“The mentor-fledgling relationship is unique. It only happens when a vampire is unable to be led through the transition by his or her maker.”
“Oh.” She said it so softly that it was a mere breath. “So that makes me some kind of vampire orphan or something?”
He cracked a smile for her benefit. “Someone donated the ichor that created your vaccine. We don’t know who, but we’re working on it. For now, you’re my responsibility.” And his own personal torment, he added silently. But that was hardly her fault.
“And what happens when we find out?”
Making sure she was steady on her feet, he pulled away from her placing as much distance between them as he could. “That’s up to you.”
Chapter 6
“Are you feeling well enough to venture out?” Achilles crossed his arms, locking them firmly in place so he wasn’t tempted to touch the silken softness of her skin. The afternoon had passed quickly—outside darkness gathered.
Beck shrugged and swiped at the long spiral of hair from her face, shoving her fingers through her wayward curls. A look of disgust scrunched up her small nose, making the scatter of freckles all but disappear. “Oh, for the love of—I’ve got thicker hair, seriously?” she huffed. “What else is this transition process supposed to do besides mess with my eating habits and change my hair to beyond unmanageable?”
You mean besides making you totally irresistible and totally unattainable to every male vampire in a 500-mile radius? “The easiest way for me to show you would be to take you where other vampires gather so you can see for yourself.”
“You mean like a field trip, professor?”
He nodded. “But we need a few rules to keep you safe. First, listen to your mentor, it could save your life.”
She crossed her arms, which pressed her breasts closer together. Achilles forced himself to look away from her chest and focus on the rebellious curiosity in her eyes instead.
“Aren’t I becoming undead? Kind of hard to hurt the undead.”
“Medically speaking. But what is undeath, but another form of life?”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re not going to go all metaphysical on me, are you? I prefer to stick to the facts.”
“Fact. We are undead rather than truly immortal.”
She waved a hand as if swiping at a particular annoying fly. “Undead. Immortal. Same petri dish. You can’t die.”
“Don’t be fooled, sweetling. Vampires can still be harmed, even killed in the right circumstances.” An image of Ione curled in agony speared through his mind, a phantom pain searing through him like a red-hot knife.
“Pfft. Yeah, like a stake the size of a California redwood?”
He clenched his hand into a fist and banished the image and the pain. He focused on the sprinkle of brown across the green background of her eyes, the way the freckles danced across the bridge of her nose. Focused on the woman before him here and now.
“Stakes, garlic, holy water are all fabrications. Beheading is the only true method to kill a vampire. Silver and dead man’s blood are also harmful and painful but not enough to end our existence.”
Her jaw slackened. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“No. Listen closely. I’m teaching you. Rule two, not all vampires are nice. So watch yourself.”
“So where are we going for our field trip?”
“Sangria.”
“You mean that freaky vampire club downtown?”
He smiled. “You’ve been there?”
“Only once to meet Kristin.”
A slight buzzing started in the back of her head followed by an echoing voice that wasn’t her own. More disturbingly it was his. Is that where you obtained the ichor for your vaccine?
She glared at him, backing up a pace and covering her ears with her hands. “What the hell? Are you in my head?”
He grinned. Rule three. Guard your thoughts. Vampires can talk to each other via mental communication. The closer the link to the vampire, the easier the communication.
Her eyes widened. “Can I do that, too?”
He nodded.
She concentrated with all her might. Then stay out of my head!
His sculpted lips flattened into a firm line. “You may find it helpful at some point if you need to reach me and we are not within eye contact.”
Had he actually heard her? “Why can’t you people use cell phones like the rest of us?” she muttered under her breath so he couldn’t hear.
“It’s cheaper,” he answered, tapping his ear. “Rule four. Watch what you say. Don’t think you can whisper in the club and get away with it. Along with your heightened sense of smell and sight, you’ll also be able to hear far more than you did before. So can all the vampires around you. Only they’ve had more time to refine and control their abilities.”
“Anything else?”
“I’ll drive.”
Grabbing her navy wool peacoat and her purse, she followed him out of her front door into the night.
On the cracked concrete of her driveway sat a sleek, low-slung black sports car with big fenders and a stubbed back end like a Corvette that seemed to hug the ground. There was only one way to truly describe it—fast looking. She’d never seen anything like it, which suited him.
She whistled long and low. “I’ve never seen a car like that before. What is it?”
“Bugatti Veyron. Sang Noir edition.”
“Never heard of it.” She peered closer. Achilles opened the door for her.
“Red? They gave it a bloodred interior?”
“I believe they call it crimson and it was a special order. It came standard with a tangerine interior I wasn’t sure I could stomach.” He shut her door and quickly climbed in behind the wheel. Everything inside spoke of luxurious excess. The buttery soft leather seats cradled her body, the space-shuttle version of a dashboard made her eyes widen and the exquisite new car smell tickled her senses.
She glanced at him as he revved up the engine. “I thought you liked your horse from Greece.”
He slowly grazed his fingers over the curve of the leather wrapped steering wheel in obvious appreciation. “This little baby has 1200 horses under the hood. And it’s much, much faster. I miss my horse. But I don’t think I’d trade. My horse in Greece didn’t cost two point seven mill.”
He pressed the pedal down and the engine growled. Beck’s pulse kicked up a notch in anticipation. She’d always had a secret passion for fast things.
“How fast?”
“You mean how fast will it go?”
She nodded.
He peered at her intensely. “You like fast things, don’t you?”
She just looked at him. “I’m not going to dignify that with a response.”
The car jumped away from the curb as he whipped a 180-degree turn into traffic, tires squealing. Beck grabbed the handle on the passenger door and grinned like a kid on a carnival ride.
“It’ll go over 250 miles an hour. But you run out of gas in about twelve minutes at that speed.”
“Is that just a fact hidden in your brain or did you actually test it for yourself?”
He gave her a wicked grin. “Why take some scientist’s word, when you can test it out yourself?”
Everything outside the car rushed by in a blur, the city lights streaming together. She pinched her lips together fighting off the wave of anger that washed over her at her situation and at herself. As much as she fantasized about doing exciting things, the time or two she’d tried something out of her comfort zone it had backfired drastically, particularly when it involved people she cared about.
She closed her eyes and a flash of her mom’s face filled her vision. She’d gone off to college, a fourteen-year-old freshman super brain and when she’d come home at winter break it was to find her mom had taken up with her new gentleman friend. The moment she had met him, she knew there was something strange about him. She’d just shaken it off, telling herself he was that way because he was rich and eccentric.
She should have trusted her gut and known her mother was in trouble. But Mom always had to find out things for herself. She’d been so angry when Beck broached the subject.
“Self-testing isn’t always something I’d recommend,” Beck said, her voice far less confident than she planned.
“True. But then how would you ever know what you were really missing?”
She stared hard at his profile. The night cut it to a fine edge, his nose straight, his cheekbones hard-edged. He wasn’t the type to back off from a battle, verbal or not. “You aren’t talking about cars anymore.”
“Neither are you.”
He could teach her everything he wanted to, but it didn’t mean she still wasn’t going to use every moment to her advantage. Despite her newfound abilities, she still didn’t want to be a vampire anymore than she wanted her mother or her best friend to be one. The sooner she found a way to reverse the process the better. Then she could go back to a life she understood. One with rules and absolutes, not the confused craziness she’d entered since she started dabbling in manipulating the vampire virus.
He pulled up the car to the curb outside the club. Throbbing red neon pulsed the name Sangria in swooping cursive letters over the padded leather door. Beck sighed, gnawing at her lip.
“You aren’t scared to go in, are you?” Achilles nudged. “I’ll be with you the entire time.”
She glanced at him. “It isn’t the company that scares me.”
“What is it then?”
Her eyes strayed back to the padded leather door. How could she tell him that it was the fear that she’d stay this way. What if she couldn’t find a cure? What if she had to accept that this was going to be her new life? Surely Margo had seen some sort of results with the PCR method by now. She’d have to call her since it was clear Margo wasn’t going to get back in touch.
She twisted in her seat, putting her back to the club outside. “I want to understand how all this works.”
“You mean being a vampire?”
“No, how you all became vampires in the first place. The virus had to originate somewhere.”
He hooked his wrist over the steering wheel and looked deeply into her eyes, impatience shimmering in the air around him. “If I give you the Cliff Notes version, will you go inside?”
She glanced at the door and shivered. Crossing that threshold meant something totally different to her now than it had eight months ago. Then she’d been completely floored, like the rest of the world, to discover that vampires were even real. She’d been determined to protect humans from them. Now she was becoming one herself. “Yeah. I guess.”
“Thousands of years ago, a man name Siphidius impressed the gods and they offered him eternal life. He took them up on the offer, not realizing that the bull-god Vrishabha, in whose image he’d been recreated, demanded blood sacrifices. The fangs we have are just the horns of the Mesopotamian bull god in another form. And the draught they gave Siphidius was vampire venom.”
“Was the virus in that venom?”
“No. Centuries later, when Siphidius nearly became ruler of the known world and thought that he too should be a god, the gods thought he needed a smack down. So he got his ass handed to him in the form of a virus. It’s been passed down genetically to every vampire since then. Some survive it but most succumb every thousand years when the virus turns vicious, reverting them to their true chronological age in forty-eight hours. It’s only been in the last changing that the nasty side effect of the virus was stopped cold.”
“Did you create an antiviral?”
“No. Nature did. She’s called Evaline St. Croix and she’s the one who stopped the virus from wiping out yet another generation.”
Beck’s curiosity spiked. “Any chance I could get to meet her?”
One corner of Achilles’s mouth lifted in a cocky self-assured half smile. “I think I can arrange it. Is that enough to get you in the door, or do you need me to explain how vampires are traditionally made, too?”
Beck shook her head. If she could get a shot at meeting this wonder vamp who’d shut down the virus, then she wanted to get to it as soon as possible. “No, I’m good. Let’s go meet some vampires.”
He exited the car and opened her door for her. Getting out of a car so low down to the ground was harder than she expected and she glanced around for something she could grab to propel herself out of the seat.
He held out a smooth, blunt-fingered hand to her. Beck took it. An electric arc zinged up from her fingertips to her mouth, making her heart beat hard and fast. She gasped at the sensation. A quick glance at the glint in his eyes confirmed she wasn’t the only one who’d felt the connection between them.
“A hazard of the mentor-fledgling relationship. Everything is felt more intensely because of the bond.”
She nodded and bit her lip. More intense? Good grief. The last thing she needed was for anything to be more intense around Achilles. He already had her on edge with the sexual allure that radiated off him like a heat signature. “Who are we meeting?”
“Kristin and Dmitri.”
Beck wanted to squee with giddy delight. She hadn’t seen her best friend in weeks because of their messed up day-night schedules now that Kris was a vampire. “What are you waiting for?” she asked shoving open the door of the club, leaving Achilles to catch up.
She’d only been here once before, because honestly once had been enough. The interior of Sangria looked like a spelunker’s dream hangout. Up-lit stalactites dripped down from the ceiling while down-lit stalagmites jutted up from the floor. Honestly, they all looked like giant stone fangs to her. The only thing that made this place even qualify as an upscale trendy bar were the modern black-and-chrome fixtures, the shiny black lacquered bar lit from beneath with red neon and the big mahogany dance floor sporting some kind of weird symbol made from three intertwined circles.
A row of crimson curtains covered the doorways leading to the private rooms off the side of the dance floor. She’d been in the farthest one when Kris had given her vampire ichor to use in her testing.
Beck let her gaze trail over the booths decked out in plush crimson velvet, looking for Kris’s familiar face and long blond hair among the people packed into the club and moving around like test tubes in a centrifuge.
Achilles lightly touched her elbow with the tips of his fingers, but she felt the contact like the brush of a flame against her skin. “Can I get you a drink?”
“No. I’m good. I’m just going to head over to see Kris if that’s all right with you.”
Achilles made eye contact with Kris across the room and Beck could tell there was some kind of conversation mind-thingy going on between the two of them just by the look of concentration on his face.
“She said Dmitri’s in his office. I’ll go speak with him while you visit with her.”
Beck bounced up to the balls of her feet. “Perfect. See you back here in about an hour, professor?”
“Don’t get into any trouble.”
“Me? Never.”
A corner of his mouth tipped up making his lips look far too kissable. “Somehow I seriously doubt that. If you get hungry, sweetling, don’t be afraid to call for me,” he said as he brushed the tip of his index finger over the end of her nose.
A man like that could make a woman hungry just by saying hello. Beck gave herself a shake. Kris. She was going to walk over and see Kris. Yeah. That was the plan.
“Bye.” She wiggled her fingers and turned on her heel before she did anything incredibly stupid like kissing him. Beck squeezed and twisted through the moving crowd at the edge of the dance floor.
A solid chest decked out in a black T-shirt, slashed faded blue jeans and long black leather duster blocked her path. She was forced to look upward at the huge guy who’d deliberately blocked her way. A pair of shocking red eyes stared down at her. He had to be a vampire. His platinum hair stood up in hedgehog fashion, spiky and stiff, making him look a lot like an early cover shot of rocker Billy Idol.
Two words came to mind just looking at him: bad news. A shiver crawled up her spine and Beck stepped back a pace.
“Excuse me,” she said, her words laced with a heavy dose of asperity.
He placed a hefty hand covered in a black spiked fingerless leather glove on her shoulder. “Have we met before?”
Beck glanced at his hand, then leveled her best back-off glare at him. “I’d think I’d remember. And it doesn’t ring a bell. If you’ll just—”
He closed his eyes for a brief second, inhaling deeply and when he opened his eyes they turned from bright red to dark crimson, nearly the color of blood. “You smell just like Stacy.” Beck’s stomach started to swim and swish uncomfortably. Her mother’s name was Stacy. This guy was completely creeping her out. She glanced over her shoulder to see if Achilles was anywhere in sight. He wasn’t.
“You’re a fledgling, aren’t you?”
Beck let out a long-suffering sigh. “Look, my friend is over there waiting for me. Nice chatting with you.”
“My name is Vane.” He looked deeply in her eyes like he expected her to remember it.
“Vane. That’s … different. Well, Vane, I’m here with someone and I don’t think he’d really appreciate you hitting on me.”
He nodded, his lip curling in nearly a smile. “I know. He’s a fool to leave you alone.” He paused, his eyes changing, flashing to dark brown for an instant. “You really don’t remember me, do you?”
Beck gasped. With the change in eye color his face seemed more familiar. But Victor, her mother’s vampire gentleman friend, had dark hair, not platinum blond.
“Ah, I see some spark of recognition.”
Beck’s legs wobbled. It was not possible. This had to be somebody’s sick vampire initiation joke.
“You’re too tempting for any full-blooded vampire to resist. I’m sure we’ll meet again.”
Beck couldn’t get away from him quickly enough. As fast as she could, she side-stepped him and moved toward Kris who had left the booth and was striding purposely toward her. Just a few steps more and she could collapse.
The Vampire Who Loved Me Page 6