Lost Angeles

by Mantchev, Lisa

  I assume, having never been in the polar bear enclosure.

  He puts me down, and almost before the back of my legs hit the soft expanse of a bed, Xaine’s deft fingers seek out my waistband. Within a second, he gets my pants unbuttoned, and he lifts me against his body so he can work them down over my hips.

  “Hey!” It’s a faint protest, but I have to at least try. “I have zero interest in having sex with you.”

  “I guess that wasn’t you straddling my lap an hour ago, then.” He tosses my pants aside. “No worries, I have only about fifteen per cent interest in having sex with you right now. Barely an agent’s cut of interest, if you had an agent, which you don’t.”

  Winding up one arm, I make a fist and nearly break it against the hard muscle of his bicep. Xaine swats me off so he can hook two fingers into my underwear and shred them right down the front.

  “I could take them off, you know,” I say, giving him a wry look, “if you’re that determined that I be naked.”

  “More fun this way.” He digs into the sheer fabric of my shirt, rending it from collar to hem, then slips his fingers under the little bridge between my bra cups and flicks the clasp open. “Besides, I never miss an opportunity to rip a woman’s clothes off.”

  ”Oh, right, I almost forgot who I was talking to.” I let him finish, wiggling a bit when he goes to pull the bra off my shoulders. “And why, exactly, do I have to be naked?”

  “Because you smell like sweat and sex and some other guy, sweetheart.” Xaine leans in close, closer, so close that I can feel his breath on my face. “The first two I can live with, but the third is a deal-breaker.”

  The stupid flush hits my face again, so I feel my cheeks turning hot right along with the tips of my ears. “All those nice things I said in the car? I totally take them back. You’re sort of an asshole.”

  “I might be an asshole, but you smell like that douchebag’s cheap cologne, and some of us have standards.”

  Before I can utter a single squeak of protest, Xaine swings me up onto a shoulder, packing me toward the ridiculously vast shower and dumping me inside. Flicking the water on, The Dark Prince lets the full frigid force of it hit me square in the face, laughing over the sound of my sharply-indrawn gasp. My whole body shudders at the onslaught. I immediately turn toward the tiled wall, fold my arms close to my chest, and press my front against the cool ceramic squares. I stay like that, goosebumped and freezing, until the water finally goes from icy to scalding. Then and only then do I open my eyes long enough to glance over my shoulder.

  Xaine’s in the process of stripping. The shirt’s already gone, flung across the cavernous room. The leather pants get caught up on his shoes, and there’s a moment of irritated tugging before he’s finally naked. It’s not like I haven’t seen it before. I mean, the guy loves to be nude in stuff: album artwork, Hustler magazine, women. Mostly women. Even so, it’s one thing to ogle the perfect, narrow waist and washboard abs via a full-page spread in a magazine, and it’s quite another to witness the genuine article in person.

  My mouth goes dry despite the wet environs. “So, why do you have to be naked?” My teeth chatter between words; despite the warmth of the water, my body’s still in shock from the initial chill.

  “People keep telling me I should ‘give back.’”

  “And we’re doing that how?”

  “Water conservation.” Stepping into the shower, he closes the glass doors behind him. “Consider yourself lucky. Most people would kill to conserve water with me.”

  “So I should shut up and make the sacrifice, huh?”

  “Pretty much.” He moves in, fingers wrapping around my upper arms so that he can pry me off the wall and station me beneath the scalding spray. “No one else is here to hold you up if you pass out again.”

  “I think I’ll be fine.” Except the water’s already turning my skin bright pink, and I wonder if Xaine’s trying to scorch the smell of Benicio right off it. Reaching out, I adjust the knob, dialing it back to a bearable setting.

  The change in temperature doesn’t even seem to register on Xaine’s internal thermometer, because he only picks up a loofah and suds it thoroughly before dropping it over my shoulder and into my hands. “Thinking and knowing are two different things, sweetheart, so until I know you’re not going to fall down and bust your skull open on my soap dish, I’ll stay right here.”

  I can’t really argue with that, because my head’s still a little swimmy. I don’t mean to, but my hand clamps down on the forearm he has hooked around my waist. When my thumb traces over Xaine’s skin, I catch tiny ridges in the flesh, a pattern that’s a series of raised lines and circles. Nothing that’s ever turned up in pictures. Hell, I didn’t even see it six inches away from him in the shower. “What’s—”

  “Family brand,” is the soft answer in my ear. “A little something my sire put on me before the turning.”

  A cold glop of something hits my hair and runs down my forehead. The unholy burn when it reaches my eyes tells me it’s shampoo, except this stings more than normal, so it’s probably really expensive shampoo. Xaine’s fingers tangle in my hair, and I swear to god I think he’s actively trying to blind me.

  “You know,” I say, scraping a handful of suds off my face, “you’re sorta terrible at this.”

  “Not a lady’s maid, sweetheart, doing the best I can,” he mutters over the crown of my head, then pushes me forward. “Now shut up and soap up, or I’ll be forced to be ‘sorta terrible’ at the rest of you, too. And you don’t even want to know the torture I could bring to your more delicate bits.”

  “No Woolite in your spin cycle, huh?”

  This time, when the thick dollop of conditioner hits my head, I have the wherewithal to close my eyes. The way he cards his fingers through the water-slick strands is soothing, comforting, and I could go to sleep right here, just like this.

  And bust my head open on his soap dish.

  “So you’re cool with me crashing on your couch?”

  Xaine shoves my head under the water again. “You can sleep on the couch if you want, but there are plenty of beds in this house. You can even have one of your very own.”

  There’s a momentary pause wherein I consider my next words carefully. “Is there one close to you?”

  “What, a bed?”

  “Yeah.”

  There’s a lull that lasts enough to that I begin to wonder if he heard me. When I peer over my shoulder, he’s staring down at me with a wrinkled brow. I get self-conscious then, because I know that it sounds like I’m blatantly propositioning him right here in the shower. I mean, we’re both here, and we’re both naked, and—

  “Sweetheart, I have no idea if you’re offering to sleep with me or offering to sleep with me.”

  He emphasizes the last three words enough that it brings the heat back to my cheeks, but the idea of being alone right now sets up familiar flutters of panic in my midsection.

  “I don’t want to sleep by myself in a strange place. Hell, I’ll sleep on the floor next to your bed if you’ll let me.”

  “The floor?” he repeats, his expression comical. “You’re not sleeping on the fucking floor.”

  “Well then, can I sleep with you without sleeping with you?” I twist around and cross my arms over my chest, staring up at his face in earnest. It’s weird to ask a stranger for this kind of favor, but stuff has been surfacing ever since Benicio put his hands on me, things I didn’t remember, or maybe a few things I never forgot. Whatever they are, Xaine charged in like my own knight in pitch-black armor, the Dark Prince Apocalypse himself. I feel safe around him, like maybe he’s strong enough to keep nightmares away. Like maybe his demons are powerful enough to battle mine. And now that I’m caught up in his orbit, I find that I’m rather loath to leave it.

  “Fantastic,” he mutters, reaching out to snag the towels and slinging one at me. “I found the only woman on the planet who wants to sleep-but-not-sleep with me. I should buy a lottery ticket or someth
ing, since I’m winning at long-odds today.” He heads out of the shower, rubbing haphazardly at bits of himself, leaving wet footprints on the floor as he ambles into other room.

  “Yeah, like you need a lottery ticket.” I wrap the towel around my chest and follow him. “And it’s nothing against you, I just really like sleep.”

  “Bully for me, then,” he tells me. “Fine. You can play human hot water bottle, and I’ll keep my hands to myself.”

  A T-shirt hits me in the face before I get all the way through the door, but I can still see my vampire babysitter through little pits and holes in the fabric. Xaine made it into the closet and back out in the time it took me to cross his stupid-huge bathroom. He pulled on a pair of sleeping pants, the black and silky kind that he probably lifted off the set of a photoshoot or a music video. They sure as heck don’t look like anything anyone would really wear to bed.

  Anyone except him, anyway.

  He gives me a sly half-grin. “Put on the shirt. It’ll help me quell all my animalistic urges, threadbare cotton being my sexual Kryptonite and all. Plus vamps can’t tread on holey ground.”

  “That was the worst pun ever.” I unravel the twisted fabric, drag it over my head, and let the towel hit the cool marble floor. “And I’m really not that worried. I figure you’ve had a lot of time to exercise a little erectile control.”

  Xaine’s in the process of turning back the sheets, but he stops to give me an inscrutable look. “It’s not the dick you need to be afraid of, sweets.”

  “I’ll take my chances.” I circle the massive bed, pulling back the blankets and staring at him over the vast expanse of mattress. “Besides, this thing has two different zip codes.”

  “Got to have enough room for entertaining,” is the not entirely unexpected retort.

  “Shoulda got a water bed, then it could be like a pool party and slumber party all in one.” I slip beneath the sheets, turn my back on Xaine, and pull the slick, black silk up to my ears. It’s a second before I hear the rustling of covers, feel the slight vibration that tells me I’m no longer alone in the ridiculously large bed. The room is dark. Everything goes still and silent.

  Oddly enough, I feel better for the knowing Xaine’s nearby. I turn over so that I’m facing him, staring across a scant strip of mattress to the place where he’s reclined, hands behind his head. His eyes are closed, but now that I’m here in this bed with him, I’m not quite ready to sleep.

  “How did it happen?”

  He knows what I mean. “Yet another personal question.”

  “I guess I’m no good at following rules, either.” With my arms curled between us, my face resting on a palm, I stare through the mostly-dark. “So, where do baby vampires come from?”

  “Depends on who you ask. Some get dropped off by vultures, the kind that eat storks for breakfast. Or they turn up in the garden at midnight. Full moon helps.” Ridiculous, except his voice shifts until he doesn’t sound like he’s joking anymore. “Or maybe, just fucking maybe, when the angels fell, their wings burned off and their teeth sharpened to razor points and they hit the earth with a thirst that could only be quenched with human blood.”

  The words spark a memory, some little thing clinging to the edges of my awareness, and the words spill out of me before I even realize it. “‘I watched him fall from heaven like lightning.’”

  Luke 10:18.

  Xaine stares at the ceiling. “You know, Lucifer wasn’t the only one. A third of God’s angels rebelled. A few more, and they might not have lost.”

  “And then what? A world ruled by vampires?”

  “No, they were still angels,” he says. “We are the vampires.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s a nice story, but science tells a completely different tale.”

  He snorts in disgust. “Science is a bunch of wet-behind-the-ears asswipes who can’t decide if red wine is good or bad for you. Same goes for chocolate, coconuts, fish oil, red meat, and artificial sweetener. We are well beyond their comprehension.”

  “Science says you have a parasite,” I remind him. “Or, in this case, lots of tiny parasites creating a symbiotic life-cycle in each and every cell of your body. That’s why it’s impossible to cure, because it’s not only a virus, it’s quintillions of microscopic animals who are aces at waste recycling and cell regeneration.” A slight pause, before I repeat, “Quintillion. That’s ten zeros, in case you were wondering.”

  He snorts. “Thanks for the pro-tip.” There’s a rustle as he moves enough to twitch the sheets.

  “It also explains why your junk still works.” I grin against the pillowcase. “Even if it doesn’t work work, I mean.”

  Xaine gives me a strange look, like he can’t quite believe I said that out loud. “Science might explain why vamps are faster, stronger, more powerful than everyone else, but it doesn’t explain why I can hear the screams of the fallen in my sleep. It doesn’t explain what the turn did for my music. And it sure as shit doesn’t explain why living burns like such a motherfucker now.”

  “Does it?” I ask tentatively. “Burn, that is. Is it really so bad?”

  “Not all kinds of burning are bad. You should know that by now. Unless you don’t know that. In which case, shame on your boyfriends.”

  “Boyfriend.” I tell him. “And it wasn’t exactly a burning sort of relationship.”

  “Well, shame on him, then.” One hand finds me in the dark, somehow avoiding my skin entirely while hooking a finger under one long, slightly damp tendril of hair. “Sometimes the burn is so good that you’re okay with the idea of falling into the fire. You welcome it. Would upend a can of gasoline to keep it going.” A pause. “It always goes out. That’s just the shitty way of all things.”

  “A candle burned at both ends.” I quietly contemplate the way he wraps one color-tipped gold strand around his finger again and again, brushing his thumb across the shining coil he’s created. “You’re right. One end or both, the fire always goes out.”

  “Well, when my fire goes out, it’s going to be with a big goddamn bang, I guarantee it.” Xaine’s mumbling now, like rubbing my hair was the big, scary vampire version of handing a toddler his blankie. Sure enough, a second later his eyes drift shut and his breath evens out.

  It takes a few minutes of silence, patiently waiting for the rise and fall of his chest to become a slow and deep cadence, but I know the very second he slips into sleep because his fingers stop moving, still twisted in my hair, the backs of his knuckles pressing the heavy locks into the pillow. Tentatively, I reach out and lay a hand on the bare expanse of his chest. The skin is cool to the touch, but not the sort of cool that comes from the chill air or a brisk fall night. Nope, this is the kind of from-the-inside cool that can only be attributed to a vampiric metabolism. It’s why everyone thinks they’re undead.

  Everyone except Xaine, apparently. Nope, oddly enough the shallow vampire rock star has deep thoughts, and as I lie next to him in the darkness, I can’t help the smile that tilts my lips. Angels and demons and fires that burn too bright to go out; it’s the stuff of song lyrics, and it suits him perfectly.

  “Well, cowboy,” I speak softly into the night, “one thing’s for sure. You’ll still be burning long after I’m gone.”

  Relaxing into sleep is an exercise in torture. I haven’t been afraid of the dark for a long while, because my monsters have been on hiatus, but if the car ride here is anything to go by, then the demons have returned with a vengeance.

  Perfect.

  I’m glad I’m next to Xaine, curled up against his cool body. Maybe I won’t dream of silver shark teeth and golden tiger eyes. Maybe there won’t be any blood in tubes or burning pain. Maybe I won’t wake up in a sweat, face buried in the pillows, screaming until my throat is raw.

  Maybe my unreasonable fear of the dark is completely unfounded.

  Maybe.

  Maybe not.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Xaine

  The bedroom’s dark. It isn’t ever anything
else, actually, between the smoked glass windows and the heavy curtains. Vampires don’t exactly experience sensory deprivation, so I can still make out the nuances in the shadows. I can tell it’s early evening without glancing at the clock on the bedside table. Normally, it takes me the better part of an hour to wake up, but not this time. Not this evening, with Lore snuggled up against me like I’m not a human-shaped chunk of ice against the sheets. She’s warm, her own little furnace now that she’s cocooned in the blankets. Completely limp, out cold, breathing nice and even, heart rate—

  Mmmmph.

  Yeah, lying here, listening to the steady, subtle rhythm of her pulse isn’t doing my dick any favors.

  It’s almost surprising to see how soft her features are when she’s asleep. No more smartass half-smiles or sardonic twitches of the lip. It’s just her and me right now, and waking up with an armful of soft-and-sweet really is my idea of heaven. I’ve said on television interviews, in print interviews, during radio banter, that this is how I want to go, but that’s not the truth. Because when I’m here, in this moment, with the soft weight of a head resting on my shoulder, an arm thrown over my chest, a long leg hooked over my knee, and a fan of hair decorating the pillows, I don’t want to go anywhere.

  Lore does that thing where her breath catches as she shifts, rearranging herself against me like I’m her own personal body pillow. I hitch my free arm under my neck and stretch out, making more skin available for her comfort and my own general amusement. As far as I’m concerned, she can sleep in my armpit for as long as she needs to, working whatever’s left of the sin-eater juice out of her system. When she wakes up, I can cram some food into her…

  Shit.

  With the passing thought of food, my fangs start tingling. It’s been ten, eleven, twelve, too-many-to-count hours since I fed, which means I’m going to have to ease myself out of paradise and get something to eat. The exact second that I start to move, Lore jerks awake. Her hand spasms reflexively, nails digging into my bare chest. Her arm clamps down on my middle, her leg tightens around mine like she’s the red stripe on my candy cane, and then she hits me with the full force of a startled pair of baby blues. She looks a little frantic, heartbeat kicking into overdrive as she blinks once, twice, then relaxes, burying her face against my skin with an exhale.