When Dusk Comes, page 22
“She lives!” Erin exclaimed in gleeful surprise as Charlie let herself into Lucía’s New York penthouse suite, the heat of the summer sun still clinging to her sweaty body. “And with a new look,” she added, eyeing Charlie’s bald head.
Charlie palmed her stubbly head. “I donated it,” she claimed, setting her black motorcycle helmet on the large round table in the foyer. “Have you and the Queen come up for air then?”
“Well, every now and again I give her a break,” Erin joked, coughing to hide the blush rushing over her cheeks. “It’s so good to see you. How are you?” she asked after greeting her friend with a long warm hug. She had talked to Charlie over the phone regularly but hadn’t seen her in person since before her attack. Until this moment, Erin worried that perhaps Charlie was hiding permanent injuries.
“All healed up,” Charlie promised. She stepped back and pulled open her black leather jacket so Erin could see she really was in one piece.
A deafening screech preceded a mess of black feathers flying like a targeted missile aimed at Charlie’s head. “What the … ah!” she yelled as she dove to avoid the aerial attack.
“Steven!” Erin squealed, chasing after the squawking bird. “I’m so sorry. He’s never done this,” she swore, trying to get her hands on the
toucan.
“Jesus!” Charlie covered her head when Steven took another stab at decapitating her with his multi-colored beak.
“Miss Lewis?” Two staff-members materialized to aid Erin in capturing Steven.
“It’s fine! I’ve got him,” she shouted from behind the curtains where the bird had become ensnared. The pair ran over to help anyway while Charlie remained behind the couch, sneering. Between the three of them, they wrangled the bird into his cage and avoided any fatalities
“I’m so sorry, Charlie. He never acts like that. He’s usually so friendly!”
Erin fixed her hair into a ponytail as she hurried to Charlie.
“Well,” She took off her jacket. “I can have that effect on animals sometimes,” she said with a nervous laugh.
“What? Why?”
“Lucía didn’t…” Charlie swallowed hard to move the lump forming in her throat. “She didn’t tell you?” Charlie pushed through the immovable mass, but it was more of a realization than a question.
“Tell me what?” Erin asked, half annoyed that there was yet another thing she didn’t know, and half concerned about what the new information might be.
Charlie gestured toward the couch, her red lips quirked in an uneasy smile. “Why don’t we sit?”
“Charlie, you’re scarring me,” Erin admitted before sitting on the edge of the sofa.
“I’m different,” Charlie stated the obvious.
“But you said you weren’t like Lucía.” Erin sifted through shattered memories from the night in Costa Rica.
“I’m not.” She sat on the farthest end of the couch. “But I’m not like you either,” she continued, picking at the cuticle around her fingernails.
The words landed like a sucker punch to Erin’s gut, and the uncomfortable silence stretched on between them. “What are you then?”
Erin’s heart raced as she waited for everything she knew about Charlie to evaporate.
“I don’t want you to be afraid of me,” she admitted quietly.
“I won’t be.” Erin scooted forward until she landed next to her fidgeting friend. “I could never fear you,” she promised, taking Charlie’s hand in hers. “So come on. Out with it.” Erin forced a smile and waited for Charlie to make eye contact.
“I’m a werewolf,” she admitted with her eyes shut. She only opened them when she realized Erin hadn’t jerked away from her.
“A werewolf?” she repeated to herself after a few moments of mulling it over. “Seriously?
“Yep,” Charlie answered, her uncomfortable smile hanging lopsided on her face.
“What are we talking here?” Erin took a thoughtful pause. “Like Michael J. Fox circa 1985 werewolf or Underworld: Rise of the Lycans werewolf?”
“Neither,” Charlie decided. “More like human to big ass wolf.”
Erin stared at Charlie for a moment. It didn’t take long to decide that if she could be in love with a vampire, she could sure as hell be friends with a werewolf. She pulled Charlie’s tense body into a hug.
“Aren’t vampires and werewolves supposed to hate each other?” Erin asked as she released Charlie.
“No,” Charlie waves a hand dismissively. “That’s Hollywood bullshit.
We do usually live independently of each other, but there’s no natural animosity. We don’t compete over food sources or territory, so there’s no real reason to fight. Sure, wolves and vamps are prone to pissing contests, but that’s an old school mentality. They tend to stick to populated cities, and wolves usually prefer wide open, sparsely occupied spaces.”
Erin shrugged with a nod. Sounded logical enough. “What do you eat?”
“Um.” Charlie scratched the back of her head. “Wild game usually. But sometimes just raw steak or something if I can’t hunt.” She looked down as she answered.
“Do you eat people?” Erin relaxed against the sofa.
“No!” She nearly jumped to her feet at the suggestion, and her face soured. “Gross.”
“Then why the hell would I be afraid of you?” she asked, like an old hand at the supernatural spectacle that was her life. “I wish you would have told me sooner though.” Erin’s eyes flash down to her interlaced fingers.
“That you would have trusted me to understand.”
“I’m sorry, Erin. It’s not that I didn’t want to tell you, but I guess I was worried it would change our friendship.”
“All right, enough of that!” Erin shook her out of her emotional state.
“So why doesn’t Steven like you?”
“He senses my wolf,” she explained. “He probably thought I was a threat to you. He’s a brave little guy, I’ll give him that. All it would take is one snap of my jaws and—”
“Charlie, don’t you dare!” Erin shrieked in horror. “Don’t you dare eat my bird!” she continued frantically, her body flooding with adrenaline.
“Not to worry. I wouldn’t hurt him.” She chuckled.
“Seriously, Charlie.” She glared intently. “Don’t fuck with my bird.”
“I promise!” She mimicked a scout’s honor before standing to serve herself a drink.
“So how come you’re working for Lucía?” Erin asked as they took a seat on the balcony to enjoy the burgeoning sunset. She hadn’t really wondered about it before but knowing about Charlie’s nature sparked her curiosity.
“It’s kind of a long story,” she said after a deep sigh.
Erin could almost sense the energy drain out of Charlie’s body. “I’m sorry,” she offered apologetically. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
“No, no. It’s fine.” Charlie placed her hand over her arm and gave it a squeeze. “It was just such an ordeal.” She took a cleansing breath before beginning. “I was taken as a teenager by a vampire hell-bent on fusing vampire and werewolf DNA. He thought it would cure their allergy to the sun and gain them some more strength as a nice bonus.”
“I’m so sorry, Charlie,” Erin said after noticing the sadness on her face.
“You don’t have to—”
“No, it’s okay. I’m okay.” She straightened her spine. “It wouldn’t have been all that bad, I guess, if he just took blood samples, but he had a scientific curiosity.”
Those words weren’t Charlie’s, and Erin’s stomach dropped. She couldn’t imagine what Charlie had lived through.
“So he injected me with vampire stem cells or something. He wanted to see what would happen.”
“Oh Charlie,” was all Erin could say as her heart broke for her friend.
“My mother sold me to him,” Charlie continued. “My grandmother went to Lucía for help after she couldn’t find me herself. Lucía could have
easily turned her away. She could have told her to seek out our pack leader.
We weren’t under her protection then. She had no obligation.” Charlie looked up at Erin, exposing her wounded eyes. Her spirit grew strong as she described her rescue rather than her internment. “But she came for me. She saved me. When my grandmother and I pledged ourselves to Lucía’s service as tokens of gratitude, some other wolves did too. And here we are.”
Charlie smiled more genuinely this time.
“Are you okay? After what he did to you.” Erin couldn’t find the right words. Perhaps there was just no way to ask someone how they came out of something like that.
“I’m okay,” Charlie assured more firmly. “But there are some lasting effects. I can’t change at will anymore. Now it happens on the full moon whether I want it to or not. It’s not a natural, seamless process anymore. It’s painful to change back, and it takes days to recover.” Her gaze found her boots once more. “And I lose myself when my wolf rises.”
The pair sat quietly as they watched the red-orange sun disappear behind the skyscrapers on the other side of Central Park. There was nothing Erin could say to ease the gouges in the fabric of Charlie’s soul. So instead she refilled Charlie’s drink when she heard the ice clanking around the empty glass.
* * *
“What did you find during your unauthorized investigation?” Lucía asked as soon as Charlie entered her office.
Charlie shifted her weight uncomfortably but didn’t immediately produce words.
“I trust you implicitly. This is why I did not reprimand you for your rogue mission, nor did I keep you from it.” The way the words left Lucía’s crimson lips clarified she knew of Charlie’s actions from the start. “Tell me what you risked your life and a gorgeous head of hair for.”
“I found a meeting place,” Charlie explained.
Lucía stood from her desk. “Where are they?” she asked, picking up her phone to call Samael. “A team must be assembled immediately.”
“They have fled, my Queen,” Charlie admitted with her eyes on the floor. “I found them a week ago and went to a gathering. I’m afraid I was spotted.”
Charlie recounted what she saw and heard in the warehouse. She explained that her return to the place, only a few hours later, resulted in her discovery that every trace of them was gone. For the last week Charlie had all but searched the sewers for the group but couldn’t find a single hint at their new location. Tucker had been unwilling or unable to help her any further, and she didn’t have any more body parts she was willing to part with to satisfy Ezekiel.
“What kind of magic did you sense?” Lucía asked when she got to the part about what she felt when she arrived.
“I really don’t know,” Charlie admitted. “It wasn’t like anything I had felt before, but I’m not well-versed in those arts. If I had to guess, I would say it was some kind of concealment charm. Maybe for humans? Or uninvited vampires?”
Lucía considered the information in lengthy silence. “So they murder and maim to spread fear, and then denounce me as the perpetrator of attacks
against my own innocent people?” Lucía asked rhetorically. “Impressive,”
she admitted. “Why did you not alert me immediately?” Lucía’s jaw tightened.
“I thought I could get more,” she said. “It was stupid.”
“Yes, it was,” Lucía said coldly. “You exposed yourself, and now they’ll be even more careful. At it is, it’s been impossible to learn anything of this group. They operate like ghosts and you squandered the single misstep they may have made to date.”
“I’m sorry for—”
“I am not interested in an apology,” Lucía interrupted. “I’ll always respect your fire, but do not defy me or deceive me like this again.”
This was the only warning Charlie would get. She nodded at her mistress, grateful that Lucía would not banish her from her inner circle or worse.
“Before your revelation I was going to task you with something important. Can I count on you to follow through without taking matters into your own hands?” Lucía asked as she sat and returned her phone to the desk.
“Yes, my Queen. What will you have me do?” Charlie asked, her head tilted downward in reverence.
“I need you to stay with Erin when I cannot,” she stated without further explanation.
“You can count on me,” Charlie said standing from her seat.
* * *
“What the hell is going on?” Erin asked, putting down the brown leather boots in her hand.
“Nothing you need to concern yourself with. I give you my word.”
Lucía approached Erin, who had stopped packing her duffle bag.
“So I shouldn’t care that you’re bailing on meeting my dad?” Erin’s tone was sharp and her gaze sharper.
“I am not bailing.” Lucía took a step back and out of Erin’s personal space. She could feel the anger coming off her body like steam from a boiling pot. “I have to attend to something urgent.” Lucía knitted her eyebrows together, giving her face a pained expression.
“Oh yeah? And what is that something? Oh wait, let me guess, secret vampire queen business and you can’t tell me,” Erin snapped.
Lucía took a deep breath and gritted her teeth to avoid snapping back at an understandably frustrated Erin. She reminded herself that she was her paramour and not her subject. There was no rule of decorum that required Erin to hold her tongue.
She stepped toward Erin once more. She ran her fingers through soft yellow hair and hoped that Erin could hear the sincerity in her words. “I swear that I will make this up to you. I do want to meet your family, and I think you know that, but right now I have to do this, and I cannot risk something happening to you.”
“Listen, I may not be a vampire, but I’m not frail either.” Erin’s eyes shimmered with emotion. “You don’t have to keep things from me. I can handle it. Charlie told me she was a werewolf today, and I didn’t bat an eye.
I can deal with shit, and maybe I can help.” She allowed Lucía to wrap her arms around her waist.
“I know that you’re strong, Erin. I do. It’s what I love about you,” Lucía confessed and laid a kiss on Erin’s jaw line. “But I could never live with myself for knowingly putting you in harm’s way.” She held Erin close to her. She hated being half a world away from Erin, especially during such turbulent times. But it was that instability that forced her away. She must take more direct action, and it was not something she could do while also keeping Erin safe. “I’ll only need a few days.” Lucía’s kiss concealed the newest notes to arrive. All containing a single word. Abdicate. The last one written in blood.
Erin stayed quiet for a long time. “I suppose I could use a vacation and some quality time with my dad,” she relented with a sigh. “I wouldn’t mind the break from the parade of video conferences, protocol reviews, and background checks.”
“Will you allow Charlie to accompany you?” Lucía asked, straightening. She knew Erin would be none too happy to have her regular security detail and hoped she’d accept Charlie’s presence. “I’ll conclude my business before the turn of the moon,” she added, thinking ahead to Erin’s concerns.
“Fine,” she replied with a huff. “But only because I was thinking of inviting her anyhow,” she asserted with her finger pointed at Lucía.
“Thank you.” Lucía moved Erin toward the bed. Each step was punctuated with a kiss. Each kiss was placed lower on Erin’s neck than the last.
* * *
“I will not ask you again,” Lucía threatened, blood staining her lips and dripping over the collar of her otherwise crisp white blouse.
“My Queen, I swear,” the wounded man groveled as he clung to life. “I don’t know anything.” He cried out after the pain shot up his spine and caused a momentary black out.
“I am not your queen.” Lucía sneered inches from the man’s sniveling face. “You expect me to believe you were the only one left unscathed, yet you recognized no one, nor were you at all involved?” Her measured words were venomous.
“I swear, I swear,” he cried, but Lucía could read the lie in his eyes. He knew death was imminent, yet he refused to yield. Lucía would get no more out of him. He wouldn’t identify who killed the three other members of his clan.
“You’re a traitor.” Lucía threw him hard against the ground, her face contorted in disgust. “Take him away,” she ordered the twins standing at either side of the door.
“You’ll never stop us!” The man exposed his fangs as he was dragged out of the room. “You can’t even hope to understand us,” he cried. “We will be the end of you!” His body jerked in an attempt to free himself, but the twins hold on like vice grips. “Your greedy reign is over! You are already dead and you don’t even know it,” he spit. “We are growing, and the Mistress has her hands around your throat.”
Lucía didn’t act on the impulse to kill him, which was very clearly what he wanted. “You will suffer, as you have made your people suffer,” she said before turning her back on bloodcurdling screams.
Chapter Ninteen
“So Charlie, you and Erin have really hit it off, huh?” Pete asked, turning over the full rack of ribs cooking on the barbecue, the mid-summer sun stinging the back of his neck.
“Sure have.” Charlie smiled.
“So then tell me,” he said, closing the grill. “What do you make of this girlfriend of hers?” He ambled to take a seat in the lawn chair next to Charlie.
“Oh!” Charlie stopped herself from spitting out homemade lemonade.
“Well,” she looked for the right words.
“Does she treat her right?” Pete tried to pry the words out of her mouth.
“Definitely.” She nodded emphatically. “She’d do anything for her.”
“Anything but meet her old man.” He laughed, creases forming around his eyes.
“I know she wants to, but she’s—”
“Very busy. I know,” he said, taking a sip of his Arnold Palmer.
“What are you two talking about?” Erin asked as she stepped out of the house with a handful of napkins and plates.
Charlie palmed her stubbly head. “I donated it,” she claimed, setting her black motorcycle helmet on the large round table in the foyer. “Have you and the Queen come up for air then?”
“Well, every now and again I give her a break,” Erin joked, coughing to hide the blush rushing over her cheeks. “It’s so good to see you. How are you?” she asked after greeting her friend with a long warm hug. She had talked to Charlie over the phone regularly but hadn’t seen her in person since before her attack. Until this moment, Erin worried that perhaps Charlie was hiding permanent injuries.
“All healed up,” Charlie promised. She stepped back and pulled open her black leather jacket so Erin could see she really was in one piece.
A deafening screech preceded a mess of black feathers flying like a targeted missile aimed at Charlie’s head. “What the … ah!” she yelled as she dove to avoid the aerial attack.
“Steven!” Erin squealed, chasing after the squawking bird. “I’m so sorry. He’s never done this,” she swore, trying to get her hands on the
toucan.
“Jesus!” Charlie covered her head when Steven took another stab at decapitating her with his multi-colored beak.
“Miss Lewis?” Two staff-members materialized to aid Erin in capturing Steven.
“It’s fine! I’ve got him,” she shouted from behind the curtains where the bird had become ensnared. The pair ran over to help anyway while Charlie remained behind the couch, sneering. Between the three of them, they wrangled the bird into his cage and avoided any fatalities
“I’m so sorry, Charlie. He never acts like that. He’s usually so friendly!”
Erin fixed her hair into a ponytail as she hurried to Charlie.
“Well,” She took off her jacket. “I can have that effect on animals sometimes,” she said with a nervous laugh.
“What? Why?”
“Lucía didn’t…” Charlie swallowed hard to move the lump forming in her throat. “She didn’t tell you?” Charlie pushed through the immovable mass, but it was more of a realization than a question.
“Tell me what?” Erin asked, half annoyed that there was yet another thing she didn’t know, and half concerned about what the new information might be.
Charlie gestured toward the couch, her red lips quirked in an uneasy smile. “Why don’t we sit?”
“Charlie, you’re scarring me,” Erin admitted before sitting on the edge of the sofa.
“I’m different,” Charlie stated the obvious.
“But you said you weren’t like Lucía.” Erin sifted through shattered memories from the night in Costa Rica.
“I’m not.” She sat on the farthest end of the couch. “But I’m not like you either,” she continued, picking at the cuticle around her fingernails.
The words landed like a sucker punch to Erin’s gut, and the uncomfortable silence stretched on between them. “What are you then?”
Erin’s heart raced as she waited for everything she knew about Charlie to evaporate.
“I don’t want you to be afraid of me,” she admitted quietly.
“I won’t be.” Erin scooted forward until she landed next to her fidgeting friend. “I could never fear you,” she promised, taking Charlie’s hand in hers. “So come on. Out with it.” Erin forced a smile and waited for Charlie to make eye contact.
“I’m a werewolf,” she admitted with her eyes shut. She only opened them when she realized Erin hadn’t jerked away from her.
“A werewolf?” she repeated to herself after a few moments of mulling it over. “Seriously?
“Yep,” Charlie answered, her uncomfortable smile hanging lopsided on her face.
“What are we talking here?” Erin took a thoughtful pause. “Like Michael J. Fox circa 1985 werewolf or Underworld: Rise of the Lycans werewolf?”
“Neither,” Charlie decided. “More like human to big ass wolf.”
Erin stared at Charlie for a moment. It didn’t take long to decide that if she could be in love with a vampire, she could sure as hell be friends with a werewolf. She pulled Charlie’s tense body into a hug.
“Aren’t vampires and werewolves supposed to hate each other?” Erin asked as she released Charlie.
“No,” Charlie waves a hand dismissively. “That’s Hollywood bullshit.
We do usually live independently of each other, but there’s no natural animosity. We don’t compete over food sources or territory, so there’s no real reason to fight. Sure, wolves and vamps are prone to pissing contests, but that’s an old school mentality. They tend to stick to populated cities, and wolves usually prefer wide open, sparsely occupied spaces.”
Erin shrugged with a nod. Sounded logical enough. “What do you eat?”
“Um.” Charlie scratched the back of her head. “Wild game usually. But sometimes just raw steak or something if I can’t hunt.” She looked down as she answered.
“Do you eat people?” Erin relaxed against the sofa.
“No!” She nearly jumped to her feet at the suggestion, and her face soured. “Gross.”
“Then why the hell would I be afraid of you?” she asked, like an old hand at the supernatural spectacle that was her life. “I wish you would have told me sooner though.” Erin’s eyes flash down to her interlaced fingers.
“That you would have trusted me to understand.”
“I’m sorry, Erin. It’s not that I didn’t want to tell you, but I guess I was worried it would change our friendship.”
“All right, enough of that!” Erin shook her out of her emotional state.
“So why doesn’t Steven like you?”
“He senses my wolf,” she explained. “He probably thought I was a threat to you. He’s a brave little guy, I’ll give him that. All it would take is one snap of my jaws and—”
“Charlie, don’t you dare!” Erin shrieked in horror. “Don’t you dare eat my bird!” she continued frantically, her body flooding with adrenaline.
“Not to worry. I wouldn’t hurt him.” She chuckled.
“Seriously, Charlie.” She glared intently. “Don’t fuck with my bird.”
“I promise!” She mimicked a scout’s honor before standing to serve herself a drink.
“So how come you’re working for Lucía?” Erin asked as they took a seat on the balcony to enjoy the burgeoning sunset. She hadn’t really wondered about it before but knowing about Charlie’s nature sparked her curiosity.
“It’s kind of a long story,” she said after a deep sigh.
Erin could almost sense the energy drain out of Charlie’s body. “I’m sorry,” she offered apologetically. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
“No, no. It’s fine.” Charlie placed her hand over her arm and gave it a squeeze. “It was just such an ordeal.” She took a cleansing breath before beginning. “I was taken as a teenager by a vampire hell-bent on fusing vampire and werewolf DNA. He thought it would cure their allergy to the sun and gain them some more strength as a nice bonus.”
“I’m so sorry, Charlie,” Erin said after noticing the sadness on her face.
“You don’t have to—”
“No, it’s okay. I’m okay.” She straightened her spine. “It wouldn’t have been all that bad, I guess, if he just took blood samples, but he had a scientific curiosity.”
Those words weren’t Charlie’s, and Erin’s stomach dropped. She couldn’t imagine what Charlie had lived through.
“So he injected me with vampire stem cells or something. He wanted to see what would happen.”
“Oh Charlie,” was all Erin could say as her heart broke for her friend.
“My mother sold me to him,” Charlie continued. “My grandmother went to Lucía for help after she couldn’t find me herself. Lucía could have
easily turned her away. She could have told her to seek out our pack leader.
We weren’t under her protection then. She had no obligation.” Charlie looked up at Erin, exposing her wounded eyes. Her spirit grew strong as she described her rescue rather than her internment. “But she came for me. She saved me. When my grandmother and I pledged ourselves to Lucía’s service as tokens of gratitude, some other wolves did too. And here we are.”
Charlie smiled more genuinely this time.
“Are you okay? After what he did to you.” Erin couldn’t find the right words. Perhaps there was just no way to ask someone how they came out of something like that.
“I’m okay,” Charlie assured more firmly. “But there are some lasting effects. I can’t change at will anymore. Now it happens on the full moon whether I want it to or not. It’s not a natural, seamless process anymore. It’s painful to change back, and it takes days to recover.” Her gaze found her boots once more. “And I lose myself when my wolf rises.”
The pair sat quietly as they watched the red-orange sun disappear behind the skyscrapers on the other side of Central Park. There was nothing Erin could say to ease the gouges in the fabric of Charlie’s soul. So instead she refilled Charlie’s drink when she heard the ice clanking around the empty glass.
* * *
“What did you find during your unauthorized investigation?” Lucía asked as soon as Charlie entered her office.
Charlie shifted her weight uncomfortably but didn’t immediately produce words.
“I trust you implicitly. This is why I did not reprimand you for your rogue mission, nor did I keep you from it.” The way the words left Lucía’s crimson lips clarified she knew of Charlie’s actions from the start. “Tell me what you risked your life and a gorgeous head of hair for.”
“I found a meeting place,” Charlie explained.
Lucía stood from her desk. “Where are they?” she asked, picking up her phone to call Samael. “A team must be assembled immediately.”
“They have fled, my Queen,” Charlie admitted with her eyes on the floor. “I found them a week ago and went to a gathering. I’m afraid I was spotted.”
Charlie recounted what she saw and heard in the warehouse. She explained that her return to the place, only a few hours later, resulted in her discovery that every trace of them was gone. For the last week Charlie had all but searched the sewers for the group but couldn’t find a single hint at their new location. Tucker had been unwilling or unable to help her any further, and she didn’t have any more body parts she was willing to part with to satisfy Ezekiel.
“What kind of magic did you sense?” Lucía asked when she got to the part about what she felt when she arrived.
“I really don’t know,” Charlie admitted. “It wasn’t like anything I had felt before, but I’m not well-versed in those arts. If I had to guess, I would say it was some kind of concealment charm. Maybe for humans? Or uninvited vampires?”
Lucía considered the information in lengthy silence. “So they murder and maim to spread fear, and then denounce me as the perpetrator of attacks
against my own innocent people?” Lucía asked rhetorically. “Impressive,”
she admitted. “Why did you not alert me immediately?” Lucía’s jaw tightened.
“I thought I could get more,” she said. “It was stupid.”
“Yes, it was,” Lucía said coldly. “You exposed yourself, and now they’ll be even more careful. At it is, it’s been impossible to learn anything of this group. They operate like ghosts and you squandered the single misstep they may have made to date.”
“I’m sorry for—”
“I am not interested in an apology,” Lucía interrupted. “I’ll always respect your fire, but do not defy me or deceive me like this again.”
This was the only warning Charlie would get. She nodded at her mistress, grateful that Lucía would not banish her from her inner circle or worse.
“Before your revelation I was going to task you with something important. Can I count on you to follow through without taking matters into your own hands?” Lucía asked as she sat and returned her phone to the desk.
“Yes, my Queen. What will you have me do?” Charlie asked, her head tilted downward in reverence.
“I need you to stay with Erin when I cannot,” she stated without further explanation.
“You can count on me,” Charlie said standing from her seat.
* * *
“What the hell is going on?” Erin asked, putting down the brown leather boots in her hand.
“Nothing you need to concern yourself with. I give you my word.”
Lucía approached Erin, who had stopped packing her duffle bag.
“So I shouldn’t care that you’re bailing on meeting my dad?” Erin’s tone was sharp and her gaze sharper.
“I am not bailing.” Lucía took a step back and out of Erin’s personal space. She could feel the anger coming off her body like steam from a boiling pot. “I have to attend to something urgent.” Lucía knitted her eyebrows together, giving her face a pained expression.
“Oh yeah? And what is that something? Oh wait, let me guess, secret vampire queen business and you can’t tell me,” Erin snapped.
Lucía took a deep breath and gritted her teeth to avoid snapping back at an understandably frustrated Erin. She reminded herself that she was her paramour and not her subject. There was no rule of decorum that required Erin to hold her tongue.
She stepped toward Erin once more. She ran her fingers through soft yellow hair and hoped that Erin could hear the sincerity in her words. “I swear that I will make this up to you. I do want to meet your family, and I think you know that, but right now I have to do this, and I cannot risk something happening to you.”
“Listen, I may not be a vampire, but I’m not frail either.” Erin’s eyes shimmered with emotion. “You don’t have to keep things from me. I can handle it. Charlie told me she was a werewolf today, and I didn’t bat an eye.
I can deal with shit, and maybe I can help.” She allowed Lucía to wrap her arms around her waist.
“I know that you’re strong, Erin. I do. It’s what I love about you,” Lucía confessed and laid a kiss on Erin’s jaw line. “But I could never live with myself for knowingly putting you in harm’s way.” She held Erin close to her. She hated being half a world away from Erin, especially during such turbulent times. But it was that instability that forced her away. She must take more direct action, and it was not something she could do while also keeping Erin safe. “I’ll only need a few days.” Lucía’s kiss concealed the newest notes to arrive. All containing a single word. Abdicate. The last one written in blood.
Erin stayed quiet for a long time. “I suppose I could use a vacation and some quality time with my dad,” she relented with a sigh. “I wouldn’t mind the break from the parade of video conferences, protocol reviews, and background checks.”
“Will you allow Charlie to accompany you?” Lucía asked, straightening. She knew Erin would be none too happy to have her regular security detail and hoped she’d accept Charlie’s presence. “I’ll conclude my business before the turn of the moon,” she added, thinking ahead to Erin’s concerns.
“Fine,” she replied with a huff. “But only because I was thinking of inviting her anyhow,” she asserted with her finger pointed at Lucía.
“Thank you.” Lucía moved Erin toward the bed. Each step was punctuated with a kiss. Each kiss was placed lower on Erin’s neck than the last.
* * *
“I will not ask you again,” Lucía threatened, blood staining her lips and dripping over the collar of her otherwise crisp white blouse.
“My Queen, I swear,” the wounded man groveled as he clung to life. “I don’t know anything.” He cried out after the pain shot up his spine and caused a momentary black out.
“I am not your queen.” Lucía sneered inches from the man’s sniveling face. “You expect me to believe you were the only one left unscathed, yet you recognized no one, nor were you at all involved?” Her measured words were venomous.
“I swear, I swear,” he cried, but Lucía could read the lie in his eyes. He knew death was imminent, yet he refused to yield. Lucía would get no more out of him. He wouldn’t identify who killed the three other members of his clan.
“You’re a traitor.” Lucía threw him hard against the ground, her face contorted in disgust. “Take him away,” she ordered the twins standing at either side of the door.
“You’ll never stop us!” The man exposed his fangs as he was dragged out of the room. “You can’t even hope to understand us,” he cried. “We will be the end of you!” His body jerked in an attempt to free himself, but the twins hold on like vice grips. “Your greedy reign is over! You are already dead and you don’t even know it,” he spit. “We are growing, and the Mistress has her hands around your throat.”
Lucía didn’t act on the impulse to kill him, which was very clearly what he wanted. “You will suffer, as you have made your people suffer,” she said before turning her back on bloodcurdling screams.
Chapter Ninteen
“So Charlie, you and Erin have really hit it off, huh?” Pete asked, turning over the full rack of ribs cooking on the barbecue, the mid-summer sun stinging the back of his neck.
“Sure have.” Charlie smiled.
“So then tell me,” he said, closing the grill. “What do you make of this girlfriend of hers?” He ambled to take a seat in the lawn chair next to Charlie.
“Oh!” Charlie stopped herself from spitting out homemade lemonade.
“Well,” she looked for the right words.
“Does she treat her right?” Pete tried to pry the words out of her mouth.
“Definitely.” She nodded emphatically. “She’d do anything for her.”
“Anything but meet her old man.” He laughed, creases forming around his eyes.
“I know she wants to, but she’s—”
“Very busy. I know,” he said, taking a sip of his Arnold Palmer.
“What are you two talking about?” Erin asked as she stepped out of the house with a handful of napkins and plates.
