by Jenn Burke
“Drinking, yeah, but not enough to hurt him.”
“You ripped out his fucking throat!”
“Because you startled me!” Hudson glanced at the back door, and when he spoke again, his voice was lower. “Do you have your car?”
“No.”
“Okay. I need you to go get mine.” He dug his keys out of his pocket and tossed them at me. I let them fall at my feet.
I shook my head. “I’m not—I’m not going to help you cover this up.”
Hudson’s eyes narrowed. “Oh yes, you fucking are. You’ve got some responsibility here.”
“Are you saying—This isn’t my fault!”
“Not totally, no, but things were fine until you unghosted and scared the shit out of me.” Hudson sighed, a noise that telegraphed his utter exhaustion. Well, yeah, I supposed accidentally killing a guy and then saving him with your blood had to be tiring.
The scary laughter was bubbling up again.
“Look, I need to get him somewhere safe, okay? Not a hospital, and if someone finds us back here like this, that’s where we’re gonna end up.” He seemed to wilt. “Please go get my car, Wes.”
I stared at the keys brushing the toe of one of my sneakers for a full ten seconds before I scooped them up. “Where’d you park?”
* * *
From the back seat, Hudson directed me to a modest bungalow in Little Italy. It was brick and looked like every other house on the street—if a bit smaller—except for the six-foot steel fence surrounding the property. Including the driveway.
I raised a brow as the driveway gate opened to let us in as we approached—he must have had a sensor or something in the car. “Expecting a siege?”
Hudson grunted.
The driveway stretched along the surprisingly deep front yard to the house located at the rear of the property. The door of the oversize detached garage opened in invitation, and I pulled the monster car into the dark interior. It closed behind us, pitching the garage into utter blackness.
“You want to get the door?”
“Right.” Two-door cars sucked when you were trying to transport an unconscious person. The strained laughter almost broke free again at that thought, but I beat it back.
The interior dome light came on as I opened the door, and provided enough illumination for me to get a sense of my surroundings. The garage was neat and tidy—typical Hudson—with immaculately stocked shelves that held all manner of tools and car things. I couldn’t name half of them. On the side closest to the house was what appeared to be a tiny vestibule, complete with a door armed with a numerical lock. A closet? Oh—maybe that’s where Hudson kept his guns. Made sense.
I held the driver’s door wide as Hudson maneuvered the young guy out of the car. The guy’s pale skin was nearly gray, and Hudson’s wasn’t much better—it looked like all the life had been drained out of him. Which wasn’t too far off. Because—
Yeah, not thinking about that word yet.
Hudson tugged the guy into a fireman’s carry and nodded at the closet door. He rattled off a series of numbers that I assumed was the lock code.
“And we’re going into the closet why?”
“Just open the goddamned door.”
I punched in the code. The keypad beeped and the lock disengaged. I opened the door and gaped at the sight of a narrow flight of stairs. “What the—”
“Nosy neighbors.” Hudson started down the steps carefully, making sure not to bump his passenger.
Right, because who doesn’t dig a subterranean tunnel to avoid being seen by their neighbors?
“This is so fucked up,” I muttered as I closed the door behind me.
“Keep it together.”
“I’m not screaming yet.”
“Yet being the keyword.”
The tunnel wasn’t long. Another keypad-locked door capped it, a different code this time. With the fence and the multiple keypad codes, I was getting the sense that Hudson took his security seriously.
We stepped into a master bedroom.
To say it wasn’t what I expected would be an understatement. I thought we’d emerge in a workshop or a furnace room or—and my excuse was that I’d been primed by all the security tech—some sort of dungeon. And not the play sort, either. But no, this was a normal-looking master bedroom, complete with a king-size dark-wood sleigh bed, hardwood floors, recessed lighting, and a large bathroom off to the right. The door directly across from the tunnel also sported a keypad, and there were no windows in either the bedroom or the bathroom.
The reason struck me hard enough that my knees almost gave out. No windows meant no sun.
“Holy fuck.”
Hudson glanced over from where he was arranging the young guy on his bed. “You couldn’t wait five more minutes?”
I gasped for breath. “You’re a—you’re a—”
“Vampire.”
“Vampire,” I repeated, and swallowed hard. “You’re not going to kill me, right?”
Hudson growled and marched out of the bedroom. I followed him upstairs to the kitchen, where he fixed himself a mug of something I didn’t want to think about. It steamed, and it smelled like—like the alley, minus the piss and the exhaust. Hudson stood in front of the sink and stared out the small window at his neighbor’s dark house, but I doubted he was actually seeing it.
I glanced at the basement stairs. “You’re sure he’s okay down there?”
“He’s safe,” Hudson said without looking at me. “He’s not going to wake up for a while, anyway.”
“Is he a prisoner?”
“No. But he’s going to have some things to learn before he leaves.”
Things to learn. Uh, yeah. When the kid finally woke up, he was going to be in for a shock. “So. You’re—” My voice gave out and I coughed. “You’re a—”
Hudson shot me a look over his shoulder. “It’s not a bad word. You can say it.”
“A v-vampire.”
“There you go. Now again.”
“Vampire.”
“Louder now, for the folks in the back.”
“Jesus Christ.” My hands started to tremble, so I clasped them together. “How can you be so casual about this?”
Hudson shrugged and looked out the window again. “I’ve had twenty years to get used to the idea.”
“Twenty—twenty years?” The urge to hyperventilate rose, but I beat it down. “You’ve been like this for twenty years?”
“Yep.”
I’d half wondered if this was something he’d hidden from me while we’d been together—but now I didn’t know if the idea he was changed long after we separated hurt more or less. “Was it...was it like what happened tonight?”
Hudson turned around, bracing his backside against the counter. One of his hands gripped it, the knuckles white, and I realized that this conversation might be as traumatic for Hudson as it was for me. Any warmth in his eyes had been replaced by ice. “No,” he said, his voice harsh. An instant later it softened slightly. “Tonight was an accident. If you hadn’t come along, I would’ve gotten that kid off, taken him out front, and poured him into a cab with nothing more than fuzzy memories of a good time. No one would have died.”
“But you—When you were—” I grimaced. “Made?”
“It was deliberate. And no, I didn’t consent.” Hudson put down his mug with a sigh. “That last undercover stint I told you about, the one that went bad? I was undercover with a biker gang, working my way up, and I found out too late that the gang leader, Pike, had a particular way of keeping his lieutenants in line. He turned them.”
My mouth dropped open. “He made them into vampires?”
“That way they couldn’t harm him. I couldn’t. Our instincts demand we protect our sire, and if we try to harm him—it hurts.” Something in his voice made me think it hurts
was the understatement of the century. “I dropped off my handler’s radar for about nine months—nine months when blood was the only important thing. I remember bits and pieces. Flashes. They had me on surveillance, so they knew I wasn’t dead—” He laughed humorlessly. “But no one could contact me. It took my handler confronting me at a club to jolt me out of it, and another three months before I could break free.”
Every line of Hudson’s body screamed his tension and begged for comfort, but I stayed right where I was. A part of me wanted to hug him, hold him—but a much larger, much louder part shouted that I didn’t know what Hudson was capable of. Not anymore.
A year. He’d spent a year or more with the asshole who’d stolen his humanity.
“How did you—”
“I trained myself to wake up before the sun set. My sire’s—Pike’s—hold wasn’t as strong when he was sleeping and I was able to betray him. Eventually. A shotgun to the face works as well as a beheading.”
Bile rose in my throat. “Hudson,” I rasped.
“I took a leave of absence after that. There were questions about—about my integrity and trustworthiness. About whether I could even be a cop again. I didn’t even know if I wanted to be. I needed to get my head on straight.”
I nodded, amazed that he hadn’t packed up and moved.
“But I liked being a cop,” he said, his voice low and fierce, “and I refused to let that asshole take it away from me. So I came back, jumped over some hurdles, and transferred to homicide.”
I suspected those hurdles were more significant than he made them seem. “No more undercover?”
“None. I can’t work days, only nights—”
“Because of your ‘sun allergy,’” I said, finger quotes and all.
“Yeah.”
Only took him dying to—
Oh my god.
“You died.”
Hudson held my gaze for a moment, then solemnly nodded.
My heart hitched. “You died. And I didn’t—I didn’t know.”
“It’s okay, Wes.”
I jolted to my feet, the kitchen chair squealing as it shot across the linoleum, and stormed over to Hudson. My finger found one of his pecs and poked it, hard. “It’s not okay! That’s not what I—That wasn’t supposed to be what happened when we broke up. You were supposed to live a long, happy, contented, wonderful life.”
Hudson tilted his head to one side. “Well, I got the long part right.”
“That isn’t funny. You died!”
“So did you.” The barest hint of a smile turned up one corner of Hudson’s mouth. “Didn’t slow you down much, either.”
“Yeah, but I died before you were born. Before you knew me. This is different.”
“How?”
“Because—” I flailed a hand through the air. “Because I should have known!”
Hudson grabbed my waving hand, captured my other one, and held them both together in between us, his grip as secure as manacles. “It happened. It’s done.”
Tears rose and threatened to choke me. I sniffled—loudly—and rested my forehead on his strong chest.
“You can let it out, you know,” he said softly.
I rolled my head back and forth against his pecs. The last time I cried in front of him, when we’d broken up, he’d berated me for the show of emotion. Macho cops didn’t cry. He could admit now that he liked my honesty and openness with my emotions, but back then?
Maybe he was thinking of the same thing, because he said, “I was an asshole.”
The admission jolted a watery chuckle from me. “You were.”
“It took me crying a lot of tears after—after Pike for me to realize that.”
And that, the thought of big, strong, unflappable Hudson breaking down, mourning his humanity, was what wrecked me. The first sob made my shoulders crumple, and Hudson jerked me forward and held me.
This man, this good, amazing man had almost been taken away from the world—from me—and I would never have known. God, my heart ached, reminding me that the break down its middle had never completely healed—I’d just gotten proficient at ignoring it.
“You weren’t supposed to find out,” Hudson murmured.
I pulled back to look up at him. “What?”
“I wasn’t going to tell you. I—” He looked uncharacteristically unsure of himself. “It wasn’t something you needed to know.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Maybe.” Hudson shrugged apologetically. “But I didn’t want to dim your shine.”
“Huh?”
Hudson chuckled softly. “Your shine, your—your presence. You’ve got this light inside of you. I don’t know what it is. Hope, humor, optimism, joy? All of the above? But it’s always been there, despite everything, and I didn’t want to be the one to tarnish it.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. Optimism and joy—that was what first drew me to Hudson, that energy and laughter as we kept bumping into each other in the grocery store. Hearing him describe me like that... I was just me. Awkward, tongue-tied, a liar, really. Maybe I sucked at verbalizing lies, but lies of omission? I was a master of those. I didn’t know how all of that added up to any sort of shine.
I cleared my throat and moved on, flicking a finger at the copious amounts of silver in Hudson’s hair. “You started to go gray early.”
“Early thirties,” he confirmed. “Which turned out to be a good thing.”
It let him hide in plain sight for two decades. I usually had a decade, tops, before I had to move on from any casual circles of acquaintances. The excuse of “good genes” could only go so far. Cutting casual relationships from my life was much easier than going through the pretense of fake moving and adopting a new identity.
Though maybe not healthier.
I let out a shaky breath. “So...vampire.”
“You said it without stuttering. Awesome.”
I punched Hudson in the upper arm—not hard, but I still regretted it immediately. “Jesus Christ, are you made of rock?”
“No.” Hudson laughed. “You need to go to the gym more.”
His twinkling gaze made my gut quiver, and I pulled gently out of his arms to stand by the kitchen table. A little space would be good here, because these weren’t going to be fun questions.
At least, that’s what I told myself.
“You drink blood?”
Hudson raised one brow and looked deliberately at the mug he’d left on the counter.
“Okay, right, stupid question.”
“I need human blood once or twice a week. Animal blood will do in a pinch—it helps take the edge off, but it’s like eating chips when you want a full meal. I have to eat regular food too.”
“Oh.” That was different than any of the vampires I’d seen in the movies.
“Yeah, I was shocked at that. We need the blood to sustain our magic, but regular food for our bodies.”
“You’re magic?”
“So are you.” Hudson sniffed the air, like he’d caught a particularly lovely aroma. That was a mannerism he’d kept well under wraps—if I’d seen it, I would have wondered. Maybe.
Probably not.
“Did you, uh, smell me?”
Hudson smiled. His teeth were back to normal. “Predator. My senses are heightened.”
“That’s how you saw me when I was in the otherplane.”
“Yeah.”
“Magic, blood, heightened senses... What else?” At Hudson’s puzzled look, I continued. “Can you turn into a bat?”
“Jesus.”
“I’m serious! It happens in the movies.”
“No. No bats, no wolves, no mist. I can’t fly, either. I’m stronger, tougher and faster than a human, with better senses and sharper teeth. Daylight’s a problem—I didn’t lie about that. I
t makes me sick.” He paused, considering. “Yeah, that’s about it.”
“That’s about it?” I echoed disbelievingly. “You’re a thing out of legend.”
“Pot, kettle.”
“Hell no, there are no legends about me. I’m a mistake.” I hitched my butt up to half-sit on the kitchen table. “How many vampires are in Toronto?”
Hudson’s eyes lost some of their light. “A few hundred.”
“Holy shit. That many?”
“As far as I can tell, they like to congregate in big cities. Places that never sleep.”
I didn’t miss the “they” in that sentence and I wondered if the ease Hudson displayed about his nature was nothing more than an act. “Do you have... I don’t know, vampire buddies?”
The laugh Hudson let out was dark and dry. He turned to pull a glass from the cupboard, got some ice, and proceeded to fill it up with water. Keeping his hands busy when faced with a difficult topic—something else that hadn’t changed. He handed it to me and I sipped it gratefully.
“No,” he said. “Vampires who kill their band are not looked upon favorably.”
“Band?”
“Their group—led by their sire.”
“You...killed all of them.” I should have clued into that earlier, but he’d only mentioned killing Pike.
Hudson retrieved his mug and took a long swallow. “I had to, or they would have hunted me down.”
Kill or be killed. Christ. What a world.
“Vampires are...” He huffed out a breath. “We’re not nice. We’re not out there looking for our soulmates or whatever the fuck the romantic fiction insists of us, okay? We’re animals. We’re territorial, we fight, we kill.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s like saying all the gays wear pink, have lisps and sashay when they walk.”
Hudson spun around. “You have no idea—”
“Oh, stop. You’re right, I don’t know vampires, but I know you.”
And I did, I realized. For all my wondering about the new Hudson and the differences that had cropped up in the years we’d been apart, I hadn’t seen anything that truly went against the values and morals he’d had back in the eighties. Even with the whole killing vampires thing. He’d always had an incredibly strong sense of right and wrong, but it wasn’t always what the law said. Most of the time, yes, but there were exceptions—like the exception he made for me and my less-than-legal career. He didn’t like that I was a thief, and he wasn’t shy about telling me that, but he recognized that I was trying to help people—in my own way, which was why he didn’t kick me to the curb after he found out what I did for a living. Taking out Pike and his band was necessary, not only to protect Hudson himself, but to protect the city. I mean, what else could he have done? Arrested them? And then what would have happened if Pike regained control over him? No, in Hudson’s mind—in mine—he’d done what he’d had to. His integrity was intact and he was a good man—a knight in dented and scratched armor, but still a knight.