The Accidental Vampire (19 page)

"True, but there's no reason for them to kill me either," Victor said sharply.

"Well…" DJ had a sort of wince on his face.

"What?"

"There is that stake bit," he said reluctantly.

"What stake bit?"

"You know. When you thought Elvi was going to bite that Owen kid and you charged through the restaurant to stake her." He shrugged. "Someone may not have believed that baloney about returning the stake as an excuse to see her. They might be trying to protect Elvi from you."

Victor frowned over the possibility. He'd forgotten that little incident. Now, he wondered…

"Where were the other men?" DJ asked suddenly.

Victor glanced at him with surprise. "Around in front of the store. Why?"

"They were all there?"

"Yes," Victor said. "Well, no. Edward wasn't there when I first rejoined them."

"Where was he?"

"He'd gone to '
find a handy bush
'," Victor quoted the man. "He came around the opposite side of the building a moment later, though. Why? What are you thinking?"

DJ shrugged. "It might have been one of them."

Victor's head whipped around. "Why would one of them shoot at me?"

"To eliminate the competition?" he suggested.

Victor stopped walking and stared at him with confusion. "What competition?"

"For Elvi," DJ said patiently.

"Don't be ridiculous," Victor waved it away as ridiculous and started walking again. "They've probably all read her by now and found they can and she isn't their lifemate."

"Then why are they still here?" DJ asked reasonably.

Victor paused to think on that, but finally shook his head, unwilling to even consider that one of the other men was a lifemate to the woman he was lusting after. A feeling he hadn't had in a very, very long time and wasn't willing to ignore for anyone's sake.

"I don't know why they're still here," Victor admitted. "But they can't all be her lifemate."

"No?" DJ asked. "What about that story Harper told us the first night? About his friend and the friend's cousin who both met a woman they couldn't read?"

The reminder of the story made his stomach turn, which in turn reminded him of why they were out there on Port Henry's streets. To feed. As Victor had told Elvi, it was against their laws to feed on a mortal unless it was an emergency. For Victor, it was always an emergency. He'd been born with a genetic anomaly that wouldn't allow him to survive on bagged blood. He could consume all the bagged blood he wanted, but it was useless. He had to feed off the hoof to survive.

They were passing a park between two buildings and Victor glanced into it, noting a couple staggering through the walkway toward the parking lot on the other side. The man was obviously drunk and held no interest for him. Victor didn't wish to be intoxicated himself. The woman on the other hand had consumed a couple drinks but was only at the relaxed stage. She was stumbling under the weight of her much bigger boyfriend as she tried to steer him toward the parking lot ahead.

Victor turned into the park to offer his assistance; he would take only a small bit of blood in return for his aid. It was a fair trade to his mind. DJ followed.

Fifteen minutes and three couples later, Victor led DJ out of the park, headed for Casey Cottage.

"I suppose there is one other possibility," the young immortal said, returning to the topic they'd been discussing earlier as if it had never been interrupted.

"What's that?" Victor asked.

"Her sire."

Victor glanced at him with surprise. "Her sire? What sire? According to Elvi, she doesn't have one."

"Yes, but we know that's not possible," DJ pointed out. "One of our kind had to have given her blood… and whoever it is may be trying to kill Elvi. Perhaps he's found out that the council is snooping around. Maybe he'd already turned someone else, she was a second turn, and this would put him in deep trouble with the council. Maybe he's trying to kill Elvi before we can discover who he is."

Victor was silent, not wanting to believe this theory, yet unable to pooh-pooh it as he had the others. Someone had turned Elvi. And they hadn't laid claim to her and trained her as a proper sire should. Even if she wasn't a second turn for this unknown immortal, he would be in trouble for that. Deep trouble. Silencing her could save his neck.

"So we still can't be sure who the arrow was meant for," Victor muttered.

DJ nodded, and then asked, "Can you read her?"

Mouth tightening with irritation, Victor admitted, "I don't know. I haven't tried."

"Why?" DJ asked with surprise.

"I just didn't think of it." Victor admitted, feeling foolish. He should have tried to read her if for no other reason than it would have sped up their work on this case. Why the hell hadn't he thought of reading her? He wondered.

Because she was distracting him with her intoxicating scent every time he was near her, and that damned wide, open, guileless smile and those big beautiful eyes, his mind answered.

"I bet you
can't
read her," DJ said suddenly. "I bet she's just unreadable."

Victor frowned. "Can't you read her?"

"I haven't tried," DJ admitted. "I didn't bother after I found I couldn't read Mabel." His eyes suddenly widened incredulously. "Maybe it's just the whole town. Maybe no one here can be read."

"What?" Victor asked with surprise.

"Yeah," DJ said, suddenly cheering. "Maybe it's something in the water here."

"Don't be ridiculous," Victor muttered.

"No, listen," DJ insisted. "I can't read Mabel, and none of the men can read Elvi."

"They can't?" he glanced at him with alarm. "They've admitted as much to you?"

"Well…" DJ shrugged. "Edward claims he can and is only staying because there is so much interesting architecture in Port Henry, and Alessandro says he can, but the women here are so "bella" he decided to stay the whole week, but…" He arched his eyebrows dubiously. "Come on, do you believe either story?"

Victor frowned. He hadn't considered that the others might not be able to read her. In his mind, he was slowly claiming Elvi himself. He didn't like the idea that he might have some competition.

"I think if they could read her they'd be gone already," DJ said with certainty. "Neither of them were thrilled about coming here, and the first night they were saying they were out of here the first chance they got if they couldn't read her… But they're still here." He shook his head. "They're lying. Neither of them can read her either."

"Why lie?" Victor asked with a frown.

DJ shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe they're waiting to see what happens with the council."

Victor grimaced. At the rate he'd been working, or not working as the case may be, they'd have a long wait to see what happened with the council. Raising his eyebrows in question, he asked, "What about Harper?"

DJ pursed his lips. "I don't know. I haven't had the chance to ask him yet, but I suspect he can't read her either… which just proves my point. Have you ever heard of three or four immortals not being able to read someone?" He didn't give Victor a chance to answer, but went on: "It has to be something in the water here. Or the ground or something. It makes the whole damned town unreadable."

Victor blinked in surprise at the suggestion and at the man's pleasure in thinking that Mabel might not be his lifemate, that he simply couldn't read her because the town was unreadable. But then he recalled the hard time the woman had been giving DJ and supposed it might almost be a relief to the man to think he didn't have to woo her around to his side. He was almost sorry to disabuse him of the possibility, but he did anyway, announcing, "I read Teddy Brunswick the first night we were here."

"Oh." DJ looked disappointed, and then brightened and said, "Maybe it just affects the women. Maybe the men are all still wide open, but the women are blocked."

Victor was horrified at this possibility. If so, it might mean Elvi wasn't his lifemate after all and that all these hopes that had reawakened the last few days might be just empty wishes.

He froze on the sidewalk, his mind in sudden turmoil.
It might mean Elvi wasn't his lifemate after all
? When had he decided she might be his lifemate? Sure, he was eating again, and okay, so he'd nearly had a heart attack when she'd fainted at the breakfast table that night, and, yes, he'd found it thoroughly enjoyable having her perched in his lap in the car, burrowing into him as if he were the only safe port in a storm. He'd also been secretly pleased when the sales manager had recognized that they were a couple. And he wouldn't deny that he was lusting after her, the first woman he'd lusted after for over three hundred years, but… a lifemate?

He could still feel her in his arms and taste her on his tongue and he wanted to feel and taste a lot more.

Crap
, Victor thought with dismay. He wanted her for a lifemate. And while he hadn't tried, so had no idea if he could read her or not, DJ was suggesting that even if he couldn't, it might just be some town-wide anomaly. The women here might just be unreadable, period. That wouldn't do. It wouldn't do at all.

"Victor?"

DJ's voice startled him from his thoughts and Victor glanced around at the dark street. They were at the corner of Elvi's road. The streets were now empty, not another female resident in sight and he suddenly needed another Port Henry female.

"Mabel," he muttered and started to walk again, moving quickly now.

"What about Mabel? Where are you going?" DJ asked anxiously, hurrying to keep up.

"To find Mabel," Victor said abruptly as he reached the gate to Casey Cottage and tugged it open.

"She's gone to bed," DJ said, following him to the front door of the house.

"Good," he snapped. "Then she'll be easy to find."

"Victor!" he cried with alarm.

When the man rushed after him and tried to catch his arm to stop him, Victor waved him away as if he were an irritating gnat. "I'm sorting this out right now."

"But—"

"There are no buts," he argued. "If the women in this town are unreadable, I want to know it. It affects everything. Unreadables are almost impossible to wipe and this whole damned town needs wiping. And what the hell are we going to do if we can't wipe them? What will the council do?" While it wasn't really his main concern at the moment, it was a concern, and would do to explain his sudden determination.

"What
will
the council do?" DJ asked with dismay.

"I don't know," Victor admitted as he opened the front door of Casey Cottage and led the way inside. "But it won't be good. We can't have a whole town full of people knowing about us. The chance of one of them talking is astronomical. The council won't stand for it."

"Damn," DJ breathed, trailing him up the winding staircase to the second floor.

Stopping at Mabel's door, Victor raised a hand to knock, and then decided against it. If the woman was sleeping, he could slip into her mind and see if he could read it without ever disturbing her. If not, he'd claim he'd thought it was Elvi's room. Nodding to himself, he reached for the doorknob and opened the door.

Mabel wasn't asleep. She was sitting up in bed, glasses perched on her nose, and one of those torrid female romance books in her hands. She glanced up with surprise at the intrusion, and then scowled when she saw Victor standing there with DJ hovering behind.

"Have you ever heard of knocking?" she asked sharply. "What do you want?"

Victor didn't bother to answer; instead he concentrated on her forehead and sent his thoughts out to find hers. Much to his relief, he slipped into her mind like a warm knife through soft butter. His jaw immediately dropped at the thoughts and feelings whirling there.

Mabel wasn't as hard core as she'd have them believe. In fact, she was as soft as a roasted marshmallow. The hard outer casing was just a protective shell she put on to deal with the world. Her husband had been a weak man and she'd been forced to deal with everything the least bit difficult in life, from disciplining their children to handling recalcitrant servicemen and so on. Mabel hadn't been comfortable dealing with everything unsupported and had longed for her husband to be the strong male he'd seemed to be while courting her.

She'd been so unhappy, she might have divorced him, but had been pregnant with their first child by the time she'd learned the weak nature his macho approach had hidden. That hadn't seemed like a good enough reason to break up a family. After all, he wasn't a wife beater or alcoholic, she'd told herself and struggled on, taking on all the hard tasks in life in his stead.

That wasn't what had Victor's jaw dropping, however. That didn't surprise him at all. Her love and concern for Elvi had already told him she wasn't the hard case she liked to project. What made his jaw drop was the small tornado of turmoil she was suffering at their appearance.

There was no confusion in the woman's mind over Victor, his presence just annoyed her, but DJ was another matter. Mabel liked the younger immortal, which didn't bother her as much as the fact that she found him unbearably attractive. His appearance raised all sorts of longings in her and a lust like nothing she'd experienced since she was a teenager. This in turn caused guilt and horror because she thought he was so much younger than her and she thought it was disgusting to have erotic fantasies and dreams about a boy no older than her own son. The woman was finding the whole situation unbearable and heart wrenching.

"Well?" Mabel snapped the word, but he knew that her self-disgust made her tone sharper than she'd intended.

"Victor?" DJ hissed and he didn't need to read the immortals mind to know what he was asking. Could he read Mabel?

"Yes," Victor said to answer DJ's question and the realization that washed over the man's face as he accepted that she was, indeed, his lifemate was enough to make up his mind on how to answer Mabel. His own situation may be a mess, but DJ's didn't have to be.

"
Hellooo
!" Mabel said with irritation. "Is there a reason you've barged into my room in the middle of the night? Did you want something?"