Creature of Habit (Book 3)

For the majority of the world, connection came easy. Bonds were forged between lovers at the first wave of chemistry. The act of physical intimacy became the ultimate connection between two humans.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t human.

Despite that, Amelia and I had joined together and formed an even greater bond—regardless of risk and moralities. We’d made love and survived.  The result was the most basic of connections. We had mated. Not that there had ever been a question from my end, but now that she had accepted me, with all my flaws, there was no turning back. Nothing else. She was my everything.

I propped my elbow on the bed, and rested my cheek in my palm so I could see her better. Amelia stretched out in sleep, one elbow bent as her hand buried under her head. She slept heavily, her even inhalations signaling the deepness of her slumber. Her hair, a tangled mess, fanned across the pillow like a chaotic halo. I ran my fingers gently down her side, marveling at the contrasting softness of her porcelain-white skin. I allowed my eyes to travel back up her body and found a wayward strand of hair plastered to her arm and picked it up. In less time than it would take to blink, I counted the pieces of hair in my hand.

Eighty-four.

Obsessive, true, but that was part of who Grant Palmer was and always had been.  I needed to know every detail of this woman who claimed my heart.  With my eyes shut, I challenged myself to place each freckle or mole or scar. I paused and listened.

Sixty-eight.

The average beat of her resting heart, per minute.

Forty-six.

The number of eyelashes on her left eye.

Fifty-two, the number on her right.

I could tell Amelia every single, minute detail about her body, but I wasn't convinced I could protect her from Caleb.

She shifted in the bed, her toes blindly seeking my legs, and relaxing when she made contact. Her hand lay open between us and I pushed my nose to it, breathing in the taste of her skin. I thought about those hands, rushing over my body, slick with her sweat. Her sharp, polished nails scratching down my skin, wanting me to feel her. Amelia never had to fear my battle-ready skin was unfeeling. It was the opposite; my skin was hyper-sensitive to her touch. Every caress, every accidental touch shot straight through my body like a bolt of lightning.

I waited quietly by her side for her to wake. Once she did, a new layer of our life would begin.

We would find Olivia.

We would destroy Caleb.

Before all of that, I had to figure out how to keep my mate safe in the building storm.

Part 1

Chapter 1

Grant

Ryan sat at my desk, hovering over my computer, jabbing his enormous fingers at the keyboard, trying to make the machine do something he didn't know how to make it do. He and I had spent hours trying to research and make preparations while we waited for nightfall.

"Stop. You're going to break it," I told him. I had a stack of newspapers and police reports prepared to spread out. I was looking for something to go on to find Caleb and Olivia. Anything.

"Elijah knows how to do all of this," he muttered, stabbing his thick forefinger at the return key, as if that would make it work. It was the equivalent of hitting the side of a television.

"He does. But he can't be here now, and you know it," I retorted, feeling immense guilt. Ryan's face was grim. In the last twenty-four hours, Olivia had been kidnapped and we’d been forced to destroy an entire campground of fledglings.
Children
. Elijah had snapped in despair and Sebastian… well, he was gone. 

Ryan and I hadn’t spoken of Sebastian yet. The fact he’d left the coven didn’t sit well with any of us, especially now that things were so critical. I could only imagine the pain Ryan felt. It was only matched by my guilt.

There was little question that I had been the one to drive him away. His reaction had been due to my obsession with Amelia and the fact I was unwilling to let her go, no matter how destructive our relationship would be.

I was, in fact, unwilling to let her go. At any cost.

Ryan had sensed the consummation of our mating. His eyebrow arched in interest the moment I walked through the office door. Amelia’s scent was all over me. Lingering reminders of our bodies joined together.

Pride swelled in my chest.

“Only you would decide to mate in the middle of a war,” he finally said, as if reading my mind.

“It was selfish,” I admitted. Amelia and I had certainly chosen a difficult time to make our declarations.

“Was it worth it?” he asked, not only for himself but for his brother, who could not bear the thought of our human-vampire sin.

I nodded curtly. A lump formed in my throat at the thought of being with Amelia. On Amelia. Inside Amelia.

“Was it as difficult as you’d anticipated?”

I swallowed the lump, so I could speak. "I almost killed her," I confessed, my eyes locking with his, daring him to admonish me. I knew better. Ryan was many things... a fighter, a brother, but most of all he was loyal.

"Almost?"

"It was close. It was just so intense and her emotions were so high. The blood pumping through her body—it overwhelmed me. You can't imagine."

He shook his head and grimaced. "No. I can't. Thank God." He paused, forehead creased in thought. "How did you stop? What made you not just go all the way—be done with it?"

I ran my hand over the back of my head, feeling the spot where she had yanked me back into submission. "She stopped me. Just like…like someone said to me, she was stronger than I thought."

“That girl,” he said, with a low laugh. “She’s a fucking enigma, you know? Brave enough to face you even though you could snap her in two. I gotta give it to her. She’s got balls.”

Behind the darkness a spark lit in his eyes but I shook my head.

“Don’t even joke about her having me by my balls.”

“What?”

“Like that wasn’t your next joke.”

He rolled his eyes and muttered something about me being lame. I let it go, because when push came to shove there was no question that Amelia owned me. Mind and body. If I had a functioning heart she’d own that, too.

I dropped the pile of newspapers on the ground and began sorting them while Ryan returned to his assault on my keyboard. His chair squeaked as he pushed his large frame into the leather.

"Grant, how were we so wrong about this? How was this about Olivia when we thought it was about you or Amelia?" He picked up the stapler from the desk and tossed it into the air, absently.

I was on the ground, kneeling, flipping through the papers. "You mean, how was
I
so wrong about this?" I corrected. "I have no idea. It seemed I was the target all along and Amelia by association."

"Okay, let's back up. Tell me again exactly what happened when you and Caleb fought the first time."

I sat on the floor and began to recount the events of the night at the paper mill. We had been over it countless times in the last couple months, but I supposed we should look at it from a different angle now. I described the mill and the damp, marshy air. I told him about the security guard, how his fingers fumbled uselessly with his gun and how we were too late. I reminded him of the older vampire and the newborn, who tore the guard’s flesh to shreds, leaving him oozing blood on the cement. I left out no detail.

Ryan's eyes grew wide with my retelling, like a child listening to an adventure story. I called on my photographic memory to get every second. "Elijah wanted the newborn isolated so he ran off, luring him away from the rest of us, which worked easily on his immature mind. Olivia lingered…" I began but stopped cold, frozen as my mind revealed a deeper memory. "Before Olivia followed Elijah I noticed Caleb watching her. In fact, looking back, he sort of… licked his lips, and for the briefest moment he leered at her."

"He looked at her? Like he knew her?"

"Like he
wanted
her," I clarified, reeling from the thought. He'd shown me his desire and I'd missed it. I wanted to punch the wall.  “I assumed he was acting like a deviant.”

“Then what happened?" he asked, pulling me away from my anger. He looked eager, as though he didn't already know, word for word, what was coming.

"He taunted me, and the family. He said he had been watching me. Us. He disapproved of our lifestyle choices, the way we mingled with humans and helped them. He seemed especially disgusted with me and Miles, referring to him as a masochist," I conveyed, balling my fists as my emotions boiled just thinking about it. I wished I'd done more than rip his arm off that day. My failure was now his gain.

"Did he say anything else about Olivia?" Ryan prompted, trying to keep me focused.

"Just that he had been tracking me for some time and that he knew all about my 'work'. He said, 'Oh yes, I know all about your family. Some of them more than others, in fact.' And he raised one of his disgusting eyebrows at me tauntingly and sent an image of a dark room with rows of beds against the walls." I kicked the edge of the desk, jarring the contents on top. "But the image held no connection for me. I still have no idea what it means."

"He was giving you clues all along," Ryan declared. "He basically told you he knew Olivia from before. We just need to figure out how and where."

I considered this as a possibility. "You may be right. But what about me and Amelia? There has to be some kind of correlation. Include the Melungeon’s death, and it all leads back to me. Before we fought he told me clearly, 'All of this, the murders, the kidnappings, it has all been to bring you to me. All of these deaths were to lure you into my game. To teach you a lesson about playing God.'”

"Sounds to me like he has an inferiority complex," he said with a pained grin. "It's almost like someone pissed him off, and he couldn't find them, so instead he’s placing all his anger on you. On the 'Mythological Vigilante Vampire,' and everything you stand for—which happens to be exactly what he opposes.”

I sighed in utter frustration. "This guy is pulling a major mindfuck on me and it's completely working. There has to be something else. Something we're missing," I said. I was completely exasperated. I knew he had been playing with me all along but this was too much. The information had been there the whole time. I was just too blind to see it. He was good. I just hoped in the end he wasn't better than me.

Ryan sat forward, placing his hands on the table and stood up, excited for the first time by the new lead. With confidence he declared, "If it's here we'll find it. Then we will kick his ass and get our girl back."

Chapter 2

Amelia

Genevieve and I sat across from one another at the kitchen table. Grant's kitchen table. Our kitchen table? I had a cup of tea in front of me, which I used in an attempt to make my hands less idle. Genevieve rummaged through a black leather bag, sorting weapons.  She seemed oblivious to me, but I watched her as she went about her organizing, wondering if that was a just something vampires did with all their spare time. Grant was certainly hyper-structured. Olivia excelled in that area, too. They seemed very good at it. Must be a vampire thing.

Ryan and Grant worked upstairs, plotting and planning their next move. As though the Gods were mocking the Palmers, the day broke blue-skied and sunny. Perfect for humans. Not so much for vampires needing to find a loved one. They were trapped in the house until night fall, so the boys set up shop in Grant's office. Elijah was in Black Mountain with Miles and the Shifters. The tone all around was somber and it conflicted with my own selfish feelings bubbling beneath the surface after my night with Grant.

“Do you need any help?” I asked.

“I’ve got it,” she said, but I could tell something was wrong. She counted and recounted the items on the table. She kept pausing on a sheath of arrows.

“Missing something? I can go ask Grant if he has it in his weapons chest upstairs.”

She rolled her eyes and mumbled something that sounded a lot like, “I bet you could,” and shook her head. My cheeks heated because although I knew there were no secrets in a vampire’s home, the reality never got easier to handle. Luckily, Genevieve moved and said, “No. Sebastian must have the bow that goes with this. And the vial of poison.”

“Okay, well, should I call him?”

Genevieve cut her eyes at me. “No.”

Okay.

“So is there something I should know? Did I break some kind of vampire girlfriend rule?”

She stopped polishing the knife in her hand. “He didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

Again she cut me another look but this time more curious. “About Sebastian?”

“What about Sebastian?” I asked.

“He left last night. For good.”

“Wait,” I said, trying to figure out what she was saying. “He left the coven? I mean, I was with him last night. We killed those fledglings together.” Yes. I killed a fledgling. It was terrifying and totally badass at the same time.

“After that. He picked up the boys in the mountains and then brought them back to town. After that he just kept going.”

“And no one knows where he is? Not even Ryan?” A sudden terrible thought popped into my head. “Oh God, Caleb didn’t get him, too?”

“No.” Her face relaxed a little. “No, he’s on his own. He did call Ryan and confirmed he was leaving. If he gave him any other details, Ryan didn’t share.”

I sat back in my seat. “Wow.  That’s just… I had no idea. Do you know why?”

She started polishing the knife again and gave me a small shrug.

“Genevieve.”

“Look, it’s not your fault.”

“Wait… it’s my fault? When people tell you it’s not your fault it’s always your fault. What the hell did I do?”

“You walked in that door and stole Grant’s heart. That was too much for Sebastian.” She shrugged again. “He’s a complicated person. His life and death were difficult. He hasn’t adjusted well. He has prejudices and is very hard on himself. Your relationship with Grant doesn’t sit well with him, but he respects Grant and the work he’s trying to accomplish enough to walk away. At least that’s the way I see it.”

Her words stunned me. I had felt a bit of tension with Sebastian but I hadn’t understood why. “Wow. Okay, I mean, I guess I figured he just didn’t like babysitting me while the others were out fighting Caleb but then, after last night, I thought maybe things had changed.”

“When you two were attacked?”

“Yeah, I held my own, you know? I thought maybe he realized I wasn’t a total weakling.”

She placed the blade on the table. “The part of you that bothers Sebastian the most is your human side. All you did was humanize yourself to him more. That’s probably why he left.”

“So he hates my humanity?”

I heard a movement on the stairs and Ryan entered the kitchen. His eyes were pinned on Genevieve. He cleared his throat and said, “Grant needs you upstairs—something about The Council.”

“Clean that up?” she asked, pointing to the weapons lying across the table.

Ryan nodded and swapped places, sitting across from me. He picked up a knife and let the blade glint in the light. In an even voice he asked, “Did Grant ever tell you how Sebastian and I died?”

I shook my head. “Grant has never told me any of your backstories—just his own.”

He rolled his eyes. “Of course he didn’t. Would you like to know?

“Yes.”

“Okay, well, we were born in 1916, in the train car that was our hospital, nursery, and home for the first sixteen years of our life. Surprised the hell out of our mother. She knew one of us was in there but not two.”

I smiled. “I can’t even imagine.”

“It was just our life. Mother worked for a traveling carnival. Every minute of our existence revolved around that world—from the minute we were born until the day we died. Our family consisted of the carnival employees.  We didn’t go to school, but we knew more than most kids by the time we could walk. We spent our days hanging out with the guys in the freak show or helping the animal wranglers. Most nights were spent watching the burlesque dancers under the flaps of the tent. We’d either sleep outside near the animal menagerie or in the train car on bales of hay.”

“Like I said, unimaginable.”

“No, I’m sure you can’t. Life is so different now.” He sighed and scratched his forehead. “Sometimes I miss those days, but then I remember living without electricity and the smell of pig crap and I realize I’m okay with the here and now.”

“What did your mother do at the carnival?”

“She was a whore.”

I froze, trying to figure out if he was serious or just joking.  Ryan simply inspected the blade and rubbed a spot with his finger.

“A whore?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even.

“Yeah, she slept with men in the towns we visited. Half the time while their families played games on the midway or watched the shows beneath the tents.”

“Wow,” I said. “That must have been difficult for you and Sebastian.”

He shrugged. “It’s what we knew and it was okay. She kept us safe and we had food and shelter. There were a lot of people worse off back then.”

He placed the blade in the bag and took out several containers. From the smell of them, I assumed they contained gasoline or other flammable liquid. “One night my mother took a customer to her bed. He spent hours with her, way past the time of the side-shows. Sebastian and I had finished our work for the day—we were eighteen at this point and had our own jobs—and were waiting outside the train car when her handler came by to close up for the night. This handler—what you would call a pimp today—he was huge.” He flashed me a grin. “Bigger than me. Mean as a snake but was pretty much the only father we had. He came running out of that train car, face white as a sheet. Looked like he’d seen a monster.”

“What was it?” I asked, having the horrible feeling I already knew.

“At the time I didn’t know, but Sebastian and I had no choice, we had to check on our mother. We found her inside, tied to the bed, stripped naked, with bloody marks all over her body. She wasn’t dead.”

“Oh God.”

“She clung to life by a thread. The guy? He was there too, and even at eighteen I knew he wasn’t human. I didn’t know what he was, but there wasn’t an ounce of a soul in him.”

“He was a vampire?”

“Yes. I went after him and Sebastian tried to release my mother. The Vamp, he turned it on. In the carney world I had seen so many things. Weird things. I thought nothing could surprise me, but this guy… this demon. He was like nothing I’d ever seen. Speed, power, and agility. He had it all. Within seconds he had me pinned to the wall, he whispered something and I froze. Now I understand it was compulsion. He told me to stay and to watch. I had no choice.”

“Oh Sebastian, I’m so sorry.”

He shook his head. “He spent the rest of the night raping my mother while he mutilated and fed on Sebastian.”

My hand moved to my mouth and I blinked back tears. Even after all the damage and horror Caleb had inflicted—the terrible things Sasha and Joe attempted to do to me, the harsh reality of Ryan’s transformation made me sick.

“By dawn he’d decapitated my mother and left both Sebastian and I drained but with enough venom to transform. Just as in our original birth, we were once again reborn twins.”

He tightened the caps on the containers and secured them in plastic. “I don’t know what to say,” I told him, feeling utterly useless.

“There’s nothing to say, Amelia. We were all human at one point. None of us had a choice in our fate. The fact you’re willingly entering this world with Grant doesn’t sit well with my brother. He doesn’t want you to have a romanticized notion of who we are and what we come from. Each of our lives were born from violence. Some more horrific than the rest.  In the end, we had something taken away from us—something we will never regain. Miles has given us a chance to attempt to heal these wounds and it helps, but it’s still incredibly difficult. Never underestimate that. Not with Grant or any of us.”

I swallow and nod. “Thank you for your honesty.”

“Anytime.”

He moved to stand and I blurted out, “Do you feel the same way? About me and Grant?”

He shook his head. “No. I hate that you being here has caused Sebastian enough pain that he felt like he needed to leave, but I understand that his wounds are deeper than your presence. You may just be the catalyst he needs to work through some of this.”

“I’m sorry he left. Last night I got to know him a little better. I liked him.”

Ryan smiled. “He’s a cool dude. A little stunted and moody, but that’s pretty typical around here.”

“Again, thank you for your honesty. I’m sure telling that story was hard.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, with the first smile I had seen from him. “Welcome to the family.”

~*~

Ryan and I climbed the back stairs and found Grant and Genevieve at the computer. Grant gave me a tense grin as we entered and hopped up to greet me with a kiss at the door. "I missed you," he whispered. It was gruff and I could feel overwhelming distress gripping his body. His hair was matted from constantly touching it and he had black newsprint ink smeared across his jaw. The situation had taken its toll. I wanted to press a smile on his lips and bury myself in him to take away our mutual pain, but hiding wouldn’t fix this. Instead, he hugged me a little longer and I felt his hand slip down the edge of my pants, brushing his cool fingers against my warm side.

I asked, "Any progress?" loud enough to include the others in the conversation.

Ryan moved to the seat behind the desk, while Genevieve had positioned herself in one of the leather chairs across from him. He looked even more exhausted after our talk. His normal, bigger than life persona, had vanished. Dredging up the past probably wasn’t the best idea for anyone right now.

"We’re just waiting for the blasted sun to go down and looking for a direction to go on. We have nothing more than we had yesterday," Grant declared with darkened eyes.

"We need a set of fresh eyes; Amelia, can you look at this?” Genevieve asked.

“You want my pathetic human eyes to look for something you missed?”

That brought a small smile to Ryan’s face. “Can’t hurt. We’re coming up empty.”

“Sure, I guess I can give it a shot.”

“We're just going over what happened over the last couple of months with Caleb. Trying to figure out what we missed."

"What's that?" I asked, and leaned over the desk, pointing to a plastic bag with several pieces of jewelry in it.

I felt Grant's body press against mine from behind, his hands reaching around me for the bag. "Caleb left these on your door a while back. Olivia and I got to it before you did,” he said. He pulled out a long chain with a dangling cross. "This belonged to Jenna. She was wearing it in the missing posters."

I reached out and he pooled the chain in my palm. A shiver ran down my back at the memory of the girl and how my life changed the night she was destroyed. I tapped my finger to the other piece of jewelry in the bag. "Who does that belong to?"

Grant cocked his head questioningly and glanced at Ryan across the desk. "Amelia," Ryan said softly, "we assumed it belonged to you. It has an 'A' inscribed on it."

I frowned, taking the brooch out of Grant's still hand. "No. It isn't mine. It's beautiful though."

"It isn't yours? Are you sure? I didn't want to concern you and had planned on putting it back in your room before you noticed. It slipped my mind with everything going on," Grant confessed.

Across the room, Genevieve sighed. "Of course she's sure. The question is; if it isn't Amelia’s then who does it belong to?"