A Vampire's Claim by Hill Joey W

Author:Hill, Joey W. [Hill, Joey W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, Speculative Fiction, Fiction
ISBN: 9780425226087
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2009-03-03T07:00:00+00:00

14

DANNY was in the blackness of her room, missing the first rays of the sun stabbing over the horizon. She knew Charles would have his men out, ensuring Dev left with nothing but that meager amount of water.

She’d had people in her employ devoted enough to be third-marked servants. Some had even asked for it, in some subtle or not-so-subtle ways. Dev hadn’t asked, and even before she’d marked him, he’d been acting as one.

She’d always been curious about other vampires and their third-marked servants, but she hadn’t investigated it too closely. She didn’t have family or friends in the vampire world she trusted enough to say some of the things she’d said so easily to Dev in the past few days. Up until now, she’d picked up snippets about that aspect of a third-marked servant, but never anything like this, which would have made her interested in having it for herself far sooner.

Now she wondered, because of the way she’d left it with Dev this morning, right before dawn. She’d heard his thoughts, been shocked by his intuitive understanding of her, even better than she seemed consciously to know herself. She considered herself happy, well adjusted, but she was also consummately shielded. Not unexpected for a vampire, but maybe even more than most her age. Perhaps that had been her mother’s doing. She stifled a snort at the attempt to apply academic psychology to her family dynamics. Those three or four times during her life she’d chosen to attend a university had been educational. Far better times than this moment, for certain.

She couldn’t stand it anymore. Throwing on her purple velvet dressing gown and tying the sash, she moved swiftly out of the back bedroom, into the front rooms, to the study. It had a heavily curtained window that provided a view of the west side of the station, with the additional protection of the porch overhang. Fortunately the house was quiet. Ruskin appeared to be in bed, all his stockmen out of the house.

Daring a slit in the curtain, standing well clear of the possibility of sunlight, she saw through the crack that there were some stockmen milling about the yard, but no sign of Dev. No, there he was. She could see him, already striding about a quarter mile from the fence line. He wasn’t even glancing back, no more concerned than if he’d finished his beer at Elle’s and was heading back into the Outback. She saw the men scowling about it. One of them had taken up a rifle, apparently with the thought of scudding a few bullets at his heels to give Dev something to be anxious about, but one of his mates wisely put his hand on the barrel, made him lower it. Charles didn’t like his sport tampered with, and if Dev was wounded, there’d be hell to pay. Even knowing that, she found her fist clenched on the fabric, murderous thoughts churning through her head until the muzzle was lowered.

There was nothing she could do to help him.

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