A Vampire’s Star (The Order of the Black Oak: Vampires #5)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

Bell Center, Montreal, Québec

October, Present Time

M athilda Ethel Davenport! Come on, girl. Tilly chided herself in the chilly, autumn night as she cradled her pregnant belly under the stark streetlights behind the Montreal Bell Center. It’s his child. He’s the only one who can keep you safe.

She rallied the courage she needed to dive into the horde of Cass St-Amand’s adoring fans waiting outside to catch a peek at their favorite rock star after his show.

The midnight air was crisp around her, the wind picking up a few dead maple leaves littering the concrete sidewalk. Yet the fall breeze did little to dilute the mixed scent of cheap perfume and body odor emanating from the boisterous mob awaiting their idol to exit the concert venue.

Standing amidst the downtown glass skyscrapers and centuries-old stone buildings, most of Cass’s superfans were not yet twenty-five, sporting jeans, leather jackets, or bodycon dresses under tiny coats.

Tilly winced and rubbed her belly once more. Her little munchkin was his baby alright. Conceived in the middle of a frigid winter, exactly thirty-six weeks ago today.

Would he believe it was his? Vampires, even immortal ones, did not father children.

Except that Cass had chosen to spend those few fateful nights not with just any woman, but a supernatural one—Tilly was a banshee.

One who walked with Death. Everything was possible.

She bit the inside of her mouth at the task ahead of her.

He had no idea she was pregnant with his child. How would he react?

He would have to acknowledge he was the father. But she’d cross that bridge when she’d get there. For now, she just had to reach him.

Wrapping her thick, oversize black hoody tighter around herself, and securing her small backpack over her shoulders, she slithered through the throngs of closely packed devotees. She was about a quarter of the way to the front of the mass when a happy clamor erupted.

Phones shot in the air. Flashes blinded her. The band had finally exited the widespread sleek venue located smack in the center of the Ville-Marie neighborhood. Everyone wanted a bit of their star.

“Cass, here! Cass!” Shouts for him rose from everywhere. “Caaaass!”

She drew one arm on her stomach, and with her lips tight, one hand in front of her, she plunged between the frenzied gatherers.

As she pushed forward, she jostled the arm of a young woman, jarring the jeweled pink cellphone the glam girl held high above her head.

“Hey, watch it, lady!” The blonde—in her late teens and barely covered with a glossy, white, fringed leather jacket over a stretchy gold sequin dress—shot Tilly a furious look.

Lady? Tilly wasn’t much older than the girl. But she knew how she must look to the evening crowd, with her face puffy from water retention and strained from anxiety. Her shapeless recording studio sweatshirt was practically the only thing that still fit her since she’d entered her third trimester.

“Sorry,” she told the fan. “I need to get through.”

“Get in line, madame . We were here before you.” The blonde looked at her like Tilly was litter she’d picked up under her shiny golden pumps.

“Yeah, no cutting.” Someone bumped Tilly from behind and she almost lost her footing.

She inhaled with frustration. Trying to catch Cass this way had to be the stupidest idea she’d ever had. Someone was bound to elbow her in the stomach.

And she was a sound engineer, blast it. Musicians came to her. Not the other way around.

She had acted out of total panic after the talk with Godmother April last night. Feeling hesitant about the circumstances of her unexpected pregnancy, and not ready to trust them with such big news, she had delayed the announcement to her long-lost banshee family until then. And now that she’d told one of her three banshee godmothers on the West Coast, she regretted having taken so long.

How was Tilly supposed to know that her condition put her and her child’s lives at risk for the mere fact that she was a banshee? It wasn’t as if she’d been raised in a banshee family and had known better.

For years, she had bounced from foster home to foster home until Death himself had appeared to her at puberty to welcome her into his fold. She’d only met the Davenport clan a couple of years ago when a cousin saw her in one of her visions.

And now that she knew about the imminent birth and its circumstances, Godmother April had insisted that the father could keep her safe. With his immortal abilities, compounded by the witchcraft heritage on his mother’s side, Cass would be able to protect her through the birth from any dark magical practitioner who’d use her for nefarious purposes.

But after her eight-hour bus ride from Boston and being jostled around by Cass’s crowd, Tilly now seriously questioned her judgment. She’d rushed straight to Montreal thinking it was the fastest way to him since she’d discarded all his contact information the minute he had left so as to remove any temptation of reaching out to him. She could have taken the time to find him through her music contacts. But since the pregnancy she’d been behaving more and more on impulse.

And now, because she’d made it all this way to see him on a stupid urge, she had no choice but go through with her plan of grabbing his attention as he walked from the exit and onto his tour bus.

“Oh my god! He’s looking this way.” Her blonde neighbor jumped up and down and Tilly shuddered at her sudden piercing scream. “Cass, mon beau. Come heeere!”

“I love you, Cass!” The crowd was in hysterics around Tilly, calling out to the singer in both languages. “ J’t’aime tellement . Baaabe!”

The girl in white leather suddenly dove forward, and Tilly followed in her wake. She couldn’t see the band and their entourage, but the red cord reining in the fans was just a few feet in front of her.

“Cass! Mon amour! ” the blonde shouted, fringes from her coat rustling in her excitement. “Oh my god, he’s soooo hot!”

The girl finally jumped her way to the very front. Tilly, with her head down and protecting her precious cargo as much as she could, slid right beside her.

She took one breath and, disoriented from the bright lights illuminating the pavement behind the Bell Center, she steadied her footing.

She lifted her head, and her heart seized at once.

Right there coming down the line of fans. It was him . Cass.

The man who had stolen her soul and changed the course of her life eight months ago. And now the only person she could think of to keep her and her child safe. Silhouetted against the brick wall under the bright flashes of a multitude of cellphones, he strode lazily, wearing a casual black blazer over dark jeans and the familiar silver Celtic cross at his neck.

Surrounded by the four members of his band, a few suits, bodyguards, and a plethora of glitzy girls, the father of her child advanced down the sidewalk toward his tour bus with a charming smile, waving and stopping here and there to pose for selfies.

Her breath shortened, her skin tingled with agitation at seeing him again after eight months.

His hair was a little longer now and Tilly recalled how she’d gripped the soft curls in the heat of passion. Her body heated uncomfortably at the memory of his lips at the nape of her neck and farther down to her breasts. She was suddenly hit with unpredictable jealousy at the gorgeous women in his entourage.

How many had he had after her?

She pursed her lips with irritation at herself as she watched him make his way toward where she stood. Did it even matter that he had moved on? She was the one who’d told him that they, as a couple, were impossible. Filled with remorse for having broken her solid rule of never getting involved with one of her artists, after, like everyone else who met him, succumbing to his easy-going charm.

They’d had one weekend, just one, a perfect forty-eight hours before she’d pushed him away from her life.

And here she was, needing his vampire strength. And his around-the-clock protection.

In agreeing with the godmothers’ plan of asking him for help, she hadn’t counted on his potent magnetism which still made her knees weak.

Come on, Till. Don’t be silly . She forced herself to look at the huge divide between them, he, a famous and untouchable figure, and her, a quiet sound engineer and future single mom.

She narrowed her eyes at him once more, guarding her heart with all her might and focused on only one thing. Get his attention.

He had to know about his baby. She had no other choice.

And there he was, just a few feet from her. Laughing away at something another excited admirer said. As he wrapped the redhead in a big side hug while she held her cellphone above their heads for a snap, Tilly couldn’t help but notice the soulful dark eyes and strong jaw of the man—actually, the Mount-Royal Immortal—who had captured her heart.

“Me, me, meee!” the sexy blonde in glimmering sequins shoved herself right in front of Tilly as Cass posed with another group of girls a few steps down the sidewalk.

Tilly had to get his attention. This was her only chance.

“Cassiodore,” she summoned him with purpose, filling the name with significance, in a magical command infused with that very special frequency only a banshee could project.

She couldn’t produce the banshee scream that could cause serious damage, but she did have the ability to be heard.

He dropped the girls as soon as he heard his name on Tilly’s lips and turned straight in her direction.

“Cass,” she repeated, keeping the tone low and meaningful. With that unique quality meant to demand attention.

He stood still for an instant, not yet meeting her eyes but looking straight at her. She finally saw him flinch as he seemed to take in her long black curls falling over the thick hood of her zipped sweatshirt, with the telltale long streak of white labeling her as one of the banshees marked by Death itself.

He knew all about the ways of her kind, joking during their lovemaking that Death had irrevocably met the Undead.

“Tilly?” he acknowledged her with shock.

Their gazes connected and for a second, they were frozen in time, the crowd receding in the background. They were back months ago in the studio’s little artist cottage by the beach, tenderly embraced, lost in each other with nothing to disturb them but the crashing winter surf.

A moment of perfect bliss that had lasted a mere couple of days. A moment to cherish for what it had been. A blink in time, never to be repeated.

She had made sure of that.

“Cass,” she said again, her voice steady and filled with resolve, in contrast with the enthusiastic shrieks around them.

He shook himself and the charmer’s smile returned. She caught a tiny flash of fangs, remembering how he had drunk from her blood that night. How she had seen his true persona. The well-hidden supernatural being that none of his fans would ever meet.

“Tilly.” He hastened toward her with a warm grin, both hands forward. “What are you doing here? You swore you’d never leave Cape Cod.”

She said nothing. Staring into his dark-brown eyes, she felt deflated for a moment. Her confidence gone. What was she supposed to tell him now?

“Cass! Here!! Take a picture with me. Pleeeease!” The girls around her were screaming.

He vaguely smiled at them and held on to the red cord blocking her way before turning to one of the bodyguards.

“Hey Tommy, get that rope out of the way, will you?” he called out.

Cass smiled brightly at her, standing right in front of her, taking her all in, not yet noticing her shape under her heavy hoody.

She waited as the bodyguard—a bearded, heavyset man in a dark suit and tie—stepped to the pole and unhooked the cord while motioning to other crewmen to hold the crowd back.

“Come.” Cass held out his hand at her. “Let’s catch up on the bus.”

With a deep breath, she grasped his forearm, and the familiarity of the contact brought forth a jumble of powerful emotions.

She dropped his arm as soon as she was out of the crowd, vaguely spotting the evil look from the super sexy blonde she had bothered earlier. She wished she could feel triumphant to be called upon while the girl remained behind, but she’d gone way past her days when popular musicians impressed her.

Rock star life is not as glamorous as you think, she wanted to tell the young woman. Not so different from everyone’s life, she reflected, keenly aware of her own predicament.

And so this was it . Her throat closed in on her. In a few minutes he would know.

She had planned to deal with motherhood on her own, just like everything else she’d ever accomplished in her life.

Unlike her own parents who had abandoned her at a Boston fire station when she was barely two days old, she had vowed to do best for her child.

But she hadn’t counted on her life being at risk from the very pregnancy that she had welcomed as a blessing. Pregnant banshees were far from safe, she’d just learned. The tragic death of Godmother May’s niece and the subsequent attack on the godmothers’ little grandniece Elsa had only happened because of their nature. Early motherhood within banshees seemed to be cursed.

She edged a little closer to Cass as she recalled Godmother April’s words of warning on the phone. The ritual sacrifice of her baby could bring tremendous mystical power to the officiants. The immortal father should be guarding her.

But Tilly had never wanted him to know about the baby. And he likely didn’t want her and their child in his life.

As she approached the touring bus, she rationalized that her decision to seek him out was the sensible one. After a horrific sleepless night filled with nightmares, unable to calm the panic in her heart, and thinking only of her child, she knew she had to reveal her pregnancy and ask him for protection from anyone who may want to cause her and her child harm.

And breaking with her initial plan of building her own little family of two, she could no longer leave the father of her baby in the dark. For the first time in her life, she would have to count on someone else for help.