Blood Legacy: Adult Urban Fantasy (The V V Inn Book 5)

by C. J. Ellisson

  Jon cringes. “While yes, that’s technically true. I have a feeling she’d twist the truth to enflame and enrage the pack further to get what she wants.”

  “And why do you think that?”

  “Because she told me her pack members traced my scent back to where I’m staying. She already knows about you and this house. And… She… uh… stated I had twenty-four hours to decide to help her or she’d tell everyone I was the culprit for the animal attack and reveal your daytime location to the supes in the city.”

  We’re all quiet for a moment before Rafe speaks up. “Well, shit. I really liked this place. It’s got the escape route through the root cellar and everything.”

  “Dammit,” I say, no real heat in my tone because the damage is done already. “Looks like we need to pack and move out.” I stand and glance around the tiny space, sorry to be leaving it so soon. “And then we need to have a chat with Justin again.”

  “Why Justin?” Jon asks. “I’d rather have you ‘talk’ to Magdelena so she’ll leave me alone.”

  “Justin is inspired by money and a job. We’ll give him both. I want to hire him to help me locate Rolando. And you,” I look deeply into Jon’s eyes. “You could be working on getting closer to the crazy bitch to learn her unique ‘skill.’ I guarantee, if she wasn’t born an alpha with these traits, she discovered or learned them later.”

  Jon looks surprised. “Really? I don’t know how that could be possible. But then again, if it was a learned skill, wouldn’t she tell others how to do it, too?”

  Rafe glances at the shorter man with a snarl of disbelief curling his lip. “Come on, furball. Didn’t you hear me before? Why would she teach her packmates a skill that could potentially help them kill her?”

  “Well, if that’s the case, why the hell do you think she’d teach me?”

  I arch an eyebrow. “You’d be surprised what lovers share.”

  Jon pales in the afternoon light. “You’re suggesting I seduce this woman to learn what she knows?”

  I step closer to the indignant young man, a harshness coloring my tone. “No. I’m suggesting my right hand man learn a useful skill that will make him a more powerful protector of me and mine. Do you have a problem with that?”

  Am I pushing him too hard? Can he separate his feelings for whoever he bedded in Alaska to focus on the task at hand? I’ve done it myself over the centuries, and would have done it again in a heartbeat before marrying Rafe, but would I do it now? I ignore the niggling in the back of my brain. There’s no way Jon’s recent love interest can compare to the dedication of a sixty-five year mate-bond.

  Before Jon can answer, Rafe chimes in. “Did you tell him about my entanglement with Coraline before beheading her?”

  Jon lashes out, “Yes, I heard about it. Can you really compare saving your wife’s life by having to pretend interest in your captor, to this scenario?”

  Rafe’s eyes cut to mine before he responds to Jon. “You weren’t there. You don’t know what I had to ‘pretend,’ as you so artfully put it. It was a matter of life and death. I’d do anything to protect Dria. Anything.” He glances back at Jon. “But then again, she’s my life, not yours.”

  Jon jerks up from the table, his face livid with anger. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Are you doubting my loyalty and sincerity to Vivian? I’ve given up everything for her—and I will continue to do so, no matter the price.”

  “Take a step back, both of you.” After a few deep breaths, I approach the topic another way. “Jon, do you love your new pack?” He nods, annoyance in his eyes as he struggles to keep them from turning a light golden brown, a sign his wolf is very close to the surface. “Would you attempt whatever was needed to keep them safe? Even if it brought you harm?”

  “Of course, I would. You know that.”

  “Well then, how is this suggestion any different? Your pack is growing. One day you will have a mate of your own and maybe children, too.” He’s listening now, and his eyes are staying hazel, indicating he’s fully in control of his beast. I resist the burning desire to ask if he found someone he could see himself having children with. It’s his decision and I want to see him happy.

  “Do you want to learn a skill that could essentially make your whole pack contenders against any threat? No matter where you all were, no matter who stood by you, your loved ones would always be safe.”

  “You’re suggesting I learn this and teach the whole pack?”

  I raise a shoulder and let it fall. “Why not? You’ve always talked about forming a network of packs, opening up communication for a system to keep people safe and informed. This could be the thing to entice packs to unite. You could become the lynchpin in something much greater than yourself.”

  My message sinks in and Jon quiets, leaning against the back of his chair, staring at the uneaten food on his plate. “And all it will cost me is my dignity—and it will hinge on my success to seduce a woman I don’t really like.”

  “Not a bad price, overall,” Rafe says, rising from his place and carrying his plate to the counter. “And how about with the next safe house, you don’t mess up and lead people right to us on the first night?”

  In a few hours we’re settled in a new apartment. It’s not nearly as nice or as big—nor as convenient—staying in a basement unit under an old repurposed bank. Since it’s located much farther from San Telmo where the Tribunal resides, we’ll be using the car more, which could help in shaking possible tails, too. Jon will now experience the joy of staying in the bedroom next to ours—I’m sure it will drive home his mistake greater than anything else I could possible say to him.

  “What’s next?” Rafe asks.

  “Time to question a few vampires,” I say, a feral grin stretching my face.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Rafe

  I’m not happy with the immediate change in locations, but we did plan for the possibility of having to switch daytime resting places daily, so I keep my frustration under wraps. Full dark has descended as Dria and I drive from the new apartment to the Tribunal’s neighborhood, the luxuriant “new car” smell seeps into my senses, soothing my annoyance. God, I love a well-made automobile.

  “I know you went to a lot of trouble to build the furniture in the basement.” My wife’s hand slides over my knee in a soothing gesture. “I’m sorry we won’t be able to use it again.”

  “Me, too. But hey, that’s life. The new place isn’t so bad.”

  “Nope, it’s fine. Just smaller.” She gives my leg one last pat and stills her hand. “We’ll do fine.”

  I want desperately to believe her, but we’re not even a few days in to searching for Rolando and plans have already been mucked up. Maybe I should contact the agent and line up another property, just in case. If I wasn’t so afraid of nosey owners I’d suggest renting instead of buying. Would certainly make life easier, if not safer.

  “How do you think Jon will do with the female alpha?” Dria asks, her tone strangely devoid of emotion.

  “Are you worried? He’s a grown man.”

  She sighs. “It’s not that. Obviously he’s an adult. But he’s never tried his hand at deception. I worry he’s not up to the task of seduction to uncover her secrets.”

  “Hmph. I’d be more worried she’ll turn him down flat and then he’ll never be able to get into her pants.”

  Despite my best efforts, Dria refuses to rise to my remarks regarding the werewolf. It’s more fun to tease him when he’s here. Very soon we arrive at our destination. Paranoid because of Jon’s recent slip, I choose a new location to watch the townhouse’s entrances, hoping to throw off anyone who might be watching.

  “No need for caution, my dear.”

  “Why do you say that? I think I’ve done a pretty good job at surveillance without getting detected so far.”

  “I’m sure you have—but that was when you didn’t have a vampire in the car with you who would trip the wizard’s wards.”

  “Damn! I forgot about t
hat. I should have parked the next street over.”

  She opens her door and waits on the sidewalk for me. “Wouldn’t have mattered if we drove in or walked. The wards will still go off and they will know an unregistered vamp has crossed the boundary.”

  “Unregistered? Hey, could Justin use the inverse to determine if Rolando has crossed the wards, too?”

  Dria slips her hand in the crook of my arm. “I have no idea. Wizard spells and magic are not my forte. One more thing we can ask him later.”

  “Why are we approaching them so boldly? Aren’t you worried about being recognized?”

  My wife tilts her head up toward mine. “On the contrary, I’m hoping to run into one of the sentries and take control of his mind to ask questions.”

  “Ahh… so clever. Paul and Drew mentioned a group of four greeted them when they wandered too close, that night they came looking for us.”

  “Exactly.”

  We stroll sedately up the street, casually glancing at homes and the street for signs of movement. Dria pauses mid-step and stops. “Do you smell that?”

  Taking a deep breath, I detect the slight odor of car exhaust, molding leaves collected near a curb, and the faint hint of trash. “Nope, nothing out of the ordinary. What are you picking up?”

  She resumes her pace, quicker than before, tugging me along with her. “I smell vampire blood. And a lot of it.”

  We pass the Tribunal’s main house and keep walking. About seventy-five yards ahead I spy a form lying on the sidewalk. “Shit. Is that a body?”

  Our pace increases to a light jog, eating up the distance quickly. A very large man lies on the sidewalk, his throat ripped out, nearly severing his head from his body. Long gouges of bloody flesh show through his clothing. A large hole in his chest is located where his heart would be. As a vampire, there’s no coming back from a missing heart and severed head. A glance at his face has me once again swearing.

  “Holy shit. That’s George, isn’t it?”

  Dria’s voice comes out as a whisper. “Yes. Yes, it was.”

  I run a hand over my forehead and up into my hair. “Dammit. He was a nice guy.”

  I shake off the cloying feel of a fearful death, distance myself mentally from the horror of the moment and attempt to help, squatting to examine him better in the darkness. My eyesight is close to that of a vampire, thanks to small sips of my wife’s blood every month, but I take out my phone and use the flashlight function to illuminate the wounds better.

  The man’s a bloody mess. The white flash of his spine can be seen through the red gore of the torn muscles and ligaments at his throat. In addition to the wounds on his torso, there are huge slashes ripped through the arm of his coat in a failed defensive move to protect the large man.

  “I’ve never seen a vampire kill another this way, especially leaving the blood to go to waste. Nor such widely spaced slashes on a werewolf’s strike—doesn’t match even the largest werewolf paw I’ve seen. What do you think made these wounds?”

  Dria takes a step back, darting a glance from side to side. “I have no idea, but I can tell you it doesn’t smell like a vampire or werewolf did it.”

  “Really? What do you think killed him—and why?”

  Concern flashes across her lovely face. “Let’s get out of here, Rafe. And fast.”

  Without further explanation, she hustles back the way we came, restraining herself from outright running away.

  “Hold up, Dria. Wait! Why are we running?”

  “Because we triggered the wards when we drove into the neighborhood and George’s death is minutes old. Sentries, remember? There’s no way in hell I want to be here when they find the body. It’s bad enough our scents will be at the crime scene for any sensitive nose to discern.” She moves faster, her petite feet almost flying over the sidewalk. “Come on, hon. Move it!”

  No sooner do we get back to the car when I hear raised voices sounding from behind us. We slide into the butter soft seats and buckle up. I turn the key in the ignition and execute a three-point turn, heading back the way we came. My breath whooshes out as we leave the darkened residential area and travel into a more commercial section with a few people milling on the streets outside of bars.

  “Holy crap. That was a close one. Do you think the Tribunal has werewolves in its employ and they’ll be able to find us?”

  Dria leans her head against the window. “I have no idea. But I have a feeling Buenos Aires’s recent killing spree is only going to get worse.”

  “Why do you say that? What do think it could have been?”

  “The scary truth? I’ve never smelled anything like it. I have no idea what we’re up against.”

  We rendezvous with Jon, picking him up near the new place, explaining all that happened and Dria’s thoughts on it not being anything she recognizes. She even went so far as to share the discovery of the body with him in a projected memory, ensuring he knows exactly what we know.

  “So if you’ve never smelled this predator before, what exactly does that rule out?” Jon asks, thinking of an angle I never thought to ask.

  “Hmph. A bigger list than I can recall, to be honest. It’s not a type of shifter I’ve ever met, nor a vampire, reaper, ghoul, zombie, witch, wizard… Jesus, there’s a lot of paranormal creepies out there. Doesn’t smell like anything from the ocean. Demons have more of a sulfur tang to their scent, and angels—”

  “Whoa. Did you just say demons?” Jon looks as freaked out as I feel. I never knew half those things existed and I was happy in my ignorance.

  “Sounds to me like you’ve protected me from a lot during our marriage,” I say, a tinge of annoyance in my tone.

  Dria glances at me, unperturbed. “I’m not sure what you want me to say, honey. The amount of things I’ve done and been exposed to in my life… well, it’s enough to fill up a library. I don’t remember it all, it happened so long ago.”

  Jon asks, “Is that why you kept journals?”

  “Not initially, no. I did it in the beginning to preserve my sanity. I’d survived so much, I had trouble handling it all. And that was way before the concept of a therapist ever existed. But after the decades started piling up, I realized I was forgetting a lot of my past. If an incident came up in conversation I would generally recall the gist of what happened… but the details?” She shakes her head. “Those very quickly fell to the wayside. I found if I compartmentalized a traumatic event, denying its existence and shoving it away in my mind, very slowly the facts as I knew them changed in my memories. My later knowledge and feelings would often color what actually happened. Making it less horrible and more survivable. Does that make sense?”

  I nod, placing a comforting arm around her slim shoulders. “Yes, it does.”

  “So where do we go from here?” Jon asks. “We’ve got a witch beaten to death, a human torn up—and now a vampire, possibly killed by the same creature that murdered the human. Are these random targets or is there significance in the victims? We can’t exactly collaborate with the local authorities, so how the hell are we going to discover the connections?”

  I shift my wife closer to me, pressing her side along mine to offer warmth. “I vote for contacting your alpha wolf again. So far she’s the only person we know with an inside track for info on the bodies.”

  Jon nods, his mouth thinning a little at the prospect. “All right. She’s expecting my help anyway. Let’s go.”

  We traverse the packed streets of San Telmo to return to the Lupine Luna. The full moon is only days away and I wonder how safe it is visiting an establishment full of werewolves. “Jon—do we need to be worried about the full moon being so close?”

  “Jesus, man. All these years with me and you still don’t know that crap is fake? A werewolf doesn’t need the moon to change. But I will concede, it does often raise instinctual tendencies—like a propensity to hunting or mating. Very hard to avoid extremes if you’re unbalanced by your baser instincts.”

  “Okay—so there’s no cha
nce the group will turn furry and attack en masse, but they may be horny and-slash-or looking for prey. Good to know.”

  In a few minutes we arrive at the bar and find a parking spot off the street. Like a lot of San Telmo, the streets here are paved with cobblestone, lending an air of times past to the setting. Noises from local restaurants spill into the streets, patrons still happy, despite the local deaths, to carry the joi de vie of the evening into the cooler night air.

  The tension brought on by the discovery of George’s corpse melts away, replaced by the magic that is Buenos Aires. I’m grateful for the change of energy, especially as we’re just about to enter what could become a hostile environment.

  “Is it smart for all three of us to approach the pack?” I ask, allowing my inner doubts to surface. “Would it be better if Jon handled this on his own?”

  The three of us halt on the sidewalk, the sign for the bar about half a block down. “That’s a really good point,” Dria says. “Jon, what do you think?”

  “As much as I hate to admit it, Rafe is probably right. Especially if you were serious about me trying to seduce the woman to learn her transformation secrets.” He looks down the street then glances back at Dria. “If our experiences with Romeo’s pack are anything to go by, our unconventional relationship of servant and vampire may not be looked at too kindly.”

  A miffed expression crosses Dria’s face. “They already know you’re traveling with a vampire, what other reason could it be for?”

  Jon raises his eyebrows, a distinctly lewd expression on his face. “They could think we’re lovers.” He reaches an arm to Dria’s waist and a not so subtle grumble begins in my chest. “Relax, man. I’m just teasing. We all know she’s yours.” He leans down and nuzzles her neck, pushing her hair back over her shoulder with his face.

  Dria extracts herself from the shorter man’s embrace. “And now you’ve successfully coated yourself in my scent. Clever. Was that for Magdelena’s benefit?”