by T. A. White
Dawn’s Envoy
An Aileen Travers Novel
T.A. White
Copyright © Tobey White, 2018
All Rights Reserved.
To Cianna
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Discover More
Connect With Me
About the Author
PROLOGUE
Liam’s bright blue eyes danced as he gave me a fierce grin, the sort of happy expression a dragon might make right before it chomped on you. It was all the warning I got before he swept my leg out from under me. I hit the mat with a grunt, surprised and startled at his speed.
When would I learn?
I sat up, frowning, even as I rubbed the offended spot on my backside. It was the exact same butt cheek on which he’d dumped me three times so far.
“What were you saying about old men?” he asked, not showing an ounce of repentance for my pain.
I grumbled as I leveraged myself to my feet again, debating the odds I’d land a worthwhile blow before this session was done. Not good, I was thinking.
In the two months since these training sessions had become a regular occurrence, I’d only landed a legitimate punch—not glancing or blocked—a handful of times. Worse, was the suspicion he was still holding back with me.
“They should know when they’ve become fossils and find a deep dark hole to crawl into,” I fired back.
His grin flashed. “When the children prove they’re good for blowing more than hot air, maybe they will.”
I couldn’t help my amused snort.
Much to my surprise, I was starting to enjoy these weekly sessions with Liam. He was growing on me—like fungus.
He knew it too and took full advantage whenever he could, pushing my boundaries just a little bit more each time, making his interest obvious.
It was an interest I returned, enjoying the flirting and banter these nights inevitably brought.
“Have you given any more thought to my proposal?” he asked as I started stretching out my kinks.
He hadn’t yet indicated the match would resume. Until he did, I was going to give my poor, abused muscles the care they deserved.
“Let me think. Being at your beck and call with a bunch of enforcers—half of whom dislike me—as my bosses. Not sure how I feel about that,” I said, wincing as a particularly tight spot protested the movement.
“Becoming part of a team and getting paid a living wage. Not really sure what the issue is,” Liam shot back.
I frowned at him. He’d gotten good at finding arguments that would have the best chance of influencing me. It demonstrated an understanding of what drove me and was slightly disconcerting, given his inclination towards manipulation.
Much as I hated to admit it, he had several valid points. The money especially, would be welcome.
“I’m still waiting for you to show me the bright side in all this,” I complained.
“Be here Friday night and I will.”
Oh. A field trip—that sounded interesting.
“Will you make it worth my while?” I asked, a playful note entering my voice.
His smirk turned seductive, his eyes half-lidded as he gave me the look a man gives a woman he’s attracted to. “Show up Friday and find out.”
I couldn’t contain my small laugh, choking it back before he took it as a sign of encouragement. Until I knew which direction I wanted to go, I found it best not to give the vampire any bright ideas. He took every opening as an invitation to push harder, displaying a distinct resemblance to a battering ram.
Avoidance and ignoring the charge between us wouldn’t work much longer. I needed to make a choice.
I frowned at him as I remembered all the reasons he and I were not a good idea—starting with the fact his loyalty to the vampires would always outweigh anything he felt toward me.
Then there was his age. He wasn’t just a few decades older than me. He was centuries. Three to four hundred years older, at least. Some of the things he’d let slip made me think he could be even older. Thinking about it was enough to make my teeth hurt.
His gaze flickered as his attention fastened on something behind me. I turned to see Eric standing at the edge of the gym, the normally reserved enforcer appearing even more intense than normal.
That was odd. Liam’s enforcers didn’t typically interrupt during our training periods.
Whatever message he brought must be important.
“We’ll end here for the night,” Liam said.
My eyes lingered on Eric for a beat longer as I tilted my head in question. Yes, whatever this was about, was very important.
Curiosity took hold. I shook my head, mentally rejecting the urge. As tempting as it was to ask questions and pry into matters that most likely didn’t concern me, that was a good way to get drawn deeper into vampire politics. I wasn’t sure if I was ready for that step yet.
“And here I thought vampires were supposed to have stamina for days,” I said as I bent to grab my shoes from the edge of the mat.
Liam stepped closer and trailed a stolen touch across my shoulder. Goosebumps skated down my spine. I stilled.
“I would be glad to show you just how long my stamina can last,” he said, a seductive smile edged with sly humor taking over his face. “On the mats, of course,” he added as an afterthought.
Amusement invaded and I cocked my head, taking pleasure in the game. “Another time—perhaps when dreams become reality.”
Appreciation at the jab passed over his face as he inclined his head.
I sauntered away, saying over my shoulder, “See you Friday.”
*
I bounded up the steps of the clan’s mansion Friday night, anticipation and eagerness giving me urgency. I had a good feeling about tonight.
Drinks with Caroline had cleared my head and given me much needed perspective when it came to what I wanted out of life. I’d been stuck in survival mode for so long that sometimes I forgot the other things in life. Maybe it was time to loosen up and live again.
Liam could be the beginning of that, starting with my taking him up on his proposal of a field trip.
Afterwards, we’d see where the night led. Either way, I was tired of fighting this attraction between us.
I walked into the gym with a smile on my face. “I’ve thought about what you said and I’d like to take you up on it. You were right.”
Nathan straightened from his stretch, looking up in surprise. “What am I right about?”
I ground to a halt and frowned. “What’re you doing here? Where’s Liam?”
“He’ll be gone for a while. He asked me to take over your training in the meantime.”
Everything in me went still. “For how long?”
Nathan shrugged. “Don’t know. The mission is hush-hush. Until then, you’ve got yours truly.”
My nod was slow. Liam had left.
All the anticipation I’d felt moments before drained away, leaving behind ice.
“Something wrong?”
I was quiet.
“Nope.” I gave my head a slight shake.
Nothing. Nothing was wrong. Liam had a job. He didn’t ow
e me any explanations.
“What was Liam right about?” Nathan asked, his eyebrows climbing in question.
I jerked my attention back to Nathan. It took a second for me to form words. “He said my form needed work and my endurance was still lacking.”
Nathan pursed his lips, as he gave me a slightly disbelieving look. He shrugged his broad shoulders a second later. “Don’t you worry, cupcake. I’ll get you into top shape. He won’t ever complain about your endurance again.”
My smile was strained. “Sounds good.”
When he returned to stretching, my smile faded, and I rubbed my forehead. My excitement had turned to ash in my mouth. I should have known better.
I was alone in this. Liam and Nathan felt a duty to help someone who’d gotten a rotten start. That was all. They were free to come and go as they pleased. It’d be best not to forget that or form attachments that wouldn’t last.
CHAPTER ONE
A bag full of donut holes, five giant chocolate bars, and three cases of Diet Coke were going to be the death of me. Not literally—we vampires were a little more difficult to kill than that—but emotionally? Financially? Definitely.
I looked up from the assortment in front of me to the customer radiating impatience.
“The sign said free snacks with purchase,” the woman explained again.
My gaze shifted from her to the sign—the bane of my current existence. I don’t know how it got out of the storage room—again—but I was going to take a pair of very sharp scissors to it as soon as I got rid of this woman.
It did indeed say, ‘free snacks with purchase’, but it wasn’t meant to be used the way the customer intended. The deal only applied to one free item, not eight. My only saving grace was the date tacked on the bottom.
“Ma’am, that deal expired at midnight.” My cheeks hurt from the polite smile I kept pinned on my face. It had been stuck there, becoming increasingly strained, for the last five minutes as we went over the same argument again and again.
The sign’s promise expired two hours ago, which was when I’d moved it to the storage room, thankful to be done with it. It had caused nothing but trouble since I’d come on shift. Whoever wrote the stupid thing made it needlessly vague. All night I’d had to explain its true meaning so customers didn’t succeed in clearing out the store of all valuable merchandise.
I was done with the whole issue. Done. And one annoying woman who didn’t know when to quit wasn’t going to force me to surrender.
“Then why is the sign still out?” she argued. “That’s false advertising.”
I kept my frustrated sigh internal, the polite smile turning even more strained. “I’m so sorry for the confusion, ma’am. We haven’t had time to take it down.”
That was a lie. I’d already taken the stupid thing down. Twice. Each time it somehow found its way back into the front of the store. At this point, I knew there was someone or something messing with me. As soon as I got rid of this customer, I planned to hunt them down and show them exactly why irritated vampires should be left alone.
The woman’s mouth pursed in a frown as she looked around the empty gas station as if to call me on the lie, her expression clearly stating she thought laziness had more to do with my predicament than anything else.
“Whether you had time or not, the fact remains that you have a sign promising me these things for free. I expect you to live up to that promise.” Her expression soured and she lifted one perfectly groomed eyebrow as if daring me to argue.
Unfortunately for her, I could outstubborn even the most persistent of customers. My sire would be only too happy to inform her of the depths to which I could sink.
The woman was a few inches shorter than me. Her youth was far behind her and the years had softened her middle and face. She compensated for that with hair styled into a sleek bob, not a strand out of place, and a perfectly made-up face, complete with foundation and blush, despite the sweats she wore.
She was a study in contradictions, not the least of which was her passion to get twenty dollars’ worth of junk food for free. It baffled me. You would think it was a supersaver deal worth hundreds of dollars, given the amount of grief she’d heaped on my head since walking into the gas station ten minutes ago.
It might have been different if I thought she couldn’t afford it, but I’d seen the car she’d driven up in—a tricked out MDX, not an inexpensive car. There was no way she couldn’t afford twenty dollars, not when she was riding in a car that could have been a down payment on a house.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but I can’t give you the reduced price. The system won’t let me,” I said, my smile stretching my cheeks. I tried to infuse it with some sympathy, a token of empathy—hard to do when I made minimum wage and didn’t have twenty dollars of my own to waste.
It was quickly becoming clear this job was not for me. When I lost my position with Hermes Courier Service, I’d known it would be difficult. I’d known things would be tight. I just hadn’t known how difficult and tight they would be.
Working at a gas station hadn’t been part of my five-year plan. It wasn’t the worst job I’d ever had, but it was definitely not where I thought I’d be at this stage of my life. It had quickly reinforced the knowledge that I wasn’t cut out for customer service. I needed a place where I could be my grumpy, antisocial self, not somewhere I had to smile on command and pretend I didn’t want to whack people on the back of the head sometimes.
Hermes had given me a certain autonomy that I very much missed. Employees were left to do a job unsupervised as long as pickups and deliveries were accomplished. Not quite the case at my current place of employment.
Despite that, I was lucky to have anything. Jobs that let you work only at night were few and far between, and since most of the spook world wouldn’t touch me with a five-foot pole given my status as a clanless vampire who’d been fired by Hermes, it meant my options limited.
I reminded myself that I needed this job. Rent was due in a week, and I was down to the last of my nest egg. If I wanted to keep a roof over my head, I couldn’t afford to alienate customers and risk getting fired.
“I want to talk to your manager,” the woman proclaimed in a ringing voice.
That’s what I was afraid of.
“Unfortunately, I’m the only one here right now,” I said in as polite a voice as I could muster.
This shift was the least busy, and as a result, the owners only staffed the gas station with one person. Me. The manager wouldn’t be here until mid-morning. That meant I was flying solo and all customer complaints went through me.
Lucky me.
The woman’s face turned cruel as a self-satisfied smirk twisted her lips. “How fortunate for me.”
I stiffened, the smile slowly falling from my face. Some instinct had me switching to the othersight of my left eye. I’d gotten better at controlling it, seeing the magic overlaying the world when I wanted, as opposed to when my eye felt like it.
Sure enough, the woman had a haze surrounding her, beautiful lights that twinkled and flared.
She definitely was not what she appeared. This was no housewife on a midnight binge or a mom desperate to get last minute supplies for a child’s party. She belonged to the same shadow world I did. A dangerous place, full of things that often posed as their more harmless counterparts.
I let my hand drop from view below the countertop and inched it toward the gun hidden by a “don’t look here” charm, even as I glanced up at the cameras pointed in our direction. Surely, she wouldn’t be so stupid as to try something in a place where normals could see and record the evidence.
There weren’t many rules in this shadow world, but one of the biggest was “don’t let the humans find out there were more things that went bump in the dark than they’d ever imagined.” It was the quickest way to earn your way onto a kill list.
Before I could do more, her hand flashed up as she threw something at me. My eye saw it as a dark blur that filled me with
a sucking feeling of dread. I flinched instinctively, a shield of white flashing into existence between me and whatever it was. The dark blur struck it and boomeranged back to the woman, hitting her in the chest.
She staggered back with a grunt as the darkness slowly absorbed into her chest. She touched the spot where it had disappeared with an uneasy look on her face.
I don’t know which of us was more surprised over the turn of events. I blinked dumbly at her chest, grateful whatever she’d thrown hadn’t touched me.
Pain tightened the corners of her mouth and eyes as she glared at me over the chaos of the rebound. One of the cases of Diet Coke had exploded while the candy bars had melted into a pile of goo, escaping their wrappers to pool on the counter. The change dispenser was now on its side and the newspapers kept in a rack by the door were strewn everywhere.
“You need to go.” My voice was strong and rang with an authority I didn’t necessarily feel. “Now.”
She straightened, her back ramrod straight as she shot me a glare worthy of a grand lady from a period drama, one filled with haughty scorn and dislike.
She snatched her purse off the counter in an abrupt movement, tucking it under her arm. I watched her gather her stuff, my hand still on the gun, which was now aimed at her under the counter.
“Leave it,” I ordered when she tried to grab the donuts and the remaining intact cases of Diet Coke. My smile turned nasty. “Unless you’re planning to pay full price.”
Her expression grew livid. “You’ll get what’s coming to you, parasite.”
She lifted her gaze to the same cameras I’d glanced at earlier. Her smile turned sinister. She didn’t wait for my reply before turning and flouncing out of the gas station.
I released the breath I’d been holding and set the gun back into place. Things could have been worse. They could have been better too, but at least I was still alive.
I cast a resigned glance over the mess. I had quite a bit to clean up before dawn.
Not for the first time, I said a prayer of thanks for the charm Dahlia had given me to protect me against such unsavory encounters. I lifted the necklace with its thumb-length pendant from under my shirt.
