I rolled my eyes, but smiled anyway. I liked Jenny. Years of moving from one place to another had given me a finely-honed sense of knowing right off who I wanted to hang out with and who I didn't. Jenny fell into the former category. “Come in.”
It should have been awkward having someone I didn't know over to a house that wasn't really mine, but like I said, my family moved around a lot. I had become an expert at making friends on the fly. We walked in, unpacked every single packaged and processed food she had taken from the store, and we plopped down in front of my computer to watch cartoons. Because at nineteen, you rediscovered that cartoons were pretty much the best thing ever. Then again, if you are like me, you never forgot in the first place.
“So,” she asked, sometime around two in the morning after we had eaten two bags of chips and more Little Debbie snack cakes than I had ever known existed, “tell me what you want to do with your life.”
I shrugged. It was hard to think about. “Well, before tonight, my plan consisted of chilling out here for six months and then maybe looking into going back to school in a year or two...you know...after a cruise or a vacation or something.”
“Back to school?” She folded her long legs under her and popped open the chip bag that we had promised was going to stay closed forever.
“Yeah, I dropped out earlier this year. I kinda gave up.”
“Why?”
I could have lied, but I didn't. “I don't know. I wish I had some great excuse for what I did. I wish I could tell you that I broke under the stress or something...but I didn't. My grades weren't terrible. They weren't fantastic either, but I was managing. The truth, though? I just didn't want to be there anymore. I didn't want to write another paper about the advancement of humans as understood by some random old dude. I didn't want to prove that I know the square root of whatever when I'd been doing that for years already. I thought college was supposed to be different, but as far as I could tell, it was just high school version two-point-oh.”
“I wanted to go to college, but we couldn't afford it. An' a'fore you go on and tell me all about the joys of student loans...don't.”
I thought back to the couple of thousand that I owed without any degree to show for it. “Not going to happen, I promise. What did you want to study?”
“Geology. I'm good with stones.”
“Really?” I asked. I thought back to the psychic attack and remembered the stones glowing around Jenny's throat.
“Yeah, I am. Always have been. Most witches have something they are good with. Well, most have several somethings, but we all have something that we are like...a natural with. The first thing that really bonded with us. I am good with stones, Grandma is good with herbs and kitchen witchery. Connie is good with animals. All of us draw from things. Your Grandma? She was good with metals and the wind.”
‘Well,’ I thought, hearing the tinkle of wind chimes in the distance, ‘that made sense.’ If I really was a witch, and I wasn't holding out hope on that front, what would I be good with? I didn't know. I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to find out.
“Who are the vampires?” I asked.
“Well, you met Alan. He's hot.”
“And he knows it,” I said with a roll of my eyes.
“Oh, ain't that the truth. Yeah, he's nice, but he likes to pretend he ain't. He wears his pretty the way Connie wears her silence.”
There was something about the way she said the name that made me look at her. “Do you have a crush on Connie?”
Jenny shrugged her shoulders and looked away. It was clear she didn't want to talk about it. If I had been a best friend, or even a friend for more than two hours, I might have pushed. I didn't though.
“Okay,” I said, “you said the other one is named Dmitri?”
“Yeah, he's from Russia, or a place that used to be its own country but is now part of Russia, I dunno. Like I said, he's broody. Tends to act first and think later.”
I formed a sketchy picture of him in my head. He ended up looking like that dude who played Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings movies.
“There are three, right?”
She nodded. “Yeah, three. The last one is Wei. I don't know him very well. He's quiet. Really quiet and... intense.”
She frowned when she said it, and I frowned right along with her. I could handle quiet guys, and I could handle intense ones, but the guys who were both usually ended up being serial killers. Then again, they were all vampires...
“Do I have to do this?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Naw, you don't have to. But I warn you that prophecy has a way of wanting to be done, even if you don't want it.”
“Well I don't. I mean, don't get me wrong. I think it would be cool for magic to be in the world again. Really cool. But...I don't think I want to be the one to do it.”
“Well, spend your six months here, do what you gotta do. Maybe get a job and save up. It's all up to you. I'll help out.”
She meant it. I could hear it in her voice. It made me smile. “You tryin' to be my friend?”
“There ain't a lot of lesbians on this mountain, but there are even fewer friends.”
We shared a quiet moment of complete understanding, the kind between two people who knew exactly what it was like to have a hundred acquaintances and no friends. In that moment, I decided that I'd stick around, if just for Jenny.
There was a knock on the door, and Jenny popped up faster than I could. “That's probably Connie.”
I smiled to myself. Yeah, there was definitely something there. I'd ask about it sometime. She swung open the door, and I knew that it wasn't Connie, because I heard her ask, “What the hell are y'all doing here?”
“I have informed my brothers of the attack tonight, and we have decided that the vessel of prophecy would be safer at our home than...here.”
I recognized Alan's voice. It wasn't just the whisper of a French accent, it was the arrogance in his words. I popped up and stomped over, staring over Jenny's shoulder and right into that perfectly carved face. “Hey, buddy, what did I say about this prophecy thing?”
“I believe you said you were not interested,” he said. He was still pretty, and still dressed to the nines in his aristocratic French getup. I had to admit it looked good. Not many guys could pull off that much lace and still look manly. Maybe it was the teeth.
“Y'all need to give her a break. She just got here.”
“And already the Cult attacks,” a man of maybe twenty or so years old said. He had rich brown hair that curled in natural ringlets around a broad face. His nose was short and hooked, but his lips were soft and looked like they would give excellent kisses. He was also, and I mean this emphatically, buff. Oh, he tried to hide it under loose clothes, so you might not notice at first, but I bet beneath that black shirt and blacker jacket he was built like Mr. Universe.
That had to be Dmitri.
“Well, maybe someone ought to tell them I'm not going to be having any prophecy babies.”
Alan gave me a look that said I was being ridiculous. “You will give up your entire inheritance because you do not want to take me as a lover?”
“One of us,” Dmitri amended, his voice gruff.
“I'd give up a lot of things to have the freedom that the average woman ought to have, not the least of which is decide when she wants to have a kid,” I snapped back.
Alan's lips curled into a smirk. “An independent woman, I see. How...modern.”
I rolled my eyes. “Listen, dude, I'm not into this whole alpha male thing. You can take your arrogance and shove it up your pretty-”
“You think I'm pretty?”
If I hadn't already been rolling my eyes, I would have done it again.
“It was just once,” Jenny cut in, “They only called to her once. It means nothing. Besides, they attacked at the station. Everyone knows Grandma works her magic outta there. This place is protected. They won’t attack her here.”
“Yeah,” I thought to myself, “Jenny
was definitely going to be my friend.”
“Is that true?” Dmitri demanded.
I opened my mouth to say that it was, but then I remembered the voice I heard when I was just about to drift off. The voice that I had promised myself was nothing.
Jenny turned towards me when my hesitation lasted longer than a second. “Right?”
“Well...”
“She comes with us,” a third man said, and all eyes turned towards him. I'd lied. Alan was definitely not the most attractive guy I had ever seen.
Wei, because who the heck else could it be, looked like a modern-day warrior, prepared for battle. A straight-edged blade hung along his back, a tassel hanging off the end. He wore the high neck and straight-sleeved shirt that I associated with Chinese history, but the pants were modern day slacks, loose ones, comfortable enough to move in. The clothes were good, the man in them was devastating. His skin was just a shade or two shy of being gold, with eyes as dark as obsidian. His lips were set into a grim and determined line. He didn't have Alan's elegance or Dmitri's brute strength, but there was something about the way he held himself that told me that this guy took no crap from anyone.
I ignored that completely. “The hell I am.”
Jenny gave me a look. “Lorena, maybe you ought to-”
“I don't want to have their children.”
I was on the verge of hysterics. I could feel it like a spider crawling up my throat. I shook my head. I knew that if I went with them, I'd be completing some step in this stupid prophecy, and I didn't want that. I wanted to go back to sleep. Better yet, I wanted to not be so stubborn that I quit a job I hated to come looking for a new life.
“Do not be foolish,” Wei said, taking a step forward. Everyone moved out of his way, everyone but me. “I have no interest in playing the stud to your brood mare, but you will be safer at our house.”
I snorted. “Who the hell called you a stud?”
Jenny made a choking sound that sounded like she was holding back a laugh, Alan's lips spread enough that I could see the tips of his pointed teeth, and Dmitri looked like I had come from a whole other planet. I got the feeling a lot of people didn't stand up to Wei, the Grumpy. Please, I had dealt with Sunday Morning Soccer Moms. No one lays into you like those ladies.
“It was a metaphor.”
I shrugged and crossed my arms across my chest. “Nice metaphor since I get to be the brood mare.”
His lips made an even tighter line. I put my hand on the door, intending to close it. I don't know what I would have done, because that sense of pressure started to build again.
“Oh no!” Jenny called. She stumbled away from me.
The pressure was hard and fast enough that my ears popped. I knew better than to try and cover my ears, but I did it anyway. Human instinct is stupid that way. The pressure hit me in waves, and I realized it wasn't affecting anyone else, just me. My vision started to go blurry. The men were shouting things to one another, and Wei's arms went around me. I had just enough time to tell him not to get any ideas before I passed out entirely.
CHAPTER FOUR
I woke up in a bed fit for a princess, I kid you not. It had four posters and a canopy and everything. The sheets were the finest cotton I had ever felt, and the comforter was stuffed with feathers. Everything was done in the palest shade of purple. I sat up and tugged at the collar of the nightgown I had not been wearing last night. It was not even a nightgown that I owned.
Come to think of it, I don't think I owned an actual nightgown. Most of my pajamas were one of three pairs of sweat pants and an appropriately geeky t-shirt. I did have a Wonder Woman matched set, but that's not what I was wearing now. This was frilly and flowy and girly. Not something I would have picked out for myself.
I wondered who had changed my clothes, and then decided that I didn't want to know.
The afternoon sun spilled in through a window that might have looked more at home in a church than a bedroom. It had stained glass cut into shapes to look like a massive rose garden. It took me a moment to realize that it wasn't just a window; it was a door, and beyond that was a little balcony. I didn't go out there, but I could see the shadow of it. I'd never stayed in a place nice enough to have stained glass anything.
I swung my feet out and instantly regretted it. It was cold! I guess vampires didn't need much in the way of heat, and I was currently assuming that in my knocked-out state, I had lost the argument about where I would be staying. Either that or the Cult had gotten me. That would be a neat twist. I looked around and found a pair of slippers and a robe. I tugged both on and got a look at myself in the mirror of a cute vanity tucked carefully into one corner of a room large enough to fit most of the apartments I had grown up in.
My short hair was sticking up in a hundred places, and my eyes had the kind of bags that would have to be checked at the airport, but other than that, I looked okay. It could have been worse.
I opened a closet and the drawers to the standing dresser. I found not only the few clothes that I had brought with me, but twenty or thirty outfits that were definitely not my style. Too many lacy bits. I wasn't above wearing a dress. I liked dresses, but lace itched, and bows were for little girls. I didn't change, mostly because it was cold and I had no desire to take off the robe that had begun to warm me up. Instead, I decided to go investigating.
I liked anthropology. Okay, there were four different types of anthropology. Thanks to the slew of crime shows on television, most people were aware of forensic anthropology, the study of bones and such. I studied social anthropology, which means I looked at pots that had been in some thousand-year-old dump site and tried to determine what they meant to someone. It was sort of like archaeology; they went hand in hand. Even so, my year and half of taking classes had given me insight into people based off of the things that they kept around. Whoever had decorated this room liked things to be comfortable and attractive. I was okay with that.
I opened the door and peeked out. No one was there. A long red rug bisected a hallway built of dark wood. There were sconces every few feet and doors on either side, five doors if I was counting right. I walked past them and towards a massive staircase. There were stairs leading up and down, which made it difficult to figure out what floor I was on.
“Miss?”
I nearly jumped out of my skin. I whirled and found myself facing a very tall, very slender, very bald man.
“I did not mean to startle you.”
“Then wear a bell!” I said pressing my hand to my chest. My heart was going a billion miles an hour. “And be glad I am not a ninja.”
His lips moved up into a shadow of a smile. “As you wish.”
“Who are you?”
The man bowed in my direction, placing one hand at his chest. “My name is Peter Montague and I am the butler here.”
Of course, there would be a butler. I don't know why I hadn't thought it before. Pretty stained glass, frilly clothes, and domestic servants. They were like peas in the pod of privilege. Neat.
“Hi, Pete,” I said, keeping my robe closed. While the nightgown I wore went from neck to floor, the fabric was pretty thin. “I'm Lorena.”
“So, I was informed. I wish to convey my apologies for your treatment. The young masters of the house do not usually bring home unconscious women against their will.”
“Well, they've done it often enough to piss me off,” I shot back, then felt bad about it. Peter wasn't the one who had brought me here. He was just apologizing for it. “Sorry. Who told you I didn't want to come?”
“Miss Jenny did. She asked me to give you this.”
He held up one hand. How I hadn't noticed my grandmother's book of magic before I wasn't sure. Then again, the hall wasn't well lit, and I was feeling out of my element. There was a post-it note on the front. It had a phone number on it.
“Call me when you wake up.” A large 'J' was written in stark handwriting at the bottom.
“Thanks.”
“Are you hungry?�
� he asked.
“What time is it?”
“Nearly four-thirty. The gentlemen will be abed for a few more hours. I thought you might like some time to yourself before they wake. I do not expect that they will give you much in the way of peace.”
I agreed with Pete there. I was pretty sure once the boys were awake, I was going to be beset with questions, made demands of, and probably wooed. Or at least attempts at being wooed. I wasn't feeling very woo-able right this moment.
“Breakfast would be good. Um...is there a shower?”
“Your room has an en-suite.”
“I... have no idea what that is, but I'm pretty sure I would have found it.”
House Of Vampires (The Lorena Quinn Trilogy Book 1) Page 4