I usually never wake early, but the sunlight shining through the slit in the drapes landed bright on my face, nearly blinding me. I fought the urge to cover my face with my pillow and go back to sleep. Instead, I pushed the covers back, slid out of bed and stretched. I had work to do and somewhat of a mystery to solve if I ever wanted to go back home.
It wasn’t until I turned around and glanced back at the bed that I noticed Gideon had already risen. It felt strange knowing I’d spent the night with a vampire and had lived to tell about it—not that I’d planned to tell anyone any time soon. I’d never live it down, especially with Tasha and her gaggle of goons. They’d jump at the chance to rub my nose in the fact that I’d actually trusted one of their kind enough to get naked and fall asleep.
Since he’d left me to myself, I decided to take a shower. The huge tub in the bathroom attached to the bedroom we’d slept in practically invited me to soak in it. I showered instead. I couldn’t stay here much longer. I felt the familiar itch to hunt, which usually meant a rogue vamp had either already killed someone, or would do so in the next day or two.
With luck, I could track the fiend down and dispatch him—or her—before they made their first kill. Though it might sound that way, I had never killed without provocation. Generally, I hunted my targets, figured out a general location where they would do their dirty deed, and then caught them in the act—most times, it wasn’t their first.
Unfortunately for the victim, I had to wait until the beast almost killed them before I could, in good conscience, end the life of their attacker. I was a rogue vampire hunter, not a murderer.
After my shower, I made my way downstairs. “Where are they?” I searched the ground floor, hoping to find Gideon and convince him I needed to hunt instead of staying locked indoors. I couldn’t find him anywhere.
Frowning, I headed for the front door. Where could he have taken Evan? The boy must have been with him unless he’d left him sleeping upstairs, which I doubted.
I heaved a sigh of relief at the sound of footsteps on the porch. At least they hadn’t gone far.
Unlocking the door, I swung it wide. “It’s about time you got your ass back he—”
A large, meaty hand struck me in the face and I toppled forward into thick arms that didn’t belong to Gideon.
My head ached where he hit me and my ears rung as the world tilted on its axis. Taken by surprise, I wasn’t able to fight. My stomach heaved at the throbbing in my head. I rarely took a blow, and the pain was something I wasn’t used to. My head swam as he bent, stuck his shoulder in my stomach, and lifted me into a fireman’s carry.
I fought to the best of my ability, but my skills weren’t something I could tap while hanging upside down with my face bouncing against a strange man’s ass. “So help me god, if you fart I’m going to kill you... twice!”
I pounded on my captor’s legs and rear as he carried me away from the house where I should have been safe, a short limping form following behind us. Had someone followed us last night, or did someone know where Gideon planned to take us?
Whatever the answer, it was obvious it wasn’t a safe house as Gideon had believed. Either their bolt holes weren’t as protected as he’d thought, or someone in their network was the one out to kill me.
No matter what I’d thought before, it became quite obvious that I was their target when the goon hauling me upside down like a sack of potatoes grabbed me and threw me over his shoulder.
The blood that rushed to my head added to my headache and I grew increasingly nauseated as he trotted down the sidewalk with his uneven gait. “I’m getting sick. I’ll throw up all over you if you don’t put me down.”
Ignoring me, the creep just kept going and the feeling grew. “I’m serious, mister. I’m going to puke down your back if you don’t put me down.”
Again, he ignored me. However, it wasn’t long before we reached a mini-van with no windows and he dumped me unceremoniously on a pile of blankets in the back. He secured me with a shackle on a chain secured to the floor. I didn’t bother pulling on it. With the pain in my head, I wasn’t strong enough to do anything but hurt myself.
Closing my eyes, I took several deep breaths and gathered my wits. I knew I could talk my way out of it if I could only think. Something about my nervous babble always put humans in a stupor—though I wasn’t sure this man was human. Still, I didn’t get the overwhelming urge to kill him as I would a rogue vamp.
“Get in.” The man snarled to the short figure that had followed us. Who or what huddled beneath the hooded cloak? The person was small enough to be a child.
Please don’t tell me some idiot brought his kid on a kidnapping job. I shook my head as the childlike form climbed into the van and fastened its seatbelt.
Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes again. I couldn’t let them take me far. I had to find a way to keep them from leaving the neighborhood.
“Where’s the keys?” The large man slapped the steering wheel with a curse. “Did I drop them on the sidewalk?”
I’m sure the question was rhetorical, but the figure in the passenger seat shrugged. I glanced down to the floor of the van and immediately shifted my body to cover the set of keys lying by the chain.
My nearly brainless captor opened his door and slid out of the van. I took the opportunity to hide the keys in my bra and had just lain back down when he threw the slider open.
“Get out!” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
Barely opening my eyes, acting as feebly as I could, I just held up my hand and showed him the shackle holding me in place.
“Son-of-a-bitch!” He slammed the door shut and yelled at the figure in the front. “Keep an eye on her until I get back here with the keys.”
So, the keys to unlock the shackle holding me in the van were also on the keychain held snugly between my breasts. Suppressing a smile, I counted to one hundred before I pulled the keys from between my boobs and freed myself.
Gathering what I assumed in my fist was the key to the ignition, I hurriedly crawled to the front of the van, locked the door and started it. Jamming it in gear, I mashed my foot on the gas pedal and headed toward Casa Sicura, the only place where I knew I would be safe until Gideon came to get me.
“I hope you’re a child, because if you’re not, they’re going to kill you for helping him kidnap me.” I didn’t know that for a fact, but I knew Gideon wouldn’t be happy. I might not be his mate, but I had a feeling he harbored some weird sort of emotions for me. Whatever they were, they had stopped Gideon from having Micah end him—even if it was only temporary.
“I didn’t help him.” It was the voice of a child, not a little person, and I exhaled with relief. I hated it when humans were caught in the middle of this strange war we waged with the vampire rogues and demons. “He killed my mom. He said he’s my husband, that my mom sold me to him. She didn’t.” The young girl pushed the hood back from her face and turned to me, her large eyes looking like two large, purple violets pressed into her ashen face.
“He didn’t... Uh he um...” I didn’t know how to ask this frightened child if the man had violated her.
“He hasn’t touched me, other than to beat me when I try to run away.” She swiped at her eyes with her robe-covered forearm. “He said something about me being too young and he needed me pure to open a gate.” She leaned her head back against the seat.
“The pig.” I spat the words as I careened around a corner a mile or so from our destination. “How old are you, ten?”
“Twelve.” She clasped her hands in her lap, her gaze cast down. “I’m small for my age. My mom was short, too.” She sobbed into her hands. “Momma always said we were vertically challenged.”
Crap! The kid was crying. I might have always wanted to be a mother, but I wasn’t one and I knew next to nothing about kids. Though I supposed, in the grand scheme of things, the person sitting next to me wasn’t much of a kid anymore.
Reaching over with my right hand, I awkwardly patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. He won’t get you again. I’ll take you to a place where you’ll be safe.”
I hoped I wasn’t lying. If what I suspected about the girl was true, she was a guide, and the man who had kidnapped the both of us was an incubus that had planned to use her to open an inter-dimensional gate when she’d reached the appropriate age to do so.
I got why they’d taken to kidnapping kids. There weren’t many virgins running around in the information age, and when an incubus raped a virgin guide, the power the guide released during the violent act would open a gate to another dimension where most of their kind stayed imprisoned.
Unfortunately for the young guides, it meant they were constantly in danger of being taken, and for lack of a better word, farmed until they reached the age of consent. Thankfully, raping a child did them no good. At least some of the rules of the crazy life I’d found myself embroiled in made some sort of sense.
I made another turn and slammed on the brakes in front of Casa Sicura. The van came to a shuddering halt as the anti-lock brakes kicked in and everything in the back slid to the front, hitting the back of the front seats with a thump.
Honking the horn, I yanked the keys from the ignition, hopped out and ran around the front of the van. I opened the passenger side door and helped the girl out onto the sidewalk. “What’s your name? I can’t very well introduce you to my friends if I don’t know who you are.”
“Marina McGee, but everyone calls me Marnie.”
“Nice to meet you, Marina McGee.” I gave her hand a quick shake before pulling her up the stairs to the porch at a near run. I had no idea where the incubus was and I didn’t want to take chances with my young charge. “Marina is a beautiful name. If I were you, I wouldn’t let anyone call me Marnie again.” I rang the bell and glanced down at her. “And both of us had parents who had a sense of humor. Alliteration isn’t something done a lot these days.” I smiled down at her. “I’m Tara Torolf.” I’d gone back to using my maiden name because using my married name had hurt too much after my husband died.
“Alliteration?”
“Yes. It’s when someone uses words that start with the same letter together or close to each other. You know, like Marina McGee. That’s alliteration.” I started knocking on the door. Was the damned doorbell broken? “You know, like super heroes and their girlfriends.”
“Oh.” Marina didn’t appear as though she understood, but I didn’t have time to elaborate. The door opened, Tasha yanked me inside and hugged me to her.
“Where have you been? Gideon is beside himself. He said he took Evan into the basement to start his training and you disappeared. What the hell are you doing here?”
“An incubus grabbed me, chained me in the back of that van,” I said, jerking my thumb toward the van I’d parked out front in the street. “The idiot dropped his keys in the back with me and then went out searching for them. I released myself and took the van, along with his young captive.” I gently pushed Marina forward. “This is Marina. He was holding her until she came of age.” I widened my eyes in an attempt to make Tasha understand.
“Hello, Marina.” Tasha took the young girl’s hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”
A little boy peeked out from behind her. Michael looked just like his father with his coffee-colored hair and dark eyes. He glanced up at his mother, his eyebrows drawn down in a familiar scowl.
“Say hello to Marina, Michael.” Grasping his arm, she pulled him out from behind her. “She’s scared. Can’t you see? Will you please take her into the living room while I get her something to eat? I’ll bring your game controllers and maybe you can con her into playing your favorite game.”
Michael’s attitude changed and his shyness disappeared at the prospect of getting his game controllers back. “Okay.” He glanced at Marina. “Wanna see my collection?”
“Sure,” she said as she followed him into the house. “What kind of games do you have?”
Their voices trailed off as they progressed deeper into the house.
“I don’t have to worry about any of your guests going after her, do I?” I cast a worried glance toward the living room. “Michael has been fed well today?”
“Yes.” Tasha nodded. “In fact, we were just about to go to the store. She smiled and waved me into the house, closing the door behind me. “Don’t worry. That can wait. Though now I suppose I’ll have to take Marina with me.”
“That would probably be best, or leave her with someone you trust implicitly.” I hoped it wouldn’t be Marta. I still hadn’t gotten over the way she’d acted the last time I visited.
I couldn’t put my finger on why, but I didn’t trust the blonde vampire as far as I could throw the van I’d parked out front. Something about her made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. Maybe it was the fact that she was a recovering rogue. I made a face. Or maybe I just didn’t like her uppity attitude.
“I take it she’s a guide?” Tasha asked, referring to Marina.
Tasha led me through to the kitchen. Stepping up onto a stool, she did the combination on a cabinet lock and pulled out two white video game controllers. Turning, she gave me a sheepish smile. “I have to put them up there and lock them up or Michael takes them.”
I followed her back to the living room and peered in while she handed the controllers to her son.
“Be good. She’s a human child.” She wagged her finger in his face. “No snacking. If you get hungry, you come see me. Understood?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Michael rolled his eyes, snatched the game accessories from his mother, tossed one to Marina and switched on the TV. “Thanks, Mom.”
I shook my head with a grin. He was just like any other well-adjusted boy. It was just too bad he had to drink blood to live.
“So, you decided this was the only place you could take the girl?”
“It was the only place where I could take her that I knew she would be safe. Obviously the house Gideon chose wasn’t too safe if the incubus found us there.”
“That’s the strange part.” Tasha frowned. “No one but a select few even know about that house. You’re sure you weren’t followed?”
“Gideon said no one followed us.” I took a seat on the length of the table and pulled an apple from the bowl in the center. I would have taken a kiwi, but a knife in my hands while talking to vampires was never a good idea—unless the vampires in question happened to be rogues.
“Well, he would know.”
“Why do you say that?” Was the man some sort of vampire super hero, or what? “Why does everyone seem to think he’s so special?”
“Because he is special, silly.” She smiled as she sat down across from me. “He’s one of the sun warriors from Cartuotain. He’s one of the oldest, and even though by some of their standards he’s just gotten here, he’s one of the oldest and wisest here on Earth.”
“Oh.” I wondered what it was that kept some of them from turning rogue when others, who were centuries younger, couldn’t seem to resist the temptation of the adrenaline-laced blood. “So he knows a lot more than some of the others.”
“It’s not only that. He has a few special... powers that the others just don’t have.”
“Other than being able to reverse the blood lust, what kind of special powers?” I took a bite from the apple and chewed slowly. I loved the fruit Tasha bought. I wasn’t sure why, but it always tasted so sweet, almost like candy—which was why I almost always raided her fruit bowl when I visited. Sometimes I wondered if she kept it full for me.
“I’m not sure, really. I know he knows things the others don’t. Apparently, there were other beings in their world that weren’t Cartuotey and weren’t quite human, either.”
“People like me, perhaps?”
“Maybe.” Tasha shrugged. “I don’t know. I haven’t been around him much. He tends to keep to himself. I don’t know if it’s just the way he is, or if he’s been withdrawing because he plans to commit suicide soon.” She sighed and shook her head. “I really wish he could find something, anything that would interest him enough to stay alive a bit longer. He has a mate out there somewhere. I just know it.”