A Vampire's Claim (19 page)

Instead she put her effort into reviving their small fire, now that night had descended, using the kindling he’d thoughtfully collected.

With his intrigued direction, she used his odd assortment of stores, including tubers, bark and flowers he’d picked up on today’s travails, to make a passable meal with his dried meat.

When at last she brought him the plate, Danny had a strong desire to feed him with her own fingers, but suspected that might lead her into selfish temptation to do more than that. He was so tantalizing, she couldn’t help herself. Curbing the impulse, she handed him the plate, taking a seat on the nearby rock. “What happened to your station?” she asked instead. “The one you had before the war.”

She wasn’t sure if it was a painful topic, so his shrug was a relief as he began to work on the food slowly, building fuel again.

“When I joined the militia headed for New Guinea in ’42, I gave the place to a mate of mine. Tom. Him and his family.”

“I suppose you got a good price for it. Pretty land up in Queensland.”

“You’ve been prying, love. But not deep enough. I didn’t sell it. I gave it to him.” At her startled look, he shrugged again. “He needed it, I didn’t. Tom does right by it. He knows the business. Plus . . .”

Dev put down the tuber that had cooked up with a sweet yam smell, wiped his fingers on his trouser leg. “Well, he watches over them for me, Tina and Rob. I told him Tina’s favorite wildflowers, so he could bring them to her stone when the wet grows them.

After I signed up for the regular army, he wrote and told me he put a swing out near there for his kids. So Rob would have friends.

Tina would have liked that. My word, she loved to watch that kid. Sometimes I’d come up on her, just watching him grow. She’d forget what she was doing entirely. Once I even had to scold her, because she forgot to cover up the grain bin. Got distracted playing with him, and the chickens got all in it. He was such a strong little chap, a fierce fella.”

He stared at the plate. “Sounds crook, but I’m glad she died with him. She wouldn’t have survived losing him like that.”

“I don’t think you survived it,” she observed softly. At his look, she added, “That man is gone, isn’t he? You’re never going back.”

“Well, my favorite chair has the shape of Tom’s bum now, instead of mine. No point.” He extended the plate to her. “Thanks for the meal, love. If you get our camp cleaned up, I’ll give that old ute one last check and load us up.”

As they trundled along in the darkness, Dev keeping his gaze focused on the terrain they were covering, Danny gave him more details of what lay ahead.

“Ian won’t deny he was behind the attack,” she explained. “If anything, he’ll cheerfully admit to it, ask if I was impressed. All the while plotting how he’ll have me staked by the end of the evening, either literally or in a far more carnal manner.” At his startled look, she waved a hand. “He’ll provide us dinner first.”

“Oh, well, since you put it that way, no worries. And what should I be doing?”

“Keeping your eyes and ears open. He’ll have a human staff, and most of his stockmen likely do double duty as his thugs.” Putting out a hand to make him bring the ute to a stop, she drew his full attention. “If his intent is to stake me, rather than work out our differences another way, and he manages it, you are released from any other responsibility to me. Vengeance, while a sentimental and appreciated notion, is entirely foolish and unnecessary in this case. For one thing, there’s no need for you to get involved in our bloody politics. As much as you know about me, I could be as bad as any of the lot. So don’t sacrifice yourself.”

When he would have spoken, she held up that hand. “For another, you won’t have any chance, fighting against a vampire and his mob. In vampire fights, humans are nothing. And that’s not the good kind of ‘nothing,’ like sunsets. More like the way aborigines used to be viewed by settlers.”

“Hmmm.” He gave that noncommittal grunt that was changing Danny’s opinion of his ancestry. She suspected he had some Scot mixed with aboriginal and Irish blood, for that grunt held a wealth of meaning, none of it satisfying her as an agreement. “You old enough to remember that, love?”

“Yes.” The blacks had been hunted like vermin, a nuisance. Some of the settlers, those who hadn’t wanted to waste ammunition, had offered damper to traveling groups of aborigines as an apparent kindness. A gift infused with poison, like baiting traps for rats.

Yes, being “nothing” in this country also had its downside. She knew that firsthand, because she was about to be back among the sort who took great advantage of it.

She said little else on the drive through the darkness, though she didn’t hesitate to use her exceptional senses to warn him of unexpected animal crossings, the signs of deep sand or other things he’d see, but only a precious few seconds later. He suspected she’d make a hell of a tracker, what with her superior eyesight and speed. Of course, vampires being predators, he likely wouldn’t want to know how she employed the skills.

She hadn’t yet told him how old she was, but he found her short answer to his question fascinating, because it was obvious she could speak to things directly that were unfortunate historical facts to him, or things his grandparents had told him.

However, it was unlike her to be so silent. He didn’t think her increasing pensiveness was due to somber reflection on the tragedies of the past. She wasn’t a female chatterbox, but he was used to her dry wit, catty observations and the occasional question. As he glanced over, he noted her stillness was becoming predatory again, the way her head turned, the glitter of her gaze in the semidarkness like a waiting croc. It had him inventorying the weaponry he had, and figuring how much could be worn to dinner without offending their bloodsucking host.

“We’re about fifteen minutes from the house now,” she said, pointing to a stand of eucalyptus, a post marker. “Do you remember all I told you?”

“Yeah. When we get out of the car, I give this Ian a smart thump in the teeth.”

“Dev.”

He waved a hand. “I cover humans, you handle vampires.”

“Follow my lead,” she added. The darkness had turned the blue of her eyes black. “While you’re not my servant, you’re in my employ and marked twice. They’ll expect you to defer to me as such. If you don’t, it will undermine my authority. That’s a perception we don’t want them to have.”

He inclined his head. “Understood. I can tug my forelock and ‘marm’ with the best of them.”

“If only it were that easy,” she muttered. At his askance look, she shook her head. “Just follow my lead,” she repeated.

A couple miles from the property, Dev stopped the vehicle for the last time. He holstered his pistol, put his rifle within reach so he could feed it down his back sling when he got out. His full complement of knives was already firmly strapped at his ankle, thigh, waist and back as well. Danny said little, watching him adjust the weaponry, then asked his assistance to check her own unique arsenal.

Before they’d started off, she’d used their water and cloth to scrub her face, and he’d helped comb her hair and French braid it.

She’d worn a wrinkled but clean T-shirt from his pack, tucked into her belted daks. Those were filthy, but her bearing pulled them off as merely a trifling inconvenience. He inclined his head. “You’ll do. You look fine.”

“Not that we have one handy, but my inability to look in a mirror is unbearably irritating.”

Despite himself, he grinned. “Well, next to me, love, you look as if you could go to tea with the Queen.”

“You’re supposed to look scruffy and dangerous,” she informed him.

“Scruffy is hardly intimidating.”

“It is, if it implies an overbearing stench.”

He gave her a narrow glance, but put the vehicle in gear. A few minutes later, they pulled through the pole fence surrounding her childhood home, which backed up to the dark shadow of low hills. It was a good setting for a sheep station in a country that ran more to cattle. Dev stopped a moment, letting the engine idle. It was a nice-sized home, a two-story wood frame with a wraparound porch, secure weatherboard and corrugated iron roof. There was a handful of outbuildings that he identified as a couple bunkhouses for unmarried stockmen, a cottage or two for a foreman or married blokes. A stable, sheep-shearing shed and storage for equipment. It also had a diesel engine, likely for powering the generator for the house and well pump as needed. A windmill.

However, it was the house that reclaimed his attention. Though it was silhouetted in darkness, it appeared that the rear half of the home was embedded into the hills that folded back into the low mountain range behind it.

“That’s where the bedrooms are,” Danny explained at his intrigued look. “A study and alternative parlor. It works wonderfully for vampires.”

As they drew closer, the skeletal remains of what used to be watered perennials lined a front walkway, made up of crushed shards of termite mounds. Unkempt, tougher scrub would close in on them in no time. Dev noted Danny’s eyes touching upon those dried-out plants. He didn’t need access into her thoughts to recognize lingering evidence of her mother’s presence in what was obviously now an all-male domain.

There were men standing on the porch, as well as in front of the bunkhouse. In the open doorway of the barn, two more men stood, watching their approach. One had a cut on his eye. The other looked as if he’d recently been burned.

“Two of my attackers apparently made it away before we got them,” she noted. “I’m surprised they’re still alive, if they came back without proof that they’d done their job. God, I wish there’d been somewhere for us to stop to clean up.”

He found it remarkable that was her primary concern. He’d noted three other men who’d come out of the stockmen’s quarters, giving them the same unfriendly once-over, as those two from the barn started to make their way to the porch. He also suspected there were reinforcements hidden elsewhere in the buildings. Five Rovers in excellent condition were pulled up front, suggesting Ian had additional visitors.

“How many vampires did you say are in your territory?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Probably about twenty. In all of Australia, there are less than two hundred, and like the humans, most live in the cities on the coast. There’s only about five thousand in the whole world. That we know of,” she added.

A pack of dogs had come out of the shadows and were milling, yipping. Danny, unconcerned, started to get out of the vehicle, when Dev put a hand on her arm. “Why don’t I get the door for you?”

She blinked. “Guess I need a reminder about appearing all uppity, don’t I?”

He offered her a smile, because in that brief moment, the mask of calm slipped, and he saw some of her nerves. “I’m here, love.

Least if we get torn to pieces, we’ll have each other for company.”

“A comfort,” she said dryly, and gave him a steady look. “Dev, whatever else happens tonight, whatever I have to say or do, however I make you feel, I want to say thank you. You’ve been a true friend these past few days, and I’ve met precious little of them in my life, vampire or human.”

He nodded, meeting her eyes in a perfect understanding, for at least that moment. Then he opened his door. Whatever was going to happen tonight, she apparently expected him to be so horrified by the end of it that he’d need what he suspected was a high compliment. For her kind.

When he offered her a hand out of the ute, she took it. He made sure his grip was strong, steady. He had a fleeting sense she wanted to hold on, but she released him at the proper moment, stepping away from him.

Stay about two or three paces behind me, Dev. It’s not a protection issue
.

The front door opened, and a man stepped on the porch. Even without the slight stiffening of Danny’s shoulders, Dev would have known it was Ian. He hadn’t really been giving it much thought, but now he realized one thing about the lore of vampires was true.

They were all beautiful. Dev’s tastes didn’t run toward men at all, but he had to acknowledge the man would earn the stares of either sex. His hair was sleek as a show horse’s mane, and lying on broad shoulders. A trim coat with open-necked shirt beneath, along with polished riding breeches tucked into boots, gave him that careless lord-of-the-manor look, which Dev suspected was intentional. The eyes he fixed on Danny’s were green, like Dev’s, but Ian’s were as brilliant as the verdant farmland outside Victoria. No blemishes or scars, no lines of age. He looked like a young man of twenty-five, though from Danny, Dev knew he was looking at a vampire more than four hundred years old.

But despite that, there was something off about him, flash as a rat with a gold tooth. Danny flicked her gaze at the two stockmen from the barn who’d joined the men on the porch. Picking up her cue without even a thought to back it up, Dev hooked a hand on his belt, his smallest finger resting with import along the pistol. He kept his eyes moving among all of them, and of course they were studying him as intently, gauging his mettle. He recognized the coil in his belly as anticipation. A fight had long ago lost the ability to make him nervous, and odds didn’t worry him that much. However, it had been a while since it meant more than the opportunity for violence. Now he was mindful of his responsibility to protect and serve the lovely blonde ahead of him. While he logically knew she wasn’t threatened by these thugs, the natural compulsion to keep himself between her and the line of fire was strong, despite her command that he stay back.

Steady, Dev.
A soft whisper in his head. “Your men need further instruction on how to take out a vampire, Ian,” Danny said coldly.

“You inconvenienced me greatly on this trip home.”

Ian shrugged. “If I inconvenienced you, then perhaps I also managed to impress you a little bit. Can’t blame a man for trying.”

Danny studied him, her face impassive. “Your grieving period is short. Not that I’m surprised.”

Smiling like a benevolent angel, Ian moved to the bottom step. His well-manicured hand curled around the post, the other lying on his thigh, drawing attention to the well-muscled column held in the snug stretch of fabric, the curve of groin. With one booted foot on a lower step, it was an attractive pose, an obvious display of what he might have to offer her.