Blood Bond (Anna Strong Chronicles #9) (2 page)

PROLOGUE

WHAT CAME BEFORE

S
UDDENLY, MAX IS STANDING AT THE FOOT OF MY BED
.

I sit up, rubbing my eyes. Did I fall asleep?

He smiles. “Hey.”

He’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt. He looks good. “Hey, yourself. When did they let you out of the hospital?”

“An hour ago. I was afraid you weren’t going to wake up in time.”

My head is fuzzy with sleep. I give it a shake and focus on Max. “You really look good. I just left Texas a few hours ago. You made a miraculous recovery.”

“In a way.” He takes a seat on the end of my bed. “I have something to tell you. And I don’t think I have much time.”

I smile. “Why not?”

“Oh, you know, places to go, people to see.”

“You realize Pablo is in custody.”

“Yes. But that’s not why I’m here.”

I prop myself up straighter against the headboard and try to concentrate. My brain isn’t cooperating. It seems to be trying to cut into my thoughts, to tell me something. I tell it to shut up, that I only want to listen to Max. I lean toward him. “Go on.”

He sighs. “First, I owe you an apology. I didn’t treat you very well when I found out you are a vampire. I was afraid of what it meant—to me. Stupid because it meant nothing. Not really. Above all, you are a good woman, Anna, and my biggest regret is that I realized it too late.”

I shrug. “You can make it up to me.”

He shakes his head. “No. Believe me, it’s too late. But there is someone else. Learn from me. You have a real chance at happiness now. Take it.”

My turn to shake my head. “If you mean Stephen—”

“No. Not Stephen. There is another. You know who it is.” He stops, tilts his head as if listening. He nods. “I only have a few more minutes. Don’t regret what happened in that hangar. I know you’ve been wondering whether you will always be stronger than vampire. You only need to want it. All the strength you need is within yourself. You are right about Culebra. He has found new meaning for his life with Adelita. He has found a way to make up for past mistakes. He has finally found peace. Make sure he understands he is not to blame for what happened to me. He needs to concentrate now on the future. Let the past die.”

I tilt my head. “But how did you know what I was thinking at the hospital? You were unconscious the entire time.”

“All the same, I heard your thoughts. Loud and clear. In fact, it was those thoughts that kept pulling me back when I was ready to let go.” He laughs. “Your will is too strong. I was relieved when they sent you home.”

“I don’t understand,” I say while my gut is saying, of course you do. You know.

“It was my time, Anna.”

Anger wells up, and with it, fear. Fear of losing a friend. Fear of losing Max. “No. I don’t want you to go.”

“It’s too late. It’s a tribute to your power that I was allowed to hang around this long. To say a proper good-bye. I’ll miss you, Anna.”

“No.” I lunge forward on the bed, reaching for his hand.

It slips through mine as though made of fog.

He smiles a slow, sweet smile and raises his hand in farewell.

And then before I can reach out again, he is gone.

* * *

FUNNY HOW SOME DREAMS ARE FLEETING AS SPRING
snow while others stay with you long past waking. It’s been that way with the “dream” I had the night Max died. Only it wasn’t a dream, was it?

It’s all I think about on my way to Monument Valley. Max’s message to me is like a beacon drawing me to Daniel Frey. And when I get there . . .

CHAPTER 1

JANUARY

I
WISH I HAD A CAMERA. THE EXPRESSION ON DANIEL
Frey’s handsome face when he opens the door and sees me standing on his porch in the middle of the day in the middle of Monument Valley is priceless. It’s a combination of surprise, delight, unease, trepidation and just plain confusion. It hikes his eyebrows, furrows his brow and turns a half frown, half grin into something that resembles a gargoyle’s grimace.

“Anna. What are you doing—?”

“Is John-John here?”

“No. He’s still at school.” A glance at his watch. “He won’t be home for another three hours.”

I push him into the living room, slam and lock the door and shove him down on the couch.

He grins up at me. “I take it you have a reason for surprising me like this?”

“Can you guess what it is?” My hands are busy unbuckling his belt, pulling at the top button of his jeans.

“You missed me?” It comes out in a hoarse whisper, his fingers tugging my blouse free, slipping it off my shoulders.

In another moment, he’s got my jeans unzipped and we’re both squirming—frantic to have nothing between us except heat and skin.

And then he’s inside me and neither of us speaks again for a long time.

* * *

FREY IS STROKING MY HAIR. I HAVE MY HEAD ON HIS
chest, listening to the strong, steady beat of his heart.

I nestle closer. “This is right, isn’t it?”

His hand stills. He tilts my chin up so that our eyes meet. “For me, it’s been right for a long time. Maybe since the first day I saw you walk into that school auditorium with your mother. I’m just sorry it took so long for me to get the courage to tell you how I felt.” He pauses. “And when I finally did, you didn’t believe me.”

I think back to that conversation—could it really have been only a few weeks ago? I shake my head and smile sadly. “John-John had just lost his mother. Staying with him, being a real father for the first time, starting a new life. That’s a lot of emotional upheaval in a very short time. I believed you missed me. I believed you wanted me. But I didn’t believe you were ready to love me.”

“And,” he reminds me, “there was Stephen.”

I nod. “Yes. There was Stephen.” A human I thought I could build a future with because he knew and accepted my true nature. But he was human, after all, and love was no competition for the lure of a public career that I could never, as vampire, be a part of.

I poke his chest with a finger. “And you were right. A match between a human and a vampire is doomed from the start.”

“Oh. So, I’m the consolation prize.”

I reach up and kiss him, urgently, passionately. When I pull back, we’re both breathless. “Does that feel like a consolation prize?”

He puts his arms around me and pulls me closer. “So, tell me, Anna, what really brought you here today?”

I slide my hand down his abdomen. “You mean besides this?”

He laughs. “Besides that.”

“Max.”

“Max?” He pulls back so he can see my face. “What does Max have to do with us?”

“He told me you were the one.”

His voice softens. “Before he died?”

“No. After.”

Frey doesn’t laugh or express incredulity. In fact, his expression grows thoughtful. He and I have been through so much together—faced witches and skinwalkers and rogue creatures of every denomination. The idea that I may have been visited by a man who was once a lover, who was killed in front of me while saving the life of a young girl, who proved to be as strong and bravehearted as any human I ever knew, all this he accepts with a nod and a tightening of his arms around my shoulders.

“Then I owe Max a debt of gratitude,” he says.

“We both do.”

CHAPTER 2

MARCH

I
PULL THE JAG INTO THE PARKING LOT AND
reluctantly shut off the engine. my business partners, david and tracey, are already in the office. I know because I’m parked right next to David. He and Tracey have taken to driving together and I can tell where they spent the night by whose car is in the lot. This morning, it’s David’s big, yellow Humvee.

I should have been inside by now, too, knee-deep in tax reports. The not-so-fun side of a successful bounty-hunting business. To make it worse, the sun is bouncing off the bay with the intensity only a cloudless San Diego spring day can generate. I want to be outside basking in it—not trapped inside, working.

But duty calls.

Halfheartedly, I drag myself up the path to the door.

Tracey looks up and smiles a greeting, but David frowns.

“You were supposed to be here an hour ago. We have to get this stuff to the tax attorney by noon.”

I slump in my chair. “Yeah, yeah. What do you want me to do?”

He hands me a fistful of receipts. “Sort these by date.”

I take the pile and spread the receipts on the desk. Mechanically, I sort.

Boring.

“We’ve had a good year,” Tracey remarks, her eyes zeroing in on the bottom line of an income statement.

“Too good,” David grumbles. “And if we don’t get this tax stuff to the attorney
by noon
, what hard work giveth, the tax man will taketh away.”

“I hear you, David. Look. I’m sorting, I’m sorting.”

David drops his eyes back to the pile of paper on his side of our partners’ desk. Tracey has pulled a chair up so that they are seated side by side and it strikes me what a good-looking couple they are. David, ex–football player, six feet six inches tall, still the same weight and shape he was when he played for the Raiders. Tracey, ex-cop, bundle of energy, her auburn hair pulled back in a ponytail. I can’t remember why I was skeptical of her when David first brought her on board. I had no reason to be. We even have the same fashion sense—each of us perennially dressed in jeans and T-shirts. That in itself should have been enough to bond us.

David looks up, catches me watching him. But instead of making some comment about how I’m not working, his expression shifts from irritation to sly mischief.

Uh-oh. What now? I brace myself.

“So, Anna,” he says. “You went out of town last weekend.”

“Did you do anything special?” Tracey pipes in, batting her lashes.

What the— I shift my gaze from Tracey to David, narrow my eyes. “Why don’t you tell me? And since when have my weekends been a topic of conversation?”

David leans back in his chair and laces his fingers behind his head. “Since you started spending a lot of time with that friend of yours in Monument Valley. Is there something you want to share with us?”

“Like what?”

“Like is it getting serious between you two?”

I frown, sifting several variations of “none of your fucking business” through my head until I come to the realization with a start. It is their fucking business. They are my partners and my friends. I turn that old frown upside down. “Yes.”

David almost slips backward off his chair. Scrambling to regain his balance, he grunts, “Wow. That’s a first. He’s not just a fuck buddy? You actually admit you have a serious relationship?”

Tracey leans forward, all big eyes and girlish enthusiasm. “Ooooh. Tell me about him. When will I meet him? What’s he like?”

I have to mull that over in my mind. There are more things I
can’t
say about him to my human business partners than I can—like the fact that he’s a shape-shifter, that his other form is panther, that his son is already manifesting his powers as a shape-shifter years ahead of the curve, that he’s saved my vampire ass more than once over the past year and a half I’ve known him.

I draw in a breath and meet Tracey’s gaze. “He’s generous, handsome, strong. Has tremendous endurance.” A wink to her here. “Has a five-year-old son that I’m crazy about. And he loves me almost as much as I love him.”

I hear a gasp from David. “Holy fucking shit. You sound like a girl.”

“She is a girl, stupid,” Tracey snaps. “Jesus.” She turns to me. “He sounds wonderful. And I’m getting so jealous. When do I get to meet Mr. Wonderful?”

“In two weeks. His son has a school break the middle of March and they’re spending it here.”

“What’s his name?”

“Daniel Frey.”

“Frey lives in Monument Valley now? And he has a son?” David asks, startled. “Since when?”

I forgot that David met Frey several months ago. They spent some time together at a local bar while I slipped out to attend to some vampire business. “He moved a while ago. I didn’t find out about his son myself until just recently.”

A white lie. Frey told me about his son the same time he distracted David so I could sneak away. I did just meet John-John, though, right after Christmas.

“Wow, that’s so romantic,” Tracey says.

David sticks a finger in his open mouth and makes a gagging sound. “Jesus. Is this what I’m going to have to listen to in the office now? You two hard-asses cooing like characters in a romance novel?”

I get out of my chair and cross to his side of the desk, leaning down so we’re eye level. “I have just three words for you,” I growl. “Gloria. Fucking. Estrella.”

“Who’s that?” Tracey asks.

Color floods up David’s neck.

I grin. “Ask him to tell you about her sometime,” I reply. “Now
that’s
a story out of a romance novel.”

David grows suddenly quiet, busying himself with a stack of papers he’s probably been through a dozen times.

“Who’s Gloria Estrella?” Tracey repeats. Then she stops. “Wait a minute.
The
Gloria Estrella?”

You can see the gleam of recognition spark in her eyes. “You told me you had dated a Gloria, but Gloria Estrella? She was your ex?”

“That was before you moved to San Diego and joined SDPD,” David blurts. “It’s been over for a long time!”

“You mean you missed the glamorous couple on the cover of
People
every other week?” I can’t believe I’m spouting off like this, but once started, the sarcasm pours forth. “The actress and the football player. They were news, baby!”

David shoots me a look that’s pure poison. “That’s enough, Anna. Unless you want me to enumerate your less-than-stellar relationships.”

But his tone is more hurt than angry and I’m suddenly flooded with guilt. It was unfair to bring Gloria into the conversation. Gloria Estrella was the big, stupid, “you are the love of my life” mistake every one of us makes at least once. David loved her to the depths of his soul, refusing to see what lay beneath the gleaming façade.

Yes, she was beautiful, a successful model and actress, but she was also vain, self-centered and utterly without conscience. David is handsome, trusting, an ex–football player of some local renown. Perfect for Gloria to use as a camera-friendly public consort and since I was his partner and friend, perfect to use me to save her ass with the police when she screwed up. Which she did on more than one occasion. Big-time. But it came to an end when I saw what she was doing to David. I made a bargain with her. I’d help get her out of yet another scrape (a very big one) if she promised to let David go. I did and remarkably, she’s kept her word.

It took David a long time to get over her.

And now, I’ve raised the specter again. Just when he and Tracey were beginning a relationship of their own. Tracey is an ex-cop, almost as tough as I am, and just as street-smart. She and David do make a good couple, and she’s more than a match for any of David’s exes, except maybe Gloria.

Tracey is about to start asking questions again, I can see it in the confused way she looks from David to me.

I made this mess; I’d better clean it up.

I wave a hand and laugh. “Foget it, Tracey. Gloria is old news—a joke between David and me. It was over a long time ago.”

I see David’s shoulders relax ever so slightly.

But so does Tracey. Her eyes tighten at the corners. “Are you sure?”

And then, as if stage directed to enter at precisely the right moment, someone opens the door to our office.

The three of us swivel toward it. I might be imagining it, but a wave of relief at the interruption is so palpable, our visitor seems to feel it, too. He pauses, hand on the door, his expression curious but detached.

“Am I interrupting?” Detective Harris says.

Shit. “When aren’t you interrupting?” I groan under my breath.

He comes in and closes the door behind him. He is smiling, but he’s a cop. A middle-aged, built-like-a-boxer, craggy-faced bulldog of a cop. His smiles can’t be trusted. He was involved in the Gloria Estrella fiasco, which brings David’s shoulders up again. But we both know he isn’t here about that long-closed case.

Harris strides over to the visitor’s chair and pulls it up to the desk. He turns it around and straddles it backward, grinning. “Hope you all had a good holiday.”

Small talk? And now he’s grinning. Christ. This can’t be good. When no one follows up with the usual banalities about how good their holidays were, I pipe in. “What can we do for you?”

Harris ignores my question and directs one to Tracey. “How’s the bounty-hunting business treating you, Officer Banker?”

“Ex-officer,” Tracey spits back with the malevolence of a striking rattlesnake, her ferocity startling us all.

Jaw clenched, she adds, “As you well know since it was at your recommendation that I was
granted
disability retirement.”

I snap to attention at this unexpected bit of information—and at the heat in Tracey’s response. I’d assumed Tracey had agreed to retirement after an off-duty scuffle with an armed bank robber resulted in a hero’s commendation and a back injury. Should have known after seeing Tracey in action with us that it hadn’t been her choice to retire from the force.

She’s on her feet now, gathering the tax papers we’d assembled and the sheaf of receipts I was working on and stuffing them into a large envelope with jabs that would do a boxer proud. “I’ll take these downtown,” she says, jaw tight. “Finish it there. See you later.”

And she’s gone . . . fairly flying out the door. David and I look at each other and then at Harris.

“Well. I don’t think she likes you very much,” David says.

Harris shifts in his chair. The fact that he didn’t jump to defend his actions with Tracey makes me think he might realize he acted precipitously in forcing her to retire. “I’m sorry she’s still so angry,” he says.

David shakes his head. “It’s not Anna and me you should be apologizing to. It’s Tracey.” He pushes back his chair and gets to his feet. “I’m going with her.” He’s looking at Harris, daring the detective to try to stop him.

Harris lifts his shoulders. “Tell her I didn’t mean to upset her,” he says quietly.

David mumbles something that sounds a lot like “right, you fucking jerk” and brushes past Harris.

Then it’s just the two of us alone in the office.

Yippee.

“I see your social skills haven’t improved.”

Then, since I think I’m going to need fortification, I get up and head for the coffeemaker in the corner. “Want coffee?”

If Harris hears the reluctance in my offer, he ignores it. He joins me at the credenza and takes a mug off the counter. He pours creamer and what looks like a quarter cup of sugar into it before swirling the mug until I think the contents are going to spill over the sides and onto the floor. They don’t.

I watch the performance with raised eyebrows. “Ever heard of a spoon?” I ask dryly.

He’s already tipped the mug to his lips, but he allows a smile. “Haven’t spilled a drop yet.”

We take our coffee back to the desk. This time he plops himself down in David’s chair. We drink for a couple of minutes until I can stand the staring contest no longer.

“Christ, Harris, are you ever going to tell me why you’re here?”

He tilts his head back, draining his mug. “You can’t guess?”

Sure, I can guess. He’s been badgering me ever since the former chief of police, Warren Williams, was found murdered, burned to ashes, outside of Palm Springs several months ago. Of course, he doesn’t know that Williams was a vampire. But the details of his death and the unconventional forensic evidence found at the scene, two-hundred-year-old DNA to be precise, and the fact that Williams and I were known to have had a contentious relationship have elevated me to the top position in his list of “persons of interest.” No matter that there is not a shred of evidence to link me to the crime.

But I want him to bring it up so I stay quiet.

Finally, he does.

“It’s about Judith Williams.”

Not what I was expecting, though as bad luck would have it, I have knowledge of
that
Williams’ death, too. Warren Williams’ wife, also a vampire, met her own grisly end at the point of an arrow.

I feign innocence. “Chief Williams’ wife? Didn’t I read that she’d gone missing several months back?”