by Nicola Rose
I should tell him to stuff his orders up his ass, but found myself nodding instead.
“There are certain protocols that we’re supposed to follow you know,” he mumbled.
“Who, twins or vampires?”
His lips twitched in the smallest smile. “Vampires. The Bael is the governing body that enforce them. Most of the older vampires still live by the rules. But the younger ones, they often don’t care for them. And nor does Alexander.”
“Where do you fall?”
“Somewhere in the middle, I guess. We’re relatively young, but I still have a certain amount of respect for the way things should be. That said, I have zero tolerance for the Bael, and I don’t follow my instinct to feed on who I want which is frowned upon. So under some laws I guess it makes Alexander the good guy and me the rebel,” he laughed bitterly.
“What are the other rules?”
“We’re not supposed to kill our own kind, but that gets broken all the time. I’ve no doubt it will be broken between me and him at some point. Soon.”
“Don’t say that.”
He shrugged dismissively, “We must not expose our true identities to a human and let them live, or remember. Oh, crap,” he looked at me intently. “Seems I’m more of a rebel than I thought.”
Before I could say anything he had continued, “What else… a vampire must never take a mortal that has already been claimed by another, meaning Alexander should stay away from you, but he won’t.”
These rules were making me feel more and more like throwing up. I think he noticed because he stopped talking for a while. I watched diners through windows at a restaurant across the street. Chatting, eating their meals, laughing. So normal.
“You asked,” he said, once the quiet got uncomfortable.
Looking at him and trying to comprehend the years he’d been alive and the things he’d seen and done was impossible. He didn’t look like a monster, he was too damn sexy for starters.
“That’s our weapon against you, remember,” he said. “Even now, as I’m telling you how I’m supposed to kill you, or that my brother might, you’re thinking about my body rather than the danger you’re in.”
“You promised you’d never mess with my thoughts, but you’re happy to keep letting yourself in to read them? You said you’d stop that,” I scowled.
“I’m trying, but I’m too tuned in to you. I don’t come snooping for them, they just come to me.”
I grunted in response.
“Long ago, vampires could read all minds and all thoughts, but over time the genetic trait changed,” he went on. “We believe it’s because hearing all those thoughts was so distracting, and with us being such a narcissistic species, vampires began filtering out anything that didn’t concern them. I suppose in the end, the part of the brain that picked up on other stuff just stopped working. Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“Some of us can tap into it better than others. I can hear bits of other thoughts sometimes, but it’s not consistent and I have to work at it, so it’s not usually worth the effort. Like some humans are good at certain things, maybe sport or math, or dancing,” he smiled appreciatively at my hips, “Some vampires excel at controlling different areas of their mind. Leon has a unique ability for sensing darkness and evil.”
“That must be pleasant.”
Didn’t he ever have anything nice to talk about? What were those couples in the restaurant discussing? Their days at work, how nice the food was, vacation plans, bills…
“It’s useful,” he said. “It’s like he has a built-in radar, he can feel the darkness from miles away. We follow his radar and when he’s close enough to the person he can not only feel their thoughts, he can see them. If that’s all they are, just thoughts, then we leave. But we keep watch on them, waiting to see if they ever decide to act on their desires. If he can see that they’ve already acted and killed before, then we take them. That’s how we find our food.”
Oh Jesus, this conversation was getting out of hand. My legs wavered as I leant into my crutches.
“You need to know this stuff,” he said. “You want to start getting back on with normal life, melding our worlds together. This is who I am.”
“It’s fine,” I lied. He was right, I did need to know and I couldn’t show any doubts or he’d use it as an excuse to try and separate us again.
“It must get confusing, what with all the other vampires on his radar,” I said.
“He can feel the difference between human and vampire thoughts. No human can even comprehend the depravity that a vampire can feel—”
“Christ, Zac! I’m trying here, but do you have to keep pushing the point? I get it! You’re bad, you’re evil, you’re a vampire. Enough already.”
He stared at me, hard. Fine, back on with the pleasantries of vampire education then. “So, with the way you guys live, Leon is really central to your gang? Without him you couldn’t find the murderers?”
“We can do it without him, but it takes more work. I can still sense darkness in people, in their aura. I can pick up a vibe and tail them to see what they’re up to. But I can’t be as selective. Despite what the media depict there actually aren’t that many murderers running around. So if I’m on my own I’ll take rapists, wife beaters, paedophiles.”
“So… you told me you feed daily. There can’t be that many bad people running around the island?”
There. I did it. The question was out again and he was going to have to answer.
“I told you I used my chopper for business,” he shrugged. “It gets us around when necessary.”
“But, every day?” I scrunched my face.
“You don’t need to know those details, Jess. Enough,” he warned, the threat in his voice enough to let me know that I really didn’t want to know. His hand brushed over mine and an alarm went off somewhere in the back of my mind, telling me to push him on the issue, whilst another voice urged me to let it go.
“Why limit yourselves to murderers? Why not always take those other bad guys out, too.”
“My Cell isn’t here to help humans, Jess. We don’t care what humans do to other humans. We try to live some sort of moral life to make ourselves feel… something. So we select the top rung of scum on the ladder. But it’s hard to reconcile taking out people who have committed less crime than you have and still take a moral high ground about it.”
“That depends how you look at it. I don’t see paedophiles as committing less of a crime than murder.”
“This is a dodgy area for us to get into. I don’t want to discuss the rights and wrongs of who I kill. Focus on the word kill. I do that, because I’m a dark, evil, self-centred being.”
“Yes,” I sighed. Ever-dramatic. “You’ve told me once or twice. Except you’re describing them, other vampires, but you and your gang aren’t like that.”
“How do you know? I could be lying to you. I could be just as bad as the rest of them,” he paused. “I am just as dark as them, I am them. I do a good job of hiding it and keeping it locked down, but I don’t know when it might surface again. Anything could trigger it. I’ve slipped up a number of times.”
“Slipped up? As in—”
“As in killed people I shouldn’t have. Innocent people.”
“But that was before you changed, right?”
I struggled to maintain the casual façade that everything he said was fine.
“Finally, you’re afraid,” he sighed.
“I like being afraid. That’s why I do all the crazy things I do.”
“Fear when you’re racing your motorcycle, or jumping out of a plane, that’s one thing. But being afraid of your boyfriend because of what he is, what he can do, that’s not right.”
36
Jess
Fear; An unpleasant emotion caused by the threat of danger, pain, or harm.
Unpleasant. It’s supposed to feel horrible, to keep us safe. Our body’s way of keeping us away from danger, forcing us to retreat to safety.
And
yet, my pull towards it ensures that I flit from one fearful event to the next, bounding along like a hyper lamb in the spring grass. It doesn’t matter if the result leaves me crashing down in an anxiety-riddled low. I’ll still pick myself up and carry on, treading the same paths, looking for something more.
Which was probably why I found myself, once again, lounging around in the vampire’s lair, convincing myself not to have a shred of regret.
I hated to admit that anything to come from my father’s lips could be accurate, but maybe when he’d told me for the thousandth time that I wasn’t wired right… he was onto something.
Fear and anger released that buzzing in my head, the thrumming under my fingertips. Did I seek that out? The release of that energy?
I drew my arms around myself. That energy was not something I should go looking for. It caused pain. Even death.
We kill murderers… he had said.
He killed murderers.
I was a murderer. I shouldn’t be here. I should have died, too.
My dad was an asshole. I was never good enough, he always expected more from me. The amnesia after the explosion was true. I didn’t know what we’d been fighting about that day. But I did know that the explosion wasn’t some random, freak incident. Well, it was a freak incident, but one I’d somehow caused.
Such painful memories. Keeping them suppressed has been essential. I can’t bear having them on the surface, creeping around in my conscience, breaking me down.
I reached to scratch the itching scar on my back. Zac’s contemplative gaze slid across to follow my fingers where they rubbed and clawed.
Please don’t ask me. Don’t ask…
The smallest, almost imperceptible nod from him.
“Have you always been obsessed with danger?” he asked.
“I’m not obsessed,” I lied.
He smirked at me, “No? Fast motorcycles, poker hustling, firefighter, hanging out with vampires?”
I smirked back, “You’re not dangerous, you just like to think you are.” I stretched out my leg, basking in the freedom now that my cast had finally been removed.
He shook his head and dismissed my joke. “You’re in a perpetual state of excitement, your body forever on the cusp of fight or flight. Heightened adrenalin. When the hormone levels dip, you start craving more. You’re so hyped-up all the time, you make a vampire giddy,” he drawled, trailing a finger lazily around my stomach.
I wondered why he didn’t allow himself to taste more of the wine if he was such an alcoholic.
“Well, since you have me all worked out, I’ll admit. Do you know why I took my job at the fire department here?” I mused, daring to lift a hand and stroke idly at the top of his chest.
“Because it’s the number one hotspot for nubile young things looking for a good time?”
“Well… yes, obviously. But mostly because my psychic said not to come. That something dangerous was going to happen. So I made up my mind instantly that I would come. I had to know what this dangerous thing was. How crazy is that?”
“I think it’s more crazy to live your life based on what a phoney psychic tells you.”
“She’s not fake. She always gets stuff right and she got this right, didn’t she?”
“You could put just about anything that happens here into the dangerous bracket, even without meeting me. You see what you want to see. There’s plenty of action around here that could be considered dangerous. And with you, since you radiate towards peril, she was bound to hit something.”
“Wow. The mind-reading supernatural being is a sceptic about someone else’s psychic abilities.”
“Humans don’t have powers. They’re just human. Well, most of them…” He tightened underneath me.
The issue we never talked about.
He knew. He knew that I wasn’t normal. How long would he let it go before he started pushing me on it?
“Maybe she isn’t human.” I said. “Maybe she’s a vampire and I never knew.”
“A vampire would not cheapen themselves with a career as a fortune teller,” he scoffed. “But, talking of dangerous things, I’ve been meaning to show you something.”
We passed down the hallway and I paused outside a door. Up until the other night, I’d never seen any of them use it and had assumed it was just a storage cupboard or something. But I’d seen Leon come through it, and I’d been meaning to ask every time I went past, but always got distracted.
“What’s with this—” I began. Zac turned and rested a hand on my shoulder, kissing my lips softly.
“Come, Jess, I need to show you this,” he murmured in my ear. My hand fell from the door and I followed him through to the garage.
I knew it was big from what I’d seen outside, but he’d never taken me inside before. When he opened the door and flicked the lights I couldn’t believe how massive it was, more like a barn. The smell of gasoline and polish shot up my nose, which I stuck upwards like a dog to heave a deep breath. Damn, I loved that smell.
A row of motorcycles stood along one wall, there must have been twenty of them, alongside several extremely expensive-looking sports cars.
“These aren’t all yours?” I began walking towards a set of sleek yellow wheels when he pulled me over to a tarpaulin in one corner.
“Yeah, but that’s not the surprise. This is.”
With a lightning flurry he pulled the cover away to reveal the most sublime machine imaginable. I glanced at him incredulously, his face full of pride and wonder, before I was drawn back to the other sexy thing in the room.
“Fuck me sideways! That’s a Dodge Tomahawk?” I gasped, darting my hand towards it before pulling back, too afraid to do so.
“Go on, you can touch. Sit on it, if you like?”
Before he could change his mind I swung my leg over and caressed the dazzling silver metal. It was beautiful, a work of art. Technically not really a motorcycle since it has four wheels, but they are so close together that it’s still motorcycle shaped – a huge, monstrous machine. A piece of automotive sculpture, as I had heard it described before.
It was like something out of a movie, a vision of futuristic transport. The sort of machine that sent grown men weak at the knees and made them talk bhp and torque. I was no exception, I just happened to be a girl.
“But I thought it was a concept bike, that they never made any more?” I asked.
“It is. They didn’t. I had to spend a lot of money.”
I let out a long whistle under my breath. I could only imagine how much a lot was, but I guessed at least half a million.
“It’s not even road legal,” he went on. “They didn’t intend for it to be ridden much, it was never tested fully at speed. You can barely turn the thing round a corner and the tank only holds just over three gallons.”
“But you didn’t buy it for cruising round town, huh?”
He flashed an enormous smile. “Exactly. That’s a V10 engine in there. Nought to sixty in two point five seconds. Top speed of nearly four hundred. The strip isn’t long enough to get any more than a fleeting glimpse at that speed, but it’s good enough. It’s the only thing fast enough to give me a decent buzz.”
“And you call me crazy?” I was shaking my head in disbelief.
I wondered how much money they spent on bribing the police to turn a blind eye to their activities, to ignore a Dodge Tomahawk tearing up the strip. Anna had hinted before about the amount of money the Elwoods had, of the rumours about how vast the sum was. Unless, they used other methods…
“They’re not even close. It’s more money than they dream about,” he said simply, cutting off any thoughts of other vampire persuasions.
“So why do you live here?” I asked.
“You don’t like it here?”
“Well, yes, but if I could choose anywhere in the world I think it would be somewhere else.”
I’d had so many dreams as a college student, all the places I would go – Australia, Africa, Tokyo…
; “It suits us here. The smallness. The atmosphere.”
“How long have you lived here?”
“Quite a long time.”
“Don’t people notice… the not ageing thing?”
“This island might be rammed to capacity, but the number of people who actually reside here long term is very small. We—” he paused. “Keep them from noticing.”
The mind-fucking. The money didn’t work for everything, then.
“Besides—” he suddenly seemed distracted and trailed off, staring at me intently. His eyes focussed on my hands which were absently caressing the shiny metal. He looked back up to my face and I saw the hunger, the dark lusting. Fear and arousal battled with each other inside my chest.
‘Time for you to get off the Dodge now,” he said sternly.
Disturbed by the sudden change of mood I said, “Don’t panic, tempting as it is I’m not going to steal this one from you.”
“Seriously, you have to get off. Seeing you astride it, stroking it like that…”
In the next breath I was pinned over the hood of a blue car.
My head spun from his hungry, rough kisses, sending fuzzy sparks through my vision. One hand held me down, while the other found its way under my top, and I whimpered as he found my nipple.
He pushed my legs up so that I was fully laying across the hood, eagerly spread for him, his big urgent hands yanking my jeans down.
“I believe I owe you a sexual favour,” he said, his voice deep and sexy. I didn’t understand what had caused him to lose his usual restraint, but I groaned his name in the hopes of keeping him going.
He started at my ankle, planting kisses and nibbles up my calf and inside my thigh. My hips wriggled, squirming with too much pleasure, his lips tickling and teasing.
Licking upwards, he continued ever higher until his tongue brushed past the sensitive bundle of nerves between my legs, before continuing the teasing assault down my other leg, nuzzling my inner thigh. His tongue was so cold it felt like ice trailing over my skin. My toes curled, my legs pressing together against his head. It was too much, I was so wet that my ass slipped around on the metal hood.