Chapter 7
“Hey, you’re sticking around for a minute, yeah?” Jackson asks and I nod, my mind still on Arsen’s warnings. He jumps up from his seat and takes a step before turning back and pointing at me. “Wanna split a Danish?” My head bobs in agreement and he jogs over to the counter, taking advantage of a lull in the line to refresh his coffee and grab us a snack.
While he’s gone, I people-watch around the coffee shop with the benefit of my vampire powers. I hear a guy talking to a buddy about how he’s going to propose to his girlfriend after graduation and watch a pretty blonde as she argues on the phone with her mom about the cost of textbooks.
It’s a heady feeling to be able to know these people while I’m invisible to them, completely unnoticed as I sit in the back corner. A familiar face catches walks into my view, and I almost wave to a grad student I haven’t seen in a while. She touches Jackson’s arm and when he faces her, she twists toward me, her stomach round and tight under her shirt like a basketball.
Jackson congratulates her as I wallow in jealousy. I hadn’t made up my mind about kids, waiting until after school to think about those choices. I don’t know if I ever would’ve wanted children of my own, but the point is moot now. Like so many other choices, that one has been taken from me, and it feels like all these lives and their freedom of choice is mocking me, almost taunting me.
A barista hands Jackson his food and fresh coffee and he hugs the girl awkwardly around her stomach, making them both laugh and sinking me further into depression. Before she leaves, he says something to her that makes her look in my direction and she smiles brightly and waves. I wave back, forcing a cheerful smile to my face, grateful that she leaves instead of joining us.
“I haven’t seen her in a while,’ I say as Jackson sits. “Looks like she’s been busy.”
Jackson laughs aloud at my snarky tone and sets a cream cheese Danish in front of me, tearing open the wrapper for his muffin at the same time. “Muffins were fresh, I couldn’t say no.” He breaks off a chunk of the crumbly top and shoves it in his mouth.
“You can never say no to food.” I tease him before my thoughts drift back to our classmate and her impending motherhood. “What about you?” I ask suddenly, “When am I going to get a wedding invitation from you and Ms. Right?”
“My life doesn’t have room for that right now.” He shrugs and scoops some more muffin top into his mouth. “My job is too hazardous to bring innocent lives into it.”
“Lots of cops have wives and families.”
He scoffs and arches an eyebrow at me. “Lots of the cops I know are on their third or fourth marriage and those don’t look like they’re going to well, either.” His phone buzzes at him and he checks it, then shoves it into his bag. Something flashes under the fluorescent light of the café.
A couple of thick sticks of wood stick out of the bag, sharpened to a point on one end. Are those stakes? I cringe inwardly and pretend I don’t see anything for the moment. Is he afraid of me? Carrying protection from me? I switch directions again, unable to let go of what I have seen.
“Jackson, I have to ask you a question.” He stiffens, his chewing slowing, but he nods. “Have you joined some weird cop fraternity? The kind that looks the other way on, like, brutality and weird shit like that?”
The complete shock followed by confusion on his face is enough of an answer, but I glare at him anyway, until he laughs at me.
“What the hell? Why would you even think that?” I point at his messenger bag. “My bag? How does my bag make me a murderous bad cop in a secret bad-cop club?”
I sigh and glance at my hands on the table, switching directions. “You know you can trust me, right? You can tell me anything?”
He clears his throat. “I know and I trust you. You know I do.”
“Okay, but I mean, do you feel like you need to protect yourself from me after what happened the other day? Am I the reason your life is too dangerous for a family?”
He ties the straps on the bag and shoves it down under the table next to him. “It’s not about you.”
“Then who?” Who else would he have wooden stakes for?
“Oh, I don’t know, how about the monster who changed you?” he asks. “And the thousands like him, just on the West Coast alone?”
“You’re going to take on the whole vampire population all of a sudden?” I gasp dramatically. I’d laugh if the thought wasn’t so terrifying. “Don’t you think you need, oh, I don’t know, training, better weapons . . .”
He raises his hands in surrender. “I don’t need you worrying about me. I’ve got it handled.”
“You’ve got what handled exactly? I don’t need a beat cop getting himself killed because he thinks he’s suddenly some kind of . . . some kind of modern day Van Helsing, vampire hunter.” He doesn’t reply, just presses his lips together and stares at me, his eyebrows drawn. I glance where the bag sat, then back at him, feeling my face pull into a frown. “Jackson?”
He lifts his messenger bag into his lap and opens the flap, revealing not only the wooden stakes, of which there are several more than I’d seen, but an automatic gun and extra ammo. Engraved on the stakes is the same symbol I’d seen on the medallion hanging from his neck.
“I’m not some naïve guy, blindly lashing out at monsters, you know.”
“And yet, seeing this, I’m terrified for you.”
He groans aloud. “Well, thanks, but don’t be.” Neither of us touches our food for a long beat as we stare each other down.
“Whatever you’re fucking around with, you need to stop. This isn’t a game.”
He leans back and cracks his knuckles, “I know more about vampires than you think,” he says quietly as I stare, dumbfounded. “C’mon, Sash, how do you think I knew what happened to you? It wasn’t just a lucky guess. Vampires are as old as humanity. You really believe humans never figured out how to fight back? How to get organized against the threat facing them?”
“You’re telling me you’re an actual vampire hunter.” I sit back hard in the booth. “Since, fucking, when?”
“Yup, and since I was old enough to walk.” He closes the bag and lifts the medallion out of his shirt and over his head, setting it on the table between us.
I pick it up, examining the sun with an arrow and a sword crossed in the center of it. I know I’ve seen it before, but I can’t remember where. I run my thumb over the image, my fingers detecting a raised script on the back of the token. I flip it over, reading the Latin inscription aloud. “Mortum et Malum.” Death to evil. How sweet.
“Holy shit. Vampire hunters are real. And my best friend is one.” I shake my head in disbelief. “Of course you are, because why not make my life more complicated than it already is?”
He nods and leans forward. “Now why do you think none of your new friends ever told you about that?”
I half expect to see Arsen at the front door, watching us. “You’re not fucking with me, right? This isn’t some joke? Arsen didn’t stalk you, did he?” I hold the medallion in my hand, rubbing my thumb over the symbol etched on the front.
“No, this isn’t a joke and Arsen didn’t stalk me. My family has been in the business for a while.”
“You know each other? I know you met in the hospital room when I was attacked, but I wasn’t aware you knew him past that.”
“I’ve run into him a few times, yes.”
“So you knew he was a vampire when we were in the hospital but still, you let me go with him?” The thought stings. Was he using me as bait or something?
“No. I had no control over my actions that night. I was frazzled and concerned about you and not on my A game. He got under my skin and was able to persuade me to go find my partner.” He curses and his knuckles are stark white as they wrap around his cup. “If I could have stopped him from taking you, I would have.”
“Why is there so much animosity between you two? Have you fought him before? Have you killed his people?” Is that why they’r
e both so tense around each other? An old fight or something?
“I’ve never killed any vampire that didn’t kill a human first. We have our own laws to follow, just like your kind do.”
Your kind. Those two words sting even more than the realization he’d kept secrets from me and lied to me about who he was. I’d done the same thing recently, and I’d thought I was protecting him while doing so . . . but I hadn’t lied to him for our whole lives. “My kind? Is this all a big joke to you? My attack? What I am now? Do you have any idea how hard this has been for me?”
“Oh, c’mon, you know better than to even ask that. You have to know if I’d been with you I would’ve done everything in my power to protect you . . . prevent this from ever happening.”
“Right, because obviously I never deserved the truth. The simple truth of what you are is . . . what . . . too much for my feeble female mind?” How the hell had I never known about this?
His hands fist on the table and I brace for him to attack, but he just opens one hand and holds it, palm up, waiting for his medallion. “You’re not too stupid to know the truth. But before, would you have believed me, or thought I was nuts?”
“I think you’re nuts now. I’ve seen what these people can do, what their ideas of fun and games are.” I place the necklace in his hand. “Is this supposed to protect you from me? Because it didn’t burn or anything.”
He laughs and relaxes a little, but I still want to bolt, terrified that he might be lulling me into a false sense of security before he takes care of me for almost biting him the other day. “No, it isn’t supposed to hurt you. It’s iron, not silver. It only hurts if I drive it into your body, just like anybody else.” My blood feels like it’s slowly turning to ice in my veins as he talks about hurting me like there’s nothing to it. “It’s a symbol of who I am, a way for my brothers and vampires to identify me.”
“But you couldn’t find a way to tell me about it or warn me about any of this?” I stand, too tired of the hurt and betrayals to even attempt understanding why any more people I care about are taking advantage of me for their own purposes. “But you were happy to help with my work, interrogate me about where I was staying, who I was with.” Tears sting my eyelids. “What if someone told you that you needed to protect someone from me?”
“Would you kill me?” I whisper, leaning over the table so our faces are inches apart. My tears fall on the backs of my hands, leaving cold wet trails as they run down the sides. His silence is enough of an answer for me and I push away, my arm wrenching back when he grabs my wrist.
“I’m not hunting you,” he assures me. “I won’t hurt you because I know that you haven’t hurt anyone else, and that you won’t. That’s not who you are.”
I think about the sweet, heady flavor of fresh blood flowing over my tongue and down my throat, the high that nearly drove me to orgasm when I bit down on Arsen and his blood poured into my body. Blood bags keep me alive, but I know there’s nothing like feeling someone’s pulse under your fingers as it pushes blood from an artery into your mouth.
“But what if I did?” I ask, closing the distance between us instead of pulling away and making a scene. He flinches, making me sigh. “I don't want to, but what if it happened accidentally, if I lost control?” He stares blankly at me like the thought never occurred to him. He opens his mouth, but I cut him off. “Right. You’re a cop and a vampire hunter. Hunting bad guys is literally your entire worldview.”
Now I tug my wrist out of his grasp and stride off, adrenaline coursing through my veins. How much more of this can I take? Jackson is my last and only real friend without his own agenda, or so I’d thought. I have no one left to depend on, nobody to help me keep my sanity as I wrestle with my new life and how to stay me, while I navigate the rules and challenges of my new life as a vampire.
“He’s right, I won’t hurt anyone. Not if I can help it.” I mutter as I shut the car door and turn the key in the ignition.
Being a vampire isn’t like the movies and books, and probably not much like what Jackson’s been taught, either. Every sense is enhanced, every experience more colorful, every flavor richer. Fucking Arsen had not just been better than any other sex I’d had, it was better than anything I’d imagined. Losing the feel of him next to me in bed, the sensation of him deep inside me, feels like I’ve been deprived of oxygen sometimes.
Now I’ve probably lost the last thread tying me to my humanity and the last person who gave me a reason to ever trust. Jackson might not be a vampire, but unloading to him had been almost therapeutic, and now, instead, I’m forced to acknowledge I might have told him something he could use to kill me or my clan. Hell, vampires I’ve never even met could be in danger.
I do my best to remember every little detail I’ve told him. “God, I’m an idiot.” That has to be why Arsen called me. He knows what Jackson is and was warning me.
Part of me gets Arsen wants to be someone that I can trust again, and he would never hurt me if I gave in to my hunger and the unthinkable happened. But he’s already broken my trust so badly. No matter what he wants to be, I’ve got to be on my guard with him.
I feel more alone than I did before I told Jackson what had happened to me. God, how stupid I’ve been, thinking I was sharing some deep, dark secret with him when he knew all along what had happened to me and what I’d become.
“Fucking moron.” Is this what my life is going to be from now on? Everyone trying to get what they can from me, while I aim to protect myself from being used? I should have paid more attention when he told me he knew what happened to me in his car.
I brush impatiently at my damp cheeks and throw the car into gear. I’m going to focus on the cure for the vampires, because frankly, I don’t have anything else to keep me going anymore. But I can’t stop the ache in the corner of my heart that reminds me that Arsen still has a piece of it. If only he could be the person he is when we’re alone all the time rather than only some of the time.
Maybe one day he will, but until then, I’m not holding my breath. Even if I can survive without breathing.
Chapter 8
It’s been three days since Jackson’s revelation and we’re still incommunicado. It sucks, but I have plenty of other shit to keep me busy. Mission: Save the vampire race.
By the time I finish yet another exhausting day of Nikolai treating me like his personal mad scientist, my stomach is beyond angry. The growling began earlier in the afternoon, but irritation and the obsession to prove myself stops me from taking the snack break I so desperately need.
Now I’m hangry, the final phase of hunger that mounts into untamable anger, which is bad enough as a human. As a vampire? It’s a whole other monster. I’ve been feeding more regularly, but my body still apparently craves sugar from actual food. And a Snickers isn’t going to sate this hunger. I’m thinking a whole cake. Double chocolate.
It doesn’t help my mood that Nikolai makes it a point to bug, sometimes with not-so-subtle hints of flirting and other times, he seeks out a progress update. Apparently, I have a sire, a suitor, and a boss. Awesome.
I wipe the sweat from my brow, wondering if Bill Nye was ever worked this hard.
The lion in my gut roars again, demanding a break and I finally relent. I make my way to the kitchen to see what kinds of bizarre food I’ll find this time. Someone in Niko’s coven has an affinity for animal organs and I’ve noticed, on more than one occasion, the stomach-turning scent of cooked tripe and kidneys.
I shove past the prepped containers of blegh and dip into the freezer, unhappy to only find a frozen pizza. I spy the chocolate cake hidden behind the fruit bowl on the counter, and I barely manage to grab a fork and take my first bite when the vampire supermodel in question comes into the room. I swear he’s implanted a tracker on me or he has someone following my every move. Either answer is annoying. Right now, all I want is some peace and quiet while I stuff my face. Is that too much for a girl to ask?
He swaggers across the room. He can�
�t help himself. He oozes eroticism—and he damn well knows it—holding his broad shoulders in such a way to emphasize the best parts of his anatomy. Strange that I can know he’s devastatingly attractive and yet have zero interest in him sexually. Not that he cares. He’s of the mind that eventually I’ll accept the truth and give in. Fat chance.
And 3 . . . 2 . . . 1.
Niko scoots out the chair across from me, spinning it around and straddling the plastic with a seductive smirk on his face. “How was work today, darling? Any closer to saving the world?”
Smart ass. “It would help if a certain someone would stop dropping in every hour to see how I’m doing,” I reply.
Niko laughs his dark, sexy laugh. “Can’t help it. I’m making sure my investments are taken care of. Plus, you make it too easy.”
I want to comment back but refuse and focus on my sugary snack.
“How about you join us tonight for a little party in the town? It’ll give you a break and show you I’m more than just a pretty face.”
“You mean more than an overbearing dictator.”
“But a handsome dictator. I don’t have a hideous mustache, which must count for something.”
A bite of rich chocolatey goodness hovers before my lips. “Not interested.”
“Don’t be such a pain in the ass.”
“Says the biggest pain in the ass in the world.”
He sighs. “You know, here I am, trying to be a nice guy and offer you a break—an olive branch—and still you fight me.”
“Oh yeah,” I say. “And what’s the catch?”
“No catch, just some good ole-fashioned fun.”
I shove another bite in my mouth, pretending to think it over. “Nope. Still not interested.”
He’s silent for a few minutes, rubbing a hand along his jaw. I can see the sneaky parts of his mind working. “That’s fine.” He sits back. “I’m actually very interested in learning more about blood diseases. We can order in and spend the whole night together, alone in the lab, going over all your thoughts. I can pick your brain.” He swiftly kicks out of the chair. “You know what? That sounds much more enticing anyway.”
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