In the Company of Vampires (31 page)

“Aye. Why else would Loki refuse to come when you summoned him?”

I thought about that for a minute. “Could I be cursed?” I asked Ben.

He lifted his head from my arm, his tongue swirling across the bite mark. “I doubt it. I don’t see a curse on you, and it would take a first-level demon or a demon lord to curse you and not leave some sign. Loki may have a grudge against you, but I doubt if a demon lord is after your blood as well.”

“That’s a relief, at least,” I said, getting to my feet and holding on to him as he did the same. He had lost a lot of blood, but he didn’t wobble at all.

I laughed at the outraged tone in the words.

“What the goddess needs to do is appease Loki,” Isleif said.

“Get on his good side, you mean?” I shook my head. “He doesn’t have a good side.”

“He likes sacrifices,” Eirik said as he replaced his sword in the baldric on his back. “He always has. A good sacrifice would bring him to you.”

“What sort of a sacrifice?” I asked, thinking about the vast amounts of fast food the Vikings had once used to lure Loki into being summoned.

“Let us think of people we would like to see sacrificed,” Isleif suggested.

All three Vikings turned to look at Ben.

“Hey!” I glared at all of them. “Stop looking at him like that!”

Ben rolled his eyes.

“She’s right,” Isleif admitted. “Dark Ones are not easily sacrificed. It would take a decapitation at best, and the goddess would not be happy with us when we were done.”

“The goddess isn’t hideously happy right now, so if I were you, I’d think of something that isn’t a living being to sacrifice. Maybe some of Isleif’s squashed sandwiches would do the trick.”

They perked up at that thought, and after asking for, and being denied, the keys to David’s rental car, they trooped off, making plans to find several packhorses so they could bring back enough sacrifices for both Loki and their own needs.

Ben and I walked slowly back to the trailer. He paused at the stairs, glancing across the common area to where Naomi’s trailer sat. “I should get my things, but I believe I’ll leave them until later.”

“Good idea.” Wearily, I unlocked the door and plodded my way up the three steps. “I know you don’t want any, but I desperately need some coffee.”

“You desperately need some sleep,” he said, scooping me up effortlessly.

“Ben! I’m not a lightweight. Put me down before you hurt your owies.”

He chuckled. It was a warm, intimate sound that made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. “My owies are quite healed, thank you. And even if they weren’t, I’d be capable of carrying you to a bedroom. I can feel how tired you are, Francesca. You’ve given me a lot of blood, and you need rest.”

I protested only long enough to use the bathroom before allowing him to put us both to bed. “If you’re going to want to—”

“We will not make love,” he interrupted, pulling me over to him so I was half draped across him. “I wish for you to rest.”

I slid my hand down his belly, encountering warm, hot skin that belied that statement. “You do, huh? What’s this, then?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t want to, I said we would not indulge ourselves. Although I would greatly enjoy bringing you pleasure as many times as you could stand, you are tired, and it’s better you rest.”

“Now I know why Dark Ones and their Beloveds are immortal. Any man who can make love three times a day has to be.”

A deep rumble of laughter formed in his chest as he kissed the top of my head, one hand caressing my back. “I admit that I was a bit enthusiastic earlier today, but I have waited for you for five years. It’s going to take me a while to work through all that anticipation.”

“You’ll hear no complaints from me,” I said, snuggling into his side. My eyes were drawn to the still faintly visible marks on his chest. I traced a claw mark. “Is this what happened to you in Sweden?”

“No. Your mother would have murdered me.”

I pinched his nipple as he laughed in my head. “Were you attacked by a therion that time in Sweden when you were almost killed?”

“Yes.” The laughter in him died, replaced by a great sadness. “The woman who attacked us was, for lack of a better word, feral. I suspect she was also under some sort of a compulsion placed on her by de Marco, although what kind I don’t know. Perhaps it has something to do with the experiments Naomi mentioned. He may have found a way to bind therions to his will.”

“Why didn’t you tell me then?” I asked, my mind on the events in the past.

“Because it was one of David’s pride who attacked me. I had to kill him, and notify David. There were many disappearances at the time, and all therions were suspicious, so I sent him word of what happened with a sign to know it was really from me.”

“Your cross,” I said, sitting up to examine the beautiful Celtic knot cross he wore.

“Yes. David recognized it, and knew the note was from me. He came to Sweden immediately afterward. We searched for two months for the person who had turned his pride member feral, but were unsuccessful.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a religious vampire,” I said.

“I’m not religious. The cross was my mother’s. It has many good memories attached to it.”

I touched the cross with one finger, allowing it to speak to me. Mostly it carried Ben’s emotions—pain, frustration, and patience—but there was also a faint image of a woman, filled with happiness and love for her son. “Your mom loved you very much. She was proud of you. She was happy you weren’t—” I stopped.

“Like my father?”

I frowned at his chest, trying to sort out the emotions. “Yes. But at the same time she loved him, too. But he didn’t love her.”

“No. My father is not a loving man.”

“Is?” I sat up and looked at him. “He’s still alive?”

Ben’s eyes opened, surprised. “Yes, of course he is. I told you that Dark Ones are hard to kill.”

“Oh. I just thought . . . accidents and such. Surely sometimes you guys are killed?”

“We are, both accidentally and intentionally. But both take some doing.”

“Good. Where is your father?”

“South America. He prefers young, nubile women and has no problem finding them there.”

I wanted to ask Ben a gazillion questions about his dad, but decided that would have to wait for another time. There was another, more pressing matter I was concerned with. “My mother. We don’t seem to be getting any closer to figuring out what’s going on with her. Who is she in love with? Why hasn’t she called me to tell me she’s so gaga about this guy? And just where the Hottentots is she?”

He pulled me tight, both arms around me. “You torment yourself needlessly. She is as strong as you are, Beloved. We will work together to uncover the truth.”

I fell asleep with that thought easing my worry, and Ben’s comforting presence surrounding me.

“Good afternoon, sleepy head. Can I just say how much good it does my ego to know that although you might be Mr. Three Times, such devotion to your duty caused you to sleep like a rock for seven solid hours?”

Ben, looking wonderfully sleepy with mussed hair and manly stubble upon his cheeks, blinked bleary-eyed at me and sat down across from me at the tiny table where I was having lunch. “I woke up and you weren’t there.”

“I woke up about an hour ago. Unlike you, I have to use the bathroom. And I’ve been thinking.”

He ran a hand over his face, blinking at me. “Oh?”

“It’s about Naomi.”

He grimaced.

“Yeah, I feel the same way, but I think we need to talk about her.”

“If it’s about the tyro—”

“No, I told you that I thought you did everything you could to keep that situation under control. It’s about Sweden. Or rather, the attack on you there five years ago. Was Naomi’s group a part of that?”

Ben rubbed his stubbly chin thoughtfully. The sound of his fingers rasping against his whiskers sent little skitters of electricity down my back. “I assume they were. It is a chilling thought to imagine two such groups preying on the therion population of Europe.”

“Right. And since de Marco is . . . Well, I don’t know what he is, other than nasty and badass and he had sex with my mother thirty years ago. But since he’s all that, I say we tackle Naomi.”

Ben shot me a look that said I had orangutans in purple tutus dancing on my head. “Who had sex with your mother?”

“De Marco. Oh! I never told you about that, did I?” I got to my feet and hurried to the bedroom, filling him in on how Peter and I had found the birth certificate. “And you can see right there that his name is Alphonse de Marco.”

Ben examined the birth certificate. “It appears genuine. But your mother?”

“I know. It means I have a half sister, too. Look at the dates, Ben. Mom was sixteen at the time, and this Petra person is nine years older than me, and yet I’ve never heard of her. My grandparents never mentioned her, and there’re no family pictures or anything. Just this.”

“Odd.” Ben stared sightlessly at the paper, his fingers tapping absently on it as he thought. “I wonder if there’s a connection between it and your mother’s disappearance.”

“I thought of that this morning, too,” I said, leaning into him when he wrapped an arm around me. “But I don’t see why he’d want to seduce her. Why now? She’s been kicking around Europe for the last five years, so if he was just waiting for her to come around the area, that doesn’t make sense. And she’s been divorced from my dad for eight years, so if he was waiting for that, it doesn’t fly, either. Not to mention the fact that Mom doesn’t suffer fools gladly, and if she broke up with him once, she probably wants nothing more to do with him.”

“I think we should consider the possibility that perhaps your mother has simply found a man she loves,” Ben said gently, kissing my arm.

Instantly, a dull red throb woke up inside him.

“Hungry?” I asked in my best sex kitten voice.

“For you? Always.”

I slid sideways onto his lap. “I had my breakfast, so I guess it’s only fair you have yours.”

The look in his eyes could have melted cement. “You know what will happen if I feed off you now.”

“Lovemaking so incredibly hot, it’ll banish further references to my toys?”

“Lovemaking so incredibly hot, it’ll make you forget you ever had toys.”

I squirmed delightedly at the thoughts he was sharing. “Oooh! But that sounds like it might take a while. Especially that one. The
entire
Kama Sutra?”

He smiled just before his teeth pierced the upper slopes of my breast.
I’ve always wanted to try all of them. But since you wish for us to locate your mother, I will content myself with simply doing this.

“Do what . . . Holy Swiss on rye! Ben! You don’t mean you’re going to . . .” My entire body went up in a fireball of excitement as his fingers slid up underneath the midthigh-length skirt I wore (with the secret hope that he would admire my legs), and proceeded into restricted areas. I lolled back against him, my mind flooded with both the sensations of him feeding and the ecstasy that his fingers brought as they danced an illicit dance.

It took longer than he anticipated for us to leave the trailer, mostly because by the time I had recovered from the experience of his magic fingers I felt a little reciprocation was in order, and then we both wanted a shower, and that meant much soaping up of each other, with the inevitable conclusion.

“I am so glad you have strong back muscles,” I murmured an hour later as I walked down the stairs of the trailer. “I never knew a shower could be so very satisfying. Ready to tackle your girlfriend?”

Ben angled one of my old baseball caps so it shaded his face from the midday sun and turned up the collar of his leather jacket. “You’ll have to do better than that if you wish me to rise to your bait.”

I know how to make you rise,
I said with a little mind leer as we dashed across the common area to Naomi’s trailer.

Naomi didn’t answer when I knocked politely on her door. Nor did she when I pounded on it and yelled for her to open up. By the time Peter and Kurt appeared to see what all the noise was about, I was beginning to suspect that all was not right.