02 Blood Roses - Blackthorn

by Lindsay J. Pryor

  Caleb emerged minutes later, his blood-smattered grey shirt removed. In its place he wore a black one which he’d left unfastened, displaying every honed, hardened muscle of his bare chest. She could now see the tattoo that coiled around his neck was the aggressive upward curl of the tail of a scorpion that covered his right pec. On his flat stomach, slightly to the left, something Celtic spiralled down out of sight into his jeans. Jeans that sat low on his slender hips and revealed an inch of the black hip band of his underwear.

  The rush was exhilarating, the instant tension in her body making her short of breath. Feeling herself blush, she was grateful for the darkness.

  Feet now bare, he silently stepped over to the fireside chair and collected something from the mantelpiece before he sat down.

  Removing a cigarette, he returned the packet to the mantelpiece, his biceps flexing with the motion. He ignited the tip with the lighter he had used back in Jake’s room, before discarding that alongside the packet. The whole process was smooth and well-rehearsed – enigmatically captivating.

  Smoking was prohibited in Summerton along with every other pollution source, let alone because of the irrevocable damage it did to the smoker’s body as well as those nearby. It just wasn’t tolerated. But that didn’t matter to vampires. It had been proven that it had no effect on them. She remembered it was a clever argument used by anti-vampiric protesters to add weight to their argument that vampires were perfectly able to survive in pollution-riddled Blackthorn.

  She’d always thought it a detestable habit, but there was something mesmerising about the way Caleb had ignited the tip with easy precision, drawing attention to his strong hands and competent fingers. And when he exhaled a steady stream of smoke through those entrancing lips, she felt an uncomfortable rush that sickened her.

  She glanced back at the tattoo on his pec and wondered how many others he had marking that perfect, honed body. She silently berated herself but not more so than when he looped an arm around the wing of the chair, emphasising the strength in his biceps and forearms, his shirt gaping to reveal more of his smooth, sculpted chest.

  His hint of a smirk told her he’d noticed and she instantly averted her focus to the flames.

  ‘You’re very quiet,’ he said after a few painful moments.

  She kept her eyes on the fire, refusing to meet his gaze, the heat only exacerbating the sense of claustrophobia. ‘What’s there to say? I know you’re not going to let me go. Not now you know what I am.’

  ‘Then look me in the eye and swear you haven’t done a holding spell.’

  She glared back at him. ‘Look me in the eye and swear you’ll let my sister and me go.’

  It was only a slight smile but it was enough to make her stomach flip. ‘Whatever each of us claims, the other isn’t going to believe. I guess we both need to wait until dawn for the truth. And in the interim, we both know this is best kept pleasant.’

  She couldn’t help but glower at the hypocrisy of his rebuke. ‘As pleasant as charming my sister into deceiving me, forcing me into saving your brother, sticking needles in me and locking me in a freezing dungeon?’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll excuse my lack of hospitality under the circumstances.’

  ‘There’s no excuse for what you’re doing.’ She lifted the mug to her lips and took a steady-as-she-could sip as she stared back into the flames.

  In the corner of her eye, she saw him exhale another stream of smoke, his gaze, she could feel, still fixed on her as the fire crackled through the silence.

  She feigned an itch behind her ear, using the motion to pull her hair over her cheek as a barrier against his scrutiny. She shouldn’t have cared how she looked. It should have been the last thing that mattered, but she still found herself wondering what state she was in – not just from the ordeal but from days of sleepless nights and overworking, let alone the poor diet and worry of the last few weeks.

  She knew she should have been reassured by her unappealing appearance, not ashamed. But she knew it made no difference. It wasn’t the physicality of serryns that attracted their vampire victims, though the attractive ones were clearly the most successful. It was the temptation in a serryn’s eyes, the chemical balance that exuded from their blood that drew vampires in against their will. Once the charm was turned on, the vampire was helpless, whatever the serryn’s physical attributes.

  But she was not one of them. Never had been one of them. Never would be one of them.

  ‘Alisha tells me you work in a library,’ he said.

  ‘I collect, repair and restore old books.’

  ‘Very glamorous.’

  ‘I happen to like it.’

  ‘Not quite slaying vampires for a living though, is it?’

  ‘I told you – I have no interest in that.’

  ‘You’re a serryn – it’s all you have interest in.’

  ‘I’m an interpreter, that’s all.’

  ‘An interpreter with very bad blood.’

  ‘Which you gladly used against one of your own knowing the effect. Whatever Tay had done, he didn’t deserve that.’

  ‘That’s what intrigues me about you. You really didn’t like what you saw, did you – what your blood did to him? You should have enjoyed it. It’s what you’re about. It’s why you exist.’

  ‘You don’t know anything about me.’

  ‘I know how to get you to talk though, don’t I?’ he said, exhaling another stream of smoke, a playful glimmer in his eyes.

  She blushed at the directness of his gaze. She instantly broke from it, despite loathing the fact she had faltered. She lifted the mug to her lips and stared back into the flames in frustration, reluctantly absorbing the intensity of the silence.

  ‘How many vampires have you killed?’ he asked.

  ‘I haven’t killed any.’

  ‘Except Tay.’

  She glanced at him. ‘You killed him. Not me.’

  ‘There have been others though. You turned away as soon as I gave Tay your blood which meant you knew what was coming.’

  ‘Of course I knew what was coming.’

  ‘But if it was the first time, curiosity would have made you watch.’

  She looked back into his eyes – those darkly framed, stunning green eyes. ‘Why, how many serryns have you killed?’

  ‘Not enough.’ His eyes lingered coaxingly on hers. ‘Clearly.’ He exhaled another stream of smoke. ‘Never a latent though. I’ve yet to have that pleasure.’

  She frowned. ‘Makes you feel good, does it – torturing and murdering women who are victims of their blood type, stereotyped by your kind just because we’re a threat to you?’

  ‘Because you’re all just innocent victims to your nature, right?’ His vibrant green eyes emanated something between amusement and displeasure. ‘Remind you of anything?’

  She stared back into the flames, his perceptiveness doing little to help abate her tension. Just sitting there, the draw to him was compelling. Whatever it was about him, it was intensifying, only adding to her annoyance and unease.

  ‘An anti-vampiric protestor but an inactive serryn,’ he said. ‘How does that work exactly?’

  ‘Just because I don’t approve of you doesn’t mean I have to kill to make my point.’

  ‘And what point is that?’

  ‘What you really are – when you’re not hiding behind superfluous terminology.’

  ‘And what are we really?’

  She defiantly stared back into his penetrating gaze. ‘You’re the one who’s keeping us prisoners here even after we saved your brother’s life. Why don’t you tell me?’

  He almost smiled again. ‘No – you tell me.’

  ‘You want to rule us,’ she remarked. ‘That’s all you want. You’ve slipped down the power chain and you don’t like it.’

  ‘Is that what your magic books tell you? The propaganda of your forerunners?’

  ‘I don’t need to have read about you to see what’s right in front of my eyes.’

&n
bsp; ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘Proof of why the regulations are in place.’

  He frowned. ‘Dogmatic little thing, aren’t you?’

  She knew she’d already said too much. She looked back into the flames, trying to block out the intensity of his presence.

  ‘So do those books also tell you you’ve got to be the monster to chase your monsters?’ he asked. ‘How, to carry out your cause, you strip yourself of every iota of humanity whilst hypocritically hiding behind its mask?’

  She glanced back at him, but she wasn’t going to engage in the debate.

  ‘It doesn’t matter who the vampire is, what they’ve done, where they’re from,’ he added. ‘Male, female or child, your kind has only one objective – make us suffer for what we are. Because suffering is what it’s all about, isn’t it? Luring vampires to their deaths, tempting them to bite. You feed us your poison then sit back and watch our incurable agony, revelling in it and boasting of our torture. Because that’s what it is – hours, maybe even days of torture, depending on the dosage your kind has chosen. So don’t you look at me with that sanctimoniousness in your eyes.’

  Leila forced herself with every iota of willpower not to retreat. ‘How can you judge me when you just tortured and murdered one of your own? What kind of cold-hearted monster does that make you?’

  ‘A cold-hearted monster would have left him to suffer. A cold-hearted monster would have already brutalised and violated you in ways you can’t possibly conceive.’

  Her stomach flipped. ‘And what are you planning to do with me instead, Caleb? Kill me like the others? Use me as some kind of weapon against anyone who displeases you? Or are you just going to sell me to the highest bidder?’

  ‘Maybe I could just rent you out as my serryn whore – the ultimate vampire risk-ride.’

  She glared at him as indignation and fear fought each other for supremacy. ‘If I’m half as dangerous as you claim, why are you even in here talking to me?’

  The glimmer of amusement in his eyes irritated her, his self-assurance annoyingly alluring. ‘Don’t fret. I’ve never been tempted to take a bite out of one of your kind yet.’

  ‘And what about Jake? The reason I’m here in the first place is seemingly because of his lack of self-control.’

  ‘Don’t you concern yourself with Jake.’

  ‘But I will concern myself with my sister.’

  ‘I know you’re struggling to get your head around this, but Jake’s not doing anything against Alisha’s will.’

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that.’

  ‘Know every part of her, do you, Leila? Just like you knew she was here? Alisha knows what she’s got herself into, and my brother has made her no false promises. What they choose to do is up to them.’

  ‘I’m here because he was with another woman,’ she reminded him.

  ‘Another woman he fed on with Alisha’s full knowledge.’

  ‘And she just nods and agrees because she’s too infatuated with him to see him for what he is.’

  ‘He likes variety in his feeding and he sleeps around, but Alisha’s the only one who gets through the door. She can walk away any time she wants.’

  ‘We both know that’s not true. Not anymore. And that’s why I don’t want Alisha to know about me.’

  Not that Alisha would even know what he meant if he told her that her sister was a serryn. Sophie would. They’d had an awkward conversation about it a few years before. After Sophie came home with news that she’d found out a vampire was responsible for what had happened to their mother, it was all she’d talked about for months. She was convinced the killer was still on the loose. The Vampire Intervention Unit had never found out who was responsible and the case had been closed. It had been the first of its kind in Midtown and had raised a lot of questions that the authorities wanted brushed under the carpet. Fortunately so had her grandfather. No witnesses had ever come forward. They couldn’t – she was the only one. She and her grandfather, who had turned up in less than half an hour when she’d used her mother’s phone to call him. A half an hour in the darkness having dragged her mother beside the dumpster, huddling into her lifeless body as she waited.

  From the moment she was old enough, Sophie had been determined to track down who was responsible. She wanted to know every way possible to kill vampires. And, inevitably, during her research, she’d come across references to serryns.

  How she’d kept her mouth shut when Sophie had probed her for information, Leila wasn’t sure, but she had. She remembered even now her pulse racing, her palms turning clammy as she’d been on the verge of confessing all. But she’d had to remind herself what her grandfather had said – it would put both of her sisters in danger. One mention of what she was outside of the four walls, and they would all be at threat.

  And here they were – Sophie no doubt on her vampire vengeance mission and Alisha embroiled with one of the things. If she’d told them both, maybe neither of them would have been at risk. Instead, her aim to protect them had ironically evoked the very opposite.

  ‘Worried about how she might react?’ Caleb asked.

  ‘It’ll only create conflict and it’s a complication that isn’t needed before dawn. If she finds out what I am, and she works out you knew, she’s going to be on you for answers. It’s best if we keep it to ourselves. The simpler this is, then the better all round.’

  ‘I’m not going to argue with that.’

  ‘Good,’ she said, a little taken aback by his acquiescence.

  ‘Fine,’ he responded.

  Her toes gripped the rug as she studied his eyes, trying to work out what was going on behind them; trying to work out what to say next whilst he purposely left her faltering.

  Unable to handle the proximity anymore, she placed her coffee on the floor and stood. She needed to get away from him, where she could breathe again and forge some safe distance. She expected him to tell her to resume her seat, but he didn’t. She strolled to the periphery of the room, starting at the books nearest the door. ‘And I suppose I’m in here to keep Alisha and me apart?’

  ‘That and the unhealthy shade of blue you were turning. Like I said, you’re not exactly dungeon material.’

  She glanced back at him. ‘Used it enough to know, have you? I thought your kind had moved on from all that torture and pain.’

  ‘You can’t believe everything you read.’

  She broke from the coaxing in his eyes and focused on the seventeenth-, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature that she passed: history, politics, military, legends. There was everything, from calligraphy to identifying trees, to philosophy. She ran her fingers over the leather, canvas and paper bindings, thriving on the energy of knowledge contained within. ‘Where did you get all of these?’

  ‘This place was a library before it became a club.’

  She glanced back at him too soon, she realised, not to mask the disapproval in her eyes. ‘You closed it down?’

  ‘It had shut down long before then. A fire had taken out the whole rear and left wing of the building. This is the only original part to remain.’

  ‘So the rest of the books were destroyed?’

  ‘A lot were. Some were stolen. Some were binned. Some got bought by collectors. I saved all the ones that remained when I bought the place. The rest are my own collection from over the years, particularly the first editions.’ He stood and cast his cigarette into the fire before taking his glass off the mantelpiece. He stepped in front of the fire, the amber glow of the backdrop darkening his outline, making him look even more intimidating.

  She lifted one of the small, leather-bound books from the shelf. She opened the first page to check out the publication date. 1898. She looked back across at him. ‘How old are you?’ she asked, surprising herself with her directness.

  ‘A lot older than you.’

  ‘I’m thirty-two,’ Leila declared, quickly realising she had said it with more pride than was warranted.

  ‘Like I sai
d,’ he replied, lifting the glass to his lips, the remains of the ice clinking against the glass, ‘a lot older than you.’

  She stopped at the far side of the table. Scanning the shelves, she reached out to take out another title. She searched the front of the book for the publication date. 1917. Another first edition. She felt a shudder of elation and tenderly turned through the first few almost-transparent pages before placing it carefully back on the shelf and reaching for another. The weighty botanical reference book felt phenomenal in her hands. After a quick scan, she placed it back on the shelf and reached for another. The value of the scarce books, far more than just in monetary terms, overwhelmed her as she stumbled upon title after title that her archive records had dictated were lost.

  But even in her absorption she sensed him approach behind her. She slotted the book back into place with clumsy hands and turned to face him just as he reached her side of the table. Bare feet silent on the wooden floor, his stealth only added to his sexiness, that predatory ease such a natural part of him.

  She tried so hard not to look back down at his chest as he stood leaning against the table, one hand loosely holding the edge. His candour as he stood almost half-naked in front of her was as intoxicating as the rest of him. To be that relaxed, to be that confident, to be that, quite frankly, territorial. And even from where he stood, almost six feet away, she could still pick up hints of the enticing, musky scent of his aftershave.

  ‘So is this your plan – to keep me in here until dawn?’ she asked.

  ‘You’re free to wander the penthouse.’

  ‘And see Alisha?’

  ‘Like you said, this is best kept simple.’

  She stepped backwards a little further along the bookcase – anything to create some distance, but not daring to turn her back on him.

  ‘Were you telling the truth when you said no one knows you’re here?’ he asked, lifting the glass to his lips.

  She frowned, feeling her defensiveness kick in. ‘Considering I was warned against telling the authorities, yes.’

  Not that she had anyone but the authorities to tell. The truth of her own isolation scraped through her. If she lost Alisha, she was totally and utterly alone. That was why she had acted so impulsively that night – that was the truth of why she had just gone straight there without a strategic plan. Like a parent diving in an icy river after their swept-away child, she had thought only to do what she could as quick as she could. But Caleb didn’t need to know how negligently impulsive she had been.