Authors: Lynsay Sands
Nicholas, a rogue hunter Eshe had worked with a couple of times before these events, had been on the run since that night fifty years ago, but had recently turned himself in to save his new life mate. However, Annie’s phone call and the blank spot where the murder of the mortal should have been had been enough to make Lucian reluctant to execute him as was expected. Instead, he’d assigned Eshe the task of sorting out the mess and finding out what really happened to Armand’s wives and, hopefully, Annie and Nicholas. It was a pretty demanding task, almost impossible to do, really, since Armand’s first wife had died in 1449, she thought.
“Follow me to the house,” Lucian said as he got into his van.
Eshe merely nodded and moved on to her motorcycle, pulling her helmet on as she went. Her actions were automatic as she mounted and started the bike; her mind was on Armand Argeneau and the possibility that he had had something to do with the deaths of his wives and then Annie. It definitely wouldn’t be a happy thought to anyone who knew and cared at all for the Argeneau clan, and Eshe was one of those people. The Argeneaus were presently enjoying a happy period after centuries of misery and oppression by Lucian’s brother Jean Claude, and didn’t need this kind of thing to blight their happiness.
Sighing, she forced herself to focus on the task at hand and followed Lucian’s van out of the parking lot.
Armand’s farm wasn’t far from the diner, which was probably good since—despite her best efforts—Eshe’s mind was preoccupied with her thoughts, leaving her little attention for driving. She automatically slowed when the van’s brake lights came on, then followed it onto a long paved driveway lined with trees. The trees were old and large, their branches stretching like a canopy over the road and blocking out the stars over-head. It was actually startling when they suddenly fell away on either side, spreading out to surround a clearing around an old Victorian farmhouse.
Eshe slowed to a stop behind the van when it came to a halt, and then drove around to park beside it on the circular drive that ran around in front of the house. Her eyes traveled over the building as she did. It was an old Victorian gabled farmhouse of yellow brick with gingerbread trim and a porch that ran its length along the front. The porch rail ran along both sides of a set of four or five stairs, leading up to double doors that were dead center in the front of the building. Light spilled from the windows on the main floor, adding to the illumination from the porch light that shone over the doors in a welcoming manner.
Eshe turned off her motorcycle and disembarked, her gaze sliding over the abode with interest as she removed her helmet. While the building was old, it was in good repair, either tended with love over the hundred or so years since it had been built, or refurbished at some point and restored to its original glory. Her guess would have been that it had been well tended rather than refurbished. The gingerbread trim and wavy window glass looked authentic to her.
“Your guess would be right,” Lucian announced, appearing at her side.
Eshe scowled at him for reading her mind, a rude habit the man had and never apologized for, and then her gaze slid to the cooler he carried and she breathed out a little sigh at the thought of the blood it probably contained. Lucian’s call had woken her up mid-afternoon and she’d been in such a rush to follow orders and get down here that she hadn’t thought to feed before leaving. She was beginning to feel it.
Lucian smiled faintly at her thoughts and waved her forward. “Then lead the way and you can have a bag or two while I put the rest of these in Armand’s refrigerator.”
Eshe nodded, retrieved her bag from the CruzPac on the back of her motorcycle, and started toward the house.
“That’s it? That’s your idea of packing for a trip?” Lucian asked, eyeing her bag with disbelief as he followed her to the stairs.
“What were you expecting? A steamer trunk?” she asked dryly. “Besides, I wasn’t sure how country folk dress. I thought I’d buy a couple of things down here once I figure that out.”
“You make it sound like farmers are another race entirely,” Lucian said, half with disgust and half with amusement.
“As if you don’t think the same thing,” she said dryly, and then added, “Besides, they are as far as I can tell.” Eshe shook her head as she admitted, “I just don’t understand why anyone would bury themselves out here in the backwoods. I had enough of that nonsense in the Dark Ages, thank you very much. Outhouses hold no attraction for me. I prefer city living.”
“I believe they have plumbing out here now,” Lucian said with amusement.
“They didn’t the last time I was on a farm.”
“When was that?”
“When we were hunting that rogue down in Arkansas,” she answered with a shudder. The living conditions in the nest had been positively brutal to her mind. She’d actually felt she was doing the rogue and his little mini rogues a favor by putting them out of their misery. That had been one of their kill-order hunts. Where the rogues had already been investigated and judged, but their hideout just discovered.
“For God’s sake, woman, that was seventy or eighty years ago.”
“Not long enough ago for me to forget,” she said with another shudder.
“If I’d known it was going to scar you, I wouldn’t have included you in that hunt,” he said dryly.
“Yeah, right,” she snorted. “More like you would have made me hit all the farmhouses with outhouses after that. Why do you think I didn’t let you know how much it bothered me at the time? You’re a sadistic bastard, Lucian. You would have seen it as your duty to desensitize me to the situation.”
Lucian’s answer was a grunt as she held the door for him to enter ahead of her.
“So how long are you staying, anyway?” she asked as he moved past her and started up the long hall. It had several doors leading off it and a set of stairs on one side leading to the second level. Lucian had obviously been here before; he headed straight up the hall toward the back of the house.
“Long enough to talk to Armand again and then I’m heading back.”
“I figured when I saw that Leigh wasn’t with you,” Eshe admitted with a smile as she mentioned his life mate. The two were rarely apart, and she’d honestly expected to find the woman at the diner with Lucian and Armand when she’d arrived.
“She and Marguerite are having a girls’ night out, some time at the spa, dinner out, and a movie,” Lucian announced as he led the way into the last room on the back left side of the house. “I’d like to be home before her if I can.”
Eshe murmured acknowledgment of his comment, but her attention was on the room they’d entered. The light in this room was off, but enough light was streaming in from the hallway that Eshe could see it was a country-style kitchen with wide plank wood floors, a brick-faced outer wall, three inner walls painted what appeared in that light to be a sunny yellow, an island in the kitchen side, by the refrigerator, and what appeared to be an old-fashioned wood-burning stove. The name Elmira on the front told her that it was probably a gas stove, specially designed to appear to be authentic to the Victorian home.
Her gaze shifted to Lucian as he set the cooler on the stone-topped island stationed at the cooking end of the room. When Eshe paused beside him, he opened the container, retrieved a bag of blood, and handed it to her.
Eshe murmured a thank-you, leaned her side against the island, opened her mouth, waited for her fangs to slide out and down, and then quickly popped the bag of blood to them.
Lucian then turned to open the refrigerator behind him. When he peered inside and grunted, Eshe shifted to peer in around his shoulder. Her eyebrows rose when she saw there wasn’t a single bag of blood inside. Either they had arrived between deliveries or Armand kept his blood supply somewhere else.
Shaking his head, Lucian turned back to begin transferring the blood bags from the cooler to the refrigerator and Eshe backed up a couple of steps to give him room. The bag at her mouth was nearly empty and Lucian was turning to set two bags in the refrigerator when he suddenly dropped them and whirled toward her, his hand shooting over her shoulder and past her head.
Eshe heard skin slap on skin and a choked sound from directly behind her and quickly glanced over her shoulder. Her eyes widened incredulously as she saw the man dangling in the air behind her, Lucian’s hand around his throat and holding him off the floor. He held a knife clenched in one tight hand.
A curse from the doorway made Eshe glance that
way to see Armand coming to a halt in the entrance. Anger flashed over his expression, but it was quickly replaced with resignation. His voice was weary when he asked, “What happened?”
“Your house wasn’t empty as you said it would be,” Lucian said grimly.
Armand looked annoyed, but explained, “That’s Paul Williams. He’s my day manager here on the farm. I expected he’d head right back down to the barn after calling me, but he must have sat down here to wait for me. Unfortunately, I drove straight down to the barn when I got here. When I realized he wasn’t there, I hurried back here to find him.” He paused and frowned and then asked, “But why did he attack?”
“Neither of us noticed him at the table. I started to unpack the blood, Eshe flashed her fangs and popped a bag, and he tried to stake her,” Lucian said dryly, and then grimaced and said, “Although I guess it would be stab since there weren’t any stakes handy and he was reduced to grabbing a knife from the butcher block.”
Eshe shifted from between the two men, stepping away to get a better look at the mortal who had been about to attack her. She grimaced and tore away the now-empty blood bag from her teeth as she got a better look at the large carving knife in his right hand. It wouldn’t have killed her, but would have hurt like hell had he finished his action and stabbed her before Lucian had noticed him. Grimacing, she muttered, “Friendly guy.”
Armand frowned at the knife, but then glanced to Lucian and asked with disbelief, “You didn’t notice him? How the hell could you not notice him?”
“The light is off,” Lucian pointed out stiffly. “Mortals do not generally sit around in the dark, so I assumed the room was empty and didn’t glance toward the table where he was apparently sitting. Besides, I was distracted talking to Eshe.” He frowned, and then shook his head and turned to concentrate on the mortal briefly before turning to Armand and raising one eyebrow. “He has been with you since the beginning of summer, but you haven’t explained about us to him?”
“Of course I haven’t. He’s a good worker,” Armand said with disgust, running one hand through his hair in a weary gesture. When Lucian merely raised his other eyebrow, Armand sighed and said with some exasperation, “Have you ever even had to
try
to initiate a mortal to our world?” He didn’t allow Lucian to answer, but merely clucked with disgust and said, “Of course not, you only keep immortals around you.”
“It makes life simpler,” Lucian said with a shrug.
“Yes, well, some of us need mortals who can go out in sunlight so we don’t need to double our blood consumption…and let me tell you, it isn’t easy. Nine times out of ten when you do tell them they don’t take it well and have to have their memories changed and be sent away.” He blew a breath out through his mouth and then said irritably, “It’s a huge pain in the ass. You tell them you’re a vampire and they think you’re joking. You flash your fangs to convince them, and half the time they piss their pants or reach for a weapon. You take the weapon away and explain that no, no, it isn’t like that. We aren’t the soulless dead. Our vampirism is scientific in nature. Our ancestors were Atlanteans and they were more advanced than even the myths suggest. They developed nanos that were shot into the body to repair injuries and fight illness, only the nanos use blood to do it and to propel themselves, more blood than the body can create, and so we need to consume blood from an outside source.” He snorted, and then added, “Oh right, and the nanos see aging as something that needs repairing, so keep their hosts at their peak condition and young…forever.”
His mouth twisted and he shook his head. “As I said, nine times out of ten they don’t take it well and I end up having to wipe their memory and send them on their way.” His gaze shifted to the man Lucian still held in the air. “Paul is a hard worker, a good manager, but he’s very authoritarian in nature. I suspect he’ll be one of the nine rather than the one out of ten. I didn’t want to have to find a new manager so I’ve been putting off telling him.”
“Your instincts are good,” Lucian said quietly as he took away the knife the mortal still clutched and set him on his feet. “Judging by what I’m reading in his thoughts right now, Mr. Williams will have to be wiped and sent on his way.”
“It figures,” Armand muttered with disgust. “And I suppose it has to be done now.”
Lucian didn’t comment, but then Eshe supposed he didn’t have to. The level of fear the man must have experienced to have come at her with a knife when she hadn’t done a thing to threaten him meant that to wipe the memory and keep it wiped, Paul would never be able to see either her or Lucian, or even this kitchen again without risking that memory’s return. There was even a chance that seeing Armand framed in a doorway could spark the memory and bring it back to life. Paul Williams had to be sent away to ensure the memory didn’t return.
“I will handle Mr. Williams,” Lucian announced. “You have a calving cow in trouble to deal with.”
Armand hesitated, and then nodded grimly. “Paul was bunking in the smaller house behind this one. The furniture stays, but everything else is his and will have to be packed onto his pickup. I’ll go write a generous severance check for him and drop it off to you at the house on my way back out to the barn.”
Lucian glanced to Eshe. “Put away the blood and then meet me at the manager’s house.”
Eshe nodded but then simply stood and watched as Armand turned and headed up the hall. Once he was gone, Lucian focused his attention on her and said, “When he comes back, I want you to try to read him.”