Love Your Entity (10 page)

She clicked on her playlist so it moved on from Imagine Dragons to the next song up. “Lessons in Love” by Neon Trees. Not a lot of help there. No way she was falling in love with Ronan. Not after one kiss. That was ridiculous.

Lessons in lust, maybe. Okay, she could deal with that. She’d pour her feelings onto the page … er, the screen.

Wait, she had to check her e-mail to see if her attorney had answered her. He’d said that he wouldn’t have much e-mail access, that it would be spotty at best, but there was a chance … No, no response.

But there was an e-mail from a reader saying she’d loved reading Sierra’s first book and asking for a signed bookmark. Sierra didn’t have an assistant, so she took care of the promo things herself. Someday soon she hoped to have help, but right now her funds were limited.

Focus. Her readers were waiting for the next Ghost Games book and Nicki’s next adventure.

Back to those black satin sheets. She’d never needed wine to write a sex scene before but maybe she should try it now. Too bad she didn’t have any alcohol in the house. Besides, her readers wouldn’t be tipsy on chardonnay while reading her book so she probably shouldn’t be tipsy either.

Maybe she should forget the satin sheets and try making that indelible image of Naked Ronan work for her. And so it was that the Chicago cop got brown eyes and dark hair just like Ronan. And bingo, suddenly Sierra was inspired and Nicki and the as-yet-unnamed Chicago cop got naked, got busy, and got orgasmic.

Nicki didn’t care that she didn’t know his first name. She knew his kiss. Recognized it. Wanted it to distract her from the devastating mess she’d seen. Bernie had come to her as a ghost, asking for her help in capturing his murderer. Instead, she’d been unable to prevent his wife from nearly being killed by having acid thrown on her.

So yeah, Nicki needed sex. To avoid the guilt. She needed molten hot, epic sex and she knew this man could give it to her. She’d known it from the first moment she’d seen him. And she was right.

She wasn’t wearing much when he’d come to her door to talk about the case. Now she was wearing nothing but the scent of desire.

He backed her against the wall as she fumbled with the fastening of his jeans. He had her roll the condom on his penis before he plunged into her, banging her against the wall. Wrapping her legs around his hips, she welcomed the wild recklessness of his possession.

“Faster!” Nicki told him. “Faster. Deeper!”

“You like giving orders,” he muttered against her mouth before grabbing hold of her butt to yank her into his thrusts.

“Yes!” Nicki shouted as she came, her orgasm gaining momentum.

“Satisfied?”

The question startled Sierra out of her writing zone. She looked up from the screen to see Ruby standing near the door.

Sierra looked back at her screen and the page count. Yep, five pages done. “Yes, I’m satisfied. So are Nicki and her cop.”

“Who?”

“My characters,” Sierra said.

“I don’t care about them. I’m talking about me.”

“You asked me if I was satisfied. I thought you meant was I satisfied about getting some writing done.”

Ruby made a scoffing face. At least that’s how Sierra translated it. “Why should I care about your writing? I was referring to Hal. Are you satisfied that you have a good plan to deal with him?”

“Not exactly.”

“Which means no.” Ruby floated closer and peered at the screen. “I charge double to do that. I didn’t know you were writing about a prostitute.”

“I’m not!”

Ruby would have read on but Sierra slammed her laptop shut.

“Why did you do that?” Ruby said.

“Because I don’t like people reading my work while I’m writing.”

“I can see why, if you’re writing pornography like that.”

“It’s not … never mind,” Sierra said. “I can’t work under these conditions. I’m going upstairs.”

Sierra let her anger carry her as she climbed the creaky steps and headed to the portrait of Hal. She made it halfway across the room when he materialized. He looked just like his photograph. The same receding hairline and sinister smile. As he stood before her she could observe his short and bulky build in his 1920s tailored suit, which was not apparent in his framed head shot. He looked like the mobster he was. Sierra didn’t have much time to focus on any of that because the most important thing about his appearance was that it had a dense darkness that was very unsettling.

“I want you gone,” Hal told her.

“I want you gone too,” Sierra shot back.

“Who are you talking to?” Ronan asked from behind her.

She whirled to face him. “What are you doing here?”

“I live here, remember?”

“You said you were going out.”

“I came back,” he said.

“And took a shower.” Which was why he was wearing a towel around his waist, a sexy smile, and a few droplets of water meandering down his bare muscular chest.

“Yeah, I took a shower. Is there some law against that? I didn’t see anything against that in the agreement.”

She could
see
too much of his body, and that towel was way too little to properly cover him. Not that he was flaunting his package at her or anything. Although after writing that hot love scene, she wouldn’t have minded seeing Ronan naked again.

“Who were you talking to?” he repeated.

“You.”

“You didn’t even know I was here, yet you were saying I want you gone?”

At a loss for words, she merely nodded.

“You do know that doesn’t make any sense, right?” he said.

She just shrugged and tried to move past him to the hallway and an escape. He took hold of her hand. That might not have been enough to stop her in her tracks but he used his other hand to trail his fingers up her arm. “Is this about our kiss?”

She nodded. What else could she do? Say she’d come to kick a gangster ghost to the curb?

“You want more,” he murmured.

She shook her head. “No, I don’t,” she added for good measure.

“It’s okay. You don’t have to be embarrassed.”

“No, it’s not okay.”

Ronan had one hand holding hers and his other hand caressing her arm. Which is why he wasn’t able to do anything when his towel suddenly fell to the floor.

Sierra was about to yell at Ronan for breaking the terms of their agreement when the startled look on his face held her back.

The sound of cruel laughter made her turn to find Hal puffing on his cigar and grinning. “If ya got it, flaunt it, boyo.”

Ronan released her and grabbed for the towel. “I smell cigar smoke.”

“That stinks. Not you,” she hurriedly assured Ronan. “I meant the cigar smell.”

“You smell it too?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“I don’t like it.”

“I’m no fan either,” Sierra assured Ronan.

“Your friend looks a little green,” Hal noted with a huge puff.

She turned to face Ronan. “Are you okay?”

He didn’t answer her at first.

“Ronan?” She waved her hand in front of his face. “Are you okay?”

He pulled away from her and left without a word, slamming his bedroom door. A moment later, he strode out dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt with his black leather jacket in his hand.

“Where are you going?”

“Out.”

*   *   *

“There’s something going on at the house,” Ronan announced as he joined Damon at the bar.

“Let me guess. Sierra is asking questions again.”

“No. I smelled cigar smoke.”

“Sierra is smoking cigars?”

“No. You told me that there was something weird about the house that didn’t allow you to put your customary surveillance cameras in there.”

“We put them in. They just don’t work.”

“Why is that?”

“Don’t know,” Damon said. “Like I told you a few hours ago, we’re working on it. Neville thinks it’s a software problem. You do realize this is the third time you’ve come into the bar today, right?”

Ronan ignored his comment. “Have the cameras ever worked?”

“Sometimes.”

“When was the last time?”

“I think for the human before Sierra.”

“Did you see anything suspicious?”

“Like what? Like a ghost maybe?” Damon paused to hand Ronan a bottle of blood. “You look like you could use this.”

Ronan had fed a few hours ago when he’d come to speak to Damon, but felt the need for sustenance so he drank the entire thing.

“I’ve heard the same stories you have about that house being haunted,” Damon said. “After all, I do live next door.”

“And?”

“I haven’t seen any ghosts.”

“But some humans have?”

“They didn’t stick around long enough to say one way or another.”

“Nothing showed up on the surveillance tapes?” Ronan said.

“No ghosts.”

“But something else?”

“No entities. Just strange human behavior.”

Ronan wasn’t freaked about the possibility of ghosts. In fact, he’d welcome that news. Because the other option was much worse. Voz smoked cigars. And if Ronan could still smell that scent, it meant Voz hadn’t gone far. Which meant Ronan had to keep his thoughts tightly locked up. If Voz discovered that Ronan didn’t know what he was looking for or that he was sexually attracted to Sierra, the Master Vampire would use those things against Ronan.

During the two weeks he’d had the house to himself, Ronan had checked the usual places to hide things. The cubbyholes he knew about from living there as a teenager. The loose brick above the fireplace provided space to hide something. But it was empty. The fake bottom beneath the built-in bookshelf. Again nothing but cobwebs and spiders. The attic was full of junk but no key. Maybe full was an exaggeration but that’s how it had felt to him. Most of it was old furniture. He’d even checked the tunnels used by the vampire residents of Vamptown. Nothing.

When he returned to the house a short while later, he was happy to find that Sierra was gone. She’d left a note on the dining table saying she was getting groceries and that Zoe next door was giving her a ride.

While she was gone, he made fast work of ripping up the floorboards in the bedrooms upstairs, and when he found nothing, swearing incessantly as he hammered them all back into place at vamp speed.

Nothing. Yet again he had reached a dead end in his hunt. Striding across the hallway, he went right up to the large framed photograph Sierra had been standing near. “If you’re a freaking ghost, I need to know about it now! Show yourself,” Ronan demanded.

Nothing. If this guy lived in the house, he might have some idea about what hidden treasures were inside. Ronan didn’t care if the guy was dead. He was good at dealing with the undead. Not that he’d ever dealt with ghosts before. Hell, for all he knew they didn’t even exist.

But on the odd chance that they did, he needed to make contact. “Show yourself!” he said, louder this time.

Again nothing.

So no ghost. Just the lingering scent of cigar smoke reminding him of Vox. Moving at vamp superspeed, Ronan knocked on the walls and the floor. He tore up more floorboards and had to put it all back. He hated this. Not the work, but the frustration.

Voz had granted Ronan his freedom and then reeled him right back in by holding his sister’s soul hostage. Ronan didn’t even realize he’d punched a hole in the wall until after the fact. He’d used such force that his bones cracked and broke.

He didn’t care. As a vampire, he healed quickly. He welcomed the intervening pain.

What if this was a mission for which there was no chance of success?

Was this his punishment then? Were the fates conspiring against him for becoming a vampire, a monster? Not that he’d been given a choice. He later learned that vampires are supposed to ask for permission before turning a human. And even then, a large percentage of the fledgling vamps didn’t survive the transformation.

But Master Vampires were immune to those rules. At least they were in Europe and Russia where vampire history went back to the beginning of time. There they could enslave a human, turning them into an indentured vampire at will to fight and to kill at their master’s bidding. That was how they got their jollies, but most importantly it was how they maintained their power among rival vampire clans.

There was no bargain involved, no requirement for the human to agree to the transaction. This was no volunteer vampire army. Voz drafted those he wanted, those he felt would be strong enough to fight his battles. Dressed as a medic there on the battlefield in northern France, Voz forced Ronan to drink blood, blood from Voz’s own vein where he’d sliced open his wrist. Then he’d moved Ronan to Romania and his remote castle there. Or to be more specific, he’d moved him in a flash to the cold and brutal dungeon beneath the castle.

The transition had been horrific. Only the strong survived. Ronan heard the tortured howls from those who didn’t make the grade. It was a relief when their voices and their afterlives were stopped.

The smell of blood had been all around him in that dark dungeon just as it had been in the trenches in France. But there had been a big difference. Now he was hungry for that blood.

When he’d been released from that hellhole, he’d gone on a feeding frenzy promoted by Voz. Only then, when he’d drunk his full, was he told he’d be indentured for a hundred years. Voz likened it to the gladiators in ancient Rome, battling it out. Voz didn’t like the hundred-year rule; he wanted it to be for an eternity, but that century limit, which had been decreed by the Ancients, had been in place forever.

Vamps could get time off for exceptional valor, shortening their hundred years by a few years. After that point additional bargains could be made. A handful in Voz’s army had signed agreements in blood to extend their term beyond the first century. They’d become addicted to the killing and now they were there for an eternity or until a strong, smarter, faster vamp destroyed them.

There was a limit to how many humans could be transformed into an indentured vampire in any given year, or so Voz had told him. But then he’d told him that Adele was well and had lived a long life.