The Werevamp Diaries: Moon Beam Dream (The Lynlee Lincoln Series Book 5) (2 page)

“I thought you were my girl.  You aren’t supposed to be cavorting with other guys.”

“Well, I know, but this guy’s a sandman.  There are some things he can do that other guys just can’t.” His lips were just inches from hers, and she licked hers in anticipation.

“You’re a tease, you know that?” He moved in, his mouth hovering so near to hers that she could feel the heat of his breath.

She decided she didn’t want to wait for him to make a move.  Instead she cupped the back of his neck and pulled him in for a deep kiss.  “I’ll show you what kind of tease I am tonight, lover.” She whispered the words in a rough voice.

“I’ll be there at the appointed hour.  I’m nothing if not prompt... especially when I’m sure it will be worth my while.” He pecked her lips again.

“Oh it will be, lover.  It...” Her phone dinged from her pocket, and she groaned in annoyance.  The special ringtone told her exactly who it was. “Damn, that’s her.  She’s become really pushy since she’s been bedridden.”

“Just since she’s been bedridden?” Sandy’s tone was sarcastic, then after a short pause he laughed.  With a wink, he spanked Rhiannon affectionately on the rear end and headed for the alley so that he could transform into a pile of sand and disappear.

She stared at that spot from which he’d vanished, lost in sexy dreams for a moment until her phone rang again.

“Damn, girl, are you like completely out of patience, or what?”

Her BFF Lynlee Lincoln didn’t respond immediately, but Rhia could just about imagine the snarky thoughts rolling around in her brain.  “You said you’d be here by 9:00.”

Rolling her eyes at the exasperation in Lynlee’s voice, she started the engine and closed the car door, bracing her phone against her shoulder. “Listen, girlfriend.  I had a breakfast date with my man, and as much as I’m looking forward to ripping those staples out of your belly, he takes precedence.”

A snort emitted from the other end of the phone. “Good, glad you got the mushy stuff out of the way there instead of bringing him with you and exposing me to it.  I don’t think my stomach can handle it.”

Despite her acerbic tone, it was good to hear the “old Lynlee” again considering she’d died and come back to life just a few weeks ago.  Death was just a part of life... no pun intended . . . and Rhiannon should have known Lynlee would find a way to cheat even the grim reaper. 

It hadn’t been without a cost, though.  Rhiannon had never seen a wound as bad as the one her friend had received from that demon’s sword.  Even with forty-seven staples total, it had been no easy feat for her to close the gash in the witch’s stomach.  A demon blade was a tricky thing, and it not only slashed but ripped and shredded the flesh all around.  Lynlee might just as well have gone through a meat grinder.

Witches normally had superfast healing abilities, which was part of the reason they needed paranormal doctors like Rhiannon to care for them so as not to freak out the lay medical person.  But this injury wasn’t following the normal rule which made Lynlee very irritable and worried Rhiannon to the extreme.  Sure Lynlee couldn’t die now, but what would her life be like with a gaping hole in her belly?  Images of the movie
Death Becomes Her
ran rampant in Rhiannon’s mind for weeks.

Still, her friend was finally getting better, and so today they were going to try removing the staples.  Pulling into her parking space at the apartment complex, Rhiannon reached into the backseat for her bag and then called Tig.

He answered without so much as a hello. “Let me guess.  The queen’s callin’ again.”

She laughed as she opened the door and stepped into the safety of her living room. “And she’s sounding really bitchy about it, too.”

Standing there beside the door, she waited, and within a few seconds, Tig materialized in front of her.  Besides being a former Neutralizer like Lynlee, he was also a goblin with a handy set of magical tricks.  At that moment, however, he looked somewhat like a sailor in uniform except that the bottoms were nothing more than a pair of very tight briefs.

“Ugh, what the...”

“Hey, hey, hey.” He waved his hand at her as he approached, and she couldn’t help but take a few steps back. “You want my assistance, you got it, but I can’t help that I was in the middle of some very interesting role-playing with a sexy mermaid named Chanice.”

“TMI, TMI.” She stuffed her fingers in her ears. “Can you just open the door and let me get on with it?”

Before Lynlee had moved in with her boyfriend the year before, all Rhiannon had to do was drive across to the next town to reach her.  These days, it required magic, and since her friend was out of commission, that meant Rhia needed Tig’s help.

The goblin snickered, then swiveled on his stubby feet and knocked on her front door.  Immediately a magical portal opened up, and Rhiannon walked right into the living room at her friend’s house.  Lynlee’s boyfriend Beck rounded the corner from the kitchen in response to her arrival.

“Oh, it’s you.” He grinned, wiping his hands on a dish towel. “Are you hungry?  You’re just in time for some breakfast.”

The man was not only easy on the eyes, but he was a dream in the kitchen.  Her mouth immediately began to water. “You should know by now that you pretty much never have to ask a werewolf if she’s hungry.” 
Or a werevamp for that matter
, she thought.

“You already had breakfast!” came a disgruntled cry from the other side of the house.

Beck chuckled and shook his head. “You get her to settle down, and I’ll make you some pancakes.  You get her to laugh, and I’ll toss in some bacon to go with it.”

“Deal!”

“W
hy don’t you take all day?” Lynlee barely had the entire complaint out of her mouth before Rhiannon walked into the bedroom.  She found her friend in bed with the blankets all askew.  Her shirt was pulled up to reveal the thick gauze wrapped tight around her midsection, and she was trying to scratch at a spot on her back.

“I could just leave, you know.”

Lynlee pulled her black brows into a fierce frown, then her expression eased, and there was just a bit of pleading in her eyes. “I’m going to go completely crazy if you don’t get me out of this thing.  Seriously, I can’t do this anymore.  I need this crap off me, and I need to get out of this damned bed.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Rhia nodded, then plopped her bag into the bed and rummaged around inside until she found her shears, a stethoscope and a blood pressure cuff.  She tested her friend’s vitals first, then moved into the bathroom and thoroughly washed her hands.  With a roll of her wrist, she indicated for Lynlee to lie back as she leaned down to get to work.

Carefully she snipped through the bandages and then slowly pulled the gauze away from the wound.  Rhia studied the injury carefully, noting the color of the skin around it and feeling it to be sure the edges had knitted together.

“Well?” Lynlee asked, and she almost laughed at her friend’s gasping tone of worry.  She figured she’d been holding her breath in anticipation as Rhiannon checked her out.

“Well, I think we can go for it.” She searched out a pair of staple removers.  Beginning at the area closest to Lynlee’s chest, she carefully cut the first staple in half and then worked both ends out of the skin.  It took a long while to make her way through all of them.  She cleaned up the healing wound a bit, then took a deep breath and motioned her friend to roll over.

Before slashing her stomach wide open, the demon blade had first impaled Lynlee straight through the gut and out her back, barely missing her spine.  The wound on the backside was shorter, but just as ragged as the other.  While her witchy friend drummed her fingers on the bed, Rhiannon proceeded to remove each staple.

“All done,” she said, then dropped her tools into a small baggie to keep them separate from her clean ones.  While Lynlee rolled to sit on the edge of the bed with her legs dangling over the side, Rhiannon walked back a few paces until her rear was leaning against the chest of drawers.

“So give me a report.  How are you feeling?” Lynlee raised her eyes with a frown and opened her mouth, but before she could speak, Rhia added, “And fine is not the answer I’m looking for.”

“You have a shitty bedside manner.”

Rhiannon didn’t say anything else, just stared her down and waited.  Lynlee closed her eyes and took a few long, slow breaths, then she grabbed a house coat from beside the bed and slipped her arms into it.  The exertion of just moving her body around seemed to have sapped any energy she might have stored up. 

But when she opened her eyes again and looked at Rhiannon, it wasn’t with worry or even defeat.  It was determination and a good bit of angry frustration.  And Rhia thought that was probably what would make the difference in her continuing recovery.

“I’m not fine, as you can see.  I’m weak as a damned kitten, and it pisses me off.  And Beck is all rainbows and unicorns and crap because I’m alive, and I’m thinking that if I have to live like this it’s not really all that cool with me.  So your turn.  How am I doing and when can I get the hell out of this bed?”

Rhiannon bit her lip and tried to stifle a laugh, but the effort was no use.  She tossed her head back and chuckled.  “You’re better each time I come, Lynlee.  I know it feels like this recovery is moving at the speed of molasses, but you were dead.  It’s gonna take some time for your body to get over that.”

Lynlee nodded, tying the housecoat at the waist then shuffling her feet as she moved to the bathroom.  When she came out a few minutes later, she looked a little calmer.

“Smells like your man’s cooked up a feast in there.  Let’s get out of this stuffy sick room and go eat.”

Her friend’s eyes really brightened with that suggestion, but first Rhiannon grabbed her arm and held her to stop her from leaving the room. “But seriously, girlfriend, you have got to start being nice to that guy.  He’s hot as hell, and he can cook.  I have a weakness for both, so unless you want me to move in on him, stop being a bitch.”

Lynlee narrowed her eyes then raised one eyebrow. “Be careful.  I have spells that will make you sorry you ever said that.”

They looked hard at each other a moment, then both of their mouths opened and their laughter mingled and bounced off the walls.  After forcing her BFF into a hug, Rhiannon called out down the hall, “Did you hear that, Beck?  I get pancakes and bacon, so I hope you made plenty!”

“I
’m late,” Rhiannon grumbled under her breath as she stuffed her medical tools into her bag and waited to be transported back to her apartment.  Basil, a wizard with a terrible case of halitosis, was giving his charge a lecture about the ills of overeating. 

And overeating for a vampire could be dangerous not only for the human who was being fed upon, but also the bloodsucker.  In this particular case, it was worse for the latter.  Tiffany was a young vampire, and that might account for her mistake in choosing a guy who worked in a silver refining plant as her host of choice.  Even though the amount of silver in his blood wasn’t anywhere near the danger point for him, it certainly wasn’t healthy for Tiffany, particularly since she had a penchant for overindulging. 

“Feeling better?” Rhia asked, approaching the two of them.  Tiffany had her hand over her face, probably to shield herself from Basil’s awful breath.

“Yes, I’m okay.  Just don’t make me drink any more of that stuff, okay?”

She laughed and patted the girl on the back. “Don’t worry.  I think you got most of it out of your system.  No need to make you puke your guts up anymore.”

Basil sniffed. “Yes, no need for more of that.”

It was true that the sign of coagulated blood vomit was pretty distasteful, so she couldn’t blame him for looking a little green at the suggestion.  “So, I need to get going.  Can you spell me, Basil?”

The man reached into his pocket and withdrew a wadded up black cloth, throwing it onto the floor where it landed in the form of a perfect circle.  Rhiannon grabbed her bag to her chest, took a few steps and leaped onto the cloth.  She immediately fell through the circle and landed smoothly in her own apartment.

With a big smile she tossed her bag onto the couch. “Home sweet home.”

The grin fell away from her when she heard the sound of crying coming from her bedroom.  The hair on the back of her neck rolled to standing, and Rhiannon quietly removed her jacket as she stalked in the direction of the sound. 

“Shhh...” A woman’s voice cooed, and she thought that she recognized her but couldn’t quite recall.

Palm flat to the cracked door of her bedroom, she pushed it open to peek inside.

“Rhetta?”

Her sister turned with a start, brown eyes wide in alarm.  She had a baby boy of about six months old in her arms, and he was wailing as if he were starving.  “Finally.  I didn’t think you were ever going to get home.”

“What are you doing here?”

Rhetta’s lower lip trembled as she bounced the screeching baby up and down to try to quiet him.  “I’m here because I’m in trouble.  We’re in trouble.  You’re the only place I could think to turn.”

Instinct took over, and Rhiannon reached out her arms to take the baby from her sister, who seemed to be on the edge of some emotional precipice.  As she rocked and spoke to him in a soft tone, the youngster hiccupped a few times and then settled down, laying his head on her shoulder.

“Go in the other room and sit down, Rhetta.  You’re making this kid a nervous wreck,” she said, moving towards the bathroom where she kept her oils.  She mixed up some lavender and water for diffusing.  The soothing scent began to pervade the room, and within a few minutes, the exhausted baby was dead weight in her arms.  Placing him carefully in her bed, she propped some pillows to keep him from rolling off, then she tiptoed into the living area where her sister was pacing.

“Is he yours?”

Rhetta appeared alarmed, as much by the question as by her sister sneaking up behind her.  She raked a hand through her long brown mane and nodded her head. 

Rhiannon took a deep breath and looked up to check the time on the wall clock.  Sandy would probably arrive in about fifteen minutes.  She dug her cell phone from her pocket and tapped out a quick message warning him about her unexpected visitor, then plopped down onto the couch.  Rhetta followed suit and sat down opposite her on the loveseat.