Hide & Seek: Games and Fangs (Ravana Moon #2), page 1
This edition published in 2018 by Hot Ink Press/CHBB Publishing
Novi, Michigan 48374 (USA)
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© Hot Ink Press/CHBB Publishing
© S.L. Perrine - Author
© EAL Editing Services
© Mayhem Designs Format
© Mayhem Designs Cover Art
To my daughter, Chloe-Jean. I know you’ll grow up to be a bad-ass chick like Ravana. So, she is all for you.
The Ravana Moon Series
The Darker Side of Me
Hide & Seek
Dirty Little Secrets
Truth or Dare
Ravana Short Story Series
The Hunter’s Curse
Iron Maiden
Tangled Web
Featuring Ravana Moon
The Himalayan Files
Tundra Witch
More titles from S.L. Perrine
The Beast Within Series
The Beast Within
The Curse of Ormshire
Maga’s a Beast
Blood Rites Trilogy
Blood Rites
Turning the Stone
The Fate’s Seal
The Crawford Witch Chronicles
Immortal Slumber
Power Surge
Collision of Fate
And many more
Prologue
What if I told you, that life was an appetizer. That every fleeting moment you strived so hard to capture and remember was all a farce. The moments you have staring back at you in the frames coating your walls are nothing more than a blip in time, and with one wrong step, one wrong word, you could lose it all. What would you say to that? That I was crazy? An oxymoron? Delusional? Yes, I very well might be, but do you want to know what else I am? I’m an anomaly.
Yes, I said an anomaly, because when I was human, they didn’t believe in the thing I am now, and neither will you.
I lived a real human life in the early 1900s; the daughter of a farmer, a hunter of dark creatures. Creatures my family fought tooth and nail, so others didn’t have to believe in them. So, they and you could go about their fleeting moments without a care in the world. Well, now the world is changing. The creatures are growing. They have their own government and law enforcement. That’s where I come in.
I was once called a hunter. I was changed by a hurt so tormenting, that I didn’t watch out for the creatures. My life dissolved into almost nothingness. My light was gone even in the brightest hours of the day, and nothing could change that.
One man tried. He fought to bring the light back to me for over a year. The light within me grew, even though I had never thought it would shine so brightly again. He’d fallen in love with an empty shell. I was useless to my family. I’d stopped hunting, stopped training. I let my body become frail and human. A weak girl, with no luster. Yet, this man wanted me.
He wanted me so much that he’d asked my parents for my hand, and I consented. The day was beautiful. The last of the snow crunched underfoot. The flowers were white, the dress butter yellow. A simple dress my mother constructed from her own. I was happy. Sort of. I thought of the day I would have had similar to that, only with someone else. Then I stopped thinking about it. I needed to move on. This man, this new man was my equal. He was everything I’d ever wanted. A man of my own choosing.
I was with child. Finally the light got a little brighter. It showed a small bit truer to what human life should be. Married, a child on the way and my father was keeping me busy training and hunting. Being a hunter was an essential legacy for my family, and my new husband agreed. He came from the same background. It was during a rather gruesome attack that our child was conceived. Everything was changing for the better…or that’s what I thought.
I was told this story recently. I was told in a way to make things sound a bit differently. I don’t know if I was supposed to not see that we had married, or of the way, our child was conceived while we were married, and not as a toss in the hay on impulse. That was how he made it sound. The year was different than now. A woman would not give herself to a man of any worth, though he was very wealthy. Wealth that has only increased over time. Though, I am getting ahead of myself.
He was the light of my life. I realized that when my true memories came back. All of them. The feelings I had for this man, outweighed any I’d had for any other.
I went to a pub. Yes, a bar. Laden with child, and ready to get rid of the thing. I had found out what I carried. I found out what my new husband was, and how he had manipulated me into a relationship while my guard was down. I could not end myself. My family would never forgive me, my spirit would never settle, but I knew the child had to go. I thought about it for a while, sitting there with the bottle of ale in front of me, but I couldn’t do it. My father had always said I was meant for something more than what I was. He kept telling my mother how much my abilities were growing, surpassing his and both of my brothers. I had found my match with my husband and thought maybe that was why we fit. That we were both supposed to be something more.
When I turned with the bottle in my hand to hand it off, I saw my husband and father in a corner booth, speaking low in the dark. Both looked well and happy. The last time I had seen my father, he looked old, weary, and stressed.
Before I could go to them and confess my love all over again for the man who’d become my everything, another caught my eye at the other end of the room. My lost love. He was there. I had become so over worked with rage and I flew to him. It may have been folly. It may have been the biggest mistake I had ever made. I may have been able to live my life with my memory and child, had I not thrust myself at him… but I did… and I died.
Now… we play a game.
Chapter One
Massimo
Seattle was almost always cloudy. When it was sunny, it was hard not to stop in the light and bask in it. Having spent nearly a hundred years staying away from the sun, being unable to stay awake to even see it, I was ready to bath it the glow every day that I could. Since I’d been given the gift of blood from the Ancient One, I could remain awake twenty-four seven. Sure, I got tired, but why would I want to sleep and miss the heat against my skin. Gone, were the days of being pasty white without a kiss. Gone were the days of passing out and being unable to rouse while the daytime spoke to the world. I was determined to enjoy it all. Everything that being alive had to offer.
Though, I wasn’t alive. I was a vampire. A particular breed, with hunter’s blood and the blood of the original vampire, Count Dracul. Sired by the Counts own last heir, Emerick Bellator. He also happened to be after the woman I was supposed to marry almost a hundred years ago. We were meant to be. Nothing he did could change that. Regardless of who he was. I would have what was mine.
The woman in question was staring at me from the corner of her eye. The daytime was usually when we slept, though the sun was shining so perfectly in the apartment’s floor to ceiling windows, it was hard for me to close my eyes to it.
“Massimo.” She wiggled her little ass in the doorway of our room. Well, her room I’d only recently moved into. Nonetheless, I was enjoying both the view of the city and the view that was walking away from me. Wait…away?
I bolted myself forward, leaving the beating sun behind in favor of the black lace thong that was bent over the bed when I reached the doorway. Ravana moved slowly, even by a vampire’s standard of movement. She was like me. She had been since her awakening. Chosen to be a mate for eternity but left alone to grow and blossom on her own, she developed a bit of angst for her sire. The best part was she finally remembered her life from before she was turned. She remembered we were to be married. So, she realized we were meant to be. How much she knew of her past was not clear yet. A forbidden memory we both shared, only I didn’t wish to let her know about it if she hadn’t recognized it on her own. She would know of it eventually. The only thing I could do was keep showing her how much my love for her had grown. I would spend every day I took a breath showing her how much she meant to me. More than the world, the entire universe.
“Massimo, you know I hate to beg.”
“That I do, love. So, why don’t you do it just once more and I’ll never make you again.”
“Oh, you think you're funny? Hmm, seems to me your just not that interested.” Ravana flipped on her back and pulled the blankets up to her chin.
Our kind had all the advantages of vampires and humans, but none of the disadvantages. We could withstand the sun, though direct sunlight would tire us, so we still slept during the day. We ate human food and took our blood intravenously from a blood bag. We could get the same nourishment by drinking the blood, but Ravana wasn’t a fan. Silver and iron did nothing but irritate our skin. A vampire could be killed on contact with either. We didn’t get cold quickly, so winter wouldn’t require warm clothes except to allow us to blend in. Ravana pulling the blankets up was strictly to keep me from seeing her glorious naked body.
New developments, which were another reason why I was having a hard time sleeping, had come to light. A weapon made by a vampire who was dead set on decapitating Emerick, our sire. Torrid found a compound that ate away our flesh, and if exposed to it long enough could decompose our bodies as quickly as silver did to a regular vampire. So, I went from regular vamp to super vamp that couldn’t be killed back to ordinary feeling in the same four-hour period. It made sleep a little hard to fall into.
The bed, however, was easily something I could fall into. Especially when Ravana held her black thong up in the air on the tip of her finger for me to see.
“Come now, Red. I wanted to peel those from your body with my teeth.” I crawled across the bed and grabbed the blankets. “I suppose this will have to do.” I yanked them back as quickly as my vampiric reflexes allowed and grabbed her by the waist pulling her down the bed until the tip of my tongue was inches from her core.
“Do you hear that?” Ravana pulled away from me and sat up.
“Seriously? Make them wait. We should be sleeping. What could they possibly want this early in the day?”
“Massimo,” she said cupping my face in her hands.
“Don’t Massimo me. A. Fucking. Lock. Ravana. I mean it.”
“And what is a lock going to do against vampires? They can still open the door.” She got up and headed into the closet. When she came back out a second later, she was dressed in her usual white blouse and black stretch pants.
“Then revoke the elevator clearance. Something has to give.” I took a sniff and listened closely as the front door to the apartment opened. “Isn’t it bad enough he’s here, but now he’s getting in the way of us being together. I bet he knew too. I bet he could hear us.”
“Right.”
“You don’t know, what if his hearing is far superior to ours?” I said keeping my voice at a whisper.
“Massimo,” she matched my volume and made me look into her eyes. “You’re overreacting. He couldn’t have known. And we can revoke elevator access today. I’ll have Delia do it. First thing.”
“Fine.” I know it was stupid of me and made me seem like a small child, but I crossed my arms and huffed out a breath like a little kid giving in under protest.
I got up from the bed, threw on my jeans, and followed Red out into the living room. It was open into the kitchen. A small island separated the two rooms. The living room had a sofa, a couple of end stands, and a television suspended by a cable in the middle of the room. With a flip of a switch, the black flat screen began to descend lower so it could be viewed.
“A movie? No thanks, Em. We were just headed to bed.”
“Not my idea, brother.” Emerick stood behind the small framed Delia. She was Ravana’s Keeper, assigned by the Order.
“We’ve been over this. I’m not your brother, you’re my sire. That is all.”
“A thorn, then?”
“You got it! Finally!”
“Boys,” Delia quipped. “I brought him up here to show you all what we’ve been dealing with since you two left for New Jersey. This is the day-time drama you’ve been missing.”
“Delia, what we fight comes out at night. I doubt this is anything we need to see.” Ravana tucked her feet under her on the sofa and pulled her long crimson hair up into a messy bun on top of her head. Though I preferred it hanging down past her ass, this was a sexy look I’d come to appreciate as well.
“Listen, Ravana. If I didn’t think this was important, I would have waited till sunset.” She turned, tucked a stray blonde hair behind her ear and hit the power button on the television.
When the screen came to life, a news reporter popped up close to report a mauling of a family in the Delridge area. The family was torn apart as if wild animals had attacked them. The problem with that is the attack occurred in their home in the middle of the day. Neighbors heard the screams and called 911, only to discover the doors were all locked from the inside, and the family ripped to pieces.
“Yeah.” Ravana stood and stretched. “Delia, coffee. Emerick, blood. Massimo…”
“I’ll go chat with our friendly PCI agent.”
“Just be nice. She might not help if you provoke her.” Red spoke over her shoulder as she moved to her computer desk.
“Nice? You think being nice is going to get her to help us? She’s being held, prisoner. No amount of nice is going to help.” I got to my feet in search of a shirt and opted to go without it. I did choose to throw on my boots and headed out the front door.
“At least she likes you more than the rest of us.” Ravana moved with lightning speed to get to me in front of the elevator. “When we’re done dealing with this, you can take me back to bed.”
“Well, then, love. We’d best get on with it.” I gave her a kiss on her mouth to leave her breathless and blurred into the elevator before the door closed.
The fifty-fourth floor was empty, except for two bodies. I will use bodies loosely since one of them is technically a dead body. On opposite ends of a hall, in an office building set up to look like a prison are the two prisoners we recently acquired. One being Torrid, maker of the vanadium blade. He was a vampire, a regular type. That was until Ravana hit him with an arrow that went through Emerick’s flesh before impaling him in the thigh. The transfer of Emerick’s blood meant he was now what I had been turned into. Giving him the same immunity to death that Red and I had. Unfortunately, Emerick might have an immunity that far surpassed the blade, but it wasn’t something we’d been able to test yet.
The other prisoner was Kelly, an undercover PCI agent working within the Order. She was sent after I joined ranks, claiming to be my Keeper. Turned out she was just after a rare ruby Ravana had been given for safekeeping. Besides Kelly, the only other person who knew of the ruby’s existence was Ravana and the creator, and now me. I suppose she’d tell Delia about it as well since she found out it was Kelly’s mission all along.
Delia had been a bit heartbroken over the Kelly ordeal. They had become a thing during Kelly’s stint within our ranks.
The PCI or Paranormal Creature Investigative Unit was a government organization created to keep creatures such as myself under control. They even hired those of us who had proven to be useful to keep the rest in line and get rid of those that wouldn’t conform.
The Order was privately funded. It was an integral organization that helped people such as myself to survive the PCI. Of course, the government always said one thing and did another. The PCI didn’t really allow nightwalkers to conform, they just got rid of them. The Order sought out Ravana for her immunity to dying, her skills with a blade and her bank account. Though she refused to run it, she worked within it. Rehabilitating those she could and dealing with those she couldn’t. She was the terror of Seattle that every bad guy feared. They stayed in line because of her. Unfortunately for us on that day, someone new had come to town.
The lights in the hall blinked on when I exited the elevator. It was the only floor that was coated in silver on all six sides. Floors, ceilings, and walls. There were no windows in the corridor or in the cells. The only lights that stay on were the two occupied rooms. A step right and I would be in front of the solid cells. On the left of that corridor were the interrogation rooms. They had a two-way mirror that allowed anyone in the hallway visibility into a small space. The visitor on the inside saw only the reflection of his or her self. The right side was solid rooms. The only window was a small slit in the door which allowed for meals to be passed through.
Down the hall to the left of the elevator was full of human cells. Two-way mirrors in every cell on either side of the corridor. More halls and cells filled the entire floor. Hallways that moved left and right in no particular order, so many that I’d probably get lost if I didn’t walk them a few times to learn my way around. Lucky for me the prisoner I was visiting was close to the elevator.
