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  As the door closed, a ripple of incredulous laughter escaped Kacie. “Wow.”

  A little too simple of an exclamation for all this, but Faith supposed there weren’t any other words descriptive enough. “Do you believe everything Dr. Parthen said? I mean…” Vampires, demons, and Dragons.

  “I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t seen it, but…” Kacie waved airily. We both saw some very unnatural stuff: that one man stopped a moving vehicle with his bare hands, and the other extremely large…creature just yanked the car door off. We saw that woman bleed white acid and her broken jaw heal in minutes. And we saw that hunky blond guy suck on the woman’s neck using a definite pair of fangs. “They didn’t know we were watching them in the garage,” Kacie added. “So I think we can trust they were being their true selves.”

  “Yes,” Faith uttered the single syllable on an exhaled breath. Was she actually agreeing or just uttering? Her brain was numb from the effort of trying to digest everything she’d heard about this outlandish community while simultaneously processing the news that she’d flown to San Diego for nothing. Certainly not to rejuvenate her career.

  Kacie pushed up from the sofa. “Dr. Parthen also came across to me like a perfectly reasonable and rational human being.” She moved over to the tea cart, standing across from Faith. “So what do you want to do?”

  “What do you want to do?”

  Kacie caught her lower lip between her teeth. “Find out more about this place, for sure. I’m curious to see what it’d be like to live here.”

  Faith gaped. “You’re seriously considering staying?”

  “I know it sounds crazy, but…” Kacie shrugged. “They really need us here. You heard that sad story Dr. Parthen told.”

  Sad? Mostly, bizarre. The Vârcolac were apparently a dying breed, the result of a hundred-year-old betrayal leading to the deaths of a majority of them. With so few left, the Vârcolac family tree had become somewhat of a straight line over the years. No surprise it hadn’t worked out. Vârcolac had ceased producing live offspring nearly thirty years ago, landing them on the endangered species list. Their future had looked extraordinarily bleak for a while…until it was discovered that Vârcolac could procreate successfully with Dragon humans, women like Faith and Kacie, along with others like them. There were twelve currently living in this community, four singles, the rest already married.

  “From the sound of it,” Kacie went on, “they treat their women like queens around here. I think it would be nice to be special.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Faith set her hands on her hips. “We’ve always been treated as special. Too much so.”

  “We’ve been treated as a circus act,” Kacie countered. “Not for what we can do. Well, you maybe, but not me.”

  “They want us to have babies.” The pitch of Faith’s voice was rising. “That’s what they want us to do.”

  “So?” Kacie threw out a hand. “You’ve always wanted to have a family, Faith, but you’ve kept it on hold because of ballet. Now that your career is over, maybe we both can finally—”

  “My career isn’t over!” Faith shouted.

  Kacie lowered her head with a long sigh and pinched the bridge of her nose.

  Faith mashed her eyes closed, so tight she felt her lashes fluttering against her cheekbones. “I’m sorry,” she pushed out of her mouth. “I didn’t mean to yell at you.”

  “And I don’t mean to hurt or upset you. But….” Kacie hesitated, the but hovering over them along with a heavy cloud of tension. “Your knee isn’t ever going to go back to normal,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry, but it’s just not. It’s been a year now, and… I really think you need to accept that so we can get on with our lives.”

  Defeat closed in on Faith, like every door in the world had suddenly and simultaneously slammed shut.

  Kacie’s brow pleated. “Here in this town we could also have some close friends for once. Our whole lives we’ve sat on the fringes, always assuming we didn’t fit in because of the quirk of being identical or because we were raised by Aunt Idyll after Mom and Dad died.”

  Faith glanced down. She’d always thought the same thing, especially about Idyll. The kooky aunt who’d taken them in when they were orphaned had never lacked in love to give to her two nieces. But the hippie-guru-shaman priestess-Tarot Card reader-sprightly woman hadn’t exactly excelled at providing a normal, stable living environment. Faith had always needed to be the responsible one. Little wonder she’d been drawn to the structure and discipline of ballet. On the dance floor, where she was told exactly what to do, she felt free.

  “But now we know we’ve been outcasts because of this Dragon-thingy we carry.” Kacie’s gaze was earnest. “There’s nothing wrong with us, Faith, and I want to feel that, experience it, believe it every day.”

  “And you think you can accomplish that here?” Faith pointed a rigid finger at the sliding glass door which led out to a small wrought iron balcony. “Have you seen that town?”

  Kacie’s lips pressed together. “Would you not be so closed-minded? Just because there’s no dance company here doesn’t mean you have to automatically turn up your nose at it. You’re going to miss out on a great opportunity to—”

  “What opportunity, Kacie?! We’re in a cave!”

  “Tell me, then,” Kacie snapped back. “What you think we’d do if we returned topside? More not dancing, same as the last year? Not only that, but we’ll have to spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders, trying not to get kidnapped again. You heard what Dr. Parthen said: now that we’ve been identified as Royal Dragons by this Raymond, he’ll never stop hunting us.”

  “M-maybe,” Faith stammered. “Maybe not. We could at least—”

  “No, Faith,” Kacie flared. “It’s my turn, okay? I’ve followed you everywhere besides Joffrey: into a ballet career, apartments, our lifestyle. I haven’t regretted it, because…well, there wasn’t anything else I wanted to do. But now I might want to stay in Ţărână. And if I do, you need to support me in that.”

  Faith’s hands trembled as darkness swallowed her up. What could she possibly say? She loved her twin more than words could describe; she couldn’t live without her. Yet…she didn’t see any way she could survive in this Podunk town, either.

  “No response?” Kacie marched over to her suitcase and grabbed the upright handle. “Fine.” She rolled it toward the door. “I’ll be in Lucerne if you care to offer comment.”

  As her twin disappeared through the door, Faith stared down at her teacup, little pink roses on white porcelain. So delicate. So breakable. Her legs shook, threatening to bend her into a plié deep enough to dump her onto the floor. Her right knee attacked her with pins and needles. The teacup blurred, and she swayed. There were two things she required to live: her twin sister and ballet. And now for the first time in her life, it looked like she might not be able to have both.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Thomal squeezed the high bar stool between tight thighs, hunching over his drink like a prisoner protecting his stash. Muscles all over his body were gnarled into aggressive knots. He’d fed a little over an hour ago, but instead of making him go all Tao-chill like it should’ve, his mood was downright abominable.

  He was back to bonding withdrawal. Oh, joy.

  Every artery, vein, blood vessel, and capillary inside him was a wild beast snarling at him for more of Pändra’s blood. Besides the stuff tasting like orgasm-in-a-can and being laced with Fey Super Powers, he’d sort of been inches from dead an hour ago, and one dosage of red yummy wasn’t nearly enough to get him completely back on his feet. He wanted—needed—more. Then there was the insistent roar of his dick. Vârcolac males weren’t wired to feed on a new mate and then not get down to the business of bumping fuzzies. The boner he’d sprung in the garage hadn’t ever entirely settled down, leaving his body filled with several quarts of adrenaline with nothing better to do than make him want to kill every organism on earth. Big wonder no one else was sitting at the
bar.

  Picking up his shot glass, he clonked it on the bar. “Another, Luvera.”

  Luvera Parthen cut him a look from beneath her black lashes while she finished drawing a beer at the tap. Luvera was a long-time waitress at Garwald’s Pub, now part owner, seeing as Garwald had recently entered his elder phase.

  Since marrying Ãlex Parthen, Luvera had changed a lot. First off, she’d given up wearing baggy, shapeless clothes, astounding everyone with just how pretty she was, and now she radiated all kinds of newfound confidence. Overall, she was doing a better job of de-nerdifying herself than Ãlex. That dude was holding onto his pocket protector like it was a childhood blankie. In her time slinging drinks, Luvera had probably seen men and women in every state of crappy disposition, yet the look she tossed Thomal leaned really heavy toward worried.

  “Um…hold on a sec,” Luvera told him, heading off to deliver the beer. Or maybe she was stalling for time while she figured out how to handle him.

  The hell if he needed handling. Hiking himself high on his stool, he leaned over the width of the bar and snagged the bottle of Jack Daniel’s from among the other—

  A strong hand on his shoulder re-parked his ass on his seat. None too gently. The bottle of Jack was pointedly removed from his grip.

  He pivoted on the stool, his upper lip wrinkling toward a preemptive sneer. Wunderbar. Jaċken and Tonĩ. The Bobbsey Twins of Buzz Kills. He narrowed in on Jaċken. “You in the mood to get skull-fucked?”

  Tonĩ heaved a sigh.

  Yeah, not exactly a career-promoting thing for a guy to say to his boss. But Thomal didn’t see any point in being subtle in his current frame of mind.

  “Sure, sounds like something right up my alley,” Jaċken returned in a tone blasé enough to bring Thomal to his feet.

  Jaċken gripped Thomal’s shoulder again and shoved him back down. “Soon as you’re not weak as a guppy, Costache, you go ahead and hand me my balls. Meantime, go to your mate.”

  “My mate?” The word dropped a Harry Potter Jelly Slug Vomit jellybean onto his tongue. “You mean that bitch with a capital C?” He glared at Jaċken. “May I please have my Jack Daniel’s back?” He left off the you fucking asshole, but still showed Jaċken a set of half-jacked canines. “We can toast my miraculous return from the grave.”

  “You’ve re-awakened your bonding withdrawal,” Tonĩ told him.

  “No shit, Sherlock.”

  Jaċken bit out a snarl. Probably not feeling the love for Thomal’s tone.

  Why was Tonĩ here, anyway? Probably because a female should be a calming influence on a newly bonded male—which he still sort of was, seeing as his cells had never completely settled—but this particular female happened to be half-sister to the slut-bag. And the only thing that would truly settle him was the slut-bag herself, which was a thought that made him want to tear his brain out of his head and bean Jaċken with it.

  Tonĩ held up a hand. “Exactly, Thomal. You’ve been through this before, and you know how miserable you’re going to be if you don’t go and scent Pändra.”

  “And,” Jaċken grated, “you’re putting other people in danger.”

  Thomal scanned the bar. True, but he couldn’t help that, except maybe to remove himself from the public arena, which was probably Jaċken’s exact point. A Vârcolac male newly out of The Change went into automatic protection mode, treating every male like a rival and a threat to his woman, no matter who the guy was. Even if his brother, Arc, got within spitting distance of Pändra, Thomal would want to kill him. Thomal laughed hollowly. Arc close to Pändra? Right. And tomorrow morning angels would fly out of his butthole, too. “I don’t want anything to do with that black-eyed human trampoline.” Over the bar, Thomal eyed the bottle of Maker’s Mark snuggled with its other amber buddies.

  “Very well,” Tonĩ said. “You should know, however, that I’ve had Pändra moved from her jail cell. She’s now in Budapest up on the third floor of—”

  Thomal let out a mighty roar as he catapulted off his barstool; no thought, no consideration, only the animal instinct of my mate is no longer contained but accessible to other males taking over his frontal lobe and sending him lunging off his seat.

  He was immediately slammed back on it, his ass hitting the top of the stool and then his boots reaching for the ceiling as he flipped over backward. He landed on his stomach, peanut shells and sawdust billowing around him. He hissed air through set teeth and long fangs. High idiot points awarded to the reptilian part of his brain for making him move in a hostile manner near the pregnant mate of a Vârcolac male.

  It’d gotten him punched in the chest by Jaċken.

  Thomal pushed to his feet, a vague part of his mind aware of the entire bar holding its breath, waiting to see what would happen next.

  After all the growling and hitting that’d just gone down, the bar’s gawking rubber-neckers probably hadn’t expected Thomal to run. But that’s what he did. His brain wouldn’t allow him to do anything else but race out of the bar, traveling at invisible speeds for the woman he hated down to the deepest part of his soul, the woman whose very existence carved a huge slice of shiny siding off the persona he’d tried to create of himself as a badass warrior. Now everyone probably thought he didn’t have what it took to kill a woman. Damn him, he should’ve ignored that something about Pändra and ripped her throat out.

  Crashing into the mansion, Thomal took the stairs three at a time to the third floor, careening past Seville, Stockholm, Lucerne…till he saw the door with the red, white and green-striped Hungarian flag painted on it. Did someone think it’d be so ha-ha-ironic to give Pändra the room Thomal had lived in before all males had been moved downstairs to the second floor, all females on the third? Buncha douches.

  He burst into Budapest without knocking and skidded to a halt.

  Pändra was flipping through some paperbacks at an exotic-looking desk, the wooden legs carved into twining vines of flowers.

  Not much had changed since he’d lived here. The whole place still mimicked the inside of a hookah bar: dark, earthy colors and gauzy lampshades, large beaded pillows and a beanbag chair mounded in the corner like a lopsided pile of soft serve ice cream. Being in here had always made him feel weirdly out of place, like he should’ve been shuffling around in a pair of dirty slippers with his head haloed in ganja smoke. He much preferred his new home in Oslo downstairs.

  Pändra startled to her feet.

  He did his own startling on the inside, his stomach see-sawing at the sight of her.

  She appeared like she smelled now, so…fresh. Her black eyes were no longer flat and dead, and her facial structure had lost some of its toughness. Was it because she was sans immortality ring now? Or because she was their prisoner and cowed a bit? Or was it all an illusion created by what she was wearing: light gray stretch pants and a tank top in lavender, both of which showed off her nubile hotness to the nth degree and seemed way too plain and nice for her usual sleaziness. A wayward tendril of blonde hair had escaped her braid to curl demurely against her throat, and her bare feet displayed cute little toes squishing into the carpet that simultaneously made him want to crack them off at the stem and paint a cool, retro design on each nail—something that would totally fit her. And how the fuck would he know that?

  He hardened his jaw. He was sick and damned tired of feeling batshit crazy around this woman. “Go over to the bed,” he ordered her.

  No reaction.

  Not a single thing registered on the little ol’ wifey’s face, not surprise or a go blow yourself, not the hint of scorn or even a desire to smoke-check his balls. Nothing.

  Thomal smiled sharply. Nicely done. But he was too good at reading adversaries not to sense the heightened tension in Pändra, despite her robotic outerwear. He prowled forward, circling her, tasting her scent in the back of his throat. “When I come in here to feed,” he said in low, distinct syllables, “you are to stand over by the bed, your back against the bedpost, hands at you side. Do. You. Understa
nd?” He stopped in front of her, trying to make himself look threatening, but found himself distracted by the front of her tank top. Was she wearing a bra? The way her nipples pushed out from the cotton like bubblegum balls, he’d say not.

  She shrugged. “Very well.” She took up position at the bed as he’d described, her hands wrapped around the post behind her. The posture thrust out her breasts, her tank top pulling taut across the two succulent, generous mounds, the sweet peaks, both nipple and aureole now, outlined against the fabric.

  His cock stirred. Ignore it, Costache. He strode up close to her. A misting of perspiration glistened in her cleavage, and he found ruthless satisfaction with that. This close, her scent wafted into the core of his brain like an opiate, settling the thumpity-bumpity his insides had been going through for, hell, days now. His upper lip quivered toward a sneer. He hated that she made him feel okay.

  He leaned into her, stacking his hands one on top of the other on the bedpost just above her head, his chest crushing her breasts. He licked his lips, his blood thrumming a wild beat. His strike was purposely aggressive, his fangs plunging deep, the suction of his mouth rough. Blood poured onto his tongue, too fast, too much, drowning his cells. His knees shook from the rush of sensation. He couldn’t get over how good this woman tasted. Salty-sweet. Rejuvenating. Right. His.

  Pändra squirmed a little. Not from discomfort, despite his lack of gentlemanly treatment, but because Fiinţă was working its magic. She released a low moan and pressed closer, her beaded nipples caressing his chest through both of their shirts. His cock swelled up stiff against his Levi’s, the answering force of his own desire nearly making him go bug-eyed with the effort it took to hold it back. He needed to get his fangs out of her. But the newly awakened part of him only wanted to fill himself up with her, so full he’d never feel wrong again. How hosed was that? This woman was actually poison.