by Kayleigh Sky
Including me, thought Asa. But he had no plans to meet the king. He had no plans to stick with Louise either. Fuck the job, which he was pretty sure didn’t exist anyway.
No chance came for him to get away when they stopped in Monterey though, because Louise didn’t budge from his side. When he said, “I need to take a piss,” she said, “Me too.” She followed him and waited in line for the women’s room until he went into the men’s.
When he came out, she appeared at his side, and they returned to their seats. Jesus, was he giving off some kind of vibe? Getting rid of her wasn’t going to be easy with so many witnesses. He couldn’t just walk off. She’d fight him, and nobody would believe he was the victim. So he had to wait.
His only dream anymore was to get away and find a place where vampires weren’t always trying to take a bite out of him. Soon. She couldn’t stay with him all the time. He’d figure something out.
Not a train wreck though. That never occurred to him. The rumble of the earth shaking underneath them an hour later hit him at the same time the car flew sideways. He somersaulted, deafened by screams and shrieking metal and his own pounding heart. Colliding with the seats knocked the light out of his eyes. He ricocheted into the dark, and something hard and cold hit him in the gut. He bent over it, breath torn out of his lungs. Pain ripped into him before the numbness set in. Screams still echoed, and a faint, far away voice whispered, Mine…
“You can’t die! Don’t you fucking die!”
The numbness buzzed like a shorted wire, sparking at every twitch. But then it stopped. Was he dead? Maybe he’d been dead for months and was just now figuring it out. Maybe the vampire Mateo had set him up with had drained him for real. Asa thought he’d gotten away, but maybe he was still in Comity, still feeding Brillen Acalliona the last of his life and sinking deeper into the dark.
But then Louise’s strident voice dragged him back up.
“You bitch,” he muttered.
“You can’t die!”
Well, he was going to, and he didn’t need the dumb vampire lover waking him up so he could feel it all. Why did she care anyway?
“Come on.”
She pulled on his arm. A loud scream tore through his head, and he sank away again. But it was cold in the dark, and he shivered.
Someone nearby said, “You have to help him.”
Nails dug into his arm.
Louise again.
He tried to shrug her off. The voices rose, drifted. But he wasn’t alone. Somebody touched his cheek, tilted his face. “You can’t die, and I don’t have much time.”
A hot, sticky substance pulsed through his fingers. He coughed and fumbled at his stomach.
A hand caught his. “It’s going to hurt.”
Then pain, white and scorching as a sun, ripped him apart. He opened his mouth on a scream that drowned in the sweet liquid pouring over his tongue. He gulped it, fastened his lips around the source and drank. Fingers stroked through his hair and cupped his head. The pain faded to nothing. He floated on soft clouds.
And then he opened his eyes.
He blinked as the vampire leaning over him smiled and reached out with his fingers. He touched Asa’s face, and then…
Nothing.
He was alone again until Louise dropped on her knees beside him. “Are you—?”
He sat up, and she gasped. Together, they looked down at his belly. His T-shirt was sticky and stained with blood. He pulled it up, fingering the hole in the fabric.
Louise said, “But… I thought…” She swiveled a look behind her, and Emek grabbed onto a nearby seat and hauled himself onto his feet. A vampire stood there. And somebody else peered in on them from outside, blocking the sun. Louise laughed. “It looked so awful. So much worse than it turned out to be.”
He rubbed his skin. Why wasn’t it worse? Where else had all the pain come from? But something had happened. The vampire got up and climbed from the car. Had it… touched his face? Asa shivered and swallowed a strange, sweet taste in his mouth. Coke?
“What are your names?” the vampire asked.
“I’m Louise Lytton. This is Emek.”
Asa’s head shot up. Something told him giving out their names, fake or not, was a bad idea. Just one more reason to ditch her.
“Perhaps we will meet again,” said the vampire.
Louise grabbed Asa’s arm. They were alone again, a watery sunlight flooding through the broken window at the end of the car. “C’mon,” she said.
He followed her outside, sucked in a breath, and grew cold as his gaze drifted over the pieces of train lying in the grass like a broken necklace. People lay on the ground and ran between the cars and the bodies. Somebody had set up a tent in the distance. The sound of a hiss and Louise’s gasp drew his attention back.
She gaped at him. “Did you see that?”
“See what?”
She looked around and shook her head. “I’d swear… Where’d they go?”
The vamp? He shook his head too. “I don’t know.”
She looked queasy but grabbed his arm again and said, “We have to go.”
Go where?
He stared again at the people running back and forth, vampires among them. Vampires on the ground too. Cars and pickups clustered around the tent. Louise dragged him toward the road through weeds that whipped at their legs.
“We’ll catch a ride,” she said.
He pulled his arm away but followed until the slam of a car door echoed through his chest, and he stumbled to a stop and stared back at the tent.
Louise stopped too and returned to his side. “What’s he doing here?”
“Who?” he asked.
“The king.”
“How do you know that’s the king?”
The creature she pointed to was standing beside a black SUV, surrounded by other vamps. A few of them stood with their chins against their chests.
Louise sneered. “Bowing to him.”
But not for long. They lifted their chins and turned away. The group that had arrived in the SUV followed. Maybe he was a king, maybe not. Asa half turned too before the vampire in the center of the group looked his way. The distance obscured the creature’s face. But something… Something like a whisper reached him.
He hurried after Louise, his heart hammering.
The whisper followed him.
Mine…
3
Asa Gets Instructions
Nine months later…
* * *
Well, he’d hated her, so what did he care if her body had just dropped to the floor like a knapsack tumbling from his numb fingers?
But his breath still froze in his lungs.
“Stupid bitch,” muttered the vampire, stepping over her.
Every nerve in Asa’s body itched to run, but he had no hope of escape.
Solomon Frenn wasn’t alone. Three other vampires sat on a couch and chair, playing cards on a coffee table. Were bodies on the floor that fucking common?
Asa’s lungs finally let him take a breath. He struggled to keep his gaze on the vampire approaching him. Show no fear. No literal quaking in his boots.
Solomon stopped a foot away and tipped his head.
But maybe Asa would die like this. In a fancy, citified apartment with the light shining through the windows and spreading like clear water over a parquet floor. Over her body. Outside, the sun glittered on the distant ocean. Inside, art hung on the walls and statuettes of lithe young bodies sat on the tabletops.
“Solomon is an art dealer,” Louise had whispered that morning. A member of a group of true Ellowyn—whatever that meant—called the Adi ’el Lumi.
“You said he was a servant.”
Her creepy smile had spread wide. “Only to important vampires.”
A servant who didn’t mind bodies on the floor.
In one of the other apartments, somebody played a piano, the notes from the keys clear and bright.
“You ran,” Solomon said.
As
a resisted the urge to swallow—show no fear—and forced a scowl. “I didn’t run. The center wasn’t open yet. I had nothing to do.”
After the train wreck he’d ditched Louise his first chance but doubted Solomon believed his reasoning, though it was true that the center wasn’t ready to open. Even Louise had told him that and had promised him spending money while he waited. He’d just decided to wait someplace else, but that had only lasted until the scariest-looking vampire he’d ever seen had shown up at the door of his motel room. “I am the light bearer and a true heart.”
Scariest-looking, bald, insane vampire.
“Don’t be stupid,” Solomon snapped. “Nobody told you to take a fucking vacation before you even started. You weren’t where I put you.” He pointed behind him—nowhere near the body—as though it was no concern of his where it lay. “You see that? I hate your kind. Outlive your usefulness to me, and that’s you.”
A dull-eyed human tracked Solomon’s finger. No expression on her face. So drained she was almost dead. After Solomon’s arm fell, she sank back in her chair, a lumpy coral-colored thing that looked like raw meat against the wall. She must have been Solomon’s feeder.
Close to dead.
He’d been like that once, and where had Asa’s voice been then? He hadn’t heard it in years except for… The train wreck. But he’d imagined that. It had only been the shock and stress doing weird things to his brain.
“I wasn’t hiding from anyone,” he said. “I wasn’t even twenty-five miles away.”
“Forty-five.”
After a moment of silence, Asa said, “Okay. I didn’t count.”
A slow smile stretched across the vampire’s face. “You might thank me for this job eventually. It won’t be hard. Maybe even pleasant. Just don’t forget—the dumbest vampire is better than the smartest human. Do what I tell you, and you might live.”
Cold spread through him, hardening his face against the fear quaking inside. The horror of the body on the floor dragged at his gaze against his will. Louise had scared him in the way complete insanity usually scared him, so he’d taken off the first chance he got. Losing him didn’t look good, but that wasn’t what had gotten her dead.
“What do you want?” he asked.
It wasn’t to give Asa a job. Just like he’d thought, the donor center was bullshit, or at least, the job offer was. They didn’t want him for that.
Solomon took a step closer. “Respect, human.”
Asa gave a slow nod. “I’ll do what you want.”
“Oh, I know you will. Too young to die, aren’t you? Like all dumb animals though, you need a purpose, which I’m going to give you. New Seaside is the closest town to Dinallah Manor. Your contact is Jere, and Jere’s contact is Jaan. Jaan owns a coffee shop in town—not the Starbucks—and his brother owns the hardware. Both are safe places.”
Solomon waited until he nodded again.
“Contact Jaan if something happens to Jere and you need to get information to me.” Solomon grinned. “Buy your coffee there a couple times to make it look good. Pretend to be a vampire lover. Whatever. You’re going to want to be an Ellowyn’s best friend.” A sudden contortion twisted Solomon’s face. “Though Dinallah hardly deserves the term Ellowyn anymore.”
“What am I going to do?”
Solomon smiled, stepped to Asa’s side, and draped an arm across his shoulders. “You’re going to come with me first. I see no need to tempt you with a chance to escape before you even start your new job. You’ll be on your own, of course, but I have eyes everywhere. You’re going to be mine and of great use to me.”
Solomon towered over him. Asa hated the touch of vampires and had since the caress of a vampire’s fingers against his cheek had stolen his heart. His skin tingled at the memory of those fingers, the rush of his blood warming him and… bonding him. Even now, after many years and so much hate, he still fought against the chains that forever locked him to the faceless vamp he’d stupidly fallen in love with. Whoever he’d been.
A traitor, that’s who.
As Solomon led him to the door, two of the vamps rose from the card game and followed. They stepped out into a hallway where the sounds of the piano grew louder and decades of cobwebs darkened the corners. The two vampires sandwiched him as they descended a narrow staircase. Outside, a black SUV idled at the curb. Solomon pushed Asa into the back behind one of the vamps and slid in after him. The other vampire got up front, and the driver pulled away.
“I like the curls.”
Solomon fingered the ends of Asa’s hair. Dirty blond hair. They’d made him dye it, an odd relief, because it meant they didn’t plan to kill him right away.
“I can smell your fear.”
Asa forced a laugh.
What did the bastard expect?
His face didn’t give anything away though. He eyed himself in the rearview mirror and saw the same gray eyes he’d seen for years. He wasn’t usually mean, but he never invited friendship. He had only pain and fear inside him, but his face hid that, lay over it as pretty and clean as fresh snow. His looks had kept him alive probably, but at thirty-two now, his sell-by-date loomed close. He’d have to rely on something else to live. The fear though…?
Invisible.
He swiveled his head and met Solomon’s gaze before looking up front again. “I’ve been through worse.”
“You mean Brillen? Yes, he would have drained you. Good he didn’t, but too bad the bastard died before I could get to the necklace.”
“What necklace?”
“One of the ones you will help me get back.” Solomon’s fingers closed on a handful of Asa’s hair. “What was your life like before?” he muttered.
It wasn’t really a question, and Asa held back his answer. Louise had been loyal to Solomon, and now she lay on the floor with her neck in two pieces.
Solomon pulled tighter on his hair. “How long have you been a whore, Emek?”
He gritted his teeth through the pain biting his scalp. At least his real name was safe from the bastard. “I’m a blood whore.”
“Only?”
“Yes.”
Solomon leaned in, his smile a whisper against Asa’s cheek. “You’re a liar. You’d better be a good whore, human. Your life depends on it.”
“What do you want me to do?”
He remembered the golden roofline of the mansion topped with antennae and chimneys he’d glimpsed from his window on the train up here.
“The king’s,” Louise had whispered.
Mine…
Asa clamped down on the echo of the voice, crushing it into silence. Louise had been wrong about so much, she’d probably been wrong about that too. Why would a king come to the scene of an accident? Or maybe she’d been playing him for some reason. She’d relished her betrayal. And now…
Well, vamps had no loyalty.
The shock of Solomon releasing his hair sent a chill through him.
“The first half of your job is to seduce the king.”
Asa’s head snapped around. “Me?”
“You’re his type in a human, I think, except for the dye job.” Anger swept over Solomon’s features. “Giving your name away was fucking stupid. You were supposed to keep to your goddamn self.”
Nevermind it had been Louise who’d given their names out and only to that vamp. He dug his nails into his palms, pushing back the images of blood and the snap of a neck. Louise had saved him in the wreck. For her own reasons probably, but she’d done it and had ended up begging for her life.
The creases in Solomon’s cheeks gouged deep. “I told you not to talk to anybody.”
“But… I had to do something. I thought… Well, Emek looked like he was dying,” she babbled.
“What did you tell them?”
“Nothing.”
Solomon stepped closer. “Are you sure?”
“Well… I might’ve… Nobody’s going to remember our names. I was trying to be normal and not stand out. After somebody saves you, you have t
o introduce yourself. It would look weird not to. And besides, we can change our names any time.”
Disgust twisted Solomon’s face. “Too late.”
What had that meant, too late? Had somebody found them? The cop?
He gritted his teeth. As much as he’d just told himself it didn’t matter, his brain kept trying to piece together a memory of what had happened to him on the train. Why hadn’t the blood been his? What could explain that?
“You can’t die!”
No, not like that. Asa had to see… him… again. His vampire. He had to kiss him and steal the breath from his lungs as completely as the monster had stolen so much from Asa.
But he had been dying. The pain had ripped through him. The rectangles of gray-white windows above him had made no sense, and screams had rolled like waves through his head.
And then he’d stood on his feet, unhurt, only bruised and splashed by the blood of strangers.
The memory brought a giddy laugh into his throat.
“Is something funny?” Solomon asked.
“No,” he said. “It’s just… Seduce the king?”
“Usually, he sticks to vampires. Eilelia is his current dalliance, but nobody lasts. You’re the type of human his eye goes to though, so be charming. That’s your job. You’ll be good at this, and you’ve already taken our money.”
“Not for this.”
Solomon’s eyes narrowed. “I say what you take it for,” he said, then smacked the vampire up front on the shoulder. “Show him one of the necklaces.”
“What necklaces?”
“That’s your real reason for seducing him. Find the king’s necklaces. It is defilement that he even touches them. They belong to the royal families. One for each family. They are the key to the treasure promised us. But only one vampire is worthy enough to lead us to it, and that one is not Dinallah.”
Fucking nut jobs.
The vampire up front popped open the glove box and pulled out a stone amulet dangling on a chain.