How to Elude a Vampire (VRC: Vampire Related Crimes Book 2)

by Alice Winters

  It was the hottest thing I’d ever experienced in my life and I was devastated when no one had taken a video of it.

  As what he said sinks in, I look at him in confusion. “What do you mean? Orin’s not going to care. He pulled you in with open arms. I’m starting to wonder if he’s considering replacing me with you so he has a ‘cool’ son or some nonsense.”

  Marcus dramatically runs his fingers through his hair. “I am pretty cool.”

  Karsyn chokes in the back seat. He’s currently trying to pretend he’s not enjoying being crushed between Briar’s and DeGray’s bodies. It doesn’t help that he’s practically throwing his body into Briar to keep from touching DeGray.

  It’s kind of cute.

  “I think you’re cool!” DeGray pipes in.

  “Hold on… so… you think Orin’s going to throw a fit about Aria’s boyfriend even though he never cared about mine?” I ask.

  “Well, yeah, Aria’s his little baby girl and he was just trying to get rid of you. I didn’t see all the warning flags before you got ahold of me.”

  “Are those fighting words?” I growl.

  “Will someone record Finn so I can report this harassment to HR?” Marcus asks.

  “You mean we could get rid of the pesky human?” Karsyn asks as he whips his phone out. “Make him do something really bad.”

  I reach back to grab for Karsyn’s phone. Since I’m reaching back with my left arm, it means I’m reaching with my prosthesis. So when Karsyn clamps onto my wrist, I go, “Oh my god, my arm!”

  He jerks back, allowing me to snatch up the phone. I snicker as I sink into my seat with his phone.

  “Oh my god, he’s such a sucker,” I say to Marcus, who is also laughing.

  “That’s not funny, moj zanuda,” Karsyn growls. “Give me my phone back. Dammit. I thought I hurt you, you asshole!”

  Karsyn has enjoyed calling me Russian names since I met him. He started off calling me zanuda, which I learned you would call someone who annoys you or you dislike. But he’s since started calling me moj zanuda. And while he never spits out what it means, my friend Google told me moj meant mine or my.

  I’ll be his annoying person all he wants.

  I prove it by unbuttoning my shirt and pulling it to the side until my nipple is showing, then snap a few selfies of me looking absolutely ridiculous while trying to lick my nipple. Once I have the perfect one, I set it as Karsyn’s lock screen and as the picture that’ll show up when I call. Then I turn in my seat to face DeGray.

  “Come on, DeGray, give me a nip slip. Show off those abs.”

  DeGray starts laughing, but he shakes his head. “Sorry, these abs are closed.”

  I scrutinize him for a moment, wondering what that means, before tossing the phone back to Karsyn. I immediately send him a text.

  Me: Try not to get too turned on when you look at the picture of me.

  Karsyn: I already deleted it.

  Me: Bullshit. You love it.

  Karsyn: It already haunts me.

  My phone beeps again and I look down at the text from my sister Aria.

  Aria: Nick is a little concerned about tonight. I’m not sure why. Is it too much?

  Me: It’s never too much to introduce your next meal to your ancient father.

  Aria: Ha. Ha. You’re so funny.

  We pull into the driveway of Orin’s house just as Aria and her boyfriend get out of their car.

  “I’ll be right there,” Marcus says. “Don’t go in without me, but I have to send a quick text.”

  “This better be as exciting as you’re leading me to believe,” I threaten him before hopping out. I walk over to my sister who’s smiling at me. She’s my half-sister, since we have different fathers, but I generally refer to her as my sister. My real father is probably some lowlife deadbeat asshole who was probably borderline four feet tall and her father is an amazing ancient vampire who raised me for more than half my life. Regular vampires can’t have children but true vampires can, although it’s extremely rare, making her a dhampir, a half-human, half-vampire.

  She’s standing next to a human with short auburn hair and freckles. He has a trimmed red beard and a wide smile. He’s also dressed nice, which tells me he was looking forward to this or hoping to at least make a good impression.

  “Nick, this is my brother Finn. Finn, this is Nick,” Aria says with a smile. She really seems to like this guy, and it shows. She rarely brings anyone around since she doesn’t date a whole lot.

  “It’s great to get to meet you,” Nick says as he holds a hand out to me, which I shake.

  “Nice to meet you too. I’m trying to figure out what’s wrong with you to want to hang out with Aria. Is she paying you?”

  He snickers. “No, I wasn’t aware that was an option.”

  And then he draws extremely still. “Is that menacing-looking man your father?” he whispers.

  I turn to look at Marcus who is doing his signature brooding look as he walks over to us.

  “Oh no, no, no. That’s Finn’s partner; my father’s not that scary,” Aria assures him.

  I lift an eyebrow, confused about what they’re referring to. “Marcus isn’t scary. He’s not even mad at anyone right now. That’s just how his face looks,” I say. “Handsome. Gorgeous. Delightful.”

  “Sweetheart… your brain is broken, he’s always scary,” Aria says as she turns me to face him as if I haven’t looked at the man enough to know exactly what he looks like.

  I watch Marcus as he sexily struts over to us and scans Nick. “Huh,” he says. And that’s it.

  Nick’s eyes get wide and his terror seems to escalate from that one simple word.

  “What?” I ask curiously.

  “Ah, I just forgot Brooks was out until Monday and dropped him an email when I should have sent it to Karsyn.”

  “Oh. I thought you were commenting on the human,” I say.

  “You’re human too,” Marcus reminds me.

  “Nah… I’ve transcended beyond the status of human. I’m much superior.”

  Marcus’s eyes narrow. “Are you picking on me again about my inability to properly greet humans?”

  I can no longer hide my grin. “Perhaps.”

  “Watch this.” Marcus holds his hand out. “Human, your hair is very red. It’s similar to the color of blood. I like it.”

  Nick looks even more terrified, but he gives Marcus a forced smile and shakes his hand.

  “Marcus is like a big fangy teddy bear,” I assure Nick, or at least I try to. He doesn’t look very assured.

  We walk toward the house as Nick apparently questions every choice he’s ever made that led him to this point.

  “Don’t worry, my dad’s not as weird as these two,” Aria promises.

  My phone buzzes and I look down at a text from Orin.

  Orin: Do The Hand, please.

  Me: No! I don’t want to scare him off.

  Orin: I’ll remove you from my will if you don’t do The Hand.

  Marcus glances at me. “The Hand?” he questions.

  “Don’t… don’t judge me, Marcus. Sometimes, you just have to do things you wish you didn’t have to do to make the people you love happy,” I say.

  “Like sex?” he asks.

  “Wait, what?”

  He chuckles before kissing the side of my head. “I’m joking, clearly.”

  Aria opens the door and pulls Nervous Nick inside. He’s sweating a little as Aria leads him into the dining room which is oddly dark. Like all the blinds are pulled, the lights are off, and the house is silent.

  “Dad? What’s going on?” Aria asks as a light flickers on from the kitchen table, illuminating Orin’s face. He’s all in black, looking like a storybook vampire holding a fucking goblet of blood.

  “Nick,” he says, and then he zooms over to us so quickly, I doubt Nick could follow him with his eyes, even though I could.

  Nick leaps back as I press the release on my prosthesis and tuck my fake arm under my armp
it.

  “My arm!” I say very dryly as I hold what’s left of my arm up. I’m not an actor, and if Orin wants me to act like I’ve lost my arm, he needs to find someone else.

  Poor actor or not, Nick must think I deserve an Oscar because he lets out a strangled sound and just drops to the ground.

  We all stare down at him in horror as Orin’s eyes get extremely wide. “It was a joke! Aria was just talking about how nervous he was, and I thought I’d break the ice with a joke, you know?”

  Marcus starts laughing. And we all know that if Marcus finds it hilarious, it should never have happened.

  “There is something wrong with this family and I love it!” Marcus says as he smacks his leg. “You literally just made a human pass out from terror! I need to be taking notes.”

  “Dad,” Aria growls.

  “Was it too much?” Orin asks, like there’s a possibility any of us could say, “No, terrifying the human wasn’t too much.”

  “Oh my god.” Marcus begins wiping away fake tears. “I had my doubts about this meal, and I see that they were all foolish.”

  “I… I thought he’d laugh,” Orin says, clearly disappointed.

  That makes me start laughing as Aria just gives us a look. Then she jabs a finger at Orin and Marcus. “You two leave, he’s starting to come to.”

  “Do I get rid of the skeletons?” Orin asks as he flips the lights on and shows the Halloween plastic skeletons seated around the table.

  “Oh my god. You’re a monster!” Aria says, but Marcus and I aren’t so sure because we’re laughing too hard to confirm or deny.

  Orin assumes that means “Yes, you should” and takes off with the skeletons. Marcus hesitates before following him. So when Nick comes to a moment later, it’s just Aria and me.

  Nick looks around in confusion before his face turns the same color as his hair.

  Aria grabs his hands. “I am so sorry. My dad thought he was being funny, and he wasn’t.”

  “It was kind of funny,” I helpfully add.

  Aria gives me a look. “Do you want to go sit in time-out with the others?”

  I shrug because honestly, it sounds more fun. “Sure.”

  She ignores me. “I’m really sorry, and I would understand if you never want to see me again.”

  He shakes his head. “No, I just… tripped. Your dad seems cool.”

  She cocks her head. “Does he?” she asks, but I have to give the guy credit for still trying to push through it.

  “Yes?”

  Orin walks in, looking normal this time… or as normal as Orin can look in a pink suit jacket. “I’m sorry… that wasn’t a very good joke, was it?”

  “I thought it was,” Marcus adds from the other room. I head over to find him. “I now know what The Hand means.”

  “Yeah… it was something stupid we did with just the two of us when I was younger. I think it was his way of trying to get me to have fun and not look at my lack of an arm negatively. Orin was always doing his best to make me happy, especially after the accident,” I say as I walk over to the couch and sink into the cushions. “It was really stupid… but then we’d laugh and joke around about it, and it’d make me feel better.”

  Marcus sits down next to me, so I lean against him.

  We haven’t talked about the accident much lately. After the first big case we’d been on together, the vampire who’d attacked me when I was a teenager had sent us a note that told me he wasn’t done with me. When I was sixteen, he’d taken me, and he was the reason I’d lost my arm and leg. I still haven’t fully told Marcus everything about that time, but he met the man who’d taken me when he attacked Marcus in a club a little over half a year ago. After that, I’d received a letter from him and I knew that my time of freedom was finally up, that he’d come for me.

  Yet things were strangely quiet. He stopped following me, and I stopped noticing his presence. As time moved on, the worrying and fear I felt every day began to pass. I knew I couldn’t let him take over my life. I knew the fear would drive me crazy if I let it hang on, so I forced myself to let go of it. I had to live my life to the fullest or the fear would eventually consume me.

  I’ve heard nothing from him in six months. No notes. Nothing.

  That doesn’t mean I live without fear of what could happen if he returns. But I try to push that fear away, ignore the nightmares that remind me of him, and fixate on the now. Thankfully, Marcus makes it easier to do that.

  I squeeze onto Marcus who wraps an arm around me and holds me tightly.

  “I’m sorry, are you alright?” he asks as if he can read my mind and knows what I was thinking about.

  I give him a smile and kiss his cheek. “Of course. I have the world’s most handsome person next to me right now.”

  His eyes narrow as he looks around. “You’re up to something. You want something. What do you want?”

  I grab my chest. “Me? No.”

  His eyes narrow even more. “You are the most suspicious person I’ve ever met in my life. Do you know how long my life has been?”

  “No, because you haven’t told me. I’m very curious, though. Tell me.”

  “Longer than yours.”

  “Oh, tell me,” I say as I poke him in the side. “You’re such a dodger. When were you born? Thirty-two AD? A hundred and two BC? Come on, give me the goods.”

  “How old do you think I am?”

  I scrutinize him while knowing I’m being ridiculous. “You look old, you act old, you smell old. So… ten AD?”

  “Yes, I am over two thousand years old.”

  “I knew it. You smell like one of those old books from the library that no one ever checks out,” I lie. This is a huge lie because he smells good all the time. He never sweats or stinks, which irritates me.

  “I was born around 1709.”

  “Hmm… do you feel a bit kinky hitting on someone, oh… almost three hundred years younger than you? Maybe a bit like a pervert?”

  “I’m not the pervert here. Everyone is extremely aware of that,” he says with a grin.

  I stare at him as if I’m letting this information process. “Wait a minute… are you saying I’m the pervert? You… you flatter me.”

  He snorts. “Only you would think that’s a compliment.”

  I lean in and give him a quick kiss. “You’re just too sweet. So can I get a cat?”

  “Wait, what? That’s what this is about?”

  “Yes!”

  “For me to eat?”

  I jerk away as my eyes get huge. “You… no… you’re not even allowed to joke about that. Jokes about eating cats are strictly prohibited. What if someone heard you? Oh my god. You’re a monster.”

  “I love that that’s what put you over the edge. Why would I care if you got a cat?” he asks.

  I shrug. “Well, I wasn’t just going to come home with five cats.”

  “Five. You said a cat. Now you want five?”

  “Fine. One.”

  “If Artemus eats it, it’s not my fault.”

  I narrow my eyes at him. “He wouldn’t.”

  “He might. All he’d have to do is just lay on it and there’d be no more kitty. Maybe you should get five in case. Then if I get hungry it won’t be too big of a deal.”

  “Mr. FangyFace, why are you so evil?”

  “It’s a requirement for dealing with you, honestly.”

  I grunt, which is an extremely sexy noise. “I kind of like it,” I whisper.

  He starts laughing. “Of course you do.”

  “I suppose we should go terrify the human some more,” I say.

  He smiles at me. “I like how you say ‘the human’ like you’re no longer a human.”

  “Nah, I’ve progressed beyond human. I am Finn.”

  “Ah… you’re a Finn. I get it now. Let’s go see if we can make him pee his pants,” Marcus jokes.

  “I like the way you think,” I tease.

  And so we head off to see what “the human” is up to and assur
e him that this big bad vampire isn’t too big and bad.

  Besides in the bedroom.

  But I don’t add that part. I feel like I should at least get to know him a little bit first.

  Chapter Two

  MARCUS

  I wake up and roll over to look at my phone, noticing the alarm won’t go off for another ten minutes. I shift a bit more to look at Finn who is squished against me since Artemus, my large Irish wolfhound, is lying on his other side and taking up at least half of the king-sized bed. I told Finn the dog could sleep on the floor.

  They both gave me a look of pure devastation like I was heartless for telling my lover that he could have more bed than a sliver by pushing the dog off onto his memory foam bed.

  My eyes run over the skin that’s exposed since his blanket has fallen to his chest. His left arm is showing where a few small scars run over what’s left of it. At the end, where his arm was removed, is a cap that protects it and is also where the prosthesis attaches.

  Even though Finn is convinced otherwise, seeing him with his prostheses off doesn’t bother me. Even after being together for a while, I’ve still never seen him completely naked with them off, unless it’s during a moment like this.

  I wish he understood that I think he’s perfect and gorgeous just the way he is. I try to make sure he doesn’t know how seeing him upset over them drives me crazy and makes me hate the man who hurt him. It makes me want to find the man and keep him from ever laying a finger on Finn again.

  I turn the alarm off before it can wake Finn and gently run my fingers over his bare cheek. “Babe, it’s time to get up,” I say softly.

  “Oh, fuck off,” he growls as he rolls over and grabs Artemus in a hug.

  Ah, what a lovely welcome I get for waking him up.

  “Do you want me to turn the alarm back on?” I ask.

  “Go away,” he mutters as he buries his face against Artemus’s wiry hair.

  “You’re so not cute. I thought maybe you were cute, but I was horribly mistaken,” I grumble.

  He lets out a growling noise as he begins to sink under the covers, like he’s melting beneath them. I flip the alarm back on, set it for one minute and perch it right next to his head. The moment it goes off, he turns to me and grabs for the phone, eyes huge like I have betrayed him.