So she’d done what Svetlanna said to do—fed her inner vampire.
Like buffet style.
Nina was sure she hadn’t meant her to do it like some gluttonous pig, but that hadn’t stopped her, and now she had no blood left. Oddly, the more she drank, the less she gave any thought to how squicked she’d been by it in the first place. In fact, she’d felt so good, she and Wanda had staple-gunned some old blankets to her windows to keep out the sunlight while she slept. A precaution Wanda insisted would be necessary come the summer when the sun set later in the day.
Slamming her refrigerator door with frustration, Nina paced the floor of her kitchen. A glance at the clock told her it was already seven, and no vampire.
Jackass.
Like it was fair to think he’d show up with more blood after she’d given him such a hard time. She’d only told him a hundred times to leave her the hell alone. He’d finally taken her up on the offer.
Which totally, royally freakin’ sucked.
Actually, she soothed herself, this might turn out okay. She’d planned to go see him anyway. She just didn’t want to do it while begging for blood, because she’d gotten her oink on the night before. Some blood right now might help her when she sprang her little surprise on him. Feeding left her thinking clearer and her reflexes finely tuned.
She scolded herself for being so impulsive. However, what she’d found last night had to be addressed whether her wits were sharp or not.
Oh, yeah, Greg was all about telling her he didn’t want her as part of his precious clan, but what she’d read in Vampires for Dummies last night told her every word from his mm-mm good lips was probably just horse puckey. Though obscure, there’d been one single sentence that had kept her riveted until her eyeballs crossed as dawn broke.
According to the book, if she could locate Greg’s creator, or sire, as the author had called it, this person had the power to revert her immortality. That was it—just one line, and if she’d read correctly, it was potentially just a myth, but it was enough to give her hope, and she fully intended to take Greg to task on it.
Surely he knew something this important. Which only proved he was full of cow dung when he’d said he had no desire to keep her a vampire and create some super race of night dwellers so they could eventually take over the world.
These freaks could put Pinky and the Brain to shame.
So the question was, who’d created Greg, where was the fuck, and how did she hunt his ass down like so much prey?
Her head took a downward plunge, throbbing with intermittent jabs of agony from behind her eyelids. It was time to feed and feed she would. She’d do whatever it took to hang on until she could find this sire person. Vaguely, she wondered who’d created Greg’s sire and if that mattered in the vampire food chain of life with her particular case.
And the 64,000-dollar question—something that had been troubling her since last night. Would it hurt being turned back into a human?
It hadn’t hurt turning into a vampire. What if it was like some reenactment of Alien? Would the vampire in her ooze out of her belly and…Hookay, she had to stop this nonsense and get dressed.
Digging through the rumpled pile of clothes still on her couch, Nina wrinkled her nose with distaste, her eyebrows squishing together. All of a sudden showing up at Greg’s with her discount jeans and T-shirts felt cheap, especially if Svetlanna was going to be there. Though she was sure it wasn’t Svetlanna’s intent, she made her feel shabby with her chic ensembles and perfectly accessorized jewelry, and even Princess Marty couldn’t do that to her.
With a cluck of insecurity, Nina headed for her bedroom closet in the hopes she had something Marty’d put together when she’d decided Nina needed not only her color wheel of life revamped, but her stupid wardrobe, too.
The lavender scarf she’d once worn as a symbol she was a newbie and Marty’s new recruit at Bobbie-Sue hung haphazardly over a plastic hanger, reminding her she could always go back to selling multilevel cosmetics if all else failed.
And then she laughed at how fucking lame that was.
She’d rather sell breast implants.
Door-to-door.
Naked.
As she sifted through her sparse, and at one time Bobbie-Sue acceptable clothing, Nina tugged on a turquoise sweater that Marty had said accentuated her olive complexion, followed by a dungaree miniskirt she totally hated, but Wanda had talked her into wearing, because she said Nina had hot legs. Long and lean, were the adjectives Wanda had used.
It couldn’t hurt to have long and lean in her favor when visiting with the Wing Man, could it?
For the love of God. That she was even thinking such a thing made her want to bang her head against a brick wall. It didn’t matter what the vampire thought. Not even a little, she convinced herself by the time she’d chosen shoes that were totally inappropriate for this time of year, but wouldn’t matter because she couldn’t feel the chilled winter air and looked übercute, if she did say so herself.
Throwing them on, Nina made her way to the bathroom, hurling some food into Larry’s cage as she went to avoid the temptation of actually touching him. At this point, he was as good as a Big Mac in her book, and she just knew once the cravings for dinner subsided, she’d regret the slightest hint of gnawing on Larry.
She’d forgotten that the mirror only gave her a distorted and now rapidly fading image of herself—so a full face worth of makeup wasn’t going to happen. She did manage to locate some light pink lip gloss—totally in her color wheel, according to Marty—and glide it over her lips before she deemed herself worthy enough to go see Vlad.
Nina stopped dead in her tracks, frozen with the unbidden thought she’d just had. Wait one friggin’ minute. She wasn’t dressing to impress the bloodsucker. She was dressing to impress Svetlanna.
Wasn’t she?
The pounding in her head increased, reminding her it didn’t matter if she showed up in her birthday suit. She needed to feed.
It was too damned bad she couldn’t do that flying thing. The trip out to the Island was going to take forever by train and bus, and there was no way in freakin’ Hell she was going to attempt to run from Hackensack to Long friggin’ Island. Right now, the idea was just too crazy spooky for her to digest. Besides, there’d come a time that she wouldn’t be able to rely on something as nuts as running that kind of distance, because she’d be human again.
Yeah…that’s right.
FOREVER was an understatement, Nina thought, looking down at her unpolished toes when she arrived at Greg’s door hours later. She was bone weary, cranky, and pissed off, but still she hesitated to knock down his door, and it wasn’t just because she was exhausted from lack of blood.
Rolling her eyes skyward, Nina sent a plea Upstairs. “Could I get some help here?” What was keeping her from banging down his door and nailing him balls to the wall was beyond her. He owed her an explanation, and she couldn’t let herself forget that.
Okay, she had to get her shit together and attack. Her fist rose, preparing to pound out her arrival, when a cold chill ran the length of her spine, crawling in slow increments along each vertebra.
“Huh,” she muttered, turning to scan the vast lawns and shrubs of Greg’s property. All was quiet in opulence-ville, yet her nose detected the scent of a human. Of course there were humans here. She was smack dab in the middle of upper-middle-class suburbia. There had to be at least ten families on this block alone—with lots of little humans, too. But this—this smell was different, closer, distinct, and sharp. Like when Wanda had sat next to her on the couch last night, and she’d truly begun to understand how Greg had deciphered Marty was a paranormal, but not a vampire.
Sweet mother, she was smelling people and differentiating their unique odors by species. Cocking her head, she let her nostrils flare. Yep, it was human and a nearby one, too.
Her head banged perpetually, while her skin crawled. She leaned against his door, hoping to find comfort in the cold metal,
only to find she couldn’t feel it much anyway.
The pocket of her skirt vibrated with a gentle rumble. Nina dug into it, thinking it was probably Wanda checking to see if she’d fed, but the caller ID revealed the number labeled as private.
Flipping her cell open, she tried to catch the call, but it went to voicemail. Damn it, who kept calling her? She shook her head, thinking she’d have to figure it out later.
Nina turned off the sound on her phone before confronting her maker. Whoever wanted her would just have to wait—she had a vampire to take to the mat.
With an angry hand, clenched tight, Nina pounded on the door, eating up more of her energy than she’d planned to expend.
When it jerked open, Nina fell into Greg’s tall, imposing frame, stumbling over the sandals she was now wishing she hadn’t chosen to wear.
“Look who’s come to dinner,” he chided, enveloping her in his hard embrace.
Her nose twitched violently against his chest, his scent invading her nostrils, manly and delicious, blocking out the scent of the invisible human. Righting her, Greg took a step back and assessed her with those hard, green eyes. “Hungry?”
There was no point in hiding it. “Yeah. Among other things.”
“What happened to the blood we left for you last night? I didn’t expect to see you until at the very earliest, tomorrow.”
That he expected anything tweaked her gut. “I went a little overboard, I guess,” she offered with a sheepish downward cast of her eyes.
Without a word, he strode to the kitchen in the direction of the fridge, the muscles of his back bunching under the tapered white shirt he wore. It grazed the top of his legs, drawing her eyes to the backs of his thighs, then dragging them steadily upward.
Nina licked her dry lips. Sheeit, that ass.
Tearing her eyes from his butt, which was a supernatural feat all unto itself, Nina found herself paying closer attention to the details of the interior of Greg’s home. It didn’t look much like a castle on the inside. It had a warmer feeling to it, with its throw rugs scattered about, mahogany furniture that gleamed, and vases in various heights and shapes, sitting atop shelves. It bore a woman’s touch, and that brought a shadow of a smile to Nina’s lips.
Her reluctant feet trudged behind him, salivating when he poured the blood into a glass and shoved it in her direction. Nina’s belly growled, and she pressed it against the island countertop to quell the noise.
At least he wasn’t razzing her for coming to him to get her daily blood supply.
He braced his forearms on the counter and leaned in so they were at eye level. “So, you finally decided to give in, huh?”
Scratch that. He wanted her at his mercy. Nina eyeballed him angrily. “Yeah. Well, it wasn’t like I had a choice. So here I am being a good vampire and nurturing my inner Dracula.”
“Headache?”
“So?”
Greg’s expression softened for a moment, albeit brief. “I remember them well.”
“It sucks,” she replied, draining the cup with a voracious gulp.
“I remember that as well.”
“Yeah? Do you remember how much you didn’t want to be a vampire, too?”
Greg’s eyes became distant. Something flashed in them before he focused on her again. “I do.”
“Good. Then you’ll understand when I tell you I think you’re all full of shit. I found something last night. Something that just might fix this whole fucked-up mess you made and prove you bunch of whack jobs are liars.”
“Your mouth…” he muttered, his eyes going smoky.
“My what?”
“Your mouth. It amazes me that such a pretty thing can spew such ugly words.”
He thought her mouth was pretty; her nipples tightened at that…
Stop that right now, Nina. Immediately. “There’s more where that came from.”
“Such a surprise.”
“Look, I don’t care if you like my colorful language or not. I found something last night, and I want some answers.”
His look grew bored. God, she hated when he dismissed her with just a caustic glance. “Wikipedia again? Or wait, one of those romance novels, right?”
“I think I’ve told you once, don’t discount what some of those sappy books say. Some of those writers aren’t so far off the mark. And no, it wasn’t the romance novels, or Wikipedia. It was Vampires for Dummies.”
“Interesting title.”
She ignored his sly reference to her IQ. “Turns out, I can get my mortality back.”
“Do tell,” he drawled, cocking an eyebrow in his very accomplished disdainful way.
“There wasn’t much, but it said if I can find the nut that created the freak that created me, I can be turned back. And I want me some of that.”
“Me being the freak, of course.” His mouth twisted as he spoke the words.
Okay, so that was harsh. He wasn’t a freak. Just a liar. “That would be you.”
“Didn’t I warn you about some of the stuff that’s out there? Contrary to what your romance novels say, there’s plenty of misinformation.”
“They’re not mine, they’re Wanda’s, and if that’s true, how come I can’t look at a crucifix without my eyeballs burning? If what you say is for real, why is it that I feel like a slab of bacon when the sun’s up or that I can’t keep my eyes open during daylight?”
“And you read that in the romance novels.”
“I didn’t. Wanda did.”
“That still doesn’t mean everything you read is true, Nina.”
Which only strengthened her belief that Gregori Statleon was hiding something. All of this “let me help you feed” shit just might be hiding a deeper ulterior motive. What, she couldn’t fathom. What if the more she drank, the more vampiric she became? Like the more she drank the juice, the more poison seeped into her system…
But Svetlanna encouraged her to drink, and though Nina couldn’t pinpoint what it was about Greg’s mother that lent to trust, it was something she couldn’t ignore and was rooted deep in her gut. Maybe Svetlanna had no idea her son did this kind of shit.
Keeping her a vampire, as unwilling as she was to be one, was crazy. Yet, she did need Greg in order to feed, and he wasn’t offering up other solutions for blood donors, but he’d claimed he didn’t feed on other people. Maybe her dependency on him supplying the blood was all just a part of his diabolical plan to keep her coming back for more. Though he’d just said he remembered what it was to not want to be a vampire, leading one to believe he’d been turned against his will.
This web was one seriously tangled weave.
Refusing to reveal all of her suspicions, she decided overlooking some things in favor of the bigger picture might garner better results. “How about we don’t nitpick? The basic facts Wanda’s read are mostly true. So I don’t see why what I read can’t be, too. Unless you like keeping me a vampire against my will.”
“Oh, there’s nothing I’d like more than to get you off my back, believe me.”
Nina took a different path, attempting to play on his sympathy. “How did you become a vampire, anyway? I mean, didn’t it piss you off? If vampires can’t procreate, then you sure weren’t born one—which leads me to believe you were turned against your will. Unless…you said you’re almost five hundred. Dude, that puts your birth back in the fifteen hundreds. I did a little research on that, too. Surviving back then had some pretty shitty odds. Becoming a vampire would definitely up your chances for survival in a time like that, right?”
“You could look at it that way, I suppose.”
Oh, the mysterious, evasive facade again. “How about you tell me what way to look at it?”
“I think it’s far more amusing if I just let you tell me what’s what. Your supposition tickles my funny bone.”
“What’s the big secret? How old were you when this—this vampire shit happened?”
He pushed off the counter, his lips a thin line of deafening silence.
So it pissed him off, then. If it pissed him off to talk about what’d happened when he was turned, why the fuck was he being so closed-mouthed about it? You’d think he’d want to share his anger with her—bond over it or some psychotic shit. Maybe, if he helped her, he could be reverted back, too. But he couldn’t possibly want that, now could he? Gregori Statleon didn’t seem like the kind of guy who didn’t get what he wanted, and that led her back to her original thought. He was a part of some sick crap, though he may not have wanted that in the beginning of his immortality, and now he wanted as many people as he could sink his fangs into to be a part of it, too. He’d bought into the cult—he’d been brainwashed.
Omigod—this was too much like the multilevel sales of Bobbie-Sue. She hadn’t fallen for it then, and she wasn’t falling for it now.
Nina cornered him, sticking her chest out and spitting her words like hard gravel up into his face. “How old were you when you were turned?”
Greg’s hands clamped onto her shoulders, holding her away from him, like she had the plague. “What difference does that make to you?”
“Call me curious.”
“It was a long time ago…”
“Answer the freakin’ question.”
“Twenty-three.”
Nina snorted, recalling what she’d read about the sixteenth century. “That’s a pretty decent life span for back then. Food was scarce, living situations were even worse. From what I read, you didn’t last much past your forties, unless you were of some prominence. Did your family have money?”
“We managed.”
“Where were you born? I’m guessing Romania, because it seems like that’s where all good vampires come from, and your last name is pretty ethnic.”
“Yep, in what is now known as Bucharest. Not Transylvania, like most would assume. Though we immigrated to England when I was a child.”
“Why don’t you have an accent?”
Accidentally Dead Page 14