House Of Vampires (The Lorena Quinn Trilogy Book 1)

by Samantha Snow

  “It's too complicated to talk about here.”

  “Gee, that's convenient.” I rolled my eyes. What was she going to say next? That I had a long-lost sister? Then again, that probably wasn't totally outside the realm of possibility.

  “Please, Lorena.” She gave me another mom look, this one not nearly as amused as the other one. “I can't be here for long. The wards on this house are impressive.”

  “Are you a witch?”

  She smiled at me, and the image of her flickered again. “Come to me, Lorena. Come see me.”

  The image flickered and then vanished completely. I sighed and flopped over. The headache was pounding now, and my head was filled to burst with heavy thoughts. Was she my mom? Was she a witch? What did this have to do with me? I was betting it had to do with this damn prophecy, too. Ugh. Just when I start to cozy up to the perks, something makes me rethink myself.

  I threw the blankets back and pulled a robe over my shoulders. Sleep was apparently not going to happen right now. I thought about going downstairs and fixing myself a sandwich or something. Maybe read a few chapters of a book. I'd like to play a few levels of a video game, but there was no television where I could hook up my console.

  Air, I thought to myself, ‘some nice fresh air would feel good.’ It might even help with the headache. I opened the big stained glass door and stepped out onto the semi-circle balcony just outside. The moon was as full and bright here as it was in France. Seeing it hanging there, one big perfect globe, made me think of that little clan of shifters in Canada. Did they change with the moon? Or was that just a myth? I added that to the mental list of questions that I was steadily building.

  A sound caught my attention. It was a door opening. A moment later, Wei stepped out and made his way to the very center of the courtyard. He was dressed in one of the martial arts uniforms that I was used to seeing him wear. This one was pure white, and it left his arms bare. The tunic, because what else could I call it, was long enough that the ends were slit at the thighs and hips to offer freedom of movement. He had a long straight blade with a short tassel on the hilt. His feet were bare.

  I don't think he knew I was there. He started to...well...dance. Not dancing the way I would have done it. No one ever needed to see that. This was a martial dance, a smooth flowing of one move into another that made the long line of his pitch black hair move with him.

  I couldn't help but watch. The fluid nature of his motions were hypnotic. and the headache began to ease. It helped that his arms and shoulders were...well...perfect. Everything about Wei, aside from his stoic arrogance and prickly nature, was.

  The minute he knew I was there, his shoulders went tight. His motions faltered. He whirled around and looked up at me. Even from here, I could see the grim line of his lips.

  “You should be sleeping.”

  I sighed. “You should be less of a jerk.”

  He frowned even harder at me, then he clapped his hands to his sides and gave me a short bow. “Forgive me. My words did not match my meaning. What I meant was, why aren't you asleep? Is there some problem?”

  His words were clipped, and they didn't have any warmth in them. If he had been a little more open, I might have told him about my maybe-mom's visit. As it was, I offered him the best answer I could. “I have a headache.” It was true enough, if not the entire truth.

  He tilted his head to one side. “Do you get headaches often?”

  I shook my head, and immediately regretted it. My palm was too warm against my forehead, and it made everything worse. “No, I think it was from the wine I had with dinner.”

  “Ah.”

  I had never known a single person to put so much distaste into a single syllable.

  “Don't get snooty with me,” I said, tugging the robe closer to me. I was in no mood for this and I said so. “I don't have the patience to deal with your prickly attitude.”

  He raised a brow at me. “Prickly?”

  I leaned against the edge of the balcony. “You've been pretty prickly with me. I know you don't like me-”

  “That is...not fair. I do not know you.”

  It was my turn to raise my brow at him. “That's weird, because you've been acting like I'm the scum of the Earth. I was racking my brain trying to figure out when I had run over your dog.”

  He made a sound I might have called a laugh if it had been coming from anyone else, but from Wei, it was more like enthusiastic throat clearing. “I do not hate you.”

  “Glad we cleared that up.”

  “I am... uncomfortable.”

  “Then come sit down,” I said, completely missing the meaning of his words.

  He frowned at me again. He was good at frowning. It suited him. But he bowed once more and then shifted his weight on his feet. I knew that he was going to leap an instant before it happened. I just didn't realize that a vampire could clear the two stories with a standing jump. He hovered in the air for a second, as if he could fly, and then landed on the balcony with the kind of grace I could only dream of having.

  “I feel like I ought to applaud or something.”

  “That is not necessary.”

  I rolled my eyes, but halfway through, I realized that his lips weren't frowning quite so much as usual.

  “Wait, did you just make a joke?”

  He shrugged, and his arms did neat things that a romance novel might have called 'ripples'. He might not have Dmitri's overt muscles, but there was clear definition there that was hard not to stare at. Hard, but not impossible.

  “I am capable of wit, I just choose not to use it.”

  That seemed completely foreign to me. I liked wit. I used it often, usually to keep from crying or yelling or any overt emotion. I was a completely functional human being, I swear. “Why?”

  “Because people misunderstand things. I do not like being misunderstood.”

  I almost laughed. “That's weird, because I misunderstand you a lot.”

  “I have noticed.” He sighed, and for the first time, he looked...tired. “Can I be blunt?”

  “Do you know any other way to be?”

  He shot me a look that would have looked annoyed were it not for the glimmer in his eyes. “I am not good with...this.”

  “With what?” I asked, leaning casually against the railing.

  He let out the smallest sigh I had ever heard and said, “Women.”

  I did my best not to laugh. I swear I did, but I was operating on an hour’s worth of sleep, wine was still humming in my system, and my long-lost mother (or a really good replica) had visited me via magic not ten minute before. So, you know, I wasn't at my best. “I'm sorry,” I said when I stopped chuckling. “I just...that was pretty much the last thing I expected you to say.”

  “Why?” he demanded.

  “Dude, I have seen you toss Dmitri and Alan around like they were foolish children. And even then, you barely ruffled your hair. You always seem so...controlled.”

  “You do not know me any better than I know you.”

  “It's not like you've made it easy to get to know you.” I took an angry step in his direction.

  “It is not as if you were trying to get to know me.” He leaned over me, as if his scant inch or two of height would intimidate me. It might have worked if I wasn't feeling so terrible.

  I threw my hands up. The pain behind my eyes had become a pulsing hammer. “I was trying to get to know everyone.”

  “Forgive me if I have no desire to be a number amongst your harem.”

  It wasn't fair, but it was a little true. “I don't have a harem. I'm not sleeping with anyone. And why do you care? Don't you want magic to come back into the world? Don't you-damnit,” I snapped when the pain behind my eyes rendered me just a little blind. I placed my palms over my forehead and hoped the world would just stop spinning.

  He watched me for a moment and then held his hand out. When I just stared at it dumbly, he said, “Give me your hand.”

  I did, only because I was too surprise
d not to. He turned it over so that the back of my hand fit into the curve of his palm. He ran his fingers over my skin, and I blinked. His touch was surprisingly gentle. He took the soft part of my hand between my thumb and forefinger and applied the smallest amount of pressure. The pain behind my eyes eased.

  “Wow,” I said after a moment.

  He kept his hand there. I could almost feel a small tingle creeping up from the place where he touched and the pain in my head.

  “Yes.”

  I blinked at him, wondering what he was responding to now.

  “I want magic back,” he continued. “I want to know what the world would be if the Weave pulsed and thrived the way it is described in the books of old.”

  He trailed off, looked away, and dropped his hand away from mine.

  “But?” I prompted.

  “But...I do not want to simply be the man who happened to be there at the time. If I take a woman, it will be because I love her, and she loves me, and the child we create will be...cared for. And, I hope you do not take this in the way that it was not meant, but I do not want to watch a woman I love wither away and die.”

  What did it say about Wei that he was saying the same things that I had been feeling?

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “I didn't ask for this.”

  “But you have not shirked it either.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” I demanded suddenly. “I grew up reading stories about faeries and vampires and dragons and now I'm being told that I can see all of those things, that I can be a part in bringing back all the things that we think are fairytales. All I've got to do is have a baby with the right dude.”

  Tears I didn't know I had spilled out of my eyes, and it did absolutely nothing for the headache that had been nearly gone. These weren't the nice and happy tears that some heroines cried in blockbuster flicks, these were the big ugly fat tears that I hadn't known were in me.

  “I-I am supposed to be a Quinn witch, but the one woman who might have told me what that meant is dead and now...now some woman pretending to be my mom is showing up in my bedroom, telling me to come talk with her and I think I have friends, real friends, and I've never had those before. My dad has been lying to me all my life, and on top of that, Alan kissed me, and Dmitri reads me stories, and you have the prettiest damn sneer I've ever seen!”

  I crumpled. My legs wouldn't hold me up anymore, and I just fell down in front of Wei. Of all the people I had ever met, he was the one I wanted to look strong for, and all I could do was sob those ugly deep rib-cracking sobs that came with the gross nose and bright red cheeks.

  “I don't know...what...to do,” I managed to say between breaths.

  I expected him to make some terrible comment, to say something rude. Imagine my surprise when he sat down behind me and pulled me against him. His body rocked, and his hand pressed my ear to his chest. Had he been human, I would have heard a heartbeat. Instead, all I felt was the caress of his shirt, stained with my tears, and the strength of the body beneath it.

  All I wanted to do was curl up and fall back asleep. When had I gone from feeling like everything was alright, to feeling like nothing was? I had been on a great date tonight. I had friends. But it all felt...like it was someone else's dream. That was dumb. Maybe everything would make more sense in the morning.

  He didn't say anything. He didn't tell me that it would be alright, and he didn't say that I shouldn't be crying. Wei just held me close and rocked me until the need to cry finally ebbed.

  “What do you mean when you say that your mother visited you?”

  “I don't know that it was her. I'm not sure I believe it. But some woman in a gray robe has visited me twice, once at Ms. Marquesa's store, and once in my bedroom before I came out here. She says she is my mother and that she wants to talk to me about the prophecy.”

  I made to pull away, and he let me, though his hands lingered on my arms longer than I thought they would. Maybe he didn't hate me as much as I thought he did.

  “Will you go to her?”

  “Hell no,” I said flatly. “I don't know who she is or what she wants from me. I've seen enough movies to know how that kind of thing goes. She's either my mother and has known who and what I am this whole time and left me anyway, or she's not my mother and she's trying to lure me into a trap. Either way, I am not interested.”

  “That is...somehow wise.”

  “You sound awfully surprised by that.”

  He pulled back an inch, which only told me that he had been too close to start with. “Maybe I am.” He stood up and bowed to me again. I almost bowed back, but I was too sure that I'd screw it up to try. “Will you be able to sleep now?”

  I thought about it and shook my head. “I am way too awake for that.”

  “Would you like me to stay?” he asked. I think he even meant it.

  I couldn't help but wonder who Wei really was. I wasn't stupid enough to think that he wasn't as powerful or as deadly as he seemed. I was pretty sure he was both. But I also wasn't stupid enough to think that was all he was.

  “What kind of sword is that?” I asked, pointing to the straight blade with the tassel.

  “It's a jian, a sword used in Tai Chi.”

  I had heard of Tai Chi. I knew that it was Chinese in origin, and that was pretty much all. I hadn't known that there were swords involved.

  “Could you teach me how to use it?” I asked.

  “Why?”

  “Dude, I have spent at least a third of my life running around a digital daydream pretending to be a hero. If I have the chance to learn to use a sword, I'm going to take a shot.”

  His lips split into a grin that made his face appear softer. He was cute, I thought. He might not have the overt sensuality of Alan, or the warrior-poet beauty of Dmitri...but there was something beautiful about him nonetheless. I wondered if they were beautiful because they were vampires, or if they had to be beautiful before someone would change them.

  “It will not be easy.”

  “The best things in life never are.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “Ugh, I can't do this.”

  I tossed an old fashioned feathered pen on the ground; it rolled next to a vial of bright blue ink. I was not, apparently, an ink witch; nor was I a witch of fire, earth, air, or any one of the other elements. I was not good with yarn or thread or other forms of stitch-witchery. I wasn't a kitchen witch, or an herbalist, a beast witch, or anything else, so far as I could tell.

  “Maybe I'm not really a witch. Maybe I just kinda suck at all of this.”

  “That is a terrible attitude to have,” Ms. Marquesa said shortly. I couldn't really blame her for getting snippy with me. I'd been snippy for the past month at least. I hadn't really slept well since the night my maybe-mom had shown up to surprise me. I was filling my time with training, both arcane and martial. The Tai Chi was all about muscle control and fluid movement, and dear sweet merciful gods of gaming, it made everything hurt. My arms were starting to look fantastic, though, so there was that. I hadn't been allowed to use a sword yet.

  The arcane stuff was going a lot...slower.

  “Yer heart just ain't in this.” Ms. Marquesa waved her hands. The herbal smoke that had gathered between her palms evaporated, taking the scent of rosemary and bay leaves with it. She looked, in my opinion, exactly how a witch ought to look. She wore layered, loose colors that might have been sheer were it not for the stacking and a few talismans around her neck with symbols that I was beginning to recognize as moon glyphs.

  “Well, I don't know where it would be,” I grumped, tugging at my college sweater. I didn't look nearly as witchy. In fact, I looked like a college student in the middle of the worst round of finals she had ever known. I kinda felt that way, too. Go figure.

  “Boys,” Connie said. She held out one hand and the squirrel who had come to her while the four of us; Ms. Marquesa, Connie, Jenny, and myself; had gathered at Ms. Marquesa's place to practice magic. She lived in an old three-bedr
oom house. It was everything that my grandma's house hadn't been, neat and organized and full of food. As Ms. Marquesa was a kitchen witch, I didn't know why I expected any less.

  I shot Connie a look. It was true, but she didn't have to say it. Boys were on my mind, a lot. Ever since I started training with Wei, Dmitri and Alan had decided to step up how much attention they were giving me. It sounded great, in theory, to have the attention of three very attractive immortal dudes, but I had spent a good portion of my life not being around people a lot. It was beginning to grate on my nerves.

  Jenny laughed, stretched out her legging-clad legs, and flopped backwards on a bean bag. The bright red of it brought out the gold shadow she'd smeared over her eyelids. I'd learned that she never bought anything that wasn't drug store brand or thrift store-centric, and yet she always managed to look like she'd just stepped off a runway. She never failed to impress. “I wish I had three hot vampire chicks to date.”