by Skye Jones
“Come.” He led me across the thick carpet and to that door, which he opened and gestured for me to enter. Once more the space was pitch black until he flicked a switch. This time there weren’t ceiling stars, but soft lamps dotted around the room. A tall one in a far corner, and two either side of Alex’s huge bed. It had to be a super-king. There was a light wood wardrobe in one corner, and an open shower at one side.
“This space is the middle door you saw when we came down the stairs,” Alex explained. “Not all of it though. There’s about half of this again, and then a room the size of the living area next door on the other side. Then there’s a massive unused coal cellar to the back of the house. So if Jackson means it, about them moving down here, there’s more than enough room, but it will be a lot of work. My living area had already been partially converted. The guy started at the top and bottom of this place it seems. He put a sump-pump in down here and tanked the walls. They were plastered too, but not painted. And the bathroom space was already plumbed in.”
“What about the furniture?” I asked.
“Nope. The furniture, the carpet, the paint, I did it all. Some with help from the guys, like laying the carpet, but the painting and lights and all, I did on my own.”
“How?” My mind boggled at a vampire electrician wiring the complex lighting.
“I have a lot of time on my hands. I don’t sleep the whole time it is light. I don’t need that much, but of course I have to stay down here. Sometimes the guys come down here and we all watch a film, but a lot of the time they have to be out and about in the day, doing things. Then, of course, once it’s late they get tired and need to sleep. It makes for a lot of alone time, so I read how to wire in lights. How to fit a shower. Jackson knows where to get the best stuff, as you probably know by now.”
I smiled because Jackson did. I had more toiletries than I could use in the next decade. Mum had her bling, he’d got Dad some cigars and top-notch whisky.
“Where does he get the gold coins he uses to trade?” I asked Alex.
He laughed, and for the first time I found myself struck by how gorgeous his smile and laugh were without noticing his fangs. When it hit me, I smiled to myself.
“We stole it all,” he said. “When we got out of the lab, it was clear the world was going to hell. We ran for a while, wondering where to go, and seeing everywhere was a mess. There had been a lot of us held there. Some we knew about, got to talk to, others we didn’t. I think most of those held there escaped that day, but certainly some wouldn’t have been as lucky. We didn’t want to get caught, if they came trying to round us up. We needed to find a place to stay, and fast before the sun came up. Jackson said we needed essentials. We went on a few raids, stole food, canned stuff, packet nastiness that would last, and then gold. Lots and lots of gold. We found this place, and we immediately knew it would work because of this basement. We took it over, made it ours, and here we are.”
“I suppose it was amazing luck this place hadn’t been occupied when you got here, or you wouldn’t have been able to use it as your base.”
Alex frowned at me. “What? Of course, we would. Jackson would have taken it. I mean, it made it easier, we didn’t have to fight for it, but he’d have taken it anyway.”
My image of Jackson as a Robin Hood good guy figure faded a little. “Did you take many things from other people?”
My voice shook, which I knew was ridiculous. I had seen with my own eyes what the world had become, but it still held the power to shock me.
“Plenty, Milly. What do you think this is? A tea party? The world is fucked up, and it might be morally wrong, but in this world, might is right.” Alex didn’t swear often, and the coarse word from his mouth only made me pay attention to what he said. “Add in brains to the brawn and you’ve got a powerful combination. Jackson is smart, Doc even more so. I’m not smart like them, but I know a lot, and Ben is cunning. Add in our strength, and we are a force to be reckoned with. How else do you think we’ve survived as only four?”
“Have you killed people?” I asked.
“Yes.” He watched me closely. “I won’t lie to you, Milly. We have had to kill. It’s not something we enjoy, but we won’t turn away from it if it’s needed. I tell you now, Jackson will kill for you, no hesitation. Anyone tries to harm you, and he’ll end them. As would I.”
He smiled at me and shook his head as if shaking off the melancholy mood settling in the room. “Come. I said I’d give you tea.”
He took me back the main living space and opened the lacquered sideboard. There was a kettle and an ornate tea set, Chinese, on closer inspection. “It’s not quite the Regency tea set you would probably love the most, but it’s still tea, and you’re having it in an old stately home.” He winked at me.
He set about filling the kettle from one of a few bottles of water he had, then plugged it in to boil as he filled the teapot with a loose-leaf tea.
“You lived through the Regency era, right?” I suddenly realized Alex would have seen the things I loved in my historical romances and Austen novels for real. “What was it like?”
He turned to me, his blue eyes warm. “I don’t want to ruin your impression of it,” he said.
“Oh, that doesn’t sound good.”
He gestured for me to sit on the sofa and took a seat beside me. “It was… smelly. Dirty. People stank. They had diseases like syphilis, and some of them were so riddled with it their faces were rotting. Smallpox was rife, debtors’ prisons were overflowing. I’d say for most people life was grim. Really, the last hundred or so years you guys never had it as good and yet you kept messing it up.”
“What do you mean?”
“You started wars with one another, fought over petty political differences to the point of insanity. Some were greedy and they wanted ever more whilst others lived in poverty. In general though, I am telling you, few humans have lived the privileged lives an average person in the West lived in the decades after the second World War. But you had to go and tear it all down. It’s in your nature. Every time a civilization comes along, it can’t last because humans are all about competition and winning. You’re like chimps, but with brains evolved enough to care, but not enough to resist the baser instincts of wanting to be the biggest chimp on the block.” He shook his head. “It saddens me greatly because I think there is a lot of good in humanity, but there’s a whole boatload of bad too.”
“You’re right, there is.” I thought of Mum, willing to give away her own daughter for a more comfortable life. The things people did for… things. Comfort, security, luxuries.
“Are vampires different then?” I asked him, curious.
He smiled, and it was a little sad. “Yes, and no. We tend not to have the same hierarchy humans do, but we fought for many centuries over different things. Old allegiances, past deeds, and similar pettiness. We might not be willing to sell our own mothers for a few coins of silver, but we are violent in our own way. Of course, now, we don’t fight. Too few of us. The last few hundred years we’ve lived in harmony. Being down to less than a hundred souls tends to do that to a species.”
I couldn’t begin to imagine how it must feel.
“You must get lonely,” I told him without thinking.
“I do,” he said right back. “Terribly at times. I’m forever thankful I have these men I view as brothers. Even in this though, I am apart. I walk this house while they sleep and vice versa.”
He got up, crossed to the sideboard and poured our two cups of tea, using a silver strainer. He came back to me and passed me one of the cups. They were gorgeous. Proper porcelain with a Chinese pattern on them.
“I have matching saucers, but I don’t bother. I can get you one if you wish?”
I shook my head and took a sip of my tea. Sighing in happiness at the glorious fragrance and subtle sweet taste, I let myself sink into the moment. I took in the beautiful room, the scent of the tea, Alex’s handsome, patrician features and experienced an overwhelming pang of af
fection for this man.
Hesitantly I asked, “How does it work? The whole drinking blood thing.”
He put his cup down and leaned back, crossing one long leg over the other at the knee, hand rested casually on top. He looked… delicious. Handsome, urbane, confident.
“It depends. Mostly we drink as you see in the movies, from the neck. One of the few things they got right. It’s a pleasurable spot to take blood from for the donor. We can drink from the groin too, but that hurts and you only get your pain sluts wanting to go that route. We can take from the wrist if a person is wanting to keep some distance. It’s still erotic though, even from the wrist.”
“Why is it erotic?”
He laughed. “We give off an intoxicating sedative when we feed. It’s to help make it not painful, but it also seems to make humans rather… amorous.”
“You too? I mean… you said, you erm, you know…” I blushed, unable to make myself say it.
“Oh, no, we simply come from the pleasure of drinking; it’s marvelous.”
Oooookay. My face must look like a beetroot.
“If you want, you can try it for a moment, no pressure. On your wrist. To see what it is like.”
I looked at him trying to see if he seemed hopeful or not, but his face remained neutral. Was he offering for me, or for himself? Did it even matter. If I liked it, what was the issue? I categorically hated the idea of a random woman being brought in to feed him. I either needed to do it, or bury my jealousy deep down. I didn’t think my green-eyed monster would be easy to bury. I sighed.
“What if you get carried away? Can’t stop?”
“I won’t.”
“But it makes you all… you know.”
He laughed. “Horny, dear girl. It makes me horny. As does sex, and I can stop that at any time too. We aren’t mindless animals. If you want me to stop, I will stop, but we don’t have to go there at all if you’re uncomfortable.”
I wasn’t, not really; more mildly nervous.
I liked the idea of trying it when it was only Alex and me, no one else. If it didn’t work, if I failed at it, then no one would need to know. “Can we keep it between us? If I try it and it doesn’t work. Can we not tell the others?”
“As you wish.”
I held my arm out, the underside of my wrist up, palm open.
“Try to calm down, I don’t want you passing out on me.” Alex took hold of my arm and stroked his thumb over the inside of my wrist. “Such soft skin. You’re beautiful, Milly.”
I loved hearing him tell me that. The way his richly accented voice lingered slightly on the
L’s in my name. Alex was a real heartbreaker when I wasn’t obsessing about his status as a living person, or not. No wonder women found him irresistible.
He lowered his mouth to my wrist and my breath hitched, but he only kissed me there. He looked up at me through long lashes, and his eyes crinkled as he smiled. “You’re as skittish as a newborn fawn. I won’t hurt you. I promise. I’ll take only the tiniest sip.”
Oh, God. I sent up a prayer to a deity who would probably, most assuredly, not approve of this. Or maybe he would; if there were a God, then he created Alex too.
I pulled my wrist back a little, only enough to get his attention. “Do you believe in God?”
He blinked at me and smiled. “Yes.”
“Really?” His answer surprised me.
“My dear girl, I believe in God and angels. I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe. I also believe in darker forces. Powerful, malignant ones.”
Would Alex be one of those darker forces? Could a vampire be good? Surely, he’d be on the side of the bad guys if literature, movies, and all that humanity believed about mythical vampires were true of him, but I’d only ever felt goodness from him.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said.
“Are you in my head? I hate the itching feeling I get when Jackson rummages around in my brain, but at least then I know he’s doing it.” I pursed my lips as I tried to sense if Alex were indeed rifling through my thoughts.
“I don’t need to be in your head. Your face says it all. You’re wondering if I’m evil somehow, one of those dark forces. I don’t believe I am. I think I’m as good or bad as you. Does that answer your question? I’m certainly not demonic. I’m no angel, but I’m no devil.”
I sensed I may have overstepped the line, tested his patience. Scrubbing my other hand over my face, I sighed. “I’m sorry, Alex. I didn’t mean to offend you. I don’t think you’re evil. You’re the kindest one here. There’s an awful lot to get my head around, and I’m trying to figure it out is all.”’
“No need to be sorry, I know you don’t mean anything by it. You’re curious; it’s only natural.” He kissed my wrist. “Jackson is the one who gets all bent out of shape about you figuring your way around all of this. He’s flat out in love with you, and he wants you to feel the same.”
“He’s in love with me?” I froze but inside of me a storm of emotion raged. Jackson loved me?
Jackson hadn’t told me as much, hadn’t used those words, and at times he could be harsh with me, making me believe he found me annoying.
Alex nodded. “I am sure of it. But let’s forget about our lord and master for now.” He grinned.
Then he leaned in, brushed my hair over my shoulder, and kissed my neck. It sent shivers down my spine. The good kind. He smelled good. Cinnamon and something else, something fresher; as if I walked past a bakery door on a crisp autumn morning.
“You smell good,” I told him.
“You smell good enough to eat,” he whispered back, lips brushing against my neck. Then he moved away, and the spot where he’d been felt cold. Bereft of his presence.
He picked my hand up again and turned it over to reveal the tender skin on my inner arm. The blue veins there stood out in a way they didn’t anywhere else. Once more his lips brushed the skin there, and then he bit me.
Sharp, searing pain hit. I thought he said it wouldn’t hurt. I flinched and tried to pull my arm away, but then it happened. The pain went away, replaced at first by a lovely warmth, then only moments later a euphoric feeling hit me. Alex took a deep pull on my blood, but I didn’t care because the act came accompanied by a wave of feel-good sensations. My skin went all warm and my limbs heavy, as if I’d downed half a bottle of wine. I felt sleepy, sedated almost, except for between my legs where a hotwire seemed to be in play; a direct line between my clit and where Alex sucked at my life force.
Holy cow, if he kept this up much longer I would come. I ought to make him stop, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak, never mind move. I floated in a haze between awake and asleep, not sure if any of it were real.
Warm lips left my wrist, a tongue laved there for a moment, then was gone. “There.” Alex kissed me chastely on the back of my hand. “Not bad, huh?”
Not bad. Not. Bad? It had been divine. And I wanted more. Needed more. I’d been close to something incredible, and then he’d stopped.
“You can take more,” I said, thrusting my wrist at him.
He shook his head. “No, my girl, I cannot. You need to go away now you know what this entails, and decide if you want to do this properly.”
“I do want to do it properly, now.”
“You are too aroused and drunk on the feeding to make that decision. Sleep on it and let me know tomorrow.”
“No.” I slapped my hand against his chest. “I need… Alex… I want…”
His smile turned downright ravenous. “Oh, yes. I can take care of that if you wish?”
I didn’t give him the chance to change his mind. Not thinking, and sick of my passivity in all of it, I clambered onto his lap. His expression was priceless as I straddled him. I didn’t give him time to make me get off, and I brought my mouth down onto his hard.
If I thought he’d object, then I thought wrong. His hands reached for me, one going around my back to pull me into him, the other tangling in my hair, angling my head.
I was on fire.
Chapter Eight
Jackson: Sorry is the hardest word
He’d done it again. Gone and been a bastard to Milly. He didn’t mean to but the veneer of distrust, fear, and almost a hint of the old disdain she showed for them in tiny flashes, angered him.
He ought to go find her. Apologize—again. He might get pissed at her attitude at times, but he had to remember, she’d gone from being a girl living a relatively normal life in this shit show of a world, to finding herself taken by him and his men and holed up in their home.
When he’d pretended she could go the other day, he’d been relieved when she’d opted to stay because he’d had no intentions of truly letting her go. Out there lay dangers around every corner for a tempting morsel like Milly. Never mind what would happen to her if the Ravens got her again, or if his own side took her.
He’d spent a few days making calls to similar cells like theirs. Altereds living and working together to try to bring down the government. One cell had apparently found another girl like Milly, one who had been experimented on and given enhancements to her sixth sense.
She was still being held in a lab, and they wanted to save her; except Sienna had been involved in working with the girl and so they’d held off.
Jackson had called them to see what their plan was regarding whether or not to take the girl or wait some more.
During that conversation Jackson learned something that made him so angry he didn’t know what to do with the rage.
The leader of the other cell, Jakob, told him the plan for Milly hadn’t merely been to pimp her out to a few kinky-minded officials, as Jackson had been led to believe. The real plan was to give her to a depraved group of men who enjoyed extreme BDSM.
Christ, he’d have been training her to give her away to be tortured. No wonder Sienna wanted to do that part of Milly’s training herself. Yes, he’d been willing, at the very start, to let Milly go and be the play thing of a group of jaded fuckers. He’d thought finding the cure that important, but these men were way beyond that. They were evil and may even have killed her once they’d finished playing with her. Such things weren’t unheard of.