Vampire for Christmas Read Free

had
thought she would be happy. She should be happy. No more working
with the enemy. They were reassigning her to warmer climes and a
partner-free role. She had proven herself worthy of working alone,
just as she had wanted from the start of her career with the
agency, and she was finally getting that wish.
    So why
wasn’t she happy?
    “ Town,” Shannon said distractedly, frowning at the pavement and
trying to piece together an answer to her own question. There had
to be a reason and it couldn’t be the vampire walking beside her.
She had grown used to him. That’s all it was. He had become a sort
of friend. The only person she actually spoke to apart from her
handler and a few people at the agency, and she had never told them
a thing about herself. She had never talked them, not as she had to
Rafe. Shannon cursed herself. She should have kept her distance and
not gotten involved, just as she had planned, but two years was too
long to work with someone without saying anything to
them.
    Rafe had
slipped in unnoticed, had passed the first of her defences and
somehow got her talking one night, and since then, she couldn’t
stop her mouth sometimes. Sometimes it all became too much and she
had to speak to someone, and he was always there, willing to listen
to her silly troubles and doubts about her ability to hunt, her
skill, and her future with the agency.
    And he
always reassured her, and made her feel better.
    “ Anywhere particular in town?” Rafe said and her attention
snapped back to him. She stared up at him, still half lost in her
thoughts, and found herself looking straight into his eyes. Windows
to the soul. Rafe’s hid nothing from her. They betrayed everything
that he was feeling, and sometimes it frightened her.
    Not when
he was showing his vampire side. His pale eyes didn’t scare her or
the malice that she saw in them, the hunger for violence and
bloodshed. It was this side of him that scared her. The gentle
side. The one who looked at her with warmth and undeniable
affection.
    “ Are you feeling alright?” He cocked his head to one side, his
gaze holding hers, sparkling with tender concern.
    Shannon
forced her eyes down to the pavement and studied the cracks as she
walked, unable to bring her voice above a whisper.
    “ I’m fine.”
    There was
a long pause, full of expectation and unspoken things.
    Sometimes, when this feeling washed over her, she had a sense
that he wanted to say something to her. He never had though, and
she often found herself wondering what it was he couldn’t put a
voice to.
    “ So, where are we going? Into town, or beyond town... perhaps
you called me all the way out here on a freezing cold night just to
make me go gift shopping with you. If that is the case, I have to
say it is in poor taste, as I am a vampire... I do not celebrate
Christmas as you do.”
    “ I don’t.” Shannon wished she could take those two words back.
They were going to cause questions that she didn’t want to answer.
She glanced at Rafe, briefly making eye contact, and then looked
away to her right, her gaze eating the streetlamp lit grass and
shrubs that she walked past. He sighed but said nothing. She waited
a moment longer, afraid that he might just be building up to it,
and then released the breath she had been holding. “The report
states that there was a demon sighting in the local cemetery just
outside the town centre.”
    “ Cemetery?” Rafe sounded positively disgusted.
    She
glanced at him again. He looked it too. He seemed to take it as a
personal affront whenever they had to hunt demons in places like
old churches, cemeteries and disused factories.
    “ Some demons have no taste.”
    Shannon
smiled. “Speak for yourself.”
    He
frowned at her but it didn’t stick. It melted into a smile that
threatened to steal her breath and she averted her gaze again. What
was she doing? Her heart skittered about in her throat and she knew
he would be listening to it, and he would know that he