“Don’t you faint on us,” a gravelly voice ordered. Sure hands pulled him into the interior before the doors closed again. He could barely hear the siren over his relieved breathing.
The ambulance’s doors shut, enveloping them inside the clean white interior. The engine roared, the tires squealed, and everyone jerked as the vehicle pulled away.
He entwined his sweaty, bloodstained fingers with his father’s clammy, swollen ones. They hadn’t held hands since Chad was nine.
“I don’t know who is out there,” he prayed under his breath, “but if he lives, I’m never going to complain about those clothes again.” Swallowing, he added, “I might even get a job.”
Desperation made a man do strange things.
“I gotta get in here, son.” The big EMT settled in to clean out the embedded gravel.
Chad nodded and moved over. His heart rate finally slowed. He contemplated the horrors he’d seen.
The CCC’s building destroyed.
Vampires on the loose.
He leaned his elbows on his knees. Could there be a connection between his father’s disgrace and last night’s activities? Had the bloodsuckers come to finish the CCC?
If that were true, would he see his dangerous woman again?
CHAPTER 8
John was awake and waiting for her when Valerie slid through the open window. He sat, wrapped in his duvet, against his headboard, his tablet computer flickering with a rerun of his favorite cooking show. He did not smile when he saw her. His apple scent, always so warm and welcoming, was overlaid with the acrid smell of anger. The air sweeping in from the kitchen bore the bitter odor of burnt coffee.
John never burnt anything. He was an exquisite cook.
Valerie drew her shoulders back, anticipating disapproval. Her rational mind knew that John had never once criticized her, but that tiny, calm voice was lost in the face of memories of her childhood.
John set aside his entertainment and said the last words Valerie had ever expected to hear.
“The Peace has been broken.”
“What?” She had to have misheard him. The Peace had been tested over the years, but no paranormal creature would dare bring unfettered war onto themselves. Before young Glenath Tempesta and the Great Wolf had hammered out the Treaty of Prague, the humans were on a course to destroy every species that challenged them. Children had been massacred. Adults were attacked in the streets.
Since the late 1960s, mortals and the others had found their way to a careful détente.
John nodded as he dropped his bedding on the floor. He approached her, his steps soft and slow. As had been her habit, Valerie ran her fingers over her earlobes.
Once enormous diamond earrings, three to a side, had decorated her. Their presence had been a constant reminder of her lost wife. In the depths of her discovery of love, she had given them away to help the homeless.
Even the tiny lump of scar tissue that had marked the posts’ seats had disappeared.
Could her grief be so easily cured?
“Chou,” her husband interrupted her thoughts. “You must go to Portland and stop the vampires who did this.”
Valerie stalked stiff-legged into the kitchen. She poured a mug of cold blood for herself. In defiance of John’s upset mood, she showed him her back. A giant dollop of the vile coffee spilled over her hands and into her cup.
“No.” Her refusal was as flat as her nonexistent heartbeat.
“Mon coeur, you are the only one who can do this.” John rested his hand on the small of her back. “There are no more hunters left.”
John’s great-grandmother had been the very best of those who pursued renegade paranormal citizens. Not a single member of his family continued the tradition, respecting her wish for a more peaceful world.
Valerie took a deep drink, the rich spice of the blood cut with the harshness of the coffee. “I cannot.”
Her brother, Radu, was the only other vampire capable of creating new vampires. Anthony O’Neill, the one Radu had turned during the Second World War, was not yet even 100. Joseph Carter, the mysterious advisor of the Consortium for Concerned Citizens, was older, but the few times she had laid eyes on him, she knew he lacked the power to exchange death into undeath.
The perpetrators would be her nephews. She would not kill another family member, not with Mina Harker’s blood on her hands.
“You must.” John’s hips pinned her against the countertop.
Valerie closed her eyes and tipped her head back, resting on John’s strong chest. “I am not that person anymore. I have given up killing.”
“Darling.” John nudged her around until he gazed into her eyes. His warm hands cupped Valerie’s gaunt face. “Will you not hunt those who destroyed innocents?”
She leaned in until her lips barely brushed his. “I loved to kill. I would come back a murderer.”
John leaned his forehead toward her until their third eyes touched. Strength flowed into her.
“I believe that you love me more than Death.” He kissed her, his apple-and clove-scented lips ripe on her tongue. “If you do not have faith in yourself, have faith in us. Have faith that we are on your side.”
John smoothed her tangled hair. “You are not alone.”
CHAPTER 9
Su Tanaka would have given her immortal soul for a pack of cigarettes.
The faint sound of a dog barking penetrated through the layers of the deadly ruin. She twisted on her mini flashlight and pointed the beam toward the sound.
“Here! Over here!” Her throat was sore from the filth the explosion had released, but she shouted anyway. If only she’d had a whistle.
The dim glow revealed the wrecked steel girders above their tiny shelter. Three of them had twisted into an unlikely teepee shape, holding off the worst of the weight. As she watched, one cracked with an unholy groan. A fragment of cinder block the size of her head fell. A corner of the desk snapped off with a retort like gunfire.
The barking moved away. Su refused to sigh; it would merely irritate her lungs further.
While the light was on, she did a quick check of Umar Mernissi’s vitals. The desk and the shelving had created a space the size of a large bathtub. She had propped him up against the leather chair, and she rested her back against one of the desk legs. From their hips to their feet, Su and Umar were pressed against each other like lovers.
No. Not thinking about lovers. Not thinking about the hot scent of myrrh that rose from his hair. Nor his full lower lip made even more delicious by the outline of his five o’clock shadow.
Su gingerly leaned forward, careful not to disturb any of the fallen pipes and blocks that surrounded them.
His pulse was strong and his color back to a healthy brown. The masonry had done a serious number on his skull. His shape-shifter metabolism was slowly mending him, but Su dabbed a little water on his dry tongue anyway.
She switched off the flashlight. No need to look around again at their hot, cramped asylum.
So yeah, cigarettes. And cigarettes only.
Not that she had seen how Umar’s robes had come undone during the struggle to get him under shelter, revealing a slab of hard pectoral muscle and a strong collarbone.
His chest would be the perfect pillow for an exhausted woman, but only after he let down his mask of disdain.
Even his ears enticed her with their long lobes. Perfect for licking, nibbling, and whispering heated secrets.
Absolutely, her only craving was for the soothing oblivion of nicotine.
She held her cupped hands out and closed her eyes. “Come and get it, Devil Man. One perfectly good soul, here for the taking.”
Dust sprinkled through the crack between the bookshelf and the desk to land on her face. Umar’s desk was made of sturdy oak, but not even the strongest wood would protect them indefinitely.
“Come on, we’re going to die here. No need to go without my smokes.” She breathed deeply, begging for a hit of delicious tobacco. Instead, the smell of the explosives use
d to destroy the Baxter Building scraped her nostrils.
She’d yelled, she’d tried her phone, Umar’s phone, the phone from the desk. Her water bottle was half-empty.
Figuring that Lucifer had plenty of time to fulfill her bargain, she peeked through one eyelid. Nope. No red and white cardboard pack appeared. Cursing, she bit her already shredded fingernails.
All she could do now was wait.
Waiting led to thinking. Thinking led to memories of her beloved and much missed father.
Twenty years ago, everyone said Kevin Tanaka was on his way to the national directorship of the Federal Bureau of Paranormal Affairs. His brilliance as a mediator between humans and PNCs named him Agent of the Year three years running. He could coax anyone into living peaceably.
His greatest gift led to his demise.
Careful not to touch any of the supports that held the building at bay, Su wiggled onto her back. She rested her head on her folded suit jacket and stared into the hopeless darkness. There was nothing to lose by contemplating the most painful parts of her past.
The species riots of the mid-1990s had begun in ignorance and fear, as all such things do. In Detroit, a werewolf entered a bar and asked for a glass of whiskey. That simple question ended with five dead. The werewolf died a day later in the police station.
Radu Tepes, the leader of the Consortium for Concerned Citizens, demanded an investigation. Despite road blocks at every corner, the CCC sued. And won.
All over the United States, humans responded with a wave of violence that was only matched by the outrage killings after World War Two.
In Georgetown, Katsumi Tanaka, half-Japanese and half-Irish daughter of FBPR agents Kevin Tanaka and Brigit O’Malley, had just gotten her driver’s license.
“I don’t like this. It’s too dangerous.” Her father shoved his face through the driver’s window. Her boyfriend, Javier, buckled himself into the passenger’s seat.
“We’re going for ice cream, Dad, not into D.C. itself. Nothing ever happens in Georgetown.” Su soothed.
Javier smiled, his gold tooth glinting. “No worries, Mr. Tanaka. You know Su drives better than either you or I do.”
When her father frowned, Su wished Javier didn’t feel the need to protect her from her own father. It was their only argument. Javier claimed Kevin was not the benevolent parent Su believed him to be. “Just look at how he treats your mother,” he would repeat over and over.
“My mother is a jerk,” Su would retort. Either way, it was a moot point. Ice cream was calling.
“We’ll be back in an hour,” she told her dad.
“You don’t need an hour to eat ice cream. Get back here in thirty minutes.”
“Sure thing, Dad.” No reason to upset her favorite parent.
Su nibbled a corner of one of her peanut butter energy bars. The taste of peanuts cut the nasty flavor of cement dust. She closed her tired eyes.
The hours of solitude opened new insights. For the first time, she wondered if Javier was right. Half an hour for an eighteen-year-old honor student to spend with her equally well-behaved boyfriend? All of her friends had lost their virginity by then, but Su and Javier hadn’t gotten past third base. And Su had been more than willing. She’d been so curious and eager to try anything and everything she had read about.
Her father’s death had changed everything. Su chewed on another nail.
Why had her father prevented her from getting her license at sixteen, anyway? Kevin claimed it was her mother’s wish, but with the perspective that impending death brought, she understood that made no sense. Her mother had made Su chauffeur whenever the two of them were alone. Perhaps her mother had not been the person her daughter had thought.
A crash down the street stopped them all.
“What was that?” Javier asked. Su’s heart pumped.
A human male with a two-by-four had broken the front window on the Johnson’s house. The Johnsons were a quiet family with a human father and a werebear mother.
“Get out, you vile animals,” he screamed into the house. “Or I’ll kill you all.”
Mr. Johnson opened his door. He wore a gray cardigan and held his hands up. “We don’t want any trouble,” Su heard him say.
The angry man swung the two-by-four like a baseball bat. Mr. Johnson fell to the ground.
Su gagged. She’d never seen so much blood.
Kevin pulled his weapon. “Put down your weapon,” he ordered the assailant. His Glock was aimed at the man’s chest. “Get on the ground. I am a Federal Officer. Get on the ground now.”
From inside her house, Mrs. Johnson roared, an angry Kodiak bear challenge to the person who dared touch her husband.
“Mrs. Johnson, stay back. Let me handle this,” Su’s father called.
From around the corner, twenty more humans came running. Each of them carried some kind of weapon, from more lumber to nightsticks. “Get the animal fucker!”
“Dad, get in,” Su gasped. “Come on.”
“I can handle this,” he answered, the confidence of a three-time winner of Agent of the Year in his bearing. “Stop where you are.”
The mob kept coming. Javier got out of the car and grabbed Kevin. “Hurry, Mr. Tanaka.”
Kevin reached for Javier’s ringed fingers, but the angry people ripped them apart. The boy went down.
“No!” Su reached for the car handle.
“Su. Go!” Javier’s last words saved Su Tanaka. She stomped on the gas, peeling out away from the rock-throwing, pistol-waving mob.
The two funerals within three days of each other turned Su from a passionate girl into a woman driven to keep others from suffering as she did.
Su took off her black blazer and draped it over a funeral home’s chair. She sat, mentally girding herself.
“Hello, Katsumi.” Her mother’s long red hair was threaded with dull silver. The black dress didn’t do her pale skin and swollen light blue eyes any favors.
“Mother.” Best not to put this off. “I’m going to Portland to live with Grandpa.”
Brigit Tanaka merely rested her head against the back of the floral sofa. “Is that so?”
Where was the fight? Where was her mother’s famous temper?
“I think it would be best for all of us,” Su continued her spiel, just as she had rehearsed it.
“I see.” Her mother kept staring at the roses on the ceiling. “Then I will give you the only piece of mother’s wisdom I have.”
Su internally sighed, waiting for the lecture.
“Don’t settle for the easy story, Katsumi.”
And with that, Brigit Tanaka walked away from her daughter.
Su ripped at a dry cuticle, leaving small drops of blood pooling on the edge of her pinkie.
“Ow.” She flipped her hand away, trying to shake off the sting. Instead, the little wound opened farther. Red dripped onto her fingernail.
She knew search and rescue was looking for them, but that granted no peace. With every creak and moan of the rubble above them, she knew a painful end crept closer.
At least she wasn’t alone. Granted, Umar slept, but she was always at her best when someone needed her.
Her independent mother had never needed her daughter. At least, that was what Dad had said, a tiny voice inside her head nagged.
Shit.
Su rested her head on her bent knees. That was the problem with facing death: there was no way to avoid the hard questions.
Their makeshift shelter shifted. Chunks of brick fell between the gap of the desk and the bookshelf. One heavy, jagged hunk of concrete landed on Su’s shoulder, digging into her exhausted muscles and ripping her shirt. Hurt radiated down her chest toward her heart.
“Ffffffffffuck,” she hissed between her teeth. One-handed, she flipped on the flashlight. At least the cement hadn’t punctured her skin. She banged her elbow on the desk leg as she twisted to rub the sore spot.
“That’s going to leave a bruise,” Umar said.
Su jum
ped. When the hell had he woken up?
“Uh, yeah. How are you?”
He pulled his garment around his body, covering that tasty, tasty honey-colored skin. “How long have I been asleep?”
“Two hours.” She handed over the water bottle.
As he drank, he studied their enclosure. “If we pushed the bookshelf to the side, we—”
“Would die instantly.” She pointed the flashlight’s beam at the way the shelves stabilized the girders above. “We’re completely cut off. I checked.”
As best he could in the awkward space, he stretched. His elbow struck the office chair. Another brick dropped, narrowly missing his head.
“So we’re trapped.” Umar straightened his shoulders and then relaxed. “Do you know what caused the explosion?”
“From the smell and the noise, I’m pretty sure it was a bomb.” Su licked her bleeding finger. “Have you received any threats?”
“You have to ask?” Umar rubbed his chin as he considered her analysis. “Nothing with bombs.”
His dust-stiffened hair stood on end and his rangy body lay arranged around broken bits that could have killed them. Umar offered a mysterious smile, his eyelids half closed and his lower lip a slight curve.
Su wanted to take a bite.
The smirk on Umar’s mouth said he knew of her attraction. “You must have been bored, beautiful girl.” His hands stroked his thighs. The thick links of a silver bracelet drew her attention to his long fingers and the dark hair on his arms. He rested his hands at the juncture of his hips, framing and displaying his crotch.
“However shall we entertain ourselves?” he asked.
The man had just woken up from a head trauma that would have permanently damaged a mortal. They were in genuine danger of being crushed to death. And he wanted to party.
Su could work with that. A pleasurable heat grew in her nipples. Her thighs relaxed, splaying open.
They were going to die anyway. She would enjoy him to the best of their ability.
She rotated the head of the metal tube, leaving them in darkness again.
“I have been alone for ages.” Like a femme fatale, she lowered her voice to a husky whisper. “I was lonely and cold and in dire need of entertainment.” She leaned back.
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