Taken by a Vampire (Vampire Queen) - By Joey W. Hill Page 0,201

If you can keep from breaking the dishes with those big hands of yours.”

He pinched her, but picked up a towel. For a few minutes, they worked in companionable silence, and then he laid his hand on hers, stopping her. Alanna glanced up at him, saw he seemed to be contemplating something, his mouth serious. Then he glanced at her. “I need tae tell you some things, lass. I know you think that your time is limited, but nothing is sure in this life. And I know you want to stay with Evan. If the stars align and that happens . . . ye need to know things about him. Like his annual kill.” He gave her a poignant, wry smile, even as his eyes stayed serious, sad. “His annual kill’s always a Jew who strictly follows kashrut. Sounds twisted, but ’tis as close to kosher as he can get. He has an odd way of honoring his past, his faith, even as he’s had to move away from it, ye ken?”

“No.” She pulled her hand away from his. “I won’t talk about this. You’re not going to—”

“Aye, I am,” he said, catching her chin. “And we both know it’s going to be sooner than later. You want to serve him, right?”

He had her on that one. She put her hand over his, clung to it tightly. Nodded.

“All right, then. We dinnae have to talk about it this moment, but I am going tae start telling you things. Though I expect you’ll already know most of it, sharp as ye are. But no more sadness in your eyes.”

He flicked suds at her, splattering the front of her T-shirt, startling a gasp out of her. Retaliating set off a splash war. The damn man refused to stop until she was giggling and splashing him more boisterously.

He snatched up the sprayer and aimed it at her, but before she could squeal and fend him off, he stopped abruptly, as did she, Evan’s voice commanding their attention.

Come to me. Quickly. Come from the northwest.

His urgency wasn’t tension, but excitement. Even so, they left the kitchen without hesitation, headed out across the grass. Niall seized her hand so they could run together across the compound. They were moving away from the lake, toward the forest where it headed deeper into the surrounding hills.

When you pass the perimeter marker, come as silently as you can. Stop at the crest of the hill, where the trees open up, so you can see it.

They exchanged a glance, but kept moving together swiftly. As they drew closer, Niall slowed them down, cutting down on their noise. When they at last topped the hill, Alanna drew in a breath. The rising moon appeared huge and yellow, dominating the sky. But what made it even more remarkable was what Evan had intended them to see. On the hill directly across from them was a family of bears. The mother bear was sitting in that peculiar humanlike way, her legs out before her. One cub leaned against her, the other exploring the grass, occasionally standing on his hind legs like a human toddler. Less than ten yards away was a doe and her fawn, the mother browsing the grass as the baby took tentative steps toward the cub, and he toward the baby.

They’d arrived downwind, explaining why Evan had told them to come from that direction. Putting his fingers to his lips, Niall lifted Alanna, then moved like the silent hunter he was, like the wind itself, until he’d reached Evan. The vampire was sitting so still amid a spray of bushes, she almost missed him. They sank down next to him, Alanna in between. Evan was studying the scene with that intensity that suggested he wasn’t even aware of their approach, except that he’d called to them.

In fact, he opened his mind, showed her how he’d paint it, adding the haze of a fog, increasing the sense of suspended time, an unlikely moment where the mother deer would normally take her baby out of range of the adult bear, or the adult bear would chase the doe off as a potential threat to her cubs. Perhaps Farida Sanctuary spun magic even over the wildlife.

Unbidden, she thought again of Stephen coming here. It made her cold, a shiver running over her skin. Though she never wanted to leave, if Stephen could get to her, she’d prefer it to be far away from this place, so no harm could come to the