Texas Hold 'Em (2 page)

“He won’t miss it?”

Megan shrugged. “He has an entire wine cellar. It’ll take years for him to notice it’s gone. And even if he does, he won’t know I took it. Of course, I would probably tell him.” Her nose crinkled at her self- professed honesty, then she perked up. “Anyway, isn’t it for a good cause? I mean, this is a special occasion, right?”

She placed her glass to her lips and took a sip before setting it down on the counter, the whole time staring at me with a suggestion in her cool blue eyes that made my stomach lurch a little. I’d like to have attributed my nervousness to the fact that she could turn on me at any moment, killing me before I realized what was happening—slashing my throat, draining me dry, and leaving me dead on the carpet for my brother to find.

But I didn’t think that she would. By inviting her in, I had bet my life that she wouldn’t.

Maybe she was just
that
beautiful. Or perhaps I was developing feelings for a monster. I don’t know. What I did know was that she was smiling up at me with an amused look that I had to do something about.

So I moved into her, my free arm wrapping around her waist, pulling her close while I tried to set my glass down next to hers on the counter.

She met me eagerly, her arms snaking around my neck as we kissed. Her enthusiasm caught me off guard, and I let go of the glass to bring my other arm under her rear as she climbed me, her legs hooking around my waist. I heard my glass bounce off the linoleum as I stumbled backwards into the living room, locked in the deepest kiss I’d ever had.

When I finally came up for air I flashed a quick look around the near- empty apartment. The furniture consisted of a card table and four folding chairs in the dining area, and a small flat-screen TV sitting all by itself next to a cable box on the floor in the otherwise empty living room.

“Sorry, we don’t have a whole lot of furniture,” I said.

“Seriously? You’re thinking about the furniture? Now? God, I’m such a failure.” Megan buried her head in my shoulder.

“No, it’s not that! I was thinking, um, well, there’s a futon in the bedroom, but we just bought that for Bryan, and…”

She removed her head from my shoulder and leaned back to look up at me, a look of earnest concern on her face. “Do you really think we’ll need it?”

My head wasn’t working quite right and I actually paused to think about it. Megan’s eyes grew wide as she realized what I was doing.

“Floor,” she said quickly, before I could say something stupid.

Looking at her in my arms, I decided the floor would do nicely. I kissed her again, and her legs tightened around me. I kept one hand under her and another around her back and we sank to the ground, still lip- locked. Our kissing became more passionate, our hands exploring each other. Her lithe body was soft and smooth against mine. Her cool aura surrounded me with a strangely comforting presence.

Most of my clothes, along with her bra, had been discarded. My hand found her breast and explored its contours while hers unzipped my pants. Things were starting to get interesting as I slid my hand down her back and under her panties. I was removing the last article of her clothing when a loud rattle came from the kitchen.

Megan paused and pulled away a few inches to look at my phone, which was vibrating its way across the counter. “Are you going to get that?”

“I wasn’t planning on it.” At this point, it was pretty far down my list of priorities. My hand resumed its journey, and now had the sheer black thong midway down her thighs.

She frowned and rose. I was saddened to see her erase all my hard work; her panties were back in place by the time she stood up. The sudden mood switch confused me. Megan tended to have random unconnected thoughts, but this was a bit much even for her. It was the stomping gait as she headed off to get my phone that made me realize she thought the caller was Toni.

Toni—short for Antoinette, and never to be confused with some Italian guy with a hairy chest and a gold necklace—was someone else that I had been kind of seeing. Sort of. It’s not as bad as it sounds; it wasn’t like I had made any commitments to anyone. I had barely known either of them for more than a handful of days. But Toni and Megan didn’t exactly see eye to eye. They were kind of competitive, like pit bulls. In their game of tug-of-war, I was the chew toy. You know—the one that usually ends up torn in half and discarded in the back yard.

I smiled a bit at my analogy, because Toni was a werewolf. Yeah, I know. From monster slayer to monster player in a matter of weeks. It was unsettling even for me, and I was living it.

In any case, I hoped the caller really wasn’t Toni, because that was going to kill the mood. At least, it would for Megan; my mood was going to be pretty hard to kill. In a desperate attempt to salvage the night, I started to think up excuses for why Toni might be calling me at ten o’ clock at night.

Megan grabbed my cell just as it was about to impersonate a lemming and dive off the counter. She actually hopped a couple of inches into the air, and her frown was replaced by a look of pleasant surprise as she held out the phone, as if I could somehow read the caller ID at this distance.

“It’s your mom!”

So the call wasn’t from Toni, but it was definitely a buzz-kill. I maintain that we all would have been happier ignoring the phone. I let out a sigh, trying to be content that it was the phone and not the doorbell.

Megan knew that I had been worried ever since my mom had gone missing last week. Trouble was, for my mom that was normal. She had a sad history of short, intense relationships with men who could generously be called losers.

However, given the fact that during my mom’s latest absence vampires had killed my friends, burnt down our house, and were probably still looking for me, I made over a dozen unanswered calls to her during the past week. And of course she picked now to finally return them.

Megan knelt down next to where I lay face up on the floor massaging my temples in a futile attempt to stave off the first signs of a migraine. She tilted her head as she held the phone out to me.

“Don’t you want to answer it?”

At that moment I could think of other things I desperately wanted to be doing, but instead, I took the phone, pressed the answer button, and said in what I hoped wasn’t too morose a tone, “Hey Mom.”

“Chance! I’m glad I finally caught you.” It wasn’t my mom, but the voice was familiar nonetheless. It took me only a second to place it, and when I did, I went cold. I jerked upright to a sitting position. My sudden motion sent the hovering Megan falling backwards to land unceremoniously on her rump.

The person on the other end of the phone was Christian, the master vampire responsible for everything that had happened back in Texas. He was the one who had killed my friends and threatened me. And he was calling from my mom’s cell phone.

“What have you done with her? Where is she?” I growled into the phone. It was cliché, but what else could I say?

His reply was cheerful, as if he were sharing a pleasant exchange with a close friend. “Your mom is quite safe. She’s sitting right here next to me, in fact. The two of us were chatting over drinks, and we thought it would be a great idea if I met her sons. Now that your mother and I have become so close, I think she wants your approval of our eternal love. So tell me, Chance—do you approve?”

Megan stared at me, her look of surprise at having been toppled over now replaced by shock. Though not as keen as a werewolf’s, I knew her heightened hearing could pick up both sides of the conversation. She had been as startled as I was when it wasn’t my mom on the other end of the call, and it had only taken her a few seconds longer than me to figure out who the caller was.

“Put her on,” I said to Christian.

“Why, certainly.” Christian’s voice grew fainter as he moved the phone away from his mouth, and I overheard, “Dear, your son wants a word with you.”

A moment later I heard my mom’s voice say, “Hi, honey.” She sounded happy, if a little tired. With vampire mind control it was likely she was under Christian’s compulsion. Then again, my mom had a weakness for men. If he treated her even halfway decently, and didn’t let her know he was a vampire, she’d be happy. Heck, to be honest, as long as he treated her halfway decently he could be an actual troll and she’d likely stick it out with him. She made some bad decisions when it came to guys.

“Sorry I missed all of your calls, Chance. Christian and I were having such a good time! The days have just slipped away. You know how that goes.” She laughed; I didn’t. “How about you come for dinner tomorrow? Christian never seems to eat, but he’s such a wonderful cook, and I want you to meet him. You two are going to get along great.”

“That’s a fantastic idea!” Christian’s voice was first distant, then louder, as he took back the phone. “Chance, why don’t you come on over. Bring your brother. I’ll have the whole family for dinner!”

“Touch her and I’ll kill you.”

“Oh, Chance, I think it’s too late for that, on both counts! But, tell you what—why don’t you come on over tomorrow night like your mother suggested and we can talk about it while I eat.”

“The only thing you’ll be eating next time I see you is a chest full of stake.” I hung up and sat silently while Megan picked up her dress. I tried my darnedest to burn Megan’s beautiful image into my mind. I knew that tomorrow I was going to do something that would quite probably be life-ending, and I wanted to have at least one last good memory to think about when I died.

I slowly pulled myself up and searched for my shirt. Megan walked up to me and took my hand, squeezing it.

“Don’t worry. I’m going to go talk to Donovan tonight. We’ll get your mother back and deal with Christian.”

“Thanks,” I said, not telling her that I planned to leave first thing in the morning to take care of it myself. I knew she wouldn’t go for that. She was too much the mother hen to let me go after Christian on my own.

Megan and her friend Lacey had put themselves out on a limb too many times for me already. In the brief time I had known them I had been more or less responsible for their house being trashed, Megan almost getting killed twice, and Lacey being possessed by a demon. I wasn’t going to drag them into this as well. Besides, I didn’t think Donovan was going to help me. He was the master vampire of the San Francisco Bay Area and, as near as I could tell, he had no jurisdiction over the vampires in Texas. He certainly had no reason to go out of his way on my account. He may have lent me a hand in the past, but only because I was in possession of a weapon he wanted to make sure none of his rivals ended up with.

I considered taking my brother along with me, but decided Bryan would be more of a liability than a help. Besides, he might actually have something good going here in California, and lord knows he needed it. He’d had a tough life, and I wasn’t going to bring him on what was likely a suicide mission just when things were looking up.

Megan got dressed quickly, eager to go plead my case with Donovan. Once again she was ready to jump in and straighten out my life. When she put her arms around me, I looked into her eyes and saw in those cool blue depths a sense of compassion that was startling. This vampire had more empathy than any human I had met in a while. She smiled, then gave me a kiss on the cheek and a hug that I wished could have lasted forever. Before she left she promised that everything would be okay.

I fully intended it that it would, at least for her and my brother. I cleaned up the wine that had spilled on the floor, then tried to fit the cork back into the bottle before giving up and using a wadded-up paper towel. Finally, I laid some blankets on the living room floor and tried to get a good night’s sleep. I had expected this night to go a couple of different ways, but this was honestly not one of them.

When Bryan came in a couple of hours later, I was still wide awake. I had been thinking about what happened to my mom and blaming myself for starting the whole thing with the vampires. Had I left it alone after Kristi had died, a lot of people would still be alive. And now they had my mom, and I knew that, realistically, I would probably fail trying to save her.

My brother didn’t say anything to me when he came in, which meant that he didn’t know about what happened to Mom and he hadn’t scored with Lacey. I would be hearing about it in graphic detail if either of those two things had occurred. All he said was “’Night, bro” before he wandered down the hall of the apartment to the single bedroom.

I breathed a sigh of relief as I heard the door to his room shut. I was glad Bryan hadn’t found out about Mom yet. He would have insisted on coming along if he knew, and arguing with him about anything was pointless. Bryan would find out soon, though. I was positive Megan had already told Lacey, and it would only be a matter of hours before she passed it along to my brother.

So much for living a nice normal life. I rolled over, and eventually capitulated to a broken sleep.

I jerked awake, grabbed my phone and stared at the time in disbelief. Not so long ago I had a considerable propensity for sleeping in, but spending several nights at Megan and Lacey’s had messed with my internal clock. Lacey was an obnoxiously early riser, despite rooming with a vampire who slept all day and partied all night. I had spent several days with them, and their habits had thrown my regular schedule for a loop.

In this instance it served me well. The first signs of dawn could barely be detected peeking through the gaps in the blinds, and I wanted to get out of town before anyone realized I was gone and could stop me.

I called a cab, quickly showered, and threw on some clothes. Then I prepared for the hunt, because that was what this was going to be: a vampire hunt. Only this time I’d have no team to back me up. Not that a team had helped me any last time.

I went through Bryan’s large duffel bag, which he referred to as the goody bag. It contained all of the spare weaponry that my last team had, the stuff that we hadn’t taken with us into the ambush. Bryan had collected it all and brought it with him when he came to California.