Beautiful Danger

“Name!” he shouted.

Lifting her chin, Lark stepped forward, daring to approach a man she suspected would lunge for her neck at any moment. No protective coat to keep him from her carotid. Yet he was not capable right now. She sensed he waged an inner war, and she’d never been one to walk away from a damaged individual.

As she approached him, he still held out a hand as if to keep her back. He yowled and pounded his head, then stomped the dusty floor. She reached out but retracted as if burned when he looked at her. That fanged grin was too sharp to be kind.

“I can’t watch this,” she decided, and turned away from what could become the beginning to a very bad day filled with memories she had thought to lock away when joining the Order.

“You don’t want to watch the insane vampire go through his contortions?” he hissed. “Because torture is not pretty, is it?” He leered, and leaned toward her. “You don’t want to see inside this.” He pounded the side of his head with a fist. “Pretty girl, look away!”

“Lark,” she offered, breaking into his tirade. “That’s my name.”

Domingos tilted his head. “Sounds like a bird. Can’t be your real name.”

It wasn’t. She’d shed Lisa Cooper when entering the Order. That woman no longer existed. She couldn’t exist and survive.

“Listen,” she said, pacing back to the window. “You know where I live, but if you value your life, don’t return.”

“Not even to keep away the wolves? Damn it!” He stomped the floor, then bent forward to catch the back of his head with both hands. His hair swung across the dusty floor.

Get out of here, Lark! Don’t look at this. All those wonders you had about what Todd suffered? This vampire can show you. You don’t want to see!

And yet his apparent pain touched her profoundly. While she wanted to avoid experiencing it at all costs, at the same time, the man was like an accident you slowed down to gawk at.

“Why didn’t you kill those wolves?” she asked, curiosity gaining the better of her discretion.

Domingos straightened and smoothed a palm down his shirt, which was only buttoned once in the center. He lifted his chin proudly. “I’m not a killer.”

“You’ve slain a third of the Levallois pack.”

“I am only taking the justice owed me!” He rushed her, pinning her against the windowpanes, which creaked with their weight. “Is that not my right? You’ve been hired by the Levallois pack to stop me, haven’t you? Stop me from claiming the justice owed me.”

“Murder is not justice.”

He shook his head violently, brushing her cheek with his hair. “Can’t tell me that. Stop the violins!”

He smashed a fist through the window beside her head, and Lark reacted by putting up her fists. Domingos saw her defensive pose and shook his head that he would not hurt her. He put up his hands in surrender. Blood trickled down his fingers, yet she watched the cuts heal instantly.

Vampires are creatures. Do not forget that.

“We have a truce for the day,” he said. “You don’t kill me. I don’t hurt you. Too bad. You smell sweet. Your blood would taste delicious.”

“You bite me and you die.”

“Fair enough. But that doesn’t mean I won’t keep trying.”

“Why? I’m a hunter. You know I want you dead. Why don’t you run away from me?”

“Pretty little hunter without weapons to protect herself?” He laughed quietly now and tapped the floor with his toes. A flick of his fingers unbuttoned his shirt. “You are the sweetest thing I’ve known since before I was taken by the pack. I will crave you even as you plunge that metal stake into my heart, Lark. And yet you’ve not a lark’s song, which pleases me. Don’t like music.”

“Is that the violins in your head you were talking about?”

He nodded and bowed his head. Their distance remained but a hand’s width apart.

Lark exhaled shallowly. She didn’t want to know—yes, she did. “What did they do to you?”

No. You don’t want to know!

“Blood games,” Domingos muttered, and bent forward, clasping his arms across his chest, as if protecting his heart. “Very bad. Not stuff for pretty girls to know.”

He shook his head side to side violently, then murmured deep in his throat. And Lark reached out to stroke her fingers down his hair. It was ratted and tangled, but he closed his eyes and moaned softly as if her kindness eased a balm to his inner struggles.

Questioning her own sanity, she retracted. Don’t pick up another stray. “I should leave. The wolves will be gone by now.”

“No, they’ll linger around your apartment to see if you return. Give it a day. Or better yet, find a new place to live.”

He squinted and turned from the window. The sun flashed a sharp orange line on the horizon.

“How will you get home?” She didn’t care. Number seventy-two? Coming right up.

He pulled the goggles down over his eyes and slipped off his shirt.

“Most vampires can walk in sunlight for a few minutes without harm,” she stated. “But your goggles—”

“No!” He pounded his head. “UVs. They burn me. Cannot look at the light.”

Lark recalled that the pack principal had mentioned UV sickness. It resulted when the vampire was kept imprisoned under harsh UV lights. She wasn’t exactly sure of the results, beyond burns and sensitivity to light, but Domingos’s strong shoulders actually shivered now.

It was too close to home, seeing a man cower from torture. Get away from him, Lark. You don’t need a plunge back to memory now. She must stay strong, and make a call to Rook to secure a safe house for a day or two.

“Take it!” He thrust out his shirt, not meeting her eyes.

“I—No. You’ll need protection from the sun.”

“I’ve ten minutes.”

“If you’re lucky and you move right now.” What was she doing? She wanted the bastard to get fried.

“You shouldn’t be walking through Paris in your bra like that. I don’t want them to see you.”

“Them?”

“All of them. The men. They will look at you wrong. Take it!”

She grabbed the shirt to appease the agitated vamp.

“Now go!”

Startled into motion, Lark hustled through the doorway near the shattered window. When she stood on the other side of the wood door in a stairwell that descended to the ground floor, she flinched when feeling the thud against the other side. He stood there, body slammed against the door. Listening? Waiting?

Shirt clasped to her chest, she placed her hand on the door. “What did they do to you?” she whispered.

But she wasn’t asking about Domingos’s torture; rather, she had never dared to ask her husband about his 366 days of captivity.

She had wanted to know. The vampires had changed him. Irrevocably.

Domingos held in the yowl clawing inside his throat until he dashed across the threshold to his home and plunged against the wall. Alone in the cool, quiet darkness of his sanctuary, he released the scream that had been building.

His fingers clawed into the wall painted a calming slate-gray. He banged his forehead against it to redirect the icy pain. He smelled burned flesh. The sun had flashed across his bare back, searing the already scarred tissue. He could see whiffs of smoke from over his shoulder, and he beat a fist against the wall, which had begun to crack, the thick layers of paint flaking off.

Tugging off the goggles he tossed them aside and then dropped to his knees. Rocking forward, he assumed the all-too-familiar rhythm, back and forth, arms clasped across his chest, to distract his mind from the pain.

He’d given his only protection to the hunter. “Lark,” he whispered.

The sacrifice had been worth it.

Chapter 4

Lark picked through the remnants of her life in the living room. The smell of rank wolf seemed to linger on everything. Actually, it wasn’t so much a smell as a feeling. They’d touched her things, violated her sanctity. In the bedroom, she fit the back door into the frame as best she could. Under her bed, she located the violin she’d owned since she was thirteen, still in its case, safe.

The plan was to take away only what was important and leave as quickly as possible. She couldn’t trust the wolves wouldn’t return. And this place was no longer livable. It needed to be physically cleaned and warded.

Gathering her valuables was easy. She pulled a manila envelope from the safe at the bottom of the linen closet. Inside were bank numbers and some credit cards and stock certificates. She should have put them in a security box at the bank, but she didn’t trust banks.

The violin was too large to carry around with any stealth, so she had to trust leaving it behind and, again, tucked it under the bed. Everything else was expendable. Save the picture in her bureau drawer. She retrieved the folded photograph and tucked it in the envelope without looking at it. She remembered his face. But the face she remembered was much different from that on the glossy photo paper. The image in her memory had hardened and grown thinner, desperate.

“Stolen,” she whispered as she tucked the envelope into a backpack. A soul stolen in a slow and methodical way that tortured her to consider what he must have endured.

The vampire LaRoque was living, breathing evidence of such torture. She hated looking at him. And at the same time she couldn’t turn away from Domingos’s crazy gyrations and manic actions. That bedraggled soul needed some tender attention.

In a way, coming en garde with the vampire might prove her penance. She deserved to pay for the suffering she had not been able to stop. And what better way than to stand up to it and face it in all its horrid and terrifying glory?

Changing into a pair of leather pants, gray T-shirt, the Kevlar vest and her cleric’s coat, she then gathered her weapons. Half a dozen stakes, some blades, brass knuckles and a retractable garrote that hooked at her belt. A vial of holy water also fit in a loop on her belt.

Pausing in the kitchen, she picked up the black shirt Domingos had given her and, without thinking, pressed it to her nose. Smoke was the only scent she could get off it, and yet the soft fabric tempted her to hold it pressed against her cheek longer than any sane woman should.

How many times had she done the same with one of Todd’s shirts after he’d been away a few nights on a job? Her husband’s leather-and-pepper scent had always made her smile.

The vampire didn’t have a scent, beyond smoke, and that disturbed her only because she wanted him to have a telltale odor. Something to remind her…

Lark shoved the shirt away from her face and dropped it as if it were suddenly on fire.

“Don’t think like that. You are not attracted to a vampire.”

Even one who would offer the shirt off his back with the sun glinting on the horizon?

“Even so,” she chided her thoughts.

Grabbing the gear she’d stuffed into a black nylon backpack, she locked her front door because it felt right—even though the back door was off its hinges—and shuffled down to street level. She dialed Rook as she hailed a cab and slid into the backseat, telling the driver to “Drive until I know where I’m going.”

The phone clicked and a gruff French voice answered. The second-in-command to the Order’s leader went only by the single moniker, which Lark suspected was a code name and not his real one.

“Rook, I need a safe house for a few days.”

“You are having trouble with the assignment?” he asked in thick French. He never used English, though she knew he spoke it. He looked down on Americans, of which, she was an expatriate.

“No, I stumbled onto some werewolves last night. Pissed them off. To thank me, they trashed my place.”

“I’ll send a cleaning crew and ward master immediately.”

“Thanks.” The ward master would provide the plastic seal, so to speak, over her newly cleaned apartment. Should make it safe to return without fear of intruders.

“Were they Levallois?”

“I don’t think so.” She hadn’t a physical ID on the entire pack, but noted that Domingos had not killed any of them, which led her to believe they had not been his target wolves. “So the safe house?”

“I can manage one for a couple days, which is all you’ll need. It’s located in the fifth arrondissement, tucked along the Jardin des Plantes. But tell me your progress with Domingos LaRoque. He has been eliminated? You haven’t reported in, which is very unlike you. Are you sure you’re not having trouble with this one?”

Lark sighed and tapped her fingers upon her knee. It had begun to rain, darkening the morning sky through the water-streaked cab windows. Somewhere out there a vampire who needed to wear goggles to protect his eyes against the UV rays must be rejoicing over this weather.

“I ran across him, but the situation with the wolves aggravated it, and I wasn’t able to make the kill.”

She heard Rook’s soft yet admonishing tut on the other end.

Always an astute student, no matter what the study, Lark had taken to the Order’s training program with zeal and a determination that had surprised even herself. She’d always been a girly girl who liked fashion and partying, and, well, the idea of exercise and martial arts, and honing her muscles and fighting skills had never been on her radar. But tragedy had altered that girl, changed her into something adamant. Something Lark still didn’t recognize in the mirror.

After being knighted into the Order of the Stake, she’d proven herself a ruthless hunter. When she went after a vamp, it was dead less than twenty-four hours later. Nothing could dissuade her from her quest.

“I’ve got the situation under control,” she said.

Oh yeah? What was that stupid “one day to live” deal you made with LaRoque? A vampire! You don’t deal with them. You slay them.

Every hour she allowed the vampire to breathe, she let Todd down a little more.

“Expect to hear from me tonight,” she said. “What’s the address?”

Rook gave her the address to a safe house, along with a digital entry code, and after hanging up, she gave the cabdriver directions.

The safe house was clean, the walls bare of decoration, and the modern furniture a plain beige leather accented with uninspired black pillows. Lark didn’t like it. She needed personal things around her to make her feel…

Admit it, Lark. You don’t feel safe here.

It was called a freakin’ safe house for a reason. But nothing she looked at reminded her of home. Of him. Yet would anything ever bring back that feeling of safety, of feeling loved and cherished?

Had it ever been love? Or simply her clinging to the idea of love, marriage and happily ever after?

Shoving away doubt, she sighed. She wouldn’t be doing this if it hadn’t been love.

“Only a few days,” she said, and dropped her backpack on the floor by the beige sofa.

Even the rug was uninspired, no texture or color. At home she’d liked to dig her bare toes into the thick, soft pile of the sapphire rug before the gray leather sofa. More than a few times she and Todd had made love on that rug.

Shaking her head rattled at the intrusive memories. Looking over the rug, she decided flat and no color was best for her now.

At that moment a knock on the door startled her hand to her hip, fingers glancing over the stake. Perhaps it was Rook come to check on her? Made little sense. The man oversaw the Order from his office and the training facility; he didn’t often go out in the field. If contact was required with a knight, the knight went to Rook. And forget ever casually running across King, the leader of the Order. It never happened.

“Lark,” called from the other side.

The skin at the nape of her neck tightened. How had he found her here?

She strode to the door and jerked it open, not fearing that he would rush inside to attack her. They’d made a deal. And besides, he needed an invite.

The scruffy vampire leaned against the door frame, goggles pushed onto his forehead and head bowed. He wore a turtleneck beneath a hooded jacket, and leather gloves. The only skin visible was on his face, and the scarf hanging about his neck clued her in that he used that as a mask.

“Did you track me?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Why? What’s wrong with you? Most people would put distance between them and the one person who had explicitly stated she’s of a mind to kill you.”

“It’s afternoon,” he said. “I’ve still got a good eight hours before our deal expires. May I come in? It’s raining out.”

“The rain won’t make you sizzle.”

“Actually, it feels great on my skin.” He tilted up his head to show the side of his jaw where the scruffy beard revealed red skin, as if plunged into hot water, yet not beset with a boil. “It was sunny when I set out after you.”

“Is that why you keep a beard? To protect as much of your face as you can?”

“No. I hate this stuff.” He stroked the thick black facial hair. “I just haven’t gotten to a barbershop lately. They don’t keep the same hours as I do.” He rapped the air in the exact position of the threshold, and his hand did not penetrate the invisible barrier to Lark’s side. “Pretty please? I promise I won’t bite. And I’m getting soggy.”

“I thought we had a truce? Me not stabbing you. You not biting me.”

“It makes me feel special to know you intend to hold good on that.” All kinds of snark in that statement.

The vampire winced as heavy raindrops spattered his face.

Lark sighed and stepped back. She would not invite him in. That was insanity. Yet he looked so pitiful. Like a wet kitten scamming for a pat on the head. If she even began to relate him to the homeless menagerie she’d helped in the past…

“You’re not hearing tunes right now?” she wondered.

“I’d hardly call them tunes. But no, no cats screeching in my brain. The whispers are there. Always prodding me. You going to invite me in?”

“I have no reason to.”

“Can’t we be civil to each other during the truce? I want to get to know you, Lark.”

“I don’t understand why.”

“Because you’re pretty, and feisty. And maybe I came so I can get my shirt back from you.”

“It’s not here. It was torn and—” had no scent beyond the smoke, which had frustrated her “—not wearable.”

“It’s one of few I own.”

Struck by that confession, Lark swallowed back surprising guilt. Maybe the guy was homeless? And she’d taken his best shirt? Because what he was wearing now didn’t look much better. The linen scarf and turtleneck looked thin. Though there were no holes in the jacket and he didn’t smell like smoke now.

“Please,” he said. He shook his head like a dog against the wet, yet it was that erratic shake that clued Lark he battled inner demons. “She’s dangerous!” The vampire chuckled lowly, and slapped his arms across his chest as if to stave off the insane mirth.

“I am dangerous. And you…” she started.

Baffled her. Yet at the same time, the man’s presence tugged at some inner threads that coiled about her heart, threads she’d thought severed and the ends singed.

Before her better judgment could strangle her conscience, Lark invited the vampire inside. Because he looked pathetic standing there with his goggles and burned skin and dripping hair. Damn her, but she’d never been able to walk past a stray kitten, either.

Rook would have harsh words for her if he discovered she’d invited a vampire into one of the Order’s safe houses. Hell, the man would speak with his fist. He had never been averse to punching her while training.

Lark closed the door but clenched the doorknob, clenching her jaw as tightly as her fist. What was she doing? Had such merciless training taught her nothing? Getting friendly with a vampire—not even with the excuse to cozy up to the subject—was strictly forbidden. Vamps were known to charm and manipulate, yet beneath the sometimes sexy—or crazy—exterior, they were nothing but deadly predators.

Domingos wandered to the couch, but before he could sit she asked him not to. He flicked her a wondering look over his shoulder.

“You’re filthy,” she stated. “Your clothes look like something you dragged out of a Dumpster, and your hair…Hell. Why don’t you clean yourself up?”

He shoved his hands into his pockets and, head down, simply stood there.

And Lark’s shoulders wilted. Why must she be so cruel? The alley cat only wanted to be picked up and stroked, not scolded for his appearance. The man wasn’t all there in the head. He probably didn’t even comprehend his tattered attire. Fashion couldn’t be a concern if he had in mind only to slay werewolves and, hell—to survive.

Lark straightened. This knight wasn’t going to abandon her hard-earned training at the first pitiful meow from a stray. “Don’t you have wolves to slay?”

“Thought I’d enjoy my free day,” he muttered, looking longingly at the couch. “I’d clean up if you wanted me to.”

Lark crossed her arms. “Is that so? You going sweet on a hunter, vampire?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know the meaning of that word. Sweet. Heh. Only dark and heinous in my world lately. I am getting a bit scruffy. Call it camouflage. Helps me blend when I’m stalking wolves.”

His chuckle was maniacal, and it set the hairs upright on Lark’s arms. He jerked, as if with Tourette’s, trying to shrug off the strange outburst.

Once, Todd had brought home a stranger who, due to his tics and constant shouts of nonsense words, she suspected had that very disease.

Oh, Lark, what would a little water and soap hurt?

It was apparent he was here for a visit, and she couldn’t shove him right back out into the rain. And conversation was not tops on her list, especially not with the enemy. Best to put him to work.

She marched into the bathroom, grabbed a razor and strolled back out to hand it to him.

Why did she care?

She didn’t. But this offer felt…familiar. As if she was doing something that she was supposed to do—something she’d once done willingly with her husband at her side.

“I get it,” Domingos said. “You need to clean me up before you stake me. For reasons beyond my ken.”

“I’m just offering a kindness, vampire. Take it or leave it.”

He snatched the razor and pointed to the bathroom.

“There’s shaving cream in there and you can use the towels. This place is stocked for men, so you’ll find everything you need.”

“An Order safe house?” he wondered as he strode into the bathroom.

“I’ll never tell. But you were never here. You know nothing about this place. We didn’t even talk. We’ve never had a conversation. Got that?”

Silence.

Lark waited, listening for the water to run, or for some sound that he was shaving. She slapped her arms over her chest, and now her conscience jumped up from the bleachers in revolt.

What are you doing? Rook will banish you from the Order. Todd would hate you for this. And you! Don’t you care about yourself? Because every moment you allow him to intrude on your life he pulls the emotional threads tighter and makes you…

Feel.

Sighing, Lark remembered the stray kitten she’d nursed for a few months when she was a teenager, only to have it die from feline leukemia on her lap one rainy fall evening. At least it had died safe and cared for.

And really? Todd wouldn’t have hated her for this act of kindness (though he would have raged to know the benefactor of her kindness was a vampire). If Lark had been the kitten magnet, it was Todd who had attracted the homeless. He had often taken in strangers. He’d bring them home, offer them a shave and a hot meal and then he’d send them off with a few crisp ten-euro notes in their pocket. Lark had always protested. They left a ring in the bathroom sink. They could be scoping the place out to later return and rob them. Todd would always dismiss her complaints, and later kiss away her protests and coax her into bed.