Episode Two: Look Back in Anger

by S. N. Graves

  He paused, a brief withdrawal that left him once more breathing against her lips. Her eyes were filled with fear, disgust, and a feral bit of longing she’d probably yet to acknowledge. He brushed a thumb over her cheekbone, looking for some realization on her face as the spastic flashes of the passing streetlights lit it up. It wasn’t there. She still saw him as the monster.

  Fuck if he couldn’t be one if he had to.

  He twisted his lips into a painful sneer, so full of hate and disgust that wasn’t truly meant for her. “Respect. Devotion. You don’t get to complain.” Dipping his head from the light, he brought his lips to feather against the cusp of her ear as they moved slowly and deliberately over the well-remembered words. “Not one…peep. Am I understood?” And then he pushed his hand possessively between her thighs.

  He felt the change in her instantly, and his gut lurched in response to her own. His words turned him cold, the images they conjured agonizing. Images he didn’t want to see, to remember, but had to. Memory stirred in her as well; he felt it. Felt it as sure as her teeth that suddenly sank into his biceps.

  He growled, an inhuman reverberation that had her pulling bloodied teeth from his shirt with a startled gasp. His fingers churned tightly in her hair, yanking her head back and to the side, keeping those blunted human fangs at bay as he inspected the wound with his free hand. It wasn’t a proper mark, but not bad at all considering the tools she was working with.

  It didn’t have to be a good mark. As shoddy as it was, it would only lend support to what he was about to do—strengthen his claim. He released her hair, slipping his hand down to clasp her trembling jaw. The windows had steamed over, but her skin was cool and her teeth chattered loudly in the silence.

  “Sammy…” He smiled, even knowing it would offer her no reassurance, then he brushed his lips to hers once more. “I need you to close your eyes now.”

  “No.”

  “Trust me, you want to.”

  She stared at him a moment, the heavy weight of fear giving way to curiosity in her bright hazel eyes. His smile was a easier then. Their penchant for curiosity would be the end of both of them. She closed her eyes.

  He pushed back his suit jacket that she wore, then ran his fingers over the milky flesh of her shoulder. She shivered beneath his touch, and a shudder moved through him in kind. The shift came over him so fast he could barely control it. He winced at the snapping of his jaw as it spread, making way for his expanding teeth. If she heard it, if curiosity consumed her again and she opened her eyes…

  But she didn’t. Her heart skipped, the sickly out-of-sync pulse in her chest quickening so violently he feared it might kill her. But she didn’t open her eyes. He lingered longer than he should have, taking in her beauty with sharper vision now. The heat that rippled from her body in gentle waves was so pale. Weak. It made his heart clench; an agonizing hope that just maybe he wasn’t too late filled him.

  Then his lips were a tender caress along her bared shoulder. He breathed her in and tasted the rain on her skin. How he would have loved to leave it at a kiss.

  He made the bite quick, his teeth cutting through her muscle so easily it put her little nibble to shame. Not that it was a competition. Not…entirely.

  Her body reeled in his hold, twisting away from him, the jolt of pain that coursed through her so vivid it made him moan against her torn flesh. He tried to hold her still, to minimize the pain and the damage to only what was necessary, but her violent spasms were as out of his control as shrieking obscenities were out of hers.

  The pain consumed her, and then flowed into him in a torrent of delicious agony. It really shouldn’t have been so intoxicating. The staggering perverseness of it tore a rumbling purr from his throat as he cinched his teeth tighter, willing her through that bite to submit and be still.

  It took her a few excruciating moments to figure it out. To realize the more she resisted, the more she pushed, tugged, and screamed senselessly at him, the tighter he held her and the worse the pain became. Even then, it took a moment more for her pride to accept the loss and her struggles to cease. That was a good thing—she needed that pride if she was going to survive.

  When finally she went limp, still except for her trembling and the shaking of her ragged breaths, quiet except for the sobs held behind clenched teeth, he felt the pain ease. His teeth receded, and his mouth became a caress on that wound as easily as he’d inflicted it, his tongue a soothing balm to the swollen sting.

  She was sobbing when he wiped his mouth on the coat that now hung about her arm, then withdrew enough to allow her some movement. He nuzzled her jaw and lifted his head to whisper a soft reassurance against her ear.

  Then she used her freedom to punch him right in the groin.

  * * * *

  Alex had put on a clean pair of pants, but his new shirt was still sitting on the dresser, waiting for Jesse to finish tending his wound so he could put it back on. It was the first bullet wound he’d ever suffered, and he had to admit it sucked. He wasn’t the best with pain to begin with, but something like that was definitely more than he could handle sober. Unfortunately, the whiskey-laced beer Jesse stuck in his hand tasted and smelled of pure horse piss. What he wouldn’t give for a shot of morphine.

  The look on Zakai’s face when he pushed open the hotel door to find Alex sitting there, cradling an untouched beer against his chest and wincing with every prod of Jesse’s latex-covered fingers against his wound, made him want to crawl back under the bed to hide.

  “What the fuck happened?” Zakai stripped off his red leather coat and dropped it over the back of one of the remaining chairs, then stood at the end of the bed, looming over him. “I left you for an hour.”

  “Actually, was more like four hours.” Alex gave a dismissive wave of his hand, sloshing beer all over his clean pants. “Gun did it.”

  “I can see that.” His father fixed him with that disapproving glare he was used to. “What, did it just jump up and attack you?”

  He shrugged, and the pain that lanced through his shoulder instantly made him wish he hadn’t. “Sorta?”

  “I did it.” Jesse wiped off the rest of the crusting blood that coated Alex’s shoulder and then snapped his medical gloves off. “It wasn’t his fault.”

  Zakai arched a brow, and Alex couldn’t tell if he was contemplating decking Jesse or laughing. “Let me guess, he wouldn’t shut up? Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve considered resorting to extremes for a little peace and quiet in his presence.”

  “Well, there was that.” Jesse got up from the bed and tossed Alex his shirt from the dresser. “Not sayin’ I didn’t think about it, just saying this time it was an accident.”

  “I feel so loved. Really.” Alex tugged on his shirt, or rather half of it. He couldn’t manage to lift his arm on his wounded side to get it through the sleeve hole. Fuck it, maybe it would just be a battle-scar fashion statement.

  Zakai just nodded, looking around the room that was in complete shambles now. “You’ll be fine in a day or two. Get this mess cleaned up before you turn in. There’s blood and bloody paper all over.”

  The door was cracked open a bit—Zakai hadn’t taken the time to close it—but still Vincent knocked as he pushed inside, Vander not far behind him.

  “Got a call from Arles,” Vincent said. “Tings went alright with Marx. Mostly, dat is.”

  Vander slipped past Vin and collapsed on the bed. He wasn’t there a handful of seconds before he sat up and took Alex’s limp arm, carefully feeding it through the armhole of his shirt. “What happened here?” Vander asked with real concern. It was one of the man’s unspoken jobs—being concerned for Alex—since his father seemed incapable.

  Not that Alex minded. The attention, when he got it, was nice. Vander was tall and bronze, and beautiful in that way Native Americans tended to be. He had perfect, silken, shoulder length black hair and mahogany eyes that reminded Alex of something truly wild, but still achingly kind. That was the sort of man who fell
hard for Zakai—Alex never would have had a chance, but the attention was nice…when he got it.

  “Jesse shot me for talking too much.” Alex sniffed, his shoulders hanging heavy as the rest of the room dismissed him to go on talking about Arles and his unwilling girlfriend.

  “Aww, should have shot him back,” Vander said, and Alex could tell he was trying to be consoling despite the chuckle in his voice. “His blood is mostly beer now anyway. Might have sobered him up.”

  “I hate guns,” Alex said.

  “Yeah, I know. But if you’re going to hang with us, you’re going to have to learn to use them.” Vander lifted his hand and gently flicked Alex’s nose. “And try to avoid the dangerous end.”

  “It bad timing all ’round,” Vincent said to Alex’s father.

  Alex gave Vander’s hand a pat and he forced a smile, then turned his attention to the conversation going on without him. It was probably none of his business—nothing with this group was ever any of his business, but if they were going to forget he was even in the room and talk anyway, they couldn’t stop him from listening.

  “I don’t understand,” Zakai said. “You’ve been planning this with Arles for over a year now. We’re here. We’re prepared. Why is there a problem?”

  “Dat girl Vander and I went to look at, Ferrah. She da problem.”

  “Ain’t it always the way?” Jesse dropped down hard in his chair, leaned back, and sucked the bottle of beer in his hand dry. “Girls always nothing but trouble.”

  “She had a sigil. On her forehead.” Vincent gave his brow a little tap with his finger. “For trackin’ her, limiting her range of freedom. I know da mark.”

  “So?” Zakai righted Alex’s shattered chair and settled onto it, absentmindedly breaking the rest of the back off until it was a stool. “Remove it. No big deal, right? Dealt with it before. Why the panic now?”

  “Because I know dat mark,” Vincent said again. “It’s mine. My signature. Whoever put it there, dey meant me t’see it. It’s a trap. I tamper wit it, no tellin’ what happen.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not,” Zakai said. “Could just be a coincidence.”

  “No coincidences in claimin’ a man’s sigil.”

  “Then how the hell is someone else using it?” Zakai asked. “If it’s yours, and only yours, how is anyone else using it?”

  “I know who did it. He left his trace all over it.” Vincent drummed his fingers against the tabletop, his expression barely in check. It reminded Alex of how he must look when trying to explain cybernetics to the group when all they wanted was for him to make whatever malfunctioning gadget just work. “It takes lot of time, dedication, love t’craft one’s mark. Steal the mark of another man so completely, that takes a bit o’ obsession.

  “The suspense is killing me, Vince, really,” Zakai said. “Spit it out already.”

  “Arthur. It’s Arthur, and he want me to know dat.”

  “Huh, okay, then.” Zakai nodded, mulling it over with questionable interest.

  “That’s not the worst of it,” Vander chimed in from the bed. “Tell him the worst bit, Vince. This shit’s gonna blow his mind.”

  “Well, I doubt dat highly,” Vincent said. “I wasn’t da only one who study under Arthur. So did Marx.”

  “Aww, shit.” Zakai snarled and leaned back in his chair, only to quickly grab the table when he remembered a bit too late that the chair was sans back brace. “That isn’t a coincidence. That shit’s by design. Vince, I’m sorry, but the man must have saw you coming somehow. Marx we can handle. Marx and whoever was responsible for making you into you… I’m feeling a bit like a vacation is in order right now.”

  “It don matta. We doin’ dis now. Don matter who involved. Arles is runnin’ out of time. It now or never.”

  “I’m good with never.” Zakai nodded again and glanced around the room for the collective assent he seemed to be expecting. “Never sounds nice. I can do never.”

  “Dat’s not funny. He don’t get Sam now, she be lost to him forever.”

  “So he gets another girl. Hell, get two or three,” Zakai said. “I always thought Arles was a little on the sugary side anyway.”

  Alex cringed. Gay jokes. Why was that always the go-to?

  “Point of fact,” Zakai said. “We have our own girl to think about. I’m here for that girl. This thing with Arles is just us being neighborly, you feel me?”

  “Zakai, you shush and mind yourself.” Vincent shook a warning finger at Alex’s father. “Just ’cause Samantha’s not your kind don’t make her any less important. There are fewer of us than there are of you in this world. And you gonna help, or God help me, I make you regret it.”

  “Maybe there’s a reason for that? The lot of you haven’t a damned bit of sense between you,” Zakai said. “Chasing after a woman that wants fuck-all to do with him—where the hell is his pride?”

  * * * *

  “You never…hit a man there, Sammy.” Arles winced as he rubbed at his groin and pulled far away from her.

  “I hope it falls off.”

  “It was really uncalled for.”

  “You bit me, you bastard!” Sam pressed her hand to the wound, which wasn’t gushing as it should be. There was a trickle of blood around the edges—the deep, clearly defined edges that looked more like the jaws of some animal had gotten hold of her. “Are you fucking rabid?”

  He chuckled, then fished a bottle of water from a pocket in the door and took a long draw from its contents before passing it to her. “Not that I am aware of.”

  She smacked the water from his hand, sending it sloshing all over the dash and navigation controls. “Fuck you. I’m not drinking after you. I probably already need a tetanus shot.”

  He made a tsk sound with his tongue against his teeth and then set to wiping up the mess. “Does it hurt?”

  “Hell yeah, it hurts!”

  He arched a brow and situated what was left of the water bottle back in its holder. “Does it really?”

  Actually, it throbbed a bit, sending little pulses of heat all through her body. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant. In fact it was disturbingly the opposite. But it should have hurt like hell. “You’re sick. There is something very wrong with you, Arles.”

  He reclined against his door to peer at her in that superior way…that he somehow pulled off while rubbing what had to be a massive bruise between his legs. “I’m sick? You’re the one who’s turned on by being bitten.”

  She swore at him again, more a banshee yell than she’d ever thought herself capable of, and just as the car’s navigator declared, “Destination complete,” the doors opened, and she kicked him square in the chest.

  The sight of him hitting concrete was far more satisfying than she had imagined.

  His laughter sapped the sense of victory right out of her. She stepped out of her side of the car and stumbled, nearly ending up on the ground herself. With a low grumble, she grabbed her purse, and her shoe that had fallen off at some point, and hobbled around the car to where he lay.

  He was still chuckling, smiling up at her from his back. The rain came down in a drizzle now, and he was getting soaked fast, not that he seemed to mind. Even laid out in the gutter, he was like something out of a gentleman’s fashion magazine—disgustingly handsome, his drenched shirt clinging to him just so, his hair all disheveled and sticking to his sharp cheekbones. She could guess how absurd she looked, clutching her shoe to her mostly bare chest, shielded only by his rumpled jacket and her bra with the sopping-wet, lewd bunnies on it.

  Out of the two of them, she still managed to look like the ridiculous one.

  She flung that shoe, bouncing it right off his hateful head, before kicking off the other and turning to stalk down the street. At this point, she didn’t care where she was going, as long as it was well away from him. Maybe when her head cleared, she’d think of a way to deal with the blackmail, but right now…

  “Sam?” His voice still held a hint of laughter as he called after her.
“You need to come inside.”

  She offered him an unladylike gesture with her hand and continued. Two miles or a thousand, she was going home and nothing he could say would stop her.

  “Fine. Have a real nice walk. By the time you get home, you can see Dad being carted away on the early-morning news feeds.”

  Okay, maybe not nothing. It was far too easy for her father to slip her mind entirely once Arles got her raging. The man made her crazy.

  She stopped, and after a moment’s consideration, heard herself cursing a blue streak as she stomped and flailed. It was totally called for.

  He ran his fingers through his hair, pushing it out of his eyes and away from his face as he beamed at her with that contented Cheshire grin.

  She wished she had a third shoe.

  Standing there in the rain, shivering and debating, knowing he was watching her, she had little choice but to deal with the situation head on. Her shoulders sagging, she looked up at the house. Like something out of a gothic novel, its wrought-iron gates, stone walls, dark and lonely grounds were barely visible through the heavy blanket of cold rain. It seemed a home for a vampire, something that sucked the life out of everything around it, just as Colfter estates drank in and obscured all the light from the city that cradled it. The place suited him.

  It nauseated Sam.

  It wasn’t the first time she had seen the house from the outside, but even then, in the daylight, it had been an oppressive wonderment. On a whim, about a year earlier, she’d decided to use her lunch hour to see where he was living. What was to be a quick drive-by ended with her and Jerri scaling the wall to sneak a peek through the windows.

  She couldn’t fathom where the burning desire to see what he was up to had come from. She had ventured on enough such “dangerous teenage crush” adventures with Jerri that looking back on her Mission Impossible-style Arles surveillance brought a warm blush to her cheeks.

  All the endeavor had gotten them were two pairs of shredded hose and Jerri a case of poison ivy. Not to mention a dry-cleaning bill Sam was still paying because she’d been wearing Jerri’s suede jacket when the sprinklers unexpectedly turned on them. Sam had accepted the whole bizarre compulsion as “facing her fears” therapy, as her doctor had suggested over many forty-five-minute sessions.