Department 57: Bloody Crystal (2 page)

He put down his glass, carefully arranging it on the beer mat. “Should I be looking at something?”

“Not if you want to keep your balls.”

Nice
. Eight pints meant aggression, and ten meant facedown on the pavement. At least he could get a hit from the alcohol his potential prey had drunk before his system processed the blood. It didn’t take long, sadly. He could do with some kind of hit right now. He wasn’t looking forward to going back to his hotel.

Maybe he should pick up the challenge after all and track down the evil lurking here. It would give him pleasure to tear somebody apart. No, he was better than that. He snorted. Who was he kidding? No, he wasn’t, but he’d rather not draw attention to himself.

He shrugged and changed the direction of his observations. He heard the sniggers from the next table but didn’t respond to them. He remembered his father saying,
“It takes a real man to take an insult and walk away.”
Not that he necessarily believed that, but in this case, he got the sense of his words. Unfortunately his father had believed them all the time.

“Drinks, gentlemen.” She’d returned. Despite his determination not to get involved, his protective instincts roared to life. Old-fashioned, maybe, but they didn’t call them instincts for nothing. He could no more control them than he could control turning vampire after sundown.

Ribald laughter and jokes ensued while she put the brimming glasses on the table.

“Gentlemen, eh? Wanna see how a gentleman can make you scream?” “You could give us more than drinks, love.” “How about a kiss on account?” “Maybe if you undid a few buttons, we could leave you a great tip.”

“Leave her alone.” He couldn’t let this be. This fairy was no match for five strapping men, probably in Llandudno for a dirty weekend, but since he didn’t see any women with them, they most likely planned to pick them up here.

Immediately attention turned to him. “Hey? What business is it of yours?” To his shock, the men didn’t say that. She did.

He raised a brow. “I was only trying to help.”

“Well, don’t,” she snapped, but it was too late.

Two of the men had stood, and they faced him, belligerence and joy limning their features. Rhodri guessed why they looked joyful. A woman and a fight would just make their Friday night.

“I knew he was trouble,” one said.

The other rolled up his sleeves. He was wearing a button-front shirt—maybe had come straight from work, by his appearance—but his tie had gone, the end sticking out of the pocket of what looked like suit trousers. “I told you not to get involved.”

His first swing was wild, and Rhodri stepped aside. Sadly his would-be assailant didn’t go sprawling but swung with his other hand and caught Rhodri a painful blow on the side of his head.

Rhodri responded, but his response was by no means wild. He fended off the third blow and clipped the man under his jaw, a nice clean strike that snapped his head back and sent him staggering. He slumped, but Rhodri couldn’t enjoy his success because he was too busy dealing with the second guy.

Shit, why did he get into these scenes every time he came home?

Now someone arrived to help him. A barman, built like the proverbial brick shithouse, stood at the back of the group, each beefy hand occupied by the collars of the two men at the back of the group. “I can’t let you have any more to drink, sirs,” he said in a thick Welsh accent. “We’d love to see you tomorrow night, but for now you’d best take your custom elsewhere. This is the biggest bar in the town. You don’t want to blot your copybooks right at the start of your stay, now do you?”

Rhodri would have enjoyed seeing the barman deal with the awkward customers, but his first opponent had come up swinging. He blocked the punch and this time managed to catch the fist and twist, forcing Office Man to turn around. Then it was an easy matter to push his hand halfway up his back and effectively immobilize him. Before he could retaliate, Rhodri leaned forward and spoke into his ear. “You won’t fight anymore. You never really wanted to in the first place. Did you? Go home; get some rest. You can have a good time tomorrow.”

The gentle suggestion he planted in the man’s mind was enough. His taut muscles relaxed under Rhodri’s hand, and when he released his arm, the guy took a deep breath and ran his hand through his hair as he gave the barman a sheepish shrug. “You’re right. Come on, guys.”

Wait. There were five. He and the barman had taken care of four. He turned, and then he saw her. She’d dropped the fifth man somehow and stood over him. Rhodri wanted to applaud. But she gave him a distinctly unimpressed look, her mouth turned down, her eyes cynical. “You men. You think size is everything, don’t you?” Unlike the barman, her accent was faint but gave her voice a lilt Rhodri found distinctly sexy. So his libido wasn’t completely dead after all. Nice to know.

“You do martial arts?” He let her see how impressed he was. And relieved.

She shrugged. “I might.” She jerked her thumb back, indicating her beefy colleague. “I keep telling Dave I don’t need all this protection. I can take care of myself.”
“And you’re not the only vampire in Llandudno.”

That rocked him as nothing else had. The Talent he’d detected? It had to be her, surely. Talents were more prevalent than most mortals suspected, but not that numerous.
“Sorry.”
He communicated the same way she had, telepathically.
“But you hid your sigil.”

“So did you.”
He heard the exasperation in her mental voice as easily as in her physical one.
“What’s your name?”

“Rhodri Tryfanwy.”

He felt a jolt of recognition, but he couldn’t sense any more. She spoke to her colleague. “Shall we see these gentlemen off the premises? Then if it’s all right with you, Dave, can I have an early night?”

“It’s Friday, Cerys. We’ll be swamped in a couple of hours. I can’t spare you.”

They looked busy enough now, but he knew how people rushed into the nearest watering hole to stock up before closing time. Especially on a Friday night. Clubbers would drink in places like this to avoid the extortionate prices they’d have to pay later. “I’ll help. I used to work behind a bar.” He wanted to talk to her, needed to.

Dave sniggered. “We’ll talk about it when we get these jokers out. Come on, gentlemen.”

The ambulant one staggered, and he forced the other to his feet and frog-marched him out. He might have missed a meal, but he had landed in a much more intriguing place. Feeding could wait.

Dave turned to him, offered his hand. “Thanks for your help.”

“Want some help behind the bar?”

“I don’t know you.”

“I do.”

He hadn’t expected her—Cerys—to say anything. He’d offered out of sheer boredom and a definite interest in the ethereal Cerys, especially now that she’d come out to him.

He had no idea other vampires existed in Llandudno. Until he’d left, he’d only known one. Him.

Cerys gave him a smile, a mere baring of her teeth. “He’s a Tryfanwy.”

Dave stared at him with new interest. “I thought the last Tryfanwy died last month.”

Rhodri shrugged. “My family left here a long time since. Looking for work, they were. They found it. But when old Gareth died, the lawyer looked for relatives and found me.”

“So where have you been?”

“Around. London, New York. My job takes me to a few places.” Anywhere Cristos or Will Grady sent him. He worked from New York for Cristos usually, but a recent operation had drawn him back to England. The rest was true. The lawyer had contacted him about Gareth Tryfanwy’s estate. He grinned. “I don’t know why he bothered, except that he needed someone to tie up his loose ends. Once the estate is sorted out, there won’t be much left.”

“He was in debt?”

No, of course he wasn’t. Rhodri had seen to that, even if he’d done it from a distance. “Not really. I get the house, apparently. Pretty little place, if a bit run-down.” To say the least. Gareth had been a collector. Newspapers and old bean cans were his specialty.

The two staff left at the bar were coping, but already the place was fuller than it had been when he arrived. “Shouldn’t we get to work?”

“Five pounds an hour, cash. You sign the book when you’re done,” Dave said. Meaning he wouldn’t use his real name, and he’d get the five an hour without deductions. Otherwise he could demand minimum wage. Five an hour was almost half that. As it happened, money was the least of the attractions in working behind the bar in a place like this. His background, his training urged him to discover more about the place, and what better way than to act in a role that many people hardly noticed? The fact that he’d be closer to the woman who’d fascinated him from the minute he’d seen her was only a byproduct. Didn’t matter at all.

Sure it didn’t.

“Thanks.” Did he look that indigent? He was sure he didn’t, but maybe Dave thought he’d come back out of desperation. Hardly. Which made him wonder something else. Why was she working here? Vampires weren’t usually short of money. His mentor had always said,
“Show me a poor vampire, and I’ll show you an idiot.”
They had family, and anyone who couldn’t make enough money to be comfortable in the first hundred years of their existence had to be doing something wrong.

Maybe she liked it. Or maybe she had a thing for Dave. Big, strong motherfucker like that had to be attractive to women.

He’d find out. It would enliven his so-called vacation.

Chapter Two

Cerys kept sneaking looks at him. Big, bad vampire for sure. The man wasn’t as large as Dave, but he didn’t have to be. Few people were that huge, anyway. Rhodri had that brooding look that most women adored, and as far as she could tell, it wasn’t put on. Something was bothering him for real. It just added to that sexy aura he effortlessly projected. She wondered if he knew he was projecting it.

From the first moment she’d seen him, she’d been drawn to him. That was the only reason she’d decided to serve the group of rowdies at the back. They’d been looking for trouble, that crew—or a good time—and Dave had been just too slow to stop her from going over there.

Then she’d picked up Rhodri’s aura and knew he was a Talent. Only when she opened herself did she realize he was a vampire, when he showed her his family sigil—the symbol impressed on his brain like a tattoo—that identified the kind of Talent he was and his clan. Not that clans meant the same thing they used to, before migration and travel became more common. In the old days, vampires stuck together in clans, but once hunters had isolated them and wiped some out, vampires had made it harder to find them, deliberately dissipating. Clans weren’t clever. But the memory remained in the sigils.

She’d been alone for so long the recognition had thrilled her like she’d stuck her fingers in a light socket. Not that she’d avoided her own kind, precisely. Just not many of them holidayed in Llandudno. And she’d grown used to being the only one around these parts. She’d had all those veins to herself. Working here helped, because it put her in touch with her potential blood donors. People wouldn’t remember things clearly in the morning. Easy prey.

She wondered if she was breaking any obscure vampire laws and decided she didn’t care. But this man intrigued her, and she could learn from him. He worked well, knew his way around a beer pump and optics. She watched him neatly finish pouring a pint, and wondered why it looked so good, then realized. It was exactly right for pints around here. Drinkers in some parts of the country demanded no froth, some wanted a lot, but here they wanted a neat quarter-inch head, and he did that with precision.

She watched him pour a Guinness—always tricky to get precisely right—and had to admire his prowess. “You really have worked behind a bar before,” she said on her way past to fetch a packet of peanuts. “Some people lie about it to get the job.”

He grinned. “Yes, I’ve done it once or twice, but not for a while. Nice to know I still have the touch.” He finished the pint off with a flourish. “They put a pattern on the top of the froth in the States sometimes.”

“We do it here now. You’ve been abroad much?”

He grinned. “Once or twice.”

Yes, although she could detect the lilt in his voice that spoke so distinctively of North Wales, it was barely there. He’d traveled, but this was home. “Where have you been?”

“A few places.” He waggled his dark brows. “I’ll tell you later if you like.”

She snorted. “Sure.” She’d heard a lot better than that. But not from a vampire. That in itself intrigued her. Not that she was about to tell him that. She walked past him, back to her customer.

A wave of pure heat hit her, and she had to put out a hand to steady herself against the bar. Had he sent that, or did she pick it up all on her own? Whatever, it made her instantly horny, her nipples growing extra sensitive and her panties dampening.

Bastard probably could do it with psi.

A few hours later, she pushed back her damp hair. Without Rhodri, she’d have been a lot more tired. Plus, she needed to feed. That only made it worse. She glanced at Dave, and he jerked a nod. She could go. After collecting her jacket, she looked back. Rhodri was still serving, but Dave had closed the doors and customers were drifting out. The rush had thinned to a trickle an hour ago, when the clubs were gearing up. Now she had to get home. She didn’t live far away.

Dave was always telling her that she should get a taxi or a car, but he didn’t know how well she could look after herself. Not that she had to. And she’d feed on the way, maybe get a nice hit from a drunk clubber if she was lucky. It would wear off as soon as her body processed the blood, but it would be nice while it lasted.

After leaving the club by the back door, she strolled down the road toward the seafront. Llandudno was a pretty, Victorian seaside town, and it had the white-painted wrought iron to prove it. She walked along the covered walkway, busy by day and by night, but tonight company was thin. She stepped down from the walkway and prepared to cross the road.

A hand snaked out and grabbed her around the throat, fingers pressing either side of her windpipe. She didn’t stand a chance, the movement too fast for her to do anything about it. Which meant her attacker knew something about vampires, that they could be choked to death by pressure on the trachea, that a blade against the carotid would slow them down, if not kill them.