Taken by a Vampire (Vampire Queen) - By Joey W. Hill Page 0,19

on, but that should make it bloody hard for Stephen to sneak up on us. If he resorts to spy work, he won’t get very far. Evan willnae use cell phones, and these auld trucks don’t have GPS chips.”

“But I thought they want . . . him to find me.” She stumbled over the pronoun. After referring to him as “my lord” for so long, she had trouble calling him merely Stephen. She also couldn’t call him Master. Though technically he still was, she couldn’t make herself do it, no matter how much it underscored her failure as a servant. “My purpose is to be bait.”

Niall stopped, such that she almost bumped into him. When he turned, that stern set of his lips was back, giving her the impression she’d offended him somehow.

“I’m sorry,” she said, though she questioned why she was apologizing to a servant.

“So you should be, muirnín. Ye have value beyond bait, and you should remember that. Making it more difficult for Stephen to find you provides more opportunities to flush him out. A man on a long treasure hunt makes more mistakes than one on a short one.”

The logic was sound, but the first part had her confused. What value?

After feeling nothing for so long, it was odd to feel unsettled, uncertain. Serving a vampire who lived inside a mountain with a big Scot who was entirely unpredictable in his behavior was like finding herself on Mars. That quick hand squeeze in the Rover came back to her, and she had an unprecedented urge to take his hand again, as she had taken Adam’s when they first came to the InhServ program together. She’d been the one to drive them toward the goal, but at that momentous transition, Adam had made her feel protected, his hand sure and strong on hers.

When Niall gestured her forward, she squashed the moment of weakness, squaring her shoulders. She was taught to be prepared for anything. She was about to meet her new Master, and no matter how temporary that was, she would serve him as if she would do so for the rest of her life. Which, in this case, was likely true.

Evan was supposed to give her two marks. Would he do it tonight or wait?

It was not her place to wonder such things. As she stepped into the cabin, she found that it wasn’t dark and gloomy as she expected. Things were clean and smelled like the mountains and forest. Though it was small, there appeared to be several rooms. A main sitting area with a kitchen. A bedroom was visible through an open door. Stepping into the hallway, she saw the open door to the back bedroom, a bathroom dividing it from the other bedroom. The beds had handmade quilts in fall colors and pillows with earth-tone cases. Dried wildflowers and a few mountain prints provided comforting touches to the décor. As she turned back toward the main room, she saw the knotty pine log walls were a pale golden color that added light to what was coming in through the windows. A bookcase had a mountain scene carved in the molding piece overlapping the top shelf. A wooden black bear stood next to the shelf, black eyes steady upon her.

“Stay still a moment, lass.” Closing the door, Niall moved to do the same to the windows. In addition to curtains, they had interior shutters. Once he closed both, it put the cabin in darkness, shutting out the midday sun. As a third mark, she could see in the dark, but with the blocker she was blinded, explaining Niall’s order. A match was struck, the sulfur hitting her nostrils before he lit a lantern on the kitchen table, filling the room with shadows. “He does a lot o’ black-and-white photography, prefers to develop it rather than relying on digital media. That’s what he’s doing now, so we cannae let any light down. It’s better for him as well.”

Moving the oval braided rug on the kitchen floor, Niall revealed the door to the cellar. When he lifted it, his forearm was bathed in a reddish light coming up from the room below. She also sensed the presence of her new Master. At least that was one thing the blocker had not taken away from her—a servant’s ability to detect a vampire nearby.

Setting the injection case on the table, she followed Niall’s direction to go down the ladder ahead of him. She couldn’t see much more than red