A man in black appeared. A red stone altar. A naked woman. Her long red hair spilled out like a river of blood off the edge of the stone.
The man at the altar held a knife toward Jake. “Do you want to help with this?”
The naked woman on the altar was Dee McCoy.
Chapter Three
“What did you see?”
Dee took her hands away from the two vampires’. “Porn,” she answered Tobias’s question.
“That doesn’t sound very helpful,” Piper said.
Dee wasn’t going to look at him. Not now. Maybe never again. Her nipples were tight and tingling, and she was glad she wore a loose shirt to cover the evidence of arousal. She wiped her palms on her jeans. “Thinking about sex is totally typical when touching a couple of Primes.”
“True,” Tobias answered. “We are born horny as well as telepathic. But did you see anything, Dee?”
“Nope. Visions aren’t my thing, boss.”
Tobias looked at Piper. Dee was all too aware of Piper staring at her.
“Anything, Jake?”
“Mirrors and doors,” Piper answered. “Reflections of reflections—oh, and fire.”
“There was fire in mine, too,” Dee added.
“Anything else?”
Piper didn’t answer for a while. Dee found that she was holding her breath. Her skin tingled with electric anticipation while she waited—Piper had something important to say.
Then Piper said. “I got an impression of being underground.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes, Tobias.”
That wasn’t all. Dee was certain that wasn’t all he’d seen. But she also wasn’t certain that this vision thing worked for anyone but Tobias. It would be stupid to question the man’s veracity on what might well have been something he’d imagined—as she had imagined what she’d seen. She might not call him on it, but she tucked her suspicions into the file against Piper she already kept in her head.
And, she freely admitted to herself, that she might not hate and distrust Piper so much if he wasn’t such a sexist pig and she didn’t want to screw him. Badly. Sex with sexists was not something McCoy women did.
The problem with hanging among the hot-bodied, hard-charging males of the Dark Angels was that there were always pheromones and sexual tension floating through the air. It was impossible to escape the constant frisson of lust—especially after a dangerous mission reminded everyone that they were alive. And there weren’t that many women in the Crew, not that a few of the guys weren’t hot for each other too. Dee was used to being hit on, and appreciated being appreciated, but refused to take any overtures seriously. At least all of Tobias’s warriors toned down the horniness when the Dark Angels were on an op, like now, but the undercurrent of lust was always there. Tobias said it was actually good for morale as long as everybody obeyed the rules he’d set down for discipline.
Dee didn’t think Jake Piper got it. Or he was too arrogant in his Tribe Prime identity to pay attention. Dee had to admit he never openly hit on anyone, he didn’t even talk to any of the female Angels unless it was business, but sometimes she caught him looking. His eyes were so dark brown they were almost black, but it was a black that burned when his gaze raked over something he craved.
If that darkfire gaze ever turned on her, Dee didn’t know what she’d do. Gut him, she hoped. But she feared another reaction, so kept her guard up around him all the time.
Piper’s voice drew Dee out of her reverie. “What did you see, Tobias?”
She concentrated on her leader. “Anything?”
“Red rocks,” Tobias said. “I saw a landscape of red rocks.”
Dee took out her iPhone. “Want me to look up red rocks on Google Maps?”
“Most of the Southwest is made of red rock,” Piper said. “Did you get a feel for where, Tobias? Colorado? New Mexico—Mongolia?”
Tobias shook his head. He stood, and she and Piper followed him. “I’ve got a feeling there’s dark magic going down somewhere, and we need to stop it.”
“We’re already a little busy,” Dee reminded their leader.
The Dark Angels’ latest op was trying to save every paranormal person in the Los Angeles area from efforts someone was making to out vamps, werefolk, and everything else with extra-human abilities to the mortal world. Last night had been spent keeping the world from discovering that there was a vampire movie star in their midst. They were protecting the medical facility where the daylight drugs for vampires were administered, and other important supernatural medicine was performed. This clinic had already been bombed once—an attempt to bring mortal fire and police departments with lots of questions onto the property. All kinds of shit like this was being pulled by the bad guys. All sorts of real and present dangers were going on. The last thing the Dark Angels needed was a separate problem involving magic and one of Tobias’s feelings.
“Exactly, Dee,” Tobias said, probably having just plucked all that out of her head. “That’s why I’m detaching you two from the Los Angeles op. I’m giving you and Jake a separate assignment to take out the magical threat. Whatever it may be,” he added.
But….
Dee didn’t say it, she was too disciplined for that, but her heart lurched and her guts twisted. Her mind went blank for a moment. She looked from Tobias to Piper. For a hint of an instant he looked as appalled as she was, before he managed to get his expression under control. Neither of them argued. The Dark Angels were the supernatural world’s military.
“Yes, boss,” Piper answered. “We’re on it.”
We? What did Piper mean, we? Dee drew herself up angrily. Then she realized that by saying that one word—we—the ex-Tribe Prime had acknowledged her existence. A step in the right direction? Or acknowledgement that there was no other option.
Good soldier though she was, Dee had other responsibilities. She held up her palm. “First things, first, boss. I promised Jerame I’d cut off his wings. I have to do that before we go—what?—witch hunting?”
Chapter Four
Neither the nephelim nor the witch wanted him in the master bathroom with them, but Jake ignored their silent disapproval and accompanied them anyway. He leaned with his arms crossed against a tiled wall of a room bigger than any place he’d ever called home back in the goodoldbad days among his Tribe brethren. He’d always been good at leaning, lounging, and watching. Paying attention without being noticed was one of his strongest survival talents.
“We don’t need a chaperone,” was her complaint.
“We’re a team now,” had been his excuse to come into the bathroom with the pair. “Where you go, I go.”
It had been very hard for him not to grab her and kiss the sneer off her face. After seeing her naked on the altar—no, that was imagination. Jake was still careful not to look at the large mirror over the bathroom’s double sink. He was shaken from the mirrors and flames inside the vision. If he looked into the mirror would he see Melchor looking back at him? Standing beside him?
Their last conversation, Melchor’s last moments rolled through Jake’s head.
“The Reynards are coming. We can’t get out. We don’t have a choice,” Jake told his brother. He fought the temptation to run toward the Clan Primes. He wanted to get it over with. He’d wanted to get it over with for a long time. But he had to give it one more shot with Melchor. They were the only ones left of an ancient vampire Tribe.
“There’s always a choice, bro,” the other Leviathan Tribe Prime said. “The war’s never going to be over.”
It was for Yakov. “We can have a new life.”
“I’m not turning into a pussy with pulled fangs. That’s no life.”
Five Primes rushed into the room. There was no place to run anymore. The Primes were Clan Boys, fully armed, and not just with fangs and claws.
Jake held up his hands in surrender.
Melchor rushed the Primes—laughing.
Jake would always wonder if it wouldn’t have been
better to join his brother in a glorious fight to the death.
But enough of memories. Enough of dreams seen in mirrors.
Right now he was standing far enough to the side of the mirror’s surface that his own reflection wouldn’t show in the glass. Where had mortals gotten the idea that vampires couldn’t see their own reflections? Or was it that they didn’t have reflections?
Jerame’s needs were both medical and magical. Psychological, too, in Jake’s opinion. Jerame believed that if he let his wing stubs grow out he would turn into a demon. Jake didn’t understand Jerame’s thinking, but he envied him at the moment. The nephelim had his shirt off, and the witch’s hands were on him. They were wielding a knife, a needle, and sharply scented ointment. She whispered as she worked. Magical spells, Jake supposed, as he couldn’t understand a single word she said, if those melodic sounds were words at all.
Dee McCoy had a beautiful voice. She was not the most beautiful mortal female he had ever seen. He had thought her ginger hair and the freckles dusting her cheeks quite unattractive when he’d first encountered her. But when she’d spoken it had been music. When she turned around he was mesmerized by the sight of tight jeans molding to her perfect, pert ass. Her breasts were perfect, her waist narrow, hips round and womanly. And she smelled good.
It had nothing to do with perfume or soap—the Dark Angels got into some situations where they ended up sweaty and unbathed for days at a time. But every time he was near Dee McCoy, no matter the state of her grooming, Jake was bathed in her unique, spicy scent. He’d discovered through discreet enquiries that no one noticed the witch’s natural perfume but him. Jake fantasized that the warm spice flowed through her untasted blood.
He breathed Dee’s scent in now. Virgin blood, he thought.
Jerame gasped. This knocked Jake out of his reverie. The nephelim was pale, his face strained with pain. Why did he put himself through this every few months?
“Say something,” Jake advised him. “Get your mind off it.”
Jerame’s gaze slid sideways to him. “Zombies,” he said.
“Stay still,” the witch said. “Almost done.”
She shot Jake a look and mouthed, ‘Thanks’. Certainly a word Jake never thought would come his way from Dee McCoy.
“What about zombies?” Jake encouraged Jerame to talk more.
“Would we protect them? Zombies. If there were zombies?”
“Do zombies have a heartbeat?” Jake wondered.
“Why?” Dee asked.
“Because I don’t think we’re obligated to protect anything that doesn’t have a heartbeat,” Jake said.
“Good point,” Jerame said, between clinched teeth.
“Aren’t zombies created by witches, McCoy?” Jake asked. “Some kind of vodoun curse?”
She gave him the usual irritated look. “Witchdoctors, Piper.”
“Aren’t you a witch who’s a doctor?” Jerame asked.
“I haven’t gotten my Ph.D. yet,” she answered. “And it will be in physics, not necromancy.”
Her words sent a spark of—something—through Jake. “Are there witches who talk to the dead? Who try to bring them back to life?”
She smeared more of the ointment on Jerame’s back before she answered. “Back in the Middle Ages—there were some Tower wizards who experimented with that kind of nonsense. The Church burned them at the stake, and threw their shadow books onto the bonfires with them. Even the rest of the witches had to agree with the Inquisition on that decision.”
“Talking to the dead isn’t a good thing? What about séances?”
She sighed loudly. “I’m a witch, Piper, not a medium. I don’t know anything about talking to the dead.” She patted Jerame gently on the shoulder. “We’re done, babe.”
Jake couldn’t shake the vision of Melchor talking to him. What if some of those magical books still existed?
Jerame stood and stretched. Jake almost growled with jealousy as Dee looked over the nephelim’s bare back. She’s examining her work, he told himself, and unclenched his fists before anyone noticed the telltale possessive gesture.
Jerame left the room, saying, “Good hunting, dude,” as he walked past Jake.
Jake moved toward the witch while she washed her hands in the bathroom sink. He was careful not to come too close. He didn’t want to spook her, or be caught by her scent or the radiated warmth of her skin.
He couldn’t help but catch a glimpse of the mirror this time, and there was more there than Dee’s and his own reflection. He caught a swirl of smoke, and—reflecting bubbles? Balloons? Whatever it was he thought he saw, the image flashed away almost as he saw it. He and Dee were the only ones there, looking at each other in the glass.
“Well,” she asked his reflection. “What do we do now?”
Jake didn’t have a clue, but he’d learned from something Tobias had once said: “Act like you have a plan, and something will come to you.”
The pair of them couldn’t just stand around and hope the bad guys would come to them. He was too proud to ask the female how one normally went about investigating Tobias’s feelings. He doubted she’d have the answer anyway.
Chapter Five
“Are we going to stand in the bathroom glaring at each other?”
Piper turned and left Dee alone in the room. Watching him go was annoying, but it had to be said the man had a fine ass to watch walking way. She waited a moment before following him, so it wouldn’t be noticed that she followed him. Stupid and childish as this was, it was also a way of showing him he wasn’t the leader in this op they were on.
“We’re partners,” she said coming up to him when they were back in the kitchen. “Just like on any Dark Angels op.” She would have loved to go up to Tobias and ask him what he wanted them to do next, but she guessed it wasn’t going to work that way. Besides, at the moment Tobias was occupied talking to Flare, the vampire female who was currently taking much of his attention.
Piper nodded. “Like any other op, except for the total lack of information or clues.” He rubbed a thumb along his jawline. Then he looked around. “Mr. Lancer,” he called.
Ben Lancer, the mortal man who was letting the Dark Angels use his home as a safe house while they were in Los Angeles, stood by the door which led to the garage. He was dressed in a black suit, and Dee guessed he was heading off for work. Ben Lancer might be old, but the silver-haired man was tall and imposing. He was head of a personal security company.
He waited silently for Piper and Dee to come up to him, his expression stern and unreadable.
“I’m in need of some assistance, sir,” Piper told Lancer. “I’ve heard something about there being a seer in your family.”
Lancer hesitated. He looked Piper over with disapproval. “She’s got a Prime of her own already.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t know what you mean?”
“My granddaughter is bonded to a Clan Boy.”
“Congratulations, sir,” Piper said.
Dee was surprised by the lack of irony in his tone. She’d also finally tumbled on to what he was getting at.
“We’re in need of someone with psychic abilities that are different than ours,” she told Ben Lancer.
“Domini’s with a security client right now,” Lancer answered. “We don’t make a habit of interrupting our bodyguards when they’re on a job.”
Dee thought he was being stubbornly protective of his granddaughter. Not that she blamed him. He’d allowed some scary folk into his home during this crisis in the paranormal community. That was good of him, but he wouldn’t want his granddaughter brought into the line of fire.
“I only wish to speak with her,” Piper said. “Perhaps she can tell me something about the future.”
“She never sees too far into the future,” Lancer said.
“That’s what I’m looking for.”
“And she never sees anything important.”
Dee spoke before Piper could get a word in. “If we could talk
to her we might discover something important in her visions. Tobias has one of his feelings, and we’ve been assigned to look into it.”
Invoking Tobias’s name had the desired effect. Lancer gave them a cellphone number where they could reach his granddaughter, and wished them luck before leaving the house.
* * *
Ben Lancer’s granddaughter agreed to meet them in a parking lot at 10:30 in the morning. She pointed out that she was a bodyguard with a body to guard and couldn’t give them more than a few minutes.
They took one of the Dark Angels’ black SUVs and drove to the rendezvous from Malibu. Windshield wipers swishing away drops from a cool December rain was the only sound, as neither spoke during the drive.
Jake kept his hands tightly on the wheel, his attention on the heavy traffic and wet road. He knew he appeared perfectly calm, he’d certainly had plenty of practice, but his other senses went crazy with being so close to Dee McCoy. He’d never been alone with her before. For a Tribe Prime there was only one reason to be alone with a mortal female. He fought down the urge to fantasize, but it was difficult. Her spicy aroma was concentrated aphrodisiac within the closeness of the car interior. And whether she knew it or not, the muskiness of arousal added a dark undertone to her already tantalizing scent.
Tobias, my leader, how could you do this to me?
He wondered if the witch was as disturbed as he was. He also resented that she had the outlet of spending the drive time thumbing out texts and sending emails on her smartphone.
Jake waited until he brought the SUV to a stop in the designated parking lot and turned off the engine before he said, “I hope you haven’t spent your time gossiping with your friends.”
* * *
“No!” Dee snapped at the vampire as she turned to face him. She was too honest not to say, “Okay, one was a text to Saffron, but I was sending out requests for any information the witch community might have on weirdnesses.”
“That’s how you phrased it, weirdnesses? Is that an actual word?”
She’d been doing what she could to ignore Piper while still being proactive on this assignment. She’d never spent any time alone with Piper before, and certainly never this close. It was very—disconcerting.
Primal Cravings Page 2
