Blood Bargain

by Maria Lima

  "Look, both Ignacio and Carlton have asked for help and you have people with abilities beyond human. All I'm asking is that you search the Wild Moon lands. The sheriff's searchers can do everywhere else. Tucker and I will lend a hand.” I nodded toward my brother, who sat on a small couch against the right wall.

  He'd come in with Niko, with some reluctance, after I'd called and bugged him. He'd made a beeline for the couch, promptly stretched his legs in front of him, crossing them at the ankles, crossed his arms and leaned his head back and shut his eyes. Right now, he was doing a good impression of Man: Sleeping. I knew better, though. Tucker was listening. He was letting me do all the talking.

  "Keira, do you really think this man is on our property?” asked Adam.

  "Honestly? I have no idea,” I replied. “He could be, though. The Pursell ranch butts up against the far northwest piece of the Wild Moon and neither ranch is game fenced. Maybe he decided to leave, walked off in the wrong direction and then got hurt or something."

  "How long has he been gone?” Adam asked.

  "Three months, probably."

  Niko's eyes narrowed and he straightened from his slouch. “This means we're looking for remains."

  "Yes."

  There wasn't any need to couch this in euphemisms with this group. I'd not said anything to Ignacio Robles, but if Alex had gone missing about the time the money stopped arriving, the likelihood was that he was dead. Although someone could live off the land, so to speak, around here, as there was plenty of small game and fresh water creeks, why would you want to? Rio Seco County may be sparsely populated, but there were plenty of roads that were, if not well traveled, at least not deserted. It wasn't that hard to find a ranch or a small farmhouse even if you were lost. No, Alex Robles was either long gone or long dead. In either case, I wanted to find him for his brother or at least establish that he'd left the area.

  Adam placed his hands flat on the desk and leaned forward a little, studying me. “Keira, I must ask. Why is it so important for you to find this man ... or his remains?"

  I huffed out a breath and started again. “Because. I promised."

  "And you always keep your promises.” Adam said it not like a question, but a statement. I could see that, to him, this was enough.

  "I try,” I said quietly, trying not to think of what had happened to Marty, who'd died on my watch. I walked around and sat in the chair. “It's not that, Adam. I didn't like what was going on over at the Pursell place. That Pete guy. He's bad news and I think he's mistreating the workers. They're illegals and have no recourse."

  Niko raised his eyebrows, mirroring Adam's expression. “Recourse?"

  "To help. If they report any mistreatment, they'll get sent back to Mexico."

  "I thought you disapproved of having undocumented aliens working the ranches around here,” Adam said. “You spoke of it once, during a newscast we were watching."

  "I am. I'm not against the workers, but this exact situation. They're not treated well. They're paid peanuts and can't do anything about it. I don't know the Judge, but from what I understand, he's never out at the ranch anymore. He may not even be aware of this."

  "Keira.” Tucker's voice interrupted me. “We don't know that there is a ‘this',” he said. He sat up and leaned forward, his elbows on his thighs, hands clasped in front of him. “Granted, we saw a threat, but in light of the fact that Ignacio was, indeed, trespassing, all we know from that and from what Bea told you, is that Pete Garza is an class A asshat. We don't have any evidence he's mistreating those workers."

  I slumped back in the chair. I couldn't argue with my brother's logic. The man rubbed me the wrong way at the ranch, and then after hearing Bea's story, I'd been sorry I hadn't done something. What, I don't know, but I wanted to get him back for having hurt Bea. “You're right, Tucker. I'm sorry. He's a nasty piece of work, but for all I know, he treats the workers like gold."

  Tucker snorted. “I'd not go so far as that, little sister, but I think our primary purpose here is to search the Wild Moon for signs of Alex and/or the missing kids, not to start a crusade against the mistreatment of undocumented workers."

  "You think those children came here, too?” asked Niko.

  "They're not quite children,” Tucker answered. “At least, to anyone who's not us.” His lips curved up as he exchanged a private look with Niko. Niko returned both the smile and the look, his eyes meeting my brother's with a twinkle. Damn. There was definitely an “us” there. I hadn't seen my brother look this besotted in well, ever. Since I've known him, he's been footloose and fancy-free. Looks like his fancy was not quite so free anymore. It was definitely interesting to watch.

  "So they're not children and they are missing,” Adam stated, an amused look on his face as he watched his second in command and my brother play footsie with their gazes.

  "Teenagers with driving licenses and a means to leave town, such as it is, doesn't mean they're missing,” Niko said, shooting a look at Adam.

  "No,” I answered, “but it does mean that they might be doing things they shouldn't ... and they could be somewhere they shouldn't."

  "Excuse me.” A quiet voice came from the doorway to my left.

  A young vampire stood in the doorway, holding a packet of papers.

  "Sorry for the intrusion,” he said. “I have the contract for you, si ... sir.” I heard what he almost said: sire, not sir. Huh. At first glance, he could have been about sixteen, or perhaps a very young seventeen or eighteen. In reality, he could be anywhere from his twenties to old enough to be my grandfather ... twice over.

  "Thank you, Lance.” Adam held out his hand and Lance crossed in front of me to hand over the contract. He gave a quick nod of his head to Niko and to me and turned as if to go, then stopped and faced me.

  "I heard what you were saying,” he said, fixing me with his brown eyes.

  "About?"

  Lance shrugged, a lazy graceful gesture. “'Bout the kids. Missing guy, too."

  He watched me as he spoke, a lock of dirty blond/brown hair falling over his forehead. He wasn't drop dead gorgeous like the two other vampires in the room, proof that Hollywood got it wrong again. Becoming vampire doesn't automatically grant you preternaturally good looks and inestimable charm.

  Lance stood about five foot five or so, square shoulders and build harking back to Middle European roots, more working class than ruling. His hair hung straight and fine, a short cut, unlike the other three men in the office. He wore nondescript brown denim pants topped by an equally muddy colored T-shirt. Tan chukka boots completed the ensemble. A symphony of earth tones.

  "And?” I prodded.

  He stared back at me, meeting my own gaze, no challenge in his look, simply the patience of the dead, clear and guileless. I looked for any sign that he was hiding something, but merely saw the calm stare of someone who could wait longer than I could.

  He shrugged again. “Don't know if it's anything, but..."

  "Go on, Lance,” Adam encouraged in a soft tone.

  Lance glanced back at his ... boss/sire? Did sire mean the same thing in real life as it did in fiction? On Buffy, sire meant the vampire that turned you into a vampire. Did Adam turn this boy? Because even if he wasn't a boy now, he was certainly a boy when he'd died. Adam smiled and nodded. Lance turned back to look at me.

  "Last night. Out hunting. Heard screaming."

  "The kids?"

  "Dunno. Could've been. Didn't go look."

  I sprang out of the chair and grabbed his arm. “Why didn't you check it out?"

  At five foot ten, I towered over him. He stood still, as unperturbed as when he'd come in. I revised my estimate of his age upwards as I stared into the brown wells of his eyes. Definitely older than my great-great-grandfather would be if I were human. There were centuries of experience in that gaze. I let my hand fall. No point in trying to intimidate him with my oh-not-so-mighty strength and abilities. I may be stronger and faster by far than the average human but to an older vampi
re, I was so much papier-mâché.

  "I was hunting,” he repeated, without heat.

  "Sorry, I don't get it,” I said. “Why couldn't you have gone over to look?"

  Lance got a confused expression on his face, then looked over at Adam and Niko.

  "He doesn't understand your question,” said Niko. “Maybe I can explain."

  "Niko.” Adam's voice held a warning.

  "For Christ's sake, Adam,” Niko said. “It's not a secret. Keira and Tucker live here. Don't you think they should know?"

  Adam dropped his head into his hands with a sigh.

  Okay, what the hell? What was going on here? What else had Adam been keeping from me?

  "Go ahead, explain.” Adam raised his head, his gaze catching mine. Behind that lucent green was more of the darkness I'd come to know over the past few weeks.

  Niko continued his explanation. “When we hunt, we lose a little of our, say, social graces. It's not a good idea to seek out humans in that state. Unless you're very, very good at control, it could lead to—"

  "Never mind,” I said. “I get it. Bloodlust, right?"

  "Of a sort,” Niko replied. “It's more the hunger mixed with the exhilaration of hunting. Some of us are better at control than others.” He looked at Tucker, who was oddly silent. “I'm sure Tucker understands."

  "A little.” My brother got a thoughtful look on his face. “I'm not sure that for us it's the same, though. I hunt when shifted. There's not really much letting go involved. I'm not a werewolf, I'm a shapeshifter. I'm wolf, but at the same time, I'm me. I think, I reason."

  "A civilized wolf, then.” Niko's smile widened.

  "You could call it that."

  "It's different for us,” Adam's voice was harsher than normal. “The part of us that remains human peels away when we hunt. What's left is the hunger."

  Was this what was behind Adam's behavior; the reason he wasn't hunting? I couldn't imagine that a vampire of his stature and strength had problems keeping the hunger in check. Even so, who the hell cared? So he went a little apeshit when eating. Not a problem for me, but it obviously was for him. I made a mental note to be brutally honest when we talked later. If losing face in front of me was the key, I could counter it with many stories about watching my brothers and father come home covered in the blood of their prey and reveling in the stories of the hunt over the carcass of whatever they'd killed.

  "All right,” I said. “You couldn't go check it out. Can you at least tell us where you were so we can go out there?"

  Lance nodded. “Yeah, more or less. I can give you a general idea."

  Right. Because when you're in the middle of chasing down a deer, it's not like you're making note of landmarks.

  "Thank you, Lance,” Niko said. “Let's go check out the property map and figure this out so I can send out some teams. Tucker?"

  My brother stood and followed them out the door.

  * * * *

  I waited a few beats after the men had left to let Adam compose himself. We were going to talk about this, oh yeah, we would, but right now, we had other things to concentrate on.

  "Who is he?"

  "Lance Zarimba. My new secretary. After Andrea left last month to go back to England, I needed someone to help out."

  "Andrea was about as much a secretary as I'm Robby the Robot. She was muscle.” I'd been sorry when Andrea left. I'd met her shortly after I'd run into Adam. She was the reason I discovered Adam was vampire and not merely a gorgeous man I used to flirt with. Andrea was pure Other. Like Niko, she didn't bother to shield her nature, so I'd twigged to her immediately. Adam, even now, kept up the pretense. Not that I minded, really. I did something similar. My sensitivity to human energies had taught me early on that I needed to keep a mental barrier up 24/7—especially during my fairly hormonal teen years.

  He shuffled the papers on his desk and didn't meet my eyes.

  "Yes. She was."

  "And Lance is..."

  "My assistant."

  "He's new."

  "Not to me."

  "Not to—oh.” Well then. The sire wasn't so much age as relationship. Perhaps he was Adam's get.

  "He came to us from a cousin of sorts some time ago. From Poland."

  "Escaping the war?” I moved closer and perched on the edge of the desk.

  "One of them.” Adam smiled and reached for my hand. I looked at him curiously, but he kept smiling as if entertained by my questions.

  "I pledged to care for him as if he were mine,” Adam explained. “When the group of us left England to come here, Lance elected to stay back for a time and assist me by wrapping up some paperwork. He arrived here last week."

  "Ah, well then.” That explained why I hadn't met Lance before. I hadn't been to the office in several days.

  "So you and he...?"

  "Occasionally.” Adam seemed genuinely amused.

  I wasn't jealous, simply interested. I knew Adam had a past; how could he not? He'd met part of my own past when he'd met Carlton. I figured I'd probably keep meeting people from Adam's past as long as I stuck around the Wild Moon. Hell, I even knew Adam and Niko had been partners for at least several centuries and lovers for a portion of that time ... if not most of it. But as with my own clan, vampires seemed to be less traditional with sexual relationships—at least, what passed for traditional in modern Western culture, anyway. Previous lovers weren't an issue. In fact, monogamy wasn't much of one either. Adam and I had never really discussed this topic in depth, but I could put two and two together and come up with Kinsey.

  My main goal right now was to take care of current business—seeing what we all could do to find Alex Robles and the possibly missing kids and then carving out time in a neutral spot (not the bedroom) to have a serious discussion with Adam about what was going on with him.

  I gave his hand a squeeze and smiled back at Adam. “Thank you."

  "For what?” he asked.

  "I don't know really,” I said. “For answering my questions and indulging me on this search thing, I suppose—not that I've let you off the hook yet."

  Adam caressed my hand, his thumb sweeping over its back. He leaned over and pressed a kiss to my wrist. “I know."

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  "Marco..."

  I ignored the caller as I trudged across the rock and cactus laden ground, careful not to brush up against any of the cholla or prickly pear. Despite the oppressive heat, I wore my leather hiking boots, sturdy work jeans and a long-sleeved denim shirt over a cotton tank top. Each piece of clothing felt somewhere between damp and dripping. However tempting, I knew better than to do this in shorts and a T-shirt. The leather and cloth protected me from the cactus spines and the equally prickly mesquite as I literally beat around the bushes.

  "Marco..."

  I took another step forward, avoiding a fire ant mound. Nasty things, those. Good thing that keeping a close eye on the ground in front of me was part of the why we were all here. Yeah, we, as in a scraggy line of searchers, each dressed inappropriately for the weather known as spring in some parts of the world that weren't here. “Marco..."

  "Tucker, seriously, what the hell? What's up with the ‘Marco’ business?"

  I didn't wait for him to answer, but kept walking and doing what I was there to do: look for signs of the four missing teenagers—the reason for my having woken my brother (again ... this was getting tiring for the both of us) and the reason we were now poking around land that was best left to the deer, the armadillos and the local flora. This several hundred acre property was adjacent to the Wild Moon and to the Pursell ranch and was owned by some sort of state conservation group.

  After the discussion with Lance the night before, Niko had sent out several groups of searchers. Some concentrated in the area Lance had been hunting, others spread out throughout the ranch. I'd tried to talk to Adam several times during the night, but never had the opportunity. The office had turned into a base of sorts, vampires reporting for their search assignments, oth
ers coming back to report. By the time dawn rolled around Niko called it all off. There was no trace of anyone that didn't belong. I suppose the results had a silver lining, perhaps Alex's (or the kids') disappearance had nothing to do with the Wild Moon and all the good little vampires could rest easily in their comfy beds. In any case, that meant we were sniffing up the wrong ranch.

  Adam and I had gone to bed after he called off the search, each of us reluctant to restart our private discussion at that point. He fell into a deep sleep almost immediately. It took me a little longer. A few hours later, my mobile rang.

  I was hoping it was Isabel. I'd already left three voice mails for her, hoping that at some point my wandering aunt would end up somewhere where she could check in. But it was Carlton, asking me if Tucker and I could help out. When Carlton told me where they needed help, I agreed and forced myself to get up, rouse my brother and head out into the day. The property they were searching was a little too close to the Wild Moon and a few dozen sleeping vampires for my comfort.

  At the very least, Tucker and I could be there and help steer people away from anything that might be unusual. Not that we'd run into any of the vampires. Even though some of them might be awake during the day, they would all definitely be inside, behind blackout curtains or in cellars blasted out of the native limestone. Like many so-called spring days around here lately, this one started off with a muggy morning and now, nearing noon, promised to be a record-breaking scorcher. Cloudless blue skies and searing heat weren't comfortable for most, but spelled severe discomfort, even death, for the residents of the Wild Moon.

  Tucker jogged up beside me, closing the twenty feet of distance between us. He'd been walking to my right for the last hour, being pretty much a pain in my backside.

  "You're supposed to say ‘Polo'."

  He grinned at me as he wiped his face with a red bandanna, then tucked it into the back pocket of his jeans. He was dressed much the same as I was, though with a long-sleeved tee instead of the denim shirt. His clothing and footwear were nothing more than a concession to appearances. The flora around here couldn't actually do much to his tough shifter hide, even when he was in human shape, but it wouldn't have been prudent to advertise the fact by bopping around in a pair of running shorts and bare feet.