by Scott, Talyn
Chapter 5
“Listen, you know a lot more about this marking your territory business than I do. But still,” Renee continued in a conspiratorial whisper while pointing a blue fingernail somewhere near her husband’s face, “I don’t think Scoopy is the kind of cat that would pee on all four tires. Even if he did, maybe he was covering up the stench of another furry little deviant that slipped by the property unnoticed.”
“He also took a shit on the hood.”
“That’s just hearsay.”
“I hosed it off myself.” Dr. Dru Holt pulled off the eyeglasses that he didn’t actually need and checked his watch. The morning was flying by and he had wall-to-wall patients lining the clinic. “I waited for that Bugatti for six months, sweetheart. Now I’m living a daily episode of Animals Gone Wild and there seems to be a ratings war. Irrefutably, Scoopy is using my dream car as his personal latrine. But that clearly doesn’t damage its paintjob any more than your Pitt Bull that chews its fender.” He took the edge of his lab coat and focused on cleaning his lenses.
“Puppies do that when they teethe.” She smiled brightly.
“My sweet wife, contrary to what you believe, that dog has to be at least six years old.” Before she came up with another absurd excuse, he confronted her about their newest freeloader. “And to clarify any misunderstanding, the only other furry deviant that you think has slipped by unnoticed is the seventh cat that you smuggled into the manse around two weeks ago. There is treatment available for pet hoarders. I’m checking into it.”
“Someone has to have some compassion around here.” She pressed her palms over her heart. “No one would adopt Buttercup. The shelter gave him top billing on their website for months. The cat couldn’t catch a break. He was going down, Dru.”
“With good reason,” he snapped, refusing to remind her of his compassionate attributes as a volunteer physician for the poor and success as a worldwide philanthropist…for centuries. “I think Buttercup is the pint-sized devil that left a turd inside the toe of my Versace hi-tops.”
“Can’t you wear Nikes like everybody else?”
“Like it would have made a difference,” he replied calmly. “It wasn’t even dry before I slammed my foot in my shoe. Common courtesy seems to have slipped Buttercup’s mind.”
“Really,” she pleaded almost desperately, “what’s a little poop among family?”
He wrapped his arms around her waist, taking in her flowing, white halter dress. She was a throwback as Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch. But her raven hair curved over her shoulders like a naughty, ebony shawl. He twirled his finger around a lock of her silky hair and gave it a diminutive yank. “I’m thinking we need a vacation, minus the critters.”
“You don’t mean Bane and Arian do you?” She spoke of their werewolf co-mates.
“No,” Dru said, brushing her lips with his reply, “just the ones with actual fur that weigh less than two hundred and fifty pounds.”
“Before you leave on that vacation,” a deep voice cut in, “could I talk to you?”
“Ryan!” Renee twirled and gave him a hug despite Dru’s low hiss. Vampires were exceedingly territorial and Ryan was a Species the same as Dru.
“I miss seeing you at Six Feet Under,” Ryan claimed, quickly stepping back from her.
“I doubt that,” she laughed freely. “I was the worst waitress you ever had.”
“You sure were.” He laughed right along with her. “But when your Granny brought her friends in, none of the patrons complained about my overpriced cover charge.”
“Yeah, floor shows by Granny and friends, who knew?” She patted Dru on the cheek. “Speaking of Granny, I have to pick her up and bring her out to the island. She’s weekending with us.”
“What!” Dru’s head nearly imploded.
“Gotcha.” Renee smiled sweetly before kissing the tip of her husband’s nose. “But that’s what can happen if I find Buttercup missing.”
Dru ran a weary hand through his hair. “Message received. Drive carefully, sweetheart.” He watched her leave, lingering on the sway of her hips, and then motioned for Ryan to meet him in his makeshift office.
“It’s nice what you’re doing for the community,” Ryan leaned against a peeling gray wall and crossed his tattooed arms over his chest.
“I care about the humans,” Dru said after he closed the door.
“I know…speaking of which.”
“In the human world, I don’t give out patient information without consent,” Dru explained, “but I saw your mark on Blythe’s throat and we’re far from mortal.”
Ryan barely took a weekly swallow from Blythe to maintain the façade they were lovers, and she was his property. Only enough to retain her blood in his body and keep his mark fresh, which forced him to feed from others. What he couldn’t understand was how she was so sick when he didn’t taste any identifiable diseases. “What’s up with the anemia?”
“That’s just it.” Dru pulled out Blythe’s slide and licked the blood smear for analysis instead of placing it under the microscope. “I can only theorize, assuming you’re not gorging.”
“I already told you that was not the case.”
“I have to admit that I only found the faintest mark on her throat, and you’ve left the rest of her body untouched.” He met his eyes. “I believe you, man. I really do.”
“Then” - Ryan was nonplussed - “if you can’t figure it out, who can?”
“I didn’t say I couldn’t figure it out.” Dru kept Blythe’s blood on his tongue, rolling it around while he was thinking. “I’m curious as to how you keep from overdrinking when she tastes like this?”
“I love her.”
Dru’s eyes ran over him slowly, making Ryan aware of the fact that he knew the truth and the corresponding lie. “She’s not truly yours. Your Bride, I mean.”
“I’m mindful of that,” he replied uneasily.
Dru moved away from him to the sink and washed his hands. Slashes of afternoon sun were coming through the filmy windows, casting dust motes in their light. “Blood pets are frowned upon in this era, whether you fancy yourself in love or not. You’re treating her as property. I know it isn’t illegal, but still. Others can be…intolerable.”
“She’s not that to me.” Ryan couldn’t tell him the truth. An order was an order, go against Maestru and he would die slowly and painfully. Vampires didn’t kill one of their own quickly, they had no mercy for traitors.
“Either way, you’re selfish.” Dru waited for him to deny it while settling on the edge of his desk. When Ryan didn’t, he said, “I understand you’re only in your twenties, and I have centuries on you. But this advice comes from pure experience and not from an older Species trying to be an arrogant, know-it-all jackass. I only met my Bride this year -”
Ryan interrupted, “How many of us ever will?” Then he dropped his keys, a very un-vampire thing to do that surprised them both. He bent over to snatch them up off the floor just when Dru slammed the final blow home.
“When you meet your Bride, and the earth actually moves just for you two, where does that leave the sweet woman I admitted for a blood transfusion?”
Ryan wanted to say something unforgivable to the good doctor. But how could he, when he was so blatantly hit with the truth? And he hadn’t forgotten that tiny lecture he’d given Dakota the night before about Rock. As a werewolf, Rock would find his mate one day, and it wouldn’t be her. But Rock had more inherent decency with Dakota than Ryan did with his long-time friend, Blythe. He reluctantly told a half-truth, “I marked her, because, for some strange reason, she always has the Undead or even Species swarming around her. I don’t want someone else drinking from her…using her, and she hasn’t anywhere to live that she can afford besides my place.”
“She mentioned her brother had cancer,” Dru pried.
Ryan’s gaze dropped to the keys clenched in his fist, and his heart began to pound. Blythe knew nothing of their world and didn’t understand she w
as in the crosshairs of their Coven Master. Her doctor sure couldn’t find out. “Yeah, I haven’t seen Anthony lately, but I’ve been knee-deep opening INKS.” He kept his eyes fixed on the keys. “Exactly how long is this transfusion gonna take? They wouldn’t let me stay in the room with Blythe, and I sure don’t want her waiting.”
Dru glanced at his watch. “She started around nine…it’s a quarter past one. I have a Species working on her. Discretion is her specialty, and I donated my own blood to blend in with the units from the hospital.”
“You’re giving her Species blood?”
“I’ve done it many times. I’ve been a doctor for more than two hundred years, Ryan.” His eyes were sharp when he promised, “She’ll recover fully in a few days from my blood alone. Will probably stay that way for a while if she eats better and takes her prescribed vitamins, they’re stronger than what’s on the drugstore shelves.” Dru looked like he wanted to say more, something he found profound but pushed it down. “Head back over to the hospital, she should be ready.”
“Thanks for everything, Dru.” He felt fear for Blythe gnawing in his gut. “I’ll get her prescription filled and stock her fridge for her.”
“Let me know if she needs any financial help.”
“Thanks, but I’ve got it.”
“It’s normal for her not to have an appetite with anemia.” Dru’s voice was quiet. “So, I’m expecting you to encourage her to eat and for you to eat elsewhere.”
Ryan’s fingers tightened around the keys. If the Coven Master knew she wasn’t thriving, he’d put her in someone else’s care. “Yeah, well, an anemic human really isn’t a nutritious meal,” he whipped out sarcastically and regretted it immediately. “No problem.”
Dru didn’t take offense, but still said, “It would be easier on you to let her go sooner, rather than later. Especially if she belongs to someone else,” he added cryptically.
Ryan released one extraordinarily long breath.
“Ryan, I’m not a Vampyr Lovec. In fact, I wouldn’t recognize a hunter if it bit me on the ass. But like I said earlier, I’ve been around for centuries and that kind of leaves me out of the stupid category. Considering Blythe’s incredible flavor and her unexplainable anemia, I could easily label her a claimed Donor in need of a blood exchange with her Dynasty Vampyr.”
Ryan sucked in a painful breath. Maestru was leaving some serious shit out of their conversations.
Dru continued, “I could also easily understand that Donors are an unfathomable delectation commoners rarely want to give back to the Dynasty when discovered. But if that’s what she is, then there’s no messing with that kind of birthright.” He stared out the window. “Rumors say the Donors have their memories tampered with repeatedly or they’re kept mentally intact while remaining in gilded cages. Obviously, her memory has been tampered with since she’s under your care and not in the preverbal, gilded cage.” He sighed as if he didn’t want to go on, but knew he had to. “If what I’m theorizing is true, and she’s been away from a Dynasty Vampyr for at least the six months she’s been in America, surely she’s being hunted. Taking all that into consideration, answer this hypothetical question: How do you go about protecting someone of her rare importance, if others were to find out what she truly is?”
Instead of answering, Ryan countered with another question, “What are you going to do?”
“Besides hope that little sweetheart isn’t the main course of the next underground Species feeding frenzy?” He cocked a brow. “Keep my mouth shut for now. Above all, I have my Bride to think about, and I won’t risk Renee for anyone.”
“Understood.” Ryan closed the door behind him and headed to pick up Blythe.
An hour later, Blythe and Ryan were grocery shopping. “Are you sure you should be walking around like this?” he asked for the hundredth time.
“I told you I’m fine.” She picked up a bag of chips and tossed it in the cart.
“I don’t think so.” He pitched it out.
She kept her aggravation under wraps and tried a tactic most men fell for. “You see all these women who keep following us while washing the floor in their drool?”
He glanced around as if he just now noticed. “Alongside the men who can’t walk straight because you sauntered by?”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m thinking that one over there” – she discreetly tilted her chin to the left – “looks exactly like the woman you need today.” He peeked over, and she took the opportunity to grab a carton of Twinkies and stash them under her mammoth-sized box of tampons.
He turned back, reached under her tampons, pulled out the Twinkies, and set them on the shelf. “Tell me what kind of woman you’re speaking of.”
“Easy.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Contrary to the daily challenges I face with you? I’ll have to admit that I’m tempted.” He looked more than peeved, but added very quietly, “By now, you know I’m a man who doesn’t like to be told what to do.”
She looked at him as though he were a Grade A Idiot. “What man does?”
“Dakota called when you were at the hospital.” He shifted gears to avoid a childish fight. “I told her you would probably be in tomorrow after you rest some.”
“And you shamelessly flirted with her, I’m sure.”
“Jealous?”
“Honestly, I’m sorry to say that I’m not.” She pursed her lips in thought before she added, “Don’t mess with Dakota’s head if you can’t give her your all, Ryan. Seriously. She’s my friend, too, and I don’t want her hurt.” She pushed a black curl away from her eyes. “She’s not a random lay.”
“I would never use her,” he whispered gruffly while steering her toward the steaks.
“I don’t eat red meat.”
“But you’ll eat chemicals wrapped in sugar?” he challenged.
“It’s un-American not to enjoy a Twinkie. Everybody knows that.” She gripped the cart with both hands and tried to push forward, but he held it back with a mere index finger.
“You’ve spent the last several years in Italy so that type of logic doesn’t work for you.”
“I’m a citizen here.”
He gave her a shrewd smile just as a package of steaks came out of nowhere and flattened the cheese curls she thought were well hidden under two loaves of whole-wheat bread.
“I can’t believe you did that,” she growled. “They’re gonna make me buy those anyway, and I’ll have to lick my finger and drag it through tiny orange crumbs just to get a taste.”
“Such domesticated bliss,” a distantly familiar voice spoke from behind.
Oh, Jesus, help me. She could walk away, but knowing him, he’d find her alone much later. And this wasn’t the kind of confrontation she needed without a big, strong friend present. She nervously pressed her hands down the front of her too-tight, pale-pink jeans and slowly turned. Knees don’t buckle now.
Ryan already faced him. “Six.” A one-word greeting that said everything, but mostly: fuck off. Funny how they didn’t seemed surprised to see one another. But Sixten wasn’t looking at Ryan at all.
She stood in a dream. More like an exhausting nightmare in which there was no escape. Although the store was brightly lit, everything seemed to dim except Sixten. As if a halo of righteous light surrounded his perfect body - tempting her not to walk away or she’d be sucked into everlasting darkness.
Curious onlookers stopped and stared at his unequaled magnificence. Carts slammed into one another, but not even a baby cried out. They, like Blythe, were in too much shock. All astonished by his masculine splendor. Blythe astonished by his presence. And with a face personally touched by the hands of God, he drew his sculptured lips into a gloriously intense smile and murmured a sexy, “Hello, beautiful.”
Ryan squeezed her shoulder, and she took a gulp of air. No doubt, Sixten noticed her sudden inability to breathe, and if she wasn’t mistaken, her mouth was gaping. Yes, she had to close it. As stunned as she was, when her bottom teeth met her top
ones, she couldn’t form any words.
Smoldering, ice-green eyes continually raked her from head to toe, taking in her shimmery-gray, strappy wedges, her second-skin jeans, and her sheer white blouse that layered a simple ribbed tank worn underneath. Sixten casually leaned against the refrigerated display case and anchored his hands on either side of his trim hips. “Leave us, Ryan.”
Ryan responded with a nearly inaudible ‘you wish’.
Sixten kept his eyes on Blythe the entire time, but with a deadly tone directed at Ryan, he asked, “You want to do this here? In public?”
“It seems you do, or you wouldn’t have picked this inopportune moment.”
“What are you two talking about?” Her voice sounded strange, almost panicked.
There was absolute silence for several long seconds before Sixten swung his flaxen, platinum streaked hair from his forehead. A low oath left his mouth the minute he zeroed in on her throat. “Ryan, what’s the big deal? Can’t you finish your shopping while Blythe and I catch up? She’ll wait for you there.” He nodded in the direction of the deli.
For the first time, Ryan looked uncomfortably nervous. Not to mention a crowd was gathering as though someone threw down the gauntlet on an illegal cockfight. “Honestly, Six, I don’t have anything to say to you.” She threw her hands up in a helpless gesture. “But I’ll listen while Ryan finishes up. Okay?”
He walked ahead of her, giving Blythe a moment to speak to Ryan privately. Before she turned towards the deli, she eyed her best friend intensely and rubbed the deep crease that formed between his eyebrows with her index finger. “I’ll be fine,” she murmured. “By the way, don’t get rid of that candy bar I have hidden underneath those cucumbers, or you’re dead.”
With an obstinate gleam in his eye, he threw a family-sized package of ground beef in her cart for good measure. “I’ll be finished in ten minutes, and then we’re leaving.”
Chapter 6
Blythe slowly closed the distance between her and her former fiancé, wondering where she would be without all the high-handed men who periodically graced her life. Oh, I’d eat Twinkies for sure. Ryan was ruling her with an iron fist. She understood that he was worried about her, and she’d be the same way if he were sick, probably worse. Nevertheless, whoever heard of a man stupid enough to come between a premenstrual woman and her chocolate? She shook her head sadly. That’s how people get killed, she thought. Then, Blythe had to admit that she was distracting herself from the matter at hand. Problems like those didn’t make her lose a wink of sleep. What stood before her did. “Six, um, it’s good to see you again.”