The Vampire King (3 page)

Silence stretched over the inhabitants of D’Angelo’s meeting room. The king’s point had been clearly made. It was up to the Offspring society to help wherever and whenever they could.

“Court is adjourned,” D’Angelo said then, his voice so soft it was nearly a sigh. He backed up his chair and stood, exuding grace with every tiny movement he made. The rest of the vampires at the table followed suit until everyone was standing. D’Angelo excused them all and the eight of them began to leave the room. Charles glanced over his shoulder as he exited through the meeting room’s massive double doors. David Cade remained behind; the other vampire was watching him. For a brief moment, their eyes met, and a thrum of fear went through Charles. Cade was a very smart man. Did he know something? Had he figured something out?

Luckily, Charles’ magic would hide any subliminal signs of nervousness. It was up to Charles to hide the rest. He forced his expression to remain neutral, turned away from the room, and left the mansion.

*****

“He has a darkness about him,” Cade said. “I don’t trust him.”

Roman gave David a side-long glance. The corners of his mouth turned up in the slightest of smiles. David Cade was not only highly intelligent, but incredibly astute. “Neither do I,” Roman admitted softly.

David turned away from the open doors through which the members of the court had disappeared and gave Roman a long, searching look. “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer?” he questioned.

“Indeed.”

“Let me know if you need my help,” David offered as he then made his way through the double doors himself. Roman knew he was talking about Charles Ward and not the werewolf situation. He nodded, just once, and David returned the gesture before disappearing entirely.

Now alone once more, Roman waited a moment in the hollow emptiness of the room. Then he turned, flicking his wrist as he faced the hearth against one wall. The double doors swung gently shut behind him. Flames erupted in the empty fire place, at once crackling to life and filling the room with a welcome glow.

Roman closed his eyes and took a deep breath as he pressed his palms to the mantle and leaned forward to drop his head.

“Troubled, Roman?”

He’d known she was there. It was the reason he’d started the fire; her old bones preferred the warmth – and he preferred her company. “My sleep has been troubled,” he said softly without looking up and without turning around.

“I thought vampires didn’t need to sleep,” Lalura said, both genuine curiosity and a hint of teasing in her slightly gravelly voice.

Roman’s lips cracked a smile. He lifted his head and pushed off of the mantle to turn and face the old witch. She wasn’t looking at him. She was eyeing the tall wooden-backed chairs at the meeting table with obvious disdain. Lalura Chantelle preferred much softer seating accommodations.

Roman spoke a few arcane words and zeroed in on the table and chairs. A soft, glittering glow began to emanate from their surfaces. That glow spread, intensified, and then flashed bright white. When it was gone, so were the mahogany table and the unforgiving wooden chairs.

In their place rested the set of double-stuffed love seats Lalura seemed to favor from Roman’s study. Between the two seats sat a small glass coffee table, upon which waited a steaming tea pot and two empty mugs.

Lalura didn’t hesitate and she didn’t at all seem surprised. Instead, the tiny, bent woman with long, thick white hair and piercing blue eyes harrumphed as if to say, “That’s better,” or “Damn straight” and made her way around one of the seats before plopping unceremoniously into it.

She shut her eyes for a moment, sighed to herself, and then pinned the teapot with her blue, blue eyes. “This got the milk in it already?” she asked as she leaned forward and picked up the tea pot.

“Of course,” Roman replied. He found that the smile she’d placed on his lips moments ago had only grown.

Lalura proceeded to pour the contents of the tea pot into each of the mugs, and then picked hers up and waved it under her nose. Roman waited, feeling oddly tense as she seemed to consider the tea. And then she nodded, more to herself than anyone else, and took a tentative sip.

Roman relaxed at once and made his way to the love seat opposite her. He sat down, leaned forward, and placed his elbows on his knees. “To what do I owe the pleasure, Lalura?” he asked.

Lalura eyed him steadily, her expression hard and unreadable. “Give me a break, Roman, I’m ancient, and I’m growing older by the second. You know damn well why I’m here.”

Roman’s brow lifted. He sat back in the seat and cocked his head to one side. If he’d wanted to, he could have read her thoughts, but he’d always considered it rude to do so without permission or probable cause, and Lalura was the most respectable – and
respected
– individual he’d ever come to know. To break the trust he had with her would rub him very wrong.

And in this instance, she was right. He knew why she was there. He took a deep breath and said, “I’m dreaming of her.”

“I figured,” Lalura said. “When you said your sleep was troubled.” She paused. “I’m also assuming you’re not talking about Ophelia.”

Roman turned away from Lalura to gaze out the window across the room. As did all of the windows in his mansion, this one looked out over an inner courtyard. At the center of the courtyard stood a marble fountain, its middle statue of a beautiful woman who gazed longingly up at the night sky.

Two hundred years ago, Roman had been engaged to a young London socialite. She had been very lovely and very sought after. But of all of the men who courted her, she chose him.

Before they could be married, disaster struck. The papers that morning read that a carriage’s horses were spooked and the young beauty was killed.

Just after the death of the Warlock King and the lift of the werewolf curse that was now causing so many changes in their society, the old witch had paid Roman a visit. And just before she’d left, she’d told him something….

And then, with the typical smoke and pixie dust that was Lalura Chantelle, the witch had once more disappeared to leave Roman to his solitude.

Now the Vampire King settled his unsettling gaze on his ancient companion and allowed the seriousness of his emotion to find its way into his calm, deep voice. “Perhaps you should let me in on the joke, Lalura.”

Lalura sighed and set down her mug. “I would if I could, Roman,” she told him frankly. “The truth is, I know nothing more than you do.” She shrugged. “I know that you’re meant to help someone. How? When? I haven’t a clue. I know that she will play a very important role for you in the days soon to come.” She slapped her hands onto her lap. “And that’s about the whole enchilada.”

Roman considered this and leaned back once more into the cushions of his seat. He thought of the dreams he’d been having. They were indistinct, fractured, and troubling. And in all of them, he saw a set of pain-filled eyes that both mesmerized and infuriated him. He wanted to take their pain away. He wanted to find their owner. He wanted to do things he hadn’t thought of doing in ages.

When he awoke, it was always the same. He was angry and he was hungry. He’d been feeding more often of late because of it. If things didn’t change soon, he would have to make a kill long before he should have to.

“My advice to you, your majesty,” said Lalura as she slowly pushed herself up on to her rickety legs, “would be to get off of your royal ass and try to find that girl.”

Roman watched as the witch hobbled around her seat to an open spot in the room. She brushed her robe-like clothes straight and glanced back at the coffee table. The half-f tea pot still steamed, forever magically warm. She eyed it greedily, pointed a magic finger at it, and watched it disappear.

“I’ll return the pot later.” She nodded, as if to herself, and then sighed. “Time’s running out, Roman. That much, I do know.”

With a grand flourish, the old witch waved her arm above her head. The air began to stir and fill with the vibration of time and space magic. Roman stood. It was customary for a gentleman to stand as a lady entered and left a room.

With that, she snapped her fingers. This time, the air filled with pink crackling, the sound of static, and an unmistakable
zap
of a transportation spell. Moments later, Lalura was gone.

Chapter Two

“Okay, no let’s go back. Just close everything you have open and look down at the screen on your iPhone.” Evie tucked her phone beneath her chin for a second, thanked the man behind the counter for her sugar-free vanilla latte, and took her coffee to a more private section of the coffee shop. On the other end of the line, her father had his own iPhone to his ear while he fiddled with her
mother’s
iPhone, mumbling under his breath as he did so. Evie waited. “Are you on the main screen yet?”

She listened. “Okay, now do you see the app icon?” She blinked. “What’s an icon? Well, it’s just one of the little symbols on the main screen of the phone. Yeah, that. Okay, so tap on that.” She waited again. “You need to do a search for the Kindle app now….. A search? Just type in what you’re looking for. In the search bar. It looks like, well, an empty space where you type something. Like a Google bar. Yes, it has a magnifying glass on it. Okay, so tap on the search bar and then type in Kindle.”

Evie took a second to sip on her coffee, closed her eyes with the warm, delicious comfort of it, and continued to listen to her father on the other end. “It should be free. Yes. Click on it.”

Evie glanced up as another group of people entered the shop. The chilled mist of the Portland, Oregon morning curled in behind them, and everyone in the store hunkered down into their sweaters for a moment as the doors let in the December cold.

The door shut behind the newcomers, but then opened again, almost to a collective groan to the shop’s patrons. But when Evie saw who walked through the door, her stomach tightened and chemicals released in her brain. He was decidedly handsome. Even from across the shop, she could tell he had distinctive, vivid eyes. Green, maybe – it was hard to tell at this distance. Or a very light blue. Evie was an eye girl. Nothing made her melt like an intense set of peepers.

The man moved forward so that the door could close behind him and then scanned the inhabitants of the coffee shop. When he got to Evie, he paused, their gazes caught, and Evie felt a flush of something warm across her chest. Light blue, then.

But her father was saying something to her through her phone’s speaker.

“What was that dad?” She looked down, looked back up, and found that the stranger was still looking at her. He smiled, flashing beautiful white teeth. Heat infused Evie’s face and she hastily looked back down at the floor.
Stupid
, she thought.
You could have at least smiled back
. “Yes, you’ll need to enter your password,” she said into her phone, feeling as though she were torn between two realities. “I don’t know what your password is. No, dad. You don’t remember it? Maybe try a few different things?” Evie bit her lip. Something was slipping away.

She chanced another look up to find that the handsome newcomer was now at the counter and ordering his own drink. It gave her a chance to look him over. He was tall and slim and had nice shoulders. Strong jaw and chin. Thick blond-brown hair cut stylishly…. She frowned. “What? It did what? Well, okay. Just start over again then. Wait,” she said, as a twinge of pain suddenly struck between her eyes. If she’d had a free hand, she would have pinched the bridge of her nose. As it was, however, she was holding her coffee cup with one hand, the phone with the other, and her laptop was tucked precariously beneath her elbow. “Let me get outside,” she sighed.

And with that, she gave up on the stranger with the beautiful eyes, exited through the coffee shop’s second door onto the frigid, deserted patio, and resigned herself once again to being single. Not that she’d actually had a chance at being anything but single just because a handsome coffee drinker had walked in at the same time that she’d been there – but that was how it felt at that very moment.

Evie had known that they would hit a snag somewhere. It was never easy when it came to helping her parents through the technological labyrinth of every day modern life. It wasn’t easy when it came to helping her parents at
all
, in fact.

Her mother was sixty-two and disabled due to a brain tumor surgery several years earlier. Her father was sixty-six and in constant pain due to advanced arthritis. The two had filed bankruptcy four years earlier and Evie, being the oldest child in the family and the only one who was either mentally or financially available to her parents, had suddenly found herself in the position of care giver.

On the one hand, there was a lot of serendipity involved with the circumstance. Her parents’ financial situation hit the skids at the same time that Amazon released Kindle and self-publishing became a possibility. If that hadn’t been the case, Evie wouldn’t have been able to do what she did for them. She was fortunate enough to be able to make money doing something she was really good at and loved to do, and that career had allowed her sick and tired parents to throw in the towel and stop killing themselves at a dry cleaning business that should have been burned to the ground a decade earlier.