Dragon's Second Chance Romance - Riley Storm Page 0,28
his head.
“No, I probably shouldn’t,” he said quietly, declining to explain why not.
He didn’t have to. She knew, she understood. If he started taking off his clothes, here in her house…
Claire lifted the can to her mouth and drank. Pietro’s arm flexed as he did the same. She eyed his biceps and then took another drink.
“Okay, so question time. Those two things were vampires, right?”
“Yup.” He drank again.
“I thought you said there was one of them? But we were attacked by two of them…”
Pietro sighed and downed the rest of his beer. “That’s because only one of them got into my mind. I wasn’t expecting them to have formed a symbiote.”
Claire stared blankly, blinking once. “Say what?”
He sighed. “You have to understand, we don’t know much about the creatures that come into our world either. It’s our job to stop them. Either drive them back or, if that fails, kill them. We’re pretty good at it. Generally speaking, things choose not to come through. The Gates are guarded twenty-four-seven by trained dragon shifters. It’s a death trap most times.”
“Except now.”
“Except now,” he said, crushing the can flat in his hand. “But rumor has it that vampires in our world grow stronger as time passes. They bond with one another. In extreme cases, their shared powers can even elevate one above the rest. Theoretically.”
“So, these two have bonded with one another? And now two of them are after me?” she asked, dismayed.
“It seems that way,” Pietro confirmed.
“How do we defeat them?” she asked. “No offense, but I don’t exactly want you to be following me around every time I step outside after the sun is down.
“We don’t,” Pietro rumbled. “I do.”
“You’re always here with me though,” she pointed out.
“There are others out there, looking for the vampires, tracking them, seeking out their lair,” Pietro explained. “Once they find it, we’ll go in and eradicate them before they become more of a problem.”
“More of a problem,” she said with a heavy sigh. “They’re already kind of a major problem for me.”
“If we don’t find them,” Pietro said. “They’ll become a problem for everyone.”
That sounded far more ominous than Claire wanted to know about after the way her night had already gone. But curiosity pushed her to know more. To find out more.
“How is that?” she asked.
“If they start creating more.”
“Ah,” she said, feeling like she understood that one at least. “The whole biting your neck and turning you into a vampire thing?”
“We think,” he agreed.
“You really don’t seem to know much about the creatures,” she pointed out, a bit harsher than was necessary.
Was it though? It’s my life that’s in jeopardy here, because of him. I wouldn’t mind having some straight answers for once. It would certainly make this easier to deal with, if nothing else.
“Like I said,” Pietro explained. “Things don’t come through very often. Contact between the two sides is sketchy at best, and we don’t really know how it’s done. To the best of my knowledge, dragons can’t even contact those on the other side. Only they have the magic to contact us. That doesn’t exactly give us much of a chance to find out more about them.”
Claire licked her lips, ready to blow off his excuse.
“About who?” a new voice asked.
Both of them spun to see that her parents had come down the stairs unannounced while they were talking.
Her father was looking back and forth between them.
“What’s going on here, Claire?” he asked sternly.
She swallowed nervously.
So much for putting this off until later.
Chapter Sixteen
Claire
Shooting Pietro a look, Claire took a deep breath. There was no avoiding it. She was going to have this conversation.
The least she could do, however, was spare Pietro the ugliness of all the yelling, shouting, and crying that was likely to come as she had it out with her parents.
“Thank you for walking me home and ensuring I got here safely,” she said in a polite, formal tone, hoping he would get the hint.
He didn’t.
Pietro opened his mouth to protest, but Claire narrowed her eyes at him before he could say anything. His mouth closed as he glanced over at her parents. Claire could almost hear him say ‘ah’, as understanding dawned.
Call me, she mouthed at him and then stepped to the side so he could go past her and grab his shoes. There was a long, awkward silence as he inched his way past her parents, both of whom eyed him and his bloodstained appearance with great suspicion.
This is definitely not going to