“What the fuck!”
“Who the fuck’s over there, man?”
“Yeah, get the hell out of here. This is our corner. Go find your own place to squat.”
“No. No, I don’t think I will get the hell out of here. And I don’t need a place to squat, either. I just thought we should go over what happened earlier. Thought you two could use a ‘come to Jesus’ talk, so to speak.”
The two men, who were both very drunk and very high on what Reagan believed to be crystal meth, squinted into the dark. Their night vision wasn’t nearly as good as his, after all, and they had spent years of their lives doing their best to dull their senses. He decided he would make things easier for them, and took another step forward, landing himself beneath the dim light of a street lamp on its last leg. There was another blank moment for each of the two miscreants before one, and then both, recognized him for who he was. But did they recognize him for what he was? Did they? No, he thought, not yet. But they would. Very shortly they would know more than they had ever wanted to know.
“Hey man, you got what you wanted, right? Why don’t you go on and leave us alone. We ain’t hurtin’ nobody.”
“Yeah man, why don’t you piss off? We didn’t do nothing.”
“You didn’t, did you? But you tried. And you would have. That’s the thing, you would have, if you’d been given the chance.”
“Bullshit, man. What the fuck do you know about what we were gonna do? We weren’t gonna do shit.”
He was going to continue his spew of lies, but he was cut unceremoniously short. He let out a strangled scream, but that was cut short as well. It was difficult to scream when you had a hand closed around your throat. Regan, who had moved so quickly that to the naked human eye it must have looked like teleportation, let out a soft, low chuckle that caused his two victims’ eyes to widen in fear.
“I’ve always liked that part, I must admit.”
“Part? What the hell are you talking about?”
This question came from the one whose throat was not being held, but he looked every bit as afraid as his friend. Maybe even more so, if that was possible. He was so frightened, in fact, that Reagan could smell the dank, acrid scent of his urine as his bladder abandoned ship. He wrinkled his nose in distaste, but it did nothing to sway him from his task.
“Part. I’m talking about the part where assholes like you realize that what you’re dealing with isn’t quite normal. When you really, really understand that I’m not quite what you thought I was. So tell me, fellows, what do you think I am?”
“A man. You’re just a man.”
“You’re a monster.”
The one in Regan’s grasp was beyond the point of lying about how dire his situation was. He knew what a monster was. He had probably believed he had before this. He had, like all children, been afraid of the monster beneath his bed.
He had grown a bit older (or maybe not much older at all; probably not, by the rough look of these men) and realized that the monster to fear might well be the father who was anything but trustworthy and had a tendency to get angry when he drank.
But now? Now this man realized that monsters were real, just the way they were in the movies. Reagan was glad about that. He wanted him to understand what he was, and that he had brought this upon himself. They both had.
“Monster,” Reagan whispered softly, almost sadly, “yes, I suppose you could say that. But if I’m a monster, what does that make you?”
He didn’t leave the men time to protest on their own behalves. There was nothing either could say to a change a thing, and he was growing tired of this exchange. Plus, the smell of piss was starting to become really unpleasant. It was time for this to be over with.
Having made that decision, two things happened at the same time. The first was that one of Reagan’s impossibly strong hands shot out and pinned the second man against the crumbling brick wall. It was such a hard hit that the guy couldn’t even cry out. It actually knocked the wind out of him. The second thing was that his head dipped down, teeth brandished, as he tore into the first man’s throat. He felt the man’s heart pounding, felt the veins give way to his penetration.
He drained one man and then the other, and when he was finished he left them where they lay. There was really no need for him to clean up after himself. For starters, being a vampire meant he left no DNA evidence.
Even with all of their technological advances, the police would not have been able to catch him. And that was if they were trying, which they would not be. Vegas was a city where everything could be bought for a price, and that included officers of the law. There were plenty of cops on his family’s payroll. All it took was one call and this mess disappeared. Funny how that worked. The more money you got, the easier everything in the world became.
***
“Where the hell have you been? You really are the most inconsiderate bastard, you know that?”
“I’ve been told, from time to time.”
“Well, how many more times do you think you’ll need to be told before you get it through that stupid, pretty head of yours?”
“Nice to see you too, Melania. Glad to see you haven’t become sentimental in my absence.”
Melania rolled her eyes, letting loose a stream of curse words that would have made a sailor blush, and Reagan let out a tired sigh. Perhaps coming home had been a mistake. Home was a large, modern place in the desert on the outskirts of Las Vegas. It was a dome house, so that while part of it was above ground, significantly more of it was below.
Reagan had commissioned an architect to build it according to his family’s special tastes, desires, and needs, and as such, it was a perfect fit for the clan of vampires. It was quite large, with ten bedrooms and five bathrooms (not that they ever slept or used the facilities, but that kind of thing was expected in a home). The third floor of the home, the only one that was above ground, was made almost entirely out of windows so that during the night the clan could look out upon the lights and glamour of Las Vegas.
Vampires were notorious for loving that kind of glitz, and Reagan’s family was no exception. Reagan had been that way himself, before his thoughts had begun to turn dark. On the lower levels were all manner of things. There was a library so extensive it would have made a private collector wet himself. There was a wine cellar that was almost certainly the finest in all of the world. There were artifacts collected over the centuries, reminders of times gone by that would never return again.
There was a gymnasium with the most state of the art equipment money could buy, just in case any of the family felt the need to exercise their strength (which was something that just came naturally with the territory of being a vampire and didn’t really require any work to achieve). The location of the home was perfect for maintaining their reclusive, isolated lifestyle, while still being close enough to the city so that any of their fast cars could get them there in no time flat.
Cars were one of the things that Reagan particularly enjoyed. Despite the preternatural speed he had acquired after being turned, Reagan had been fascinated by cars since they had first been created. There was something about them that represented freedom to him and always would. He loved his home, too, inasmuch as he had ever loved one of the places he had settled, but he was fairly certain that it would have been better for him to stay away on this day.
He hadn’t come home in two nights. The first night of his absence had been the one where he had escorted Ella to her room and eliminated the men who had meant to do her harm. The second night had been the night where he had possessed her for the first time. He had half believed that once he had her, once she gave her body over to him, he would lose interest in her entirely.
That hadn’t been the case. Far from it, actually. He felt more tied to her now than ever and leaving the Venetian to come home at all had felt like a struggle. The urge to watch over her, to protect her, was overwhelming. The urge to possess her again, to possess her completely, almost impossible to ignore
for even a moment.
Reagan didn’t know if he still had any kind of soul left, but if he did, Ella had left her mark on it. It was like she had imprinted herself upon him, like she had branded him with herself and he would never be the same.
But now here was Melania, looking just as fierce and angry as always, expecting some kind of an explanation for his undisclosed absence. What was he supposed to tell her? What could he possibly say to her that would make any sense? He knew she would think the idea of Ella being meant for him was utter bullshit.
They had both heard of this kind of thing happening from time to time over the years (although every time before it had been two vampires, claiming to be soul mates), and Melania had always thought it was the most ridiculous idea she had ever heard. She would be doubly pissed off to see that he had allowed himself to become entangled with another human. Melania had been there with him through the mess with Andrea, the first and only human he had turned. The loss of that love, or what he had believed to be love at the time, had almost driven him over the edge.
Melania would not watch him do that to himself again without a fight, and she would never in a million years believe that this time would be any different. Melania looked terribly sweet with her blonde ringlets and wide blue eyes, but in reality she was as cynical as they came. She hadn’t had an easy life, working as a brothel girl until succumbing to tuberculosis and being turned by her admiring client Alexander in the last moments of her life, and to her the idea of love was complete nonsense.
Not that Reagan was saying he was in love with Ella, he couldn’t quite say that yet, but he knew that’s what it would soon become. She was meant for him. She was his.
“Seriously, Reagan? What’s going on with you? Just taking off like that for days at a time? That’s not like you! I thought -- god, I don’t know. You’re being reckless, that’s all I know.”
“Relax, Melania, I was in the casinos of the Venetian. You know those places are safe for us. No windows, remember?”
“Right, fine, no windows, but still. What’s going on with you? You fed on humans, too. I can smell it. That’s not really something you do, or at least it wasn’t the last time I checked.”
“These men deserved it.”
He spoke those last words with more anger than he had intended, meaning that any chance he had of playing his absence off in a nonchalant way pretty much dissolved. When you spent more than a hundred years with someone, they got to know you pretty well. Melania looked at him now with narrowed eyes, chewing on the ends of her hair the way she did when she was really aggravated.
“Alright, Reagan. Cut the shit. What’s really going on here? What’s up with you?”
Reagan sighed again, rubbing his temples in a gesture that had been his in times of stress since before he was turned. He told Melania of the smell that had penetrated his thoughts and completely captured his interests. He left out the part about his dark thoughts. He saw no need to tell his blood sister of how frequently he had thought about going the way of the ancestors.
He did make it clear, however, that he was completely infatuated with Ella and that he had no intention of giving her up. As he spoke, Melania’s eyes narrowed further, narrowed until the point where they were little more than small slits.
“You can’t be serious.”
“I’m afraid that I am.”
“And so what, do you mean to turn her? Is that it? Are we going through that all over again?”
“I don’t know. That’s up to her.”
“Excuse me?! Up to her?! Since when do humans get to decide a thing like that? Also, and please, correct me if I’m wrong here, but it seems to me that in order for her to make a decision like that you would have to tell her about us.”
“That’s right.”
“So you’re going to jeopardize the safety and anonymity of all of us, our entire species, for a good fuck?”
Reagan was upon Melania in the blink of an eye. Faster than that. He pinned her up against the wall, his knee digging painfully into her side. She gasped, clearly in pain, but her face remained defiant. He had a feeling that her face would have been that way even if he threatened to kill her. She would be rebellious right up until the very end.
“Be careful, Melania. I would be very careful if I were you. You don’t get to speak about her that way. Nobody does. You’re my sister, but that doesn’t mean I won’t protect what’s mine.”
He didn’t wait for a reply, but turned to leave the room quickly and before his temper could get the best of him. Had he turned, even once, he would have seen the look on his sister’s face. It was a dark look, one that would have saved him a lot of trouble in the future had he noticed it right then and there.
CHAPTER FIVE
Once again, Ella awoke in confusion. It was her total inexperience with travelling that did it to her. For most of her life, she had gone to bed and woken up in very predictable places. First there was her parents’ home, then there was her dorm room (a situation she hadn’t cared for at ALL), then her little apartment. She honestly didn’t go on vacations, not really. There was the matter of hating to fly, plus she was always busy with work, plus...well, plus nothing, really.
She just wasn’t the spontaneous type when it came to planning things. When it was a trip, she was more likely than not to just plan her way out of it. So, when she awoke on her second morning in Vegas, she had no clue where she was. She didn’t even really know if it was morning. Those black out curtains did their job well, but it might have been too well. Again, her room was pitch black and she had the momentary terror where she thought she could have been abducted or injured and now had no memory of either one.
There was one major thing working in her favor this time, however, and that was that this morning there was no awful hangover to contend with. Which was good, because she was pretty sure she couldn’t have handled that two days in a row. She thought about the way Jen had partied her way through college and, to some extent still did, and wondered how she dealt with feeling so terrible all of the time. Even the memory of that pounding head and rolling stomach made her squirm.
She was not anxious to repeat it anytime soon. No, this morning, she actually felt pretty freaking wonderful. She had just had the best night’s sleep ever, and her whole body ached in the most pleasant kind of a way. For a second, she had no idea why and felt herself grow vaguely embarrassed, thinking she had had a dirty dream or something, something she had acted out on physically. Then, all at once and in a rush that almost knocked the wind out of her, Ella remembered. She remembered everything, and she sat up so quickly that she almost rolled herself right out of bed.
“Reagan.”
She said his name in a whisper, then gingerly put the tips of her fingers up to her mouth. Her lips felt tender, swollen, and she imagined that there was still the faintest taste of Reagan on them. It was such a visceral reaction that she could have sworn he was still there in the room with her. She thought that she could feel his hands running over her flesh, smell the spicy scent of his hair, see his strange eyes gleaming at her with that constant, almost smile that never quite came to be.
He wasn’t still there, of course. She was in her immaculate room all on her own. That made sense, but even so, when Ella became really sure of that fact, she felt an immense wave of disappointment. That wasn’t even a big enough word for it. It felt like a death, or some equally massive loss.
She wanted to tell herself that was ridiculous and to stop feeling that way, because it was. It WAS ridiculous. How could she feel so broken up about not having Reagan there when she had only known him for a few hours? And even saying she had known him for that long was a stretch. Face it, she told herself in a voice that was going for brutal but wound up sounding sort of pitiful instead, it was a one night stand. You should just be thanking your lucky stars that a man that gorgeous wanted to go to bed with you in the first place! But then another voice, this one a good deal softer but with more of a sense of authority, rem
inded her of the way he had told her she was beautiful.
He could have just been saying it to get what he wanted, but then again he had already been getting what he wanted. And for some reason, she didn’t think he had been lying to her. She knew he wasn’t lying to her. She had felt it inside of her, in a place she hadn’t even known existed before meeting Reagan. Something had happened between the two of them, and it wasn’t a bunch of bullshit she had made up inside of her head because she wanted it to be true. She knew that without having any reason to. She just knew it.
“Oh!”
Ella was startled out of her thoughts by the ringing of her cell phone. She had been so lost inside of her memories of her wild night with Reagan that she had pretty much forgotten that such mundane things as cell phones even existed. They did, though, and now she was fully back in the world where she was supposed to answer them.
She grabbed for it, groaning when she saw who was calling. It was Jen. Jen, who was her best friend, but who she didn't feel like talking to at the moment. It was for a couple of reasons. One was her memory of seeing Jen walk out of the bar last night totally entangled with some strange guy. She knew it was none of her business, but she didn’t like it.
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