Ten, p.1
Ten, page 1
TEN
R. E. CARR
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Acknowledgments
Copyright: R.E. Carr
Published: 25 October 2016
Amazon Kindle (KDP) Edition
The right of R.E. Carr to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format. All ancillary rights, including but not limited to film, broadcast, radio, video, DVD, CD, satellite, digital, merchandising, theatrical, and mediums to be exploited the future belong solely to the author.
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please purchase a copy from Amazon.com. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
ISBN: 1539553655
ISBN 13: 9781539553656
Find out more about the author and upcoming books online at: www.rachelecarr.com
@TotalRECarr on Twitter
Created with Vellum
To the twin stars that light my way, my teacup in a tornado and my rainy day.
1
“BEET ROOT IS of the devil and should be banned from goodly households,” Mr. Lambley lamented as he stared at the claret liquid in his snifter. A terrible scarlet spray covered his kitchen table, while his unamused assistant reached for the sponge.
“How could you do this to me, Georgia?” he asked, shaking his head.
She swiped at the juice in front of her, trying her best not to get any more stains on her apron. The pouting vampire tapped his stubby, well-manicured fingers against the Formica tabletop until Georgia finally let out a deep, exasperated sigh and stomped over to the fridge. A second later, an icy-cold duck’s blood macchiato was placed ever so lovingly in front of the perturbed creature of the night.
The assistant smiled a smile so bright and so sweet, yet with eyes as cold as the frosted rim of the glass. Mr. Lambley gulped audibly as he reached for his new beverage.
Georgia then produced a bottle of thick crimson liquid from the fridge with the green face of Mr. Yuk on one side and the initials
“G.S.” written neatly on a chalkboard sticker on the other. The pale man at the table grew even paler.
“And exactly whose initials are on this particular bottle, Mr.
Lambley?” Georgia asked.
“Well, I just saw the G and it was red—” Mr. Lambley said in his most terribly proper and British voice possible.
“You know it was cute when I didn’t know how smart you really are, Mr. Oxford scholar in Latin and history,” Georgia sighed as she finished the cleanup.
“Well, you didn’t write it in Latin, now did you,” Mr. Lambley grumbled.
Georgia whirled around, brandishing her ferociously soapy sponge. “What was that?” she asked.
“This beverage is simply divine,” the vampire said before taking a slurp from his straw.
“I thought that’s what you said,” Georgia said before getting her own supper of eggplant parmesan and plopping down across their cozy little kitchen table. She sung a happy little tune under her breath as she twirled a bit of pasta with the saucy, cheesy vegetables and made a playful string of mozzarella between her mouth and the bowl.
“My, you are lively tonight, Miss Sutherland,” the vampire said between sips. He narrowed his bright green eyes. “What are you plotting?”
Georgia clutched her free hand against her chest. In her best imitation of a helpless Southern belle she exclaimed, “Me, plotting?
Never!”
Both of them devolved into snickering giggles as they continued to have a lovely brunch at eight-fifteen on a Sunday evening.
Georgia pulled her phone out of her apron pocket and lazily scrolled through notifications, while Mr. Lambley tapped at his screen to make a little bird fly around virtual obstacles. She interrupted him before pouring some of her beet and berry smoothie into a clean glass. “You didn’t backwash in this, did you, Geoffrey?” she asked.
“No more than I do in the milk carton. Blast it! I hate these pipes!
Why must every one of the games have these teeny little gaps between two stupid green pipes to taunt me—?”
“Steve got back in town today,” she said as her boss continued his tirade.
“—I mean where in any decent plumbing system would anyone put two pipes almost touching! Wait, what did you just say?”
She flipped her phone around to show a check-in notice of one Stefano DeMarco at Fenway Park. Geoffrey raised a brow. “You finally got his boy to give you one of his secret tracking devices?” he asked in awe.
“Nope, Steve may be a century old vampire, but he’s too stupid to block me on Facebook,” Georgia sighed. “He probably came all the way to Boston today just so he could root for the Yankees. If we’re lucky, someone will have staked him for us.”
“You know that I won’t let him come anywhere near you ever again,” Geoffrey blustered. “I do not tolerate gentlemen who lay hands upon defenseless women—”
Georgia took a moment to size up her rather puffy, bulldog-faced vampire employer. His shockingly ginger hair now grew in a thick, nearly uncontrollable mop on his head, and his eyes sparkled brighter than ever, but when he smiled, she could still see that only two stubby little fangs had pushed their way into his upper gums.
Two gaps in his lower jaw remained as painful reminders of his condition.
“Mr. Lambley, I may be a woman, but I’m definitely not defenseless,” she said with a little smile. “Not that I’m not grateful every single day for what you did for me—”
Geoffrey beamed. His whole face scrunched up as he smiled.
“But,” Georgia said with a faraway look. “He was your friend for a few decades, you know.”
“I will never ever forgive him,” Geoffrey said. “Why, they still haven’t even found that nurse—”
“Let’s not bring her up, OK?” Georgia asked. “What I’m saying is that life is too short, for some of us at least, to hold on to grudges.”
“Miss Sutherland, you may have only been in this house for a couple of years, but I think I know you better than that. What are you really after?”
“It’s not been two years yet,” she said after a quick check of her calendar. “It’s just that Steve might be a necessary evil if, you know
—”
Geoffrey’s eyes lit up and his face softened. “I see, this is about Stefano… err, Steve’s boy, isn’t it?”
“The only way I’m going to get to spend time with Ren again is if, you know, we deal with Steve. You said it yourself, he’s stupid and impulsive. Do you really think that he would have truly hurt me?”
Georgia asked. “Look, I’m not dumb enough to ever be alone with him again, and no, dating is out of the question, but—”
“You think if I were to allow Steve near us again, that you would be able to be with Mr. Matsuoka? I did say that I would assist you in saving your true and dear love, but I am still not certain that we can trust a Jaeger in our midst again. As I’ve said, Steve is reckless and impulsive. He’s the kind of vampire that heads all the way to Boston to root against the Traitors—”
“You’re mixing sports again, Mr. Lambley. The Red Sox are baseball. The ones you call the Traitors are the Patriots and they play football—”
“You know I won’t call them anything but traitors. My family fought in that rebellion. My uncle lost his life there. It’s simply too fresh—”
Georgia suppressed a giggle. “Remind me to give you more duck this week. You are still fiery. Look, sporting differences aside, Steve, from everything I’ve seen, is too dumb to have been acting entirely on his own that night—”
“That is true,” the vampire conceded.
“I also know that I have the scion of House Pendragon looking out for me,” she said before grabbing his cool, pudgy fingers.
“That is also true,” Geoffrey said with a little nod.
“So, I say that we forgive what we can, but not forget,” Georgia said. “Maybe see him someplace public, someplace safe—”
“Georgia, I have the distinct impression th
“Your mom does that to you all the time, doesn’t she?” Georgia asked with a guilty little look.
“Indeed, all my second life, so, just tell me what you have in mind.”
She flipped around her screen to show the vampire a confirmation email from the Museum of Fine Arts. “Two tickets for
Professor Noah Adebayo’s Essays on Arthur?” the vampire read.
“Wait, which Arthur are we talking about here?”
“Which Arthur?” Georgia asked with a raised brow. “Seriously, you have to ask?”
“Last time I checked there was more than one Arthur in this bloody world,” Mr. Lambley huffed. He raised a brow as Georgia scrolled down the screen. Images of knights on horseback made the vampire’s face sour.
“It’s not what you think,” she said quickly. “It’s about the various ways that King Arthur is portrayed in fiction throughout centuries. I’ve watched his lectures on YouTube—”
“Oh no, an Internet celebrity,” Mr. Lambley scoffed. “Even I know that those are not real celebrities—”
“Mr. Lambley,” she sighed. “He’s a professor from Oxford—”
“Well, they let anyone in now, even women can get in. . .” He trailed off as the ire rose in her eyes.
“Haven’t there been women at Oxford since the eighteen-eighties?” Georgia asked.
“Well they weren’t there when I was there, and how can you be so sure?”
Georgia pointed to his phone. “It’s called the Internet, and it’s in the palm of your hand… so will you go with me or leave me to my own devices while I call over Nicolette?”
Mr. Lambley rolled his pouty lower lip with his extant teeth. After a good, long grouse under his breath, he started tapping his surprisingly deft little thumbs over his screen. His green eyes lit up as a tinny voice started speaking through the speakers.
“—I am here not to judge one man in history, but to show you all the ways a man can be judged—” the lecturer on the screen started.
Georgia smiled her vampire boss tried a quick sample of the ever so genteel and well-spoken Dr. Adebayo. Her smile widened as a new text popped up under the header “My Robot.”
“Mada ikite iru,” it read. “See you soon.”
“Today will be the day, Paige,” Paige Presley DeMarco said as she stared confidently into the mirror. She fluffed her lion-worthy mane of rich brown curls, squared her shoulders, and adjusted her collar to hide the greenish edge of today’s bruises. “Today will be the day that I tell him.”
A pair of green eyes stared into the reflection. The lanky, pale, dark-haired man let out a deep sigh. “And what exactly will you tell him, A rún?” the man in the mirror asked.
“You don’t get to call me that anymore, Mordred,” she growled.
“You don’t have any power over me.”
The creature in the mirror took a step closer. Paige trembled for a moment as she could see phantom arms sliding around her waist, while the apparition leaned over and whispered into her reflection’s ear. “If I have no power over you, why are you so afraid to tell your new lover the truth? I’m just a dream, aren’t I?”
Paige closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Her heart pounded in her chest. “It’s over, Mordred,” she hissed her voice far deeper than any petite, sweet young thing’s should be. Her eyes snapped open and the phantom was gone. Paige stared at her left hand. A pool of shadows filled her palm, quivering and concealing the red claws that just slipped out from under her French manicure.
She whirled around and slammed her fist through the tile over the toilet. New scraps of ceramic joined the growing pile on her bathroom floor. As she pulled her bleeding knuckles back, all traces of shadows faded away. She smiled as she pulled each finger back into place with a wicked pop and within a minute, her left hand stretched and moved as well as her right. Her phone vibrated in her pocket as she rushed to wash the fresh blood off her fingers. She scowled again.
“Damn, chipped a nail,” she grumbled before darting for the door.
She surveyed the boxes and unfinished furniture in her tiny living room, crates marked fragile perched on top of old girl scout cookie boxes. She slipped around a stack marked “centrifuge” and poked her head into bedroom number two. A bear of a redhead in a skintight T-shirt and jeans combo curled over a pile of tube legs and
a tabletop, cursing loudly at the multilingual instructions in English, Spanish, French, and Chinese.
“Still can’t get it up, Kyle?” she asked with a smirk.
He twisted his mouth into some semblance of a smile. “I’ve become such a bad influence on you,” he said. “So, were you motivated solely by the atrociousness of the pink tile in there, or has something got your panties in a bunch, Little Bit?”
“Not a good time to talk about it,” she said. “I’m getting dinner with my mom and Morgan—”
“Oh, so you are finally going to introduce tall, blond, and brooding to Maria?” Kyle asked. “Wow, I would pay to see how long he lasts.”
“I’m surprised you and Toy don’t already have a pool going,”
Paige sighed as she held one set of legs upright so that her housemate could finally screw it in.
“Who says we don’t?” the ginger muttered as he tightened the last bolt. “By the way, next time I decide to be cheap and not pay for assembly, you have my permission to go all alpha dog on me.”
“Well the good news is, you have an eidetic memory—”
“But I don’t have your mad muscle memory skills which would be ever so helpful in putting together three more of these tonight,” Kyle finished.
Paige gave him a little wink. “Well you know, Sammy has those very same skills, maybe you could ask him to help with all the screwing around here,” she said ever so sweetly.
“I heard today was rough, is he up for it?” Kyle asked.
“Just a couple burns and broken ribs,” she replied, looking at the bare concrete floor. “He’s fine by now.”
“Well who am I to argue with you then?” Kyle asked as he hopped to his feet. “If you’re lucky we will get most of the lab setup before hormones take over.”
Paige gave him another wink, “Just keep the door closed. I plan to bring Morgan here tonight.”
“Oh good,” Kyle said. “You can take out the other non-load bearing wall in the basement. I swear, you two are so much cheaper than any contractors on Angie’s List.”
“Love you, Kyle,” she said sweetly before hopping to the door.
“Love you too, Little Bit.”
Paige whipped out her phone to text her mom that she was on her way. The little house that she and Kyle had managed to buy out in the middle of nowhere Arlington, TN, was a remnant of an old neighborhood that managed to stay old and unique in an area rapidly succumbing to cookie-cutter subdivisions. The crash of the housing market had left this pocket of quaint ranches and hideous modern box houses either abandoned or filled with defiant old hermits.
Indeed, it was the perfect place for an enterprising pack of werewolves to hide.
Paige gave a nod to her newest neighbor—a tall, violet-haired woman who yanked the realtor sign out of the lawn with one hand.
She had chosen a quaint little brick bungalow with a poplar tree in front and climbing roses around the porch.
“Evening, Nadia!” Paige chirped as she pranced to the car. The bouncy little girl stopped cold as she saw a gorgeous ivy-green Plymouth Barracuda tucked in the garage next to Nadia’s jeep.
The violet-haired amazon looked over to the garage as well. “He just dropped off the car,” Nadia said. “He was only passing through for a few hours to handle business.”
Paige’s smile tightened. “So that’s why it was such a rough day at work,” she growled. “See you later, Nads.”
“You will,” her neighbor said ominously.
“Not gonna let this ruin my night,” Paige muttered to herself as she slipped into her shiny new truck. She breathed deep the scent of leather and bacon air freshener, and her stomach growled as she picked up the few biscuit wrappers tucked in the trashcan strapped behind the passenger seat. The speakers started spewing out the latest in dance tracks as soon as the car recognized her phone, and by the time she made it onto the interstate, Paige was happily singing along and tapping her thumbs against the wheel. It took over an hour to pull into the swanky steakhouse parking lot in East Memphis, enough time for the bruises to fade completely from Paige’s chest.
