by Melody Raven
“You asked me to keep it safe,” said Cora matter-of-factly. “And we’re friends.” She said the last part slowly, as though she were asking rather than making a statement.
Alyssa gave her a soft smile. “We are friends. And after all that we’ve been through, we might have to be best friends.”
“That’s a big statement for someone you just met,” said someone else. Someone definitely male and from the sounds of his deep bass, a big one.
Alyssa tensed as her gaze shot to the far corner of the room. A large man sat in an armchair. If he hadn’t just spoken, she wouldn’t have known he was even there. She tried to figure out how freaked out she should be. Cora didn’t seem surprised at the man’s presence, so she was going to judge from context that he wasn’t a threat. At least not at the moment.
“Do you always hang out with unconscious women?” she asked him, trying to appear as though she wasn’t freaked out.
“I do when they’re showing an unusual attachment to my daughter.”
He leaned forward, and she was hit with recognition. The vampire from Sorenson. The one who had slammed her against the wall. “You,” she breathed.
“Alyssa, this is Dante. My father.”
“Dante? That can’t actually be your name.”
“When we came here, we adopted human names to make assimilation easier.”
She snorted. “Assimilation? You’ve been watching too much Star Trek.”
“I don’t watch science fiction.”
Okay, fine. She’d bite. “If you don’t watch science fiction, what do you watch then?”
“I like police shows.”
“It never occurred to me that alien vampires like television that much.”
“I’m not a vampire.”
She frowned and glanced to Cora, who shifted uncomfortably on her feet, and then back to this Dante. “Do you have superhuman abilities and feed off blood?”
“We’re Vopura. Vampires are an offshoot of our species that crossed onto Earth centuries ago.”
“And what’s the difference between the two?”
“To be determined. I assisted the vampires in bringing an end to the Siege of Seattle. In return, they’re offering to help Cora and me get settled.”
“And the government knows about you?”
“They do now. After the siege, certain things the vampires were trying to keep hidden came to light. I believe they’re in what you call ‘damage control.’”
“And if the government knows about you, then what was with the artillery at my safe house?”
“They knew about me. They didn’t know about Cora.”
Alyssa glanced at the girl and Cora gave a guilty smile. “I’m sorry, Alyssa.”
“No. Don’t be sorry. You didn’t know what was going to happen.” And, to be honest, Alyssa was still pissed about it. Not at Cora, of course. At the stupid soldiers who thought all that firepower was necessary for one little girl. A supernatural girl, but still. They’d have to be insane to think Alyssa was going to turn Cora over to two army jackasses like Roberts and Patrick.
But she knew the fallout from her “moral” decision would be swift and severe. If she was lucky, there wouldn’t be charges pressed against her. For sure she was never going to get a client in the armed services again. Considering that was the bulk of her business, she might well be out of a job.
It wasn’t the end of the world. There would always be some crisis popping up that would need a social influencer to manipulate the facts. Starting from scratch wouldn’t be easy, but she’d never been one to back down from a challenge.
“Okay,” she said while still mentally tracking the different possibilities for her future. “We can recover from this. I can make this work. But what I don’t get—one of the many, many things I don’t understand—is why am I here?”
“Because Cora refused to leave without you.”
Cora straightened with pride. “You kept me safe. I couldn’t leave you.”
Alyssa reached out an arm and hooked it around Cora, bringing her in for a tight hug before realizing how much that action hurt her sore body. She held back the groan as she kept on hugging the girl. “I appreciate it.” If not for Cora’s insistence, Alyssa was certain she’d be in some military prison until they figured out what to do with her.
Her only hope was that the military would be so busy dealing with the vampire mess that she would be a low priority.
“Where’s my phone? I probably have fifteen hundred fires I need to put out.”
“What’s on fire?” asked Cora with wide eyes.
Alyssa unhooked her arm from around the girl. “Oh, no actual fires. It’s a figure of speech. I have a few crises I need to handle.”
Cora nodded slowly. “I have got English, but figures of speech are the worst. It’s like they’re there to confuse me.”
“I can’t imagine.” Alyssa also couldn’t imagine how Cora was able to speak English so well even though she’d only just gotten here, but there was no use in saying that out loud.
“Cora, why don’t you get our guest her phone? I believe it’s with her laundry.”
Laundry? Alyssa glanced down and realized she wasn’t wearing her T-shirt and sweats from before. Now she was in an oversized white T-shirt and, after lifting up the sheet, sweatpants.
“On it!” Cora raced out of the room.
Alyssa knew it was probably all in her mind, but somehow it felt colder without the girl’s presence.
Her last meeting with Dante hadn’t exactly been a warm and pleasant experience, and now she was alone with him again. Alyssa gripped the laptop tighter as she looked over to where Dante was still sitting. “Ummm... thanks for keeping me safe.”
“I wanted to leave you. Cora insisted.”
Okay. Apparently he wasn’t great at taking a compliment. Her mind searched for something to say to break the awkward silence. What did they have in common? Cora. She should talk about Cora. “Cora was telling me that you were going to marry her off.” She winced. That probably wasn’t the right thing to say.
“I see you and she have become close.”
“Well, it came up. Apparently it’s the reason she ran away.”
“She won’t have to worry anymore. We can never go back to the Vopura now.”
“And the local vampires won’t be drooling for the chance to get another woman in their ranks?”
“They can satiate themselves on human women.”
Alyssa sat up straighter. She knew he was speaking in general terms, but it was hard to not feel as though he were speaking directly at her. He’d only brought her here because Cora had insisted. It was hardly as if he were infatuated with her.
“I found it!” called Cora as she appeared in the bedroom.
Alyssa welcomed the distraction as she reached out for her phone. “I can only imagine how many messages I have.” However, once she had the phone in her hand, a troubling realization hit her. “Wait. They can track my location with my phone. It’s not safe here.”
“It’s fine. Stefan cleared the phone for use.”
“Stefan?”
“He does computer stuff.”
She raised a brow. “Computer stuff? My kind of guy.”
“If you have an issue with your military, tell them that you’re under our protection.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that you’re off-limits. It’s how we got them to lay off Cora.”
“So you just tell them to stay away from me and they will?”
“Not me specifically. From what I understand, they’re being cautious with the vampires. I think they know they don’t have the advantage there.”
Alyssa snorted. “No advantage? They have nukes. That sounds like one hell of an advantage to me.”
“The vampires don’t have a separate country you can bomb. They blend in with everyone else. Besides, the past few wars haven’t worked out too well for this country. They don’t want another Vietnam.”
/> She narrowed her eyes and stiffened, her innate patriotism rising up. “What do you know about the Vietnam war?”
He shrugged. “Like I said, I watched a lot of television. There was a series, I believe it was made by Ken Burns, that gave a very detailed account.”
She nodded even as she tried to figure out whether she was imagining all of this. “Okay. I’m not going to touch on that. I want to call my contact and I can’t guarantee it will go well. Can I make the call outside?” She frowned. “Where is outside? Where are we?”
“Oregon. This is a safe house set up by Talon.”
She pushed the covers off her and turned off the bed. “Okay. I’m going to go outside and try to figure out what happens now.” She stood and waited to see whether Dante would protest. They hadn’t made it sound as if she were a prisoner. As far as she knew, she could leave right now.
But she was a human. From what she’d heard, Dante didn’t have any vested interest in her safety. Sure, Cora was on her side, but Dante obviously had no problem going against her wishes. If she wanted to keep herself alive, she needed to get away from the blood suckers as soon as possible.
There was no use in running away from them if her own people were going to try to kill her. So first of all she wanted to get a hold of Joshua and figure out whether there was a kill order on her head.
Luckily she hadn’t spent much of the money, so she was more than happy to offer a full refund and get out of that dumpster fire.
“I’ll be right back.” She gave Cora a reassuring pat on the shoulder. She meant to give Dante a little smile but found herself unable to look in his direction. Cora was a sweetheart, but she made Alyssa uncomfortable. Dante, however, terrified her. He didn’t care about her safety, and she was going to assume that he’d had no problem killing her kind during the Siege of Seattle.
Stepping out, she cautiously looked in both directions. There didn’t appear to be anyone else there. Was that better? She supposed it was fewer vampires to deal with.
Ugh. There was no better in this situation. She was so screwed. She sighed and pulled open the door, only to gasp in shock. The whipping winds and whooshing sounds of waves crashing on the shore greeted her. They weren’t just in Oregon. They were on the Oregon coast, along the Pacific Ocean.
Hell. Alyssa unlocked her phone and noticed it was fully charged. Whoever this Stefan was, he must’ve given her a charger too. Maybe he could get one for her laptop. In the rush to leave the Seattle house, she hadn’t had time to grab anything. Maybe she should send Stefan a thank-you note. Though, if he was able to make sure her phone wasn’t being tracked, he’d probably cracked the security pass code. Not that the four-digit code was that hard to hack.
Even so, she was going to guess that a good amount of her privacy had been invaded. Of course, her phone was bombarded with missed calls, voicemails, and text messages. She decided not to listen to any of those voicemails. She didn’t need that kind of negativity in her life.
Alyssa wrapped her arms around herself as she stepped off the wooden deck and onto the soft, cool sand. The wind was whipping up a frenzy, but it wasn’t really cold. Dramatic. Turbulent. An apt analogy for the past few days.
She found Joshua’s contact info and sent the call. She knew he was going to be pissed, but she’d wanted to get this over with sooner rather than later. She’d call, try to explain, apologize, and then move on with her life. At least what was left of her life.
He picked up almost immediately. “Where are you?”
“Out of state,” she said honestly.
“Do you have any idea what kind of shit storm you caused? Now tell me the truth. Did you find a vampire kid?”
“I don’t know.” She would’ve outright lied to him if she didn’t already think he knew too much. “I was driving back from getting supplies and I saw a couple guys beating this kid almost to death. I brought her home and the next thing I knew, the army was after her and they’re shooting at me and I’m jumping out of a window and one of our soldiers is kicking the crap out of me.”
“You know you aided and abetted a war criminal.”
“I saved a kid! A terrified kid. You can BS other people, but you can’t BS me. This wasn’t a war criminal.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. This isn’t a normal war, Lys. These things invaded our planet, took advantage of our people. No. Invasion isn’t the right word. This is a goddamn infestation. What would you do if you found a baby mouse in your house? You’d exterminate it. And that’s what I’m trying to do. It’s okay if you don’t want to do the extermination yourself. I get it. But you have to at least let the exterminators come in. Now, where are you?”
Alyssa clenched her teeth in frustration. Cora wasn’t a fucking baby mouse. Cora had insisted that Dante bring Alyssa with them so her life could be saved. A baby mouse sure as hell couldn’t do that.
Besides, she had a distinct memory of finding a family of mice in her parents’ barn back when she was a kid. She’d shut the door and let them be. But Joshua didn’t need to know that. “I’m not going to tell you where I am. I think you understand why. Now, how much trouble am I in?”
“You know the system better than anybody. The amount of trouble you’re in depends on how useful you can be. You obviously can’t do the job we hired you for anymore. Unless you can think of some other way to help....”
“I am not as susceptible to threats as you might believe I am.”
“You’re not susceptible to threats because I’m talking to you over the phone. When you get some guys in front of you asking you to your face while holding sharp pointy objects in their hands, you’d be amazed how much more effective those threats can be.”
“You know torture doesn’t work.”
“I’m not fucking around! I’m not threatening you because I want the information. I’m threatening you because I care about you. Come in now, cooperate fully, and I can guarantee you’ll be safe.”
“You can’t guarantee a thing. I know that. You know that.”
“I can do a hell of a lot more if I can prove that you’re cooperating with us. That’s not bullshit—that’s the truth.”
“All right. You’re telling me I’m only safe if I can be of some benefit to the military. I guess I’ll call back when I know how I can be of some benefit.” Alyssa hit End on the phone, and her arm fell down as if the phone weighed twenty pounds. It might as well be a deadweight. Didn’t matter how much sway Dante said his vampire friends had. If the military wanted her, they wouldn’t stop looking. They would just be more subtle about it. So she had no job, couldn’t go back home, and one of her best contacts couldn’t do a damn thing to help her. She could get out of this. She knew she could.
She had no idea how, but she knew she was capable.
She felt the wet trail trace down her cheek and reached up to push the tears away. Stupid tears. What good did they ever do? All they ever did was signal weakness.
“Why didn’t you tell your friends about Cora?”
Of course Dante was out here. Why wouldn’t he be listening in?
Alyssa was going to grow old and wear a tinfoil hat and everybody was going to think she was crazy. And she might be, but those people judging her wouldn’t understand all the reasons she had to be as paranoid as she was. “I don’t know. Didn’t want to.”
“Are you afraid of what will happen if they find you?”
“Fear’s overrated. Unless I’m actively running for my life and need the adrenaline, it’s not going to do me any good.”
Dante nodded as he looked out over the water. It was the first time she could remember that he wasn’t actively staring at her. Therefore, it was the first time she could actually look at him without immediately averting her gaze.
He didn’t immediately seem like a vampire, but he definitely fit the stereotype. Tall, dark, and handsome. He was buffer than her normal idea of the ancient aristocratic vampires. But like he’d said, he wasn’t a vampire. He was something differen
t.
“I like it here,” he said unexpectedly.
“Like... here on Earth?”
“Yes, but here specifically. Where I come from, there is no water. Just sand and rock.”
“So your kind needs water to live then?”
“We can eat and drink, but I think you know our preference. One of your scientists who I worked with during the siege thinks that our bloodlust evolved from creative ways to get moisture.”
“I suppose that makes sense. But how does science and evolution mix with the magic portal?”
“I believe there are answers, but those answers are very far away from us.”
That was a shame. She wanted an answer. She wanted there to be a nice, neat, scientific explanation that would tie all of this up in a bow. Make it neat and pretty and put it in a textbook. Because otherwise everything she thought she knew about the world was put into question. She did not want to have to face those questions.
“I, umm, I appreciate you and Cora bringing me here and keeping me safe, but I think it’s about time I take off.”
“Where are you going to go? You have no money, no car, and no belongings.”
“That’s not true. I have a phone and my computer. I don’t need much else.”
“You don’t have to leave, you know.”
“I appreciate the offer, but I’m not a moocher.” Besides, being surrounded by a bunch of vampires didn’t exactly make her feel safe.
“You wouldn’t be mooching. There are things you can do.”
Alyssa was just about to ask him what he meant when realization hit her. “Holy shit. Are you asking to feed from me?”
“Don’t act so disgusted. You know what I am.”
She shook her head and took a step back. “Oh, it’s not disgust. Shock. I’m very, very shocked. It’s odd. Not the kind of thing you get asked every day. And no, I’m not desperate enough for that.”
He scowled as he looked at her, and she couldn’t tell whether she’d offended him. She also didn’t know whether she cared she might have offended him. It was a weird thing to ask. He should know it was a weird thing to ask. If he didn’t know it was a weird thing to ask, then allow her to teach him that it was a weird thing to ask.
