The Vampire's Protector. Michele Hauf

go? And with what means would he survive? And what would he do now that he’d risen from death? Would the violin continue to sing and lure him down the dark and evil path he had literally been born to follow?

      The music grew more insistent, and his newly beating heart answered those desperate questions for him. There was only one thing he could do to ensure that bedamned bargain did not claim him. He must find the violin that had called him up from death. And destroy it.

      * * *

      Sitting in the silver Audi with the windows rolled down, Summer glided her fingers over the leather violin case nestled on the passenger seat. Since discovering the instrument an hour earlier she’d been hearing the silvery whisper intermittently. It wasn’t a voice, more just a sound, a distant note on a violin. So far away that she had to lean forward and tilt her head to hear it, but she wanted to hear it. To answer it.

      And that was strange. She likened it to her vampiric persuasion. Had she fallen under some weird thrall when uncovering the violin? If it really had come from the devil Himself any number of malevolent spells or hexes could be attached to the instrument.

      The thought gave her a shudder. It took a lot to scare her. Devil’s magic was number one on that very short list. Demons ranked number two.

      Her reflection in the rearview mirror showed a tired blonde with dirt smeared across her cheek and dust still cluttered in her hair. She’d driven straight from Paris to Italy and hadn’t slept since two days earlier. She required a few hours shut-eye each night. That’s what she was considering now as the car idled roadside at the edge of Parma.

      She rubbed at the dirt on her chin, but didn’t bother when it smeared. She was used to being dirty. In her spare time she liked to work on cars, and getting greasy was part of the fun. Makeup and hair spray? Ugh. Leave the war paint for the girlie girls. Much to her ultrafeminine mother’s annoyance, Summer was a tomboy to the bone.

      Probably another reason why the Retriever job fit her like a glove. She didn’t mind the tough work, long hours, travel or the dirt. And she really didn’t mind the creep factor.

      Except when said creep factor was accompanied by a violin that played itself. But had it really? Or maybe the unconscious fear of evil she had was putting that freaky scenario in her brain. It could have been that she’d dropped the bow, the bow hairs had slid across the violin strings, and, voilà. A few random notes had sounded. Shouldn’t raise the dead or Beneath.

      She hoped.

      “Paganini’s violin,” she whispered with awe. “Nice snatch.”

      Now to get it to Paris. Without falling asleep. A sip of blood should do the trick to keep her awake, so she’d keep her eyes peeled for a potential donor. Someone nondescript, young, not terribly attractive, but not a vagrant. She preferred mousey and bookish, actually. Though, considering what she did to them, she should probably go after criminals. But then, she argued that changing a criminal would only make him a worse danger to others. A normal person? With hope, they could handle the results of her bite.

      There was nothing she could do about it, and she did have to take blood. Bags of blood from a blood bank wouldn’t cut it. A vampire had to drink blood with a heartbeat to survive.

      Initially, she hadn’t realized what her bite did to humans. Her father, Vaillant, had been the first to notice. He’d gone along with her those first times when she’d come into her fangs at puberty and had taught her to stalk the shadows and take a donor without killing. Yet, her father had noticed that her donors were different after Summer’s bite. Some struggled with voices about them that they grasped for as if at insects. Others shouted out to nothing but the madness inside them. It seemed a condition that lasted for hours.

      Over the years, her family had figured that Summer’s bite was somehow changing her donors. A little or a lot, depending on how large a drink she took from them. A long drink? The donor very possibly went mad. It had frightened her to know she had such an ugly power. And confused her. Why only her? Other vampires did not impart madness with their bites. Nor did her bite seem to affect the paranormal breeds. But she could hardly keep her blood drinking only to paranormals. Humans were so much more abundant.

      Fortunately, she had a strong family support system and had learned to control her hunger as much as she could. Which meant taking only a small sip and then hoping the donor would be okay. Just a touch of madness.

      It was no way for a vampire to exist. But it was her life.

      What she wouldn’t give to be a normal vampire who could take a nice long quaff from a pulsing vein and then walk away, whistling a show tune.

      Her job did make avoiding that emotional struggle a little easier. No time for empathy for others or personal-relationship woes. She kept busy. Focused on the prize. And never got involved with distractions such as families who may own the sought-after magical item, or humans who wished to challenge her for the prize, she, as a Retriever, had been assigned to obtain.

      Life was basically good. And it would be much better when she dumped this weird, whispering violin.

      “I’m going to bring you in to the Archives to be cataloged, tagged and stored. Never to be played,” she said and followed with a sigh. “That’s so wrong. This violin is exquisite.”

      Whatever horrible powers it might possess could be counteracted with a witch’s spell, yes?

      No. She wouldn’t go there. Dark and dangerous things were best kept under lock and key. And wards. And spells. And any other magical device that could be slapped on to the thing. Better safe than sorry.

      She picked up her phone and scrolled to the director’s number, when it suddenly rang. From the director.

      “Yes,” Summer answered. “I’ve found the black violin. Got it in the case and sitting next to me right now.”

      “Excellent. So you’ll be flying it to Paris today?”

      “Uh, you know I drive.” Because, adventurous as she was, soaring up to thirty-thousand-feet altitude in an airplane? Not going to happen. She was a creature of the earth and intended to remain as close to it as possible. It wasn’t that she was afraid of flying, she was merely sensible. “I’m sure I can have it there by tomorrow evening. Monday morning at the latest. I might find a place to pull over and rest because I’ve been driving all night.”

      “That’s fine. As long as it’s secure, there is no rush. Go ahead and bring it directly to the Archives for cataloging.”

      “Uh... Director Pierce?”

      “Yes, Santiago?”

      “What is the thing with this violin? I mean, it seems innocuous. It’s just another violin, albeit remarkably well preserved. The strings were even tight—”

      “You didn’t play it, did you?”

      “What?”

      “Don’t play that violin, Santiago. All of Beneath will, quite literally, break loose if anyone should play that violin.”

      “Uh...” Gulp. All of Beneath? That covered quite a lot of area. And included its ruler and nemesis, Himself. But really?

      “Summer.” The director rarely used her first name, so that set her back in her seat. “Tell me you did not play the violin.”

      “I did not play the violin.”

      “I’m sensing there’s a but?”

      She sighed heavily, and with a glance to the violin case, nodded. “But I did drop the bow, and it slid across the strings. It wasn’t as if it was purposefully played. It made more of a noise than anything.”

      “Fuck.”

      She had never in her service to Acquisitions heard Ethan Pierce swear. And now Summer noticed her hands shook. What the heck? She hadn’t done anything cataclysmically wrong. She was still alive. A vile nest of demons had not been released from the depths of the storage room where she’d found the violin. The