by Joshua King
“See?” she asked. “Looks like a good, clean bite. She really knows what she’s doing.”
The affinity for sex Ashe had mentioned reared its head. I reached down and ran my fingers through her silky hair.
“Why don’t you show me what you know how to do?” I asked.
Ashe nipped at me with her fangs, just catching the skin of my thigh. She climbed to her feet and flipped her hair back over her shoulder.
“Soon,” she said. “There’ll be plenty of time for that. But right now, you need to get your ass in gear. I told you, you only have four days after the bite to finish the turning. If you don’t, you’ll die. Time’s ticking. You’ve got to get going.” She gave me a regretful look. “But, honestly, I wouldn’t hold out too much hope.”
4
I didn’t like the sound of Ashe’s last statement. She stepped away from me, and I pulled up my pants.
“What do you mean you don’t hold out too much hope?” I asked.
Ashe tilted her head thoughtfully, looking like she was trying to figure out the right words to say. She seemed to almost be debating with herself about what she thought she should tell me. Finally, her shoulders dropped resolutely, and she looked me directly in the eyes.
“Alright, let me put it this way. The woman you called Blondie? Which, just to reiterate, I recommend you never, ever do again. That’s Aurora. She is the daughter of one of the highest-ranking vampires in our world. Do you know what that means?”
I thought about it for a second. “She’s royalty?” I asked, just throwing it out there.
Ashe gave a hint of a nod. “Essentially,” she said. “You need to think of Aurora as a princess, and you are a peasant. That is how untouchable she is to you. She is completely beyond you, and you can’t pursue her, just like a peasant would never try to go after a princess. Do you understand?”
I stared at Ashe, still trying to get her words to sink in. When did I stop being able to understand what a woman was saying to me? Not that I’d call myself a sparkling conversationalist or anything, but usually, I could at least follow along with a basic talking to. Even when I was distracted by fantastic tits and creamy skin. Right now, I felt like Ashe’s words were coming at me through a block of Jell-O.
I frowned. “Okay, so let me get this straight. The vampire who found me so irresistible she just had to make me her bar snack is apparently some big deal in the vampire world, so I’m not even supposed to try to talk to her again?”
“Yes,” Ashe said.
“Bullshit,” I said.
Ashe sighed and grabbed two mugs from the rack above the bar. She filled them with sudsy beer and stalked around the side of the bar toward one of the tables. She didn’t say anything, but her body language told me to follow her. Actually, language didn’t have anything to do with it. I’d follow the swish of those hips anywhere they went, whether they were telling me to or not. She walked up to a table and set the mugs down firmly. I vaguely remembered that particular table getting kicked out of the way the night before during the brawl.
Had it been the night before? Ashe mentioned that people going through the turning sometimes slept for the first twenty-four hours because of all the changes happening to their bodies. Had I done that, too?
“Look,” Ashe said, dropping down into a chair. “It’s not my problem Aurora zeroed in on you. I don’t know why she did it.”
I sat across from her. “Well, that’s hurtful.”
She shrugged. “Also, not my problem. I’m trying to tell you that she isn’t just some bar skank you can track down after a one-night stand and bring out for greasy Chinese food in some hole in the wall you think is romantic.”
“Have you been following me?” I asked with a grin.
Not impressed. Damn. This girl just wasn’t giving me an inch.
“Aurora does what she wants, and who she wants, when she wants,” Ashe said.
“So, the city is crawling with her little collection of vampires?” I asked.
Ashe shook her head. “No, that’s the thing. She doesn’t usually bite the men she picks up for fun.”
I took a swig of the beer and set the mug back down. What the hell time was it? Not that it mattered. I wasn’t above drinking no matter what time it was. “Well, that makes me special, then. Doesn’t it? And I’m not giving up. I’m not just going to sit around with my memories and long for her like I’m in some pathetic women’s network movie.”
“Are you particularly familiar with those?” Ashe asked flatly.
I ignored her teasing. “I don’t know how this whole vampire thing works, but I really don’t care. If I want to go after a woman, I’ll go after her. Even if she thinks she’s above me.”
“She doesn’t think she’s above you,” Ashe said, leaning slightly toward me. “She is above you. Therein lies your problem. Remember, you are a peasant. You can’t just stroll up to the princess and expect her attention. Unfortunately, if you don’t, you are fucked, and not in the way that got you here in the first place.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
Ashe took a deep sip of her beer. “I told you that you have to complete your turning within four days after you get bitten.”
I nodded. “Or I die. Yes, that stuck with me.”
“Yes, you die,” she said. “A very slow, very prolonged, very painful death. It takes a at least a week. Sometimes more. The venom from the bite starts to break down at the point of the bite, and your body goes along with it. It’s not a kind or gentle death. All these benefits you’re enjoying from the bite? All the youth and sexiness? Gone.”
I was unnerved by the matter-of-fact tone of her voice and the unaffected expression on her face. I would have preferred if she put some drama into it. Some flailing. A few meaningful gestures. Even just an increase in the volume of her voice would have made it less chilling.
“Gone?” I asked.
“It came to you as a gift of the turn,” she said. “If you don’t complete the change within the set time, it’s taken from you, along with everything else. Your skin that has become so smooth and youthful will go gray and slack. It will start rotting away, sliding off your bones. The blood going through your veins will become like acid and will eat away at you from the inside.”
I felt my stomach turn at the thought and nodded. “That’s really lovely, but I think I have the basic idea now.”
She kept going. “You’ll lose the feeling in your fingers and toes.”
“Oh, there’s more? Lovely.” I hung my head for a few seconds, drawing in a breath to try to keep myself from throwing up.
She nodded. “They’ll turn black, then start to fall off one by one.”
“At least I’ll know when that’s going to be over. I’ll just do the most depressing New Year’s Eve-style countdown from ten ever done. I’d just have to go through it twice.” I folded my arms on the table and dropped my head down onto them. I felt dizzy thinking about everything Ashe was saying.
“Well, it would be a countdown from eleven for one of them, technically,” she said in her same flat tone.
“What?” I asked without lifting up my head.
“Eleven,” she said again. “It’s already a fairly shaky metaphor you’ve got going there, but if you want to go with it, you might as well be accurate about it. You’d have to do a countdown from eleven if you really wanted to make sure you knew when appendages were going to stop falling off during the death process. Ten fingers, then ten toes, and one…”
My head snapped up from my arms to look at Ashe. “No,” I said.
She nodded. “Yep,” she said. “Just like everything else. It would turn gray and—”
“No,” I said, shaking my head.
“It would lose all feeling.”
“No,” I groaned.
“And it would fall off.”
“My dick?” I managed to ask, my voice squeaking. “No, not my dick.”
“It’s not a pretty picture,” she said. A smile tu
rned up her plush lips, and I noticed her eyes travel up and down me briefly. “Well, the falling off part isn’t. Before that is yet to be seen.”
The hunger rose up inside me again, and it took everything to keep sitting in the chair, rather than diving over the table and taking Ashe for a spin right there. The image of my dick falling off helped dampen my urges a bit. That was one scare tactic the public-school system should grab hold of and run with. They could show all the oozy, gross pictures they wanted, but teenagers were still going to fuck. Throw them one mental image of coming across the wrong one-night stand and their dick going grey and falling off, and the teen pregnancy rate would drop to nothing.
“So, what am I supposed to do?” I asked. “I’d definitely like to avoid the dick falling off scenario.”
“And the death?” Ashe asked.
I shrugged. “Well, yeah. It’s a package deal.”
“You have to drink Aurora’s blood,” she said.
“I have to what?” I asked.
“Aurora is the one who bit you and started the turn,” she said. “You have to bite her and drink her blood in return. That will complete your transformation, and all the changes will be permanent.”
“You just got finished telling me I’m not even supposed to consider getting near this chick because she’s some eternal princess,” I said, shaking my head. “Now you’re telling me the only way to keep myself from decomposing to death is to not only get near her, but to drink her blood. That’s just perfect.”
Ashe shrugged. “Now you see why I said not to hold out too much hope.”
I shook my head. “No, I’m not going to accept that. You can’t just tell me I can’t approach this woman after she did this to me when she’s the only chance I have. That’s not happening. I’m not just going to give up and sit around waiting for the next four days.”
“Three days,” Ashe corrected.
“What the fuck ever. Three days, then. I’m not going to sit around waiting to die for three days so I don’t offend the princess. I’m going to find her. And you’re going to help me.”
Ashe’s eyes widened slightly. “Me?”
“Yes,” I said. “You’re the one who told me Aurora was interested last night—or the night before—whenever it was I met her. You told me to go after her, and now you’re telling me about all this. Whether you like it or not, you’ve taken me under your wing, and you’re going to tell me where she is, how to find her, and then what to do.”
Ashe’s eyes narrowed. Her glare told me she wasn’t used to people standing up to her. I expected her to lash out at me and tell me I was on my own. Instead, she took a long swig of her beer and squared her shoulders.
“Fine,” she said. Her eyes traveled up and down me again. “I don’t know why, but I’m going to help you. Usually, I don’t care about people in your situation. It’s not in my nature to care what happens to those who are in the process. Too disposable. I don’t like to get attached, just in case things don’t turn out. That’s not something you want to watch happen to a person you have any connection to. But there’s something about you.”
It was the same thing Aurora had said to me when I first walked in the upstairs room with her. The fact that Ashe said it now struck me, but I didn’t mention it.
“Where do we start?” I asked.
5
“I don’t know where Aurora is,” Ashe said. “She moves around as she pleases and isn’t the easiest to follow. If we’re going to find her, the best thing we can do is figure out where she isn’t.”
“Are we communicating in riddles now?” I asked. “If so, I’m going to need a few minutes to come up with mine.”
“It’s not a riddle,” Ashe said. “Come with me.”
She stood, and I followed her toward the back of the bar.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Downstairs,” she said. “There’s somebody I want you to meet.”
I’d watched enough horror flicks to know it was rarely a good thing when somebody asked you to go downstairs in a building you didn’t know. Especially when they also told you they had somebody they’d like you do meet. Usually, that meant there was going to be a monster or a torture chamber with rusty implements involved. But since I was already staring down the barrel at a pretty nasty death if this whole find-Aurora mission didn’t work out, I decided to go along with her.
We made our way through the bar and to a black door in a dark corner. If I’d seen it after just wandering in, I’d probably have thought it was a storage closet. The small etching of the emblem from the front of the menu into the doorknob was the only thing giving me any indication it was something different.
Ashe took hold of the knob and pushed the door open. It was anticlimactic in a way. I thought there was going to be a special secret knock, or a password, or something. At least a key. She opened the door like we were just going on a casual stroll to get some extra paper towels.
The door opened onto a set of steps, and she started down them. I followed her, pushing the door closed behind me as I went. We were immediately engulfed in complete darkness, and I heard Ashe muttering to herself as she hurried the rest of the way down. A few seconds later, I heard a click, and a light turned on over my head. I was still making my way down the rest of the steps toward Ashe on the landing when a man came around a corner toward us.
Big and muscular, the man looked angry as he stalked toward Ashe. I felt a protective urge to defend her, but when she glanced over her shoulder, she didn’t seem bothered by his advance.
“What’s going on?” the man demanded.
“Hey,” Ashe said. “I was coming to look for you.” She gestured toward me. “This is Hayden.”
I stepped toward him with my hand extended.
“Hey,” I greeted.
The man said nothing, and Ashe gestured toward him. “This is Tybalt,” she said.
I grinned. “Hey, Tybalt. Sorry to hear about your cousin Juliet.” I laughed. “That Shakespeare dude really knows how to do a downer, doesn’t he?”
Tybalt’s expression didn’t change as he reached out to shake my hand. It was a firm, almost painful grip. “Will was a good man,” he said. “I miss him.”
I wanted him to laugh. He didn’t.
My hand fell away from his, and I looked back to Ashe. She didn’t look at all fazed by his comment, and something told me she’d heard stories about this man’s time chumming it up with good ol’ Will.
“Ty is my bouncer,” she explained. I noticed him stiffen, as if the word made him angry, but she didn’t elaborate. “Hayden is a new member of the clan. At least, he’s on his way to becoming a new member of the clan. He’s in process.”
“I thought he had an unfinished look about him,” Ty said.
I wanted to say something back, but Ashe pushed ahead to drown me out.
“We need to go to the portal,” she said.
Ty scrutinized me for a beat, then gave an almost imperceptible nod. He turned, and Ashe started following him deeper into the basement. I fell into step behind them and tried to pay attention as we weaved through a honeycomb of rooms. In case they were planning on just abandoning me somewhere down here, I wanted to have at least some chance of making my way back out. Finally, we reached another door. Ashe hung back slightly as Tybalt approached it.
I leaned toward her so I could whisper in her ear. “What’s up with him?” I asked.
She shook her head sharply. “Ty doesn’t talk about his past,” she said.
It was vague, but the tone in the words shut me down instantly. I straightened again and watched as Ty reached into the neck of his shirt and withdrew a chain. Hanging from it was a large, complicated-looking key. He took the chain from his neck and inserted the key into the hole just beneath the handle on the door. When the lock clicked, even before opening the door, he put the chain back over his head and tucked the key into his shirt again. He opened the door and stepped inside. Ashe waited a few seconds and then followe
d him, with me right behind her.
We walked into a room that was almost completely dark. A faint light shone from somewhere across the space, but I couldn’t see what it was. I had the distinct feeling there was something there I couldn’t perceive.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Ty is also the keeper to the portal to the Underworld,” Ashe explained.
“So he’s a bouncer for both worlds,” I said.
“You can say that,” Ty said flatly. He looked to Ashe. “You can pass through, but you have to pay the blood price.”
That didn’t sound promising. “Blood price?” I asked.
“Before we do that,” Ashe said, ignoring me. “Have you seen Aurora?”
Ty looked at her strangely. “Aurora?” he asked. “I saw her upstairs last night.”
So it was just last night. The drugged feeling I’d had since I woke up was still dragging on me, but at least having some grasp of how long I’d been out made me slightly less disoriented.
“Have you seen her since?” Ashe asked.
“No,” Ty admitted. He sounded almost confused. Then a sinister smile curved up one side of his lips. “Wait, Aurora?” He looked at me. “Aurora bit him?”
“Yes,” Ashe said. “Apparently, he caught her eye, and she bit him in the thigh. She didn’t drain him, so his time is ticking. We need to find her so he can take some of her blood and finish the turn.”
“Before my dick falls off,” I offered, leaning slightly toward the massive man in the hope of creating some sort of camaraderie.
He glared at me. “Good luck with that,” he said. “Aurora hasn’t passed back through the portal. Not since she came through a few days ago.”
“Shit,” Ashe said.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
She shook her head. “If she didn’t pass back through the portal, she hasn’t gone back to the Underworld. It still wouldn’t be easy to find her if she was there, but at least I know most of her usual spots. As it is, she’s still somewhere in New York. That’s going to make it even harder to track her down.”