Daring Fire: Paranormal Romance (Bad Boys Of The Underworld Book 2) (10 page)

“You’re insane,” was all she said before she turned and continued to walk down the street, leaving Marcus with no other option than to chase after her.

Well, this wasn’t how Gena had wanted the day to go. They’d been having such a nice time before he had to go and ruin it.

Hell, the evening had even started with Marcus taking Lady for a small walk around the block with Gena. Afterwards, she’d gotten some great food and was walking around the city she’d always dreamed of going to. The temperature was cool, but it wasn’t freezing cold yet.

It really had been as perfect as an evening could get, considering all the extenuating circumstances.
It’s true
, she thought.
Sex ruins everything.

Was it really so hard for him to give her some space? They were in a city full of beautiful women. What was it that made her so irresistible? It was probably because she was the first to say no to him.

Even so, he should know better than to get involved with someone he had to stay in close quarters with for an indeterminate amount of time. How awkward would it be if something did happen between them and then he got sick of her while he still needed her help?

Gena also had to take into consideration that she’d only just met Marcus a whole twenty-four hours ago. She was shocked she was even considering doing anything with him after only knowing him for such a short amount of time.

She’d never been with a man within less than a month of dating, let alone less than a day of meeting. But then again, she’d gone through some radical changes in the past week.

Ideas shot through her. “It’s because of what is happening to me, isn’t it?” she said out loud.

Marcus shot her a puzzled look. “What?”

“I think this new body is out of whack. That’s why my libido is acting so strange.”

Marcus held a hand to his heart as if he were wounded. “You do know how to bruise an ego, don’t you?”

Gena rolled her eyes. “Stop making this about you. I have been doing things in the past three days that I would have never done before all this started happening to me.”

“We can’t rule out the possibility that your personality has changed as well,” he conceded. “But you also have to admit you have been in situations you could have never even imagined one week ago. Who’s to say you wouldn’t have always reacted the same way?”

“You didn’t even know me before,” she pointed out. “What makes you think I would’ve stayed the same?”

“I have seen quite a few people transition from being from human to vampire. Physically, almost everything is different about the person after the change is done. They are stronger, faster, and have senses better than they had ever even imagined possible. On top of that, they also have the prey drive and natural instincts to feed.

“Even with all those changes, the personality is basically the same. A coward in life is a coward in the afterlife as well. As far as I can tell, you’re no coward and I highly doubt you ever were. You stood up to that man when he pointed a gun at you and burst right past Gareth, who is scary-looking even before you know what he is, to confront Vlad. If that isn’t courage, I don’t know what is.”

Gena was taken aback by the sudden flattery. She’d never considered herself brave before. She wasn’t good at taking a compliment, so she deflected the conversation away from her. “You don’t believe people can change?”

“No. I believe people, and vampires for that matter, are constantly changing and evolving as time goes by. However, it’s a long-term process and not something that happens over the course of one week.”

Gena was about to go deeper into his opinion on people changing when a passerby bumped into her. She lost her balance for a second but righted herself quickly enough. The offending stranger never bothered to apologize, she noted.

She’d been listening to Marcus so intently she almost forgot they were in a crowded street. “Should we not talk about this in such a public place?”

Marcus shrugged. “Even if someone did overhear something they shouldn’t, they are much more likely to think you are crazy than believe I’m a vampire. You can ask me anything you want out here, and I’ll tell you.”

The possible questions raced across her mind.
Where should she even start?
“Well, I guess the obvious question I should’ve asked a lot sooner is how often do you eat?”

Marcus laughed. “Probably would’ve been better asked yesterday,” he agreed.

“In my defense, you said you were going to protect me, and I assumed that meant no biting,” she said.

“I see your point,” he said. “I can have a big ‘meal’ once a week and be fine, but having a small drink every other day or so is enough to get me by.”

“Who do you get your ‘meals’ from?”

“Well, for
most
humans,” he gave her a pointed look, “I can simply ask them to step aside for a few minutes and convince them they accidentally cut themselves when I’m done.”

Gena frowned at that, but Marcus continued. “However, in more recent years, Aleksander has set up blood banks all around the Americas and Europe. These blood banks will accept all donations, but any donors with low iron counts or other diseases harmful to humans will be filtered to us. It’s very freeing to not need to hunt every night.”

“You just go to the local blood grocery store?” asked Gena, skeptically.

“The supply isn’t big enough for brick-and-mortar,” said Marcus. “The Internet is the best way to place an order right now.”

Gena laughed. “Of course the Internet would be a great place to buy blood.”

“Well, this is only the pure-born vampires. I never told you that the turned vampires don’t even drink humans.” Gena raised a questioning eyebrow and waited for him to continue. “Turned vampires survive on vampire blood.”

“Why would they need different blood?”

“There are many scientific ways to explain almost everything on this planet. You can teach all the children in school how babies are made, but when it comes down to it, that moment when a fetus becomes a sentient being, whenever it happens, cannot be explained by science. Some things are just magic.”

“Is that a fancy way of saying you don’t know?” asked Gena with a joking smile.

“In a roundabout way. I guess the point is that a lot of the things that make me what I am don’t make sense according to human science. Either there’s a deeper and more complicated science that explains how I exist or it’s magic. I don’t know why I’m here, but I do know I am.”

Gena thought about all the things she’d seen lately. Between mind-controlling vampires and her own (double) murder, a little magic wasn’t too hard to believe in.

“When I woke up, I was so freaked out,” said Gena. “It took me a few moments to fully understand. I don’t think I could ever explain the feeling of seeing yourself laying lifeless on the floor.”

“I can try to imagine,” offered Marcus.

“How?”

“Well, I have never seen myself dead, but I have seen a lot of death. There is something truly tragic about seeing someone who used to be so full of joy and light turned into an empty shell.”

Gena frowned. “Now that you put it that way, I’m even more depressed about it.”

“It was not my intention,” said Marcus. “Everyone has their own unique experiences, and no one will be able to relate exactly to you. That doesn’t mean you’re alone.”

She couldn’t reply to that. It was a nice sentiment he was trying to make, but in truth, she was alone. She was being continuously told she was no longer human, but so far she had no idea what she could be.

She looked at the nameless people who passed them. They all looked so normal. They all knew what they were. Up until her murder, Gena had known exactly where she stood. She was an independent woman with plans on being a doctor. She had plans on buying the home she rented and dog lover. Above all, she was certain of her humanity.

“When do you think I can see that psychic?” asked Gena.

“Vlad is working on it. Hopefully we can have one in the city tomorrow night,” said Marcus. “Tell me more about the man who killed you.”

That was a topic she didn’t want to get into, but she had no choice if Marcus was to protect her as he promised. He couldn’t protect her if he didn’t know all the threats against her.

“I’m still really confused about what happened, myself. I worked with Ryan for years, and he never as much as looked at me and then all of the sudden, he was cornering me after work and telling me, not asking, that we should be together. I turned him down and the next night he was at my house. He barged in and told me we were meant to be. Some bullshit about him giving up drugs and now that he was clean, there was some ‘brightness’ about me that made me different. Have you ever heard of anything like that before?”

Marcus thought about that for a moment. “Well, I have heard people that are crazy ramble on before, but nothing that sounded specifically like your situation. Brightness is an interesting choice of words. He could have been referring to an aura around you.”

“What would my aura have to do with anything?”

“Well, I’ve never seen one myself, but psychics can see them on just about anybody. It could be that Ryan is an untrained psychic and spotted your aura,” said Marcus.

“If all humans have an aura, why would Ryan single me out?”

“He’d single you out because your aura was different. That would mean your aura was different even before he killed you, leading me to believe whatever makes you special was something that happened long before he killed you.”

Gena’s heart sunk as she processed that information. “I swear, I’m just about as normal as normal can get. I always have been.”

Marcus wanted to comfort her, but there was nothing he could say to make her feel better. He was so far from normal, he hardly even knew what that was anymore. Hell, in his mind, being normal was worse than any torture he could imagine.

He was stronger than everyone around him. He had access to any VIP room or restaurant he wanted with only a few seconds of eye contact. Women wanted him and men wanted to be him. How could it get better?

He wanted to shake her and tell her she’d risen from the dead! She should be shouting from the rooftops with joy and celebrating.

He felt just as helpless as he had watching her bleed from two bullet holes in his arms. This time was different, though. This time he could show her the new world that was now open to her. He could help her find out who she was. No matter how normal she said she’d been, he knew something very supernatural had happened to her at some point. They would figure it out together.

He and Gena were able to make it to about three different shops before they closed. He wasn’t experienced with shopping for women, but he made the best out of the situation.

At first he tried to sit down and out of the way as she did her shopping, but the boredom got to him much too quickly. Before long, he was making her show him everything she tried on. He did his best to convince her to buy more revealing clothes, but she’d playfully brush his suggestions off.

Soon enough, she had enough clothes to last her a few weeks and had ignored about ninety-nine percent of his suggestions. Apparently he had bad taste in women’s clothing.

He did convince her she needed to buy another outfit she could wear to Fang, but that might have been a mistruth. In all honesty, if he wanted her in Fang, she’d get in no matter what she was wearing. A vampire had to have some fun, though.

Since the rebels had made contact, he wasn’t worried about going to Fang tonight. He could make an appearance tomorrow and no one would miss him.

As he and Gena made their way out of the store, the clerk who had helped them locked the doors to close the store. Gena glanced worriedly at the noise. “I hope we didn’t keep her too long past her shift. I didn’t realize how late it was.”

Marcus took her losing track of time as a good sign. She was enjoying her time with him, even if she didn’t want to. “Considering how much we just spent, I’m sure they could stay open an extra half an hour,” he assured her.

Gena looked guiltily at the bags she was carrying. “I’ll pay you back for all this. I promise.”

Marcus still had to get started on setting her up with an identity. He added it to his mental to-do list. As much as he liked having her around, he knew she’d want her independence back sooner rather than later.

Things like a Social Security number and driver’s license were important. Luckily, because he was of a species that didn’t age, he had someone who could get some papers made up within a week.

He appreciated that she wanted to pay for her purchases, but he didn’t need her money. He refrained from telling her, considering he didn’t want to start an argument when she seemed to be enjoying herself.

He wanted to show her around the city. She said she’d never been there before, and Marcus wanted to be the one to show her everything for the first time, but the multitude of bags weighing them down made sightseeing cumbersome.

He wasn’t one prone to wishful thinking, but his mind suddenly wished he’d met Gena under different circumstances. He wished she was here of her own free will and wanted to be with him. He wished she hadn’t seen the dark side of his life so soon.

He wondered whether she’d think differently of him if she’d believed he was human when they met. He could have taken her on a real date. When was the last time he’d been on a real date?

All he could remember were scattered affairs across the last centuries. Any time he took a woman out, he wanted something from her. Blood, sex, and political favors were his top three, and if he could get all at once, that was just icing on the cake.

Being with Gena was different. Although his itching fangs and constant state of semi-arousal were proof that the drive for blood and sex were still especially strong around her, he wanted her to enjoy herself around him.

It was obvious she still missed her old life, but she was at least slightly enjoying her time with him.

An unfamiliar noise shook Marcus from his thoughts. A cell phone rang, but it wasn’t a ringtone he recognized. One look at Gena’s face and he knew it wasn’t hers. A sense of apprehension filled him. It was show time.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The noise of the bar overwhelmed Marcus at first. His sensitive ears took a moment to adjust to the loud voices all around him.

The voice on the other end of the phone call had told him an address and time to meet but offered up no more information. All thoughts of spending a nice night alone with Gena had been tossed out the window.

He was already pissed enough at these rebels for fucking with his life, and now that they were potentially cock blocking him, he was going to find it hard to hide his disdain.

He was unsure how to play his role. He had a reputation of being a savvy politician who was out for himself first and foremost, which was why he was an ideal target for the rebels to convert to their side. Because of Marcus’s selfish side, he was also known as a bit of an asshole.

If he was too nice to the men he was meeting with tonight, they could get suspicious and kill him. If he was too much of a bastard, they could get angry and kill him.

Neither of those were exactly ideal
. Marcus grimaced.

In addition to the loud voices and music, the dimly lit bar was also filled with smoke. Whoever these men were, they knew what they were doing. He was already having a hard time hearing, and the smoke impaired his vision and his sense of smell.

However, the smoke did give him one piece of valuable information. New York City had a smoking ban in public places. Although it was common enough for one or two customers in the seedier bars to ignore the ban and light up whenever, this amount of smoke wasn’t caused by one or two people. Almost everyone in the bar had smoked one or two cigarettes to get this amount of smoke to fill the rooms.

It was possible that everyone in the bar decided to say “fuck you” to the ban and have a smoke, but Marcus thought it was much more likely they were “convinced” to smoke by one of the rebels. Meaning at least one of the men he was meeting here tonight was a pure born.

He frowned at the idea. Someone who had to do as much boozing and schmoozing as he did knew a lot of people and vampires, and he prided himself on knowing, or at least knowing
of
, every pure born.

He knew there were trusted vampires working with the rebels, but he was uneasy at the idea of there being even more traitors right under his nose.

He looked around through the smoke-filled room. The voice commanding him to meet here had neglected to give any direction about what to do or who to look for once he got there.

He saw a lot of big, tall, and gruff-looking men, but none were vampires. Apparently he was supposed to play a waiting game. Fine with him. He could use a drink. He would prefer type O, but whiskey could do in a pinch.

He nursed his drink slowly. He knew someone was watching him. Someone had been at the bar earlier in the night to control all the patrons to talk loudly and smoke. It would make no sense for them to leave and come back later. They were scouting him out.

A few whiskeys later and almost to the point of pulling out his phone and playing Sudoku, the men he was meeting finally made themselves known.

The first man was a familiar face, but not the one Marcus was expecting. It was one of the men he’d met last night in the alley. The one who had tossed him the phone.

“You look lonely,” the man said with a raspy voice. “Come join our table.”

Marcus gave a slight nod of agreement and followed the man. He was tall, a little taller than Marcus, so probably almost six and a half feet of vampire. Dark tattoos covered most of the man’s exposed face and neck.

That in itself was puzzling. Because vampires didn’t age, they avoided identifying marks like tattoos. It was worrisome that this one seemed to not care whether people noticed him.

The table he was led to sat two other men. One looked very similar to the man he was following and the other was different.

He had no tattoos covering his face, but he seemed more menacing than the other two men. Where the other two had unkempt hair and messy clothes, this man was put together with purpose. He had dark hair, like the other two, but his was neatly slicked back and his face was clean shaven.

Although the other two men looked as though they had found their large jackets in the trash, this man’s jacket looked as though it had cost at least two grand—or he’d taken it from a man who had paid that much.

Marcus would know. He had one just like it.

Marcus took his seat and let it sink in that he didn’t recognize any of the three vampires in front of him. “You like to make a guy sweat, don’t you?” he asked the three.

The two messy ones looked to the vampire in the middle and said nothing. It was obvious who was in charge. “I like to know who I’m dealing with,” said the leader.

“I guess you have me at an advantage then, seeing that I know jack shit about you.”

The leader simply smiled at the comment. It was the eerie calm of a man who knew if he gave the slightest hint of discomfort, Marcus would be dead by the hands of those two goons.

“I am Rok,” he said. “These are my men, Kilk and Goff.”

Even though Marcus had names, they did nothing to help him figure out who these men were. They didn’t ring any bells, and considering how unique they were, he should’ve recognized them. Even more puzzling was the accent of the two men he’d heard speak so far. It had a hint of Eastern European, but Marcus could not recall hearing it before.

“I assume you want something from me,” said Marcus.

Rok casually took a sip of his drink. Through the clear glass, Marcus saw a dark red liquid. “I believe you hold enough power with your peers that your insights and abilities could prove useful to me.”

Marcus nodded. “What exactly makes you think I’d want to be ‘useful’ to you? We might have a common enemy in Aleksander, but I don’t need your help to kill him.”

Rok met Marcus’s eyes across the table. “I know you. I am you. I know exactly what it’s like to give all of your time, energy, and devotion to your king. And what do you get in return? Kicked out of the kingdom for imagined crimes. You might be able to kill Aleksander whenever you want, but it will not be a secret who the culprit is. Your own people thought you wanted him dead even before your latest altercation. What will they think if he ends up dead now?”

It was an interesting angle they were working. They were depending on his sense of betrayal to sway him to their cause—whatever the hell that cause was. “The Council will think I killed Aleksander. Even if you find some other flunky to help you assassinate the king, everyone will still think I did it.”

“You’re right about what they’ll think, but you are mistaken about a few other things. We’re not looking for a flunky in you. We are looking for a partner. And while we do intend to kill Aleksander, that’s not our endgame. Our intent is to replace him.”

“Who are you going to replace him with?” asked Marcus.

Rok leaned back in his chair and regarded Marcus. “I have to have some secrets.”

You won’t have any left by the time I’m done with you
, thought Marcus. “So please clarify; why do you expect me to help you?”

“I can promise you one thing. I can promise that in the very near future, Aleksander will be dead. I can also promise you that in the near future, you will still be ostracized from your own people you have served for centuries. Join me and we can give you the one thing you crave. Power.”

Power?
Marcus didn’t crave power. It came naturally to him. He knew how to play people and read them like no other. He didn’t need Rok or anyone else giving him anything. Instead of pointing that out, Marcus asked, “Aleksander always travels with armed guards. He is even more paranoid after he found out you turned one of his most trusted men against him. What makes you so sure you can get to him without me?”

Rok waved his hand in front of him in a dismissive gesture. “He has a few guards. That’s nothing. I have an entire
army
at my command. Aleksander doesn’t stand a chance.”

An army of vampires?
How the hell could anyone amass an army of vampires without any of the monarchy or Council knowing about it? “If you don’t need me to help you take out Aleksander, what do you need me for?”

“Need is a very strong word,” stressed Rok. “You are, or at least were, a trusted member of this Council. Once chaos comes down, the remaining people will need guidance from a trusted face. Your high rank with your people and your current state of disgrace make you a prime candidate. I assure you that in return for your assistance, you will be rewarded far beyond your wildest dreams.”