Swear

by Amanda Hocking

  Bobby just scoffed at me. "He doesn't let it get out. He's Batman."

  THERE WAS NO NEED TO linger at Rebekah's spooky mansion with Rebekah and her creepy servants, so Bobby and I parted ways with Olivia in the driveway. She promised to keep in touch if she heard anything, then hurried inside to see if one of Rebekah's maids could get the blood out of her dress.

  The sun would be up soon, and I was exhausted, so Bobby drove my Mercedes back to Amsterdam. I slouched down low in the passenger seat, staring at the scenery until my lids felt too heavy and sleep finally overtook me.

  After the long days I'd had lately, I'd been hoping for a nice, restful nap. But of course, nothing in my life could be that easy.

  This time, I felt the sunlight first, warming my skin, and I opened my eyes with the intention of asking Bobby to turn the AC up. But then I saw that I wasn't in the car. I was back in the field of blue flowers, and I should've known, because I already smelled them.

  "What now?" I groaned and sat up in the field of flowers.

  "Alice," she called to me, and I heard her before I saw her.

  It was only a few moments before she appeared, floating down the hill from me. She stayed farther back than she usually did. In most of the dreams, I felt like I could reach out and touch her, but this time, I could barely even see her face.

  Everything about her seemed blurrier and weaker than normal - everything except her voice, which still seemed to permeate the dream.

  "Danger is on its way," she said, her ethereal voice lilting. "You must be prepared."

  "Prepared for what?" I asked, and I felt a strange tickle on my hand as vines crept over them. It was so early in the dream, but it was already happening. The flowers were overtaking me.

  "Time is running out."

  "Then you need to tell me what I have to do!" I shouted at her as I fought against the flowers. "If time is important, then you need to quit wasting my time."

  "I don't have all the answers, Alice," she said mournfully. "You have to find them yourself. And you must move quickly if you want to break free."

  I couldn't see her anymore because the flowers were pulling me down. At first they just pinned me to the ground, but now they were pressing me into the earth. The dirt felt cold and heavy as it consumed me. I tried to claw and scream, but it was futile.

  "Alice?" Bobby asked, shaking me, and I responded by lashing out and hitting him in the arm. "Ouch! Alice!"

  "Shit, sorry." I blinked and sat up straighter, trying to make sense of what was happening. "Are you okay? Sorry. I was having a bad dream."

  "Yeah, I'll be fine. I think." He rubbed his shoulder and looked at me warily. "Are you okay? You look... shaken up."

  I forced a smile. "I'm fine. Everything's fine. Why'd you wake me up?"

  "Because we're home."

  I looked around and realized that we were in the parking garage below our apartment complex, sandwiched between Milo's Lexus hybrid and Jack's DeLorean.

  "Holy shit. How long was I asleep? I feel like I just closed my eyes for a few seconds."

  "That's usually how sleep works," Bobby said, stilling giving me an odd look. "You slept the whole trip. Are you sure you're okay?"

  "Yeah, I'm fine," I repeated, but I don't think either Bobby or I were convinced. "Let's just get inside."

  That was easier than explaining that I really didn't feel like I'd slept at all. It felt more like some kind of crazy teleportation, and the scent of the dirt still filled my nose and mouth. I could still feel it under my fingernails as I tried to claw to the surface. But when I looked, there wasn't any sign of it.

  Which made sense, since it was only a dream. An intense realistic terrifying dream.

  "Are you gonna be okay for your honeymoon?" I asked Bobby, hurrying to discuss anything normal so I wouldn't have to think of the dream anymore.

  He nodded. "Yeah. We're flying out, because Milo didn't want to waste time on the road, so I'll be able to sleep."

  "Good." I nodded, then took a deep breath. "Everything's good."

  When we made it up the apartment, it was quiet and the shades were drawn, so no one had gotten up yet for the day, but it was still early afternoon. I walked quietly into my bedroom, where Jack slept with his back to me.

  Matilda lay at the end of the bed, and her tail thumped a few times at the sight of me. I kicked off my shoes and peeled of my pants before scratching her head, then I climbed into bed. Jack was shirtless underneath the sheets, and I wrapped my arm around his waist, pulling myself close to him and resting my head against his back, so I could listen closely to the slow, steady beat of his heart.

  "Hey, you're back," he murmured, still half-asleep. "How did it go?"

  "I'll tell you more about it later."

  He rolled over so he faced me and brushed the hair back from eyes. "Is everything okay?"

  "Yeah," I lied.

  His blue eyes studied my face, and I couldn't tell if he believed me or not, but maybe he just saw that I needed some time to destress before I talked about anything.

  "I missed you," he said finally.

  "I missed you, too." I leaned in, kissing him gently and sweetly on the lips, then he pulled me into his arms and let me rest with my head on his chest.

  As I closed my eyes, drifting off to sleep again, hoping for a real sleep this time, I felt something gnawing at me from the trip in Prague. Beyond Cate's strange reaction to me, or the fact that my status as a vampire hunter was now apparently relatively public, or that the House of Basarab was resurging (whatever that meant).

  There was something deeper that was bothering me, something less deadly but more personal, making it far more terrifying. It was something that Cate had said that I couldn't shake, as I lay with the man that I loved more than anything on this earth.

  She'd been convinced that Elise hadn't been meant for Peter. If Elise and Peter weren't bonded, what did that mean for me? Was I really meant for Jack? Or maybe I wasn't meant for any of them at all, the way Ezra once suggested. That maybe because I was a dhampyr I reacted strongly to them, but I didn't have a soulmate in the bunch.

  Maybe I didn't even have a soulmate at all.

  "SO?" JACK ASKED, LOOKING AT me expectantly. "Do you want to talk about it now?"

  After I'd gotten back, I'd slept uneventfully late into the evening, and when I woke up, Jack was gone at work, and Milo and Bobby had already left for their honeymoon. I used the alone time to get on my laptop and search for anything I could find about either Cate Brennan or blood bonding, but both searches had turned up nothing fruitful.

  When I heard Jack at the front door, I'd closed at all the open tabs I'd been perusing and started a more innocent search about the House of Basarab.

  Jack played with the dog before kissing me on my temple, then he sat down beside me, propping his feet up on an empty chair across from him. He had the strangest look in his soft blue eyes - faraway and strained, which wasn't that strange, I supposed, except it did look so out of place on his normally smiling face.

  "We had a run in with vampires from this weird cult," I said, deciding to explain the part of it I was comfortable talking about first.

  By the time I'd finished the story, his expression had changed to restrained concern - a look I'd gotten used to seeing since I'd been working full time as a hunter. He knew I could take care of myself, but he was never happy about me going out to face vampires that might try to kill me.

  "But you were all okay?" he asked, trying not sound as worried as he so obviously felt.

  "Yeah. We're all fine."

  "And that's what you didn't want to talk about this morning?"

  "Yep."

  He looked away from me and scratched the back of his neck. "Hmmm."

  "Are you okay?" I closed my laptop and scooted my chair closer to him, so I could take his hand in mine.

  "Yeah," he said, but he didn't sound like it, and his eyebrows were pinched together. "I just had a weird day."

  "How so?"
/>   "I don't know." He shook his head. "I really don't know how to explain it. We had a busy day, with lots of customers, so that was good. I just kept getting these odd vibes all day, like people were staring at me more than normal."

  "People always stare at you," I reminded him.

  When we'd first started hanging out, when I had still been mortal, I had been so annoyed with how often other humans would openly check him out and flirt with him. He was very foxy, even by vampire standards, and that combined with the supernatural attractiveness had always gotten him a lot of attention.

  "I know. But it wasn't just humans."

  I straightened up in surprise, but I didn't let go of his hand. "What do you mean?"

  He licked his lips, like he was stalling for time, before finally saying, "A vampire came into the shop."

  "And?"

  "And she just kept asking me questions and kinda followed me around. The questions were all benign - like about this title or that one, what do I think of the New 52, what do I recommend, just basic comic questions."

  "That all sounds normal," I said cautiously. "So what was the strange part?"

  "The way she looked at me. Like she was awestruck." He stared off, thinking of the right words. "Like when people say something is 'amazing,' they usually just mean cool or neat or whatever. But the way she looked, it was textbook definition of 'amazed.' She was slack-jawed stunned and her eyes were so wide."

  "Did you catch her name?" I asked.

  "Nah. I honestly tried not to make conversation with her. Eventually, I just pretended I had something important to do in the back office, and I hid out there until Jeroen came to get me and let me know that she'd gone."

  "You're sure she was a vampire?" I asked.

  Jack looked at me like I was being ridiculous. "Come on, Alice. I think I know a vampire when I see one."

  "Sorry. Of course you do." I smiled apologetically. "What did she look like?"

  "She had blond hair, blue eyes, fair skin. She must've been about forty when she turned, but I have no idea how long ago that was," he explained. "But the only thing really remarkable about her was her accent."

  Intrigued, I pressed, "Her accent?"

  "Yeah, it was German, but mixed with something soft. Maybe Australian?" He pondered it for a second. "Like she born in Australia, but she moved to Germany in her formative years or something. Or vice versa."

  "Anything else you can tell me about her?" I asked.

  "I -" Jack looked up at me and his shoulders slacked. "You're going to look her up, aren't you?"

  "I'm going to try to."

  He leaned back in his chair, but didn't let go of my hand. "I don't need you checking up on me like that. It's probably nothing."

  "Jack, it's part of my job. Yes, I want to make sure you're safe, but I'm also charged with policing this area for the Agency. I have to take all claims of vampires behaving badly very seriously."

  "She wasn't behaving badly," he argued. "Maybe she just had a crush on me. I am an attractive guy, you know."

  I smiled at him. "I know."

  "It was odd, sure, but I don't know that she's dangerous." He leaned forward on the table. "If she shows up again, I give you my blessing to look into her. But can you just hold off until then? I don't want you hassling some poor stranger and scaring away customers. That's no good for business."

  "Okay," I relented. "But you have to promise to tell me if any other weird things happen, especially with this lady."

  "Deal." He grinned broadly at me, and his earlier unease seemed to be finally melting away. "Hey, how did it go with that Catherine vampire? Did she tell you anything?"

  "Not really. I mean, not anything I didn't know," I said, then decided to switch tactics. "How much do you know about Elise?"

  "Not much at all. Peter barely even spoke her name to me. Most of what I've gathered, I got from Ezra," he said, putting him in the same boat as me. "Why? What were you hoping to find out?"

  "I don't know. Something, I guess." I took a deep breath. "Elise was murdered. Did you know that?"

  "Yeah. She got in some scuffle with vampires or something."

  I nodded. "They never caught her killers."

  "Ezra told me something about that once. They searched everywhere, but never found any sign of this roving band of territorial vampires."

  "It just seems really strange, doesn't it?" I asked, staring off as I thought about everything I knew about Elise's death. "She's lived in Ireland all these years without any problems? And then right before she leaves, she gets murdered?"

  "Uh oh," Jack said, and I turned to see a bemused smile his face. "I know that look."

  "What look?"

  "That look you have right now." He motioned to me. "You're going to try to solve this murder, aren't you?"

  "I mean, no. I don't even know if it can be solved," I contended. "But yeah, I was thinking of looking into it."

  "She died over a hundred years ago," he pointed out. "It was the 1800s, wasn't it?"

  "No one's ever told me an exact date, but Ezra said he hadn't seen Catherine in at least 150 years, so I'm guessing it had be around 1864 or even earlier than that."

  Jack let out a low whistle of dismay. "This is a cold case. You really want to go digging around for clues when there really might not be any?"

  "It might give Peter some peace."

  "You still feel responsible for his unhappiness," he realized.

  "Well... don't you?" I asked.

  "Sometimes, yeah, I do," he admitted, sounding unusually somber. "I love that I get to share my life with you, so I know exactly what he's missing out on, and I understand why that would make him sad. But he's got his own life. And I've been talking to him a lot more lately, and he really does sound happy."

  "I hope so," I said.

  He smiled thinly at me. "But if this has a chance of making Peter happier, and making you happy in the process, then I support it. I'll help you however you need me to."

  "THE STOKER & HAWTHORN AGENCY. This is Sabine speaking. How may I help you today?" The receptionist answered the phone just as I opened the door to the Agency's office suite. She smiled politely at me from under her oversized glasses and held up her index finger, letting me know it would be a minute before she got to me.

  I took a seat in one of the slick black chairs that were set up in the lobby. Across from me was the water feature - a floor to ceiling waterfall with color changing lights, bathing the waiting area in soft pastel colors.

  Abner rounded the corner, coming from the hall that led to his office. His gray overcoat was draped over his arm, his homburg hat was on his head, and a rather grim expression was plastered on his face. When he saw me, he stopped short and managed a confused smile.

  "I didn't except to see you. I thought you'd be off enjoying your vacation."

  "Bobby's on vacation," I explained. "I'm still hanging around the city."

  "Looking for work?"

  "I actually just came in to talk to Ettie, but I am free. Did you need me for something?"

  "Not anything specific, and not right this minute, but maybe," Abner said, sounding dejected, and I noticed a few splatters of blood on his off-white dress shirt.

  Sabine had gotten off the phone, and she'd politely waited for a gap in the conversation to address me. "Ms. Bonham, you're here to see Ms. Lefevre?" I nodded. "I'll let her know you're here."

  Once Sabine had disappeared down the hall to alert Ettie of my presence, I turned my attention back to Abner. "What's going on?"

  He sat down in the chair beside me with a heavy weariness and took off his hat. "I feel like more humans have been turning up dead lately."

  "There's a spike in vampire-on-human crime?" I asked.

  "I'm still in the gathering data phase, so I don't have exact numbers yet. But I think so." He paused. "Or maybe it was just a long night."

  "What happened?" I asked, glancing down at the blood on his shirt.

  Abner ran his fingers along the brim of
the hat and stared down at his hands as he spoke. "Got a call about a disturbance down in the De Wallen district. When I got there, it was just this young girl, maybe eighteen-years-old, lying in an alley, and I don't even think she was a beethoer.

  "Her neck was torn open, and she was barely breathing," he went on, grimacing. "I tried to save her, but she only hung on for another minute, and then she was gone."

  He fell silent for a moment before saying, "I've heard some of the older vampires talking, saying that death gets easier. That you get used to humans dying so quickly and so frequently around you. Life stops having this innate value to it."

  "You don't think that's true anymore?" I asked, trying not to sound as hopeful as I felt.

  Rebekah and Ezra had warned me of the same thing, that living forever causes life to lose its worth, so I feared that would someday be true for me, too. But hearing Abner still struggle with death, even after being alive for 125 years, reaffirmed my belief that we didn't have to lose our humanity if we didn't want to.

  "I don't know," he admitted. "But somedays, I wish the apathy would hurry and kick in, and other days, I'm grateful that I can still feel."

  "Which one is it now?"

  He smiled bitterly. "Ask me tomorrow."

  I heard Sabine before I saw her, her high heels clacking down the hallway and the rapid pounding of her heart. She returned to the lobby, glancing apprehensively at the clearly distressed Abner, before smiling at me.

  "Ms. Bonham? Ettie will see you now."

  "Thanks, Sabine." I stood up and gave Abner a comforting pat on the shoulder. "And you call me if you need me, okay? I'll always be available to help."

  He put his hat back on and offered a more genuine smile. "I'm gonna take you up on that, Alice."

  As the head of our region, Ettie had the largest and nicest office. It had a very French modern style to it, with sleek elegance and practical functionality. All the furnishings were subtle gray or soft white, with a few mirrored and glass touches.

  The wall behind Ettie's chic alabaster desk were all windows, overlooking the heart of Amsterdam. Another fog had rolled in, darkening the view, but the city lights still managed to twinkle through.

  A MacBook Pro sat open on her desk when I came in. She was leaning forward, studying something on the screen, and scribbling a few notes in graceful cursive on her stationary, under letterhead that read Etionette M. Lefevre. The warm light from her desk lamp gave her dark skin a wonderful bronze glow, almost highlighting her beauty.