and then motioned to one of his underlings to bring the silver stripcuffs. The silver was on the outside of the hard plastic cuffs so it wouldn’t burn him but would keep him restrained and helpless to break free of them.
Or so it would have been, under usual circumstances. He had soul-melded with Serai, and he had tasted her Atlantean blood. Twice. For the first time since he’d been turned, the proximity to silver wasn’t hurting him.
Not the slightest bit.
Things weren’t going to go badly at all.
Serai remained silent while the soldiers took her and Daniel to a large vehicle and politely escorted them inside. But when the men conferred outside the vehicle’s closed windows, evidently to gain privacy for their conversation, she took the opportunity to do the same.
“They are far more civilized than I expected,” she said. “More like the king’s personal guard than invading soldiers. What is this force? What does the lettering ‘P-Ops’ on their jackets mean?”
“Paranormal Operations. They’re a federal police force that deals with all things supernatural. That’s why they’re so nice to you. They must think you’re a plain vanilla human.”
She tried on her most seductive smile and glanced at him through her lashes. “Plain vanilla? Really?”
He blew out a long, slow breath and his eyes darkened. “Only you could get me hot when I’m handcuffed in a P-Ops transport. Let’s talk about what we do next, instead, maybe, sex kitten.”
A thrill of pleasure tingled through her at his reaction, but she quickly stifled it for more urgent matters. “They want to take us to the center of the action, I would anticipate. Agreed?”
“Agreed.” He stared out the window at the men, whose conversation seemed to be wrapping up. The one in charge was heading to the driver’s side of the vehicle.
“That’s where we want to be, also agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“Then this is perfect. Saves wear on our boots.” She leaned back in the seat and folded her hands demurely in her lap, the picture of civility, prepared to unleash the full extent of her beautiful court manners on the young soldier.
Gun or no gun, the poor man didn’t stand a chance.
Chapter 34
Daniel watched the scenery fly by at five times the speed he and Serai had been traveling on foot, and tried not to laugh out loud as Serai, sitting up front in the passenger seat, charmed the soldier. He was a young guy, not that it mattered, with short hair, freckles that he probably hated, and ears that stuck out just a little bit. Daniel couldn’t imagine there was a straight human male alive, old or young, who could resist Serai when she was being enchanting. She’d already elicited the guy’s family details (mom and dad still alive, very proud of their boy Rob), pet’s name (Izzy the cat), and favorite hobby (an obscure sport by the unlikely name of cornhole).
“You toss the small bags into holes in the wood, while drinking ale?” Serai tilted her head and smiled encouragingly at Rob, whose head almost visibly swelled.
Daniel would have been a little annoyed by the whole thing if it weren’t so damn funny. At least, it was funny until he remembered the day he’d first met Serai, and she’d asked him a similar set of questions, with the exact same smile on her face.
He, too, had been dazed that such a beauty was so interested in him.
Hmmm. He scowled at the driver in the rearview mirror, in spite of the armed guard sitting next to him in the backseat. Rob continued on, blithely ignoring the angry vampire sitting behind him.
Foolish young man. Very foolish.
“Are you from England? Your accent is beautiful,” Rob stammered.
“Thank you. I’m from all over Europe,” she replied, smiling shyly at him. “Do you enjoy traveling there?”
“I’ve never been out of the country, except to Mexico—well, and Canada, ma’am,” he said, abjectly sorrowful that he’d never been to Europe, just because Serai claimed to be from there.
Damn, but she was good.
“Please, call me Serai,” she said, daring to lightly touch his sleeve, just for the briefest of seconds, nothing to alert the guard in the back with Daniel who was actually paying attention to his job instead of to the beautiful woman in the front seat.
The driver actually blushed, if the way the tips of his ears turned red in the lights from the dashboard was any indication, and Daniel had to stifle a groan. If they didn’t get there soon, he was going to have to step in and put loverboy out of his misery.
It would be a public service.
The guard next to him said something into his radio and then leaned forward. “The colonel wants us to stop around the next ridge.”
“Roger that,” the driver said, suddenly snapping to attention. The colonel must be someone with enough authority to make a young soldier remember his duty, even in the presence of his dream girl.
They slowly rounded a corner and pulled to a stop in front of a barrage of lights and a large vehicle like a trailer on wheels. The front door of the trailer slammed open, and an older man stepped out. He was dressed simply in the same black uniform as Rob’s, with no special insignia to indicate rank, but the way the two soldiers in the truck snapped to attention told Daniel that this must be the colonel.
Rob jumped out of the truck and saluted. He’d left the door open, so Daniel and Serai could hear everything he said. “Reporting with the prisoners, um, witnesses, as ordered, Colonel St. Ives, sir. One of them is a vampire.”
Serai glanced back at Daniel, her eyes full of concern and something else. Something worse. She was fading again; her strength draining out of her as he watched. The soul-meld and the vortex either hadn’t been enough, or the Emperor was sucking the magic out of her faster than she could keep up. Either way, this wasn’t good.
The colonel walked over to the car, opened the back door, and motioned to Daniel. A hands-on kind of man who didn’t stand on ceremony or wait for his minion to do things, then. Daniel admired that, so he didn’t immediately rip the man’s throat out.
While he stepped out of the car, St. Ives stared at him, his dark eyes assessing. “Why are you here, son?”
“I’m not your son,” Daniel said, reasonably enough, he thought.
“No need for rudeness. I’m sure you’re probably a few years older than me, in vampire years, but I’m an old country boy with a lot of bad habits. So perhaps you will give me your name and we’ll start over, but be warned, I don’t have a lot of time.”
“Daniel.”
St. Ives waited, but Daniel added nothing further.
“That’s it? Daniel? Mr. Daniel? Just Daniel? Okay, let me clarify my question. What the fuck are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere with that woman who looks like she needs a doctor, only two short miles from the hiding spot of the worst vampire in the Southwest?”
Daniel took a minute to untangle that question. “My companion is ill, and we’d appreciate if you would escort us to a hospital. We were on our way back from our hike, to do just that, when your soldiers rudely abducted us. You can understand why I don’t feel all that friendly or like answering your interrogation. As to the rest, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
The colonel eyed him skeptically. “Right. No idea why I would be suspicious of a vampire lurking around, not far from where I found a dozen other vamps hiding in various bushes.”
Daniel raised an eyebrow. “That sounds uncomfortable. Was there poison ivy? Vampires can get poison ivy, too, you know.”
St. Ives abruptly lost patience with Daniel. “Hold him here,” he ordered Rob, and he strode around to the other side of the truck and opened Serai’s door.
“Ma’am, I’m going to need to ask you a few questions,” he said.
Daniel didn’t hear what Serai replied, but it didn’t matter, since she stepped out of the car and collapsed into
