“Do
you hear that?” Nate looked around the room. Hard as it was for her to
believe, the frown on his face had actually deepened.
“Hear
what?”
Nate
shrugged, continuing to look around perplexed. “I don’t know it’s kind of
a droning… maybe more of a whining or a humming.”
Oh
Good Goddess, she’d become so relaxed she’d been humming out loud hadn’t
she. She steeled herself for Nate’s imminent slobbering state… oh well,
seeing him blubber and pleading for her touch would at least cure her
ridiculous instant infatuation with the novelty that was… had been, Nate.
Straightening her shoulders, steeling herself, she met his gaze.
“It
was really loud. You sure you didn’t hear it?” Nate shook his head,
glaring around the room for a moment before returning his gaze to her.
Charisse
braced herself.
“It’s
stopped now thank Maat, because whatever it was, it was really annoying.”
Charisse’s
mouth dropped open in shock, first she went very pale and then flushed with
colour. He thought her humming was annoying! Her humming! The
voice that men wrecked their boats for and sold their souls to hear?
Annoying! The utter gall of the man.
Nate
was oblivious to her reaction, still trying to shake off the sound that had
grated across every last nerve ending he had, irritating him down to his very
bones. “It was like a really annoying mosquito buzzing around or a car
engine stuck in third when it should be in fifth.”
Charisse
was seething.
Why she’d show this
irritating jerk what a Siren was all about. Ignoring the gnawing pain as
that interfering bitch-rock, Bettina, scratched and clawed at their mutual
bond, Charisse took a deep breath.
Keeping her voice low, after all she wanted to prove a point, not start
a stampede; she began to sing along with the Julie London song.
Infusing her voice with just the right amount
of sensuality, longing and desire to bring an elite warrior of Maat to his
knees.
Nate
stopped dancing abruptly… hah, finally he was succumbing to her charms.
“Sorry.”
He dropped her hand, taking a step back, absently rubbing at one of his
ears. “All of a sudden my hearing is shot to hell. Everything is sounding
garbled and weirdly pitched.”
Maat,
his ear canals felt as if they’d been scraped raw. A headache blossomed
at the base of his skull. When was the last time he’d had a
headache? Maybe a decade or so ago - during a fight at a construction
site - when he’d taken a hit to the head with a steel beam.
Fuck,
he had a pretty good idea that whatever was going on with him could be
attributed to the gorgeous woman standing in front of him. Cyd
might be ten kinds of gorgeous but he was more certain than ever that she was a
hundred times more dangerous than any woman he’d ever met before.
Even
as he watched with his inner eye, a black scaly tentacle slowly wound its way
up Charisse’s body, extending from the nest it had made in her inner core just
below her heart, the appendage encircled her beautiful pale throat. Nate
had a deep suspicion that if he made any move to take Cyd back into his arms
that tentacle would tighten and throttle her senseless.
Charisse
stood there, feeling strangely bereft to no longer be in Nate’s arms. At
the same time her mind was trying to process what had just happened.
She’d sung for a man in full Siren mode and he wasn’t in the slightest bit
moved. It was… unbelievable.
But
hold on, hadn’t she dreamt of meeting a man immune to her Siren charms? Maybe
here was an opportunity for her to put aside all her Siren gimmicks and
associated hang ups and have a real, genuine interaction with an attractive
man. Forget Darcy’s covert mission and just… flirt and dance, like any normal
woman would when she met a gorgeous, almost immortal warrior.
Nate
fought every instinct he had not to reach out and wrestle that scaly black
tentacle from around Cyd’s throat. The damn thing was invisible to
everyone but him for a start. Even Cyd appeared to be unaware of its
presence. So grappling with it at a party, that’s if he could even touch
it, would be very uncool, not to mention Cyd would probably think he was
attacking her, double uncool.
Shit,
every warrior instinct he had was screaming at him to do something, protect,
fight, defeat. Yet all he could do was stand there and stare at the
gorgeous woman in front of him. She was currently unhurt and it seemed
she was in no danger, unless he made a move in her direction. So what
options were open to him? Damn it, he hated it, but what else could he
do? It wasn’t his fight.
“Well,
thanks for the dance Cyd. See you around.” Abruptly Nate turned and
walked away, disappearing into the crowd.
Ouch,
that kind of hurt, standing alone in the middle of the dance floor, Charisse
could do nothing but watch Nate retreat. This would have to be the most
embarrassing day of her adult life. Had anyone seen her get snubbed by
the annoying dolt? Goddess she hoped not.
Explaining to Darcy what had just happened was going to be bad enough
without speculation running rife that her Siren powers were on the fritz.
As
she walked off the dance floor, trying to make it look like it had been her
idea to end the dance with Nate so abruptly, Charisse brushed past the newly
melded couple.
Hadleigh, looking
gorgeous in a fitted cream long dress that dipped surprisingly low in the back
and did great things for her cousin’s curvy figure, glanced her way
“Char.”
Hadleigh’s grey eyes practically beamed with happiness and love for her new
meld mate Vaughn. “I issue a blanket apology for whatever fawning
compliment or naughty invitation Nate just made. The man is an
irrepressible flirt. I promise, if you ignore him, he’ll soon move on to
some brainless bimbo more easily taken in by his cheeky ways.”
Charisse
managed a breezy smile and kept on walking, all the time wondering in what
universe Nate was considered an
irrepressible flirt
?
Seriously? With that scowl - gorgeous though he might be - and his abrupt
gruff ways? Great, just fricking great, hah, so much for her first real
attempt at flirting with a man sans her Siren powers. She could take it, but it
seems without her powers, she couldn’t dish it out. How humiliating, she
prayed to the Goddess above that she would never have to see Nate of the wicked
whiskey coloured eyes again.
Chapter
Three
Six
weeks later
Nate
leaned across the reception desk, a sexy grin on his face, a leer in his
eyes. “You rang my Sweet?”
“Get
off my folders you clumsy oaf, I just sorted those.”
“Ah
Vivian, you’ll turn my head if you keep up this litany of charming pet names.”
Vivian
Dupree, receptionist for Maat Productions, sent him a mock glare from her dark
brown eyes, though she couldn’t stop the small laugh that escaped her
lips. At twenty-three, Vivian counted herself very lucky to have
landed her current job, she wanted to be a producer someday, but with no formal
education she’d been forced to devise a plan of working her way up the
corporate ladder. Step one was the receptionist gig.
It
had turned out to be a lot more exciting than she’d imagined. Mainly
because the men who worked on the reality show, debunking all things
paranormal, were a bunch of exceedingly nice guys and it didn’t hurt that they were
mega eye candy. Not that she’d ever mix business with pleasure, she had
her eye on her prize dream job after all, but it didn’t mean she couldn’t
indulge in some low key, friendly, meaningless flirting. And let’s face
it, if Nate was breathing – he was flirting.
Reaching
down beside her chair she scooped up the heavy crystal vase that had just been
delivered.
The twenty-four roses it
contained so dark red, they were almost black in colour. “Another delivery just
came in.”
Nate
straightened abruptly, a shuttered look coming down over his features.
“What’s
that make it now?” Vivian hunted around for the card. “Eight… nine
bunches of flowers, six boxes of truffles, the balloons, the fruit basket and
the silk pyjamas.
You must have really
rocked this girl’s world hard, Nate. Hah, here it is.” She held out
the card, her attention already on tidying up her desk for the evening and
gathering her things, missing entirely the look of distaste on Nate’s face as
he contemplated the contents of the card and eyed the roses.
“Well.” She stood up to grab her raspberry red
coat. “It’s home time for me.”
“I’ll
walk you to your car.” Nate offered, flicking the card into the waste bin
at her feet with amazing accuracy.
“Everything
okay?” She frowned into the bin, what was that on the card… a word… a
name? Well, it was none of her business for a start.
“It’s
all good. You can keep the roses out here in reception. In fact, if
any more are delivered, flowers, gifts, whatever, just bin them or give them
away.”
Vivian
thought about following up with a few more questions, perhaps tease Nate a
little bit more about his admirer but there was a serious, almost remote look
on Nate’s face that was so far from his normal easy going smiling self, that
she didn’t quite know how to broach the subject. “You don’t have to walk
me to my car. It’s in the parking garage after all.”
The
flirty smile was back on Nate’s face as he rounded the desk and slipped his arm
through the crook of her elbow. “Ah, but it gives me an extra ten minutes
in your company sweet Vivian.”
She
rolled her eyes but accepted his escort. It was kind of late and to be
honest, Nate’s reaction to the card… to the roses, it kind of worried
her. He was her friend and she’d never seen him shaken or even slightly
perturbed by anything until now. Determinedly, she spent the next ten
minutes trying to lighten the mood and bring the sparkle back to her friend’s
eyes.
Back
in the elevator, on the way to his apartment located on the 84
th
floor, Nate was running through a litany of curses in his head. Three
weeks now… three weeks and it didn’t look as if the psycho bitch assassin
vampire Queen was going to give up on her infatuation with him or show her face
so he could cleave her head from her skinny - catsuit wearing - body.
Fuck
and double fuck, she was proving to be an elusive thorn in their… his, side.
It
had all started when demented Queen D and her little vampire kiss posse of
assassins had been hired to kill his friend Serena. Knowing the vamps
were gunning for Serena, the Elite warriors plan had been to use the Queen to
lead them back to her clients; Sek and Mot, two Chaos Demi-gods intent upon
performing a ritual, the key ingredient of which was Serena’s witchy blood, to
awaken their father Apep, the God of all Chaos.
All
had been going splendidly. They’d lured in Vampira and her minion posse for a
final show down, killed off all the minions, he’d personally planted the
tracker on… well technically, in, Vampira… he still hadn’t gotten the nasty
taste of their kiss out of his mouth. Then he and Drum had intentionally
let Queen D escape the hospital with what she thought, was a vial of Serena’s
blood.
Unfortunately,
somewhere along the way, their plan had fallen over in a big smouldering heap;
somehow, Vampira had managed to ditch the tracker.
At
least Sek and Mot were back to square one. Believing Serena to be dead,
they would be resuming their hunt for a witch. Likewise, they would be
looking for a long lost descendant of Apep. The blood, the Chaos duo had
ordered the vamps to steal from Xander, Apep’s last known descendant, had been
destroyed when Maat’s warriors had raided the vamps’ lair.
With
all her vampire posse henchmen dead, the Queen should have gone to ground,
should have disappeared to lick her wounds. Not this bitch. The
moment he’d laid eyes on her, Nate had realised she was a well-deep pool of
insanity and trouble.
Following
his instincts, he’d known that killing one of her henchmen in front of her, in
the bloodiest manner possible, would draw her attention his way like a Great
White Shark scents a midnight swimmer. But they’d needed her distracted
in order to get the tracker into play. What he hadn’t quite factored in, was
the
fixation aspect
.
Who
knew Vampira could fall in love… or whatever her blackened soul recognised as
love. And he, thrice damn his luck, was the recipient of her
affections. The candy, the flowers, the gifts… all untraceable, all
unwanted. All kind of vaguely creeping him out.
In
his apartment Nate grabbed a bottle of cold beer from the fridge before heading
out onto the balcony. It was late winter in Atlanta, but he needed no
extra clothes other than the informal work uniform he had on of khaki pants,
t-shirt and his steel cap boots. The chilly night air couldn’t touch him,
he was a warrior born of the sun, one of the Goddess Maat’s chosen Elite.
What
he needed was the distraction of the city skyline whilst he came up with a plan
of how to draw out the vampire bitch.
It was long past time Vampira found out if there really was a vampire
heaven. Taking a swig of beer, he ran through all his options but his
attention kept wandering… sea green eyes… long glossy auburn hair… wicked wide
mouth… full breasts… toned dancer’s legs.
Maat
damn it, with Vaughn and Drum both recently melded and understandably
distracted and Marcus, concentrating all his hacker information gathering
skills on finding any remaining mortal descendants of Apep.
That left only Rafe, Flynn, Dash and himself
free and clear to focus all their energy on dealing with all the mystical bad
guys they normally tackled on a daily basis. The vamp Queen lurking in
the shadows and following their every move wasn’t helping the pressure cooker
situation. He needed to come up with a plan of how to track down and
obliterate the vamp Queen, sooner rather than later.
His
head snapped skywards… what was that sound? It wasn’t one of the flyboys
– Dash or Flynn – coming in for a landing on one of the upper decks, no it was
like something… or someone, was falling. On instinct his boot shot out,
kicking a nearby lounger across the balcony with a shriek of metal. It
had barely come to a stop when the object from the dark starless sky hit it
with a muffled thump. Even then, it took Nate a second, maybe two, to
register what… who, he was looking at… the few remaining shreds of coat…
raspberry red in colour, gave away the body’s identity.
“Shit,
Vivian!”
He
crouched next to her, desperately searching through the blood and shredded
clothing for a pulse, steady but weak. She was alive, thank Maat, but she
was a mess.
Clicking
his earpiece he put in a request for Nell, magic healer and Drum’s new wife, to
be summoned.
He daren’t risk
transporting Vivian until the Doctor had a chance to gauge her condition.
Thank fucking Maat he’d moved the lounger. Kneeling beside Vivian he
managed to find one of her small soft hands, sticky with blood.
“I’ve
got you honey.” He crooned under his breath.
His
eyes searched the surrounding skyline, knowing somewhere nearby that vampire
bitch was watching and probably smiling her ass off.
Something
white caught his attention, switching focus he watched as a small white gift
card fluttered from out of the sky.
Snatching it out of the air before it could land on Vivian, Nate glared
down at it with hard eyes. One word… combination threat, promise and a
name…
Destiny
.
Nate
crumpled the card in his fist, the vamp Queen with the stripper name.
Well he hoped she realised destiny was a two way street. It was well past
time to sharpen some stakes and fuel up the flamethrower.