Bad Mouth

chapter Ten


The walls vibrated from the force of a slamming door. Val raised her weary head from her desk, sure she���d have a red spot smack in the center. She glowered at Graham’s sour expression.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.

“You’re the one storming into my office and trying to break down my door. What is your problem?”

“My problem? You ran off alone at night with a crazy, sadistic bloodsucker, and I have the problem?” He nodded curtly, his lips tight. “Yeah. I talked to Alice. Thanks a lot for sharing, V. You know I never would have let you near Rollins if I’d known about him.”

“Let me? Since when did you start bossing me around? If you’ll remember, we didn’t exactly have a choice of who we had to work with.”

“Why’d you go alone? What’s going on between you two?”

For a moment, Val was taken aback. This was the most possessive she’d ever seen Graham. His expression, his stance…it was as though he’d gone off the deep end. He knew damn well they weren’t a couple. “Nothing’s going on, Graham. Stop acting like a jealous boyfriend. You’re supposed to be a professional.”

“Excuse me for caring about you, but I’m not gonna let him hurt you.”

“He would never hurt me.” The second the words had left her mouth, she knew they were wrong. Knew she should never had said them, let alone thought those five words could be anywhere near the truth.

“Never? How well do you know this guy? You’ve known him all of three days, and you know what he’s capable of?”

“I—” She sighed. He was right. She didn’t know Kade at all. It only felt like she’d known him longer. Admitting that made her unusually snippy. “Look, this argument is going nowhere. I have work for you, so I’d appreciate it if you did your job.” She tossed a stack of files toward him. “Read the notes and check all these leads. We’re looking for a human who witnessed the downtown blooding up close and personal.”

His scowl darkened, but he dropped the subject. “Another human actually at the blooding? Is any of this even possible?”

“Apparently so.”

He picked up the files. “All right.” He hesitated in the doorway, his fingers flicking the edge of the folders. “I really do care about you, Val.”

She looked up from her paperwork. “I know you’re only trying to protect me. Thank you, Graham. You’re my best friend.” She was pretty sure that wasn’t what he wanted to hear, but he seemed satisfied enough.

She checked the clock—two in the afternoon already. Before Graham’s unwelcome interruption, she’d napped at her desk for a good hour and a half. If only the work could have magically happened while she slept the afternoon away. She rolled her shoulders and began sifting through the witness statements, hoping someone else had mentioned the presence of a third or fourth being. It was a long shot at best. She would have remembered a detail that important.

A rhythmic knock at the door startled her. When she glanced up, a handsome man grinned at her from the doorway. He looked Nordic with his shoulder-length, platinum-blond hair, extraordinary height, and broad shoulders. She half expected to see him pull out a giant hammer and call thunder and lightning from the heavens. A thin scar crossed from his right temple and through his eyebrow, stopping at the bridge of his nose.

“Well, well, well. You are beautiful.” Harsh—not the words, but his voice grating through his throat. Her eyes went there, but he wore a thin, muscle-hugging turtleneck. He’d followed her gaze and guessed at the question. “Terrible accident.”

He pulled up a chair in front of her desk and drew his collar down. A thick scar circled the base of his neck.

“Nearly lost my head,” he said.

She blinked a few times and realized she’d been staring slack-jawed at the man. “Uh, who are you?”

“Forgive my poor manners.” He reached forward to shake her hand. “My name is Ezra.”

Ezra. So this was Kade’s best friend, a Dominus as well. His eyes were a very light red and radiated more friendliness than a department store Santa. She’d encountered satisfied vampires, composed vampires, excited ones, wild partying ones, but a happy vampire? She’d never seen one with such a wide-open welcome in his smile.

“Have I caught you at a bad time?” He cocked his head.

“Oh, I’m sorry. No. I’m just surprised to see you here. You don’t look like an Ezra.”

He laughed. “I get that a lot. Long ago, I was adopted by a traveling missionary and renamed. Too young to remember what name I was born to.”

“Hopefully a good adoption,” she said. He gave her a solemn nod. When he remained silent, she cleared her throat. “Well, what brings you to the VLO?” She took a sip of her coffee that had grown cold while she’d napped.

“Personal business.” He winked. “My lordship tells me you gave him a heartbeat.”

She sputtered and choked on the bitter liquid, dissolving into a coughing fit. “Did he?” she asked when she could speak again.

“He did.” His smile disappeared, leaving his features as cold and hard as Kade’s when she’d first met him. “Ms. Craig, I know your reputation, and I know the history behind it. I can see you’re upset about that, but hear me out.” He waited for her acknowledgement.

“Go on,” she said.

“I’m asking you to think before you judge Kade.”

She absorbed his words carefully. Having never met him, she had no idea where he’d get the idea that she judged Kade. Though he wasn’t exactly wrong in that idea. “What did he tell you?”

“He tells me very little, but I know him well, and I’ve deduced that he cares for you.”

She did her best to ignore the warmth spreading in her chest. “It’s only been—”

He held up a gloved hand. “Please let me finish. He’s not what he appears, Ms. Craig. He’s a good man in spite of his atrocious speech. All I ask is that you dig a little before you decide anything about him.”

“What are you talking about? Dig for what?” An ominous sensation grew in the back of her mind. She had a feeling she wouldn’t like what he wanted her to find.

“I’m…limited with what I can tell you.” He sighed, his gaze rolling upward as if for inspiration. Then he gave her a very direct look. “The VLO receives copies of transformation applications?”

“Yes, we do.”

“And completed transformation records? The assignments?”

Where in the hell was he going with this? “Yes to both.”

He stood and made a short bow. “May you have a good day, Ms. Craig.” He strolled toward the door.

She couldn’t believe it. That was all he was leaving her with? “Wait!”

He stopped just shy of the exit, his grin back in place. More of a Cheshire grin this time.

“Is that it? What am I supposed to do with that?” she asked.

“Lim-i-ted, Ms. Craig.” He winked again. “I have faith that you’ll get it.” With that, he left her as speechless as when he’d come in.

What did the transformation records have to do with anything? Their investigation concerned illegal ones. Her mind replayed the conversation while she paced the short length of her office. Dig, he’d said. In the records. Applications and approvals and assignments. And Kade.

With an exhausted resignation, she pulled her chair to the keyboard and searched for all the records for all transformations assigned to Kade. The earliest records were from 1975, nearly forty years earlier. That would be like yesterday to Kade, but she hadn’t been born yet. With such disparity between them, he had no reason to be attracted to her, but maybe it didn’t matter when the attraction was all about sex. Val swiped her hands over her face. Her cheeks were hot. She had to stop distracting herself with such thoughts. With a shake of her head, she read through the first four sets of records before she flounced back into her chair. Nothing was out of the ordinary.

She picked up the phone and dialed Graham’s extension. “Any luck so far? Please give me something to be happy about.”

His warm chuckle at her ear eased some of her tension. “Well, I have one bit of promising news. Two of the blooding victims were connected. They were business partners in a roundabout way. Nothing you’d notice at first. A shipping company and, believe it or not, a towing company.”

“That’s weird. No go on the others?”

“Still checking.”

“Well, it’s something. More than I got. Thank you,” she said, rubbing at her temple with her free hand. “I needed this.”

“Anytime, V. I’ll let you know when I find anything more.”

She hung up and sipped her barely tolerable coffee. This case had gone from cut and dry to outright confusing. They’d assumed the bloodings were random acts committed by crazed vampires. There shouldn’t be anything common between them. There shouldn’t be rhyme or reason to the choice of victims, nor should any humans at the scene have survived the encounter.

She drummed her fingers on her desktop and then turned back to her computer screen. She pulled up Kade’s very first record. July 1975. Samuel Lewis. Caucasian male, thirty years old. The second record: September 1975. Jed Grayson. African American male, twenty-six years old. The third record: December 1975. Robert McCray, Caucasian male, thirty-eight years old.

This was getting nowhere.

As she continued through the list, the theme was all male. Not one female. But that didn’t tell her anything that could unravel Ezra’s puzzle. To top everything, Kade had been one busy adjuvant over the last several years with a transformation every month. It would take days to get through his records to date.

All right. She gave herself one more shot before heading home for the evening. She plugged the name Samuel Lewis 1975 into the Internet search box. Running a quick look starting at the top, she saw nothing until she reached midpage, and there it was. The man’s face staring out from an old, fuzzy mug shot. Rape, murder, and armed robbery. That couldn’t be right. She read it again and then one more time.

Her heart racing, she checked Jed Grayson. On the second page of links, she found his story. Something about drug charges and a violent shootout with cops. Before the cops had busted into his place, he had murdered his family.

Her hands swept over her face. These men shouldn’t have gotten approved for transformation. On a hunch, she plugged the names into her criminal records database. Every single one. After the first fifteen records, she skipped every ten and then twenty until her fingers ached from typing. The pattern never broke over the entire forty years. Every one of Kade’s subjugates were the worst dregs of human society.

How long had this gone on and who drove it? The authorizations were signed mostly by different members of the Human Transformation Authority, an early predecessor of the VLO. All this time and no one noticed criminals getting through the cracks. Unbelievable. And these were the humans Kade had contact with most.

She remembered her reaction to the pictures of his newest transformation. With a wealth of foreboding, she checked the record, and it made her sick to her stomach. Jerry Finch, serial pedophile, three counts. The last victim was hospitalized for months following the assault, with burn wounds on the boy’s face. In a burst of clarity, she saw a glimmer of the real Kade. He hadn’t mutilated innocent subjugates at all. There was nothing innocent about any one of these humans.

He had to have known somehow that these were bad men, that they shouldn’t have been turned. It made no sense for him to proceed with the transformations. A hundred questions crowded her thoughts, and she needed answers only he could provide.

With a sudden burst of energy, she jumped up from her seat. A glance out the window revealed the setting sun. She snapped up her jacket, rushed out of her office, and caught the elevator down. He could have tried to defend his actions if he’d only told her about this. Unless he knew no different. Those criminals were what he knew of humans. Brutal, he’d said, and now she knew why he thought so. Maybe he believed he was doing the right thing by punishing those men. She needed to know his reasoning, but regardless of it, he had to stop. What he was doing was as wrong as his assignments to transform those men.

She couldn’t get to his penthouse fast enough. When she reached his door, she pounded on the worn, symbol-scarred wood. He opened the door himself, thankfully, but he tensed in surprise when he saw her. His brows rose expectantly as the silence drew tight between them.

“I’m sorry,” she said finally. “I’m so sorry, Kade.”

“What do you have to be sorry about?”

Ignoring the question, she clutched his biceps, her gaze darting around the room. “Where’s your newest?”

“I sent him to my home in Glacier.” He rested his hands at her waist.

Her relief felt like the aftereffect of a deep-tissue massage. “A thousand thank-yous.”

“What’s going on, Val?”

“Oh, Kade.” How was she supposed to explain what had been done to him, how he’d been deceived? “None of your subjugates were eligible for transformation. Not one.”

He frowned, his eyes narrowing. “They were all approved, all legal.”

“They were approved all right, but they weren’t supposed to be. They had criminal records. They were felons, all violent, all evil.”

“You think I don’t know that? After I taste their blood, I see their sins.” At her questioning look, he elaborated. “My adjuvant ability is to see past events of those I feed from.”

She gasped. “Do you realize how valuable that is? You’re like cop, lawyer, judge, and jury all in one.” She waved her hand. “Never mind. Kade, if you knew what these men were, why did you transform them? You could have refused them.”

He drew away from her and pushed his hands through his hair, his biceps bunching with tension. “No, I couldn’t have.”

“Yes, you could. You’re the third most powerful vampire in the Immortalis. You can do what you want.”

“Dammit, Val, trust me,” he snapped. She recoiled at his harsh demeanor. “Our races may appear similar, but we’re so f*cking different. You’re assuming the rules restricting transformations are ours. They are not. These men are falling through your cracks, not ours. Criminal background has no bearing in our approvals. None.”

She felt the shock of his words down to her toes. “That’s insane.”

“Why would it matter to us what they did in their former life?”

“Why do you think?” she asked. He shrugged, driving her mood from horrified to outraged. “Because they could commit more of the same crimes.”

He crossed his arms over his broad chest. “Yet they were all released from your prisons as free men.”

That took some of the wind from her sails. “That’s different,” she said. He didn’t look convinced. “Now that they’re turned, they have an eternity.”

“When you freed them from prison, telling them their debt to society was paid in full, did you stipulate the remaining length of their lives?” His point made, he didn’t wait for her answer. “Val, aside from the recent derangements, when was the last time you’ve heard of an Immortalis-related crime?”

“I—” Shit. She’d been a little girl at the time.

He nodded. “In my culture, breaking protocol just isn’t done. It has dire consequences no matter who you are. If the Rex himself broke protocol, he’d be subject to execution the same as anyone else. Turning these approved men doesn’t break any rules. But refusing the order to turn them? F*ck, Val, there’s no hiding that. I might as well offer my nuts on a platter right next to my head.”

Her shoulders sagged. “Can’t you change the protocols?”

He dropped his hands to his hips, his jaw clenching and releasing as he considered her. She’d give just about anything to know what he was thinking as he watched her with such intensity. Then he reached for her waist, pulling her in close to his body that had grown considerably hotter as they’d stood at his entryway.

“For once, I wish I could.” His gaze caressed her face. “Only when I become the new Rex will I have a chance at setting protocol, and even then, it’s a tricky mindf*ck to get the Immortalis behind it. Most see change as an enemy they need to defy.”

That was news to her. She’d always thought anything Olen Rex said was law. “But if you were the Rex, don’t they have to do as you order?”

He chuckled close to her ear, and her senses went on high alert, absorbing the heat of his breath on her skin. “A leader is only as powerful as his followers allow. Yes, they’ll do as they’re commanded, but there are boundaries. If the boundaries need to be pushed, it must be done gently.” He trailed his hand up the valley of her spine and tugged a lock of her hair. “I don’t do gentle well, Val.”

She gasped and then clamped her lips together. A shot of desire hit her hard and throbbed between her legs.

His knowing smirk made her want to dump ice water down her panties. Then his smile faded. “It wouldn’t be my priority to change protocol, not for humans.”

Of course he would feel that way, and she understood, but now that she knew about the felons, she could change that for him. “You’ve only ever seen the worst humans. I understand now why you don’t like us, but you haven’t seen the good ones yet.”

He slid both of his arms behind her and tightened his grip around her waist, aligning his body with hers. “I see you.”

The low-lidded, sensual look on his face made her body hum. She pressed her thighs together to sooth the insistent, pounding need between them. Now was the time to move away before the intent in his expression became reality, but when he lowered his head toward her, her lids dropped slowly of their own volition. The soft brush of his lips over hers was a shot of wine to her veins. It went straight to her head, and everything resembling logical thought went fuzzy. She clutched his shoulders, the fabric of his shirt bunching beneath her palms.

He slicked his tongue over her bottom lip, and she opened for him. The second he entered her mouth, he lit off like an explosive. The heat in his skin beneath her fingers ramped up to a feverish level. His hips moved against her as if he couldn’t control himself, and every thrust added to the searing pulses of pleasure in her core.

A tortured moan pushed from his throat. “Val,” he said. “Leave now or I can’t stop. I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

But she couldn’t leave, not with his hot mouth on hers, and his hard shaft against her belly, and her right brain shorted out by his kiss. She lifted up on her tiptoes and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. Good Lord, he was sexy. Her body trembled at each touch and each satisfying sound rumbling from deep in his chest.

“Kade,” she whispered. He cupped her rear with one hand, keeping her tight against him while his other hand traced a line between her breasts. He covered her hardened nipple with his mouth, dampening her blouse. She whimpered when the suction and scrape of his teeth pulled a streak of delicious, nerve-tingling pleasure to the needy, swollen place where his shaft stroked. As if his tongue was there, too. And then he reached under her skirt from behind, and his fingers were there, caressing her through her silk panties. He slipped beneath the silk and spreading her wet response around her entrance and right up to the place she needed it. Her breath panted out in shallow gasps. She’d never been so on fire for a man.

She tugged at his T-shirt, pushing it up his chest, shoving him away from her breast only long enough to lift the shirt over his head. Her fingertips smoothed his thick biceps and the muscles of his pecs, and down the ridges of his abs. Even his chest hair was magnificently trim with a light sprinkle over his pecs and above his small, dark brown nipples. Lower still, she traced the V at his hips that disappeared into his jeans along with the trail of soft hair below his navel.

“I might finish just looking at you,” she said.

At the sound of her voice, he jerked away. After a moment of shock, the sudden cold distance between them forced her wits to return. Probably a good thing, considering her flesh was quivering, suffering from pleasure withdrawals.

“F*ck.” He wore a scowl and glared at her. As if this temporary insanity had been all her fault. Hadn’t he been the one to make the first move?

But she’d lost her head as much as he had. He was a vampire, the creature she had sworn should be wiped from existence. Humans were nothing more than food or entertainment to them. Still, she ached to stuff those thoughts into a dark hole and bury them.

Had she really thought his cruelty okay because those subjugates had been bad men? She wanted to tell herself it was justified, and maybe it was, but that didn’t mean he had the right to punish men who had already served their time. The rationalization had knocked down the walls of her self-preservation so darn easily, as if the subjugates’ treatment had been her only reason for not jumping Kade sooner.

“Mind if we forget this ever happened?” His voice ground out as rough as her emotions.

His words struck a sharp ache in her chest that made her breath hitch. Then a welcome numbness crept over her. She reminded herself that she hadn’t wanted what had started between them either. “Forget what ever happened?” She tried to keep self-recrimination from her voice but doubted she’d succeeded.

He nodded sharply and headed toward the living room, grabbing his shirt from the floor and pulling it back over his head. “I’m aware not all humans are like those I transform.”

“Then why—”

“Have you ever met a vampire you liked?”

“A few times, but—”

“But not enough to change how you feel about us, right?” He didn’t bother waiting for an answer as he took a seat with the balcony at his back. “Damn straight.”

“As simple as that? You’d base your judgment about an entire race on those men?”

He pinned her with stony, crimson eyes. “You are the last person who should criticize, Val. The very last person.”

She sank onto the couch across from him. Admitting he was likely right felt akin to swallowing acid, so she kept her silence.

No matter what, she had to put an end to the criminals obtaining legal transformation approvals. Because Kade wouldn’t stop. She may not see him in the same negative light as at their first meeting, but he was the same man he’d been when she’d met him. Less than four days ago, which brought her back to her first thought: what the hell was she doing?