He’d wanted to leave, to go back to Heaven, and he’d come so close to doing just that. Instead, he chose to stay and keep doing exactly what he’d signed up for in the first place.
He’d lied, manipulated, and deceived them shamelessly, using them as part of his master plan.
And he’d also saved her soul and Darrak’s life.
“I think I know what her name should be,” Eden said after a moment.
Darrak held up a hand. “Don’t say it.”
“Lucy.”
He sighed. “I just
knew
you were going to say that.”
“What do you think?”
Darrak put the card down and came to Eden’s side, climbing in the bed next to her and putting his arm around her shoulders. He looked down into the face of his tiny daughter and nodded. “Yeah, that works for me.”
She smiled. “Don’t pout.”
“I’m not pouting,” he pouted.
“You’re going to make a great father,” she whispered to him.
“Going to try like hell.”
They both looked down at Lucy, who seemed to smile up at them a moment before a faint glimmer of fire appeared behind her pale blue eyes.
“She didn’t . . .” Eden began.
A wide smile stretched across Darrak’s face. “You said she had my eyes. And she does! That’s my little girl!”
Eden started to laugh. “Well, hell. I guess it’s fate.”
“Would you look at that?” Darrak said before leaning over to brush his lips against hers again. “You took the words right out of my mouth.”
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BLOOD BATH & BEYOND
Coming summer 2012 from Obsidian!
The fangs don’t get nearly as much attention as you’d think.
Your average, everyday person doesn’t notice that they’re sharper than normal human canines. If they did, they’d have to deal with the possibility that vampires really existed. It’s a survival instinct on their part, culminating from centuries of living side by side with something they’d prefer to think of as a fictional predatory monster. Or, more recently, as an eternally sparkling teenager.
Real vampires make up approximately 0.001 % of the population—that’s one in a thousand. So, worldwide, there are about six million vampires.
Humans just don’t see us. It does help that, despite what you might have heard, we can go outside into the sunshine without turning into a pile of ashes. We blend in with regular human society just fine and dandy.
It’s kind of like we’re invisible.
Someone bashed into me when I glanced down at the screen of my phone as I walked down the busy sidewalk.
“Hey!” the woman snarled. “Watch where you’re going, you dumb bitch!”
“Bite me,” I replied sweetly, then added under my breath, “or I might bite you.”
She gave me the finger, stabbing it violently in my direction as if it was a tiny, flesh-colored sword.
Okay, maybe we’re not
totally
invisible.
I couldn’t help that I had a natural-born talent to rub people the wrong way. It had very little to do with me being a vampire and more to do with me just being . . . me. I liked to think it was part of my charm.
I looked bleakly at the phone again. No messages. No calls. It felt like everyone I knew had recently deserted me. It wasn’t far from the truth, actually. Last month, my parents had moved to Florida to a retirement community. Two weeks ago, my best male friend, George, had left for Hawaii to open a surf shop after he won a small fortune in a local lottery. And now, my best girlfriend and her husband were in the process of moving to British Columbia so she could take a job in cosmetics management out there.
“We’ll totally stay in touch,” Amy said to me at the airport before she got on her flight an hour ago. I’d met her there to say a last good-bye.
I swallowed back my tears and hugged her fiercely. “Of course we will.”
Her husband stood nearby, giving me the evil eye like he usually did. We’d never really gotten along all that well. You win some, you lose some. “Are you finished yet? We’re going to miss our flight.”
I forced a smile. “I’m even going to miss
you
, Barry.”
He just looked at his wristwatch.
Amy smiled brightly. “This is a new beginning, Sarah. For both of us. We have to embrace change.”
I hated change.
I did hope to see her again soon, not too far into the future.
The future was something I thought about a lot these days. After all, as a fledgling vampire, sired only seven months ago, I had a lot of future to look forward to. I just hoped it wouldn’t suck too much.
Yes, that was me. Sarah Dearly, immortal pessimist. I had to turn my frown upside down. Right now, I was so far down in the dumps that the raccoons had arrived and were starting to sniff around. Metaphorically speaking, of course. The only real raccoons were the ones around my eyes as my mascara smeared from my pathetic sob-fest after leaving the airport.
It seemed as if new opportunities and new adventures had been presented to everyone but me, like they’d won the lottery—literally in one case—and I’d mistakenly put my ticket in the wash and now couldn’t even read the numbers.
“You look sad,” someone said.
I glanced over my shoulder, surprised to see a clown standing at the side of the street holding a bunch of balloons.
White makeup, poufy costume covered in colorful polka dots. Red hair. A hat with a fake flower springing out of it. Big red nose. The works.
It was like a bad omen. Clowns scared the crap out of me.
“Sad? Who me?” I said warily, slipping my phone back in my shoulder bag. “Nah, I’m just melancholy today. There’s a difference, you know. Please don’t murder me.”
“Somebody needs a happy happy balloon to make her happy happy.” He handed me a yellow ribbon tied to a shiny red balloon. I looked up at it.
“Yes,” I said. “This will make all the difference in the world. Thank you so much. Now life is happy happy for me again.”
The clown glared at me. “No reason to be sarcastic, lady.” “I don’t need a reason.”
“The balloon’s five bucks.”
“Three.”
“Four.”
“Sold.” I grinned, then fished into my purse and pulled out the money. “Thanks so much, Bozo.”
“It’s Mr. Chuckles.”
“Whatever.”
The balloon did cheer me up more than I would have guessed. It reminded me of going to the National Exhibition with my mother every fall when I was a kid. Popcorn, cotton candy, hot dogs, and balloons. High calorie memories with a little bit of helium and latex thrown in for good measure. Those were good times.
I’d needed the walk to clear my head. My head was officially cleared, so I returned to the huge townhome I shared with my fiancé and let myself in.
Immediately, I sensed there was something different there. A big clue to this was the large black suitcase placed at the front door.
I heard Thierry on the phone, speaking French to someone. I didn’t speak the language, despite taking it all the way through high school. Thierry was fluent since he was originally from France centuries ago.
Yes, my fiancé was significantly older than me—by about six hundred years or so.
Some of the words I understood:
“
Aujourd’hui
,” which I knew meant
today
.
“
Seul
,” which meant
alone
.
“
D’accord
,” which meant
alrighty
.
“
Importante
” . . . well, that one didn’t really need a translator.
Thierry entered the front foyer with his phone pressed to his left ear. He stopped when he saw me standing there gaping at him.
“
A bientôt
, Bernard.” He slipped the phone into the inside pocket of his black suit jacket. “Sarah, I was about to call you. I’m glad you’ve returned.”
He didn’t have an accent. His English was flawless, since he’d spoken it for at least five hundred years.
Thierry de Bennicoeur appeared to be in his midthirties. He was six feet tall, had black hair that was usually brushed back from his handsome face, and piercing gray eyes that felt like they could see right through you clear to the other side. He always dressed in black Hugo Boss suits, which wasn’t the most imaginative wardrobe choice but looked consistently perfect on him anyway. He was, in a word, a total fox. Even after all the time we’d spent together, there was no doubt in my mind about that.
Some people perceived him to be cold and unemotional, but I knew the truth. That façade was for protection only. Down deep, Thierry was fire and passion. Only . . . it was
really
down deep. Most people would never see that side of him, and I was okay with that. I had the rock on my finger that proved I
had
seen the fire and hadn’t been burned yet.
However, I had to admit, that suitcase was causing a few painful sparks to fly up in my general direction.
“What’s going on?” I asked cautiously. “What’s with the luggage?”
“I have to go somewhere.”
“Where? And . . . when?”
The line of his jaw tightened. “I’ve been called upon to meet with someone about some important Ring business in Las Vegas.”
The Ring was the vampire council. Thierry was the original founder of the organization that tracked any potential vampiric issues worldwide and did what they could to neutralize them. He’d left a century ago after dealing with some personal issues and he hadn’t looked back since. The Ring had carried on without his input or influence.
“What business?” I asked.
“I’ve been offered a job with them. One I can’t decline.”
My eyes widened. “What kind of job?”
“Consultant.”
“What do you mean you can’t decline it?”
He hesitated. “They made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
“Who were you just talking to, Don Corleone?”
He raised a dark eyebrow. “His name is Bernard Du-Shaw. He was the most recent of several people I’ve spoken with over the last couple of hours. It’s his position I would be taking over now that he’s retiring.”
I thought of my parents settling in to Florida’s sand and sunshine now that they’d reached their retirement years. “He’s immortal, isn’t he? He doesn’t ever have to retire.”
“After a contracted term with the Ring, one is permitted to leave to pursue other interests if one wishes to. He wishes to.”
I tried to breathe normally. Contrary to one of many popular myths about vampires, we needed to do that regularly. “Okay. Well, the universe does work in mysterious ways. I guess this isn’t a bad thing. I think you’d be a great asset for them. Keep them from making any mistakes or judging anyone too harshly without a proper assessment. So . . . you’re going today to meet with Bernard about this job?”
“Yes.”
“And when will you be back?”
His expression was unreadable. “Perhaps you should sit down, Sarah.”
“I don’t want to sit down.” My anxiety spiked. “You are coming back, aren’t you?”
His expression tensed. “I’m sorry, but I won’t be returning to Toronto. The position calls for constant travel. I won’t be able to stay in one place for very long during my term as consultant.”
I tried to absorb all of this, but it was too much all at once. “How long is a term?”
He didn’t speak for a moment. “Fifty years.”
I just looked at him, momentarily rendered speechless by this unexpected news. Silence stretched between us.
His gaze moved to my balloon. “What’s this?”
My mouth felt dry. “My happy happy balloon. I got it from a clown named Mr. Chuckles.”
His lips curved at the edges. “I thought you were going to the airport.”
“I did.”
“You stopped by a circus on the way home?”
“Thierry,” I said sharply. “What the hell is going on? How can you just leave? Fifty years? It sounds like a prison sentence, not a new job. Are you saying . . . are you saying that—” I didn’t want to speak my thoughts aloud. After everyone else I loved putting thousands of miles between me and them, perhaps I should have expected this. But I hadn’t. This was a complete and total shock.
Everyone was leaving me. And now Thierry was joining the list.
“Sarah—”
“I heard you on the phone. You said
seul
, which means you’re going alone.”
He nodded slowly. “That’s what they want. This job requires focus and 24/7 availability. I assumed you wouldn’t want to travel so much, never knowing where you’re going next. There’s a great deal of uncertainty involved with this job.”
“This job that you can’t say no to for some mysterious reason. A job that you’re going to be doing for half of a damn century all by yourself with no prior warning.” I crossed my arms tightly. Everything about this made me ill. “You know, maybe this job came at just the right time for you to change your mind about being with—”
“Please don’t finish that sentence.” He took me by my shoulders, gazing fiercely into my eyes. “All I want is for you to be happy, don’t you know that by now?”
I swallowed hard. “The clown thought a balloon would make me happy.”
“And did it?”
“For a couple of minutes.”
He looked up at it. “It is a nice balloon.”
“Screw the balloon.” My throat felt so tight it was difficult to speak.
I knew people had their own agendas, their own destinies to chase, and most of the time those destinies were not meant to intertwine. Thierry’s and my path hadn’t been an easy one, not since the very first moment we met. It wasn’t every day a twenty-eight-year-old fledgling hooked up with a six-hundred-year-old master vampire—we were so completely different in temperament and personality it was frequently glaring and often problematic. But we had and it felt right, but somehow I knew, down deep, that it might not last forever. Forever was a very long time when you’re a vampire.