Minneapolis, modern day
RHYS HAWKES MOVED THROUGH the Irish-themed pub with a swaying stride. It was past midnight, but O’Leary’s stayed open until two. The owner, not an Irishman but rather a German who’d married into the family, granted him carte blanche. The high-tech, temperature-controlled cellar was always open for Rhys to select a bottle of wine, whiskey, or to relax in the cool darkness after a long day at Hawkes Associates.
More than just a bank, Hawkes Associates stored treasures, housed certain volatile objects of a magical nature and offered the various paranormal nations, Light, Dark, Faery and otherwise, a safe and lasting place to keep—and exchange for new currency—their money and valuables as they passed through the centuries.
His firm was the only of its kind and had offices in New York, Minnesota and Florida, four more in Europe and one in China. The Paris office served as his home base.
He didn’t own this pub, but he was considering buying it.
Rhys didn’t get involved in the daily management details of the clubs he collected as if they were baseball cards. They were investments. And rarely did he mingle with the crowds. He was a lone wolf—make that vampire.
Still clinging to the same excuses.
Not an excuse, just an easier summation.
Tonight he was in business mode, eyeing the place for potential.
At the blue neon bar, two college guys exchanged what Rhys had decided were urban legends. The one about the man with the hook instead of a hand was common. But he’d never heard the one about the mermaid swimming the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn. He kept the men’s conversation in peripheral range for the humor.
A waitress clad in a shimmy of green satin and beads snuck past him and slipped behind the bar. The scent of alcohol made Rhys nostalgic for the real whisky he’d once drunk in Scotland. Not his homeland, but a safe hiding place when the vampires had sought to extinguish the werewolves from France during the Revolution. He hadn’t been hiding; he’d been in mourning.
The world had evolved over the centuries, but the disease between the wolves and vampires could never be healed. Most days Rhys was fine with that. Other days he wished he could have done more.
Of course, his situation was the stickiest. There was no definite “side” for him. He had once been persecuted for his differences—by those of his own blood. He and his nemesis had battled for decades. Neither had claimed victory.
Until she had become involved. She had changed everything. And since then, nothing had been the same.
It was rare Rhys thought of her, and always those azure eyes.
But for a man who had walked the earth two and a half centuries it was easy to pine for a long-departed lover who whispered ghostly sonnets in his thoughts.
Rhys smirked at his wistful memories.
“Heartbreak,” he muttered. It clung like a bitch with fangs.
With one ear taking in the legends, Rhys’s ears perked up when he heard the men start talking about a Vampire Snow White.
“Yeah, you know. The chick buried in a glass coffin by some prince.”
“That was a cartoon, dude.”
“I know, but listen. They say a vampire chick fell in love with a man who was a vampire or maybe he was a werewolf. I’m not clear on that detail,” one of them said.
Rhys slid onto a bar stool. He smiled at the men and pushed the crystal peanut bowl between his hands. They regarded him with nods.
“Vampires and werewolves are fiction,” one man said.
“Whatever. So are urban legends, but you wanted one you’d never heard for tomorrow’s blog.”
“All right, give it to me. So she fell in love with a guy who might have been a vamp—”
“Or maybe a werewolf. But she was being courted by a vampire, too. An evil vampire.”
Rhys’s fingers curled into a fist. He felt the muscles at the back of his neck tighten. He wanted to grip the man and shake the rest of the tale out of him, but he checked his growing urgency.
“Anyway, so this vampire chick falls in love with the man who wasn’t what he seemed and they get married or something. I don’t know. I’m foggy on that detail. Only the evil vampire is pissed, see. So something happens to separate the two—the chick and her lover—and the evil vampire locks her away in a glass coffin and buries her like some kind of Goth Snow White.”
“That’s a dorky legend. Couldn’t she have broken the glass?”
“No, dude, get this. The vampire had a warlock put her under a spell. She couldn’t move, but would live forever. So she can see out the glass coffin, but can’t move or scream. So the legend says she went mad, and she’s probably still buried somewhere beneath the streets of Paris. You know they have all those tunnels under Paris.” “Huh. So what if she escaped?” “Don’t know, man. That’d be one freaky bloodsucking chick.”
The men tilted back swigs from their beer bottles.
“Sweet. But, dude, so not true.”
“Tell me about it. Vampirella gone mad.”
“I’d offer my neck to Vampirella any day. She is so sexy.”
“She’s a cartoon, too.” The storyteller swiped an arm across his lips. “You going to put it on the blog?”
“Yeah, we’ll see. Buy me another beer, dude, this one’s tapped. So what’s with the man who was a vampire or maybe a werewolf?”
“I don’t know. That’s how I heard it told.” “So you mean he’s different, like, where his hand should be—” the guy assumed a melodramatic tone “—was a stainless-steel hook!” Rhys winced.
“No, dude, he was … not right.” The crystal bowl in Rhys’s grip cracked in half. The men turned and delivered him wonky looks. “Delicate,” Rhys offered sheepishly. Not right. The words stabbed Rhys’s heart with bittersweet memory. He could hear them spoken in her voice. He pushed the mess aside. “Interesting story.”
“Yeah, dude, it’s an urban legend. You can read all about it tomorrow at my blog.”
One guy handed Rhys a business card that simply read: UrbanTrash.com.
“Wouldn’t it rock if werewolves and vampires existed? We could all like, live forever.”
“Forever is not always appealing.” Rhys strode away. The Vampire Snow White. Once loved by an evil vampire and another who was maybe a vampire or maybe a werewolf. An urban legend? It was rumor.
But the details were too familiar to disregard. “Mon Dieu, I thought she was dead.”
CHAPTER TWO
Paris, 1785
THE PERILOUS JOURNEY THROUGH knee-high snow ended when a rider galloped alongside Viviane. He literally swept her into his arms to sit before him on the horse’s withers.
The warmth emanating from his thighs and chest told her that he was mortal. The desire to bite him did not rise. All that mattered was getting warm and shaking the feeling into her left foot. A hasty “merci” spilled from her lips.
“The sun will beat us if we do not hurry,” he said.
How could he know the sun would prove her bane? “Who are you?”
“They call me the Highwayman. I know you are not human.”
“But you are.”
“Not like most humans, though.”
They