“The council was on to them?” Harper asked.
“Yes, fortunately,” she said. “But it would have been hard for them not to be. There was absolutely no caution being used. A lot of men, women, and even children from the area had disappeared. Several of the missing had been seen following the women into the house. And the smell coming from inside was rather atrocious. They might as well have painted ‘Look here’ on the front door.” She shook her head. “The enforcers were apparently arming themselves in carriages across the street when we rode up and, as Scotty put it afterward, ‘traipsed in as if attending a tea.’ ”
“Scotty?” he asked, pouring them both more wine.
“He was the lead enforcer on the raid. Now he heads up all the enforcers in the UK,” she explained, and then grinned. “He was most put out with us that night.”
Tilting her head to the side, she mimicked a very bad Scottish accent, mangling it horribly with her laughter as she did. “Ye should ha’e sent a message round to the council to handle it, not danced in there yersel’es like a pair o’ idjits. Ye cuid ha’e got yersel’es killed, ye silly arses . . . And wid ha’e twoo had we no been here to pull yer fat oot o’ the fire.”
Harper chuckled with her, and then tilted his own head, and asked, “Is being saved by Scotty and the other rogue hunters the reason you became one yourself?”
“Partly, perhaps. They were pretty impressive. But I think we mostly joined up to make sure that what happened to the girls didn’t happen to anyone else.”
“We?” he asked, and then his eyes widened. “Beth?”
Drina nodded. “She’s my partner. We joined together. Trained together. Were partnered when we finished training and work together still.”
“In England?”
“No. Neither of us wanted to be there anymore. For Beth, England was a bad memory. As for me, well, the whole incident had rattled me. I’d always thought of myself as immortal, and while that’s what we call ourselves, we aren’t really. But that night in that house was the first time I was made to face it.” She swallowed, and then explained, “When the enforcers crashed in, Beth and I were both pinned to the ground by the women, and Jimmy was about to hack off our heads. In fact, he was in the process of doing so to me when Scotty rushed him. It knocked him to the side and he only half scalped me, but it was enough. I stopped calling myself immortal that night. We are vampires.”
He didn’t argue, merely squeezed her hand again, and Drina continued, “That was the first time in all my adventures that I actually feared losing my life. And it had the strangest effect. I suddenly wanted to see my family again, live close to them, spend time with them. But I didn’t want to leave Beth behind by herself. She was a baby vamp and needed training, and she had no one.” Drina shrugged. “We stayed to watch the house burn after the hunters were done inside, then went straight to the docks, and I booked us both passage on a ship back home to Spain. We talked on the journey, and more while visiting my family, and she decided to join as well. We joined the Spanish branch of the rogue hunters once she’d adjusted to being an immortal. We joined together, trained together, and as I say, we were paired up after training and are still partners.”
“She’s more than that,” Harper said quietly.
Drina nodded. “My brother welcomed her into our family. She’s like a sister and carries the name Argenis now.”
“A sister or an adopted daughter?” Harper asked solemnly, and Drina smiled.
“A bit of both I suppose,” she admitted on a chuckle. “But don’t tell her that, or she’ll squawk.”
He chuckled and she smiled and slid her wineglass away, but then said, “Well I’ve monopolized the conversation nicely. Your turn. I know you were a cook once and own a frozen-food concern now, but what else have you done?”
Harper grimaced. “Believe me, my life hasn’t been nearly as exciting as yours. It would bore you to tears.”
“I doubt it. And my life wasn’t all that exciting. It just sounds like it in the recounting.”
Harper snorted with disbelief, and then glanced around in question when their waiter appeared. The man smiled gently and slid a small leather folder onto the table before quickly retreating. Harper glanced at the folder and opened it to reveal a bill, then glanced around, his eyes widening.
“What?” Drina asked, and peered around as well. They were the only guests left in the restaurant. The remaining tables were empty and cleared and workers were quietly setting chairs upside down on the tables, she supposed so that the floor could be vacuumed.