Authors: Catherine Vale
Whimpering, the vampire did as
commanded, getting onto his knees and putting his hands behind his head. He
shot Angela a hateful glare as she rushed over with a pair of bespelled cuffs,
then clapped them on and read the vamp his rights.
“You should really call for
backup,” the man said when Angela was done.
It took a moment for Angela to
find her voice. “I will,” she said, her face flushing as her voice came out in
a croak. Clearing her throat, she tried again. “Thank you for your assistance.”
“Your
welcome.” He turned to leave.
“Wait.”
Angela grabbed the sleeve of his leather jacket. “Are you – ”
They
both stopped as a kind of heat lightning arced between them, instant sexual
tension crackling in the air. Angela gasped as the shock of desire raced
through her nerve endings, her nipples hardening instantly, and she dropped his
arm immediately.
“I’d
prefer if you didn’t say it.” He set his jaw, and from the tension in his body
Angela knew he’d felt the same thing she had. His violet eyes glittering like
chips of amethyst. Angela marveled at how dazzled she was by his gaze, but
before she could say anything else, he pulled his arm from her grasp, and
disappeared into the crowd.
It
took another moment for Angela to realize she was still gaping after him, and
then she set her jaw as well and turned back to the vamp. This wasn’t time to
be gaping after ghosts and legends, she told herself firmly as she pulled out
her cell phone and called for back up. This was time to get back to work.
Chapter Two
“Raina,
I really need you to answer the phone here,” Angela spoke urgently into her
phone as she left a voicemail for her partner. She’d already called twice
before, and texted, to no avail. “I need to make sure you’re okay, and I also
have some crazy shit to tell you. Please, call me back.”
Hanging
up the phone, she shoved her hands into her pockets and glanced around the
parking lot. The vamp and the shifter were already in the back of a police car
– the Order of Protection used cop cars like humans because it was easier
if they were recognizable as a type of law enforcement, though their cars were
equipped with certain types of protections and spells that normal police cars
didn’t have. Backup had arrived nearly fifteen minutes ago, and Angela had
expected Raina to emerge from wherever she’d been necking with that elf by now.
Maybe
she really did go home,
she thought to herself, looking up at the stars
twinkling in the night sky. It was still fairly early, barely midnight now, so
you couldn’t see too many stars due to the light pollution, but still, looking
up at the sky always gave Angela some level of comfort because the stars were
constant. They would always be there waiting, even if she couldn’t see them
sometimes.
Unlike
my partner,
she groused to herself, her mood souring even though she didn’t
really have a right to be annoyed at Raina.
After all, this was their night
off, wasn’t it? She was entitled to go romp around in the sheets with someone.
“Everything
okay, Mason?” Lorenzo, one of the Protectors who’d responded to her request for
backup, wandered over to ask. He was a Hispanic wolf shifter who’d only been
with the Order for a year, but he did his job well, from what she knew of him.
“You seem a little spaced out.”
Angela
dragged a hand through her coppery curls, wishing she could release some of the
tension curling in her belly. “I’m fine. Just wishing my one night off didn’t
turn out this way.”
If only that was the only problem churning through her
mind, but it wasn’t.
She’d been incredibly off-balance ever since her
encounter with the man who’d saved her. In the entire century she’d been on
this earth, she’d never once encountered a shifter who sparked such a powerful
reaction inside her, and it scared the hell out of her. Not just because of the
intensity of the feelings, but because she was having them for a man who was
largely considered to be taboo amongst her kind.
She
could hardly imagine bringing him home to her father without inducing some kind
of apoplectic fit. The very idea of it all gave her a splitting headache.
Please,
a dry voice in her head drawled.
You haven’t even talked to him for more
than five seconds, and you’re already envisioning bringing him home to your
parents? Get a grip girl. Just because you felt some chemistry doesn’t mean
that he’s your mate.
Maybe. But she couldn’t rule
it out either.
God, she really wished Raina was here.
Her partner always
knew
exactly
what to do and say when Angela got worked up like this.
Which of course, brought her back around to her other problem. Where the hell
was
Raina?
He
laughed a little. “Don’t we all,” he said, glancing over her shoulder to the
bar behind her. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to do the exact same
thing you just did… and I imagine you’ve had to do it a lot more times than
me.” He patted her kindly on the shoulder, his dark eyes filled with
understanding. “You should go get some rest.”
Angela
sighed and dropped her gaze so Lorenzo wouldn’t see the worry in them. “I
know.” She glanced back at the bar. “I’m going to look around one more time, and
then I’m heading home once I write my report.”
“Good
deal.” He clapped her on the shoulder once more. “Let me know if you need
anything.” He joined his partner in the car and they hauled the two misfits off
to the precinct.
Inside,
Angela re-checked every nook and cranny for Raina. She spoke with the
bartender, asked the locals, scoured the dance floor, and checked the upstairs
lounge area as well, with no sign of her.
She
was just about finished checking the privacy rooms in the back – where
customers could go to spend a little ‘quality time’ with each other without
having to go home – when the door at the far end, and Raina’s dark elf
spilled out with a pixie hanging on his arm. Their eyes were sparkling and
their faces flushed – or at least as flushed as a dark elf’s could be
– all signs of a good romp in the sack, and Angela’s blood boiled as she
realized that Raina was not with him.
“You!”
She grabbed the dark elf by his hair, and jerked him forward. “Where’s Raina?”
“W-what?”
His silvery eyes widened as the pixie squawked angrily behind him. “I don’t
know what you’re talking about, lady.”
Baring
her fangs, Angela slammed the elf into the wall, cracking the wood paneling and
eliciting a shriek from the pixie. She turned to the pixie– who had electric
blue hair and was dressed in sparkling green dress – and all it took was
one orange-eyed glare to send the fae running for her posse.
“Tall,
skinny. Long black hair. Wearing a purple shirt. I was sitting right next to
her when you were giving her bedroom eyes from across the room. I
saw
you
dancing with her.
Where is she?
”
“Oh!”
the elf’s eyes widened with recognition. “The mage girl. I… umm…” his gaze slid
away, and embarrassment tinted his dark skin again. “I don’t really remember.”
“What
the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Angela snarled. She jerked the elf forward,
then slammed him back against the wall again, panic and temper soaring high and
making her forget her protocols. “Why isn’t she with you?”
“Stop!”
the elf howled, squeezing his eyes shut as he squirmed beneath her grip. “Okay,
okay, relax! It’s just that I can’t really remember what happened because my
brain is really fuzzy.” He frowned. “Which is really weird because I haven’t
actually had that much to drink tonight.”
Alarm
bells went off in Angela’s head, her keen nose telling her that the elf wasn’t
lying about this. “Tell me what you
do
remember,” she ordered.
The
elf closed his eyes and swallowed, then opened them again. “I remember us being
on the dance floor,” he said. “I was leading her toward the back, so we could
go up the stairs and use one of the privacy rooms, and she was giggling. And
then all of a sudden, some guy appeared behind us, dressed in a black robe.” He
frowned. “There was a hood over his face so I couldn’t see him, and he was
holding some kind of incense burner thing in his hand. I stepped forward and
then I went all fuzzy. The next thing I knew I was sitting in a corner with my
head against the wall. I thought maybe I’d had a few too many to drink and I’d
just passed out or something.” His skin grayed beneath his complexion. “Did…
did something happen to her?”
Angela
clenched her teeth against the fear curdling the alcohol in her belly. “I’m
going to need you to come down to the station for questioning.”
His
eyes widened as she spun him around and began walking him towards the front.
“But why?”
“Because
the woman who you so conveniently lost track of is the commander’s daughter,
and it looks like she might have just been kidnapped.”
* * *
In
the end, the elf – whose name was Darian – had come quietly, which
was a damn good thing because Angela had been forced to call a cab to take them
to the precinct, since she’d ridden her motorcycle over to the Crazy Horse. Her
captain was waiting for her right inside the precinct when she came in, and he
did not look thrilled.
“I
got your message,” he said after Darian had been handed off to two uniforms,
folding his arms as he looked down at her. Captain Gerald Fitzsimons was a big
guy, with ebony skin and wiry, close cropped hair, his wide, six-foot four
frame crammed into a grey suit. His coffee-colored eyes could be warm and
compassionate, as they were when he had to speak to victims, or hard and
dangerous, like they were as he stared her down now. “Please tell me that you just
forgot to have someone go by her condo to check if she hadn’t just decided to
go home early.
Angela
shook her head. “I had a patrol car go by her place and knock on her door. No
one was home. And she hasn’t been answering her phone. Sir, with the
information I received from the witness, I have to assume…”
“I
know.” The captain set his jaw. “Let’s see what other information we can get
out of him first.”
They
went into the observation deck for the interview room and watched as Lieutenant
Novak walked in to question Darian. As a high-level mage, the lieutenant
specialized in drawing out details from witnesses and suspects who suffered
from mental manipulation, and soon enough she was casting her spell, pulling
out images from Darian’s mind and hovering them high into the air so their
special cameras could record them.
Angela
sucked in a breath as she watched the hooded man drug Darian and Raina with the
strange incense he wafted in front of their faces. Darian was out instantly,
but Raina struggled against the enchantment as another hooded man came up
behind her, and hooked an arm around her waist and placed another on her
shoulder to lead her out. As she fought, her struggles weakening as the drug
took firmer hold, the man’s hood slipped, and she caught a glimpse of orange
eyes.
“Shifters,”
the Captain murmured. “These guys are shifters.”
“No,”
Angela whispered, horror-struck as she got a good look at the man’s face. “It
can’t be.”
“What?”
the Captain rounded on her, his black brows drawing into a fierce scowl. “Do
you know these men, Mason?”
Angela
swallowed. “I recognize that one there,” she said, pointing with a finger that
wasn’t as steady as she liked. “He’s from my brother’s clan.”
The
Captain’s frown deepened. “I wasn’t aware you had a brother.”
Angela
bit her lower lip. “He’s adopted,” she explained; though the fact that she
didn’t share blood with him didn’t make the betrayal hurt any less. “He left
our clan a long time ago to become the Chieftain of another. Which means that
whatever the reason they took Raina… he’s the one behind it.”
* * *
Angela
took a deep breath through her nostrils to try and calm her churning stomach as
the Captain escorted her to Commander Madison’s office. Unfortunately, her
breathing exercise was doing little to help calm her, which might have had
something to do with the fact that she was about to tell her superior’s
superior that his daughter had been kidnapped.
On her watch.
Not
that she was Raina’s babysitter or anything. But still, the Commander was fiercely
protective of his daughter, and would no doubt lash out at Angela and blame
her, at least partially. If it weren’t for the fact that Raina was just as
fiercely passionate about working for the Order, he would have her cloistered
away in some high tower where she could practice magic safely without the
dangers that were part and parcel of being a Protector.
The
Commander sat behind his desk, his lean, wiry frame dressed in an expensive
dark suit with diamond cuff links winking at the wrists of his Egyptian linen
shirt. He shared Raina’s inky dark hair, but his eyes were a laser blue that
had the uncanny ability to pierce through even the staunchest of souls. Magic
practically shimmered beneath his pale skin, an indication of just how powerful
a mage he was – but then, you didn’t get to the top without being one of
the best.
“Sit
down,” he said curtly to both of them, indicating the two dark brown and green
leather visiting chairs that sat in front of the huge mahogany desk that looked
like something that belonged in a manor house’s study rather than a
supernatural police station. But then, at nearly a thousand years in age,
Commander Madison had a fondness for old-world décor and taste that manifested
itself in different ways – like the wall sconces that held electric
candles in lieu of light bulbs on his walls, and the pen on his desk that
masqueraded as a quill. She imagined that if he could get away with it, he’d be
wearing mages robes, but the Order was required to blend in with the modern
world in order to facilitate their efforts to co-exist with humans.
“Tell
me everything that happened. I want to hear it fresh from your mouth.”
Angela
folded her hands in her lap and told the Commander everything, meeting his icy
stare with her own and trying to ignore the way his face tightened with each
word she spoke, his ire growing until the room was practically crackling with
unleashed rage. By the time she was done, her palms were damp, and she kept
them hidden in her lap, not daring as to so much as rub them against her jeans
lest he pick up on the sign of weakness. The best way to get out of this
unscathed was to stand firm and reassure the Commander that she would fix this.