Ever After Series: Paranormal Romance Box Set (Steamy Vampire Romance)

by A. C. James

  My mind reeled at the thought of this stranger watching me with Arie and thinking of me as someone who he’d known and perhaps been intimate with. What did she mean to him, anyway? Was she his friend, lover, or more than that? If I saw him again I’d have to tell him that she was dead, and surely he’d want to know how she died. Then I’d have to think up some lie rather than tell the horrible truth to someone who had known her. The truth was that I had killed Katarina.

  Whoops. Sorry about that. Better luck next time.

  Nothing that I could say would change what happened, and I’d be lying if I said I’d take it back. She was psychotic. When it came down to it, it had been me or her. No way could we have both walked away from that night. But even if I’d had no other choice, there was no telling how this person would react to hearing about her death.

  My stomach churned.

  How could I tell him she was gone? I’d never killed someone before, and the memory of that night was still so fresh that I could remember the tiniest details; it was etched in my mind like waking up from a nightmare, drenched in cold sweat with my adrenaline pumping. It had only been a little over a week, but I didn’t think I’d ever forget the moment when pixels of light had poured out of her, like sunlight shattering a vase. Tessa and Victoria had stopped talking.

  You always look good wearing nothing.

  Heat rushed to my face, but the embarrassment didn’t quell the desire pooling in the pit of my stomach as I thought back to Arie cuffing me around the pole at the club. This stranger had watched us fuck, and then wrote to me. A conflicted swirl of emotions that I didn’t want to consider washed over me. I crumpled the paper and shoved it back in my pocket.

  The sound of crinkling paper drew their attention from the front seat. Tessa met my eyes in the rearview mirror. “Is there anything you’d like to share with the rest of us, pet?”

  It wasn’t worth arguing over her nickname for me, which apparently hadn’t changed just because I was a vampire. I really couldn’t stand it, and it irritated the shit out of me that she refused to call me by my name.

  “Not really.”

  “Fine by me. Tessa pursed her lips. “But just remember that now isn’t exactly a time for secrets. Do you understand me?”

  Victoria shifted in her seat.

  I sighed. “It has nothing to do with tonight. If it was something that you needed to know about, don’t you think that I’d tell you?”

  “If you know what’s good for you.” Tessa returned her attention to the road.

  “I have nothing to hide. If it was something that mattered, you’d be the first to know.”

  “Good. I like you, and I’d like to keep it that way, but don’t think for a minute that just because you’re with Arie and I find you useful, I’ll tolerate secrecy,” Tessa said. “Loyalty is everything.”

  “It is to me, too. I never thanked you for taking care of those two who were helping Katarina,” I said, meeting her eyes in the rearview mirror. “So, thanks.”

  “None necessary, pet.” Tessa met my eyes again in the mirror before looking back at the road. “Those two Ancients have been causing problems for centuries, and it’s not like two against one is really a fair fight.”

  I thought back to the night of the gala. Two Ancient sisters had restrained Arie and kept him from coming to my rescue. Apparently, I hadn’t needed it. Then again, I never really cared for being a damsel in distress—I’d rather rescue myself.

  “Still…I appreciate what you did for me,” I said.

  We drove the rest of the way in silence. Scenery flew by as I tried not to dwell on the stranger who had left me the note. The note said he’d be in touch, but I didn’t know how that was even possible. I wondered if I should tell Arie. But I didn’t relish bringing up any topic that concerned Katarina, even if I felt guilty for not telling him, especially after we’d talked about being honest with each other.

  Tessa pulled off the highway, and we were gliding through neighborhood side streets until we came to West DePaul, where the houses often started at half a million dollars. She stopped in front of a brick-front building, and we all fell out of the Mustang, filing up the steps to Victoria’s townhouse. My thoughts turned to the tragic events of the night. How would Luna take this?

  Victoria unlocked the front door and let us in. Her townhouse was airy and filled with white contemporary décor. Bright splashes of color broke up the whiteness: a throw pillow here, a well-chosen piece of artwork there. Had it been daytime the skylights above would have illuminated the open space with natural light. I closed the front door behind me, and it slammed a little louder than I had intended.

  “Hello?” Luna walked down the stairs from second story, silver beams trailing behind her. She looked at all of us standing in the foyer. “Hey, you’re back. Wait…what’s wrong?”

  I was still a blood-stained mess from saving the vampire at the club. We all looked exactly like we felt—worn and defeated. My haggard appearance aroused Luna’s fear. Knowing what I knew about her family, I felt a little sorry for her. I’d been lucky to have found permanency when I was a teenager with my adoptive parents. Before that I’d been booted around the foster care system, and it didn’t take long for me to recognize that in some instances it was better to have no family at all then one who used and abused you. I never knew my mom, but at least I didn’t have a father like hers. She shifted uneasily from foot to foot.

  “Luna, you should sit down.” Victoria gestured to the modern sofa, which reminded me of the snow outside, and we all gathered in her living room with its vaulted ceiling.

  “Okay, just tell me what’s going on,” Luna said as she took a seat.

  Tessa sat in the matching chair across from the sofa, but I was too afraid to sit down. I might stain something. Plus I probably reeked, and had globs of half-melted vampire all over me. So I just stood behind the sofa near Luna. I couldn’t wait to be back at the loft so I could wash away all the muck and grime from the attack at the club. Victoria took a seat next to Luna and opened the file folder with Naida’s employment records.

  Victoria pointed to her picture. “Luna, do you know who this is?”

  Luna took the photograph from Victoria. Her eyes widened infinitesimally. “Yes, of course. Her name is Naida. She’s a water sprite.” Luna turned to me, her gaze dropping to my bloodied shirt and cargo pants. She turned back to Victoria, closing her eyes. With a shaky breath she opened them. “What has she done?”

  “Five vampires are dead. She put some sort of poison in the Puncture,” Tessa said.

  “Oh, God. No.” Luna turned back to me. “Did she hurt you, Holly? Please tell me she didn’t hurt you. There’s blood all over you.”

  I shook my head. “I’m fine. None of it’s mine.”

  “I’ve known her my whole life. She works for my father.” Luna shook her head as she regarded Victoria. “She’s never liked vampires. Not since the territory wars during Prohibition.”

  Territory wars.

  It always came down to control. Who had it? Who wanted it? And how far would they go to get it?

  “We figured as much,” Victoria said. “The bastard planned it perfectly. He knew you were with me.”

  “How?” I asked.

  Luna turned her head in my direction. “Victoria was there when my father confronted me about my servitude ending if you used my magic to return to being human. He said whether you took the deal was irrelevant. That he wanted me to come home and go back to working for him.” Luna’s eyes pooled with silver tears. “I can’t go back. I just can’t. But I don’t want anyone else to get hurt because of me. What are we going to do?”

  She looked like she could bolt at any minute.

  “I don’t understand. Why now? And why wouldn’t it matter?” I asked.

  Victoria gave Luna’s shoulder a quick squeeze. “He insinuated that he was working on something—something big—so that he’d never have to answer to Tessa ever again. I told him good luck with that, and I said
that Luna could come stay with me right in front of him.” Victoria paused. “But that still doesn’t explain how he’d know that she wouldn’t be working tonight and recognize Naida as soon as she set foot in the club.”

  “You think my father doesn’t have ways of getting information? When he confronted me it seemed like he knew everything that I’d talked about with Tessa in her office. Honestly, I just wanted to help Holly. Tessa said I’d be free from the deal I made on my father’s behalf.”

  “He was working on something big. He must have been talking about whatever poison he’s concocted, what Naida put in the Puncture,” I said.

  I’d never seen Tessa look as angry as she did just then.

  “We’ve been compromised,” Tessa mused aloud.

  Victoria gave a harsh laugh. “I was there when your servitude began. He was real quick to agree to your plan, just to save his own ass, and never once considered what it would mean for you. Lucky for you Tessa’s not the monster that he is. But he didn’t know that.”

  Luna looked pale. She blinked twice as if to keep the tears in her eyes from spilling over. All of us turned when we heard the front door open and a cold gust of air came in along with a windswept Arie. Even though his face was drawn, he still took my breath away. His eyes met mine. “Hey,” he said, closing the door behind him, and then he regarded the group. “What did I miss?”

  “Luna just confirmed that Naida works for her father, but then we suspected as much,” Tessa said drily as she crossed her arms over her chest. “And the club has definitely been compromised. We need to sweep my office for bugs, but we need to do it quietly. We may be able to use it to our advantage.”

  “I had the surveillance tech clean and enlarge a shot of the fae from the footage and email it to me.” Arie pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and crouched in front of Luna. “I want you to take a look at this.”

  I looked over Luna’s shoulder from my vantage point behind the sofa. Arie had pulled up a photo of the fire faerie from the vision I had when the waitress brushed against my arm.

  Luna gasped. “That’s my uncle.”

  “Does your uncle have a name?” Tessa asked.

  “Luca. But I swear he doesn’t work for my father. At least he never used to.”

  “Well, he does now,” I muttered.

  “Naida stole from me to pay him for whatever she put in the Puncture that killed five of us tonight. Any idea on how he could get his hands on something like that?” Tessa asked.

  “I’m guessing that my father probably paid him to develop it. He’s a microbiologist. He lives in the UK. But I haven’t seen him in years,” Luna said. “I just can’t imagine that he could do something like this.”

  “I can. You’d be surprised what people are capable of. The ones that you think you know will betray you,” Victoria said with a faraway look. “You can’t trust anyone.”

  Tessa looked at Victoria, her expression softening into kindness. But in a blink it was gone. It was the first time I’d ever seen her look vulnerable or show she had a soft spot.

  “What if this was just a practice round? And this is just the beginning of…” Arie trailed off his stream of questions.

  “War,” Tessa said.

  The silence that fell as we all exchanged looks was unsettling. None of us wanted to say it out loud, but we all knew what it meant. It meant that we were all in a lot of danger. Her father had been holding a grudge against vampires since the territory wars, and now he had something that could hurt us. Really hurt us. Worse than that, he had the power to make more of it.

  “I’m so sorry…” Luna’s voice broke as she looked at her feet.

  Tessa’s head popped up as if Luna’s words had somehow spurred her into action. She pulled out her cell phone and dialed a number faster than was humanly possible. “F-4-98, confirm,” she spoke the alphanumeric code to someone who picked up on the other end. “I need you on the next flight to the UK. Your target is Luca Monti. He’s fire fae. Expect resistance. Call me when you land and I’ll send you a packet with his photo. I need him kept alive long enough to be questioned.”

  Luna started to cry and I couldn’t blame her. She pulled her legs up to her chest and buried her head in her knees, her silver hair spilling around her like a veil. The word target could only mean one thing—that this wouldn’t be a social visit.

  Far from it.

  Judging by the instruments in Tessa’s interrogation room on the third floor at HFC, and the nature of the phone call, I figured that they would use any means necessary to find out what we needed to know and put a stop to this. I knew he’d be tortured until Tessa got what she wanted. She only said to keep him alive long enough to be interrogated.

  But what choice did we have?

  The government left us to clean up internal issues on our own. Arie told me that as long as it didn’t affect the general population, they stayed out of vampire business and made sure our existence remained a secret. We had to find out what he had concocted and how much of it before anyone else got hurt.

  Besides, he’d brought this on himself by being in cahoots with his brother. The burnt bodies that had lined the floor back at the club made me sick. I couldn’t understand how someone could do something like that. He’d intentionally created a weapon against us and signed his own death sentence in doing so. I didn’t feel bad about Tessa’s decision at all, and from the look on Arie’s face, neither did he. Victoria wore a look of resolve as well, but she folded Luna into her arms just the same. I had no illusions that once Tessa had the information she needed and ensured that it couldn’t be used against us, Luca Monti was a dead man.

  Chapter 7

  Arie and I didn’t talk much at first on our drive back to the loft. We were both lost in our own thoughts. Most likely he was thinking about the events of the evening too. Snow-covered scenery slid by as we drove in his Venom, but I barely noticed the Christmas lights still strewn about even after the holidays were over. We had just celebrated it with whispered promises about our future and a quiet New Year, only to have it kicked off with more bloodshed.

  This wasn’t how I had imagined it would be. We should have had some breathing room after Katarina’s death, and the next calamity had seemed like a distant question mark so far into the future that when we finally did have to deal with it, nothing would matter as long as we faced it together.

  But things never happened like you expected or wanted them to. I didn’t have time to sort out my own insecurities about our relationship. I wished I could control how I felt, fake confidence, and bury my fears. The only thing you can control is how you react. I’d been too quick to rush to the female vampire’s aid tonight. I hadn’t thought it through, didn’t even know if I could help, but I’d risked it anyway. The fact that this toxin affected younger vampires differently than it did older ones made me hyperaware that this situation left me vulnerable, and I didn’t like feeling that way.

  Feeling exposed.

  Call me selfish, but I had the good sense to be afraid, and enough smarts to consider self-preservation over saving someone else’s ass. It would be Crimson Dusk, the donors at the club, from here on out for me, at least until this was over and I could be sure that the Puncture I drank wasn’t infected.

  I heard Arie mutter something under his breath. “What?”

  “Christ, Holly. Do you even realize that I could have lost you back there?” He looked at me, but then turned his attention back to the slushy road.

  “I know. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I just wanted to help.”

  “And I love that about you, but—”

  “Look, you and Julian were helping. I don’t like feeling helpless. I wanted to do something even if I wasn’t sure whether it would do any good. I went with my gut instinct. I really wish you’d learn to trust that my intuition is usually right.”

  “Holly…” -I can’t lose you.- His telepathic transference was like a punch to the gut.

  “I was already thinking that for
now I don’t think I should drink the Puncture. Not when we know that to someone like me—”

  Arie’s eyes turned dark. “Don’t say it. I don’t want to think about you being dead again.”

  “Neither do I, but from what little we do know about this poison, it doesn’t appear to be lethal to Ancients or older vampires. At least for now… there’s always the possibility that Luca will alter the poison and make it stronger now that he knows what it’s capable of.”

  “You’re probably right. Tonight was probably just an experiment.”

  I reached over and put my hand on Arie’s knee, giving it a squeeze to remind him I was here and didn’t plan on going anywhere.

  “Let’s just go home. There’s nothing we can do right now. Hopefully whoever Tessa contacted will find Luca and we can destroy his work before any more of the toxin ends up in the wrong hands.” I paused. “But what was with the code and Tessa’s phone call? The person on the other end is a hired killer, aren’t they?”

  Arie’s expression turned grim. “The Circle of Slayers…the Slayers are assassins who work for the Legacy. Each member of the Legacy has a code to activate a Slayer in times of peril. They are only dispatched in times of extreme urgency. In this case, I think defending our species against an unknown toxin that can nuke us from the inside out qualifies as a matter to be dealt with extreme prejudice.”

  I swallowed. “Are Slayers vampires?”

  Arie tightened his grip on the steering wheel.

  “No, they were engineered and created solely to serve us, to kill at our command. They are without souls. But they pass for humans and can shift into human form as if it were a second skin, which is good, because you wouldn’t want to see them in their true form.”

  “Their true form?”

  “Slayers bring death. Just imagine how death would look. Slayers are winged creatures with serpent-like tails. They are covered in scales that are as black as midnight, with eyes like onyx, and they smell of death. It clings to them, and then it clings to those they slay as they consume their life force into their bodies.”