High Stakes (Vegas Vampires #1)(25)
Author: Erin McCarthy

This was where Kelsey had run out on him, leaving him under a weak glamour on the goddamn reception desk. The elevator dinged.

"Oh, God," Alexis said in a somber voice. "She left him there, didn’t she?"

"Yes." Ethan was embarrassed. What they were watching it wasn’t how he wanted to introduce Alexis to his world. It shouldn’t matter, but it did, that sheknow it didn’t have to be crude like this. "Alexis "

She glanced at him. "Are you going to say something totally embarrassing to both of us, like that it isn’t always like this that a feeding can be an exchange of souls, as pure and sweet and sensual as making love with the right person?" well, he wouldn’t have used those moronic words, but the sen-timent , yes. But obviously, she got it and didn’t want him to say it.

"No, I was just going to say that you sound like a tortured crow when you laugh."

A laugh burst out of her, half-amusement, half-relief, it looked to him. She hit him in the arm with tithe throw pillow. "You’re a schmuck."

He was a smart schmuck. He knew when to retreat from a woman. Ethan fast-forwarded until the shooter collapsed against the desk.

The man said something, though it was too garbled to distinguish the words. He looked around, pleasure replaced by confusion, which disintegrated into anger. Wiping his hands on his pants, he then put everything back inside and zipped. He straightened his jacket, reached inside for thin leather gloves, and pulled them on. He was walking around the backside of the desk when the elevator door opened.

Ethan knew it was himself, cominng to investigate, even though he wasn’t visible on film.

Fast, smooth, poised, the man reaached into his suit, pulled out a piece, drew his arm up, and squeezed the trigger two times.

Alexis jumped. "Did it hurt?" There was concern in her voice.

"Yes, there was pain when I was hit. Then I blacked out."

The shooter stepped forward, avoiding a puddle of blood forming on the tiled floor. Ethan had forgotten to ask William to send housekeeping to clean the mess up, but his head of security was smart enough to handle all those details on his own.

"He’s making the sign of the cross over your body with his gun. I told you therewere sickos in’t this world ."

It was an odd last thing to do bbefore the man calmly put his gun in his pocket, removed one glovve ,punched the elevator button.

withthe other, and disappeared. But to Ethan it still read like a professional hit. When the man had been caught off guard by Ethan’s sudden appearance, there had been no hesitation. No panicking.

The questionwas, who wanted him dead?

"Now that I’ve seen you lying on the floor in a pool of blood, and then seen your invisible self get shot on camera, I feel like I have the right to ask this." Alexis tucked her feet under her legs.

"What?" He couldn’t even imagine what she was going to ask.

"What the hell were you thinking going up there by yourself?"

That he’d been feeling stodgy and white-collar and had wanted to handle the situation himself to prove that he could. That he was so attracted to Alexis that he was distracted and acting on impulse. That he hadn’t been thinking at all.

"Hello! I remember what Kelsey said. She said he was going to kill you, that he was empty inside, and that lipstick I thought was bleeding outside of her lip liner really was bleeding, you know what I’m saying. You knew she had fed off of someone, knew she thought he was after you, and like a hugely arrogant ‘I can handle anything’ man, you just ran off and got yourself shot." Alexis’s cheeks were pink, her hands flying all over as she gesticulated wildly. "Do you want to die? What if he’d had a stake or a sword or a sunlamp or whatever it is that can kill vampires?"

Ethan hit the Eject button on the DVD. "A sunlamp is not go- ingto kill me, and it would hurt less than a bullet, that’s for sure."

The very thought made him scoff, though he found her concern appealing.

"You know what I mean! It’s a good thing I went up after you." And why exactly did you do that? It was no smarter than me going up in the first place. What if the shooter was still there? You’d be lying dead on my office floor right now."

Her face paled. But she stubbornly stuck her chin out. "So you’re just going to erase his memory and that’s it? That doesn’t seem like much punishment for shooting someone."

"Now who’s the bloodthirsty one here? Look, we have rules, Alexis. We don’t kill people. We’ll contain him. If he doesn’t know how to kill me, it will be nothing more than a nuisance until we find him. Then like I said, we’ll contain him, and remove the parts of his memory relating to me."

Alexis didn’t look satisfied with his answer. She worked her lip with her teeth and picked at the pillow in her lap. "How many of you are there?Obviously enough that you have some sort of governmental system."

Ethanhesitated only a fraction of a second. He wasn’t supposed to tell a mortal about his kind, but he didn’t feel much like following the rules when he was with Alexis."Ten thousand."

"Whoa. That’s a hell of a lot more than I thought. You must be sucking blood everywhere."

Ethan sat down next to her and plucked the pillow out of her lap, amused by her lack of fear. "Ten thousand is not a lot. There are two billion Chinese alone in the world."

"Well, that’s true."

"We’re vastly outnumbered and are able to successfully blend in with society, while still being organized. The Nation exists to ensure we aren’t discovered, and can live quality lives." It was a system that worked, kept order and prevented chaos among the ranks of the undead, and provided mentoring for young vampires. Ethan had seen the world before the Vampire Nation, and he didn’t want to return to those dark days of rogue vampires and needless human slaughter.

But sometimes being a responsible vampire leader was a heavy burden.

And lately it had really cut into his sex life.

It was definitely time to change that.

Alexis had never given vampires much thought, but when she had, she had always envisioned brooding men living in isolation, snagging a random human victim here or there, and more often than not, lunching on animals while their houses crumbled around them.

Ethan wasn’t exactly falling in line with that image.

And never once had it even occurred to her that vampires were democratic.

"So what is your platform? What differentiates you from your opponent?" She couldn’t even begin to guess what the issues facing the modern vampire were. Security, financial planning, airport retina scans? Okay, maybe she could guess, but that didn’t mean she was going to be right.