by Angel Lawson
"Are you afraid of me?"
“Should I be?"
The words hung in the air. I had no idea if it was inappropriate. I wasn't afraid, but had no idea if I should have been. My question was left unanswered.
"How did you get in here?" I asked.
"Through the front door. I have a key."
A chill ran down my spine.
"You've been here before. At night? While I'm asleep?" I already knew the answer to this. I had felt him in the room each and every morning. His soft thumb on my lip, his cool breath in the air.
"Yes."
Again we were silent. I was thinking of my next question. Trying not to panic. He was probably bracing himself for my admonishment, but I had a feeling that wouldn’t get me the answers I wanted. So instead I said, "You were in my dreams. You saved me time and time again. But then you didn't." I absently reached my finger up to my lips like he had done so many times before.
My finger never touched the flesh of my lip; his hand was there, cool and firm, guiding it away while his own took its place. I sucked in a breath of surprise but reveled under the familiar, yet gentle caress of his thumb. He stroked my bottom lip tenderly and I froze in my spot, afraid to move. It was a stark contrast to the brutality I'd witnessed in the forest. There were at least two sides of Grant Palmer and I didn't know which one to trust.
"I'll always save you." He pulled his hand away.
I trembled. How could something so simple light such a consuming fire in my body? I feared the implications of my desire. What they said about me.
“I came to tell you Sasha is dead.”
“You killed her?”
“Yes. She’s gone.”
“Thank you.” The words tumbled from my mouth before I had a chance to consider them.
The tension between us grew oppressive and I allowed my curiosity to take over. The situation was unreal, but I was caught smack in the middle of it. I had questions that needed answers. This could be my only chance. I took a deep breath and plunged in head first. "I have some questions I would like answered."
"I suspected as much. Go ahead."
“Will you be honest?”
He hesitated. “Yes.”
“Okay, well, do you hurt people, you know…”
"Eat them? Drink their blood?” he asked. “My coven only drinks from animals or from donated blood."
“So you don’t kill people?”
"No. Not humans.” His voice was tentative. "Being a monster wasn't a conscious decision any of us made, but we do make choices about how we live. Living peacefully with humans is one of those decisions."
Sasha's words taunted me. They said something about Grant living an 'alternative lifestyle'. I assumed she and Caleb didn't approve of saving humans when they appeared to get so much joy from killing them. "Have you ever killed a human?"
“Yes.” His answer was quick and sharp. "Not recently. Not that it matters.”
The tension rose dramatically but sitting in the dark next to a killer, I was forced to ask the most obvious, yet inane question. "Do you want to kill me?"
He paused this time, almost for too long, and my heart pounded so loudly in my ears I didn't know if I would hear him when he finally answered.
"Yes. No.” His voice was quiet and strained. “I don't want to kill you now, but I did. Very much so."
His words were shocking and harsh. Truthful. He was attempting to be honest even in this situation. He promised me he would never lie again. Maybe he was serious. I curled into a tight ball, wrapped under a thin summer quilt. "Help me. Help me understand."
"I don't know Amelia. I just…" The self-hatred was evident. Grant didn't want to hurt me. I knew this from his touch, his actions, but his nature compelled him to feed from humans, even if he said otherwise. It was vampire 101, I got that, but I heard the conflict in his voice.
"When I first saw you, or even before, your scent filled the house and it was exquisite. I'd never smelled anything so…divine." I heard him inhale slowly, deeply, and my hands clenched at the desire in his voice. “I could taste you on my tongue, feel you in my bones. Your heartbeat throbbed in my head like a migraine.”
“No wonder you hated me so much.”
"It was the opposite of hate,” he admitted. “I crave everything about you, Amelia. The rhythm of your heart. The smell of your fear. The pulsing veins running down your neck. Other, more primal urges. You call to me Amelia, like no one I’ve ever encountered." I felt a flutter of air. The next time he spoke he was farther away, somewhere across the room. "I'm sorry."
I was still sitting on the bed, my fingers nervously picking at the fraying edge of the blanket and said, "Don't be sorry for things you can't control, Grant."
“But I can control it. That is what I do. Who I am.”
I couldn't figure out the right thing to say. Why was I even doing this? Grant admitted he was a vampire and that he desperately wanted to kill me. Before. Not now. He also admitted, although in few words, that he was still inexplicably drawn to me. He was here because he wanted to be close to me.
Mate.
Sasha’s warning echoed in my head.
Minutes passed and I heard the latch of the door click as he opened it. A sliver of light filled the room from the hallway and I could see his dark outline. "I want you to know that I won't hurt you and I will keep my promise. Caleb will not harm you either. I will keep my distance but I will be watching to make sure you're safe."
I opened my mouth to say something. Anything, but the words wouldn't form. He opened the door further and I could see him fully now. His hair was ruffled as though he’d been running his hands through it constantly, and he was wearing a plain black T-shirt and jeans that were both wrinkled and unkempt. His eyes flashed dark. He was beautiful and tortured and absolutely not human.
We stared at one another, both disheveled and lost. I blinked and he was gone. The only sound was the door shifting back into place, and once again I was alone in the dark.
Chapter 4
Grant
The days passed slowly following my late night talk with Amelia. In order to distract myself I hunted, researched, and exhausted every resource available to me and my family to locate Caleb and his gang. From the news reports, I suspected he had abducted at least three more people during the last several weeks, most likely in an attempt to replace the loss of the vampire we killed at the warehouse, Jenna, and the sacrifice in the woods. One of the missing was from Black Mountain—too close to family and Lost Cove to be anything but intentional.
Elijah focused on finding the origin of the brooch. Ryan and Sebastian settled in to guard Amelia, which allowed me to keep my distance. I was back to patrolling the streets at night to see what information or leads I could come up with. I kept an eye on the Melungeon who worked in the coffee shop, Laurel, in case any of her shape-shifter friends decided to join the fight locally, but so far there had been no sign of contact.
The bar district was busy tonight with students crammed into the open-air porches. So many voices in one area rattled like chains against my skull and, unfortunately, none of the talk led back to Caleb and my hunt. Pushing aside the noise, my thoughts drifted back to Amelia. Her reaction the night she awoke to find me in her bedroom had not been what I expected. Honestly, I didn't truly know what to ever expect with this woman. She always surprised me.
One thing was for certain, when I left her room that night, I knew I had to leave future contact up to her. Obviously, I had no choice but continue to watch over her, the situation with Caleb had reached an extremely dangerous level, but I wouldn't cross the lines of entering her home again until she asked. Miles was right, if I wanted her back in my life I had to give her a chance to work through the situation at her own pace.
I ducked down a back alley between a set of shops, looking for something—anything that could lead me to Caleb. How had this vampire continued to get the better of me? How did he manage to hide from my entire family? We needed a break
in the case, soon. There was something I was missing—something in the clues. The brooch and the row of beds. All of the images he fed me. I just needed to figure out what it was.
Crossing the street and getting back into my car I knew now, more than ever, we needed to stop him before he made his next move.
~*~
It was after dark the night the twins and Elijah burst into my home office. I jumped from my seat, fists raised, and hissed.
“What the hell?” I asked, realizing it was them. I snapped off the monitor quickly—although from the look on the others faces, not fast enough.
"Too late, Grant." Ryan laughed, pointing to the monitors. Elijah nodded sympathetically, and I felt the rush of immense humiliation from being caught. I’d been watching old videos of Amelia working around the house.
“Shut up,” I said. “Who’s with Amelia?”
“Olivia,” Elijah replied with a slight eye roll at my attempt to change the topic.
“You were so into your videos you didn’t even hear us come in,” Ryan said, not shutting up. "Weird for a guy who has this place wired so tight in addition to enhanced senses. You do know we have super hearing too, right?”
“Ryan, seriously, shut your mouth.”
“I’ll consider shutting up when you admit that you’re just as much of a perverted stalker as the rest of us.”
“Hey! I’m not a pervert,” Eli said, shoving him in the chest.
“No, I guess not. You’re really pretty lame, you know?”
I sighed heavily and sat back in my chair. “If Amelia’s safe then what are you doing here?”
Sebastian sat across from me and said, “We’ve got news.”
Elijah jumped in and explained, "Olivia had a vision of a cabin in the woods. She thinks it may be where Caleb has been hiding out."
“You have a location?” I asked, already out of my seat.
“Yep,” he replied, holding up a square of paper. “She even drew us a map.”
After raiding my weapons stash, we were out the door. Ryan preferred to use his brawn, but the rest of us relied on a variety of knives, swords and axes for the job. Unlike popular fiction, wooden stakes didn’t do the job, but decapitation worked 100% of the time.
As we hurried down the stairs, Elijah filled me in on the rest of the details. "She couldn’t pinpoint the actual location, but thinks it’s an old hunting cabin on the river. We're just going to have to search."
“It’s better than the whole-lotta jack nothing we’ve been going on for the last couple of months,” Ryan said.
I agreed and we entered the garage. Piling in the SUV, I drove out of the city. Before long, we’d left the more populated areas of the county behind. By car, and with opened windows, we combed the valleys trying to catch the scent of Caleb and his followers. Olivia’s map pinpointed a particular curve in the French Broad River. We’d hunted near here many times and I took a small, vaguely familiar road that cut through the overgrown landscape and followed the water. Cabins hung precariously over the edge of the water—most decades old. Many had been uninhabited for years.
“Yeah, babe,” Elijah said into the phone, pointing to a small street veering away from the water. “Take the next right.” I turned onto a dirt road. “Okay, Grant’s got it.” He listened for a moment. “Love you, too.”
We didn’t travel far when Ryan coughed into his hands. “Oh hell, I think we’re here. Reeks of a nest.”
“We should walk,” Elijah said. I turned off the headlights and parked the car on the side of the road, close to the woods. “Sebastian can you cloak the car, just in case?”
Sebastian had a gift for creating illusions, altering the appearance of himself, things or other people. He nodded and within minutes had camouflaged the car. A quick glance made it look like part of the forest.
“I’ll never get how you do that,” Elijah said, studying the area.
“It’s just mind tricks, like everyone else. You’ve got your ultra-sensitivity thing and Grant can manipulate anyone to do what he wants them to—“
“Except Amelia,” Ryan jabbed.
“It’s just mind tricks,” Sebastian repeated. “Unfortunately Ryan’s brain was too small to handle anything extra.”
I popped the trunk and took a long blade out of the bag in the back. I sheathed it in a holster and slung it over my shoulder. Elijah surveyed the ax he chose at my house, the blade glinting in the moonlight. He handed Sebastian a cross-bow and sheath of arrows. The solid silver tips were laced with an immobilizing poison. It wouldn’t destroy a vampire but it would slow one down. I glanced at Ryan and he shrugged. “I’m good.”
We moved quickly to the wooden cabin. The house was nestled in a thick grove of trees and backed up to the forest. The house was quiet, overrun with the pungent odor that came along with a less than hygienic nest of vampires.
The place reeked, but there was no sign of movement.
“It’s empty,” I said, forcing my way inside. After a quick sweep of the house it was obvious they only recently left, the cabin hastily abandoned. Caleb and Sasha's scents were all over the furniture. I pushed open a door in the back. A bed sat in the middle of the room, the headboard cracked, the yellowed sheets twisted and torn. I sniffed and caught a third vampire’s scent before moving on.
“Get a count,” I said, directing the others.
“Ten to twelve were here not too long ago,” Ryan said. Sebastian looked sick—this kind of work didn’t suit him. He shouldn’t have come.
“That’s not a huge undertaking for us, but if we’re right about the abductees they’re mostly fledglings.”
“Nasty fuckers,” Ryan said, shaking his head.
“Tell me about it,” I said, thinking about the strength and hunger fueling Jenna.
Over the past several months a rogue vampire had taken up residence in our territory. Murdering innocents in a ritualized, brutal manner. Others were abducted and turned. Elijah theorized, from experience, that Caleb was forming a gang with the intent of violating Council policy, as well as some sort of personal vendetta against me.
“You know what I don’t get?” Elijah asked, looking over the messy house. The couches had shredded fabric, stuffing falling onto the floor. Glass from two lamps covered the top of the end tables from where they had shattered. A spray of blood coated one wall. Elijah sniffed it. “It’s stupid to keep fledglings together in such close quarters. They’re feral and don’t completely differentiate between a vampire and a human. To them it’s all just another opportunity to fight.”
“You’re saying it doesn’t look like Caleb knows what he’s doing,” I reply. “I get the feeling he’s spending half his time in the bedroom. I picked up the scent of a third vampire in that bedroom. He moved on pretty quick from his mate.”
Elijah continued with his assessment. “Right. That’s the problem. Fledglings need constant supervision, especially with in this number.”
We continued our search of the house, looking for anything useful. I grabbed a handful of receipts off the dusty kitchen counter to go over later, although it was unlikely they were from Caleb and his followers. Nomadic vampires don’t usually purchase things. It wasn’t like they ate food or had a need for consumable products.
“What is that smell?” Elijah asked, sniffing around. The rest of us paused and inhaled. Sure there was a funky, oppressive odor about the place but not much beyond that.
“Sebastian, check the basement.”
Sebastian opened the basement door and let out a howl of disgust. “Damn.”
“What?” I asked, but the wave of rotten flesh explained his outburst.
"I think I found the owner."
Elijah shook his head. “Guess he didn’t fit Caleb’s standards.”
We walked back to the car and quickly made our way back to Asheville. Ryan called the police, leaving an anonymous tip about the cabin owner. Elijah sat in the back seat. He’d been quiet ever since we left the house.
I caught his ey
e in the rearview mirror and asked, “What are you thinking?”
"Wrangling ten or more fledglings would be incredibly difficult. There was no way they can hide out in the city," he said. "They must break into a house, murder the owner, and camp out for a while. They probably only leave when people would start to notice.”
“Makes sense,” Ryan said.
“I smelled Sasha in there. So they had been in that location for a while.”
“The body in the basement was pretty decomposed,” Sebastian added.
I kept my eyes level on the road. “Caleb has been able to stay one step ahead of us for months now, but the fledglings are like any group of children. They’ll force him into a routine. If they aren’t cautious, one will get loose and they’ll have a massacre on their hands.”
“He’s going to need help now that Sasha is gone. He can’t do that one his own,” Elijah noted.
I thought about the additional scent in the bedroom. Maybe he’d already found his next lieutenant. “Sasha was incredibly strong. Smart. He trusted her. Caleb will have to find someone to fill her shoes.”
“Whoever he’s sleeping with?” Sebastian asked. I nodded in agreement.
We split up near my office, the twins hopped out of my car and headed back to Amelia’s. Elijah got back on the road to Black Mountain. I went to my office and spread the receipts on the floor, looking for something—anything that would lead us to catching this bastard before anyone else was killed.
Chapter 5
Amelia
I sat in my car outside the building and opened my calendar one last time.
Tuesday, August 18th:
9:00 AM-Board Meeting
Noon-Lunch
2:00 Officers Meeting
4:00 Budget Review
If everything went according to Grant’s explicitly organized schedule, this information should be correct. I’d written it in my planner weeks ago. Grant would be out of the house all day at one meeting or the other, leaving the building empty. If I went through the garage, the BMW would be gone. Upstairs, in his meticulous closet, there would be one less ridiculously expensive suit. Same with one heavily starched shirt, a matching, yet fashionable tie, and one of his fifteen pairs of black wingtips that cost as much or more than the monthly payment on my car.
