The Librarian's Vampire Assistant, Book 5 Read online

  Who does that little librarian think she is?

  I rise from my desk, scowling every inch of the way. “You may tell the summoner that I do not care what weapon she carries. No one threatens the king, so bring it on.”

  Freddy’s Adam’s apple bobs again.

  “What now?” I snap.

  “She said you might say that, sir, and if you did, I should tell you she has not and never will accept you as her king, and technically, you never sent in your formal resignation to the library, which still makes you her assistant. Therefore, she is still your boss, and the boss has given you an order.”

  What the devil?

  This might be a good time to explain that the Michael Vanderhorst who once worked for the librarian in Phoenix was an entirely different man. He was weak. He had those pesky feeeelings. He spent far too much time worrying about the librarian’s well-being, making decisions that put her before his people.

  This Michael killed that part of himself, using a time-honored technique taught to me during the Great War. It allowed be to become a ruthless killing machine. The Executioner. That coldhearted Michael is back for good this time, and he places his kingdom first.

  “The librarian has overstepped, thinking that our past relationship will grant her leniency.” I calmly take my seat again. “Send five soldiers to detain her and bring her here to our prison.” Let us see how brave and insolent she is from our basement prison.

  Freddy bows his head. “Very good, sir. Shall I send in your next appointment?”

  “Yes. I have a schedule to keep, and we have a vampire kingdom to whip into shape.” Literally. I have a mass whipping at three this afternoon. It is for the vampires who were known to have socialized with traitors of the Uprising. I am a fair man, so I will allow them to confess before executing them.

  “Yes, sir.” Freddy takes his leave, and I grab a folder from the towering pile atop my desk, wanting to make use of my time. We have twelve geographies, all without councils to oversee them. There is much to be done, such as approve travel visas, resolve complaints between families or vampire business owners, and send soldiers out to societies to ensure some of our less human-friendly vampires are behaving. Just yesterday, a troublemaker named Dali the Damned, down in Tijuana, Mexico, took ownership of a taqueria. Vampires own all sorts of businesses, so no big deal. Until a neighbor noticed that people were going in, but not coming out. She is on the run, but we will find her.

  As I read the request for additional security resources from one of our societies in Russia, my mind begins to drift to the last time I saw my librarian. And that-that-that…thing. The child.

  I note the hollowness in my chest and utter lack of affection. Good. Soon, everything I have ever worked for will be on the line, and I cannot afford the smallest of distractions. If I succeed, the victory will make my accolades of the Great War seem like breakfast cereal—nothing more than a mundane snack.

  As for the librarian, tomorrow I will set her straight. Like it or not, she is my subject and will not undermine my authority. If she does not like it, well, that is simply too bad. She only has herself to blame for becoming a vampire.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The next morning, after only having slept one hour, I am dressing for another long day on the throne. Like most vampires, I do not have to sleep, but it does impact one’s performance. Go long enough without and you turn mad. Some say this is what drove Mr. Nice insane. No sleep for a century. I think he is simply a twisted, evil soul who stopped caring what the world thought of him. Others say he is eccentric, and eccentric people tend to obsess. In his case, it’s frilly lace and Fanged Love—a vampire romance series. Honestly, they are fantastic books, but his obsession grew from merely raving about the stories to kidnapping the authors, Kylie Gilmore and Mimi Jean Pamfiloff, so he could force them to write more books. Then he kidnapped the librarian, claiming she was his real-life fanged love.

  He kept her for five long years. Five! And along with her, he kept a secret. A child. My child—who had been in the librarian’s womb when he took her.

  I slam the door on my dark thoughts, reminding myself that it serves no one to rehash history.

  What’s done is done!

  I shall hunt down Mr. Nice and punish him for taking what was mine. But not before I get what I need. Afterwards, I will forget him. He does not deserve to be remembered. Not by me. Not by the librarian. Not by the lace factory employees he drove mad with his thirst for ruffles. And certainly not by Kylie Gilmore or Mimi Jean Pamfiloff, although, I understand they are now safe after changing their names and moving to a remote island in Alaska, where they spend their days hunting for faux beavers to make faux beaver pelts.

  Well, I said they were safe from Mr. Nice. I never said that the kidnapping episode did not leave them deranged.

  I straighten my blood-red tie in the beveled mirror in my bedroom—decorated in the classic Victorian style (still very modern to me)—and take the last sip of my wonderfully nutty espresso with undertones of Bavarian chocolate. I head downstairs, grabbing the keys to my Mercedes G550.

  Ah yes. A beautiful vehicle worthy of a man of my taste and status. No more compact, electric-blue shoeboxes for me like in Arizona. While I do support our laws pertaining to the avoidance of human detection, which means a vampire must live within his or her means, according to their human cover story (i.e., if your cover is a college student, as mine was while I lived in Phoenix, then you must live like a college student), I am far too old to be squeezing my large manly frame into a child-size clown car. Nevertheless, the tiny, affordable vehicle I was forced to drive while in Phoenix has forever scarred my masculine soul. I ended up torching it in the desert.

  Just as I’m setting my security system, the doorbell buzzes. I glance at my watch. It is a quarter to seven, a little too early for a delivery.

  I pull my cell from my pant pocket and check my messages to ensure I have not missed any security breaches. I have guards outside around the clock, and when they fail to check in, it sets off alerts.

  Nothing.

  I walk to the door and look out the peephole. It is Freddy, and he brings with him that face, the one that tells me he has more bad news.

  Arrrgh. What now? I unlock the deadbolt and jerk open the door. “Whatever this is, I hope it’s important.”

  “Ye-yes, sir,” he stutters, and holds out a big white box with a red bow and an envelope stuck to the top.

  “What is that?”

  He keeps his gaze focused straight ahead, over my shoulder. “The five men you sent to collect the librarian, sir.”

  It takes a moment to comprehend his meaning. “You mean, they’re in the box? All five?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Is this some sort of joke?”

  “No, sir.” He blinks rapidly.

  I sneer. “You are telling me that a tiny, five-foot-four librarian who has been a vampire for less than two months took out five trained vampire soldiers on her own?”

  He nods again.

  I do not believe it. I grab the envelope from the lid and pull out the letter.

  Dear Mike,

  I warned you not to mess with me. I’ll give you one more chance to come to the library. We have a lot to discuss, and time is of the essence.

  See you in the morning.

  —Miriam

  I crumple up the letter and throw it in the hedges to the side of my front door. Who does she think she is? In particular, two things—no, wait, make that three—three things about her note grate on my nerves. One, I hate being called Mike, and she knows it. Two, she assumes her threats work on me. Three, I cannot stand the sound of her name. Not on paper, and not said aloud.

  This slight cannot go unpunished.

  “Sir? Do you want the box?” asks Freddy.

  I narrow my eyes at the thing. I know that Miriam was trained by her parents to be a Keeper, a sort of vigilante vampire slayer, but she never took on the role. She became a librarian instead. So while s
he claims to be an expert with a crossbow, I do not see how she could have carried out these executions. Killing our kind takes years—decades—of practice.

  I pull the lid off the box and look inside. Motherfuc—“Those are real vampire ashes.” I look at Freddy, who seems to already know that because he does not blink.

  How is this possible? Perhaps she obtained the ashes from her parents’ vault, where they have all sorts of Keeper paraphernalia—books, family trees, training manuals.

  “Oh. I almost forgot.” Freddy sets down the box at his feet and reaches into his pocket. He produces his phone and taps the screen before turning it in my direction.

  I squint, focusing on the video. “Is that…?” I point at the phone.

  “She recorded their executions, sir.”

  I can’t see Miriam, because clearly she’s holding the phone to make the video, but the sword removing my men’s heads is clear enough, as is the library in the background.

  If I had emotions, my blood would be boiling right now. Or I would be getting a boner over such a ruthless act. I am unsure. But as it stands, Miriam has broken our laws, and she must be made an example of.

  I lift my chin and straighten my tie. “Book me a flight to Phoenix. I shall deal with the librarian myself.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Miriam

  “Stella! Hurry up! We have to be there in ten minutes.” It’s her first day of preschool, and she made me promise to let her get ready all by herself, like a big girl. I am fully committed to giving her a normal childhood, but there’s no manual for raising a child like this. So many things could go wrong. What if they find out what she is?

  My hands won’t stop shaking. Thinking about it is making me a nervous wreck! Doesn’t help that her father, who’s no longer in the picture, is now the poster boy for tough, ruthless vampires everywhere. The Executioner King, they call him.

  God, Michael. What happened to you?

  Stupid question. I know what happened. I just don’t know how. And if I did, would I be able to change him back to the man he once was? Caring, funny, sexy, and fierce? There’s no manual for that either: Vampires who’ve lost their souls. I’m terrified that Michael will show up one day and take our daughter because he wants her to be cold and ruthless like himself.

  A script of dark thoughts starts replaying in the back of my mind. Part of me knows that raising Stella to be a skilled fighter isn’t such a terrible idea, especially when Mr. Nice is still out there. Nice, short for Nicephorus, is a very old, very evil vampire. He eventually let Stella and me go after five long years of captivity, but our freedom came with a price. Lula, Michael’s longtime sidekick, took our place, agreeing to be Nice’s companion. Lula had her reasons, but I know the solution is only temporary.

  I press my hand to my stomach as it rolls in nauseating waves. I need to stop rehashing the past. I need to focus on taking measures to ensure Stella is safe. Now and forever. The thing is, I don’t believe for one second that Nice is done with me. He’ll eventually get tired of Lula, and when he does, it’s my door he’ll be knocking on. He thinks we’re soul mates. He thinks I’m the only one who’s ever understood him. He thinks what we had was love.

  No. Never.

  All I can say is thank goodness I’m a great actress. I believe it’s the only reason Stella and I are alive. Well, that and the fact that my parents were excellent teachers when it came to dealing with vampires. “Rule one: Never, ever trust a vampire, Miriam. It doesn’t matter how much your heart wants to believe they are human. They are not.”

  I think that’s why I couldn’t tell Michael the entire truth about my past. Even when I was falling madly in love with him, a part of me held back. It wasn’t easy, though. His looks—dark seductive eyes, sensual lips—are the stuff vampire romance novels are made of. But his personality was what reeled me in. He was kind and fiercely protective from day one. And boy is he smart.

  Not smart enough to figure out that while he was pretending to be human, I was hiding my own true self, but smart nonetheless.

  So despite all the training and warnings from my parents, I found myself spellbound by this sinfully hot man who contradicted everything I knew about vampires. Eventually, I gave in. I fell hard. Then he knocked me up, which was completely unheard of between a human and vampire, and I was kidnapped by Nice.

  Five years later, Michael found us and brought formal charges against Nice. He wasn’t happy about it and, as a punishment, Nice turned me. He did it in such a way to make Michael believe I was dead.

  That was when Michael’s soul left him. He changed. So did I.

  And while I never saw this future for myself, it doesn’t matter now. I can’t change the past. I can only use every asset and weapon at my disposal to make a safe life for Stella and me. Michael made it clear that he wants nothing to do with us. And now that he’s changed, he’s only good for one thing: killing. And he’s not even willing to do that for me?

  How the hell is Nice still out there? Alive! Free! The thought boils my cold blood.

  I glance at the clock on the wall. “Stella! Sweetie! Come on, sugarplum. We have to get moving.” I tap my foot and grab her pink backpack sitting on the blue storage bench in the foyer.

  I wonder if she can even hear me. Our home isn’t what you’d call cozy or modest. It’s more like a shrine to books, your basic Southwestern-style mansion located in a prestigious neighborhood of the Phoenix hills. I inherited the home from my parents—my mother a librarian, my father a book collector. At least, that was what we told people. In truth, they were so much more.

  God, I miss them. But maybe it’s a blessing in disguise that they’re not here today. What would they say about Stella, my half-vampire daughter? What words of wisdom would they have for me?

  Vampire. I’m a vampire, I mouth to myself in the mirror hanging above the blue bench. Even though I’m thirty-five now, I can practically hear my parents scolding me like a child for making the choices that led me down this path. They would probably say, You turned your back on us, on the Keepers, for this? To end up a dirty, vile vampire? They would say I was trained to kill vampires, and it wasn’t too late to fulfill my destiny. My parents, their parents, and several generations before them were Keepers who hunted creatures of the night.

  Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Michael was the notorious “Executioner” and at the top of their kill list—not for anything he’d done in particular, but because he was so dangerous. I learned the truth after falling for him, when I was looking for information to help Michael stop the Uprising.

  No one ever said the Executioner looks like a hot-as-hell, twenty-year-old college student, with a face that breaks hearts and a body that could set your books on fire. No one told me he was the ultimate gentleman who’d do anything to help a stranger, including killing a few unsavory men who’d attacked me one day outside my library. No one told me that it would take everything I had to not fall in love with him. Even after I knew what he was.

  Suddenly, a crash echoes through the house, and goose bumps erupt down my arms. Crap.

  I drop Stella’s backpack and go for the umbrella stand, where several weapons are stashed, including my compact crossbow. Devil Juicer, I call it, because it punches a hole right through a vampire.

  I grab DJ, secure the arms, and pull an arrow from inside the bench. Locked and loaded.

  I slip off my shoes and quickly make my way through the living room, which is basically a huge three-story library, all open in the center of the second and third floors to allow the light to pass through from the glass skylights above.

  I cling to the wall as I tiptoe down the hallway, toward the wing of the house with my and Stella’s bedrooms.

  My entire body feels like it’s on fire, pumped and ready to kill. If there’s an intruder, I know I can take them if they’re human. If it’s a vampire, I can only win through the element of surprise. I am too new, too weak to take on an older vampire.

  My vampire blood
pounds through my body, the cells sucking up nutrients, preparing to power up my muscles. I don’t know what other vampires feel, but my body is intensely aware of every function, every single inch of skin. It’s going to take forever to get used to it.

  I hold my breath and reach Stella’s bedroom door. I lower my crossbow, ready to take action.

  In one swift motion, I twist the handle and push.

  Stella is on her hands and knees, picking up the pieces of her pink cactus lamp.

  She sees the crossbow and screams at the top of her lungs.

  “Oh God!” I pull out the arrow and toss DJ to her pink bedspread. “I’m so sorry, honey.” I swoop down and take her in my arms, holding her tight. She cries in an endless stream of shrieks and hiccups, her body shivering. “It’s okay. Shush, shush now,” I whisper and rock her in my arms. “Mommy is a vampire. My reflexes are too fast to accidentally hurt you, baby.”

  But in my heart, I have to wonder if that’s true. I pointed a loaded weapon at my baby. I thought Nice was back, wanting to take Stella again and force me to be with him. That was how he did it for five long years. Her life was the only leverage he needed to get what he wanted. Luckily, he has an aversion to sex with humans.

  But now, I’m a vampire.

  Like a true five-year-old, Stella shakes it off with a few sniffles and asks to be set down. She smiles up at me with those big brown eyes that remind me so much of her father.

  I try to push him out of my mind. I’m not over him yet. I don’t know if I ever will be.

  “It’s okay, Mommy. I’m not mad. Can I go to school now?” She grabs the hem of her tutu-like pink dress and shows off her choice of outfits. She even tied a matching pink bow in her blonde hair—same color as mine.

  I smile down and try to hold it together. She is so sweet and so precious. “Oh, wow. Don’t you look beautiful. Just like a real princess.”

  The irony is that Stella is a princess. And as long as Michael stays in power, she will always be at risk. It doesn’t matter that Michael no longer cares about us. People think he does. They see us as his Achilles’ heel. It is why her preschool comes equipped with armed security guards, a safe room, and a state-of-the-art surveillance system. I hocked my first-edition Brontes and Austens to pay for it.