“Did you notice the marks on that girl when she walked past us?” Zanipolo asked suddenly.
Sighing, Raffaele opened his eyes and glanced around. Despite the early hour, there were at least fifty females in the near vicinity, and while more than half of them were over forty, they were still just girls to an immortal who had seen as many centuries as he had. “Which girl? What marks?”
“The blonde in the yellow bikini,” Zanipolo said, pointing.
Raffaele followed his gesture to a young woman in a large crowd of people in their mid-twenties. They were gathered in a circle between the rows of lounge chairs just a little to the right of them, chatting and laughing. Raffaele’s gaze slid over her. She had a killer figure, but he didn’t see anything unusual. “Okay. What marks?”
“Her neck.”
Raffaele raised his gaze, pausing on the marks in question.
“What do you think?” Zanipolo asked after a moment of silence.
“I think we’re sharing the resort with a vampire,” Raffaele said solemnly, and was vaguely aware of the other man turning to peer at him with surprise. He usually didn’t use that term to refer to one of their kind. None of them did. It was an insult in their eyes. Vampires were dead and soulless creatures who crawled out of their graves to feed on mortals. Raffaele and his kind were immortals, all very much alive, all still retaining their souls, and nowadays they stuck to bagged blood. However, he was cranky and felt like insulting the rogue immortal who was breaking their laws, so vampire it was.
“Most mortals would call us vampires,” Zanipolo pointed out with amusement.
“Yes,” Raffaele agreed, watching as the woman laughed and then started to turn away from the group. “But we aren’t biters.”
“Well, except in a pinch,” Zanipolo pointed out, and then glanced back to the blonde as she headed toward the buildings. Pursing his lips thoughtfully, he added, “Maybe her biter wasn’t a rogue immortal, but a good one in a pinch.”
“Yeah. And maybe Frosty the Snowman will visit us here,” Raffaele said, his gaze narrowing as it moved to the others in the group.
“Such cynicism,” Zanipolo admonished.
“Not cynicism,” he assured him. “Take a closer look at her friends, but not the necks.”
As Zanipolo followed his suggestion, Raffaele slid his own gaze over the group again. Each individual had similar marks . . . two holes, about the same distance apart give or take a millimeter or so. But the others didn’t have them on the neck. One bore the mark on the inner curve of the elbow, another the wrist, another the ankle. One fellow even had them on his inner thigh, quite visible below the tight Speedo swimsuit he wore.
Eyes narrowed, Raffaele quickly scanned the other sunbathers around them, before adding, “And that group on our left.”
“A nest,” Zanipolo breathed with dismay as he noted the marks on the group of four, seated three lounge chairs over from them.
“That’s what it looks like to me,” Raffaele said quietly.
“What do we do?” Zanipolo asked with a frown.
Raffaele drew his gaze away from the group and let it slide to the ocean as he shrugged. “You’ve got your cell phone. Call Lucian or Mortimer. They’ll know who runs the Rogue Hunters here in the Dominican Republic and can give them a heads-up.”
“If there even are Rogue Hunters here,” Zanipolo said with concern. “Is this part of the purview of the South American Council?”
Raffaele was silent for a moment and then said, “Whether it is or not, Lucian will know what to do.”
“Yeah,” Zanipolo muttered, and reached for the cell phone lying on his towel between the chairs. “I’ll call it in.”
One
“Looky, looky, beautiful señorita. You like? Sí? You buy? Very cheap.”
Jess forced a smile even as she shook her head at the stall owner walking along beside her. The man was moving backward next to her, matching her slow stride and running one hand over the many colorful wraps hanging along the front of his shop.
“But look! Is beautiful for you. Cheapy cheapy too,” he protested, somehow managing to sound hurt at her lack of interest.
Jess merely shook her head again, and then moved more quickly to get away from him. Much to her relief, the man dropped away to approach someone else, his good cheer returning to his voice as he called out, “Looky, looky, beautiful señorita. Very cheap. You like? You buy?”
Jess didn’t bother glancing around to see who he had approached now. She already knew that any female tourist, whether she was aged eight or eighty, fifty pounds or five hundred, was a beautiful señorita. The vendors didn’t discriminate here. They were also incredibly aggressive. Jess found that a bit distressing. She didn’t like attention being drawn to herself and didn’t like constantly having to say no to people. It was one thing she would not miss when they headed home . . . that and the humidity. Dear God, every time she stepped out of her hotel room it was like stepping into a sauna. Not that the hotel room was much better. It was cooler, but just as wet, so that everything in it was wet too—her clothes, the bedsheets, the towels, herself. She hadn’t felt dry since arriving and was sure she was going to start growing mold on her body somewhere before they left.
“I don’t see our bus, but perhaps it’s farther down the street,” Jess said to her cousin now, glancing at the open area ahead. The gates between the vendors’ stalls and the road had been wide open when they’d arrived, but were half-closed now, leaving enough room for people to walk out but not for vehicles to get through.
When Allison didn’t immediately respond, Jess added, “What do you think?” She glanced around, only to stop dead when she didn’t find her cousin behind her as she had been since leaving the boat.
“Allison?” She turned to peer over the mass of bodies moving toward her. A good eighty to a hundred people had been on the trip to the Seaquarium. A large boat altered to look like a pirate’s ship had picked them up at the dock here and taken them out to the Seaquarium, where they’d “swum” with stingrays and sharks.
Eager to get back to land, Allison had rushed Jess off the boat at the head of the group to file back up the beach to the vending stalls. Most of their hundred shipmates were now moving toward her, a wave of people in swimsuits, some with cover-ups, some carrying bags, and most of them still wet from snorkeling at the coral reef after the Seaquarium. They moved around her like a wave around a boulder when the tide came in, all headed for the half-closed gate and the vehicles waiting beyond.
“Allie?” Jess said a little louder, not seeing her and unsure when she’d lost her.
“If you’re looking for your blonde friend, she stopped to talk to one of those dangerous-looking pirates,” an elderly lady in a black bathing suit and cover-up said helpfully, tipping her head up to see her from under the large straw hat she wore.
“One of the dangerous-looking pirates? You mean the performers?” Jess asked with confusion. They’d arrived onshore to a “surprise” performance by men and women dressed as pirates. They had put on a show of fighting and dancing in a circle, performing some tricks and tumbling that hadn’t been half-bad. Certainly, they had been better than the dance show the crew had performed on the boat. Still, Jess wouldn’t have called them dangerous looking . . . a little dashing, perhaps, but not dangerous.
“No. Not them. One of the ones who came to mix and mingle with the crowd after the performers’ show ended,” the old woman explained.
“Oh,” Jess murmured, glancing past the woman toward the stalls and stores again. Hot, tired, suffering sore feet, and basically sick of listening to Allison’s whining, she’d agreed easily when the other girl had insisted they start back to the bus before the show had ended. It was hard to imagine she’d then just suddenly decided to stop to chat up one of the men in costume. Although her cousin did tend to find “dangerous-looking” men attractive, she thought on a sigh. For Allison, well-muscled men in tight leather pants were like cream to a cat. Throw in some tattoos and a clean-shaven head and he became catnip.
Jess thanked the elderly lady, and then started back toward the stalls, her eyes scanning the people moving her way. She couldn’t see Allison. For that matter, she couldn’t see any dangerous-looking pirates. At least not in the immediate throng surrounding her, but then she noted small clusters of people moving in the opposite direction and back toward the dock. They were mostly twosomes consisting of someone, male or female, in a pirate’s costume and a member of the opposite sex in beach clothes, but there were a few trios as well. Jess quickly scanned them, breathing a little sigh of relief when she spotted Allison’s pale blond hair. She’d had it cornrowed by a strolling vendor on the beach the day before and the red and teal beads threaded through it were quite distinctive.
Allison was walking back toward the boat they’d just left, clinging to the arm of a good-looking pirate with dark hair and swarthy skin. Jess’s eyebrows rose as she took in his clothes. While the costumes the earlier performers had worn had been good, they’d still obviously been costumes. In comparison, this man’s outfit looked almost authentic . . . or perhaps it was just his confidence and swagger that made him look like he could have stepped out of a Renaissance version of GQ if they’d published a “Bad Boys of the Sea” issue. In a billowing white shirt, dark pants, a bloodred sash around his waist, brown leather boots, and a large tricorn captain’s hat also in weathered brown leather with metal rivets along the rim, he looked every inch a pirate captain. Jess had to admit that she understood how he’d caught Allison’s eye. He did cut quite a dashing figure. Still, just moments ago Allison had been whining about the boat ride, having sand up her crack, and being seasick, exhausted, and eager to return to the resort. This was a rather sudden about-face, even by her flighty standards.
For one moment, Jess considered just returning to the bus as planned and waiting there for her cousin to join her. After all, the bus wouldn’t leave until they were all on it, and if Allison dawdled too long, the bus driver would no doubt go fetch her back himself. But she had promised Krista—her cousin, and Allison’s younger sister—that she’d keep the woman out of trouble during this trip and Jess took her promises seriously.