Instead, he’d sat in the front pew, alone in the light of the candles he’d lit, feeling oddly comforted. He’d thanked God for this second life and the chance to continue to do good in the world, and then he’d gone back to the mansion and ripped into a few more bags of blood.
No irony there, right?
He slowed his bike just enough to take the turn without flipping and roared up the driveway to the mansion, still finding it hard to believe that he lived there.
In a mansion.
The house was more than a century old. It was a stately manor home that overlooked the river and was big enough for dozens of vampires to live there, although in fact only five did.
Well, five vampires, two staff members, one woolly mammoth they called a dog, and an angel.
An actual, honest-to-heaven angel. Half angel, at least. Dr. Ryan St. Cloud, the angel, had tried to explain how she’d found out she was Nephilim—half angel and half human—but his attention had wandered when he’d realized that the incredibly ambrosia-like scent he was smelling was probably her angel blood. That’s when Bane, the owner of the mansion and Ryan’s soon-to-be husband, had strode into the room with a glare promising Hunter’s impending death.
Since Bane was the three-hundred-year-old master vampire who’d Turned Hunter in the first place, it probably would have made him feel bad to kill his newest family member, so Hunter had speedily excused himself from the situation and gone to the basement freezer for more bags of blood.
Hunter scowled as he braked, sensing a theme.
Thirst? Bags of blood.
Stress? Bags of blood.
Impending death? Bags of blood.
Realizing you’re seconds away from attacking a beautiful woman, despite the fact that she’s holding a raccoon in her arms? Bags of blood.
He bleakly wondered if he’d ever be able to have sex again without waking up to discover that he’d ripped his partner’s throat out while climaxing. Or if he’d have to take bags of blood on all dates. Then he wondered if this was the kind of thing he felt comfortable asking Bane or Luke.
Hell, no.
“Allo! Back so soon?” Meara blinked into existence in front of him, balanced on his handlebars.
He almost crashed the bike.
“Damn it, Meara, I’ve asked you to quit doing that!”
She just laughed and gracefully flipped backward off the bike and onto the lawn. “Don’t be so boring. I get enough ‘Meara, don’t do that, Meara, don’t do this, Meara, don’t eat the tourists’ from my brother to last me another three centuries. I don’t need it from you, too, little one.”
She meant “little one” in terms of their relative ages. Although she looked maybe twenty-five, Bane’s sister had been a vampire for three hundred years. The two of them had been Turned at the same time. Something about a wild night at an English village festival, from what he’d been able to pick up. He needed to ask for the full story sometime. Although he had no idea the etiquette involved—was it bad manners to ask another vampire how they’d been Turned?
“Fine, just stop using your invisibility powers on me like a jump scare. I’m having a hard enough time figuring this all out.” He heard the snappishness in his voice and rolled his eyes at himself. “Sorry. Don’t mean to sound like a whiner. It’s been a difficult night. And yes, I’d have to agree with Bane that you shouldn’t eat the tourists.”
The thing was, he wasn’t sure whether or not she’d been kidding about that. Meara Delacourt was the kind of vampire you’d expect to meet if you believed in the movie-star version of vampires. Or if vampires all looked like Norwegian supermodels.
She was tall and slender, loved to wear designer clothes and expensive jewelry that complemented her golden hair and eyes, and she had a wicked sense of humor. In other words, if she’d decided to munch on a few tourists, they’d probably consider it to be their privilege. She was so beautiful that he’d been tongue-tied and completely unable to form words the first time he’d met her, a few years back in a nightclub.
But then one night she’d been caught out by the dawn and nearly died. Purely by chance, he’d been on his way home from work and seen a woman collapse onto the road in front of his car, smoke rising from her skin, and he’d rescued her and learned about vampires all at the same time. For some reason he still didn’t quite understand, neither she nor Bane had shown any inclination to either kill him or enthrall him to safeguard their secrets. Instead, they’d repaid him with their trust.
Vampires were definitely not about to come out of the coffin, so to speak, and announce their existence to the world. Protecting their secret was paramount. But Hunter had told them he would keep their confidences, and Meara and Bane had believed him.
To this day, Hunter didn’t know if Bane or Meara had spied on him or followed up in any way to be sure he wasn’t spilling the bloodsucking beans, but he and Bane had met for a semi-regular chess game ever since.
Now it was Hunter’s secret to protect, too.
His eyes widened as the realization punched him in the gut—he’d told Alice Darlington that he was a vampire.
That was about as far from protecting a secret as you could get.
Son of a bitch.
“You look distraught, little brother. What’s wrong? Perhaps you ate a few tourists yourself?” Meara’s intelligent golden gaze fixed on his face. “You don’t have to figure this out alone. When you and Luke tire of each other’s company, come find me.”
“You were unhappy that Bane Turned me,” he said, not in accusation but in simple fact. Unhappy was an understatement, though. She’d been furious. He’d heard a lot of their conversation, even when he’d been trapped in unconsciousness. “The last thing I wanted to do was bother you with my problems.”
She waved one hand in dismissal. “My brother takes too many chances. Turning a human to vampire is dangerous to the one doing the Turning. I don’t want to lose him, just as I don’t want to lose you, now that you’re part of our family. But you’re changing the subject. Why do you look so distressed?”
“There was this woman…” he began, reluctance fighting every word. But before he could go on, the sound of Bane’s bellow roared across the yard from the back of the house.
“Ryan! Not again!”
Hunter threw a questioning look at Meara, who started to laugh. “Our angel is trying to learn to fly.”
“What? How?”
“She keeps jumping off the roof.”
A loud, high-pitched, and decidedly female shriek rang out next, and Meara raced around the house, Hunter hot on her heels. By the time they arrived, Ryan was floating in midair, halfway between the roof of the three-story manor and the grass, laughing wildly.