Undaunted

by HELEN HARDT

  “I don’t know. It’s been some time since you drank her blood.”

  “True. I’m drinking Erin’s blood now. The blood bond…” My mind raced. “Maybe the bond. We’re taught not to drink from humans. Maybe there’s a reason beyond it being immoral. Maybe human blood gives us something…”

  “Dante, despite what we’re taught, some vampires survive on human blood.”

  “Not the blood of someone they’re bonded to.”

  “True. Not that we know of, at least.”

  I walked to the coffee table and picked up the counterfeit Vampyre Texts. “Damn you, stupid fake book. I want the secrets. I need the secrets.”

  You will have them, Dante. You will have them all.

  When you learn to ask.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Erin

  I awoke with a start, sweat dripping down my cheeks. I sat up, and the perspiration poured from my forehead into my eyes. I squinted away the sting.

  My heart hammered and my palms were clammy.

  I’d dreamed something. Something big.

  Something I struggled now to recall.

  A baby had been crying—alone and crying.

  A vampire baby.

  But not Dante’s and mine, like I’d seen before. This was a different baby. A baby I knew, somehow, I had some sort of connection to.

  Emilia’s baby, maybe? I rubbed my brow.

  I could call Julian, have him glamour me to remember the dream better like he had before.

  No. For some reason that I couldn’t articulate, it was important that I remember this dream without any prompting.

  It was necessary.

  Vital, even.

  I rose, went to the bathroom, and splashed some water on my face to get rid of the perspiration. Then I lay back down and closed my eyes.

  I breathed in, out, back in again.

  Relax. Relax. Relax.

  The baby again. She was crying. Yes, it was a little girl. I just knew. She was crying.

  Someone help her! She’s hungry! She needs her diaper changed.

  Still she cried.

  Still no one came.

  Then a voice.

  “I want my baby!”

  A voice I recognized.

  Who was it?

  “Be quiet.”

  A male voice. Another voice I recognized.

  Logan.

  Logan was keeping this mother from her baby.

  My heart sped up and the images dispersed. No!

  Easy, Erin. Just relax.

  “Can’t move. Help me. Help me, please. I want my baby.”

  The woman’s voice again. She was lying in a hospital bed. She couldn’t move. God, she was in pain. She’d had some kind of surgery.

  Logan.

  I think I might have done some surgeries.

  He’d said that when I found him.

  He’d performed surgery on this woman.

  The baby still wailed.

  Why wasn’t anyone taking care of the baby?

  “Help me!” the woman cried. “Help me, please!”

  I shot my eyes open.

  The woman. I recognized her.

  The young mother who had been transferred to a hospital in Baton Rouge.

  “Help me,” she said again. “Please help me, Erin!”

  Epilogue

  The Queen

  Your powers are emerging, Dante. You are more formidable than your father or uncle could hope to be. And your grandfather? He’s an old fool whose time is at an end. He won’t torment you for much longer.

  The answers you seek are within you. You don’t need to decode a book to find them.

  The darkness your grandfather fears is real.

  You don’t need to fear it, Dante.

  You must embrace it.

  Prologue

  Erin

  I rose, went to the bathroom, and splashed some water on my face to get rid of the perspiration. Then I lay back down and closed my eyes.

  I breathed in, out, back in again.

  Relax. Relax. Relax.

  The baby again. She was crying. Yes, it was a little girl. I just knew. She was crying.

  Someone help her! She’s hungry! She needs her diaper changed.

  Still she cried.

  Still no one came.

  Then a voice.

  “I want my baby!”

  A voice I recognized.

  Who was it?

  “Be quiet.”

  A male voice. Another voice I recognized.

  Logan.

  Logan was keeping this mother from her baby.

  My heart sped up and the images dispersed. No!

  Easy, Erin. Just relax.

  “Can’t move. Help me. Help me, please. I want my baby.”

  The woman’s voice again. She was lying in a hospital bed. She couldn’t move. God, she was in pain. She’d had some kind of surgery.

  Logan.

  I think I might have done some surgeries.

  He’d said that when I found him.

  He’d performed surgery on this woman.

  The baby still wailed.

  Why wasn’t anyone taking care of the baby?

  “Help me!” the woman cried. “Help me, please!”

  I shot my eyes open.

  The woman. I recognized her.

  The young mother who had been transferred to a hospital in Baton Rouge.

  “Help me,” she said again. “Please help me, Erin!”

  Chapter One

  Dante

  I walked to the coffee table and picked up the counterfeit Vampyre Texts. “Damn you, stupid fake book. I want the secrets. I need the secrets.”

  You will have them, Dante. You will have them all.

  When you learn to ask.

  Bitch was still in my head, talking in riddles as usual. So many questions, none of which the book in my hands could answer given that it was a counterfeit of the original.

  But was it?

  Bill said it was, but I no longer trusted Bill. Bea had told Erin in a dream that it was. But how much stock could be put in a dream?

  “I understand your frustration, son.”

  My father’s ghostly form still stood in the room. He looked so perfect. So healthy. So…real. The image of his battered and partially decomposed body erupted in my mind.

  No son should have to see his father look the way my father had.

  Yet here he stood before me, as young and vibrant as I remembered him. Problem was? It was all an illusion.

  “Do you?” I asked. “Do ghosts feel frustration? Do ghosts feel…anything?”

  “Of course we do. Do you think I would be here if I didn’t?”

  “I’m sorry. You must feel. I know you’re here to protect me. To protect Erin, River, and Emilia. You would have no desire to protect us if you couldn’t feel. It was a stupid question, Dad. Forgive me.”

  “There’s nothing to forgive, Dante. As I said, I understand your frustration.”

  “You said you would teach me everything you should’ve taught me in the last ten years.”

  “I will, although I think you might be the one to teach me.”

  “What do you mean by that? I know nothing, Dad. Nothing.”

  “Perhaps you don’t have knowledge in the formal sense, but Dante, you have abilities I never had. That Braedon never had. You sent Bill to his knees in the courtroom. Your grandfather is scared, Dante. Not just by what he read in the book. He’s scared of you.”

  Tiny invisible feet scampered up my spine. “Are you scared of me?”

  My father smiled. “No, I’m not. I’m a ghost. You can’t hurt me.”

  “Does Bill think I would hurt him? I would never—”

  “Not intentionally. Of course you wouldn’t. I will teach you what I can. You’ve already learned a lot of control, but when times are dire, you come close to losing it. I don’t believe you would hurt Bill. I don’t believe you have ever hurt Erin, which is why I left when you demanded I do so the othe
r day. You have control, Dante. The problem is…neither of us knows exactly what we’re dealing with here. These newfound powers you’ve exhibited are unlike anything I’ve ever seen. We should probably talk to Jack about them.”

  “We can do that. But before we do, I need you to begin teaching me. Bill said fathers teach their children through symbolry and example. Can you still do that? I mean, being a ghost now?”

  “I’ll do my best. Would you like to begin now? Or would you rather get some sleep?”

  “I’d like to do it—”

  “Dante!”

  Erin. The scream was shrill and full of fright. I raced right through my father’s form—the feeling was intensely odd, like a combination of gelatin and seawater—up the stairs and into the bedroom.

  “Baby?”

  She sat up in bed, her spine straight as a board, her eyes wide as dinner plates.

  “Erin, love, what is it? Are you all right?”

  She swallowed, the gulp registering in my ears. “I had another one of those bizarre dreams, Dante. Why is it that every dream I have lately seems so real? Seems to be telling me something?”

  “I don’t know, baby. What was the dream about?”

  She closed her eyes. “A patient was calling for my help. Her baby was crying. She was a seventeen-year-old young woman who gave birth in the ER a week or so ago. Her parents transferred her to Baton Rouge.”

  “Is she still hospitalized somewhere there?”

  “I don’t know. The baby was a bit premature, but her lungs were good.” Erin smiled. “She wanted to name her daughter after me. Isabelle Erin.”

  “Do you remember her name?”

  “Patty Doyle.”

  “We can have River and Jay check it out. Make sure she’s all right.”

  She let out a relieved sigh. “That’s a great idea. I could find out if I were at the hospital, but I no longer have access to those databases now that I’m on leave. I just want to make sure she and the baby girl are okay. We kind of bonded, and then she was transferred. I never got to check back in with her and make sure they were okay.”

  “I’ll text Riv.” I pulled out my phone and sent the text.

  “What next then? River, Jay, and I are all on leave. To help you. Where do we go from here?”

  Damned good question. I had no answer.

  “Dante?”

  “I love you, Erin.”

  “I love you too. But what—”

  I stopped her soft lips with a gentle touch of my fingers. “We need to sit down with my dad and figure out what our next step is.”

  He appeared, jolting Erin.

  “Shit, Julian!”

  “I’m sorry. Are you all right?”

  “Yeah. Just another weird dream.”

  “Anything I should know about?”

  “No. It was about a patient who was transferred to Baton Rouge. I’m sure she’s fine. I’m much more concerned with the patients who’ve disappeared, beginning with Lucy.”

  “We have two mysteries to solve,” I said. “The missing women and finding Uncle Brae. Make that three. The blood bond. No, four. The secrets of the Texts.”

  “We do have our work cut out for us,” my father said.

  “Plus, you’re supposed to teach me what I missed. We were going to begin when Erin screamed.”

  “I’m sorry I interrupted you. I don’t know why I dreamed about this particular patient. She can be accounted for, according to Dr. Bonneville. I should be more concerned about Lucy and the others. I am. So why would I dream about a patient who doesn’t need me?”

  “I don’t know, Erin.” My father sighed. “At times like these, I really wish I could sit down next to you. Share your physical world again for a moment.”

  “You thought my dream about the vampires in the ER could be a premonition. What about this dream?”

  “It could be, but I doubt it. You said yourself that this patient isn’t in any danger. She’s safe in Baton Rouge. It could be just a fear of yours manifesting itself.”

  “But everything about this dream—the images and the emotion they invoked—felt so real.”

  “Dreams can feel that way,” he said, “especially when you wake up in the middle of one.”

  “I’m going to have Riv and Jay check it out,” I said. “For her peace of mind.”

  “Good idea.”

  “I feel so ridiculous,” Erin said. “We have so much more important stuff to deal with, and I’m taking up time with a silly dream about a patient and her crying baby. Then I had this really strong feeling that Logan had performed some kind of surgery.”

  Ice chilled my veins. “Wait a minute. Logan Crown was in the dream?”

  “No. He wasn’t there. It was just a feeling. A really strong feeling that he’d operated on the woman or her baby. Maybe both.”

  “But he’s back at the hospital now,” my father said.

  “Yes. He came back. You know that.”

  “So he can’t be in Baton Rouge operating on the woman or the child, then.”

  Erin shook her head, laughing lightly. “I’ve lost it, haven’t I?”

  “No more so than the rest of us, baby.” I smoothed her hair. “We’ve all had more than our share to deal with lately.”

  I wanted to soothe her, make her feel better. But the mention of Logan Crown had me tensed up like the skin of a drum. Maybe it was because I’d caught him about to fuck Erin.

  Maybe it was because the very sound of his name made me want to throw heavy objects.

  Or maybe it was something else. Something I couldn’t define. Something I didn’t even know yet.

  Whatever it was, I knew in the marrow of my bones that something was sinister about him.

  “So,” my father was saying, “we need to decide whether we’ll be working days or nights, now that everyone is free.”

  “We’re all used to working nights,” Erin said.

  “But you’re not as safe at night, when the Claiborne vamps are out,” I reminded her.

  “Hello?” She held out her wrist. “Did you forget my anti-scent perfume?”

  “We don’t know for sure—”

  “Dante, River couldn’t smell me. What more proof do you need?”

  “Son,” my father said, “nights are a good idea. You know that as well as I do.”

  “Yeah, I know.” I sighed. “I just want her safe, Dad.”

  “You will protect her. You, River, and her brother.”

  “We don’t even know what we’re dealing with,” I said.

  “I know. Which is why it’s time to contact Nocturnal Truth. It’s time to find out what’s in the Texts.”

  Without warning, Erin gasped and took a quick step back, her lips dropping into an O.

  Chapter Two

  Erin

  A lightning bolt hit me. “Julian? Remember how you helped me remember my dream? Could you help someone remember something that happened while they were awake?”

  “Yes. But the person would have to be open to it.”

  “What are you getting at, baby?”

  “The first woman who disappeared and then returned. Her name is Cynthia North. She couldn’t recall anything when I talked to her. Could you help her even if she’d been kept in a drug-induced coma?”

  “I don’t know,” Julian said. “I’ve never tried that before. It would require a really strong glamour. Stronger than any ghostly glamour. The only one who could probably produce a result is an elder.”

  “Bill,” Dante said.

  “But Dante, you reversed Bill’s glamour,” I said. “Maybe you could do it!”

  He shook his head, sighing. “I have no idea how I accomplished what I did, love. I doubt I could repeat it.”

  “Probably not,” Julian agreed. “From what you’ve told me, you were acting purely from emotion due to the situation. It was instinctive. That will be difficult to replicate if you’re not feeling the same intensity.”

  “But you could teach me,” Dante said.

/>   “I can teach you what I know about glamouring,” Julian said. “I don’t have the ability to do what you did in the courtroom. No one does.”

  “Can’t we at least try?” I begged. “Cynthia is our only chance to find out where Lucy and the others might be.”

  “We can always try,” Dante said. “But I can’t guarantee anything. And we’d need her permission.”

  “Leave that to me,” I said.

  “I’m here to see Cynthia North,” I told the receptionist at Elyssa’s Beauty Salon and Spa.

  “Do you have an appointment?” she asked.

  “No. I’m sorry.”

  “Well, you’re in luck. Cynthia has an opening in fifteen minutes. Would you like to take it?”

  “An opening for what?”

  “For a facial. She’s one of our estheticians.”

  Jay, who had found out where Cynthia worked, hadn’t been able to tell me what her job was at the spa. A facial didn’t sound half bad. I’d never had one before. Why not pamper myself a little while I talked to her? Plus, I’d have her undivided attention for an hour. “Yeah, that sounds great. Pencil me in.”

  “Perfect.” She handed me a clipboard. “Fill out this paperwork, and then I’ll take you back to the relaxation room.”

  Relaxation room. Any room that could produce relaxation in me at this moment would be a true miracle. I absently answered the questions about my skin type and general health and then handed the questionnaire back to the receptionist.

  “Thank you,” she said with a pasted-on smile. “Let’s get you back to the lounge.” She led me through a narrow hallway to a dark room. Several women in robes sat in cushy chairs. “Since you’re having a facial rather than a massage, you can undress in the treatment room, but if you’d like, I can give you a locker and a robe.”

  “No. I’m fine. But thanks.”

  “Then have a seat. Cynthia will be with you soon.”