Previously on Trancing Miranda
Miranda leaves Nick and goes into her house. She thinks about blocking his good night text, then keeps it. She puts on her grandmother’s fae necklace and notice a shimmer of green energy along the leaf of her jade plant. She falls asleep thinking of Nick.
The Vault
Nick met his friend, council enforcer Ragnar Erikson, at a club called the Vault. The Vault was the largest club in the Regio, a converted factory, with exposed brick walls and open steel beams. The interior was packed, but Ragnar stood out from the crowd.
There was nothing unusual about his dusty biker garb and low dirty blond ponytail—and his neon blue eyes were glamoured. But there was something about him that commanded attention, something beyond the height and the sinewy strength—a dark, dangerous sort of energy that was surprisingly attractive to women.
Ragnar turned away from the pretty dark-haired girl he’d been talking to without a second glance, clapped Nick on the back, and smiled broadly.
Greetings completed, the two vampires ordered beer and found a table near the back.
Ragnar wasted no time. “So, why are we here, Nico?”
Nick had asked Ragnar to join him in the Regio via text and Ragnar had flown in from somewhere out west without question. Now he deserved an explanation. “Julien Suzera.”
“I thought he got ten years.”
He had.
Suzera had been confined to his father’s Italian villa after a failed attempt to take the Regio from his young, untested stepbrother, Daniel Boucher, seven years earlier.
“He got early release,” Nick said. “We have intell that he is here in the states. And Ludari is worried.”
Nick’s great uncle, Hurin Ludari, was acting head of the International Vampire Council, and his instincts were good. If Ludari was worried about Suzera, Nick was too.
Ragnar shook his head. “Would he really try it again?”
Julien had made his move while his Daniel was overseas and held the Regio for a matter weeks before Daniel had taken it back. It was a pathetic attempt but people had died and Suzera had been lucky to escape with his life.
“If he succeeds,” Nick said, “his father will say he has a claim.”
And others would agree.
Ragnar and Nick, fell silent, considering the politics.
The women were already noticing them. And Nick was noticing them back.
It had been over a week since Nick had fed from a an actual living donor. He tried to rely on bag blood as much as possible, but healing Miranda had wiped him out, and it was going to take real life force energy to bring him back up to speed.
Nick watched a group of girls pass by their table. Just before they got lost in the crowd, a pretty blond in a tiny black dress looked back and smiled.
“How long has it been?” he asked Ragnar. “Since you’ve been tempted to keep one?”
“A week. Then I remember how easily they break—so I leave them as I find them.”
Nick nodded. For the last hundred years, he’d done the same. Taking what he needed, then erasing the memory. Over and over again.
How Ragnar, who was centuries older, had not tired of it, was a mystery.
“What about you?” Ragnar asked. “How long since you’ve been tempted?”
“Decades.” Last week it had been true. This week it was a lie—because of Miranda. “Hours.”
Ragnar laughed. “Which is it?”
“I met a girl.” Nick took a drink of his beer. “Earlier tonight. She’s fae. Mostly fae, anyway.”
“A fae girl?” Ragnar asked. “Here in the Regio?”
Where you would least expect it. The fae, or what was left of them, kept to the forest. And they were very hard to find. “Yes.”
“Can she track?”
“I don’t yet,” Nick admitted. “But she’s good with energy. Sensitive, too, across the board. If she can’t track, she can probably learn.”
“You met her in one of the clubs?”
“The Black Goddess,” Nick said. “She was attacked by a half-vamp. I came to her aid.”
Ragnar watched as a tall, dark-haired girl hurried to catch up with her friends. “And the half-vamp?”
“I let him go to save her.”
“Do you want me to locate him?”
“Not yet. I’m going to ask the fae girl to help me. It will be a good four or five days before the half-vamp needs to feed again. That will give me time to see what she can do.”
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