by Sierra Dean
“Daddy issues.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Daddy issues?” Holden’s fingers kneaded my knotted muscles in a most delectable fashion.
“Do you remember how you couldn’t figure out why Sig was always able to find me, even though he and I hadn’t shared blood? How he could get into my dreams?”
One of his fingers prodded me too sharply, and I gasped in pain. “You didn’t tell me he was in your dreams.”
Ignoring the obvious jealousy in his voice, I powered on, the ache of his touch still radiating over my collarbone. “As it turns out, I might have a little of his blood in me after all.”
I thought he might choke me, his hands clenched so hard.
“What does that mean?”
“In biblical terms?” Maybe not the best word choice since getting biblical was a euphemism for sex he was probably familiar with. “I don’t mean like that,” I quickly added.
“Secret, just tell me what you’re talking about.”
“Sig begat Theo.” I held up one finger then lifted a second. “Theo begat Sutherland.” Raising a third and final finger, I concluded, “Sutherland begat Secret.” Letting my hand drop, I angled my head back to look up at him. “Get it?”
“Let me get this straight…you and Sig are related.”
“Not related. We share a bloodline.”
“Which is literally the definition of being related.”
“Okay, maybe, but we’re not related the way Sutherland and I are. Or the way Mercy and I are.”
“But still related.” He looked downright gleeful.
I propped myself up on one elbow and stared at him. “You seem awfully happy about this.”
“You have no idea.” He leaned in and planted a kiss on my lips. It was brief, not passionate, and when he pulled back, he was still beaming like a Cheshire cat. “This is great news.”
“I’ve been lied to about my entire lineage, and that’s a positive thing?”
“Not for you, maybe. But for me.”
I scrunched my face up, getting into a cross-legged position and sitting so I faced him. When I figured out what he was giddy about, my gut response was to slap him, but I held back. “Oh God, Holden. Are you seriously grinning like an idiot because you think this takes Sig out of the running for a place in my bed?”
“Yes,” he replied without hesitation. I reconsidered my restraint and smacked him hard upside the head, but it didn’t rattle his smile.
“Sig has never been in my bed.”
“You’ve been in bed with Sig.”
“Ugh, that’s a gross use of semantics.” Since I couldn’t say I’ve never slept with him, I added, “I’ve never had sex with Sig.”
“Doesn’t mean he wasn’t trying.”
“You mean like you were trying?”
“I tried for seven years. I got there eventually.” He winked, like I’d find it charming.
“You’re lucky I love you, you stupid pervert.” I whacked him in the arm. “But you had nothing to worry about with Sig.”
“Sig gets what he wants. He wanted you.”
“Did it ever occur to you I didn’t want to be with him?”
“No. I’ve met him. I know him. At some point you would have wanted to be with him.”
I didn’t deny it outright because there’d been a time when I had wondered what it would be like to be with the Tribunal Leader. He did have an undeniable appeal to him. But above and beyond any attraction was my deep-seated terror of him. Whether or not we were related, my reasons for not sleeping with him existed long before. Sex was about trust, and though I trusted Sig as a leader, I wouldn’t leave my throat exposed to him in a dark alley.
And if I wouldn’t expose my throat, I sure as hell wouldn’t hike my skirt up for him.
Especially not now. Which seemed to be all Holden cared about right then.
“You thought I was going to sleep with him?”
He raised a shoulder, the smirking expression gone, replaced with something more apprehensive. I suspected he was realizing how his excitement might be interpreted from my side. Badly.
“Just because I slept with you and with Desmond doesn’t mean I’ll sleep with anyone.” I was unable to keep the hurt tone out of my voice.
“I’m sorry.”
“You really thought that?”
“I don’t know what to think. You keep me on the same leash as the dog. Neither of us know what you’re thinking, or who you’re choosing. If you won’t choose one of us, what’s to keep you from choosing someone else?”
I scrambled off the bed and put the full distance of the room between us. I didn’t want to be within arm’s reach because the urge to deck him was one thing, but I also had a habit of tangling limbs with him whenever I got mad.
“I thought you loved me,” I said quietly.
“I do.” He stayed sitting on the bed, but his gaze was locked on me, following as I paced the length of the room. “I’ve always loved you. I will love you as long as I live. That’s not the point. It’s not fair what you do to me and Desmond. I can’t speak for him, but I can tell you the last thing I want is more competition. A heart can only be divided so many times before the pieces stop feeling anything. How many times can yours be divided?”
I stopped pacing and stared at him. All the guilt that had come and gone like tides in the moonlight came swelling back over me now. I’d thought I was the only one feeling the burden of this three-way love affair, but now here was one point in the triangle telling me it injured him too.
“I don’t want to hurt either of you.”
“But you are. You’re hurting us, and you’re hurting yourself.”
There was a leather settee in one corner of the room, and I sat down, placing my face in my upturned palms. I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t choose between them, and I couldn’t give them up. I was stuck between having everything I wanted and having nothing at all, and I believed it was better to stay still than to take any risks.
“I can’t do this right now.”
“Fine.” He got to his feet and crouched in front of me, taking my hands in his so I had no choice but to look at him. “I’m not asking you to make a choice this second. I just want you to know why I’m relieved another option has been taken out of the running.”
Staring at him, I tried to decide if he was being cute or making a joke at my expense, but he seemed totally earnest. I let him hold my hands while he watched me. He had the eerie vampire ability to sit perfectly still, as if he’d been turned to stone, so sometimes it felt like I was looking at a statue version of Holden that didn’t breathe or move its eyes.
Not that Holden breathed on a normal day.
“Sig isn’t another option,” I assured him.
“Good.” He offered up a faint smile and squeezed my hands. “Good.”
“Are you really so unhappy?”
“It’s not that I’m unhappy. But I’d be much happier if I didn’t have to share you at all.”
“I imagine Desmond feels the same way.”
“Probably.”
I slid off the settee and straddled his lap, looping my arms lazily around his neck so I could get close enough to press my forehead against his. I liked the way his cool skin made my own seem warm by comparison. The way I felt when I was close to him was something I wouldn’t be able to give up easily. He made me believe I was safe even when I wasn’t. Like I could get through any situation.
Even this one.
“I promise you, when this is all over…Peyton, my mother, Sutherland…when it’s all done, we will talk. You, me and Desmond will sit down and figure this whole awful mess out. Okay?”
He supported my lower back with wide, strong palms, and leaned us towards the settee, his lips dangerously close to mine. “In the meantime, do you think you might relent on this silly celibacy mission you’re on?”
Given my position, it was impossible to ignore the rising presence of his erection, or the possessive way he
tightened his hands into fists on my shirt. If I waited a few more seconds, he might shred the garment and have his way with me on the floor.
It wouldn’t be the first time we hadn’t made it to a bed.
I weighed the options in my head. On the one hand, I wanted to be thoroughly consumed by him. I craved his bite more than almost anything, longing for the intoxicating thrill it gave me. And he’d mentioned we would be better able to sell our story if we were heard by others.
That was what made me push myself off him. Not the notion of selling our relationship, but the idea other people could hear us. I had no interest in turning my bedroom sessions into an audience event. The members of the West Coast council had no place in my relationships.
No matter how badly I wanted to end my three sexless months and put Holden and me out of our misery, it wasn’t the right moment.
“I’m sorry. I want to, but it’s not—”
He lifted me off the floor and backed me into the wall, rattling the large mirror beside us. With barely any effort he hoisted me up with one hand so I was once again positioned over his hardness. Briefly his eyes fluttered closed, and he stilled the hand that had gone to my throat.
“Holden.”
His fingers grazed the thin skin of my neck, and when he reopened his eyes, they’d gone black. For a fleeting moment I wondered if I should be afraid of him. Years of training to kill vampires made me wary of their black-eyed state because it usually meant they were about to rip your carotid artery out.
Holden wasn’t interested in a traditional feed though. He might want to bite me—hell, I wanted him to bite me too—but his interest was carnal in a different way.
“You want to,” he said, his voice harsh and raspy. “You said you wanted to.” He kissed my collarbone, and he must have heard the loud thump of my heartbeat because he lowered his ear to my chest and listened for a long time.
Which was when he seemed to understand why my heart was beating so fast.
He lowered me back to the floor and took several steps away, raking his fingers through his hair and looking completely disgusted with himself. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay.”
“You didn’t hurt me. I wouldn’t have let it get out of hand. And you’re right…I did say I wanted it. Just not here. Not like this.”
He sat on the bed, the blackness fading from his eyes as he continued to stare at me. I tried to smile, but I wasn’t feeling very smiley right then.
Maxime had a hell of a sense of timing, because he knocked quietly and opened the door, giving Holden and me a much-needed reprieve from the tension.
“Is it a bad time?” Max asked.
“No. Couldn’t be better,” I replied.
Chapter Fifteen
The West Coast vampires were more forward thinking than their East Coast counterparts in that they opted for a technologically advanced approach to collecting information. Back in New York I was convinced the council still thought computers were a passing fancy because very few of the wardens or sentries used them, and I doubted Sig or Juan Carlos had ever tried.
Maxime was carrying a sleek MacBook when he came into my room and took a seat in the center of the big leather couch. I sat on his right and beckoned for Holden to join us. Perhaps with his brother in the middle we might stop being so weird and he could potentially relax.
I wasn’t mad at Holden for what he’d done. I knew with absolute certainty he never would have forced me to do anything I didn’t want to do. There was a strong likelihood he hadn’t taken blood since his arrival in Los Angeles, and he’d been drinking. Vampires didn’t drink often because our metabolisms processed the alcohol too quickly, creating a near-instant buzz.
He was hungry and a bit drunk, and I’d sat on his lap after depriving him of sex for three months. I wasn’t trying to make excuses for his actions, but I wasn’t upset with him. My clothes were still intact, and he hadn’t done anything except pick me up and listen to my heartbeat.
Maybe I was making excuses.
I sighed and directed my attention back to Maxime and his laptop. I had to admit, I wasn’t terribly good with technology myself. My smartphone made me feel stupid, and the laptop I had at home was about three times thicker than this one and existed solely so I could update my iPod.
The couch sagged under Holden’s weight, and he looked at the screen with us.
Maxime had pulled up a black-and-white photo of a beautiful mansion surrounded by a copse of palm trees. He continued to flip through photos on the computer, showing the mansion getting larger and larger as more rooms and wings seemed to be added in each new photo. The color photos showed it to be a lovely near-yellow cream with burgundy accent tones.
“Nice house,” I said, still not sure why we were looking at it. “What does it have to do with Sutherland?”
“This is the Winchester Mansion in San Jose,” Maxime informed us.
“Winchester, like the rifles?” I asked.
“Precisely. It was constructed after the death of Mr. Winchester by his widow Sarah. She carried an incredible burden of guilt because she believed the ghosts of those killed by her husband’s rifles were haunting her. When she spoke to a psychic, the woman informed Sarah the only way to escape the spirits was to build a house and never stop.”
“Never stop building?” I stared at the thumbnail images on the screen of the ever-growing house, wondering what kind of madness would drive someone to do that.
“Yes. She had a construction team working on it night and day for over thirty years, until the time of her death.”
He opened a new folder, this one showing the house’s interior. Dozens of pictures went by, and at first the house seemed like a normal early-twentieth-century mansion, but as they went on, I began to question Sarah Winchester’s mental stability. It was one thing to take life advice from a psychic, but the house this woman had built was completely nuts.
There were staircases running into nothing, windows stuck into the middle of the floor, doors opening to flat walls, secret rooms with three doors in but only one door out. The house was crazy. Each wing appeared to have its own color theme, and Sarah had a peculiar penchant for the number thirteen, hiding it in the details almost everywhere.
Maxime began to show us detailed color photos of all the gorgeous stained glass, and while it was an interesting history lesson I finally had to ask again, “What does this have to do with Sutherland?”
My vampire valet continued to flip through photos of the windows. “Almost all the stained glass in Mrs. Winchester’s house was custom designed by Charles Tiffany himself.” He showed us pictures of lovely daisy designs and windows that would make a gothic church green with envy. “What most people don’t know about Tiffany is his passion for constructing stained glass has a very…unique history.”
Great. More history.
Being surrounded by those who had lived through historical events firsthand and could relate them back to me with more vivid detail than any book had made me less inclined to pay attention during a standard history lesson. But Maxime was trying to tell us something important, even if it was taking him forever to get to the point.
He continued. “Tiffany had a mistress. Not uncommon for his time.”
“Or ours,” Holden noted.
“True. But Tiffany’s mistress was special. She was a vampire.”
I raised an eyebrow and looked across Maxime to Holden. He shrugged, but he too appeared interested in this development.
“It seems his vampire mistress had a special longing for the sun. She missed it more than anything else from her human life, and she begged him to find a way to bring the sun back to her. They both knew she wasn’t able to see real sunlight again, so Tiffany tried to find a way to capture the sun for her. He started by designing lamps, hoping to convey the essence of sunlight through different colors and shapes.”
I thought of the lamps in Calliope’s mansion. My half-fairy/half-go
d guardian had an impressive collection of original Tiffany works lighting her waiting room, and I loved those lamps. I could see now how their creator had been inspired, and loved their jewellike glow all the more for it.
Artificial sunlight. What a genius idea. He must have loved his vampire mistress a great deal to set about making art like that for her. Judging by the expression on Holden’s face, he too was impressed by the lengths a human man had gone to for his vampire lover.
“While she loved the lamps, she still craved more. They were such a small offering compared to the greatness of day. So Tiffany began constructing work on a larger scale.”
Maxime opened the web browser and typed Tiffany ceiling into the Google search. An astonishing blue-green circular dome ceiling was the first thing he showed us, and it was so beautiful I wanted to reach out and touch it.
“This one is in a library in Chicago. Or, from what I gather, a former library, which is now a tourism office.” He shrugged as if it was hard to keep track of how buildings changed purpose over the years. Going back to the image search, he showed us literally hundreds of ceilings and windows Tiffany had designed.
“His vampire mistress loved them all, but nothing seemed to achieve his goal of bringing her the sunlight she desperately wanted. She grew sullen and dark as time went on. Meanwhile, Tiffany’s star was on the rise, and his designs became coveted by elite families across America. Including Sarah Winchester.”
Maxime went back to the files with images of the Winchester Mansion. He showed us several we’d already seen, but stopped on a small one set into an interior wall. It was patterned in pink and green, with thirteen crystals of various size mounted in it, appearing like dew drops caught in a spider web. It was incredible.
“This window was designed specifically for Sarah Winchester. Tiffany agonized over its construction, setting those crystals—which are actually prisms—in such a way they would take the sun’s light and cover the entire floor of a room with rainbows. He considered it one of his greatest achievements.”
“But…it’s inside the house.”