Reunion (13 page)

“I heard someone arrived... walked in through the door with the section chief from London... but I didn’t see him.”

Lilith slipped the jacket on and buttoned it up.

“Thanks for the loan.” She waved idly and walked away, her thoughts now firmly fixed on her client. A man that had arrived with the section chief. Whoever he was, he had to be important to garner that kind of escort.

Reaching Daniel’s door, she rapped her knuckles against the mahogany and waited.

“Come in.” Daniel’s muffled voice drifted through it.

She paused, needing a few seconds to gather herself and push her fatigue and feelings to the back of her mind, and then opened the door and walked into the large office.

Directly in front of her was a heavy mahogany desk. Daniel was leaning against it with his arms folded and a wary look on his face. The tall curtains of the office’s two windows framed him. They were drawn. She glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was nearing six in the morning. The sun would be rising by now. It was unusual for Daniel to keep the curtains drawn against the sunrise.

She sensed her client’s presence. He was sharp, focused, watching her and studying her movement across the room. There was something familiar about that.

She stopped in front of Daniel. Worry had joined the concern she’d seen in his eyes earlier. He knew she wasn’t in the mood for this meeting. If he hadn’t been so insistent, she would have continued to refuse his orders until he backed down. His words, however, had made it clear that this client was important and he wasn’t one to wait any longer for an audience with her.

Her eyes roamed the room, seeking the man out. They scanned along the packed bookshelves and their leather-bound tomes. They found him masked in the shadowed recess to the side of the bright fire. Darkness shrouded his face and obscured his figure. Her senses spoke to her.

Here was a dangerous man.

Here was one who demanded respect and commanded power.

“Lilith, our client,” Daniel said behind her.

The man stepped forwards and the warm firelight instantly chased the shadows from his face. He was young, handsome in a way that had her staring. In fact, she couldn’t take her eyes off him. He ran slender fingers over his short black hair and then around the back of his neck, drawing her attention to it. She frowned at the scars there. Bite marks? Was he a victim of a vampire attack? Her eyes darted to his mouth, absorbing the gentle bow of his lips, and then rose to meet his.

His dark eyes met hers and a shiver of recognition bolted down her spine and sent alarm bells ringing in her head.

His mouth became a thin line and tilted into a cruel smile, one that fitted him perfectly.

She’d been wrong.

He wasn’t young.

His appearance betrayed his age.

Here was one older than she’d ever met.

Lilith stepped forwards, defiant in the face of him, and reached for her stake.

Anger rose inside her and everything faded until there was only him.

He was no victim.

He was a murderer.

“Vampire.” She sneered, assuming a fighting stance.

He growled and she felt that command deep in her soul.

She refused follow it.

To drop her stake would be to leave herself open to attack.

“Lilith!” Daniel said, his hand on her wrist making her tense. He lowered it for her.

She looked at him, stunned. Her eyes slid warily to the vampire, her anger not abating. How had he fooled her? She’d thought him nothing more than a man. She’d found him attractive. Her stomach rolled with that thought. Only the darkness in his eyes had betrayed him and lifted the veil from hers.

“Mr. Lincoln is our client.”

She glared at the vampire. He had a name.

They’d never had names before.

They’d been nameless, faceless demons for her to eradicate. Now there was one whose name she knew, and for some terrible reason, it made him seem more human.

The vampire smirked, a challenge, the same as the one in the cemetery had issued her. She amused him. He meant to provoke her.

“I am not working with it!” She flung her arm around to point at the vampire at the same time as she turned to face Daniel. There was no need to look at the vampire to know he was glaring at her. The heat of it caressed her skin until she was burning wherever it touched. She shook the feeling away, and the attraction she’d felt towards him, and focused with all her effort on Daniel. “For all we know this could be bullshit. It could want to drain me dry.”

The vampire snorted contemptuously, as though that was one thought that would never cross his mind.

“I’m being serious.”

Daniel just shifted position, folding his arms across his chest and giving her the impression that her tirade had fallen on deaf ears. The only one paying the remotest of attention was the vampire. Her eyes roamed to him against her will. A brief glance was all it took to see he was still standing in the same spot in front of the fire, staring at her with intense dark eyes. She told herself that look wasn’t making her body burn. It was anger and the fire.

A sigh drew her attention back to Daniel.

When she looked at him this time, she could see that he wasn’t happy. She frowned at the floor. The section chief from London had brought Mr. Lincoln to this place to meet with her and Daniel. Daniel had as little choice in this matter as she did. The vampire had cleverly gone over their heads and left her superior powerless, unable to get her out of this mission.

Her eyes narrowed on the vampire. He smirked and nodded. If he’d had a hat, she swore he would’ve tipped it. Her fists clenched and she wished to God that she could wipe the smug look off his face. Taking a deep breath, she clawed back a little control. He wasn’t going to provoke her. He didn’t frighten her. She was going to find out what this contract was about and then do everything she could to either get rid of him as soon as possible or get out of it.

“So what do you want, vampire?” she said, striding up to him until she was close enough to see he wasn’t breathing.

He was very old then, and he was powerful. At this range, she could feel the power radiating off him, sparking her senses and making her instincts kick into gear. They told her to run. She stood her ground.

“It is a pleasure to meet you too, Lilith,” he said in a mixed accent. There was a lot of English in there and an equal amount of European too. If she had to guess, she’d say he’d spent a lot of time in Scandinavia and wasn’t a weakling.

“What bloodline are you?” Her tone was nothing short of venomous. Her eyes searched his, trying to discern whether he was going to lie to her or ignore this question too.

He straightened to his full height and looked down on her.

“Vehemens.”

That one word made her stomach drop and broke the restraints that had been holding her anger at bay. Before she could stop herself, her hand was around his throat and she was forcing him backwards towards the fire. She growled in frustration when he planted his left foot against the cast-iron fireguard behind him, effectively stopping himself from moving, and yanked her hand away from his neck.

It went straight for the stake in her pocket. She grabbed it and lunged at him with it. He caught her wrist and twisted it until she had to kneel in order to stop him from breaking her arm. His eyes darkened. Her heart sped, fear saying he was going to attack.

He surprised her by releasing her the moment her knees touched the floor. She was back on her feet before he could move, the stake still held firmly in her hand.

“Lilith!” Daniel stepped between them, his hand on her shoulder forcing her backwards. She moved farther away and pocketed her stake to show him that she wasn’t going to attack again. He went back to his desk. She glared at the vampire.

“Bastard!” She spat it at him with as much hatred as she could muster. “It was your fault wasn’t it? You’re the reason they were here!”

He looked confused, a trait she’d not witnessed in one before. She hated him even more for it—for attempting to look human by reflecting such emotions. She had no doubt that he knew what she was talking about. It couldn’t be chance that two Vehemens had arrived in her city in the same night.

“I wish to discuss the contract in private with you.” His words were calm, measured.

Her attack hadn’t shaken him in the slightest. The idea of that made her feel weak and fatigue crept in again as she remembered watching Jackson die. She’d been powerless then, and she was powerless now.

“Discuss it in private all you want, but I’ll still have to write it all in my report anyway, and everyone will know. Hell, I might post on the bulletin board that you’re a vampire and sit back and watch the show.” She hoped that her words carried all the spite behind them. It was childish, but she wasn’t about to make anything easy for the vampire. If she couldn’t attack him physically, words would have to do.

“Lilith,” Daniel warned again. She sighed and ignored him.

“Why do you hate my kind so much?” the vampire said. It caught her off guard.

She stared at him, knowing that she looked like a rabbit in headlights and that she needed to recover herself before he realised that he’d rattled her.

“You seem very driven to hate us... to kill us.”

Her eyes never left his. She held his gaze even as the barrier around her heart came back up as swift as a dart, shutting out his attempt to peer into her innermost thoughts and feelings. She wished she could shut out the pain as easily. She turned away from him and walked to the door.

“Come with me,” she said and stepped outside the office.

Lincoln stared at the open door and the hall beyond. He frowned, dark thoughts stirring at the back of his mind and plaguing him. A glance at her superior told him that he wasn’t pleased with the way his subordinate was acting. She seemed headstrong and wilful. Perhaps a little too wilful.

“She openly detests my kind,” Lincoln said, getting the superior’s attention. In his world, a superior wouldn’t tolerate such behaviour from one below him. He had never tolerated it. “Are we going to have a problem?”

The man looked thoughtful. “No. Today has been hard on her. She’ll work with you as agreed in your contract with us.”

“I would like to know one thing.”

“And that is?” The man pushed away from his desk and walked around it to sit in the plush leather chair.

“Why does she hate vampires so much?” Lincoln said with another glance towards the door.

He could feel her waiting in the hall, knew that she would be able to hear him. She hadn’t answered his question, and he needed a reply. The idea that she would hate him contradicted everything he’d been told.

The man sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“Her sister was murdered by a vampire,” he said and then looked at the open door, “and tonight Jackson was killed. He was Lilith’s closest friend and he died at the hands of a Vehemens.”

Lincoln frowned. That explained her outburst. She was probably right. Not many of his bloodline lived outside the safe houses scattered across Europe or the family mansion in Oslo. The Vehemens had been here because of him.

“I think it’s understandable that she should hate your kind... you.” There was so much anger in the man’s voice, so much loathing and disgust in his words. He’d never realised the extent of the humans’ hatred towards his species. With hatred like this directed at him, he was glad that only the hunters knew demons existed. “No one here is going to welcome you with open arms... no matter how much you pay our superiors.”

He gave the man a dark look, matching his glare and tipping the balance in his favour. The man looked away, turning towards the closed curtains. Lincoln turned towards the door and reached out with his senses, focusing them on the woman. Lilith.

Had they been wrong about her?

Could one so fixated on destroying his kind truly save him?

Born with powers similar to a vampire’s, Lilith has spent her life hunting demons for Section Seven. On the same night as she watches a vampire kill her best friend, she is faced with her worst nightmare—a client who is not only attractive but a vampire.

Lincoln is a powerful pureblood with a problem. He’s caught up in a prophecy and has little time left to unravel the mystery of the contract between his lord and the Devil before he dies. When witches foretell that a vampire hunter will save his life, he’s prepared to work with his most hated enemy, but he isn’t prepared for the forbidden desire he feels when he meets her.

Their mutual attraction becomes difficult to deny as they work together but when Lincoln reveals the truth about her powers, will Lilith find the strength to embrace a side of herself that she wished didn’t exist? And when they discover Lilith’s role in the prophecy, how far will Lincoln go to save her?

Dark, sensual and fast-paced, Seventh Circle is a story of forbidden love so strong that it will save the world.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0035LDO68/

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Felicity Heaton writes passionate paranormal romance books as Felicity Heaton and F E Heaton. In her books she creates detailed worlds, twisting plots, mind-blowing action, intense emotion and heart-stopping romances with leading men that vary from dark deadly vampires to sexy shape-shifters and wicked werewolves, to sinful angels and hot demons!

If you're a fan of paranormal romance authors Lara Adrian, J R Ward, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Gena Showalter and Christine Feehan then you will enjoy her books too.

If you love your angels a little dark and wicked, Felicity Heaton’s best selling Her Angel series is for you. If you like strong, powerful, and dark vampires then try the Vampires Realm series she writes as F E Heaton or any of her stand alone vampire romance books she writes as Felicity Heaton. Or if you’re looking for vampire romances that are sinful, passionate and erotic then try Felicity Heaton’s new Vampire Erotic Theatre series.

In 2011, five of her six paranormal romance books received Top Pick awards from Night Owl Reviews and Forbidden Blood was nominated as Best PNR Vampire Romance 2011 at The Romance Reviews. In 2012, she was awarded the GraveTells Author of the Year Award, and Heart of Darkness was announced as a 2013 Epic Ebook Awards finalist in the Paranormal Romance category. Many of her books receive five star reviews from readers and review sites alike.