Vampire's Curse

  Vampire's Curse

  Katherine Kim

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Katherine Kim

  Vampire’s Curse © 2020 Katherine Kim. All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, at katherineukim@gmail.com

  * * *

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, or events is entirely coincidental.

  Follow me on Instagram @katherineukim or on Facebook www.facebook.com/katherineukim

  Cover by Venkatesh at www.killerbookcovers.com

  Copyright © 2020 Katherine Kim

  All rights reserved.

  To my son, without whom I would have finished this book a month sooner.

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  1

  "I survived a bar fight, someone else's dramatic bestie breakup, and Julia's standard insanity last night. Please tell me again why I let you drag me out of bed at seven a.m. on a Saturday?" Darien was just lucky that she was too exhausted to murder him right now, though the memory of being woken by her damned work phone was pretty motivational. Otherwise, she'd be taking up a vampire hunting hobby.

  It wasn't his fault that she had let her roommate drag her out last night. And it wasn't his fault that Julia managed to find the most dramatic ways to do things, though thankfully, last night had been pretty low-key for the woman, even if they hadn't gotten home until almost three a.m.

  "Work," Darien answered her, his voice full of patience. "Same as last time you asked."

  “So, we’re headed to the middle of nowhere, then?” Caroline asked for the third time. The scenery was rolling past her window, the suburban landscape near her apartment giving way to more rural views quickly as they headed out of town and she didn't even want to look at it.

  She was slumped in the passenger seat, her head resting against the window and her eyes barely open. It wasn’t her fault, really. She had been planning to have a nice, quiet Friday evening in, but her roommate had derailed that plan almost immediately when Caroline got home with plans to go clubbing at this new place that had opened recently.

  Caroline hadn’t even had anything stronger than seltzer with a lime wedge and a paper umbrella that changed colors at random intervals as she drank. She still could barely remember the whole evening. Thank goodness for Bull. If he hadn’t been there, Caroline might never have made it through the whole evening. For a giant, tattoo-covered, leather-clad bouncer the guy was a real teddy bear.

  “We’re heading to Scarford, West Virginia, to help the sheriff’s office investigate a disappearance. Someone not only trashed the victim’s house but smashed through a handful of decent wards as well,” Darien said. Caroline could hear the amusement in his voice at having to tell her again but didn’t hear any annoyance. Instead, she noticed him pulling off the highway and into a truck stop. “You clearly need more sleep, and since that's only available on the menu while we're driving there– and we're almost there now– you're going to need coffee."

  "Blessings upon you and your family and your, um, house and stuff and god. Just gimme." Caroline was clearly not going to be much help to the beginning of this investigation. Darien, thankfully, just laughed. He pulled into the fast-food drive-through lane and got not only coffee but a breakfast sandwich for each of them.

  "Tell me about this disappearance again?" Caroline asked after drinking half her cup and unwrapping Darien's sandwich so he could eat one-handed on the drive. "I'm a tiny bit more functional now."

  He swallowed his last bite and pulled back into the flow of traffic. It wasn't much, considering it was a Saturday morning, but there were still plenty of folks heading out of the heat and stress of the city for a weekend away in the mountains. Caroline didn't really understand that drive, but then she'd lived in small-town Ohio most of her life, then moved to a medium-sized university town not particularly close to but still within driving distance of Washington D.C.

  Most of the people in the cars around her were living or working inside the Beltway and while she was a federal employee, she couldn't even begin to imagine wanting to live that way.

  "The sheriff's office called in last night about a missing person. It seems that they would handle it themselves, but the wards that were broken were professionally installed by a security company, so they needed a fairly strong mage to break them," Darien said. "Mitch went on ahead this morning since he wakes up at lord help us o'clock."

  "You mean he actually sleeps? I wasn't sure," Caroline said. She didn't have enough energy to smile at her own joke, but Darien heard it anyway and grinned back at her. "He's always in the lab or puttering around the office, grumbling at people."

  "Yeah, well. He does love his job, what can I say? I can't really blame him. I love my job." Darien shrugged. "Anyway, he's gone ahead to check out the broken wards and see if there's any residual magic to follow up with. We're basically just going as investigative support."

  "Because they don't want the big bad feds coming in and taking over the investigation?" Caroline asked. Most of the cases she'd worked on so far had come into their office first instead of the local police, so she didn't have a lot of experience visiting other law enforcement offices.

  "Nah. Usually, these guys are glad to let us deal with this stuff. They don't want to mess with strange magic or things they can't explain. After all, it's not like most police stations know that their real problem stems from a bored wood nymph, or whatever."

  Darien fell silent and Caroline finished her breakfast sandwich, licking the crumbs off her fingers before digging in the paper bag for napkins.

  He was right, after all. Most of humanity wasn't aware of the existence of the paranormal world. Heck, Caroline herself had been blissfully unaware of anything other than everyday mages and the elves who mostly kept to themselves in cities and were rumored to be scattered around in wilder areas.

  The truth was that there were not only far more elves and half-elves than most people were aware of, there were also shifters, trolls, vampires, brownies... a whole mythology textbook's worth of magical creatures. They had collectively gone underground in the middle ages, after the Mad Mage War. Caroline didn't blame them in the slightest, now that she knew more about the atrocities committed by those very Mad Mages.

  She
shuddered to think about what the world could have been like if they hadn't been beaten. No thanks.

  "This town is a little different, though," Darien broke into her thoughts, and she was glad of the distraction.

  "Oh, yeah?"

  "Yeah. The sheriff's office is almost exclusively paranormal. Mostly shifters, but there's at least one brownie, I think."

  "Huh." Caroline looked over at Darien's profile as he tried to get a sip of his own coffee. His dark hair flopped over his brown eyes, and he put his cup down to push it out of the way. He'd unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt and rolled them up in deference to the summer day, even though it was still early in the day the humidity and heat of an east coast summer were not joking around.

  If she didn't know he was a vampire, she would never have even considered the possibility.

  Of course, she knew a hell of a lot more about vampires now than she used to. Darien had explained a lot about the world to her while they were both prisoners in a cold basement dungeon cell back when they first met. Their captors had expected him to go crazy from his injuries and feed on her so that they could frame him for a bunch of other stuff, but... it didn't work out the way they had hoped at all. Too bad for them.

  It all worked out for Caroline in the end, though. And for Darien, too. And Point... fine, she'd say that it worked out for everyone but the elves that had kidnapped them and for the old Section Chief who got arrested for a whole laundry list of things. But then, betraying the people that work for you and breaking a zillion laws probably wasn't a good way for the guy to lead a Federal Agency office.

  It all ended with her on the team and she got a kickass best friend out of it. Not too damn shabby.

  But... it also all led to her being here in the car on the way to a crime scene on a Saturday morning when she would much rather be spending it asleep in bed. Not that she seemed to be allowed to rest or relax anymore. Ugh, she definitely needed to learn how to stand up to Julia better.

  "So, at least we don't have to hide what you are from them, is that what you're saying?" Caroline asked.

  "Well..." Darien frowned now, and Caroline could hear the reluctance in his voice. "I wouldn't advertise it, to be honest. You remember back when we met?"

  "I was just thinking about it, actually," Caroline said. She turned away from the window and pulled her feet up on the seat to sit cross-legged.

  "Remember what I told you, that a lot of folks don't like vampires on general principle? Old biases are hard to overcome." Darien frowned for a moment then shrugged. He scrunched up a napkin in his hand and ran a hand down his tie to make sure it was crumb free.

  "I mean, I can sort of see where they're coming from," he continued. "Vampires don't have a specific species we need to feed on, so we're sort of viewed as an equal opportunity predator. Some people are uncomfortable around any kind of predator at all, and some are used to being the apex predator of their social circle or town and don't like feeling inferior, even if they're not. And until blood donation was really a thing, we didn't have a lot of options for socially acceptable feeding. Animals and stuff, sure, but you can't just grab a pig or something to keep in your pocket to make sure you've got something on hand just in case you need it. "

  "But," Caroline tipped her head and blinked at him, sorting through everything she had learned over the last year. "But vampires are no more predators than any other paranormal. I mean, you're certainly not some kind of uber-predator. You could go up against just about any shifter, sure, but if they've got the same training they've got an even chance of beating you."

  "Sure. You and I both know that, but we're also pretty rational people," Darien paused, and Caroline looked over at him. There was a small frown on his face and a heaviness to his posture. He opened his mouth like he was going to speak once or twice as he groped for the right words.

  "I don't think you appreciate how unusual you are," he said, finally. "Back when we met. I know I was in rough shape, just about much nobody in my life outside my family has had that..." the frown deepened and he chewed his bottom lip for inspiration maybe? "That calm, I guess? About meeting a vampire, I mean. You were unbelievably cool about everything."

  "Well, to be fair, I didn't really believe you at first. I thought you'd been hit on the head too hard and were probably delirious. I mean, you were kind of a mess," Caroline answered. She picked the corner of the cardboard coffee sleeve, slowly pulling it away from the glue. "I knew you weren't lying, but... There's a pretty big difference between deliberately lying, and talking about a delusion you honestly believe in. It sounded pretty wild to me."

  Darien huffed out a breathy laugh. "Yeah, I bet. You had a lot going on that day, after all. What with the mean girls and skipping school for the first time, you rebel."

  "And being kidnapped then threatened, and helping to take down my first evil mage," she added with a grin, glad to hear the sadness start leaving his voice.

  "Yeah, and all that," he snorted a laugh. A small smile started to creep over his face again. "Anyway, even the office– you remember I told you that I never made many friends in my first post in Seattle, even before Chief Dupont turned out to be a manipulative lunatic. God, I'm still embarrassed I let her use me like that. I guess a lot of the office was reacting to her opinions on vampire, though."

  "From everything you've told me about it, you shouldn't beat yourself up. It sounds like even I would have had a tough time catching on to her at first, and I can hear people's intentions pretty clearly. Better than their words, sometimes." Caroline said. She reached over and rubbed his shoulder and he glanced at her, a tiny smile in his eyes.

  "And here in the Stonehaven office..."Darien sighed and grimaced. "It was run by Beckett, and he was also a manipulative lunatic, although a different sort of lunatic. Neither of them exactly fostered an environment of diversity and acceptance. It was better here, despite Beckett. I think because it takes a lot to make Greg dislike someone on sight, so I had him on my side from the start," Darien sighed. "It wasn't really until the raid that things started to shift throughout the whole office. Greg and Point and Mitch... a few others. That's pretty much the friends I had at work, before you. More like allies, really."

  "Oh, Darien," Caroline said. It was upsetting to know that the people she worked with could be so cold to a colleague, no matter what they were. Darien shrugged under her hand.

  "Old biases are hard to overcome. Anyway, all this was to point out that it might not go over super well for them to know right off the bat what I am. That's what I'm saying." Darien shifted in his seat and returned to chewing on his lip.

  "So..." Caroline squinted at him. She mulled over the sadness in his voice over the conversation. Sometimes this odd talent of hers was more upsetting than it was helpful, but it was an interesting insight.

  "So, unless they already know or ask flat out, just let them think I'm a mage or something. Not even the most skilled shifter can actually sniff out a person's species."

  Caroline made her eyes go as wide as she could. "You mean all those romance novels lied to me?"

  Darien blinked and his jaw dropped open for a moment of stunned silence before he burst out laughing. Mission accomplished and a less sad Darien slipping through the Saturday morning traffic, Caroline sat back in her seat and worked on finishing her coffee.

  2

  Caroline stared at the brick building with a weird sense of familiarity. The neat brick building housed the police department and the town hall. The post office was immediately to the left, in a newer building of a similar style. The fire department was at the end of the block in a fully modern building, but somehow had the sense of being part of the set.

  It felt oddly like home, and she wondered idly if there was a dusty local history museum in the back of the building, like the one she had visited the day she was kidnapped and thrown into a whole new world of paranormal problems. When she mentioned it to Darien as they headed toward it, he just grinned and pointed down the street in the opposit
e direction of the firehouse.

  The Scarford Historical Society Museum stood proudly in a building obviously dating back to the colonial period, just the other side of the Post Office. Caroline chuckled and shook her head slowly, and Darien's grin widened.

  At the front desk, they were directed to the sheriff's office, and he greeted them politely but with no particular ceremony, offered them the willing assistance of his people, and directed them to Deputy Joe Simon who had been the man in charge of the case until they walked in. When they got to the deputy's desk, they found him pecking away at his keyboard with two fingers and scowling. Sandy brown hair cut short in a ragged sort of style and tanned skin gave him the air of a reformed surfer.

  "Deputy Simon? I'm sorry to interrupt, but we understand it's you we should talk to about the missing person case? I'm Agent Darien Webb from the FPAA, and this is Caroline Peters. She's an intern, technically speaking, but don't let that fool you." Darien's smile was wide and friendly, and he reached his hand out to shake.

  The deputy stood and took it enthusiastically. "Glad to have you here, Agent Webb. Please, call me Joe. And you, Miss Peters. Welcome to Scarford." He offered Caroline his hand and a smile also, and she heard his interest change slightly when he turned his attention to her. She sighed mentally and shook hands. At least he wasn't leering at her and practically drooling like that guy at the truck stop in Maryland last month.