Moon Child (Vampire for Hire #4) (16 page)

That’s going to leave a mark.

Vampire and werewolf were a blur. Fists
flying. Blood flying. Shredded clothing flying. At one point,
Kingsley grabbed hold of the Frenchman, and pummeled him
mercilessly with fists that looked, from my perspective, as big as
anvils. Bone crunched against bone.

One moment Kingsley was pummeling the
son-of-a-bitch, and the next the French bastard was gone, having
squirmed his way free, moving quickly.

Now the two men faced off. Kingsley, I saw,
was badly beaten up, his clothing completely shredded. For all of
Kingsley’s might, he couldn’t keep up with the speed of the
Frenchman.

“Until we meet again,” said the Frenchman,
and in a blink, his clothing, including that damn bow tie, burst
from his body. Before us was a massive winged creature. Next to me,
Leland squeaked loud enough to be heard in the physical world and
huddled next to me, afraid even in death. Kingsley stood unmovingly
before the winged creature, taking great, heaving breaths.

A moment later, the creature’s monstrous
wings flapped once, twice, and then he was airborne. A few flaps
later and he had burst through the top of the dome, raining wood
and brick around us. Kingsley immediately shielded me, protecting
me with his thick body. As he did so, blood from his wounded face
dripped over me.

He looked down at me with wide, amber eyes.
“I’m so sorry, Samantha. I’m so very sorry.”

And that’s when I blacked out.

Chapter Forty-eight

I saw the yellow light first.

Two glowing disks that hovered in front of
me. One of the lights was picking at me, digging into my shoulder,
causing me excruciating pain. It was the pain that had forced me
back to consciousness.

I opened my eyes slowly and saw two faces
hanging over me. One of them belonged to Detective Hanner, my
female vampire friend, and the other was an unknown man. The
unknown man was finishing up working on my shoulder. He picked up a
metal dish and held it up, rattling it. Hanner peered inside. “Good
work, doc.”

He said, “I would normally be stitching her
up but, as you can see, her wound is already healing.”

“Again, thank you, doctor. Speak to no one as
you leave.”

“Of course.” He nodded, grabbed a small
handbag, and left through the back door of an ambulance.

“This is beginning to be a habit,” said
Hanner. She was, of course, referring to one of our last meetings
when she and I had ended up in an ambulance outside of an Indian
casino in Simi Valley. “And don’t try to speak, Sam. Doctor Hector
tells me that your throat is shredded to hell. Even for us that
will take a few hours to heal. Oh, and don’t worry. He’s on our
payroll, so to speak. So your secret is safe with him.”

Full comprehension of where I was or what was
going on hadn’t fully settled in. I heard voices everywhere.
Shouting. One woman crying. A man crying, too. Sirens.

“You see, there are a few carefully selected
mortals out there who work with us. The good doctor is one such
man.”

Why he would help, I had no idea, but I
couldn’t think about that now. She saw my eyes shift towards the
sound of nearby crying.

“Yes, we’re still at the Mission Inn. The boy
you saved is with his parents, and we can only thank you. You are
proving to be quite the superhero, Samantha.” She leaned over and
inspected my throat. “Nasty business, made worse because it was a
silver bullet. But it will heal soon enough.”

I heard more sirens, some nearby, and she saw
the alarm in my eyes. “Not to worry, Sam. We’re already forgotten
by the Riverside Police. I have a few talents of my own, and one of
them is, let’s just say, persuasion. As far as the police are
concerned, we’re just another ambulance waiting to help.”

I soon recognized another voice from outside,
coming closer.

Hanner reached over and patted my knee. “I
imagine you’re going to want to speak with Kingsley.” She smiled
warmly and touched the back of my hand. “Well, you know what I
mean.”

As she left, Kingsley Fulcrum and his massive
bulk eased into the ambulance.

Chapter Forty-nine

“Doctor Hector tells me you can’t speak,
maybe that’s just as well,” said Kingsley. He had eased down at the
foot of the gurney. I think my end of the metal bed had risen an
inch or two.

Kingsley was hunched into a sort of
cannonball, his meaty knees up around his chest. He looked
uncomfortable and didn’t seem to know what to do with his thick
arms. He was dressed in another shirt, clearly one that wasn’t his
own, since that had been bloodied and shredded. His own wounds had
long since healed.

He reached out and touched my right ankle
which was poking out of the thick blanket covering me. I flinched
and withdrew it. He nodded to himself. “I deserved that. I deserve,
in fact, for you to never talk to me again. I should consider
myself lucky that I have you here, alone, in this small place, so
that you are more or less forced to hear my apology.”

I was still in some pain, as the effects of
the silver bullet still lingered. Perhaps there were trace elements
of silver still lodged in my muscle tissue? Lord, I hoped not. Or,
more than likely, my actual muscles and tendons and flesh
supernaturally mending themselves.

Lord, I’m such a freak.

Kingsley’s longish hair spilled over his
collar. Known as a maverick lawyer, Mr. Fulcrum propagated the
image by keeping his hair long and thick and lustrous. Then again,
maybe his flowing locks were a result of his own particular wolfish
condition. Now, for the first time in a long time, Kingsley looked
at me so tenderly that my heart heaved.

“You took a helluva beating tonight, kid. I’m
sorry you had to go through that alone. I should have been there
earlier to help.” He made a move to pat my ankle again, but stopped
himself. This time I wasn’t so sure I would have moved my leg. “You
deserved better. You deserved a friend who supported you through
thick and thin, good and bad. Who am I to tell you how to run your
life, how to deal with your dying boy? Who am I to play God from
afar? You made the best choice you could, and I should have been
there to support you. My God, I’m an ass, and I almost lost you
forever because of it. Look at you, babe. You can’t even talk. Your
poor throat. And you did this all to help another boy, risking life
and limb and the very medallion you need to help your son, and I
couldn’t even be there for you.”

Now I did something that surprised even me. I
leaned forward and took his warm hand. It took both of mine to
comfortably hold one of his, and we gripped each other like this
for a few minutes.

I wanted to tell him that he did come, that
he did help me, that he did save my ass, but I couldn’t speak, nor
could I penetrate Kingsley’s thoughts. An immortal, he was closed
to me.

He chuckled lightly, running his thick thumb
over the back of my hand. “I bet you’re wondering how I came to be
there on time. Well, the on time part was dumb luck. The being here
part, not so much. I realized I had made an egregious error when I
had mentioned the medallion to Dominique.” He caught my raised
eyebrows. “Oh, you didn’t know his name?”

Ah, so the bastard had a name. Dominique. I
was certain I hadn’t seen the last of him.

Kingsley continued, “I can’t be certain, but
I think Dominique has been around long enough to read the minds of
fellow immortals. But that’s no excuse. I’ve been around long
enough to learn how to guard myself from such an attack. I
suspected he scanned my thoughts and knew that you and that damn
medallion were heavy on my thoughts. He then mentioned something
about it and I felt oddly...compelled to tell him what I knew. He’s
a bastard. A sneaky bastard, but what do you expect from a blood
dealer? Still, I should have been more guarded in his
presence.”

Kingsley looked away and I wanted to
desperately ask him about the blood. Who else was he sharing it
with? Another woman? Should I even care if it was another woman?
Kingsley had been famous as a womanizer. Did his harem of women
also include vampires? It seemed so unlikely. But my thoughts were
cut short when Kingsley went on.

“I knew he was staying at the Mission Inn. In
fact, he’s been here for quite some time. After I blurted out the
info on the medallion, I was on edge, nervous. I should have warned
you. Instead, I lashed out at you, perhaps more angry at myself for
not keeping your potentially dangerous artifact a secret. And when
I heard about the kidnapping at the hospital, it seemed fairly
obvious to me what had happened, and I headed out to the Mission
Inn immediately. I have fairly good instincts, too, and, as you
might imagine, a helluva sniffer.”

I laughed lightly, which tore at my throat. I
reached for it immediately, wincing.

“Easy,” he said. “No more laughing, young
lady. Anyway, I’m quite familiar with your scent and I was soon on
the trail.”

What every woman wants to hear, I
thought.

I think he read my expression. “Oh, nothing
bad, of course. Your scent is all your own, and the way my own
supernatural hard-wiring works, I can distinguish individual scents
from thousands, even millions, of other scents. Call it my gift.
Hey, you turn into a giant vampire bat and I can smell feet.”

I slapped his hand and stifled my laughter.
He squeezed my hand tenderly and looked at me so deeply that I felt
a stirring deep in my heart. Love?

Damn him.

“Anyway, I was soon following a winding pair
of stairs when I came across a rather strange young man. Poor guy
looked like he’d been through hell, face bloodied and all. He
immediately led the way down a side hallway, up another flights of
stairs, and that’s when I heard the gunshots. I came running, fast.
Where the young man went off to, or who he was, I haven’t a
clue—”

Leland had, of course, been there by my side,
comforting me the best way he knew how. A sweet guardian angel with
a crush.

Kingsley went on, “And before I knew it, I
was on top of Dominique and I think you know the rest. The boy,
Eddy, I believe, is safely with his family and apparently unhurt.
Interestingly, he too spoke of a young man leading him out to
safety. I suspect it was the same young man who had helped me. Do
you know him, Sam?”

I simply nodded.

“Well, he’s an unsung hero and there are a
lot of people who want to thank him. The police are looking, of
course, for the man who kidnapped Eddy, but for the most part, the
police are unaware of your involvement, Sam. Thanks in part to
Detective Hanner. She can put quite a spell on people. She even
went back and cleaned up your blood. Mine, too.”

He continued stroking my hand, and as he did
so, I saw the tears forming in his eyes. The moment his tears
formed, my own came running free, too.

Damn him.

“I don’t expect you to forgive me, Sam, for
being a holier-than-thou ass, but if you can find it in your heart
to give me one more chance, I promise I will do my best to never
hurt you again. You see...” And now he covered my two hands with
both of his, and never have I felt so protected. “I think I’m
falling for you, Sam, and I don’t want to screw it up any worse
than I already have.”

His words caught me by surprise. Mostly,
because they echoed my own thoughts.

“Take care of yourself, kiddo, and take care
of your little one, too. You’re a good mother, and I respect you
more than you can possibly know.”

He leaned over the gurney and kissed me
lightly on my lips, then turned away and headed out, pushing
through the ambulance’s door.

Chapter Fifty

I awoke by my son’s side in the early
afternoon.

With Dominique still out there, it was hard
to truly feel at peace, although I suspected any attack now would
be on me personally, and not my son, since the medallion was still
sealed to my chest.

Where Dominique had gone, I hadn’t a clue.
But I would be ever vigilant for him and perhaps others like him,
especially since he had proven to be such a bastard.

I soon got the news I was dying for. The
doctors were releasing Anthony later today. For now, two policeman
had guard duty just outside his door. The hospital, apparently, was
taking all necessary security precautions, especially since little
Eddy’s abductor had not been found.

I absently felt for the medallion that had
melded into my flesh. I hated the irony. I possessed the very
artifact that would have returned Anthony’s mortality, an artifact
that, apparently, was sealed to me forever.

Or so said the vampire, Dominique. I wanted a
second opinion. In the least, I still wanted to find Archibald
Maximus, whoever the hell he was.

My cell rang. I glanced at the faceplate.
Restricted call. It was Detective Sherbet. I was sure of it.

I clicked on briefly and told him to call me
back in five minutes since I was at the hospital. He called me back
in four, just as I was exiting through the sliding glass doors.

“You did good, kid,” he said.

“Thank you,” I whispered. I still had not
gotten the full use of my voice back. Not to mention that my
shoulder still hurt.

“Interestingly, no one mentioned you in any
reports. Only a young man who saved the day.”

“God bless him.”

“Apparently the little boy had been held
captive, albeit briefly, within one of the domes. They found damage
to the ceiling and what appeared to be an epic fight. You wouldn’t
happen to know anything about this, would you, Sam?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“I want to know everything, dammit.”

“I’ve told you more than I should have.”