by Lexi Blake
“Congrats, sweetie.” Sarah stood, preparing to leave as well. “I wish I had thought of a gay, supernatural matchmaking Internet site. They have to be making money.”
Sarah and Neil chatted happily as they walked out the door, making plans to go to a local club and dance the rest of the night away like the young, unattached people they were. As the door swung closed, I couldn’t help but notice the contrast between the friends who had just gone and the two of us left in the room.
Daniel and I were young and unattached, but we weren’t the dancing type. At least we weren’t anymore. And the unattached part was not my choice.
Daniel strode to the window and watched Neil and Sarah walk down the street.
“What are you thinking?” I asked.
He didn’t turn to look at me but kept his quiet watch. “I’m thinking that it will be a miracle if those two survive this.”
I sighed. Daniel was not the most positive of thinkers. He tended to be a worst-case-scenario type. “Well, at least you don’t underestimate my survival skills.”
Daniel turned to me with a dismissive look in his eyes. “I would never let you die. I’m worried about Neil and Sarah because I think I will be spending all of my time and energy keeping you alive.”
I folded my hands across my chest in a defensive posture. “You know I managed to run this crew for several years before you came back. I survived. We survived. Well, most of us did.”
“You took on little jobs with little clients. There wasn’t any serious risk in the beginning. Believe me; I had no worries about you during my time with the Council. If I had, I would have returned sooner or had someone handle it.”
Shortly after his rising, Daniel had been whisked away to Paris, where the Vampire Council was located. It wasn’t a voluntary thing for the newly risen vampire. The night they had come for him was branded on my brain, never to be forgotten. I had held on to him with all my might, but my human strength had been nothing for the vampires. It had been three years before I saw him again, and he was a different being altogether. This was one of the first times he’d mentioned our time apart.
“I couldn’t stay on my dad’s crew forever. You had to expect that I would want to work on my own.” I kept my tone even. I didn’t want to scare him off. Normally Daniel would already be out the door, and there was a part of me that would do anything to keep him here, even for a few extra moments. At times like this, Daniel seemed like a gorgeous beast that could run at the merest provocation. “How do you know about those years? I thought they kept you isolated from the outside world.”
His eyes were suddenly wary, as if looking for traps in my every question. “They make accommodations on occasion. I promised to be a good boy if they gave me the information I wanted. I discovered I had some pull due to my youth. Our numbers are dangerously low, and someone my age is unusual. I was allowed some outside contact, though obviously not with you. You were…too close to my past life.”
I struggled to shove down my rage. There was a bitterness that overwhelmed me every time I thought about those years. I had been left with nothing—no Daniel, no information, no hope. I had gone from the deepest grief at his death to an overwhelming joy at his unexpected rising. We had one night of the most complete ecstasy I had ever felt, and then he was gone. “Well, it’s good they kept you up to date. As far as I knew, you were dead. If my father hadn’t understood the process, I would have been grieving for you a second time. I guess the Council was pissed when your time there was up and you came right back here.”
“Not at all. It was the plan all along. I was encouraged to reconnect with you after my training was complete. The Council thought you would make an excellent…” Daniel let the sentence die, but I knew exactly what he was going to say. My rage welled once more.
“Well, you sure showed them, didn’t you, Danny?” I spat, unable to control myself anymore. “This is what kept you from me? You have to do the opposite of what the Council wants? You haven’t touched me in two years. You reject me because they’re willing to accept me? That’s ridiculous and you know it.”
Daniel turned away, dismissing me. It was obvious this conversation was over for him, and I knew it would be a long while before the subject would come up again. “You should stay out of all Council matters, Zoey. It’s really best that we not even discuss this. Simply know that what the Council approves or disapproves doesn’t matter. This is about what is right for you. Now I need to go. It’s only a few hours until dawn, and I haven’t fed properly. We know how badly that can go. If I hurry, I can make it to my club.”
That pitiful part of me wanted to beg and plead. It wanted me to throw myself at him and ask him not to leave me for some whore at his club who would feed his hunger but not touch his soul. Unlike Neil, I knew Daniel’s soul was still intact, but it was infinitely harder than it had been before. I kept my mouth shut because no amount of pleading would keep him from leaving, and I would only look like a fool again.
As he opened the door to leave, I managed one last question. I wasn’t sure he would bother to answer, but I needed to know.
“Why did you come back?”
It was the first time I had gotten the courage up to ask that simple question. Up until now, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but this distance was getting impossible to take. My heart ached every time he walked out the door.
Daniel paused but didn’t bother to look back. “I came back to make sure you didn’t kill yourself with this business.”
“Well, you should feel free to go.” I had been right. I didn’t want to know the answer. “I can handle myself.”
“The case on the table tells me differently, Z.”
The door closed behind him, and I was alone again.
Chapter Three
Companion.
The word played through my brain as I drove toward what was hopefully my final destination. Hours had passed since Daniel had gone, but my mind was still wrapped around that one word. The one Daniel hadn’t said.
My craptastic car coughed and sputtered as I turned onto the lonely road that led to the third bridge I’d decided to search. Neil wasn’t the only one who needed a car. The trouble was I needed way more than a car. Money couldn’t buy what I needed. I needed a totally new life, but I was stuck holding fast to the old one.
At one time, I had been planning a life as Daniel’s wife. Actually, when I thought about it, I had spent most of my existence planning to be Daniel’s wife. Ever since we met at the age of eight, it had been in my mind. Needless to say, I was a kid who moved around a lot and struggled to maintain friendships. Daniel was a constant in my life.
My father had been the one to take in thirteen-year-old Daniel after George Donovan died on the job. He’d been a thief like my father, but not as careful. We’d been together after that and nothing could separate us.
Well, nothing except the Vampire Council.
I pulled off the road and parked my car behind a group of overgrown bushes. I looked out at the bridge. It crossed the Trinity River in a relatively unpopulated section of the city. An out of the way place, the bridge was home to a number of creatures. The bridge was one of those in-between places, not big, not small, not enormously popular, but by no means vacant. This was a mediocre place that no one really thought about, a quiet place that the police didn’t routinely check and the homeless didn’t think to seek shelter in. It was perfect, and I knew I had found the spot when I smelled soup.
I grabbed the small cache of items I’d tossed into the car when I’d given up on researching the object. I hadn’t found much.
The Light of Alhorra was supposedly a mythical object of faery origin. It had been missing so long from the human world that it had passed into legend. I had found an artist’s rendering on a web site, but who actually knew if it was real? It was hard to see the carvings on such a flat medium as paper, but there was a beauty to the piece. The artist believed that the carvings represented a story of faery kind, perhaps even a cr
eation myth. The box was supposedly locked with a golden seal, and it was said that only one with pure intentions could open the box and receive the blessings inside.
It had been stupid to waste time on the Internet when I had a font of information just waiting under a bridge. And all it would cost me was a couple of bottles of cheap wine and some chocolate.
When wanting to learn about a Fae object, it was best to seek out a Fae creature.
I closed the car door quietly, and as I climbed down the embankment, I was grateful I had thought to trade my strappy sandals in for a pair of sneakers. As a semi-forgotten place, the grass hadn’t seen a city crew in a long time.
“Hello?” I sent out into the darkness, not wanting to frighten anything that might be waiting. Some of them had extremely sharp teeth.
“Stop.” The voice was loud but held a tremble that told me he was as afraid of me as I was of him. Actually, he was probably more afraid of me since I didn’t find him particularly threatening.
“It’s Zoey Wharton bringing greetings to Halle the Loyal,” I said in my most formal voice.
“Only greetings, Zoey Wharton?” There was no way to miss the disappointment in the question.
I smiled. “I bring greetings and a few gifts.”
“Please come in and be welcome.”
Trolls get a bad rap. Sure the mountain trolls one might find in the wilds of Norway or close to the Arctic Circle might be gigantic and completely terrifying, but your everyday, ordinary, under-the-bridge troll is really no big deal. As long as you treat the troll with respect, they treat you with an enormous amount of old world hospitality. When most people think of faeries, they think of tiny creatures with gossamer wings, but the truth is there are many different creatures who make up the Fae world. Trolls are one of them.
Halle the Loyal was one of the Huldrefolk, a branch of the Fae that originally was native to Scandinavia. Faery kind can be found on almost every continent, but the Northern Europeans were particularly populous at one time. Sometime in the distant past, when humans began to take over the planet, the majority of Fae had chosen to find another plane of existence. It was a historical time the Fae referred to as Passing Beyond the Veil. Some had stayed and adjusted to life with humankind. Halle and his wife, Ingrid, had immigrated to the New World sometime in the 1800s. My father had befriended the pair before I was born. I had been visiting them for as long as I could remember and was well versed in greeting protocol.
“Greetings to Zoey Wharton, you are a welcome guest,” Halle said as I ducked under the bridge. “It has been far too long.”
I smiled. Halle was sweet and always had kind words for me. Of course, he also liked to eat small house pets, but I wasn’t a poodle, so I felt fairly safe. His wife was infinitely more complex, but I didn’t see her at the moment. I held out the wine and chocolate. “I come bearing gifts for a friend.”
Halle’s dark eyes widened as he took the gifts. He took a deep whiff of the bag containing the chocolate. “Your gifts are always much appreciated, Zoey. Are you alone tonight, or is your vampire with you? He is welcome. I promise there will be no further incidents.”
The last time I’d brought Daniel with me, Halle had had some friends visiting. Needless to say, they had not appreciated a vampire surprising them. It was rather like inviting a lion to a party thrown by twelve antelope, though these antelope had weapons and weren’t afraid to use them. “No, Daniel had other things to take care of tonight. And you have to stop referring to him as ‘my vampire.’ He isn’t mine. I just work with him.”
Halle shook his head as he sat by the fire. “I will never understand human relations. One minute you have a mate, the next they die and the relationship is over. We never let a thing like death keep us from our mates. And Daniel made it easy by rising. It should have been simple, but you humans make things difficult. I know. I have watched many of your reality shows.”
“It wasn’t my choice, Halle,” I said, wanting to get off this subject as soon as possible. Trolls like gossip almost as much as they like a nice roast dachshund.
Of course, trolls could be as tenacious as any hound dog. “Have you tried to talk to Daniel? I’ve heard the transition can be difficult. He did not know he was a vampire. Perhaps he simply needs time to adjust.”
There was good reason Daniel hadn’t known he was a vampire. Vampire lore has been carefully cultivated by the Council in a successful propaganda campaign. The Council has made the public believe that vampires are a myth like the Greek gods or a fifty cent cup of coffee. They have hidden the fact that anyone alive today can be a vampire. There’s no way for a person to tell until after death has occurred. Vampirism is a genetic disease carried by the parents as a recessive gene. The child lives a perfectly normal life until death, and then the vampire gene reanimates the dead tissue after a few hours. The new vampire rises after the disease takes over, and then as long as the vampire has a good supply of blood, he can go on indefinitely.
Yes, I could certainly see where it had been a shock to Daniel’s system, but it hadn’t done me any good either.
“He’s had years, Halle. He was with the Council for three and he’s been home for two.” I took a deep breath and found I simply couldn’t stop. I wouldn’t be able to talk about this with my father. He was too close to Daniel. It didn’t seem fair to talk about him to Neil and Sarah. So Halle, who had watched over us both many times, seemed my best bet. “He told me tonight that the Council approved of me as his companion.”
Halle clucked a bit and shook his head. “Dearling, you don’t know what that would mean.”
But I did. I’d talked to a few people and patched together what I could. In the vampire world, there are two types of women. There are blood dolls and there are companions. It’s the vampire equivalent of a one-night stand versus a long-term, happy marriage. A companion is a woman who serves as wife, and more importantly, dinner. The blood a vampire needs on a day-to-day basis is small. One person can feed a vampire and never suffer ill effects if said vampire isn’t a greedy bastard. Due to the passionate nature of the vampire, most select a companion and mate for the life of the human companion. The vampire sharing small portions of his blood elongates the companion’s life. It keeps the companion young, but in the end, the human body breaks down no matter what you feed it. Vampires without a companion, or who find themselves apart from their companions, use blood dolls. These are women who work at the clubs and make themselves available to vampires for a late-night snack. I like to think of them as convenient, Council-approved whores.
“I understand what it means to be a companion, Halle. And I understand that Daniel is being stubborn.”
Halle took a long breath, an odd weariness stealing over his features. “There is so much you don’t know. Vampires are secret creatures. Even I don’t understand everything about them. Ingrid and I have steered clear. To know vampire secrets is to court the Council’s wrath, but I know that a companion is something a vampire guards zealously. And I’ve heard rumors about true companions. I don’t like these rumors. Daniel is right to keep you off the Council’s radar.”
I didn’t know what he meant by true companion. True or false, I would have taken any title just to be close to Daniel again. But three years of waiting for him followed by two years of a Daniel I barely knew had worn me down. And I hadn’t come here to talk about Daniel.
“Is Ingrid around? I have a couple of questions about an object I’m hoping she’s heard of.”
Halle ran his fingers through his thick hair in an attempt to smooth it down. “She should be back any moment. She went walking. She will be pleased to see you.”
Halle was wearing a large T-shirt and sweatpants, and he attempted to smooth the wrinkles out of his clothes as well. Trolls were very aware of their mates and always attempted to look their best. It was hard, though. Trolls like Halle looked mostly human, but there was always one piece of hair that no matter what they did to it or how much product they tried on it, always stuck
straight up. Then there was the tail…
There was a pop as the cork in the wine came out, and I found myself seated comfortably by the fire with a glass of wine and a bowl of soup which looked completely housepet free. After some pleasant conversation about the weather and television shows we both liked, I got down to why I had come.
“This sounds like bad business.” Halle sagely shook his head as I told him the story of my encounter with the demon. “I have not heard of this demon, Halfer, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know him. He would use many names and many guises when on this plane. Was there anything unusual about him? Anything that stood out?”
I thought for a moment. “I don’t know. I think he was really good at masking. You know how when a demon is around, people get uneasy? I never felt that with him. Daniel didn’t even pick up on the brimstone until he was gone.”
“Then he is either extremely old and powerful, or works for someone who is,” Halle explained. “Demons sometimes share powers with their lesser servants when they need to. The powerful can share strength with lesser demons and even earthbound witches.”
I took a long drink of the wine. It was just starting to take the edge off my panic. Not only did I get to deal with a demon, but apparently a really old, powerful demon, or a group of them led by an old, powerful demon. The day just got better and better.
Halle turned his large, dark eyes on me in a sympathetic fashion. “I’m sure it will turn out all right. You just have to be careful and follow the letter of the agreement. Just remember that when dealing with demons, the devil really is in the details.”
“Who is dealing with demons?” a feminine voice asked from the darkness.
Halle stood and smiled as his wife emerged from the shadows. I wasn’t sure what Ingrid really looked like. She was old and adept at glamour. Halle was younger than his wife and had no use for glamour. The female who emerged from the darkness appeared to be in her mid-twenties and could have been a poster child for a Swedish modeling agency. Her blonde hair was perfect and meshed with her icy blue eyes. She made an odd sight walking out of the trees in a couture gown and heels.