Phoenix Dead (New Adult Dark Romance) (The Vampire Years)

by Vremont, Ann

  And that is where I would inevitably get lost. Even thinking about Chris felt like an infidelity. It left me confused as hell. The only sure thing I knew was that I was growing weak again - too weak to spend another Saturday dodging Danny's requests to attend Sunday Mass with him at St. Vincent's over on 51st Avenue.

  "Are you worried your family will be there, Lee?"

  We were sitting at the kitchen table and I laughed at his suggestion. First, I didn't feel like I had any family. My sorry ass excuse for a mother was dead at the fangs of the vampires who had turned me. Elliot had let his uptight wife kick me out of their house. My grandfather was probably sliding towards dementia. And my step-father Paul, whose abandonment of Sandy had precipitated my attack, was a pedophile who considered me still just young enough to be an object of interest.

  Second, they were all heathens of the first magnitude.

  "So, you'll go with me?" Danny fingered the garnet cross at my throat, his knuckle caressing my collar bone. It was the necklace I had seen at Blush, with the crucifix and tiers of glass beads. He had returned to the store the next day and purchased it.

  Closing my eyes, I let the sensation of his touch spread across my skin. I nodded, not saying anything. I would finally give him this thing he needed. Afterwards, in bed, naked, we would mirror the service, only with real meaning because I needed to feed soon. My high school classmates - even the weird ones - were starting to look and smell like dinner.

  "Good." He leaned forward, his hand closing around my shoulder as he kissed the prominence of my cheekbone.

  I tried to move in on the kiss, to touch my lips to his, but he moved back. We'd been dancing this way for the last four weeks, the simmering passion flaring beyond his control only rarely and always instantly reeled back in after that one night.

  I couldn't blame him. I was still withholding information on Oscar and the vampires who had attacked me. My age bothered Danny, as did the unexplainable lack of scars on my body from the attack. And, from his blood, I knew there was something bothering him on an even deeper level.

  The crime scene photos - the ones they had taken before they realized only one of the bodies on the garage floor was dead. Danny had seen the pictures of my torn and naked body. It fueled his dedication to bring my attackers to justice, but it had also driven his early obsession with me. The age difference, my orphaned status, the pictures - he felt like a predator.

  But I was the one who wanted to sink my teeth into his flesh, fucking and bleeding him until we both collapsed exhausted on the bed.

  "Danny..." I rested my hand on his bare forearm, tried to caress the skin but he stood up and scooped his car keys off the counter.

  "We need to go shopping," he said.

  The image of us thrusting and moaning evaporated. "Don't you think you've bought me enough clothes already?"

  "That was all school stuff." Forgetting himself for a second, he fingered the cuff of my shirt and I managed to curl my hand around his before he could pull back. "You need something a little dressier for church. And you haven't even said anything about needing a prom dress yet."

  I frowned. "Prom?"

  "Yeah, you know, dancing, corsages, that sort of thing." He extracted his hand from mine. "Have you decided who you are going with?"

  "Prom was supposed to be two weeks ago but the principal cancelled it." I stopped and pointed at myself. "For security reasons."

  I didn't care about the prom, but his question irked the hell out of me. If prom was still on, I'd want to go with him - the guy I was fucking (if only the one night) and kind of thought I was in love with when he wasn't asking stupid questions.

  "That's tough, been taking a lot of flak, huh?"

  I raised my hand, showing about an inch of air between my thumb and index finger before widening the space as far as I could.

  "So that's why you've been...a little quiet?"

  He didn't want to say moody, but that would have been the better descriptor. I shrugged, letting him think what he wanted to. I was quiet for a lot of reasons, including the barriers he kept erecting between us.

  He stood and gave my shoulder a brotherly squeeze. "All the more reason to go shopping."

  ***

  Less than twenty-four hours later, I was sitting in a pew at St. Vincent De Paul. I was wearing a white, crinkled chiffon dress that fell in layers down past my knees. The dress itself was sleeveless but I had a matching shawl of the same fabric and color around my shoulders. My legs were bare, the outfit finished off with white sandals. My hair was in a braid wrapped into a bun at the base of my skull. Around my throat was the garnet cross with its tiers of glass beads.

  I wasn't thinking about how I looked, however. How could I when I recognized the priest? Or, at least, I thought I did. Part of my brain already knew I wasn't really seeing Oscar up there. That part, unfortunately, couldn't convince the rest of my brain and I was staring so hard in disbelief that Danny gave me a gentle nudge.

  "You okay, Lee?" He had his church whisper down pat, his lips didn't even move.

  Not trusting my voice, I put my mouth a centimeter from Danny's ear. "Isn't the priest a little young?"

  "Father Craig is almost fifty."

  Right, so I was hallucinating, but why?

  Oscar looked up, smiled directly at me, his tongue snaking out of his mouth to slowly lick the center of his top lip. "Hungry, Lee?"

  I'd say my heart or lungs stopped, but that is pretty much status quo for vampires. Everything internal runs slower. Still, I was unnerved by his words and the complete lack of reaction from the people around me.

  When the time came for Communion, I was ready to faint or scream. Not because I was going up there, I wasn't. I already knew that, as a non-Catholic (never mind my being a vampire), it would be improper of me to take the sacrament. But Danny would be up there, kneeling, eyes closed, tilting his head up to take the wafer, exposing his throat. And I couldn't get the possibility out of my head that, instead of my hallucinating Oscar, the rest of the congregation was hallucinating Father Craig.

  I grabbed Danny's wrist before it was his turn to stand. "Don't go, please."

  He looked at me, his gaze soft but determined. "It's okay, Lee. Not all rituals are dangerous."

  I put my hand back in my lap, knotted my fingers together. He thought I was remembering the attack, the chanting, the candles and robes, the rows and rows of fangs as more than a dozen vampires bit into my flesh. He thought, more than anything, that he needed to take Communion for my benefit, to show me that the church wasn't a scary place filled with scary people.

  I looked at the row of worshippers already dipping down in front of Oscar. I wondered what they saw in place of the young Hispanic male with long black hair and glittering black eyes.

  Don't you hurt him.

  I voiced the words in my head. Oscar only smiled darkly at me. When it was Danny's turn, he took his time, stopped to place his hand for a moment on Danny's shoulder and whispered something to him.

  When we were finally out in the parking lot, I asked Danny what Father Craig had said to him. He looked at me like I was confused.

  "He didn't say anything."

  Danny was clearly distracted, looking past the surrounding parked vehicles to the street beyond as he started to unlock the car door. I tugged at his sleeve.

  "I saw him say something to you."

  He shrugged, still staring at the street and then his features narrowed. Danny the boyfriend was gone, instantly replaced by Officer Gutierrez. I followed the direction of his gaze to find Oscar standing across the street, dressed in tight jeans and a t-shirt. Oscar's predatory stare shifted from Danny to me. He lifted his hand in greeting and, even at this distance, I could see his mouth pucker in a mocking kiss.

  So could Danny.

  "That's him!" Danny broke into a run, scaled the cast iron fencing rods that bordered St. Vincent's and dodged four lanes of Sunday traffic on 51st Avenue.

  I followed, not quite so dramaticall
y given the dress and my knowledge that, no matter how hampered I was from lack of blood or the sandals or the chiffon clinging to my knees, I could still outrun a human. I found the nearest gate out of the church lot, circumnavigated the cars Danny had already brought to a honking standstill and cut the same path through an unfenced yard that opened onto North 50th Drive. From there, I chased after him along Pinchot Avenue until we both lost site of Oscar and Danny came to a panting halt.

  When he had caught his breath, Danny straightened and grabbed me by the shoulders. "How did he know you were going to be here?"

  "What's to say he did?" I jerked my shoulders from his grip and started walking back to the church. Now that I was sure Oscar hadn't been leading Danny into a trap, I was free to be pissed off at both of them.

  Danny caught my arm and turned me to him. He held both my wrists this time. We were no more than a few inches from one another. He was still breathing hard and sweating. A delicious salt smell covered his skin and I could see his pulse beating hard in his neck. He was too full of adrenaline to notice that I was exhibiting none of the same symptoms.

  It was a good thing, too. If I had broken into a sweat, the pretty white chiffon dress would be a pale pink by this time. Certainly not the easiest thing to explain to someone for whom vampires existed only in print and on screen.

  Danny's grip on my wrists tightened. "You've been lying about him from day one, Lee. I want to know who he is."

  Let's see, well, he's a master vampire. I think. At least he's got clout over all the other vampires in his little group. He kissed me once. I kind of liked it. His name is Oscar.

  Instead of saying any of that, I pressed my lips into a thin line and glared at Danny.

  "At least admit that's the same guy who took you from the school."

  I nodded. There was little room to deny it. Even if they didn't have Oscar's face on camera, they had enough of his body and long hair captured on video to tell it was the same person.

  "Good, now it doesn't matter that you won't see the sketch artist again. I can do it and I won't have to worry about your intentionally screwing up any details."

  I felt my whole expression widen. From habit, I drew a deep breath. "He doesn't know anything," I said. "They just used him as a messenger. You'll only put him in danger."

  "I'm not stupid, Lee." Danny let go of my wrists and grabbed me by one elbow, turning me on the sidewalk. "I know when you're lying to me. You think it doesn't hurt when you do that?"

  I didn't answer and he marched me back in silence to where his car was parked in the church lot. We drove home, still not talking, and then he went into the spare bedroom that served as his home office.

  He slept in there sometimes on a fold-out futon. It was always when I pushed a little too hard at him, when he was still trying to play the protector and pretending that he didn't want me as badly as I wanted him. That night was no different.

  I went to bed alone...

  Hungry...

  Vulnerable.

  ***

  I can't say when in the night the dream began, only that it woke me a little before two in the morning. It was bloody and sensual as hell. I woke with one finger against my clit, another in my mouth that was bleeding from a self-inflicted bite wound.

  Mija.

  I tried to push the word and the waking images that came with it from my mind.

  Now, mija.

  My body jerked, my cunt feeling like a fist or incredibly thick cock had just been pushed hard into it. Only, instead of reeling in pain, the walls of my pussy were clenching tight, trying to catch hold of the fleeting sensation and caress it for more pleasure.

  You know you want to come, mija.

  A fraction of a second passed, followed by Oscar's wicked chuckle inside my head at the double entendre. He was waiting for me, at the church. And while I didn't want to go to him, he was right about my wanting to come. I wanted it bad. And, more than that, I wanted...

  Blood, mija.

  Yes. The word was a sigh in my mind.

  My sigh.

  My acquiescence.

  I dressed in the dark and left through the bedroom window, my movements inhumanly slow so as to avoid tripping the security lights Danny had installed in the back yard.

  We had driven to services, but the walk to St. Vincent's was less than a dozen blocks. I was familiar with the church grounds. I had trespassed there at night since my mother had first met my step-father. Sandy, as she would much of her life, had lived with her dad back then and Paul had lived at his mother's. In between the two houses were the school and church. Sometimes when Sandy was drunk and mad at Paul, she would drag me back to her father's, taking a shortcut across St. Vincent's. Sometimes she left me with her much younger sister, just six years my senior, and I'd spend the night on the swings while my aunt partied with some of the neighborhood bad boys.

  I wondered, finding a door to the church open and stepping inside, if any of those bad boys had ever been Oscar?

  "Right now, I only have eyes for you, Lee."

  This was no voice in my head. I jerked my gaze to the small hallway that led to the restrooms and, past those, a cloakroom that was unused outside of monsoon season. The doors to the cloakroom were open. The voice had come from beyond the room's threshold.

  There was little light in the hallway, even less in the cloakroom. I could still see inside the room with my enhanced vision. There were racks with hangers and a long bench for taking off rain shoes perhaps. But I couldn't see Oscar.

  I sniffed the air before I stepped into the room, my nose telling me an instant too late that he was standing alongside the door. He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me tight to him.

  I didn't fight him. He had something I both wanted and needed. There was no point fighting him until it was clear he had no intention of helping me.

  "Why were you outside this morning?" I only halfway cared what his answer might be. He had fed heavily tonight and I could smell it on him, on his clothes, his skin. As tight as he held me, I pressed tighter still as the blood's odor cloyed at my senses.

  "I wanted you to know I'm still watching you...I'm still interested."

  "In what?" Shamelessly, I had pulled my arms free and wrapped them around his neck. My body had started doing other things I was only faintly aware of - moving against his with a flex of my hip or chest muscles. He dropped his hands down to my bottom and cupped me closer to him.

  "In you, of course." He brushed his lips against my throat, his fangs out and lightly scraping my skin.

  I thought back to the day he had blackmailed me into leaving the protection of the high school and my police guard with a picture of my nine-year-old cousin, Casey. He had called me something that day...

  "Your freak among freaks?" I said, running my mouth along the line of his jaw.

  "Well, Lee, you're a very beautiful freak. Far too beautiful for that cholo with a badge you've been fucking."

  I laughed at him calling Danny a cholo. There were no khaki pants or flannel shirts in Danny's wardrobe. He was college-educated, well-groomed and all around damn good looking. Even with Oscar's unnatural perfection, I would have preferred to be wrapped in Danny's embrace, running my tongue over his throat, pressing my mound against his erection.

  Oscar was clearly reading my thoughts. "But you're here with me, Lee. So maybe he's a homo and not a cholo."

  Starting to think I wasn't going to get a drop of blood from Oscar, I drew back as far as his embrace would allow. "You're the one obsessed with another man."

  He laughed and spun me so that my body hit hard against the wall. With one hand around my throat, he pinned me in place while his other hand undid the top button of my jeans.

  "Unreasonable, maybe, but I was hoping you'd show up in the dress from this morning." He pushed my zipper down and slid a finger beneath the band of my lace panties. "And that bare excuse for a bra you were wearing under it."

  Easing his grip on my neck, he started stroking my clit.
"I had visions of me down on my knees, your dress up around your hips while I licked that sweet pussy of yours."

  That's what he'd done in the dream, almost making me come alone in my bed. I was starting to tremble now from the memory, the force of his words and expert strokes.

  "Slide your jeans down, Lee."

  I obeyed, shamed by the eagerness of my quick movements.

  He let go of my throat and offered his own as he pressed his chest against my breasts. He pushed, forcing me higher up the wall, letting my knees bend and my legs spread around his hips and the wedge of his hand between my thighs.

  I bit into the flesh of his neck as his fingers entered me. It was blood for blood as I felt my healed maidenhead surrender to his hard thrust.

  "Does Officer Danny know you can be such a little slut, mija?" Oscar teased.

  I growled but didn't release my hold on his throat. His blood was a rich chaos of other peoples' memories and emotions. I held it in my mouth, pressed my tongue flat against his neck as my lips formed a tight seal against his skin. He eased his fingers from me to tease only the clit, rubbing, flicking and tugging for tortuously slow minutes. And then he was several fingers into me again, hard and deep in one breath, breaking me all over again.

  "And how do you hide this, mija? Fresh and tight and new every time he fucks you..."

  When I didn't answer, he filled me thicker, only his thumb outside me, stroking my clit. It was a feral exploration - my teeth, his neck, the merciless thrusts of his fingers in my cunt. We ground against each other until I lost control, releasing his throat as my orgasm exploded inside me. Oscar dipped his head and kissed a line along my collar bone as his hand still teased my pussy. With no thought of any consequences, I leaned my head back against the wall, my face turned up toward the ceiling with my eyes closed as small tremors of pleasure continued to rock through my body.

  I had no idea the church had installed a security camera in the room or that I would soon be sitting in a small office of the Maryvale PD watching a night vision playback of the whole scene.