by L. E. Wilson
More specifically, that they could not be trusted. Not under any circumstances.
Apparently, their old coven used to work quite closely with some that lived in their area to help them protect their shared territory; before the new High Priest took over and her family had attempted to flee to the other side of the ocean.
However, he wasn't anything like she'd imagined as a kid. In retrospect, it seemed kind of silly now, but she'd always pictured vampires as being all dark and creepy, with waxy, white skin, long fingernails and black, slick-backed hair. Like in the old movies.
Not a hard-bodied, olive-skinned, grey-eyed, charismatic Brit that looked like a model and sent off vibes that made her want to rip off his dusty clothes and ride him like a rodeo bull.
When he wasn't creeping her out, that is.
She still couldn't quite put her finger on it, but there was just something...off... about him. And it wasn't the vampire thing. It was more than that, she realized now. Something else that her senses were picking up on, something that urged her to sprint in the opposite direction even as she wanted to curl up in his arms and let him make sweet, sweet love to her.
"Don't play with me...Wanno."
The scary dude's voice echoed around in her head.
I thought he'd said his name was Aiden. Who the hell is Waano?
Just when she was certain her ribs weren't going to survive this escape attempt intact, his pace finally eased up and he slowed down to an easy jog.
The dude wasn't even breathing hard.
Looping the bag's short strap over one arm, she placed both palms on his firm ass and straightened her arms, pushing herself up until she could take a deep breath.
He gave her an answering squeeze on her own derriere and she swatted him, eliciting a rakish chuckle from her frisky rescuer.
The smell of the ocean was strong, which meant they were close to the water, but that didn't tell her much. Two thirds of Dalian was surrounded by the East China Sea. And with all of the skyscrapers surrounding them, it wasn't always visible anyway, but it did tell her they were downtown.
He slipped into a narrow alley between buildings, and she dropped her head down again. She pulled the bag close and shoved her face back into the small of his back just in time to avoid either one from being smashed into the side of the building as he whipped around to check that they hadn't been followed.
Aiden chuckled again, "What a bunch of wankers."
Striding to the back of the alley, he hefted Grace easily up and off his shoulder and set her on her feet in front of him.
"Ow! Dammit!" Her left ankle throbbed painfully when she tried to put her weight on it. She must've twisted it when he threw her out the window.
He grabbed her upper arms to steady her. "What's wrong?"
She swatted his hands away. "You broke my ankle!"
"When?" he demanded.
"When you threw me out the window!"
"I wouldn't say I threw you, exactly."
She shot him a glare.
"Here, let me see." Crouching down in front of her, he took her foot gently in his hand as she balanced herself with one hand on the top of his head.
Probing the joint until she winced, he carefully set it back down and stood up.
"I don't think it's broken, just sprained."
"No thanks to you," she grumbled.
"I told you you should've worn different shoes," he reprimanded.
She stared up at him in disbelief. "I didn't know when I left the house this morning that I was going to be chasing a bunch of Suits all over town. Or, that I was going to be THROWN OUT OF A WINDOW!"
"Would you rather that I'd left you there with them?"
"Oh, shut up," she huffed at him.
He took the bag from her hand and held it up by his ear, giving it a shake. "So, what's in this all-important bag anyway?"
"Stop jostling it!" She hobbled towards him, trying to take the bag back as he held it above his head.
"But what is it?"
"I told you. My Mojo. Give it to me!"
He gave her a skeptical look, but lowered the bag until she could grab it from his hand.
"Give me that." Setting it carefully on the ground, she eased herself down onto her butt next to it and carefully unzipped the zipper. A little bit scared of what she might find, she tentatively opened it up and peeked inside.
"Mojo!" she squealed excitedly a second later. Thank the gods he was all right!
Reaching into the bag, she slowly and carefully cupped her hands around her beloved Mojo, wincing slightly as he huffed and bristled.
Seemed he was still a bit shaken up from the bouncy ride.
She ignored his spiky quills and lifted him up in front of her to show the vampire, her smile lighting up her face.
He stared at her for so long her smile began to slip. "What?" she asked.
He blinked a few times and looked from her to the small creature in her hands, and then back at her, his blank features not giving anything away.
Finally, he lifted an eyebrow. "That is what I risked life and limb for? A rat with prickles stuck in its bum? A boot brush?"
She cradled her pet to her chest, attempting to calm him. "He is NOT a boot brush!" she scolded. "He's a hedgehog, you dork. He's my pet, and my friend," she added. Cooing to him softly, she smoothed down his spiky quills.
"You have a porcupine for a friend?"
She glared up at him while she tried to decide if he really had never seen a hedgehog (though she didn't see how that was possible), or if he was just yanking her chain. "He's not a porcupine. He's a hedgehog."
His face screwed up in confusion. "But, why ever would you want that thing? You can't even snuggle with him without getting jabbed. What good is it? Does it even do any tricks?"
Mojo wiggled his nose at her, happy to be with her again now that he had calmed down enough to realize who she was, and she touched it with her own. "Don't listen to him, Mojo. He's just a stupid vampire."
Rubbing her nose with Mojo's again, she suddenly shivered. She hadn't really noticed how chilly it had gotten until just now. Looks like it was going to be a long, cold, painful walk home.
At least until the vampire went away and she could fix her ankle.
Caught up as she was in her reunion with her beloved pet, it took her a moment before she sensed the tension hanging in the air. Glancing up, she found Aiden had become eerily still, his normally animated expression completely closed off.
"What did you just call me?" he asked softly.
Uh oh.
Well, she saw no reason to lie now. "A stupid vampire."
His expression didn't change. "Why would you call me that?"
Dropping her eyes, she sighed as she carefully pet Mojo. He was right. That had been a mean thing to say.
Looking directly at him, she grudgingly apologized. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that," she told him with as much sincerity as she could muster. "You're not stupid. I'm sure you're very intelligent. You probably have multiple college degrees."
Shaking his head, he said, "No, I meant the 'vampire' part."
Now it was her turn to be confused. "Because that's what you are, aren't you?"
He just cocked his head at her and didn't answer.
She rolled her eyes. "Come on, dude. No human could run the way you just did."
"Maybe I'm just extremely fast and agile."
"Yeah, ok," she scoffed. Then another thought came to her. "Or are you a shifter?" She paused. "A werewolf? Shit. Are you a werewolf?!"
That seemed to snap him out of his trance. "I am NOT a dog," he assured her, his tone thick with repugnance. "Although some very good mates of mine are, and they don't seem to mind it."
"Then I was right. You must be a vamp." She resumed petting Mojo. "I'm not totally ignorant, you know. I've known you guys exist my entire life. Actually, I know quite a bit about your kind."
"Whatever is that for?"
"What?" she asked, confused.
"There was no 'tone' in my voice." Was there? Maybe there was. She wouldn’t be surprised if it had slipped out, though she hadn't meant it to.
He looked as if he was about to keep arguing with her, but then he sighed, shrugged, and shoved his hands into his pockets. "Honestly, I thought you would've figured it out sooner, what with my outrageous good looks and all." He gave her a wink. "Humans are not this pretty."
Grace rolled her eyes. "Yeah, yeah. You would think you all would have learned to be a little more modest by now." She ignored his gloating look when she didn't deny the fact that he was good-looking. "But it was the fangs that really gave you away."
"My fangs?" His tongue reached out and touched the tip of one. "Ah. Yes. I imagine that would do it. How very uncivilized of me. My apologies, luv."
Eying up those canines of his, an unpleasant thought came to her. "You're not planning on eating me, are you?"
He scowled down at her, crossing his arms across his chest, letting loose another small poof of dust. "You know, you're the second female who's accused me of eating people recently."
"That doesn't answer my question," she responded.
He rolled his eyes. "Of course I'm not going to eat you."
An even worse fear came to her. "Are you going to eat Mojo?" she squeaked. "Like those vamps in all the teeny bopper stories these days?"
He dropped his head back in exasperation. "No! I don't eat rats!"
She threw the bag at him. "He's not a rat!"
Aiden waved away her protest. "All right, all right. I don't eat anything with prickles. Besides, I just fed shortly before I found you."
That didn't really make her feel better, and she kept Mojo close to her chest just in case. A mental image of him feeding on some poor, helpless person popped into her head. She wondered vaguely if he preferred men or women? Or if it even mattered to him? Maybe after living for so long, he'd want to mix it up a little.
Then she wondered what it would feel like to have him at her neck, pulling at her vein, taking her life force into his body; becoming a part of him.
Literally.
Her insides stirred at the thought, and not in a bad way. She quickly looked down and cleared her throat, trying to ignore the lust that was coursing through her. "Then why are your fangs all out and pointy?"
If he'd noticed her discomfort, he gave no sign of it. "They just do that if any emotions are running high." He shrugged, unconcerned. "Must be all of the excitement."
Without warning, he crouched down in front of her with a wicked smile. "Want to touch them?"
She drew back away from him. "Yeah. Not happening, dude."
His smile fell, disappointment taking its place. "You don't strike me as the wilting type, poppet."
Lifting her chin defiantly, she didn't bother to defend herself. Let him think what he wanted to.
He watched her pet Mojo. "Am I to take it you only like being jabbed by pointy things when they're attached to something that you think you can handle?"
"I don't like being 'jabbed' by anything."
"Don't knock it till you try it, luv. You just might like it."
His grey eyes danced as he teased her, holding her own a little longer than necessary, and then he rose again to his full height.
She continued to soothe her pet as her face burned self-consciously. And it was not because she was worried that he was right. It wasn't.
Glancing at him sideways, she watched as he tilted his head to listen to the sounds around them. She studied his perfect profile, and barely caught herself before she let out a despondent sigh. It really wasn't fair. Why couldn't he be a normal guy? Even if he meant all the flirting he was doing, she knew better than to trust her heart to a vampire.
Vampires only looked out for themselves. As a human, she was nothing to him. He would betray her in the end, just like they all did.
Her mother had trusted a vampire, and he'd gotten her father killed.
Not to mention the whole eating people to survive thing.
Besides, she really, really, liked sex. Could vampires even have sex?
Seemingly satisfied that no one of any consequence was nearby, he pulled his hood up to cover his head just as a fat raindrop landed on her arm. Almost immediately, it turned into a steady drizzle.
He huddled over her, shielding her with his body. "Let's get us out of this rain, shall we? Before you catch a chill, and I turn from a pile of dust to a puddle of mud."
She opened her mouth to tell him that she was perfectly capable of making it home on her own, but before she could utter a sound, he'd scooped her up into his strong arms. She automatically threw an arm around his neck and supported Mojo with the other as he snuggled down into her ample cleavage.
"Lucky rat."
His wistful voice was so quiet she wasn't sure she had heard him correctly. She raised her eyes to find him watching the hedgehog burrow under her shirt as she protected him from the rain with her hand, an expression of such intense longing on his face she was a bit startled.
She smacked him lightly on the back of the head, just hard enough to get his attention. "In your dreams, dude."
He turned his head slightly, his grey eyes locking onto her green ones, his sensual mouth only a few inches from her own.
The raw intensity she saw there made her heart hitch in her chest, and her eyes were drawn to his lips of their own accord.
Her breaths grew shallow as she stared at that beautiful mouth, slightly worried that she'd gone too far. Although probably not as worried as she ought to be. Her tongue slid out to wet her bottom lip, and she felt his hands tighten on her.
But he only repeated, "Don't know what you're missing, poppet," and then gave her a devilish wink. Tossing her up a bit, presumably to get a better hold on her, he chuckled softly when she squealed, and gathered her even closer to him. With one last, lusty look at her breasts, he turned to leave.
"Wait! What about the bag?" she asked.
"What about it?" he responded without slowing down.
"I think we should bring it with us. Whatever's in there was awfully important to those Suits I was following, and they were obviously having a secret meet up with the scary dudes. Maybe having to do with whatever is in there?"
Aiden paused for all of half a second. "True." Spinning around, he walked back to the where the bag was lying in the rain, switched her to one arm, and swiped it up.
"And who the hell were those other guys who came in?" she asked as they got moving again. "The ones who were calling you 'Wanno'?"
"No idea," he answered quickly. Too quickly. "So, where do you live?"
She'd felt him stiffen slightly at her question. Squinting through the rain and the dark, she tried to get her bearings in the dim light of the street lamps. "Go that way." She pointed down the deserted street to the right.
He was lying about not knowing those other guys, she was sure of it. But why?
"What do you mean you don't know? You acted like you knew them, and they seemed to know you. Or know you as Waano, anyway. And you were calling the scary leader dude 'Steven'."
The rain came down harder and she shivered and cuddled closer to him as she waited for him to answer.
He hunched over her, shielding her as best as he could, and checked once behind him before he finally said, "I used to know them. They were good mates at one time, a long time ago. But I don't know who they are anymore."
He sounded so sad that her heart ached for him. Looking down at Mojo, snug inside her shirt, she frowned. She didn't need to be getting all mushy over a guy right now, especially a non-human one.
"Are they vampires too?"
He glanced down at her, a funny look in his eyes. "More or less."
What was that supposed to mean?
Maybe she should tell him that tonight wasn't the first time she'd seen those dudes around the city, and that every time she had, they'd totally freaked her out. There was something "wrong" about them, and s
he had a feeling Aiden knew more about it than he was telling her, because it was that same sense of wrongness that she got about him.
But as the rain continued to fall harder, she was distracted with trying to keep Mojo dry, and decided to save her other questions for when they got somewhere with a roof.
Speaking of which. "Do you have somewhere to stay today?" she asked. "Out of the sun?"
His cocky grin returned in full force. "I was hoping you would offer. Thank you, poppet. I'd love to stay at your place."
She scowled up at him. "I didn't offer anything. And you're not staying at my apartment! I was thinking more along the lines of an abandoned building you could break into or something."
His eyes filled with hurt. "But the sun will be coming up in less than two hours. You're going to kick me out to perish and burn after I saved you...and your silly rat? After I've carried you all the way home?" His features tightened suddenly. "I've seen vampires exposed to the sun before. Trust me, it's not pretty."
She opened her mouth to tell him that, yes, that was exactly what she was planning to do, but it didn't come out quite the way the way she'd intended. "Fine. You can stay at my place. I have a windowless closet you'll fit in, I think. But this offer is only for today!"
"Of course," he agreed in all seriousness.
She glanced up at him warily, but he was staring straight ahead, his expression impassive.
"Take a left up here," she grumbled.
This was going to rank right up there at the top of her current list of "Worst Ideas Ever". She just knew it.
Chapter Six
His heavy boots made no sound as he navigated the narrow, damp tunnels through the underground labyrinth that he now called home. His long strides ate up the distance effortlessly, and at a speed not normally achieved by anyone other than vampires or werewolves, of which he was neither.
The old-fashioned torches lining the walls flickered as he passed, half of them blowing out completely, but he didn't need the light. He knew this route by heart. Reaching up, he pushed the black hood of his cloak off his head and ran his hands through his short, dark hair.