Gambling on Her Bear (Shifters in Vegas) (5 page)

Karen snarled right back. Elvira was a conniving leech of a woman who wasn’t good at anything but sucking blood — and possibly Igor’s dick. An image Karen really, really didn’t need right now.

“You could use a new interior decorator for this place,” she sniffed at Elvira. “Black and red is so passé.”

“You really could use some manners.” Elvira left out the
bitch
at the end, but Karen could see it on her lips.

“And you really need to get your Transylvanian accent down,” she shot back. “I can hear Brooklyn come through, loud and clear.”

Elvira threw a hand over her mouth, looking horrified, and Karen knew she’d hit the nail on the coffin. Wait, wrong expression. Shit, these vampires were getting her all mixed up.

“Kill her,” Elvira screeched at Igor. “Drain her of every last drop of dragon blood.”

“Hey!” Karen snapped as a guard pried the diamond out of her hand.

The bison handed the stone to Elvira, who pinned Karen with a haughty gaze as Schiller strung the diamond around the creamy white flesh of her neck.

My diamond, bitch,
Elvira’s eyes said. She held the diamond up, kissed it, and tucked it between her fleshy breasts.

Disgusting
, Karen’s inner dragon snarled, letting half an inch of her dragon fangs slide out of her gums. No way was she giving up on the diamond. No way was she letting Elvira have the last word.

“Kill her,” Elvira ordered. “Drain her dragon blood.”

“Sure,” Karen said, holding her wrist under Elvira’s nose. “Go for it.”

Elvira recoiled, and Karen all but crowed in triumph. Her blood was her ace, and she knew it. Vampire legend held that dragon blood was the richest of all — so rich, it could only be consumed by the most powerful vampires.

“All that mercury, coursing through my veins,” she snickered, and all the vampires fell back a step.

Schiller’s eyes shone in anger and greed. Oh, he wanted her blood, all right. But even he wasn’t powerful enough to dare a sip.

She stared the vampire down for another long minute then pulled her hand back. Maybe it was smarter not to dare a hungry vampire. Especially one who ran a casino and might be able to sense a bluff. So far, nobody had called her on it, but if anyone found out she was only half dragon…

Then the dangerous game she was playing would be up. Permanently.

“Take her away.”

Tanner let out a long, slow breath as Schiller gestured to the guards. Christ, he’d never stopped breathing for that long before. An eternity had stretched from the moment Karen stuck out her wrist in open defiance to the moment Igor snapped his fingers, and Tanner had nearly jumped forward and throttled Karen in the intervening time. Was she crazy, provoking a vampire like that?

Crazy.
His bear nodded.
In the best possible way.

Well, he’d been a hair away from shifting into bear form and ripping into the vampire. Damn, that would that have felt good. Even if the others eventually tore him to pieces and sucked out his blood, it would have been worth it to save Karen.

But one impulsive act wouldn’t have helped, which was the only reason he’d kept his bear leashed.

Jesus, he was crazy, risking his heart to a woman like that. He was bound to sprout gray hair and die young from a heart attack she gave him with one of her escapades.

His bear grinned.
Dying young and happy beats old and bored, you know.

Tanner pursed his lips. Fate was just messing with him. That’s what it was. Karen wasn’t his destined mate. She couldn’t be.

But his bear sniffed her trail dreamily long after she’d been led out of the room. The only reason the beast allowed her out of sight was the knowledge that her dragon blood kept her safe.

“You.” Schiller snapped his fingers.

Tanner held back a growl. God, he’d like to take the vampire on, face-to-face. But fate was messing with him on that count, too, because he had to be sneaky and bide his time. Christ, it was unworthy of a bear. But he had his clan’s welfare to think about, so he held back his tongue — and his claws.

“I want the whole building searched. Find out how she broke in.”

He arched an eyebrow and pointed straight up. “Well, she is a dragon.”

He had to hide a smile, imagining Karen swooping down on the roof. God, he’d like to see her in dragon form. She’d have the same reddish-black coloring as her hair, he’d bet. A flap or two of her wings and she’d be airborne. What a sight that would be. And what a feeling it would be for his bear to lope along a mountain ridge as she soared overhead. The moonlight would glint off her wings, and they’d meet in some lofty place, shift back to human form, and kiss. Kiss and touch and explore, with the earthy scent of dragon mixing with her human scent.

Imagine not one night, but a lifetime of that,
his bear sighed.

“Find out who’s responsible and punish them,” Schiller snapped.

Ah, law and order in the vampire world. So black and white.

Schiller and his entourage disappeared inside the penthouse suite, and Tanner spent the next hour affirming what he’d already surmised. Karen had broken in through the roof entrance, set a fire a few floors down as a diversion, and then backtracked to steal the diamond. The fire would seal the fire doors leading to Schiller’s apartment, too, which bought her time to steal the diamond. If she hadn’t tripped the witch’s trap, she would have escaped with the diamond.

He walked down the ashy hallway of the twenty-seventh floor, telling himself he had it all figured out. Elementary, right?

Except some things didn’t add up. The lock on the roof door had simply been sprung as if she’d had the key. And how had she set the fire? Of course, as a dragon, all she had to do was spit a few flames, but the hallways of the two levels below didn’t bear the phosphoric scent that went with dragon’s breath. Or so he’d heard, because he’d never met a dragon before. They were few and far between, more legend than real life.

She’ll be a legend, all right,
his bear hummed, dreaming of her.

They’d both be legends — Karen and her sister, Kaya, who’d torched half the underground fighting arena Schiller ran in his spare time. Tanner wished he had been able to witness that, but he’d been working in the casino that night. He would have loved to see Schiller’s face as not one but two dragons slipped out of his grasp.

His brow furrowed with the thought. If he had been there, would he have been able to let Karen go?

And now she was back. While part of him cried to see her taken captive again, another part of his soul sang. He had a second chance!

But really, a second chance at what?

At love. At forever,
his bear said.

Tanner took the stairs all the way down to the tenth floor, where Schiller kept his occasional “guests.” They came in all shapes, sizes — and flavors, he figured, grimacing — and while some went willingly, others had no choice. Like Karen.

The willing ones weirded him out. There’d been a whole group of college-age women through here his first month on the job, and they’d heartily participated in the sex-and-blood orgies vampires threw. It turned his stomach, but as long as the women were willing and the vampires didn’t kill their prey, well, he figured he’d keep his mouth shut. With the witches cleansing the victims’ memories of anything but wild sex, the vampires managed to hide their true nature from the outside world. Humans were just as ignorant of the existence of vampires as they were of shifters.

Still, it made his skin crawl, imagining what went on behind closed doors. Seeing the glassy-eyed “guests” leave, assuming their weak legs came from a pint too much to drink instead of a pint too little blood in their veins. And to think Karen was locked up there now…

His eyes skipped ahead to the suite at the end of the hall. He didn’t have to ask to know where they were keeping her. He could scent her trail.

The scent of my mate,
his bear murmured.

He shook his head. At some point, he and his bear were going to have words and finally get things straight. She wasn’t his mate. She couldn’t be. He was just going to free her and see her on her way.

Sure. Right. Uh-huh.
His bear nodded, pretending to play along.

He’d have rebuked it, too, but voices drifted from the enclosed guard station midway down the hall, and he couldn’t help but overhear.

“No way is she all dragon,” said one hushed but excited guard. A vampire. You could always tell without looking because their voices were unnaturally smooth.

“You’re nuts, man,” said the second guard. A wolf shifter — the gritty scratch in his voice was a dead giveaway.

Tanner slowed his step and tilted his head.

The young vampire smacked his lips, an annoying habit that told him it was Antoine, one of Elvira’s malicious nephews.

“You know what I think?” Antoine said.

“What do you think?” the wolf replied in a disinterested monotone.

“I think she’s half witch.”

Tanner’s body froze. Witch?

“You’re nuts, man,” the second guard said.

Tanner sure hoped so. The bears in his clan held a deep grudge against witches ever since the time generations ago when a witch had nearly exposed every shifter in the Rockies to humans. The shifters had only survived by retreating deep into the mountains, away from prying eyes that the witch had made attuned to the subtle differences between humans and shifters — things like the unique glow in a shifter’s gaze, the outdoorsy scent, the telltale twitching of noses and ears. They’d barely averted disaster. Older folks in remote mountain communities still told tales of werewolves and werebears, though no one believed them any more. A damned good thing, and a damned close call.

Never trust a witch.
He remembered his grandfather’s bitter tone.

Never trust a witch,
his father would echo.

And Tanner never had. Why would he?

His heart skipped a beat. But Karen? A witch?

“A witch,” Antoine said, sounding sure. But then, the bastard always sounded sure of himself. “How else did she break into the penthouse? That place is a goddamned Fort Knox.”

Tanner’s mind spun back over the results of his investigation of the upper floors. It couldn’t be. Could it?

“And if she’s only half dragon, I bet we can drink her blood,” Antoine went on.

“You want to be the one to find out the hard way?” the second guard asked.

Tanner’s eyes darted down the length of the hall to Karen’s suite. The suite was protected from the inside with a spell, but not from the outside. A guard with the key — like Antoine — could enter any time of day or night.

He leaned forward, clawing at his own palms. The sound of fingers scratching over a tabletop carried to his ears, and he winced. Damn those vampires and their groomed nails.

“Just imagine how good her blood would taste. It would be so thick, so rich…”

Tanner braced a hand against the wall. He would not rush over and throttle Antoine. Not yet, he wouldn’t.

“I can just taste it…”

“You guys are sick, you know that?” the wolf shifter said in disgust. “Forget about it.”

Heavy silence indicated that Antoine was doing anything but.

“Listen, I’m going to get myself coffee,” the wolf said. “Coffee, that’s how you get a pick-me-up. Not blood.”

Tanner backed around a corner of the hallway, keeping out of sight until he heard the man’s steps recede. The elevator pinged, and the doors slid open then closed. Silence ensued but for the beating of his heart.

He pictured Antoine, scheming away. The young vampire was a greedy little prick. Greedy for blood and for power.

Tanner had learned a lot about vampires in the past three months — more than he ever wanted to. Drinking blood gave them power, and the more powerful the donor, the greater the drugging effect of the drink. Strong men and women, humans and shifters — vampires weren’t discriminating. They sought the most potent blood, the kind sure to give them their greatest highs, the most lasting boosts to their power.

And dragon blood was the strongest of all. That’s why Schiller coveted Karen’s blood. The only reason he hadn’t fed from her yet was the fear that her blood was too rich, even for him.

When Tanner sniffed the air, he smelled greed and temptation. Vegas was thick with it, but the scent was especially strong and fresh here. The rancid scent came from the guard room where Antoine schemed away.

Another piece of vampire lore spilled out of the recesses of his mind. Vampires raved about the ultimate drop of blood in a person’s body as being the richest, most potent drop. They even had a special name for it —
ultimum gutta sanguinis
— and spoke about it like it was the holiest of all holy things. Most vampires had the sense not to bleed their prey dry, the same way most shifters had the sense not to show their beast sides to humans. But young, reckless vampires… Who knew what they might risk?

Young, reckless, and impatient, like Antoine.

Tanner’s heart hammered in his chest as he tried to figure out what to do. Whether Antoine decided to go after Karen by himself or to share his hunch, Karen was in danger. He had to get her out of there, fast. Witch or no witch, he wasn’t leaving her to these thugs.