“Alexis, you have to protect her.”
Alexis took a swallow from the glass of blood in her hand and looked at him with a hefty dose of suspicion. “From what?”
“I care about Brittany. I care about my child.” Corbin felt his hands forming fists and he took a deep breath. “And while you are wrong about many things, you are right that my work is controversial. I don’t know what the future holds, but I do know that if the wrong person finds out about the origin of your sister’s baby, they won’t hesitate to use our child for their own purposes. There are those who would see me dead, who are merely waiting for the completion of my research to attempt to kill me, and if I cannot protect Brittany, you must do it. You and your husband.”
“I will kill anyone who touches Brittany. But why would they want her baby?”
Corbin glanced back at the bedroom door. “This child will be immortal, but have no need to drink blood. I have not told Brittany this because I don’t want to scare her, but Carrick knows the truth. And I’m telling you because you are the first defense between Brittany and harm.”
“Jesus Christ.” Alexis’s face was pale. “And you wonder why I don’t like you?”
“No one must know the baby is mine. They must think it is just a mortal’s child. Then I will marry Brittany so I am close enough to protect her, and see that no one learns the truth.”
“Brittany’s agreed to tell people the baby’s father is Joe Blow?” Her expression indicated how doubtful she felt that was.
“I haven’t told her she should. You know Brittany. I don’t think she would agree to the deception.” Corbin ran his hand through his hair. “I shouldn’t have come back around so soon, but I wanted to see her. I couldn’t stay away. I have very strong feelings for her.”
Alexis looked horrified. “Oh, God, you’re like in love with her, aren’t you?”
“Possibly.” He wasn’t entirely sure what love felt like, but he definitely had some strong emotions regarding Brittany, feelings that had only grown in the eight weeks of separation.
“I suspect she feels the same way. So I guess I really am going to have to get over it and accept you.
Crap
.” Alexis set her glass down on the coffee table with a loud plunk. “I’m not sure I can lie to her.”
“You’re going to have to.” Corbin moved closer to her. “And tell me, do you know who Brittany’s father is?”
“No. For the thousandth time, no. Ethan and Seamus have asked me that already.” Alexis shook her head. “All I know is that my mother met him when she was working at a club. And I remember the day my father found out. My parents were arguing and he threatened to leave her, take the two of us with him. And she told him he could take me, but not Brittany, because she wasn’t even his kid.” She rolled her eyes. “Nice, huh? He called her a liar and she mentioned the fact that Brittany had black hair, if he hadn’t noticed, while his was a dirty blond. So he called her a whore, she laughed, and said that Italians were known for being good lovers, unlike hillbillies from West Virginia. So he left, without me, I might add, despite her offer for him to take me. You think they would have kept their voices down, since I was sitting in the next room watching Care Bears, but... ”
Corbin sucked in a breath.
Alexis’s head snapped up.
He saw the moment she realized what she had said. “Italians... where did that come from? I never remembered that before... crap, what does that mean? I always thought it was my mother who was of Italian descent. That’s where we got Baldizzi from—it was her maiden name.”
“It means that either your mother was lying to irritate your father, she thought the man she slept with was Italian, or the man she slept with really was Italian.” Corbin’s mind was racing, trying to mentally sort through his database. Did he have any Italian vampires’ DNA to do a comp? He had Brittany’s hair from the night they had last spent together, and he had analyzed it weeks ago, but had only begun the laborious process of matching it against potential fathers. He had started with a group of European vampires, but that number was well over twelve hundred. He had only gone through three hundred, with no match. If he could isolate that grouping to Italians only...
They might know the answer to who Brittany’s father was.
Then again, Corbin only had twenty percent of all vampires in his database. Since they were a seventy-five percent male population, that left over five thousand potential candidates still at large.
“How many vampires are Italian?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe a hundred. Two hundred.”
“So what do we do, ask them all to take paternity tests? And why does it matter anyway?”
Corbin started pacing. “It matters because who that man is plays an important role in the political pull over our child, if it were ever to become common knowledge. That man, Brittany’s biological father, could either protect or harm our child, or be utterly powerless to stop those who would. And it is important for simple genetics. If there is the presence of a particular gene in her father, it means our child will have unseen power and talents.”
“It all sounds so awful I’m not sure which is the worst-case scenario. And how do we find out who our culprit is?”
“Run DNA, of course. And when members of the Nation register to vote, they list their nationalities. Wouldn’t Seamus Fox have access to those type of records?”
“If it’s on a computer, I bet Seamus could get to it.” Alexis bit her fingernail. “Hey, just an FYI, for a while I was getting strange e-mails from a group claiming to be vampire slayers. It seemed hokey, and they’ve stopped now, but just so you know.”
“Vampire slayers?” Corbin almost snorted. “That is a myth.”
“Yeah, well, those e-mails weren’t a myth. And maybe slayers aren’t real, but some people are delusional enough to think it’s real and jump on board.”
“Just what we need. Vigilantes thrown into the mix.” He fished his car keys out of his pocket. “Please tell Brittany that I stopped by and that I would like to speak with her.”
“Do you want her to call you or what? Because last time I checked, she didn’t even know where you live.”
That drew him up short. “No?” That sounded terrible. That was wrong. “Do you have any paper? I will write down my address and phone number.” He didn’t have a cell phone because there was no one who would be calling him, but he did have a phone in his apartment.
“It’s about time,” Alexis muttered as she opened the drawer of the desk Brittany kept by the kitchen door. She pulled out paper and pen and handed them to him.
The memo pad said,
Bright Smiles by Dr. Brittany Baldizzi
. A big molar with a smiley face was next to it. It made him subconsciously rub his tongue over his teeth. He had never been to a dentist.
As he wrote, he asked, “Can you ask Seamus if he can retrieve that information? I will start running the data that I already have.”
“Can’t you just isolate a search by nationality already? If you can’t, I can ask, but Seamus and I don’t really get along. He won’t do backflips to help me out.”
“Is there anyone you do get along with?” he asked, genuinely curious.
“Brittany. And Ethan.” She shrugged. “Most of the time. Cara. Kelsey. My friend from college, Judith. My old neighbor Bob, who is renting my old house for the winter so his mother can visit from South Dakota without actually living with him.”
“You have a house?” That piqued Corbin’s interest. Brittany had an apartment, as did he. She wanted a house, with a yard. “Does it have land with it?”
“Like a yard? Yeah, though it’s mostly indigenous desert plants. No grass. I’ll probably sell it when Bob’s mom goes back north in the spring. Why?”
“Brittany would like us to live in a house, that is all. Perhaps I could purchase it from you for her.”
Alexis grimaced as she took the paper from him. “Wow. We’ll just be one big happy undead family, won’t we?”
“We can only hope.” Corbin sketched her a bow. “Now,
excuse-moi
. I am off to run that search through my database and to feed.”
“That’s special. The Cleavers have nothing on us, I’m telling you. We’re the new All-American family.”
“Zat is the plan.” Corbin grinned, almost able to picture it. “We will be a family.” But first he had a fertile vampire to unearth and a genetic mystery to solve.
Ringo stood in front of the fountain that rose majestically in front of the Bellagio. The water was a constant hum behind him, the pool lit with spotlights as he tried not to pace, his knee bouncing up and down nonetheless. Donatelli had told him to be there at four in the fucking morning and he was on time after a hard night’s travel from New York.
Kelsey was across the street at a bar, afraid to go back to her apartment in the Ava, sure that Carrick had changed the key card. Ringo had to admit it was possible, and he didn’t doubt that he’d been evicted from his own apartment months before, all his shit sold on eBay by his landlord. So he hadn’t protested when Kelsey had insisted on accompanying him, because the truth was he wasn’t sure what to do with her. The cash in Donatelli’s wallet had covered their hotel and airline expenses, and that was it. He hadn’t wanted to use the credit cards and risk pissing the Italian off before Ringo could cash in on the serious prize.
Twenty-five grand. Donatelli had told him the Russian, Chechikov, would be handing the money over to him, and he was supposed to turn over the name of the woman carrying Atelier’s baby. Easy.
So why did he feel like he was standing in a big-ass trap?
The December wind was chilly to mortals, and the few tourists hanging about were wearing jackets. It wouldn’t be hard to hide a knife. Ringo was doing it himself. But it would be difficult for another vampire to cut his head off in the courtyard of the Bellagio, even if it was dark and the crowd was thin.
That didn’t scare him. What scared him was the unknown. The idea that he didn’t understand how to play the game with these powerful bastards, who had been dicking other vampires over for hundreds of years. Donatelli was a sick mother-fucker who knew there were worse things than death, and Ringo didn’t want to fall in with any of that shit.
A woman caught Ringo’s attention as she wandered around the fountain, taking pictures with a digital camera. She wasn’t the usual tourist bundled in nylon and fleece. Wearing a long, black and green plaid coat tied tightly at her waist, fishnet stockings, and knee-high suede boots, she stood out in the handful of people hanging around, her walk, her manners, her dress screaming of wealth and sophistication. She was model thin, burgundy velvet gloves on her hands, and a white fuzzy purse on her shoulder, dark blond hair flowing over her shoulders under a fur hat.
She didn’t seem to be aware of him, or anyone else around, and Ringo watched her, intrigued. If she were a celebrity, she would have an entourage of bodyguards, assistants, paparazzi around her. If this were a modeling shoot, there would be cameras, a director, makeup artists. But she was clearly alone, and Ringo couldn’t take his eyes from her. She wasn’t hot, not in the way a stripper or a Hooters waitress or a Playboy bunny was, but she was exotic, exquisite, untouchable. And mortal.
The urge to seduce her, to draw her aside, and sink his teeth into her flawless flesh rushed through him. He wanted to taste her, to feel her give in to him, to see her eyes roll back with pleasure as he drew on her, taking her into him, her sweet rich blood running over his tongue and down his throat.
But he couldn’t. He had to wait for Donatelli or Chechikov’s errand boy. And he was married now, ring on his finger and everything. He didn’t possess the self-control to stop at a taste of her blood. He would want a full sexual joining while he fed, and that was probably wrong. Kelsey didn’t deserve that kind of disrespect, no matter how she got on his damn nerves. He knew that. But that didn’t stop him from wanting this woman.
Especially since she was strolling toward him, tucking her camera back into her purse and extracting a thin gold cigarette case. She lifted her head, a cigarette between her lips, and Ringo sucked in a breath. Jesus. She was so goddamn gorgeous, her thick plump lips a raspberry color, skin creamy, cheeks pink from the chill, nose long and straight. But it was her eyes that distracted him, that made him almost forget why touching her would be wrong. Narrow, an intriguing oval shape, her eyes were a pale blue, a green ring dividing blue from the darkness of her pupils.