Jacob's eyes went to Ahmose, who had darkened, but did not do anything to stop the close contact. Ahmose looked at Jacob and grimaced. "I expected this. He doesn't know any better. Wait until he finds his woman and see how he reacts when another vampire grabs her. I will forgive him this once because I know how I felt when I saw her again after thinking she was dead. It is acceptable under these circ.u.mstances."

Jacob raised his eyebrows. "How civilized of you. You beat the s.h.i.t out of me when I did the same after finding Starla here in your village that first time."

"I've grown," was all Ahmose said, and grinned. "Still, he'd better put her down soon, or I may actually give him the same greeting you got that time."

Luka did put Mal down, moments later. He stepped back and stared at her face. "G.o.d, you're the best thing I've seen since I've been here. I missed you, partner."

"I have too. That's why I asked Ahmose to save you. I couldn't imagine this world without Luka somewhere in it. I hope you've been happy."

Luka glanced to his side at the Asian beauty, then looked back at Mal. "I'm working on it. This helps."

"I'm glad we're back together. You know that I'm with Ahmose, don't you?"

Quiet, he nodded. "Yeah. I hope that works out for you."

"We have a daughter together. She's amazing, Luk, better than I deserve, and more than I ever expected in my life."

"You deserve the best, Mal, I've always known it. But more importantly, I have to ask, what did you do with my bike?"

Mal grinned. "Ask me again tomorrow when my things are delivered."

Luka's eyes sparkled, and he and sighed, shaking his head. A deep smile lit his face. "Thank you, partner."

Ahmose moved between them. "We need to greet some more people and then I will take you and Brigitte to our dwelling to settle in." He nodded to Luka, and pulled Mal with him.

Luka balled his right hand into a fist. Before he could get any angrier, he felt a soft hand wrap around his fist. He looked up and Chione smiled. She kept him honest and sane.

"Thank you," he said to her and she nodded.

"My pleasure, my friend. I do not want to see Ahmose hurt you."

He watched as Ahmose led his ex-partner through the group of vampires that he had come to know quite well and really liked.

"Chione, will you save me a dance?"

"You know I will, my friend."

"Good, I'm going to the waterfalls for a moment to calm down. Will you come with me?"

"I will. It is a better choice than your first instinct to hit Ahmose. I am proud of you, Luka. You no longer need me as escort on your journey as a new vampire. I believe I have finished my task of guiding you."

"No, Chione..."

Her soft, liquid magic eyes looked into his. "Yes," was all she said.

Luka was thrilled that Mal was there in the village with him. But he knew that he was going to lose Chione. He'd always known that she was also in search of purpose in her life, and that she felt like a long journey was ahead of her. He believed that caring for his sorry a.s.s had been the only thing keeping her here. With her announcement, he knew the time for her to go had come.

"Let us go. I fancy a swim tonight anyway. Tomorrow night, when things calm down, then I will greet my master's mate." Chione led Luka through the veil.

FOUR WEEKS LATER.

Starla giggled. "Look at them. It's like they have always known each other."

For the past two weeks, Mal and Starla had been putting their daughters in the same ba.s.sinet together, and they had shocked them by rolling into each other and hugging. When they took the girls apart, both cried horribly for hours until they were reunited.

"They're reading each other. Those two girls know what the other is thinking. I think they're bonding," Chione said, the fingers of her right hand caught by Shani, the fingers of her left, trapped in Brigitte's little hand.

Chione looked up at the two mothers, who she noticed seemed almost as close as their daughters.

"It's the magics. You are all bonded at such a deep level." Drawing a deep sigh of satisfaction, Chione leaned closer to the ba.s.sinet. "This is as it always should have been. I cannot wait to find my destiny."

Starla came up behind Chione and hugged her. "My darling friend, there is a great one for you, I know it. Your heart is bigger and more pure than anyone I have ever known. It will come."

Mal leaned closer, and touched both women. "If I could find such a destiny, believe me, you certainly can. I was a half-crazed gun-toting woman who roamed the streets of a busy city looking for criminals to stop. And yet I've ended up here. See? It happens."

"I believe it. I see it in my sleep. At rest, there are images that come, most days, but they are vague. Only one image keeps coming, day after day, and that is of a strange shape, a tower. This has been coming now for several weeks, but I don't know what it means."

"Perhaps we should have Cherise come to read you," Starla suggested.

"I cannot, Star. I am not grand enough to disturb her. She has much more important futures to see than my little one."

"I disagree."

"Still, I am hopeful that it will come to me." Chione gently disentangled her fingers from the babies and pulled a folded piece of paper out of a pocket. "See? I've drawn the tower so that I may research it."

Starla took the sheet, which Chione had folded over four times into a tiny square. After unfurling it from its tight shape, she spread it out and smoothed it down. Mal glanced at it, then at Starla. They both looked at Chione.

"The s.p.a.ce Needle," Mal and Starla said simultaneously.

Later that night, just before sunrise, Mal kissed Brigitte on the cheek, letting her eyes linger on her daughter.

"Sleep well, my sweetheart," she whispered, and turned to the huge man who waited in her bed. He was naked, the way she liked best.

"Husband," she said, and he looked up from his tablet computer that he rarely used.

"Wife," he answered, and pitched the thing over on a bundle of clothes beside the mattress.

Walking over to the bed, Mal played with the ties on her robe, which was made of the thinnest, most diaphanous material she'd ever seen. It barely had the right to call itself fabric, but it was soft and shimmered, and showed off her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and other a.s.sets well.

His eyes were locked on her as Mal bent over near the end of the bed and pulled something up from where it had been placed on a bench. She hid whatever it was behind her, the motion pushing her nipples tighter against the straining material. He loved her b.r.e.a.s.t.s!

He hadn't changed her yet, he was waiting for a friend to come whose blood made conversions easier and he wanted to cause as little pain as possible. Park would arrive next week, and Mal would go through the transition and become vampire. While he looked forward to it, he loved her human body too, so he wanted to take the time to enjoy the perfection of her imperfect, but spectacular human shape.

Mal suddenly placed a blue police officer's cap on her head and got up on the end of the bed. Ahmose, propped up against the headboard, watched, fascinated.

"You know, I became a cop because I prefer to control as much of my world as I can. I liked chasing the bad guys and arresting them. Here, everyone is so good. But sometimes I miss the bad boys. Sometimes, a girl just wants a big, s.e.xy guy who doesn't follow the rules. You, sir, have some things to answer for. First, you abducted an L.A. city detective and I believe you were never punished for that crime. Furthermore, you promised to make her immortal and eternally young and that hasn't happened yet, either. I believe I need to detain you, sir."

Now standing on the bed, Mal pulled another item from behind her back, a set of handcuffs, police issue, that she dangled from her hand. The barely-there robe highlighted long legs and the area between them, which was now at eye level.

Ahmose's gaze dropped there, lingered, and then was drawn back to Mal's face when she spoke again.

"Put your hands up, sir, or I'll have to add resisting arrest to the charges."

With a smile, Ahmose lifted his powerful arms up, his c.o.c.k shooting upright when she leaned over him, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s in his face, and clipped his wrists together. She'd brought one side of the cuffs around a metal pole that supported a canopy over the bed.

Ahmose smiled. "My punishment, officer, should be swift and brutal."

"Oh, no, sir. I don't do swift. I don't do brutal. Torturous would be a better word."

Mal nipped at Ahmose's neck and he slid further down on the bed. Closing his eyes, he felt her hands on his chest as she travelled down his body, close, so that he felt her breath on him from there across his abs, down his thighs, and then surged upward as her tongue roamed aggressively across the head of his c.o.c.k.

He opened his eyes and stared at her. "Don't stop, officer. I don't want to report you for cruel and unusual punishment."

"I don't believe the incarcerated have a say in how the interrogation will go. I'm hungry, I'll be back in a few hours."

She got up, and left him groaning on the bed as she walked over and got a banana out of a crystal bowl, peeled it and licked it from top to bottom.

"G.o.d, woman, I'm going to explode."

"Not yet. That's not on the agenda."

"You'd better be on top of me when it happens."

Mal tilted her head.

"That's on the agenda."

Dropping the robe, Mal walked back to the bed quickly and took him into her hands, then began a sensual attack from the top of his c.o.c.k to the bottom, her tongue too quick and not quick enough, driving him to finish. He did explode, and it was before she got on top of him.

He hoped the rest of the community hadn't heard his yell, but he knew it had been as explosive as his o.r.g.a.s.m.

"Release these cuffs, woman," he demanded, because he was going to attack her the same way and when he finished, and was hard again, he was going to ride his little human and shoot into her.

"Excuse me, sir, but I call the shots around here."

But she was naked, and ran her fingernails down her body, across her nipples, to her belly b.u.t.ton, and lower, to slide across the slit that was very wet.

He groaned yet another time, lifted up, pulled his wrists apart, and the hand-cuffs shattered. Surging up, he scooped Mal into his arms and flipped her beneath him. He bit her neck and began to draw blood, his hands sliding down to replace her own fingers as he rubbed the throbbing c.l.i.toris that needed more. Using vampire-level speed, he made Mal come quickly as he finished the blood draw, then rolled over and pushed into her waiting body.

"Officer down, officer down," she whispered, "And she intends to stay down."

OUTSIDE OF THE PROTECTED VEIL.

"f.u.c.k, Neck, there just isn't anything here. I've been over the entire area with every bit of surveillance we have during daylight, and there's just f.u.c.king nothing here."

"But you saw her go in there?" Neck's voice over the poor cell phone connection was sharp and impatient.

"Yeah, I did. Uh, I think I did. I don't know, it was f.u.c.king dark and this is in the middle of the f.u.c.king forest!"

"Canzone wants to know what you've found out. He wants the girl back and I can't get her the f.u.c.k back if she disappeared into thin air. So take the team of six guys I sent to you and get the job done!"

Ballgame wanted to shoot Neck. Or, he wanted to shoot himself in the head. Either way, he'd get out of this b.u.mf.u.c.k, G.o.dawful noisy country. He couldn't stand the sound of those incessant waterfalls! How did these people live here anyway?

"Sure, sure."

After he ended the call, Ballgame threw his phone back into his pocket and turned to Java, the most experienced guy he'd ever seen with surveillance.

As he turned, a huge man caught his head and looked into his eyes.

BACK IN THE U.S. TWO DAYS LATER.

Someone hit Ballgame on the head. What the f.u.c.k?

Neck was standing at the end of his bed.

"What the f.u.c.k, Neck? Can't a guy get some sleep?"

"Not when he's supposed to be in Africa looking for the woman cop for the boss! What the f.u.c.k are you doing back here?"

Ballgame crawled out of bed, naked, and Neck rolled his eyes. "Look, I just got chewed out by Canzone, I don't need to be a.s.saulted again by having to look at your junk. Put some f.u.c.king pants on, man."

Mumbling, Ballgame pulled on some grungy sweatpants that he wasn't even sure were his.

"What are you doing here man?" he asked. "How the h.e.l.l did you get in my apartment?"

"I told you, the boss wants to know where the h.e.l.l you've been. You and six other guys are supposed to be watching for Canzone's cop in Africa. Why the h.e.l.l are all of you back here in your s.h.i.tty apartments? We've been looking for you for two days! In Africa!"

Ballpark lit a cigarette. He took a long draw and squinted up at Neck.

"I don't know what the f.u.c.k you're talking about. I've been here the whole time, sleeping. I ain't never been to Africa, and I sure the f.u.c.k don't want to go! What have you been smoking?"

Neck didn't say anything. He just looked at Ballgame.

"You're serious?"

"Yeah, I'm serious. Who told you I was in Africa? Hey man, I'm not letting anyone set me up for taking the fall for something I didn't do. Who told you I was in Africa?"

"You did, Ballgame. I know you were there."

Ballgame laughed. "Yeah, right."

Scratching himself in the crotch, Ballgame went to the fridge and screwed up his nose. "What the h.e.l.l is growing in there? d.a.m.n, that food goes bad fast."

Neck walked up to Ballgame and took his head in his hands.

"You don't remember being in Africa?"

"I'm telling you, Neck, I ain't never been in Africa!"