Hunter by Night (3 page)

Lee nodded, already following the wizard as Thad lifted Isabel. “All right, let’s go.” Having the wizard on premises also meant one more body who could withstand the sun’s rays to drive in times of emergency. Lee conceded right now that it was a tough benefit to argue.

“Wait.” Alexia ran up the hall behind them. Lee turned. The rest continued down toward the exit she and Isabel had come from.

“I need to grab a change of clothes for Isabel, and I’m coming with you. I’m her birth assistant. If anything happens with the baby, I have to be there. I promised.”

Fuck. The panic on Alexia’s face filled Lee’s gut with dread. “Fact is, given the circumstances, there’s not a damn thing any of us can do for her right now. I’m sorry.” He let the
least
of
all
you
stay silent. He might be an asshole, but he had some respect. “Now we have one windowless van with a driver and it’s leaving. I have to go, Lexi.”

He turned but she grabbed his wrist. His pulse jumped. “I’m going with you.”

They couldn’t waste the time to argue. “Fine. To hell with the clothes. We’ll find out what she needs when they’ve assessed her properly. Keep up and stay out of the way.” He shook off her touch and turned to jog down the hall.

Behind him, Alexia ran.

Lee’s reluctant heart beat steady and fast, echoing his frustration. Bad enough the king and queen had to be rushed to the hospital, that they were outside the estate where they were safest. Worse yet that a meeting of the Elders’ Council had been scheduled for that very evening—not enough time to cancel after the queen’s brush with sunstroke. And fuck Lee’s fucking life…

“Is it just me or do these Council elders all sound like chattering monkeys?” Siddoh, his next in command, had been selected to join him. The vampire voted most likely to make Lee stab something with a salad fork.

Lee’s fingers pressed into the podium. “Is it possible for you to stand still and shut the fuck up?”

Siddoh’s shoulders managed a casual shrug. “I suppose anything is possible.”

The muscles in Lee’s neck wrung tight. He tapped a finger patiently and waited for the din to quiet. He’d seen the old bats and bat-esses chill out much faster for Thad. Maybe they still waited with hopes that the king might show. Whatever. He wouldn’t give these ancient assholes the satisfaction of begging. He wasn’t as far beneath them as they liked to pretend.

“You know,” Siddoh whispered next to him. “In my nearly four hundred years on the planet, I have held certain truths to be universal. Females were always right, if you valued your eardrums and your testicles. Vampires were always good. Wizards were always unredeemable assholes. Cheesecake was always delicious. And if you convinced the world at large you were enough of a devil-may-care dickwad, nobody rammed the tippy-top of the chain-of-command totem pole up your ass.” Siddoh took a deep breath. “Lately all my universal truths have been shot to shit.”

Lee turned his head slowly and pegged Siddoh with a glare. Dammit, he didn’t have a salad fork, but he
did
have a Taser. “Siddoh…”

Siddoh leaned his hand on the podium, too close to Lee’s. “Except the thing about cheesecake. That shit’s delicious. God help any man or beast that dares defile my love of creamy goodness with graham cracker crust.”

Lee’s hand curled into a fist. “We are here to make an announcement, and then I am needed at the hospital with the king and queen. You are needed to help guard the estate. If you can focus on priorities for one goddamned minute, we can do this thing and then leave.”

For one maddening second it looked as if Siddoh might speak again, but just to the side, an aging male in a long coat stood to fire a shrill whistle. Immediately the cacophony faded.

“Excuse me, everyone, but I believe the speaker is waiting for our attention so that he may open the meeting.”

Siddoh clapped Lee on the shoulder. “You see? Problem solved.” For Siddoh, everything was always fine. Fucker made “laid-back” look like an escaped serial killer on amphetamine.

The elder, Siddoh’s uncle, sat and gave Siddoh and Lee a conspiratorial wink.

“Thank you, everyone,” Lee said to the room when they had all settled into their seats. He nodded politely to Siddoh’s uncle.

The elders all narrowed their eyes suspiciously. Disquiet buzzed through the room. Someone in the back coughed.

“Okay,” Lee said, when finally the shuffles and murmurs had ceased. “Under other circumstances we’d have canceled this meeting entirely, but there wasn’t enough notice.”

Hundreds of pairs of eyes widened with curiosity, and Lee’s jaw clamped down. Not knowing why Thad wasn’t here probably gave the elders a rash, and Lee would sooner walk naked into the sunny downtown streets looking to tango with Haig himself than tell these assholes what had just happened to their queen. Couldn’t trust a single damn one of them.

“The king has been detained.” He held out both palms. “Before you ask any questions, I know nothing further.” Thad suspected disloyalty among some on the Council. They had hoped the actions were limited to one elder who was now under house arrest, but one couldn’t be too careful.

Siddoh drummed his fingers on the podium. Lee resisted the urge to slam his fist on the guy’s hand. Or bring out the Taser.

Someone popped up to the far right. A female Lee didn’t recognize. She must have ascended only recently. “What of Elder Grayson? Why have we been unable to visit him to see about his well-being or to have our private Council meetings?”

Because
he’s a scummy piece of shit who tried to kill a member of the royal family.
That would be, as Alexia would say, “a big freaking duh.”

“What the fuck is wrong with these assholes?” Lee muttered beneath his breath.

Siddoh cleared his throat. “You want me to give you the list alphabetically, or by age?”

Lee cut his gaze to Siddoh but didn’t respond. “Elder Grayson is under house arrest for the assault and attempted murder of the king’s half sister,” he said with his voice raised again.

The din of voices swelled around them again. Siddoh leaned over. “I suggest now would be a good time to blow this lemonade stand.” For once, something on which they agreed.

Lee bowed quickly to Siddoh’s uncle and stalked out of the room. It was the best he could do without making his neck and back ache more from tension. If the elders thought hard, they could make the leap: the queen had been pregnant eight months. Vampire pregnancies lasted for eight and a half. The king suddenly wasn’t available, and not everybody in the room was stupid enough not to do the math, even though they acted dumb as cattle.

For
fuck’s sake, Isabel and that baby had better survive.

He and Siddoh eyeballed each other when they reached the parking garage. “I need to get back to the hospital,” Lee said. “You know what this means.”

“Yep.” Siddoh jammed his hands into his pockets. “Tippy-top of the totem pole.” His fingers combed through his too-long hair. “Take care of them, yeah? And hurry the hell back so I don’t have to be Dad anymore.”

Lee nodded. “Bet your ass. Keep an eye on the human news for signs of Haig and his dirty work. I can only assume the fact that he hasn’t attacked after leaving that message means he’s trying to make us squirm.”

“Or he’s cooking something really fucked up.”

Lee had no doubt.

***

St. Anne’s Hospital made Lee’s eyes burn. The bright lights, the smells, the sanitizers. Seriously, the lights. He’d held a spotlight in a wizard’s eyes during interrogation that had lower candle power than the shit blazing in these hallways. Wasn’t this the place where vampires came to get
well
? No way a little pale-green paint on the walls and a few pictures of flowers were going to help perk up the infirm with all that fucking glare.

As he headed up to guard Queen Isabel’s room, someone walked past with objectionable-smelling greasy food and stale coffee. Burning acid shot into his throat. Again.

With a nod he took the post over from the soldier stationed at the door. Down the hall, Lexi and Anton sat close in a set of wood and vinyl chairs, talking with their heads together. The deserter wizard had his hand on the small human’s leg.

You
do
not
deserve
to
touch
her.

Alexia acted as if the hand on her leg meant nothing, but Lee remembered. Accident or no, she’d passed out once when Anton had dared to touch her and use his healing powers. Clearly the wizard had gained better control over his ability, but it had taken weeks—months—for Lexi to return to her usual self after that night. Whatever Anton had done to her, how could she allow herself to get close again?

It defied logic.

The air beside Lee stirred. An arm brushed his. In his next sideways glance, the king’s sister stood by his side. She must have just teleported in. “You still don’t trust him,” Tyra said.

Lee faced forward again. “If I truly distrusted him, you’d both have been out on your asses by now. Or he’d be dead.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “I love you, too, Lee.”

“I do love you, Ty.” Down the hall Anton brushed a tear from Lexi’s face. What happened? What made her cry? The doctors had said Isabel was cooling down and the baby had a strong heartbeat. What had that bastard said to Alexia?
Why
was
he
touching
her?

His chest thumped painfully. Lee slowed his breath. “Nevertheless, greater good is greater good. As it is, you’re lucky there were no further attacks on the two of you from inside our community after he arrived.”

“Yeah,” she said quietly. “You’d think… He killed his own father to protect me. To protect all of them. What is there not to trust?”

Down the hall in the chairs, the defected wizard curled his fingers around Alexia’s. Her free hand pushed a stray swath of mussed hair out of her face, and she smiled gratefully at him. At Anton.

Lee’s own fingers clenched. “Wizards are soulless and vile,” he growled. “This is knowledge burned into the hearts and minds of every vampire from childhood. One of the keys to our survival. That there is an exception to such a rule after so many centuries will be hard for some to grasp. Besides, he could have killed his father for personal gain. Revenge. Look at his brother, Petros, who used their father’s death to take over as the new wizard leader.”

“Hmm.” Deep breath from her. “You know, I think he feels protective of her,” Tyra murmured. “Because they’re both outsiders. Anyway, he thinks she’s got some sort of childhood trauma.”

“What?” Now Lee’s head ached.

She gestured slightly. “Anton. Lexi. He says he thinks she’s got some sort of childhood issue. Something he gleaned from his healing touch, I guess.”

An orderly pushed in front of them with an empty cart, blocking Lee’s view. Shit.

He glanced at Tyra, whose brown eyes were staring at him with far too much curiosity. “Honest to God, Ty, sometimes you bust out with the weirdest shit.”

“So do you.” She rolled her eyes. “You keep wondering if there’s something going on between them. Which is just ridiculous.”

Was he being so obvious?

“I can tell. I know you. And lest we forget, I remember all those months ago when she first came to the estate. Even then, I could sense your desire for her. Anyway, I thought you’d want to know your territory is well marked.”

Another of Tyra’s abilities was reading emotion through touch. Damned annoying. “I’ve asked you not to read me. She is not my territory. I haven’t marked a damn thing.” Yet without intention, an image of his bite on Alexia’s pale throat appeared in his mind. Jesus, imagining such a thing spun desire through his stomach.

“Well, I try not to pry. It was just so obvious then, and now…” She turned again, inclining her chin toward the two other individuals talking down the hall. “I don’t have to. I can see the little muscle twitching in your jaw and the way your hands are poised like you want to grab a weapon. For the record, you should hear the way he talks about her. Like she’s a kid.”

Lee swept his gaze up and down Alexia’s body. Tonight she wore tan cargo pants and a long-sleeved shirt. Simple, but the thin, nylon pants rode low on her hips. As she sat in the chair, they dipped to expose her lower back and a piece of one of her tribal tattoos. The shirt hugged her waist and glittered with rhinestones across the chest. Impossible not to notice the feminine lift and swell of her breasts. Her curvaceous hips. Alexia was no child.

Tyra nudged his arm. “We’re in a secured vampire hospital, and you said yourself if you thought Anton was truly a danger to our race, you’d have kicked him and me both out of the estate by now. So why the need to watch her so closely?” She took a breath and lowered her voice. “Moreover, I know sometimes you check on her. I’ve come through the house on my way back from the shelter in the morning and caught you listening at her door.”

Lee went still. He wasn’t aware anybody knew he listened in on Alexia. He’d learned quickly that she didn’t function well with silence. Lexi always had something playing in her room, usually music. He could tell her mood in an instant by what came out of her speakers.

“So, I think what bothers you is that you don’t know what’s wrong with her. Or that Anton is the one giving her comfort. Or—”

Something in the back of Lee’s skull snapped. “Stop. Please. There’s nothing going on with Lexi, and I wish you’d mind your own business.”

The bustle of the hospital filled in their tense, contemplative silence.

“Don’t you think it’s been long enough since you and Agnessa—?”

“No.” His teeth snapped together.

“Jeez. Sorry I said anything.”

Lee’s chest tightened. “Look. I don’t deny that I care for Alexia. That doesn’t mean anything. I care for you, too.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “You know damn well it isn’t the same.”

No, it wasn’t at all the same. It had never been the same. Against Lee’s very will, he’d wanted Alexia from the darkest depths of his being since the moment he’d spotted her.

“Tyra, it’s a bad fit. I can’t be with a human. To be honest, I’m not sure I can be with anybody. It’s not simply what Agnessa did. It’s me. I like the freedom of being on my own.”

“To do what? Go bowling with your bros? You have the absolute opposite of a social life.”

Lee withheld a snarl at Tyra’s attempt to raise his ire. “The greatest enemy our kind or humankind has ever known may be alive and well and lurking in Ash Falls. For fuck’s sake, Ty, he started the plagues.

“We—I—will have our hands full if he manages to resurrect that magic once again. I’m trying to reorganize our forces so that our fighting power is stronger. Now is not the time for relationships.”
And
the
thing
is, I’m pretty certain I’m dying. Death and relationships do not mix.

“Yet somehow I’ve managed.” She gestured down the hall to Anton.

He scoffed. “It took you more than a century to settle down. With someone who is helping us to fight the war. We don’t have many female fighters, and I don’t sleep with subordinates. Or humans.”

“You’re second to the king. If no humans and no subordinates are your rules, you’ll never get laid. What’s wrong with humans?”