Dark Queen’s Knight

by I. T. Lucas

  Not only because she wanted to experience the real him, but because she had a feeling that more than his sex drive had been numbed for centuries. It was time he started enjoying life to its fullest, and not through hazy sunglasses.

  “That’s actually not a bad idea.” He scratched at his day-old stubble. “It will give me peace of mind knowing that you can stop me if I go nuts.”

  Mey laughed. “I don’t need a taser. A rolling pin could be just as effective. A baseball bat would be even better, but it’s not going to be comfortable under the pillow. Maybe a frying pan? You know, one of those old-fashioned cast iron ones.” She pretended to swing one at his head. “Boom, out goes the light.”

  He tweaked her nose. “You think that you are being funny, but it’s not a laughing matter. I’m serious.”

  With a sigh, she rested her cheek on his chest, listening to his big heart beat slow and steady. “Don’t worry. If all else fails, I’ll perform the Vulcan nerve pinch.”

  “You’re still joking.”

  Yamanu was starting to sound exasperated, and Mey debated whether to pull out her secret weapon now or save it for later. If she used it now, it would lose the shock effect, which she was certain would stop him no matter how far gone he was.

  Then again, if she kept it for later, Yamanu might sneak in a dose or two of his damned potion because he was afraid of hurting her.

  Then there was her own fear of rejection, but that was highly unlikely. Mey knew how Yamanu felt about her, even if he hadn’t told her. After all, he was breaking a centuries-long vow and was willing to leave his clan unprotected for her. She didn’t need any more proof of how deep his feelings ran.

  Still, there were two things that were fueling her insecurity.

  One was her being a potential Dormant, which made her highly desirable to Yamanu as well as to all the other single clan males. That alone would have guaranteed a long line of suitors regardless of who she was as a person, and whether she was even attractive or not.

  The other one was Yamanu himself, and the fact that he hadn’t verbalized his feelings for her yet.

  It would have been nice to hear him say it first.

  Then again, if he was breaking a freaking super important vow for her, she could at least thank him with the best she had to offer.

  “I know what will stop you, and this time it’s not a joke.”

  “That I would like to hear.”

  She chuckled. “I bet. So here it goes. I love you, Yamanu, and I’m pretty sure that you love me too. Your love for me won’t let you hurt me, and if in the height of passion you forget, I will remind you.”

  The only response she got was Yamanu’s arms tightening around her.

  Was he too stunned to say anything?

  Or had she been mistaken about his feelings, and it was all about finding a suitable mate who could one day have his children, and not about love?

  “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

  He swallowed. “I love you. I was trying to come up with something that sounded better than that, but all I could think of was asking you to marry me. Not right now, but maybe after we find your sister. I know that you would like to have her at our wedding. And your parents too, although that means that I’ll have to ask the goddess to compel them to silence, and I don’t know if she’s still going to be here in two weeks.”

  Tears prickled the backs of Mey’s eyes.

  Sweet, sweet Yamanu was babbling like a schoolboy, and it was the most endearing thing ever to see the big, powerful man lose it because he was overwhelmed with emotion.

  Lifting her hands, she cupped his cheeks and kissed him lightly on the lips. “Yes, I’ll marry you, but only after I transition. There is still a chance that I won’t.”

  He kissed her back, just a soft brush of his lips. “I’ll pray to the Fates every morning, noon, and night until you are safely on the other side.” He shook his head. “This was probably the most underwhelming proposal ever, and I’m so sorry about that. I don’t even have a ring to give you. But I’m going to get one. Today.” He looked into her eyes. “Do you want to choose it? How is it usually done?”

  Her heart overflowing with happiness, Mey laughed. “You don’t have to rush to get me a ring. We can wait with that for the wedding. And just to ease your mind, I’m not big on protocol, I am big on feelings. Let’s make tonight special.”

  “How?”

  If she could run out to a store, she could have come up with a few creative ideas. But since she was stuck in the village until her transition, she would either have to make do with what she could find in the house, which probably wasn’t much, or solicit the help of her new friends.

  The problem with that was that they would ask what was the special occasion. Could she claim that she wanted to celebrate their ten-day anniversary?

  Heck, why not?

  It was crazy, but it was also romantic, and from the stories they had told her, the insanity was not unusual for immortal couples, or rather immortals and Dormants.

  Talk about hit by lightning.

  The girls were going to love it.

  The other problem was how to plan anything with Yamanu in the house. Seeing her preparing things for tonight would take away from the experience.

  “Leave it to me.” She kissed his cheek, then frowned. “Did you take your potion today already?”

  He shook his head. “Last night was the last time.”

  “Good. The question is whether one day is long enough for your body to get rid of it all.”

  He chuckled. “Trust me, it is. I don’t know how I’m going to last until the evening.” He eyed her speculatively. “Unless you are willing to forgo the preparations and get in bed right now.”

  “No way!” She slapped his chest. “This night needs to be special, and I’m going to do my damnedest to make it so. But in order for that to work, I need you out of the house.” She scrunched her nose. “That’s the part I feel bad about. I don’t want to kick you out of your own home, but I can’t prepare anything with you watching. It would ruin the fun.”

  “Don’t feel bad. If I want to last until the night, I need to get away from you and spend the entire time in the gym. Hopefully, the physical exhaustion will tame the beast.” He tilted his head. “Or is that not okay with you either?”

  “No, that’s fine. I just don’t want you to be drugged. I want you to be fully into the experience.”

  48

  Lokan

  “What should I wear?” Carol asked.

  Looking at her standing in front of the closet, wearing only a skimpy bra and an even skimpier pair of panties, Lokan could only think about her taking them off and not about what she should put over them.

  “Something elegantly casual.”

  Pursing her lips, she put her hands on her hips. “You’re not helping. You are taking me to an important business meeting, and I don’t know whether I should put on a dress or a suit.”

  He leaned back on his forearms to get a better viewing angle. “A dress. You are supposed to be the distraction, so I can enter Malcolm’s mind while he is drooling over you.”

  Carol looked at him over her shoulder. “That might be risky. What if you get jealous and your eyes start glowing, or worse, your fangs make an appearance?”

  “Not going to happen. I know you have a thing for powerful men, but I’m not worried. Malcolm is in his late seventies.”

  She arched a brow. “And he still runs the business? Good for him.”

  “He is still one of the sharpest guys I know, and he’s a workaholic. He’s going to die clutching his keyboard.”

  Malcolm Roderick was the founder and CEO of a cybersecurity firm that provided services for the US government when discretion was key. Which was why he was one of the few people who knew about the existence of the secret paranormal division. Naturally, the guy hadn’t volunteered the information, and Lokan had stumbled upon it accidentally while searching Malcolm’s brain for something else.

>   At the time, he hadn’t dug too deeply, but later on, he'd regretted not going for more details.

  Today, he was going to remedy that oversight, not for his own purposes, but per Kian’s request.

  Carol smiled like a she-devil. “I’ll wear this.” She pulled a form-fitting dark blue dress out of the closet. “It’s elegant, but not overly so, and it displays my assets to perfection.”

  Unable to help himself, he reached for her hand and pulled her down to him. “I think we have time for a quickie.”

  Carol put a finger on his lips, preventing him from kissing her. “Save it for later, tiger. You’re going to mess up my makeup, and I won’t have time to reapply it.” She pushed back by bracing on his chest.

  With a sigh, he let her go.

  They had dinner reservations for five, and given the unpredictability of traffic, it was best if they left the hotel in ten minutes or so.

  Luckily, Carol didn’t take long to finish getting dressed.

  “How do I look?” she asked.

  He smiled. She did it every time they went out, and his answer was always the same. “Ravishing.”

  “I’m going to get you a thesaurus app for your phone.”

  He lifted his hands. “What is wrong with ravishing? There is no better word to describe you. It encompasses beautiful, alluring, elegant, delightful, sexy… should I go on?”

  “Not if we want to make it on time.” Carol stifled a smirk as she lifted her purse off the dresser. “Let’s go.”

  Even with the rush hour traffic, they arrived at the restaurant a few minutes before Malcolm, which was how Lokan liked it. Small things like that mattered. People appreciated not having to wait and viewed tardiness as disrespectful.

  As Lokan had expected, the moment Malcolm walked in, his eyes zeroed in on Carol and a wide grin spread over his face.

  Getting up, Lokan offered the guy his hand. “Hello, Malcolm. Let me introduce my fiancée, Carol.”

  Carol followed his example and got up as well. “Hi.” She smiled as she offered him her hand.

  “Enchanted.” He lifted it to his lips for a kiss. “Congratulations. When is the wedding, and do I have time to steal you away from this handsome devil?”

  Carol laughed. “I’m afraid it’s too late for that. I’m hooked.”

  “What a shame.” Malcolm pulled out a chair and sat down. “Let’s order a bottle of wine to celebrate your engagement.”

  For the next half an hour or so, Lokan pretended to be interested in soliciting Malcolm’s services for an imaginary client, hinting that he was referring to the island. Regrettably, Malcolm had visited only once and hadn’t shown any desire to come back. Which meant that any information they wanted to pick up from his brain had to be done on his turf.

  After coffee and dessert were served, Malcolm turned his attention back to Carol. “So, what do you do, young lady?”

  “I write a foodie blog. Next time you are in Washington, check it out before choosing where to eat.”

  As the two chatted about the various eateries and Carol’s unique rating system, Lokan reached into Malcolm’s brain.

  Disarmed by Carol’s easy charm, the guy had his defenses all the way down, and probing him was like flipping through an open picture album.

  There was a lot of technical stuff in there, most of which Lokan couldn’t begin to understand, some meetings and phone conversations with government officials, and interactions with friends and family.

  Regrettably, the memory of hearing someone talking about the government’s paranormal division was the same one Lokan had already seen, and there were no new ones.

  It seemed that Malcolm was a dead end as far as that went. Still, it was a good opportunity to probe him for other things that might prove useful to the Brotherhood.

  “What about you, Malcolm?” Carol asked. “I’m sure you’ve done work for some interesting people. I know that you can’t drop names, but I’m sure you have some fascinating stories.” She leaned closer to him. “You can tell me. I’m good at keeping secrets.” She added a wink.

  Damn, he should take her with him to all his meetings. If she could have Roderick wrapped around her little finger like that, she could be an incredibly useful tool.

  “Well, there was this one guy,” Malcolm said. “A couple of years ago, a reclusive billionaire, whose name I won’t mention, bought a huge house in one of the most affluent cities in the Bay Area. The odd thing about this job was that next to the existing house, he built an even bigger underground structure that went three stories deep. It was like freaking NORAD, including the latest and best in computer equipment and communications.”

  “What’s NORAD?” Carol asked.

  “It’s the North American Aerospace Defense Command. It’s a secure bunker built inside the Cheyenne Mountain, protected against EMP pulses. During an emergency, its stored supplies can last one thousand people for a month. I’m only telling you that because that’s public knowledge. There are other doomsday scenario facilities that I can’t talk about.” He shook his head. “I have no idea how he got permits for that. My guess is that he either bribed someone or donated a shitload of money to the mayor’s re-election campaign.”

  Or if the billionaire was a powerful immortal, he could’ve either thralled or compelled the city officials to grant him the permits for his compound.

  Lokan's interest was piqued. “How many people could live in that underground structure?”

  Malcolm shrugged. “Comfortably, about a hundred. A little more, packed, probably three to four times as many. Perhaps he wants to run his business from home, so to speak, and provide his staff with living quarters. He would have never been allowed to build such a monster above ground, so that might have been the motivation for it.”

  “Did you meet the guy in person?” Lokan probed further in case he’d missed seeing it in Malcolm’s brain.

  Malcolm shook his head. “Everything was done online, and no one was living in the place while we worked there. I won’t mention how much he paid for our services, but I can say that it was the biggest private job we’ve ever done.”

  Carol and Lokan exchanged glances.

  What Malcolm had described resembled the keep’s infrastructure, which made it a perfect setup for a bunch of immortals seeking a secure hideout. Since it didn’t belong to the clan or to the Brotherhood, could it belong to a group of unidentified immortals?

  It was a long shot, but it was worth investigating.

  It sounded like the ideal environment for Kalugal and his men.

  “Anyone know where his money comes from?” Lokan asked.

  Malcolm shrugged. “No. I’m pretty sure that he uses an alias too. He could be a Russian oligarch or a Wall Street maverick.”

  Lokan chuckled. “Why only those two options?”

  “A hunch. You can tell a lot about people by the vocabulary they use. His English was perfect, but here and there I caught a phrase that didn’t fit as precisely. Those are the kind of mistakes that well-educated foreigners make, which made me think either a Russian oligarch or an oil prince. I discarded the oil prince because he would have no need for an underground facility.”

  “What about Wall Street? What made you think in that direction?”

  “Again, his vocabulary. He used many trade-specific terms.” Malcolm shrugged again. “But I’m playing Sherlock here. I might be totally off. He could be an international drug lord for all I know.”

  “But you don’t think so.”

  “No, not really.”

  49

  Mey

  After looking through the kitchen cabinets, the pantry, the laundry room, and Yamanu’s closet, Mey hadn’t found a single thing she could use to create a romantic atmosphere.

  There were no candles to light, no incense to provide a pleasant aroma, and no roses were growing in Yamanu’s back or front yard to collect petals from.

  He didn’t even have wine.

  Whiskey and that awful beer he liked to drink
were not exactly romantic drinks.

  She had no choice. If she wanted to make tonight special, she had to call one of her new friends.

  Wonder was the first one that came to mind because she had the best rapport with her, but she didn’t seem like the type to go for romantic gestures. Callie was second, but her idea of a romantic evening was probably a pair of handcuffs and a flogger.

  Mey chuckled.

  She would’ve never suspected sweet, unassuming Callie to be into the kinky stuff. Her mate, however, that was a different story. Mey could certainly imagine Brundar in a pair of leather pants.

  Bad girl. She admonished herself. This wasn’t the time to think about other couples’ sex lives.

  Kian’s wife seemed like the romantic type, but Mey wouldn’t dare call her even if she happened to have her number. Carol would have been a perfect choice, but she wasn’t around.

  It was either Wonder or Callie.

  She chose Callie. Maybe kinky couples did romantic stuff too.

  “Hi, Callie. I’m calling to find out if Brundar is still alive, or did you kill him and hide the body in your backyard?”

  “Ha, ha. Very funny. He’s alive. How about Yamanu? I bet he is exhausted after the shrouding he did last night.”

  “Actually, he's in the gym. We slept until late, though. Listen, I need a favor.”

  “Anything.”

  “I’m planning a romantic evening for Yamanu to celebrate our engagement.”

  Damn, she hadn’t planned on using this as an excuse. It just came out of her mouth without thinking.

  The shriek Callie released was deafening. “Congratulations! Who proposed to whom and when?”

  “Yamanu proposed to me this morning, but don’t get too excited. It’s a tentative proposal that is conditional on my transition. So please don’t tell anyone.”

  “Oh, girl, this is going to be so hard, but I’ll keep my mouth shut. I promise. What do you need me to do?”

  “I didn’t find anything in the house that I could use to create a romantic atmosphere. No candles or candlesticks, no wine, and the fridge is practically empty, so I can’t make anything good for dinner. If I could, I would run to the nearest store and buy whatever I need, but until I transition, I’m grounded here.”