“So is Dimitri okay? You still haven’t told me.”
“You are correct, I haven’t.” I knew at this moment in time, I should stand up, scream good day to you sir and leave immediately. Walk out the door, try to erase this whole evening from my mind and resume as close to normal as I could. I shouldn’t say another word...
Life would be a lot easier if I listened to myself.
“Do you...think we will have another event like that?”
“I do not know for certain.” Frowning, I wrapped my arms around myself. The temperature in the room had dropped a few degrees and judging by the scowl on Caius face I knew pressing him at the moment would be like kicking a bull in the balls after waving a red flag in front of its eyes.
Still it was a boon, anger showed his hand. Had this just been a random occurrence, why would he burden himself with such an emotion? He was too old, too calculating for that.
My father was once a military man, as such he raised me on the benefits of strategy and calculations, well as much as a young girl would listen to such concepts. He’d have his little quote books and phrases of the day, telling me how things could be applied to something as simple as a math test or as complex as a debate competition. Time to do a mental rundown of what I knew of Dimitri’s destination to date; the vampire citizen/overlord up there was named Zhang Qi, Chinese heritage. Based on statements that had been made by our local blood sucking denizens, Zhang was old. Super old. If he was a grumpy old dinosaur like Caius he was traditional. Traditional methods, traditional education...
“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” I murmured. Edge of those thin lips of his kicked up.
“Sun Tzu. Wise words even over human tongues.”
“I...I don’t think that was random.” I plunged into my thoughts, talking quickly, hands moving in excited gestures. “I think those things were led to our doorstep. Dimitri told me that Zhang Qi was not going to be happy with the deaths of what he considered to be his property. What better way to get at us without lifting a finger than to coerce a horde to weaken us?” In response to my rant his face darkened, those black brows coming together in a sharp V.
“My son has been too candid with you.”
“Am I wrong?” I pushed. His hand was on my throat in an instant, pushing me back against the couch.
“Does it matter if you are right?” His smooth voice registered in my head. Not that I cared what his words were at the moment. My energy was focused on that room temperature hand that was wrapped tightly around my neck. There was no pressure applied, it was more a sign of control. Any moment he could snap me in half or squeeze until my head popped like a grape. I held absolutely still, not sure why I did. He wasn’t a snake for crying out loud. If he wanted to strike, he was going to.
His ancient blue orbs focused on mine, a look that carried a thousand consequences unstated.
“Away with you. Keep your theories in your mind and not on your lips.” His hand lifted from my skin, then he was gone.
I was alone.
My feet did not hesitate to comply. I ran from the room, down the stairs, out of the house; not bothering to shut the front door behind me. My recovering leg failed me off the porch steps. In a mess of tears and limbs I collapsed to my knees on the sidewalk.
All around me, the ground was white. It was snowing. That beautiful blanket of purity that coated our world, freezing the dead and bringing illness to our living. Our reprieve from one hell, only to struggle against another.
Winter had come.
When the snow fell everything about our world changed. When the ground froze, the dead followed suite, solidifying like morbid sculptures along the horizon. We still don’t understand how their cells get through it without bursting, living tissue doesn’t go through such conditions without severe damage. It was probably due to whatever keeps them moving when their bodies rot to begin with.
At first thought one would think that the frozen status of our enemy would delight us. Many asked during that first winter why we didn’t just use the opportunity to expand our walls, go further for supplies or simply walk along and decapitate all of our foes.
Sentiments from the ignorant who had never lived through a winter without heat, or had to walk through the snow because we did not have any vehicles within town. Ever try to climb a wall when it was covered with ice?
No, when they freeze we stay indoors. No patrols aside from the vamps. Our goals are purely food and warmth.
Warmth is a hard one. Come mid-February most folks-the ones who do not have second story fireplaces-will have forsaken the upstairs levels of their homes and be sleeping exclusively in their livings rooms, huddled around the fire. It sounds quaint until you do it every night for a week. A month. Two months.
My dad had long talked about having geothermal power installed in a multitude of buildings within the next decade, a movement many men in town smiled and called ‘getting the lights back on’. A phrase that brought a whole new slew of concerns.
To make a simple light bulb you needed glass, some sort of inert gas-argon, nitrogen, xenon-to fill it, tungsten filament, wiring, glass mount, an electrical contact and insulation which in our modern world was usually vitrite. With no advanced manufacturing facilities getting all of the components was laughable. Sure we could scavenge for bulbs in derelict buildings, but that was a finite resource.
In truth the want for electricity was not for lighting, but to power furnaces, stoves, microwaves and our long forgotten refrigerators. Definitely furnaces.
So here it was, the first night of heavy snowfall. The unspoken signal that everyone would remain indoors until the first thaw. I accepted that mandate happily as I wandered home from Caius and crawled into bed for the evening. It would be months before I’d be forced to visit with him again. Months to sort out the cluster of what the hell he left in my brain.
Cole had elected to sleep at his own place, leaving the bed extremely cold. Despite my exhaustion I had a hard time sleeping. I flexed my hands and wiggled my feet, trying to keep my temperature up. My non volunteered blood loss earlier in the evening probably didn’t help me keep my core temperature up. Unable to keep warm, I wandered across my dark room to my armoire and layered on another sweat shirt and a third pair of socks.
I knew I looked ridiculous but who cared? Better to be a cloth rolly polly than a popsicle. Settling back into my sheets it registered that this would probably be the last night I slept upstairs. Snow usually signaled first floor by the fire living. We’d all huddle up like a bunch of bears in hibernation and wait for spring. In a way it was kind of like a vacation. A make food last, don’t freeze to death or catch a bad case of cabin fever and kill everyone vacation. Every spring when our doors opened there would be a few pieces of bad news. Someone who caught a cold and didn’t make it or a suicide. First winter we lost everyone in four houses in a row. Viral outbreak of something or other. After that winter the seclusion mandate started, under the premise if you’re going to fall ill, the casualties would be limited. Sure we could fetch the good doctor in extreme situations but well, that was when we had a doctor.
I pulled my covers up to my chin, chastising myself for thinking of Tommen this close to bed, last thing I needed was images of his lab dancing in my dreams. “You awake?”
“What the hell!?” I sat up with a shriek, looking around the room frantically. In the darkest shadows of the room, someone was on the ceiling. It was a man, perched like a spider in the corner, his body was forward but legs back against the drywall.
“Adam. Hey.” I collapsed back against the bed. “You freaked me out.” He hopped down and walked up to me casually. The cold didn’t seem to bother him at all. He hadn’t bothered with a jacket, wearing a banged up red flannel and jeans. I wondered for a moment how long he’d been hanging there. Did vampires have any sense of privacy?
“Sorry, I got home and smelled you...had to make sure you were okay.” With those words my anger for towards him immediately deflated
. Health and wellness check gave someone a partial pass on breaking and entering. Plus it was obvious he was giving me a once over.
“You don’t look okay.” He frowned, an odd expression on his usually chipper face.
“I...I’m...” Fine. Dandy. Amazing. On top of the world.
“Not fine.”
“Not fine.” I echoed.
“Gonna fill me in?”
“First I woke up and had some eggs.”
“Fill me in with important facts?” I bit my lip and fiddled with my fingernails, when that seemed too obvious I refolded the blanket in my lap.
“Your boss is a scary guy.”
“Bull, you can handle scary. Truth up.” I inclined my head to the side, flashing twin puncture wounds in the moonlight.
“Oh shit.”
“Yeah that pretty much sums it up for me.”
“That all he do?” Adam’s jaw was clenched. The fact that he even asked made me ponder why he wiped the minds of all his past blood liaisons.
“Yeah but...” I felt awkward telling Adam this. “I kind of got the feeling he was into more.”
In response Adam growled, a deep throated holy crap that’s a big dog growl. His white fangs caught the dim light of the room making him seem capable of anything. If I was anyone else, I would be shaking in my sheets.
“I don’t want you coming back over to our place.” A demand that caught me off guard.
My eyes widened, slightly taken aback that he had the balls to try to order me around. “Not your call. Council made me the official liaison to the vampires.” “Zack?” More of a guttural bark than a word.
“And his ol’Daddy.” The temperature in the room seemed to rise, heat emanating not from the vents of the long forgotten furnace but from Adam himself. His face twisted, friendly features became a mask I didn’t recognize.
“I will disembowel them both, I will hang their heads on spikes in the yard, I will feast upon their hearts! Then...oh yes then we will see what your council decides.” He spit out the words with foreign venom, pacing in my small room like a caged beast.
“Adam! Stop it...” He stopped pacing, and turned to stare at me. The murderous intent in his eyes was so strong. Had he not promised Dimitri, I would have worried my blood may run on the sheets if I dared to utter another word.
“That’s not you.” I lowered my voice, the way one would try to tame a vicious animal. Even though the words left my mouth I wasn’t sure of their truth. Where did all that venom come from? Adam never had a cross word for anyone as long as I had known him. His boyish good looks so deformed that he appeared a nightmare of himself. To see him so twisted with rage turned my stomach. Was it the vampire in him that took that sweet caring man and morphed him into something else, or was it the core Dimitri had saddled him with to look out for my safety. Many creatures in the world reacted like this when threatened, I hoped that’s all it was.
The seething hate slowly sifted out of his gaze as I held his stare. It was not a quick process, more like a pinhole leak on a tire.
“Sorry Liv. I ah...” He blushed, looking very embarrassed. “I’m not sure what came over me.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” He shook his head. “It’s nothing really. Just ah...adjusting.”
“Will you tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“Everything. What’s it like, how you work...I want to know it all.”
“Figured Dimitri would have given you the run down when you two were shacked up.” I cringed involuntarily when he air quoted the word shacked. Yet another person who had insinuated Dimitri had an actual interest in me other than his superman syndrome. Sure he had kissed me, even laid next to me while I slept those last few weeks, but there had been nothing deeper than that. We weren’t getting down and dirty like everyone seemed to imply. For some reason, I think the whole cohabitation time would have reflected better in my mind if we had been. Instead looking back I felt like a housecat rather than a love interest.
That was my internal humiliation, not something I was going to share with Adam, so instead I looked him square in those blue eyes and carried on.
“He’s really cagey. I mean he like...told me some stuff; I know you can eat, that you can be in the sun but it’s not a good for you long term, that you have some interesting social and temporal abilities, and obviously that you need to feed quite often.” I exhaled sharply. “It’s not enough though, I want to understand. Understand him and understand what you’re going through. Sometimes you seem like you. Then something like that happens and...I wonder if I’m just fooling myself to not see you as something more.”
Adams shoulders sagged, with long lazy strides he walked over to the bed. The end of the old mattress dipped, he sat next to me yet outside of arm’s reach.
“I’m still me.” His tone didn’t match his words, despite the positive affirmation he sounded defeated.
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yeah. I am.” He looked up from his hands his eyes finding mine in the dim light. “There’s a primal side to all of us, men especially with all our testosterone,” He let out a short laugh, “sometimes it’s like I’m on the most severe dose of steroids you can find. Not just because of how strong and quick I am, but this temper I have. I’ve never felt this way before. Nothing used to get to me. Not one damn thing. Now, it’s like a smile at the wrong moment makes me want to tear down a wall. I can’t think well when I feel like that, I just see red and I have to get that energy out of me. Stop the ringing in my ears. I would have been a great addition to a reality show. Think of the ratings! I could do a lot more than flip a table.” He smirked, his eyes carrying a sadness that didn’t match. “That and I thirst, constantly relentlessly unequivocally thirst no matter what time of day it is. No matter how much I consume. It’s frustrating which doesn’t help on my temper in the slightest.”
“Does being around me make it worse?”
“Being around anyone makes it worse. Remember walking into a candy shop, and just getting that deep breath of chocolate that made your mouth water?” My head went up and down on its own accord. “It’s like that. I can smell you, see the blood in your veins in way that makes HD video seem like analog, I can almost taste you in my mind just sitting here. Like a piece of cheesecake with my name on it.”
My expression must have shown my feelings, he reached out for my hand. “No it’s okay don’t be afraid of me.”
“I’m not.”
“You sure?” I kicked my chin up.
“You said Dimitri put it in your core not to hurt me.”
“That he did my logical Liv.” His smile faded. “Dimitri told me it will get easier as I get older. I won’t feel so erratic in a decade or so, the thirst will move from a constant pressure to a gentle hum to quote him.”
“Did he talk to you much?”
“More so than Caius has in our short tenure together. I only knew Dimitri for a few days before he skipped town, but I miss him like a brother I’ve known all my life.” I had a feeling that was part of the whole elder thing.
“I’m sorry, I’m sure he’ll be back soon.” Even though I knew he didn’t want to see me, I really wished my statement was true.
“Yeah. I’m sure.” There was no conviction behind those words, but I let it go.
“So what do you and Caius do together? Charades? Bridge?”
“He watches me feed, making sure I don’t kill the donor.”
“Rocking good time.”
“Could be worse, I could be slouching and moaning on the Fed building downtown.” He shrugged.
“So you don’t regret...” I trailed off.
“I have no regrets. I’m glad I went with you guys. I’m glad I’m still around. I am what I am. There’s no changing the past so why focus on it? There’s no worrying for the future what will be will be. We only have now.”
“I think I like Zen Adam.”
“Heh.”
“Snow lockdown is
starting.” I desperately wanted to change the topic to something lighthearted. After all, it had always been so easy to talk to Adam.
That brown bob of his nodded. “Figured. Can I come visit, you know, over the winter?”
“Always. I’d love to borrow some books if you have recommendations.” His face lit up, he bounced on the bed.
“Yeah! I can hit libraries now too. So like, you want something lemme know I’ll go find it.”
“Okay.” I yawned, my lids drooping without apology.
“Shit I’m sorry. I’ll go so you can rest.”
“Thanks Adam...” I fought the sleep that pulled me, there was one last thing to make clear, “hey.”
“What?”
“Knock next time, okay?” I drawled. Much as I thought of him like a brother, I didn’t need him just wandering up in here while I was changing or something.
“Sure. Sorry.” He blushed and gave me a light laugh. A sound that echoed in my mind as I faded into sleep’s embrace.
I woke to wind battering the house in steady rhythmic gusts, snow fluttered outside my window blanketing the landscape in a lovely pure white. Without street plows, snow blowers, sand and ice melt, the landscape remained undisturbed for the majority of the season making for a serene-almost otherworldly-view. If it didn’t bring with it illness and frigid temperatures, I probably would have still enjoyed winter.
I noticed a pair of boot prints had corrupted the snowscape along the far sidewalk. Had to have been winter ordinance patrol.
Once the snow was coming down there were volunteers that went house to house, making sure everyone knew the seasonal lockdown was starting. They also verified all houses were in working order and well stocked with supplies. They had always kind of reminded me of a town cryer, ringing a bell running down the street shouting the latest. Thankfully there was no running in the snow and no bells because they were loud and obnoxious. Just a polite pair checking in with all and sundry.
With the lockdown beginning effectively tomorrow, I was out of work till the spring thaw. Even the council minded the lockdown. The only fuzzy line were those in blood service, although I had heard this time of year the vamps were known to make house calls rather than opt for delivery service.
The Blood Bargain (Book 2): Breach Page 8