SEDUCTIVE SUPERNATURALS: 12 Tales of Shapeshifters, Vampires & Sexy Spirits (236 page)

He opened his eyes. They were back in her bedroom. Carefully, he laid her out on her bed and traced his fingers over her limbs to feel for broken bones. Her breath was shallow, too shallow and a dark purple smudge blossomed at her temple, spreading over her forehead.

“No, no, no, no, no,” Cole muttered frantically.

A sound of movement startled Cole. He looked up to find Crawford in the doorway, black ichor still dribbling down the side of his face where he’d been cut. “I knew you’d come bac—” Crawford’s words cut off, his eyes narrowing. “What’s wrong?”

“She got slammed against the wall, looks like she hit her head really hard. Breathing is too shallow. Might be shock. Might be worse. What do I do?” The agony in Cole’s voice was clear.

He couldn’t lose her. Then there truly would be nothing worth living for—not as a vampire, not as himself.

Crawford stepped up beside him and felt her pulse. “Weak. Not good.” He locked his gaze with Cole, and Cole hated what he saw there—defeat. “You got a choice here, you can either turn her or say goodbye.”

Cole plowed his fingers through his hair, cupping the back of his skull. “I don’t know how to turn her! What am I supposed to do?”

Crawford put a hand on his shoulder. “I can walk you through it. Your call, man.”

His body shook as he closed his eyes. What would Kayla want? He hated being this way sometimes, well most of the time. What would it do to her? Was he so incapable of living without her that he’d ignore if she wanted to live and die just like all mortal things were supposed to do? Yes. God help him, yes. He would move mountains for her, uproot forests, swim oceans. There was nothing he wouldn’t try if it would keep Kayla by his side.

His eyes snapped open and he straightened, before looking at Crawford. “Tell me what I have to do.”

Crawford cracked his neck to either side and rolled his shoulders. “Okay, here we go. First, she’s close enough to death that her body isn’t going to recover on its own. Normally if you were changing someone you’d have to drain them first—”

“I don’t want the full-blown how-to lecture here, just the fucking highlights!”

“Right, right. Use your fangs to score your wrist. She needs some of your vampire ichor in her system before her body gives out for the transition to happen. Then we wait.”

Cole didn’t mess around. His fangs were out and ready and he razored them across his wrist causing a swell of dark red, almost black blood to ooze to the surface. Pressing the cut against Kayla’s lips, he watched as her mouth filled with his blood.

She coughed, but swallowed. Cole sat beside her on the bed, moving her head to rest on him as he stroked her hair. He could hear her heart beat slowing, the space between each beat growing longer and longer.
Ka-thunk. Kaaa-thunk. Kaaaaaa-thunk.
His chest ached. This had to work. It had to.

Her body stiffened, her last breaths coming in gasps until the beating of her heart stopped altogether. “Kayla?” Cole asked softly, his thumb brushing the cooling skin of her cheek. When she didn’t respond he glared at Crawford.

“Why isn’t she waking up?”

Crawford frowned, crossing his arms. “Give it time. This isn’t an exact science, and you’re not in a fucking lab coat.”

And so he waited what seemed an eternity in the space of minutes.

He felt her stir against his body, and looked down at her precious face, and saw movement beneath the fragile skin of her eyelids and felt the beat of her heart again, now growing stronger. “Kayla?”

She gasped, her eyes opening slowly, blinking him into focus. “What happened?”

“You died,” Crawford said plainly. “This guy brought you back.”

Cole gave Crawford a look.
Thanks for the help with everything, but do you think you can give us some space?

Crawford nodded. “I’ll be available if you’ve got any questions. In the meantime, you’ll want to make sure you both down a couple of these.” He held out his hand and several blood bags, similar to those from base appeared and he handed them over to Cole. “When you guys are ready, we’ll get you set up with an apartment with the Clan. That way you can stick close as she works through her transition.”

Cole frowned. “I’ve only got three days left on my furlough. I can’t take her with me.”

“No!” Kayla cried out. Cole wrapped his arm around her, pulling her close.

Crawford held up a hand. “I can take care of that. I’ll have our head of clan security contact your commander and let them know that we are willing to help train their vampire unit, but only if they let us start with you. That should keep you here at least a half a year.”

Cole held out his hand to Crawford. “Thank you. For everything.”

Crawford shook his hand and gave him a cocky grin. “Don’t thank me just yet. You haven’t seen the training I’m going to put you through.” Then, in a spiral of dark particles, he vanished.

Kayla shifted, and Cole looked down at the best reason he’d ever been given to keep on living. “You okay?” he asked, as he cupped the sweet oval of her face in his hand.

“I feel a little shaky, but at least we made it out of there.”

“Yeah. We did. But I had to do something to keep you from dying.”

Confusion flitted over her features. “What did you do?”

“You were dying, and I didn’t see any other choice. I’m sorry Kayla, I—”

“What did you do?”

Cole sighed. “I turned you into a monster like me.”

She blinked for a few seconds, the empty silence filling up the room. “A vampire?”

He nodded.

“Well Cole, now you’ve done it.”

His heart began to shrivel in his chest. He’d lost her anyway.

She lifted one silky brow. “Now you really are stuck with me forever.”

He pulled her close, his heart beating frantically. “And you’re okay with it?”

Kayla leaned away, putting her hands on either side of his face. “I told you before, I don’t think you’re a monster. And if this is what you had to do to protect me, I’m not going to question it, I’m just going to ask for your help because I have no idea how vampires work.”

He laughed. “I’m only just beginning to find out.”

“Then we’ll find out together.”

He frowned. “It’s my fault you can’t stay here. It’s not safe.”

She nodded. “I know, and it’s okay. We’ll just start over and make a home together.”

He kissed her, lightly at first, then let it grow between them. Kayla’s smile was soft and luminous.

“I can’t promise I’m always going to be home. Vector Force still calls the shots.”

Kayla brushed her hands over the rough stubble on his face. He probably looked like hell, but this woman still had a look of love in her eyes.

“Just promise me you’ll always come back.”

“For you, always.”

Deep down Cole knew it was finally a promise he could keep. He looked deeply into the soft brown of her eyes, at the woman who’d loved him no matter what he was or what would become of them and he knew at last he was home.

THE END

Dear Reader,

Thanks for reading
Welcome Home, Vampire
. I hope you enjoyed it!

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You’ve just read the novella that kicks off not just one, but two new connected series—the Vector Force series and the Enochian Brotherhood series. The next book in the Vector Force series will be
The Ultimate Vampire
(out in 2015) and following that will be the first book in the Enochian Brotherhood series,
In His Touch
(out in 2015). The Vector Force series connects back to my earlier Sons of Midnight vampire/werewolf series.

About the Author

Theresa Meyers

Award-winning author Theresa Meyers didn’t learn to read until third grade, but she overcame dyslexia, going on to make words her life’s work. Her first piece was published in a national magazine at age 17. A former journalist and public relations officer, she now uses her writing skills to pen fiction novels. She’s spent a quarter of a century married to her Prom date, lives on a mini-farm near Seattle with her family, drives a red 1966 Mustang that was her grandmother’s, and drinks tea with milk and sugar. Find her online at
www.twitter.com/Theresa_Meyers
and

www.theresameyers.com
and Facebook at
TheresaMeyersAuthor

Additional Books by
Theresa Meyers

THE HUNTER

ONE NIGHT WITH THE SHIFTER

THE GEEK BILLIONAIRE MAKEOVER

Excerpt from
IN HIS TOUCH

Out in 2015

She was in!

Paige Harlow resisted shouting out a cry of satisfaction and settled instead for a silent fist pump. A few more keystrokes and she located her father’s file on the elusive and highly-encrypted server and waited for it to open. For a second she held her breath, her hearing growing acute as she listened for any sound of movement in the room.

Paige quickly and quietly rose from her office chair, just enough that she could peek over the pale gray partition of her cubicle in the National Security Administration building to see if anyone was headed her direction. No one else seemed to be in the large office area that resembled a cubicle farm. Good.

She glanced down at the screen. Hacking was her job and she was damn good at it. Normally as part of her routine she hacked into email servers and oversea multinationals, but this little side operation was personal. The central ventilation system kicked on sending a wash of cool air into the room that stirred a few hairs at her nape. But it wasn’t the air conditioning raising goose bumps all over her skin. Paige stared at the picture of herself, complete with annoying red hair and a spray of freckles across her face, on the screen in front of her. This was not good. Not good at all.

The problem with hacking was either you unintentionally found out things you wanted to know or you intentionally found things you wish you didn’t know. This was one of the later.

She quickly scanned the dossier. Whoever these Vector Force people were, they’d not only taken and encrypted most of her father’s research on their server, but also had amassed an impressive collection of data on her.

Paige copied as much as she could to the small thumb drive she’d snuck in with her to work that day. While she could try all she wanted to get into Vector Force files from her home computer, it wasn’t going to happen. Only her desktop at the national laboratory could hook into the other government servers through the back door access granted to IT threat analysis specialists. Using a few masking techniques she’d managed to worm her way in enough to get to her father’s files on their server.

Right now Paige only knew three things: one, whoever or whatever Vector Force was, they were linked into the Department of Defense in a dark ops sort of way, where everything was confidential and way above her pay grade. Two, her father was somehow connected to them. She hadn’t yet figured out how other than they seemed obsessed by his research. But in her mind they had definitely risen to suspect number one in his recent disappearance. Since his last meeting with Vector Force was scheduled in four hours. She figured heading there was the next step, if she could only determine where the top secret base was located from the files. Three, the term Enochian and brotherhood kept popping up with enough regularity in what little of her father’s notes she’d unencrypted that she assumed they were linked and other integral groups involved in his research on DNA sequencing manipulation.

Paige’s fingers froze in mid-air hovering over the keyboard. She suddenly realized if they already knew this much about her to create a far too intimate dossier on all aspects of her life, personal and private, that they probably realized she had hacked into their files and were tracing her.

She glanced at the clock. Ten minutes. She’d been in their server for long enough to have given them time to pinpoint her IP location within a six-mile radius. Time to pull the plug.

With a few quick commands, she shut down the search, covered her tracks and logged off. Paige grabbed her purse, pulled out some baby wipes and wiped down the keyboard, then slipped on her jacket, and picked up the backpack she’d packed just in case.

* * *

Rex Angelo couldn’t take his eyes off the cool blonde waiting in the TSA line at the airport. Her skin-tight jeans hid nothing, but the oversized sunglasses shielding her eyes and her antsy manner intrigued him. He’d only taken the job with TSA to blend in and stop trouble before it started. And this blonde, she reeked of trouble.

He waited until she approached the first point in the security line, and moved to relieve the guard in the line she chose. He clapped the older gentleman on the shoulder, instantly getting a wash of images of the security officer watching porn on the screens during his last break and enjoying himself. Great. Something he definitely couldn’t unsee.

“I’ll take over this line. They need you to go get some more bins,” he said casually. In reality he used his power of persuasion to blank the man’s mind and get him to easily agree.

The blonde got closer.

Something about her was off.

“Please remove your sunglasses too, ma’am,” said the female screener at the beginning of the line. The blonde complied, but as she did the edge of her hair slipped, a single strand of brilliant coppery hair peeping out from the wig. Well, if she weren’t hiding anything else, she was definitely hiding her hair color, Rex thought.