Forever Vampire (2 page)

Trystan's pale blue eyes went soft. He blinked and looked aside. Vail felt the tension in his brother's muscles slacken under his grasp. He stepped away from the werewolf.

He'd spoken the truth. Neither could deny it. Tryst and Rhys Hawkes, and perhaps even his mother, Viviane, owed him more than they could ever give. But Vail knew the blood debt was one bargain for which he'd never know reciprocation.

“Gentlemen?”

The security guard knew they were brothers.

“It's cool, Harley,” Tryst said to the guard. “All in jest. Brotherly love, and all that crap.”

The guard nodded, but his smile didn't express amusement.

The lanky wolf nodded once, an odd acknowledgment, which either agreed that, indeed, he should have paid the debt himself, or that he didn't care what Vail had suffered.

Vail didn't have to guess at his brother's meaning.

Tryst curtly waved him off and strode toward the entrance, calling, “Stay out of my life, vampire!”

Vail flipped off the werewolf and jumped inside the elevator as the doors closed. Releasing his breath, he then shook out his fists, working his tense muscles loose.

The surprise of learning, three months earlier, he'd a brother could never top the innate desire to connect with Tryst. Vail didn't know where that feeling came from, but he'd fight it to the death, if he had to. Tryst hated him without knowing him. Vail had best accept that.

You are unwanted in Faery. You will be unwanted in the mortal realm
.

Tough words to hear from his enemy. But not difficult to believe they were true.

Landing at the top floor, he assumed calm as he slicked back his hair and strode into the marble hallway. The place always smelled like leather polish, and that disturbed his respect for nature.

The receptionist, a petite, strawberry blonde with a sexy librarian's penchant for tight, tailored clothing, adjusted her glasses at the sight of Vail and sat straighter behind her desk, offering a bright red cupid's bow smile.

Vail winked at her, and she noticeably swooned.

Mortals. They were too easy.

Hawkes was on the phone, and gestured him inside the sparely furnished, large corner office.

Swinging by the bar, Vail nabbed a goblet of the expensive wine and sucked it down. It tasted like fruit warmed by the sun, but could never match any faery vintage.

He walked to the window that wrapped the two corner walls of the office. Spreading out his arms, he felt the sudden daring desire to jump through the glass, to discover the exaltation of flight. Despite growing up in Faery, the closest he'd come to flying was a raging orgasm. Not to be disregarded on the list of adventures one must constantly pursue.

Yet any attempt at flight would result in a vampire smashed on the tarmac—not dead, but aching and damaged for weeks, surely. He'd save it for desperation.

Rhys Hawkes showed his age with sublime protest. Pushing three centuries, Hawkes had told Vail his hair had once been black with a gray streak striping one side. Now it was gray with threads of black here and there. His harsh European bone structure battled for notice but the man's whiskey eyes were always what garnered observation.

The man was the father of Trystan Hawkes, Vail's brother. Vail and Tryst had the same mother, Viviane LaMourette. He and his brother had been born on the same day; Vail first, then Trystan not two minutes later.

They were not twins.

Vail's father was a vampire who had once been Rhys Hawkes's nemesis—and his brother.

Viviane LaMourette was all vampire—bloodborn in the sixteenth century—but also insane.

What a twisted web woven through this family's history, Vail thought with a mirthless smirk. Made
for interesting coffee table talk, if one owned a coffee table. Well, he did own the coffeemaker.

Mortals and their curious habits.

Vail had never met his father. He would, as soon as he could get Hawkes to cough up information on how to find him. If anyone knew where to find Constantine de Salignac, it had to be his own brother. Yet Rhys had been evasive the first time Vail had begged the information from him.

Vail needed to see the man who had driven his mother insane. To look into his eyes, and to know whether or not his own eyes were the same. And then? Well, then.

Hawkes hung up and gestured for Vail to sit on the other side of the sleek stainless-steel desk before him. The man wore a comfortable gray sweater and dark jeans, and a silver wedding band on his left hand. He looked more Aging Rock Star than Vicious Half-Breed.

“I'm pleased you've come. It's been months, Vaillant. How are you getting on in the mortal realm?”

Vail slouched onto the chair and propped an ankle across his opposite knee. He shrugged fingers through his hair, liking the scrape of the iron rings he wore on most fingers against his scalp. He noted Hawkes zoomed in on the rings.

Cracking a lazy grin, he tilted his head. “I'm assimilating. But it's got nothing on Faery. So what's up, Uncle?”

“You feel ready to visit your mother yet?”

Hell, not this scam again. Vail leaned his forearms onto his knees and shook his head.

No, he'd never met his mother. He was too freaked to know she was literally a loony after his father had buried her in a glass coffin under the city of Paris for over two centuries. Rhys had told him the tale when he'd first visited.

What was even freakier? Thanks to a warlock's spell, Viviane LaMourette had been kept in a stasis for those centuries, alive and aware, yet frozen.

But the freakiest thing yet? She had been pregnant before being buried alive, and the stasis had also affected the embryos in her womb. She'd given birth to Vail and Tryst nine months after Rhys had finally found her in the twenty-first century. Two hundred and twenty-five years after she'd been buried.

Talk about a long gestation period.

He eyed Hawkes. Did the half-breed look hopeful? What was it with the paranormal breeds in this realm? They were all so…emotional.

Vail should have never left Faery. Not that he'd had much choice.

“A visit to my mother is not on my radar.”

Rhys tilted his head, nodding with weary acceptance. Vail could smell the man's feral nature, and it reminded him of open fields dotted with summer blossoms, edged by verdant forest. And he could see a faint, red, ashy aura surrounding him, which proved there was vampire somewhere inside the man.

“That all you want from me, old man?”

“What's that stuff?” Rhys pointed to Vail's eyes. “You go out to a nightclub last night?”

“I do the clubs every night.” Vail smeared a forefinger under his eye, smudging the black ointment he wore. “It's for the faeries. I need to be able to see them.”

“Hmm.” Hawkes nodded. “I suppose.” But he could never understand why.

When a mortal wanted to see a faery they smeared an herbal ointment around their eyes. When a vampire wanted to see one in the mortal realm, he did the same. The magical, mythical elixir never worked for mortals. It worked for Vail because he'd come from Faery and knew the right ointment to use—the ingredients could only be obtained from a sidhe healer.

“Makes you look like a rock star with a heroine addiction,” Rhys commented.

“I have no addictions,” Vail said, but was ashamed his voice faltered on the word
addiction.

“Right.” Rhys leaned back in his chair, assessing Vail to the very marrow. A certain faery, Mistress of Winter's Edge, had utilized the same assessing gaze on Vail. He had never liked that look, and so openly defied the man by stretching back his shoulders and looking down his nose at him.

“I need you to come to work for me,” Rhys said, repeating the same words he'd spoken the last three times he'd phoned Vail.

“Not this again—”

“This time it's different,” he rushed out. “No office
work. No pickups. This is a recovery mission. Actually, it's a private investigation thing.”

Vail lifted an eyebrow. He had no such skills. “You lose something?”

He glanced to the wall where a large safe door hung open. The firm stored smaller items here in Rhys's office, with a massive storage area in the basement of the building, which was entirely owned by Hawkes.

Inside the safe were priceless artifacts, totems, magical objects, currency in all denominations (and from all centuries), and other collectibles. Hawkes Associates was a security house for the paranormal nations, and took in objects of value and stored them for as little as a week or as long as centuries. If you were an immortal, it was a good thing to have a storage facility that would be there as you walked through the centuries. This Paris office was one of about half a dozen locations all over the world.

“As a matter of fact, something was stolen from us about a week ago. But that's not the assignment. Well, it is, but not.”

“Don't have time for this, old man, just spit it out.”

“Charish Santiago, kingpin for a splinter group of vampires unaligned with any tribe, wants me to find her daughter. She's been kidnapped.”

“You want me to track a missing vampiress?” Vail thumbed his chin. “You know I don't do vampires.”

“Yes, you can't stand them. And yet you are one. How does that work again?”

“They disgust me.” Vail leaned forward. “They
are weak, reek of mortal blood, and are unworthy of regard.”

Rhys sighed heavily and tapped his fingers on the desk. They'd had this conversation before. Vail didn't need to convince the man of his prejudices. Hell, he knew it was a ridiculous prejudice. But when a vampire was raised in Faery, he developed certain dislikes, and vampires were one of them.

“What if I told you this mission isn't going to benefit the vampires, but rather Faery?”

“I don't get it.”

“A valuable Seelie court gown was also taken, along with the vampiress. Her name is Lyric Santiago. Seems she was wearing the gown at the time because she was about to hand it over to the Unseelie prince, or some dark lord—I don't recall his title.”

“Lord of Midsummer Dark?”

“Yes, that's him. I believe Zett is his name. You know him?”

The muscles strapping Vail's jaw tightened. Zett had been his nemesis since childhood. But Vail had had the last laugh before being banished from Faery months earlier. Zett had been outraged. Heh.

“Ever wonder where the title Vail the Unwanted came from?” he tossed out.

Rhys nodded. “I see. So you don't like the guy.”

Vail blurted out a huffing chuckle. “To put it mildly.”

“More reason to help me recover the gown.”

“And the vampiress?”

“Yes, her, too. But it's the gown I'm focused on. Up
until ten days ago, that gown was in the safe here in the office. We'd taken it in from the Seelie court as a means to cleanse it of some dark sidhe vibes. Something like that. I don't understand it, only that it needed to be in the mortal realm a fortnight. They intend to reclaim it after that fortnight. Which is marked four days from now. Someone stole it from me, and I'll give you one guess who that someone was.”

“The Santiago clan?”

Vail had heard the name muttered in the dark nightclubs as a connection to deeds even he could not fathom. The Santiagos were old-school vampire mafia, a self-styled tribe that followed none of the legitimate tribes' ways. Thieves, cutthroats and murderers populated their ranks.

Vail avoided tribes—he didn't require any modicum of family, no matter the form—but most especially he avoided the vampires.

“So why steal the thing, then put it on her daughter and hand her off to the Unseelie lord?”

“I'm told she was merely trying it on, and had intended to take it off before the exchange. I'm guessing the gown was leverage for something.”

“Not the daughter? What, is she ugly and has a snaggle-fang?” Vail chuckled to imagine a vampiress with such an affliction.

“She's known as the ice princess, and I'm told she is stunning. Well, I've a picture here.” Rhys thumbed through a row of files in his bottom desk drawer and tossed a photo across the desktop to Vail. “I'm not sure
what sort of deal was made between Santiago and the Midsummer darkness—”

“Lord of Midsummer Dark.”

“Yes, whatever. All I know is I need to get that gown back before the Seelie representative returns for it. The sidhe are the last nation on this earth I want to piss off.”

“You are not a wib, old man.”

“I don't know Faery speak.”

“It means you're not stupid.”

Vail leaned forward to glance at the photo. He wasn't about to touch it—that would show too much interest—but then he did. Bright white teeth. Brilliant whites surrounding blue eyes. And long ribbons of white-blond hair. She was a stunner. And he could appreciate a gorgeous woman.

But not a vampire.

“So how is this not helping the vampires?”

“You find the woman and retrieve the gown,” Rhys explained. “We give the woman back to her mother, but—oops, we couldn't retrieve the gown. The mother is happy to have her daughter back. And I have the gown in hand, ensuring the Seelie court is pleased with my work.”

“And Zett is left empty-handed.”

“Exactly.”

Vail thought about it. Why would a faery lord make a bargain with a vampire? Vampires stayed away from faeries because their ichor was addictive, and faeries generally regarded bloodsuckers as unclean and not worth a glance.

Something didn't figure.

“You in?” Hawkes prompted.

“No.”

Vail stood and shoved a hand in his pants pocket. The pants were soft and well worn; buckles circling one thigh hung unbuckled here and there (though most of the unbuckling had been done by random women). So he was still wearing last night's clothes. Sue him.

And yeah, he probably did look like some drug-addicted rocker, but he couldn't deal with how vamps in this realm tried to appear similar to mortals just to fit in. Had to be exhausting.