Safe Hex With a Vampire (3 page)

“Tempest, look at me!” Ivy nearly
shouted.

Tempest looked up at her but she was still
distracted by the head wound. “What is it?”

Ivy was waving her arms wildly. “That is not
the man we’ve been hunting. I met this guy right before I got on
the train, and he projects his thoughts pretty well. From his
thoughts I could tell that he was looking for sex but only with a
willing partner. You just injured and kidnapped the wrong guy. We
need to find a way to drop him at a hospital.”

Tempest shook her head as she studied the
head wound with a sense of disbelief. “I don’t think he’d
appreciate being dropped off at the hospital.”

“Are you insane?” Ivy asked. “The man needs
a doctor and we need to cut our losses.”

“Ivy.” Tempest began in a patient voice.
“First of all, I am a doctor. Second, his head wound is already
healing over the stitches I just put in.”

Ivy’s eyes widened with shock. “That’s not
possible.”

Tempest cut off the stitches she’d already
made and grabbed gauze pads to apply pressure to the wound so he
wouldn’t lose too much blood while it healed. “I’m sure most people
would say that the stuff we can do isn’t possible, but we do it
anyway. I’m not sure what he is, but I’m sure he doesn’t want to
end up in the hospital. I’ll treat him at the center.”

“Oh, I so do not think so,” Rose argued. “We
can’t keep him at the center”

“We don’t have a choice,” Tempest said. “I
injured him. The least I can do is make sure he’s okay. He’s got
his own secrets so I doubt he’ll reveal ours. Plus, I really want
to know how his body is doing this. It could be useful.”

“You can’t just experiment on the poor man,”
Ivy insisted.

Tempest sighed. “I’m not planning to
experiment on him. I’m just going to take a little blood and ask
him a few questions when he wakes up.”

“This is a very bad idea, Tempest,” Ivy
argued. “Maybe he has an emergency contact on his phone.”

“Ivy,” Tempest said with an edge to her
voice, “we don’t know what he is. For all we know his emergency
contact could be like him and that person might be dangerous.”

“I totally agree with Ivy,” Willow said from
the front seat. “If that thing might be dangerous we should just
leave it somewhere. There was a huge dumpster in that alley. We
should just leave it in there.”

“I don’t think he’s dangerous,” Ivy insisted
as she glared at the back of Willow’s head, “and I never suggested
we leave him in a dumpster!”

“No offense, Ivy,” Rose said, “but you’ve
been wrong before. I just don’t think we should risk our safety or
the safety of the other women in our care.”

“I am done arguing,” Tempest said. “He goes
back with us.”

Ivy nodded but she didn’t look happy with
the situation at all.

“And just where do you expect to keep that
thing?” Willow asked.

“In a containment area until we know if he’s
dangerous,” Tempest said.

“You are going to put him in a cage?” Ivy
gasped. When she saw the expression on Tempest’s face she put her
hands up. “Fine, I guess we don’t really have much choice.”

It was a relief when the van fell silent. No
one seemed happy with her decision but at least they all seemed to
be done arguing about it.

“
Why do you run from me?” I asked her
simply.

“
Why do you follow me?” she
countered.

It took me some time to come up with the
words to explain my reasons. “I cannot help myself. Maybe you
really are a witch, and you’ve cast a spell on me.”

Excerpt from Roman Draksel’s blog

Upon regaining consciousness, Aiden came to
three realizations. First, his head hurt like hell. Second, he was
lying on an uncomfortable bed, and not on the cold ground in an
alley. Finally, he realized that he was in a cage. Panic like he
had never known set in. He tried to rise from the bed, made it to a
sitting position before black spots swam in front of his eyes and a
wave of nausea washed over him. He collapsed back onto the bed with
a groan. When he moved to cover his eyes, the cotton ball taped to
his arm came into view and he sat up despite the nausea and
dizziness.

Someone had taken a blood sample from him.
Someone could prove that he wasn’t human and they had him locked in
a cage. They would probably cut him up into little pieces to see
what made him tick in an attempt to find an elixir to make them
live forever.

“Fuck!” he shouted to no one in particular
and then he clutched his head as it throbbed.

He wondered how long it had been since he’d
lost consciousness in the alley. He remembered the sickening sound
of his own head hitting a brick wall but nothing after that. Either
it had only been a very short time since he’d been injured or he’d
been hurt pretty badly. In general, he healed fast but if the
injury was too bad he usually depleted his own energy resources
before he could fully recover. Those injuries were severe enough
that they likely would have killed most people.

Slowly he examined his surroundings and
worked to calm himself. Now was not the time to panic. He needed to
find a way out of this mess. He was locked in a small cell, caged
like an animal. In his little prison he had a small cot, a toilet,
a sink, and nothing else. Under normal circumstance he would try to
break the lock. His kind was stronger than humans and the lock
looked pretty flimsy. Unfortunately, with the pounding of his head,
he could barely walk.

The room surrounding his cell had what
looked like a small laboratory at the far end. There were test
tubes and beakers all over which only added to fears about being a
lab rat. The desk had a laptop computer and a printer on it.
Cabinets lined the walls above the desk and lab area. There were no
windows and he could see stairs leading up so he assumed he was in
the basement. That meant that even if he got out of the cell he had
to make it up the stairs and past whoever was at the top. It seemed
like it would be best to find out who his captors were first.
Better to be prepared. There was also the fact that he was sure he
couldn’t walk up the stairs, much less run right now. His head was
pounding just from sitting up.

“Whoever put me down here, I demand that you
show yourself immediately!” he shouted arrogantly. Yelling made his
head hurt so badly that he nearly vomited. There was no response
except the pounding of his head. After groaning in pain he risked
shouting louder, despite the pain he knew it would cause. “Show
yourself, you coward!”

The door at the top of the stairs opened,
and Claudia walked down slowly. She wore jeans and a sweatshirt.
Her long hair was pulled back, and secured with a large hair clip.
It was beautiful hair that went nearly to her hips, but it was
blonde. Strange since he was sure it was black in the alley, and he
knew it was black in the painting.

It didn’t make any sense that she would be
holding him here, unless she was afraid that Roman would find her.
He realized that there were details his uncle had left out, and
maybe her fear of him was one of them. Aiden knew that Roman’s
second wife had feared him and even run off. It was certainly
possible that the same was true with Claudia. It would have made it
easier to decide how to approach her if his uncle had shared more
details. Well, maybe his uncle didn’t really need to share that
since everyone was afraid of Roman Draksel. It was probably safe to
assume that she was afraid of his uncle.

Aiden forced himself to speak in a calm
reassuring voice. “Claudia, I wasn’t going to hurt you. Roman would
have killed me if I harmed you in any way. Let me out of here and
we can talk about all of this.”

She stared at him as though he were speaking
a foreign language. It suddenly occurred to him that she might not
understand him. English hadn’t been her first language and he had
no idea how long she’d been in this country.

“Do you speak English?” he asked slowly.

“I speak English,” she said with no hint of
an accent, “but I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about your husband, Roman. He
sent me to make sure you and your son are okay. If there is
anything that you need, I’m supposed to make sure you have it.
Please, you have no reason to fear him. I don’t know what happened
before, but he just wants me to make sure you’re safe and offer you
any help you might need.” He knew he was repeating himself, but it
was unnerving that she hadn’t responded to any of his
assurances.

He waited for her to reply but she just
continued to stare at him as if he’d lost his mind.

“Roman won’t force you to be with him,” he
assured her. “Is that what you’re afraid of?”

“My name isn’t Claudia, and I have no
husband or son.” She stood closer to the cell, and studied him like
some exotic animal in a zoo. “What are you, Aiden Draksel?”

“How do you know my name?” The panic was
returning.

“Your driver’s license,” she explained.
“Your blood work shows several strange anomalies.” Her voice was
cold and it reminded him in some ways of Roman’s voice.

“My blood work? You tested my blood?” Now he
felt really stupid. He already knew that someone had taken his
blood and this woman was obviously involved. What he couldn’t
figure out is why she would want to test his blood. At first, he
had wondered if she was denying being Claudia out of distrust, but
even if his uncle hadn’t told her what they were, she would have
figured it out by now. All of this left him wondering who he had
followed into that alley.

“You aren’t Claudia,” he said mostly to
himself, “and I am completely screwed.”

She must have sensed his distress because
her voice softened. “I’m not going to hurt you,” she assured him.
“My family shares some of your genetic anomalies, but some of them
are very unusual. Tell me what you are.”

Despite the fact that she was trying to
comfort him, she was still staring at him in that clinical way and
his fear was quickly being replaced by anger. The word, “what,” was
the straw that broke the camel’s back. He embraced the anger
because it made him feel more in control. What right did she have
to talk about him like he was some science experiment?

He lay back down on the cot, placed his
hands behind his head and closed his eyes. “Luv,” he started in his
most condescending voice, “your imagination is running wild. This
sort of thing happens all the time to women who don’t get enough
sex. I’d offer to help you out but cold bitches don’t really do
anything for me.” He was willing to admit that the words were a bad
idea almost as soon as he spoke them but he was madder than hell at
the moment.

“So, I see that your genetic anomalies
haven’t made you smarter than human men,” she snapped.

He lost it. Heedless to the pain in his head
he sat up and lunged toward the bars of the cell. “What the hell
kind of sick game are you playing?” he shouted.

She studied him for a long time and finally
let out a weary sigh “This is obviously a bad time for us to talk.
You have a head injury and you need to rest.” Then her voice
dropped so low that he knew she was muttering to herself.
“Hopefully you’ll be more pleasant when you’re feeling better.”

“Wait!” he shouted when she started to walk
away.

She stopped and turned toward him.

He stared at her and reached out his mind
toward hers. “You want to let me out of this cell.” He pushed the
compulsion into her mind but hit a brick wall.

“Nice try,” she said and gave him a smile of
appreciation. Then she turned and walked away.

He reached through the bars to try to grab
her arm but she was already on her way back up the stairs. When he
spun around to stalk back to his cot the dizziness hit him full
force and he collapsed to the floor. The activity around him seemed
unreal. There were footsteps and the jangle of keys. When the
fogginess finally cleared she was kneeling beside him, checking his
pulse.

“You need to rest or you’ll hurt yourself.”
Her voice was soothing, not nearly as cold as it had been just
moments earlier.

Aiden looked up into her eyes for a long
moment before speaking. “Why are you keeping me in here?”

She looked guilty. “I promise that we’ll
keep your secrets, Aiden,” she assured him. “When you recover I’ll
explain things better. For now, just rest. I know this isn’t the
most comfortable place for you, but it’s the best I could manage on
short notice.”

She helped him back to the cot and adjusted
the pillows behind his head.

“You can’t just keep me in a cage,” he said,
embarrassed by how weak his voice sounded. It made him wonder again
how long he’d been here. How long had it been since he’d had his
supplements? How badly had he really been injured?

“We can’t risk keeping you anywhere else,”
she said with just a tinge of regret as she locked the cell door.
“I’ll be back to check on you later,” she said and then headed up
the stairs and out of the room.

He wanted to shout at her and curse her for
imprisoning him but he was just too tired. As he drifted off to
sleep he came to the depressing realization that no one was likely
to even notice that he was missing.

When she looked at me there were tears in
her eyes. “Why do you suppose your father saved me?”

A sick feeling came over me. My father had
never performed a selfless act. I knew that he hadn’t touched her
because he had been on his way to visit my mother when he’d saved
Claudia. He hadn’t even returned to the estate with her, but I was
certain that he had already told Claudia his reasons for saving
her.

Excerpt from Roman Draksel’s blog

Judging by the stubble on his face, Aiden
guessed that he had been mostly unconscious for at least
twenty four hours, probably closer to forty eight hours.
At the rate he was going, he’d soon have that beard he had
threatened to grow so many times. He had drifted in and out of
consciousness, not really sure what was real and what was a dream.
This was the first time that he’d woken up with a clear head.