by Tamara Hogan
“So, you were our European liaison for over two hundred years?”
He nodded. “I moved to America in the early nineteen hundreds. Valerian needed me here.” And he’d needed to get away from England—away from Deirdre’s scheming, and from his growing suspicious about where Bram had gotten the idea for his story.
He hadn’t been careful enough, and his people had paid the price.
His phone vibrated in a distinctive SOS rhythm. “It’s the hospital. Excuse me.”
Nodding, she wandered over to the table where Antonia had been working to give him some privacy. She leaned over the ancient book, hands behind her back, peering at its yellowed pages without touching them.
Very good.
He scrolled through the patient intake report. Mila Stanton had passed out at work again, and the nasty gash at the back of her head definitely needed stitches. The delicate young vampire had autoimmune hemolytic anemia, and she didn’t always comply with her treatment plan. She refused to share her diagnosis with her parents, so they couldn’t help. With a couple of taps, he instructed the resident to handle the wound and to start transfusing. With a mental apology to the very capable resident, he added that he was en route. Now would be a good time to deliver a strongly worded lecture, reminding Mila that she had to drink more blood. He hit ‘Send’ and slipped the phone back into the leather holder clipped to his belt. “Unfortunately, our work will have to wait for another time.” A time when he was better prepared to deal with her.
“You’re going to Memorial?” She glanced at her watch. “Now? Are you okay to drive? Do you need a ride?” She paused. “You looked so tired earlier.”
“The blood rejuvenated me.”
“Do you have a place you can rest? At the hospital, or a place in town? What about the sun?”
“Tia.” He put his hand over her mouth. It seemed to be the only way he’d get a word in edgewise. “I’m fine. I’ll catch a nap at the hospital before I drive home, but thank you for your concern.”
She pulled his hand away. Her fingers felt warm against his skin, an intimate brand. “Make sure you do.”
She sounded…worried about him. It had been a long time since a woman had worried about him.
She abruptly dropped his hand. A delicate blush washed over her cheeks, turning her skin a delightful shade of pink. “Do you suppose Valerian is awake?”
He nodded. “I think he and Thane planned to watch Downton Abbey tonight.”
“I love that show! Do you watch it?”
“No.” He grabbed his suit coat off the back of Bailey’s chair and handed Tia her purse. The drive to the hospital, on the nearly-empty night highway, would give him almost an hour to get his unruly body under control again.
He had to get himself under control again.
“When will we work together next?” Tia asked. “We didn’t get anything accomplished tonight.”
He started walking toward the stairwell. “I’ll let you know.” He’d find some diplomatic way to decline any future offers of assistance.
She didn’t follow. Instead, she lifted her chin in challenge.
“I’ll call. I promise.” The words were out of his mouth before he knew he was going to say them, and he felt a trickle of admiration for her chutzpah. No one had questioned his actions, or as Bailey would say, called him on his shit, in a very long time. He flipped the light switches next to the door, dousing the clinical, bright light. Several dim security lights illuminated the space well enough to navigate. “I’ll escort you to your car.”
“No need.”
It wasn’t worth discussing. “Come on.” After a quick glance at the security screens, he led her through the heavy metal door and up the stairs. When they reached the entrance, he scanned the parking lot again, and opened the door. “Drive safely.”
“Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry?” she murmured, amusement in her eyes. But she didn’t move. Mosquitoes buzzed and crickets chirped. Finally, she put her hands on his shoulders for balance, rose onto her tiptoes, and softly kissed both of his cheeks.
She smelled luscious, like blood and lilacs. It was all he could do keep his tongue in his mouth.
Tia studied him for several seconds, her gaze flicking down to his lips momentarily before her own quirked into a smile. “Take care.” She hit a button on the key fob in her hand, and her car’s headlights flashed, spotlighting them. She about-faced, walked to her car, got in, buckled up, then drove away.
He watched until her tail lights disappeared, pondering her words. “Take care.” A huff of self-mocking laughter escaped. Take care? That’s what he did. That was all he did.
And damn it, it wasn’t enough anymore.
Chapter Three
“Hello, Miss Lyudmila.”
Hansen, Mila’s family’s black-suited butler, stood at the kitchen door—the one she’d hoped to sneak into. “Hello, Hansen.” She really shouldn’t have expected anything different. Very little happened in her parent’s palatial Lake Minnetonka home that Hansen wasn’t aware of. He was probably the only person in the household who’d noticed she hadn’t slept at home for over a day.
“Sorry I didn’t call.” She set her backpack on the floor, just inside the door. “My shift at work went longer than I expected. The sun came up, so I decided to sleep at the hospital until it set again.” Strictly speaking, she wasn’t lying. Ever since her diagnosis, she’d become way too adept at such conversational shades of gray. The tiny staples hidden in her hairline stung and throbbed—she couldn’t believe she’d fainted at work—but at least the wound had stopped bleeding.
“Your parents are just about to break their fast.”
Her aristocratic parents ran their household on strict vampire time, sleeping during the day and waking at sunset. No new-fangled VampScreen or UV-treated windows for them, thank you very much; they had no need to be out and about during the daylight hours. At sunset, they woke up, bathed, then dressed to meet the day. You could set a watch by them. Hansen likely did.
“Will you be dining with your parents this evening?”
“Yes.” She felt like a bloated tick after being transfused at the ER, but it was best for everyone that she join her parents and eat what Hansen served. She looked down at her shirt and pants. Her work clothes would annoy her mother, but at least she hadn’t bled all over them when she fell. She tugged at her sweater sleeve, making sure it hid the bandage and cotton ball at the crook of her elbow—which she really should have removed before coming home, damn it. She sighed as she walked to the formal dining room. There was no help for it now. If her parents smelled the blood and asked questions, she’d just tell them she had her period.
Though the glossy mahogany table could comfortably seat twenty, her parents sat adjacent to each other at one end. Hansen had set the table with the everyday Lenox, with pale green cloth napkins providing a shot of color. A lead crystal vase of chrysanthemums served as the centerpiece. The flowers’ coral heads were as large as the bread plates.
“Hello, Lyudmila.”
“Hello, Mother.” Leaning down, Mila kissed both taut cheeks, and quickly backed away. Her mother’s heavy floral scent made her feel woozy. “Are the chrysanthemums yours?” Her mother excelled as a hostess, and grew flowers year-round in a greenhouse on the property.
“Yes. Aren’t they beautiful?”
As she started talking about how she’d trained the flowers, Mila looked at her mother’s face, a surgically smooth canvas where no age line dared tread. No one looking at the chic vampire Lyudmila would ever guess she had a daughter Mila’s age—which was probably the point of all those nips and tucks. Mila had been a late-in-life baby, conceived at the outer boundaries of her mother’s fertile years—but five years after Mila had been born, there’d been one more pregnancy, one more birth.
Did her mother mourn Katarina? Did she even remember her?
Her father dropped his Wall Street Journal. “Hello, dear. How was the League meeting?”
&nb
sp; It cracked her up how the Elders shortened the Genetic Purity League’s name to something so…philanthropic-sounding, as if by leaving off the first two words they could disavow all knowledge of why the organization had been formed in the first place. Its original mission, to preserve the pure bloodlines of the Ancients who’d survived the crash, might have been well-intentioned at one time, but damn it, they knew better now.
“It was fine.” She kissed her father’s cheek as she passed him.
Most younger members knew that the GPL’s mission was ignorant and ass-backwards—their species’ robustness lay not in genetic purity, but in genetic diversity—but the group continued to meet anyway. And why not? It was a way to socialize. The booze flowed free and freely, and people hooked up with abandon. Not her, not anymore; she’d quickly learned that having sex for entertainment’s sake wasn’t for her. These days, she attended the meetings as a personal challenge, as a way to force herself to interact with people her own age.
She plopped into her chair, ignoring her mother’s disapproving frown. Approaching Dominic Reese had been one of the most difficult things she’d ever done, but she’d made herself do it, and—she disguised a shiver of delight—he’d actually asked her out. She’d been so distracted by his low, rumbly voice, and by the silky, cinnamon-colored hair on his muscular forearms, that she’d had a hard time concentrating on the questions he’d asked about her job, her family, and her life.
Hansen entered the dining room with a click of hard-soled shoes against the parquet floor. Ice cubes clinked as he set a glass before her: cream soda, barely tinged with blood. “Thanks, Hansen.” Wyland had told her to increase her blood intake—and she would—but she wasn’t going to stop drinking her favorite breakfast beverage.
“Lyudmila, you’re a grown woman,” her mother said as Hansen went back to the kitchen. “Why do you insist on drinking soda pop for breakfast?”
If I’m a grown woman, why do you insist I live with you? The angry words went unsaid. Over the years, Mila had learned to choose her rebellions very, very carefully. She took a sip—a small, safe rebellion—and felt the bubbly chill effervesce on her tongue. “Because I like it.”
“And those unattractive work clothes.” Her mother picked up a goblet of dark red blood that glistened in the chandelier’s prismatic light. “Must you wear such drab colors?”
Mila eyed her mother’s black silk blouse, but didn’t say a word. Her clothes weren’t the problem; the work was. Her mother didn’t understand Mila’s need to do something useful with her education. To work outside the home, to earn a paycheck that didn’t have Daddy’s signature on it.
“Well, we’ll take care of the drab when we see the dressmaker about your gown,” her mother said. “The calligrapher needs the names and addresses of your League friends for the party invitations.”
“Huh?”
Her mother sighed. “Must you use such coarse language?”
Mila set the glass down on the tablecloth and mentally counted to three. “To which party are you referring, Mother?”
“I can’t believe you’ve forgotten.” Hansen entered the room again, pushing a rolling cart holding three plates covered by shiny silver domes. He served her mother first, then her, and then her father, before leaving again. “Lyudmila,” her exasperated mother continued, “it’s time for you to take your rightful place in our community. It’s been far too long since we offered hospitality to Valerian and Wyland.”
Wyland, here? The last thing she wanted to do was socialize with her doctor—the doctor her parents didn’t realize she was seeing. She looked down at her plate. The small steak, swimming in bloody au jus, suddenly looked nauseating instead of appetizing. “Why invite them to the party?”
“Are you daft? They’re our leaders. They represent us on the Underworld Council. They’re the most powerful vampires on the planet.” Her mother picked up a silver-plated knife and fork. “Lyudmila, social and political networks don’t just…happen. Like flowers, they require constant cultivation and care.”
“I saw Wyland at Sebastiani Labs a couple of weeks ago,” her father volunteered from behind his newspaper. “We exchanged a few words. He asked after your well-being, Mila.”
Her stomach bottomed out. Had Wyland told them—
“It’s high time Wyland took a mate.” Her mother sliced into her steak. “He’s a very attractive man, don’t you think? Barely three hundred years old, and his parents were purebloods.”
Attractive? Wyland? Surely her mother wasn’t suggesting—
“You’re nearly twenty-five, Lyudmila. It’s time you thought about the continuity of our family line.”
Apparently she was.
“Wyland is the perfect choice for you,” her mother bulldozed on. “The only choice, really.”
Mila picked up her fork and mutinously stabbed a strawberry. What if she didn’t want a bondmate? What if she wasn’t interested in having children? Ever? The very thought would put a stake in her mother’s heart. “I’m sure Wyland’s far too busy to socialize, Mother—especially with Valerian being in such poor health.”
“Lyudmila.” Her mother’s knife clanked against the china. “Wyland asked after your well-being. We must strike while the iron’s hot.” She picked up her goblet again, considering her with more than a hint of calculation in her eyes. “Do you ever see Wyland at the hospital?” A pause. “Maybe taking that job wasn’t such a horrible decision after all.”
If her parents knew how often she saw Wyland, and why, they’d shit a gold-plated brick. It was time to nip her mother’s delusions in the bud. “Mother, Wyland’s not interested in me, not that way. He’s simply being polite.” She gave a light laugh. “And he’s over three hundred years old. If he wanted a bondmate, don’t you think he’d already have one?”
Her father eyed her over the top of his newspaper. “Perhaps you can change his mind.”
The words hit like a depth charge. Apparently her parents weren’t above pimping out their only daughter for political and social gain.
As she tried to catch her breath, her mother chattered on about menus, guest lists, gowns, and seating plans, not at all concerned about Mila’s reaction. Not bothering to assess her daughter for damage.
What else was new?
A shriek of frustration threatened to leap from her throat, but she shoved it back, shoved it down—and that, she admitted with a sigh, was part of the problem. Given her past behavior, why wouldn’t her parents think she’d simply fall in line with their plans? They were so certain she’d obey that they hadn’t even bothered to thrall her to ensure her compliance.
Little Mila, meek and mild.
Not anymore. Damn it, she was nearly twenty-five years old, an adult vampire with full rights and autonomy. She had a good job, friends, her own money…it was high time she took control of her own life, stood on her own two feet. Either she needed protection, or she was old enough to take a bondmate, run her own household, and continue the family line.
Her mother couldn’t have it both ways.
She picked up her glass and took a slow sip. So, her parents thought they could offer their perfect, pristine daughter to the Vampire Second on a silver platter? Ha. What would they do if they discovered she wasn’t so perfect? Wasn’t so pristine? That a hot guy like Dominic Reese was interested in her, and that she was interested right back?
What then?
She lowered the glass with a hand that shook. She might have been perfectly healthy at birth, but she was far from healthy now. And little Katarina’s snuffed-out life was proof that, in her parents’ minds, imperfections were simply not acceptable.
Ignore it. Just ignore it. Don’t look at the screen.
“Easier said than done,” Tia muttered, scrawling her name on the bottom of the check. After posting some new content to ILQ, she’d caught up on email, returned a few phone calls, and had done some long-overdue filing. Now, truly desperate, she was paying bills—something, anything, to avoid clicking on t
he icon that mocked her from her laptop screen.
Ever since Bailey had given her access to the Archives, she’d hit the database as often as a crack addict hit their pipe. And was it any wonder? What marvelous things she’d read; what amazing facts she’d learned.
Sighing in defeat, she swung her chair toward the laptop sitting on the other side of her home office’s L-shaped desk. After clicking on the icon and logging on, she opened the files she’d started to build on Sigurd, Valerian, The Old Ways, the Genetic Purity League, and Wyland—who hadn’t called her as he’d promised.
She shook off the thought. She had plenty to keep her busy, other stories to work on, even if Commander Gideon Lupinsky hadn’t returned her phone calls yet. While she waited for the Archives’ login sequence to finish, she glanced out the window, where a floodlight illuminated her neglected back yard. If she didn’t mow her lawn soon, she’d need to scare up some goats… Ah, there. The main screen was finally up.
Bailey had warned her that the Archives were still a hot mess—a hodgepodge of scanned original manuscripts, documents, images, and electronic files, all crying out for organization and deeper indexing—but the biographies were solid, and rudimentary search capabilities were up and running. Though Tia hadn’t found any information on The Genetic Purity League or The Old Ways, she’d been amused to find her own small biographical entry, probably due to her parents, who were noted philanthropists. Bailey had formatted the biographical materials in a manner anyone familiar with Wikipedia could navigate.
She pulled up Wyland’s biography, clicked on one of the first links, and watched Valerian’s distinctive, slanted handwriting fill the screen. Against the cream-colored parchment, the ink was still surprisingly legible, and the scan was so pristine that she could see places where his incisive downstrokes had caused the nib of his pen to cut through the paper. She took notes as she read, tapping pertinent facts into the word processing document she’d created for Wyland.
Thanks to Valerian, Wyland had a well-documented life. Born to aristocratic vampire parents in England in 1702, he’d been studying medicine when he’d come to Valerian’s attention. His primary research interest? Blood, of course. Wyland had become Valerian’s apprentice soon afterward, continuing his medical research, studying law, and familiarizing himself with their culture’s history via their fledgling Archives. As Wyland had previously told her, Valerian had designated Wyland as his Second in the mid-1700s. He’d remained in England while Valerian traveled back and forth between Europe and the ascendant American colonies.
