TWO
Anticipating the visit from the “head government honcho,” whoever the hell he was, I couldn’t figure out why in the hell I was in such a frenzy about finding a matching sock. After only finding a single sock in my drawer and putting it on, I’d been in search of another one, hopefully a matching one, when Nora had come to deliver the news of the head honcho’s impending visit.
The moment she’d left, I’d thrown my search into overdrive, rechecking my sock drawer for any additional socks, maybe a stray one in the back, but I’d found it empty, maddeningly. I’d then flown into the bathroom to check the laundry hamper. No luck there, either. The hamper was empty. And that’s when I’d remembered that Nora had taken my laundry in a bag that morning. The single sock on my one foot was likely the only sock in my apartment.
“Oh, dammit.”
With all my shoes having been confiscated earlier that week, I realized that I now had two choices. I could greet my “visitor” and possible assassin barefoot, which I absolutely did not want to do, or I could greet them with one sock on, which I absolutely did not want to do, either. It just seemed a very undignified and bizarre way to greet a man I might be attempting to kill, if he made any attempt to try to kill me, anyway.
I didn’t want to greet him with one sock on for the obvious reason of not wanting to appear like an imbecile, and I didn’t want to greet him barefoot because, in addition to the fact that that just seemed overly casual and strange, I’d always hated my feet. On the smaller side and blocky, with short toes pretty much all the same length, they’d always struck me as borderline disfigured.
People often described them as “cute” or “precious” or “darling,” which, although I understood that people were just trying to be kind, always rankled me. I’d always wanted feet that were longer and elegant, feet that I could show off instead of always trying to keep them hidden and disguised with socks and shoes.
When it came to the man who’d be arriving at my apartment soon, I really wasn’t sure why I even cared. So he'd see my little block feet if I answered the door barefoot. So he might think my feet were weird, on top of the general weirdness of a person receiving visitors barefoot. So what.
This was a man who was possibly coming to kill me, and who I was possibly going to kill first. It shouldn't have mattered to me what the head honcho man thought about me or my feet. But it did, at least a little. I really wasn’t even sure why, except for maybe just a touch of simple human vanity, or maybe a desire for full dignity was the right way to put it.
Lord only knows that living as a captive during the previous week, a captive who’d had her shoes confiscated, and a captive not even allowed to step foot out her own apartment door, I’d felt more than slightly deprived in the dignity department.
I hadn’t yet made up my mind whether to go with bare feet or one sock-foot when I heard a knock on the door.
“Oh, no. Dammit.”
I was in my bedroom, but the knock had been loud enough for me to hear it, even though the apartment door was down a short hallway and across the fairly large living room to the foyer. It had been the knock of a person who was insistent on being let in and wasn’t used to waiting. This almost struck me as funny, since I was pretty sure the head honcho could just let himself right in with a key.
I jerked open my underwear drawer, wondering if I’d maybe accidentally thrown a pair of socks in there the last time I’d put laundry away. However, I found nothing. “Dammit.”
The loud, insistent knock sounded again, and I began striding out of my bedroom, feet padding on the hardwood flooring. “Just give me a minute!”
In the foyer, there was a shoe rack that used to contain some of my shoes before they’d been confiscated, and I had a sliver of hope that maybe at some point, I’d peeled off a pair of socks and set them on the rack. I knew this hope was one in a million, though. For one thing, being that I’d been confined to the apartment as a prisoner, I hadn’t been taking off shoes and socks upon entering and exiting the apartment because, of course, I hadn’t been entering and exiting the apartment.
For another thing, even if I had been, leaving socks hanging around just wasn’t something I’d ever normally do. I’d always been into order and cleanliness, unable to even sit down and relax until everything was in its place.
When I reached the foyer and the shoe rack, I saw that my suspicion had been right. I hadn’t left any socks on the rack, not a single one. Frustrated, I heaved a sigh, and a moment later, the loud, insistent knocking sounded again. It was so loud, in fact, that now that I was near it, I jumped a mile, thoroughly startled.
“Just a minute! Just a damned minute, okay?”
I glanced down at my feet, wondering again if I should go sockless or at least keep on the one I had. I wondered if maybe the latter would make the man that was surely behind the door feel a bit bad about having made me come to the door so hastily with only one sock. Like he had a conscience and could feel bad about anything, though. I knew that as a government agent holding someone captive, he probably didn’t even have a conscience.
Having a flash of inspiration, I realized that Nora hadn’t confiscated a soft, fuzzy pair of sky blue slippers in my closet. With my mind racing, I tried to imagine which of the three scenarios would afford me the most dignity. First scenario, me answering the door barefoot; the second, me answering with only one sock on; and the third, me answering wearing fuzzy slippers with my jeans and sweatshirt.
I’d just decided to dash back to my bedroom for the blue slippers when another knock sounded, followed by the sound of a deep male voice.
“I’m allowing you to answer your own door as a courtesy to you, but if you don’t open it within three seconds, I’m going to assume you're trying to make some sort of escape attempt, and I’m going to go ahead and let myself in. Your door is already unlocked. You have three seconds.”
Suddenly my block-shaped feet, dignity, and fuzzy slippers were the furthest things from my mind.
With my pulse accelerating, I grabbed the doorknob and yanked the door open. “Oh, you're allowing me to answer my own door as a courtesy to me? Well, how terribly courteous of you. How very….”
I swallowed and fell silent. The burning lava that had flooded my veins at what had been said to me had quickly cooled upon me getting a look at the speaker. He certainly didn’t look like any government agent I’d ever seen in my life.
Tall, dark-haired, impossibly handsome, and extremely well-built, he stood with a hand on the door frame with his expression expectant, as if waiting for me to continue. “‘How very’ what? Please…go right ahead and finish your thought.”
This man had eyes the color of dark, angry storm clouds, which somehow underscored what he’d said.
Tongue-tied, I had no idea what to say. I had no idea what I'd been starting to say. All I knew was that my heart was hammering loudly in my ears, and I just wanted the devastatingly attractive man in front of me to leave.
With my hand seeming to move almost of its own accord, I began slowly closing the door. “I don't want any visitors right now, so please leave.”
The gray-eyed man stuck a black-booted foot in the doorway to stop it from closing. “No.”
*
I just hadn't expected the government “head honcho” to be so drop-dead gorgeous. I hadn’t expected him to have a muscular chest that appeared to have been carved from marble. I hadn’t expected him to have a strong, square jaw and a gaze so intense that it almost seemed to look right into my very soul. I certainly hadn’t expected him to have lightly tanned skin.
Nothing Nora had told me had prepared me for all this.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, standing in front of my impossibly handsome visitor, I had something I could only think of as a “memory explosion,” although this had nothing to do with him, specifically. It had to do with my past, basically everything that had happened to me in my life up until age twenty-four, when I’d developed amnesia after a car accident. Since then, friends had filled me in on some details of my life, and I’d remembered some myself, although just vague bits and pieces. Now, however, it was like I almost remembered it all, having regained my memory in some sort of a burst that had hit me like a lightning strike.
I now remembered that I’d been some sort of a witch in my “past life” before the car accident, and I wondered if maybe this is what I’d heard Nora and one of the government agents talking about when they’d mentioned my “powers.” I also now remembered that at one time, I’d been fully aware of the existence of vampires. In fact, I’d even dated one.
I’d actually been in love with a vampire named James Thorn, who was the leader of a vampire group called the Dormio Coven. I’d been with him for maybe two years. Only now, from what I could recall, James was their former leader because he was dead. He’d been killed in some sort of a confrontation with a vampire named John Winter, who had then assumed leadership of the Dormio Coven.
From what I’d heard at the time and from what I'd been told, James had suspected John of plotting to kill him, so he’d tried to kill John first, and John had won. Which had all sounded about right to me. Even though I’d given my heart to James, I couldn’t deny that he’d been paranoid and prone to violent rages. He’d never been violent with me, personally, but I’d seen it many times. I’d seen his wild, out-of-control rage.
Attacking John absolutely seemed like something he’d do, and when I’d heard that James had been killed, I hadn’t been able to stop myself from feeling that he’d deserved it. I hadn’t even felt that bad. Which, naturally, had troubled me. I’d loved James, as I’d told myself over and over, so I hadn’t been able to figure out why I hadn’t felt much pain at his loss.
All this was no longer important. What was important was why I was in the situation I was currently in, facing a government head honcho who might try to kill me. To my surprise, I found that I couldn’t even focus very well on this, though. I was now having too many recollections of my former life before the car accident.
I recalled that sometime in the seventies, the government had become aware of the existence of witches, shifters, and vampires. Because of this, the Detroit-based witch coven that I’d been a part of had felt free to step out of the shadows we’d been hiding in ever since the coven had been established hundreds of years earlier. After all, with half-man, half-animal shifters now on the government’s radar, it didn’t seem like witches should have to hide from the government, especially since they already seemed to know.
The vampires didn’t feel like they should have to hide any longer, either. There were two factions of them that I recalled, one of them being the Dormio Coven. They were named what they were because their home base hundreds of years earlier had been a town called Dormio’s Creek, just outside of Detroit.
The Dormio Coven was the oldest vampire coven in the state, so old that no one even remembered when they’d first arrived, or even how the first of them had been made into a vampire. There was some lore about the first original vampire in North America having come from Romania in the seventeenth century.
During the time period I was recalling, the other vampire group in the area hadn’t even had a name, and their numbers were small. James had told me that they were unspeakably cruel, which was saying a lot, since James and his coven could be pretty cruel themselves. For this reason of unspeakable cruelty, James had vowed to kill all the members of this smaller group. But before he could, my own personal earth-shattering disaster had happened.
My entire witch coven had been killed. All my sister-witches and our mother figure, Aurelia, all gone. They’d all been slaughtered. All of them with their throats bitten out and their blood completely drained when I had returned home from taking a simple brisk walk, a simple brisk walk that had saved my life.
For hours and hours, I’d just sat among my family members’ pale, completely still bodies, in complete shock. We’d known that the vampires from the smaller group were a threat to us, but being that I’d had the protection of James, who was the Dormio Coven’s leader, we hadn’t thought we’d ever be attacked. Not to mention that we’d figured that if we ever were attacked, our magic would be enough to defend ourselves with.
Because I was the strongest witch in the coven, stronger even than Aurelia at this point, my magic would likely have been enough to turn back any and all vampires. However, of course, I hadn’t been there. I hadn’t been there for the only real family I’d ever known in my life. Instead, I’d been out for a bit of fresh air.
From what I could recall now, I’d started out in life as a regular girl, not knowing that I had any supernatural powers or any special “were-gene.” My parents had been drug addicts and alcoholics, and I’d grown up in a series of equally terrible foster homes until I’d run away at the age of fifteen.
I’d quickly learned that the streets of Detroit were no place for a teenage girl to wander alone, but I’d tried my best to make it anyway, begging for spare change for food and sleeping in alleyways, always hidden behind dumpsters. However, one night, I’d been discovered by a man who wanted to add me to the group of prostitutes who worked for him.
When I’d resisted him, he’d tried to drag me away, but I’d fought him, stunning myself by shooting a beam of bright red light from my palm, almost like liquid fire, when I’d been flailing around trying to hit him. This “liquid fire” had knocked him unconscious, and that’s when Aurelia had joined the scene, seemingly coming out of nowhere.
She had told me that she was a witch and had demonstrated a few fiery light tricks of her own. She and her coven worked within the city, using their supernatural gifts to protect as many people as they could from various crimes. They usually didn’t stumble along teenage girls with latent powers in the course of their work, though. Aurelia wanted to know if I’d like to join their group. Not even hesitating, I said I would.
About seven years later, I’d become acquainted with James. Aurelia hadn’t known too much about the Dormio Coven and hadn’t wanted me to get involved with them, but sparks had already flown between me and James, and my heart made me get involved anyway.
Two years later, the attack on my coven had happened. After my initial several hours of shock upon finding my entire coven dead, I’d wanted to die. I'd tried to die. I’d cut my wrists in an attempt to try to bleed to death, and when I hadn’t been able to cut deep enough, I’d tried to use my own magic against myself, directing my fiery beams of light at my heart.
By this point, my beams of light were strong enough to instantly kill a grown man, which I’d done once when I’d come upon a man trying to stab a girl dressed in high heels, a miniskirt, and a lacy black bra, even though she didn’t look a day over twelve to me, not that it even mattered exactly how old she was. My job was to protect all people, but especially women, regardless of age and regardless of what they were doing out on the streets.
I’d knocked the attacking man unconscious at first, but he’d come right back around and immediately had begun stabbing the girl again like some possessed, wild animal, so I’d warned him to stop or I would kill him. He hadn’t stopped, so I had killed him. Aurelia, whose strongest skill was free-flying through the air as fast as lightning, literally, had soon arrived and had raced the near-dead young girl to the hospital, and she had survived. Later, Aurelia and I had read in the papers that the girl was only ten.
However, despite the fact that my supernatural power could instantly kill a grown man, it hadn’t worked on me when I’d tried to use it to kill myself. Some iridescent shield of light just made the fiery light coming from my palm bounce right off my chest every time.
James had found me on the floor, writhing in such misery and pain that I’d begged him to just kill me. Being that he was a vampire, I’d offered him one of my bleeding wrists to try to entice him drink from it to drain me dry, but he’d refused to do this. He hadn’t even seemed tempted. Once they’d been turned for ten or twenty years or so, most vampires were plenty strong enough to resist human blood if they wanted to, and James had been turned over a century earlier.
Instead of giving in to my request for him to just kill me, he’d told me that it was clear that the smaller group of vampires in the area had killed my coven family and that what I should do was take revenge. He’d urged me to redirect my grief and pain to this goal, saying that it would make me feel better in the end. I was sure I’d never feel “better” about my coven being killed, but the thought of revenge had appealed to me, so I’d agreed.
We’d worked out a plan where I’d infiltrate the smaller coven of vampires and then kill their leader with my supernatural powers. This, James said, would help us both meet our goals. I would get revenge, and he would finally have this smaller coven of vampires dealt with and gone for good. Despite the fact that he and all the members of the Dormio Coven were incredibly strong, they hadn’t yet been able to kill the leader of the smaller coven.
However, before James and I had put our plan into action, he’d been killed by John, and John hadn’t seemed very interested in having me kill the leader of the smaller coven right then. He wanted to kill the leader himself, and he was confident that he could do it. Just in case, though, he wanted me to be his backup plan. But not long after, I’d had my car accident and had developed amnesia. Some close friends had filled me in on parts of my past, but not that part. And from what I remembered now, John had never contacted me again.
***
Recalling all this in the present, I figured that my revenge services were never needed after all, which made me feel slightly disappointed. At first, when John and I had come up with our plan, I’d been hesitant because I hadn’t wanted to just be the backup plan. I’d wanted to kill the leader of the smaller vampire coven myself. I’d also wanted a chance at doing it first, before John could even try. However, there hadn't really been anything I could do. John was the leader of the largest and most powerful vampire coven at the time, and as badly as I’d wanted to take the first crack at killing the smaller coven leader, it wasn’t like I could go toe-to-toe with John and his hundreds of vampires to claim that chance. I’d just had to settle for being the backup plan.
In the present, only a few moments had passed since I’d had my sudden “memory explosion” with the impossibly handsome government head honcho standing right in front of me. Apparently, my memory wasn’t quite done “exploding,” though, because I suddenly had another. Maybe I’d seen a picture at some point or something because within a blink, I realized the truth. The man standing in front of me wasn’t any kind of a government agent, head honcho or otherwise. He was the leader of the smaller group of vampires, who I now recalled had sometimes been called the Everglen vampires. What he was doing standing in front of me, I had no idea, but it was clear that John hadn’t been able to kill him, meaning that I now had a chance to, which made me thrilled that I was needed. I was finally going to have revenge on the Everglen coven leader for them killing my coven family.
There was just one problem, though. My supernatural powers hadn’t survived my car accident. Or they had, but were just taking a few years to “warm back up.” I wasn’t really sure if they’d ever come back. All I knew was that I’d been trying to do my fiery light beam since the very first day that I’d been told of my past after my car accident, but I’d had zero success with it. I just couldn’t do it anymore. I hadn’t been able to perform any of my minor powers, either, not that I really cared about those. It was with fiery beam of light that I now desperately wanted back in order to kill my vampire leader target. The only other weapon I had at present was a small combination wine cork remover and pocketknife that I’d jammed in my pocket shortly after Nora had told me that the “head government honcho” would be coming to see me.
Despite being a little anxious about recovering my supernatural powers now that I desperately needed them, I really wasn’t too worried yet. Now that I’d had a sudden burst of true memory, I figured I’d get my powers back in time, maybe even within a couple of weeks. After all, it only made sense that now that I could recall my supernatural gifts, whatever was inside me that gave me them would need some time to return to full strength.
In the meantime, after seeing why the leader of the Everglen vampires had come to pay me a visit and why the government apparently trusted him, I’d just bide my time, gaining his trust so that he’d be absolutely blindsided when I finally killed him by directing a fiery beam of light at his head, which I was certain would kill him. Ninety-nine percent certain, anyway.
Usually, vampires could only be killed by being staked or stabbed through the heart and then decapitated. But, even though it had been extremely rare throughout vampire history, vampires could also be killed by exceedingly powerful witches. I’d learned firsthand that this was true because I’d once had to defend myself from a nomadic vampire who’d been visiting the Dormio Coven. Being a fairly new vampire, he’d attacked me, not yet able to resist human blood.
So, acting on instinct, I’d “shot” him with a beam of fiery light, intending just to disable him. Instead, I’d killed him instantly. So I was ninety-nine percent sure that taking out my new personal target would be just as easy. Once I finally got my powers back, anyway. And as long as he came to visit me in my “government apartment jail” once again. However, at present, I was going to have to suffer through this visit completely powerless and unable to even injure my target, let alone kill him.
After the gray-eyed man had stuck his boot in the door a little further to keep me from closing it, I spent a long moment just gritting my teeth, trying to think of what choices I had and realizing I had none.
So I opened my apartment door and then stepped aside to let him enter, deciding that I wouldn’t let on that I knew who he was. “Just come right on in, then. You may as well, since you’re not giving me a choice about the matter.”
The gray-eyed man entered the apartment and came to a stop, towering over me. “You’re right about that. I’m not giving you a choice. I’ve been through a hell of a lot trying to break you out of here, and it’s time the two of us talked and got acquainted.”
A little confused about why he claimed to be trying to “break me out,” but uncertain of how to respond to this, I shrugged, hating the feeling of him towering over me. “Fine. Then you can follow me to the living room, and we’ll talk.”
I turned from him and began striding across the marble-floored foyer to the hardwood-floored living room, which was tastefully decorated with framed oil paintings, brass lamps, and crystal vases that Nora filled with fresh flowers every couple of days. I couldn’t deny that my accommodations in captivity could have been a lot worse. Although I hadn’t been able to leave, I hadn’t exactly been locked in a dungeon, either, at least not since I’d been moved from the subterranean prison cell I’d woken up in after being kidnapped.
I didn’t even glance back to see if the Everglen vampire leader was following me, but the sound of his boots on the wood flooring told me that he was, and closely. When I finally turned to face him in the living room, I found him a mere foot away from me. I hated it, hated our close proximity. Hated to be stunned by the sight of him all over again. Although I couldn’t even exactly remember how I knew he was the Everglen leader, I just really hadn’t recalled him being so damned attractive.
I wished he were average-looking, or even ugly, so that I’d just be able to zone out while he talked to me about whatever he wanted to talk about. However, something just told me that considering his looks and his long, well-muscled physique, zoning out might be impossible for me.
I’d not only be talking with the enemy, but I might very well be unable to resist liking his presence, at least a little, a thought that disgusted me. I didn’t want to like a single second of interaction with the vampire responsible for killing my coven family. For all I knew, he might have even done it himself, instead of just having his vampires do it.
Standing so close to me I could see the tiniest flecks of light gray within his coal-gray eyes, the Everglen leader spoke in a voice that held more than a hint of steel. “My name is Nick Alexander, and I’m the leader of the Everglen vampires. I’m aware that you’ve had amnesia these past few years, but maybe you remember hearing my name?”
His name did sound familiar, but I didn’t want him to know this because I didn’t want him to know what I did and didn’t recall. So I decided to not even address his question and instead, just breeze on by it.
Reminding myself that I was supposed to be gaining his trust in order to eventually kill him if I could, I tried to speak in a flat, emotionless voice that I hoped didn’t betray the malice I felt. “I’m Tiffany Abbott. And it’s fine if we sit and talk, if that’s what you’d like. I have to admit, I’m a little curious about why you’re here and why the government agents let you in.”
Unless they didn’t let him in, and instead, he killed them all to get to me, I suddenly thought, a little scared for the first time since I’d opened the door.