Safeword: Storm Clouds(46)

Maybe she should have taken Norris up on his offer to visit New York. Norris was less likely to break her heart than Eric. And Norris had almost undone her with that kiss. But on some level she knew that Norris was part of her past, not her future. Or, she thought she knew it, anyway.

An hour and a half later she was pulling into TBR, happy with what she'd seen at The Library. She saw Eric's Range Rover in the parking lot and it made her all warm and fuzzy inside. She chided herself that this was getting a bit ridiculous.

When she walked in she smelled him before she saw him, and she was immediately hungry. She walked over to them and told Eric she wanted to go in the back and check on things and that she'd be back in about ten minutes. She headed through the kitchen to the vampire room and ordered eight ounces of blood. She drank it and then got a bourbon on the rocks to drink before heading back out to Eric and Ranger to watch them finish the game they were playing.

Ranger asked her if she was good at pool and she told him she could hold her own. Ranger won the game and Eric told him to rack the balls while he talked to Kendra. Eric took her to the side and said, "You fed after you got here, didn't you?"

She was surprised that Eric could already tell when she'd fed and when she hadn't, that was something most humans took months or even years to become intuitive about. "Yes, I did. I'm impressed that you've learned so quickly how to tell when I've fed and when I'm hungry."

"Who did you feed on? I was here, you could have fed on me, you know."

Was he jealous? Or did he just want the experience? She put her hand on his arm, "Eric, we have bagged blood in the back. I poured some in a glass and drank it. I didn't feed on anyone. Not like you are thinking, anyway."

"Oh. You have blood stashed at all of the bars? The health department would have a fit."



Kendra laughed. "No, just a few, the ones that employ a lot of vampires. And the health department will never know."



Kendra walked back towards Ranger and smiled at him. "Go ahead and break, let's see what you've got."



Ranger won, though Kendra played a really good game. While Eric and Ranger were playing their game Kendra heard a disturbance and looked across the room to see two girls arguing. Mike the bouncer was paying attention but she knew Mike would have trouble if the girls started fighting, he just wasn't good at restraining girls so they couldn't hurt him, he was always too gentle with them. Mike was headed to them, using the right voice and words to try to calm down the situation, but it wasn't working. And then one of the girls jumped the other and Kendra headed over to help Mike. When Mike stepped in between them one of the girls hit him, and he grabbed her to restrain her, which made her boyfriend jump in on Mike. Kendra told Mike to handle the boyfriend and she'd take care of the girls. Within a few seconds she had the girls under control – she'd grabbed an arm on both of them and twisted them around so she was holding their arm on their back, high up so she had leverage and they didn't. After a bit of a scuffle Mike had the boyfriend handled in a similar way and the rest of their party had decided to stay out of it. Kendra spoke. "You three need to leave and not come back. The rest of the party can choose to stay or go. Mike and I will be escorting your friends out though, so if they rode with one of you then you'll be obligated to get them out of here. The options are to leave quietly or we call the police and press charges". One of the men stepped forward and said one of the girls was with him and he would take her home. The other two, the boyfriend and girlfriend, had come together so they'd go together. Mike and Kendra walked the three of them out. Kendra kept the girls held like they were, which kept them from looking at each other, which kept them from fussing with each other as much. And when they did start in Kendra just pulled up on the arm of the one talking until she shut up again. When they reached the cars she handed one girl off to the boyfriend that had not gotten involved and then put the other girl into her boyfriend's passenger seat, and watched the cars pull out of the parking lot.

When she went back in and saw Ranger looking at her she realized she'd just set off his radar again. She grinned at him, "Hey, I told you that bouncing duties kept me on my toes, you just didn't believe me."

"Right. You have had formal training, and it bothers me that you are not being honest about it. I want to know what Eric has gotten himself into. I want you to be truthful with me, but if you aren't then I have the resources to dig and find out."

It wouldn't be good for him to dig. She had good paperwork, the vampires specialized in being able to fake the things to make a person official. The document that they needed most in order to start over every ten to fifteen years was a new birth certificate, since having one of those could get you a driver's license and social security number and passport. They had people who could make it look like a social security number and birth certificate had been linked to each other for a really long time, even though they had not. But, if someone went snooping extra hard at a federal level, at the level of someone who seemed to be some sort of international spy, she didn't know what they would find.