He took my right hand and slipped off the Celtic knot band.
“What are you doing?” I asked him.
“I want to see you wearing nothing but my ring.” His fingers slid under my sweater, the thumb and pinky catching on the hem to lift it up. “Now.”
“Shouldn’t we open the champagne?”
“Champagne second. Naked first.” He pulled the sweater over my head, then undid my belt. “Now’s a really bad time to deliberate over sex like an old married couple.”
My dread of normality jump-started a desperate desire. “Then it’s a really good time to fuck me like a stranger.”
Shane scooped me up, one arm under my knees, then rushed me to the bed like it was a medical emergency. He stripped off my pants, then his own clothes, with rough, urgent motions, his hands shaking with something more than desire.
He stretched out above me. I ran my hands up his lean, muscular back and opened myself to him, ready to chase away our fears with a bout of seriously savage sex.
But instead of beginning, he stopped and stared down at my face. Something passed between us, a silent acknowledgment that things had changed.
Under his gaze I felt more naked than ever, but I didn’t look away. My fingertips brushed the underside of his jaw. “I love you.”
His breath caught, the way it always did when I said those words first. Then he leaned down and kissed me softly, almost chastely. “I love you, too.” He rolled onto his side next to me, then brought my left hand to his mouth. “We should have that champagne first.”
“It is sort of a special occasion.” I slid my ring finger between his lips. “But you have to drink it out of my belly button.”
Morning twilight came at 6:16 a.m. I knew this not because I saw the approaching sun, since no shred of light crept past the shrouded window above our bed. I knew this because by necessity, the times were branded into our brains. Such was life with a vampire, and such would be my life forever.
After the poignant lovemaking, the celebratory Jacuzzi soak, then the dirty sex of jubilation, my muscles felt as liquid as the champagne, the last of which Shane was pouring into our glasses.
“I was sure you would say no.” He clinked his half-full glass against mine. “I thought about offering you a choice between the ring and a wooden stake but figured that was a little macabre, even for me.”
My hand tightened on the glass. “If you were convinced I’d say no, then why did you ask?” Maybe he didn’t want to marry me after all.
“What can I say? I’m a dreamer.” He trailed his fingertips, cold from the champagne bottle, along my arm. “Can we set a date?”
My chest constricted. An actual date would be a wall in the fourth dimension of time, beyond which lay the foggy valley of married life.
I took my first bold step toward that wall. “Whenever.”
“I was thinking this winter, when the nights are long.”
“But then I’ll be working for the Control and we won’t be able to go on a honeymoon.”
“How about the next winter, after you’re done?”
“That’s almost two years from now.”
“You in a hurry? Want to get it over with before you change your mind?”
“No, but I know from Lori that the longer a couple has to plan, the more complicated and expensive it gets. I do not want a three-day wedding extravaganza.”
“No bridalpalooza, I promise.” He rested his head on my pillow, close enough I could feel the sweep of his lashes against my temple. It seemed as if he were holding his breath, so I knew he was about to get serious again. “Ciara, you didn’t say yes just to make me happy, did you?”
“I did it to make me happy. That’s the good part about being with a selfish person. You know I’m never doing anything out of nobility, because I have none.”
“Bullshit.” He stroked the side of my hip. “You do a million things for me.”
“Like what?”
“You keep your clothes organized in our closet so it doesn’t distract me.”
“Easier for me to find stuff. I’m half conscious when I get dressed for work.”
“You never complain when I rearrange the spice rack in mysterious ways.”
“Since all I ever use is salt and pepper, who cares?”
He went still again. “You risked your soul so I could have my family.”
“Don’t be dramatic.” I skimmed my palm over his arm, as if I could brush away his concern. “The Control is just a job, not an adventure.” I tried not to think of David’s warning about the Immanence Corps and the folder of secrets in my overnight bag. “It’ll be over before you know it, and I promise I’ll bring my soul to our wedding.”
There it went, that hitch in my throat again, at the sound of the word “wedding,” but this time it wasn’t fear. I felt a strange bubbly excitement at the thought of trying on gowns and tasting cakes and choosing a song for our first dance. Thus was the girly girl in me born.
I shoved her down and stepped on her face. “I’m not changing my name,” I told Shane.
“I don’t expect you to, especially since I’ll have to change my identity one day.”
“Ooh, can I help you pick a new name?”
“You can help, but I get final say. It’s me we’re naming, not a baby.”
“Thank God.”
His fingers tightened on my waist. “You don’t care that we’ll never have children? You’re absolutely sure?”
“I’ve never wanted kids.” I wove a lock of his hair through my fingers. “Except once when I went to a baby shower and saw how much stuff this girl got. But that feeling went away like an hour later.”
He propped his head on his hand again and examined my face. “How can you not want kids?”
“Do you?”
“I would if I were human.”
“Then it’s a good thing you’re a vampire, so we don’t have to fight about that.” I pressed my face into his chest. “Kinda funny. I’m not marrying you in spite of the undead thing, but partly because of it.”
He ran his hand down between my shoulder blades, then across the planes of my lower back, stealing the last bit of tension in my muscles. Sleep tugged hard at my consciousness, slamming my eyelids shut.
“It’s not funny,” he whispered. “It’s a miracle.”
I meant to mumble, “I don’t believe in miracles,” my usual reflex on hearing that word. Maybe it was the exhaustion, or the champagne, or the press of Shane’s lips against my cheek. But somehow, on the way out of my mouth, that familiar refrain lost the word “don’t.”
8
Gimme Some Truth
I woke around noon, due to the demands of various abdominal organs. My head informed me that I was not hungover—a rare feat where champagne was concerned. So I made myself a fruit, cheese, and bread plate, along with a pot of coffee, then settled down on the silk-embroidered sofa with the Immanence Corps file David had let me steal.
The report’s findings were printed on Control Internal Affairs letterhead. The cover page contained the date (October 4, 1994), the author’s name ( Jonathan Fetter), and the title:
Immanence Corps’ Project Blood Leash: Violation of Control Precept 1
“Cooperation before coercion,” I mumbled by reflex.
The executive summary outlined the Internal Affairs’s concerns. The Immanence Corps had been researching ways to secretly manipulate the movements of all vampires, including nonhostiles. Including vamps who worked for the Control.
In these efforts, the IC had deployed various sacred objects—religious artifacts and symbols like crosses and Stars of David; holy water, relics, etc. They’d hidden them in secret compartments incorporated into certain buildings at Control headquarters, then observed the vampires agents’ reactions. Watched them as if they were rats in a maze.
Basically, Project Blood Leash had treated vampires like rabid animals instead of the rational individuals they’d proven themselves to be. And like any rational
individuals, some vampires had taken issue with being treated like puppets. People had gotten hurt. Go figure.
Fetter’s point was that the first precept wasn’t a cozy, charitable impulse to be tossed aside when inconvenient. When dealing with dangerous creatures who could be reasoned with, it just plain worked. Due to their long history of being hunted and staked, vampires tended to get “up in arms” (I would’ve written “up in fangs”) at any hint of organized repression.
I perused the report through two cups of coffee and three saucers of fruit and cheese. I was surprised to find that one of the Immanence Corps’s primary missions was the development and deployment of holy weapons. So I was right. They wanted me only for my freakiness, not my brains or talents.
I couldn’t wait to get out.
One of the report’s final recommendations was to install a senior vampire to head the Immanence Corps, to ensure they never stepped out of bounds again. Tina had said her father was in that position but hadn’t mentioned he was a vampire. Maybe the Control hadn’t followed that recommendation.
Or maybe she didn’t want to talk about it. I couldn’t blame her. Being raised by people who never aged and drank human blood to survive had to be even weirder than being raised by a pair of con artists.
And if I was suspicious of all preachers because my dad was a bad one, maybe that explained Tina’s hostility toward vampires. I dreaded meeting my new commander more than ever.
My coffee was cold and so was I, so I crawled back under the covers with Shane, bringing my cell phone with me.
He slid his arm around my waist. “You don’t have to call the office,” he murmured against the back of my shoulder. “David knew I was taking you away.”
“I’m not calling anyone. I’m checking e-mail.” I waited while the phone connected to the mobile messaging service. “Did David know you were proposing?”
“By now he probably knows. I told Lori.”
“Why?”
“Your parents aren’t around to ask for your hand.”
I scrolled through my inbox. “Are you from the 1990s or the 1890s?”
“I wanted her opinion on whether you’d say yes.”
I opened my mouth to ask him Lori’s answer, but the subject line of the next e-mail froze my breath.
SAFETY ALERT: ASSAULT DEATH ON WEST CAMPUS
I tapped the e-mail to read it, assuming it was about the burned body Aaron had found.
Shane shifted against me. “Don’t you want to know what she said?”
“Oh my God.” I sat up.
“What’s wrong?”
“One of my old professors was murdered yesterday morning on campus. I had her for freshman comp. She was so sweet.”
“Freshman comp? What was her name?”
“Professor Haldeman. We called her Susan, because she was so close to our age. She couldn’t have been much more than thirty when she died.”
After a long, silent moment, Shane said, “She would have been thirty-one.”
I turned to see his face illuminated by the white glow of my cell phone screen. “You knew her?”
“She’s one of Jim’s donors.” He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. “She used to be mine.”
I caught my breath. “You traded her to Jim when we started going out?” Since the vampiric bite was such an intimate encounter, Shane had stopped seeing all of his female donors before becoming my boyfriend.
He nodded slowly. “How was she killed?”
My thumb shoved the text up and down on the screen. “It doesn’t say how. I guess the police are withholding that—Whoa, wait a minute. Her body was in the woods where Aaron found that human torch yesterday.” I dropped my hands into my lap. “I guess it wasn’t a gang murder after all, unless she was a witness and they killed her to keep it quiet.”
Shane covered his face with both hands. “I can’t believe she’s dead.” His voice filled with pain.
I set my phone on the nightstand, then curled my arm over his chest. “I’m sorry.” The vampire-donor bond was often intense. “Were you and Susan lovers?”
“Sometimes.” He pulled me close. “She was with Jim, too, once she became his donor.”
“When did you start, uh, biting her?”
“I found her in 2001, right after she moved here. We met at O’Leary’s pub.”
2001—the year I started college. A sick feeling oozed through my stomach as I realized that while she was teaching me about misplaced modifiers, she’d been giving blood to and sleeping with my future fiancé.
“Was it hard to give her up?”
“For you?” He stroked my arm. “Nothing was hard to give up.”
I snuggled closer, wishing I could truly believe him. He’d sacrificed so much to be with me. And in return, I wouldn’t even feed him. From now on, I would only get old and weak, every day drifting further from his immortality, until one night he’d wake to find me gone forever.
I’m told Lori’s shriek could be heard all the way to Harrisburg.
“Ciara!” She hurled herself into my arms, knocking me back against the sharp edge of my desk. “I can’t believe you said yes!”
“I sort of can’t either.” More than thirty-six hours later, our engagement still didn’t feel real.
Her eyes bugged out as she lifted my left hand to her face. “This ring is soooo gorgeous. Tell me how it happened. Every. Last. Detail.”
David poked his head out of his office. “You guys okay? I was on the phone and I heard screaming.”
Lori yanked my hand in his direction, almost dislocating my shoulder. “She said yes! Ciara and Shane are getting married!”
For a moment his face froze, his gaze adhered to the ring. Then he blinked and gave a tortured smile. “Wow. That’s…” He nodded. “That’s great. I’m very happy for you.” His voice was flat.
“I get to be maid of honor.” Lori shook my arm. “Right?”
“Of course. But you’ll be married by then, so technically you’ll be a matron of honor.”
“Ew, I feel old already. David, tell her you won’t turn me into a matron.”
He gave her a look of distracted affection, then turned back to me. “Did you hear about the murder on campus?”
Lori put her hands to her mouth. “Susan Haldeman—remember her, Ciara? Her comp class was where we first met.”
I watched David’s reaction, wondering if he knew Susan had been Jim’s donor. “Have they said yet how she died?”
Lori shuddered. “I called my contact at the state police—you know, Travis’s old friend?”
I nodded. Her late boyfriend had been a detective, and Lori had considered continuing his business before realizing she wasn’t the sneaky sort. Instead she decided to become our full-time sales/marketing/office associate, aka godsend.
“It was massive trauma,” she said. “Apparently she lost a lot of blood from what looked like bite wounds.”
My knees shook. “Like a vampire bite?”
“They think it was a mountain lion, because—” Lori closed her eyes hard. “Oh God, it’s awful.”
“The bleeding wasn’t just from the bites,” David said. “It was from loss of limbs.”
This time my knees gave out entirely. I sank into my office chair. “Does Sherwood even have mountain lions?”
“Not normally.” He slid a comforting arm around Lori’s shoulders. “There’s a roadside zoo about an hour away.”
My hackles rose. “That craphole that keeps animals in tiny cages? I thought they were under investigation for cruelty.”
“The police are looking into whether an animal might have escaped,” David said. “That place is so shady, they might not report it unless it was an exotic like an elephant or a wildebeest.”
I crossed my arms. “So if a cougar escaped, no one would know until it killed somebody.”
David glanced at the basement door, the one that led to the lounge, the studio, and the vampires’ apartment. “Let’s hope that’s what hap
pened.”
Lori looked at her watch and sighed. “I have a sales call in Baltimore at ten.” She gave David a quick kiss before picking up her purse and the client binder. “Remember, we’re meeting the wedding DJ for lunch.”
“Have you guys settled on a first dance song?” I asked.
“We did,” David said, “but this time we’re not telling anyone. No more wedding by committee.”
Musical opinions at the radio station were as plentiful and heated as spices in a Thai kitchen. Shane and I would have to use the same tactic to keep the scoffers at bay.
When the front door closed behind Lori, David and I said nothing at first. I didn’t know which secret to avoid harder—Jim’s relationship to the murder victim, or the Project Blood Leash information David had funneled to me.
“Speaking of secrets,” he said.
“Were we?”
“Lori made a sales appointment for the twenty-sixth.”
Out of habit, I jumped out of my seat and moved closer, then remembered she was out of hearing range. “The day after she thinks you’re getting back from the Bahamas?”
“Yep. So I need you to take the appointment for her, or at least reschedule it.”
I bounced on my toes, a touch of wedding giddiness returning. “I wish I could see her face when she finds out you’re going to Greece instead of coming home.” I squeezed his arm. “You are the coolest fiancé ever.”
He looked at my left hand. “Even now?”
“I’ll let you know.” I rotated the loose ring around my finger. “I wish Shane and I could go somewhere sunny for our honeymoon.”
“Ciara.” David reached for me, then seemed to think better of it. “You can’t marry a vampire.”
I put my hands on my hips, armed with the facts. “Legally, Shane’s alive. He has his original social security number, he has a current driver’s license, and he pays taxes. As far as the government is concerned, he’s just a young-looking forty-two-year-old.”
“It’s not about the law, it’s about reality. You’ll age like a human, but he won’t.”
“He doesn’t care about that. He says he’ll love me when I’m wrinkly and incontinent, and I believe him.”
“I believe him, too. But I watched Elizabeth change. She went from a warm, loving human to a cold shell of a monster.”
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