by Susan Harris
“You don’t have classes until after seven. Where are you going?” It was only a little after five-thirty; the sun had barely set.
“We don’t have classes today,” Nickolai replied, shifting the bag as if it was heavy, mirroring human action with admirable ease. “With the murder on campus, classes have been called off for the rest of the week. They are offering the students counselling. A few of the guys wanted to meet at the restaurant on campus, so I said I’d go. Matt was my friend.”
I wanted to argue with him, persuade him to remain at the apartment so I could stalk the campus in search of the rogue. I could only do that if Nickolai was safely locked in this apartment. But how could I stop him from going to be with those he called his friends? Maybe the rogue would see us hanging around campus and I’d get the chance to kill him.
“Fine,” I said. “Let’s go.”
“You don’t have to come. I’m perfectly capable of crossing the campus by myself. Stay here and rest up.”
“Like hell I will. This is not negotiable, Nicky. Where you go, I go. If you want me to go back to hiding in vents so your ego isn’t bruised, fine, but I will go with you everywhere.”
Nickolai’s expression darkened, but I did not so much as flinch.
“My ego has nothing to do with this, Ryan, and you know it. But whatever you need to tell yourself to feel useful.”
Nickolai spun on his heel to leave, halting only when I sighed his name. Turning back, he watched as I kicked off my Chucks and stepped onto his couch, stretching my arms up and lifting the cover off the vent. Balancing on my toes, I grabbed my gear bag and the paperback I was currently reading and dropped them on the couch, setting the cover back into place. Stepping down off the couch, I slipped my feet back into my trainers, grabbed my jacket, threw it on, and picked up my book.
Ready for the night, I strode over to Nickolai, who grinned as his eyes fell on the book I was reading.
“All right, Anita, let’s go.”
I wanted to growl at his mocking of my book, but Nickolai wasn’t the only one who considered my love of vampire novels a tad unconventional. What they didn’t understand was I grew up with only one role model in my life, and when she died, when she was taken from me, I found the strength to carry on through the characters in books—the badass females who could kick ass and be loved even though they weren’t soft. I survived because of Anita, Cat, Merit, and Rose. I learned life lessons from them and so many more. But that was my secret; I would not share it with anyone.
I waved my book at Nickolai. “You should read a book or two, Nicky. I mean, the vampires in these books… damn. A girl could get ideas.”
Nickolai flushed, and I grinned. He reached for the book, and I shook my head, hiding the paperback behind my back. Returning my grin, he called for the elevator. Once inside, we didn’t utter a word, remaining silent even as we strode across the quad.
The quad was illuminated by floodlights—more so than it had been the previous night—the college no doubt worried the murder was not an isolated incident. I took in the added security tucked discreetly around the many twists and turns on campus that led off to secluded pathways.
Flags flew at half mast, a very human gesture when someone had passed. I stopped. Looking at the tricolor flag flapping in the wind reminded me of the tattoo on my father’s arm. A proud Irish vampire, he’d been extremely proud of his heritage.
I swallowed hard, blowing out a breath, and ignored Nickolai’s curious gaze, continuing toward the café ahead. When we reached the door, I turned and pointed a finger at Nickolai. “You do not leave without me. You don’t leave this building without telling me. I will stay out of your way and not embarrass you, but in turn, please don’t make a mockery of me by dodging out and making me come find you.”
I put as much threat and malice in my tone as I could and noticed a muscle ticking in Nickolai’s jaw as I held his gaze. Fire burned in his eyes, and he slowly smiled, reaching forward to tuck a strand of hair off my face. I growled low in my throat.
Leaning in close, so close I could smell the minty freshness of his toothpaste, Nickolai whispered, “Very fierce, Frosty. I like the fire. How about we make an agreement? I won’t take unnecessary risks, and you’ll try and make some friends.”
“I don’t need friends, My Liege. I’m working.”
Nickolai jerked back, breaking eye contact as he withdrew his hand and walked away from me. I hurried after him, ducking inside under an arm holding the door open, but stopped in my tracks at the sight of the busy café interior, suddenly unsure what to do next.
My eyes followed Nickolai as he found his friends and greeted them with hugs and claps on the back. The group of guys took their seats and began chatting away with somber expressions on their faces. One seat lay empty, as if left in memory of their slain friend.
One of the guys pointed at me, a grin on his face I wanted to punch. Nickolai glanced over his shoulder and crooked his finger with a grin tugging at his lips. I flipped him off, and the guys chuckled. Spying a free table in the corner, one with a clear view of both the door and my charge, I sank down into the seat and set my book on the table as I tried to relax.
A waitress came by the table and I ordered a coffee, watching as a group of girls stopped by Nickolai’s table, offering sympathies. A brunette set her hand gently on Nickolai’s shoulder. He patted her hand once, then lifted it from his shoulder and inclined his body toward a ginger-haired man to his left.
The waitress came back with my coffee and I thanked her and took a sip before opening my book and beginning to read, my attention half on the book and half on Nickolai.
When Nickolai and his buddies ordered food and settled in for the evening, I leaned back in my chair and concentrated on the words on the page. Time passed by, and soon I’d blocked out the noisy coffee shop, immersing myself in a word where Anita raised the dead and solved crimes. I didn’t know how long I lost myself in the book, captivated until a voice cracked through the magic and broke the spell.
Lifting my gaze, my eyes landed on a familiar, petite girl who smiled as if I were a long-lost friend. Her blonde hair was short and wavy, her features cute in that girl-next-door way. She wore a Sons of Anarchy tee, tied up at the waist.
Setting her armful of books down on the table in front of her, the girl’s smile widened as she extended her hand and said with a hint of an American twang, “Hi, I’m Krista.”
“Ryan,” I muttered in reply, staring at her hand until it dawned on me that she meant for me to shake it. Nickolai’s words about making friends rang in my head as I grasped her hand in mine.
“Can I join you? There’s not a free seat to be had tonight.”
Her expression seemed genuine enough, but I was suspicious as to why she wanted to sit with me. Krista didn’t wait for my answer, dragging out the spare seat and sitting down in front of me, blocking Nickolai from my line of sight. I shifted my chair slightly so I could easily watch the princeling.
Krista must have been studying me herself as she followed the path of my gaze and grinned. “Are you watching St. Pat’s most eligible bachelor? I mean, every single woman on campus has their sights set on him. Though tonight, most are sulking at the fact a mysterious runway model went home with him last night.”
Annoyed everyone seemed to be watching us both, especially when I wished to blend in with shadows, I narrowed my gaze. “Is that why you sat with me tonight? For gossip? Don’t try and pretend you wanna be my friend if all you want is to find out about us. I spent a great amount of time and energy avoiding girls like that, so if that’s all you want, then have at it. Nickolai’s a free agent.”
Krista blanched, horrified at my words and my disgusted tone, her chair scraping as she stood. She made to leave, then paused, turning back. “I have no designs on Nickolai, Ryan. I have a boyfriend at home in the States. I genuinely wanted to be friends with you because… Do you know how hard it is to find another girl who’s intelligent and not afraid to speak
her mind like you did in class the other day?”
Guilt and regret washed over me. I wanted to apologize, but Krista kept going.
“I don’t know who hurt you and made you think kind words are ploys of deceit, but that’s not me.”
Krista gathered up her books, and I stood to stop her, knowing I was being fifty shades of an asshole.
“I’m sorry, Krista. Please, let me try this again.” This time, I held out my hand and tried to give Krista the most genuine smile I could muster. “Ryan Callan. It’s nice to meet you.”
Krista shook my hand again. “Krista Meyers Gill.”
We sat down again, and I struggled to find something to say. Krista smiled, sensing my discomfort.
“Not very good at small talk I take it?”
“Not really,” I admitted. “I… I… I don’t have many friends where I live, so I spend most of my time alone or with…”
“With Nickolai?”
“Hell no! I, um… I train in martial arts, so I spend a lot of time with men who think a girl’s place is barefoot and pregnant.”
Krista rested her chin in her hand as she propped her elbows on the table. “And our world leaders think the world has changed, eh?”
“Definitely not the world I live in.”
We shared a smile and I felt eyes on me from across the room, yet I fought against the urge to glance in that direction. The waitress came by again, and Krista ordered more coffee for us both and a plate of fries. I avoided talking for a few minutes by reading the spines of Krista’s textbooks. They were all media related, from one about investigative journalism to monsters in literature.
“I want to be a journalist, interview movie and TV stars. I wanted to be a crime journalist at first, but I don’t have the stomach for it.”
I waited as the waitress returned with our order, and Krista pushed the plate in my direction. I snatched a fry so as not to be rude and nibbled on it.
“Why not study in the States?” I wondered aloud. “Why come all the way to Ireland to study?”
Krista took a sip of her coffee before explaining. “Ireland, and especially St. Pats, is the only place where you can study about all the technical aspects of journalism and have someone like Professor Sykes who will let us debate Buffy, The Vampire Diaries and Van Helsing in the same class as Laurell K. Hamilton and Jeaniene Frost. Conrad, my boyfriend, was transferred to Ireland about a year ago, so I came along. He went home in September, but I stayed.”
“That must be hard.”
“It is what it is,” she said with a shrug.
“I’ve decided to stay around for a while,” I said. “Nickolai’s mother is going to try and get me enrolled, so we might have some classes together.”
“Oh my God, that’s awesome!”
Krista babbled on about classes and assignments, offering to help out where possible to get me up to speed and telling me I’d arrived at the perfect time with Halloween approaching, that all kinds of events and displays would be happening around campus. She mentioned a party at one of the frat houses and how everyone wanted to go because it was one of the events of the year.
I certainly wouldn’t be going.
“That’s if the party still goes ahead after what happened to Matt,” she added.
“Matt?”
“Matt Sullivan. He was murdered last night on campus.”
I remembered the professor calling him Mr. Sullivan and Nickolai calling him Matt this morning. I tried to pretend I was saddened by the death, but humans were born and then they died—some tragically, some of old age. For vampires, death was something that happened after a sprawling gap of time. Unless, of course, death came calling for you long before your time, shrouded in blood and despair, masked in honor and duty.
Krista ate a few more fries, washing them down with a gulp of coffee before she leaned in. “Rumors abound on campus as to how he died. The police have been very tight-lipped, but I heard one say his blood was drained and he had two prong-like marks on his neck that looked like he’d been gnawed at.”
Shrugging my shoulders, I ran my thumb over the spine of my book. “Some sort of wild animal must have come upon him after he died.” I lifted my mug to my lips, taking another sip of coffee.
“Or a vampire killed him,” Krista said simply.
I spluttered, coughing harshly as I tried to regain my composure, her words so blunt and accurate I had no idea how to respond except for absolute denial. “Vampire’s aren’t real. They’re fictious monsters created from the minds of men with overactive imaginations.”
“Why don’t you seem overly convinced, Ryan? All stories come from some aspect of truth. I would bet you anything that all monsters are real.”
Yeah, and she was sitting right across from one.
“You’re completely insane,” I said with a laugh.
“And by that, you mean we’re gonna be best friends.”
Despite the situation, I found myself grinning at Krista as she stood and asked me to meet her again for coffee tomorrow. I spared a glance at Nickolai, and Krista grinned, advising me the boys always met here when classes were cancelled. I already knew, but I still bobbed my head in agreement.
Just as Krista inched away from the table, a siren wailed outside, and I had to cover my ears at the loudness of it. Lights flashed in the café, and people screamed, the scent of their fear so strong it roused the predator in me and I had to close my eyes and find my Zen.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, please remain calm. There is an active assailant on campus grounds. For your own safety, please remain inside the grounds until further notice.”
Krista peered at me, sinking back down in her chair as I sprang up, adrenaline flooding my veins as I pushed my book at her and said I needed the bathroom. With a quick glance at Nickolai, I begged him to stay put as I marched toward the main doors of the café.
A stout security guard manned the doors, arms folded across his chest, his expression smug. “Go back inside, little lady. No one can leave.”
“My boyfriend went out for a smoke about ten minutes ago; I just want to see if he’s okay.”
“Don’t worry your pretty little head about him,” he said. “There was nobody in the smoking shelter when I came on shift just before the alarm. Go back inside.”
The doors swung open, another security guard coming inside. As the first guard tore his eyes from me, I angled my body sideways, slipping past both guards and out the open door, grinning as they called after me. Bolting around the corner, I set my back to the wall and waited a few heartbeats to see if they were brave enough to follow me.
They weren’t.
Lifting my nose in the air, I inhaled deeply, searching for the familiar scent of blood on the wind to lead me in the right direction. Just then the wind shifted, blowing right in my face, and I caught it—the coppery scent of blood mixed with the sicky-sweet scent of death. According to my nose, I needed to cross the quad in order to find the body.
That meant the body was close enough to Nickolai’s apartment to cause concern.
Reaching back, I grasped the hilts of my sai, relishing the comforting feel of them. I relinquished my hold, channeled my inner Anita Blake, and rushed forward into danger.
9
By the time I reached the scene of the crime, the place was so riddled with police and crime scene investigators I couldn’t get close enough to the body to examine it, but I didn’t actually need to see matching puncture wounds. I knew in my gut the rogue vampire was responsible for this second death.
I was puzzled as to why the rogue had wasted so much blood—the amount seeping into the concrete could have fed at least three fully grown vampires. No self-respecting vamp would waste blood like that. We were raised to believe those who gave us blood—willingly or unwillingly—were sacred, the blood in their veins keeping us alive. We respected the hell out of the fact that, without humans, our species would become extinct. Wasn’t that what the council wanted to prevent?
Knowin
g I could not be of any use to the dead man, I kept to the shadows, glancing up toward the window of Nickolai’s apartment, the proximity of the murder too close for comfort. I felt an overwhelming urge to grab Nickolai and drag him home. Swallowing down the bile in my throat, I stole one more glance at the slain man, noting his similarity to Nickolai. It was not a coincidence; someone knew the crown prince was on campus, and they were not one bit happy about it.
Moving away from the scene, I made my way down a back alleyway, glancing down at the ground and following the bloody footprints that led all the way to the high wall surrounding the outer edge of campus. There was a partial print on the wall, as if the rogue had scaled it and escaped before the humans could so much as get a whiff of him.
Glancing around, I made sure no one was watching before I crouched low and used all of my strength to leap up and grasp the top of the wall. Ignoring the dull ache in my shoulder, I pulled myself up and balanced on the top of the wall, my feet gracefully settling on the flat, narrow surface. I scanned the area in front of me, my eyes peeled for any sign of the rogue.
There was nothing for miles as I peered out into the pitch-black night, scanning the field and looking toward the forested area beyond. If I’d been looking for the perfect place to hide, I’d have been out there with scents and sounds masking my presence, watching, waiting to see if I’d been discovered.
The wind gathered again, whipping strands of my ice-blonde hair into my face but also carrying a scent on the air, one I recognized from the night before. It was strong enough that I knew it was fresh. The rogue was nearby; near enough for me to scent him and for him to have scented me.
We’d always been told rogues were predominantly male, that female rogues were so rare they basically didn’t exist. But rogues craved a mate just like all other vampires, and with trueborn females being so rare, that was a recipe for trouble. There were even rumors of court vampires in the past falling for rogues and casting aside title and prestige to join them. As the Romanov dynasty’s vampire clan liked their women soft and protected, finding a full-blood female vampire alone in this part of the world was a rarity. Hopefully, that meant the rogue would be just as intrigued with me as I was eager to make his acquaintance—I was counting on it.