Feral Passion

by Stephanie Bedwell-Grime

  Ignoring his comment, Xandra leaned against the wall beside the door and took off her shoes, pointedly reminding Jeremy of his lack of consideration without saying a word.

  The corners of his mouth drew down in annoyance, telling her he’d gotten the message. “Care to tell me where you’ve been?”

  “I pursued the suspects fleeing the scene.” She tried to look exasperated and tired. “They led me on quite a chase.”

  He didn’t believe her. She could tell. A few days ago, she wouldn’t have lied to Jeremy for anything. She shouldn’t trust Dante, her mind told her, no matter what her body thought.

  But she was in better shape than she would have been in had she gone to the hospital. And Jeremy had shown up five minutes too late—as usual.

  “Don’t you think I at least deserved a courtesy call? Just so I knew you were all right?”

  “I lost my cell phone in the melee,” she said. “I couldn’t spare the time to get to a pay phone. And, as you can see, I’m quite all right.”

  “And I should believe you’ve been in pursuit of said suspects all night?”

  She’d better tread carefully here. Jeremy had taught her everything she knew about interrogation. How to do it and how to survive it if she got caught. He’d see through her deception. But she couldn’t tell him the truth. She couldn’t tell him she’d spent the night with a vampire.

  “It’s the truth,” she said and set her jaw. It was—sort of. Dante had also been working the case. Though whose side he was on, she couldn’t tell.

  “The truth,” Jeremy repeated. She could tell he believed it was anything but. “Well, I just happen to know that you’re lying.”

  He let the last word drop into silence, giving her a chance to deny it. She said nothing.

  “I have it on very good authority that you spent the night with the vampire, Dante.”

  Chapter Five

  Xandra stared at Jeremy, unsure what to do. She had been with Dante—some very intimate things had happened between them. He’d shared his blood with her. She’d been in his strange house. His inner sanctum. She’d kissed him, and if she hadn’t been injured, she would have gone a lot further. Dante had accused Jeremy of putting her life in danger.

  Now Jeremy was accusing her of something—she couldn’t tell what exactly. Normally, she would have told Jeremy the whole truth. But instinct warned her not to. She played a dangerous game. If she told Jeremy what she knew, which wasn’t much, she ran the risk of being taken off the case. Hell, Jeremy might take her off the case, anyway. And if she trusted Dante and stayed mute, she risked losing Jeremy’s support and everything she knew. She really didn’t want to lie to Jeremy.

  Okay, her better sense warned. There were ways not to lie. What if she just didn’t tell him the whole truth? That seemed like the best course of action. Two could play the interrogation game.

  “Dante?” She marveled at how steady her voice sounded when she was shaking inside. She hoped Jeremy wouldn’t see through the charade. “Is that his name?”

  “You damn well know that.” Jeremy rose and strode toward her. In the wan light from the window, he looked pale and imposing.

  “I met him through the Mortals Seeking Vamps section of V-date. How should I know what his real name is?”

  “You were on a date with that guy?”

  Xandra nodded. She held her ground, refusing to bequeath so much as a foot to Jeremy’s advance. This was her house—he had no right to threaten her here. “I told you I had a date for last night.”

  Jeremy’s shoulders relaxed, making his whole posture seem a little less threatening. “Yes, you did.” He offered her another penetrating look. “And this guy turned out to be your date.”

  “Yes.”

  “Quite the evening, don’t you think?” He led her in a circular route back through her own deception, trying to trap her in a lie.

  “It turned out to be a bit more exciting than I’d expected.”

  “I guess it did.”

  Not sure what to do next, Xandra decided to offer him some information. It wouldn’t hurt to recount the night’s events. By now Jeremy must know exactly what went down at the restaurant. “Turned out Mack Saunders was in the restaurant we went to. He had a very attractive vampire as a date.”

  “And you didn’t find that unusual?”

  She stood on dangerous ground now. She decided to go with the truth. “Well, sure I did. But then, I guess Mack’s got to eat too.”

  By the hostile glance Jeremy launched her way, she could tell he didn’t appreciate her sense of humor. “And then what happened?”

  Now she had to be careful. One wrong word could reveal her deception, and Jeremy wouldn’t take her lies lightly. “Mack was just getting up to leave when a horde of feral vamps burst through the door.”

  She had his full attention now. He was watching every move she made, how rapidly she breathed. She wouldn’t be surprised to find out he had some gadget set to monitor her body temperature. “We followed them out onto the street. I called you on my cell phone.”

  Well, that much was entirely true.

  “Yes, and I recall telling you to wait for backup.”

  “I did wait.” Xandra fought against her rising anger. She had waited for Jeremy. Each and every time she’d waited for backup, they’d arrived moments too late. Just like Dante said. “But the man was in danger.”

  “I don’t care about some underworld boss,” Jeremy snapped. “I care about you!”

  Until today, she would have believed him. But Dante had planted the seeds of doubt. Now they sprouted in her mind, connecting events she never would have put together. Did Jeremy really care about her? Or was she some pawn in a new operation?

  “I waited for backup,” she insisted. “But they pulled the guy up on the roof and fell on him like a pack of hungry wolves. They even attacked his girlfriend.” Enough of this, she decided and turned the line of questioning on Jeremy. “They sucked her blood, Jeremy. I’ve never seen anything like it. What’s going on?”

  “I have no idea,” he shot back. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “I really don’t know. I emptied my gun into them, but nothing would stop them. That gun was loaded with wood-tipped bullets. They just kept coming, stepping over the bodies of their fellows. I couldn’t stop them…” She let the sentence trail off, allowing him to see her true confusion.

  “And this Dante guy? What did he do?”

  “He pulled a badge on them and ordered them to stop.”

  Jeremy looked surprised to hear that. Or maybe he was just surprised that she’d admitted as much. “I gather they didn’t.”

  “No.”

  “And this Dante—did they bite him too?”

  “Not that I know of.” Maybe she shouldn’t have told Jeremy that. But Dante hadn’t given her much to go on. And maybe Jeremy knew something that might help her determine which side he was on. “Who is he, Jeremy?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No. Like I told you, he showed up for my Internet date.”

  “Dante is a vampire. And a member of the Vampire Liaison Unit of the police force.”

  “And you think what—that he is somehow involved in what when down with Mack Saunders?”

  “Possibly.”

  Dante had seemed as shocked and surprised as she was. Her gut instinct told her he hadn’t expected what had happened any more than she had.

  “So maybe you want to tell me why you spent the night at his apartment?”

  ***

  Dante forced himself to drive the motorcycle down the driveway away from the complex Xandra lived in, though every instinct told him not to. Once he was sure he was out of sight, the cut the motor and stared back down the lane at her house.

  He’d noticed as soon as he neared the complex that another life force lingered in Xandra’s living room. Jeremy Landis. Her boss—the one he didn’t trust. Ex-military, he’d bet. A tough old veteran and one who should have counted honesty and loy
alty among his virtues. But there was something about Jeremy that raised his hackles. Something he really didn’t like. Not to mention his habit of putting Xandra’s life in danger.

  He lingered in the laneway, trying to decide what he should do. Xandra was an undercover agent with a specialty in vampire hunting. Technically she was an enemy of his kind. Someone sent to hunt down the rogues his unit missed. He loathed the fact that such operatives existed and that the powers that be kept so tight-lipped about their existence. He had no right to interfere between Xandra and her boss. A boss she seemed to have affection for, despite the man’s gruff exterior.

  He’d warned her. That was all he could do. He’d debated following her to the door and even into her apartment. But that would only put her job in danger, not to mention his. The less Jeremy knew the better.

  He’d gone and gotten himself mixed up with a vampire hunter. What was he thinking? He should be running in the other direction. Instead, he’d kissed her. Debated doing all kinds of things with her. Things that brought back memories of what it truly meant to be a man. Of the finer things a woman’s body could offer. Things he hadn’t thought about for a long time.

  Dante snatched his mind back to the present. He’d compromised his own investigation. Tempting lips or not, Xandra Wheeler was up to something. He suspected Jeremy had her working on an investigation that bordered on the unsavory.

  He’d begun to investigate the sudden proliferation of vampires in the city. Its very existence was unusual. Hives were not unheard of, just rare. As solitary creatures, vampires rarely lived among large numbers of their own kind. Perhaps now that their existence was out in the open, things were starting to change. But he doubted it. Somehow Xandra Wheeler was involved. He’d sensed her presence at several vampire crime scenes. And then his department’s cyber-investigators had flagged her sudden interest in vampire dating. So he’d talked to her previous night’s date and flushed her out.

  Then Mack Saunders had been murdered by a swarm of feral vamps. That changed everything.

  And there was the lovely Ms. Wheeler herself. Tall, slender and muscular enough to take down just about anything that came her way, she still had curves in all the right places. Not to mention jewel-like turquoise eyes and dark brown hair. And enough attitude to intrigue him.

  He was intrigued. But that still didn’t stop his better sense from intervening. When he’d investigated Xandra Wheeler, he’d discovered her employment in a covert operation. But that’s where the trail disappeared. It was as though Xandra Wheeler had never been born. Had never grown up, never went to the prom or graduated from college. Before joining Jeremy’s team, she simply didn’t exist.

  He never should have kissed her. Not before he knew the truth. Because now he wanted to kiss her again. He wanted to taste the sweet blood that soared through her veins. He wanted…

  A nervous glance at the sky told him dawn was rapidly approaching. Even protected by his specially designed helmet and leather biker gear, he couldn’t linger long.

  With a deep sigh, he parked the bike by the curb of the laneway and crept back down the road to her complex. He flattened himself against the wall of her townhouse. He could tell by the slope of the roof that she had a loft bedroom. Craning his neck, he noted that she had a tiny deck on the upper floor.

  He didn’t want to alert any other inhabitants of the development to his presence. He doubted they knew what their neighbor truly did for a living. Early morning intruders would definitely frighten them, so he remained utterly still and concentrated with his acute hearing to listen to what was going on in Xandra’s living room.

  Jeremy didn’t seem to be buying her story. As far as he could tell, Xandra hadn’t betrayed him. She hadn’t offered any information about him. Instead she seemed to be mining Jeremy for data. He smiled, wondering if her boss realized that.

  But Jeremy knew that she’d spent the night at his house. Would Xandra confess the truth? She hadn’t told him about their exchange of blood. Still, he’d have to be a lot more careful.

  A ray of sunshine stabbed above the horizon. Speaking of being careful, it was time to leave. He couldn’t risk staying any longer.

  Keeping his back to the sun, Dante headed back to his motorcycle, vowing to find out a lot more about Xandra Wheeler.

  ***

  No sense in even trying to lie to Jeremy, Xandra decided.

  “I told you, I pursued the suspects. Things got ugly. Dante rescued me from an attack.”

  “Dante pursued the subjects with you? I don’t remember giving the order for a joint investigation.”

  “We were both trying to stop them from escaping.” So far, she hadn’t lied. They had pursued them up onto the roof. That’s where things got hazy.

  “And how exactly did this pursuit lead you to Dante’s house?”

  Now she really was walking on dangerous ground. “They got away from us.” Well, technically, Dante had removed her from the fray. To save her life. She didn’t like the way this conversation was going. Jeremy had always been a tough boss, but he’d always been fair. This ruthlessness, this blatant interrogation just wasn’t like him.

  “They got away from you?” Jeremy asked.

  She tried to divert the question. “We were trying to save a man’s life.”

  “The police and paramedics save lives. You’re supposed to hunt down and kill rogue vampires.”

  “No matter who he associated with or what he was involved in, Mack Saunders was human. I was trying to save his life and take out the vamps.”

  “Even though I told you not to.”

  “The situation had progressed. There wasn’t time to call for additional assistance. I had to act.”

  “You had to wait for me!” Jeremy’s voice rose. Losing his military coolness, his face colored. “You were on a date, scantily clad and barely armed. You were supposed to wait!”

  Xandra could feel her own face heating up, the space between her shoulder blades tightening up. “Like I said before, it wasn’t possible.”

  “You disobeyed orders.”

  She let go a gust of breath in exasperation. “I’ve made a career of disobeying your orders. Why are you so mad this time?”

  That question caught him off guard. With Jeremy something had changed. She couldn’t tell what. He opened his mouth to say something, then visibly changed his mind. His eyes darted toward her. Whatever it was, he wouldn’t tell her. “You spent the night with a vampire,” he said hoarsely.

  “We were on a date. One I told you about.”

  “He’s a member of the metro police force, no matter what else he is. Tell me you didn’t sleep with him.”

  That question nearly rendered her speechless. Jeremy usually gave her a great amount of latitude when undercover. He had a saying, “What happens undercover stays undercover.” Bartering her body for information really wasn’t her style, but Jeremy had never asked before.

  “No, I didn’t!” Make him think he’d truly caught her off guard. “Not that it’s any of your business.” She didn’t add that they’d done something far more intimate by exchanging blood.

  “So after you lost the hive members in the fray, you went to Dante’s house? Why?”

  “I’d gotten a little scraped up. He offered to let me clean up.”

  Jeremy’s eyes narrowed. “How scraped up?”

  “Just a little, but I thought it best to get disinfected as quickly as possible.”

  “You didn’t get any vampire saliva in your bloodstream?”

  Xandra shook her head. She imagined by now she had quite a bit of vampire saliva in her bloodstream. But Dante’s blood seemed to have countered any ill effects she should be feeling. Other than sensitivity to light and sound, she felt fine. She felt…stronger. Under no circumstances could she reveal that to her boss. “I wasn’t that badly injured.” Not now in any case.

  “Why didn’t you call in?”

  “I told you, I lost my cell phone.”

  “And this upstandin
g member of the metro police force doesn’t own one?”

  “I didn’t want to use anything that might be traced. Or anything that might have recording equipment on it.”

  He raised a gray eyebrow. His crystal blue eyes glared at her.

  “Besides,” she added. “I was trying to find out if he knew anything.”

  Now that had Jeremy interested. “Does he?”

  “No. At least not about who is creating the hive. But I had the feeling he was doing the same thing—trying to find out what I knew.”

  “So he knows what you are.” A statement, not a question.

  “We aren’t a secret to the police. ‘As long as we stay out of each other’s way’, as you’re so fond of saying. If things have changed, you should have alerted me.” Xandra shot him an outraged look. Exhaustion pulled on every muscle. She just wanted to go to bed. She strode past Jeremy and plunked herself down on her couch.

  Jeremy gave her attire a once-over as she passed. She noted he didn’t say anything about the police department. But his eyes centered on her borrowed sweats and T-shirt and narrowed. “Obviously he knows you well enough to lend you clothes.”

  Xandra set her mouth. “He was a gentleman.”

  Her boss snorted.

  She decided to take the direct approach. “Look, if you’ve got something to say, then why don’t you just go ahead and say it.” He opened his mouth, but she continued talking, raising her voice to cover his words. “Because I haven’t done anything wrong. You pulled me off the case and told me to date vampires. So I dated a whole host of dead men. For you. And I was pretty surprised when Dante showed up on my date. And even more surprised to see an underworld boss get taken out execution style by a horde of feral vamps.” Her anger broke free and her breath came in deep gasps. She took a deep breath to calm herself. “And I did call you for backup.” Dante’s warning rang in her mind. She turned the tables on her boss and accused him. “And as usual, it arrived too late!”

  He stared back at her, saying nothing.

  “And a member of the metro police force helped me out. We are supposed to cooperate, you know.” Jeremy studied her for a long time. He could order her downtown and subject her to blood tests and God knew what else. He could place her under house arrest. But she refused to be intimidated. “Might I remind you I didn’t ask for this assignment. You assigned me, despite my protests.”