by Lissa Kasey
Kelly appeared in the doorway, the look on his face ashen, but he glanced upward when Jamie pointed toward me. Con put a hand on Kelly’s shoulder. They shared a look and a few words I couldn’t make out, then the sky darkened overhead as clouds amassed in the sky. A crack of thunder rumbled loud enough to shake the house. I fumbled in my flight, banging into a blazing branch and trying to right myself. Then the rain began. Not a gentle spring shower, but a full-on downpour so thick I couldn’t see them anymore. The fire sizzled out, water pooling like a lake in what was left of the arboretum. The beat of the downpour battered at me with the weight of an anvil.
The bright fire of my wings vanished and they felt suddenly heavy. I flapped them trying to stay in the air, only the drenching of my wings became lead weights and I dropped like a stone. I hit the water with a thud, struggled for breath and direction as the water bubbled and swirled, cleansing, but also fighting with the earth. A moment later someone swept me up in firm arms and lifted me free.
Without the fire I looked like a raven again, black wings, talons, and beak, what little I could see of it in the reflection on the glass in the door.
The rain began to ease, and slowly trickled to a stop, while Jamie waded back through the now waist-high water with me held against his chest. He climbed the stairs up into the house and carried me through the doorway. Con was wrapped in a sheet. Kelly held out two towels, one for Jamie and one for me. Jamie carefully placed me in the outstretched towel before taking his own. Kelly rubbed at my wings, and I was grateful when the towel began to leech away some of the water.
After a few minutes I flapped my wings again and the orange reappeared. Kelly took a step back, holding me away from his body, as fire reignited in my wings, though didn’t touch the towel. “Whoa!”
“Holy crap,” Con said.
“Call him,” Luca said. “Make him change back.” Luca was alive. He lay on the kitchen floor, a professional-looking bandage on his abdomen. It was probably a good thing the muscleman nurse was on hand.
“Change,” Con said. “Sam, change back.”
Yeah? How did I do that? How had I done it before? I’d thought I’d been dreaming the first time it happened. Hadn’t realized it had been real, but then I had only thought about it and it had happened.
I breathed in a deep breath and just let the idea of being me again fill my head. The change washed over me like a flame burning through a piece of cotton candy. I hit the floor because my limbs didn’t want to work, and Con was there a moment later to share his sheet with me. He pulled me into his arms, me unable to help.
“Holy fuck,” I groaned, feeling as limp as a baby. “What the hell was that?”
“Um…” Kelly said staring at Jamie who appeared thoughtful.
“Restoring balance,” Con said. “Can’t you feel it? It sings in my power, not a vibration, exactly. More like a soft hum?”
“Yeah,” agreed Kelly, “I feel it too. Everything is quiet. Calm. It was like the release at the California house, only more contained. I think Seiran contained it to just inside the arboretum because nothing beyond has been touched.”
Jamie stepped up to the door, peering out into the broken remains of the arboretum and the yard beyond.
“He’s not dead,” I said.
“No,” Jamie agreed. “I feel him.”
I think we all did. Flowers began to bloom throughout the barren ground. The last of the giant plants created by wild magic dissolved and became a small grove of trees.
Con dragged me to Luca’s side. I reached out for Luca with a hand that felt like it weighed a ton. He took it, squeezed it and let me lay my head on his chest. His breathing was steady and solid. Eyes clear, though tired. I guess a dhampir was pretty hard to kill with a bullet too.
I stared out into the arboretum for a minute and saw the shadow of Seiran there, crouched over where Gabe had gone to ground. Only I knew it wasn’t really a vision of this world but something beyond what I’d seen before. Seiran never spoke of the place beyond the veil he’d gone when he’d ascended to Father Earth. Bryar mentioned it a time or two as an actual place and Jamie had speculated once that it was a parallel dimension of power. I suspected it was all tied together.
“Hey, Ronnie,” I called to him with my mind, feeling like maybe he could hear me, “get your ass back here. Those babies need you and I think the big guy is going to start crying soon.”
“Bastard,” I heard faintly. Was it in my head or for real?
“Jerk,” I said out loud. I closed my eyes, resting for just a moment, and then jerked awake a second later. When I opened my eyes again the spot where I’d seen Seiran kneeling had become a grove of red roses, thick with thorns and lush buds. Father Earth knelt at the edge, both fists clutched around stalks of painfully sharp spikes and dripping blood. I feared for a moment that it would wake Gabe too early. He’d need more time to rest. But then I realized the truth. Gabe wasn’t there anymore. In fact, all vampires who went to ground were eventually reabsorbed by the earth. When they rose it was because their souls, or whatever it was that animated them, had regained enough strength to be rewarded a new body from the circle of power.
Life and death. Two sides of the same coin. Both a formidable and intertwining circle with that of the elements. There was no balance without life and death. Seiran had pulled Gabe back once when his body wasn’t yet absorbed into the earth to regenerate. It was why I hadn’t risen faster or responded to their bloodshed over my grave. I rose when I’d been ready. Gabe would have to do the same.
Seiran let go of the roses and got to his feet. The wounds on his hands healed almost instantly. He turned toward us and as he came up the stairs the green visage of Father Earth faded and he was back to himself again. Jamie gave him a sheet to cover himself, though I suspected he could probably do like Bryar did and create some sort of ethereal clothing made from strategically placed leaves if he thought about it.
“Fire, eh?” Seiran said to me. “Been holding out on us?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said. “Too many hits to the head from giant plants maybe?”
“You or me?” He wanted to know.
“Both?” I squinted at him. “I’m not sure where the fire came from.”
“That was you,” Kelly said. “I totally felt it. Opposition to my water.”
“And my wind,” Con added.
Seiran nodded. “It makes sense. All witches are elemental. We’ve all been wondering what yours was. I think you just hadn’t manifested it yet, or maybe you did and didn’t realize it.” He thought for a minute. “Like that barn…when Matthew died…it should never have exploded. Burned sure, but not exploded.”
“That was magic,” I insisted. “The destruction of Matthew’s power.”
“I think that was the release of your power. You’d been living under his null influence. Null’s dampen power, they don’t increase it, not even in death. Your siphon powers enhanced his while your own were just beginning to emerge. That’s why no one tests until college. It can take that long for a witch’s power to manifest. And when Matthew died, the void-effect of his power over yours vanished.” Seiran looked thoughtful. “It explains the blast of heat we always get when you touch me in my Father Earth form.”
“And maybe the cacti,” Con pointed out. “’Cause hot earth and all…”
“Sam is so hot,” Luca said sleepily.
Seiran snorted. “And the vampire baby is loopy.”
“I gave him some pain meds,” Jamie said.
“Not a baby,” Luca said. “I’m older than all of you.”
Seiran waved his hand like he was trying to clarify his thoughts. “Sam is the youngest of us. So it makes sense. Just because my powers showed up early doesn’t mean everyone’s does.”
“Didn’t start having to change until I was almost eighteen,” Kelly said.
“Mine really evolved in the past two years,” said Con. “Sam is barely nineteen.”
“Right �
��cause the rest of you are all geezers,” I remarked. Early twenties was not old.
“No, but none of us had a null suppressing our first years of power.”
“Seiran was with Matthew when he was a kid,” I reminded them.
“My powers hadn’t manifested yet,” Seiran said.
“Okay, so I’m a fire elemental as well as a siphon? Is that a thing?”
“Apparently. I’ll have to talk to the Dominion. See if we can get you a one-on-one fire witch to help train you.” He looked back at the fire ravaged structure. Not much remained of the arboretum. “Just so you don’t burn the house down.”
“I didn’t mean to burn the place down. I was trying to save the world.”
“Now who has the white knight syndrome?” Con asked.
I glared at him. “Whose side are you on?”
He kissed me. “Whatever side keeps us breathing.”
I sighed into his lips while I listened to Luca’s steady heartbeat. Okay. I could be on board with that.
Chapter 25
The broken vampire bonds were a mess. My fault, I guess. Since I’d refused to take them from Tresler. Some vampires died, destroyed by the police, too broken to take themselves to ground to heal. Others were bonded en masse to the few strong vampires, who had not bonded to Tresler, that were left. This included Mike and Max.
Which was how I ended up standing in a brand-new tailored suit in Max’s office with twelve other vampires, all of which I’d never met. Apparently Max was now doing the bonding thing. He’d cited some bullshit about his government contracts when I’d made a comment about it.
He seemed unaffected by the incident. Whatever wound he had received from our bond, was long gone only a few days later. He’d given Luca a week to rest, and me along with him, though he set goals to be completed before I’d arrive in his office, like getting the suit. Fucking suit felt like a million ants crawling on my skin. And how did people breathe in this shit?
All the vampires were dressed up, like little dolls, all watching Max with devoted eyes. It annoyed me. If he was looking for a zombie ass-kisser from me, he’d picked the wrong vampire to save.
The edge of Max’s lips curved up in a tiny smile and I felt his gaze on me. I met it with defiance, daring him to challenge me. Could he hear my thoughts? Maybe, and so what? Fuck him. I didn’t have a daddy kink. It was Seiran who’d begged him to save me.
“Everyone has their assigned mentor,” Max said as he walked around the desk to stand before the group. We had already gone through a long list of expectations, guidelines, and issued equipment. I’d never had such a stuffy job before. “I expect great things of all of you. Treat your mentors well or my use for you will find an abrupt end.”
Well wasn’t that friendly.
Luca got up out of the chair beside the desk. He looked good in the light gray Armani suit that hugged his frame. He’d lost a little bit of weight while healing, but I knew the wound to be nothing more than a slightly raised pink scar. Not the first bullet, he told me, but I really hoped it was the last. Seiran promised to feed him up and had been cooking up a storm. At least it kept his mind occupied.
Luca crossed the room to my side as the crowd began to disperse to their assigned areas. I was apparently going to be Luca’s assistant, which might have sounded fun for about two seconds before I realized it was a lot of phone calls and scheduling in order to free up his time for phone calls and scheduling for Max. Add to that a regular fight schedule, two shifts a week at the bar, and required Dominion training on the weekends, and my days were about to get really long.
“Did you get your reading done?” Luca asked as he waved goodbye to his father and directed me into the elevator.
I sighed. “Con read to me while I played video games. Does that count?”
“Do you remember any of it?”
I thought for a few minutes. “Maybe.”
“We’ll keep working on it.”
“I’d like to work you out of that suit,” I told him honestly after the last group got out of the elevator and we were finally headed down to the parking garage.
Luca threw me a sexy grin. “That can be arranged.” He’d kept himself clean-shaven, which while making him look several years younger, just did crazy things to my dick every time I saw him.
“Con won’t be home until after three,” I reminded him. Con was working until close at the bar tonight, which meant two a.m. and then cleanup. Since it was just after eleven p.m., that left us some time before our third could join us.
“I’m sure he won’t mind us starting without him. He’ll join us when he gets home.”
I still hesitated to spend time alone with Luca. It was odd, because of the two, he was more indestructible than Con. The whole getting shot and healing in less than a week thing proved that. However, I wasn’t tempted to throw Con up against a wall and fuck him through it. Con and I together were more slow exploration until we were both about to pop. Romance some might call it, though I hated the term. What I felt for Luca wasn’t so much romance, but full on lust. I really liked him. Like panicked at the thought of him going anywhere, liked him. Con told me it was love, but the whole love thing still had me confused. Philosophy bullshit in my opinion. Luca was mine just as much as Con was mine, and that was all that mattered. I wanted both of them badly in very different ways. It didn’t mean I didn’t enjoy slow kisses and exploration with Luca, or rough grips and a bit of teeth with Con, but more a mix of the two. What I wanted from Luca came more from the vampire side. A sense of ownership I didn’t feel I had a right to. It was very visceral and related a little to the fact that I was feeding from him regularly.
Territorial, Luca reminded me when I got bitchy about Max’s other vamps looking at him like he was dessert. He experienced the same thing. My caveman attitude over him had taken several blood exchanges to develop. And while it was no longer specifically related to the feeding, it bothered me a little that it was related to blood at all.
Luca’s strength made my masochistic and sadistic sides come out. I liked to manhandle him, liked when his grip bruised me, or if occasionally my claws came out to mark his beautiful skin. We hadn’t done more than hand jobs or blow jobs between the three of us. That was my fault. More old baggage I tried to pretend didn’t exist.
“Isn’t there work stuff we should do?” I tried to get my mind off the idea of having Luca naked and all to myself.
“Nah, my stuff is done from noon to midnight. It’s easier when I have calls to make. Most of the businesses are normal human businesses run during daylight hours. A handful are overseas which is why I’m working so late most times. I’ll go over the computer and handbook stuff tomorrow.”
Each of us had been given a laptop, a fancy phone, a black diamond credit card—to be used for business expenses only—and a handbook of rules and guidelines expected from employees who represented the company. In our case, not so much the company, but my bonded sire, Maxwell Hart.
I was also being handed a bunch of contracts, in Chinese, to review. That was going to suck. Because not only did I hate reading, but my reading of Chinese was pretty rusty. I hoped it came back like riding a bike.
“We should stop in and check on Seiran.” He’d been pretty quiet all week. Back to work, with his mother, Kelly, Jamie, Bryar, and even me on rotation to watch the twins. When Luca and I had headed to the meeting earlier he’d been spread out in the second floor family room, which we hadn’t noticed before, twins playing on a blanket on the floor, and papers of some new mystery from his job as an investigator for the Dominion, spread out around him. He didn’t seem happy, but also not completely broken. I just worried about him.
“Do you not want to be alone with me?” Luca asked.
“Not at all. I have visions of throwing you against the wall, but worry about the property damage and a pissed off witch.”
Luca laughed. “So much snark. I mean it, though.”
“Mean what?” I played dumb.
; “Do you not want to be alone with me?”
“I just said I did.”
“You can throw me against a wall anytime. I’ll pay for any property damage.”
I just grunted. Stupid insecurity.
“Do you need to fight?”
I didn’t, and wasn’t that sad? ‘Cause fighting with Luca was hot, sexy, and a super turn-on, but I was as calm as I’d ever been. “No.”
“So what’s wrong?”
“I’ll blow you when we get home,” I offered. I was getting better at that.
“I want you to fuck me.”
Just the idea of that made me hard, and terrified all at once.
“Do you not want to fuck me?”
“I just want it to be good for you,” I admitted.
He laughed. “Um, yeah, that’s why I’m requesting it, ‘cause your cock and my butthole need to become fast…hard…friends.”
Fucking Luca. I felt like my face was on fire and the stupid suit was far too tight and revealing all at once.
“Maybe we should wait for Con and he can…”
“Sam?” Luca demanded. “What is wrong?”
“Nothing. I’ve just never done that before.” There was a pause. Silence that stretched a few seconds longer than comfortable and I immediately felt like an idiot. “Never mind,” I said.
“You’ve never fucked someone before?” Luca asked.
“I’ve had sex before.”
“But you’ve never topped,” Luca clarified.
“No,” I said, mad at him and myself now.
“Would you rather Con be your first? He’s okay with bottoming, though he prefers blow jobs over anything else.”