Ten, p.3
Ten, page 3
“Oh, Cal, I need to introduce you to Morgan. Morgan, this is my ex-boyfriend, Cal,” she said ever so sweetly. “You know, the one I told you all about.”
Cal paled slightly as he found himself staring eye-to-eye with someone for a change. It took only one look at a set of bulging biceps for him to scurry back into the kitchen. “Sorry, gave up coffee!” Paige called after him.
She punched Morgan playfully on the arm. “I wasn’t in any danger,” she chided him.
Morgan furrowed his brows. “Oh, I know that,” he muttered. “I was looking out for him.”
She punched him again, this time eliciting an “oof” from her hot companion. He slid his arm around her torso and paused abruptly as he felt a lump above her waistline. His jaw tightened. “It there something that you need to tell me, Paige?” he growled.
“Later,” she hissed before giving him a quick kiss on the cheek.
“I can still smell blood under your nails, by the way,” he muttered as they started back for the booth. Paige stopped cold.
“Later,” she growled firmly. This time Morgan clamped his jaw firmly shut, and he said barely a word as they plowed through wedges of pie. Paige and Maria filled the void with small talk until it was finally time for Morgan to snatch the check and take over the role of consummate gentleman for the evening.
“It’s just a piece of paper,” Georgia chided herself as she finally dared to open her own little black envelope. Her vampire boss remained nearly catatonic on the chaise, while the cat snoozed happily on top of the tattered remains of Mr. Lambley’s invitation.
“We have to go to another one,” he moaned under his breath.
“Well, we survived one party and a trip to Japan. How bad can this—?”
“I have to go home,” the vampire whined. “I haven’t been home in over a century, and both the bastards will be there this time.”
“Look, I know it’s hard, but you can’t avoid them forever—”
“I bloody well can!” he huffed. “What’s the point of being immortal if you can’t spend forever avoiding the bastards who have nothing better to do than to judge you as a failure from now until Kingdom Come?”
Georgia’s eyes widened as she lifted out her own invitation. “A wedding and a masquerade ball?” she asked incredulously. “Three nights of revelry?”
“See!” Geoffrey cried. “Three whole nights of staying in ghastly Pendragon castle, dressing ridiculously, and having to make small talk with every ancient windbag from Rome to Tokyo—”
“Oh yes, sounds dreadful,” Georgia sighed as a confirmation for a first-class ticket to London fell on her lap. “I mean, London is so passé, right?”
“Do you only communicate through sarcasm, Miss Sutherland?”
the vampire asked.
“It seems to be the most effective way through your thick skull,”
she muttered. “Oh, hell no!”
“What?”
She flipped around her invitation and pointed to a neat row of silver script just under the insanely long British address. Mr. Lambley fumbled under the pile of fur and squinted to read his own note. “Oh, my,” he muttered.
“You have been chosen, as a sign of good faith between the families to be the escort of one Stefano DeMarco von Jaeger—” she read just as her boss piped in with, “Minerva Fenstermacher von Jaeger!”
They both slumped back in their seats, shaking their heads in shock. As if on cue, Georgia’s phone vibrated in her pocket. “We need to talk soon – Steve,” she read.
“I guess we will have to deal with the Jaeger siblings sooner rather than later, Mr. Lambley,” she muttered. She flipped over the invitation and furrowed her brow as she saw an unfamiliar name scrawled in bold red script. “Who the hell is M. Ambrosius, Cesare of Western Europe and Colonial Territories?”
She hopped from her seat as her vampire began to wheeze uncontrollably. He gawked at the name and clutched his chest. “Oh, we have to find a reason not to go. You need to be ill! Yes, humans get ill easily—”
“Mr. Lambley, I haven’t had a sick day in the thirty years of my life, now calm down—”
“Well get in a family way and be unable to fly!” Geoffrey countered, “I’m sure we can find someone—”
“Mr. Lambley!”
“I could forget I ever saw it. People know that I’m weak and scatterbrained—” he stammered as his face went from ice-white to florid red with every labored breath. Finally, his young assistant had to shake his already shuddering shoulders until he focused on her.
“Miss Sutherland, you simply don’t understand. If he’s going to be there, no good will come of this wedding or this ball.”
“He who?”
“My great grandfather. . . Merlin,” the vampire finally said.
“So, are you going to speak to me?” Paige asked as she slid off the highway. Morgan watched the blur of restaurant and store signs out the window while tapping his fingers against his briefcase.
“Your mom is more terrifying than the vampires I had to sit with today,” he said, still not looking her way. “He was in town—”
“I know,” Paige snapped a little too quickly.
“Of course, you did,” Morgan growled.
Paige rolled her eyes. “Nadia told me, OK?” she said. “I saw the car, not him.”
Morgan kept his eyes firmly planted towards the horizon. “He was at the meeting today, but you knew that, didn’t you?”
Paige tapped her nose. The traffic had inexplicably stopped, and three cars tried at once to cut in front of her truck. She snarled at the SUV that now blocked two lanes of traffic.
“He asked how you were,” Morgan sighed.
“That’s nice,” she muttered. “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” she howled before deftly slipping her Chevy into the right lane and slipping around the asshole in the black land-barge. Her claws shot out from under her nails and dug into the leather of the steering wheel.
“I really don’t think we need YouTube videos of a werewolf on Highway Seventy-N
ine, Paige,” Morgan growled.
“Fuck off!” She cringed the moment the words left her lips. “Sorry, it was a rough day at work.”
“At the gym? Nadia push you too hard? What was it today?
Lifting tires? Obstacle courses? Blowing up meth labs?”
Paige nearly hit the sedan in front of her. She slammed on the brakes, shoving them against the polyester seat belts. She sighed with relief as she managed to muscle onto the shoulder and slip around to her side street. From the new angle, she could see the fender bender causing all the traffic. She waited until she was safely tucked into her open carport before opening her mouth again.
“You knew?” she asked.
This time Morgan tapped his nose. “I can walk back to my place from here. Thanks for the lift,” he muttered as he slipped out of the car.
“Oh no, you don’t!” she barked. At the sound of her command, he stopped cold in his tracks. He rubbed the back of his neck and shook his head ferociously as he muttered under his breath.
“Really, not fair,” he mumbled as she darted around in front of him.
She took his hand and stared up at him with her big, brown eyes.
As the moonlight hit them, they lightened dramatically as the irises widened to cover her cornea.
“You are using literal puppy eyes,” he snarled.
“I just want a chance to talk to—”
“To what? To your mate? To your happy little plaything that you can bark orders to willy-nilly?” he snarled.
“To talk like human beings!” she roared.
Morgan snarled, showing off his own fangs. The light played with his eyes as well, and the blue now stretched from corner to corner.
He took a deep, raspy breath, and his voice dropped into a husky, inhuman register. “Humans lie to each other all the time. I thought we were past that—”
“Don’t you get all high and mighty with me, Morgan,” she snarled.
“I smell blood on you too and it isn’t human—”
“Two of the damn vampires got upset over their drug operations in the Mid-South failing all of a sudden. Do you have any idea what happens when two bloodsuckers get pissy? Lorcan had me escort them out.”
“And you took a potshot at one,” Paige said as she licked the back of his hand.
“You’re damn right, I did. Most fun I’ve had reviewing the books all month,” he said, closing his eyes as Paige continued to work her tongue around his hand. “And how was your day today, sweetie?”
Paige shimmied next to him and started nuzzling his chest. “Oh, you know, the usual,” she said sweetly before gnawing off a button and spitting it onto the street. “Did some stretches, a little cardio, and then drove a baseball bat through a bloodsucking animal down near Graceland.”
“Hey, Kyle let me borrow this shirt,” he growled as another button landed on the pavement. “And we are out in the open—”
She dragged him back under her carport. Before they made it to the side door, they could hear thumping against the walls. “Kyle still has company, I guess. Your place?” she asked as she grabbed the doggie bag from behind her seat.
“Do you really want to do this now?” Morgan asked. One look in Paige’s eyes had him leading her back down the street towards the very end of the cul-de-sac. “We both know exactly what is going to happen,” he protested weakly.
He had barely swung open the door when Paige pounced on top of him and slammed him to the floor. His briefcase and the leftovers went sprawling across the shag carpet as the ferocious little thing ripped open his shirt. The she-devil growled as she was met with an infuriating white cotton undershirt and a belt buckle in her way. One flick of her claws sliced her prize open, and Morgan sneered at his destroyed undergarments. “Oh, you’ll pay for that,” he snarled before yanking off her sweater. His eyes widened as he saw the faint traces of scrapes around her midsection.
She pointed to the darkest splotch. “Bastard got lucky and hit me with his bong,” she said before picking a tiny shard of glass out of her skin. As soon as the offending object was gone, her epidermis knit itself closed in record time.
“You can’t keep doing this,” Morgan spat out as he was fumbling for the latches on the back of her bra. He ended up tearing one of them from the backing and sent the entire horrid contraption flying
over his coffee table. Paige lifted his head up, kissed him roughly, and then slammed him back onto the floor.
“And why not?” she asked as she unceremoniously yanked down Morgan’s pants.
He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her down so that he could once more look her feral eye-to-eye. She responded by slipping down her own bottoms. His eyes rolled back as he fumbled for words.
“I’m waiting,” she said in a singsong little voice as she slid right on top of him.
“Dammit, sex first,” he growled as he rolled her over and proceeded to screw the hell out of her. Only after a solid fifteen minutes of nail scratching, thrusting, yowling and howling did Paige finally roll on her side and toy with the little strings on the carpet.
“Sorry about that,” she said.
“You’re not, and you know it,” Morgan muttered as he stared at his popcorn ceiling.
“It’s rough, you know, when you’re all frustrated,” she confessed.
“It was a day full of, you know—”
“Violence,” Morgan offered.
Paige continued to toy with the green and gold strands. One of her claws snagged in the pile. She yanked her pinky free and stared in wonder at the little tuft of fuzz now stuck in the crack of her black and red talon. Morgan reached over and ran his fingertips gingerly along her spine, feeling every contour of the new bulge and stopping only when he reached the scar at the base.
“You hate it, don’t you?” she asked weakly.
“I kind of guessed that you had another tail growing in there Paige,” Morgan confessed.
“Really?”
Morgan pulled her over so she could curl against his side. He gave a little smirk. “You forget that I see you naked more often than in clothes lately,” he said, kissing the top of her head.
“Werewolf sex drive, who knew,” Paige sighed. “I just thought that if I didn’t say anything that—”
“That it would somehow go away?” Morgan offered. “Newsflash, life doesn’t work like that. You can’t wish away your tail any more than I can wish away being a vampire’s flunky. We have to accept our reality from time to time.”
She rested her head on his chest and looked guiltily at the long rows of scars that cut his otherwise flawless physique in half. Her nails fit perfectly into all five slashes. “You didn’t answer me though.
Do you? Do you ... hate it?”
“I don’t hate the fact that you have a tail, Paige,” Morgan sighed.
“It’s strangely sexy to a, you know, thing like me—”
“I am sensing a but coming,” Paige said wistfully as she curled up against his side even closer.
“But you can’t keep lying to me, Paige. Well you can, but don’t you think I deserve a little bit better?” he asked softly.
“How do you work “I’m a vampire slayer by day” into casual conversation?” she asked.
“Seems like you just did,” Morgan laughed weakly. “I figured it was you and Nadia and maybe Toy being the enforcers around here.
Lorcan pays you well to clean up any — what do they call them?”
“Animals.”
“— Animals around here. I’m the one who makes sure your expenses are paid, for your little retreats. I know about New Orleans, Jackson, Birmingham, need I go on?” Morgan asked.
Paige twisted around so she could see his face. “Wait, you’ve known the whole time, and you never said a word?” she asked.
“I wanted you to tell me, Paige,” Morgan said, finally looking her right in the eyes. His irises had returned to normal human blue. “I just wanted you to trust me or at least not assume that I’m just some stupid brute—”
“It’s not just me and Nadia. Toy and Sammie also fight. The twins are our backup along with Bernard,” she confessed.
“Bernard too, eh. Let me guess, he’s the one that blew up the meth lab that was all over the news, the one that yielded two highly decomposed and unidentifiably burned bodies.”
Paige nodded.
“And you have no problems just killing—?”
“Don’t you dare call them people, Morgan. You, of all people, can’t possibly think that those monsters are—”
Morgan’s face darkened. “You’re right, they are monsters. They are monsters that have taken away everyone I’ve ever loved, everyone except you, so you’ll excuse me if I’m a little upset that you are going after them—”
“I am trying to get rid of the bad ones!” she protested.
“I hate to break it to you, Sweetheart, but they are all bad ones in the end, and if you run into a real one like my uncle, like my father did, then you know exactly what will happen; and don’t you for a second think that Lorcan will stick his undead ass out for any of us,”
Morgan growled. “Oh, I see that look, Paige, but you know I’m right
—”
“Lorcan isn’t like the others—”
“Yeah, he’s worse. He has us all tricked into doing the dirty work for him,” Morgan snarled. He paused as Paige rolled to her feet and began stomping across his living room. “Hit a nerve?” he called after her.
“I’m not getting into this now,” Paige snarled as she yanked one of his shirts out of the dresser and started making herself presentable. Morgan didn’t even bother putting on clothes as he sauntered behind her. “I also didn’t want to sleep on the floor,” she said as she stomped towards his bed.
“So, you are staying the night?” Morgan asked with a raised brow.
“Of course, I am,” Paige muttered. “I love you, even when you are being an impossible ass.”
He slid into bed next to her and yanked her close. He nuzzled her mountain of hair and gave her a quick kiss on the temple. “Aww, I know you love me because I’m an impossible ass,” he said.
“Maybe,” she sighed. “I’m sorry, I keep slipping into this stupid alpha bullshit, Morgan. It’s hard for me to open up anymore. It’s so much more comfortable just to bark a few orders and it’s not fair to you—”
Morgan silenced her with another kiss. “Just try to remember us little dogs from time to time,” he whispered. “Besides, I can’t fault you
entirely when I’ve been keeping something from you.”
“Tell me what it is,” Paige snapped. She cringed again. “I mean, what is it, if you want—?”
“I finally did it, Paige,” Morgan said softly.
“Did what?”
“I’ve finally traced the vampire’s money. I’ve finally gotten inside,”
he said. “For the first time ever, I got past the bastard who sold us out. The one who worked with Irvine and Ivan and the crazies—”
“Wait, what are you saying?” Paige asked.
“I’m saying that I’m this close to tracing exactly who set us up last year. We might finally find out not only who tried to kidnap us, but the added bonus of exposing whatever vampire has it out for our benefactor. Guess what? Whatever shadow vampire conspiracy is out there, it’s funneling a metric crapton of cash all towards a single city.”
“And where exactly are the evil vampires funneling their cash to?”
Paige dared to ask.
“London.”
3
“IT’S STILL a ridiculous concept to think of someone pulling a sword out of a stone,” Mr. Lambley sighed as he took a long sip out of his snifter. He sniffed the glass, and his grin widened. “Type-O is so nice when it picks up notes of age and desperation.”
“Well, Gary said he got extras from day-trader failures this week,”
Georgia said as she fiddled with the latest addition to their den. The little box connected her laptop to the big screen. She raised a brow, as her recent searches included not only all of Professor Adebayo’s Essays on Arthur and every Epic Rap Battle of History, but also something titled “Vampire Jackrabbit Porn”.
