by Elena Lawson
I was taken aback. Ethan may not have forgotten, but I almost had. Damn. “Are they here? In Baton Rouge?”
Frost paused at the top of the stairs before opening the door. He breathed heavily and then with a determined look, shoved the door to the apartment open. “Yes,” he said as he stepped inside. “But it’s not just here. Blake and I have been keeping an eye on things and an ear to the ground. Word has spread, and the bounty on your head has doubled. Raphael is growing restless and he won’t stop until he finds you.”
Frost’s face was beet-red when he finally turned back to face us as Ethan closed the door. My chest squeezed at the pain I found hiding behind the hardness in his gaze. “I’m not even sure you should be here,” he said begrudgingly. “I’m not sure it’s safe…at least—” he stopped himself, gritting his teeth. “At least wherever Azrael has you, they won’t be able to find you.”
I knew it was killing him to admit that. That he—that they—were not enough to protect me from so many foes. “It’s alright,” I told him, shrugging. “Azrael had a witch put a ward up around this building. As long as I stay inside it, I can’t be tracked here.”
Frost frowned. “A witch was here?”
“Azrael employs a witch?” Ethan asked, and I realized I hadn’t told him, either.
I nodded. “Yeah. So dislodge the stick from your ass,” I told Frost with a cheeky grin and a wink, trying to lighten the mood. “I’ll be just fine so long as I stay inside.”
Frost strode past me and threw the deadbolt on the door home, effectively locking us all inside. I shuddered involuntarily, a little meek voice in the back of my mind wondered when, or if, I would ever be truly free again…
I shook my head and shut up. “Come here, big guy,” I said with the best smile I could conjure, opening my arms.
The corner of Frost’s lips pulled up and he shook his head at me. I’m not sure what I expected, but I yelped as he lifted me from the floor with a strong arm under my butt and the other wrapped tightly across my back. I buried myself in the crook of his neck, taking a deep breath of worn leather and tangy aftershave. I sighed.
“I missed you,” I whispered, my heart aching at the tenderness in the way he held me.
He planted a kiss in my hair, and I felt some of the tension leave his shoulders. “I missed you, too, Rosie.”
16
The shower was still running as I crept down the hallway. Frost and Ethan warned that I should wait until he came out, but I didn’t want to wait. I’d waited long enough to see them. A week apart felt like a goddamned year and I wouldn’t wait another second. Not when I had another choice.
Plus, I wasn’t about to pass up the chance to see a dripping wet and naked Blake. His glorious body wrapped in coiling black tattoos. His near-black hair shining and damp. My inner lioness was already roaring and ready to pounce. The sexy little minx in my mind purring as I quietly turned the slot in the lock with my thumbnail.
“Frost, you need something?” Blake hollered from inside, and I heard the water shut off.
Damn. I hadn’t been quiet enough.
“It’s not Frost,” I said as I nudged the door open and was met with a wall of warm steam and the scents of vanilla and suede.
“Rose…” Blake breathed as the door clicked shut behind me.
His dark eyes widened as they took me in.
My own widened in response, drawing a line down his chiseled chest and abs, and lower to his half-hard cock, and the thick muscle of his thighs. I admired the way his tattoos wrapped around his biceps and ran down his forearms. How they crawled over his hard pecks and up the sides of his neck. The start of another tattoo began on his left side and followed the curve of his inner groin to wrap around his right thigh.
I gulped.
He was a fucking masterpiece.
“Rose,” Blake said again, louder this time as he almost tripped out of the shower in his haste to get to me. His hands lifted to cup my face, his fingers warm and wet. He searched my eyes, as though he was afraid this was a mere dream and we would wake up any second.
“I’m here,” I told him, laying a hand against his hand still cupping my cheek. I smirked. “I told you guys—you’re all fucking stuck with—”
He kissed me. His lips crashed against mine, and his warmth seeped into me as warm droplets shook loose from his hair and scattered like rain down my cheeks. He pulled away too soon, and I moved to wrap my arms around him.
His spine went rigid as my hand met the skin of his back. He sucked in a breath and pushed my hand away, stepping back to put three feet of space between us.
The wonder was gone from his features. His gray eyes had darkened to a shade closer to black. The muscles in his face were taut and drawn as he stared at the floor.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
“No,” he all but growled, his chest rising and falling faster than it was a moment before.
I stepped closer, and he stepped back again. “Blake? What is it?”
He swallowed. “Just…” he started, his tone hard and icy. “Just get out.”
He might as well have driven an icepick into my chest. What? “But I—”
“Please,” he ground out, backing up until he was able to grab a towel from the hook next to the shower.
With my mind racing and not another word out of my mouth, I turned and left the room. I hadn’t missed how he reacted when I touched him. Or how he never once turned his back to me. My stomach soured as my mind conjured all sorts of horrible things he could have been hiding.
What happened to him?
We all knew Blake’s father was a total fucking loser. The worst sort of asshole. A memory flickered at the edges of my mind. Of a time when I’d jumped on Blake’s back when we were kids. I’d only meant to be playful. I was just trying to surprise him.
And he’d thrown me off as though I was on fire. I’d hit the ground hard and banged my head. He’d had to carry me to the nurse’s station in the school, the whole time apologizing profusely. Near the point of tears in his guilt for hurting me.
I’d never done that again. By the following year everyone knew better than to sneak up on Blake. Everyone knew he didn’t like to be touched. But I always thought it was just other people he didn’t like touching him. People he didn’t know. He used to let me hug him. Let me run my fingers through his hair. Held my hand when we ran from Frost after dumping a gallon of cold water on his head the morning after the last day of school. I was the exception, wasn’t I?
Me and the guys?
As I shut the door behind me, my legs wobbled, and my heart grew heavy as I realized I wasn’t really a part of their whole anymore. Hadn’t been for a long time. And where I’d accepted them back into my heart almost from the first moment I’d seen them, regardless of whether they’d become the things I hunted, they may not have accepted me back into the fold so easily.
At least, it seemed, Blake hadn’t.
I steeled myself, and forced the thoughts from my mind, stalking back towards the living area. That’s alright, I told myself. It’s fine.
“Frost,” I called, halfway down the hall now. “Got anything to eat in this place? I’d kill for some Cheetos and a slushie.”
An hour later, I had a convenience store feast. Cheetos and a Sprite slushie along with a cup of five-cent candies, three chocolate bars, a bag of peppered jerky, and a case of Gatorade. I could smell the nutty aroma of cheap coffee percolating in the kitchen. It was so beautiful.
“I fucking love you guys,” I told them as I inhaled half the bag of Cheetos, sucking the orange powder from my fingertips.
Even though I was fed well in the cave—every meal seemed to be meticulously crafted to include each food group and the perfect portion sizes—I never had what I was really craving…food that doesn’t exactly fit in with any identifiable food group.
I started feeling more myself after the first brain freeze from my slushie subsided. Any traces of soreness or aches I’d been carrying sin
ce my last visit to the lab evaporated.
“Better?” Ethan asked with an eyebrow raised and a smirk pulling at one corner of his lips.
“Much,” I replied, polishing off the slushie with a wink in his direction.
He chuckled.
“So,” I began, setting down my empty cup and brushing the orange crumbs from my shirt. “The fuckers are in Baton Rouge now? Do you think they tracked me somehow?”
Frost crossed his burly arms over his chest and grimaced. “Nah. I think they tracked us, but I can’t be sure. The city was crawling with vamps before you were captured by Azrael, it’s possible someone could’ve seen us with you and tracked us back to Baton Rouge.”
“Can they find you here?”
“Let ‘em try,” Blake said, pulling my focus to where he was coming down the hallway, his hair still damp, but now he was fully clothed. His gaze swept over me and I watched his adams apple bob in his throat before he sat down in the armchair across from the couch.
Frost leaned forward and I turned my attention back to him. “We’ve been taking them out one by one,” he admitted, gritting his teeth.
“Eight in the last week,” Blake added.
“You’ve been doing what?” My brows raised and my heart thudded against my ribcage.
Frost cocked his head at me. “What? Should we’ve just kept letting them multiply, so the city was overrun with them by the time you returned?”
I frowned. “It’s dangerous, Frost,” I all but growled, completely losing my appetite. “What if Raphael was out there, hmm?”
Blake scoffed. “As if that bastard would do any of his own dirty wor—”
“Or any vampire over the age of fifty,” I spat, cutting him off.
“You underestimate us,” Blake said, deadpan, his black eyes glittering with fury.
Ha!
“We hunt vampires, Rosie,” Frost said, leaning back in his armchair with a sigh. “Just like you did. And we’re damn good at it.”
I shook my head, my eyes casting a wide arc over the ceiling. I resisted the urge to groan. I remembered when Frost told me that they changed themselves to fight back against the creatures of the night. To find their way back to me. He’d said they hunt the ones who deserve it.
I’d been so furious and shaken at the time I hadn’t really put much thought into it, but now…now I was imagining all sorts of scenarios where they could get themselves seriously hurt. Even killed.
All it would take is a second. A split second. A single wrong move.
“It’s no more dangerous for us as it is for you,” Ethan chimed in, the voice of reason. “I understand your worry, but it’s misplaced.”
I ground my teeth and tried to shove the thoughts from my mind. He was right, as usual. They fought together. Three young vamps against one older one was an even match. It really wasn’t much different than what I did.
Did.
I hated that it was suddenly past tense.
I’m a vampire hunter. It’s what I do.
Without that, what am I?
Just…Rose?
I had no other skills. I didn’t go to college or university. I would never be a mother—I’d decided that a long time ago—I wouldn’t wish this existence on anyone, least of all a future daughter. So, what was left?
Would I ever be able to go back to hunting? Or would I be relegated to being hunted for the rest of my life, instead? I doubted Raphael would ever give up. Someone a thousand-or-so-years-old would be well-versed in the art of patience.
“What’s wrong?” Ethan asked after the silence stretched on for a few more minutes.
I shook my head, dislodging the disquieting thoughts, and cleared my throat. I looked up with a half-hearted grin. “Nothing.”
I glanced around at Frost, Blake, and Ethan, and realized that I didn’t have any reason to be disappointed. I had them. I didn’t think I would ever have them again, but here they were. And when Azrael was finished with me, maybe we could go someplace together. Somewhere far away from here, where Raphael couldn’t find us. I’d hardly touched a penny of the inheritance from my mother, though it wasn’t much. And then there was the house—I could sell it.
I’d trade hunting for the three of them any day. Besides, maybe they needed a few vampire exterminators in Tanzania, or maybe Timbuktu…
This time, my smile was real.
We’d figure this shit out one way or another. Together.
I tore open the bag of jerky and willed my muscles to relax as I sank back into the sofa. “So,” I said, popping a chunk of peppered beef in my mouth. “What has everyone been up to for the last ten or so years?”
Frost snorted.
Ethan’s cheeks dimpled with a tense grin.
Blake looked away—a darkness shrouding his already dark eyes.
“Ok then, I’ll start…”
We sat like that for hours. Me, stuffing my face with junk food and Gatorade. Them, answering my hail of questions. My story was simple. I’d been institutionalized. Then thrown in foster care. I had several shitty fosters, including but not limited to; one pedophilic drunk fucker who had a thing for feet, a woman who locked me in my ‘room’ for days at a time, and a couple who treated me as though I were a feral animal in need of caging—they may not have been wrong.
Then my power to compel got stronger. I got stronger. And I decided I didn’t need to be a mouse in the trap anymore. I’d been living alone since I was sixteen. Started training before my seventeenth birthday. Killed my first vamp before my eighteenth.
Been doing it ever since.
I glazed over the darker bits for the guys, not wanting them to feel any remorse or guilt for any of it since it truly wasn’t their fault. If anything, I had them to thank for getting me through it all. It was their faces—their memory—that kept me from succumbing to the dark.
“And then she took off,” Frost said. “She calls about twice a year, but I stopped picking up a while back.”
His mother had always been a real piece of work. She’d had four marriages under her belt by the time I was taken away, and it seemed she wasn’t finished. Frost told me he watched two more husbands come and go before the most recent one convinced her to pack up and move to Rome with him. She hadn’t been back to visit. Not even once since she left six years before.
My face fell. “I’m sorry.”
Frost’s face hardened. “Don’t be,” he told me. “I’m not.”
I got up and walked over to him to plop myself down in his lap. He tugged me to him with a grin and squeezed my ribs, trying to play off his emotions. At least he didn’t have to worry about hiding what he was from her. That could get tricky.
“What about your family, Ethan?”
Ethan had a sad smile as he asked me, “What family?”
I cocked my head at him.
What?
Ethan wasn’t close with his relatives, but he had a lot of them. His parents were microbiologists and even though they had the biggest, nicest house on our block, they were never actually inside of it. Ethan spent all of his time alone in that big house while they flew from conference to conference—from university to university. And though he had about a million cousins and several aunts and uncles, because his parents were so closed off from them, so was he. He only saw them once every few years around the holidays.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m dead,” he told me plainly, his steeped tea eyes tipping down at the corners. “Well, undead, I guess, but they didn’t need to know that.”
“You…you faked your own death?” I asked, incredulous and trying to catch up to what he was telling me.
He nodded. “My heart doesn’t beat. I don’t have to breathe. It was easy to fake it for the authorities.”
“Easy to compel the coroner that an autopsy wouldn’t be necessary,” Frost added.
“And then easy to dig him back out of his own grave after the funeral,” Blake finished.
Ethan had essentially killed himself.
I could hardly believe it. My chest ached for him. I knew he wasn’t close with them, but his parents had cared for him in their own way. When they were home, his mother would cook amazing meals for them all, and his father would take him out hiking. They made sure he was taken care of.
They weren’t like Frost’s floozy, absentee mother who I would deck in the face if I ever saw her again, or like Blake’s asshole father, who I would gladly send to an early grave if he hadn’t found one already.
Ethan dropped his gaze. “I still check on them from time to time. The first year was hard for them, but they’re doing fine now. Better than fine, actually.”
I nodded, unsure what to say except, “And what about you?”
He managed a small half-grin. “I’m good.”
I turned to Blake, about to ask him how his mother was. She’d been ill ten years ago before everything that happened and barely left the house. She spent most of her time in bed with the TV set to the game-show channel. But she was a nice enough woman from what I saw of her. We never hung out at Blake’s house, though, so I didn’t see her very much.
“What about—”
I caught a look from Ethan. His eyes met mine and he shook his head.
I looked from him to Blake. Blake still had his gaze fixed to the shaggy rug. His hands were curled tightly around the armrests of his chair.
It felt like I just swallowed a bucket of lead. What happened to him?
Later, Ethan mouthed to me and then got up to clear away the wrappers strewn over the coffee table.
The tension was tangible in the air as the silence stretched on. All the color was draining from Blake’s face and I thought any second now he was going to burst. I scrambled to change the subject, rising to help Ethan clean up the mess I’d made. I supposed when all you consumed was blood, there was very little food mess.
“Show me your shop?” I asked Ethan as we made our way to the kitchen, eager to escape the heaviness in the room. “I want to see what you do.”
Ethan smiled at me. “Yeah. We can go down the back stairwell,” he offered. “Technically you won’t be leaving the building that way.”