“I don’t—” he started to say, but it was too late. She darted over to the dining room and threw open the door. Ethan’s surprised gasp shot through him and there was no stopping the snarl that slipped past Marcus’s curled lips. He rushed to Meryl’s side. Cain’s heavy hand clamped down on his shoulder and squeezed in warning.
Deep down, Marcus knew he could take Cain in a fight. The vampire was younger and not nearly as strong as Marcus, but he also knew that Meryl wouldn’t remain passive in the fight, and he was no match for the older vampire. She didn’t need Cain to protect her. She just liked having a flunky shadowing her every move.
“Well, isn’t this a delicious-looking meal,” Meryl purred.
Marcus growled. He threw off Cain’s hand and pushed his way past Meryl to step into the dining room. Ethan had started to move around the table, his hand extended toward the woman with his polite smile in place.
“Hi, I’m Ethan Cline, Mr. Varik’s new assistant,” he introduced.
Marcus jumped in front of Ethan, blocking his path and Meryl’s direct view of him. He didn’t care what Ethan thought; he just didn’t want Meryl taking an interest in Ethan.
“Oh Marcus, he’s so pretty,” Meryl cooed. “Please tell me you’re going to keep this one.”
“This isn’t the time or place, Meryl. We can discuss why you’re here upstairs in the lounge.”
“But we can bring him along.” Her bright hazel eyes jumped to Marcus’s face and she giggled. “The more, the merrier.”
“He was just leaving for the day,” Marcus said firmly. She started to open her mouth, but he continued. “Please, Meryl.”
She pressed her lips together in a bright smile and nodded at him before spinning on her heel. He didn’t move as he listened for the sound of both Meryl and Cain moving up the stairs, and only then did he allow himself to relax a tiny bit.
Ethan’s hand landed on his arm and he twisted around, fully expecting to see anger filling his large blue eyes, but he found only concern there.
“Are you going to be okay?” he whispered.
Marcus nodded sharply. “Go directly home. We’ll talk tomorrow,” he said in a low voice. Not that he could even guess what he’d tell Ethan when he saw the man again. But that was a worry for another day. Right then, he had to figure out what Meryl was up to.
Chapter Seven
When he entered the lounge, he found Meryl already seated in the leather chair in front of the empty fireplace, while Cain was standing nearby. Fighting to keep his face expressionless, Marcus closed the door behind him and walked over to the chair closest to Meryl.
“It’s that time again, isn’t it?” Meryl said. The playfulness was gone from her voice, and there was a new seriousness that ran in sharp contrast to her carefree attire. But then, the punk rocker look with the purple hair was all an act. A ruse. Meryl was a cold-blooded killer, and her favorite target was her own kind. “Moving day is nearly upon you.”
“We’ll be gone in less than two months,” Marcus replied carefully.
Vampires were required to move every couple of decades. Otherwise they risked humans catching on that they didn’t age, never changed. There were murmurs now among their kind that moving every twenty years wasn’t enough. That the rule should be changed to fifteen or ten. With the advent of digital cameras on every cell phone and social media, there was always the risk that someone would notice.
But ten years was a drop in the bucket for a vampire. Marcus was just getting settled in a location, getting a feel for his new hunting grounds in ten years. He hated the idea of constantly packing up and resettling in a new location.
And moving wasn’t just a matter of relocating his household. It meant coordinating the move with his three brothers as well, finding new homes for all of them, and seeing that their mother was disturbed by the move as little as possible. The endeavor was exhausting and stressful.
Of course, there was also the problem that his family might be moving into an area already populated by other vampires. Most large cities couldn’t be claimed by a single vampire. The hunting grounds were large enough to support several vampires with little difficulty, and in general, everyone could play well together. Complications only cropped up when too many vampires gathered in a smaller town. The risk of someone noticing something rose significantly, increasing the danger for all of their kind.
Their new home in Connecticut was in a somewhat smaller city of fewer than fifty thousand people, but Hartford and New Haven weren’t too far away. The only thing that worried him was hunting during the winter when people strayed outside their homes far less. Unfortunately, his family had spent too much time in the south over the past several decades. They needed to head north to escape the risk of being noticed.