Others were less dangerous and a touch younger but incredibly influential nonetheless. Seth studied his reflection for a moment and considered some of these. For one, he wasn’t supposed to have a reflection. Yet, there it was, staring right back at him through eyes an eerie, stark indigo blue in a handsome face that appeared much younger than it should have.
By another, he shouldn’t have been able to move around the streets earlier that day beneath the partly cloudy skies, falling leaves and cooling temperatures. By all rights and misconceptions, he should have crisped as black as Cajun gator on a stick within his first few seconds of sun exposure.
But that was the human belief system for you: conveniently, fatally flawed. Silver bullets didn’t kill werewolves, they killed warlocks. Wooden stakes were more dangerous to Akyri than they were to vampires. Holy water didn’t do squat to anyone. And wolfsbane was just a weed.
Actually, in all fairness, the sun exposure versus vampire legend wasn’t exactly wrong. It was just that it failed to take into consideration special conditions. The offspring of warlocks and Akyri were termed Offspring by those intelligent enough to recognize their existence. However, the plain truth of the matter was that they were vampires. Without taking the proper actions, those vampires would fry in the sun like eggs on a skillet, which was a little unfair considering warlocks and Akyri could both walk in daylight. Fortunately, each and every vampire alive carried warlock blood in his or her veins – and for the most part, they used that blood to construct shielding spells around them.
The Offspring had never revealed themselves as vampires, of course. Seth chuckled softly as he considered this. If warlocks felt that their dormancy spell was a closely guarded secret, they had no idea what a true conspiracy was.
Werewolves found the scent of an Offspring confusing, frightening and off-putting, but they didn’t know why. Warlocks could feel power coming off of Offspring, but it was a strange kind of power to them; unnamable. Some Akyri were able to symbiotically feed off of Offspring, but it was uncomfortable for them – a little like eating fruit on the verge of going bad. So, they usually opted for warlocks as their partners instead.
For their part, vampires went along with their “Offspring” title and the enigmatic anonymity that came with their existence. They revealed nothing. They weren’t stupid. Knowledge was power and it was a power that the vampires wisely wished to keep in their own court.
Seth paused when he reached the front door of the building that housed his loft. As he always did, he raised his head slightly and scented the air, searching for any indication that an enemy had been near the keypad beside the door. However, the air smelled only of salt and seaweed and incoming fog.
Seth waved his hand over the keypad. The proper number sequence initialized, and the locking mechanism within the door slid back with a heavy shhhh-thunk. He stepped inside, gave the lobby a cursory search, and shut the door firmly behind him. The lock once more slid into place.
Seth rode the 1950’s elevator to the top floor, got off, and unlocked his loft door in the same manner that he had manipulated the keypad downstairs. A simple wave of his hand and he was entering his apartment, then once again closing the door behind him.
The air in the massive open space smelled of floor wax and fresh paint. Seth liked cleanliness; it was an OCD trait with most vampires for some reason and that was the reason for the wax and paint.
The windows across the vast, open room were open to let in the fresh Sea breeze coming off of the bay. It was a necessity for vampires to live in a moist environment. When Seth had reclined on his leather sofa to watch the first episode of True Blood, he’d had to smile at their quip about New Orleans being a haven for their kind. The fact was, New Orleans was a haven for vampires. The air was heavy with thunderstorms and bayou and vampires loved it.
On the other hand, you wouldn’t find a single blood sucker in Vegas. Or anywhere in the Southwest for that matter. Dry air didn’t agree with vampires. If one was stuck in such an environment for any significant length of time, their feeding needs doubled, and that was dangerous. It wasn’t a good idea to leave a trail of dead bodies in your wake. It was so much more difficult to avoid detection that way.
Along the coasts; that was where you would find the Offspring. Living there, a vampire was capable of existing on one feeding a week. There were a lot of big cities along the coasts. These cities were notoriously dangerous. Vampires were at least in part responsible for this danger, though they honestly didn’t make as big, or as creative, a homicidal dent in the population as humans made themselves.
A third misconception humans held about vampires – besides the belief that they didn’t exist in the first place – involved the ever infamous bite mark. Luckily for the Offspring, their feedings left no mark whatsoever. As soon as a vampire’s fangs were pulled from their victim’s throat, the pair of openings disappeared. Again, Seth figured that if they’d wanted to, they could have allowed the mark to remain on a victim’s neck, but the inherent magical will a vampire possessed made sure that the notorious evidence vanished without a trace.
Victims had to be disposed of properly. Fires were convenient. “Drownings” were a go-to. Coroners didn’t waste time investigating cause of death if it seemed rampantly obvious to them from the outset. So, vampires did their best to make sure that was the case.
Now Seth gracefully eased himself into the leather love seat that sat across from the large windows in his loft and pondered the day’s events.
Gabriel Phelan had an itch to scratch and he’d stepped over a plethora of lines in order to get at it. Charlie St. James had been in Phelan’s sights for a decade and a half. He was obsessed with her, to put it lightly. Unlike it would have for any sane werewolf, the fact that she had not only been marked by another alpha, but claimed and turned by him as well, hadn’t lessened Phelan’s resolve to obtain her.
The alpha werewolf had somehow learned about the warlocks’ dormancy spell and now he fully planned to use it. Seth had no problems with helping Phelan in this. He was getting what he wanted in return, and he certainly wasn’t afraid of dying during the casting of the spell. As he did in everything, Seth had taken precautions in this manner. He would be safe. And by the time the spell was completed, the lovely Charlie would be a dormant once more.
*****
Lucas used his left hand to pour the Everclear from its bottle into the glass. He wasn’t left-handed, but his right arm was currently out of commission. He considered just swigging from the bottle, but he knew that if he did, he wouldn’t stop until the damn thing was empty, and then he would have to remember to buy more for next time. And there was always a next time. So, he filled the glass to its brim and set the bottle back down.
Then he took the glass, turned, and made his way to the couch across the room. He would have liked a fire to rest and heal beside, but building one required both hands. As it was, he had to limp to the couch and then ease himself into its leather with a grimace and a set of gritted teeth. His fangs had not receded. His eyes had not stopped glowing; he could feel them heating up his face from the inside out.
Normally a werewolf healed almost spontaneously. Human-dealt wounds disappeared from a werewolf’s body within seconds. But Akyri were a poisonous, other-worldly lot and the injuries they inflicted were of a more insidious nature. It would be a good hour before Lucas retained the full use of his mangled arm and probably another one before he felt completely back to normal.
At the moment, he was an injured animal suffering from a lot of pain and a hell of a lot more anger. When the first demon had attacked him, he’d admittedly been confused as to what “warlock” it was who wanted him dead. At first sight of the Akyri, Lucas’s old brain had kicked in and he’d automatically assumed the attack had something to do with his dead brother. Maybe the warlock who had done Byron in had come back to finish the job by taking out his kin as well.
But then the Akyri had told him about the “Healer,” and there wasn’
t a werewolf alive who didn’t know who that was. Lucas had to admit that he’d never exactly warmed to the idea of the Council turning to magic users for help, but the Healer herself was a legend. She had saved a great many lives, and in Lucas’s opinion, that made her something more than a simple witch. He’d always figured that if he met her in person, he would nod with respect, be diplomatic if distant, and at least treat her with the deference she deserved.
He never imagined he would become bound to her and wind up branding her with his mark. Dannai was the Healer, and there was a warlock out there somewhere who felt he had as much a right to claim her as Lucas. That was bad enough. What was worse was the fact that Danny was marked and the warlock was sure to find out. What would happen to her then? Would he hurt her?
Would he kill her?
Lucas had gone back to her house after the fight in the hopes of finding that she had used her magic to go home. But there was no sweet scent of dormant; Danny was gone. So Lucas had shifted into wolf form and loped back here, to the house he had just purchased in Trinidad.
Now he felt restless and wrathful. He needed to find his mate. He needed to know that she was safe. As he reclined in the leather chair and stained it with blood, he downed the liquor in his glass and wished it could do a hell of a lot more for his pain than it was.
A thought occurred to him.
The Healer was known to work with Lily Kane and Claire St.James. The three of them were some sort of super trio that stopped really bad things from going down before they had a chance to do so. Lily was the seer and the one who comforted the intended victims. Claire, also known as Charlie, was the muscle and clout, the enforcer of the bunch. Danny was the Healer.
Lucas straightened in the chair and lowered his glass. If Lily was a seer, maybe she could help him find Danny. Lucas used to work for Cole and Charlie was Cole’s mate. Lucas pulled himself out of the overstuffed chair and made his way to a drawer where he kept his cell phone. He pulled the phone out of the drawer and speed dialed a number. This may be a long shot, but Cole could get to Charlie and Charlie could get to Lily. Lucas’s stomach knotted with pain and worry. He could use all of the help he could get.
*****
Lily jerked out of sleep with a start, instantly waking her husband, who had been laying beside her with an arm thrown possessively over her waist.
Daniel Kane rose in the bed, bracing himself on one strong arm as he instinctively searched the room for danger and pulled his wife closer to him. He always did this when anything pulled him out of sleep. “What is it?” he asked, his voice softly rumbling. He watched the shadows in the room and didn’t look at her.
“Another vision,” she told him, running her hand over her face.
Now Daniel looked down at her, and she removed her hand to stare up into his blue, blue eyes. “Who was it this time?” he asked, his deep Louisiana accent wrapping around her like black velvet. “You need to go again?” Lily noted the tighter tone of his latter words, but it was an improvement. The fact that she, Charlie and Danny went off into the great unknown to fight mega bad guy humans had never settled well with Daniel. He had issues.
Daniel was an alpha male in the extreme; he’d been born that way. To complicate matters, he’d lost too many people he loved in too few years and now his defense-o-meter was in the red zone twenty-four seven and frankly, it sometimes made him an asshole. At least on the outside.
Lily knew a different man underneath the wolf suit. She’d coaxed that man out of hiding over the last few years, but it hadn’t been easy and if she hadn’t been the most single-mindedly determined human being on the freaking planet, she probably would have been the first werewolf to go before the Council in order to ask the Overseer for a divorce from her mate.
Fortunately, Daniel really loved her. He had since high school. It had been one of those lightning-strike kinds of things that left him quietly in awe of her. And the fact of the matter was, she felt the same about him. She most certainly loved him back. If she hadn’t, she never would have given him their child. Their son, William, had been named for Daniel’s uncle, who had been murdered by the same maniacal Hunter who had once kidnapped Lily and tortured her.
William was sometimes the white fluff between the two Oreo halves that were Daniel and Lily. Amidst the stress of Daniel’s job as police chief of Baton Rouge and Lily’s job as the Council seer, their marriage was a constant roller coaster ride that Lily was fairly certain other werewolf couples didn’t have to endure. But all they had to do was stop and look into each other’s eyes or pick up their infant son, and they remembered how they truly felt about one another. It gave them the strength to keep going.
Still, Daniel didn’t like the idea of Lily putting herself in harm’s way by taking on these rescue missions with Charlie and Danny. He didn’t like it one bit. Once he’d realized that his wife wasn’t going to stop doing it any time soon, he’d begun to try to deal with it. It was a work in progress. These things just took a while.
“I don’t know,” she told him honestly. She didn’t know if she was going to have to leave again. This dream had been different from the others. First of all, it hadn’t been about a human, as it usually was. It had been about Dannai. What did it mean when a precognition that normally would send the three of them running to help someone was suddenly about one of the three?
The other thing that was different about this vision was that Danny didn’t seem to be in danger. It was just that she was… kissing someone. And though she seemed to be enjoying the kissing, it felt wrong. Lily couldn’t shake the darkness of the dream. It was one of those dreams that directly nicked the neural synapses that set off a surge of adrenaline though there seemed to be no obvious reason for the reaction. It was as if Danny wasn’t supposed to be kissing that man.
He’s dangerous, she thought. She tried to picture him now, to bring back a solid image of his memory. Tall, black clothes, light blonde hair. That was all she could remember.
She fingered the pearl on the small gold chain she wore around her neck and Daniel’s gaze followed her fingers. She knew he hated the necklace. It had been a gift from Dannai two months ago. The magic pendant allowed her to transport to the scenes of her visions. She turned it slowly between her thumb and forefinger now and wondered whether she should try to find her friend with it.
The dream had been so vague. What if she allowed the necklace to transport her to Danny’s location – only to find that she was walking in on a tender moment between Danny and her new boyfriend? Danny would probably be happy to see her regardless, and she would of course forgive the interruption, but Lily would feel like an idiot.
“Tell me what you saw, cher” Daniel urged softly. She noted the troubled expression on his handsome face and realized that he’d tuned in to her confusion and indecision. “What’s goin’ on?” His gentle drawl coaxed her into a state of submission. It always did.
“It was Dannai,” she told him. “And I don’t even know what the dream means, but it felt strange.”
From the other room came the sound of an infant softly mewling. Lily glanced in the direction of the hallway beyond the door. Daniel’s gaze flicked toward the door as well, but only for a brief moment before he was once again pinning Lily beneath the weight of his gaze. “Like bad strange?”
“Yeah,” Lily admitted before she could give it too much thought. “Yeah, I guess so.”
Daniel pondered her response for a moment and she could almost see the wheels spinning in his head. And then he nodded. “Okay then,” he said as he pushed himself up and gracefully stood beside the bed to peer down at her. As always, he looked edible in his mussed blue-black hair, his inhumanly perfect physique, and his pajama bottoms. He moved to his leather jacket where it lay over the back of a chair nearby and pulled his cell phone from its inside pocket before returning to the bed to hold it out for her. “Then what do you say we give the Healer a quick call?”
Lily looked at the phone and experienced a moment of relief
. She released a breath and nodded. “Thanks,” she said, pushing herself into a sitting position. It was a definite improvement for Daniel to be aiding her in something involving Dannai or Charlie. He was really trying hard. And she was grateful for it.
She took the phone from him and placed a gentle hand on his cheek. The blue in his eyes lightened at her touch, sparking ever so slightly to life with werewolf magic. She smiled and brushed her thumb across the strong line of his jaw. Daniel instantly responded by cupping her face in his hands. He leaned in.
In the other room, William began to cry.
Before her, Lily could feel Daniel stiffen into stillness. For once however, Lily let the baby cry, ignoring him long enough to place a gentle kiss across her husband’s lips.
Chapter Twelve: “The Dirty Trick”
Danny closed her phone and put it back on the kitchen table when it immediately began dancing on the table top with a second ring. She frowned and picked it back up again, flipping it open and placing it to her ear. “Hello?”
“Danny, it’s me, Lily.”
“Lily! I just got off the phone with Charlie!”
“You did? Are you okay?” The worry in Lily’s voice was evident.
“I’m fine,” Danny assured her friend. “Why? What happened?” She immediately thought of children trapped in dank garages or women huddled on the corners of dirty mattresses, and Danny’s blood began to pump furiously through her veins.
“Nothing,” Lily quickly replied. “It’s just that…. Wait, why did Charlie call you?”
Danny blinked. Lily wasn’t going to let her change the subject. “Lucas Caige called Malcolm Cole – and Cole spoke with Charlie. And Charlie called me.”
There was a generous pause while Lily no doubt ran this through her head again. “Lucas Caige is the alpha who used to work for Cole. Right?”
“Yes.”