Guarding Valentina [Paladin Protection Agency 3] (Siren Publishing Classic) (2 page)

She kept her back to the building as she moved down the empty street, scanning every inch of space for her missing partner. He had to be close by because there was no way Nick would have left the area without radioing her first. He was all about protocol, to the point of making Val crazy half the time. She reached under her jacket and popped the release on her shoulder-holster. Drawing a gun in downtown Seattle really wasn’t on her to-do list, but if she didn’t find Nick soon, she’d consider it. Something just didn’t feel right.

Just then her radio squawked, and Val snagged it from her belt as a strange voice came on. “Hello, Valentina.”

Her blood froze in her veins. Someone had one of their secure radios, and whoever it was, they knew her name.
Fuck.
She drew in a quick breath and keyed the talk button. “Whoever this is, you seem to have me at a disadvantage. Who are you?”

“You’re so polite. I wonder if you asked their names before you killed my children. I imagine not. Still, I will give you my name, a gift between us. My name is Christoph.”

“I have never killed a child, Christoph, yours or anyone else’s. You’re mistaken.” Val’s heart was hammering in her chest, but her hands were steady as she drew her gun and flicked the safety off.

“I did my research.” Even distorted by the radio, Christoph’s voice made her skin crawl. There was something
wrong
about it. “You led the team who killed my children and destroyed my family as they slept. Now I am going to do the same to you. In the end, when you are all alone and surrounded by death, then I will come for you.”

Ice-cold fury added an edge to her next words. “Where’s my partner?”

“Look up.”

Val heard a terrified scream far above her and looked up, her gun tracking with her eyes. She managed to throw herself out of the way just as Nick’s body hurtled to the sidewalk where she’d been standing a half second before. The sickening sound of impact filled her ears, and she knew it would haunt her dreams for the rest of her life.

“You bastard!” she screamed to the rooftops as the storm broke and the rain washed over her, hiding Christoph from view.

“One down, Valentina.” His voice came over the radio again, taunting her.

“I will find you, and when I do, I am going to kill you,” she snarled back at him.

“You’re beautiful when you’re angry.”

Val startled as she realized that this time his voice hadn’t come from the radio, but from right behind her. She spun around, but there was no one there. She was alone on the street, standing beside the body of her partner. As she lifted the radio to call for help, a shadow moved, and all the breath was knocked from her body as arms like steel cables wrapped around her and squeezed until she couldn’t breathe.

“Just a taste.” Something cold slithered over her throat, and she screamed, emptying her lungs as she fought to get free. Her gun was pried from her hand with brutal force, and then there was nothing but pain. It lanced through her, radiating from her neck and spreading outward until her entire body was a collection of agonies. Spots swam before her eyes from the lack of oxygen, and her limbs grew heavy. Just as the world went gray, her attacker released her and she tumbled to the wet pavement, too weak to stay upright.

“Until next time,” Christoph said, bidding her farewell. As her vision cleared, she could just make out a pale-haired and slender shadow fading into the rain, and then she was alone.

She crawled over to Nick and laid her hand on his neck, looking for the pulse she already knew she wouldn’t find. He was dead. Grief welled up inside her, and she gently closed his eyes, struggling to speak past the lump in her throat. “I’m so sorry, Nick. I shouldn’t have left you alone.”

She retrieved her gun from the gutter and her radio from the sidewalk and then settled herself beside Nick’s broken body as she radioed in for help. She reported their location and the situation in a few terse sentences and then sat back and waited for the others to arrive. Only then did she reach up to press her fingers to her injured neck. When her hand came away covered in blood, she swore and started checking her pockets for something to use as a bandage.

“You’re going to need to put some pressure on that.” Another voice came out of the darkness, and Val acted out of instinct, her gun trained on the new arrival before she remembered she was in the middle of Seattle and not some godforsaken warzone.

“How the hell is everyone managing to sneak up on me tonight?” she muttered in frustration as she got to her feet, still feeling slightly unsteady but determined not to show it.

“You can put the gun down, luv. I’m one of the good guys.” The stranger’s voice was gentle, and there was an almost musical lilt to his words as he held his hands up, showing he was unarmed.

“Forgive me if I don’t take your word on that.”

He reached up slowly and swept a sodden tumble of auburn curls out of his eyes so she could see his face. “Those holes in your neck are going to keep bleeding unless I treat them. It’s a charming little trick they have, something in the saliva that stops the blood from clotting properly.” He took a step forward. “My name is Aedan, and I’m sorry I didn’t get here in time to save your friend. You must be a member of the Paladin Protection Agency.”

Val lowered the gun, though she didn’t take her finger off the trigger. “Did Remington take out a front page ad or something? How is it everyone I’ve met tonight knows who I am and who I work for?” She raised her free hand and clamped it down on the wound on her neck, hissing slightly in pain as she pressed hard to slow the bleeding.

“Your organization seems to have run afoul of a very nasty vampire, luv.”

“Stop calling me that,” Val snapped.

Aedan grinned and took another step toward her. “I’d use your name, but first you need to tell me what it is.”

“It’s Val,” she offered and lowered her gun the rest of the way. “And I’ve decided I’m going to trust you, for now.” As he moved close enough that she could see him properly, Val realized he was probably used to being trusted on sight. Or being flirted with on sight, she mentally added as she took in his appearance. His eyes were hazel, and even in the dim light of the street she could make out the smattering of freckles that dusted his chiseled features. Even soaking wet and half in shadow, the man was definitely easy on the eyes.

“I’m pleased to meet you, Val. Though I will admit I wish it were under more cheerful circumstances.” Aedan reached into his pocket, and Val lifted the gun slightly in warning. “Easy now, I’ve got something that’ll help with the bleeding. No need to shoot the man offering to help.” He dug deeper and withdrew what looked like a small, plastic squeeze bottle full of water.

“What is it?” She eyed the bottle with distrust. The wound on her neck hurt like hell, and the bleeding hadn’t stopped yet, but she’d rather deal with the discomfort than let a stranger dose her with god knew what. “And for that matter, how do you know about Paladin? Or vampires?”

Aedan chuckled. “Is this what you call trusting someone? I’d hate to see how you react to someone you
don’t
trust if this is the warm and fuzzy version.” He tipped the bottle over and squeezed a bit of the liquid onto his hand, where it blended with the rain. “It’s holy water, that’s all. It’ll help. And as for how I know about Christoph and his kind, I’m a hunter.”

“Oh, that clears it up nicely,” Val shot back and arched a brow at him in irritation. “What the hell do you hunt? Deer? Criminals? Unicorns?”

“Vampires, actually,” Aedan answered in a matter-of-fact tone as he nodded toward her injury. “Will you permit me to fix that for you, or are you going to just keep bleeding until your friends arrive?”

It was at times like these Val envied her teammate Tara her empathic abilities. It would have made it so much easier to know if she could trust this charming man, or if she was about to fall victim to her infamously bad sense of character judgment yet again.

“Go ahead.” She lifted her fingers away and frowned when she saw that she was still bleeding heavily. “And uh, thanks.”

“This might sting a bit,” he warned her.

“It’s only water. How much could it—yeow!” She yelped in surprise at the burning sensation that flared up and then faded as quickly as it had come. “I thought you said that was just water?”

“Holy water. Father Patrick’s special blend, in point of fact. It has the power to purify that which has been tainted by the undead.”

“So that hurt because your friend Christoph left me with a neck full of vamp venom?”

“Something like that, yes. But let’s be clear here, Christoph is no friend of mine. He’s more like my current assignment. Forgive me for saying so, but you don’t seem too well informed for a group that managed to kill off an entire nest of Christoph’s fledglings. I’m going to guess you’re new to this sort of thing.”

Before she could answer him, several sets of headlights appeared on the road, heading toward them at high speed.

“It would appear your friends have arrived.”

Before she could say a word, he brushed a quick kiss to her lips, and then his voice whispered in her ear, “I’ll see you again soon, luv.” Then he was gone. Between one heartbeat and the next, he vanished. Her lips still tingled from the kiss he’d given her before he had disappeared, the only proof he’d ever been there at all.

“This is going down in the books as my worst day, ever,” she groused as the headlights closed in, and she had to squint against the glare to see anything at all. She could make out the shapes of people piling out of the vehicles and running toward her as she slumped back against the wall and finally holstered her weapon.

“Val! What the hell happened?” She could hear her team leader’s voice over all the others as they swarmed around her.

“I only left him for ten minutes. I swear.” She glanced over to where others were carefully marking off the area around their fallen comrade. “I think we’ve got a big problem, Sin. It was a vampire, a really nasty one.” She lifted her gaze to meet Sinjin’s worried gaze. “And he isn’t finished with us yet.”

* * * *

He shouldn’t have kissed her. Aedan watched from the shadows as Val’s teammates helped her into one of their oversized SUVs to wait for law enforcement to arrive.
Hell, I shouldn’t have been that close to her, period.
Christoph was one of the least psychically gifted vampires on record, but even he might have been able to detect Aedan’s presence at that paltry distance. Aedan had certainly been able to sense
him
. All dhampir could detect and track vampires. It was one of the preternatural abilities they were born with, along with increased speed, strength, and varying degrees of psychic ability.

It was that last one that usually got him into trouble. He had just enough talent to catch the occasional glimpse of someone’s thoughts, nothing more. It was easy to tell when someone was bluffing at poker, or if the pretty girl at the end of the bar was looking for a night of uncomplicated fun. The trouble was, he wasn’t gifted enough to determine when the pretty girl in question had a jealous boyfriend in tow. That was usually when Aedan fell back on his other abilities, the ones that let him fight his way out and then run before he was caught by the inevitable police presence.

He’d been following Christoph from a careful distance, trying to figure out what the vampire was up to. Revenge was clearly on the agenda, but the when and the how were far from clear until Aedan had watched through his binoculars as the vampire had gone after the solitary Paladin operative. It had been over before he could intervene.

What the dead man’s teammates didn’t know yet was that Nick had been bled almost to death before he’d been dropped. He’d been bled, and then some of that blood had been returned to him in an obscene ritual that had twisted Aedan’s stomach into knots of nausea. He’d never been present for the creation of a vampire before, and he hoped like hell he never had to see it again.

Watching someone die was hard enough. Watching someone lose their soul in the seconds before their death was a horror that he’d never forget. He’d have to see to it that Nick’s body was dealt with before sunset tomorrow night, or there’d be another vampire walking the streets of Seattle. Worse, the fledgling would rise still retaining all the knowledge and skills of a Paladin employee. It would appear that Christoph’s revenge plan was finally underway.

He’d observed as Val had arrived at the scene, and he’d admired the way she’d switched from casual passerby to focused professional in the blink of an eye. He’d covered half the distance between them by the time her companion’s body had hit the pavement, but he hadn’t been fast enough to reach her before Christoph had.

Aedan shifted his position slightly so he could get a better look at Val through his binoculars. Someone had given her a towel, and she’d dried her dark hair enough that it was now falling in damp waves that came just to her jawline. Her body was concealed beneath a metallic silver blanket, but he had seen the way the wet material of her shirt had clung to her curves. She was a woman-warrior, cut from the same cloth as the Morríghan, the Irish goddess of battle, beautiful and dangerous.

“You’d be smart to stay away from that one,” he told himself, already aware he intended to do the exact opposite. It wasn’t her beauty that had inspired him to kiss her before he left. It was the brief moment he’d seen into her mind as she had apologized to her dead companion. Despite her sharp words and the dark world she walked in, she still had a tender and compassionate heart. He’d felt her grief and her guilt at the other man’s death, and it had been that glimpse of her soul that had captured his interest. She was a kindred spirit, a fellow soldier in a dark and never-ending war. One he was fast growing tired of fighting.

His eyes strayed to the bandage that now covered the bite on her neck, and he felt a stir of concern. It bothered him that Christoph had tasted her and then left her alive. That wasn’t normal vampire hunting behavior. The bastard was playing a game, Aedan just knew it. But to find out what the stakes were, he was going to need to talk to Val and her superiors. And before he could do that, he was going to need permission to disclose the Brethren’s existence.