Authors: Nina Croft
“What is this place?” Tasha asked.
“Just an office building. My company owns it.”
“Your company?”
He smiled. “Vampires need to work too, you know.”
Beside him, Sebastian snorted. “Don’t you believe it; they’re all lazy bastards, sleeping all day.”
A light shone from the open doorway of an office. Tasha’s heart slowed as they approached. Jack squeezed her arm and then pushed open the door, and Tasha found herself in a huge, ultra-modern office, all black leather and stainless steel. Three men stood by the desk. Jack nodded, and two of the men left the room, leaving the third standing alone.
Tasha took a step forward, but Jack put a warning hand on her arm. She stared at her father.
He’d hardly changed in eight years and a wave of longing washed over her. This was the father she remembered from her childhood. She shook off Jack’s hand, but could feel him and Sebastian taking up positions on either side of her. She didn’t need to be telepathic to sense the menace radiating from them.
Her father was staring back at her now, a slight frown of recognition on his face.
“Dad,” she said.
The frown disappeared. It was replaced fleetingly by alarm, which he quickly covered, leaving his expression blank. “Natasha?” He stepped toward them, his movements jerky as though he was in shock, and Jack and Sebastian shifted a little closer. “My God, Natasha, is that you? I thought you were dead.” The words were forced, but Tasha could sense the truth in them. “What happened?” he asked.
“That’s what we’re here to find out,” Sebastian said from behind her.
Her father’s eyes shifted past her to rest fleetingly on each of her two bodyguards. “Who are you?” he asked. “I was told I was meeting the finance team about budget changes to my program.”
“Instead,” Sebastian said. “You’re meeting with us about why you paid a werewolf to murder your own daughter.”
“A werewolf? What are you talking about?”
“We have his confession. You’d be dead already but your daughter seems to want to give you the benefit of the doubt. We don’t. You have five minutes to explain before you die.”
Her father turned toward her. “Natasha, please I would never…”
Tasha closed her eyes and reached out with her mind. And met with a complete blank. She opened her eyes and looked into his, and all of a sudden, she knew there wasn’t going to be a happy ending. “Why, Dad?”
“Natasha, I don’t know what these people are talking about. I’m overwhelmed you’re here, that you’re not dead.”
“He’s lying, Tasha,” Sebastian growled in her ear. “Read him, and let’s get this over with.”
“I can’t,” she said.
“What do you mean, ‘can’t’?”
“He’s shielded, like the guards at The Facility.”
“Then perhaps we need to use a more conventional means of persuasion.” Sebastian took a step toward the other man. “Do you know what we are?”
“You look like mercs.”
“Mercs?” Tasha asked.
“He means mercenaries, paid killers,” Jack said. “Don’t you, Dr. Grant?” He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes, which remained as cold as polar ice. “Oh, we’re killers all right, and sometimes for money, but you can be very sure, that right at this moment, I would happily kill you—just for fun.” He flashed the tip of one fang, and Tasha’s father took a step back. “You know what I am,” Jack continued. “But then my companion here is something else entirely.”
Sebastian reached out one arm, and Tasha watched in fascination as the fingers turned into claws. She gasped. She had lived with this talk of werewolves for so long she’d stopped thinking about what it actually meant. Would she be able to change like that?
“With a little practice,” Sebastian drawled in her ear. “Sleep with me tonight, and you’ll see for yourself.” She glanced at his face in surprise, and he laughed. “I don’t need to be a mind reader to know what you were thinking,” he said.
She turned to her father. He was backed up against the wall, fear and revulsion on his face.
“I don’t understand, Natasha. How did you come to be with these…” He hesitated. “…people? I thought you were dead.”
“It seems your paid assassin got greedy,” Jack said. “Saw a chance at some extra cash and sold her.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I saw you, Dad. I read the man you paid.”
“You can do that? You have that much control?” He rubbed at the spot behind his left ear.
Sebastian’s eyes narrowed at the movement. “Jack, you’ve been studying the implant you got from the guard. Can you remove it?”
“Not here,” Jack replied. “At least not without killing him.”
“Well,” Sebastian said. “Killing him would be my choice, but I doubt it would improve our chances of getting information. What about using some of your persuasive vampire skills?”
Jack shrugged. “Might work. On the other hand, with the implant it’s just as likely to blow his brain. We don’t know enough about them yet. Tasha, do you want to try first?”
“Why, Dad?” Tasha asked again. “How could you do that to your own daughter?”
He glanced away for a moment. When he looked back, his eyes were cold. “I could do it,” he said. “Because you’re not my daughter.”
“What do you mean? Who am I?”
“You’re a laboratory experiment, in vitro fertilization, DNA modification. You were grown in a test tube.”
“But why?”
“We were researching telepathy. We wanted to increase strength. Your genetic parents were mild telepaths. We had managed to identify the gene that gave them their talent, and then we modified it. Once you were born, it was decided you would be grown in a home environment as near normal as possible.”
Tasha’s head was about to explode. She was finding it difficult to take in. “What about my mother? Did she know all this?”
“Of course she did. And she wasn’t your mother. But she loved you. She knew nothing about the—” he paused, and glanced from Jack to Sebastian “—other.”
“You mean about you paying a werewolf to kill me.”
“I didn’t know he was a werewolf. And, no, your mother loved you. She was devastated when you disappeared. Heartbroken.”
“So why did you do it?”
“I was under orders. There’d been problems with the others.”
“Others?”
“You were one of a batch.”
“I have sisters and brothers?”
An expression of distaste crossed his features. “If you can call them that. Anyway, most of those brought up on the outside have been eliminated.”
“On the outside?”
“In home environments like yourself.”
“But why were they killed?”
“They became telepathic. We were told to look for certain signs.”
“But I don’t understand. Isn’t that what you were trying for?”
“Yes, but at the time, we hadn’t developed the shielding technology. What we were doing was confidential, and the handlers thought it was best not to be exposed. We had plenty of samples still in the labs. It was either eliminate you, or lock you up for life.”
“So you were doing them a kindness,” Sebastian said. “How sweet.”
Tasha rubbed the spot between her eyes. “So you bred telepaths and then killed them so they couldn’t read your minds?” She shook her head in disgust.
“The orders came from the very top. I argued, but Frank insisted.”
“Frank?” Tasha asked.
“Frank Latham, my boss at the unit. Anyway, Frank said some of the others hadn’t been able to cope, had gone crazy—we couldn’t risk leaving you on the outside. He put me in touch with a man called Oswald. I didn’t know he was a werewolf. Back then, we weren’t even sure they existed. It was supposed to be quick. You weren’t supposed to suffer. And you have to understand, I’d always known it was a possibility.”
“Did you ever love me? At all?”
“I never allowed myself to love you.”
Tasha closed her eyes to shut him out. She couldn’t bear to look at him anymore. Her whole life had been a lie. She’d spent eight years yearning to return to a family, which had never been hers to begin with. A father who had never loved her, who had arranged to have her murdered. She shivered, and Jack’s hands slid over her shoulders, pulled her back to rest against him. She realized how hard she’d been holding on to the hope that somehow it was all a mistake, that there was some explanation for what she’d seen in Oswald’s head. As she started to shake, Jack’s hold on her tightened.
“So, can we kill him now?” Sebastian murmured, his eyes cold and steady.
Her father was staring at them. “I’m a scientist. I just did my job. I followed orders. Natasha, you have to listen to me.” He took a deep breath. “Natasha, please, let me talk to you alone.”
She shook her head, pressed herself back into Jack.
“For your mother’s sake. She loved us both—she wouldn’t want this.”
Tasha needed time to let it all sink in. She didn’t know if she was ready to stand by and see her father die. Even if he wasn’t actually her father.
“Let him go,” she said, and saw the tension drain from him.
“He tried to have you killed,” Sebastian said.
“Please, I don’t think I can stand much more of this. Just let him go.”
Sebastian shook his head in disgust, but then nodded in resignation. “Don’t presume this is over,” he said to her father before taking him by the arm. “I’ll see this piece of shit off the premises. Then I need to get back to the house.”
He paused in front of Jack and Tasha, and then leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. “Remember, you have a family now. You can forget this scum. Look after her,” he said to Jack.
“Natasha,” her father said. “I need to talk to you. There are things you need to know. Here…” He reached into his pocket and handed her a card as Sebastian dragged him past. “Call me, please.”
The door closed behind them. To Tasha, it was like saying goodbye, not only to her old life, but also to all her dreams. Yet, she had no choice—her old life had been a lie. She had to look forward. She had a chance at a new life now, with the pack.
She pulled herself out of Jack’s embrace and turned to face him. He smiled, shrugged out of his jacket, and tossed it on the back of the black leather couch. Next, he unbuckled the shoulder holster, laid it on top of the jacket, and then crossed the room to a cabinet and poured them both a drink.
He took a seat on the couch. His long legs stretched out in front of him and stared at her through half-closed eyes. A ripple of excitement shot through her. He patted the seat next to him. “Come and sit for a moment.”
She sat down and took the drink he offered but put it on the table untouched. “What is this place?” she asked. “Do you work here?”
“I own the building. We use it as headquarters.”
“Headquarters of what?”
“We’re a small group who believe the time of living in secrecy is coming to an end. We keep an eye on the interactions between our kind and humans. We also do contract work, often for the government.”
“What sort of contract work?”
“It wasn’t an accident or a coincidence that I was at The Facility. We’d been watching them for a while. One of my men had gotten too close and been taken. He died. He was young, not strong, and he couldn’t withstand the hunger. Or maybe they killed him just to see if they could.” He shrugged. “So I went in.”
“Weren’t you in danger?”
“No, I’m older, stronger.”
“How old?”
“A few hundred years.Old enough, anyway.”
Tasha closed her eyes and tried to imagine living so long. No wonder he thought of her as a child. When she opened her eyes, Jack was regarding her intently.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“Numb,” she said. “All the way here, no, even before that, ever since the meeting with Oswald, I’ve been trying to fool myself into believing there’s an explanation, that my father didn’t actually pay someone to kill me. Okay, so he’s not my father, as it turns out, and I can’t decide whether that makes it better or worse. It’s as if my whole existence is a lie. You know, through the last eight years, all I could think about was getting back to my family. Now it doesn’t even exist.”
She reached over, picked up her drink, and took a sip. “Ugh! What is this?”
“Fifty-year-old scotch,” Jack said wryly.
She put it down.
“Sebastian was right, you know,” Jack said. “You have a family now. You belong with the pack. And there’s a job for you here, if and when you want it.”
“A job? Doing what?”
“We could always find use for a telepath, and we already have a number of wolves on the team.”
She thought about it. “My father was shielded. That must mean they’re still working with telepaths. There may be others like me out there.”
“We’ll look into it. You can help if you decide to work with us.”
She sat back, closing her eyes. There was a place for her, a job. She wasn’t alone; she had friends. She would join the pack truly become one of them. She opened her eyes and glanced at Jack, her heart beating stronger at the thought.
“You know, you should have let Sebastian kill him,” Jack said. “I don’t trust him not to come after you again. You need to be able to protect yourself better. Once you make the transition you’ll be stronger, faster, you’ll heal even quicker. You’ll be almost impossible to kill.”
“I know. I’d already decided to join the pack.”
“You had?”
She nodded. “So there’s something I need to do.”
Chapter Eight
Tasha nibbled on her lower lip. She didn’t know what she would do if Jack rejected her now, but she had to take the risk. “Jack, will you make love to me?”
He smiled. “I’d already decided to do that, but you needed to make the decision yourself. But let’s be clear here, you’ll be different. It won’t be easy to overcome the stigma that goes with having a vampire lover.”
“I don’t care. I’ll always be different anyway.”
“Good.”
They were silent for a moment. Tasha glanced sideways at Jack. She’d wanted this for so long, but now she was scared. “I don’t know what to do.”
“I do,” Jack said. “Get up.”
She frowned but rose to her feet and stared down at him. He appeared relaxed, almost indolent as he sprawled on the sofa, his head back against the cushions, long legs stretched out in front of him. His eyes gleamed emerald through the thick curtain of his lashes, never leaving her.