I turned toward him, my arms crossed over my chest. “So?” I offered.
He took my hand and dropped to his knee and despite every defense I thought I’d put in place, I felt my jaw slacken and my mouth gape open. “I do not deserve your forgiveness, My Love. I ask it just the same. I am sorry for any danger I placed you in.” He stroked his thumb along the top of my hand. “It pains me more than you could know that you feel betrayed by me. I’ve missed you.”
I closed my mouth and swallowed hard. I tried to hold on to the anger. The truth was I didn’t want to forgive Ian. It was far easier for me to deal with being mad than the other feelings he invoked within me. I knew how to deal with anger.
“Thank you,” I whispered, and while I knew I hadn’t granted him the forgiveness he was looking for, it was the truth. I was grateful he’d apologized.
“May I spend the day with you, My Love?” He didn’t push for a definitive answer. Ian was patient and always seemed to know when to just wait it out. I guess unlimited mortality would do that to you.
“You get the couch,” I clarified as he stood.
Ian pouted, jutting his lower lip out. I couldn’t stop the thought of capturing that lip with my teeth. That’s the problem with thoughts, you get thousands of them a day but a few manage to stick with you.
I shook it off and walked to the kitchen. I pulled out one of the homemade frozen meals Alli had put in the freezer when she’d helped me move. A few minutes in the microwave and I’d have chicken and rice. Not necessarily what most people would eat for breakfast, but technically, this was dinner for me, regardless of what the clock on the wall said.
While the chicken spun around in the microwave, I opened a bottle of water and took a drink. I glanced over the pass-through wall. “You want something to drink?”
Ian pinned me with his eyes. “Yes, My Love. Yes I do.” Desire hooded his eyes and if I hadn’t known Ian had impeccable self-control, I might have been a little nervous.
“Coffee, water or wine?” The microwave dinged. “That’s all I’m offering you.”
“How about conversation?” He patted the seat next to him.
I took my chicken and water to the coffee table. “Nice ring.” I nodded toward the silver band and diamond-surrounded emerald gleaming on his finger. “Is it new?”
“No, My Love,” he settled back in the cushions, “it is very, very old. It was my father’s before I was turned. Chaos retrieved it for me.”
Well didn’t that just bring up all kinds of pleasant thoughts? “Retrieved” could mean so many things to a vampire. So I asked the most obvious, “Chaos killed your father?”
Ian shook his head. “No,” he said quietly, “he tried to save him.”
I dropped my fork, suddenly more interested in conversation than food. “Save him from what?”
“Chaos was my father’s friend, chums since they wore short pants.” His gaze went unfocused, as if he were lost in a memory.
“My father found out Chaos had been turned into a vampire. He hated him for it but his sense of honor still required that he protect Chaos.
“He moved into my father’s estate and was never seen during the day. At first, the villagers believed Chaos to be ill.” He snorted a laugh full of disbelief. “When the villagers found a young maiden with her throat ripped out, they became suspicious. Whispers of the supernatural had made their way throughout the village. Diseases were running rampant in other parts of the world, stirring controversies.”
He shifted closer to me. “It has always been easier for the human mind to fabricate their own explanations for tragedy than to accept blame for them.” He smiled slightly then waved his hand in an “anyway” gesture. “Whispers turned to shouts, shouts to accusations until I thought they had all lost their minds so I went to warn my father. People were so quick to assume the worst; they still are.”
He closed his eyes as if seeing it all over again. “I found Chaos, dead in the dungeon, my father keeping watch over him.”
Ian’s eyes popped open and he leaned forward on his knees. “My father told me the truth then. Chaos was indeed a vampire.” He shrugged. “So we started making preparations for the oncoming attack. All able-bodied men on the estate were armed, but they had little experience in defense and were quickly overcome.” Ian’s whole body was tense, his eyes closed.
“You don’t have to tell me this,” I interrupted. It was obviously bringing Ian pain to relive this.
Ian placed his hand over mine. “I want to,” he said simply.
He rubbed his thumb gently over my knuckles and continued. “Chaos was awake by the time they found us. He…” Ian pulled in a shuddered breath, “killed many of our attackers, but there were just too many.” He opened his eyes as if to shut out the scene playing through his mind. “My father was killed.”
“What about you and Chaos?” I asked with anticipation bubbling low in my stomach.
“They told us we were to be charged with harboring a criminal and placed us on house arrest.”
“But Chaos is…” I swallowed hard. “They thought your father was the vampire?”
“Aye,” Ian replied with a bit of an Irish brogue, as if recalling the story brought him back to his homeland. “The villagers believed my father was the vampire, holding Chaos captive for his blood.”
Ian snorted a laugh. “Chaos attacked me while I slept. He swore it was the only way he could protect the son of his friend, the son of the man who died in his place.”
“Oh, Ian.” I placed my hands on his face. “I’m so sorry.”
“He was right.” Ian pierced my gaze with his, small points of light swimming in a sea of darkness. He sighed deeply. “I have never admitted that to anyone,” he replied sadly. “Not even to myself.”
We sat for a few moments, the silence pounding in my ears. I knew Ian was sharing something with me that he rarely, if ever, spoke of. I didn’t want to say something to screw it up.
“It was easy to overcome the guards at our door and flee,” he continued suddenly. “But I didn’t stay away. I was a new vampire, full of uncontrollable urges and unquenched thirst.” He smiled and something sinister inside it made me shiver. “Every man who had been involved with my father’s death died ‘mysteriously’ in the coming nights. They believed the town cursed by the devil himself.” He laughed. “Aye, it was cursed and the devil was me.”
Emotion clogged my throat. “Do you hate him?” I croaked barely above a whisper.
Ian smiled then, a genuine smile that reached his eyes and lightened their color to sky blue. “No, My Love. Chaos tried to save my father,” he shrugged, “and me. He was right; we would not have survived if he hadn’t turned me.”
“Still, it was violent,” I protested.
“Yes, My Love. He could have done it differently, but he was new to this life as well and I’d like to think it would have been less … vehement if he had known how.”
“You’d like to think?” I wondered aloud.
“With Chaos, you can never know.” Ian leaned his head back, eyes closed, and rolled the tension from his shoulders. I sat quietly. Not just because I was content to let him have his moment of peace, but I didn’t really know what to say. Chaos had been both his killer and protector. If I had the ability to save someone I loved by ending their existence, would I do it?
Could I forgive someone if they did it for me?
We each sat with our own silence echoing in our ears for a while. Then, after securing the shutters to eliminate any threat of sun, Ian “slept” on the couch, much to his disappointment, and was gone before I woke.
Chapter Twenty-One
We were to meet at my office after I made a quick stop for some take-out Chinese food. I walked in and plopped the food down on my desk, hoping to eat while I sifted through the daily e-mail, when my phone rang. I looked at the screen to see Wilson’s smiling face. My new phone had a camera thingy on it and I matched everyone’s photo to the phone number. I had everyone except
Sam and Ian. For my best friend Jess I had a photo of Oscar, her precocious three-year-old son who was also my Godchild. Jess was raising Oscar by herself and after some happy yet exhaustive babysitting duty, simply amazes me. I’d asked who his father was, but she refused to tell anyone. She simply says they are better off without him. I thought he should at least pay child support but Jess was a well-respected attorney and earned enough to make a comfortable life for her and Oscar.
“Hey, Wilson, what’s up?” I asked around a mouthful of pepper steak.
“I have something down here I think you’re going to want to see,” he yelled over the noise around him. “I’m at the train station.”
Ian walked in, his attention focused on the phone. I knew his vampire hearing allowed him to listen to both sides of the conversation, even from the hallway. I didn’t know how far I had to be to have a private conversation but I made a mental note to ask him later. He was dressed all in black again, only switching his black silk button-down shirt for a black T-shirt that hugged the muscles of his body. He looked like he’d been hitting the gym. Contrary to what Hollywood would have you believe, vampires are not all beautiful. I’ve seen some seriously fucking ugly ones. Vamps may remain forever immortal and at the same age, but they could tone their body just like humans. The same is true for shapeshifters, except they aren’t immortal. Shapeshifters age far more slowly than humans do, but they will die. Ian was just as drop-dead gorgeous in life, as he was immortal. No pun intended.
“Leah? You listening to me?” Wilson called through the phone.
I swallowed hard and felt the blush creep up my face. Just like Ian could hear both sides of the conversation, he could hear my heart rate increase and the blood flowing through my veins. The crooked smile on his face told me he knew exactly what I was thinking about, even without the mind connection. Shit.
“Yeah, Wilson, sorry, I was, uh … distracted for a second.”
“Well undistract yourself and get your ass down here. Don’t come alone,” he warned.
That got my undivided attention. “What? Why not?”
“Just don’t. Okay, Leah?” His voice deepened. “Bring someone with you.”
I was standing and heading for the door before he finished talking. “I’ll be there in ten.” I disconnected the call and dialed Sam. It didn’t matter what time of day or night it was. SINS was a twenty-four-seven job. The powers that be really needed to allocate us enough funds to hire office staff.
“Sam, I’m on my way to the train station to meet Wilson. He advised me not to go alone.”
“Is Nightwalker with you?” He sounded alert so I must not have woken him.
“Yeah.”
“Keep me informed.” Sam hung up.
I flipped my phone shut and shoved it in my pocket.
“I’ll drive.” Ian’s long legs paced my shorter ones as we left the building and strode toward the parking lot. “It’s faster.”
I opened my mouth to spit out a snide remark when he lifted his chin toward a sleek black sports car parked next to my rented sedan. The windows were tinted so dark there wasn’t much variation between the color of the car and the black of the windows. The gull wing doors opened and it looked like a great bird of prey getting ready to take flight. All I could say was “wow.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said as he placed his hand at the small of my back to urge me into the car. I took a seat in the passenger side and ran my hand across all that leather like a lover’s caress. It was so soft that the first thought I had was that I’d like to roll around on it naked.
“That can be arranged,” Ian answered the thought I hadn’t said out loud, which told me I still had a little work to do on shielding.
“You are anxious; it causes your shields to weaken,” Ian said as he took his seat and put the keys in the ignition.
“Dammit! Cut that out! And what the hell makes you believe I was thinking about you?” I know it was snarky, but he had it coming.
“Shield better,” he replied flatly as he turned the key and the engine growled to life—and I do mean growled. Purring was far too tame for the sound of this car’s engine.
“It’s an RJ5, a prototype. It tops out at nearly two hundred miles per hour, more since I had it modified.”
“Two hundred miles per hour wasn’t fast enough for you? You’ll kill yourself!”
He just looked at me until I figured out I’d had one of those “duh” moments. “I guess you can’t technically kill yourself,” I said sheepishly. “But why would you want to go faster than that?”
He shrugged with a completely boyish smile. “Why not?”
I suppressed a laugh and looked out of the dark windows, surprised at how clear everything was. “I thought with windows tinted this dark it would be difficult to see, at least for a human.”
“Who said you’re human?”
It was my turn to give him the look.
“Like I said, I had it modified,” Ian said as if that answered everything. “The tint allows me to drive in daylight.”
“How early do you wake now?” I asked.
“When a vampire can rise depends upon their age. With age comes power.”
“Yeah?”
“My bond with you increased my power.”
“So how early?” I asked again.
“It depends on how much healing I require. Death sleep is when my body fully repairs itself.”
“So if you can withstand some daylight already, why the tint?” I asked.
“Some, yes. However, at full sun I am still vulnerable.”
“So you would have been able to make it home this morning after all?” I narrowed my eyes at him but couldn’t really put a convincing bit of anger into it.
The half of his face that I could see lifted in a devilish grin, one slender eyebrow arching for just a moment.
“Damn it, Ian!”
He tilted his head and looked at me. “I do not want to be unable to go to you if you should need me.”
Damn. I couldn’t think of a single reply to that. The fact he would risk true death in the sunlight to get to me. Damn.
* * * *
Ian pulled into the gravel area that served as the train station parking lot and parked next to a car marked “county morgue”. The fact the medical examiner was already there let me know Wilson had most likely called me in to try and talk to the soul of whomever had died here.
The station was really just a small building placed next to the tracks with a slide-through window to allow ticket purchases without needing to go inside. An antique passenger car stood as a reminder that travel by rail was once the most popular way to get from one side of the country to the other. The air was pungent with the mixed odor of diesel fuel and the residual metal caused by the grinding of wheels on rail.
I had to flash my badge at the uniform to get past the yellow police tape. He looked like he wanted to stop Ian but let him pass. I wondered if Ian had used mind control but decided I didn’t want to know the answer.
I really didn’t.
I asked anyway.
“Did you just compel him to get past the barricade?”
Ian nodded with a “what do you think” expression.
I shook my head and kept on walking until I found Wilson. “Hey, Wilson.”
“About damn time you got here,” he said in greeting. He looked up from his notepad and in two long strides covered the distance between us and grabbed Ian by the front of his shirt, forcing him to shuffle back a couple of steps.
“What the?” I stammered. I could feel the rage flowing off Wilson like waves crashing into the shoreline.
“You brought her into this!” Wilson snarled into Ian’s face.
Ian said nothing and stood perfectly still, staring at Wilson, who still had his fist twisted in the front of Ian’s shirt.
Wilson released Ian suddenly then turned and hugged me. I knew my face looked completely shocked. Wilson rarely showed affection in front of his co
ps, anger maybe, but not affection. It was something we had just silently agreed on when I became a cop myself. Home was home. Work was work. It was part of the reason I called him Wilson instead of Dad. The rest, I guess, was because I knew him as Wilson before he became my dad. I had other issues with my reasons for not calling Alli Mom, but I’d dwell on them later.
Okay, never.
I looked around Wilson to see Ian, but his face gave nothing away—it was completely vampire blank. Wilson stepped back and said nothing as he took my arm and led me to the victim. The cops around the body were strangely quiet.
Or was it just me?
The woman lay peacefully on her back with her hands across her chest. She was clutching a single black rose across the long white vintage dress she wore. There was no blood and if it wasn’t for her too-pale complexion, turning slightly ashen, you might not even know she was dead. She looked serene, happy even. Her long dark hair was curled and a veil was arranged around her head like a fan.
A look of shock then recognition raced across Ian’s face before he schooled it back to his blank expression. It happened so quickly that if I had blinked, I probably would have missed the emotion.
Wilson looked at Ian and all I could think of was “if looks could kill”.
“You call her ‘My Love’,” right?” Wilson took a menacing step closer to Ian.
Ian nodded, not taking a step toward or away from Wilson.
“We found this attached to the flower.” Wilson handed me an opened card that had already been sealed in an evidence bag.
I held it up to the light and read it. The envelope was addressed to “My Love”.
You are cordially invited to host the gathering of
The Order of Chaos
Attendance is mandatory
Details will be forthcoming
I looked at Ian and his face was now blank, but I could see a tick working in his jaw that told me he was clenching his teeth. “Your Chaos?” I asked.
He gave one short nod.
“Then this is for you, Leah?” Wilson asked a little hesitantly, as if not saying it out loud meant it couldn’t be true.
The Order of Chaos Page 9