Lost Angeles

by Mantchev, Lisa

  She gives me a flicker of a smile, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “You think so?”

  “You don’t?”

  “It was… not what I expected?” There’s the half-shrug to go along with the question that’s not a question. “It was awesome, but you were different than I thought you’d be.”

  “Yeah, I can see how my up-close-and-personal might surprise you,” I tease her, just to feel that blush intensify.

  “No, I mean… it wasn’t like the rookie and the rock star. It was just you, and me, and the music…” Her voice trails off, because she can’t find the words to explain herself.

  Me, I have the words. I’ve been in that bubble often enough, burning through the hours like they’re nothing. When I’m in there alone, it’s a frenzy that lasts hour upon hour. Forgetting to eat, forgetting to sleep, forgetting everything.

  Or trying to.

  Lore is right. It was different, sitting in that bubble with her. Crosslegged on the floor together, like we did onstage at Scion, except for the times she was at the piano and I was on the soundboard instead of the guitar. Even caught in the throes of her muse, Lore takes the time to savor the notes, to neatly write out the lyrics, to meticulously record everything in perfect pitch and time so that the raw notes-on-bars echo inside my head without a single word sung. There’s deliberation there, the sense of a soul at ease, a bird gliding on an updraft. She’s a worker bee, too, with a precise and focused purpose to everything she does. Hell, in those short hours, she taught me a few things about composing, about the mixing software she uses, about taking the skeletal remains of a two-decade-old napkin scratch and making it a song.

  I know where Lore’s version of “In Your Light” came from. The piano, the violin, the vocals, the guitar, the percussion… it was all her. One line at a time, each instrument in turn. The girl is a closet virtuoso. Unfortunately, in an industry where every pretty voice and pretty face is spit-shined and run through the mass-production wringer, nobody’s even going to notice. She’ll be famous, no doubt about that, but nobody on the planet is going to know what I know about Lore. Nobody’s even going to ask.

  Their loss. My gain.

  I tilt my head back and close my eyes, wishing we were back there right now, instead of headed for the shitfest waiting for us at PFC. When Lore’s fingers tighten down on mine, I crack an eyelid at her.

  “What?”

  “Maybe you should eat something before we go in there?” She chews the inside of her lip before adding, “You know what we’re walking into. There’s going to be a lot of blood. And if you haven’t eaten…”

  “I know, sweetheart. Like an alcoholic wandering into a bar, or something.” I scowl and try to count back the hours, because I never eat when I’m on set, and I was too distracted by her staircase stunt to give a single fuck about food. “Lonan, we need to make a pitstop—”

  A soft little snort interrupts me, and then Lore sticks her wrist under my nose. When I wrap my fingers around her arm and push it down onto the seat, she crosses the other one over and tempts me with that.

  And absolutely no lie, I am tempted. She smells like makeup, and under that, she smells like my shower wash, and under that she smells like warm female. I’ve been on my best behavior since she stepped foot in my house, especially since she planted all those curves in my bed, so I guess somewhere along the way I’d acclimated to the constant tingle in my fangs.

  And my dick.

  While I’m wholly unwilling to fix the thwarted dick situation in the back of Lonan’s Jeep, I raise Lore’s wrist to my mouth and break through her fragrant skin. She sucks in a breath, then exhales and leans against me, body going lax when I disengage my teeth and drag the first warm mouthful in. Then we’re back in the bubble… that space where everything is quiet except her pulse, a heartbeat that’s set the rhythm for my every waking second since the moment she walked onto the stage at Scion. In the vaguest of ways, I hear Lonan mumbling about how he could have pulled through Starbucks, and Christ, don’t get anything on his seats, but then he’s smart enough to shut his mouth and concentrate on the road.

  I don’t intend on taking much, because the last thing I need is Lore falling out of the car at PFC and into Asher Reece’s Popeye arms with two fresh holes in her. Hell, I didn’t intend on any of this. You’d think pulling a girl into my insane world would be enough to knock her on her ass and then some; instead, I’m the one whose life has been upended, like someone took my snow globe and shook the living shit out of it.

  I keep her wrist against my mouth long after I’ve stopped drinking, lips pressed to the wounds until the blood slows to a trickle. Takes me a moment to realize that mellow haze has taken up residence in the back of my skull again, another to realize I’m murmuring new song lyrics against her skin. Lore has her head against my shoulder, and I know she’s transcribing the whole thing onto mental Post-Its for us.

  Soon, I promise myself. Back into the studio, and the entire world can go fuck itself.

  Only one hurdle to clear first.

  “We’re here,” Lonan says, and I catch his nervous, frowning glance at Lore in the rearview.

  The second we pull past the first industrial gate and checkpoint, Lore sits up straight, sucks in a deep sigh, and pulls her wrist free of my grasp. Her other hand wraps around it, twisting loosely as she works through the worst of the aching. A shiver runs the length of her spine, visible, raising goosebumps on her pale flesh and causing her teeth to chatter. That’s how I know she’s cold. That’s how I know I took a little too much. Scowling, I reach out and recapture her hand.

  When her sweet face turns my way, she’s quick to reassure me. “I’m okay.”

  “You sure?”

  She nods, offering up a sleepy smile. “Yeah, I’m good. Not even dizzy. Let’s do this.”

  The sooner we get in, the sooner we get out, but I’ve got to brace myself for what’s to come. Lore may be utterly clueless, but every moment of every turn that I’ve ever witnessed is burned into my cerebral cortex, the same as every note of music I’ve ever written.

  “Let’s get this over with, then.”

  Phantom Firearms is ghetto-adjacent, but the crackheads know better than to go near the industrial fencing that encloses the concrete building. At one point in time, it was probably a shipping warehouse. Pretty much a box with windows, it takes a closer look to see that those windows are frosted over on the upper levels. Vague discolored outlines on the lower floor show where other old panes have long since been bricked up. Someone carved out enough earth underneath it for a subterranean garage space, and I know for a fact that Asher’s stashed a veritable convoy down there. There are cameras everywhere, from the second gate that swings open when Lonan punches in a code to the reinforced steel door bearing the company logo. It’s nothing short of a fortress, and while some men might pump their dick with huge houses or fancy cars, Asher Reece compensates for his in the form of big guns, bad bullets, and a vamp-killing research facility like nobody’s ever seen before.

  It must be really fucking tiny.

  Before we’re even out of the car, the proprietor is already headed out to meet us. His gaze goes straight to Lore, skimming over her from head to foot but dodging away before he looks her full in the face. She’s still wearing my clothes, and I must admit that the jeans are far more interesting on her. Judging by the disapproval on Asher’s face, he doesn’t quite agree.

  A few feet closer and I start to notice other details about our host. He’s limping a little, walking with a slight hitch in his normally regimented step. One of his eyes is rimmed in purple, and there’s a scabbed-over cut across his left cheekbone. Bandages are wrapped around one arm from wrist to elbow, too, which tells me that some serious shit went down in the twenty-four hours since we parted ways.

  “The fuck happened to you?” I ask.

  A single sour look is all I get before he turns to Lore. “You need to mentally prepare yourself before we go in.” Dark eyes return
to me. “She’s not doing very well. I’ve had her on an IV most of the day, trying to get enough blood into her.”

  I raise an eyebrow at that, because if Jess isn’t able to drink it, then “not doing very well” is a polite way of saying she’s completely fucked. With weak-blooded amateurs trying to force-turn a girl, it really couldn’t have gone any other way. “She’s sweating that out, too, isn’t she?”

  Far from surprised or horrified, Lore looks grim. Her lips are pressed together in a thin line that reads ten kinds of pissed. “I want to see her.”

  Asher’s eyes meet Lore’s, and whatever he was about to say goes right out the window. It takes a second for me to realize what I’m looking at, but when I do, I can’t stifle a surge of irritation. There’s sympathy there. Commiseration. Pain, and suffering, and all those other human traits that make martyrs out of men. Asher and Lore care about Jess, and it gives me pause, because Asher’s never once taken an interest in anything but stroking off his guns. Pause, because the only person I’ve ever seen him actually care about is Reille. Even his own sister is something of an obligation, but some borough-born lackey is his new BFF, apparently.

  “Are you trying to wait us out?” I say, drawing Asher’s attention to me. His eyes flash with irritation, and I can practically see him drumming up enough spit to tell me to go fuck myself with a cactus. “Because if we stand out here much longer—”

  “Come on.” Turning on his heel, Asher strides into the building, almost like he’s in a hurry to return to the sweaty, bleeding mess we’re sure to find dying inside his warehouse.

  I keep my eyes trained on his back, taking mental inventory of the man with us tonight and weighing it against the Asher Reece I know. There’s a slouch to his shoulders and a curve to his spine that has nothing to do with his injuries. Beyond the bruises and limp, he’s broken down. I’m still considering his cocked-up body language when I hear the telltale beep of a security sensor. My stomach clenches as the heavy door swings open, and it completely bottoms out when I put one foot on the other side. I’m in a building devoted to UV weapons development, and either of the men walking with me could ram enough concentrated sunshine up my ass to reduce me to a pile of dust in half a second flat. Knowing Asher and his father’s reputation, I’ve no doubt that they wouldn’t even have to exert themselves to kill me; there are probably UV tubes in the overhead lighting throughout the entire building. Flick a switch or thumb over a touchscreen, and I’m toast.

  So this is the bit where I should be grateful that Asher and I have become unlikely allies. Next comes the part where I’m supposed to hand the whole thing off to a pair of studio tosspots and have them cough up a movie script for our little bromance over a flat of Red Bull and Chinese take-out.

  Or not.

  After a long corridor and a set of metal stairs, we end up in an observation room kitted out with a two-way mirror. Asher gestures that we should stay here, then ducks through a second door. Through the glass, the three of us watch as he pulls back some hospital-style privacy curtains, revealing the baby vamp in the bed. Lore sucks in a breath, reaches out, and places her hand flat against the pane. A thin, steamy outline forms around her fingers.

  Damn cold in that room.

  “Asher’s hoping the lowered temp will slow the blood flow.” Lonan pauses, flashing a quick glance at Lore, but her attention is fixed on the room beyond the glass. “That maybe it’ll keep her from bleeding out so quickly.”

  “How long will this go on?” is Lore’s softly worded query.

  She’s talking to Lonan, but what does he know?

  “It goes on until it stops,” I mutter.

  Jess looks like shit. The blood those vamps pumped into her is matted in her hair and clotted under those slick, lacquered acrylics of hers. Her skin has a yellow pallor to it, as do her eyes, because the juice headed into her arm via IV is oozing out her pores. The linens are soaked-through red, shiny from the liquid, and I can’t help the way my teeth ache at the sight of it. The flavor of metal hits the back of my throat with every breath I take.

  There are tears in Lore’s eyes now, glittering along her lashes, and I’m suddenly rocketed back to a similar face but a different vigil.

  Elizabeth lasted three days. Three days of her fragile human body trying to make the turn. Three days of human blood oozing out her every pore because I’d pumped her full of mine and it was trying hard to claim her.

  I believed she would make it. That first day, she brimmed over with ferocity, thrashing on the smeared linen and snarling at anyone who came near her. I tasted hope, a single sip from a cup that was dashed from my hand by the second night. Her fangs remained stunted bits of ivory in pale pink gums. When I brought her a tumbler of blood, the merest sip caused her stomach to clench. I watched her grow pale and weak, not voicing my worst fears until that third moonrise. That’s when Elizabeth had turned those blue eyes upon me, eyes that were too tired to cry, and asked me to send for Cas.

  I have exactly zero desire to watch that particular shit show again, to see someone else fighting for a life that they’re not ever going to get back. Lore might be ready to face it, but I am not. Except when she turns those heartbreakingly-blue eyes toward me, I find that I’m powerless to save myself, mostly because I can’t deny her a single thing in this universe, not if I have it in my power to make it happen. There’s a heavy ache in my chest, one I don’t acknowledge often, but for once in my life I just let it hit me.

  In the meantime, Asher’s doing a good job hiding his concern. He speaks to Jess in an undertone, asks how she’s feeling, fields the weak answers. After changing out the IV bags, he wipes her face clean with a series of damp cloths, betraying himself when he flings them into the garbage with more force than necessary. It looks as if he’s about to reach for her hand, but then pats her on the arm instead. I step closer to Lore, but she doesn’t move. Her gaze is trained upon Jess, and she doesn’t so much as flinch when the baby vamp in question bucks up off the gurney and lets loose with a scream to rival any wraith ever depicted in folklore.

  God’s honest truth, this is anyone’s horror story, right here.

  Brushing a hand across Jess’s forehead, Asher speaks softly to her until the convulsion ends and her body wilts back to the blood-sodden bed. Like a passing contraction, we’re all standing here watching the soon-to-be stillbirth of one of the could-have-been undead. My hand finds its way to the back of Lore’s neck, and I squeeze a little, kneading the warm flesh. Her concern is written across every clenched muscle in her body.

  Asher makes his way back toward us, leaving the land of the lost. “How did you do it?”

  It’s exactly the sort of tone he’s always used when dealing with me: the annoyed older brother voice, the pissed-off vampire hunter voice, the stick-up-the-ass do-gooder voice. But when I glance at him, he’s not looking at me. Nope, those hard brown irises are trained on Lore. Every protective instinct I have flares, my hackles rising right along with the hairs on my arms. Lore must feel the tension in my fingers because she very slowly turns her head so that she can look first to me, then to Asher.

  “This exact thing happened to you, Lore. They grabbed you and tried to turn you. Except you didn’t turn, and you didn’t die.” Asher’s voice breaks and desperation bleeds through. “How did you survive that? What did Cas do?”

  My girl just shakes her head, those fair brows drawing together in confusion. “I don’t know.”

  Asher approaches her, one hand unconsciously curling into a fist. He’s in full intimidation mode, and it’s obvious to me that Fuzzy Bunny’s not even sure why.

  Hell, I’m not even sure why. “What are you talking about, Asher?”

  He doesn’t look at me, doesn’t even acknowledge that I spoke. He takes one more step, and that’s one step too close. The hand I had at Lore’s neck slides down her back, fingers clamping around her waist and pulling her behind me. Doesn’t really matter, because Vampire Hunter could take me out in two seconds flat. Lor
e’s not safe here, and I shouldn’t have let her come, but there’s no going back now.

  So much for the bromance.

  “You want answers?” he asks. “I’ve got them. But I need answers, too.”

  All the color drains from Lore’s face. “What do you mean?”

  “You came to LA looking for Reille, right?” Asher snaps out. “And now you’re looking for Cas?”

  Her normally open expression shifts to suspicion. “Yeah.”

  “I know what happened,” he mutters. “I don’t know why, but I know what.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I was there.” Guilt is painted across Asher’s face, clear as day. “At the vamp facility. I came for you and Reille, but they were keeping you in separate rooms, different rooms than our intelligence led us to believe.” He tears his hand through the dark bristle on top of his head. “It was all a setup, I think. I had three men with me, and none of them made it out. It shouldn’t have gone to shit the way it did. If that asshole hadn’t betrayed us—” Then he cuts himself off, shaking his head. “It’s my fault you were stuck there. That they tortured you like that.”

  “You left me there?” Lore asks, the icy chill of her fingers creeping along my wrist to my hand. When I turn to look at her, she’s pale as death. “To die?”

  “That’s the point. You didn’t die. You survived.”

  When Asher takes another step toward her, I’m there between him and her, growling into his face. “Step off, Reece.”

  Except he reaches around me to grasp a fistful of Lore’s shirt. “I need to know how you did it—”

  My arm flashes out reflexively, my open palm catching him at the shoulder and shoving him backward. Lore’s chest thuds against my side, a startled cry escaping her as Asher’s grip pulls her against me before he finally lets go. Without warning, all the fury drains from Asher’s body, his spine returning to that dejected slouch. He retreats a few feet, eyes flashing toward the two-way glass before they seek out Lore.