"Not that you're real stakes," she whispered aloud, because really, they looked silly. They looked like tips of stakes. She liked things big. Bold. Larger than life. Solid. Especially a stake that stood between her and a vampire.
Trixie lay back on top of the sleeping bag, looking up at the dancing notes, hearing the beautiful song, the one that made her dream when she didn't want to. When she knew better. "I never wanted a man of my own, not after learning they were lying, cheating, lazy bums. He never even spoke one word to our daughter. Not one. Our beautiful girl." Her hand closed convulsively around the little gun. Had her daughter's father been standing in front of her right at that moment, she would have staked him on the spot.
She was quiet for a long time, occasionally reaching up to wipe at the wet on her face. She didn't cry, so the tracks weren't tears, just maybe leftover residue from the fog. Still, her eyes were a bit watery and out of focus when she first noticed the disturbance in the dirt floor. Right in the middle. The dirt spewed into the air, small at first and then like a geyser.
Trixie scrambled to her feet and jumped to the side. She stood over the hole in the ground, staring in shock. The hole was deep and long. It was long because it had to accommodate a very large man. He lay down in the open grave--and it was an open grave--looking up at her. His eyes were open.
Trixie screamed. She wasn't the screaming type and her scream scared her. Most likely it scared the angels in heaven. She lifted her hand and pointed at him. An honest-to-God vampire. Staring at her. It took a moment to realize the little gun was in her hand and she convulsively pulled the trigger. The tiny little stake flew out of the gun and hit him high in the shoulder.
He winced. His eyes, a gorgeous blue--and they were gorgeous, she'd noted that--darkened. Became twin storm clouds. More, he'd been entirely naked. As in naked. All of him. Even the best parts, and although it was truly her worst nightmare, she'd still noted his best parts were really the best. Holy cripes.
Her stupid little stake hadn't done the trick. She backed up, tripped and went down on her butt, hand trying to find the other stakes. She was loading the gun when he rose. Floated. In the air. Floated. Feet not on the ground. Holy cripes all over again. She shoved the stake in the gun and let fly a second time.
The stake nailed him in his arm. It really wasn't a point-and-aim kind of weapon like it was advertised and it didn't seem to be killing him. At all. He looked really alive and really big. Lots of muscle. Lots of . . . um . . . everything.
She caught up the holy water and flung the glass vial at him, forgetting to take out the stopper. He caught the vial in midair. He was fast. Very fast.
"Kod alte han, emni," he snapped.
His voice was like music, even when he was cursing. The sound made her stomach curl, something that hadn't happened since she was fifteen years old. And he definitely was swearing at her.
"Stay back, vampire," she hissed, holding out the big silver cross. So far her very expensive vampire-hunting kit wasn't working. Hopefully the cross was real silver. "And for God's sake, put some clothes on."
Because really. How could she keep her mind on killing him when he was right there in all his glory? And he had glory.
A slow smile pulled at the hard edges of his mouth. He looked all man. Not those skinny, prissy boys they put on the covers of the books she liked to read. No, he was definitely a man. Hard edges and lots and lots of muscle. He might be a bloodsucking vampire, but he was a really hot, manly one. If she was going to die, at least the vampire killing her was scorching hot. She could take that to her grave and perv on it for a very long time in the hereafter.
"Lady, put that silly cross down and tell me what you are doing, because so far, you have shot your lifemate with two darts and thrown a glass vial at him. All of which can be considered disrespectful."
Her eyebrows shot up. "Disrespectful?" Oh, no, he was not going to pretend she wasn't a worthy opponent. "Those are not darts. They are stakes. And I've got more where they came from so don't think you're going to take a bite out of me."
His smile warmed his eyes, and seriously, there it was again, that stomach curl. This time it was accompanied by a curious flutter in the region of days gone by. Long gone by. As in forgotten. As in seriously cobwebby. He was dangerous, and he just had to put on clothes because she couldn't stop looking.
"You are trying to kill me?"
"Well of course." She put her hands on her hips. "You're a vampire and I'm huntin' you. So yes. You're going to have to die, which is very sad and I don't like being the one to have to dispatch you because your music is beautiful, but I'm up to the task so don't come any closer." She glared at him. "And put some clothes on."
It had been a long while since she'd seen a naked man and she didn't remember them looking like him. The artists, the ones famous for their sculptures, didn't get it right. They should have tried sculpting him--before he became a vampire anyway.
"You're distracting me and I've got a job to do," she announced, before she could stop the words tumbling out of her mouth. Now she knew where her granddaughter got her compulsion for blurting out things when she was nervous.
"And your job is to kill me?" he asked.
His voice was gentle, almost a caress. She felt the notes stroke over her skin like the touch of fingers. She shivered. She couldn't help it. She wanted to listen to his voice while she slept. In her dreams. All night. The tone was beautiful, like his song.
"Someone has to do it, and I don't shirk. You're a gorgeous hunk of male, but that doesn't matter. I won't have you biting me and bringing me to the dark side."
His smile widened. He had white perfect teeth. Not, she noted, vampire teeth.
"I appreciate that you think I am a gorgeous hunk of male."
She wanted to close her eyes to savor his voice, his accent, but it was just too dangerous. Everything about him was dangerous. His hair was very long and very black but salted with streaks of fine silvery gray. She always thought men with long hair looked a bit silly, but on him, his hair didn't detract for one moment from his ultramasculine features. She was fairly certain he had a tattoo that crawled up his back and moved over his shoulders and down his arms, but it wasn't like any tattoo she'd ever seen and in the faint light streaming in through the windows she couldn't be certain.
"It will make you happy to know that I am no vampire. I hunted vampires for centuries, but stopped a very long time ago."
She blinked. Her gaze dropped to his thick, heavily muscled chest. Then to his flat--like twelve-pack--abdomen. Serious muscle there. She swallowed, trying to school her gaze to keep from looking any farther down his body, but there was no stopping her wandering eyes. Damn. The man was fine. She was fairly certain he had a fine ass, too. He just hadn't turned enough yet.
"If you aren't a vampire, how can you float in the air and sleep in the ground?" she demanded. Her mouth was watering a little looking at the man's body.
His gaze drifted over her face. Then her body. She felt the touch right through her clothes to her core. The core that gave a convulsive spasm. He was waking up things best left alone. There was possession in his gaze. Interest. Not just any interest, but sexual interest, and she so wasn't going there, no matter how fine he was.
His feet touched the ground just in front of her. He waved his hand, a graceful movement that sent a myriad of notes dancing in the air between them. Immediately he was dressed. A thin black shirt stretched across his amazing chest. His trousers fit him snugly. He wore sandals on his feet.
He looked pretty darn fine in clothes. Really darn fine. This killing-him thing wasn't going so well. And now he was close. So close she could feel his heat. She was cold so his heat felt good. Too good.
"I am Fane. Keeper and guardian of the monastery."
In her life, Trixie was rarely at a loss for words, but she could barely breathe. Up close he smelled good and his music blended with hers. She could hear the song and knew it was beautiful and it was right. How could he be a
vampire when he had a song so perfect? It didn't make sense. The notes made their way inside of her, just as they had before. They settled, all silver and gold, in those lonely places, and this time they didn't retreat. They stayed. And they brought him with them. Her body began to tremble and she stepped back, tripped on the vampire-hunting box and started to fall.
Fane caught her, gripping her forearms to steady her, bringing her in close to his body. To his heat. Holy cripes. He was hot. He had to notice she was shaking like a silly teenager. She was an old lady, well past her prime. He had to stop looking at her with those hungry eyes. If they were just hungry for her blood, well, she could take that. She could fight for her life. She had the feeling he was hungry for something altogether different and she didn't know how to process that.
She put up a hand to ward him off. She wasn't tall and she wasn't short. She was a woman with curves, but he made her feel small. Her hand looked a little silly there, a slim defense against him. He stepped even closer so that her hand rested against his chest. She could feel those delicious muscles there. She felt his heart beat, part of the rhythm of his song. Did vampires have hearts that beat? She thought they were dead.
"Lady. Tell me your name."
He gave the command in a low, deep voice. Husky. Raspy. Caressing. She had to find a way to pull herself together and stop her body from responding to just the sound of his voice. She was no teenager to get lost in a man. He was weaving a spell. Because. He. Was. A. Vampire.
"If I give you my name, doesn't that give you power over me?"
His smile flashed again and he shook his head. "Sivamet, you do embody the meaning of the word cute. I never much liked that word until this moment because I did not get the meaning. The meaning is a woman who thinks I am a vampire but still asks me questions thinking I would help her out. A vampire would kill you immediately. Or he would nearly drain you dry and then torture you before finishing you off. He is wholly evil. There is no conversation with a vampire. And these things you have brought with you are useless against him."
Well. That wasn't good at all. Not. At. All. She sighed. "I'm tired and I'm going to sit down, so if you aren't really a vampire, just give me a few minutes to rest. I've been hiking all day and most of the night and I'm not so young anymore." She thought it best to point that out to him so he'd get that really hungry look off his face. She was a dried-up old prune and had no idea what to do with a man as fine as he was. Well, she'd read enough books to know what to do with him but since she didn't have any practical experience, she knew that wasn't going to happen.
Suiting action to words, she sank down onto her sleeping bag and began gathering up her vampire-hunting tools. At least she wouldn't have to carry the stupid heavy box around with her anymore, because none of it worked on him. Not one single thing. A waste of money, and if she ever got home she was putting up a one-star review and blasting the seller. That was for certain.
9
Fane studied his woman's features as she sank to the ground. She looked exhausted and was hiding scared. She had beautiful skin. That had been the first thing he'd noticed. Soft as a rose petal. A beautiful, dark, almost chocolate color that made him want to run his fingers over her skin. She had a lot of hair. It was long, reaching her waist, and was in small braids that wrapped around the sides of her scalp to the back where it was gathered by a tie of some sort and the braids fell in a thick stream down her back. Beautiful. Unusual.
He hadn't seen in color in well over a thousand years. More. He hadn't felt anything at all. At first, it was difficult to assimilate just what he was feeling, but he was a patient man and elation was at the forefront. She was human, and she clearly had ideas about what was and what wasn't going to happen between them. He didn't bother to disabuse her of any of her very wrong ideas. She was his lifemate. His reward after so many centuries of keeping the world a safe place.
He was still able, after so many centuries, to keep a cloak of civility around him and that had landed him the position of keeping the other ancients there in the monastery in check. He wasn't a man who argued or lost his temper. Looking at his lifemate, he was fairly certain he was going to need those traits.
He crouched down beside her, his fingers catching her chin so she was forced to look up at him. "Your name, my lady."
She scowled at him and for a moment he thought she might defy him. He would be forced to take the information from her and he didn't want to frighten her any further. She was holding it together by a thread.
"Trixie. Trixie Joanes. I'm from the United States, and I've come here looking for my granddaughter Teagan."
Teagan. He should have known. Fane had felt a strong connection to Teagan, Andre's lifemate, from the moment he'd first met her. She was related to his woman.
"I have met Teagan. She is safe."
Her eyes lit up. She reached out and caught his wrist. "Are you sure it was her? When did you see her?"
"Last rising."
She frowned, and he realized she was of the modern world and human. "Last night," he corrected. "She is with Andre and he will keep her safe."
Trixie drew in her breath and shook her head, dropping her hand to look around for her pack. "I have to go, to get to her. She doesn't know the danger she's in and neither does this Andre."
"Tell me."
"I came up the mountain with a group of crazy men. Fanatics. I left them in the middle of the night. They're with a man from the local village, a man by the name of Denny Jashari. I overheard him describe Teagan and a man she's traveling with. He persuaded the men I was with to hunt and kill her. They have all kinds of strange weapons with them, and I knew they planned on killing me after I led them up to this monastery and to my granddaughter. Fortunately, they didn't realize Teagan is related to me."
"They know," Fane said. "There is a society of humans who hunt those they consider vampires indiscriminately. They have killed several of my people over the years, but I doubt if they have ever come across and successfully killed a vampire. Evil feels and smells different. They wouldn't recognize that stench because . . ."
"They smell and feel the same way," she finished for him. She looked down at her hands. "I'm sorry I tried to kill you. I should have known you weren't like them." Her gaze jumped back to his face. "But you were in the ground." She was very confused. His song confused her. That and the fact that he rose out of the ground and was looking so fine when he should have been a really ugly, scary corpse, and that he seemed to make sense when really, he didn't.
"How did you get through the safeguards?" he asked.
She tried to pull her gaze from his, but his eyes held hers captive. His voice was gentle, but instinctively she knew there was nothing gentle about the question. It was a demand. He wanted to know. He was just a little bit scary, and that kind of set her temper on edge. She was too old to be scared by a man.
Now that she had a good chance to really look at his face--without the distraction of his naked body--he looked hard-edged and beautiful, but very bossy. She didn't do bossy. She was the boss. Just to be on the safe side she took a better grip on her stake gun.
"Would you mind giving me back my holy water and the two stakes I fired at you?" She was proud that she managed to sound matter-of-fact and maybe a little snippy as well. After all, he had her things. She'd bought and paid for them.
"You want them back?"
She scowled at him and narrowed her eyes to show him she wasn't a woman to be trifled with. "I feel very strongly about this. They're mine."
He looked at the vial of holy water and then reached up to his arm and casually removed the dart. Blood dripped down his shoulder. She bit her lip. She hadn't thought the little stakes were still in him and that they'd actually hurt him. She felt bad about that. He seemed too invincible for her tiny little stake gun to do much damage. Secretly, she was just a teensy bit elated. Her money wasn't a complete waste.
Fane's gaze never left hers as he removed the second dart and more blood appeared,
dotting his immaculate shirt. That didn't look good.
"I've got a first aid kit," she volunteered, although she wasn't certain she wanted to touch his muscles again. Just touching his chest made her go weak at the knees, and for a dried-up old prune, she had responded in areas of her body she had given up all hope on too many years earlier. "I could let you use it."
His steady, focused, unblinking stare made her nervous. It was the way he looked at her, as if he might devour her.
"You're actually bleeding a lot," she pointed out. "We aren't anywhere close to a hospital and if you don't stop the bleeding . . ." She trailed off.
"You will supply the blood necessary. You are my lifemate. And put that silly weapon down. You are liable to shoot me again by accident."
She tried her sternest look, the one that made her girls quake and run to their rooms. It always worked. "It wouldn't be an accident. Don't try bossing me around. I am not intimidated by you."
A slow smile curved his mouth and softened his features. Did he have to be so beautiful? She had never been able to stand seeing anyone hurt. And she'd been the one to do it. Still. He came out of the ground. Naked. And he floated. And put clothes on without actually getting dressed.
Her fingers closed harder around the gun. It wasn't loaded and she needed to try to get to the other stakes. When she put up her one-star review she was going to mention how the gun really needed to carry a full six rounds. You obviously couldn't bring down a real vampire with one or two mini-stakes. You needed a big gun.
"I am reading your mind," he announced softly.
"I don't believe you. No one can do that."
"A bigger gun? Are you thinking of staking me again?"
The amusement in his voice annoyed her. "You need to take me seriously," she snapped. "I've got the gun, not you. And I'm not afraid to use it."