Night's Promise (Children of The Night 6)

“Of course I am.”

Edna tapped her fingers on the arm of her chair, then sprang to her feet. “We’ll just have to stay out of Mara’s way,” she exclaimed.

Pearl shook her head. “And if we can’t?”

“Now who’s being negative?” Edna chided. “We can avoid her until the full moon,” she said, patting Pearl’s shoulder. “And then we’ll go home.”

Chapter Nine

Louise McDonald sat at her desk, idly thumbing through an old scrapbook. She found it hard to believe she had been in the vampire-hunting business for over thirty-five years. She had made a lot of kills in her long career. In all that time, she’d only let one get away. Mara. The so-called Queen of the Vampires.

Grunting softly, Lou sat back and propped her feet on the edge of her battered desk. Even though it had happened twenty-five years ago, she still recalled her meeting with Kyle Bowden, the foolish mortal who had fallen in love with Mara. Bowden was the only person she had ever met who hired her not to kill a vampire, but to locate one.

She had charged him extra for that. Good thing, too, she thought with a wry grin, since he’d still owed her money when he’d gotten himself killed.

She would have given a month’s pay to know the full story behind that odd relationship, and twice that to know what had happened to Mara, and whether her baby had been a boy or a girl, human or vamp or both. The kid would be grown now.

Lou glanced around her office. Tomorrow was supposed to be her last day. She was fifty-four. Time to retire. Vampire hunting was a young man’s game, or woman’s, as the case may be. But thinking of Mara gave her pause. Taking out the Queen of the Vampires would be a hell of a last coup. Something future hunters would talk about long after Lou was gone.

She reached for her phone, then punched in her sister’s number. Cindy answered on the second ring.

“Hey, Lou, what’s up?”

“Have you ever wondered what happened to Mara and her brat?”

Cindy snorted. “Where would you even start to look after all this time?”

Lou pulled the morning paper from the pile on her desk. She subscribed to most of the big-city papers. It had long been predicted that newspapers would disappear, and they had, for a few years, but had recently made a comeback. “Three hunters have been killed in the last few days, one of them here, in California. You remember Julia LaHood? She’s mentioned in one of the L.A. papers.”

“LaHood? Wasn’t her old man a hunter a while back?”

“Yeah. I heard Mara got him, although there was never any real proof. What if Julia got wind of Mara’s whereabouts and decided to avenge her father?”

“That’s a big stretch after all this time.” Cindy paused. “You’re not thinking of going after Mara, are you?”

“One last hunt,” Lou said. “For the biggest game of all.”

Chapter Ten

Sheree sat at the breakfast table, the morning paper spread before her as she sipped a cup of English tea. Having little interest in the latest Hollywood scandal or the president’s upcoming vacation, she skimmed the headlines until the word vampire caught her eye.

Leaning forward, she quickly read the article under the headline VAMPIRE IN THE CITY? According to the article, the body of forty-year-old Ira Selkirk of Granite Falls, Washington, had been found in the alley behind Chin Lee’s China Palace, the victim of an apparent robbery. A broken neck was listed as the cause of Mr. Selkirk’s death. According to the coroner’s report, the man had also lost a pint or two of blood, though there were no injuries to the body other than the one that had killed him. His companion, Julia LaHood, who reported Mr. Selkirk missing and identified the body, said she had last seen Mr. Selkirk at Nosferatu’s Den the night before. She had no memory of leaving the club with Mr. Selkirk, and no information regarding his death.

Stunned, Sheree sat back. Drained of blood? Last seen at Nosferatu’s Den. She and Derek had been at the Den last night. Had there been a vampire there, too? Stars above, she and Derek could have been the vampire’s victims. It was a sobering thought.

Lifting a shaky hand to the side of her neck, she remembered Derek asking if she had considered the danger in looking for a vampire, his warning that creatures of the night were born predators.

If the article in the newspaper was to be believed, he’d been right. The thought troubled her. Blinded by her determination to prove vampires existed, she had blithely ignored the danger. A very real danger.

Suddenly, finding a member of the undead community didn’t seem like such a bright idea.

Maybe it was time to stop looking for creatures of the night and turn her attention to something a little less life threatening, like walking barefoot on hot coals or jumping out of airplanes without a parachute.

Sipping her tea, she wondered if Derek had seen the morning paper.

With an irritated sigh, Mara tossed the newspaper on the floor.

“Bad news?” Logan asked, peering up at her through narrowed eyes.

“Some stupid editor splashed the word vampire in the headlines.”

Logan uttered something unintelligible from under the sheets.

“Derek should have dumped the body where it wouldn’t have been found.”

“Yeah, and maybe he would have bled out while he was at it.”

Mara glared at her husband even though he couldn’t see it. The man could be infuriating. But, what was even worse, he was right. Vampires healed almost instantly from most wounds, but there were exceptions. Injuries caused by silver or by wooden stakes dipped in holy water tended to be more painful and last longer. Of course, she was immune to such things, but her son wasn’t, though he would be when he was older.

Taking a deep breath, she slid under the covers and curled up against Logan’s side. She ran her hands over his back and shoulders. His skin was cool and smooth. She knew every inch of it as well as she knew her own. He was the most incredible lover she’d ever had. She draped one arm over his waist, her fingers running back and forth over his belly, grinned when he sucked in a ragged breath. “You don’t really want to go to sleep, do you?”

“It’s why I’m in bed.”

She ran her tongue along his spine. “There are other things to do in bed.”

In a move that would have been a blur to anyone but Mara, he rolled over, ripped the nightgown from her body, and tucked her beneath him. “Is this what you had in mind, woman?”

She grinned up at him, then batted her eyelashes. “Why, you sweet ol’ thing,” she purred in her best southern drawl, “however did you guess?”