Chapter 22
The unnamed man was short, unshaven, and dark circles of exhaustion ringed his eyes. Salt-and-pepper hair stood in unruly peaks. His rumpled suit needed a good pressing. And every heterosexual woman over the age of puberty stared as he marched swiftly through the Portland International Airport.
Not one of them approached him, despite his sensual, heavy-lidded eyes and the assured grace of his movements. They all recognized a hunting panther with no time for diversions.
And every one of them, from the heated schoolgirl to the respectable matron, wondered what it would take to be on the receiving end of that kind of focus.
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The exhausted Frenchman leaned against the padded backseat of his taxi. Less than twenty-four hours ago, the international news had broken the story of a homeless shelter in the States integrating peacefully. Less than twenty-three hours ago, John Janté booked a patchwork of flights, and now he was here, in Portland, Oregon. True to the stereotype, it was raining.
He didn't know why he had come, only that it was of dire importance. John chewed on his necklace's chain as he closed his eyes and tried to relax.
“Where are you going, sir?” the driver asked as she closed her door.
“To the paranormal conference,
yeux bruns,
” he answered, remembering the woman's soulful brown eyes.
A barely hushed giggle made him smile internally. How long had it been since he had enjoyed some quiet time with a lady? Working at CERN left very little time for entertaining. He shifted on the cloth seat, trying to ease his tired legs.
“Traffic is bad,” she informed him. “The conference has been overrun in the last day.” He'd forgotten the American love of automobiles. The drizzle spangled the metal bodies surrounding him as everyone inched along the highway.
Exhausted, John touched the backs of his fingers to his eyelids. “That is fine. Please wake me when we get there.”
This is going to be an adventure,
he thought.
He leaned his hot face against the cold window and let himself remember the past. The plant woman had stolen years from John. But she had given him an unforeseeable gift.
Once the digestive enzymes cleared from his body, his immune system that was left was what his doctor called “turbo charged.” John now healed at an accelerated rate.
He couldn't even get drunk, as his liver oxidized alcohol at lightning speed. Fortunately, he also shook off jet lag in hours instead of days. All he needed was a few hours of sleep....
“This is as close as I can get, sir,” his driver said before he could nod off. “The police have closed the streets.” John tipped his driver, hoisted his backpack, and weaved his way through the streets of Portland. The cool moist air woke him and the walk invigorated his mind.
He ticked off the observations he'd made on the hours of his flights.
Fact: Lance was in danger.
Fact: Lance was keeping company with a mysterious lady. Her cautious, beautiful eyes were both familiar and fascinating to John. Just from the few images he'd caught of her hiding in the background, John wanted to bite her lips.
John caught a whiff of seductive hot chocolate. He detoured into a small café.
Also, caffeine had no effect on him.
Dammit. He could really use some.
A quick visit to the bathroom for a change of clothes and some deodorant, and John was ready for both his chocolate and his thoughts.
Conjecture the first: If she fascinated John, Lance was surely and completely besotted.
The first sip crossed his lips as smoothly as a woman's sweet fluid. He vaguely heard someone beside him sigh.
Conjecture the second: The pallor of her skin and her dangerous eyes insinuated that she was a previously unknown vampire.
Conjecture the third: Since so few vampires currently existed, and the ones left were much higher profileâhow could anyone miss Radu Tepes and his lawyer?âshe must be the vampire killer. Rarely did PNCs turn on each other. What would cause such aberrant behavior?
His inner eye wandered to the memorized image of the dark vampire. Lovely bone structure and an incredible sense of style. Too few women knew how to dress anymore. Once upon a time, vampires had been secretly hired to be the mannequins for the fashion houses. They had the stamina for the hours of fittings.
A strong, fearless woman with experience and stamina. One already attached to Lance, who never had had the courage to embrace the attraction between himself and John. This vampire would hardly allow such cowardice from a lover. John licked the chocolate from his upper lip. She would most certainly demand that Lance admit his heart.
His imagination dared to visualize Lance and the vampire with him in his apartment in Geneva. They'd need a bigger bed, he thought, before closing the door on that dream.
Too bad the vampire only had eyes for Lance.
Those eyes. Her lovely eyes. Her lovely, sexy, deadly, dangerous eyes. He took a sip of the rich hot chocolate and choked.
John knew who she was.
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Lyons, France
August 1980
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John choked on his hot chocolate. “You hunted vampires, Nana?”
He knew he shouldn't have followed her into the small attic space, but she'd made such a huge thump. And Great-Grandmother was old. John's mother had trained him to keep watch over Nana and stairs.
Nana looked over her stooped shoulder, not bothering to hide the crossbow she held in one wrinkled hand. A quarrel still quivered in the yellowed man-shaped target with fangs hand-drawn on its smiling mouth.
As the chocolate dripped down John's chin, she set the weapon on the floor.
“I was a hunter, the best in Europe,” Josephine O'Neill Trudeau said. “I hunted the Nazi Paranormal Corps, up until the 1970s.” Her proud expression softened at his dropped jaw. “Go downstairs, John. I'll be right there.”
John never could remember what happened next, but when he shook himself to, his nana, a fresh cup of cocoa, and a cedar chest swam into focus.
Her face was creased and slack, but her eyes burned with an unending fury. “A vampire named Randall killed everyone in our family during the war. For some reason, Dracula stopped him from killi!ng me.” She caressed the chest, her face still wondering after all the years. “Dracula told me how to beat a vampire even though I am human. He said he wanted a fair fight when I came for him.” She opened the chest. “Drink, child. You've had a shock.”
John numbly drank his cocoa. Tacked to the inside lid of the cedar were dozens of crumbling newspaper photos, grainy old pictures, and sharper pictures from the 1970s. All were of Radu Tepes and Dracula.
“I vowed I'd kill both the murderer and Dracula. But I was so young, I can't remember his face well. I think he was this Radu character, but according to all sources, he was a hero of the Resistance. And Dracula supposedly died in Berlin.”
Her voice plainly said she doubted that reality.
Nana had cracked. Everyone knew that Dracula was dead.
“Uh-huh.”
She studiously ignored his eye-rolling. “Dracula survived. I have proof.” The chest yielded a scrapbook album. Yellowed pages crinkled as she flipped to the famous pictures of the death of the architect of the Shadow Creature Corps.
There was a photo that John had never seen before. A woman in a bedraggled skirt stood to the far side of the frame, her mouth open in a shout.
“The eyewitnesses insisted a woman, Dracula's secretary, killed him. She then disappeared.”
She turned the page to reveal another picture, a rare one of Dracula drilling his corps. Instead of his usual impeccable uniform, the famous vampire wore fatigues. Mud blotched his aristocratic features. And his mouth was open in an undignified shout.
“Look at this.”
He compared the two images.
Thin face. Wide eyes. Slender body. A certain tension of the shoulders and arms.
“Dracula escaped as this woman. ” He knew as surely as he'd never taste better cocoa in his life.
His nana nodded, her lips tight.
“Where is he, then?”
“I don't know. I have hunted for decades.”
“It must be really hard to pretend to be a girl,” John said. “He must have become a man again.”
“I have a theory.” She smoothed the photos flat on the table. John's spine tingled the way it did before a pop quiz. “I think Dracula always was a woman.”
For the second time in a half an hour, John snorted chocolate out his nose. Laughing and coughing, he wheezed, “Good one, Nana.”
“Look again,” she said sternly.
She wasn't joking. John rolled his eyes and laid the pictures next to each other. He'd stare at them and pretend to go along with his nana's delusions and ...
Then he saw it. The graceful ear with mostly hidden diamond studs, the too-thin moustache, the delicate jawline and throat.
“How?” he whispered. “How did she do it?”
She closed the scrapbook. “As far as I know, this is the only surviving photo of Dracula from this angle.”
John was young, and enamored of heroics. “Should I kill her for you, Nana?”
“No, darling.” She tucked a wayward piece of hair behind his ear. “The time for killing is past. Your grandmother and mother work too hard with Bishop Tempesta for things to go back the way they were. But if you find her, tell her I knew.”
As John solemnly nodded, the contents of the chest distracted him.
A dazzling array of weapons greeted his eyes. The sheer number of stakes, knives, crosses, pistols, and boxes of bullets stunned him. A glimmer of gold to one side caught his attention. As if in a daze, he dug for it.
A gold medallion inscribed with a pair of wings nestled into his hand like a loving dog searching for petting.
It was beautiful. Everything from the finely detailed feathers to the tiny rubies around the circumference called to him.
“Grandmother?” He held the disc up to her. “What does this mean?”
She sat next to him and placed her hand over his. “That you are a Guide to a Fallen Angel.”
“You're joking,” John said. Everyone knew that Fallen Angels didn't exist.
Nana smirked in a way that made John decidedly uncomfortable. “Soon you will meet the person you are to help.”
“How will I know that?” he challenged.
“Well, from everything I've seen, you'll want to slug him right in the face the very minute he opens his mouth.”
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John rubbed his hands against his face. Lance Soleil, ex-chaplain, soldier, and Fallen Angel, was fucking Dracula.
Merde.
Getting the two of them to move in was going to be a challenge. Good thing John liked his life complicated.