by Liz Meldon
Kain, meanwhile, perched on her window ledge, her usual perch for watching post-work rush hour at the intersection below. It was on that very ledge she had talked to Kain over the phone all those months ago, on the night of the masquerade, when he’d told her to come out to the bar with him and the boys instead of sneaking into the ball.
Had he known? Delia frowned. Time and time again Kain had proved that the High Council put a lot of faith in him. He had known back then that the masquerade would be riddled with more vamps than anticipated. Did he also know that Claudia, every Harriswood hunter’s white whale, was a fake?
“Look, I’m really sorry for how things went down the other day,” Kain started, and Delia blinked out of her musings, busying herself with her nails. “I didn’t think they’d make you describe every detail of the night he bit you—”
“Did you know they had another job lined up for me?” She clenched her jaw briefly. “That they weren’t going to, you know, banish me or kill me because I let a vampire bite me?”
“Yes,” he said without missing a beat, “because Claude Grimm isn’t just some vamp. He’s a clan leader. Even if he isn’t central to this whole Donovan mess, any information you get from him has value. Lots of value, actually, given—”
“Given that he’s the regional king?” When he didn’t respond right away, Delia glanced up and found him studying her with a frown. “What? Do I actually know something you don’t?”
“Did he tell you that?”
“Obviously.”
“It’s an antiquated title,” he insisted, more fervently than necessary. Her eyes dropped to his fingers as he slowly spun his cigarette. With his coat bunched up beside him on the ledge and his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows, she could see the mishmash of tattoos up each forearm. She’d thought his whole vibe was so sexy when they first met: a dangerous vampire hunter with tattoos. Now they were a little faded and two of his fingertips were stained yellow from smoking.
After everything that had happened, what she’d thought was sexy before had lost its charm. And without the sex appeal, where exactly did Kain fit in her life anyway? She’d thought he was her support system after Claude bit her, but apparently she had been seeing things that weren’t there.
“It’s still a title he holds,” Delia stated, pleased with the way her words made him scowl. “I think he trusts the clans to govern themselves.”
“Well, fine job they’re doing,” he said with a scoff. “Rats hanging from the library? Humans butchered in the trades? Why doesn’t this self-professed king do something?”
“He—”
“Because, like the actual monarchy, his title is superficial. It doesn’t mean anything in this day and age, Delia. Even if he wanted to assert some authority, who’d listen to him?”
“Vamps are all about tradition,” she argued, the heat in her cheeks matching the colour suddenly flaming in his. “If their king puts his foot down, I’m sure they’d toe the line.”
“Then why hasn’t he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Isn’t that why you’re dating him?” he said flippantly. “So you actually know something?”
“Wow…” She pointed in the general direction of the door. “You can leave if you’re going to be an ass.”
“Alright, alright…” Kain slid off the ledge, hands up in surrender. “I’m sorry. I didn’t come here to fight about Claude fucking Grimm. But I don’t want you to get too wrapped up in his ridiculous title.”
“Thanks, I’ll try my best.” Sarcasm rolled off her as Delia continued to glare at him, until finally she broke the silence. “Why are you even here?”
“Just checking in,” Kain told her. “Seeing how things are with you after the date.”
“You read the report,” she fired back. “You should know.”
Kain slouched back on the ledge, looking a little defeated. “Delia…”
“Are you here asking me because you’re genuinely concerned, or because Wentworth doesn’t know me well enough to read between the lines yet?”
“Both?”
“Oh my god…” Delia stood and hurried into the kitchen. Once she was there, she wasn’t sure why she had marched in there besides needing a break from Kain, so she grabbed a can of Coke and a bag of chips, then meandered back into the living room, only to find her “guest” seated in her previous spot. Jaw clenched, she climbed onto the clothes-less arm of the couch and cracked open her drink.
“You’re a shit hostess,” he said with a smirk, one she didn’t return. Exhaling deeply, he faced her, one ankle crossed over his knee and an arm stretched out along the back of the couch. “Isn’t this what you always wanted? The High Council has a special interest in you. A secret operation they cooked up just for you. Even more established hunters would be jealous of that kind of attention. You should enjoy it.”
“They didn’t pick me because of my skills,” Delia told him flatly. After taking a noisy slurp of her drink, she set the can on the floor and broke open her bag of chips. “They chose me for circumstantial reasons.”
“Who cares?” Kain shoved his hand into the bag when she begrudgingly held it out to him, pulling out a huge handful of chips. “Prove ’em wrong. Show ’em what you’re made of. Write good reports. Dig up useful intel. I know you can impress them, Dels.”
Shoving a too-big chip in her mouth, Delia chewed thoughtfully for a moment. He had a point. This was an opportunity to prove herself—she just wished it had nothing to do with dating Claude Grimm.
“So, look, this is from Wentworth,” Kain said, shifting a little closer, “but is there anything you didn’t mention? You wrote a lot about clan history, which from what I understand was the assignment, but it didn’t feel personal. Kind of like you read up on it and wrote the report.” Delia swallowed hard, wincing when the pointed edge of a chip sliced its way down her throat, as Kain went on. “Is there anything else you got out of him? Anything about the Donovans in particular?”
She shrugged. “Not really. He’s made it pretty clear on multiple occasions that he doesn’t like discussing clan business. He calls it gossiping.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, Kain,” she said sharply, the line of questioning starting to reignite her temper, “I’m fucking sure. It might surprise you, but I can actually read pretty basic social cues.” Her eyes narrowed when he rolled his. “You know you guys are asking a lot, right? You’re basically twisting my arm into spying on a guy I have this weird history with.”
Weird romantic history at that.
“He’s not a guy, Dels, he’s—”
“I know, I know, clan leader and king of the—”
“He’s a vamp,” Kain said tersely. “Think of him as one the next time you go out with him.”
Difficult as it was, she tried to keep her face neutral, ignoring his patronizing tone to focus on what actually mattered to her. “So the High Council wants me to go on more dates?”
“Well, you didn’t exactly give them much that they don’t already know in this report,” Kain told her. “I think you’ll be getting an email sometime tonight about the next topic.”
She pressed her lips together to hide her sudden smile, but given the expression on Kain’s face, she wasn’t successful. Clearing her throat, Delia dug into the chip bag again. It didn’t matter that Kain was here and he was being an ass. She got to go out with Claude. That’s what mattered. “Oh darn. Go out on more dates with a gorgeous guy. Get taken to the finest restaurants. Drive around in his sexy car. Sucks to be me.”
Kain took a playful swipe at her leg, catching her with the tips of his fingers as she tried to dart out of the way. Both of them were smiling this time when their gazes met, though perhaps for different reasons. Delia slid off the armrest onto the couch, legs folded up against her chest and head leaning on the backrest.
“Dels, this is serious.” Kain took another handful of chips. “I mean, I know you don’t feel like the High Council values you,
but they’re testing you here. Try to do a good job.”
“Oh, thanks, Kain,” she drawled, pushing aside thoughts about her outfit for the next date. “No, I mean, I thought I’d fucking wing it and see what happens.”
“You know what I mean.” He broke a chip in half. Crumbs scattered onto her cushion. “Don’t get wrapped up in a guy like Claude Grimm.”
“You mean don’t fall for him?”
He shrugged, brushing the crumbs onto the floor. “Yeah, I guess.”
Somewhere outside, two cars had erupted in a honking battle, probably at the intersection down the street. As Kain looked back to the window, Delia bit her lower lip and set the chip bag aside. Even though she’d put on a front for Kain, the idea of more dates where she had to play the spy wasn’t exactly appealing.
More dates, on the other hand, more time with Claude, was. Maybe she could fake her way through those reports too. If the worst she got was a talking to from Kain, maybe she could actually do it: go on a date with a man who made her giddy and pride herself on being given a personal assignment from the High Council.
She wished she could talk to Kain about it, but it seemed that ship had long since sailed. Devin would be the ideal one to discuss her mess of personal and professional feelings with, but the fewer people within the League who knew she’d been bitten, the better.
“So, are we friends again or what?” Kain asked when the symphony of car horns finally died down. He poked at her leg, grinning. “I don’t like when you’re mad at me.”
“We were always friends, Kain,” she said with a slight shake of her head, though the words felt empty now. “But I haven’t forgiven you for what you’ve done. And I probably won’t.”
He’d lost his chance at a real friendship the second he ratted her out to the High Council. But if keeping Kain in her life meant she had an in with the men who controlled her career, then she’d keep him around. Gone were the bar nights. Gone was the flirty banter. Gone were the thoughts about how attractive he looked in workout gear. As far as Kain was concerned, Delia’s feelings had shifted to strictly professional.
“Guessing an afternoon quickie probably wouldn’t help with that, eh?”
She frowned at him, trying to gauge whether or not he was serious, but Delia got her answer when he flashed what she was knew to be his seductive grin. It usually worked best on her when she was drunk. In the daylight, it was sleazy.
“Go,” she ordered.
“Come on, Dels, I was only trying to lighten the mood…”
Taking him by his sleeve, Delia eventually managed to shove Kain out of her apartment. As soon as he was gone, a peaceful quiet descended, the emptiness curling around her like a welcome embrace. With a long sigh, exhaling all of the day’s stresses with it, Delia flopped back down on her couch and demolished the rest of her chips.
So they wanted her to date Claude Grimm again. Dig deeper. Get more information from him. There was no other way around it—Delia had to look at it as an opportunity. She suddenly had permission to spend time with a forbidden man and explore her feelings for him, and she had the High Council’s attention. She’d just have to get better at masking archive information in her reports.
Later that evening, as she drew herself a bath and powered down all her electronics, Delia vowed that by tomorrow morning, she would have figured out a way to both date Claude Grimm and work her way up through the League without dissolving into a frazzled, sleepless disaster like she’d done over the last couple of days.
When she eventually did, it was like finding nirvana.
Because once she gave herself permission to move forward, to brush aside the anxieties and fears and insecurities, Delia could actually enjoy herself.
*
Which was precisely what she did. In the weeks that followed, Delia dated the hell out of Claude Grimm and wrote lengthy, fluffy reports around the questions the High Council sent her. She drew information from the archives and padded it with watered-down drama from her reality TV favourites, knowing Don Wentworth wouldn’t share her taste in guilty pleasures. There were no more inquiries from Kain. No more meetings in the High Council’s disciplinary chambers. For the first time in her life, Delia got her cake and ate the absolute shit out of it too.
And for once, Delia was happy.
CHAPTER 13: Kiss in the Rain (Bucket List Item #3)
“Maybe you should stop being a hunter,” Claude mused as he glanced over his shoulder at her. A few feet behind, Delia paused on the crest of an unearthed tree root, arms out for balance, and frowned. The crunch of his feet on the forest floor, littered with the decay of fallen leaves, stopped, and the dark-haired vamp turned back, hands in the pockets of his charcoal-grey sweater.
“Why do you say that?” she asked, fingertips brushing the trunk of the nearby tree. He offered her what she could only describe as a kind smile, a patient one, the sort he used whenever she wasn’t quite getting it.
“Well, think about it,” he started as he took a few steps toward her. She looked up at the sound of a woodland creature skittering along the branches overhead—a squirrel, fatter than ever as winter approached. When she faced Claude again, that stupid smile was still there, and she reached out to push at his chest. The contact changed his expression for the better. “You’ve spent the last half an hour listing all your employee grievances about the League. You’ve worked there for years with no real upward mobility, nor have your superiors given so much as a hint that you might be going somewhere career-wise beyond this little secret project…”
She swallowed hard. It had sort of slipped out during her ranting that the High Council had finally offered her a better paying gig, but she clammed up before telling him it was all thanks to the bite mark he’d left on her throat. True to form, Claude hadn’t questioned it or pressed for more information. He always seemed happy to take whatever she would give, somehow.
Delia hadn’t been able to help herself. When Claude had asked her if she wanted to tell him about her experiences as a hunter, it was like he’d opened the floodgate to Rant Central. There were so few people in her life she could complain to, and most of them were hunters. They already knew the whole story, a few of them experiencing something similar. Claude was a fresh sounding board, a blank canvas on which she could paint her annoyances and spill her grievances.
“You’re young, Delia,” Claude told her with a soft sigh. “If you aren’t happy with your job, then you have all the time in the world to change it. Pursue another passion. Find something that you’re good at.”
“I’ve always thought this was what I would be good at,” she said weakly. A gentle gust of cold November wind rustled through the forest, rattling the empty branches and dragging her hair across her face. She combed it aside, scolding herself for not bringing a band to tie it back with.
Claude had only told her to dress comfortably—he hadn’t even slightly hinted they’d be going for a late afternoon hike through the more rugged and unkempt parts of his property. They’d been hiking for so long that she wasn’t even sure if they were within Harriswood limits anymore, but, for once, she didn’t mind. Forest walks weren’t usually her thing, but talking to Claude definitely was.
“Come now,” Claude said, reaching out and brushing a few of her rogue brown curls back where they belonged. Her skin warmed at even the slightest touch. “There must be something else you’re skilled at? Other career paths you might have considered?”
She shrugged and looked away, eyes wandering the wild terrain. There was no path to be seen. Claude simply led and Delia followed, not once concerned that he would get them lost.
“I didn’t really care much about school when I was in it,” she told him, “and everything else, all the stupid part-time, dirt-paying jobs, never held my interest. I don’t know. My aunt was a great hunter. She brought me into this life, pulled all the right strings to get me an interview with the recruiters, and I would feel like I failed her if I just up and left it.”
“You can’t do something for a living to please others,” he said. “Do it to please yourself. If you aren’t happy with what you’re doing, do something else. Surely you must have passions outside of hunting vampires?”
Her gaze drifted upward to the grey, overcast sky, the forest canopy all but gone. “I don’t know. I’ve never felt drawn toward anything. I don’t have a favourite band or movie or book. I can’t see myself doing anything else. I don’t think I have other passions.”
Besides eating and watching reality TV in bed, that is. Not exactly the passions of a mature adult. Oh, and jogging—but any thoughts of becoming some track superstar were dead and buried. Besides, she wanted to do something in life that actually gave her purpose.
“Perhaps,” Claude remarked, taking her hand and helping her off the thick exposed root, “you’ve just never tried. We all have passions. Some are hobbies, some turn into careers. Perhaps you’re so apathetic because you feel stuck in a place where you’re going nowhere.”
“I’m not apathetic,” she countered. Claude’s hand tightened around hers when she tried to tug it away, and they both grinned at one another as she fell back into her usual place by his side. “I’m… I don’t know. I fought really hard to prove myself when I first joined. Then more recruits started filtering in, better hunters than me, and now it feels I’ve just kind of faded into the background no matter what I do.”
“If it doesn’t make you happy, perhaps you shouldn’t do it.”
“But it does make me happy,” she argued, faltering, then muttered, “sometimes.”
The people she worked with made her happy. Her assignments, while usually mind-numbingly boring, gave her that sense of purpose she craved. But ever since she’d been assigned to spy on Claude, something had changed. League emails in her inbox gave her a rush of panic. Knowing that Wentworth wanted to see her made her physically queasy.