With a whoosh and a squeak, the kitchen door swung open. From where she sat on the floor, she couldn’t see who it was.
“Lena?”
Crap. Kos. He was the last one she wanted to see her tear streaked face. He would look at her with the same pity Zoey had, only worse, because he had the power to make her feel better, and he wouldn’t.
He rounded the corner of the counter and strode to the coffee pot without looking at her. Liquid swished into his cup. Normally, it was cute the way he liked to sniff it and carry around a warm mug cupped in his palms. But at the moment she cursed his un-vampirely habit. He lifted the mug and turned to look at her, pity already on his face. Clearly, he’d known she was there all along and had probably smelled her tears. She wanted to shout, I hate pity, but she clenched her teeth and swallowed the words instead.
“Le—”
“Kos, I’m fine.” She stood up and brushed off her hands.
His lopsided dimples appeared when he frowned, just like when he smiled. “What happened?”
“I was just telling Zoey how much I want to leave.”
He set the mug down. His frowny, pouty, pity look became hazier, and his eyes turned gray. “I’m doing my best.”
“I know. I’m grateful. It’s just…hard.”
Without warning, he pulled her into his arms, and pressed her face into his hard chest. In spite of herself, she relaxed into him and let his warmth soothe her aching heart. He stroked her hair.
Some of the tension melted from her shoulders, and she stepped back and leaned against the counter. He picked up his mug and looked at her, patiently waiting for an explanation.
God he was handsome. She wanted to trace his brows, slightly darker than his blond hair, and those red, kissable lips. Without thinking, she leaned toward him, then jerked back.
He tilted his head, pulling his eyebrows together.
She felt her face warm with a blush and turned to fiddle with the sponge in the kitchen sink. Long fingers wrapped around her shoulder, spinning her to face him. Then, those red lips were on hers without warning—soft, firm, sparking desire down her spine.
She parted her lips for more.
He did not.
Oh God. Pity kiss. She pulled away.
He reached for her. “Don’t—”
“Kos, I’m sorry.” She evaded him, spinning to face the counter. “I don’t know what came over me. Clearly, I’m extra emotional today. I’m really embarrassed.”
With her back to him, she sensed him watching and waiting. Finally, he gave up, with a sigh. He crossed to the door in a blink. “Zoey asked me to plan the menu for the party with you.”
Lena’s jumbled thoughts refused to straighten out. Shame heated her cheeks and made her brain pound. She shook her head, trying to follow what he’d said. “She did? I thought she wanted to do it?”
He hadn’t had a meal other than blood since Andre turned him into a vampire in the nineteenth century. Zoey had eaten a grilled cheese sandwich last week.
“She said she misses food and it will make her sad to plan a delicious menu she can’t enjoy.”
That didn’t make any sense. She’d just told Lena she didn’t miss food at all.
“Okay. When do you want to do it?”
“Would later this afternoon work?”
“I’ll be finished prepping for dinner around four.”
“I’ll meet you back here then.” He pushed the door. “Oh. I wanted to tell you that I’m going out on patrol with Bel’s crew tonight. So you’ll have the room to yourself. I need to get out. It’s making me antsy that we haven’t seen any sign of the Hunters.”
He wouldn’t meet her eye, and she didn’t believe him for a second. Clearly, he just wanted to get away from her.
She swallowed and forced herself to sound chipper. “That’s a good idea. I’m sure they’ll be glad for the help, if there’s any trouble.”
Then he was gone.
She touched her lips where he’d kissed her, and clenched her teeth behind her closed mouth. Damn Andre and Kos both, for treating her like an unwanted child. She would leave Kaštel and give her destiny one more chance. She owed it to herself, and to Nona.
Chapter 6
PEDRO WAS HUNGRY. He’d gone a whole week without blood, which was unheard of—a young vampire was supposed to be crazed with bloodlust. It began with an aching cold in his bones. His gut churned and growled around the gnawing hollow. He wouldn’t be able to stand it much longer.
If the wasting disease Andre and Kos had suffered felt anything like this, they were mas macho than he gave them credit for. He felt like mierdo, and he wasn’t wasting at all. He was just goddamn hungry.
A single bunch of purple-black grapes lay on the stainless steel countertop. Sweet and sharp, their fragrance made his mouth water—strange, since he could no longer eat them. It had been a good year for grapes: heavy rain in the winter and spring followed by a cool summer that spiked hot right at the end of the season. From the smell, he guessed this batch of Blood Vine would be excellent.
Andre strode into the workroom and came to stand next to him. Pedro squeezed one grape to see if the seeds would separate from the fruit’s flesh. Nope.
“Not ripe yet. I predict another week or two until harvest,” Andre said.
“Yeah, and the good news is, they’re ripening evenly.” For the fifteen years Pedro had worked with Andre, this was their constant challenge—Zinfandel grapes on a bunch tended to ripen at different times. “It will save us a lot of time if we don’t have to harvest by—”
A cramp in Pedro’s gut stole his breath. He’d hoped work would distract him from his hunger. No luck. His skin felt dry and tightly stretched over his body like too-small clothes. He spread the fingers on his hand to test the pulling sensation.
Andre shook his head. “You need to feed.”
“I’ll have more wine.”
“You have had enough wine. You need more blood. Newly turned vampires must feed once a day. I cannot believe you have made it this long.”
“I wasn’t hungry at first,” Pedro said.
“But you are now. You must feed.”
Problem was, his body only wanted blood from Lucas Bennett. Pedro had a legion of reasons to stay away from Lucas. Damn good reasons like betrayal, torture, a gratitude he resented, and oh yeah—lust. He was staying in the south wing, and Pedro hadn’t seen him in days. But every time the ex-Hunter’s scent hit him, he shuddered with desire, like an addict.
“I can’t feed,” he said.
“Of course you can.”
“I’m not hungry for anyone but Bennett. I can smell him everywhere in the house—he’s all I can think about.”
“I can smell him too and it puts me on edge, like a Hunter is waiting behind every corner.” Andre ground his teeth so loudly Pedro wanted to cover his ears. He would rather listen to nails on a chalkboard.
“You’re not hearing me, man. I can’t feed from anyone else.”
Andre dropped the bunch of grapes. “Have you tried?”
“Yeah. I tried with all the household women. Didn’t work. Kos is pretty sure it’s not a gay thing. But just in case, he took me to a bar in Guerneville last night—met two willing dudes. Still nothing. I was hungry and I could smell their blood, but my fangs wouldn’t come out to play.”
“I have never heard of this before.”
“Great, as if being a vampire didn’t make me enough of a freak, I’m a freaky vampire.”
Andre threw a grape at him. “So, Bennett then. He is your only option.”
“I don’t want to get that close to him.”
“Believe me, I understand. Feeding was salt in my wounds every time until Zoey came. Still, you must eat.”
Maybe Pedro was being a wimp. After all, Andre had survived the death of his first wife and the broken blood bond it caused. In some way that no one could fully explain to Pedro, Mila had been a living part of Andre and her death had torn him in half, body and soul, and
caused him decades of torment. Surely, by comparison, Pedro could handle feeding from Lucas, no matter how awkward it was.
Pedro allowed himself to imagine drawing near to Lucas—his body, his neck, his blood. Pedro’s muscles coiled under a wave of anger, his skin heated with shame, and blood pounded in his ears. He was a fucking wreck, emotions firing off one after another. The room spun, and he shuffled to a nearby stool.
“What will happen if I only drink Blood Vine?”
“You will not grow strong. It is not a good idea. You are on the soil where you were turned. This is where you will become powerful. If the Hunters come back and we are forced to flee, your exile will cause the wasting disease, just like Kos and me. And if we flee, we will not have Blood Vine to counteract it.”
“Mierda.”
“Tell me, son. What are you afraid of?”
“That I’ll lose control. That I’ll fuck him. Or kill him. Or both.”
“Davo,” Andre said.
Pedro winced. Andre always saved that curse for his worst moods. Apparently, it was some ancient half-Slavic, half-Latin accusation against the devil that two-thousand-year-old Andre, alone among living creatures, still said. With the harsh word, Andre had reassured Pedro he understood how royally screwed the new vampire was. Pedro would willingly accept that small comfort.
“Exactly.”
“Well, as your sire, I tell you it is unwise to kill your blood supply. Especially if he is the only one you can feed from.”
Pedro opened his mouth to point out the absurdity of advice so obvious, but caught the glint in Andre’s eye and swallowed the retort. They held each other’s gaze for a moment. In his cold, empty belly, Pedro felt a flare of heat—fatherly affection he’d known rarely from his human father. If he had to be a vampire, at least Andre was his father.
Andre clapped him on the shoulder and the moment was gone.
“News from Bel?” Pedro asked.
“He arrived in Los Angeles and will begin the research today. I hope for your sake he finds results fast. If he learns the secrets of Hunter blood, maybe he can cure your addiction to Lucas Bennett.”
“You think so?”
“I do not know. But if anyone can, it is Bel.”
Chapter 7
WITH TIME TO KILL and a laptop, Leo did what every other twenty-year-old guy would do—chats, email, porn, more of the same. Not just his email, but Kosjenic Marasović’s, which proved far more interesting than the half-ass flirtations he had going with girls at school.
Some vampire had responded to the ad for the cook—a bloodsucker named Mason Kearney wanted to hire her. And Leo wasn’t sure what to do about it. Even if he could find this Kearney’s address, he could hardly show up on a vampire’s doorstep solo.
He knocked on the truck trailer. “Okay in there?”
“Please let me go. My wife and my—”
“Chill out, man. I’m not going to hurt you.”
He wasn’t. He just hadn’t figured out how to get rid of the guy without having him come back with the cops. Next time he carjacked somebody, he’d think that part through better.
The abandoned garage was hot, but he couldn’t risk opening a door. There was a toilet which didn’t flush, making for a hell of a ripe stink. His mind bounced from idea to idea at the same speed he opened and closed windows on his computer, unable to focus on a game, an email, or a video for long. Unable to think straight at all, really, like he’d had a bunch of those super caffeinated sodas. Only, he hadn’t had one of those things.
A doubt whispered in his ear that he might be in over his head.
He forwarded the email to Ethan Bennett with a note explaining he’d hacked Marasović’s email. His finger hovered over the send button, and then he recalled Bennett’s words to the Hunters when Stephen Bennett had been killed. Ethan had been all fake-sad about his dad dying, and he promised to find all the deep, dark Hunter secrets before he took down Marasović himself.
Dude thought he was Jesus H. Christ for Hunters. Hey, maybe that’s what the “H” stood for. He’d always wondered. Leo opened another window to Google it, and his email to Bennett got buried on the screen.
Ethan leaned his hip against the doorframe, interested in observing Gwen’s reaction to the basement of his family home.
She scanned the room, rubbing her elfin chin. “Who are you?”
He had expected the question. Years ago, his father had the lower level equipped to preserve Hunter artifacts in museum-like conditions with temperature and humidity controls, as well as airtight cases for the objects that required them. Low filtered lights prevented damage to the ancient heirlooms.
“What do you mean?” Ethan plastered a show of puzzlement on his face. Very few people had private facilities like this, and especially not beneath an unassuming house in the Boston suburbs.
“Give me a break, Edwin.” Her accent added a certain charm to the colloquialism.
His real name formed on his lips, but he swallowed it. That kind of slip could ruin the best-laid plans.
Still, the more of the truth he told her, the more useful she would be. He rolled up his cuffs, settling in for a night of research. “My family is part of a Welsh tribe that has preserved its traditions and artifacts for centuries. I believe we originated somewhere in Central Asia and migrated across Europe.”
“Your name isn’t Welsh.”
“I’m descended from the Welsh community, and one in Eastern Europe.”
She flitted around the basement, looking inside each display case. Her focus was so intense that each time she bent over a glass cabinet, he longed to see inside it too. But watching her petite frame bend over the cases was also interesting. The climate control fan hummed in the otherwise silent room. She didn’t speak for ten minutes, and he was startled when her voice sounded over the droning air conditioner.
“Let me see this.” She pointed at a bronze brooch.
He held a ring of small keys, each one opening a different case. It had been his father’s idea of security. Ethan had pointed out that if all the keys were on the same ring, it wasn’t secure, just inconvenient. Yes, well—there was a reason his father was dead and he wasn’t. He would call the locksmith in the morning.
He opened the rear panel of the case. Tissue in hand, she reached inside to grasp the object. She held the brooch on her open palm and they bent their heads together to peer at it. For the life of him, he could not figure out why she had selected it from all the other objects. It was round and bronze, with a bull’s-eye pattern surrounded by a silver circlet, braided in a style similar to her ring.
“What is it?” he asked.
“A brooch.”
He ignored her sarcasm. “I’ve always believed this piece to be unremarkable.”
“Logical, but mistaken. You think your tribe migrated to the British Isles from Central Asia. When do you think this migration occurred?”
“Early Iron age. The third or fourth century before Christ.”
“There are many improbable things about that hypothesis, but the codex makes me curious and this brooch supports your theory. It’s a nazar.”
He rifled through his mind until he located the definition. “A charm for warding off the evil eye? Don’t those have blue irises?”
“Yes, except in your codex, there are people with golden eyes. This is a golden-eyed nazar. I’d place its origin farther west, in Turkey.”
“Are you certain?”
“No.” She didn’t elaborate, but continued to examine the artifact. Then she set it on top of the case and resumed her walk around the room. Minutes passed before she spoke again. “I am going to tell you something about the codex, in exchange for your honest answer to the following question. Do we have a deal?”
So this was how it would be between them—quid pro quo, all the way. Of course, there were other means to get information from her. He was skilled in them, and ever since Pedro had escaped, he had itched for another chance to use the sharp objects in his littl
e black bag. But he could not extract information she did not yet have, which meant he would have to wait for her to study his Hunter relics and feed her the history she wanted.
“Obviously, I can’t agree until I know the question.”
“Fair enough.” She trailed her hand along the cases, sauntering toward him. Much too close for his comfort, she stopped and tilted her face up. “What color are your eyes?”
He relaxed his cheeks and mouth to block an expression of surprise. “What a strange question. You can see for yourself that they are brown.”
How the hell had she guessed? He routinely hid his yellow eyes behind contact lenses. Disguised as Lovac, his were brown and he wore glasses.
He aimed for a casual tone. In order to convey emotion, he always had to determine the sentiment before he spoke. “What does my eye color have to do with anything?”
“Your codex is called, The Book of the Day.”
That got his attention. A title. “Tell me more.”
“That’s all you get.”
“Our agreement was that you would share your translation when you saw my artifacts.”
“I’ve changed my mind. There’s something you’re not telling me, and the translation is my leverage. Don’t bother looking for it, by the way. It’s not on my computer or written down anywhere in my belongings.” She tapped her temple with her index finger.
“I wouldn’t dream of intruding on your privacy.”
Damn, she was either incredibly suspicious or she saw right through him. Being seen was a curious prospect—highly unlikely, but strangely appealing.
“Of course you wouldn’t intrude. I’m simply taking every precaution. Will you show me to where I’ll be staying?”
“Certainly. Are you hungry? I can order in dinner.”
“Please. Chinese?”
“Fine. I know a decent place. What dishes do you like?”
“Oh, I’ll eat anything. The spicier the better.” She prattled off the names of her favorite dishes, and he struggled to understand them with her lilting accent.
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