Ravenous (Triskaidekaphilia Book 2)

by Wendy Nikel

  The prince yelped and hopped back. One hand flew to his face and massaged the sharp point of his chin with long fingers. Jules beamed, wishing Lavinia had been there to witness her triumph… and then her glee sunk right into her guts. She’d assaulted the prince—twice in one night. She was most certainly going to die now.

  A little thrill sparked in Jules’s heart at the thought of Prince Fabian touching her. Yes, he’d be touching her to kill her, but it still made her excited. Shit.

  A chuckle escaped Prince Fabian’s lips, quiet at first, then loud and boisterous. He pointed Jules’s boot at her. “You.” He shook his head in merriment. “I like you.”

  This was not the reaction Jules expected. Where was his rage at being assaulted by a radical? She frowned in confusion. Was this a psychological tactic to mess with her before he skewered her? If so, it was cruel and unusual.

  “Well…” Jules fought to keep her voice from quavering. “The feeling isn’t mutual, psycho. I despise you.”

  Unfazed by her insults, Prince Fabian took a step toward her, set her boot down on a countertop, and looked around. Jules clenched her fists. Prince Fabian’s seeming indifference was infuriating.

  The prince gestured to the beakers, the sinks, and the refrigerator in a sweeping gesture. “What is all of this?”

  Jules wanted to shout, Stop playing with your prey, you asshole! but instead she said, “Why should I tell you?”

  Prince Fabian’s eyes glittered and Jules swallowed hard. His eyes were hungry, impassioned, as they’d been in California.

  And there they were again, her loins getting all riled up over a pretty face. The feelings of longing that burned in her belly were exquisitely, painfully annoying. Perhaps fear was an aphrodisiac?

  “You and I are more alike than you think.” Prince Fabian ran a long finger across a countertop.

  Jules snorted. “I find that highly unlikely.”

  Prince Fabian shrugged. “You’re a scientist?” He drifted closer, and Jules’s nose tickled. He smelled like rain.

  “A chemist.”

  Prince Fabian raised an eyebrow. “Impressive.”

  Jules rolled her eyes. It was too much, this toying with her. “Okay, enough with these weird puzzles of yours. I’m sure you’re here to sentence me to death or a lifetime of slavery to the Republic, so how about you dish out my punishment before sunrise, yeah?”

  Prince Fabian pressed his fingers together in a prayer position and then brought them to his lips, studying her. He blinked behind long, black lashes. He lifted his chin, so his words wouldn’t get lost in his fingertips. “You think I’m here to kill you?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  Prince Fabian smiled. “Quite the opposite. I want to give you a new life, Jules…”

  “That doesn’t sound creepy or anything.”

  “I remember you.”

  Jules’s throat constricted. There was no way.

  “We’ve never met,” she lied.

  Prince Fabian shook his head. “A man doesn’t forget a beautiful girl with blue hair. I couldn’t quite place it earlier tonight when you attacked me, but on the drive over, I figured it out.” He moved to one of her lab tables and hopped up to sit on the counter. “California, maybe fifteen years ago? What was the name of that place?” Prince Fabian snapped his fingers. He pointed at Jules. “Monkeybone, right?”

  Jules remembered the dirty beach bar with a silly name, the smell of hops, the ruffle of the breeze off the ocean, and a stranger who entered the bar and immediately stole her attention with his dark demeanor. “It was sixteen years ago,” she mumbled.

  Prince Fabian smiled. “Time flies.”

  “Have you been having fun?”

  “Not like I used to.” He narrowed those blue eyes at her. “Jules, I noticed you the moment I walked into the bar. You were so pale, so hungry. You stuck out like a sore thumb, a porcelain doll among the tanned beach bums.”

  Jules remembered, with painful clarity, the hunger contractions that rocked her stomach that night, and the way her skin looked pallid and stretched thin. “I was new and my maker had been killed. I hadn’t fed in a week. I thought dark beer would fill me up.”

  “But it didn’t.”

  “Definitely not.”

  “I was looking for something to quench my thirst as well.” Prince Fabian cracked his knuckles. “I chatted up a blonde drinking a cosmopolitan—no, a mai tai. Her blood smelled like honeysuckle. I’m sure you caught a whiff?” When she didn’t answer his question, Prince Fabian shrugged. “I’d hazard a guess you thought she had my undivided attention that night. In fact, she had but a slice. I never let you drift out of my periphery. I loved your blue hair.” He shook his head fondly at the memory. “I knew you’d follow us.”

  “How?”

  “Because just as you kept me in your sights, I kept you in mine.”

  Jules’s cheeks heated. She had, indeed, watched him that night like a love-struck hawk. She’d watched the dark stranger’s long fingers wrap lyrically around a foamy pint of beer, his smile dazzle everyone around him, the impish twinkle in his eye that promised sinful exchanges between sweaty sheets.

  Despite the hunger growling in her belly, she’d desperately wanted to trade places with the blonde with whom the stranger seemed so enamored—until she snuck out back with them.

  The stranger had dotted the blonde’s suntanned throat with lascivious kisses and gentle nips, weaving a spell of lust about her, but in her gut, Jules was keenly aware of his true intention. She pegged him for what he was the moment he floated into the bar, beautiful but grim. And so she watched, eyes wide, her breath hitched up in her chest.

  The stranger had skimmed the blonde’s freckled skin with his tongue. As he teased the patch of flesh above her jugular, the woman moaned in pleasure, and the stranger sank his teeth in. The blonde cried out and struggled against the stranger’s firm hold as blood, black as molasses in the dim light, dripped and pooled at the point where her neck met shoulder.

  Jules remembered how her mouth had watered in the moment, how a torturous kneading in her stomach almost doubled her over, how desire for the stranger surged through her limbs. She desperately wanted to taste both the woman’s blood and the stranger’s perfect lips.

  He’d turned to her, the woman limp in his arms, and pierced her gaze with his own. Then, she was running, running, running, terrified by her ravenous hunger for warm honeysuckle blood and cold fingers she wished would explore her body.

  Prince Fabian was looking at her now, and that dark twinkle she’d seen in the bar sixteen years ago lit up his blue irises and made his pupils flare. “I wanted to share the blonde with you, but you ran.”

  Jules was leaning back against one of her lab tables, clutching the metal surface desperately because her legs were less than functional. She was sure she looked like an idiotic fan girl with a crush, so she pushed into the ground and lengthened to her full height. “Why are you bringing this up?”

  Prince Fabian hopped off the table, lithe and graceful as a jaguar. He shoved his hands in his pants pockets and sauntered forward, close enough that Jules could smell his rainstorm scent. He licked his lips. “Because I haven’t forgotten the taste. Of the real thing. Of freedom. I want it back.” He leaned in to whisper in her ear. “And you do, too.”

  Jules shivered.

  Prince Fabian stood to his full height and looked down at her. “Unless everything you said tonight was bullshit.”

  Jules shook her head. “Not in the slightest.”

  Prince Fabian grinned. “I knew someone would come along if I remained patient, but I never would’ve imagined it would be someone from my past.” He reached out and caressed her cheek. His icy touch reminded Jules of snowflakes kissing her skin. “I want to start a revolution with you.”

  Wait, what? A revolution? What the hell does he mean?

  Aloud, Jules defaulted to sarcasm. “I bet you say that to all the girls.”

  Prince Fabian’s face grew
ever serious. “No, just you.”

  Jules didn’t know what to say to that, so she simply stood there, waiting.

  “We have to act quickly. I’m sure that ox of a guard Maddox is entertaining the king and queen as we speak. Denouncing me as a traitor, no doubt.” He scratched his chin, staring up at the ceiling. When he resumed, Prince Fabian appeared to be thinking out loud. “I can’t go home, though it’s never been much of a home to me, so…” His blue eyes snapped to Jules. “Have you ever been to a pub called Oscar’s?”

  Oscar’s was a hole-in-the-wall bar across town, the kind of where place serious drinkers—bloodaholics—hung out. “Yeah, I’ve been there.”

  “Meet me there tonight at midnight. We’ll have a few drinks, discuss my plans, and if you don’t like them, well, you can throw another shoe at me.”

  Prince Fabian disappeared up the stairs and slipped into the night, leaving Jules wondering if she’d just given audience to a delusional vampire or been asked out by a prince.

  As Jules revved the engine of her motorcycle to life, little fingers of sunlight crept over the horizon and threatened to incinerate her. She sped like a daredevil through the nearly empty streets of the Republic and parked at the first cheap motel she could find. Jules was aware she smelled a bit like burnt hair as she pushed into the motel lobby.

  A bored teenager was working the day shift. The girl didn’t question Jules when she gave a fake name and paid in cash. She gave Jules a key to a room on the third floor and immediately went back to reading a zombie comic book. Jules swiped a business card from the front desk and shoved it into her back pocket.

  Upstairs, she peeled off her clothing and examined her skin. Despite wearing leather from head to toe and keeping her motorcycle helmet on until she’d retreated inside, she had a sunburn. Jules ran the tap and stepped into the soothing balm of a cold shower.

  Well, it was soothing until Jules imagined the rivulets of water dripping across her skin were, in fact, Prince Fabian’s chilly fingertips. She imagined him, there before her in the shower, his lips quirked, his blue eyes roving her skin, his…

  As delightful pressure coalesced between her legs, Jules turned off the water. She needed to make sense of this, and fantasies weren’t conducive to figuring shit out.

  Prince Fabian’s words echoed through her head. I haven’t forgotten the taste. Of the real thing. Of freedom. I want it back. And you do, too.

  His words had been cryptic at best, yet… Jules had to admit they excited her. Was it possible, despite his rank in the Republic, Prince Fabian had retained some of his zeal for old-school vampire tendencies? He’d mentioned revolution. What the hell would that entail? Was he a delusional man with a pipe dream who’d just thrown away his high-ranking position for her, or did he have some kind of plan?

  He’d called her beautiful, too. More than once. Was it a ploy to charm her, or did he find her as alluring as she found him?

  Her brain cluttered with possibilities and questions, Jules tumbled into the motel room’s modest coffin, nude. The ripped lining was scratchy and smelled of cheap cleaning solution. She considered closing the lid but didn’t like the idea of being fully ensconced in a coffin that was not her own. She stared up at the cracks in the popcorn ceiling above her. A skittering emanated from the corner, but she made no move to investigate. She didn’t want to know.

  Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

  Exhaustion pulled at Jules’s eyelids and she felt her body relax.

  It was raining. Fat drops of water that smelled of the Pacific landed on Jules and burst into little individual rivers. Her blue hair was plastered to head, and her leather jacket couldn’t keep the weather out. Her T-shirt was soaked and clung to her breasts and belly. Jules didn’t care about being wet or the wind that whipped the rain against her. All she cared about was her ability to see. She blinked repeatedly to banish the raindrops that collected on her eyelashes and blurred her vision.

  A few feet away, a man in a trench coat and ruthless leather boots kissed a blonde woman in the rain. His mouth moved against hers with urgency, and the woman clung to him like plastic wrap. They were both drenched, but clearly, like Jules, they couldn’t care less, too preoccupied with each other’s bodies to mind the slight inconvenience of a thunderstorm.

  The man buried his head in the blonde woman’s neck. The woman let out a yelp and then flailed against the man, sending little drops of water sailing about her in desperate arcs. The man sucked and sucked, drawing out her blood, consuming her.

  The blonde’s thrashing lessened until she hung like a ragdoll in his arms. The stranger pulled away from the woman’s neck and looked directly at Jules, his blue eyes slicing through the sheets of rain, slicing through her. He cocked his head to the side and smiled.

  In three steps, Jules was before him, smirking. She dipped and brought her lips to the blonde’s neck. She slurped happily, relishing the taste of honeysuckle and coastal precipitation.

  When she disengaged, the stranger dropped the lifeless blonde at their feet, grabbed Jules’s cheeks between his palms, and pulled her to him. His icy lips probed hers, and he coaxed her mouth open with his tongue. Jules loved the taste of him—smoke and rainwater and a tinge of copper. Jules moaned against the stranger’s mouth and tangled her fingertips in his wet hair.

  She awoke in a pitch-black room, chest heaving and lips ice cold, as if the stranger in her dream had kissed her and then fled.

  When Jules arrived at Oscar’s and scanned the bar, she thought Prince Fabian had stood her up. The watering hole boasted a mere five patrons. Two rotund bloodaholics sat on stools at separate sides of the bar, their eyes glazed over with drink, empty highball glasses overturned in front of them like fallen soldiers. A couple sat in a booth in the corner, canoodling. A man with long dirty-blond hair pulled into a ponytail sat with his back to her at a high top in the middle of the room, taking languid sips from a snifter of synthetic blood. Prince Fabian’s dark, unruly hair and pond-blue eyes were nowhere to be seen. Disappointment snaked around Jules’s heart.

  When the jukebox near the entrance started playing Rick Astley, it was too much. Clearly, she’d been punked. Jules turned and prepared to kick the front door open to vent her frustration.

  “You here to meet Carlos?”

  Jules whipped around. The bartender twirled a cleaning rag inside an empty glass and inclined his head toward the lone man at the high top.

  Jules was about to shake her head no when the man, apparently Carlos, stood and turned to face her. She brought a hand to her mouth to stifle a laugh.

  Prince Fabian was Carlos. And he was wearing a wig. A bad one.

  Jules nodded at the bartender in thanks and then strolled over to the high top. She slid into her seat and lowered her voice. “What the fuck do you have on your head?”

  “A deliberate precaution.”

  Jules planted her forearms on the tabletop and leaned forward. “You’re wearing colored contacts, too.”

  “I’m not exactly welcome at the palace anymore, or in the Republic, for that matter. This disguise is essential.”

  Realization flickered in Jules’s brain. “You’ve been banished. Because you saved me.”

  “Banished is putting it nicely.” Carlos leaned and retrieved an item from a messenger bag slung over the back of his chair. A moment later, a curly mop of red hair dangled from his long fingertips.

  “Am I starring in a production of Annie I don’t know about? If this is part of your plan—”

  “You must take precautions, too,” Carlos said, tight-lipped and solemn. “It’s dangerous for you to be out in public. You’re the Republic’s Most Wanted.”

  Jules hooked the wig with her fingertip, frowning. Talk about overnight celebrity. “Well, aren’t we a regular Bonnie and Clyde?” She twisted the loose strands of her blue hair around her fingers and shoved them inside the wig cap, then pulled the wig onto her head. The synthetic curls were itchy and heavy. Jules was sure she looked ridicul
ous. “What did the bartender call you? Do you have a code name or something?”

  “Carlos is my real name.”

  Of course his given name was sexy, as was the rest of him, peeking out from underneath the ridiculous camouflage. Carlos’s eyes still penetrated hers like laser beams. His angular face made Jules’s fingers tingle, and that satisfied smirk twisted his lips just so.

  Strangely enough, Jules was thankful for synthetic fibers and plastic. The silliness of the costume made Carlos, the man she’d formerly known as Prince Fabian, more approachable.

  “I’m happy you left your cravat at home,” Jules said. Properly incognito, Carlos had abandoned his princely attire and met her in an ensemble reminiscent of their first acquaintance—trench coat, black shirt, jeans, and… Jules glanced under the table. Yes, boots. She wondered if they were the same pair.

  “You’re not a fan of my royal wardrobe?”

  Jules shook her head and stuck out her tongue.

  “Me, neither.”

  The bartender suddenly appeared at their table, and Jules asked him what Oscar’s had on draft. As he rattled off a list of her infusions, Jules grinned, preening ever so slightly. She ordered one of her creations, the one that tasted like a Bloody Mary, but bloodier.

  Carlos eyed her curiously. “Did I miss something?”

  “They carry my stuff.”

  Carlos frowned. “Your ‘stuff?’”

  “I make synthetic blood for the consumer market,” Jules explained, “and special blends for bored housewives, swanky parties, and royal dictators.”

  “Ah, that explains the lab.”

  Jules’s shoulders slumped. “I guess I should say I used to make synthetic blood. When you called the guards off the second time, I had just been kicked out.”

  “I’m sorry about your lab, but I’m not sorry you came to the palace and confronted me,” Carlos said. “In fact, I rather enjoyed it.”

  The bartender swooped in and set Jules’s blood on the table. She took a sip, considering the man in front of her. “I still don’t know what your deal is. Why are you happy I chewed you out in public?”