Guarding Valentina [Paladin Protection Agency 3] (Siren Publishing Classic) Read online

  “It’s Val,” she offered and lowered her gun the rest of the way. “And I’ve decided I’m going to trust you, for now.” As he moved close enough that she could see him properly, Val realized he was probably used to being trusted on sight. Or being flirted with on sight, she mentally added as she took in his appearance. His eyes were hazel, and even in the dim light of the street she could make out the smattering of freckles that dusted his chiseled features. Even soaking wet and half in shadow, the man was definitely easy on the eyes.

  “I’m pleased to meet you, Val. Though I will admit I wish it were under more cheerful circumstances.” Aedan reached into his pocket, and Val lifted the gun slightly in warning. “Easy now, I’ve got something that’ll help with the bleeding. No need to shoot the man offering to help.” He dug deeper and withdrew what looked like a small, plastic squeeze bottle full of water.

  “What is it?” She eyed the bottle with distrust. The wound on her neck hurt like hell, and the bleeding hadn’t stopped yet, but she’d rather deal with the discomfort than let a stranger dose her with god knew what. “And for that matter, how do you know about Paladin? Or vampires?”

  Aedan chuckled. “Is this what you call trusting someone? I’d hate to see how you react to someone you don’t trust if this is the warm and fuzzy version.” He tipped the bottle over and squeezed a bit of the liquid onto his hand, where it blended with the rain. “It’s holy water, that’s all. It’ll help. And as for how I know about Christoph and his kind, I’m a hunter.”

  “Oh, that clears it up nicely,” Val shot back and arched a brow at him in irritation. “What the hell do you hunt? Deer? Criminals? Unicorns?”

  “Vampires, actually,” Aedan answered in a matter-of-fact tone as he nodded toward her injury. “Will you permit me to fix that for you, or are you going to just keep bleeding until your friends arrive?”

  It was at times like these Val envied her teammate Tara her empathic abilities. It would have made it so much easier to know if she could trust this charming man, or if she was about to fall victim to her infamously bad sense of character judgment yet again.

  “Go ahead.” She lifted her fingers away and frowned when she saw that she was still bleeding heavily. “And uh, thanks.”

  “This might sting a bit,” he warned her.

  “It’s only water. How much could it—yeow!” She yelped in surprise at the burning sensation that flared up and then faded as quickly as it had come. “I thought you said that was just water?”

  “Holy water. Father Patrick’s special blend, in point of fact. It has the power to purify that which has been tainted by the undead.”

  “So that hurt because your friend Christoph left me with a neck full of vamp venom?”

  “Something like that, yes. But let’s be clear here, Christoph is no friend of mine. He’s more like my current assignment. Forgive me for saying so, but you don’t seem too well informed for a group that managed to kill off an entire nest of Christoph’s fledglings. I’m going to guess you’re new to this sort of thing.”

  Before she could answer him, several sets of headlights appeared on the road, heading toward them at high speed.

  “It would appear your friends have arrived.”

  Before she could say a word, he brushed a quick kiss to her lips, and then his voice whispered in her ear, “I’ll see you again soon, luv.” Then he was gone. Between one heartbeat and the next, he vanished. Her lips still tingled from the kiss he’d given her before he had disappeared, the only proof he’d ever been there at all.

  “This is going down in the books as my worst day, ever,” she groused as the headlights closed in, and she had to squint against the glare to see anything at all. She could make out the shapes of people piling out of the vehicles and running toward her as she slumped back against the wall and finally holstered her weapon.

  “Val! What the hell happened?” She could hear her team leader’s voice over all the others as they swarmed around her.

  “I only left him for ten minutes. I swear.” She glanced over to where others were carefully marking off the area around their fallen comrade. “I think we’ve got a big problem, Sin. It was a vampire, a really nasty one.” She lifted her gaze to meet Sinjin’s worried gaze. “And he isn’t finished with us yet.”

  * * * *

  He shouldn’t have kissed her. Aedan watched from the shadows as Val’s teammates helped her into one of their oversized SUVs to wait for law enforcement to arrive. Hell, I shouldn’t have been that close to her, period. Christoph was one of the least psychically gifted vampires on record, but even he might have been able to detect Aedan’s presence at that paltry distance. Aedan had certainly been able to sense him. All dhampir could detect and track vampires. It was one of the preternatural abilities they were born with, along with increased speed, strength, and varying degrees of psychic ability.

  It was that last one that usually got him into trouble. He had just enough talent to catch the occasional glimpse of someone’s thoughts, nothing more. It was easy to tell when someone was bluffing at poker, or if the pretty girl at the end of the bar was looking for a night of uncomplicated fun. The trouble was, he wasn’t gifted enough to determine when the pretty girl in question had a jealous boyfriend in tow. That was usually when Aedan fell back on his other abilities, the ones that let him fight his way out and then run before he was caught by the inevitable police presence.

  He’d been following Christoph from a careful distance, trying to figure out what the vampire was up to. Revenge was clearly on the agenda, but the when and the how were far from clear until Aedan had watched through his binoculars as the vampire had gone after the solitary Paladin operative. It had been over before he could intervene.

  What the dead man’s teammates didn’t know yet was that Nick had been bled almost to death before he’d been dropped. He’d been bled, and then some of that blood had been returned to him in an obscene ritual that had twisted Aedan’s stomach into knots of nausea. He’d never been present for the creation of a vampire before, and he hoped like hell he never had to see it again.

  Watching someone die was hard enough. Watching someone lose their soul in the seconds before their death was a horror that he’d never forget. He’d have to see to it that Nick’s body was dealt with before sunset tomorrow night, or there’d be another vampire walking the streets of Seattle. Worse, the fledgling would rise still retaining all the knowledge and skills of a Paladin employee. It would appear that Christoph’s revenge plan was finally underway.

  He’d observed as Val had arrived at the scene, and he’d admired the way she’d switched from casual passerby to focused professional in the blink of an eye. He’d covered half the distance between them by the time her companion’s body had hit the pavement, but he hadn’t been fast enough to reach her before Christoph had.

  Aedan shifted his position slightly so he could get a better look at Val through his binoculars. Someone had given her a towel, and she’d dried her dark hair enough that it was now falling in damp waves that came just to her jawline. Her body was concealed beneath a metallic silver blanket, but he had seen the way the wet material of her shirt had clung to her curves. She was a woman-warrior, cut from the same cloth as the Morríghan, the Irish goddess of battle, beautiful and dangerous.

  “You’d be smart to stay away from that one,” he told himself, already aware he intended to do the exact opposite. It wasn’t her beauty that had inspired him to kiss her before he left. It was the brief moment he’d seen into her mind as she had apologized to her dead companion. Despite her sharp words and the dark world she walked in, she still had a tender and compassionate heart. He’d felt her grief and her guilt at the other man’s death, and it had been that glimpse of her soul that had captured his interest. She was a kindred spirit, a fellow soldier in a dark and never-ending war. One he was fast growing tired of fighting.

  His eyes strayed to the bandage that now covered the bite on her neck, and he felt a stir of concern. It both
ered him that Christoph had tasted her and then left her alive. That wasn’t normal vampire hunting behavior. The bastard was playing a game, Aedan just knew it. But to find out what the stakes were, he was going to need to talk to Val and her superiors. And before he could do that, he was going to need permission to disclose the Brethren’s existence.

  He stayed and watched as the police laid out their tape, took their photographs, and got Val’s statement. He had no idea what her story would be, but he was pretty certain that she wouldn’t be mentioning the fact that her attacker had been a vampire.

  He stayed until the streets were empty and the pale light of a false dawn crept over the sky. Only once he was certain it was too close to sunrise for Christoph to return did he head back to his hotel. He was going to need a hot shower and a few hours of sleep. He knew that while he slept other members of his organization would quietly see to it that Nick’s body never rose again. Once he got permission to give Paladin’s people the truth, he would have to pay them a visit and explain to them just how much trouble they’d gotten themselves into when they’d raided that vampire nest in Oregon. He sighed and scrubbed a hand over his unshaven jaw. It was going to be a very long day.

  Chapter 2

  Val had been ordered to take the day off and rest. Yeah, right. Like that is going to happen. She’d lost a teammate and been turned into a vampire hors d’oeuvre. She didn’t need rest. What she needed was payback. That didn’t mean she was going to advertise her disobedience, though, so she kept a low profile as she slipped into the operations room of Division S and snagged a chair in the back corner. Her strategy worked for all of ten seconds.

  “Val?” Jase lifted his head and sniffed the air before turning in her direction. “I thought you were supposed to be off duty?”

  “That new nose of yours is a serious pain in the ass, you know that, Jase?” Val had forgotten about her team leader’s new abilities. As a recently turned werewolf, he had developed an interesting array of talents, including an enhanced sense of smell. He’d only been back at work for a week after taking a long tropical vacation, and she hadn’t had time yet to adjust to his new abilities, or the fact he had gone from unrepentant playboy to eagerly expectant father in only a few months.

  “Just wait until it gets closer to the full moon. I’ll be able to tell you what brand of shampoo you’re using from across the room.”

  “Charming,” Val retorted and went to get a cup of coffee. Now she’d been spotted, there was no sense in trying to hide any longer.

  “You had a rough night.” Jase joined her to top up his own mug. “You really sure you want to be back here already?”

  “I don’t want to be anywhere else.” It was the truth. Paladin was her real home, and these people were her family. As much as she loved her parents and her noisy rabble of siblings, none of them understood her the way her teammates did. This was the one place she felt she truly belonged.

  “You know Sin’s going to blow a gasket when he sees you’re back at work. Why don’t you hang out with Jake for a bit? You can see if you can help him track down your mystery man. He’s using traffic-cam footage to try to pull an image of whomever it was that dropped in to help you last night.” Jase chuckled. “Poor kid was already looking for images of Christoph when I got here this morning. No one told him vampires don’t show up on film.”

  “And since Jake’s desk is over in the corner, there’s less chance Sin will spot me right away.” Val bumped her fist to Jase’s bicep. “Good thinking. Jazz must be rubbing off on you. I’m sure you didn’t used to be this smart.”

  “Wise ass. Go help Jake before I remember I’m supposed to be the responsible leader-type and report you to the doc.”

  “Yes, sir!” She tossed Jase a flippant salute and made her way over to where Jake was working behind a collection of oversized computer monitors.

  “How the hell do you keep track of all this?” she asked as she dropped into a chair just behind Paladin’s resident computer wizard.

  “Years of practice and a steady diet of Red Bull.” Jake turned around to greet Val, his blue eyes dancing behind his overgrown bangs. “I’ve been trying to find a camera that was trained on the area where Nick…fell.”

  “Hey, it’s okay. You can say it. It’s where he died. I know, Jake. I was there.”

  “I just…” Jake suddenly looked like a lost little boy instead of the brilliant and cocky twenty-six-year-old he was. “This is the first time I’ve known the person who didn’t come back. I don’t know how you guys do this.”

  “Do what?”

  “Keep going and act like nothing happened last night.”

  Val lowered her voice to a whisper. “I’ll let you in on a secret, Jake. That’s all this is, an act. You work here long enough, you’ll figure out how to do it, too. We carry on because that’s the job. And finding the bastard who did this to Nick is the best way to honor his memory.”

  Val took a deep breath and let Jake see past the wall she’d put up around her feelings. She felt the sting of tears and blinked them away before anyone else could notice. “You tell anyone you saw me cry, I’ll kick your ass up one side of this building and down the other.”

  Some of the sparkle returned to Jake’s eyes as he nodded. “I didn’t see a thing. And, Val, thanks. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one feeling badly. I was starting to wonder if I’d signed on to work with a bunch of Borg.”

  “Your geek is showing.”

  “If you got that Star Trek reference, then so is yours.”

  “Shh! If you give me away to the others, I will tell that little blonde down in payroll you have a thing for her.”

  Jake paled. “Ingrid? You wouldn’t! It took me two months to convince her I’m seeing someone! She’s the most tenacious girl I’ve ever met.”

  Val had to clap a hand over her mouth to muffle her laughter. “You didn’t. Seriously? What are you going to do when she finds out you’re not?”

  “Who says I’m not seeing anyone?”

  “Your time sheet says so. You clock more hours here than damn near anyone else. If you’re dating, then she’s either the most understanding woman on the planet or you’ve gone and made yourself a DIY girlfriend.”

  “There are days I’ve considered that last option, believe me.” Jake muttered before spinning around and typing something too quickly for her to read it, but it set a series of images scrolling across one screen.

  “If you figure out a way to build computerized companions, you’ll have a long list of clients, starting with me.”

  “Single again? What about that guy you were seeing? Bruce? Bill?”

  “Bradley.” She frowned into her coffee. “He dumped me by text message yesterday. Classy, huh?”

  “You really did have a lousy day.”

  “Yeah, tell me about it. So, have you found Aedan yet?”

  “Your mystery man? Not yet, but I think I’ve managed to, uh…access a security camera that might give me another angle.” He typed for another few seconds and then cheered. “Got it!”

  “Just don’t tell Sin how you managed to access that camera, you sneaky little hacker.”

  Jake winked at her and then leaned in closer to the monitor as he fast-forwarded the feed to just before the attack. The camera was situated across the street from where she and Nick had parked their car last night, and it gave a half-decent view of the area on either side of the vehicle. Jake toggled the camera to normal speed, and they both watched in silence as Val left the car and headed off camera.

  “I should never have left him,” she murmured as she watched herself disappear from view. “He’d still be alive if I hadn’t wanted a damned coffee.”

  A warm hand touched her shoulder, and she glanced up to find Sinjin standing behind her. “I don’t think your being there would have helped much.” He directed her attention back to the monitor. One minute Nick was air-drumming to whatever was playing on the radio, and the next the overhead light was on and he was being dra
gged across the seats and out the passenger side door, struggling against some invisible assailant.

  “Holy shit!” Jake swore and paused the recording. “What the hell was that?”

  “That was Christoph.” Val stared at the image frozen on the monitor. “He had Nick within a minute of my leaving the car. He deliberately waited until I came back to kill him. He wanted me to see it.”

  Sin cleared his throat. “You were team leader on that raid a few weeks back, Val. Clearing out that vampire nest in Oregon. Do you remember?”

  How could she forget? They’d been hired to retrieve a man’s runaway daughter from what he thought was a cult. It had taken Paladin a while to track her down, and when they had, they’d been stunned to learn that she wasn’t part of a cult at all. It turned out she was one of the human devotees who voluntarily offered themselves as a food supply to a nest of vampires.

  They’d retrieved the target, destroyed the nest, and the last Val had heard, the girl was locked away in a detox center somewhere while they tried to help her recover. Having seen the desperate way she’d tried to run back through the flames to rejoin her vampire lover, Val doubted she’d ever really get over it. The girl was more than a little broken.

  “You think Christoph is connected to that?”

  “He did accuse you of killing his children.” Sin shrugged slightly. “That’s the only time we’ve been involved with vampires.”

  “Until now.” Val tapped Jake’s arm. “Can you keep playing it? I want to see if Aedan is on this recording.”

  “Why wouldn’t he be?” Jake asked as he toggled another switch and the video footage started running again.

  “Because I’m not entirely sure he’s human.”

  “Fuck. Why wasn’t that in your report, Val?” Sin asked, clearly unhappy.

  She glanced back at Sin. “Because it’s just a gut feeling.”

  “Just great. So what the hell do you think he is?”