by Kat Cotton
He grabbed his pillows to make a nest. This was no time to insist on him sleeping in his bed.
I ran upstairs to get more blood for him. He waved it away.
“Yuck.”
“Yuck?”
“Want tasty.”
Of course he did. That bagged blood tasted like shit, even if you warmed it up a little. Nothing beat the richness of fresh blood. If only I could find someone for him to feed from. I stayed beside him, stroking his hair, until he fell asleep.
With Vlad sleeping, I had some time to search for a new place. The decision to move was for the best. I’d only moved to this town to sort out the mess Vlad had made after he’d woken. I’d hoped we could destroy him and prevent the entire paranormal world being exposed. Instead, it had turned out that Vlad couldn’t be destroyed and my only option was to train him.
In the meantime, my plan to keep our kind underground had been totally screwed up. Between the mayor and the Vampire King, we had no secrecy at all.
I’d made a list of possible cities. Prague, Berlin, Paris and Budapest topped the list. The rest of the pack could join us there too.
I checked the news.
Another Northside Gang attack.
I hated those guys. Their leader, Lucio, thought he was hot shit, but he was just regular shit.
I couldn’t stay here with them making vampire killings the most trending news story. If only there had been someone I could pay to destroy them for me. Oh, yeah, there was: Clem Starr, but I’d sent her off to another country. Damn it all.
Even worse, the only other demon fighter in town had recently tried to kill me. That made hiring him a problem. Also, he had all that moral stuff about working with vampires.
The damn mayor should be the one trying to stop these attacks, but he had his own agenda, and that agenda meant doing the exact opposite. The mayor had no qualms about a few innocents being killed if it meant exposing vampires. I had no qualms about innocents, either, but then I was a vampire. No soul. It wasn’t in my DNA to give a shit. Protecting my pack was my priority.
I had to do something.
I kept checking Airbnbs. One had carpet that I just couldn’t live with. Quite a few were nice but didn’t have enough room for the entire pack. Even if Luis and Shelley bunked in together, we still needed six bedrooms as well as the basement. Jeb couldn’t share a room with anyone without arguing, and Andre was too much of a man-whore to share his room. At a pinch, I could put Oscar and Kisho in the same room.
Damn them. Worst case scenario, the whole bunch of them could share a room and fight it out amongst them instead of being a bunch of princesses. So long as I had my own room and we had somewhere for Vlad.
Oh, there was a particularly promising Airbnb in Budapest. Big enough for the entire pack. It might have a basement. The photos didn’t show it that well. Amazing kitchen, two living areas. Seemed perfect.
I messaged the host to check if it had a secure basement. You had to be careful about how you phrased that otherwise it looked super creepy. It would have been so much easier if Airbnb had had a filter for basements.
That’d been hard work. I needed a cup of tea. Cake would be really nice too, but I hadn’t had time to shop.
By the time I’d made my tea, the host had replied. There was no basement. I’d been sure it looked like one in the photo. Hell, if you couldn’t find a decent vampire lair in Europe, where could you find one?
I went to check on Vlad. He’d want to train again.
He hadn’t woken. He lay curled in a ball, cuddling with Hellhound. I got out my camera and took a few more photos. He looked so peaceful.
He opened his eyes. “Pretty man?”
“Ready to get up?”
He shook his head. But he always wanted to get up and train. He’d lost the sparkle from his eyes. I’d never seen a vampire get sick before. Injured, yes, but never sick or lethargic. And he’d gone downhill so quickly.
“I need to go out for more blood.”
“Tasty!”
I needed to work on expanding his vocabulary, too.
I patted his head. “I won’t be long,” I told him. Then I put on another one of my motivational DVDs. “Come and watch this.”
He got out of bed but just curled up in front of the TV. He hardly seemed to notice me leave.
I had a contact at the hospital who supplied me with blood bags for a very high cost. I dropped by to pick them up. On the way home, I turned on the radio. That Taylor Swift, I really loved her.
As I passed the little café down the street from where I lived, I saw him. Lucio. Damn him. He came out of the café with a couple of his gang members, all wearing long leather coats. That look was so dated. What the hell was he doing in my neighborhood?
I definitely needed to get out of this town, and fast.
Chapter 9 Clem: Summer Honey
The only words the priest had written in Kisho’s book were “summer honey.”
“That priest obviously wants a piece of you. He’s gagging for a bit of Kisho lovin’.”
Kisho traced over the words. They weren’t even in real Japanese, just this weird script they used for English words and shit like that. It made no sense to me that they would have, like, three writing systems, but when I’d asked Kisho to explain it, he’d told me I wouldn’t understand even if he told me. Because that’s what people say when something makes no sense at all but they don’t want to admit it.
I slurped my noodles. Ramen really was the best food for demon fighting. Followed by cake. Maybe we could drop by the convenience store on the way back to the hotel and get some delicious cake.
“It’s a clue.”
“It’s a come-on. I got a glimpse of that guy out back. He looked hentai as fuck.”
“You’re been here for less than a week, and that’s the first Japanese word you pick up?”
“Actually, I used to date a guy who was into anime.”
“I think I don’t need to know any more about that.”
But he smiled that sweet smile that punctuated his dimples. Once, I’d taken those sweet smiles for granted, but now I treasured every single one. I knew how quickly they could disappear.
“When we get back to the hotel, I’ll do some Internet research. No point running around looking for ‘summer honey’ all night. It could mean anything. Is honey something kitsune are particularly into? I know they like red beans, but I’ve never heard anything about honey.”
“I doubt it. If he meant honey literally, he’d have used the Japanese word.”
That made a whole heap of sense.
I picked up the egg from my ramen bowl. The egg was so much the best part. I wanted to eat it now, but I wanted to save it until the end. Life was filled with moral dilemmas.
“So, it’s a brand name or something?” I asked, plopping my egg back in the broth.
“I guess so. You know, you can get more than one egg.”
I almost dropped my chopsticks. “No shit.” Two eggs would solve all my problems. Maybe not all, but a huge part of them. I’d so get the extra egg next time. “That’s egg-citing. Egg-stravagant. Egg-cellent news.”
“Eat up, so we can go research this,” Kisho said.
Oh, yeah, a night of research, side-by-side on the sofa. That would be so cozy. The whole gap between us would disappear, and it’d be lovely snuggles like we used to have.
“We could go to karaoke again on the way back,” I said. “That was fun.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Kisho said. “We really need to get to work on catching this kitsune. The sooner we catch it, the sooner we can get back to Nic. He’d never say it in a million years, but I think he really needs help with the Demon Child. He’s not used to doing things for himself.”
“You’re saying that out of real concern and not because you hate my singing?”
“A little of both, really.” But he looked up at me and smiled in that shy way that always melted my heart.
I smiled back. I
t’d take a long time for things to repair between us, but we’d made a start.
We’d almost arrived back at the hotel when the rain started. It pelted down so hard, my skin stung where it hit me. I moved to huddle in a shop doorway, but Kisho grabbed my hand and ran with me.
The blanket of rain around us made it feel like we were the only people in the world. The city lights blurred and became patches of color. As I ran, water splashed up my legs, but Kisho’s grasp on my hand held tight. Even though the rain soaked through to my skin, the warmth of Kisho’s touch spread through my body. The coldness I’d thought would never leave me had completely disappeared.
I’d run forever with him.
Water dripped down my face, blinding me, but I trusted Kisho to guide me.
When we got back to the room, I needed to have a shower and put on some dry clothes. Kisho’s wet t-shirt clung to his chest. Bonus. He could stay like that if he liked. I mean, he was half-vampire, so it wasn’t like he’d catch a cold. That rain might’ve stung like a bastard, but it had its merits.
“Meet you in the living area in 20 minutes,” he said.
“Damn, I forgot to buy my cake.” Also damn, he’d dry himself off and I’d not get to perve on him.
“I can run out and get you one,” he said.
That was why I loved him so much.
I smiled at him. “Thank you.”
Once we were dried off and caked up, I fired up my laptop and did a Google search.
“A maid café sounds like one of the stupid things on that list you had. He couldn’t have possibly meant that,” Kisho said.
“It’s the most likely place on the list. Unless you want to go on the Pooh Bear Honey Hunt at this theme park, which quite frankly does not sound at all appropriate for children. Then there’s a fashion label. That’s not much use.”
Kisho grabbed my laptop, fiddled with the settings, then searched using Japanese. Not much else came up that I could tell.
“Okay, we’ll try the maid café,” he said.
He leaned back on the sofa, his t-shirt riding up to show a sexy strip of midriff. Oh, yeah, it would be so worth trying that waterfall cleansing—which probably wouldn’t be much worse than the rain storm had been. Even though it was meant to be a cleansing ritual, it’d be as hot as hell if Kisho did it with me.
“We can’t just rock up. We’ll find out nothing that way. We’ll just look like dumb tourists.”
“I can talk to them.”
“Not good enough. We need to infiltrate the maid café. Not in a dirty way.” Not like the way I wanted to infiltrate Kisho. Surely, he couldn’t sit there with that tantalizing flesh on display without realizing the effect it had. He wanted to tempt me. He wanted me to lick his abs. Just as I set about putting that idea in motion, he sat up again.
“You could hire a maid outfit and pretend you were there for an interview.”
“I’d look hot dressed as a maid,” I said. Then a sly grin spread over my face. “But it’d be pointless. I don’t speak Japanese, so we’d get nowhere. There’s only one person here who speaks Japanese.”
“No way. Absolutely no way.”
“I’ll help you do your makeup and shave your legs.”
He folded his arms. “I repeat, no way.”
“How about we call Nic and get his take on this?” I thought that might work, since Kisho always did what Nic said. Nic would so be behind this plan.
“No!”
“Come on.”
“The pair of you would just want to see me dressed as a maid for your own twisted amusement. There is no rational reason for it.”
He wasn’t wrong about that. Except, for once, there was a rational reason.
“It’s necessary for the case. The café name is the only thing that fits the priest’s clue, and we need to get behind the façade. You’re the one who wants to get back home to Nic. A tiny little sacrifice like this is a small price to pay.”
I did begging eyes.
“There will be NO photos.”
“Okay, I promise.” But I crossed my fingers behind my back. There would be photos. Who could resist a chance like this?
“And don’t tell Nic.”
I screwed up my face. That ruined half the fun of it. But Nic had a big mouth. If I told him, he’d never keep it to himself.
“Promise.”
“I’m sorry I followed you today,” I said. “If I’d realized...”
“That’s okay. It’s a good thing you did. The cleansing at the temple really helped.”
I wasn’t sure if it’d been the cleansing itself that had helped or if it was because Kisho had been nice to me after I’d done the cleaning ritual. Either way, it was all good.
Now that that’d been settled, I had to ask him something.
“Tell me about your mother,” I asked. “If you don’t mind talking about it, that is.”
I unwrapped the plastic from my cake slice and tucked my legs up under me.
“No, it’s okay. What do you want to know?”
“The whole story. It’s pretty unheard of for a human to give birth to a vampire baby.”
Kisho pushed back his hair from his face and stared off into the middle distance. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked him, even though he’d said he was happy to talk about it. I had a feeling it wouldn’t be a happy story.
“You probably don’t know much about Japanese history,” he said, “but back then, Japan was closed off to the rest of the world. No foreigners allowed.”
I nodded.
“My mother lived in Edo. That’s what Tokyo was called back then. Her family, my grandparents, were merchants. They made kimono and were quite wealthy, wealthier than most samurai. My mother lived a very quiet life, but her beauty was famed in the city. That bought many customers to the kimono store.”
“Because they wanted to see the famous beauty?”
He nodded.
“But it was also a curse. My grandparents wanted a good marriage for her. Not necessarily to a wealthy man. Often, in those days, if a merchant family didn’t have a son, they’d marry their daughter to one of the workers apprenticed in the business. Then they’d adopt him into the family and he’d become the heir. For my mother, there were two suitable candidates. One of the men, Hiroshi, was young and strong. My mother told me he was very good-looking. The other, Kazu, was wizened and grasping. Of course, my mother favored Hiroshi. But even then, she wanted to wait.”
“So, she wasn’t in love with either of them?” I inched closer to him.
“I think not. Love wasn’t really something that people knew about back then. Women had to marry to do their duty, and the best thing they could wish for was a man who didn’t mistreat them. Because the man she married would inherit the business, she had to make sure that he would be suitable not just for her.”
Kisho didn’t look at me while he told his story. It seemed like something from a history book, but this had been his life. I couldn’t even imagine it. You forget that vampires know all about the olden days because they lived them.
“Then, my father happened.”
I nodded. I’d wondered how that vampire had played into all this.
“Even though foreigners were banned, killed on sight, he ignored those laws. Human laws meant nothing to him. He only moved at night to avoid people noticing his white face, but, of course, it was hard to disguise his differences. Still, his presence overwhelmed people. Even if he’d been human, he would’ve towered above the local people. People were a lot shorter back then.”
“Why was he in Japan in the first place?”
Kisho shrugged. “I have no idea.”
“Okay, but he met your mother. Obviously.”
“He came to the kimono shop. He said he’d heard about the store’s reputation, but I think it was my mother’s reputation that drew him. She became fascinated by him.”
“Did he thrall her?”
“I don’t think so. Even years later, the few times she talked about him,
there was a fire in her eyes that wasn’t entirely hatred. Naturally, she tried to avoid him. It seemed a preposterous idea for her to be attracted to this strange man.”
I nodded again. I didn’t want to say it out loud, but I could understand. The Vampire King was a compelling man even with his ice-coldness and evil. Maybe it was exactly that coldness that made him so compelling.
Kisho stared at the television set, even though it wasn’t switched on. Even though he was staring, I think he’d lost himself in the details of his history. I sat close to him, wanting him to know that I was right here beside him.
“She stayed away from him, leaving the store when he appeared, until one night in the summer. Summer festivals are huge events, even now. The family all went together, but my mother slipped away with several of the daughters from other merchant houses. In that darkness, with the summer heat and the fireworks and the festival excitement, my father found her. She never told me what happened, but since I was born nine months later, I think you get the general idea.”
“The Vampire King disappeared after that?”
“He did. He never knew she was pregnant. Or, if he did, he didn’t care. He knew it’d be near impossible for her to give birth to a half-vampire baby, anyway.”
I rubbed Kisho’s arm. This must’ve been so hard for him. He trembled slightly as he told me, but he didn’t stop talking.
“When it became obvious that my mother was pregnant, my parents insisted she marry. Hiroshi, the apprentice, disappeared, not wanting to take on that responsibility. Kazu, however, was more than willing to take on another man’s child if it meant inheriting the business. They married, and my mother disappeared from public view. Once I was born, she became ill. Very ill. Because I was born. She’d done the impossible, and it almost broke her.”
I wanted to put my arm around him, to pull him to me and comfort him, but I wasn’t sure if I should. If he pulled away, it would hurt too much. Instead, I took his hand in mine. I rubbed my thumb along his. Just that contact with him made me happy.
“We both were kept hidden away, my mother and I. She was terrified that if my father found out about my existence, he’d come for me. Maybe kill me. By then, she’d worked out what he was. I don’t know if he told her himself or if she learned from someone else.