Chapter 4

So far, so good, Jacqueline was thinking. As soon as Mabon finished his second murder-for-hire phone call, Dane shoved his phone in his pocket. She loved how he was proactive and was taking a recording of Mabon’s business dealings before they terminated him. She hadn’t even thought of that, but he was doing the right thing in doing so. Once they took Mabon down, the people who had hired him could still kill their partners, just by hiring someone else. So they needed to be convicted of trying to do a hire-for-murder scheme also and in the end, save their partners before they hired someone else to do the job.

Mabon turned and started to head for the living room, but he suddenly stopped and glanced in the direction of the dining room where they were standing. That’s when Jacqueline realized she heard Mabon’s heart beating. He could probably hear their two hearts beating at once.

She and Dane made their move, both of them vanishing and appearing in the living room. She had to admit she loved that she could vanish and appear in places like that. It really helped to get somewhere much more secretively. As hunters they would have to have moved quickly and decisively but they would have exposed themselves too early to the rogue vampire threat.

Even though she suspected that Mabon knew they were hunters, their movements said that they were vampires. He looked surprised, maybe like he was trying to figure out who they were and why they were there. He hadn’t invited them, so he knew they were not there for fun and games.

Not when they were armed with swords and targeting him. Mabon threw his bloody cocktail at Dane, and he dodged it. The rogue immediately dove for an umbrella stand filled with sheathed swords and tried to pull one free but it was tangled up with four others.

Yes! Fatal mistake, hopefully, on his part. She wasn’t going to let down her guard in the event he could finally free his sword or come after them with his deadly teeth. She’d never even let her vampire teeth down, not wanting to experience that part of her vampirism so it wasn’t something she felt she could use in a fight.

Dane was on the vampire and before she could even engage Mabon, Dane removed the vampire’s head. His body and head quickly turned to shriveled leather body parts. Her adrenaline was still racing through her blood, and she couldn’t believe how easy that had been, all because the vampire had a tangled mess of sheathed swords in an umbrella stand. He should have just had one for easy retrieval.

She hugged Dane and whooped and hollered. He smiled at her, then kissed her.

“See? We make a great team,” he said.

“Yeah.” But Dane hadn’t really needed her on the job this time, she felt. Just looking at him, their gazes meeting, she felt butterflies taking flight. She couldn’t believe it. She had just finished a hunt, for heaven’s sake. “Listen, you terminated him, and you can go ahead and claim him.”

“No way. We’re in this together. You could have been after another bounty or enjoying the rest of your night off. Besides, having two of us here rattled him enough that he couldn’t grab his sword.”

“Well, thanks. I appreciate it.” She had hoped Dane wouldn’t take her up on the offer because she thought he deserved all the money, but she really thought the world of him for giving up half the bounty to her.

He called the police and reported the kill. “I also have a recording where he was making a couple of deals to be a hitman for a murder-for-hire scheme. Yes. We’ll be here.”

They always hung around until the police arrived and verified who the dead vampire was. Providing evidence that the rogue vampires were up to their usual shenanigans regarding trying to turn or kill people when the hunters took them down was helpful, but it wasn’t absolutely necessary. The police already had enough evidence against them. They just needed hunters to terminate them.

They both went into the kitchen and found fresh bottles of blood. Because they were newly turned, they had to drink them occasionally, especially if they were injured and had lost blood. Dane poured them both a glass before the police arrived. It was better if the police didn’t witness them drinking blood. It just kind of freaked some humans out.

“Have you extended your fangs yet?” she asked Dane, then finished her glass and washed it out.

“A couple of times.”

“Oh?”

“When you kissed me the first time.”

Her jaw dropped.

He smiled. “Apparently, when a vampire is aroused, his canines can extend. I suppose that if you are an ancient vampire, you would have more control over it. I’ve never kissed a woman since I became a vampire, so when we kissed, I wasn’t expecting that.”

“You hid them well.”

“We didn’t kiss deeply, or you might have noticed. Yours didn’t drop down?”

“No. I thought they would, only if you were really angry.”

“Yeah, then too, supposedly, but I guess I haven’t been angry enough. And of course, they’ll drop down at command if you want to bite someone or want to show them off. I had to show them to my brothers. They still didn’t believe that the vampire had turned me until then. Of course, once I could vanish, they really had to believe it.” Dane finished his glass and cleaned it and set it on a drying pad next to hers.

“I think it’s nice that they are still close to you. But you don’t hunt together.”

“Sometimes. Like if we know a group of rogues need to be eliminated, we need more of us to do it.”

“Well, I think it’s great.”

Then they heard the sirens and three police cars pulled up. Dane identified himself and Jacqueline to an officer and gave their statements. Another couple of officers were searching through a file cabinet and one said, “Holy, crap! We’ve got the mother lode.”

“What have you got?” a homicide detective asked.

“Files on several people that Mabon murdered, including all the contract information—payout, details on where a key would be left for him to have easy access to victims’ homes or offices, or when his target would be home or alone. Names, addresses, everything,” the officer said.

Then the detective started looking through them. “Okay, we put the people who hired him on five of these robberies in jail, but there are another six here that we thought were home invasions, robberies that had gone bad, but now we know they were all murders. We’ll get all the culprits who hired him.” The detective thanked Dane and Jacqueline then and released them.

“Are you ready to go home?” Dane asked her as they headed out to his truck.

“Yeah. I’m tired. It’s late. It’s time to call it a night.”

“What do you like to do for fun?” he asked as they got on the road headed back to their housing development.

“Terminate rogue vampires.”

He smiled. “Other than that?”

“I used to like to dance at a hunter club close by.”

“We could go there.”

“We’re vampires now.”

“You mentioned a human club. They don’t know what we are and vampires who are looking for blood bonds go to them, so we would fit right in.”

She glanced at him. “You’re not thinking of looking for rogue vampires at a human club, are you?”

“No. Unless of course one shows up who we know is trouble. But first, we need to get rid of your vampire.”

“Not the others on our lists first? What if other hunters get them before we do?”

“We can always get more contracts, but we need to get the vampire who turned you so he doesn’t force you to do something you’ll regret.”

“Okay, I agree.” She had wondered how she was going to manage that on her own. But with Dane’s help, she felt that he might be able to handle it. She was glad he thought they made a good team in a vampire fight. She thought she had done well when she’d fought alongside Van too, so she had really been surprised when he told her he preferred fighting beside his brothers instead.

“Since my place isn’t too far from where you live, if you have any trouble with the vampire, let me know,” Dane asked.

“Thanks.” She was really glad he lived in her gated community. “Have…you tried talking telepathically to anyone yet?” She had been practicing with the disappearing and reappearing act because she knew how helpful that could be in a fight and because she could do it in the privacy of her home. Telepathic communication had to be done with a vampire who was willing to talk to her in that way.

“Not yet. I haven’t really had anyone to talk to who is one like us. My friends Adonis Cameron and his sister were hunters turned. His mate is Rachael and her cousin, Zachary, was turned against his will. Adonis turned Rachael so she would be able to protect herself better from a rogue vampire who claimed her for his own. But they’ve been out in Florida taking care of the vampires that decimated the rest of Adonis’s family. They’re living out there now but come here to visit their family in Dallas too.”

“Oh, wow, that’s awful about what had happened to Adonis and the rest of his family.”

Dane parked at her house. “Yeah, it was. They terminated the last of the rogue vampires in their territory in Florida though. If they had been here in Dallas still, I would have tried it with them.”

“Well, maybe we can do it with each other.”

“Yeah, I would like that.”

Then she hopped out of his pickup truck. She wasn’t going for another kiss and lead him on. But maybe later? She wasn’t ready to get into a relationship with anyone after the ordeal with her ex-fiancé. Plus, because of the changes she faced with being a vampire, she just wanted to be more settled with her new self before she had any notions of courting anyone else in her life.

“About our other cases—” he said.

She let out her breath in a heavy sigh. “Okay, sure. You can take some of the cases we have left, or we can work on them together.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Well”—she shrugged—“we did pretty well as a team for the last two missions. I’m good with doing it together until it doesn’t work out any longer.” Not that it wouldn’t, but she wanted him to know that she didn’t want him to feel obligated to work with her if he decided she was more of a liability than a team member.

“All right. Do you want to take some of the names and learn their locations and who they associate with, and I’ll do the same with the others? Then we can go to the first one we can locate before other hunters get there to take care of the rogue.”

“Yeah, that will work. We’ll keep in touch then. Whoever gets a location first, will let the other one know and we’ll take it from there.”

“Sounds great.”

She unlocked her house and turned to see he was still watching her, being a gentleman, making sure she got in okay. She smiled and waved, and he smiled back and waved.

Then she walked into the house and locked the door. Instantly, Princess came to greet her, rubbing her furry body against Jacqueline’s leg and she reached down and stroked her. “Okay, I’m done with jobs for the rest of the morning. Time to go to sleep.” She took a shower and dressed in pajamas, then climbed into bed and Princess quickly joined her.

“Well,”—Jacqueline stroked Princess’s head—“that went fairly well tonight—the meeting, taking down one vampire on my list, and taking another down who wasn’t. Good beginning to returning to work. And we even have a hunter who is willing to go after the vampire who turned me.”

Princess purred, her nose turned up as she eyed her with her big green eyes, her chubby cheeks the cutest thing ever.

Then Jacqueline thought she heard a male voice in her head. She jumped out of bed, Princess leaping off the mattress at the same time as Jacqueline went to check the house and make sure that no one really was inside. She found no one. Why did the voice sound familiar? Though she hadn’t made out what he had said. She didn’t think it was Dane, but what did she know? She hadn’t tried to talk telepathically with anyone, so it could be he tried to talk to her, and his voice would be different than when she heard it in his physical form.

She wasn’t sure how to do this, but she tried in her mind to say, “Dane, did you try to speak to me telepathically?”

He didn’t respond. Did she not do it right? Or maybe he was sound asleep.

But then she heard someone in her head saying, “Go to 75692 Evergreen Drive. I’ll be waiting.”

“Who is this?”she asked in her head.

But she didn’t get a response. She got on her phone and called Dane. “Hey, did you try to telepathically connect with me?”

“Uh, no. I thought we would do it sometime when we’re together to try and figure out how to do it.”

“Someone told me to meet him at 75692 Evergreen Drive now. And it sounded like a man, but it was hard to hear, like he was a long way off.”

“Is it the vampire who turned you? Is he forcing you to go? I mean, do you feel compelled?”

“Yeah, like I’ll be in trouble if I don’t go. I don’t know if it’s him. He never spoke to me when we fought, so I don’t know what his voice sounds like.”

“I’m going with you. He won’t be expecting me.”

“What about your brothers?”

Dane was silent for a moment.

She spoke again. “He might know I went on a hunt with you tonight. He might believe I would call on you. He didn’t tell me not to say anything to anyone about going anywhere tonight. What if he’s laying in wait to terminate you? Or maybe he can even force me to do it? What if he has a bunch of vampires at that location and you can’t fight all of them on your own, particularly if he’s controlling me? If your brothers could join us, maybe you and your family could take the vampire down.”

“I’ll call them. I’m coming right over. I don’t want to lose you while I’m getting hold of my brothers.”

“All right. Sorry about this. I’m sure you’re as ready to sleep as I am. The same with your brothers.”

“They’ll be behind this all the way.”

“Well, if you’re wrong, let me know.”

“I’ll be there in a few minutes.” Dane sounded determined to protect her.

She usually felt confident in her own abilities but there were too many unknowns in this case. Particularly with the problem of a vampire potentially being able to control her actions. She had kind of hoped Heskel wouldn’t remember he had turned her. But that had been too much to hope for. She couldn’t imagine it would be anyone else who was directing her to come meet up with him telepathically at this time of morning.