“This is Cade by the way. Cade this is Bo and…”
She trailed off, looking meaningful y over her shoulder at Bo. He moved past her and came to stand by my side, sliding an arm possessively around my waist.
“This is Ridley,” he supplied.
Annika’s startlingly blue eyes darted from Bo to me and back again before she smiled tightly and offered her hand.
“Ridley, it is nice to meet you.”
Politely, I took her proffered hand and pumped it once, cordial y, and then released it. Whether it was rooted in jealousy or something else, I didn’t like the fair Annika and I suspected that the feeling was mutual.
For the first time since their arrival, Cade spoke.
“Bo,” he said, nodding once in Bo’s direction before his obsidian eyes made their way to me. “Ridley, it’s a pleasure.”
His voice was a deep delight with a thick Texan drawl.
His lips curved into a smile and, despite Bo’s presence at my side, Cade made no effort to conceal the blatant appreciation in his eyes.
“And how do you two know each other, Annika?” Bo said, referring to Cade.
“We met a few states ago and discovered that we had much in common. We have been traveling together since.
We have a common goal.”
Bo nodded slowly, his eyes never leaving Cade. Cade just stared back.
Annika slapped the back of her hand against Cade’s chest.
“Stop that! Brothers are not supposed to compete.”
After a moment’s delay, Bo and I both gaped first at each other and then we turned our rounded, incredulous eyes on Annika. When we final y found our tongues, we both had one question. It came in the form of a word, a single word.
“Brothers?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“I don’t have a brother,” Bo declared, turning a scowl on Annika.
“Yes you do.”
Truthful y, Bo didn’t have enough memory of his life to argue with her, which is probably why he chose to demand answers instead.
“Then tel me how it is that y o u came across this information, yet I did not.”
“Can we please take this inside?” she asked again, making every effort to keep her voice low and calm.
Bo glared at Annika and Cade for several long, tense seconds before he acquiesced. With a frustrated growl, he stepped aside, al owing Annika and Cade to enter. As Cade passed, Bo eyed him suspiciously, the tension between them nearly palpable.
Once they were inside, Bo closed the door, grabbed my hand and led the way into the den. After Annika and Cade had deposited their bags on the floor and taken a seat on one of the couches, Bo urged me to sit on the one facing them. He remained at my side, though standing, his arms folded over his chest in an intimidating posture that was rife with antagonism.
“Alright, we’re inside. I think you need to explain yourself.”
Annika snorted.
“I see that the fun-loving Bo that I remember has grown up quite a bit,” she began, her voice teasing. When Bo said nothing, Annika cleared her throat uncomfortably.
“Let me start with how I found you. I—”
“We can get to that later,” Bo interrupted sharply. “Right now I want to know why you think I have a brother.”
I glanced at Cade. He was watching Bo closely, as if puzzling over his reaction.
“You are just going to have to be patient, because it al starts with the night you disappeared from Lindersberg,” she said. “You and I were supposed to go hunting together. You were stil showing me the ropes, showing me techniques and how to avoid infecting people once my fangs matured.
Showing me the best places to find wil ing humans, al that.
Anyway—”
“I was hunting humans?” Bo interrupted, dismayed and a little disbelieving.
“Yes. Why would you not hunt humans?”
“I don’t drink from humans. The person you’re describing doesn’t even sound like me.”
“Wel , maybe not the current you, but it certainly describes the you from back then,” she declared. When Bo said nothing, she continued. “Anyway, you didn’t show, so I went to a place that we had been to before, thinking you might be there. And you were. You weren’t there alone, though. You were with a man, one I didn’t recognize. I waited for you to finish and then, when the two of you left, I gave you a few minutes and fol owed. By the time I got outside, however, you were already gone. Vanished. Without a trace. I looked everywhere for you, but it was as if you just disappeared.
“When you didn’t show up for three days, I knew something was wrong. I asked al around about the man you were with, but no one seemed to know who he was. It took me almost a week to final y find someone, a new vampire, who remembered someone named Sebastian, someone who fit the description of the man I’d seen you with.
“After that, the trail went completely cold. I wasn’t able to pick up on any scent or find anyone who’d seen you for months, so I eventual y gave up. It wasn’t until I moved to the states about five years ago that I stumbled across Sebastian again.
“I was in a smal town in Texas visiting a bar I’d heard was a good place to feed. That’s where I saw him. He didn’t know that I had seen him that night in Lindersberg. I struck up a conversation about the local hunting grounds and he was more than happy to chat when I flashed him a smile and showed him a little cle**age.”
Annika paused to show us exactly the smile she’d used, one I could see being persuasive to nearly any male creature and probably even some females. Bo wasn’t impressed, however, only wanting more details about his father at that point.
“What did he say?” Bo asked stiffly.
“Er, not much real y. He was very careful, which just made me that much more suspicious. That is why I fol owed him.
Tracked him to a house. It was an old house, sort of off the beaten path. It didn’t take me long to figure out why it was so secluded. He was keeping a woman there. A woman and her son.”
Annika’s eyes darted to Cade before she continued.
“The woman was beautiful. She had dark hair and eyes, and she looked like an angel. I watched her house until he left and then I went and knocked on the door. It only took me about ten seconds of talking with her to figure out she was under the influence of his blood. I knew I would never get any information from her, so I thought to fol ow Sebastian. I kept up with him until he stopped in a town in Colorado cal ed Buford.
“But just like before, I lost him. He can just vanish. It is incredible,” Annika exclaimed, her voice saturated with admiration. When she saw that no one else shared her fascination, she cleared her throat again and continued.