Valley of the Shadow Page 9

  He played with her hair and watched her face. Every tiny hint of expression was a new wonder. What was she thinking? Was she cold? Warm? Hungry?

  They were both completely filthy, but she didn’t seem to care at all. He would have to adjust his thinking. For her, being in the earth would be as soothing and familiar as the water was for him. The grit wouldn’t bother her skin any more than seawater bothered his. It would be an adjustment for someone as fastidious as Baojia, but he would happily adapt, especially if getting dirty resulted in that level of sex on a regular basis.

  Relieved. That’s what he felt. He was massively relieved.

  Her eyes hadn’t changed. They were still the same clear blue that reminded him of sun-splashed water. Her laugh was the same. Her awkwardness and her honesty. She still craved his bite. Plus he no longer had to be painfully and carefully gentle when they made love.

  Baojia felt as randy as a sixteen-year-old boy.

  “Hey, George?” Her voice was drowsy.

  “Yes, Natalie?”

  “I really love you.”

  “I really love you too.”

  “Can we just have lots and lots sex for an entire year?”

  His laugh started low and got louder, filling the room. “I forgot how newborns tend to have a one-track mind.”

  “Yeah, okay, but can we?”

  “We can stay in here for a few nights at least. After that, you might want to explore the outside world.”

  “I don’t know.” She turned toward him, and her fangs were down again. “The outside world can be really overrated.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “Are they gonna be weird if my fangs come out?”

  “They love the fangs.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Trust me, the kids love the fangs. You’re gonna end up showing them over and over until your jaw aches.” Baojia kissed her temple. “Just relax.”

  It had been two weeks since Natalie had changed, and she finally felt steady enough to hold a normal conversation. They had kept her stimuli simple for the first week. She and Baojia slept in the stone room on the ground, the earthen floor Lucien had built literally grounding her chaotic emotions and reactions.

  The second week, they’d moved to a room in the far back of the house that jutted up to bedrock. Lucien and Makeda stayed in the house with them. They ate together. Played card games and watched movies. She was distractible and erratic, moved to tears in a heartbeat and snapping with anger over minor things.

  Natalie likened it to the absolute worst case of PMS she’d ever had. Only on steroids. Lucien and Baojia were confused, but Makeda backed her up.

  Toward the end of the second week, she felt steadier, but she still hadn’t ventured any farther than the porch. She felt inundated by her senses anytime she stepped outside. Baojia thought it might help to remind her why she needed to wrestle control back, so he arranged for his Nocht-compatible tablet to be brought to the cabin, and Giovanni and Beatrice would wait on the other end with the kids.

  The signal booster Matt had installed seemed to be working if they sat on the far corner of the porch, so Natalie and Baojia waited to connect with the two people they missed the most.

  The tablet beeped as it connected, and a picture of two small chins appeared on the screen.

  “Mama!”

  “Sarah, you just… you bumped it.” Jake righted the tablet and aimed it so that Natalie and Baojia could see their little faces. “Did I do it? Can you see us?”

  Natalie felt like she couldn’t breathe even though she didn’t need to. It was a weird feeling. She nodded and knew she was crying.

  “Hey guys.” Baojia was smiling. “We miss you so much. Have you been being good for Giovanni and B?”

  Natalie swallowed the lump in her throat and focused on Baojia’s hand rubbing her back. “Hey, baby.” She touched the screen by Jake’s face and was startled when it went wavy. “Oh sh— Bugger. Oh bugger.”

  “Careful.” Baojia moved her hand away. “Just the edges. You can touch the edges.” He kept rubbing her back.

  “Mama, why are you crying?” Sarah was already climbing on the back of the couch. “I miss you. I went to the barn today with Dema and Andre and I saw kittens.”

  “I miss you too.” She wiped her eyes, hiding the red-stained tissue in her hand. “Tell me about the kittens.”

  Sarah blathered about the kittens for a few minutes, and Jake stared at her silently.

  “Hey, Jakey.” She smiled at his solemn little face.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I’m more than okay. I promise. Dad is with me, and Uncle Lucien and Auntie Mak. I promise I’m okay.”

  “You’re crying.”

  She shrugged. “I’m just emotional, and I miss you, buddy.”

  Baojia leaned over and kissed her temple. “I promise I’m taking good care of her. She’s doing great.”

  Jake’s eyes lit up. “Are you drinking blood now? Like Dad?”

  Natalie laughed a little. “Yeah, but you want to hear something weird?”

  “What?”

  She whispered, “I actually like cow blood best.”

  Jake wrinkled his nose. “No way.”

  “Yes way. Really. I’m a superweird vampire, I think.”

  Natalie had been both bothered and relieved to learn that cow blood satisfied her as much or more than human blood. She still drank her share of human blood—Lucien’s orders—but while that tasted overly rich after the first few swallows, cow blood tasted great. Everyone thought she was nuts except Carwyn.

  Carwyn—upon hearing about her preference for cow blood over human—automatically assumed they were distantly related, citing her freckles, red hair, and superior intelligence.

  Natalie found nothing in that to dispute.

  “Tell me what you’ve been doing while I’ve been gone,” Natalie said. “Sarah, don’t crawl on the back of the couch like that please.”

  “Isabel says it’s okay!”

  “Did I just ask you not to do it?” Natalie asked. “Please listen, because I’m not going to say it again.”

  Baojia hugged her from the side. “Some things don’t change.”

  “Just because I’m not there doesn’t mean—”

  “Oh!” Jake interjected as Sarah was climbing back down to her seat. “Mom, can we see your fangs?”

  “Oh!” Sarah bounced up and down. “Let me see, let me see!”

  “Told you,” Baojia muttered.

  Natalie felt weirder than she had in weeks. “Uh… Sarah, stop bouncing on the furniture and I’ll show you my fangs.”

  Sarah stopped bouncing immediately. Both kids leaned into the camera until all Natalie could see were the tops of their heads.

  “Okay.” She swallowed hard and tried to will her fangs to come down. “Okay, I’m still figuring all this out, so—”

  Baojia ran a finger along the inside of her thigh, and her fangs popped down immediately.

  “Whoa! So cool!”

  “I like them, Mama! You have nice fangs. They look really sharp.”

  “Uh-huh.” She gave Baojia a dirty look, but he was biting back a laugh. “Thanths, guyth.”

  Sarah put a hand over her mouth and giggled. “You talk funny now.”

  Jake was smiling too. “That’s so weird, Mom.”

  “Thanks.” She swallowed hard and stretched her mouth until her fangs retreated. “I’m still getting the hang of it. Glad to know I’m weird.”

  “The weirdest.” Jake’s eyes were dancing, just like his father’s. “Miss you, Mom.”

  “I miss you too.”

  Six months later…

  * * *

  Baojia opened the front door just as Natalie threw her notebook against the wall and screamed into a pillow.

  “Gaaaaah!”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Kids are good, thanks for asking. Isabel says hi and she thinks Adriana would make a great nanny. They’re going to call her tonight to see if she can
come down and meet us.”

  “That is great news!” Natalie threw down the pillow and stalked toward him. “This is driving me crazy.”

  “What is?” For the most part, she’d been adjusting adequately. She still didn’t trust herself to be around humans, which showed she had good judgment, but she was venturing more and more outside, so she wasn’t in danger of becoming a hermit.

  “Tommy keeps emailing me these leads. This is the second one in as many weeks. And I know there’s a story here that connects with the Ostenhouse case—”

  “That was the trafficking one last year, right?”

  “Yes! But remember there was the one guy…” She snapped her fingers. “Yukov. Lukov, something like that…”

  “Sokolov?”

  “Yes! That guy. And SFPD could never find enough evidence to get the DA to charge him, and then he’s international, right? So he walks.”

  “And disappears.” Baojia sat on the edge of the couch. “I heard about him somewhere in Belarus, but after that—”

  “He disappears.” She threw up her hands. “Poof. And now I’m hearing that there are girls on the East Coast who are disappearing with the same MO. The exact same MO, Baojia. And I can’t do anything about it.”

  “Modeling website?”

  “Yep.” She paced around the room.

  “Sixteen- to eighteen-year-old girls?”

  “Three so far. New Jersey, Boston, now New York.”

  “Diverse racial targets, but all low-income and high achieving?”

  “Yes and yes.” She picked up the notebook and stalked over to him. “This newest one is seventeen. She was accepted to the magnet high school for music and arts. Superhard to get into. Pretty girl. Gorgeous girl. Dominican-American. She’s acting weird, mom puts it down to being stressed about starting at the new school. Then she disappears last week. No sign of her. Police are convinced she ran away with her boyfriend, but guess what?”

  “She and the boyfriend were already broken up.” Baojia stood.

  Natalie snapped her fingers. “Exactly. Mom is telling the police that this isn’t like her daughter, and no one is listening.”

  “Friends?”

  “Friends say the girl and the boyfriend broke up because she was approached by—get this—”

  “A modeling scout?”

  She pointed at him. “Right in one. Boyfriend didn’t trust the guy. Girl said he was overreacting and being jealous and it was a good way to earn some extra money. Blah blah blah, she breaks up with him. Friends say she was upset, and they thought it was about the boy, but what if—”

  “What if they’d already taken pictures?” Baojia let out a long breath. “Filmed her when she was changing and were blackmailing her?”

  “Sounds familiar, right?”

  The trafficking ring in San Francisco had done exactly that. They’d targeted bright, pretty girls with promising futures but not a lot of family resources and then lured them into “modeling photo shoots” where they were filmed in the dressing room and it was edited to make it look like amateur pornography. Natalie had worked tirelessly on the story and gotten massive credit by both the investigative-journalism community and law enforcement for information that led to multiple arrests and the rescue of more than a dozen girls.

  He walked over to her and put his hands on his shoulders. “Natalie, you can’t help with this case.”

  “But I know what questions to ask.” Her eyes pleaded with him. “I don’t know New York, but I know the pattern. I know—”

  “You are a six-month-old vampire,” he said. “Setting you down in the middle of New York would be like letting a fox loose in a henhouse. And yes, Red, in this situation, you’re definitely the fox and not the chicken.”

  “But I don’t even like human blood! It smells like liver and nobody likes liver except cranky old men and I’m not a cranky old man!”

  “Natalie, there’s no way. You have to drop this. And tell Tommy to stop sending you stuff, okay? It’s just going to drive you crazy because you can’t do anything about it.” He saw the guilty look on her face. “You told him to dig for more, didn’t you?”

  She mumbled, “Just… reaching out to some people he knows at the Times.”

  Baojia sighed. “You can’t leave. It’s not even a possibility, so just stop tormenting yourself.”

  “But these girls are out there! They don’t kill them. They keep them and they just…” Natalie’s face was stricken. “You know what they’re doing to them right now. You know it. Is there anything you can do?”

  “I can’t help like I did back home. It’s not my jurisdiction, and no one would appreciate me barging in. The O’Briens rule New York, and unless this is something encroaching on one of their businesses, they do not get involved in human issues. Plus you and the kids are my priority right now. I can’t just up and leave.”

  “But—”

  “Out of the question, Natalie. I’m not leaving you, Sarah, and Jake.”

  She took a deep breath. “But you know people in New York. Ben—”

  “Is still in Mongolia, remember? He’s in the same boat as you.”

  “Tenzin?”

  Baojia shrugged. “Who knows? And she wouldn’t be able to work a case like this anyway. Not without Ben. She’d fly off the handle and just kill everyone.”

  Natalie cocked her head. “Well…”

  “Wow, those shady vampire ethics sure sprang up quick.” He grimaced. “Do not call Tenzin.”

  “We have to do something,” Natalie said. “The kids are here and we’re all fine. Lucien and Makeda have taken care of everything back home. We’re just sitting here waiting and—”

  “Brigid.” Baojia knew it was right the moment he said it. “If you can’t leave it up to human law enforcement—”

  “They’ve already written these three girls off as runaways. They’re not going to do anything until more and more disappear.”

  “Then call Carwyn and Brigid. They have resources. Brigid has the skill set, and Carwyn has the connections. She regularly contracts out at this point anyway because Dublin is a sea of calm. No one wants to mess with Murphy when he’s the only one who’s figured out how to get vampires into the twenty-first century.”

  She reached up, pulled his face down, and kissed him. “You’re brilliant.”

  “I know.” He patted her butt. “Call Brigid. I think she and Carwyn might even be in Los Angeles right now since they finished up that thing for his daughter. This sounds like something they could jump on.”

  Natalie sped over to her Nocht-enabled tablet and began barking commands at Cara while Baojia went into the kitchen to grab a drink.

  Yep, she was exactly the same woman he fell in love with. Exactly the same heart and passion. Exactly the same drive and exactly the same infuriating lack of self-preservation.

  Fortunately, she was now a little bit more durable.

  * * *

  THE END

  Afterword

  Dear Readers,

  Thanks for returning to the Elemental World series. I’ve been waiting for six years to write the finale of Natalie and Baojia’s story, and I’m thrilled to finally answer lingering questions for readers about their lives together.

  What’s next for the Elemental World? It’s hard to say right now. Clearly, though the Elixir storyline has wrapped up, there are still many characters I could feature in future books. So while I will never shut the door on this series, I’ll be focusing on two major projects in 2020. I dropped an Easter egg or two in Valley of the Shadow, so you might already know what I’m going to say.

  First up, the last two books of the Elemental Legacy series featuring Ben and Tenzin. Dawn Caravan will be coming in April 2020, and the fifth and final book in the series will hopefully be published toward the end of the year.

  I will be starting a new, fast-paced, action packed, and brightly patterned paranormal mystery series featuring two of my favorite characters in the Elemental World… Carwyn and
Brigid. Did you guess???

  That’s right, Carwyn and Brigid will be exploring more of the Elemental universe in a brand new series featuring the two of them and many other favorite characters, along with a few new people along the way. There will be fighting. There will be kissing. There will be crime-fighting. And there will be Hawaiian shirts and professional wrestling. OF COURSE. I don’t have a title or release date for the series yet, but I’m excited to start writing next year.

  I hope you take the time to sign up for my newsletter so you can keep up with all the news about my books. You’ll receive a free short story, news about new releases and sales, and a monthly newsletter with free serial fiction starting in January 2020. If you want to keep up with me but don’t want extra emails, you can subscribe to my blog at ElizabethHunterWrites.com.

  * * *

  Thanks for reading,

  Elizabeth Hunter

  Pulse-pounding paranormal mystery featuring your favorite characters from the Elemental World.

  Obsidian’s Edge

  is now available at all major retailers!

  For the first time ever, all three origin novellas in the Elemental Legacy series are available in one volume, along with a bonus novella, The Bronze Blade.

  In Shadows and Gold, driving a truck full of rotting vegetables and twenty million in gold across mainland China wasn’t what Ben Vecchio had in mind for summer vacation. If he can keep Tenzin’s treasure safe, the reward will be worth the effort. But when has travel with a five-thousand-year-old wind vampire ever been simple?

  In Imitation and Alchemy, all Ben wanted was a quiet summer before his last semester of university. All Tenzin wanted was a cache of priceless medieval coins that had been missing for several hundred years. And some company.

  In Omens and Artifacts, Ben needs a job. A legendary job. Finding the lost sword of Brennus the Celt would make his reputation in the vampire world, but it could also draw dangerous attention. The Raven King’s gold isn’t famous for being easy to find. Luckily, Ben has his own legend at his side.