“Hai.” The man’s wrinkles all scrunched together as he frowned. “Only ever drink sake and then leave with someone. Never same person.”
Tristan realized the man might have thought Wren was a prostitute. Well, he didn’t seem to know anything that would help him anyway. Shame. Tristan thanked the old man again for the food and showed him out. He then returned to eat the hot meal the man had left him, contemplating how he was going find Xuejiao if he knew nothing about her or her captive.
After his meal, he inspected the room he’d been previously locked in, Wren’s daylight-proof closet. There was no handle and he still didn’t know how it’d been open for him when he awoke. Not to mention his handcuffs were off too. A cold feeling settled in his belly. He didn’t really want to think on it too closely, because if it had been what he was starting to suspect, then that could mean a whole world of trouble for him and Ash. The last thing he needed was a fucking shinigami following them around on top of everything else. If anything, he prayed it had been Lilith’s intervention—but then, didn’t he always say his luck was shit?
By the time he wandered back towards the bedroom he’d been sleeping in, he started to feel better. The food was a warm weight in his belly, a new strength in his veins. His head was clearer and though he was still tired, he wasn’t dead on his feet. Good thing too, since he had work to do.
This was his first real hunt alone, and never before did he have to dig up clues to locate his target. Even when Ash was taken in Greece, he had Mamoru’s level thinking and experience to guide him. And no matter what the man said, there was no trusting Desmond. Or believing in him. Tristan was on his own as far as he was concerned.
He spent the rest of the day, bleeding into the late afternoon, investigating. He started with a thorough go-over of Wren’s place. And found nothing. Not a single photo or keepsake, nothing that gave any indication that a person lived here. It was just a room, a place to sleep, nothing more. The man’s apparent lonely life let Tristan stop for a moment and think about Ash, wondering how she was handling the knowledge that he was out of reach. Maybe he’d get lucky and she’d show up.
Sparked by the small hope of seeing Ash soon, Tristan went out and spent a great deal of time wandering the town. He tasted their foods, shopped their wares and talked to them. He was never a big people person, but had no problem striking up a conversation with complete strangers. The language barrier did make it a bit more difficult and he found himself stumbling through more Japanese than he’d ever attempted to speak before.
Dressed in fresh clothes and feeling dizzy again, he was seated in the old man’s izakaya, waiting on the light dinner he ordered when he felt the flop in his belly. The back of his neck itched and he knew exactly who it was before they’d even gotten in past the door.
“Find anythin’ then?”
Tristan sighed as Desmond’s hulking weight made the natural wood stool next to his creak. Tristan didn’t have the money on him to pay for it if the big vampire broke it.
“No.” The fact was, he hated that he was so bad at this. Sure, he had moral issue with what he did now as his “living”, or whatever, but if he was going to do it, he at least should have been better than suck at it.
He turned his head to the side, cheek resting on his clasped hands. “Is there anything you can tell me about Wren? Maybe a place here he used to like, a favorite… um, type he liked to hunt or, erm, other? Maybe something about Xuejiao? Anything to help us find them?”
Desmond frowned at him and looked away. He caught the attention of the old izakaya owner’s son and ordered himself a drink.
“No,” Desmond said, sounding a bit bruised.
“Come on, man, don’t be like that. What? You think I actually give a shit? That I’ll use the info you tell me against you somehow? Jesus, just what kind of person do you think I am?”
Desmond only glared at him in a side-glance.
Tristan suddenly smiled and leaned in real close. He felt the room react to that little gesture since everyone was noticing the two big foreign men. “Or are you afraid of me falling for you?”
Desmond’s green eyes widened, his mouth dropping open. The stunned silence lasted only a few tense seconds and then the vampire burst into laughter. He laughed so hard, a few of the closer patrons, including the owner’s son as he tried to pour drinks, started to giggle.
The vampire slapped Tristan on the back with a big hand, nearly knocking the wind from him and mumbled something in a language Tristan didn’t know.
“Right then, when yew put it that wey.” Desmond took his drink from the son and sighed as he sobered from his outburst. “In 1807 I was supposed tae be just passing through Edo. I found Wren pissed out of his bloody little mind in a local dive. Were his pain that drew me in.”
Desmond shifted on his stool, making it creak again. “Was fascinated by him and decided to take him, make him mine.” He stopped to sniff loudly. “Was me right as a Master, after all,” he added after a second’s hesitation as if to justify himself.
Desmond sighed into his drink before taking it all down in a big gulp. Tristan had the eerie and uncomfortable feeling that Desmond was dumbing down the story, taking all emotion out of it so that he wouldn’t see that under all that asshole, there was a real man with feelings.
“I had him that very night. Couldn’t help meself and started to turn him. We didn’t agree on words, but I went tae him again the following night and the next two. By the fourth, he was mine and I gave him what he needed to become like us.
“But, he didnae—I buried him and four nights passed and I was sure he failed to become what he was meant tae be, but then he rose and was a vampire. And he was bloody glorious.”
Desmond grunted. “He hated me. Was a beautiful thing, all that hate in his eyes. He stayed with me, but the hate—The next hundred or so years… they were a little rough, aye. Until it all came to a crux. We fought, more or less, and he left. After our parting, he ran off with another vampire. A child vampire. I found them at a kitsune shrine.”
Tristan made a little noise of surprise, drawing Desmond’s attention to him.
“Aye, the very same.”
“He was trying to call Xuejiao out, wasn’t he—er, Wren. That’s why he was at the shrine. He was trying to get her attention, not piss off the kitsune.”
Desmond looked away and held up his glass to order another drink. “Always the bleedin’ sentimentalist.”
Tristan held back a scowl. “Do you think he would try to stop her on his own? Even knowing it’s completely futile?”
“Mebbe.”
The two men fell into silence, both going over their own private thoughts. He couldn’t put it in words, but Tristan had this need to save Wren. Sure, his main mission was the stop Xuejiao, but saving Wren was important too. Maybe Lilith’s joke to Ash about them being fast friends was more of an insight. Maybe there was hope for life after Xuejiao.
“Well,” Tristan finally said, “I think the first place we should go is the shrine then. I doubt they’ll be there but it doesn’t hurt to look. We can go by your place too and pick up Yuki and Ash… I think we’ll need them. More pointy things too.”
Desmond looked at him through lowered lids, his bright green eyes darkened with his cynicism. “Xuejiao really has two seikonō then?”
Tristan huffed. “You saw that shit back at Wren’s place, you think I did that? I’m telling you, this girl, she’s dangerous. And super freaky. I mean, she’s all adorable and innocent seeming and then she pulls out her seikonō like that… Dude, she’s not right, telling me she was drowning those people just because she liked it.” But insane? No. He couldn’t call the girl crazy because she was perfectly logical, even if her morals were wrong.
“You’re afraid of a little girl.”
“Damned right I am,” Tristan said, pushing his empty dishes away and slipped off the stool. “She’s stronger than all of us put together with nothing silly like morals to stop her from acting.”
Desmo
nd grunted as he vacated his own stool. “We’ll bloody see ‘boot that.”
“Fine, don’t believe me, but I know what I felt. She was old, super old.”
Desmond considered him a moment, a tiny frown tugging at his mouth. “You can feel our age?”
“No, not age per say, but your… weight? I don’t know, it’s like a heaviness on my soul, if that makes any sense. I can tell how strong someone is by the weight of their presence. Like Innokentiy back in Greece, I—”
“Wait a bloody minute. Who?”
“Uh,” Tristan looked around as if there was actually someone around to pull the foot from his mouth. “No one.” Did Desmond really not know that Viking with them was Ash’s predecessor? Innokentiy wanted to be thought of as dead still…
“Bollocks, no one. Did you just say Innokentiy? He’s long dead, how do you know aboot him?”
Tristan took a step into Desmond to speak more softly, everyone was watching them openly now. “Don’t you remember? That Viking on Crete?” They hadn’t officially met, or whatever, that Tristan saw, but they were aware of each other while they fought off Genoveva on the island, lent each other a hand when needed.
Desmond’s eyes widened. “Crete?”
“You don’t remember… We—Crete?” Tristan asked carefully, watching Desmond closely for a reaction. “The fire and the pythia, Genoveva and Mamoru?”
The vampire stumbled back, reaching for something to catch himself, looking horrified and whispered, “Genoveva?”
Immediately Tristan understood what had happened. Yuki erased his mind of Greece, but why? What was it he saw or did that he wasn’t supposed to remember? As far as Tristan could tell, the vampire hadn’t done anything extraordinary… Well, except for calling up his kōmajutsu, umibozu, into the middle of a populated city. He’d never tell the guy, but that was fucking awesome.
Tristan reached out and grabbed Desmond’s thick bicep as if it were a perfectly natural thing to do. The vampire was too dazed to even notice and allowed himself to be guided back to the stool. Thinking they were going to be awhile, Tristan ordered them both another round of drinks.
“Do you remember being in Greece?”
Desmond flinched, looking at him. “Aye, that we do. Was there tae deliver Master’s message to your lot and then we all… came back home.”
Tristan frowned. “You… um, you don’t remember Mamoru or the cave with the mermaids were I nearly drowned… Fighting with umibozu on Crete to defeat Genoveva. Chrysanthe and Silas?”
“What are yew on aboot?” Desmond nearly shouted in his panic.
Tristan motioned for Desmond to calm down. “After you gave me Yuki’s message to come home, you say we—that Ash and I came back with you?”
“Yes!” The vampire was in a collected panic now. “I bloody well remember us three flying back together on Yuki’s plane after I found yew in yur room—who in the hell is Mamoru, Chrysanthe and Silas? And how in the name of God do you know about Genoveva and her Master?”
“Damn,” Tristan hissed under his breath, turning to put his back to the room, mindlessly reaching the drink that was being handed to him.
This was bad. Because if he believed everything Mamoru had told him, and he did, then what had happened to Desmond had nothing to do with vampire power. Wren had said as much too. So, the fact that Desmond’s memories were not merely locked away but altered with falsities pointed to a pythia. Someone spelled him to forget. Someone spelled him with a fake memory.
“Don’t freak out, but you’ve been spelled.”
The vampire looked at him a moment and then shouted, “What the fook do you mean, I’ve been sodding spelled?”
Tristan hissed, grabbing Desmond’s arm. The vampire jerked from his hold, but Tristan leaned in to talk to the man in a low voice. “Look, a lot of shit went down in Greece. Ash was taken, I met another Uruwashi and an elf and pythia who were doing what they were told by this unseen person, the Professor who… The point is, I think, you saw something you weren’t supposed to. Maybe it happened before you arrived on Crete, but after Ash took care of Genoveva, you made a hasty retreat, so I don’t know what was up your ass, only that we didn’t see you again until the night after when we burned and buried Mamoru. You left, we assumed, for home right after that.”
Desmond blinked at him a minute in shock before whispering, “There was another like you?”
Tristan relaxed, dropping his shoulders now that Desmond wasn’t freaking out on him. “No, not like me—not like me, at all. A real Uruwashi, no halfsies bullshit. Full Uruwashi.”
Desmond’s white brow knotted. “You’re not a full Uruwashi?”
Silently cringing to himself, Tristan shook his head. He wondered how much Desmond even knew before he’d been spelled and what was telling him too much. “Ash figured it out in France.”
“How?”
“My blood. She said it tasted wrong.”
Desmond only frowned at him.
Tristan sighed, looking away. He really didn’t want to have this conversation with Desmond. How could he explain what he was when he didn’t know himself. “We need to get going.”
The vampire snorted but was smiling. “Damn that woman for teaching yew to block yur mind.”
A slow smile curled his lips. “Come on.”
The vampire only grunted in answer and shoved his hands into his pockets as he led the way to the car. Pedestrian traffic was light due to the snow, and despite their appearance, the two men went nearly unnoticed. But that didn’t mean Desmond didn’t notice them, the residents of this place, the humans. It put Tristan on edge.
“Desmond?” Tristan questioned uneasily. He was noticing the same kid as the vampire at his side. He could practically feel Desmond salivating over the young man.
“Just a quick bite tae sup. Need some juice, aye.”
He couldn’t remember making a conscious decision to touch the vampire, but when he took a moment to stop and think, he realized he was holding the man’s arm, keeping him in place. The fingers of his free hand tingled to pull his gun, but he knew better than to turn up the violence just yet.
“Just a minute.”
“Don’t get yurself in a tissy now. Won’t kill the wee bairn, just a taste. Best to be at me top if we run into the wee bairn, don’t yew think?”
Tristan considered him a moment before letting him go and taking a step back. “Fine, but I’m watching you.”
This sent Desmond into a fit of laughter so that the boy he’d been watching flinched and looked back over his shoulder. “Give me a bleedin’ break.”
The vampire was still laughing as he walked away. Tristan hovered close behind, not really making it a conscious decision. He realized that this was the first time he’d ever watched a vampire feed on a victim that wasn’t another vampire or meant to die.
Desmond’s arrogant strut turned into a stumbled jig. It was almost too low to be heard, but the vampire was humming, something familiar, and Tristan was captivated with how quickly the agile vampire turned into a drunk, just like that. And the boy, he was falling for the farce as he turned now to grab the larger man when he faked a trip.
The vampire’s arm went smoothly around the boy’s shoulders and Desmond lowered his face to the boy’s ear. Whatever he was whispering reached Tristan in a tendril of luscious emotion, made him shiver and bite his lip to hold back a sigh.
He was backing up when suddenly he felt the sting of Desmond’s teeth as if it were on his own neck and he moaned aloud, hand going to his neck. He stumbled when the teeth withdrew and collapsed back against the side of a building, unable to stand on his own.
“Oh god,” he whispered and shut his eyes as he felt the tug on his middle. Everything inside him was warm and tingling, reaching for his groin. He hated it as much as he wanted to give in to it.
He managed to rally and righted himself, moving towards the vampire. But before he could grab Desmond and pull him away from the boy, the vampire willingly withdrew, cutting of
f all sensation with a shocking abruptness. He arranged the boy in the doorway of a home, adjusting his jacket closed over him and withdrew with a cheesy smile.
Tristan glared for a moment, taking in Desmond’s ruddy appearance before following after him. The vampire had let him, no, made him feel that experience. He was rubbing it in Tristan’s face, what it was like to be bitten.
“You’re a real son of a bitch, you know that?”
Desmond’s laugh was warm and touched Tristan. “Aye.”
The ride back to the shrine started off nice enough. The entire trip Desmond managed to not speak a single word. Unfortunately, that didn’t mean he couldn’t still bother Tristan. The more agitated the vampire grew with his own inner tumult, the more Tristan could feel his presence and being confined in the small car with him, well, it wasn’t ideal, especially after the feeding incident.
“What are you going to do about Wren?” Tristan asked in a gravelly voice as Desmond pulled in through the first torii. The tracks they made last night were smoothed over with fresh snow that had fallen earlier in the day, but it didn’t add more than an inch to the total.
“What do yew mean, what am I going to do ‘boot him?”
“I mean,” Tristan said, turning in the seat to face the vampire. “If he’s here, are you going to try and kill him?”
Desmond was silent for a long time. He glanced at Tristan, his expression masked. “Why do yew care?”
Tristan took a moment to poke at his mental barrier, to make sure it was still in place. Solid. “He hasn’t done anything wrong.”
Desmond snorted. “So your job is now to protect vampires? What a fooking farce.”
“No, but I don’t believe in murder.”
This sent the vampire into a fit of uncontrollable laughter so bad he had to stop the car just to keep from crashing.
“Bloody right yew don’t.”
Tristan furrowed his brow. “I—I don’t have to explain myself to you. Just don’t kill Wren. You got it?”
“Bloody hypocrites,” the vampire muttered under his breath as he started the car moving again. “Can’t stand bloody hypocrites.”
White Lies: (The Uruwashi Series #4) Page 17