by Melody Raven
“No. But I still want to know.”
His brow furrowed in confusion, and damn it if he didn’t look cute. His cheekbones and jawline were so perfect and sharp, so the wrinkles in his forehead actually gave him some character. Character that was impossible to see in the jet-black irises. Though, she supposed, it was night. For all she knew, they could be dark brown, but the black iris fit with the monster theme much better.
“John.”
“John? You’re kidding, right?”
“You wouldn’t be able to say my real name.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know that. Every one of you took on normal names when you got here. But out of all the names you could possibly pick, John was what you settled on?”
John turned the corner.
She was grateful to put this whole thing behind her. Well, behind her until she needed money again and let that creep bite her again. Maybe she could convince him to go easier next time. Maybe she could bring orange juice.
Or maybe next time would be her last.
When they got to her apartment building, she expected John to put her down, but he went right up to the door. “Where’s your key?”
“Um... my back pocket. I don’t think either of us can get it from this position.” Now that she said it out loud, she realized he could easily hold her in one arm while getting the key with another, but that would involve him feeling up her ass, and that just wasn’t an option.
He set her down slowly, letting her slide down his body as her feet inched to the ground. Tela sucked in a breath at the contact, and her pulse quickened, pumping what little blood she had left through her body.
His body felt hard and strong against hers. She clenched her teeth and cursed the heat that shot through her. After tonight, she should be feeling nothing but fear and repulsion toward his kind. Obviously, this was just some other odd symptom of the blood loss. As soon as her feet were on the ground, she stepped away from him, shooting a hand out toward the wall as she tried to get used to the light-headedness that rushed through her as she took her own weight on her feet.
She turned away from him as she fished out the keys to her building. “Thanks for your help. You can go now.”
“I said I’d see you home. You’re not home yet.”
“I’m literally twenty steps from my apartment. I think I’m close enough to home.”
“Are you scared?”
She felt every single tiny hair on the back of her neck stand up on edge. “No,” she lied.
“Because if I wanted to hurt you, I could.”
Oh, she was aware. Her still throbbing neck had kept her very alert to the possibility of danger.
“I scared you more now. I was only trying to reassure you.”
Tela’s free hand went to the base of her collarbone, where she could feel her heart beating frantically. He must’ve heard it. What a stupid invasion of privacy.
She got the door open and didn’t bother telling John to wait any longer. He had a point. If he wanted to come in, he would get in. If he wanted to hurt her, he would hurt her. There was nothing she could really do to prevent it.
At this point, the only protection would be the safety of her home. Her crappy little basement apartment, which was now the only place she truly felt safe.
She didn’t hold the door open for him. Although not running, she quickened her steps as she went into the building and hooked a right, heading down the stairs that led to her level. Basement living wasn’t ideal. Except for a few small block windows toward the ceiling, there was no natural light. And it definitely wasn’t spacious. But because of the laundry area and other utilities, her apartment was the only one on this level, which gave her a semblance of privacy that the other tenants didn’t have. Also, it was a little bit comforting to know that because her windows were so small, she was safer from looters or break-ins.
Even though vampires couldn’t enter without an invitation, they’d made it known that if they wanted somebody out, they would get them out by any means necessary.
Of course, by the time she reached her door, John was right next to her. “Thank you very much for your help.” She shoved her key into the door. “Now you’ve seen me home and you can go off, guilt-free.”
“You never told me your name.”
She froze. He was right. He told her his, or least the fake one he’d adopted once he came here, but she never offered him up any personal information. Somehow, the little semblance of secrecy made her feel just a tad more secure, and she needed all the security she could get right now.
“Tela. My name is Tela.”
She turned the key in the door, pushed it open, and stepped just inside the threshold, finally putting a barrier, albeit an invisible one, between her and John.
He stood in the hallway, staring at her inquisitively. “That’s an unusual name.”
“Thank you again for your help. I hope I won’t be needing it again.” She pushed the door shut softly, not wanting to be rude but still wanting to detach herself from that situation as quickly as possible. She was grateful to him. She had no idea whether she would’ve been able to make that walk home alone by herself. Not to mention the fact that it was after dark. There were a lot of dangers on those streets, and it wasn’t limited to just vampires.
But as grateful as she was, it wasn’t as if he had protected her out of a sense of right or wrong. He did it because if she ended up dead on the side of the street, that would look bad for him. A selfish good deed was still selfish.
Besides, she’d probably never see him again. So what did it matter if she was a little bit rude? Considering his kind had just about killed her, she’d earned a little bit of rudeness. For tonight, at least, he couldn’t blame her.
Now that she was home and she’d officially made it through her first donation, she could relax. By tomorrow morning, she’d have enough money for at least a month’s worth of groceries. Maybe in a month, all of this would be figured out. The government would find some amazing chemical agent to kill off all the vampires and let things go back to normal.
Now she could raid the cabinets for anything that had sugar in it and pass out in her bed. “Dani! Did you eat the leftovers from yesterday?” The beans and rice didn’t exactly taste fantastic, but it would really be nice to not have to cook anything right now. Tela strode through the apartment until she got to the kitchen. Everything was dark, so she flipped on lights as she went. “Dani?” she called again.
She must be sleeping. In her old life, Tela would’ve loved the chance to take more naps, but ever since the siege, there’d been little to do at night except sleep. The government had managed to keep hot water and power flowing to the city, but Tela had no idea how long that would last for. She hadn’t paid any bills since the siege started. With no internet, it wasn’t as if she could access her bank account online, and the mail service was shut down. All she and Dani had to keep them occupied was the television which seemed to get more and more boring every time she surfed through the channels.
Tela pulled open the fridge and verified that the leftovers were still there. Well, that was a plus. “Do you want me to heat them up for you?” She yelled louder, hoping she actually woke up this time. Of course, knowing Dani, she’d say no, and then when she saw or smelled Tela’s food, suddenly she’d be asking for a few bites here and there that would amount to well over half of the portion. She’d have to heat up extra just in case. She set the container on the counter and started reaching for plates, but her hand stopped halfway up.
Something wasn’t right.
Tela moved out of the kitchen and headed straight for Dani’s room, pulling open the door and staring at what she’d somehow already known would be there: an empty bed. She tried to take a nervous gulp, but her neck seemed to tighten and constrict, not even letting her do that motion. “Dani?” she croaked. Barely any sound came from her this time. Like a lightning bolt, she snapped and quickly ran through the one other bedroom, the bathroom, and the living room. But it was very, ver
y apparent that Dani was gone.
John leaned against the wall and watched as the tiny little windows at the very bottom of the building brightened. Tela was home and moving around. He’d succeeded and gotten her there safely. He should go back to District One and relieve whoever had taken over for him once he’d left to help Tela home. This girl who’d gotten in over her head wasn’t his concern. They were a conquering army. The humans should be grateful that they weren’t enslaved. It was more than John had ever gotten. So why should he feel bad now?
He was about to push himself away from the wall when he heard it—the panicked scream of a familiar voice. A moment later, Tela ran out of the building, her head whipping in each direction. He knew her neck wound would be hurting, but she didn’t seem to be in pain. She was frantic. She started calling over and over and over again for someone named Dani.
He ran to her side, reaching her in half a second. “Who is Dani?”
She pushed him aside, not seeming surprised at his presence at all. “None of your business.” Her eyes never stopped scanning the street.
John grabbed her arm and forced her to face him, the manhandling finally getting her attention back on him. “Are you going to keep running down the street screaming?”
She opened her mouth and closed it. For the first time in her entire ordeal, he saw her shaking. Her run-in with the vampire tonight hadn’t scared her, but right now she was terrified. “I’ll help you find Dani. Who is he? Your lover?”
She blinked a few times, once again looking over John’s shoulder and down the street. “No.... I don’t even know where to start. She doesn’t have a phone anymore. How am I supposed to find her?”
Her? For some stupid reason, it made him happy. It wasn’t a boyfriend. “Were there any signs of struggle inside?”
“Struggle? I.... The door wasn’t busted open. There wasn’t like broken glass or anything.”
“Was anything moved? Where it shouldn’t be? Anything tipped over or out of place? If it were a human, the lock could have been picked. For Vopura, the door would’ve been opened voluntarily.”
Tela took a deep breath and seemed to relax marginally. “Dani would never let a vampire in. She knows better than that.”
“All right then. If a human took her, she would’ve put up a fight. Why don’t we go back and look for anything that can help.” She still seemed shaken, so John led the way back into her building and downstairs. “Invite me in so I can take a look around.”
“I... I can’t do that.”
“Do you want my help?”
“How about I leave the door open and you can look in?”
“Do you really think I’ll be as effective that way?”
“I think I’ll be more alive that way. Can you really blame me for wanting to keep you out?”
No, he really couldn’t. Besides, what did it matter? If she never found this girl, it was no skin off his back.
He leaned back against the wall across the hall and looked inside. He couldn’t see much from here. A living area and a hallway that seemed to lead to a kitchen. Small, from what he knew about human living quarters. Even this small space was so much more than he had on Vora....
“Found it!” called Tela, her voice adding a little croak. He heard her footsteps as she ran back to him. It was as though she no longer had any pain or fatigue from the blood loss as she ran out to the hall and slammed the door shut behind her.
“You seem miraculously better.” He looked skeptically at the piece of paper in her hand.
“Dani is my sister. I’ll keep it together until she’s safe. I need to. Don’t you things have family?”
He shrugged. “Sure. My mother sold me when she couldn’t take care of me any longer.”
Tela stopped short and looked at him. He could see a mix of disbelief and... pity? Fuck that. He leaned forward and wrenched the paper from her hands. He didn’t think there would be any harm in telling her that. After all, every Vopura around recognized him as a former slave immediately. However, he’d forgotten the negative connotations slavery carried here.
He stifled a growl. Give him war. Give him beatings. But for fuck’s sake, don’t give him pity.
He squinted at the neat writing. Reading English was new to him, but he was now able to get through one English book a week and was getting faster and faster. However, handwriting always made it harder.
I hope everything went great. I’m with Tiffany at Queens Club. I’ll be back before dawn!
Damn. Well, any thought of leaving Tela to handle this new development on her own was pushed aside. “Why would your sister go there?” Tela was already moving down the hall, and he caught up with her immediately.
“Because she’s an idiot. Have you heard of it?”
“I’ve attended. It’s no place for a child.”
Tela snorted. “Child. That’s the perfect word. A young, reckless, stupid child. Is it as dangerous as I think it is?”
He didn’t know how to answer that the right way, so he chose not to answer. “Why would your little sister go there?” he asked as they reached the first floor and headed out the building.
She glanced over at him and looked away abruptly. “I don’t know. Why do kids do anything?”
He frowned. Even without listening to a heartbeat, he knew she was trying to deceive him. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“It’s nothing important. I just want to get there as fast as possible and find Dani.”
“It would be faster if you let me carry you.” He saw her neck tighten at her obvious discomfort toward the idea. “This... adrenaline rush you’re feeling will fade away eventually. The pain and fatigue will come back. The sooner we get to Queens Club, the better. Unless, of course, you pass out on the way there. If you’re unconscious, there’s nothing I can do for your sister. I don’t exactly know what she looks like.”
Tela was still marching toward Queens Club, but John knew it was about ten blocks away, in District Four. A long walk for a mortal who hadn’t just suffered massive blood loss. For Tela, it would be near impossible.
“Just like... professional, right? You don’t get off when carrying wounded women around the city, do you?”
“Get off?”
She rolled her eyes. “I swear, you don't know the simplest things. All right, fine. For the sake of my sister, you can carry me. But you better not be enjoying it.”
“I wouldn’t think of it.” He held one arm out.
She sighed skeptically. “What am I supposed to do with that?”
Unintentionally, he smiled at her question. He couldn’t think of a way to explain it without being more awkward than this already was, so instead he moved to close the distance between them until the arm he had stretched went behind her back along her shoulder blades. From there, he bent enough so his other arm could go behind her knees, and then he straightened, turning her in his arms as he went until he was cradling her against his chest.
Despite himself, he was abruptly able to understand what she meant by “get off.” Maybe Dante had been right. John thought he was being regimented and strict by keeping himself away from some of the more tempting offerings of this world, but his body was obviously still controlling him. If he wasn’t gaining any more control over his base instincts, what was the point of rising above temptation?
“I’m going to go fast. This can be jarring for most mortals.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like a roller coaster.” She patted his shoulder twice. “I’m ready, let’s go.”
He frowned down at her, unsure what to do with that. He wasn’t livestock for her to ride, yet at the same time he didn’t mind the touch. He’d definitely have to look into getting a blood donor once he got back to the Sorenson.
His grip on her tightened. Without giving her any more warning, he took off east, making a quick turn when required.
A moment later, he was close enough. He didn’t stop right in front of Queens Club. When he was going at full speed, it was too hard to
judge distances and most of his attention went to avoiding colliding with obstacles. If he ran into a parked car, he would be fine, but his current cargo wouldn’t fare so well.
So he ended up three buildings short, but close enough to hear the booming music inside. When he stopped, he went to set Tela down but stopped when he got a good look at her. Her unnatural coloring and pained expression told him plenty about how unpleasant the ride had been for her. Mortal bodies weren’t made to go that fast without shields of glass and metal protecting them.
“I.... Um....” She seemed to be struggling to form words. “Put me down,” she finally croaked.
John frowned at her. “I don’t know if you should be standing right now.”
“We won’t know till you try, now will we?”
Against his better judgment, he lowered her feet to the ground but kept his arm steadily behind her back as he allowed her weight to rest purely on her own two feet.
Tela reached out and set a hand on his shoulder, steadying herself. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. I’m not all convinced that wasn’t a big mistake.”
“Not just for bringing me here. I meant thanks for....” She winced and looked away from him.
John frowned. “I’m only doing this for personal gain. You know that.”
She scoffed. “It’s not like I thought we were going to be best friends or anything. I was just saying thank you for helping me find my sister.” She pushed away from him and started walking toward the club.
John was already bracing himself for the sensory hell he was about to walk into. He would never understand why there were some Vopura who frequented places like this. His senses were already so much stronger than most humans, especially sound and sight. So to walk into a club with such loud music blaring and flashing strobe lights seemed like his idea of hell. From what he understood, there were a lot of Vopura who liked the overload. It almost became so much that they couldn’t hear or see much of anything. Like a drug that dulled the senses and blocked out any anxieties.
But he had a feeling he wouldn’t feel the same way.