Chapter Fifteen

Leaving off the studious inspectionof his cream cheese bagel, Alex angled a glance at his sister, seated next to him at the U-shaped conference table, and secretly grimaced. Man, Toni was hacked, her jaw set and her mouth tight, her blue eyes flaming. Roth was red-faced, as if he'd just been scolded, which, well…he sort of had been, although not with overt words.

The morning Council meeting had just gotten underway when Beverly Morville, the new jewelry designer, had been ushered in, asking to opt out of her contract. Her exact words had gone something like, "I want to leave this whack town rightnow."

Honestly, Alex could understand Beverly's urgency. Last night, she and the other new residents had received a too-close view of Josnic, and that dude made the spike-faced demon from Hellraiser look like Opie Taylor from The Andy Griffith Show. The sight of Josnic had even shrunk down Alex's manjiggles a bit. Damage control had definitely been high on the Council's agenda this morning. Then Beverly had entered, and…

Roth had pulled a Roth. Faced with the loss of a precious Dragon, he'd started to deny Beverly's request to leave—as in, revert to the old ways of doing things and keep her here against her will. Roth had been mid-denial when Toni had snapped a glare over to her co-leader that had shut him up but quick. Maybe even shrunk his manjiggles a bit.

Alex would've chuckled, if, um, that wouldn't have been a completely wrong thing to do. But who would've thought that his little sister would someday be able to make vampires quake in their boots with a mere glance.

He gave his head a slight shake. He'd never forget that day four months ago when, after an insane eighteen-day search for his missing sister, he'd finally gotten Toni back. He'd been the one to set the ball in motion for her escape, but his plans never would have come to fruition if not for ginormous help from Beth Costache and Kimberly St?nescu.

Reunited topside, Toni and Alex, plus four other women called "Dragons," had holed up in a hotel room, and that's when the story of the Varcolac had come out. He probably should've treated the info like far-fetched malarkey, but instead, everything that Toni told him made perfect sense—the most sense anything had ever made in his entire life. He finally understood why he'd never fit in anywhere, or why at the age of thirty-five—correction, thirty-six today—he'd never had a serious relationship with a woman. Turned out, he, as a Dragon male, belonged with the people of ??ran?, not topside with regular humans.

Deciding it was do-over time, he'd moved down here with his sister for a fresh start, and the first thing he'd done was put his computer skills to work on a very special project: finding valuable Dragons.

As one of the brightest computer geniuses to come out of UC Berkley's class of '97, Alex had been recruited right out of college by the DoD, moving directly into their RD department. There he'd created groundbreaking pattern recognition software, modeling his programs after the arbitrage trading system that large companies used to detect trends in the stock market. Based on this theory, he'd devised "scene change detection" software to help the military organize the incalculable satellite images they collected. It was only a matter of altering the language of this software a bit to use the program to wade through colossal amounts of information—from hospitals, blood banks, private laboratories, medical clinics, and fingerprinting labs—to find women with a unique element in their blood called Peak 8. Dragons.

He'd unearthed fifty Dragons in three months, an overwhelming success compared to the seven women in seven years the community had found without his help. Yep, career-wise he was a triumph. His personal life, on the other hand, was a total flop.

Unlike his sister, who'd had the advantage of getting to know everyone in the community as a plain ol' Dragon, Alex had arrived as a Royal Fey and, on top of that, in possession of the Str?vechi Caiet—a book and guide of the Varcolac's ancient history—which meant that he was also a revered Soothsayer. Well…if he could ever boot up his Fey enchantment skill. Such a thing would necessitate him bonding with a Varcolac female and getting loaded up with the Fiin?? that came out of her fangs…which kind of required that the women around here not be so freaking intimidated by him.

Talk about irony.

Somebody seriously needed to tell these Varcolac women to take a second look at him. He wasn't a half bad-looking guy, and, yes, he was smart and generally up-beat. He could even pull off cool when he played the guitar, but he also tended toward tan Dockers and plaid shirts, plus he wore glasses and a pocket-protector, for God's sake. He himself was loath to use the word nerd, but he certainly wasn't worthy of the star-struck, hands-off treatment he'd received so far.

Just as fed up with the situation, Roth had finally stepped in and arranged a blind date between Alex and Fey Varcolac, Jennilith, the most stunning woman Alex had ever seen in his life. The night he'd shown up on Jennilith's apartment doorstep with a bouquet of flowers, he'd nearly swallowed his own tongue when the copper-haired beauty had opened the door. Certainly, he wasn't James Bond, but he generally could manage to say more than, "Gleerch" when he reached out to shake a woman's hand. At least he hadn't said what he'd actually been thinking: Nice to meet you, and would you mind if I roll around naked in your long hair?

Luckily, he'd gotten over himself enough to enjoy milkshakes and burgers with Jennilith at the community diner. It'd been a nice evening; she'd been nice, the food had been nice, the conversation nice, everything had been…nice. He sighed. Not great, though. No, the only great part was that the other Varcolac women had finally relaxed enough to talk to him after that. He supposed they figured that, what with Jennilith such a slam dunk as a mate choice, he was off the market and they could chill out around him. Not true…though, damn, why shouldn't it be true? Jennilith had every quality a guy could ever put on his checklist. Maybe he had no idea what he wanted in a woman.

Alex stared distractedly at the Str?vechi Caiet, set on the conference table in front of him. It was a beautiful book, the cover sandy-colored with a dark blue crescent moon and star shimmering on the middle of it. He ran his hand over it, the grainy texture lightly abrading his fingertips. Sometimes the nonsensical, hieroglyphic-runic-like writing spoke to him. Which would be nice if it were to happen, like, now. Then maybe he could see the future and learn who his mate truly was, and stop agonizing over—

A small electrical spark jumped from the Str?vechi Caiet into his hand.

He jumped, his lips parting. His vision zigzagged and his lungs tightened. Trancelike, he watched his own hand slowly open The Book. His heart raced as the page bulged outward, as if it was inhaling a huge breath. On the exhale, it spat the strange lettering off the page, sending it twisting into a small tornado. He stared unblinkingly at it, spellbound. The tornado swirled faster, then slowed, unfolding into a picture. The image was blurry and ragged, but he could make out the figure of a woman. Men, too, large and dangerous—The picture melted into a wash of blood.

"No!" He slammed out of his chair, swaying to his feet.

His exclamation was met with a startled silence. The ten other Council members turned to stare at him.

He stared back, wide-eyed, his breathing audible.

Toni's gaze shifted down to the Str?vechi Caiet, open on the table before him. Her expression sobered. "What did you see?"

"K-Kendra Mawbry…she's in trouble." He pressed his fingers to his temples, his head throbbing. The Om R?u knew about her. Someone like Beverly Morville could return safely to the top, but not Marissa, Hadley, and Kendra.

He heard Toni exhale a breath. "How? Kendra agreed to go live with her mother outside of California."

His stomach was so tight it hurt. "It doesn't look like," he said on a raspy breath, "she's going to make it out of San Diego in time."