Dark Heir

The linens were shades of greens—natch—from emerald to fern to celery, and the bed itself was a humongous four-poster of black wood carved with vines and flowers. Two chairs nestled at a dainty, antique tea table were upholstered in pale, shimmery fabric that looked like silk. I didn’t know much about furniture, but there was something that said this was stuff Edmund had brought with him into slavery to Leo. Master-vamp furniture. And that meant that Leo had allowed him to keep it. More secrets to discover about the vampire Edmund Hartley.

Carefully, I lifted Edmund’s arm from my waist and slid to a sitting position on the edge of the bed. My right arm was bandaged and twinged with pain as I rose, like being stuck with tiny needles all over its skin, from fingertips to the middle of my back. I stretched it slowly, not liking the feel of the healed but still tender flesh, and gathered up my boots, spotting my cell in a boot bottom. I looked around for the rest of my clothing and weapons. Zilch. Somebody had made off with my stuff, hopefully to clean the body fluids off it.

However, my headset hung over the doorknob, and I carried what I had left from the room, to put on in the hallway. One-handed wasn’t the easiest way to boot up and get into coms, but I managed it and turned on the set as I moved down the hallway in the direction of the elevator. “Jane Yellowrock here,” I said into the mic. “Who’s on at coms?”

“Juwan here, Legs. Good to hear you up and around.”

I came to a quick stop in the hall and leaned against the wall. Juwan was the real-world name for one of Derek’s men. He was a sharpshooter home between deployments when I first met Derek. I had ridden Bitsa, my Harley panhead, into the hood to get permission to hunt for a rogue vamp. Derek had come out to talk to me. Juwan had targeted me, a dead-on hit with a laser scope between my shoulder blades. I wasn’t sure what a shooter was doing there, running security after a breach, but I’d find that out later. First, it was likely that I had to establish boundaries. Most of Derek’s men seemed to need that from time to time, and with Juwan seeing me for the first time, wearing a fuzzy purple dragon T-shirt, I’d better start right away. “Twizzlers, Juwan,” I said.

Twizzlers had been the code word Derek had used to make Juwan not shoot me. Juwan laughed, his voice mellow over the in-house coms channel. “You remember that, do you?”

“Hard to forget the moment when Uncle Sam’s finest has the spot between your shoulder blades all lit up like Christmas lights. What did you have on me that night?”

“USMC M40A5.”

The M40A5 was essentially an AK-47. “Ouch. That one mighta killed me.”

Juwan laughed. “Yeah, maybe. I hear you’re kinda hard to kill.” Not happy that I was an ongoing topic of gossip, I grunted, and he went on. “Course, shootin’ you from that angle and distance would likely have punched right through you and taken down one of Derek’s other guys. He’da been pissed. Sorry. I hear you don’t like the way marines talk.”

He didn’t sound sorry. He sounded challenging, the way men did when other men have built you up into something to be confronted and defeated. Lucky me. I might have to fight this guy someday soon. Just not today, please, I silently asked the ceiling. I stretched my hand and made a grip, the skin moving painfully beneath the sleeve and bandage, the muscles feeling tight. The entire arm was tender. But . . . I smiled and looked up, searching, knowing there had to be a camera on me somewhere. When I found it, I grinned into it, showing teeth. “You wanna make a big deal out of language, we can do that, Juwan. But understand. If you challenge me over something so stupid as polite conversation, when I beat your butt, it’ll go on YouTube so all your marine buddies can see you get your backside handed to you by a skinny Cherokee chick.”

Juwan laughed over the headset, the confident tone slowly changing to one less certain as he saw my expression over the security camera.

“Think about it.” I pushed off the wall and continued down the hallway. “And while you’re thinking, do a search of archived footage from the sparring room. Make sure you want to pursue this. Otherwise, we’ll just let it go and pretend this little convo didn’t happen.”

“Yeah. Roger that.”

I could hear little faint tappings, the sound of fingers on a touch screen. “Meanwhile, I need to know where the priestesses are. Are either of them on-site?”

“Yes, ma’am. Interesting that you asked. They turned off the system at thirteen hundred forty-two, when they entered the library on the floor where you are now. Take a left and a right, and you’ll see the door. It’s closed but not locked. They used the remote to turn on the gas logs.”

Interesting that I asked? “Gotcha. Thanks.”

“Welcome, Injun Princess. Anytime.”

Still pondering the statement Interesting that you asked, I moved toward the library, deciding that the priestesses had probably told him to send me in the moment I woke up. Outside the library door I pulled my cell and flipped open the armored case. I texted Alex with, Why Juwan in security? He alone?

Instantly I got back the answer to the last question. Angel with him. Out USMC. Hon. disch. Retraining for civilian life. I interpreted the message to read that Juwan was out of the marines with an honorable discharge and starting a new life.

I sent back K, knocked on the door, and waited until I had permission to enter.

CHAPTER 4

I Am the Keeper

Sabina Delgado y Aguilera and Bethany Salazar y Medina sat together at the library table, in the afternoon, with the sun still up outside. There were no windows, so it wasn’t a miracle, but seeing any vamp awake and active in daytime was enough of a rarity to throw me off my stride. A pile of old books, teapot wrapped in a quilted cozy, and teacups sat on the table between them. The aroma of tea mixed with the scent of old books, leather chairs, and wool from the carpet in a soothing fusion.

As I moved across the room, my fingers found my wounded arm, still feeling not quite right, the skin tender. Even after my nice rest, I wanted nothing more than to curl up with a cuppa and maybe a novel—not that I read books. Not ever. But the smell here made me want to try.

There were other cups on the table, and as I approached, Sabina placed one on a china saucer, the kind shaped to hold the cup secure and catch any minor spills. She placed it at an empty chair and poured tea into the cup. I guessed that was my invitation to join them.