by Eve Paludan
I said quickly, “I want you to go undercover for me.”
“You mean surveillance?”
“More than that. You’d need to go deep undercover—interact with other vampires and find out stuff I need to know to break some clauses of the contract that Miss Hart signed.”
Sam frowned. “Interact? How?”
“A vampire named Morrie and my musician client, Jolie Hart, regularly go to Fang’s new blood club in Echo Park. She has a punch card there where you get the tenth drink free. Apparently, they have quite a habit. Fang must be making money hand over fist with that place.”
“A punch card?” Sam said, looking interested.
“I want you to go there, too, at the same time they do, and feed to make yourself look like one of them.”
“Kingsley,” she pointed out, “I am one of them.”
“I can’t ever forget that,” I assured her. “You know what I mean. I want you to fit in with them. Then, when you get the other vampires comfortable with you, I want you to pump Morrie for information about the contract, if possible.”
Sam’s eyebrows rose. “You want me to feed at Fang’s blood club? On human blood?” A flame surged in the pupil of one eye.
I shuddered. “That flame in your eye. The entity inside of you is on board with you feeding on human blood.”
“Of course she is. When I feed on human blood instead of the animal blood I usually drink, it gives her more control over me.”
“There’s that.”
Sam sat absolutely still and I noticed that she wasn’t breathing. Not that she needed to breathe. She seemed to be having an inner conversation with her entity. At last, she looked back at me. “Are you sure you want me to feed there? Can’t I just go there and nose around for clues?”
“If that were the case, I’d go there myself. But they’ll feel more comfortable with you if you’re complicit in drinking human blood.”
“This ‘complicity’ for the sake of my undercover work will put my dwindling humanity in jeopardy.”
“Feel free to decline. If you say no, my second choice for this undercover job is Fang.”
“Fang?” Sam said. “Why him?”
“Actually, he’s the more logical choice for investigating other vampires at his own venue. The thing is, I just trust you a hell of a lot more than I trust him.”
Again, I had the sense of Sam discussing the job with the thing inside of her. Finally, Sam said, “I want double my usual fee. This isn’t just a surveillance gig. It’s inherently more dangerous.”
“A double fee is fine. If you’re really worried about the danger, I could come inside with you. Protect you.”
“No, if this is to be true undercover work and not just doing surveillance from the safety of my vehicle, Jolie Hart can’t see you anywhere near me. If she does, she’ll figure out what we’re doing and blab to this ‘Morrie.’” Sam paused. “Do you think he’s really Satan?”
“I don’t know. But she better keep me a secret from Morrie,” I said, horrified at the thought that Jolie might blow it. “She has no reason to tell him she contacted a lawyer about her contract. It would be stupid of her to give us away.”
Sam shrugged. “Vampires can read each other, unless they shield their thoughts. Does the newbie know how to do that?”
“I kind of doubt it. She’s so innocent.”
Sam laughed, and it was not a nice laugh. It was a jealous one. “Don’t be fooled by her innocent appearance. She’s got a dark entity inside of her.”
“Actually, Sam. She doesn’t have one yet. They tried to put one in her and were unsuccessful. Something was protecting her and it died.”
“What?”
“Yeah, she thinks she is too evil for an entity. And she doesn’t want to become a shape shifter.”
“Not all vampires can shift. Where would she get that idea?” Sam was taken aback, I could tell.
“The contract. The entity implantation is one of the contract clauses she doesn’t want to have to fulfill. I need to make sure it doesn’t happen. I think Morrie told her she was going to fly.”
Sam didn’t look convinced. “All vampires have entities. But hardly any vampires can fly.”
“That’s what I thought. Yet, she’s a vampire without one and she doesn’t want one.”
“Only God could kill an entity,” Sam said.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Gut feeling.”
We’d gotten off the track. “Will you go undercover for me?”
“Yes. It’s dangerous, though.” She swallowed. “Kingsley, if anything happens to me, make sure that my sister gets my kids.”
I gave Sam a chance to back out. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I know.”
“Then, why are you?”
“Two reasons. First, it’s the right thing to do. Second, the entity inside of me wants to feed at the blood club and if I let her, she’ll help me on this case.”
“Apparently, the devil’s in the details.”
“Yes, she is,” Sam replied, as her phone alarm went off. “I gotta pick up the kids from school.”
“Sam, I’ve barely seen you for two minutes.” I must have looked very sorry to see her go because suddenly, Sam leaned over and gave me a passionate kiss that left me wanting her—and with a bloody lower lip that she had nicked by accident-on-purpose. And sucked on my lower lip and finally, she let it go with a popping sound.
“That’s from my entity. She’s excited about the blood club. Look what you’ve done, Kingsley. Made brownie points with her.”
Sam left in a blur, her minivan tires squealing down the street outside Hero’s.
As I held a napkin to my lip, I grinned like a fool in love.
Did this mean that Samantha Moon and I were on again?
Chapter 5
Franklin had gone to a private clinic for the weekend for skin graft repairs to his patchwork neck. He expected to be back on Monday before the full moon, when I would have him lock me in my secure basement room that was, essentially, a maximum-security cage. We’d done this for years now, so I wouldn’t desecrate any more cemeteries with my taste for corpses.
So, I was alone when Jolie Hart took a cab to my house in the middle of the night with a guitar case, an overnight bag, and bite marks all over her neck, arms and legs. Her clothes were torn asunder and she was crying so hard that she was hiccupping.
Dressed in nothing but my paisley robe, I answered the madly ringing doorbell. When I opened the door, she leapt into my arms—weeping against my massive, hairy chest. My naturally protective instincts took over.
Holding her, I kicked the front door closed. I carried her to the living room sofa and sat down in the cool darkness with her in my arms. Her cold vampire tears bathed my chest. I knew she’d been assaulted, and probably by more than one vampire.
But now wasn’t the time for questions. She’d come to me to have her safety and comfort restored. Because she felt safe with me. I was both touched and chagrined.
I rocked Jolie back and forth in my arms as gently as my big, clumsy hands could. I pulled her long, blonde hair away from her back and smelled blood there, too. I resisted the urge to lick her slowly leaking wounds. That would not be appropriate, even though werewolf saliva indeed has healing properties. Didn’t vampires have their own healing system? Then I remembered she didn’t have an entity in her. Maybe that was something vampires needed to help them heal from injuries.
Oh, honey. My compassion was rising to a dangerous level. I sat there for a few moments, feeling sorry for her, and yet, there was a distant part of me that didn’t want my Williams-Sonoma furniture to get messed up. We were sitting on a $6,500 white couch, and she was sticky with drying blood.
“Let’s get you cleaned up.”
“Please help me, Kingsley!” she said, sobbing. “They hurt me.”
I thought my heart would burst from sympathy. I carried her upstairs to my master bath and gently peeled off the rest
of her torn clothing while I ran a bubble bath in my giant tub. She was incredibly beautiful, but unlike the last time she’d been here, I didn’t get aroused. I was in protective mode.
I helped her into the bubble bath and handed her a sea sponge, but she was so weak that she kept slipping under. After the third time I plucked her head above water by her hair—not that vampires could drown—I gave up. I shucked my paisley robe, climbed in naked, and pulled her into my lap. I held her head above the water, her body exposed to me and resting across my broad thighs. The foamy bubbles cascaded down her slick skin.
God in heaven she was breathtaking. She had called me breathtaking and now, in my head, I was calling her that. I inhaled and exhaled several deep breaths to push down my rising physical attraction to her and a small growl of sexual frustration escaped me.
No, Maltheus, I scolded my inner werewolf alter ego. No! Bad dog!
This was a time for a caring, tender act from a strong being to a weak one. Nothing more.
I took some deep breaths and thought of fantasy football to calm myself down. As I gently washed the blood off Jolie’s body with a sea sponge, she relaxed against me.
“Tell me what happened, Jolie. I care.”
“I know,” she said. “It’s why I came here instead of going somewhere else.”
“Where else would you have gone?”
“To Fang. But his spoiled, stupid girlfriend was with him, and I knew she wouldn’t like it. And I trust you more than I trust him.”
I was startled to hear her say that. “Thank you,” I said. I truly felt sorry for her in that moment. “Tell me everything.”
In great shuddering breaths, she began to tell me the details of what had happened to her tonight. They spilled out one by one, and each one made me want to kill her attackers.
I held her slippery nakedness protectively in my arms and bent to kiss her on the forehead, a way to give her my werewolf talisman of protection, nothing more.
That was when I saw glowing eyes peering at us from the darkness of my bedroom. Familiar eyes. Samantha Moon’s eyes.
Chapter 6
Jolie’s back was turned to the door. To Sam’s credit, she didn’t speak or scream. But I hurriedly got out of the tub as she turned back into the darkness of my bedroom. I wanted to catch her before she fled my house. I had to.
“Jolie. Sit tight. I’ll be right back,” I said hurriedly.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
I couldn’t help thinking her voice was a tad whiny now, which was horrible, considering all she’d been through. But I needed to talk to Sam.
“I’m gonna use the other bathroom. Stay put.” I turned on the sink to cover my conversation with Sam and closed the bathroom door behind me.
Sam was already almost naked on my balcony, stripping off the last of her clothes and stuffing them into the leg of her jeans. She would carry it all away in her talons when she transformed into her flying bat form.
“Sam, stop,” I said quietly.
“This again? Cheating?” Her furious voice was full of pain.
“No, I’m not.”
“Are you kidding? I catch you red-handed this time and you still want me to stop and listen to your lies?”
“I can explain.”
“I don’t doubt that, Mr. Defense Attorney. I can’t wait to hear your flimsy alibi so I can shove it down your throat.”
“Sam, I can explain!”
I made a move to touch her, but she shrugged off my hand and glared at me with angry, hurt eyes.
“Kingsley, if you don’t want to retrieve your hand from the bottom of the garden, keep it to yourself.” A flame flickered in her eyes as she said it. She was just seconds from transforming and leaving.
I heeded her warning, but I couldn’t let her go without knowing the circumstances. “That woman is my client, Jolie Hart.”
“You’re sleeping with a client? That client? Kingsley, that’s low. Not to mention stupid. You could be disbarred.”
I cringed. “But I didn’t—”
“Shut up. I don’t even want to hear your lame excuses.” Sam didn’t stop there. “You’re going to blow the investigation. What if she’d seen me? She can’t get a look at me tonight or my undercover plans will be blown.”
“You’re still planning to work the undercover gig?” I asked.
“Of course.” When I started to thank her, she held up a hand. “It’s not about you. I need the money. Anthony goes through underwear like crazy. And Tammy wants her first good bra from Victoria’s Secret. And I’m so, so pissed at you. So my fee is tripled instead of doubled.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Nothing’s fair in love or war,” Sam said. “What is your decision, counselor?”
I didn’t hesitate. “I’ll pay you triple your usual fee. Look, Sam. I don’t care about the money. I just want you to believe that I did not have sex with that woman!”
Sam hissed at me. Hissed.
“Listen to me,” I insisted. “Tonight, Jolie Hart was horribly assaulted, and she came to me for help. I know it looks bad, finding us together in my bubble bath, but I swear, I didn’t do anything to her.”
“I saw you kiss her forehead.”
“I was giving her a werewolf talisman of protection.”
“Oh, you made that up, you lying, cheating bastard.”
Now I knew how Danny had felt. Sort of, because he really was a cheater. I was a cheater, too, of course, but ironically, not this time. “I swear, a werewolf’s talisman is a real thing.”
“If that’s true, then why didn’t you ever give me one?”
“Because, Sam, you don’t need it. You’re an army unto yourself.”
“The mere gesture, and the knowledge of such a thing’s existence, would have been nice.”
“Come here. I’ll give you a werewolf’s talisman on your forehead, too.”
“Forget it, buster. I don’t want sloppy seconds of your little werewolf charms.”
I huffed out a sigh. “Go downstairs and follow the blood trail from the front door to the white couch. You’ll see that she was assaulted and came over for help.”
“I came in through the downstairs and already saw the blood. The entity inside of me insisted that I lick up the floor and suck it out of the white Williams-Sonoma sofa that we picked out together. I didn’t find any blood drops on the stairs.”
I admitted, “That’s because I carried her up the stairs and she got blood on my paisley bathrobe.”
“I gave you that bathrobe for your birthday!” she screamed.
My heart was breaking. “Sam. Nothing happened. Nothing. I’m not even aroused and there are two naked women in my house. I mean, look.”
She did look and damn if my body didn’t betray me!
“You dirty dog. I never want to look at that monster-sized thing again.” Sam stepped outside onto the balcony. Naked.
“Please, don’t break up with me over this,” I said, covering myself with my hands. A monster-sized thing. Really?
She gave me the finger and turned her back on me to transform into the primitive bat creature. After she took flight, I went back into the master bath where Jolie was just getting out of the tub.
“What took you so long?” she asked.
I turned off the sink that I’d left running. “It took longer than anticipated.”
“Where should I sleep?”
“Not here,” I said, kicking and congratulating myself at the same time.
Samantha Moon had broken up with me again. Was I trying for some kind of record? I pushed my recurring heartbreak with Sam to the back burner for now.
“Where can I go in the middle of the night?” Jolie asked more pointedly.
“I’ll take you somewhere safe, and I’ll come up with a plan to make sure that you never have to deal with the clauses in your contract that you don’t want to deal with.”
“You aren’t going to kill those vampires for hurting me, are you?” she as
ked.
“I’m thinking about it,” I admitted.
“You can’t! They’re my record producers!”
Wannabe rock stars. Where did they even draw the line?
“You need a class in boundaries, Jolie. And I need one in… professionalism. Understand?”
“Yes. I’m sorry. I’ll be good.” She pouted. “I admit I really came here tonight because—”
“Don’t say it. It’s okay. I understand. I want you to be safe, too. And I know you like me. That way. But some things can’t be my job. Not this. In the bathtub. With you. I was wrong. You did nothing wrong.”
“I didn’t mind you washing me. I liked it.” She gave me a naughty grin with that Cupid’s bow of a mouth and I had to look away.
“Trust me, I know you liked it.” I ran down the stairs and brought up her purse and overnight bag. “I’m sorry those barbarians hurt you and I will get them for you, Jolie. I promise, they will pay for what they did to you. Now, please get dressed.”
“I will, but what’s this about you taking me somewhere else?” Jolie asked. “Please don’t make me go. I came here because I’d be safe with you.”
“I’ll make sure you’re safe,” I promised. I couldn’t let her spend the night because she would definitely not be safe… from me. Maltheus, my werewolf alter-ego, wanted her. Badly.
In the end, I took Jolie to someone who would be my alibi to Sam, and who was probably the only person Sam trusted right now.
After I left Jolie at the home of Sam’s sister, Mary Lou, I breathed a sigh of relief.
And then, I went to see a vampire about a vampire.
Chapter 7
It was hours before he could do a meet up, but I sat in my vehicle waiting in a parking lot and looking at the photocopy of the contract. I did a lot of research using my phone. It was not looking good for Jolie. The contract she had signed was such a cluster.
Just after sunset, the tall, but muscular vampire met me at The Wild Artichoke on Yorba Ranch Road. Now that I saw his face in the ambient lighting, it was no wonder that Sam found Fang attractive. Damn his beautiful lips. What man had lips like that? The guy wasn’t just physically a perfect vampire—he oozed charisma. Yeah, he was such a nice guy that it was impossible to dislike him.
