Up in a Blaze (Texas Vampire Rangers Book 3)

by Alice Brown

  Donte paid for her order and handed over the Caramel Flan Latte and blueberry muffin. “Don’t you eat breakfast?” she asked as she just realized he hadn’t ordered anything for himself.

  “Not usually, no.” Quickly trying to come up with something that sounded plausible, he added, “I am usually out with one of the other rangers early enough, and we just stop for an early lunch.” He just neglected to tell her that they usually stopped at each other’s houses because their lunch generally consisted of a bag or two of blood. Nope, not going there without a LOT of backup!

  She nodded her head in understanding and he watched as she lifted the cup to her lips to take her first sip. She closed her eyes as the hot liquid hit her tongue, a moan of sheer ecstasy sounding from the back of her throat had his previously flaccid dick rock hard and painfully pressing against the zipper of his jeans in two seconds flat. His mind easily conjured up a picture of her lips wrapped around his dick, that same look of ecstasy on her face, which in turn, had him fighting for self-control.

  “Damn, baby, you have no idea how sexy you are, do you?” He chuckled as he pulled out of the parking lot and back into morning traffic.

  When they arrived at headquarters, he swung around back to the parking lot and parked his truck. He escorted her in through the backdoor, and they walked toward the front of the building, following a few voices.

  Walter, Betty, Lucas and Meredith, Adam and his mate, Bethany, Ethan, Zack, and Kade were already in the office. It looked like the only one missing was Nathaniel.

  Donte caught Walter’s eye and stated, “Nathaniel is running a few minutes behind me. I saw his truck at the coffee shop.”

  “Well, now that most of us are here, we can go ahead and start our morning meeting. I’ll just catch Nathaniel up when he gets here.” Walter had never been a stickler for time. His attitude was as late as they had to work sometimes, even getting called in on cases in the middle of the night, he wasn’t going to demand everyone be there at an exact time. As long as they were there when he needed them to be, he certainly never raised his eyebrow if someone ran five or ten minutes late once in a while.

  Everyone headed to the conference room, and Donte reached down to clasp hands with Cassie as they followed everyone else into the large room. Nathaniel walked in the backdoor and followed them.

  Walter started by introducing Cassie to everyone in the room, and had just launched into telling about her attack, when they heard Betty’s high piercing shriek. She’d been left at the reception desk to answer phone calls while everyone else went in for the staff meeting.

  Walter had just started heading to the door when it burst open, as Betty ran into the room. She stopped once she was standing behind Walter, using him as a vampire shield. Another second and a tall, dark haired man in a Stetson hat followed.

  Walter placed one hand in front of him and the other on his weapon. “Who the hell are you, and what are you doing chasing my secretary?”

  The man was smart enough to listen to Walter’s tone of voice and stopped in his tracks, raising his hands up in surrender. “Sorry for the interruption. My name is Samuel Grey, and I am currently an Oklahoma state trooper. My identification is in my back pocket.” Lucas had stood up and quickly made his way to the front as soon as Betty ran in, making certain he was behind their intruder. Walter gave a short nod but kept his eye on the stranger.

  No one said a word for a minute while Lucas pulled the guy’s wallet out of his back pocket and opened it. “Looks to be legit,” he stated to Walter.

  Walter held eye contact with their visitor. “Okay, we’ve established who you are, mind telling me what you are doing here, and why you chased down my secretary?”

  Samuel tilted one side of his upper lip just enough to show Walter that he was a vampire. “I drove half the night to get here after someone using this agency’s server searching for black magic alerted me.”

  Donte stood up. “Walter, that was me. I was searching for information trying to get to the bottom of Cassie’s problem with Gregory showing up in her dreams.”

  Samuel glanced over to him. “You think someone has been placed under a spell?” he verified.

  Donte slowly turned quietly to Cassie. “Stay here, I’ll be right back,” before walking up to the front of the room to join Walter and Lucas.

  “Yes, I am almost positive about it. Why? Do you know anything about spells?”

  “As a matter of fact I do.” Samuel glanced over Donte’s shoulder to where Cassie was sitting, her hands tightly clasped together, looking like she wanted the floor to swallow her up. He also sensed she was the only human in the room. He looked back over to Walter and cocked an eyebrow at him. “Could we possibly discuss a few things in private?”

  Walter turned to Betty who was still standing behind him, using him as a shield. “Stay here with Lucas and Nathaniel.” He fully planned to get to the bottom of why their unexpected visitor was chasing his secretary, although he was pretty sure he knew the reason. If it was what he thought…well, he couldn’t help shaking his head and releasing a small chuckle as he escorted Samuel out of the room, then headed toward his office. This felt entirely too familiar as he thought back to just a short time ago when he was escorting his own brother, Nathaniel, to his office for much the same reason.

  Once Walter and their guest walked out of the room and the door shut, everyone started talking at once. Donte walked back over to Cassie, who was looking a bit paler than usual. He knelt down in front of her and placed his hands over hers, which were sitting in her lap.

  “Are you doing okay? You’re looking a bit pale, have you taken anything for your pain yet?” he asked in concern.

  Cassie shook her head. “No, I didn’t have time before the meeting began, and I didn’t want to take the chance of interrupting once it started. Who was that man?”

  Donte picked up her purse that was sitting on the floor and sat it in her lap. “I made a few inquiries last night and did some searching on the net trying to find answers.” He glanced over to where Walter and Samuel had walked out just a moment prior. “Don’t worry about him, babe. Walter isn’t about to let anything happen to you or Betty.”

  He smiled over to Betty as she walked up and took the seat next to her friend. “You okay?” he inquired.

  “Yeah, now that I’ve calmed down, I’m fine. Just kind of freaked me out, you know?”

  Cassie turned and grabbed Betty’s hand. “Hon, what happened out there? Did that man h-hurt you?” Donte could hear the wobble and uncertainty in her voice. He had a feeling he knew what had just happened, but couldn’t voice it.

  Betty turned and looked her friend in the eye, keeping a tight hold on her hand. “I’m fine, Cassie, no need to worry about a thing.” She spoke low and smooth, her voice pitched to promote calmness. While she maintained skin contact, she carefully invaded Cassie’s mind and rearranged her most recent memories, especially of those that had her barging in on a staff meeting a short while ago, scared out of her mind.

  Donte was rather impressed as he remained still and calm, allowing Betty to do what needed to be done to make Cassie forget at least part of the last ten minutes. He knew she had a lot of questions, but until they sat down and explained everything to her, no one wanted to answer.

  When she released Cassie’s hand, Betty had a warm smile on her face. “Hey, Cassie, you doing okay? These guys aren’t boring you too much, are they?”

  Cassie blinked twice, and Donte watched a ‘V’ form in her forehead where she scrunched it up.

  “What happened? Did I do something embarrassing?” She couldn’t seem to remember what she had been doing prior to just a few seconds ago. She remembered coming into the conference room with Donte and taking a seat. She remembered Walter addressing the group and starting to explain her presence. But looking around the room, Walter was nowhere to be seen, and everyone else was standing up and mingling with each other. What the hell had happened? Had she blacked out?

  “No, noth
ing embarrassing, I promise.” Betty giggled from beside her. “You just kind of spaced out there for a moment.” She looked over to Donte for a little support to her fabricated story.

  “You know, you haven’t taken anything for pain this morning, babe. Why don’t you go ahead while we are on break before Walter gets back? He had to step out for just a moment for a phone call or something.” Donte made sure his body was nice and relaxed as he shrugged his shoulders, as if nothing of any importance had occurred.

  *****

  Walter led Samuel to his office and shut the door behind them. He gestured for him to sit in one of the two chairs placed in front of his desk, while he went and sat down in his own seat.

  “Give me just a moment, and I’ll be right with you.” He quickly tapped a few keys on his computer and did a search for the man sitting in front of him. He wasn’t going to divulge anything to him until he knew he was legit. Three minutes later, after accessing both the Oklahoma State Trooper site and the National Vampire Data Base (NVDB), everything matched up with what Samuel had told him in the conference room. The NVDB was a private database that listed many of the vampires along with pertinent information. Several vampire computer specialists worked tirelessly to ensure the database stayed private, and was only accessible to certain vampires of authority.

  “Okay, you look legit, so I am going to give you the benefit of doubt here, but I still want to know why you were chasing my secretary.” He held his hand up when Samuel started to speak and continued, “You need to realize that not only is she my secretary, but she is also my sister in-law and under my protection. Now,” he made a hand gesture over to Samuel, “proceed.”

  “First of all, I apologize for interrupting your staff meeting. Like I said, I drove half of last night to get here as quickly as I could. The very last thing I was thinking about when I walked in the front door was to run slap into my mate. I made the trip with the sole intention of alerting you that someone was using your server to search out some powerful magic, and then maybe stick around and help you find that person if needed. As you can probably guess, I’ve been around a longtime.” Samuel stopped and shook his head. “I’d given up on finding my mate. When you reach my age, and you still haven’t crossed paths with her, it’s time to hang up the hope of finding her.”

  “So Betty is your mate?” Walter verified.

  “Yes, she is. I know she is one of us, however, why she ran from me I’m not sure. She should have felt the mate pull the same as I the moment I walked in the door. When she took off running, I just wanted to stop her, for fear she was running from me, and I’d never find her again. Again, I apologize. Barging into a morning staff debriefing is not the way I wanted to meet you.”

  Walter sat back in his chair and laughed. Actually laughed. “Oh this is too good to be true,” he crowed.

  “I’m sorry. I fail to see the humor in the situation,” Samuel replied, clearly lost in what was really happening.

  “There must be something about that front desk out there. Betty is temporarily filling in for the last secretary that was there, who happened to meet her mate, which is my brother, almost the exact same way you just met yours. The only difference is Susan is a human, but she already knew about our kind.”

  “Really? Well, I can see where you would find humor in that situation.”

  Walter sat up and placed his hands on his desk in front of him. “However, there are a few very serious topics we need to discuss concerning Betty.” For the next ten minutes he filled Samuel in on Betty’s ex, them showing up at the hospital with her on death’s door, Sissy changing her over to being a vampire, and then bringing her home. He then told Samuel about Gregory’s escape from prison, his visit to Betty’s friend, Cassie, and Donte going to retrieve her for protection just two days prior.

  Samuel sighed deeply and shook his head. “Well I guess that explains why she ran from me. Has she ventured out and socialized since the change over?”

  “Yes, she has to some extent. She has no problem working here in a building full of male vampires, but then again, she is fully aware I’d clock any yahoo idiot who tried to take advantage of her. You will need to go slow, my friend. Very slowly. Now, let’s talk about this magic crap, because that shit gives me the willies!”

  *****

  The door to the conference room opened and everyone immediately became quiet and took their seats. Walter walked in with Samuel following close behind him.

  “Gang, I’d like to introduce Samuel Grey from the Oklahoma State Troopers. He also knows quite a bit more about magic than we do, so for the time being, he has agreed to stay on and help us out with this case.”

  Cassie glanced next to her where Betty was still sitting just in time to watch her eyes go big. Did she know the man Walter introduced as Samuel?

  “In light of this, I’m going to be spending today getting Samuel completely caught up on this case, as well as see what we can do about Cassie’s problem,” Walter continued and then looked directly at Cassie. “Cassandra, Donte has already filled me in on Gregory trying to access your mind while you are sleeping. We are hoping Samuel here can shed some light on things for us. I’ll be sticking around the office today, and Nathaniel,” he stopped and turned his gaze to the other ranger. “I think it might be best if we keep the women together until we know exactly what we are up against. I’m going to be calling Sissy and have her here, and I would strongly recommend bringing Susan in.”

  Walter turned his attention back to Betty and Cassie. “Ladies, I will do everything in my power to make your stay here as comfortable as possible.”

  Both women gave him a short nod, while Cassie couldn’t help but think, it’s going to be a long day.

  Chapter Five

  The remainder of the morning was spent with Walter and Lucas bringing Samuel up to speed on Gregory’s entire case, and Donte and Nathaniel turning one of the spare offices into a lounge for the ladies. Nathaniel had left for a short time and returned with his wife, Susan. Cassie also got to meet the other females in the unit, Bethany and Meredith.

  She was surprised at how open and friendly all the women were. It was obvious the others had been friends for a while, but they seemed to take her into their fold without question.

  The men carried lounge chairs they had found elsewhere in the building into the large room for the ladies to sit on. They even found a couch and a television that they hooked up. As he set it up, Nathaniel stated, “You ladies will probably be too busy chit-chatting to watch anything, but we thought we’d go ahead and set it up anyways.”

  His spouse, Susan, turned to him and shot him a glare. “Are you insinuating that we talk too much, Mr. Andrews?” She placed her hands on top of her baby bump, lightly stroking over her extended stomach. “Because I know you don’t want me going upstairs and telling doc that you have upset me needlessly.”

  Nathaniel was smart enough to know he needed to back pedal fast to get out of this mess. “No, baby. I would never upset you on purpose.” He walked over and crouched down in front of her, kissing her swollen stomach. “I just meant that you all would probably be busy getting to know one another. How’s my little munchkin today?” He had that look in his eye that clearly stated he was hoping his mate would allow for the change in subject matter.

  Susan cocked her eyebrow at him as she looked down at him still crouched in front of her. “Good save, Mr. Andrews, good save.” She picked up her hand and ran her fingers through his hair. In a staged whisper she added, “Nice try changing the subject also.”

  He chuckled then gave her a wide grin as he looked up at her after giving her belly another kiss. “Love you, cariño. I didn’t mean to upset you, truly. Can I do anything for you?”

  “Hey, hey now…you two need to get a room if you’re going to start that up,” Donte teased as he went by, carrying a small table into the room. “Besides, isn’t that what got her in the condition she’s in already?”

  “Shut up, Donte!” Nathaniel growled as h
e stood and wrapped his arms around his mate. “I’m currently digging myself out of the dog house.”

  “Coño batida,” Donte called out as he sat the table down over in the corner. He knew his friend’s Spanish was horrible, and figured the only way he’d be able to figure out what he said would be if one of the ladies translated.

  Cassie’s eyes went wide and she looked over to Betty, who clearly didn’t realize what was said. Betty walked over and Cassie whispered in her ear, “It means pussy whipped.”

  Because she whispered it, she never thought anyone else could possibly hear what she said, but as Betty clamped a hand down on her mouth to keep from laughing out loud, a growl came from the side of the room where Nathaniel was.

  Nathaniel glared at Donte for a second. “Connard!”

  This time it was Susan who raised her eyebrow up at her husband. “Why did you just call him an asshole in French?”

  “Because he knows I don’t know very much Spanish and just told me I was pussy whipped a minute ago.”

  Susan rolled her eyes, right along with all the other women. “Right, and boys will be boys. Well, boys, thank you so much for all of your help, but I think you two can go find something else productive to do.”

  They chased the guys out and shut the door behind them. “Men!” Betty stated as she shook her head. “Can’t live with them, can’t kill them. What exactly are we supposed to do with them again?” This had all the women laughing, and soon they were joking and exchanging stories as if they had all been friends for years. Cassie watched with some interest, trying to stay out of the conversation as much as possible, after all, she was just a guest, but the rest of the women weren’t having that. They made sure she was included in everything, and before she knew it, the morning had passed and it was lunchtime.

  “I’m going to go find Walter and see if he deems it safe enough to go to lunch together,” Sissy stated as she stood and stretched.