The Vampire King (15 page)

“I’m fine,” she said. “The twins are fine.” She took a deep breath and tried to let go of her mounting tension. “We’re all fine. Now you can go.”

“Yeah,” Charlie agreed. “Before we kick the Overseer’s ass.”

Jesse’s grin was still ear to ear. It wasn’t every person who could talk to the werewolf council Overseer in such a manner, but where Charlie was concerned, it was allowed, for many reasons. He settled his amber gaze on Charlie and shook his head. “Oh baby girl. We’ve been down that road before and I think we both know who’s gonna win.”

Charlie’s own expression first switched to one of shock, and then slid into one of sly defiance. She and Jesse
had
definitely been down that road before; Danny knew all about it. The two were very, very close friends, and at one point – long before Malcolm Cole, Charlie’s mate had arrived on the scene – they’d been friends with
benefits
.

Danny could feel the stares of a few of the patrons in the store now; Jesse Graves was a powerful man in every sense of the word, and anywhere he went, women tended to notice and men tended to get antsy. Now a few of the shoppers had overheard bits of their conversation and things were probably getting a little too public for comfort.

She cleared her throat. “Seriously, Jesse,” she said, lowering her voice and moving forward so that she wouldn’t be overheard. “We really are okay. We’re well guarded.” She gestured to the men who were watching from the hall. Two had taken seats on a bench where Danny could have sworn some other guys had been sitting a few minutes ago, and two were on opposite ends of the hall, leaning casually against the walls. “You have enough muscle on us to keep – ” She was cut off mid-sentence by the sound of bullets thunking into metal and stone all around them.

The Overseer was in motion at once, grabbing Danny and yanking her into his arms before he hit the ground with her, cushioning her fall.

There was a brief silence in which the world tried to catch up with what was happening, and then that silence erupted into screams. Danny blinked, her hands immediately going to her stomach. Her werewolf hearing at once caught the separate heartbeats of her little girl and boy.
They’re okay.

Above her, there was a scrambling motion, fast and furious. Danny curled in on herself when she heard more bullet thunks along the walls and the glass storefront shattered. Jesse’s body was a protective weight above her.

And then the noise stopped, and the world went eerily still. Jesse was moving immediately, coming to his feet with the grace of everything he’d ever been trained to be. Danny couldn’t tell exactly what he was doing; a part of her was too shell shocked to get up. It was slowly sinking in that someone had fired a gun on them in a public place full of innocent humans.

The Hunters
, she thought numbly.

“Danny,” someone said above her. Danny recognized the voice as Charlie’s. “Danny, you okay?”

Danny rolled over, looked up at her red-headed, blue-eyed friend, and sat up. Danny had been through a lot in the last year, and she and the others were no strangers to violence. But for some strange reason, she felt slightly numb this time.

Still, she knew she needed to reassure Charlie, and she managed to nod. Charlie patted her once and was up and moving again, no doubt either going after whoever had done the shooting or tending to anyone who might be wounded.

Wounded.

Oh hell
, Danny thought, coming at once to her feet. She began to scan her surroundings. They were filled with broken glass, overturned displays, and chunks of plaster and paint. Jesse was nowhere around, and now neither was Charlie. They
had
gone after the shooters. It was like Charlie to do so; she never backed down from a fight. And as the Overseer, of course Jesse would.

The enforcers the werewolf council had assigned to them had split up. Two were moving through the crowd, checking on people who had hit the ground. Two were standing on either side of Danny.

Imani was coming up beside Danny even as she finished scanning her surroundings. “One injury,” Imani said softly. “No one was killed. Not a normal Hunter attack.” She turned to face Danny fully. “But I’m gonna have a hell of a lot of mind-wiping to do, and the one injury is actually pretty bad.” She pointed to a group of huddled teenagers kneeling beside a girl who was laying in a small puddle of blood near the back of the store.

Danny’s heart flip-flopped. At once, she was moving in that direction, but one of her guardian enforcers stepped in her path. “Mrs. Caige, we can’t let you do this,” he said as she looked up at him questioningly.

Imani was beside her. “He might be right, Danny. You were pretty drained last time.”

“Get the hell out of my way,” Danny demanded, her gaze narrowing. She could smell the girl’s blood and knew instinctively that there was too much of it. However the human had been harmed, an artery had been punctured. She needed to be healed.

The enforcer shook his head.

And Danny’s hormone-fueled anger reached a peak. She whispered a powerful arcane word and held up her hand, palm-out. A blast of something invisible rushed over the enforcer in front of her and he stumbled back, shaking his head. Without blinking, she spun and did the same to the second enforcer as he came up at her side. The two moved away, temporarily discombobulated.

“Stunned,” Imani whispered, nodding sagely beside her. “A safe bet I guess. But I’ll ask you honestly, girl – you sure this is a good idea?”

“Positive.” Danny brushed past her best friend and made her way to the girl on the ground. “Hang tight, sweetie,” she said softly. “Everything’s going to be just fine.”

*****

Several blocks away, Ramses watched the young pregnant woman through the clear crystal of the telescope one of the Hunters had supplied him with. Their attack had worked. And the recordings Ramses had watched earlier hadn’t lied.

Dannai Caige possessed the ability to heal.

What was more… she was an orphan who had been raised by a well-meaning witch. She had no idea who her parents were. Who her
mother
was.

But Ramses did. Dannai was Amunet’s daughter.

Chapter Fourteen

When Evie woke up, the smell of coffee was still strong in her nostrils, and a heavy sense of dread had settled in her gut. She came awake with a start and rose in the bed to find that she was back in the safe house room Roman had originally transported them to before taking her to his cavern. Roman wasn’t there, but she wasn’t alone.

“Miss Farrow, you’re awake,” came a familiar voice. There were two men in the room; they were the two who had been at the hospital with her and Roman. There was also an old woman.

The old woman sat on the edge of the bed and watched her through some of the bluest eyes Evie had ever seen. She said nothing, and Evie’s sense of confusion and doom deepened.

The one called Jaxon came forward now and stood beside the bed while the other man immediately turned toward the door and exited the room through it. “He’ll be notifying Roman that you’re awake,” Jaxon told her.

“There’s no need,” the old woman said finally, her voice so positively ancient, it sounded like dried leaves skittering across a deserted Autumn park. “He knows. He’s on his way.” She turned and reached for a tall glass of drinking water on the night stand beside the bed. “Here child, drink this,” she offered, holding it out for her.

Evie cleared her throat and shook her head. She had no idea who the old woman was and she had barely been around the others long enough to keep her from hysterics about waking up amongst strangers, but at the moment, the only thing she wanted to do was speak to Roman before the images from her strange sleep disappeared and she lost them entirely. The dread that had glued itself to her in her dreams still clung menacingly, speeding up her heartrate and threatening her with panic. “No. No water,” she said, clearing her throat to continue. “I need to talk to Roman.”

“Oh, he’s on his way my dear, I can assure you,” the woman repeated.

“Oh God….” Evie’s fingers curled into fists. She needed to hang on to what she’d seen, but at the same time, she’d have given anything at that moment to be able to forget the images playing before her mind just then. “I know who killed that girl!” she cried, the trembling of her body causing her voice to quiver. She couldn’t hold it in any longer. She wasn’t sure the old woman would even know what she was talking about – but Jaxon would.

She looked up at him. “The girl that was burned, the one in the morgue,” she repeated, her words speeding up and her voice rising with mounting hysterics. “I know who killed her! I saw the whole thing!”

Jaxon frowned down at her, his vivid eyes blinking in confusion. “But miss, that’s impossible.”

“Nonsense,” said the old woman, shaking her head in reprimand. “You of all people should know better, Jax. You’re a vampire for crying out loud. What the hell could be impossible compared to that?”

The old woman turned back to Evie and cocked her head to one side thoughtfully. “I’m Lalura,” she said by way of introduction. “And you are Evie. Roman’s told me all about you.” She nodded once as if to close off the subject. “Now what is this about the killer?”

Evie was baffled. But more than that, she was scared.

She’d seen everything. She would never forget the killer’s face now. What he had done to the innocent girl in the morgue turned Evie’s stomach to lead and clouded her brain with an oncoming migraine. It was a waking nightmare. But worst of all – absolutely most terrifying of all – was the fact that the murderer was not a stranger. Not to her.

She’d come close to him. Within mere feet. She’d even found him attractive.

Evie swallowed hard now and closed her eyes. “He followed her home from the school,” she said, seeing it behind her closed lids as if it were a movie. “Light brown hair and blue eyes. His name….” It was there, floating around her subconscious like a bunch of jumbled, blurry letters that floated frustratingly close to being in the right order.

“His name….” She froze, the letters came together, and she opened her eyes. “His name is Charles.”

It was the man from the coffee shop, the one with the piercing blue eyes who had been watching her from across the store while she tried to tell her father how to download the Kindle app on his phone. Charles was the murderer. He was also a vampire.

He’s a vampire.

And it was more than that. Evie shook her head and felt a comforting hand on her shoulder. Her head began to pound. Her chest felt tight and her fingers tingled. A panic attack was coming on.

There would be no avoiding it. Evie was absolutely petrified.

The man from the coffee shop was a vampire and he’d drained an innocent girl of every last drop of blood for one horrifying reason. He’d done it because the girl looked just like Evie.

“Breathe,” Lalura said. “In for five counts, hold for two, out for five counts, repeat.” She leaned forward, her voice stern, her blue eyes flashing. Evie automatically did as she was told. She would do anything to prevent the attack. She felt as if she were dying.

She breathed in slowly, held it, and let it out just as slowly. A bit of the nausea passed, the throbbing in her head lessened, but the tingling fingers and the tight chest remained.

“There now. You’re doing what you can. I’ll take care of the rest.” The old woman raised her right hand, held two fingers over Evie’s heart, and spoke a string of the most beautiful cryptic words Evie had ever heard.

*****

There were six where there should have been eight, and as the doors to the meeting chamber closed and Roman’s heady gaze landed on the second of the remaining empty seats, a number of puzzle pieces slid into place.

David Cade was missing, but Roman knew where he was. He’d remained with Lalura to keep an eye on Evie.

The other missing court member was Charles Ward. It was beginning to make sense now.

The eight members of Roman’s court had been chosen for very good reason. Each warlock in existence possessed powers particular to them and them alone. For the most part, they all shared the ability to perform the same basic spells such as transportation and telekinesis. However, just as each individual human on the planet was special in some manner that was his or her own, be it incredible athletic prowess or great cooking skills, each member of the supernatural world was different from the others.

Some alpha werewolves possessed the power to change into animals other than wolves, such as the infamous and late Gabriel Phelan had been capable of doing. Some could control human minds to some extent, such as Malcolm Cole, the famous author and even more famous werewolf was capable of doing.

Warlocks were no different. And because Offspring were the product of a warlock communion with an Akyri, vampires also tended to possess unique powers. Those with the most useful abilities were called in to Roman’s court.

Samantha Chance was the youngest in his court, only pulled in a few short years ago. She was a technological genius in more ways than one. She possessed an inherent know-how when it came to nearly anything computer-related. And because she was also a technopath, what she could not coerce or finesse with this know-how and a college try, she simply manipulated with the powers of her mind.

Saxon had been a member of the vampire court for more than a thousand years. His particular ability was one of great value when it came to protecting Offspring society from other supernatural factions. He was a trained warrior, and because he’d lived so long, he had become proficient in nearly every weapon on the planet. He was also immune to attacks from all of them. Bullets bounced off of him or simply missed altogether. Swords scraped along his skin as if it were made of metal. And when it came to magical attacks, Saxon’s abilities were perhaps most impressive, for he was able to absorb the attack and turn it back around on his opponent. With such abilities, Saxon had long ago earned the right to train and teach Roman’s “army,” a fairly sizeable group of Offspring warriors who luckily were needed less and less with each passing year.