Page 10 of Secret of the Vampire
“Killian, I have to. Mike can’t make it. I gave him some time off.”
“Take it back and tell him to go in.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to do that.”
“I can’t protect you during the day,” he gritted out. “I can’t be there with you. And that thing is here, in our city.”
Lizzy stopped trying to get around him and let him pull her against his chest, mumbling words of reassurance to her mate.
While they were distracted with each other, I wandered closer to the doorway that led to the front room, searching through the windows for Alex, but he was nowhere to be seen. I didn’t dare leave the room though, even as exhausted as I was. I knew Killian wasn’t finished with me.
When it sounded like they’d reached a compromise—translated into Lizzy going to the shop as she wanted to and Killian having to deal with it or tie her to the bed—I refilled my whiskey and settled onto one of the kitchen stools.
A few minutes later, Killian joined me and I told him everything that had happened in more detail.
Well, almost everything.
Now, I just had to hope Alex would also keep silent about where he was and who he was with tonight.
Chapter 4
The Djinn
Ipulled up in front of the pile of lumber and sheet metal that used to be a house of sorts. The house the vampire should have died in.
However, I was so very glad she hadn’t.
Her illness had been a test I’d created. Taking a spell I’d found and infusing it with my own very different kind of magic, I had hoped it would be enough to take out a vampire. I had two reasons for doing this. The first was mostly for fun, because the blood suckers insisted on continuing to mate with the witches who should ultimately be in MY coven. Not theirs. However, a vampire’s blood bond was impossible to break, so there was no hope of severing it once they’d been fed on by their leach of a mate.
That is, unless one side of that bond no longer existed.
But unlike the vampires, if the witch was left alive, their physical body would just pick up its natural course where it had left off. They would begin to age naturally again, no worse the wear for their little trip to the immortal side. However, I’d learned from experience that this approach did nothing to bond the witches to me. Actually, they took extreme offense when I released them from the mating bond. Something that left me flabbergasted, to say the least.
On the flip side, however, a vampire would die without its mate’s blood, but I certainly couldn’t run around killing off the witches I wanted to recruit. That made no sense at all.
I’d needed another way. Something I wouldn’t be blamed for.
The second, more important reason, to leave the safety of my home and do what I’d done was much more personal. It had to do with my own blood. Family I’d been denied and who I hadn’t even known existed until I’d been tipped off that one of the witches here in the wonderful city of New Orleans had magic that was quite a bit…different. Darker, like my own. I’d needed a way to flush them out without scaring them away.
The curse I’d created was effective, but obviously took entirely too long to finish the job. This ended up being a good thing, for it gave the others time to figure out a cure. And that’s exactly what had happened. I knew a simple warlock would be unable to undo a djinn’s magic. And I’d been correct. The vampire’s savior hadn’t been a simple witch.
He was only part warlock.
And part djinn.
My new problem was that he was obviously quite taken with the vampire he’d saved, as he’d so happily proven to me tonight. But actually, that had also turned out to be a good thing. His little act of rebellion had revealed something to me. Something I never would have known otherwise.
Running my tongue over the roof of my mouth, I could still taste the voodoo in her blood. In her frantic haste to get back inside of the club, the vampire had cut herself, leaving behind this gift for me to find. Just a drop. But that was all that I’d needed. I wondered if she was even aware of the legacy she carried within her. Of what she was capable of.
If I’d known who she was, I never would have tried to kill her that first time. But it had been so easy to see how adored and protected the female was by the other vampires. Like a little sister. An easy target, if an unwilling sacrifice.
I also knew witches and vampires could not live in such close proximity to each other without some type of truce between them. And if history was any indicator, it would be an agreement of mutual benefit to them both. Which I deduced to mean that when the chips were down for one group, they wouldn’t hesitate to enlist the help of the other. And only one of the witches would have the talent to withdraw my curse.
One who was like me.
Imagine my surprise when I discovered there were two.
When my source here had told me the vampire had been cured, I didn’t dare to believe. But now that my great niece and nephew had been revealed to me, I could do what I’d come back here to do: convince them to come back to the north with me where they belong. Or they would soon discover they are on the wrong side of the battlefield. For when their coven of witches discovered whose blood ran through their veins, they would no longer be welcome. They would become too much of a threat.
