“Looking as good as ever, Loz,” Alex said cautiously.
“All for you,” Lauren replied. “Your opinion always mattered more to me than any guy’s.”
“Well…I’m flattered. Now how about you impress me some more and let me take Matt out of here.”
“No.”
“Lauren, don’t do this. I can’t imagine what you have been through, but I want to help if you’ll let me.”
“I’m glad you said that. There is something you can do.”
Alex wanted to keep her calm and hoped she was telling the truth. “Ok, what is it? What do you need?”
“Join me.”
Alex froze. “Join you? What do you mean?”
Lauren smiled. “I think you know.”
“I—I’m sorry. I can’t. This is not the life I want. I want to help you deal with this, but I can do it better as a human.”
“No, you really can’t. You have no idea what it’s like to be so alive, even though you’re dead. Young, beautiful and strong forever. It’s everything I could’ve dreamed of. Tell me, what is so great about being human that you won’t join me?”
Alex didn’t know where she was going with this, and didn’t think she wanted to find out. “Oh, I don’t know. Come on—”
“No. I want to know. Tell me. What’s to live for?”
“Kids?” Alex tested.
“Whinging brats brought into an already overpopulated world. They will grow up to resent you anyway. Next.”
Alex racked her brain, finding the one thing she believed in, the one thing she hoped could reach Lauren. “What about love?”
“As good as myth, a brain malfunction. I mean does it really exist? Or is it just a combination of hormones at the right time? The number of things that have to go right for it to even be relevant are ridiculous.”
“It may not be everywhere but I know it does exist,” Alex insisted.
“Oh really? You have experienced it have you? I see. Tell me why you never told me Matt curves to the left?”
Alex did not understand what Lauren was asking for a second, and then it hit her. She looked at Matt and to Lauren.
“You slept with him?”
“After I was turned. I certainly didn’t force him to, by the way.”
Matt shook his head, but said nothing. His look of guilt was enough.
“How…how could you do this to me?” Alex said, looking from one to the other.
“To prove a point,” Lauren said. “And now I’ll prove another.” Before Alex could blink, Lauren suddenly had Matt by the neck in front of Alex. “Tell her the truth,” Lauren said to Matt. “You loved what I did to you, didn’t you? Haven’t you always wanted me?”
Matt didn’t speak, just strained from the force she held him with. She pinched his neck harder and Matt groaned in pain. “All right, yes!”
“But you love her?” Lauren said, deliberately looking confused.
“More than anything,” he panted.
Alex held her palm to her forehead, briefly scrunching her eyes. You obviously didn’t. Did you ever?
“But you could so easily fuck another girl?” Lauren frowned. “Did she even enter your mind while you were entering me?”
Matt was silent but after a harder pinch and a thin stream of blood beginning to flow, he screamed again. “No! Fuck, stop, please!”
“Well, there you have it,” Lauren said, slightly releasing her grip. “I give you three years’ worth of ‘love’. There is no such thing as love, babe. It’s a mixture of other emotions, made to keep churches and courts in business.”
Alex crossed her arms, a mixture of emotions flowing through her. “You’re wrong. I’m sorry you have never experienced it for yourself.”
“Can’t experience something you don’t believe in,” Lauren said, raising Matt above her head and holding him lengthways.
“Stop!” Alex cried. “What are you doing?”
“He cheated on you. What do you care?”
Lauren let him go and brought her knee up, crunching into his back. Matt sprayed blood from his mouth before he crashed to the ground, silent and unmoving. Alex screamed and ran to him but was grabbed around the neck by Lauren.
“Forget him. He was a lousy lay and an out-and-out douche. He was always holding you back. You’ll see that one day, but I give you one last chance.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Alex cried.
“I told you, I’m more alive than ever. I’m giving you the chance to be a part of that.”
“I WILL NEVER BE LIKE YOU!” Alex roared, tears rolling down the strained skin around her eyes.
Lauren threw Alex into the side of the nearest car, setting off the alarm. Lauren kicked the car so hard it slammed into the side barrier and shut itself off. Alex looked up as Lauren approached, with black eyes and her fangs out, enraged.
“You disappoint me, babe. It really didn’t have to be this way. You chose this. Only I could’ve saved you.”
A new car alarm sounded. Not from the same car but one about ten feet behind them. Someone was walking on the roof of the vehicle, then the bonnet, finally the ground.
“I don’t know about that…” the figure replied.
Chapter Twenty Six
Have A Little Faith
Lauren stared hard at Dante, feeling her eyes change to the black bottomless wells of her animal instinct mode. This was no longer sex kitten; it was now survival of the fittest. A challenge was being issued over her prize meal.
“And the hero arrives. Just in time I see. Hollywood could not have scripted it better.” Lauren sneered.
“Let her go.”
Lauren sighed. “I guess I was wrong. That clichéd response is exactly how Hollywood would have scripted it. Ok, here’s my answer. How about, no? She is mine. You’re no hero, Dante. You’re a cunt. Just like me,” she finished with a smile.
Dante put his hands out, as if to calm her. “Lauren, listen to me. You don’t have to be this. You can choose to rise above it. Turn this curse into a boon. Do something to make the world better, to make yourself better.”
Lauren yawned deliberately, putting her hand up before her open mouth. “My goodness, were you always this boring? Maybe I just never noticed before. Not sure what I ever saw in you. Well, darling Dante, I have already made up my mind. That is why we just would not work out.”
“There are many reasons why we would have never worked, Lauren.”
Lauren drew in a breath angrily. “I’m still a newborn,” Lauren seethed. “You’d be wise to remember that I’m stronger than you are.”
“Stronger, maybe. But not experienced.” Dante began unzipping his jacket.
“But I don’t have anything to lose. You do.” Lauren lashed out with her foot and caught Alex under the jaw with her heel. She then lifted her up slowly.
Dante threw his jacket as his own features morphed to match Lauren’s, black eyes meeting black. “I have something worth fighting for,” he countered, flaring his fangs and snarling.
“You want her?” Lauren said, flinging Alex aside. “Come and get her!”
*
Lauren ploughed into Dante like a snarling leopard. Caught off guard, he absorbed the impact as best he could, but she was right—she was faster and stronger than he was. They pelted into a car behind him. The windshield exploded in a shower of glass. The entire side of the vehicle caved in, wrapping around them in a semicircle.
Dante lashed out with his knees and Lauren suddenly flew backwards, her body skidding across the concrete. She came to a stop and was suddenly on her knees facing him.
Lauren screeched with anger as she bolted towards him again. This time Dante was armed. He threw one of the side mirrors directly into her face, mid-stride. The blow broke her nose and sent blood streaming across her face, yet it only halted her for a second. She leaped on top of him and began unloading with both fists. Dante took several hits before lunging skyward with her in his arms and dropped her head first onto the wr
eckage of the car. His feet had only hit the ground when Lauren’s heel cracked him in the jaw. He fell to one knee.
“I thought you were bad,” Lauren screamed as she vaulted a kick that connected to Dante’s head, throwing it backward. His fangs tore into the side of his mouth, searing the gap open wider. “You’re nothing compared to me!”
Another kick connected that Dante did not even see coming. He couldn’t take much more of this.
She aimed another kick but this he saw. He snatched her foot out of the air and with a wrenching twist, her fibula snapped. Lauren howled in agony and fell, holding her leg. Dante tried to stand but stumbled, the blows to his head were harder than he’d realised.
He rose again and then it was his turn to scream in pain. Fucking newborns. Lauren had healed incredibly quickly, rising to dig a large piece of remnant bonnet into his back.
Dante launched the back of his head into her forehead and struck with two quick elbows. She staggered back allowing him to remove the shard. Dante unleashed a vicious back fist that snapped her head around, yet she retaliated with a slap of her own, shredding Dante’s cheek with her nails and fragments of shattered glass still in her hand.
Dante coughed and spat blood, trying to rise when Lauren’s vice like grip latched around his throat, pinning his back to the wall. Dante looked at Lauren, no mercy in her eyes, only cold fury.
The searchlights on the ground found them, Dante heard the cries and shouts from the people below as Lauren hung him over the side.
“Your public wants you, darling,” Lauren said.
Dante wrapped both of his legs around her head. “They want us both.”
With that, he used all of his weight to flip the both of them off the roof. They tumbled three storeys to the alleyway beside T with nothing heard but more cries and shouts from the crowd and Alex still on the roof, watching them fall.
Dante felt an explosion in his shoulder as he hit the pavement, staying in the same spot unlike Lauren who slammed onto a closed industrial garbage bin. Dante had barely opened his eyes when Lauren began to stir.
Both rose gingerly and at the same time but it was Lauren who started her attack. Rushing at him, slinging heavily with one fist after the other, screaming with the exertion of each move. Dante ducked the swing and the following one. The next he flung away with his one good arm. Finally, she was beginning to slow down.
“Fight back!” Lauren screamed.
She lunged at him but he dodged, shoving her away.
“I know what you want,” Dante said, “But I’m not going to give it to you.”
“Come on…you—” she bellowed.
She lashed out with a slap that carried minimal force. Dante let her, knowing she was faltering.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t save you,” he said softly.
“Fuck you!” she yelled through the beginning of tears. “I’m better than I ever was! I’m immortal.” She came at him again, groaning with savage frustration. She lashed out at him but it was strikes without power, moves without thought. She wasn’t screaming anymore, she was rambling, and sobbing his name. “Please, Dante…” she begged with her eyes and her words, grasping his torn shirt as if it were her salvation, “I can’t live like this… Please…”
Dante grasped her face with both of his bloody hands, looking into her eyes.
“This is your nightmare. I can’t wake you up, no one can. Death will not bring you peace. You have lost everything you loved and that loved you. You must live with the things you have done for eternity, like I must. But if you need a friend, I will be there.”
She slumped to her knees and buried her head against his thigh, not letting him go, crying uncontrollably. Dante stroked her blood and sweat-saturated hair, consoling her.
The crowd around them burst into applause and shouts of amazement.
“Wow!”
“No wires.”
“I know…how’d they do that?”
“I didn’t know they were putting on a stunt show this year.”
*
Dante sat in his office as Lauren used his personal shower to clean up. Michelle and Alex had travelled with Matt to the hospital. The latest word was that he had not yet regained consciousness and his diagnosis was not promising. Dante thought about the filthy looks Michelle and Alex had given him as Matt was loaded into the ambulance. He knew Alex had more reason to be angry, since she’d believed he was dead. Michelle on the other hand, weary from the enormous amount of blood she had given him when he’d awoken a few hours before, had known he wasn’t dead, but didn’t like the result from tonight’s fight.
He tried to work out his explanation, fairly confident they would understand his reasoning. Someone must have told Matt where to be, what to look for, and yet purposely slipped him the wrong information on how to kill a vampire. Dougie had prevented Julian from taking his body. But where would he have taken it?
There was more going on here and Dante had chosen to remain hidden, watching and waiting to see if the answers would present themselves. Michelle had seen Lauren enter T. Dante’s intention had been to question Lauren privately, but when he got there, Michelle informed him that Alex had just followed her to the roof. It would not have been wise to let Lauren see him behind Alex, so he had scaled the side of the building in the dark, coming up behind her instead.
What he was not so sure about was whether they would understand why he did not kill Lauren when he had the chance, or indeed, when she had begged him to do so.
The shower turned off and a few seconds later Dante was no longer alone.
“Sorry, I couldn’t find a towel.”
Dante looked up to see Lauren standing beside him, naked and dripping wet.
“Actually, it’s my fault.” Dante said, limping over to his desk and opening the bottom drawer. “I rarely use it. It’s more for Michelle. I assumed she kept it stocked.”
Dante handed her a thick, soft bath towel, which she accepted.
“Thanks,” she said softly. Dante looked at the two-way mirror and viewed the customers in his club, giving Lauren some privacy.
“I need to know how you got in tonight,” Dante said.
“What?”
“Our kind are not welcome here, besides myself. They have to be invited by Bison or Tyson, and they were under specific instructions not to let you in.”
“Don’t worry, you’ve still got loyal dogs. I was watching Alex walk in, and your boys had to tackle some alcoholic newspaper guy as she passed. Another of your staff came out to see if he could help. When he did, I jumped the queue and he invited me.”
“But, you don’t have the power of influence.”
“They’re called tits.”
Dante gave a small turn of his head, but thought better of it. He wouldn’t ask who had taken over nor would he reprimand. What’s done was done. And besides, despite himself, they would be enough to get her into almost any place.
“Can I ask you something?” Lauren asked.
“Of course,” Dante replied.
“Last night I killed a guy and fed off him, but a weird feeling came over me. It was like I was being pushed away. But nothing was there. He was dead in my arms, light as a feather—but then I suddenly couldn’t hold him.”
“He was suddenly too heavy and you would’ve expelled all the blood you had consumed,” Dante stated.
“Yes, exactly.”
“Where were you?”
“The ANZAC Memorial.”
Dante nodded still peering out through the mirror. “You committed a reprehensible act on sacred ground.”
“What? What do you mean? It wasn’t a church,” Lauren replied, confused.
“I said sacred, not holy. But I see where your thinking comes from. In all cultures they have stories of evil beings not being able to cross thresholds where religious artefacts lie, or vampires not being able to touch crosses or holy water and so on. There’s not really any such thing as holy ground. Maybe there was once, but not anymore. Maybe
it’s the evolution of science and more people turning away from the hypocrisy of religion. You know, more death and destruction have been caused in the name of god than any war or disease. Or maybe it’s that good intentions got undermined by brainwashing and greed. In your case, your act was committed in a war memorial. A memorial not dedicated to a god who may or may not exist, but to men. Men who sacrificed everything for others to live. You do not need faith for these things to be real. Out of war came a legend to be embraced: mateship and courage. You spat upon that and were duly punished.”
Literally. So the ghosts of the ANZACS were mad at her? Huh.
“Have you ever done something like that?”
It took a long time, but the answer came as a solemn, “Yes.”
“Can I ask, why didn’t you do it? I asked you to kill me.”
Dante turned and faced her, now with the towel wrapped around her torso. “I look at you and I see two people. The person you are and the person you could be. I want to see those two meet.”
“How can you say that after everything I have done?”
“Your crimes are terrible,” Dante nodded. “And yet some of them I believe were warranted. Such as Ryan. I do not believe you have to be a vampire to wish him a painful death. The way you were reborn was unacceptable. Your creators did nothing to teach you, to guide you. You were merely a product of their sick and twisted minds, a means to an end. I have no child because I do not believe this life is a gift. There are similarities in the way you and I were both made and our treatment by those that made us. If I did not have a mentor, I do not know what would have become of me. I owe much to Dougie. If you are willing, I am offering to be your guide in your new life. I warn you, though, it will not be easy.”
“Why do you have such faith in me?”
“Someone has to, Lauren.” Dante grunted. The pain in his shoulder was beginning to make the room a little unsteady. “You have lost everything. Some taken away, the rest you did yourself. You had a friend that loved you unconditionally and you slept with her boyfriend and then critically injured him. I can’t fix these things for you. The only good thing about hitting rock bottom is just that. You can’t get any lower. The only way is up and if you put in the hard work, I will help you rise, one step at a time.”
Night Walker (Undeadly Secrets Book 1) Page 22