The Vampire's Favorite

by V. R. Cumming

  “That was pretty much my reasoning.” I hunkered lower on the pillow and touched my forehead to his. “Tangi said that I was familiar to him. What do you know about a werewolf’s beast?”

  “Only that instinct drives them and they trust it implicitly.” He circled one fingertip through the hair on my chest, tracing random lines along my skin. “What did Tangi say about Di this morning when he met her?”

  “She smells wrong, and no, it wasn’t her perfume.”

  “Hmm. Well, no telling what he means.”

  I propped up beside him and stared down at him through the darkness surrounding us. “Oh, no, you don’t. Tell me what’s bugging you.”

  “I’m not erecting walls between you and your sister,” he said tartly. “Not on a mere suspicion.”

  “Hunh. That’s Ericese for, I’ve got a hunch and it’s a humdinger.”

  He huffed out a disgruntled breath. “We haven’t been lovers long enough for you to know me that well.”

  “Yes, we have. Speaking of.”

  He slapped a palm flat against my chest. “Forget it, lover. We’re about to have company.”

  “Spoil sport.”

  A soft scratch sounded at the door. Eric shot me an I told you so look.

  “Come in,” he called.

  The door opened on Tangi dressed in his white pajama bottoms. His arms were crossed over his chest and his shoulders were hunched inward. “Can I sleep with you guys?”

  “Of course,” Eric said. He scooted over, making room between me and him, and patted the mattress. “There’s plenty of room for all of us.”

  Tangi eased the door shut, stripped down, and crawled into bed between us. I pulled him snug into the curve of my body, spooning him. Eric turned over and snuggled back first into him, and Tangi sighed and relaxed.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  I stroked a palm down his arm, soothing him. “Any time. Seriously.”

  “I know. I…” A sob ripped out of him, ragged and harsh. He sniffed and coughed, and when he spoke again, his voice was thread thin and so tight, I thought it might snap and break him in two from the inside out. “I’m safe, now. He can’t get me here.”

  Eric turned over and smoothed the backs of his fingers over Tangi’s cheek. “No, he can’t, Tangi. He can never get to you again. We won’t let him.”

  “Thank you,” Tangi said. “I… Thank you.”

  He broke into giant, shuddering sobs and wept openly, and the three of us lay there for a long time, weathering the raging storm rocking through his wounded soul.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake, Jason.”

  Charity’s sharp voice woke me from a sound sleep. I scraped a hand down my face and attempted to force my brain into a semblance of awareness.

  “Wasn’t Eric enough for you?” she asked, her young voice knife strong. “Did you have to steal Tangi, too?”

  “Christ, Char. Give me a minute to wake up, would you?”

  “I will not. Look at you! I mean, just look at you, all tangled up with him and Eric both. Geez, Jase. Leave some for the rest of us, why don’tcha.”

  I finally pried my eyes open and glanced down. I was flat on my back, pinned there by Tangi lying half across me, his head on my shoulder, his arm around my waist, and one leg thrown across my thighs. Eric was behind him, cuddling him exactly the same way. Worse, we’d kicked the sheet down to the foot of the bed and it was glaringly obvious we were all three naked.

  I cupped a hand over my morning woody. “It’s not what it looks like, I swear.”

  She popped the side of her fist into the door, pushing it into the wall. “Yeah, right.”

  “No, really. You heard Alden. Tangi doesn’t need to sleep alone.”

  “Sorry, Jase. I missed that part.”

  I winced at the sarcastic twist in her voice. God in Heaven, it was too early to deal with a pissed off teenager.

  “Charity,” Tangi said softly, startling me. He hadn’t moved so much as a muscle during my sister’s tirade. “I didn’t have sex with them last night. You know I can’t lie.”

  I jerked my gaze to him. “Exactly how does she know that?”

  “I told her.”

  Eric groaned and buried his face in Tangi’s nape. “Not good, Tangi.”

  “She’s important.”

  Charity smacked her fist into the door again. “I never should’ve believed you when you told me that.”

  “Charity,” Tangi said, and the simple word held layers of command and compulsion I’d only ever heard from a vampire. “Enough.”

  “He gets all the good guys—”

  “No.” Tangi wiggled his torso around and glanced down at Eric. “I need to get up.”

  “I really don’t want her to see me naked,” Eric said.

  Charity rolled her eyes and put her back to us. “Like I haven’t already gotten an eyeful. Nice butt, by the way. Is that a bite mark on your hip?”

  Eric cursed under his breath as he scooted away from Tangi, and I laughed.

  “Who’s been biting you?” I asked.

  “I’m not answering that in front of your sister.”

  Tangi scrambled off the bed, yanked on his pajama bottoms, and crossed the room in two bounds. He cupped his hands over Charity’s shoulders, shook her gently when she tried to shrug him off. “A shower first, and then we can talk.”

  “Shower separately,” I said. “Or else.”

  Tangi’s shoulders stiffened. “She’s fifteen.”

  “Yeah, and what was that you told me about doing what she wanted?”

  Charity whipped around, her blue eyes wide and hopeful. “Really?”

  Eric poked a finger into my ribs. “You really don’t need to talk before you’ve had your coffee, do you?”

  “We’re setting rules,” Tangi said firmly. “Rule number one. Never walk in on your brother while he’s sleeping unless there’s an emergency.”

  Charity winked at me over his shoulder. “Bummer.”

  I grinned, couldn’t help it. God, I adored her, even when she was a pain in the ass. “Close the door on your way out.”

  “Party pooper,” she said, but close the door she did. Tangi’s soft voice echoed down the hallway as he recited ground rules, and gradually faded.

  Eric reached down and jerked the sheet over us. “I don’t think I can ever look her in the face again. How did she see that bite mark from across the room?”

  “She was yanking your chain.”

  “A lot like somebody else I know,” he muttered. “How the hell did she know to look down here for him?”

  I opened my mouth on another retort and promptly closed it. How had Charity known where to find Tangi? “I’m setting some rules of my own, as soon as you come here and greet me the way a lover should.”

  “She pretty much killed that dream when she walked in on us.”

  “Well, hell. That’ll teach us not to lock the door.”

  “I told you that the first day we were here. Come on. We might as well get up and be productive.”

  He rolled out of bed, and I scrambled for him, trying to get a hold on his slender body. “Hey, don’t I even get a kiss?”

  “Later,” he promised. “When the memory of your sister telling me I have a nice butt is no longer front and center in my mind.”

  I sighed and got out of bed. Yeah, there were gonna be some ground rules, and the first one would be a reinforcement of Tangi’s rule number one.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Eric spent most of the day cloistered in our bedroom, talking on the phone with Marco, Remy, and anybody else he thought might be interested in helping take out Oriana once and for all. His worry bled through the barriers he erected around his psyche and spilled over onto the rest of us. Charity and Anna Grace got into an argument over whose turn it was to clean their bathroom. Tangi walked around with his head bowed and flinched at the slightest out of place noise. Pop stalked outside as soon as breakfast was done without giving Ma a kiss, and Ma spent the entir
e morning scrubbing anything that held still long enough.

  Even the weather was affected. Storm clouds gathered all morning long, layering one upon another until the sky was an undulating field of gun metal gray.

  Di was the sole exception. She bounced downstairs first thing and called a cheery greeting to everybody on her way out the door to her new job.

  Which figured. She’d been out of sync with the rest of us since the first day Eric and I had been home.

  Midmorning, the misery hanging over our heads closed in around me, smothering me. I changed into running shorts and shoes, and slipped outside into the muggy, wind whipped air. The thick cloud cover created a false twilight, perfect protection for an emerging pet’s skin. I stretched gently as I walked, breathing deeply of the nascent storm’s sweet mineral scent, and the tension tightening my muscles slowly ebbed away. It was a good day for a walk, in spite of the coming storm, and good to be moving around under my own steam for a change.

  I set off down the rutted, dirt driveway. It was good and long and straight, and easily visible from the house, in case my legs gave out on me. They were holding up pretty well, considering how long I’d gone without using them, probably due to Remy and Paolo’s recent blood donations.

  I hadn’t made it far when the sound of something running swiftly toward me from the rear caught my attention. I twisted around. A black wolf pounded toward me, his legs flashing across the ground in a swift blur. He slowed and came even with me, panting around his tongue lolling out of his open mouth.

  “Hey, Tangi,” I said. “You needed out, too, huh?”

  He pressed his wolfy head into my thighs. An odd mixture of relief and giddy freedom filtered into me, filling me from stem to stern. My knees buckled under its unexpected weight and I reeled as Tangi’s unique woodsy scent flooded into me.

  “Whoa, hey.” I threaded my fingers through Tangi’s ruff and steadied myself. “So that’s what a werewolf bond feels like. Good to know.”

  He batted my foot with one clawless paw, then trotted a few paces ahead of me.

  “You can run,” I said.

  He trotted back to me, batted my foot, and ran ahead again, and I got the picture. He wanted company, and I was happy to oblige. I set off at a shuffling jog down the driveway, stretching my legs into long, even strides. Tangi kept pace with me, so much like a normal dog, I almost forgot what he was. If it hadn’t been for the occasional flare of his scent over me, I probably would’ve.

  We made it to the end of the driveway, tagged the mailbox, and turned back around. My muscles tingled and burned and sweat poured off of me, but my legs held. I’d probably pay for the excess of exercise that night. It felt so good to be up and moving, though, that I didn’t give a flying fuck how much it would hurt later.

  The sky opened up right about the time we reached the house. Tangi veered off to one side, to retrieve his clothes, maybe. I pushed myself up the porch through the front door and toed my soaked shoes off.

  Eric came out of our bedroom, phone in hand. His brow was furrowed, but the worry seeping out of him earlier had mostly bled away. “Nice walk?”

  “We ran, sort of.” I braced one hand on the wall and stripped my wet socks off one at a time. “Tangi went with me.”

  “He needed out.”

  “You do, too. Why don’t you go for a nice, long run?”

  Eric backed up a pace and glanced out the living room windows. “It’s pouring rain.”

  I shrugged. “So? It won’t kill you. Besides, you need the fresh air.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” He inhaled a slow breath, let it out in a short rush. “Marco’s coming up this weekend.”

  I gathered my shoes and socks in one hand, snagged his elbow with the other, and guided him back down the hallway. “Is that when we’re doing it?”

  He nodded and slipped into our bedroom. “Maybe Friday or Saturday, depending on how long it takes to coordinate the attack.”

  “A lot of things can happen between now and then. What if Oriana gets wind of it?”

  “She probably already suspects something’s going on.” Eric tucked his phone into the front pocket of his shorts and dropped onto the edge of the bed. “She has spies everywhere, same as the rest of us, and she has to know Marco’s been in and out of the state.”

  “She’ll be ready for us then.”

  “Probably.”

  “You still think we can take her?”

  “It’s either that or convince your parents to abandon the farm and move your entire family to Georgia.” He flopped back on the bed and rubbed both hands over his face. “God, Jase. I don’t know what else to do. She’s got the whole vampire community up here in terror over what she’ll do next. The wolves have lost their base of power and don’t have the resources to help, except in manpower.”

  I stretched out on the bed next to him and slid a hand up his shirt. His skin was warm under my palm, his muscles taut. Christ, I could touch him all day long and never get tired of it. “Wolf power isn’t anything to sneeze over.”

  “I know. I know, Jase, it’s just.” His hands fell to his sides and he shifted on the bed, meeting my gaze with his. His worry roared back with a vengeance, and I wrapped my mind around it, shielding the rest of my family from it as much as I could. “What if we can’t do it? What if she ambushes us and wipes us out before we even make it to her house?”

  I cupped my hand around his ribs and rolled him toward me. “And what if she doesn’t? You can’t let the unknowns drive you crazy, Eric. You’ve got most of them figured out, right?”

  “As much as I can, yeah.”

  “Then you’ve done the best you can.”

  He knotted his fingers into my damp t-shirt and nestled into my embrace, for all the world like a child needing comfort. Odd. He was the strongest man I’d ever known, right up there with my father. An unbreakable rock forged into steel by life and circumstance and the native might of his keen intelligence.

  “Let’s hope so,” he said.

  “I don’t have to hope. I know what you’re like. I know how meticulous you are, how many scenarios you foresee just by following the logical path of one action to the other. I know you’ve got it all planned out down to the letter, and I know it’ll work out, just because you’re the one working out the kinks. I believe in you, Eric. I trust you to lead me down the right path.”

  He breathed out a soft laugh. “Now you tell me.”

  “You’ve known all along.”

  “Yeah, I guess I have.”

  I kissed him then, a soft slide of my lips over his, just because I could, because he was there and I loved him and he needed me. Thunder crashed and jumbled around us, and rain lashed against the house, but we were safe, sheltered in the warmth of a single, simple kiss.

  My morning jog caught up with me after supper. I excused myself from family game night on the pretext of wanting to get up before sunrise for another run. Ten minutes later, I was in bed, sound asleep. I roused once, when Eric came to bed and kissed me goodnight, then settled back into sleep.

  I dreamed I was out running with Tangi, surrounded by the sharp scent of evergreens in the dew damp morning. We were on a trail cutting through an unfamiliar forest. A stream bubbled nearby, its rushing waters well out of view. Our feet pounded on the packed dirt, startling a doe and its fawn out of their hiding places among the lush undergrowth, and my vision focused on them. Prey, lovely prey, hot blood under their skin, juicy meat, the thrill of chasing them pumping through me.

  Tangi swung his head around and grinned his wolfy grin, tongue lolling, head down. His tail wagged hard once, and he was off again, loping along the trail on four agile paws.

  I let the doe and her fawn be and chased after Tangi instead, playful Tangi. The sun burned down on the treetops and filtered through dense foliage in jagged spikes of bright light. One landed on me, scorching my skin, and I stumbled to a stop on the trail as pain etched through flesh into bone.

  Tangi’s lips curled into a silent
snarl and his sub-vocal growl tingled my sinus cavity, rebounding into my skull. Danger.

  The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. I turned full circle, searching for the threat, and saw nothing out of the ordinary. The forest was quiet, unoccupied. Even the doe and fawn had disappeared.

  A ripping sound tore through the air, followed by a crash, and my muscles jerked reflexively. Acrid smoke billowed around me. I sucked in a breath and coughed, and panic filled me as dream and reality blurred and my conscious mind stirred.

  This wasn’t a dream.

  Another rip and crash, and Eric’s scream pierced the morning air, waking me fully.

  My eyes popped open on a nightmare. Wood was piled on the floor between the end of the bed and the closed door. Smoke poured in thin runnels out of the smoldering embers deep at its heart, confined mostly to that end of the room. Sunlight streamed into the bedroom through uncurtained windows and across the bed, and Eric was bearing the full brunt of it. Part of him was shielded by the sheet thrown over his body to his waist, but his torso, one arm, and part of his face were raw and bleeding under the sunlight scalding him.

  Christ, how long had he been exposed? Why hadn’t he woken up already?

  I snagged his other, mostly uninjured arm and tumbled off the bed away from the light, taking him with me. We landed in a heap, me on the bottom, him writhing and nearly sobbing as his skin sizzled. I wiggled out from under him and scrambled into the bathroom. Towels. We needed wet towels, some to put out the fire, more to soothe Eric’s skin, and oh, God, he needed blood, more than we could get our hands on in the immediate future.

  Another rip-crash sounded, and I whirled around in midstride. Di stood in the corner of the room in front of a window, curtains in hand, surrounded by a halo of harsh, morning sunlight. She reached up and popped the blinds off their brackets, then dropped them onto the floor and started on the shades Eric had installed under the blinds.

  I picked up the nearest object, a silver picture frame, and threw it at her. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”