Embrace the Power: A Paranormal Romance (The Blood Rose Series Book 9) (44 page)

For a witch, she was a model citizen.

It was after midnight, but he was still in the middle of his shift. And he had no damn reason to be at Iris’s house, except he couldn’t help himself. Not that he had plans for the future since he could never actually be with the woman. As a witch, and a powerful one at that, she had the power to kill him with a touch of her fingers.

She moved around her overgrown garden, her voice reaching his ears almost incessantly. At first, he thought she was talking to someone on her Bluetooth because both hands were constantly busy, pruning, digging, cutting, planting. He’d rolled his eyes when he realized she was communicating with her plants. Very witch or very Iris, maybe both.

Apart from his bizarre need to spy on the woman, he hated witches with a passion.

A witch had started this whole shitfest with a brew pot. Result? Seventy thousand humans, in Phoenix alone, lived in a pit of hell, having gone through the
alter
and become something not human anymore. At least the original witch had changed as well. Witches were now one of the five
alter
species living in Five Bridges. Being an
alter
witch or a vampire wasn’t a choice; it was a genetic mutation.

His own story wasn’t unusual. Devastated by his wife’s death, he’d stupidly tried to numb-out with a hit of blood flame. But it had been laced with the
alter
serum that created a set of fangs and an annoying craving for blood. The flame drugs by themselves weren’t the culprit, only when enhanced with an
alter
serum.

He’d gained physical strength and long-life. Beyond that, he was living a nightmare, one that had started thirty years ago, not long after the flame drug craze had hit the human population.

Now he was here, watching a witch who had gotten hit with an
alter
serum herself ten years ago. Only her flame drug had carried the witch serum. He knew this because he’d Googled her. A lot.

She wore a purple smock over her jeans and a pair of flats that looked like ballet shoes, typical brew-faring clothes for one of her kind.

And he liked her in jeans. She wore them snug and that was part of the problem. He’d seen her dozens of times at the Tribunal building in her casual investigative uniform of short-sleeved t-shirt, also worn tight, along with the form-fitting jeans. He’d mentally stripped her clothes off about a thousand times. He swore he knew what she looked like naked.

Yeah. Obsessed.

And guilty as hell. His kind didn’t go with her kind.

His kind
killed
witches, wizards and anything else that dared to smash up herbs and throw them in a cauldron, or cast spells, or worse, kill with the tips of their fingers. Witches, like Iris, were a danger to vampires and shifters. She should be offed, like all her murdering, enthralling kind.

Yet, here he was, floating above her garden, so quiet he’d never be heard not even by another vampire. He’d gotten good at stalking the woman.

~ ~ ~

Iris had that feeling again across the top of her shoulders that a vampire was watching her. She had excellent instincts, but every time she either hunted through her garden or checked the night sky, nothing.

She also had an instinct about who the vampire was. James Connor, also known as Officer Connor, of the Crescent Territory Border Patrol.

Yep, Connor was here again, which caused her heart to beat hard in her chest. Vampires killed witches as often as they could, but in this case an attack wasn’t what she feared.

No, the dull thuds of her pulse meant something far worse. Against all reason, small tendrils of pure desire moved over her breasts, down the insides of her thighs and curled around her sex.

A year ago, she’d seen Connor at a crime scene, one that involved a couple of human children. Until that moment, she would never have believed a vampire capable of any kind of compassion. She honestly thought that the
alter
had removed all tender emotions from those humans who had become vampire.

That night, she’d been called to the same scene to make a full report on behalf of the Five Bridges Tribunal, the central governing organization for which she worked. She served as a Tribunal Public Safety officer and as such could move freely among all five territories without too much fear of getting assassinated in the process. Murder among the five
alter
species was rampant.

At the crime scene, with so many vampires present, she’d remained in the shadows, content to merely observe and gather data.

Because of the bloodsuckers, her own killing instinct had risen to the surface, vibrating like a motorcycle engine on overdrive. Her fingers had ached to touch some pressure-points that night and rid her world of a few sets of fangs.

She hated this aspect of being a witch, the driving need to strike another species down. But every one of her kind, once having gone through the
alter,
felt an intense pressure to self-protect. She’d come to accept that what she experienced was a basic survival mechanism. Vampires and shifters killed witches, her kind returned the favor, though for her she’d only done so when attacked. However, that didn’t change how much she detested her new nature.

The crime scene that night had torn her own heart into a thousand pieces. Two children were found at the Phoenix entrance to Sentinel Bridge, a boy and a girl, about nine or ten. They’d accidentally gotten hold of one of the flame drugs that carried the
alter
serum, and had begun the process of change. But children couldn’t handle the sudden physical trauma involved. Death always followed.

They’d held hands as they’d died, facing each other. It had broken Iris’s heart, seeing their twisted bodies, fingers entwined. She’d wept quietly, and that’s when Connor had arrived.

She’d seen him many times at various crime scenes, but never like this. He’d taken one look at the pair then dropped to his knees, covered his chest with both arms and rocked. She’d had no idea what had gone through his head at that moment, but she’d felt his compassion in waves hitting her over and over, wrecking her heart and somehow causing her to become fixated on a damn vampire.

As much as she’d come to loathe his kind, she’d ended up craving him with a terrible need.

She was tired of thinking about him almost constantly, though. More often than not, her thoughts turned into elaborate fantasies that usually involved his fangs buried in her neck and his cock plunging in and out of her sex. Sick as hell.

Tonight, she was determined to change all that.

With a fresh lime in her hands, she moved into her workroom between the house and her garden. She set about creating a spell that she should have used about eleven months and four weeks ago. She had no doubt, once completed, the formula would end her obsession.

She fired up her cast iron pot-belly stove, using elder wood. Once blazing, she placed the blade portion of her hatchet on top. She needed the metal hot enough to slice instantly through a thick wax candle.

On her worktable, she cut the lime in half, then squeezed the juice onto a purified elder wood tray. She rolled a thick black candle in the juice and invoked Connor’s name several times until she felt the spell move into place. At the same time, she made use of one of her most powerful incantations. She then picked up the heated hatchet and held it aloft ready to slam the blade through the thick wax and break Connor’s hold on her.

She felt her witch power racing through her veins, giving her a heady buzz. The swirl of electrified energy let her know how potent the spell was. She had no doubt it would work.

With her arm poised and ready to strike, a soft longing ran through her of things hidden behind the veil of death. Her sister came to mind and she felt, as she often did, a trail of loving fingers down both cheeks.

She closed her eyes, her throat tight. “Violet. Are you here?”

A wind from the garden whipped through the room, smelling of thyme, the herb of love she always associated with her sister. Tears tracked down her cheeks.

Violet was long dead, killed in a vampire massacre nine years ago. Yet, in this moment her sister’s spirit was here, in Iris’s workroom.

“Violet,” she whispered again.

Once more, the wind blew in a strong gust and the scent of thyme thickened in the air. “Don’t you want me to end this obsession?”

This time, the fingers once more touched her cheeks while the wind blew.
No-o-o-o,
came softly into her mind.

Iris talked with Violet a lot, but her sister had never communicated with words before, not once in all these years. Yet, she had now.

“Violet?” She looked around, wondering if the ghost would show herself.

But nothing happened, no fingers on her face, no words in her mind, nothing.

She lowered the hatchet and returned it to a slab of cast iron on the long butcher block counter near the sink. It would need time and a safe place to cool.

She felt frightened suddenly. Something was coming and Violet was part of it, as was Connor. She walked back out to her garden to try to calm down, but again she sensed Connor was near, watching her.

But why? She knew the reasons she’d fallen into an obsession with him, but why did he so often hover above her house?

~ ~ ~

Connor’s com vibrated against his shoulder. For the moment, he ignored it because Iris had finally returned to the garden. His whole vampire being was focused on her. He wanted her sex and he wanted her blood. And in a strange way, he longed to talk with her.

He stared down at her as she lifted her gaze once more in his direction, hunting through the night sky. But he knew she wouldn’t be able to see him. All vampires had the means to remain partially cloaked from witches, one of the few defenses they had against Iris’s kind. The distance completed his invisibility.

Using his scope, he centered it on her face once more. Damn, she was beautiful and that was part of the problem. He’d always preferred dark-haired women and her large, brown eyes had a soulful expression he knew reflected her nature, despite that she was a witch.

He knew a lot about her because he’d hunted her down on the Internet and made an illegal search of her home computer. He knew which websites she visited, that she followed a blog called, ‘Witches and Self-Awareness’, and her Tumblr page had lots of pictures of animals, the forest, and travel photos of Europe.

He even knew the porn site she preferred, which had been fodder for his fantasies over the past two months. Iris, of course, played the lead.

He really was just this side of stalking.

Hell, who was he kidding? He was stalking Iris, though to be fair he had no intention of ever intruding into her life.

An owl swooped down on her suddenly, then took up his usual perch in the huge tree at the back of her yard.

Her melodious voice hit the air once more. “Hello, Sebastien.” He could hear Iris laughing and talking with the owl, her pet, or muse or whatever it was witches used to conjure shit.

When his com buzzed for the second time, he swiftly rose another thirty feet in the air then pressed the button. “Connor.”

“Talking pretty quiet. You on a stake-out?”

He recognized Lily’s voice and some of the tension eased out of him. Lily worked dispatch, manning the phones and passing out assignments. “Trying not to attract notice.”

“So, who is she?”

The question startled him. He didn’t think anybody knew what he did between calls. Shit.

Then he realized Lily was fishing. “A beautiful Honda Scrambler, 1973.” Half true. He’d started to collect Café Racers, the older, the better.

He heard Lily snort. “You men and your machines. Okay, listen up. This comes from the chief. We’ve got a runner out at Amado Bridge and he wants you on it.”

Connor frowned. He didn’t usually work the dead-talker end of vampire territory. “Isn’t that Jason’s section?”

“Jason’s MIA, has been for two nights now, and the chief is about ready to explode.”

Unusual for Jason to be missing, but he was a Border Patrol officer and sometimes the men needed to go on a bender just to survive. “He’ll turn up, but his head won’t feel too good.”

Lily laughed. “I totally agree and to answer your next question, yes, Easton was adamant you take this call.”

No point arguing about any decision the chief made. “I’m on it.”

He took off, heading north in the direction of Crescent Territory, wondering what the hell he would find this time. He touched the hilt of his half-sword and thumbed the holster of his Glock. He wore black leather wrist guards lined with steel, a black tank, leathers, and heavy boots. He was ready.

Amado Bridge. He scowled. One of the worst terrains for a runner to attempt to take drugs into the human
world.

His instincts lit up. Jason was missing, a runner was out at Amado and Easton wanted him on the assignment.

A sick feeling started crawling around his gut. This call already stunk and it was only midnight. Great.

~ ~ ~

At the same moment Iris felt Connor take off, her cell rang. She fished it from her jeans pocket and saw that the Tribunal was calling. She frowned because she wasn’t working tonight, and she had a dozen orders to fill. Her job as a TPS officer barely paid the bills so she supplemented her income by creating special potions. Using a human dealer, she had her products selling at high prices in the various malls and specialty stores around Phoenix. She was doing well.

She touched the phone face. “Meldeere.”

“Sorry, Sweetie, but Donaldson wants you out at Amado Bridge.” Faith doled out the assignments through the night and had a calming effect with the officers. “Know where that is?”

“Northwest Crescent Territory.”

“Right.”

Iris frowned. “But I’m not on duty.”

“I told his royal highness as much, but his face turned red, you know in that fucked up wizard way of his. He then let a few choice words fly. I tossed up both my hands and said I’d give you a shout.”

Donaldson was a prick, no question about that. He was also corrupt as hell, so already Iris was uneasy. Corruption tended to lead to the three drug-lords in Five Bridges. But her fingers were squeaky clean so she couldn’t imagine why any of them would send her out there. “What’s the crime?”