Primal Cravings (3 page)

He breathed Dee’s scent in now.
Virgin blood
, he thought.

Jerame gasped. This knocked Jake out of his reverie. The
nephelim
was pale, his face strained with pain. Why did he put himself through this every few months?

“Say something,” Jake advised him. “Get your mind off it.”

Jerame’s gaze slid sideways to him. “Zombies,” he said.

“Stay still,” the witch said. “Almost done.”

She shot Jake a look and mouthed, ‘Thanks’. Certainly a word Jake never thought would come his way from Dee McCoy.

“What about zombies?” Jake encouraged Jerame to talk more.

“Would we protect them? Zombies. If there were zombies?”

“Do zombies have a heartbeat?” Jake wondered.

“Why?” Dee asked.

“Because I don’t think we’re obligated to protect anything that doesn’t have a heartbeat,” Jake said.

“Good point,” Jerame said, between clinched teeth.

“Aren’t zombies created by witches, McCoy?” Jake asked. “Some kind of vodoun curse?”

She gave him the usual irritated look. “Witchdoctors, Piper.”

“Aren’t you a witch who’s a doctor?” Jerame asked.

“I haven’t gotten my Ph.D. yet,” she answered. “And it will be in physics, not necromancy.”

Her words sent a spark of—something—through Jake. “Are there witches who talk to the dead? Who try to bring them back to life?”

She smeared more of the ointment on Jerame’s back before she answered. “Back in the Middle Ages—there were some Tower wizards who experimented with that kind of nonsense. The Church burned them at the stake, and threw their shadow books onto the bonfires with them. Even the rest of the witches had to agree with the Inquisition on that decision.”

“Talking to the dead isn’t a good thing? What about séances?”

She sighed loudly. “I’m a witch, Piper, not a medium. I don’t know anything about talking to the dead.” She patted Jerame gently on the shoulder. “We’re done, babe.”

Jake couldn’t shake the vision of Melchor talking to him. What if some of those magical books still existed?

Jerame stood and stretched. Jake almost growled with jealousy as Dee looked over the
nephelim
’s bare back.
She’s examining her work
, he told himself, and unclenched his fists before anyone noticed the telltale possessive gesture.

Jerame left the room, saying, “Good hunting, dude,” as he walked past Jake.

Jake moved toward the witch while she washed her hands in the bathroom sink. He was careful not to come too close. He didn’t want to spook her, or be caught by her scent or the radiated warmth of her skin.

He couldn’t help but catch a glimpse of the mirror this time, and there was more there than Dee’s and his own reflection. He caught a swirl of smoke, and—reflecting bubbles? Balloons? Whatever it was he thought he saw, the image flashed away almost as he saw it. He and Dee were the only ones there, looking at each other in the glass.

“Well,” she asked his reflection. “What do we do now?”

Jake didn’t have a clue, but he’d learned from something Tobias had once said:
“Act like you have a plan, and something will come to you.”

The pair of them couldn’t just stand around and hope the bad guys would come to them. He was too proud to ask the female how one normally went about investigating Tobias’s feelings. He doubted she’d have the answer anyway.

Chapter Five

“Are we going to stand in the bathroom glaring at each other?”

Piper turned and left Dee alone in the room. Watching him go was annoying, but it had to be said the man had a fine ass to watch walking way. She waited a moment before following him, so it wouldn’t be noticed that she followed him. Stupid and childish as this was, it was also a way of showing him he wasn’t the leader in this op they were on.

“We’re partners,” she said coming up to him when they were back in the kitchen. “Just like on any Dark Angels op.” She would have loved to go up to Tobias and ask him what he wanted them to do next, but she guessed it wasn’t going to work that way. Besides, at the moment Tobias was occupied talking to Flare, the vampire female who was currently taking much of his attention.

Piper nodded. “Like any other op, except for the total lack of information or clues.” He rubbed a thumb along his jawline. Then he looked around. “Mr. Lancer,” he called.

Ben Lancer, the mortal man who was letting the Dark Angels use his home as a safe house while they were in Los Angeles, stood by the door which led to the garage. He was dressed in a black suit, and Dee guessed he was heading off for work. Ben Lancer might be old, but the silver-haired man was tall and imposing. He was head of a personal security company.

He waited silently for Piper and Dee to come up to him, his expression stern and unreadable.

“I’m in need of some assistance, sir,” Piper told Lancer. “I’ve heard something about there being a seer in your family.”

Lancer hesitated. He looked Piper over with disapproval. “She’s got a Prime of her own already.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t know what you mean?”

“My granddaughter is bonded to a Clan Boy.”

“Congratulations, sir,” Piper said.

Dee was surprised by the lack of irony in his tone. She’d also finally tumbled on to what he was getting at.

“We’re in need of someone with psychic abilities that are different than ours,” she told Ben Lancer.

“Domini’s with a security client right now,” Lancer answered. “We don’t make a habit of interrupting our bodyguards when they’re on a job.”

Dee thought he was being stubbornly protective of his granddaughter. Not that she blamed him. He’d allowed some scary folk into his home during this crisis in the paranormal community. That was good of him, but he wouldn’t want his granddaughter brought into the line of fire.

“I only wish to speak with her,” Piper said. “Perhaps she can tell me something about the future.”

“She never sees too far into the future,” Lancer said.

“That’s what I’m looking for.”

“And she never sees anything important.”

Dee spoke before Piper could get a word in. “If we could talk to her we might discover something important in her visions. Tobias has one of his feelings, and we’ve been assigned to look into it.”

Invoking Tobias’s name had the desired effect. Lancer gave them a cellphone number where they could reach his granddaughter, and wished them luck before leaving the house.

* * *

Ben Lancer’s granddaughter agreed to meet them in a parking lot at 10:30 in the morning. She pointed out that she was a bodyguard with a body to guard and couldn’t give them more than a few minutes.

They took one of the Dark Angels’ black SUVs and drove to the rendezvous from Malibu. Windshield wipers swishing away drops from a cool December rain was the only sound, as neither spoke during the drive.

Jake kept his hands tightly on the wheel, his attention on the heavy traffic and wet road. He knew he appeared perfectly calm, he’d certainly had plenty of practice, but his other senses went crazy with being so close to Dee McCoy. He’d never been alone with her before. For a Tribe Prime there was only one reason to be alone with a mortal female. He fought down the urge to fantasize, but it was difficult. Her spicy aroma was concentrated aphrodisiac within the closeness of the car interior. And whether she knew it or not, the muskiness of arousal added a dark undertone to her already tantalizing scent.

Tobias, my leader, how could you do this to me?

He wondered if the witch was as disturbed as he was. He also resented that she had the outlet of spending the drive time thumbing out texts and sending emails on her smartphone.

Jake waited until he brought the SUV to a stop in the designated parking lot and turned off the engine before he said, “I hope you haven’t spent your time gossiping with your friends.”

* * *

“No!” Dee snapped at the vampire as she turned to face him. She was too honest not to say, “Okay, one was a text to Saffron, but I was sending out requests for any information the witch community might have on weirdnesses.”

“That’s how you phrased it,
weirdnesses
? Is that an actual word?”

She’d been doing what she could to ignore Piper while still being proactive on this assignment. She’d never spent any time alone with Piper before, and certainly never this close. It was very—disconcerting.

“Yes,” she answered. Dee put the phone away. “Now we wait for any answers.”

He looked out the water-spattered windshield. “Now we wait for our medium to arrive.”

“Have you seen Domini Reynard? She’s at least five foot nine. There’s nothing medium about that girl.”

“Reynard?” The named sounded like it had a bad taste to Piper. “Clan Reynard.”

“Ben Lancer did tell you Domini is bonded to a Clan Boy.”

Piper said nothing else, but Dee was aware of the new tension. She thought there were things he wanted to say. Maybe he’d had dealings with the Reynards in his Tribe days.

“We asked for Domini’s help,” she reminded the Prime. “Don’t be rude to her even if you’ve got something against her husband.”

“You are going to make someone a wonderful mother,” Piper said. “Or, possibly, evil stepmother. I’m not good at mortal familial terminology.”

She was certain he knew exactly what he meant, but since he was still relatively new in dealing with mortals, she had to give him the benefit of the doubt. She grimaced, knowing that he knew he could get away with a lot playing the new-to-mortal-ways card.

Dee was aware there were no mothers among Tribe vampires, even though the Clan and Family vampires were matriarchal societies. What passed for a society among Tribe vampires involved keeping vampire females as breeding stock, and mortal women as pleasure slaves. The males fought each other for places within the hierarchy. Nothing friendly or familial in a Tribe Prime’s house.

“It’s a dying life,” Piper whispered.

Dee wasn’t sure if he was talking to her. It didn’t matter, as a car pulled up beside them a moment after Piper spoke. A woman got out of the driver’s seat of that car and slipped into the back seat of theirs. Dee turned around in her seat. Piper looked at the woman in the rearview mirror.

“We’ve met before,” Domini Reynard said to Dee. She gave the back of Piper’s head a quick glance, then turned her attention back to Dee. “I don’t know how much help I can be. I’m not exactly a proper medium— Do you know someone named Tower?” She blinked. “Never mind. I was telling you that I’m not a pro at telling the future. I can’t do it on command. Though the talent has gotten stronger since I started adding iron-enriched liquid supplements to my diet.”

“Since you began tasting a Prime,” Piper said.

Drinking blood, Dee interpreted.

“You disapprove of bonding, Leviathan?” Domini asked.

“Piper,” he corrected. His words came out bland and toneless. “Of course not, ma’am. I’m a Family boy, now.”

“Excuse my rudeness, Prime Piper,” Domini said, with less expression than Piper, if possible. She glanced at her watch, back at Dee. “I don’t have much time. So, what do you want me to do?”

Dee rather resented someone outside the Dark Angels being rude to one of the Crew. If anyone was going to rag on Piper, it should be her. She told Domini about feelings and visions and how they hadn’t a clue what they were looking for but that there was no doubt something bad was going on.

Domini nodded. “Oh, yeah. I’ve heard about Tobias Strahan’s feelings.” She settled back against the leather seat, and closed her eyes. “I’ll see if I can add anything.” For a while there was only the sound of rain on the windows.

Dee would have set up a warding circle, used something to concentrate energy through, done other stuff depending on what sort of magic needed to be worked with. Well, to each their own ways of working. She had a marble in her hoodie pocket, and considered offering it to Domini in lieu of a crystal ball. Maybe that would —

“Don’t let the balloons touch,” the seer said.

Dee thought that made as much sense as everything else they’d heard and seen today.

“What balloons?” she asked.

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Domini said.

“Why shouldn’t they touch?” Piper asked.

“Because that’ll destroy the worlds, of course.”

“Of course.” Piper sighed. “Anything else, ma’am?”

“You have to go deep,” Domini said. “Deep beneath the oaks and red rocks. It’s burning under the rocks.”

Domini opened her eyes. Then she opened the car door and threw up onto the parking lot concrete.

Dee passed her some tissues, and a bottled water.

“Well, that’s never happened before,” Domini said after she wiped her mouth and spit water onto the ground. “Thanks.” She didn’t close the car door this time. “That’s it,” she said firmly. “I hope that helps, but don’t count on it.”

“But—” Dee started.

“I’m sure you two will live happily ever after if you survive this. Gotta get back to my client now.”

Then Domini Reynard was gone, slamming the SUV door behind her.

Chapter Six

“She’s likely right about not being helpful,” Jake said. And that had been his only idea.

“Maybe her reading was crap, but do you remember the first thing she said when she got in the car?”

“She asked if we knew someone named Tower,” he recalled. “You are about to protest that she was speaking to you, but I think she meant both of us.”

“How do you figure that?”

“I am a telepath.”

She wasn’t convinced, but McCoy didn’t argue with him. “Do you know someone named Tower? Not yet,” she added before he could answer.

Jake fought smiling, but wasn’t completely successful. “Tower is a school of magic, yes?”

She nodded, but she had her phone out again, scrolling through the screen. One of the many reasons Jake had turned himself in to accept the punishments for being born Tribe was for the opportunity to experience all the technological advantages Tribe Primes shunned. There was so much more he wanted than to just live in the light.