Authors: Jeannie Holmes
She brushed away the tears on her cheeks and nodded. “Can you tell me what happened to me the other day? Was that really Claire Black’s ghost I saw?”
He nodded. “You were able to see her because she chose to reveal herself. She must have trusted you to do the right thing, otherwise she wouldn’t have done it.”
“And the vision of Darryl shooting Harvey? That was because of my psychometry?”
“Yes, and that’s why you connected with Gary Lipscomb so easily.”
“The psychic wound,” she murmured.
He nodded again. “Now that his murderer has been stopped, his and the others’ souls are at peace. You won’t see them again.”
“Will that happen—psychic wounds, I mean—every time I connect with a victim in that way?”
“It could, but the blood-bond you have will offer you some protection from it.”
“But Varik can’t access this place, can he?”
“No, he doesn’t have the same gift as you, but he can and does act as an anchor for you. Just as your mother did for me.”
Alex stared at him in confusion. “You and Mom were blood-bound?”
“For nearly two hundred years. I can still feel her”—he touched his temple—“here. That’s how I know she’s okay.”
“I didn’t think a vampire could survive the death of a bond-mate.”
“It takes a very strong will to resist the call of death.” He smiled. “Which is why I loved your mother so.”
A crystalline chime sounded from overhead. Alex glanced up at the ceiling, only then noticing that it appeared to be a star-filled night sky. “What was that?”
“My time’s up.” He rose slowly, helping her to her feet. “I have to return to my world, and you have to go back to yours.”
“But you haven’t told me how to access this place.”
“It’s simple, Princess.” He led her back to the door to
Varik’s hotel room. “Visualize a door in your mind. Will it into being, and open it. It should bring you here.”
“But how do I know where the doors lead?”
He touched the crystal next to the door. A beam of light shot upward and then expanded to show a list of names, dates, and places scrolling across a spectral screen. “Access the main directory. It will tell you everything you need to know.”
The crystalline chime sounded again, and Bernard’s outline wavered. “Time to go, Princess.”
Alex reached for the doorknob and turned it. “I love you, Dad—”
He was gone.
When Alex awoke again, true moonlight lit the room around her, and the smell of sandalwood and cinnamon clung to her. She rolled onto her stomach, reaching for Varik, and grabbed a handful of empty pillow.
She heard his voice then, muffled, coming from the bathroom. Curious, she tapped the blood-bond. She felt a brief surge of anxiety, and then it was gone, stymied by the wall Varik erected between them.
Climbing out of bed, she pulled on one of his white T-shirts and paused as a feeling of déjà vu passed over her. Shaking her head as the bathroom door opened, she stood and turned to face him with a smile.
The look of concern on his face changed her smile to a frown.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” she asked.
“That was Damian,” he said, sinking onto the bed, turning his cell phone over and over in his hands.
Damian had left Jefferson the day after she’d killed Darryl Black, summoned back to Louisville and FBPI headquarters. “What did he want?”
He didn’t answer.
“Varik?”
He seemed to struggle with a decision, uncertain, and then sighed. “Damian says they’re going to launch a full investigation into every case you’ve worked since coming to Jefferson.”
Alex’s breath left her in a rush. Investigations of that scope happened only if they believed an Enforcer to be corrupt, compromised in some way. Compromised Enforcers weren’t tolerated any more today than they had been before the formation of the FBPI, back when the Hunters were still the only means of law enforcement among vampires. Charges of corruption carried only one penalty—death. She sat on the bed next to him, stunned.
“I shouldn’t have told you.”
“No, I’m glad you told me. It’s just …” She loved being an Enforcer, but she’d allowed the pressures to crack her, and far too many had paid the price for it. How was she supposed to get through a corruption investigation?
Varik pulled her in tight next to him. “We’ll get through this. You’ll see.”
“I thought you were going back to Louisville.”
“Jefferson still needs an Enforcer, and since you’re
suspended while the investigation is pending, Damian’s reassigned me.”
“You’re staying?”
“Only if you really want me here.”
She slipped her arms around his waist and laid her head on his uninjured shoulder. “Stay.”
“See? I told you you’d realize you couldn’t live without me.”
Alex smiled but didn’t respond. Outside, a cloud drifted across the moon, blotting out its light and plunging them into a shadowy darkness from which she wondered if they’d ever return.
Look for more of Alexandra Sabian’s dangerously
sexy adventures in the hotly anticipated sequel
BLOOD
SECRETS
by Jeannie Holmes
Coming soon from Dell Books
Turn the page to take a look inside. …
NO MOON SHONE IN THE SKY WHEN HE DUMPED THE
body. He hardly recognized the mangled mess before him as the vibrant young woman he’d known. Hair the color of new pennies turned black with dried blood. A dull silver film encroached the sparkling jade of her eyes.
Her jaw was marred by a dark smear as he traced its gentle curve. He pulled back and stuck the digit in his mouth, coating his tongue with her blood. An electric charge jolted his spine. Memories that were not his own flickered through his consciousness, playing scenes from her life on the movie screen of his mind, until the film stopped in a crimson moment of violence.
The rags he’d used to wipe down the trunk and hide his fingerprints fell from his hand and greedily absorbed the blood pooling beneath the remains. Using his elbow, he slammed the trunk closed, blotting the macabre view from sight.
A falling star streaked across the glittering sky. He
closed his eyes and made a wish he’d made a thousand times before. The vision of his wish coming true filled his mind.
“Soon.” His whisper, a blade, sliced through the silent night. Without a second glance at the trunk-turned-tomb, he walked away.
November 17
ALEXANDRA SABIAN SEARCHED THE HALL OF RECORDS
for clues that would lead her to a killer. The only problem with her search was that she had no suspects, no witnesses, and the body had been buried for forty years.
Her father, Bernard Sabian, had been murdered in the spring of 1968, when she was only five. Someone had left his staked and beheaded body in a cemetery near her childhood home.
Simply because he was a vampire, like her.
At least that was her theory.
The large screen before her was projected by crystals housed in a black granite access terminal. Names scrolled by in one column while the adjacent column held a series of numbers showing the location of a door that led to that person’s memory.
In the two weeks since she’d discovered she could access the Hall of Records—a metaphysical storehouse for the memories and experiences of every man, woman, and child who’d walked the face of Earth—she’d been
searching through the records, trying to locate her father’s. She hoped once she did that she would uncover the clues she needed to find his killer.
The screen flashed from white to red and bold black letters appeared: ACCESS DENIED.
“Damn it,” Alex muttered and dropped her head into her hands. Every time she searched for her father’s name she met the same result.
Sighing, she looked up and around the Hall. It had transformed since the first time she’d entered. What had been a single endless hallway had become a huge ornate multilevel rotunda. Countless doors lay hidden in shadows on each level of the massive round building. Large golden Corinthian-style columns supported each level, and she craned her neck to count ten floors before the top-most levels became lost in darkness. The only light came from the screen in front of her and the softly glowing crystals beside each door. Although moonlight streamed through a circular opening in the apex of the rotunda’s unseen dome, none of it reached the lower levels.
“All I need are some crickets chirping in the background,” she said to no one. She turned her attention back to the screen, ready to try a different approach to her search.
Somewhere in the distant shadows overhead, a door opened and closed.
Alex jerked. While she’d known others could access the Hall, she’d never been present when it happened. She waited to see if someone appeared or if she heard footsteps.
No noise broke the silence. No one showed themselves.
“Hello,” she called. “Is someone there?”
Only her echoed voice answered.
Frowning, Alex peered into the gloom overhead. Had she imagined it?
A persistent, steady beeping sounded from her wrist. She checked her watch and sighed. It was time to leave the Hall behind.
She rose from her seat and headed for the simple wooden door behind her. The Hall wasn’t a place located on the physical plane but rather was located in the Shadowlands, a sort of neutral zone between the physical world and the realm of the spirit. Light flooded the rotunda as she opened it and stepped through.
The light surrounded her, warm and welcoming. The moon had reigned over the Hall, but once outside, Alex found herself in a flowering meadow kissed by sunlight. Looking over her shoulder, no building was visible—only the door through which she’d exited the Hall.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” she muttered and then smirked at the reference to
Alice in Wonderland.
Sometimes she definitely felt like Alice tumbling through the looking-glass.
Parting the Veil that separated the physical from the spiritual required concentration. She sighed and closed her eyes, pushing aside the random thoughts that crowded her mind.
Her physical body lay in a hotel room in a meditative trance. Once awake, she would be groggy and disoriented, like someone coming out from under anesthesia.
In order to shift her consciousness from the Shadowlands back to the real world, she had to remember details of the room.
Gradually she recalled the feel of the bed beneath her, the coolness of the air, and the hum of machinery from the nearby elevators. The sensation of a yawning pit opening beneath her made her stomach roll. She’d learned to keep her eyes shut tightly against a kaleidoscopic whirlwind of colors and shadows as she passed through the void and returned to the physical plane.
Alex slowly awoke from the dreamlike trance in which she’d fallen and alarms immediately sounded in her mind. Her skin prickled under the gaze of an unseen observer.
Darkness cloaked her surroundings. Disoriented, she searched with her senses, probing the night for signs of life. She steadied and measured her breathing as her eyes adjusted to the gloom. The greenish glow of a security light bathed the window beside the bed on which she lay and cast strange shadows on the wall.
Without turning her head, she looked around the small hotel room trying to make sense of what she saw. One of the shadows in a far comer shifted and her focus zeroed in on it. She eased her hand beneath her pillow, reaching for her loaded Glock G31 .357-caliber pistol.
The shadow detached from the wall and moved toward her.
Alex sat up quickly and aimed her pistol at the shadow as it launched itself onto the bed. Her finger found the trigger.
The shadow landed beside her with an inquisitive warble.
“Damn it, Dweezil,” Alex whispered, jerking her finger from the trigger as the large Maine Coon cat swished its tail over her bare legs. She secured the gun’s safety and laid it on the nightstand.
Dweezil head butted her empty hand and purred.
She chuckled and scratched behind his large tufted ears. “Don’t scare me like that. I almost shot you.”
His eyes flashed iridescent green in the light filtering through the window. He winked at her as if to say “Gotcha,” before moving to the spare pillow and curling into a tight ball.
“Crazy cat.” Alex yawned and glanced at the time displayed on the digital clock on the nightstand.
It was almost four o’clock in the morning. She could still manage a few hours of real sleep before her meeting. Straightening the oversized University of Louisville T-shirt she wore, she walked into the bathroom and blinked against the harsh light before closing the door to insure Dweezil didn’t join her. Answering the call of nature didn’t require a fuzzy audience, though he begged to differ at times. His objections usually manifested as fuzzy paws waving at her from beneath the door.
As an Enforcer with the Federal Bureau of Preternatural Investigation, it was her job to police the vampire population of Jefferson, a small town in the southwestern corner of Mississippi. At least it had been until two weeks ago when she turned rogue, abandoned her oath to uphold the law, and incurred the wrath of Chief Enforcer
Damian Alberez. She’d been placed on administrative suspension and ordered to remain within the city limits until the Bureau summoned her to their headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky, to face an official inquiry before the Tribunal, the vampire equivalent of an internal affairs committee. She was being charged with numerous violations of the Enforcer code of conduct, the most serious being corruption, which, if found guilty, carried a mandatory death sentence.
She was scheduled to meet with Damian and a special investigator assigned by the Tribunal to examine not only her recent actions but also every case she’d worked since moving to Jefferson six years ago. It wasn’t a process she looked forward to enduring.
As she washed up, Alex checked her reflection in the age-spotted mirror above the sink. The bruising that had covered her ribs, stomach, and the right side of her face had finally disappeared but the fractured cheekbone hadn’t fully healed. She could still feel the soreness when she smiled, not that she had much reason to smile lately. A bright pink scar ran diagonally over her right bicep, the result of a sniper’s bullet grazing her arm.