by Martha Woods
“Vampires can catch diseases?”
“Blood diseases, yes,” she replied. “They won’t kill us, but they could make immortality unpleasant.”
Tessa glanced at Kristian. “You didn’t even have me checked before you nipped me.”
If he were human, Tessa was sure he would have blushed. Instead his brows knitted together. He pursed his lips. “Most humans would not have remembered,” he said quietly.
“Well, since we have already established I am a freak among humans…” Tessa said.
“You really are, aren’t you?” Veronica laughed. It was almost musical the way she laughed, a cold trill too perfect to be human.
“So, you thought the Calder sent me?” Tessa asked.
“They have been known to plant their people in places one wouldn’t expect them,” Kristian said. Veronica nodded in agreement. “An attractive woman with the power to read minds could be a powerful tool for tracking us across the country.”
“I guess that explains why you kidnapped me and all.”
“I again apologize for that,” Kristian said.
* * *
The flight itself took three hours, but they spent another couple of hours in the airport changing flights to throw the witches off their trail. By the time, they touched down in Los Angeles, Tessa was exhausted. She’d only slept a handful of hours after her escape attempt, and not much the night before that. Tessa suffered from insomnia on a regular basis. You could imagine how difficult it might be to sleep while bombarded by the thoughts of a city. Even though she learned to reduce the stream of transient thoughts into a sort of white noise buzz when she needed to, there were always her dreams. Dark memories were transformed into monstrous images at night, haunting her each time she lay her head down at night.
In those few hours after Kristian had found her in the parking lot, she had slept well. She couldn’t figure out what it was that set her at ease. She should have ignored the feeling, knowing that he was a dangerous creature that had kidnapped her, but she didn’t want to. Was it the way he touched her? Or was it his mere presence? She was looking forward to testing her theory further.
After the flight, the drive out to Kristian’s home was another long slog—two hours in heavy traffic. They arrived at the beach house just before sunrise.
“Can you travel in the daylight?” Tessa asked nervously as they entered the house.
“We can, with the help of some very expensive drugs,” he replied coolly. “Otherwise, no.”
“We made sure to take our dosages before we left,” Veronica replied sarcastically. “Couldn’t risk blowing up in balls of flame in case the plane was delayed.”
Tessa stared at Veronica. It wasn’t often she found someone nearly as sarcastic as she was. Of course when she did it would have to be the baby sister of her undead kidnapper. This was going to be fucking interesting.
Kristian took Tessa’s hand, pulling her across the threshold and into the house. He wanted to separate the two of them. He didn’t know if his sister trusted Tess, yet. Veronica disappeared somewhere—literally—she was gone before Tessa could even see which direction he went.
“There are six bedrooms in this house,” Kristian said quietly. “I keep my private suite in the basement, while Veronica keeps her rooms on the main floor. The second floor holds the guest rooms.”
“Do you have many guests?” Tessa asked.
“Occasionally. We have friends who are scattered about, and sometimes we’re lucky enough to have a few of them visit. No one else is here right now.”
“And where will I sleep?” Tessa asked.
“Where would you like to sleep,” he asked. Images of her laying in his bed crept into her mind. She frowned and pushed them away, sure that they were his thoughts.
“I’d like to see the guest rooms.”
Tessa had seen houses like this in magazines, but never been inside of one. The ceilings were twenty feet high, with fans whirring softly above. The living room held a brick fireplace which took up an entire wall. The furniture was simple; a plush L-shaped corner group in dark red and chunky, matching leather chairs in black. The mahogany wood floors shined. She noticed an Oriental rug but only caught a glimpse of the colors in it.
“Let me guess,” Tessa said. “Veronica decorated this room.”
Kristian made a small, dismissive sound. Tessa realized with some amusement he’d sucked his teeth. “She has no idea about such things. I designed this house myself.”
Tessa thought about saying something snarky. The first thought that came to her mind was a vision of him watching HGTV and Food Network after the sun set. She pressed her lips together in a smile at her own joke. “It’s lovely,” she said.
Tessa smiled. She registered his pleasure from her small compliment. It made her happy to know this. With some horror, she wondered why his pleasure should mean so much. She usually didn’t care what anybody thought.
What’s happening to me?
Kristian led her up the staircase, opening into a landing framed by a floor to ceiling window that looked out over the crashing waves of the ocean. He walked up to pull the heavy drapes across the glass, his face apologetic as he turned. Down the hall, he opened the door to a room that was...so much more.
It was nearly a suite. The room itself was done up in shades of cream and gold, from the floor to the drapes, but the bed stood amidst it all, dark and heavy. The wrought iron frame was shaped into delicate swirls and whorls. Atop the mattress were soft, black and gold blankets.
Tessa wondered, for a split second, what Kristian would look like sprawled out atop those blankets. She shook her head, trying to get the image out. That was surely her own thought and she felt ashamed. She didn’t understand what was happening between them and was suddenly grateful that there would be an entire story between them as they slept.
* * *
“I have a question,” Tessa said.
She was wearing Kristian’s white dress shirt, with nothing beneath it. Her clothes were getting beyond wearable. Odd how she could feel so lady-like wearing a man’s clothes. She sat on a stool in his basement kitchen space, legs crossed. Neither of them had woken until late afternoon. According to her cell phone, it was just past two. The rooms in this space did not have windows. It gave her the feeling of time passing differently, or stranger yet, not existing at all.
She had wandered the house alone for a short while after she woke. For the first time in a long while, she suddenly found that she was lonely. Her heart lifted when Kristian came looking for her.
Once they were awake, the first thing he’d wanted to know was if she was hungry. He made her a grilled cheese sandwich and a bowl of tomato soup. She watched as he poured liquid from a black decanter into a black travel mug. He kept his back turned but she caught the smell of copper. Blood.
He sat down across from her and watched as she took a bite of the sandwich. He apparently understood the idea of comfort food. Sharp swiss was greeted by crisp, sweet apple slices. Experimentally, she dipped a triangle of sandwich into the soup and took a bite. The fresh basil bloomed through her mouth and she moaned in pleasure.
“What would you like to know?”
Tessa paused. What she really wanted to know was more about this woman, Serena. His maker. She asked something else instead.
“Is there some reason the Calder are after you and Veronica in particular? I mean, there have to be other vampires for them to occupy their time with, right?”
Kristian took a long sip from his mug and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. She didn’t see any blood but the idea of him drinking it like coffee made her slightly queasy.
“The Calder do have more interest in some than in others. My coven was once known to cause them trouble in the past, so they have a... vendetta against us.”
“Coven?”
“It’s what we call our families—the line of the vampires who sired us. My maker was part of a long line.”
Tessa nodded. He
was still avoiding her name.
“Not just anyone goes up against them?”
“No, they don’t,” he agreed. “Most of my family is scattered. Some have fled to South America, or parts of Africa. When we heard, the Calder were on the move, we decided it was best not to take chances.”
I stirred my soup. “So. My safety with you is doubtful, but these predators who are after you…I am pretty sure they wouldn’t leave me alive either.”
“It’s in your best interest to help us,” Kristian replied. “And as far as your safety with me is concerned, it’s obvious I don’t want to hurt you.”
“And why is that? I mean, don’t get me wrong. I am enjoying…whatever it is going on between us. It’s good to not be the strangest person in the room for once. But I don’t know about laying down my life for something which has nothing to do with me.”
“You’re not exactly an ordinary human. Whatever you are, the Calder would see you as a threat as well. I can provide you protection. And you can provide us your ability to read them. Think about it this way, if you please. I found you by accident, and the odds of one of them finding you, out on the road alone, is just as great. How many people do you think you meet in a year while you roam the country telling fortunes? The energy you give off…I could see it long before I ever saw you. It was a miracle that they didn’t find you sooner, a miracle that I found you before they found your trailer. Had you been in it when they did, you would have perished in that fire, no one the wiser.”
“You can see my aura?” Tessa asked.
“Yes. And I am sure one of the Calder could too.”
“What’s it like?”
“The same as the auras of other humans,” he said carefully. “Only larger, enough to fill a room, where others have only enough to extend and inch or so from their bodies. Pale, and shimmery gray. I can protect you. And provide for you. Don’t you think you should be afforded a better life than living out of the back of a trailer?”
Tessa blushed. “I like living off the grid. Nothing is wrong with my life! I don’t have to answer to anyone and I like it that way.”
“I would understand what it is to be a nomad better than you know,” Kristian replied. “And I am not judging by any means. I just think you deserve more in life than that.”
“Would you mind coming out with me today? I’d like to show you something,” Tessa said.
* * *
Tessa remembered it well: 1224 Willmont Avenue. The house hadn’t changed in all these years, and she wasn’t sure if that pleased or unnerved her. The lawn was still neatly cut, with rosebushes out front in full bloom. Not only had Melissa Forrester loved those damned roses, but she loved being better than her neighbors, too. Both the cars were in the driveway, newer models, but still the midsize Japanese make that Tessa remembered.
Tessa and Kristian were parked across the street in his sleek European sedan. He listened as she spoke. It was a difficult story to tell. She was aware of his feelings. Sadness. Grief. The overwhelming desire to console.
“My parents died when I was eleven, shortly before my twelfth birthday. I had been in the institution for about a year, and I had these hopes that my parents would come get me out. Life would magically go back to normal when they signed me out of that hell hole. Up until then they visited me once a month. Whenever they came there was this hope in their eyes. As soon as I said anything about mind reading, or knowing how they really felt about me, it was like something inside them shut off. Their eyes went dark. I wasn’t really their daughter anymore. They’d tell me I was sick and needed to work on getting better, and when that happened, then they’d take me home and we’d have a big party. It was their nice little way of saying they didn’t intend to take me in until I stopped saying crazy shit to them about what was going on inside their heads. Even though they knew the things I told them were true. Just got the things they didn’t want to talk about, the things they both wanted to sweep under the rug. I knew all about Dad’s affair and Mom’s Jack Daniel’s habit. If I had lied, I would have never ended up there. But I was a kid, and it wrecked me to think that I was insane. That place was destroying the kid that I was.” She sighed.
“Well, you might be a touch crazy, but in the good way,” Kristian replied with a wink and a small grin.
“Touché,” Tessa said. “Anyway. I kept hoping they would see what the place was doing to me and change their minds. That never happened. When they told me my parents were gone, I realized I had to do better. Toe the line. Kiss up to the doctor and tell him anything he wanted to hear because no one was left to care whether I died in that place or not.”
“You said they died in a car accident?”
“Yes,” Tessa said. “Went off a bridge and into a lake. They were up in Seattle for some reason. I never found out why. Anyway. I convinced the doctor I was a good little girl and was never going to believe in such rubbish as mind reading again. It took a couple of months of lying through my teeth for him to believe it. They put me into the system. I was at a girl’s home for a couple of months, and that was lovely. Pretty much had to fight some chick every day. I wasn’t a fighter before, but I learned. And then I got placed with the Forresters,” she said, making a gesture towards the house. “And I won’t even go into the wonderful experience it was for me.”
Kristian tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. It seemed an oddly human motion. Most of the time, he was so controlled that if she hadn’t been able to read minds, she’d have no clue he felt anything. “When we were alone. I noticed some scars on your back. Is that how…”
“Yes,” Tessa said, closing the door in her mind just as she saw the flash of the belt.
“How long did you stay with these people?” he demanded. She felt a wave of his barely controlled anger.
“Until I was sixteen. I knew I needed to be able to work, and old enough to learn how to drive. With the right makeup I could make myself look eighteen. Sometimes I would take waitress gigs. I was working the tables when I realized that I would make a lot more as a fortune teller.”
Kristian looked out the window at the perfect house. “Why are we here?”
“I haven’t been back here since the day I left. I always wanted to come back. Just to let them see they didn’t destroy me.”
* * *
As they approached the door, Tessa smiled. She didn’t tell Kristian that she wanted him to come along as insurance, just in case either of the Forresters thought they might not take seeing her very well. Feeling the waves of anger flowing off him like heat off an oven, she wasn’t so sure it was a good idea. She could imagine him throwing punches and snapping necks. Or maybe just drinking his fill from their throats. It was a morbid thought but she couldn’t help taking some small joy from it. She walked up to the porch with Kristian at her heels.
She rang the doorbell and waited. There were no sounds coming from within. The neighborhood was oddly quiet.
“Tessa,” he whispered. “Let me.”
The door opened beneath his hand.
“Breaking and entering?” she asked, taking a look around. “I don’t want to get arrested.”
“The door was open,” he replied frostily.
The television in the front was on, but the volume was very low. A heavy lump formed in Tessa’s stomach. Mrs. Forrester was one of those people who never allowed anything electric to run unattended, much less the television set. A lump lodged in Tessa’s throat as Kristian went directly for the kitchen.
Tessa could see past him to a pair of shoes and the rumpled hem of a house dress.
She tried to push past him, but he stood firm. Pushing against him was like walking into a brick wall.
“You don’t want to see it.”
“I have the right to see,” Tessa demanded, pounding his back.
“Very well,” Kristian said, stepping aside. “I warned you.”
Melissa Forrester’s head had a blackened hole in her temple. The wall was sprayed with blood and pieces of M
rs. Forrester. Something had blown through the woman’s skull, charring everything on its way through. Tessa held a hand over her mouth as she felt her stomach churn.
Jim Forrester must have died coming to her aid. He lay crumpled a few feet away from her, his face gone entirely. There was blood and gore and some gray-white substance that she didn’t want to contemplate.
Kristian pushed her gently backwards, so that they were back in the living room.
The front door opened, and a woman stepped inside. She brushed back her short, burgundy streaked hair and looked at them with wide, dark eyes. Her black combat boots stomped towards them, the leather of her jacket completely silent. She looked completely at odds with the quaint kitchen.
“Well,” she said, addressing Kristian, throwing her hands in the air. “You beat me here. So much for needing my services.”
“Who are you?” Tessa spat.
“I could ask you the same thing, honey,” she said, narrowing her eyes.
“Tessa, this is Allison Harding. An old... friend of mine.”
“Call me Ally,” she replied caustically as she approached, flicking Tessa’s nose with the tip of her finger. “And let me guess, you must be the plaything of the month.”
Part Two
No one had to explain to Tessa just what Ally was—another vampire, for one thing, and Kristian’s ex-lover for another. How many of them did he have, she wondered. He was two hundred years old, she reminded herself. She listened to the pool of outright hateful things the woman thought of her. The woman was as jealous as they came. If not for the situation—the scene so near that made her stomach turn—she’d have given the bitch a piece of her mind.
“Tell me why you’re here again?” Tessa asked.
Ally turned her attention to Kristian, her voice clearly incredulous. “Do you really want me to explain to this human?”
“She is my friend. This was the home of her foster parents and considering that they have been murdered, anything you could tell us right now would be helpful.”