Primal Call (7 page)

Sex wasn’t the first thing Thena usually thought of when beginning a story, but then she’d never considered sex with one of the partners being a blood-drinker before. What were the logistics?

She wrote:
The kiss tasted of metal, iron and copper, hot with life and need.
Succulent, he thought. Delicious.

“Oh, my,” Thena said. She touched her lips. They felt like they’d been kissed. Okay, she had a vivid imagination. It was useful for making a living, but not so much for reacting physically to a brief sexual fantasy.

She fanned her face with her hand. Of course she’d been thinking of James in the role of the hot kissing vampire, and she’d been the kissee. She did not normally put herself in her stories. Okay, this was a fantasy, not a story. But why get turned on by the thought of Jimmy as a vampire? He was quite hot enough just being James Wilde. Weren’t her growing feelings for him dangerous enough? And that was only the emotional connection she didn’t want to do without. Never mind the everyday, regular, increasing, aching lust. Still, that edge of risk vampiric powers added to the already steaming mix....

Thena put her fingers back on the keyboard, looked at the screen, thought about making words. Went off into a reverie.

He held his hands up to show her talons sharp as steel. She couldn’t breathe as his hands came closer. Her skin heated and tingled with anticipation. The tips of his claws touched the tops of her breasts. Needle-sharp points pressed as gently as feathers, caressing down and around, up and under the round globes of her breasts.

Absolute desire rushed through her, but she still giggled.

He responded with mock indignation. “My claws tickle you?”

“
Do it again,” she said.

Instead, his mouth came down on one nipple while his thumb teased the other.

Lightning shot through her. Fire pooled deep within —

Fire. Flames.

“Jimmy, no! Don’t!”

He ran into the fire. A scream sounded, high-pitched and panicked.

Athena stood up and shouted again. “Jimmy!”

Again?

She looked around wildly, recognized nothing. Where were the flames lapping up out of the shadows? Where were the people watching the fire in shock as James Wilde ran toward it?

Except, he didn’t run. He went from
here
to
there.
She was the only one who saw what he did, how he moved.

What did it matter how? He was engulfed in flames! He needed her! He—

Thena realized she was standing in her office. She was cold with shock, hot with terror. She was afraid. She was also certain of what she’d seen. Felt?

She grabbed up her cell phone in her shaking hand and autodialed James’s number.

###

“It’s okay, hon, the fire’s out,” James said as he answered the phone.

He moved away from the group of people gathered around him on the set. A telepathic command kept anyone from getting any ideas about following him.

Thena was quiet for a few moments. James sent calming thoughts her way, but at the same time he couldn’t stop radiating triumphant emotions her way as well. Her shields against him were thinning, cracking. She was his and soon she’d—

A few more seconds of silence. “Let’s start again, shall we?” she said. “I was minding my own business—all right, I was trying to write a sex scene with a vampire—”

“I’d love to hear that.”

“—then I had the
strongest
image of you running into a fire. I know it’s a stupid question, but—did you?”

“I did. Sort of. There was a bit of a flash fire on set. It’s out. Everyone is fine. Thank you for worrying about me. You have no idea how much it means to me that—”

“But how did you know that I saw—”

“We’ll talk about this later. I promise you we will.”

Behind him, the director called his name. Damn it! Just as he and Athena were making the right kind of connection, just as her mind was beginning to open, he had to go.

“Thank you,” he said again. “I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

###

Thena looked at the clock on the living room wall before she stepped onto the porch. She was surprised to discover it was only five forty-five, when it seemed as if this day had gone on forever. And it hadn’t just been Aunt Maria and vampires and James on fire. There’d been a long exchange of emails with her editor about cover copy and cover art for her next book—the one she wasn’t finished writing yet. There’d been a long call from her mother trying to talk her into leaving for the annual family trip to Greece earlier this year. Thena wormed out of her mom that the real reason wasn’t that
grandpa’s not getting any younger
but
you need to get away from that younger man
. Thena’s pointed out that they had these things called airplanes, so that if the
younger man
wanted to he could visit Okios. Not that Thena thought James would follow her across the world, or even as far as Missouri, but a girl could dream.

Then, of course, her younger sister had been in a shoot-out. Lonnie was an FBI agent. Thena had seen a news crawl about FBI agents stopping a bank robbery in Washington, D.C. and had called her sister on a hunch that Lonnie was involved. Thena didn’t understand why she was suddenly having hunches and visions, but she’d acted on this one just as she had on the one featuring James Wilde. It turned out that Lonnie had indeed been involved. Shots had been fired. Lonnie assured Thena that she was fine. No one, including the bank robbers, had sustained any injury.

“You lead an exciting life,” Thena had told Lonnie before they hung up.

“Be grateful you lead a quiet one,” Lonnie had answered.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, Thena had loved her quiet life, never wanted to change it, reveled in it. Now she wasn’t so sure making up and writing down adventures was enough for her.

She chuckled at herself as she went out onto the porch, a glass of iced tea in one hand, her knitting bag in the other. She sat down in the rocking chair, put the tea on the table next to it, then glanced at the other items she’d put on the table earlier. Two telephones and a laptop. The communications types available to her were immense, all of it plugged in and charged up.

She tsked. “All this because Jimmy said he’d be in touch.”

She left all the tech on the table and took out her knitting. Along with the row counter, tape measure, cable needle, and the pattern she’d worked out for James’s sweater. Knitting wasn’t just two sticks and a string when working on a complex Aran Irish knit project with all its twists and bumps. She reveled in the challenge, and got to work.

After a while, Ed Caven stopped by the porch. “Weather Channel says there’s a strong storm front heading through tonight.”

Thena looked up from her knitting, past Ed, to the sky above the distant hillside where sheep wandered the pasture. The sky was clear and blue and quiet, but you couldn’t argue with all those weather satellites and radar and whatever the meteorologists used. Besides, she’d broken an arm in her youth, and the healed bone in her upper arm told her the Weather Channel’s prediction was correct.

Thena laughed, but her cell phone sounded Jimmy’s ringtone before she could answer the farm manager. Ed nodded and walked off as she snatched up the phone.

“Meanwhile, back at vampires,” James said before Thena could even manage a greeting. “There’s so much more I need to tell you.”

“I’m fine. How are you? How was your day, besides the fire? I’m starting to see and feel things—psychically—and somehow I’m blaming you. Can you explain that?”

“Um—” was his inarticulate reply. “Uh. I know you aren’t crazy, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m fine,” he added. “Restless. In need of some female company.”

“You can have any woman in the world,” she pointed out. She hated that her entire being clenched with jealousy as she stated this simple truth. “Do vampires have claws?” she changed the subject as quickly as she could.

“Damn,” Thena said as she caught sight of a truck towing a horse trailer coming up the long drive from the county road. She knew that truck. “Damn, damn, damn.”

“What’s the matter? What’s wrong? How can I help?” James asked. She heard his desperation in far-off California.

“Hold on,” she said.

Thena left the phone on the table and went into the house. She was standing on the porch steps when the truck came to a halt in front of the house. The driver’s door opened.

“Don’t bother getting out,” she called. “Turn around and go home, Mike.”

Mike Finn didn’t listen. He never did.

Ed and Carol came up to the truck. Dogs barked. Sheep Mother spat from her side of the pasture fence. One of the part-time helpers climbed over the fence and trotted to the far side of the truck. James could be heard faintly questioning the situation from the phone’s spot on the table.

Thena didn’t know if he was talking about his ex-wife, her, or the mare. She certainly hoped he wasn’t referring to his daughter.

###

James’s hearing was far better than any mortal’s. He had no trouble discerning the confrontation being played out at Athena’s home. It was something about someone wanting a horse. Thena didn’t want that person on her property.

That
had
been a shot!

“I’m going to the airport right now!”

###

“What the hell’d you do that for?” Finn demanded after Thena shot out the front tire of the truck.

“To keep you from getting anybody killed,” she said. “I want you gone, but I’m not letting you drive drunk.” She held her shotgun up again. “Walk home.”

“You tried to kill me. I’m calling the sheriff!” Finn shouted.

Ed came up to Finn. “A deputy’s already on the way.” He turned Finn toward the drive and gave him a little shove. “I’m sure you’ll meet up with the cop car on your way.”

Finn turned and wove his way down the drive. Ed watched him go.

Thena decided that maybe her world wasn’t so lacking in adventure after all. She took the shotgun back into the house. She’d cleaned and locked the gun away before she remembered.

“James!”

He’d hung up while she went about her business, and she couldn’t blame him for that. She called back, but got no answer. So she sent him a long and, she hoped, entertaining, email explaining about Mike Finn, the horse, the donkey that loved it, the llama, her gun-toting hero sister, her aunt seeing vampires, and all the other incidents of what had to be the longest, strangest day of her life to date.

By the time she’d finished and sent this missive the wind had picked up and dark clouds were moving in. She took her stuff off the porch. As lighting began to flash, Thena unplugged her computers and other electronics because she didn’t trust surge protectors. With the Weather Channel playing on television, she settled down for the evening.

###

“There are tornado warnings up that way,” the clerk behind the rental car counter said as she handed James back his driver’s license.