by Myers, AJ
Though I could feel the intensity of his gaze, I refused to meet it. I trained my eyes on Zan instead and kept them there. Zan was just…safer, believe it or not.
“My shot made me sick. I was throwing up when I saw a big pool of blood in the back yard. Since I know you’re not in the habit of pouring your stores out in the yard, I just thought… I just wanted to warn you.”
“Em, we have to—”
“Don’t, Nathan,” I whispered, stopping him before he could finish that sentence. I didn’t think I could take another one of our ‘talks’. “Zan’s right. I’m not worth it. I might have been once, but not anymore.”
I heard his sharp intake of breath, but I didn’t give him time to say anything to dispute what I’d said. Instead of going back to my room, I let myself out onto the back patio and sank into one of the chairs there, barely even noticing the cold that immediately started to seep into my bones. I leaned forward, elbows resting on my knees and dropped my face into my hands, waiting for that terrible pressure to start tightening my chest up like an overstuffed sausage again, but it didn’t come. Instead I just felt…empty.
I heard the back door open and close, but I kept my head down and my eyes closed, hoping whoever it was would just go away. Even when I caught a scent I was quickly starting to hate, I kept my face hidden in my hands. I had admitted he was right about me, wasn’t that enough?
You can imagine my surprise when he knelt in front of me and gently pried my hands away from my face. Leaning back, I waited for the next hit to my already aching heart. But it didn’t come. For a few minutes, he just studied my face. I don’t know what he was looking for, but he must have found it because the first real smile I had seen on his face pulled his lips up at the corners. It wasn’t his usual smirk, but a real, genuine smile, warm and inviting. It changed him somehow, easing some of the harshness of his features.
“I wasn’t right about you,” Zan said finally. “You’re hurting, but you’re trying to hold it in and hold it together. I admire that, Ember. I just think you’re going about it the wrong way.”
“I also know you love Nate,” he said, cutting me off when I opened my mouth to tell him exactly what I thought about his assessment of my coping strategies. “He loves you, too, Firecracker. If you only knew how much.”
Nathan loved me? Yeah, maybe when I was human. Sorry that he was stuck with what was left of me? Now that I believed. It was really cruel of Zan to rub my face in it like that. In that moment, I wanted my powers back so badly it hurt. Zan was really asking for it.
“Are you bipolar or something?” I asked, glaring at him through narrowed eyes.
“No,” he said, actually laughing. “But, I think I have just the cure for what’s ailing you.”
“Oh? You have a cure for poison in those tight leather pants, do you?” I rolled my eyes when he just laughed harder.
“No, but I do know how to ease a broken heart,” he said, grinning and pulling me out of the chair by my hand. “Sneak back in your window and change clothes. Meet me out front in ten minutes. Oh, and wear something sexy. I think it’s time we got some air.”
∞§∞§∞§∞
“Wow!”
Watching Zan’s eyes flare when I slipped around the side of the house and walked toward him actually made me feel a little better for reasons I didn’t even want to examine. I raised one eyebrow as his eyes raked from the top of my head to the toes of my boots, taking in the form fitting low-rise jeans, leather jacket, and low-cut top I was wearing. When his eyes met mine again, they were full of appreciation.
“Zan, you’re looking at me like a first class perv.”
He threw back his head and laughed and I couldn’t help but smile…until I saw our mode of transportation waiting at the curb. It was a beautiful piece of machinery, black as night and covered in chrome.
There was no way I was getting on it.
“Have you ever been on a motorcycle before, Firecracker?” Zan asked, leaning against the bike with a gleeful grin. I started backing away and, faster than I could blink, he was standing in front of me, his grin growing wider when he saw the anxiety on my face. “You’re a little pale there, Em. You might want to take a breath.”
“I’m always pale, Zan. I’m a darkling.” I was thoroughly embarrassed when I heard how high my voice had gotten. Clearing my throat, I tried again. “Don’t you own a car? I’m not getting on that thing!”
“Sure you are.”
I clapped my hand over my mouth to hold in my squeal of surprise when he swept me up and carried me over to the motorcycle. He dropped me onto the seat and was already climbing onto the bike in front of me when I tried to slide back off. His hand latched onto my knee to prevent my escape and his voice was very low and soothing—and dripping with compulsion—when he turned around to grin at me.
“Come on, Ember,” he purred. “Don’t you trust me?”
“No, not really,” I told him honestly, surprised when it seemed to make his smile grow even wider.
“Try.”
Without giving me another chance to protest, he cranked the bike. The roar of the engine revving up was jarring, and I could feel the power waiting to be unleashed beneath us. Something inside me, something reckless and wild, reacted to it.
Deciding a little adventure was exactly what I needed, I slid forward and wrapped my arms around Zan’s waist. I didn’t really trust him, but there was something about him. Maybe it was the fact that, unlike everyone else I knew, he wasn’t half-terrified of me. Our confrontation in my bedroom had shown me that, if it hadn’t really shown me anything else. Then again, it could have been the fact that he wasn’t looking at me like his dog just died. For whatever reason, I decided to trust him enough to get me from point A to point B in one piece.
“What are we waiting for?” I asked, returning his grin when he looked back at me over his shoulder.
Smiling, Zan turned back to the road. I winced when I heard a furious roar behind us as we took off and turned to see Nathan standing on the front lawn, glaring after us. Reminding myself that it was over, I faced forward again and watched the landscape fly by as we raced away.
Chapter 15: Traitorous Behavior
Three hours later, we were tucked into a dark booth in the loudest of Moonlight’s two bars. We hadn’t had any problems at the door, despite how young we might seem. A little compulsion and we were in. It was so simple it was scary.
To my surprise, I actually found myself starting to like Zan as he told me stories about his very long, very colorful, life. I started to wonder, after a while, if I had misjudged him. Oh, he was the bad boy type, there was no denying that. But he was also funny and really easy to talk to.
“So what happened?” I asked, choking on my laughter, when he stopped to toss back the shot he’d ordered. He’d been telling me the tale of when he got caught window shopping in a sheik’s harem, and I was dying to know how he had gotten out of it.
“One of his wives defended me,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve and laughing with me. “She begged him not to kill me, but he got really pissed when I started laughing at him and gave it a go, anyway.”
“And…?” I coaxed, stirring the drink he had ordered for me despite my protests.
I had already had more alcohol in the last three hours than I’d ever had in my life. Though I knew it took the edge off my hunger, I still didn’t think drinking so much was a good idea. Especially not with some strange vampire I didn’t even know.
“I bit her, right there in front of him.” When he saw my horrified expression, Zan just laughed again. “I didn’t kill her, Firecracker. She loved it. I had to show him what he was dealing with, though, didn’t I? You should have seen it, Ember. He ran away screaming like a little girl. I’ve gotta tell you, I didn’t know a man’s voice could hit notes that high.”
“You are so bad!” I told him, laughing and taking another sip of my drink.
“What can I say?” he shrugged, leaning b
ack in his chair and pinning me with a look I couldn’t quite decipher. “I like being a vampire, Ember. I’m not one of those ‘Oh, I’m a monster!’ vamps. I have accepted what I am, and I take advantage of every opportunity it offers me.”
I had never thought of it that way. It made sense when you stopped and thought about it. It was just like anything else in life. If you couldn’t change it, why not embrace it? It was really the only rational thing to do.
And someday, when I’d had a few hundred years to think about it, I might even be able to see it that way, too.
“How old are you, Zan?” I asked, truly curious.
“Five hundred and seven.” He smiled at me when I arched an eyebrow skeptically. There was something about him that just seemed so young. “I’ve loved every single day of it, too. I’ve seen things most people only dream of or read about. I’ve experienced everything life has to offer, and I don’t regret a single second.”
Was that what I had to look forward to? Would I be sitting across from someone in five hundred years telling them how awesome it had been? Somehow I couldn’t see it. Sure, immortality was fine for Zan, but I’d had something so much better than that, and I’d lost it.
I didn’t really think an eternity of longing for what Nathan and I had had was going to be all that great for me. Just doing it for a couple of months had already turned me into a bitter, sniping hag. Five hundred years? I shuddered to even think what I would be like by then.
“Okay, your turn,” Zan said, giving me a long look.
I shook my head. We had been playing our game all night, and I had run out of stories to tell him. He was five hundred, I was eighteen. How many stories did he think I had to tell?
“I’m all out,” I told him, holding my hands up shoulder height. “I’m afraid you have a few hundred years on me. I don’t have as many stories as you do.”
“Tell me about you and Nate. How did you meet?”
I frowned and started stirring my drink to avoid his gaze. With just one question, he had sucked all the fun out of the evening for me. Why did we have to talk about Nathan, anyway? Zan knew it was over for us—surely he’d caught that when he was eavesdropping earlier—so I really couldn’t see the sense in bringing up a subject that was painful for me and dissecting it to death.
“Are you the reason he came back from Spain?” Zan asked, prodding me in the direction he wanted me to go. “He just up and disappeared one day, said he had to do Shea a favor and would be back in a month. You were the favor, weren’t you?”
“Yeah, I guess I was,” I said softly, knowing he would hear me even over the pounding bass line of the song the DJ was playing. “Grams tricked him into coming to check on me back in October. It just kind of developed from there.”
If I had been hoping he would just take that and leave it alone, I was to be severely disappointed. He bugged me until I told him the whole story from beginning to end. About Jack and the demon he had been playing house for. About Nathan kidnapping me and making me fall in love with him. About all the ups and downs we’d had since then. Zan listened to every word, never taking his eyes from my face.
When I told him about waking up as a darkling, the way I’d felt when Nathan couldn’t even make himself look at me, I expected to see the same judgment in his eyes I’d seen earlier. Instead, I saw sympathy. And, in that moment, I knew we were going to be friends. He might be an ass most of the time, but I felt like he understood me in a weird way.
When I was finished, he just sat there, silently staring at me for a minute, and then tossed back another shot and slid off his seat. Holding his hand out to me, he nodded toward the dance floor and the crowd of people there, his eyebrows dancing up and down. Shrugging, I slipped my hand into his and let him drag me to the middle of the floor.
The way he moved was just…wow! It didn’t take long for us to get comfortable with each other, and after that I tried not to think anymore. For just a second, I wanted to let my worries and my anger go. I lost myself in the music instead, wishing I could stay there forever.
“You’re hungry, aren’t you?” Zan purred in my ear. When my head jerked up to meet his eyes, he just smiled. “I can see it in your eyes. They’re starting to get really light. I’m right, aren’t I? You’re hungry?”
“A little,” I admitted, sighing.
The party was officially over. I couldn’t be around all those people when I was hungry. I immediately held my breath so I wouldn’t smell the scents surrounding me and prayed no one tasty would catch my eye on the way out. It was easier than I thought it would be. I guess all my practicing to return to the world I had known, a world I no longer belonged to, had paid off.
“No need to hurry off, Firecracker,” Zan whispered. “I say we should have a little fun—and a snack.”
His eyes darted around the dance floor. When they stopped moving, zeroing in on a target I couldn’t see, I felt a sense of unease start to creep in. I knew I wasn’t going to like what he was thinking, the eager smile on his face would have told me that even if his eyes hadn’t started to glow ever so slightly. He smiled at me when he saw how nervous I was starting to get and then leaned down and whispered his next words against my ear, his lips brushing my earlobe.
“You have to try the real thing, Firecracker. If you don’t, you won’t know what you’re missing.”
The real thing? I turned and followed his gaze over my shoulder and saw that he was leering at a young woman, a thin, petite blonde. She was really pretty. Her white blonde hair curled around her pixie-like face, and the smile on her lips was extremely seductive. As I watched, she crooked her finger at him, the invitation in her eyes obvious. When I looked back up and saw that his eyes had lightened a little more, I knew exactly what he’d meant.
“No, Zan!”
In the next second, he was gone. He wrapped an arm around the blonde who had been stupid enough to invite him over for a drink and pulled her flush against him. He was so smooth about it that I was pretty sure I was the only one who saw him bite her. To anyone else it would just seem like he was kissing her neck, but I knew better.
I watched in disgusted fascination as her eyes went dreamy and her hand reached up to tangle in his hair, holding him closer. He lifted his eyes, pinning me in their glowing gaze, and the club around us disappeared. Suddenly, that girl’s aura was all I could see. It was a pretty pale amber in color, but what really got my attention was the light starting to swirl through it as Zan drank.
I forgot I wasn’t supposed to breathe and took a deep breath, just wanting to see what she would smell like. She smelled like summer. I know how odd that sounds, but that’s what she smelled like. Like warmth and cool water and lush, green plants. It was mouthwatering.
“No!” I moaned, tearing my eyes away and backing toward the exit. I saw Zan lift his head, his eyes full of dark challenge, just before I turned and ran.
I had to get out of there. Like someone had flipped a switch in my brain, suddenly all I could see was the auras of the people around me. The scents I had been able to block until that moment smothered me, cheering the beast inside me on.
I could see the back exit door beckoning me toward the safety of fresh, cold air and moved toward it at a dead run, knocking people out of my way as I went. If I could get outside, away from the crowd of people who had started to resemble an all-you-can-eat buffet, I might be able to hold on to my sanity.
I hit the door with a little too much force, sending it slamming back into the brick wall hard enough to warp the hinges. Closing my eyes, I bent over and braced my hands on my knees, gulping up the clean air like a drowning victim. Gradually, the hunger burning through my veins and the tearing pains in my stomach started to ease up enough for me to be able to think again.
“Sorry, Ember,” Zan said softly. His voice coming from behind me startled me, making me jump, but I didn’t turn around. “That was a cheap shot, I admit it. I just wanted to see you lose that amazing control of yours.”
�
�You did that on purpose?” I hissed, trying to remember why I shouldn’t just kill him. “You dick! I could have lost it and killed someone in there! Did you think of that? Do you know what happens to me if I kill someone? I become a full-fledged demon, you creep!”
I was afraid I would do something unfortunate if I looked at him. My fingers itched with the urge to claw his eyes out. How could he do that to me? And there I had been, thinking we might be friends. What a joke!
“You’re right,” he agreed with a sigh, “that was reckless of me. It’s okay, though, because I’ve thought of a much better way to get the reaction I want.”
I whirled around only to find him standing so close that I was forced to take a quick step away from him. He reached out and grabbed my arms, pulling me back slowly. There was a strange look in his eyes, and I suddenly wanted to get away from him more than anything.
“Whatever you’re thinking of doing, don’t!” I growled, trying to pull free of his hold.
“Oh, but I want to, Ember, and I always do what I want,” he crooned, releasing his hold on one of my arms and wrapping his hand around the back of my neck instead. “I’m not going to hurt you, Firecracker. I just want to see if you taste as good as you look.”
“Zan, don’t!” It was too late, though. His lips crushed mine in a kiss that should have been hot enough to light my socks on fire. Only, it wasn’t, because Zan wasn’t Nathan and never would be.
Oh, and because I had told the asshole no!
I jerked my knee up, feeling an immense amount of satisfaction when it made contact with its intended target. Zan howled in pain and released me, dropping to his knees and grabbing the wounded part of his anatomy with both hands. I took the opportunity to put a lot of distance between us.
“Touch me again, and I’ll do much worse than that!” I growled, letting him see the anger glowing in my eyes. “I mean it, Zan. Stay away from me.”
I heard an odd twanging sound as I turned to walk away and a terrible pain flared in my right shoulder. Crying out, I reached up to find out what had hit me. I gasped when I saw the shaft of an intricately carved arrow. Shocked, I broke it off and held it up to my face, ignoring the blood flowing down the sleeve of my jacket.