She did have nightmares of blood, but it wasn’t the same thing.
So it became that owning a motel was her current endeavor. Everyone in the MacGregor family worked and contributed. Though being a lazy, rich dilettante did have appeal, the truth was without purpose immortality became challenging to live.
Maura often equated a MacGregor family move into a new town like a swarm of locusts invading. It wasn’t just a few of them. It was the entire extended family—all the siblings from her parents’ generation and their children. Eventually, some of the extended-extended family would show up. They arrived in a flurry, and before the townspeople knew what was happening, they overtook everything. It sounded harsher than it was in reality. Communities thrived. Animal shelters became well-funded—a pet project of Uncle Raibeart’s. MacGregor businesses provided jobs with real benefits. The family also protected locals against the supernatural threats they didn’t know existed in the world. Though, to be honest, those supernatural threats normally arrived because the MacGregors lived there.
Maura shivered, and she stood from her desk. The air changed. It developed a peculiar feel, a heaviness like the seconds before the first raindrops, but there had been no clouds in the sky when she’d come inside.
“Bruce, do ya feel…?” Her words trailed off as she realized her brother was no longer in the lobby.
Maura made her way past the check-in desk to gaze outside. Newly formed clouds cast shadows in the moonlight. She pushed through the door so slowly the bell didn’t jingle. Her scalp tingled as a static electrical charge filled the air. The subtle change in the surroundings would be unnoticeable to most, but she had lived long enough to know to trust her intuition.
Something was off.
One of the guests played his television a little too loudly, and she heard the rhythmic pattering of battle drums. She saw the set’s lights flashing through a window which seemed to indicate the source of the noise. The eerie sound backdropped against the turning weather caused a chill to work over her spine. Mist rolled into the parking lot on a breeze, and she had the strongest urge to run.
Maura fortified herself, facing her fear as she stared at the mist, attempting to see within its murky depths. Tension filled her, and magick prickled the tips of her fingers, readying for a fight. Whatever this was, all was not right in the town of Green Vallis tonight.
Chapter Two
“Curtis Jefferson.” The whispery voice cracked as if dust had settled on the vocal cords.
Self-preservation instantly urged Curtis to run. Logic told him he’d never escape. This was the kind of moment he’d dreaded his entire life.
Curtis slowly lowered the bag of trash he carried to the ground. He placed it beside the dumpster behind Crimson Tavern instead of throwing it over the top. This was one dangerous being he did not want to startle into action.
“You’re a hard man to track down,” Virgile continued.
Curtis doubted that.
He had only heard the vampire’s voice a couple of times, but some living nightmares were impossible to forget. Never had the creature spoken to him directly.
Keeping his hands lifted slightly at his sides, Curtis turned toward the vampire. The soft Southern accent reminded him of his mawmaw’s home in the Mississippi Delta. The reminiscence brought with it a mix of nostalgia and fear. His dhampir grandmother had raised him in his later teen years after the death of her son, Curtis’s father. His mother, a human, had not lived through his birth. Curtis had sucked the life out of her before he even took his first breath. Curtis’s father had never forgiven himself for getting her pregnant, and Curtis’s presence had reminded the man of that sin.
Curtis was a third generation dhampir. A vampire had seduced—a word he used sardonically—a house slave, producing his grandmother from the union. Mawmaw had warned him that his blood made him easy for vampires to track, and he always needed to be on guard. It was a two-way street. His dhampir blood would warn him when vampires were near, but he had to keep focused and alert.
Tonight, he had failed that lesson. If he hadn’t been so preoccupied with food inventory, he would have sensed the vampire skulking in the shadows.
A blur sped past him, triggering one of the alleyway’s security lights. Cold fingers clamped his shoulders from behind. Fingernails pressed through his shirt to dig at his skin.
“Why didn’t you say goodbye to us?” Virgile pouted. “You know it hurts the sire’s feelings when you don’t show respect.”
Virgile enjoyed the drama of being a vampire, like he’d watched too many Hollywood movies and had adjusted his personality accordingly. Curtis had even seen the vampire make claw hands and hiss at someone. If a messy bloodbath hadn’t followed the gesture, it would have been mock-worthy.
Curtis swallowed nervously and closed his eyes. He prayed that this moment would pass with no more than fear-inducing scolding.
Virgile tsked in his ear. “Bad little dhampir. You just snuck away in the middle of the day. Not so much as a goodbye letter.”
Curtis wasn’t sure why that would have been a concern. He’d never been forced to check in with his vampire great grandfather in the past. The creature barely registered that he existed—or so Curtis assumed—and had never shown genuine interest in him before besides the handful of visits to make an accounting of his human bastard family. It always felt more like business inventory than genuine affection. That was the way Curtis preferred it.
“Had to follow the work,” Curtis finally answered. Though his voice was calm, he knew the vampire listened to the rapid beat of his heart and could smell even the tiniest hint of fear.
Virgile spun him around. The security light glinted in the vampire’s eyes. The man wore dark eyeliner, long hair, and black clothing with a row of shiny silver buckles down the front of his shirt. He kept his hard hold on Curtis’s shoulders. “I don’t think it was the work that drew you, garbageman.”
Curtis gestured toward the back door, which still hung open. “Crimson Tavern. It’s a restaurant, a bar and grill. I run it. I’m not hiding.”
Curtis sent money back to his grandmother to help cover her expenses. At over one-hundred-and-fifty years old, she didn’t need to be working. It’s not like great grandpa ever kicked in to help support his daughter, even though the vampire had acquired a fortune off the deaths of his victims. It didn’t matter. Mawmaw would not have wanted his blood money.
“Restaurant? Why don’t you show me?” Virgile hooked his arm around Curtis’s neck. He smiled to show his fangs. “I could eat.”
Curtis didn’t want to invite Virgile in to dine—not because of some antiquated Victorian notion that a vampire needed an invite, which was purely myth, but because bringing Virgile inside would kill his business.
Literally.
Thankfully, it was twenty minutes until closing time, and most of the guests had left.
“That’s not a good idea,” Curtis said. “This is a small town. People will take notice. Perhaps you should try Green Bay? Or Chicago’s not far.”
Anywhere that isn’t here, he thought.
“People will take notice?” Virgile tilted his head. “Or warlocks?”
Curtis didn’t answer. He couldn’t deny knowledge of the Scottish family that had moved into Green Vallis not long before him. It wasn’t like a bunch of rowdy MacGregors running around in kilts blended into the small-town Wisconsin’s landscape. Curtis had instantly detected they were more than eccentric humans the second they walked into his restaurant. His natural avoidance of supernatural beings had transferred onto the MacGregor family, and he kept his distance.