Possessed by a Warrior

by Sharon Ashwood

  Winspear raised an eyebrow. “After a day in the morgue, my only criterion is that it’s not formaldehyde.”

  “Another myth shattered.” Kenyon set the bottle down.

  While vampires had little appetite for food and drink, at times the ritual was comforting—but empty. Scratch the surface and the blood hunger bubbled up, poisoning everything.

  Sam rubbed his eyes, suddenly exhausted in spirit if not in body. Why did I let Chloe kiss me? Actually, there hadn’t been much “let” involved. She was hard to stop once she focused on something.

  He’d nearly drowned in her eyes back there in Jack’s old office. She’d had that hopeful look, the one that said you might be worth a woman’s time and energy.

  He wasn’t. He was a monster. He’d flat-out told her so. And for someone who claimed no one ever told her anything, she was very good at ignoring his warnings. Impossible woman. Chloe Anderson was everything he didn’t deserve, could not have and absolutely craved. Worse, he was on the brink of giving in to his desire for her and didn’t know if he could stop himself. If he wanted to. Monster.

  The beer came and Sam grabbed his bottle as if it was a comfort object. The cold, sweaty glass felt good against his palm.

  Nine hells, what was he thinking? He was a vampire! It would end up in some B-movie moment with Chloe in a white nightgown on a parapet and him with his fangs sticking out—hoping to get them stuck in her.

  Sam frowned. That image was so wrong in so many ways. Did Jack’s house even have a parapet?

  “Something bothering you?” Winspear asked.

  Sam snapped back to the present, irritated at losing his focus. “No.”

  There was no point in even apologizing for how phony his answer sounded.

  “Then maybe we can get down to business.”

  Sam caught Winspear’s impatient tone and lifted his gaze from the tabletop. The doctor’s dark eyes were filled with a cold anger.

  “What?” Sam demanded.

  Winspear lowered his voice so that his words wouldn’t be overheard. “You wanted an autopsy report. Here it is: The only thing I can say for sure about the body we pulled from the Jag is that it belonged to a vampire. I can’t tell you anything else.”

  Kenyon looked sick. “Seriously? It was that messed up?”

  Winspear leaned forward, lowering his voice yet further. “Vampires burn extremely well, and the fire from the crash was fierce. I’d hoped to get some viable samples for testing, but almost everything useful was consumed.”

  “I thought one of the servants identified...him.” Sam couldn’t bring himself to say Jack’s name.

  “There were personal effects. A watch, some jewelry. The physical build was right.”

  “Dental records?” Kenyon asked.

  “We don’t get cavities,” Sam put in. “All vampires have perfect teeth.”

  “We do, however, have full body X-rays on file with the Company,” Winspear continued. “Bone formation, skull shape, healed fractures and so on provide enough individual differences to identify a vampire. I took a set of films and sent them in for comparison. That should at least give us a positive ID.”

  Kenyon looked confused. “There’s doubt that it was Jack in the car?”

  The corners of Winspear’s mouth twitched downward. “I’m a scientist. I require objective proof before I commit one way or the other.”

  Sam’s stomach squeezed painfully. Given what little Sam knew of the doctor’s history, Winspear didn’t like or trust many people—okay, anybody—but he had respected Jack. He would feel his loss keenly. “Jack’s gone, Mark.”

  A savage look flashed through the doctor’s eyes. “I don’t have to believe that yet. When the Company phones and tells me it’s a match, then I shall mourn for him.”

  Sam looked away, trying not to react to Winspear’s vehemence. Some vampires went feral as they aged, ran for the wild and ended their days like savage beasts. There had been whispers that Plague was headed that way. He was certainly centuries older than Sam. How many horrors had Winspear seen in all those years?

  Sam shoved the beer bottle aside.

  “So the autopsy is a dead end for now.” He winced at the unintended pun. “What else have we got?”

  “I checked the guest register,” Kenyon volunteered. “I didn’t recognize any names, but that’s no real surprise.”

  “What about the bed-and-breakfasts in the area?”

  “Nada,” Kenyon said with exaggerated patience. “I also checked the trailer park, campgrounds, and looked through the community paper for short-term rentals. This is our best bet. If our visitors are still around, they’re here somewhere, hiding in plain sight.”

  Sam took a quick glance around the room, wondering if Chloe’s thief was in the crowd. Was it one of the college students? One of the men leaning on the bar? He considered each figure, assigning a level of probable threat to each. The Horsemen could have met somewhere else, somewhere more secure, but this felt right. War didn’t hide.

  Plus, Sam wanted this confrontation over with. It was so much faster when the battle came to you. Never mind what he said to Kenyon, he wanted to see just how many of the enemy he could take down. Those were the moments when it was good to be a monster.

  “I’m happy to know you spent your day in constructive endeavors,” Winspear observed.

  Kenyon folded his arms. “Glad somebody noticed. All that legwork makes me want another beer.”

  “Fill your boots,” Winspear muttered, pulling out his phone to check it. “Be your friendly self and soon the locals will tell you their every secret.”

  “Thanks, old-timer.” Kenyon rose and sauntered straight toward the auburn-haired bombshell tending bar. He always went for the redheads.

  Turning to watch the werewolf go, Sam watched with amused disgust. Then he stiffened. He knew the figure staring at him from the shadows of the doorway. The man was dressed as one of the locals, drawing no attention.

  Sam stared at the vampire who had made him. The wave of recognition brought a complicated tangle of affection and resentment, but then it always did. More important, why had his sire come unannounced?

  Dismay fingered the back of Sam’s neck as his maker gestured for silence, and then vanished from sight.

  Chapter 12

  Chloe sat on her bed, too wound up to go to sleep.

  She’d spent an hour on the phone with Elaine smoothing everything over after the disastrous appointment that afternoon. Okay, disastrous from a business perspective. She wasn’t going to regret anything about that kiss with Sam. It had been far, far too long since she’d had that kind of a tingle in all the right places.

  Not since Neil, and that was a pale shadow compared to what Sam inspired.

  Odd that she’d thought about her ex-fiancé twice in one day. She’d blocked him out of her mind as much as was humanly possible. As Uncle Jack had put it, unfortunately some water under the bridge came straight from the sewers.

  When bad memories bubbled up, good friends and chocolate were the only answers. She’d already eaten half a bar of dark Belgian supreme.

  With a glance at her bedside clock, Chloe picked up her cell phone and thumbed in a number. It was eleven o’clock. That meant it would be eight in the morning in Vienna, which was early for Lexie but not indecent. After a long pause, she heard a ring.

  “Alexis Haven.”

  The sound of her best friend’s voice gave her a surge of comfort. “It’s Chloe.”

  “Hey!” Her friend’s husky voice suddenly brightened. “Are you back at work? Are you through sorting out the estate? What’s going on?”

  The warmth in Lexie’s tone made her smile. “I’m back at work, more or less. In fact, I need you to photograph a couple of weddings, but that’s not why I’m calling.”


  “What’s up?”

  Chloe paused a moment, not sure where to begin. “Some odd things have happened over this estate. I just sent a picture to your email. Don’t laugh. I’m not a photographer like you.”

  “Hang on.” She heard the distinctive sound of a Mac computer coming out of sleep mode, then a keyboard clicking. “Okay, got it. What is it?”

  “I think it’s a designer’s signature.” Chloe had taken the wedding dress out of the safe just long enough to search the garment for anything like a maker’s mark. She’d found a tiny patch of embroidery along the hem, stitched in thread that matched the cloth.

  “It looks like a bird.”

  “It might be. I have a dress on my hands and I want to know who designed it. You’re working for that woman who organizes all the big shows, right?”

  “Anastasia?” Of course she would be on a first-name basis with one of Europe’s fashion queens. Although modest among friends, Lexie was an up-and-coming runway photographer just on the edge of being outright famous. It was a mark of their friendship that Lexie still made herself available to Chloe’s Occasions.

  And, at the moment, Lexie was Chloe’s source for the info she needed. “Do you think she would know whose label this is?”

  “Maybe. Do you have a theory?”

  “I think it’s Jessica Lark’s, but I can’t find anything online.”

  “Cool. I’ll ask.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Where did you get the dress? Lark originals are hard to get.”

  “It was part of Uncle Jack’s estate.” Which was true, just not the whole truth. She’d tell her the rest later, when they could talk face-to-face.

  “Huh. Interesting. I’ll get Anastasia to email you directly.” Chloe heard typing. Lexie was probably forwarding the JPEG as they spoke. “So you said something odd was going on. There’s got to be more than just that, right?”

  “Yeah, well, it’s Uncle Jack’s friends. You know he was in the security business, right? Among other things?”

  “Sure.”

  “A handful of these G-man types showed up at the funeral. The one who’s the other executor, Sam, is—I don’t know how to describe him.”

  Lexie chuckled. “In a good way or a bad way?”

  “More good than bad.”

  “You mean he’s hot? Available? Tall, dark and handsome?”

  “Sure, but—that’s not it.”

  A dramatic sigh gusted halfway around the world. “How can that not be it? That’s everything.”

  “He’s different.”

  “Like how? Eats with a fork? Speaks in complete sentences? Chloe, you’ve had a dry spell the size of the Sahara. Count your blessings.”

  “He’s a bit like a Swiss Army knife.”

  “Oh, baby!”

  “Not like that.”

  “I like the corkscrew best.”

  “No, really. He’s been with me through some real emergencies. Big ones. But you know how this always ends for me, Lexie.”

  Lexie caught the tone of her voice and sobered. “I know your history, and I get why you would worry about ending up with another Neil.”

  “Maybe I’m not being fair. Sam’s been the only bright light in this whole mess.”

  “How serious a mess, Chlo? What exactly has been happening?”

  “What would you say if I said I’d been attacked in my own bed by thieves, suddenly acquired a pair of bodyguards and found a wolf running up and down the hallways in the dead of night?”

  She heard Lexie’s intake of breath. “A wolf?”

  “The attack part was worse. The wolf was kind of a sweetie.”

  For a moment, all Chloe heard was the crackle on the line.

  “Chlo, what in blazes is going on?”

  She gripped the phone, as if it could bring her physically closer to her friend. “I don’t know, Lexie. And if I’m totally honest with myself, I’m a little bit scared.”

  Suddenly the shadows in the room seemed darker. Chloe pulled an afghan around her shoulders, burrowing into the crocheted softness.

  “Who did you say this Sam guy is again?” Lexie asked.

  “One of Uncle Jack’s friends. There were three who showed up for the funeral. One left but the other two are still staying here. Sam and his friend, Faran Kenyon.”

  Chloe felt her friend’s shock, even though there wasn’t a sound on the line.

  “Faran?” Lexie’s voice smoked with ire. “You’re not serious?”

  Whoa! That was full-on Lexie temper. “You know him?”

  “Only the most arrogant, pigheaded...”

  Chloe suddenly smiled. “Is he that ex you always go on about?”

  She remembered there had been an unnamed boyfriend when Lexie was in Cannes—an affair as passionate as it had been brief.

  Lexie made a sound that would have done the wolf credit. “That’s only half of it, Chloe.”

  Chloe sat up. “What do you mean?”

  “How much do you know about these guys?”

  She felt a niggle of alarm. “Sam saved my life. These are good people.”

  “People being a subjective term,” Lexie muttered.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Lexie sighed, her breath loud in Chloe’s ear. “I can’t explain. At least, not on the phone. Listen, I’m done here in Austria. I’m catching the first plane I can. It sounds like you need a friend. In the meantime, I wouldn’t be going on any moonlit walks with your Swiss Army knife.”

  “How serious are you about that?”

  “More than I like. I would be supercareful. Think about it. I don’t do careful.”

  * * *

  Sam was staring at the spot where his maker had been a second before. His vanishing act had been too fast for human eyes, but Sam saw the blur streaking out the door. Only ancient vampires could move quite that quickly. What in the nine hells is going on?

  A moment later, Sam’s pocket vibrated. He pulled out his phone. A text message was up on the screen. All it said was Parking lot. Code Gray.

  Gray meant official business in Company-speak. Official as in need-to-know, supersecret, grab your decoder ring and eat this message if it doesn’t self-destruct first. Combined with his maker’s mysterious behavior, this could not be good news.

  According to protocol, Code Gray meant he should go alone, mentioning the message to no one. Sam looked up. That ship has sailed. The werewolf had returned with his fresh brew and both Winspear and Kenyon were watching him stare at his phone, curiosity rampant on their faces.

  Sam looked from one to the other. These were his brothers-in-arms. They might lack a lot of things, like a regular heartbeat, but they were loyal. And there is something amiss. He had a profound sense he was going to need his friends.

  He rose, the legs of his chair scraping on the wood floor. “I have to take a walk.”

  Winspear gave a cool nod, checking his watch. “You’re sure?”

  “I promise to look both ways before crossing the street.”

  The doctor shrugged, eyeing Sam’s cell phone. “Then go. I’ll finish my beer just in time to come save your backside. You’re not ending up on my examination table.”

  “What he said.” The werewolf was peering down the neck of the beer bottle as if expecting to see a tiny Moby Dick breaching the suds.

  The tension in Sam’s chest eased. There was no question they’d be watching him every step of the way. Protocol meant he couldn’t tell them anything, but there was more than one way to ask for backup. Jack had done the same thing plenty of times. A Horseman was brave, but he wasn’t stupid.

  Pushing through the steadily growing crowd at the bar, Sam shouldered his way to the door. For a dive in the middle of no place, it was
hopping. Outside, the summer night was deliciously cool.

  He paused, waiting for the latest arrivals to head inside the Salmon Tail. Then he circled the parking lot, the soles of his boots silent on the gravel. Wind ruffled the trees, drowning out the constant chirruping of frogs.

  Finally, he sensed his maker. When he spoke, his voice was conversational. “Hello, Carter. What’s going on?”

  A match flared from the darkness of the woods, stinking of sulphur. It was an old-fashioned lucifer, struck against the bark of a tree. The scent of old Virginia tobacco followed, and Sam wondered where Carter got it. Most modern cigars didn’t smell like they had in the old days. Too many pesticides, he supposed.

  The scent triggered a flood of memory. The first time he’d encountered that blend of tobacco was a century and a half ago. Then the sweet smoke had been mixed with the stink of his blood and bile. December 1862, near the Rappahannock River. Reflexively, Sam put a hand to his stomach, where he’d been gutshot. A wound to the belly is a long, painful way to die. Carter had saved him from the agony.

  Sam turned to see his maker a few yards away, leaning against one of the Douglas firs that ringed the parking lot. Carter wasn’t an especially tall man, but he was solidly built with a mane of gray-streaked hair and ice-blue eyes. He’d been in his middle years when he’d become a vampire, but he moved with the quick energy of a young man.

  Sam’s shoulders tightened, memories coming too thick and fast for comfort. He’d begged for a quick death. He’d been an officer in the Army of the Potomac, proud of his command, prouder still of his honor. He hadn’t asked to live.

  But instead of granting him peace, Carter had made him War.

  “My boy.” His maker took a puff on the cigar. The end glowed like a blazing firefly in the darkness.

  “What are you doing here?” Sam kept his voice neutral.

  “I thought you would be glad to see me.” Carter’s smile was half a challenge.

  “I am.” It was true, and not. However mixed his feelings, Sam knew Carter was the Company’s best agent. “I just didn’t expect to see the director of the Company in the parking lot of a backwater bar.”