Hunger

by Jacquelyn Frank

  “It’s a simple act of using hypno on the lead investigators.”

  “Oooh sneaky. And very handy. I wish I could use that. I’d hypno my ex into leaving me alone. I’d make him forget he ever knew me.”

  “That would be impossible if he has known you any length of time. It would leave an enormous gap in his life.”

  “He deserves it. Trust me.”

  “What has he done to earn such malice from you?”

  “Just trust me when I say he’s gone out of his way to earn that malice.” She shivered wildly, and Danton’s attention grew sharp.

  “It is really that bad?” he asked.

  “Well, not lately. I moved without telling him where I was going and none of my friends and family would ever tell him. I put down new roots a thousand miles away from him—opening my store upstate, Felice’s Antiques. I haven’t seen or heard from him since. For the first time in ages I feel free of him.” She frowned then. “Only to be harassed by a new violence.” She suddenly felt so tired and worn out. The entire situation was taking a toll on her.

  She chatted with Danton about things of far less consequence after that, unwilling to dwell in the heaviness of her situation a moment longer. Danton proved to be good company, very different from Halo. He was a serious sort, quite unlike Halo’s irreverence, and seemingly incapable of flying in the face of convention like Halo did. But Danton was also relaxed. Comfortable in his own skin. Assured that his path was a righteous path. She envied him his clarity. She also envied his strength, just as she envied Halo’s. She would never have had the wherewithal to escape from Roth on her own. She could easily see Danton coming out on top just as Halo had.

  Halo arrived a short time later. To her surprise he ignored Danton’s presence and came up to the head of the bed. He ringed a hand around the back of her neck and pulled her into a deep, passionate kiss. The intimacy of it was inescapable. The fact that he was dallying with a human right before the eyes of another vampire made her flush with awkwardness. She didn’t want him to get in any more trouble than he had already faced. He wouldn’t be censured for making love to a human, but it was clear that the vampires were heavily prejudiced against humans.

  She put a hand on his chest and pushed him away from her, although quite reluctantly. She so loved the heat and passion of his mouth. Part of her also loved that he had come straight to her with affection. That she was more to him than a passing fuck made her feel special in his eyes. Felice tried not to feel that way, knowing such attachments could be dangerous, but she couldn’t help herself. It seemed that when it came to her he had begun acting out of character. She tried not to read too much into it, but it was hard.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked solicitously.

  “I’m fine. What have you been doing?”

  “Research. A little hunting.”

  She frowned. She wanted to curb him, to tell him not to go in search of Roth on his own. Roth was obviously a formidable opponent. How could Halo face a man who was clearly insulated by a wall of other sycophants? However, she knew there was no curbing Halo. To try would be an exercise in futility. She had to let him be who he was, no matter how harrowing it was for her.

  “Any luck?” she asked.

  “Some.” Halo moved to the DVD player and popped in a disc. He turned on the TV and the familiar footage from the front-entrance cameras came up. “Now, assuming the bomb was planted after our escape from Roth, that puts the time index from 1400 hours to the detonation at 1545 or thereabouts. During that time only seven people enter the building through the front entrance. This woman enters at 1430,” he said, indicating the blond woman passing security. “She isn’t carrying anything and is wearing a light coat that fits too snuggly to her body to account for her smuggling something in. Now, I’m working under the assumption that the bomb isn’t already in the building. So we can dismiss her. Then a couple enters at 1446. I know the woman personally but don’t recognize the male. So, I followed them both for a while today and yesterday. No one exhibited any strange behavior and, unless he was smuggling something under his coat, neither appears to have brought anything into the building. You and I enter at 1505. Obviously neither of us brings the bomb. But then this male enters at 1515 carrying a backpack. Plenty of room for a bomb and he does seem to be taking care with it, holding it in his arms as opposed to on his back or slinging it over a shoulder. I find that to be suspicious behavior.”

  “So you followed him too?”

  “For a little while. Enough to know he bears watching. He looks over his shoulder a lot. He is rather a nervous sort for a vampire. I’ll find out more about him from the records in vampire central. Where he lives and whatnot.”

  “And the last person to enter?”

  “That would be me,” Danton said as the video showed him entering the building at 1527.

  “I trust Danton wouldn’t blow up a building while he was standing mere floors away. This little bastard…” He sped up the tape to 1536. “He leaves right before the explosion and he isn’t carrying his backpack anymore,” Halo said, stopping the tape and showing the same young man who had entered the building at 1515.

  “I have to admit that’s very suspicious,” Felice said. “But if you’re going to plant a bomb, why do it by coming through the front entrance? Why not any of the others? And why not exit through any of the others?”

  “The tapes cover both entrances to the building. East and west. There are no other ways in or out of the building except two fire exits and both of those have alarms on the doors. There were no alarms reported during our implantation time. It takes keycards to come up from the garage and into the building, and no one scanned in from the garage during this time.”

  “Are these alarms in working order?” she asked him.

  “They are. I checked. Both alarms went off minutes after the bomb had gone off and vampires were evacuating the building.”

  “So you think it’s this fellow,” she said, indicating the frozen visage of the young vampire male. He did seem very young, although how she could tell any vampire’s age was beyond her. The seemingly young male could be hundreds of years old and she would never know it.

  “What’s his name?” she asked absently as she studied his face. There was something oddly familiar about him, she realized. Although, how she would ever know a vampire was beyond her. At least, before meeting Halo. Now she had met a whole building full of them. Still, it was possible she had crossed a vampire’s path before. It wasn’t as if they wore neon signs that proclaimed, I’M A VAMPIRE! They blended in seamlessly with the world around them. She would never have known the difference.

  “There’s something familiar about him,” she said, her tone thoughtful. Halo’s head snapped around and he narrowed keen eyes on her.

  “Familiar how?”

  “I don’t know. He’s just…familiar.”

  “Felice, it’s important you try to figure out why,” Halo said, his entire presence having changed into something aggressive and demanding.

  “I’m trying! I can’t think of why!”

  “Perhaps there is a better way of handling this,” Danton said smoothly, earning a glare from the impatient Halo.

  “How?”

  “Hypno. We can search her memory that way, possibly shake loose why she feels this way.”

  Halo immediately looked abashed. He ran a hand through his hair and gave her a warm, sheepish look. “I’m sorry. I should have thought of that instead of bullying you.”

  The apology touched her. She knew he did not ask for forgiveness very often. She knew he never asked for forgiveness for being who he was. It touched her that he was making an exception for her in consideration for her feelings. Again she was overwhelmed by the desire to consider herself special to him. She knew she had to fight such feelings of familiarity, but she couldn’t seem to shake them free one hundred percent.

  She firmly decided to ignore the sensation and focused instead on what they were proposing.

>   “It won’t hurt me, right? You’re not suddenly going to decide to wipe my memory?” she asked.

  “I wouldn’t let that happen,” Halo said with a frown. “No one’s going to wipe your memory without you knowing about it first. This will just be a probe for information.”

  “You’re not going to ask me what color underwear I have on or at what age I finally stopped sucking my thumb, are you?”

  Halo rolled his eyes in exasperation. He huffed out a breath. Then he cocked his head and arched a brow. “What age did you finally stop sucking your thumb?” he asked her with a low-voiced curiosity.

  “Never you mind that,” she said with a nervous laugh. “Let’s just get this over with.”

  “Who would you rather…?” Halo asked. He was hesitant, something she wasn’t used to seeing on him.

  “You. Of course I want you,” she said as if he were silly for asking. His expression eased and a smiled lifted one corner of his mouth.

  “Just sit back and relax,” he said, moving around until he was sitting beside her on the edge of the bed, facing her. Danton sat back in the chair next to the bed and watched with focused attention. His attention wasn’t conducive to her relaxation. It made her nervous. She was going to be exposed to them. She didn’t mind being exposed to Halo, but Danton…she hardly knew him.

  Halo touched a finger under her chin and turned her stare away from Danton. He made her look into his eyes, and she gladly focused on the beautiful blue of them.

  “That’s a good girl,” he said as he praised her softly. “Just look into my eyes and let your mind drift.”

  Before she could even draw her next breath she felt herself tumbling into his hypnotic embrace.

  Chapter 17

  Halo let her believe she needed to relax for the hypno to work, when in fact all he needed was to meet her eyes. His hypno ability was strong. Powerful. Of course it wasn’t on par with Rafe’s or the queen’s, but it would get the job of the moment done.

  At least he hoped it would work. As she sat across from him drifting between the hypnotic world and the waking world, it occurred to him that someone could have used hypno on her in the past. It could be why she didn’t remember a reason why someone like Roth would want her head on a platter.

  As he probed gently into her thoughts, it was like wading through a great big field. Random things floated by, like the words to a song she had recently heard and the fact that she wasn’t wearing any underwear. That made him chuckle. She was purposely directing the direction the hypno went in. It impressed him. It showed a great strength of mind as she lifted him higher into the corners of her mind.

  “Remember the vampire from the recording,” he encouraged her in a soft voice. “Remember his face and the way he moves. The familiarity of it.”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “You’ve seen him before.”

  “Yes,” she said, her brow creasing with concentration. “I didn’t like him from the moment I met him.”

  Halo was surprised. Why would she have met him before? How long had it been? Why hadn’t she been able to recall him without hypno?

  He realized he had asked all of the questions aloud in rapid-fire style when she chuckled at him, shook her head, and took his hand into her good one.

  “Always so impatient,” she said softly. “Let’s start slowly, from the beginning.”

  “Of course,” he said with a small smile. “Tell me about the beginning,” he encouraged her.

  “Michael introduced us,” she replied simply, as if she hadn’t just dropped a bomb on them. “His name is Jonah. I have forgotten him because I met him only once and because Roth used hypno on me to make me forget the meeting.”

  “Why would he do that?” Halo asked, directing the question to Danton who simply shrugged in response.

  “I don’t know. I only know that it wasn’t part of his plan that I remember right away. He wanted you to find the information the hard way.”

  “Using hypno. He could have effectively erased your memory so you would never remember, even with hypno, because he is so powerful a vampire. But he left it here for us to find. Why?” Halo asked with frustration.

  “He’s messing with you. He knew you would find it. He said…he said he knows you. Knows everything about you. That you’ll never catch him.”

  “We’ll fucking see about that,” Halo snapped. “So tell me, now that we’ve found the memory, what does he want us to do with it?”

  “I don’t know. He never intended for you to escape. He had hoped you would be on his side by now. This was just a contingency plan. Just in case something went wrong. He didn’t want me to remember…Jonah. That’s all I know.”

  “Tell me about Jonah. Tell me more about how you know him,” he encouraged her, taking her hand in his and stroking the back of it soothingly.

  “Michael introduced us,” she repeated.

  “When? Where?”

  “It was about a year and a half ago. At a party.”

  “How well did he seem to know him?”

  “Pretty well. In fact, they seemed to be newly fast friends. They spent the entire night off in a corner talking.”

  “Tell me about the party.”

  “It was a birthday party for one of my friends.”

  “Was it common for him to bring a stranger to a party that intimate?”

  “Michael doesn’t have friends. He is too egocentric to think anyone else is worthy of him. So I was surprised. It stood out.”

  “Did you see Jonah at any other time?”

  “Not that I recall.”

  “So Roth might have destroyed all other memories of Jonah except for the moment she first met him,” Danton said.

  “Maybe. We should have Simone search her memory. She could potentially retrieve them. She is the one most likely to get to them. I’m sure Roth didn’t count on us bringing her to Simone.”

  “Why not? He counted on you being with her long enough to search her memory. He might have planned for everything.”

  “We were trapped together. He probably thought I would search her memory then for anything pertaining to her capture or vampires. He didn’t count on us escaping. Together.”

  “It’s lucky that you did escape together. You didn’t think to search her memory while you were captive?”

  “No. And I don’t know why I didn’t,” Halo said with a frown.

  “But how would she have recognized Jonah without a photo to work from?” Danton asked.

  “He told me Jonah was a vampire,” Felice responded even though the question had not been directed at her. That brought Halo’s attention sharply back to her.

  “So you found out about vampires before?”

  “Jonah was the one who kidnapped me initially,” she supplied. “Roth then proceeded to tell me all about vampires and how I was going to help him lure away a powerful vampire from the other side. I can only assume he meant you. Then he used hypno on me and made me forget everything about our first meeting so I was raw and unprepared for being thrown into that room with you.”

  “That prick. Man, I’m going to kill him twice.”

  “But first,” Danton said firmly, “can you tell us why he picked you? What made you so important to him?”

  “It wasn’t him,” she whispered. “It was Michael. It was Michael who wanted me. It was Michael who wanted revenge on me. He’s somehow in cahoots with Roth. I don’t know how. All I know is that he was there, gloating, the entire time. He told me he was going to see me dead. Drained until there was nothing left but an empty husk.” She shivered, no doubt recalling the evil that had spewed from Michael’s lips in that moment.

  “It is not uncommon for sycophants to work in tandem with humans. Humans who break the law and are willing to get their hands dirty. Michael must offer something Roth needs,” Danton said.

  “That part doesn’t matter. I couldn’t care less why Michael is partnered up with Roth. I only care that the fuckers made her a target for no good reas
on except for his personal enjoyment and retribution. When I get my hands on that little fucker I’m going to rip his dick off.”

  “He must have been watching us,” she said softly. “On the cameras. Seeing us…connect…would have infuriated him,” she said.

  “Good. I hope it really pissed him off. Serves him right for throwing you away like garbage.” Halo leaned in to her and kissed her mouth softly, breaking the hypno connection. She kissed him back, just as softly, her hand trembling in his. It killed him that she had been singled out for abuse by that sick psycho. But he also felt empowered, knowing something he hadn’t known before. He was grateful. Now that he understood why she was a focus for Roth and his flunky human pet, he could eliminate the threat by eliminating them both. Danton rose to his feet and put a hand on Halo’s shoulder, squeezing briefly before walking out of the room. The signal was clear. Danton wanted to talk outside of her presence.

  Halo began to mentally prepare himself for leaving her. Oddly enough he was finding it more and more complex a task. He didn’t know why. All he did know was that Felice didn’t belong in the vampire world. Certainly not in this seedy underbelly of the vampire world. He had to protect her. At all costs. Now that he knew how, it was only a matter time before he hunted down Roth and that little fucker of an ex of hers as well. He would no doubt be the easier of the two. Humans were ridiculously easy to hunt. They were weak in both body and mind when it came to predictability.

  A light lit up in his mind. This was how he could find Roth! Find Jonah again and track him using the lesser vampire. It had been there all along, waiting for him to discover it. All he had needed was the last few pieces to the puzzle.

  Halo extricated himself from the warmth and affection of her arms, albeit reluctantly. There was too much to do, too much to figure out. He had to be out in the world hunting. It was what he did best and it was the only way to protect her.

  He didn’t know why Roth did what he did. He didn’t know what his big plans were. He only knew he had to be stopped…and he was the man to stop him.

  She held on to his hand the longest, kissing the back of it fiercely as she met his eyes, her pupils glistening with sudden tears.