“It would be my honor,” Mikhail replied.
“That the only deal you’re prepared to make?” asked a familiar voice from the door way.
I turned in my seat to peer over the back of the couch only to find Emma.
That bitch! What was she doing here?
Emma was the primus of a seethe down in Portland and a leading member in the “Sacrifice Ashley” gang. Oh, and she used to date Nik.
The men rose to their feet while I gnawed angrily on my empty blood bag.
“Emma,” sighed Mikhail. “What are you doing here?”
“I had something of a coup at my seethe. I seem to find myself homeless and at your mercy.”
“You tried to sacrifice me!” I snapped, coming to my feet and throwing the blood bag on the couch. “You have some nerve showing up here.”
“Oh please, sweetie. You didn’t actually die. Besides, can you really blame me for wanting to be a daywalker?”
“Lot of good that did you!”
She shrugged. “True. Still, I have information that might be helpful in your current Ashley dilemma.”
“Yeah right.”
“What information?” asked Mikhail at the same time.
“Nuh-uh,” she said as she shook her head. “That’s not how this works. You agree to provide me safe haven I’ll not only tell you what I know, but I’ll help you keep little Ashley safe.”
“Hell no!” I snapped.
“Not your choice, Ashley,” said Nik.
“Come sit, Emma.” Mikhail motioned toward the couches.
“No!” I shrieked. “You gotta be kidding!”
Before I could say anything more eloquent against our new guest, Mikhail had me up against the nearest wall, his forearm cutting off my airflow.
“Don’t forget,” he whispered. “I give the orders. I’ve known Emma a LOT longer than I’ve known you. Remember your place.”
With that final, unspoken threat, he released me and moved back to the sitting area, where Emma had taken my seat. I rubbed my sore throat and glowered at them.
“Now, Emma, what is this information you have.”
“The Summer court is working for Sedgrave. They were working with Richard before the sacrifice. I’m certain they are still in the warlock’s pocket.”
“But you aren’t?” I growled from my corner.
“I have had nothing to do with Sedgrave since it became clear he was not going to make us daywalkers.”
“So comforting.”
She ignored me.
“And you’re certain they’re still working for Sedgrave?” asked Mikhail.
“Yes. The Summer Fae have hopes of overthrowing the Winter court once and for all. They think Sedgrave can help them. Or, at least, that is what I’ve been told.”
Mikhail nodded. “Jim, prepare a room for Miss Tanner.”
“Oh, I’m sure I can just stay with Nik,” Emma said, her voice coming out like a cat’s purr.
“Prepare the room, Jim,” Nik said, his mouth barely opening as he frowned down at the ground.
I glanced at Emma and smiled as her face stilled into an expression of surprise and consternation. She quickly schooled her features and smiled at Mikhail.
“What did I tell you, Emma?” I asked as I stepped away from the wall.
I was referring to our previous conversation in which I had tried to trick her into killing me before the sacrifice by telling her that Nik would never forgive her for her part in the ritual.
“Aeson, it was a pleasure to meet you, and I look forward to knowing you better.” I was trying for ultra-polite; prove all these jerks wrong. “If you will all excuse me, I’ve battled many monsters today, and I find myself rather tired. Good night.”
With that I turned and sauntered out of the room.
I’m pretty sure I heard Josh giggle like a little boy.
Chapter Twenty
I had barely pulled a fresh shirt on over my head when I was interrupted by a knock on the door. I hesitated; I couldn’t help it. Part of me wasn’t entirely sure Mikhail had cooled enough not to come and just kill me. Then again, I don’t think he’d ever actually walk all the way down to the bowels of the bunker just to kill a wayward member. This thought heartened me, and I opened the door.
Nik stood on the other side of the door, his hands playing nervously with the hem of his shirt.
“What?” I asked, in no mood to have a fight with Nik. Put the two of us in a room and a fight is inevitable.
“We need to talk. May I please come in?”
I hesitated a moment, but since he asked nicely, I stepped aside and ushered him in, ignoring the audience his presence had created. No doubt other people who ranked the lowest level in the seethe were just as surprised to see the primus’ second on our floor.
He stopped in the center of the room and looked around.
The room was smaller than my tiny studio apartment. It might even have been smaller than his walk-in closet. There was just enough space for a single-wide bed, a narrow nightstand, and a three-drawer dresser. It didn’t even have its own closet. The walls were bare and the only item beyond the furniture was the hotel-style clock on the nightstand.
“Like what I’ve done with the place?” I asked to break the tension he’d brought with him.
“It needs something, I just can’t put my finger on it.”
I burst out laughing, totally unprepared for him, in his current state of agitation, to produce a genuinely funny joke. My laughter did the trick. When I looked up, wiping tears from my eyes, I saw a tiny smile playing at his lips and noticed his hands had stopped fidgeting.
“So what’s up?” I asked when we lapsed back into awkward silence.
“I think I need to tell you some of my history.” He hesitated. “And why I participated in the ritual.”
I ground my teeth together, suddenly wanting to kick him out of my room, but curiosity got the best of me. I nodded for him to continue.
Nikolai looked around the room and took a seat on the edge of my nightstand. “It was about 1812, or so. I don’t remember dates too well. Anyway. I had a friend, a human friend, named Grigori Yenotov. Napoleon’s troops had been steadily working their way across Russia. Grigori’s entire family was killed in an attack. He was alone… and I turned him.”
Nik paused again and I found myself shifting to sit on the edge of my bed, already caught up in his story.
“Grigori, Mikhail, and I were very close, despite Emma’s best efforts. This was before formal seethes were common. In, ummm, 1829 we had to leave Russia. Marchner’s “Der Vampire” was performed for the first time and sent a scare through the entire nation.
“Anyway, skipping a lot of history, Mikhail, Grigori, and I ended up in Boston in the mid-1800s. You’ve got to understand, that was a time when people believed in real evil—us creatures of the night. The government nabbed Grigori and jailed him. I can only assume they were trying to study supernatural creatures. Lincoln’s subordinates saw a war coming. They wanted any advantage they could get.
“So… when I heard about a warlock that had practically shaped the events of the sixteenth century, I thought maybe he could help me get Grigori out.”
“How?” I asked, not seeing the logic in his plan.
“He could sway the mind of any man. Why shouldn’t he be able to get Grigori out? I worked with a group of vampires to try to raise him. Mikhail knew nothing about it. Still doesn’t.”
I stared at him in silence, wanting desperately to be angry at him. “You sacrificed my ancestor,” I said, hanging on to my anger as long as possible.
“I did it to save a friend.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Wouldn’t you have done so for Jordan or Chloe?”
I glared at him, determined not to admit he might have had a point. I’m not sure if I would have been willing to sacrifice another human-being for my friends, but I would have definitely considered it. Either way, I still felt betrayed.
“You should have told me,” I relented quietly.
“Yes, I should have.”
Again, we lapsed into silence, both our thoughts likely running to different places. Mine were mostly heading toward my pillow. I was tired from a very long and trying night.
“Why’d you do it, Ashley?” Nik said, suddenly.
“Do what?” I asked, unable to keep up with his unexpected change of subject. I had a sneaking suspicion what he meant, but I wanted to be sure before I answered.
“Why’d you go after Chloe?”
“You know why.”
“Chloe? That’s it?” Nik seemed genuinely confused.
“I did it because it was the right thing to do,” I explain, as I crossed my arms in front of my chest, feeling my hands clench on their own accord.
“You could have been killed!”
“And Chloe will be killed if we don’t do anything about it.”
“The best way to help Chloe is to end this war between the courts.”
“Not likely,” I said, unwilling to give him an inch.
He glared up at me, his green eyes darkening with anger.
“We need to find her, Nik.”
“You do not need to do anything. You need to stay safe!”
“Well, if you won’t do it, I have to.”
“Oh so this is my fault?” he snapped back.
“YES!” I cried before biting my tongue. I didn’t want to fight with Nik, but more importantly I didn’t want the entire wing of the seethe to hear our fight.
We were both silent for a moment, our eyes locked in an intense stare that was only interrupted by the soft giggle we heard from the hallway. I leaned up against the door and banged my fist in an obvious rhythm that increased in speed. “Oh yes. Yes. YES!” I shrieked loud enough for the entire floor to hear before swinging the door open and poking my head out. “Satisfied?” I demanded of the small audience standing a few feet from my door.
They eyed me, my fully dressed state, my straightened hair, and Nik sitting on the bed, also fully dressed.
“Now bugger off.”
To my intense satisfaction, they scurried away as fast as they could, some of them even tripping over each other’s feet. I slammed the door shut and turned back to Nik. I could see that he wanted to smile at my recent jocularity, but was held back.
“Yes, I think this is your fault,” I whispered. “I think the minute we knew she was missing you should have been out there looking for her. But you didn’t trust Jordan to know his own girlfriend, and now she’s in the hands of our enemy, hurt, because you couldn’t be bothered.”
“You want to know the real reason I didn’t go after her?”
“What? Enlighten me as to the noble reason for letting her get kidnapped.”
“I didn’t go after her because you were hurt. Badly hurt. We didn’t know if you were going to live through that little surgery. Do you really think I could have left you then?”
“Periphetes was there. No one could have hurt me.”
“Periphetes was there when you got hurt in the first place. I was not about to leave you injured, in the care of another man.”
I balked at his wording. What was that supposed to mean?
Nik stood up and began pacing the short length of my room. I pressed myself up against the door to give him space. His speed increased until I was worried he’d damage my precious furniture with his energy.
Suddenly he turned to me and whispered, “I can’t lose you,” before grabbing my face and pulling me up to his lips.
He kissed me soundly, his lips firm and urgent, and I kissed him back.
In my defense, it’s kind of a natural response to kiss someone back.
Nikolai pressed me up against the door, one hand shifting from my cheek to my waistline, his fingertips finding the skin between my t-shirt and my jeans. Of their own accord, my hands moved up to his hips and pulled him closer.
This must have been the encouragement he had been waiting for; Nik pulled me off the ground and swung me over to the bed. He quickly lowered us to the mattress, his hands starting to seek out more skin beneath my shirt. I was just about to reciprocate when the door swung open, banging against the far wall.
Nik and I jerked, him falling off the mattress and me bonking my head against the concrete wall. I reached up to rub the sore spot before noticing who stood in the doorway, his eyes the size of flying saucers.
All three of us froze in place. Had this been a sit-com, the audience would have been cued to laugh. Instead, I wanted to throw up. What had I just been doing?
I watched as Josh’s eyes flickered between the two of us, his hand still resting on the door knob. He swallowed before speaking.
“I knocked.”
With that simple statement, he turned and bolted down the hallway so fast, I knew he felt just as awkward as Nik and I did.
From where he lay sprawled on the floor, Nik kicked the door shut and looked up at me. “Well that was…” He couldn’t think of a way to adequately describe what had just happened.
I sat up, adjusting my shirt. “Get out.”
“Ashley?”
“I said get out.”
Nik hesitated, opening his mouth to say something but then deciding against it. I saw this all out of the corner of my eye, unwilling to look directly at him.
Finally, when he realized I wasn’t going to acknowledge his presence, he climbed to his feet, brushed off his pants, and left me to my guilt.
What had I been thinking?
It had been a long time since any man showed that sort of interest in me. I tried to look back over my dating life, and, considering Isaac had only been interested in my ability to be his sacrificial lamb, I couldn’t find a single man who had shown the sort of passion Nik had just displayed. I took a stuttered breath, trying to calm the feelings surging through me.
I didn’t like him that way, though. He drove me nuts! And I’m not just saying that because secretly I really like him, and all I need is for him to confess his undying love, then suddenly I’ll realize I feel the same way and stop being mean to him.
Nope. Just not my style.
I dropped my head into my hands and felt tears press against my eyes. They spilled over my lids and dropped to the floor. It felt good to cry, just as it had felt good to release myself to the need of another person’s touch.
I sighed.
Why couldn’t it have been the touch of someone I liked—whoever that is.
A feeling of loneliness swept over me, forcing more tears from my tired eyes. If only Chloe was here. I could talk to her. She wouldn’t judge me for making out with Nik, and up until recently, when she started dating Jordan, she would have empathized with my loneliness.
But she couldn’t listen to my boy troubles, because she was being held captive by some bastard of a Winter Fae. A new wave of guilt crashed over me.
Why hadn’t I just traded myself for her freedom? I could have handled whatever they flung at me a lot easier than she could. She was human after all. Besides, it’s not like they were going to sacrifice me again. Or, at least, I hoped that wasn’t why both courts wanted me.
How could one person be the recipient of that much negative, supernatural karma?
I knocked the palm of my hand against my forehead a few times, trying to dispel the growing feeling of shame. I had been such a coward. Sure, I fought a few fae and talked to the Winter queen, but I hadn’t done what was needed when a real opportunity presented itself.
I flopped over on the bed, pulling my knees up to my chest and wrapping my arms around them. I felt the tears shift course to run down my temple toward my hair and my pillow. At some point I fell asleep, my pillow wet with my despair.
Chapter Twenty-One
I woke up and thought about just hiding under the covers for the entire night, but then my stomach turned and my fangs reminded me that I needed blood. Stupid stomach. I rolled over defiantly, hoping to get a few more winks of sleep. It didn’t work. I coul
d hear other people on my level waking and preparing for their nightly activities.
With a sigh of exasperation, I flung the blanket away and climbed out of bed. I dressed in a classy outfit of jeans and, wait for it, a t-shirt. Emma would be so impressed. I ground my teeth together as I flung my hair up into a messy ponytail.
How was I going to handle her being here, much less being a part of my protection detail? Maybe I wouldn’t need to go anywhere and I could spend the day hiding from her with Josh… assuming Josh was even speaking to me.
That was another issue that needed addressing. I thought back with shame to the previous morning’s debacle with Nik and Josh. I felt my cheeks warm up with a heated blush. How was I supposed to face either of them?
I shook out my hands and arms, trying to dispel my nervousness, before opening the door. A few others were making their way toward the upper levels. Some were giving me furtive, humored glances, their hand, covering their mouth, though I could tell they were stifling chuckles.
I ignored them and hurried to the main level. On the main floor of the seethe, I spotted Nik. He waved me over and I hesitated, considering my other options. Before I could find a way to escape, he came up to me.
“We need to talk.”
“Nothing to talk about,” I said, determined to pretend it had never happened. He was making it very difficult.
Once again, I was discovering that being a vampire was nothing like the fantasy I had created in my books. In my stories, the heroine found some guy who annoyed her—like Nik—but quickly discovered she really loved him, then they had sex. A lot of sex.
Instead, I was stuck with Nik. While I had managed the first step with ease, I was nowhere near falling in love with him. And had no intention of doing so, either. Life would be a lot easier if it just followed the plot of my books.
“About last night?” hinted Nik.
Okay idiot, I thought, I obviously don’t want to talk about it. I pursed my lips, hoping he would notice how annoyed I was with him. Either he didn’t, or he was prepared to ignore it.
The Series that Just Plain Sucks: The Complete Trilogy Page 41