Samael Read online

  Samael

  Dawn McClure

  (c) 2009

  ISBN 978-1-59578-642-5

  Samael

  Dawn McClure

  Published 2009

  ISBN 978-1-59578-642-5

  Published by Liquid Silver Books, imprint of Atlantic Bridge Publishing, 10509 Sedgegrass Dr, Indianapolis, Indiana 46235. Copyright © 2009, Dawn McClure. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Liquid Silver Books

  http://LSbooks.com

  Email:

  [email protected]

  Editor

  Jean Cooper

  Cover Artist

  Anne Cain

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

  Blurb

  Assassinating vampires was all in a day’s work … until she became the hunted.

  Jade is a vampire assassin for the Alliance, a prestigious group of vampires who consider themselves the elite of their species. Facing death on a daily basis is part of her job. Yet when a psychic informs Jade her death is imminent, the thought of death doesn’t seem quite so appealing. She changes her fighting tactics in the hope of staying alive despite the dire warning. Her new tactics bring unwanted attention from the human race. Her boss, Ambrose, puts her on probation, and that’s not even the worst of it. Ambrose gives Jade four missions to prove she deserves to remain an assassin. He assigns Samael, a demon from the First Angelic Revolt, to report on her progress.

  Samael recently quit his job as a Marquis of Hell to take up an offer to become an assassin. He’s given the assignment to observe Jade and report on her progress during missions. During their first mission together, Samael can see why Jade has been put on probation. She’s a liability to the Alliance. If there’s one thing all immortals understand, it’s not to bring attention to themselves. But when he finds out why Jade’s fighting tactics have changed in the last few months, he may be too late to save the one woman who has captured his heart.

  Chapter One

  Gladwin, Michigan

  Jade held her cell phone to her ear in one hand, and a live grenade in the other. Getting bitched out by her boss, Ambrose, while trying to take out four vampires was embarrassing. The vampires had excellent hearing, and Ambrose was certainly giving them something to listen to.

  “Jade, I’m telling you for the last time. Quit bringing attention to yourself when you’re on missions. That stunt you pulled back in New York was completely asinine. What the hell is wrong with you?”

  One of the vampires standing in front of her snickered. She held up the grenade, pin extracted and lying on the ground, and waved it around. The vampire’s smirk melted off his handsome face.

  The stunt in New York had been a matter of life or death. A vampire had taken hold of her throat while both were on the roof of a tall building. Either the vamp took the nosedive or she did. Luckily her adrenaline kicked in, and she’d hoisted him over her body in a move that would have made the Hulk proud.

  Unfortunately humans had been on the ground to see the vamp go splat. It wasn’t the actual death that annoyed Ambrose—that was to be expected. It was the way she did it that annoyed the shit out of him. Her fighting habits had always been a bane to Ambrose, and lately it had become worse. But she was still breathing after seven hundred years as an assassin. She liked her fighting tactics. Life was good.

  According to Alexia, a friend and fellow assassin, Jade had to be extra careful. Lexie was endowed with a special gift—she could see the future, though her visions were never very precise. They came at Lexie in bits and pieces. Apparently Lexie’s latest vision involved Jade dying in the field from a severe cut to her throat. Lexie had described the vision in gut-wrenching detail. A lovely visual Jade could have done without.

  Jade shook the visual away. She had to defend her actions in New York. “I didn’t have a choice. I had to toss the bastard head first.”

  “Off a building with human onlookers?”

  “Well, yeah, that’s where we were.”

  Ambrose growled. “And where do you think the body went, Jade?”

  Okay, so it splattered on the concrete. Jade bit her lip to keep from laughing. If Ambrose had been there, he would have hunted her down and killed her. After tossing the vamp she’d hauled ass off the building and called the guy who took care of bodies in the area. Suffice to say the guy was less than pleased he had to deal with police. “Would you rather the body had been mine?”

  “That is not the point, and you damned well know it. Your fighting tactics have to change. The Alliance eliminates rogue vampires without bringing attention to ourselves. That’s how our species survives.”

  A fact she was well aware of. “I’ve been killing for a long time. I’m just spicing it up a bit.”

  “Quit with the damned grenades.”

  She answered him with one word. “Oops.” Her grenades were specially made by Jimmy, a genius when it came to weaponry. He tricked the grenades out and made them more explosive than your average grenade. Jimmy was her hero.

  “Just what in the hell is oops supposed to mean?”

  She rolled her shoulders, trying to ease the tension currently building. The cold Michigan air had invaded her bones hours ago. Night had fallen hours ago, and the woods surrounding them were pitch black. Her long, black leather jacket wasn’t made for temps as low as these, but she needed freedom of movement. A parka just wouldn’t do in her line of work. “Well … it’s like this. I’m in an area that doesn’t boast of any houses nearby, so I—”

  Three of the vampires turned and bolted down the abandoned dirt road, leaving the other to stand dumbfounded. There was no way in hell she was going to chase after them. She’d never get all three. She might get one, but the others would keep running—and running after them held no appeal after her earlier chase. There was a reason they were out in the middle of nowhere—their defense seemed to be running.

  Besides, getting close to her kills was something she avoided at all costs now that Lexie had shared her vision.

  “Hold on a sec, Ambrose.”

  She whipped her arm back and let the grenade fly. Seconds went by and she held her breath, thanking the strength she had from being a vampire. Without it the grenade would never have gone as far.

  The sound of the grenade going off was deafening. It would be heard for miles. Oops. Placing a hand on the hilt of her sword she waited to see if she would need it. There were times her job could get messy, and she accepted that. She just didn’t want to deal with it tonight.

  Please, don’t let me need my sword.

  Once the smoke cleared and the flesh settled she did a little end-zone dance. And off with their heads!

  You couldn’t decapitate what wasn’t in one piece. Her aim had been right-on. Three down, one to go. Mission almost accomplished. She’d have to remember to call the guy in charge of bodies in the area.

  The remaining vampire was clearly terrified—whether it was her dancing or his imminent death she couldn’t guess. Probably the former.

  “Jade!”

  She brought the phone back to her ear. “Can I call you back? I’m kinda busy.”

  “Was that another damned grenade?”

  She hung up on him. The last vampire hauled ass in a different direction than his buddies took. As if that would save him. True, she was fresh out of grenades—mental note to self, buy more off Jimmy—but
she still had her sword.

  As she started running after the vampire she thought about Ambrose, and what he would do to her when he got a hold of her. She’d admit she might be a live wire, but she was an assassin in the Alliance. What did Ambrose expect?

  The three vamps she just incinerated, along with their cowardly pal, had been killing innocent humans for blood. There was no reason for a vamp to kill a human. A pint or two of blood was enough to last a vampire for weeks if that vampire happened to be young—months if the vampire was older. Some vampires enjoyed the feeling of taking blood—it caused some to become addicted. Feeding could be extremely sensual for both parties.

  The vampires she was sent in to kill normally ran when they found out an Alliance member had come to take them out of commission. It hadn’t always been that way. Back in the old days, circa 1700, vamps fought to the death. They would face off with her and fight back, death be damned. Lexie had just spoken about this a few months ago. The job of an assassin was hard, but when you’d been doing it for nearly seven hundred years it became redundant.

  Secretly, Jade couldn’t have been happier the vamps were cowardly, though she would never admit that to anyone—especially Lexie.

  Jade caught up with the vamp and unsheathed her sword. Her hands shook as she drew near, her breathing labored. The sound of steel made the prick fall to the ground, his arms quickly covering his head.

  Could she kill him when he looked like that? Cowering like an innocent about to be slaughtered by the evil vampire with a sword? Hell yes, she could.

  She sucked in her breath, raised her sword and—

  Headlights hit both of them, and she froze, her sword up in the air, looking like Xena, Warrior Woman on crack.

  Shit.

  She lowered her sword and moved to the side of the road in a nonchalant manner, keeping an eye on the vamp who remained lying on the ground. The car came close to hitting him, yet the vamp hadn’t moved an inch. Who in the hell would be out in the middle of nowhere at this time of night? What was it, two in the morning? She pushed her jacket back on her arm and checked her watch. No. Three in the morning.

  Then the telltale lights came on. Flashing red illumination over the sparse area, it highlighted the emblem on the side of the blue and yellow-trimmed car.

  Michigan State Police.

  A short, dumpy-looking police officer bounded out of the car before it came to a complete stop. The look on his face would have been comical if she hadn’t found herself staring down the barrel of a forty-five. Digging bullets out of flesh hurt like a bitch. Hopefully the cop wasn’t trigger-happy.

  “Drop your weapon! Hands in the air!”

  Fucking great. She did as he asked, letting her ancient sword fall to the ground. Ambrose was going to shit his pants when he found out about this fiasco. It wasn’t really her fault this time. Well … maybe. The police officer probably heard the grenade go off.

  “On the ground!”

  She laid herself flat on the ground, face in the dirt. Turning her head she caught the vampire’s eerie smile as he sat in the car’s headlights.

  He sneered. “Bitch.”

  He pushed himself off the ground and ran away from the scene. Perfect. Not only had she botched this mission, she had also done the one thing that was sure to get Ambrose’s undies in a bunch—getting caught doing her job with humans around.

  Some days it just wasn’t worth getting out of bed. This seemed to be one of those days.

  “Put your hands where I can see them!”

  She obeyed the officer’s command as he called for backup. She doubted he planned to run after the vampire without proper reinforcements.

  She had to think of a way out of this mess. She could use her superior strength on the officer, but then she would be breaking the “not-in-front-of-humans” rule. As if she hadn’t done a great job of that so far. The morphing power she contained wouldn’t help her in this situation. In fact, morphing only came in handy one or two times out of ten. She could morph into the form of the police officer, but giving a man of the law a heart attack wasn’t high on her to-do list.

  The officer cuffed her, pushing her face into the ground, and she coughed up dirt. Nice. Only one thing could make this better.

  “You’re under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say—”

  And there it was.

  * * * *

  “Assault with a deadly weapon. Failure to produce I.D. Assaulting an officer?” Samael whistled as he leaned against the bars of the jail cell. “You have anything to say in your defense?”

  It took Jade a second to find her voice. “I have the right to remain silent.”

  She’d been given one call, and against her better judgment, she’d called Ambrose. He’d been pissed, but he would get her out of jail without repercussions with the human law. That he had sent Samael … unbelievable.

  To say she and Samael didn’t get along was an understatement. He was a demon from the First Angelic Revolt, the fall incited by Lucifer. From what she had heard, Samael had let go of his job as a Marquis of Hell. Having commanded thirty legions of demons, he thought he was the big man on campus in everything he did. The rumor circulated that on his first day in the Alliance he’d assassinated over ten vamps single-handedly, which ended his training mighty quick. With only a week of training under his belt, he’d been given assignments to complete on his own.

  He annoyed the shit out of her.

  He also made her heart beat a little faster whenever she saw him.

  Samael had a sleeve of tattoos on his right arm, which he proudly displayed wearing a tight black T-shirt. The demon was built, as most were, but Samael actually worked out in the gym. He aided his naturally built body by lifting weights every other day. When he stayed at the Alliance headquarters in Northern Scotland, he lived in the gym.

  Not that she noticed.

  She waved a hand at the security cameras set up all over the jail. “Did you take care of the cameras, or are we going to be on the next episode of Cops?”

  “I took care of the cameras, as well as the body parts you left lying in the middle of the country road. I tracked down the vampire you let get away, and I finished the job for you.” He leaned against the bars that separated them, a stern expression on his face. “Discipline, Jade. Discipline and restraint go hand in hand. You would do well to learn these traits in your training and use them in the field. You could avoid mistakes like this in the future.”

  She imagined ripping his throat out with her fangs. “Are you going to de-materialize us or prattle off like the ass-kisser you are?” He knew when to command, and he also knew when to kiss some serious booty. The brownnoser.

  His light green eyes took on an unnatural illumination. “It’ll cost you.”

  She ignored the rush of heat his words brought. The last time she’d allowed herself to be taken by his looks she’d been embarrassed for days. “If you think I’m going to sleep with you, forget it. I do have some standards when it comes to the men I take to bed.”

  He could never guess how much she wanted him. A kind word had rarely passed between them—unless it had been spoken by him. He had been trying to get her into bed since the moment they’d met on the training mat. She’d kept her distance. While most women salivated at the mere mention of Samael’s name, she wanted no part of him.

  Sex with no strings attached was one thing. Sex with Samael would be something else entirely. She wasn’t ready to settle with anyone, and she probably never would. Relationships, marriage … none of it interested her in the least. The idea of using him and dumping his ass like yesterday’s garbage crossed her mind.

  Now that idea had merit.

  His sinful gaze traveled the length of her body. “Sex between us is only a matter of time, but I’ll settle for a kiss.”

  Her gaze fell to his lips, an unconscious gesture, and one that had her visualizing exactly what he could do with those lips. Could do, but she had no intention of letting
him. He’d mentioned the two of them in a sexual manner before, and her body had always responded. She’d caught herself fantasizing about him—but not only in a sexual way. Fantasizing about sex was normal for her. Dreaming of intimate dinners and hand-holding was red-flag shit.

  “Get us out of here,” she snapped.

  He folded his arms across his chest. His pectoral muscles bunched, his biceps bulged, her mouth watered. He made it obvious he wasn’t going to move. She could push the issue, and he would have no other option than to de-materialize them. Ambrose sent him in to do a job, not seduce one of his finest assassins.

  “What happened to discipline, Samael?”

  He didn’t answer her. What an infuriating bastard. She marched up to the bars, wanting nothing more than to slap the smug expression off his face. She didn’t care if she ever found out how soft his lips were, or what he was like in bed, or how he’d respond if she bit him. She only wanted to expedite the process of getting her ass out of jail, and that was the only reason she stood before him.

  She wrapped her hands around the bars, stood on her tiptoes and gave him a quick peck on the mouth. As she leaned back, figuring they were done, Samael snaked his hand through the bars, cupped the back of her head and brought her back for more.

  His lips were as soft as she had imagined them to be. Part of her wanted to pull away, while another part ached to feel his body pressed against hers for the full effect. His hand was a light pressure on the back of her head, his fingers splaying in her hair. The steel bars caused a barrier between their bodies, but she could well imagine what it would feel like to melt in his embrace.

  His tongue slid across hers, wicked and hot. He pulled back, nibbled her lower lip, then deepened the kiss, his hand a constant pressure on the back of her head. She fucking loved it.

  What was she thinking?

  She knocked his hand away and pulled back, breathless. He ran a hand through his short, black hair, looking as though the kiss had affected him as well.

  Not that she noticed.

  “There. You got your pound of flesh. You think we could go now?” Did she sound panicky? Damn. She swiped her hand across her mouth just to let him think she’d hated the kiss. In all actuality, she wanted more. Ached for more. What was it about this man that held her so captivated? It truly annoyed the shit out of her.