Table of Contents
Dark Flame
Copyright
Dear Reader
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
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DARK FLAME
THE FLAME SERIES: BOOK 3
CARIS ROANE
Dark Flame - The Flame Series: Book 3
By Caris Roane
Copyright © 2015 Twin Bridges Creations LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this eBook may be reproduced in whole or in part, scanned, photocopied, recorded, distributed in any printed or electronic form, or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without express written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Dear Reader,
Welcome to the third installment of the Flame Series called DARK FLAME!
Committed to the rule of law, Border Patrol Officer Robert Brannick falls hard for a beautiful fae woman who illegally seduces him in his dreams…
Brannick works with Juliet Tunney to help several human women escape the nightmare of Five Bridges. But something isn’t right. Juliet acts as though she knows him really well, yet he’s only met her once. Unless…the dreams he’s been having about her aren’t dreams at all. When a sensual dream surfaces in vivid images and sounds, he knows something’s up with the beautiful fae woman from Revel Territory. And if what he suspects is true, Juliet has a lot to answer for.
Juliet fell hard for Brannick the night she first signed on to help out with his rescue operation. She even violated a serious Revel Territory law by invading his dreams. What she hadn’t expected was how readily he took her up on her illegal dreamgliding offer. With her special fae abilities, she’s been his secret lover for five months. Sworn to withhold the nature of their dream-relationship from Brannick’s conscious mind, she faces the hard truth that she’s in danger of losing him forever because she broke the law. Once the truth surfaces, will Brannick ever be able to forgive her?
I hope you’re enjoying the Flame Series. I’ve had a wonderful time developing a world inspired by my love for bridges and of course, hunky warrior vampire types!
Enjoy!
PS: For the latest releases and coolest contests, be sure to sign up for my newsletter!!! http://www.carisroane.com/contact-2/
CHAPTER ONE
Robert Brannick stared at Juliet, every suspicion lit on fire. She’d been the star of a recent dream and the hot-as-hell images kept streaming through his head like a porn movie he couldn’t shut off.
Yet something about the dream wasn’t right.
He just didn’t know why.
He was in the garage of a private homeowner, moving boxes away from a secret tunnel entrance he’d built to smuggle abused human females out of Five Bridges. Tonight, Juliet had driven the van containing four of them, each rescued from Revel Territory sex clubs. With the vehicle in the garage and the door shut, the neighbors wouldn’t be able to see what they were up to.
He steadily shifted boxes and plastic tubs out of the way.
Another image flashed.
Juliet’s long curly hair splayed out on his red sheets.
Lips parted.
His body moving over hers, connected.
Her cries filled his bedroom.
He could see each freckle on her creamy skin and her hair smelled like strawberries.
So real, like more than a dream.
Doubt nagged at him about what had actually happened between them, as in something very fae and highly illegal.
He glanced at Juliet again, the star of his cockfest and a beautiful alter fae woman. He couldn’t seem to move as he watched her.
She stood next to the van and wore a loose, light green dress, a gauzy thing that draped her curves. He’d seen those curves in his dream, beautiful, lush, full. His hands and mouth had been all over her. Would she look the same as what he’d pictured beneath the dress?
She glanced at him and turned her hand in question, probably because he was staring at her. She had large, dark blue eyes, even delicate features and all those faint freckles that in the dream he’d kissed over and over.
She was about to open the door, but when he remained silent and staring, she let go of the latch and turned in his direction.
“Everything okay?” Her voice had a soft, melodious sound. She was a feminine kind of woman, not like the vampire females he banged noisily in Crescent Territory. But then Juliet was an alter fae who lived in Revel, not vampire at all. In many ways, she was his opposite.
He tore his gaze away from her, resisting the urge to clear his throat, then put his feet in motion. He called out, “Everything’s fine.”
But he knew in his gut it wasn’t. As soon as they got the women to safety, he’d have to confront her about what he suspected was going on.
He heard the van door slide open, then Juliet as she spoke quietly to the women inside. “I need all of you to refrain from talking. We’re on a residential street and don’t want to alert anyone in the area of our presence here. But please don’t worry. You’re in good hands and you’ll be back in the human part of Phoenix within the hour.
“We work with excellent people as dedicated as we are to ending this nightmare in Revel Territory. And that man over there? Moving the boxes? That’s Officer Brannick of the Crescent Territory Border Patrol. He’s the one who’s set up this whole operation.”
Brannick scowled as he shifted a dusty, rolled up carpet out of the way. He didn’t like to hear that kind of praise, though he understood Juliet’s motivation. The women had been badly used by men for a long time. They would need to know he was someone they could trust.
He forced himself to focus on the task at hand and set the box on the growing pile off to the side. The owners of the house had agreed to let him run a tunnel up to their garage so that he could get abducted women out of Five Bridges. It was a dangerous set-up for everyone involved.
Brannick took great care to keep his operation on the down low. For that reason, he hadn’t used this particular tunnel in two months, a policy that helped keep suspicious neighbors from reporting unusual activity.
The three cartels that ruled Five Bridges paid a lot of money for tips leading to the discovery of exactly this kind of covert operation.
The upper part of the door leading down to the underground tunnel was half visible now. He needed to let the sex dream go and pick up the pace. He shifted a couple more dusty bags and plastic tubs.
Juliet wasn’t even supposed to be driving the van tonight. That was Mary’s job. Juliet coordinated with a team of Revel Border Patrol officers who worked their off-hours to rescue abducted humans, mostly female. The women were used in the sex trade in Revel Territory while pumped full of the dark flame drug. Each bore the teal flame markings on their hands, necks and faces. Drug addiction was hard to disguise in Five Bridges.
So where was Mary? For as long as he’d worked with her, she’d never missed a run.
As Juliet continued to talk to the women, answering their hushed questions, he glanc
ed at her again. She wore her long, curly hair pinned up but with a lot of curls hanging free. She looked messy in an artsy way, but then she didn’t. She looked fresh and alive. Beautiful.
He’d played with those curls in his dream.
Shit, that dream again and how the woman would make, intense cries of passion…
Once more, he forced himself to look away and to keep shifting the boxes. He pulled a heavy one, but set it off to the side. It should be closer to the bottom. He didn’t want the stack to fall over after they were gone. The door needed to be kept hidden at all costs.
He’d met Juliet five months ago, having arranged to look her over at the White Flame club in Elegance, to see if she might be a good fit for his operation. She’d come highly recommended by one of his extraction team, a hard-core Revel Border Patrol officer by the name of Keelen.
Maybe it was the vampire in him, or maybe the human part that had always been able to read people, but he’d trusted Juliet right away. He’d liked the way she held his gaze, spoke in a clear direct if soft manner, and set her chin when he asked about her commitment.
He’d liked her so much in fact that apparently he’d made her the star of his dreams.
The truth was, he hadn’t seen Juliet since his meeting with her at the club. He’d spoken with her several times on the phone and he’d checked her out on the net. She was an up-and-coming civic leader in Revel Territory as an apprentice to Agnes Munroe, who served on the Revel Board of Sages.
Mary was the one who drove the van to the exit-point houses each week. But she hadn’t shown up and when questioned, Juliet had said she didn’t know why.
Brannick had been shocked as hell when Juliet had pulled into the garage. He was profoundly attracted to the fae woman, something that didn’t make him happy at all. The moment he’d realized she was in the van and not Mary, his jaw had dropped and that dream had started playing over and over in his head.
The weird part, however, was that when she’d crossed the garage floor to greet him and shake his hand, he’d felt as though he was looking at a really good friend. If he believed in past lives, he’d say they’d known each other in one.
Or maybe, as he suspected, something else had been going on, something a powerful fae could have done with him.
Or to him.
Despite his drive toward the woman, he kept moving boxes. But that didn’t keep him from looking in her direction about every third trip.
Right now, one of the women wept. She sat in the seat closest to the open door and Juliet was comforting her. The human woman had bruises on her face and up and down her bare arms. She was missing a couple of teeth and of course had the teal colored flames on her cheeks.
Juliet went to the front seat of the van and returned with a small box of tissues. She handed the woman one, who in turn blew her nose. Blood came out.
He watched Juliet rubbing the woman’s shoulder as she spoke to her in a low voice. She kept handing her tissues and taking away the bloody ones. The woman leaned her head back and closed her eyes, her fingers pinched over the bridge.
There were only four women in the van, against the hundreds, maybe even thousands, who needed his help. He felt grim about the whole thing, about how impossible the odds were against any kind of success, long-term or not. As many humans as he rescued, more were abducted from the Southwest to fill the void.
He wouldn’t give up though, despite the numbers. He reminded himself of something he’d heard recently, an old quote from a Chinese philosopher, ‘The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.’ And this journey was at least a thousand miles, maybe more like ten thousand.
He frowned. He swore he’d heard the saying spoken to him in the past few days, but he couldn’t recall who’d said it? He’d begun to wonder if living in Five Bridges for thirteen years as an alter vampire had started affecting his mind.
But as he turned back to his task, rage boiled all over again at the state of the world he lived in. Years ago, Five Bridges had devolved into a ghetto because of the drug and human trafficking that had made a cesspool of the place.
Sometimes his hatred of the flame drugs and their companion alter serums got to him. Thirteen years ago his family had been wiped out in one trip to the supermarket. He’d taken his family north from Phoenix to their cabin in Flagstaff to escape the summer heat. His wife had gone to the store for groceries and among the provisions was a six pack of corrupt soda.
He’d heard of this kind of thing happening, but he felt sure his family was safe in Flagstaff. Most of the alter serum crimes occurred in the Phoenix area, not in the more remote satellite towns of Arizona.
But over the past thirty years, Phoenix had become an increasingly difficult place to live as had all the major cities of the U.S. A large portion of north Phoenix had become the province of Five Bridges where each of the five alter species had been segregated in order to protect the human population.
The U.S. had its own border patrol guarding the entrance and exit points of the five main bridges leading into his world. Human visitors could come and go at their own risk, but only a few alter species could leave and then only on official business. Most of the workers at the Tribunal, the main governing body for Five Bridges, had passports that allowed them to travel to the human part of Phoenix on limited business. Everyone else had to stay put or risk on-the-spot execution in the human part of the world.
Unfortunately, the full panorama of the flame drugs had become a highly popular recreational substance. And the three powerful cartels worked hard to keep the supply moving. Humans came into Five Bridges every night by the hundreds, and on the weekends by the thousands, to score drugs and to take advantage of the dozens of sex clubs scattered throughout all five territories.
The world he lived in had become a freak show of drugs and a nightmare of trafficked women who got used up in the clubs. Very few escaped. Most died at the hands of their captors.
He glanced back at the van. The women had emerged and Juliet stood with her arm supporting the one with the bruises and bloody nose. They were a quiet, broken bunch and would need years of therapy to recover.
Brannick shifted the last of the boxes away from the entrance to the tunnel. Moving close to the door, he knocked quietly three times, until he heard the answering response of one rap, a pause, then two rapid knocks. He changed the signal often to alert him to treachery. If he’d heard anything other than the correct order and frequency of knocks, he would have piled the women back in the van and taken off.
He glanced at Juliet and held up his hand to her. She understood and turned to the women, a finger to her lips. Silence fell; no one breathed.
The signal might have been correct, but he wasn’t taking any chances.
He drew his Glock, standard issue for the Crescent Border Patrol, then pulled the door open.
Lily stood there. She was the dispatch operator at the station and smiled as she glanced down at the barrel of his gun. “Good evening, Officer Brannick. Good thing you don’t have an itchy trigger finger.”
Brannick relaxed and holstered his gun. He trusted Lily with his life.
The feisty woman had short, white-blond hair and gold-green eyes. She was tall at six feet and had one of the toughest jobs in Crescent Territory. She had to balance her dislike of half the officers who were on the take with the other half who tried to do some good in Five Bridges.
Their chief, Easton, was as corrupt as they came. He’d been sleeping with the cartels for a long time. Yet somehow, Lily combined pragmatism with a certain amount of stealth and made it all work.
He drew in a deep breath and smiled in return. “How you doin’, Lily? Are we secure below?”
“We are. We have a half-dozen female support staff in place ready to walk the women out. Our contacts are waiting at the other end with an emergency vehicle to transport them to the hospital in Deer Valley.” Lily glanced at the group and frowned. “They’re pretty beat up. Did they come from one of Roche’s establishment
s?”
“Yep.”
“He’s a real bastard, that one.”
“He’s at least that.”
Neal Roche ran one of the biggest sex and drug trades in Revel. He was hooked up tight with the cartels and was rumored to have a large, underground manufacturing set-up that produced dark flame. The powerful drug supposedly helped some of the more gifted fae in his employ to engage in an intoxicating form of sex during dreamgliding, something peculiar to Revel Territory
Roche also had a reputation for dropping off female corpses at the Graveyard every single night.
Brannick gestured for the women to come forward. They moved slowly, shuffling and in pain, a sight that made him wince.
He moved himself to the far side of the garage as the women drew close. They’d been handled so badly by men that he didn’t want to add to their current distress. He waited as Juliet and Lily ushered them through the door, down the stairs and into the tunnel.
Juliet returned a few minutes later. She appeared at the threshold, her eyes brimming with tears. She crossed into the garage, then turned and closed the door firmly behind her.
He drew close and kept his voice low. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
She shook her head and pressed the crook of her finger beneath each eye. “Nothing. I’m so happy for them and for a stupid moment, I felt sorry for myself.”
“What? Why?”
She turned to face him more fully. “Honestly, once I saw the tunnel, all I wanted to do was keep walking. They’ll be free, but I won’t. I’m an alter fae. I’ll never be free again.”
A feeling of familiarity swamped him once more, as though they always talked like this, like she’d said similar things to him before. Yet he’d only met her once at the club.
The sound of a vehicle on the street drew his attention away from her. He turned to listen. The car stopped outside the house.
He glanced at Juliet. Her eyes were wide as she drew close. The tunnel house was owned by a vampire couple who wanted to help. They were both intelligent and wouldn’t have arranged for any kind of delivery or service appointment at the same hour Brannick was working to get another group of humans into the tunnel.