My Vampire Idol(5)

He’d never feel that way again. Never wanted to.

Mac’s voice didn’t waver when he felt the change in the air, sensed the new arrival. Female. Her scent was pure sin.

Another bloody demon.





Chapter Two




He was the one. Her mark. She couldn’t believe she’d been the one to find him, since she was usually the one sent to the long-shot locales.

The song washed over her as she quietly entered the small-town bar, the male voice full of gravel and grit, caressing her skin like the hands of a rough lover. Making her shiver with a need she forced herself to restrain for the sake of the unwary patrons.

Son of a bitch.

He could sing and play the guitar? No one had mentioned that little tidbit in his file. Rose was a sucker for musicians.

Musicians and drop-dead sexy men who looked like they were carved out of sharp rock and bone and broken dreams. His pictures and what little video she’d had time to peruse had not done justice to this Scotsman’s appeal.

He was big. He was bearded. He was a ginger with ice-blue eyes she wanted move closer to appreciate.

The song he sang was soft and melancholy, his brow furrowed in a brooding expression that she knew came naturally to him. She’d think he actually had a beating heart, that he could feel the anguish of every word.

It was a facade. He was good, but like the rest of his kind, he was little more than an actor camouflaged for the hunt.

Rose might be half demon, but every bit of her was alive. She had feelings. If anything, her kind’s emotions were more intense than most humans…regardless of how they were painted by humanity and other species. Demons had received a lot of bad press over the years—though she would admit that when it came to the pure-blooded demons…and a few of her half-blooded relatives—some of that bad press was deserved.

Vampires, on the other hand, were just cold, sexy corpses who—while claiming to recall the echoes of emotion—couldn’t truly experience anything beyond arrogance, pride and gluttony. At least, the ones she’d met. Yet they were forever romanticized in books and movies and tween television shows. If those teenyboppers knew what the blood-drinkers were really like… Well, they would no doubt still be in love—because the truth was, teenagers of every species were among the stupidest, almost entirely hormone-driven creatures on the planet.

This was a surprise for Rose, though. A first. Vampires didn’t usually sing love songs in run-down, empty bars in the desert. Singing without the intent to seduce or mesmerize. They never did anything without a reason.

She’d done enough of her homework to know Mac was no arrogant showman like his roommates. Before they came into his life, he’d hardly left a footprint in hundreds of years. And from what she’d seen of the vlog, he’d never willingly gotten in front of the camera until that idiotic competition at his castle. Now he was being hunted by her and others like her because of his contribution. By his elders for drawing too much attention to himself. What had possessed him to get on this—on any—stage when he knew they were looking for him?

She noticed him send a look to the couple beside the bar, and the short woman responded with a beaming, watery smile and two thumbs up.

For them? For human strangers? How unusual. That made no sense…

Unless he’d never chosen to suppress the empathy that came with the fangs... Rose shook her head. He was old enough to know better than that. Only a vampire who was young and stupid, or masochistic and suicidal kept that switch on all the time. And he was neither.

At least, she’d been told he was neither.

Maybe she had been told about this weakness. The poor vamp had a hero complex. That might be what this was about. He pretended that he wanted to be alone, that he didn’t care about anyone, but all of his actions belied that pretense. His castle was filled with orphan ghosts, his apartment with paranormal misfits and his life with the kind of trouble that could only come from too many entanglements.

One too many, or her family wouldn’t have been hired.

Speaking of family…

Rose slipped her hand into her jacket pocket, feeling the cell phone’s cool metal against her palm. She should call them. Daisy, Gardenia and the others. Let them know she’d acquired their target.

Her phone vibrated against her palm and she twitched in surprise. Lifting it out of her pocket, she read the text message that appeared.

He’s my friend, little Rose.

Hurt him…turn him in…and I’ll have to act

However you do have my permission to torture him.

I dare you—make him smile.

-Saint

Saint. Shit. She shouldn’t have been so careless. Everyone knew what he could do. How many times had her sisters told her to stay away from Wi-Fi—from all electronics—when she didn’t want Saint to know her plans? And this particular vampire hunt was not one she wanted him to know about.