The Recruiters

by Dara Nelson

  The Recruiters

  The Pearl Vampire Chronicles

  Volume Two

  By

  Dara J. Nelson

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. Adult content – parental discretion is advised.

  ISBN-10: 1-456-55350-X

  EAN-13: 978-1-456-55350-0

  Acknowledgements

  This book couldn’t have been possible without the encouragement and guidance of: Teresa Green – the best editor a writer could ever hope for, Carol – my sister and the first reader (and fan) of my work, Erica Nelson – author of “Prospect When You Are Happy” who encouraged me before I even had a story to write, Lorraine, Leah, Michelle, I thank you all.

  For vampire fans everywhere.

  The Recruiters

  The Pearl Vampire Chronicles

  Volume Two

  By Dara J. Nelson

  Prologue

  It was dark, well after midnight, and I was clinging tightly to Matt’s hand as we ran. And running we were, as fast as we could. The wind whipped through my hair and my bare feet pounded on the pavement. The few people who were out this late never saw us. We were only a blur and a gust of wind as we sped past them. Through dark alleys, jumping over walls and fences, we ran. We turned quickly and headed into the park, ducking into the greenbelt that was at the back side of the park. We ran around the trees, changing our direction every thirty feet or so. Matt pulled me closer and wrapped his arm around my waist. He picked me up and then flew just a few feet off the ground so we wouldn’t disturb any more pine needles or dirt. We emerged out the other side and found ourselves in the dirty, abandoned slums that seemed to be part of every large city these days. Up the city streets, through abandoned buildings, over rooftops, wherever we could go, we ran and flew without stopping. I never looked back but I knew they were close; I could feel them – and they were gaining on us. I glanced at Matt and saw the panicked look on his face. Why couldn’t we be somewhere familiar? We’d never been here. Everything seemed sinister, luring us into dead ends. Flying higher wasn’t an option; they were much faster than we were in the air.

  “In here,” Matt whispered and we ducked into an empty warehouse. We raced from one end of the building to a set of stairs at the other end. Taking them three at a time, we shoved through the locked door to the roof without breaking our stride. We ran the length of the building and jumped down to the street at the far end. We ran to the end of the row of abandoned warehouses and turned up the next street.

  ‘This can’t be happening, somebody please tell me this isn’t real,’ my mind screamed. We rounded another corner.

  “Quick,” Matt said, “in here.” We turned and quickly ducked into an abandoned apartment building. Flying up four flights of stairs, we ran to the apartment at the end of the hall, fleeing through the apartment and out the open window to the fire escape. We jumped into the dark alley below, and came to a dead stop. There were four of them, waiting for us at the end of the alley. We turned to run out but saw four more behind us, and they were quickly closing in. We looked up, hoping against hope that we could jump, or fly. But there were two hovering above us. There was nowhere else to run, nowhere else to go. We were completely surrounded and we were out of options. As The Enforcers closed in, we clung as tightly to each other as we could.

  “Don’t let go,” I whispered. “Please, don’t let go.”

  “Never,” he said through clenched teeth. I squeezed my eyes shut as they got closer and closer. I knew what was coming. I knew that this was the end. I felt their breath on my back, felt their ancient fingers close around my arms, felt them yanking and pulling until they finally broke us apart. Felt the panic rising as they pinned our arms behind our backs. I felt my heart break as I heard the cracks when they broke our fingers and pinned them back so that we couldn’t touch our scars.

  Chapter One

  I felt the scream wake me and I shot up in bed. Matthew was also instantly wide awake. He spun around on the bed and quickly reached for me. “Another one?” he whispered.

  I nodded my head then buried it in his chest. This was becoming all too frequent. But we had been so successful in our first attempt at matching that it didn’t make any sense for me to still be so afraid of the Elders. Andrew and Janine were blissfully happy. They were on their honeymoon right now. Enjoying each other before returning to the fortress so that she could go through the change and he could resume his position as head guard. But something really felt off to me.

  I noticed that the dream was more frequent when we were forced, because of work, to spend some time apart. I had taken a five day temp job at a downtown company, here in New Orleans, to get to know Alison a little better. Alison was someone who I thought might be a suitable mate for Billy. Matt had begun working construction to get to know David, a possible mate for our first female client, Anne. That meant almost eight hours apart each day, made bearable only by the fact that Matt’s company was building a high rise only three blocks from where I was working, so I walked over there every day on my lunch hour to meet him.

  Of course, that had been very interesting on the first day: I had strolled into the catcalls and wolf-whistles so common from these sites and saw Matt glaring at these guys. I was worried that he was going to bite their heads off, literally, so I quickened my pace a bit, took him into my arms, turned his face back to mine, said, “I hear no one but you my love,” and kissed him, long and hard, only stopping when I had peaked at the crew and saw their expressions turn from leering to jealousy and admiration. They never made a peep after that. We would walk across the street to the park, sit by the fountain and just enjoy being next to each other until our hour ended. The afternoon was spent counting down the minutes until we could meet outside my work and we’d walk to the small house we were renting in the French Quarter.

  We had discovered early on in our fourteen months of doing this that we were definitely not made for apartments. We were just too… noisy. We were doing our best to blend in, and since there probably wasn’t a human alive who could match our sexual appetite, and apartment walls are too thin to contain our sounds – we knew it would be noticed – so we decided to stick with houses.

  “Maybe I’m just tired,” I said. “I mean, we’ve been working non-stop since the wedding. I dunno, do you think they’d let us take a break? A short vacation? A honeymoon maybe?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “We can try asking I suppose.”

  “No,” I replied. “Don’t ask yet. Let me think about it for a while. I don’t want us to get into trouble. It’s just that I haven’t seen my sisters in almost two years. Emails and phone calls just don’t seem to be cutting it anymore. I really miss them.”

  “Is that wise, Sarah?” he whispered. “They’re going to notice that you’re different.”

  “Matt, they’re going notice that I’m in love,” I said. “That’s the only thing that will matter to them.”

  We sat at either side of the table with our laptops open, entering our notes from the day. “How are things going with David?” I asked, wanting to change the subject.

  “I’m not sure he’s going to be right for Anne. He’s got too much baggage that he’d bring with him. I think it might be too complicated.”

  “That’s too bad. I really think Alison will be great for Billy. She’s exactly his type: She’s still young yet, can’t have children. She’s the only one left of her family. She’s fun-loving and seems very eager for new experiences. I think I’m going to set up a chance meeting for next week. What do you think?”
>
  “Hmmmm? Oh, sounds like a good idea,” he mumbled. He seemed completely distracted by something he was doing on his computer. Uh-oh, I thought, he’s only like this when he’s planning or scheming. I’ll have to keep an eye on him. I finished working before he did, so I went to the kitchen to throw away the remnants from our meal and then headed to the couch to wait for him. I closed my eyes and started sifting through my memories of the last fourteen months to see if I could figure out what the trigger was for this recurring nightmare. It had definitely been an exciting and adventure-filled year and a half.

  Chapter Two

  Fourteen months earlier

  We had arrived at Stefan’s apartment just before dawn. Thankfully he not only owned the penthouse suite, but two other apartments in the building too, both of which were kept vacant for visitors. With vampire hearing, it was going to be tough enough for us to keep quiet so that he couldn’t hear us through two floors, let alone just down the hall. We knew he wanted to head out at seven the next morning to move through the crowds making their way to work, which left us about an hour and a half for our wedding night. Better than nothing, I thought as I winked at him and turned to head down the hall, unzipping my dress and letting it fall to the floor on the way to the bedroom, which I didn’t see – we never made it that far.

  My first day with the crowds of New York was overwhelming, and a complete failure. Millions of sounds and smells kept drawing my focus. I kept freezing and people would bump into me. It was so bad that someone tried to hand me a dollar, thinking I was a street performer. “Great“, I mumbled. “I should just get a job as a statue.”

  “But the pigeon poop is hard to get out of your hair,” Matt said, chuckling. “It’s okay sweetheart, you’ll get better. It just takes a little time.” He wrapped his arms around me and, just like the first time he did this, I instantly felt calm, safe and right where I was supposed to be. I closed my eyes and tried to block out some of the sounds.

  My ear was resting on Matt’s chest, so I concentrated on the rhythmic thump of his heart. Pretty soon that was the only thing I was hearing. I turned, holding tight to Matt’s hand, and told myself “I CAN do this.” Then I opened my eyes. I took two steps and lost it. I was hearing the couple arguing in the apartment four floors above us, millions of car engines, the buzz of the subway tracks in the tunnels a hundred feet below us, a rat scurrying across the rooftop of a building down the street.

  I stopped walking. My eyes darted everywhere. I felt the panic growing. Stefan came and stood right in front of me. His eyes bored into me, he gritted his teeth and suddenly everything was silent. I stared up at him, “How did you do that?”

  “It’s kind of the same principle as passing a thought from one vampire to another, but instead of passing a thought, I’m passing silence. You can do this too. Concentrate hard on silence and try to project it out from yourself. We’ll work on it over the next few wee. In the meantime,” he smiled gently and offered me his arm, “you can share mine.”

  We continued down the street like that, my left hand on Stefan’s arm, my right held tightly to Matthew’s, until we reached Stefan’s office building. We spent a few hours there. He took us on a tour and even allowed us to sit in on a few menial meetings. Thankfully, Stefan knew I was thoroughly exhausted from the day, and he called for a car to take us home. We said our goodnights in the elevator, with me saying I’d practice on creating the silence that night, and promising to do better tomorrow.

  Once we got inside our apartment, I sat on the couch and turned on the television while Matt went to the kitchen to heat up our dinner. I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate on the silence in my head. I began to see it as a changeable object. Blackness like a veil or scarf, floating in my head. I imagined stretching it out over the top of my head, first clinging to my head, then stretching out farther like an umbrella. I opened my eyes and stared at the television. For an instant I thought I had muted it. I turned up the volume just in case. But though the news anchors’ lips were moving, there still wasn’t any sound. I jumped when Matt appeared next to me, his hands over his ears, saying something that I couldn’t hear, and the veil quickly retracted into my skull. I realized that he was telling me to turn down the television, because it was almost at full volume. I quickly hit the mute button. “Sorry” I mumbled.

  He laughed. “I take it you had some success?”

  “Yeah, I think I did, but as soon as you startled me it failed. That’s something I’ll have to work on.”

  He held his hand out to me and I gladly took it. “Come and eat, love” he said.

  I followed him to the kitchen and was quickly satisfied by my meal.

  “Are you going to keep practicing?” he asked, as he headed towards the living room.

  “In a minute,” I replied as I opened my laptop. “I want to email my sisters first.” Logging on to my email account, I smiled when I saw that I had about a dozen from them, ranging from thrilled: “Your pictures from Paris were incredible!” from Diane; to slightly perturbed and cautious; “You met someone, got married and you didn’t even tell us?!? He must be pretty special to have turned your life around so quickly. When do we get to meet him?” from Amanda; to complete awe after I sent the ones with the wedding pictures, “Ummm, WOW! Sarah, he’s amazingly beautiful. And the way he looks at you. It’s staggering how much he loves you. I felt like I should look away, like I was intruding on something intimately personal. Again, all I can really say is wow… and I miss you,” from Cindy. I answered all of them as quickly as I could, since I was hoping that I would get to see them soon. I took a little more time on the last one from Cindy.

  She was right, I thought as I glanced over the computer at Matt who still sitting on the couch. It was pretty staggering how much he loved me. But what was more staggering was how much I loved him. I smiled as I hit send then left the laptop open and on – I didn’t want him to hear me. I snuck up behind him, wrapped my arms around him and bent down to find his mouth, kissing him full and hard. He quickly reached up and pulled me over the couch onto his lap. And in the hours of ecstasy that followed I silently realized that we still hadn’t made it to the bedroom here, and I really didn’t care.

  It took me a few weeks, but I finally started to get the hang of the silence veil. The thing that caused me to lose my concentration the most was Matt. If he reached down and took my hand, if he touched my arm, if he spoke to me, if he put his arm around me, if he breathed on me, basically if he was anywhere near me, the only focus I had was wanting him. I knew I’d have to learn to control my desire when I was with him in public, but it just wasn’t something I was ready to do or willing to do, yet. Or possibly ever…

  Chapter Three

  We had happily spent six months in New York with Stefan. We worked at his company, went to parties with him, ball games, and other social events. Although I was surprised that he didn’t kick us out after the first, and only, time he took us to a night club. It was a Friday night. I was worried about the music and lights being too much for me, but what ended up being too much for me, and almost got us in big trouble, was my reaction to seeing Matt dancing and my moving with him on the dance floor. It nearly sent me over the top. We had only made it through three songs, when I pulled him tight into my arms and growled into his ear, “You have to take me home, NOW.” He immediately understood, but as we turned to go one of the bouncers approached us, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you two to leave. Some of the customers are complaining about being, ummm, uncomfortable.”

  “Not a problem,” I said much too quickly, as we rushed out. We didn’t quite make it to the apartment though – thank goodness the elevator was empty.

  I smiled as I thought back to that night. We’d been together a year and a half now, and my desire for him, my yearning for him, my need for him, continued to grow stronger. I tried to clear that from my head. I was supposed to be concentrating right now, trying to remember when the nightmare had first started. I definitely kno
w I didn’t have any in that first six months, so I moved on to Baltimore.

  Baltimore was our first stop on the road to finding a mate for Andrew. The two possibilities I had found, Sabrina and Lisa, were a disappointment but our time there was valuable owing to our discovery that apartment walls weren’t thick enough to contain our sounds and it would be houses from there on out.

  My mind moved on to Dallas, our next stop. I got a job working at a local coffee house, alongside Tammy. She seemed perfect for Andrew, until I discovered her secret life – as a hooker. That was two months wasted. But I did have my first nightmare there. What triggered it was playing at the edge of my mind, but I couldn’t quite catch it.

  I moved on to Albuquerque, thinking I could come back to Dallas later. Three months there proved very successful. I found Janine a few weeks after arriving. She was fluent in Spanish, was a school teacher and loved kids but couldn’t have any of her own, which was perfect because I didn’t feel it was fair to ask anyone to give up their ability to have children just for love. I had experienced motherhood. It had ended tragically for me but it was enough for me to give up the possibility of having more children by becoming a vampire.

  Janine could continue teaching in the village outside the fortress after her training was complete. Most of her family had passed on – except for a brother that she barely ever spoke to – and she was in love with being in love. I brought Andrew over when we had been there a month, where we arranged for him to ‘run’ into her, as in a chance meeting, while walking in the park, shopping at the supermarket, in the library, or some other ordinary location. These chance meetings became more and more frequent. And he was spending more time with her each time he saw her. It wasn’t long before they were head over heels in love.