She looks good. She’s tall and slim and has eyes that aren’t quite green and aren’t quite blue, but flash of both. Her dark hair has grown since I last saw her, it skims her shoulders. Her skin is sun-kissed and glowing. She looks healthy. She looks alive.
What she doesn’t look is happy to see me.
“Hello, Sandra.”
I step up to the bar and place both my hands flat on its surface. I know why she’s reacting the way she is. Culebra made that clear. It’s the reason I came.
For the moment, though, the more urgent problem is the vamp to my left. His negativity flares, burning into my subconscious, demanding response.
So much for ignoring him. Without turning, I say, “Hello, Williams.”
The negativity is momentarily suppressed by a flicker of satisfaction. He was waiting for me.
He was waiting for me.
Son of a bitch. Did Culebra set this up?
Sandra’s expression, though, hasn’t wavered. Her reaction seemed real enough.
So what the fuck is going on?
Next moment, all my questions are washed away in the flood of nonverbal communication Williams sends my way.
If you’d answer my calls, your friends wouldn’t have to resort to trickery.
I do answer my friends’ calls. I didn’t—I don’t want to talk to you.
My gut churns in frustration and anger. Williams has played enough dirty tricks on me to bring out the animal instinct for self -
preservation. The beast rises close to the surface.
Williams is in my head, probing for any hint of a threat. He quickly relays his own intention to keep this meeting a civil one, and politely inquires whether I can do the same.
The vibes we’re throwing off must be explosive because the two vamps at the table get up and beat it out of the bar.
The roar of the Porsche engine is still rattling the windows along Main Street when Sandra ends our head game. She isn’t privy to what’s going on between us, but her own animal instinct for preservation senses the hostility. She slams a glass on the bar with enough force to shatter it.
“Great,” she says. “They left without paying for their beer. Which one of you big, bad vampires is going to pick up their tab?”
CHAPTER 6
WILLIAMS REACHES FOR HIS WALLET, SLAPS A twenty on the bar.
He turns on the bar stool and looks me over. “You look well,” he says.
Small talk? And out loud? I know he’s doing it for Sandra’s benefit, to diffuse the tension, but the time for bullshit between us is long past. He’s here. If he insists on talking, we will. But what I have to say to him is better said in private.
We have unfinished business.
He eyes flick to Sandra. “Do you mind if we go in back?”
I see the uneasiness in her eyes. I can’t read a werewolf’s mind and vice versa, but I imagine she’s wondering what she’ll tell Culebra if we trash the place.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “We’ll play nice.”
If we don’t, and Culebra did set this up, anything that happens is his responsibility.
Sandra looks from me to Williams and back again and finally jerks her thumb in the direction of the back. Her expression says she ’d rather risk us destroying the place than be alone with me.
A worm of irritation crawls over my skin. First Culebra with his mysterious vacation bullshit, and now Sandra and her revisionist history.
“When I’m done, we’ll talk,” I tell her.
She doesn’t answer.
Williams pays no attention to the friction between Sandra and me. His thoughts reflect bored indifference. He figures I ’ve alienated yet another acquaintance as I have him. He shakes his head in our direction and hoists himself from the barstool.
My indignation ratchets up another notch, but I follow him to the back.
Williams picks the first room. It’s a feeding room so there’s a bed and a couple of chairs. He glances around, then shuts the door behind us.
Warren Williams is an old-soul vamp, and the ex-police chief of San Diego. When I first met him, he was a friend of Avery ’s, and eventually that led to him becoming an enemy of mine. Time and circumstances altered our relationship from adversary to mentor to meddler. I dislike him intensely. He manipulated the situation that led to my family moving out of the country. I allowed it because I feared what I am might put them in danger, but I haven’t forgiven the manipulation.
This is the first time Williams and I have come face -to-face since I learned that he was behind my parent’s inheritance—a winery in France. Avery’s winery in France.
Williams is watching me, on high alert. He may be bigger than I am and older by about two hundred years, but he ’s tasted my wrath before and isn’t letting his guard down.
“You shouldn’t have interfered with my family,” I say.
His expression remains cautious, his thoughts cloaked.
“You had no right.”
A tight smile. “That’s a matter of opinion.”
“Whose? Yours? You continue to operate under the delusion that you know what’s best for me. For me. It didn’t work before, it’s not working now. It’s never going to work.”
Williams’ cool gray eyes don’t flicker or look away. “That’s only because you continue to operate under the delusion that you can take care of yourself without—”
Whatever he intended to say, he bites it off. “You are changing, Anna. You must feel it. Your power is increasing; your appetites will, too. It’s inevitable.”
“Once again,” I reply, bitterness rising like bile, “you underestimate me. I’m doing just fine on my own. I come here when I need to. I have someone in my life. We’re developing a real relationship.”
“Lance? He’s a model, for Christ’s sake,” Williams blurts, cutting me off. “He’s not strong enough or bright enough to hold your attention past the fifteen minutes it takes to make you come. A big cock—”
The punch catches him square on the mouth. It spins him back and around and he trips on the corner of the bed. He wasn ’t expecting the attack but a vampire’s reflexes are quick. He recovers his balance, whirls toward me and lunges.
My reflexes are just as quick. I sidestep and he slams into the wall, knocking one of the chairs aside. The plaster crumbles where his fist makes contact.
There’s a yelp from outside. “What are you two doing?” Sandra yells.
Neither of us answers. Williams is angry, his mind a tornado of conflicting emotions he ’s unable to conceal. He wants to kill me, but he can’t. He needs my help and it’s eating a hole in his gut. But there’s a promise and a warning jumbled in there, too. A promise that when I’m no longer needed, we’ll do this dance again.
It’s that promise that calms him. His hands are still balled into fists, but his shoulders lose some of their rigidity. He knows I ’m aware of his thoughts and he waits for my reaction.
I have none. The feel of my fist connecting with his jaw gave me tremendous satisfaction. I ’m not afraid of Williams, I’m not afraid to finish this anytime he wants.
I return his stare. What are you doing here?
I have come to warn you.
He says it like he’s doing me a favor. After what happened a few minutes ago, it makes me laugh.
This is serious, Anna.
It always is. You weren’t surprised when I walked in. You and Culebra set this up?
Williams is massaging his right hand—the one that hit the wall—with his left. I doubt he’s aware he’s doing it, but it gives me a great deal of pleasure to know he’s hurt. When he picks up on that, he drops his hands to his sides.