by Rye Brewer
She had company.
Just as I was about to trail her, the double doors to the club opened and out stepped the shifter who had made a pass at her and ushered her inside. He looked furious as he took off in her direction.
I followed, almost running to catch up. I didn’t reach them until he had already grabbed her arm.
“Hey, asshole! Let go!” She tried and failed, to wrench her arm free.
“What’s your problem?” he growled. “Don’t you know when a guy’s trying to show you a good time?”
“I can have a good time on my own, thank you. Let me go!” She tried again, and let out a little whimper of pain when his hand visibly tightened.
“Let her go.” I stepped up beside him, hands balled into fists. “She said she doesn’t want to hang out with you tonight, friend.”
His head swiveled in my direction, and his already dark eyes turned nearly black with hatred. “I’m not your friend.”
“No. You’re not. Now, let her go, or we both know you’ll regret it.”
Our eyes were locked.
I almost forgot about Carissa, I was so ready to fight.
That would’ve been catastrophic—and knowing that it would be catastrophic was the only thing keeping me in check.
A public brawl between a shifter and a vampire? The last thing we needed.
“You’re alone. You know I have a lot of friends across the street,” he whispered menacingly.
“You wouldn’t have time to get them out here,” I promised. “Now, let her go. There are plenty of other girls in there for you to choose from.”
His face contorted into a mask of disgust, but he released her. “This is war,” he snarled. “Wait and see what we do to you for this.”
I watched as he strode away, every muscle tensed with rage.
I relaxed, then remembered the overwhelming girl standing just behind me.
I turned to find her staring up at me with wide, blue eyes and wondered what I was supposed to do with her.
27
GAGE
“What was that all about?” she asked, eyes still wide. “What did he mean by war? Who was he to you? And who are you, anyway?”
“A lot of questions,” I grinned.
“Answer the last one first, please.” I admired how self-possessed she was after what had just gone down. I guessed a girl as beautiful as her, living in a place as rough as New York, would have to learn to let things roll off her back.
“My name is Gage. I saw that guy harassing you and thought you could use some help,” I shrugged.
“But what did he mean by war?”
“It’s nothing. Don’t even worry about it.”
We stood there, me with my hands in my pockets and her with her arms wrapped around a thin, easily broken body.
She had no idea how close she’d come.
“Are you all right getting home?”
“I guess so.” She chewed her bottom lip and hesitated.
“Do you want me to walk with you?”
She shook her head, then nodded. “I can’t even think straight,” she admitted, blushing. “Not that that guy bothered me all that much, but that club… I didn’t have a good time. It’s been a strange night.”
“I know what you mean. I’ve had a strange night, too.” Very strange.
For starters, I had never felt such a pull toward any human. She drew me to her without saying a word, consuming my entire being with the need to have her.
“Would you mind walking me?” she asked with a shy smile. She was so endearing.
“Of course.” I let her lead the way—it wouldn’t be a good idea for her to know I had been following her—and fell in step beside her.
It was still fairly early for Manhattan on the weekend, barely midnight.
“Were you out alone tonight?” I asked, reminding myself again that I wasn’t supposed to know anything about her.
She let out a hard laugh without humor. “I am now, I guess. It didn’t start out that way.”
I remembered the tall girl who manipulated her and frowned.
“By the way. You never told me your name,” I murmured.
She smiled that same shy little smile. “Carissa. But you can call me Cari. Anybody who saves me from the clutches of a monster gets to call me by my nickname.”
She had no idea how right she was, either. It was uncanny how sharp her instincts were.
Then again, what about the monster who was walking her home?
“Carissa. That’s pretty.”
“It sounds like something out of an old romance, one of those Victorian melodramas,” she joked.
I wished I could tell her I was alive when those Victorian melodramas came out and that, yes, her name would’ve fit in perfectly in that era.
A breeze blew past us and lifted her dark blonde waves, sending her scent even more alluringly to my nostrils.
I gulped, fighting back the bloodlust raging all through me.
“So, Gage, what do you do?” she asked as we continued to walk.
Unlike the people going past us, we were strolling. Neither of us was in any hurry to get anywhere.
“For a living, you mean?”
“Of course,” she smiled.
“I help run the family business. My father passed away a long time ago, so my brothers and sister and I keep things going.” The image of Fane’s face flashed before my eyes.
“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that,” she murmured. “My father died a long time ago, too.”
“He did?”
“9/11,” she said, and we left it at that. No further explanation needed.
“What do you do?”
“I work for a magazine. Nothing special.”
“What do you want to do?”
We waited at a corner for the light to change, and she turned to me.
“Huh?”
“What do you want to do?” I asked again. “Everybody wants to do something else, something other than what they’re doing. Isn’t that the whole point?”
She laughed. She had a great laugh. “I guess you’re right! Between you and me, I would rather be working in one of the offices instead of sitting in a cubicle out on the floor. Writing or editing.”
“You’re a writer?”
“I wish.”
“Do you write?”
“Yes.”
“Do you like to write?”
“Sure.”
“Then, you’re a writer.”
“You make it sound so simple,” she smiled.
“It is when you boil it down.” I took her elbow to help her across the street—not even thinking about it, just wanting to be sure she was safe when there were cars waiting to turn in our direction.
She didn’t pull away.
“I should keep you around as my career manager,” she joked. “If you ever get tired of your job, let me know.”
“Eh, for me it’s not that easy.”
“I thought everything was easy when you boil it down,” she winked.
I had to laugh. “For me, it really is different. It’s more of a… family business.”
Her eyes went perfectly round. “The mafia?” she whispered.
I burst out laughing so hard, I had to stop walking for a second. I couldn’t remember the last time I laughed like that, or if there was ever a time in my long existence when I needed to laugh like that. “No, no! Not at all.” I laughed some more.
“I didn’t think it was that funny,” she said, but she was smiling.
“I’m sorry.” I wiped a tear from the corner of my eye. “If my brothers heard that, they would die. No, we’re not that way at all. Think more… like the way certain positions are passed down from one generation to the other.”
“Royalty?” She sounded skeptical this time.
“In a way. In a very, very loose way. And I think we should stop talking about it now.”
Her eyes twinkled wickedly. “Am I being walked home by an actual Prince Charming, who saved
me back there?”
“I see you’re not willing to let this go.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll stop.” But she was struggling to keep from smiling.
We walked up to a pizza shop with a window facing out onto the street. “Would it be ridiculous if I told you I’m starving right now?” she asked.
No, it wouldn’t, because I was starving, too. Just not for food.
It was everything I could do to hold a conversation with her when the pull of her blood filled my consciousness.
“Of course not. You’re human. You get hungry.”
She smirked. “Yeah, but girls aren’t supposed to like to eat. Didn’t you know that?”
“I might have heard something like that, but it doesn’t mean I believe it.”
“Oh, I like you.” She grinned before turning toward the man leaning halfway out the window. “Slice of white, please.”
I watched as she carefully dabbed off the excess grease with a handful of napkins before sprinkling salt and garlic powder—oh, the irony, vampires and garlic, supposed to keep us away. A stupid legend with no basis in fact.
She folded the slice in half—it was almost as big as her head—and took a large bite. She closed her eyes and let out a little groan of pleasure.
I didn’t know whether to applaud or kiss her.
Kiss her? Where did that come from? And yet I felt it.
“I’m sorry. Are you hungry?” she asked, pointing to the window. “I didn’t mean to hog the space.”
“I’m fine.”
She took another bite, and we walked even more slowly while she ate. Even after she was finished, we kept walking slowly, talking about whatever came to mind.
We couldn’t seem to stop coming up with things to say. I knew I couldn’t. She told me she was a Yankees fan in a family full of Mets fanatics, she had five siblings in all, and that her mom was a school teacher.
“And Dad was an investment banker,” she quickly added, voice tinged with pain.
I marveled at how years could pass, but the pain was still there. I knew that feeling.
“I lost both my parents at the same time, actually. Years and years ago.”
“Wow. Both of them?”
“Yeah. My brother and I, we’re the oldest. Twins. We sort of had to keep everybody else in line. We weren’t ready to take over the business, I don’t think. But I wanted to, you know? He was older by around a hair’s breadth, so he got the job. I wasted a lot of time being mad at him because of that. I got myself into trouble over it, too.”
“We all make mistakes when we’re young.”
I held my tongue. She had no idea how young I wasn’t.
“Anyway, I still remember the uncertainty and pain of those days. Sometimes I still feel it, in little bursts. You know?”
She sighed. “Yes! It’s like sometimes, I almost forget it happened. It was so long ago. How is that possible that I would forget it after all these years of not being with him?”
“I don’t know. A defense mechanism, maybe. Our brains want to keep us safe and, I don’t know. Functioning, I guess. If we thought about the pain every day, all the time, how could we function?”
“I guess that’s true.” She smiled—a little sadly, but it was a smile.
My hand itched to take hers, but I didn’t dare let myself do that. If I did, I would want more. I already wanted more.
And when did I go from wanting to taste more of her blood to wanting to hold her hand?
We reached a block of brownstones, and she stopped around halfway down, in front of a stone staircase. “This is me,” she said, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.
I realized then that we’d been together for hours.
It was almost four in the morning—the newspaper trucks were driving past as we stood there, wondering what to do next.
“The whole house?” I asked.
“No! I wish. Just an apartment.” She looked up the stairs, then at me. “Do you want to come up?”
That surprised me. Didn’t I hear her say that she never slept with guys she had just met? But I wasn’t any ordinary guy, and we’d done more talking and bonding over the last four hours than I bet most people did in weeks of knowing each other.
For one brief, breathless moment, I was about to say yes. I was about to go up there with her and take her. I wanted to be with her, all over her, inside her. I wanted to compel her to let me drink her rich, sweet blood until she was just at the edge of life and death—I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop myself until it reached that point. I would drink my fill and let the blood flow through me until I quenched my thirst for her. It wouldn’t be enough, either. It would never be enough.
I really wanted to go. I did. I came so close.
There was a loud noise down the street, like a car backfiring, and it shook me from my trance.
No way I could do that. If the League ever found out that I was drinking from a human, I would never get away with it. Consorting was bad enough, but drinking from them was against our laws.
She spun around, surprised, looking for the source of the noise.
I took the opportunity and crossed the street, disappearing behind a minivan and then into the shadows.
I looked back through the windows of the van and saw her looking around for me with her mouth hanging open.
No, I couldn’t take a chance on being with her or drinking from her.
If we got caught, it wouldn’t be just me who faced the League’s wrath. They would kill her to keep her quiet, and I couldn’t do that to her.
No matter how desperate I was for her.
No matter how sure I was that she was meant for me.
28
CARISSA
Where the heck did he go? Was he a magician or wizard or something? One minute I was going against everything I had ever believed about going to bed with a guy right after I met him—the next, he was gone. So much for trying to turn over a new leaf.
Did I scare him away?
I looked all around, turning in a full circle.
He was gone. He really was.
My heart sank until it was somewhere around the vicinity of my sandals—sandals I was glad I wore that night, since it meant being able to walk around for hours on end without wanting to cut off my feet.
Not that it mattered, because I would never see him again.
I thought there was something special between us. Was I that far off-base? Was I just kidding myself? I must have been.
He was so sweet, so gallant. I didn’t even get his number—not like he asked for mine, anyway.
I guessed he figured that he’d done his good deed for the night and could go home with a clean conscience.
I was fun to walk around with for four stinking hours, but that was all. Wasn’t it supposed to be the other way around? Weren’t guys supposed to sleep with a woman and then disappear? Not do something semi-meaningful, something that made a girl think she was bonding with somebody when she wasn’t?
I was just about to turn toward my front stairs and drag my feet the whole way to my apartment—and that was when I spotted him hurrying down the block on the other side of the street.
A car turned in his direction, and the headlights shone on his dark red hair. He was crazy if he thought he could hide with hair like that.
I took off after him before I could stop myself or even think about it, jogging until I turned the corner and saw him hurrying past a row of storefronts.
I kept my distance, hanging maybe a half block back so he didn’t catch sight of me if he turned around. I didn’t want to come off as some desperate stalker, refusing to get the hint that he didn’t want me. I knew girls like that. I even had a few friends in college who were like that. I had made a vow a long time ago that I would never be that girl.
You should be home, getting into bed, you idiot.
No matter what I told myself, I couldn’t help it. There was something special about him. He got me, as strange as it seemed. And he
was real. He didn’t put on some fake macho BS act to impress me, even though he obviously had money and was pretty well-off. The family business. Whatever that meant, it bought him some pretty nice clothes and a watch I could’ve paid a year’s worth of rent with.
The guys I met at the club were just as well-dressed and flashy, but that was the difference in a nutshell. They were flashy. They had to show off, like it actually mattered that they could afford VIP treatment and a bottle of Cristal. Big whoop.
Give me a guy who smiles indulgently when I tear into a slice of pizza any day of the week, thanks very much, I thought as I ducked behind a dumpster when he paused to wait for a light to change.
Who did I think I was? Nancy Drew? Hiding behind a dumpster. Jeez. But that didn’t stop me.
I kept following him, darting between cars as I crossed the street. We definitely lived on different sides of town. He was heading into the heart of Manhattan, where all the high-rises were. Just another thing to confirm how wealthy he was.
Where did he come from? He just randomly jumped in and saved me earlier. I didn’t know what I would’ve done without him. It could’ve turned out to be a very different night. I might have been running away from someone rather than running after someone.
I did not have a good feeling about that club, no matter how hot the guys were. Unlike Mathilda, I cared about more than what a man looked like. But there was no getting through to Maddy. She was insistent that I go in. But she was always pushy, wasn’t she? I loved her, but she was a pushy broad. She was also a good friend—something I had to remind myself from time to time. Like when she left me on my own in the middle of a bunch of guys who were practically licking their chops.
I told myself that was why I was desperate to find out more about Gage. He was like a unicorn. Respectful and kind and funny and smart. He even took my elbow when we crossed the street together, like he was trying to protect me. He even looked like he could kick some ass if he had to.
I had never known anybody like him. I didn’t know men like him still existed. Weren’t men chivalrous and protective of their women back in the old days? Hadn’t those days passed? Not for him. It was sweet.