THE VAMPIRE OF MONTANA

  Agents of the Royal States

  Book 1

  SUSAN COPPERFIELD

  The Vampire of Montana

  An Agents of the Royal States Novel

  by Susan Copperfield

  As a member of the RPS, Daphne Niell, also known as the Vampire of Montana, lives to serve.

  On a good day, she hunts terrorists and eliminates them before they can strike.

  On a bad one, His Royal Majesty of Montana, also known as her twerp of a cousin, sends her overseas to play nice with foreign monarchs.

  Upon landing in Spain, the Vampire of Montana learns she’s been played, and her first job involves securing the life and liberty of everyone in a busy airport. To do her job, she needs more than just an excuse: she needs a partner.

  Selecting a tall, dark, and handsome stranger from the ticketing line to become an unwitting accomplice in her plans isn’t her style, but desperate times call for drastic measures.

  What she doesn’t know might kill them both and forever change the course of the Royal States and the world.

  Copyright © 2023 by Pen & Page Publishing/Susan Copperfield

  Susan Copperfield is a pen name of R.J. Blain. Cover design by Rebecca Frank (Bewitching Book Covers.)

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  1. Why me? Why Madrid? Why economy?

  2. “There’s a Royal wedding.”

  3. I really liked killing terrorists. Anytime, anywhere.

  4. “Is it true he’s the shining example of what it means to be a family man?”

  5. “She just climbed into the ceiling.”

  6. Damn, Edward had his head screwed on straight. Nice.

  7. One day, I would confess—when I wanted to dodge death at my cousin’s hands.

  8. I gave it ten minutes before the knocks to my head scrambled my brains.

  9. “Just give me ten minutes and a knife.”

  10. “Spain let Geoff take over?”

  11. Only a fool tried me when I had a child in my arms.

  12. Every stable had a horse with opinions, and sometimes, the opinions made no sense.

  13. “The foals are all gone.”

  14. My kingdom had a reputation of eliminating terrorists for some reason.

  15. “Not today, fiend!”

  16. “That’s going to send a weird message.”

  17. Princess Poppy, Chomper of Meadows put her hoof down and blew air in my brother’s face.

  18. Some sacrifices were worth making.

  19. “I’m just helping.”

  Epilogue: Everything had come full circle.

  About Susan Copperfield

  ONE

  Why me? Why Madrid? Why economy?

  I couldn’t tell if His Royal Majesty of Montana, also known as my asshole cousin, loved or hated me. Most would have been thrilled to be going on an all-expenses paid trip to Madrid, but my cousin couldn’t trick me. Somehow, he used me as a pawn in one of his little games.

  Will did everything with a reason, and most of the time, it was a damned good one.

  Why me? Why Madrid? Why economy?

  Will would pay for flying me to Madrid in economy class. On my way back, he would be sending me in a comfortable seat located in the front of the plane, where I would enjoy however many little cocktails I wanted for the bazillion hours it took to make it back to Billings where I belonged. I would land so drunk one of my RPS co-workers would have to haul me to the motorcade and back to the palace, where some poor bastard would get to hold my hair while I paid the price for indulging in copious amounts of booze.

  Maybe I’d skip that. The last thing I needed was an epic hangover after spending a long flight drunker than a skunk and regretting I’d been forced abroad in the first place.

  In any case, I’d find some way to make my cousin pay for my discomfort, especially as my seat, at the very back, would result in me being the absolute last person to escape from the plane’s cramped bowels.

  I had no idea what I’d done to stir my cousin’s ire, but I was sorry.

  But why me? Why Madrid? Why had Will deliberately put me through hell flying me economy? There was no way he hadn’t done it on purpose. Worse, the vile rat had paid extra to fly me in an assigned seat deep within the bowels of the wretched plane.

  What had I done to piss him off so damned bad?

  The Spanish loathed me. I abhorred flying long distances, although my job demanded it of me often. Sometimes, I even flew the damned plane. Flying made the trip tolerable, as I had an intense and important job to do.

  For some reason, nobody let me fly the commercial planes except during an emergency, and the last thing anyone needed was the crew having to pull me into the cockpit to take over the controls.

  Damnit, damnit, damnit. Why Madrid? The instant the Spanish customs agents processed my passport, they’d be on me worse than flies on shit. Truth be told, I couldn’t blame them for that.

  I was who I was, and the last time I’d been to Madrid, someone had looked at my cousin wrong. Wrong looks at my cousin ended in one of two ways: death or arrest.

  As a known terrorist had been the one doing the looking, I’d given the Spanish a rather brutal demonstration of how I’d earned the name the Vampire of Montana. Leeches, the kind that manipulated blood rather than emotions, came few and far between. I’d inherited the kingdom’s entire damned share of the talent.

  Half of my family believed I would take over Montana at the rate I was going. My cousin held a different opinion, opting to send me overseas for months at a time, acting like I might be more useful touring foreign kingdoms while indulging in one of my dirtier habits.

  Nobody minded when I killed off a few terrorists. They were only terrorists, and nobody missed them. Well, outside of other terrorists, but I couldn’t care less what they thought.

  Sometimes, I hid the bodies once I was finished with them. Sometimes, I left them where they fell before making myself scarce.

  If I had a lot of terrorists to kill at one time, I tended to get the job done and leave a mess in my wake, a mess I rarely wanted to deal with once I’d done my work. As I didn’t want my cousin to come under fire for my terrorist-slaughtering ways, I invented new and creative ways to murder the bastards.

  Repeating a pattern would get me accused of a crime I had committed, and I really wanted to avoid the drama of having to admit I’d killed a bunch of terrorists again.

  As such, I had an unfortunate tendency to star as a serial killer in various episodes of unsolved mystery shows, which did a good job of getting me in trouble with my cousin. He always caught me, as he tracked my movements almost as closely as he tracked his wife and his children.

  Maybe if he stopped sending me to places with terrorists, I’d stop killing them. Maybe if he stopped sending me to places I might find terrorists lurking around the corner, I wouldn’t be in a position to put an end to them. Maybe if the terrorists stopped terrorizing people, I wouldn’t have irresistible urges to kill them.

  I bet my cousin liked yelling at me because I yelled back, so he gave himself every excuse under the sun to yell at me.

  Evil twerp of a cousin.

  The plane bounced twice on landing and otherwise came to a gentle halt. The stewardess welcomed us to Madrid in Spanish before swapping to English for those of us who couldn’t speak a word of the native language.

  In short, me.

  My cousin really needed to stop shipping me off to foreign countries.

  Gate delays kept us on the tarmac for almost an hour, which I spent reading a book. As my cousin inevitably tracked my flights and would freak if I didn’t check in with him, I waited until we taxied to the gate before turning my phone on. As soon as the display glowed and it booted up, I began to count.

  I reached forty-five before it rang, notifying me my cousin couldn’t handle me going off on my own without hovering. Smiling, I swiped my finger across the screen. “Don’t you have anything better to do right now, Will? Like sleep? You’re going to have a rough day starting in a few hours if you keep insisting on babysitting my trips to foreign countries.”

  “Absolutely not,” he replied. “How was your flight?”

  “You made me fly economy overseas. Currently, the polite answer is fine. The real answer involves your imminent demise when I return to Montana. I’m thinking I’m going to spend the entire flight home drinking just so you can deal with me hungover as punishment. It could have been worse. The flight was uneventful, just as it should have been. I am not happy you made me fly economy.”

  “I was reminding you of why you should be nice to me. In reality, it was the only seat available on the flight, as it seems everyone in Billings wanted to go to Madrid at that exact moment. I will attempt to perform better booking miracles next time. And no, I would not have paid extra to put you in that seat. It was the last seat left, I swear.”

  How did he always know when I suspected him of wrongdoing? Wait. Next time? Why did there always have to be a next time?

  Oh, right. I couldn’t quite stop myself from killing terrorists. One day, should the stars align, I might learn a few new tricks.

  When I made my way back to Montana, I needed to plop onto one of the shrink’s fancy couches and have a chat w
ith someone smarter and wiser than myself. My favorite, an old lady who took no shit from anybody, could set me straight. If she couldn’t, no one could. “Are you going to tell me why I’m here now?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes.”

  “About time. I was about to have to start lyin’ to the customs folks, and you know how I feel about lyin’.” To drive him wild, I mimicked Her Royal Majesty of Texas. “You don’t want me to start lyin’ now, do you, sweetheart?”

  “Daphne, please don’t.”

  “At least you didn’t call me Delphi this time.”

  My cousin sighed. “You’re really going to make me apologize a hundred times for that slip, aren’t you?”

  “You emotionally scarred me for life,” I lied, well aware my cousin would know I teased, as his magic annoyed him with his awareness of my lying mouth.

  “Why are you, evil woman that you are, an RPS agent?”

  “This is one of the few job fields where it’s legal to dabble in my favorite hobby. Anyway, anyone with a grain of sense is more afraid of me than they are of you,” I reminded him. “The entire kingdom celebrates my gender yearly, knowing they have been spared. And I have not yet acquired payback for implying I’m an oracle rather than a nymph. Then again, you pretending that I can see into the future is pretty lame. Me? An oracle? You’d have to send me to Greece to play at that game. But I’m already in Madrid. Go ahead. Send me to Delphi. Then I’ll be the nymph who takes a close look at your future, which involves me shoving you into some mud when I get home.”

  “Are you done?”

  “I haven’t even gotten started, Will. I’m going to have to talk to my parents. They’re why I am as I am, and that is not fair.”

  “You’re a leech, Daphne. That is not another word for demoness.”

  I chuckled at having gotten under his skin. “Close enough. So, what’s my job?”

  “Spain has reason to believe terrorists might target the airport within the next week. I want you to check everything over. Should you encounter any of your favorite people, you’re to eliminate them with extreme prejudice. However, the safety of the civilians is your top priority, even if you have to let a few of your favorite people go.”

  I considered crying from joy. “You sent me here for that?” Mentioning terrorists while exiting a plane would draw unwanted attention, especially when aware my cousin expected an event in the airport. “Is it Christmas? It feels like Christmas. Nobody ever gives me such nice things without it being Christmas.”

  “It’s September,” my cousin muttered. “Do you remember what happens in September?”

  September, September… I frowned, lowered my phone from my ear, and swiped a finger on my phone screen to check my calendar.

  Oh. Right. September. My mother had cruelly evicted me into the world during the month of September. According to the calendar notation, in two days, I would turn thirty-nine. “I see it is the seventh. Happy birthday to me, slightly in advance! I actually feel like celebrating something this time. Did my mother put you up to this, Will? Because if my mother put you up to this, I’ll actually show up for Christmas dinner, and I might find some fake boyfriend to bring along just to make her happy for once in my life.”

  “Aunt May loves you, and no, she didn’t put me up to it. If she’d known I sent you to Madrid anticipating a terrorism event, Mackenzie would be reading my will right now. I would like to remind you that your mother does love you dearly. I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear anything about a fake boyfriend.”

  “That’s the only type of boyfriend I’m qualified to have, Will.”

  “I regret allowing Spain to talk me into this,” he groused.

  “Spain requested me?”

  “I said something similar to the diplomat, although I may have used language unfitting for a monarch. You’ll find this to be amusing, but I called them hoping to clear you to accompany me on my next trip through Europe. Instead, they begged for me to send you over early while approving my request. They begged, Daphne. It turns out I’m weak when other monarchs stoop to begging me for anything.”

  “Again?” I complained. The last trip through Europe had resulted in the permanent loss of at least ten IQ points, a severely damaged pride, and a general desire to quit my job. I’d survived the trip, but I’d sworn never to go on another tour of duty across Europe.

  At the rate my cousin went, he’d have me breaking my vow to myself within two years of making it.

  “Alfred whines if you’re not on my detail, and he’s turned manipulating my detail into an art.”

  I sighed at the reminder Alfred couldn’t function as the head of any detail anymore. “There’s a reason for that, Will.”

  “Remind me,” he ordered.

  The lack of compulsion to obey pleased me. It had taken time, but it meant my cousin wore his bracelets like he needed to. His mask couldn’t completely restrain his talent, not like his bracelets could. Best of all, Will might come out of his shell as his fear of hurting others eased.

  I’d missed my cousin.

  I smiled, as even when my cousin slipped, I could fight off the compulsion, although not to the degree his wife could. “He trusts me because your talent doesn’t scare me.”

  “It should.”

  “Mackenzie,” I warned, smirking at how it had only taken one visit to my cousin’s wife to convince him he didn’t want me conspiring with her.

  Will sighed. “She’s pregnant.”

  Of course. Between the two of them, she barely made it a year without becoming pregnant. “I’d stopped counting after five,” I admitted. “I just assume she’s pregnant and refuse to worry about it. If she’s not, with how good she is at seducing you, she will be soon enough.”

  “She threw a book at me earlier today. I made the mistake of suggesting I should be snipped. She swore we’d be having at least ten more children. At that point, I spent a few minutes thinking about having ten more children while she held a second book and basically dared me to give her a single reason to throw the next one. But as you are terrible at math and worse at tracking my children, we currently have six, and numbers seven and eight are on the way.”

  “Girls?” I guessed, as the last one had been a boy.

  “Not according to Melody. Boys, fraternal.”

  “Twin boys? Wait, fraternal twins? And boys? But you had a boy not that long ago.” I kept my voice down in case anyone was listening in on me, although I doubted it. I came across as average and boring, which meant few noticed me at all.

  Montana’s king tended to have at least three or four daughters between the birth of every son.

  What was going on? I made a mental note to check into the royal line and the branch families to track the frequency of male births, as I couldn’t think of a single instance of anyone in the Montana line having twin sons.

  “I’m surprised, too. So, you need to take care of that problem in Madrid, and once you’re done with that, I need you to convince my wife you’ll cry if you can’t tour Europe with me. That will keep Alfred from having a meltdown, it’ll keep Mackenzie comfortable, and you’ll be the glue that will keep this delegation from turning into a disaster.”

  My cousin didn’t ask for favors often, so I surrendered without putting up a fight. “I can do that, but if I have to literally cry to manipulate her, we will have words, Will.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate it, and I’ll make sure you’re given a suitable present for the help. I’m going to go check on the kids, because if I take my eye off them, they’ll find some way to drive me crazy. Have fun with your assignment, try not to take over Spain, call me with your final tally, and try not to become the star of yet another episode of murder mystery television, okay?”

  “Just this once,” I teased.

  “Call me when you have an update,” he ordered before hanging up.

  I would, but I appreciated that he hadn’t tried to use his magic to enforce his request.