He let go of my wrists. I let go of his lapels.
Perkins blinked at me. I blinked at Perkins.
To be fair, his was more of a do you know this psychopath? sort of blink, while mine was more of the there’s a psychopath behind me, isn’t there? variety.
The answer to both ocular interrogatives was, of course, a resounding yes.
“Liam,” I said, not taking my eyes off Perkins. “I would advise you against pointing a gun at this nice officer. He was just trying to help me.”
“Gun?” Liam asked. “What gun?”
To say I wasn’t prepared for what I saw when I turned around would be a staggering understatement.
Liam looked like hammered shit in the grittiest, dirtiest, panty-wettingest way possible.
He wore black.
From the tattered duster coat to threadbare slacks to a t-shirt peppered with holes. The body beneath was leaner than I remembered. All the better to emphasize musculature almost cruel in its unforgiving, razor-honed brutality.
His hair had grown long and wild. Onyx waves falling across his hollowed cheeks and past a jaw shadowed by a beard whose texture I already felt between my shoulder blades.
In a staring contest, the Devil himself would have looked away first. Which was pretty impressive, considering Liam had only one eye in the game. The other hid behind an eye patch, which seemed both the origin and terminus of a web of silvery scars.
“Miss me?” he asked.
I knew from the handful of words he had spoken that if I were to kiss him, he’d taste like whiskey and smoke.
“Liam, what are you doing here?”
“Protecting you.”
“Protecting me?” My attempts to keep my voice and face completely neutral failed miserably. “From what?”
Of all the evidence detailing how hard he’d lived since our parting, his smile was somehow worst of all. A devastating echo of what it once had been. A reminder of the charm that had relieved me of my virginity in a cheap motel room so long ago. He unleashed it upon me full tilt.
“Maybe you should ask your husband.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Husband?” Perkins cast me a sidelong look. “You’re married?”
Liam’s gaze burned into my face, daring me to acknowledge my attachment. Here. In front of him. To say the words.
“Yes, as a matter of fact. I am married.”
“I don’t see a ring,” Perkins said. “I checked.”
I reached into my pocket and slid the gopher-sized diamond over my knuckle. “Happy now?”
Perkins looked stricken. “But, you touched my badge.”
“She touches a lot of people’s badges.” Liam smirked at him. A rude, knowing slash cutting up the side of his face where the eye patch lived.
“You know that’s not true.” I had been a virgin when I met him, after all. And hadn’t slept with anyone other than my husband since.
Okay, there was that one time when I humped Adonis up against the bookshelf in my office, but I refuse to count it as I was under the influence of supernatural juju at the time and Crixus broke it up before either of us could get off.
If you didn’t come, it doesn’t count.
Crixus’s rule, not mine.
“Oh, I forgot.” Liam gestured as dramatically as he could while keeping his hand stuffed in one of the duster’s deep coat pockets. I suspected that, should I have a peek inside, I’d surely find his hand wrapped around a well-worn Smith & Wesson 1911. “You only touch someone’s badge if you want something. Otherwise, a guy would practically have to beg you to get his badge touched.”
“Maybe someone wouldn’t have had to beg to get his badge touched if he hadn’t abducted me at gunpoint!”
“You did that?” Perkins asked, looking equal parts fascinated and horrified.
“It was business.” Liam shrugged. “I’d been paid to bring her back to Stefano the Fathead and that’s what I did. You gotta do the job they pay you for. Isn’t that right, Perkins?”
Perkins opened his mouth to speak but I spoke first.
“Don’t you drag Perkins into this. If you could just acknowledge your responsibility for once, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“Well, I think—”
“Don’t interrupt, Perkins,” Liam said. “This isn’t about my not acknowledging responsibility. This is about you making men fall in love with you then ripping their hearts out their assholes as soon as you no longer need them. That’s what this is about.”
The more lengthy speech revealed something his previous statements had not: Liam was drunk. Very, very drunk. Glassy-eyed, wobbly-legged, moving with exaggerated care drunk.
Had this been a soap opera, I would have slapped him across the face and said something like “How dare you?” But seeing as we were bickering in a gym parking lot at the edge of a crime scene, I thought better of the theatrics.
“I think it’s best if we don’t talk when you’re like this,” I said.
“Like what?”
“Inebriated. Why don’t you wait until you’re sober and then we’ll talk?”
“That’s impossible,” he insisted.
“Why is that?”
“Because I’m never sober.” He held up a hand to Perkins, who failed to return his high five. “Party foul, Perkins.” Liam listed toward him like a flag in the wind. “You never leave a bro hanging. That’s basic human kindness for you. Speaking of which…” He rooted around in a pocket on the duster’s inner lining. Close to his chest. “Did you know that we’re not alone? That every second of every day, we’re sharing the planet with any number of supernatural fucktards who shuffle us around like meat hunks on a chessboard?”
“Will you excuse us, officer?” I grabbed Liam’s bicep and steered him toward my car. “I think we’ve taken up enough of your time for tonight.”
“Are you sure you’re okay to get him home?” Perkins asked.
“I’m sure I can manage. Say goodnight, Liam.”
“’Night, Liam!” Liam called overloud in his wake. “I hope you find the bastard who did this.”
When we were away from the crowd, I wheeled on him, shoving him squarely in the sternum with the heel of my hand. He stumbled backward into my car and caught himself.
“What the hell gives you the right to show up out of nowhere, insult me and jeopardize the confidentiality of the entire paranormal world?”
“I don’t give two fucks about the paranormal world. If it weren’t for those bastards, I’d still have a life. And you might be in it.”
The unexpected tenderness siphoned some steam from my tirade.
“Answer one question for me.”
“Eight inches,” Liam said without hesitation. “Don’t you remember?”
“Not that question. I want to know what you’re really doing here.”
“Keeping an eye on you.” He stepped closer, his shadow shrouding me like a cloak beneath the parking lot lights. “And I’m not the only one.”
Fear wriggled like a worm in my gut. “Who else is following me?”
Liam glanced over his shoulder at a scrubby hedge bordering one side of the parking lot. “Yo, Boris. Come on out. You’re not fooling anyone.”
The bushes shook and a white hand shot out, followed by a foot wearing an athletic sneaker, followed by a dark head.
“Is Vasili, not Boris.” His lightweight jacket snagged on the shrub’s branches as he extricated himself from the foliage. The scratches sustained on his cheek and hands knit back together while I watched.
“Is what Liam said true? Have you been following me?”
“No, no. Vasili was in area, so he decide—”
“To hide in bushes and spy on doctor?” Liam said, affecting an overblown version of Vasili’s accent.
Vasili looked
Liam over, a subtle hunger in his eyes when he reached the hit man’s scarred face. Perhaps imagining the open wounds that had once been there. “This man is pirate?”
“Hit man,” I corrected.
Vasili shook his head to indicate his non-comprehension.
“A man that’s paid to kill people.”
The young vampire actually sneered at Liam. “In my country, you starve. If you want someone dead, you do yourself.”
“Funny,” Liam said, lazily scratching his beard. “That didn’t stop you from accepting a fat pay-off to kill Doctor Schmidt here.”
“What?” I took a full step backward, suddenly feeling far too close to see the big picture. “Vasili, is this true?”
“This is lie!” Vasili insisted. “Vasili is not hired to kill Doctor Schmidt. He swears on lucky jock strap.” His right hand cupped his package while his left rose to the square as if he were standing before a jury. Never mind why he chose to wear a nut-cup outside of the ring.
“Then why is it you’ve been stalking her for the past week?” Liam insinuated himself between us, crowding the young vampire with his large, dark figure.
“Past week?” I looked Vasili over beneath the parking lot’s harsh overhead lights. Far above our heads, moths batted around like self-willed snowflakes. “But we only met today.”
“Ahh!” Vasili said, wagging an index finger. “But how pirate-man knows Vasili is following pretty doctor unless he too follows her?”
“Liam?” I pinned him with a pointed stare. “Is that true?”
Liam cleared his throat. “Not exactly.”
“Vasili sees him! Waiting outside apartment. Sniffing panties when he thinks no one watches.”
“Panties? What panties?”
“I don’t know what he’s talking about.” The indignation in his tone was perhaps a shade too emphatic for my liking.
“Then you show us what is in pocket.” Vasili indicated Liam’s duster with a jerk of his chin.
Liam’s eye skated to the blacktop. “I really don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Liam,” I said. “Show me what’s in your pocket.”
“What? Right here? In front of everyone?” If he was trying to distract me with the lascivious grin…it was only working a little.
“Your coat pocket,” I clarified.
“Actually, I should be going.” Liam made the mistake of attempting to bolt. Young yet in the undead world though he was, Vasili had clearly discovered use of his unnaturally fast reflexes. He’d managed to both shrug out of his pullover and run Liam down in the time it took me to blink.
There was a brief, violent struggle, by the end of which Vasili had forced Liam’s hand out of his pocket. Wadded in his fist was a silky blue scrap of fabric I recognized right away.
“My thong!” My gasp drew several alarmed glances from the surrounding crowd. “I thought I’d lost it!”
“You did,” Liam said. “I was just lucky enough to find it.” His face looked both hopeful and apologetic at the same time. A mixture that harpooned my heart with heavy regret.
“How he gets thong?” Vasili looked from me to Liam and back again. “You make the sex with pirate?” The comical expression of bewilderment on his face struck me as intensely endearing. I half wondered if he was a virgin, innocent as he seemed to be in matters of the flesh.
Vasili Voskoboynikov, the virgin vampire from Vladivostok.
It occurred to me as I cadged a closer look at the sizable guns Vasili had revealed in discarding his shirt that one could do worse than spending an afternoon remedying that situation. If indeed vampires could have sex. Which raised a question that had never come up—so to speak—among the vampires I had heretofore treated—how would one achieve an erection without a heartbeat, exactly? I filed the topic away for future research.
In a purely clinical capacity, of course.
“No,” I said, returning to the question at hand. “I do not make sex with pirate.”
“But she fucked a hit man once.” Liam shrugged his arm from Vasili’s grasp and skewered me with the heat of his dark gaze. “And she liked it.”
Vasili’s eyes fixed on my face as my cheeks filled with heated blood. “So you do make sex with pirate!” And then, to Liam, “she is taste delicious, yes?”
By the way Liam’s beard twitched, I suspected the muscles of his jaw were bunching. “You want to tell me how the fuck you know how she tastes?”
“No, no. You misunderstand Vasili. He is not make sex with doctor like everyone else.”
“Excuse me?” I folded my arms across my chest, as much to cover the missing buttons as to express indignation. “What do you mean by everyone else?”
“You make sex with pirate. You make sex with gladiator in office before Vasili comes—”
Now it was Liam’s turn to color. “You fucked that shit-for-brains ass-chaser in your office?”
“What I choose to do with my husband in the privacy of my office is none of your concern. Anyway,” I said, turning to Vasili, “how did you know that I, that we—“
“Hump like horny gorilla?” No doubt about it, if this kid ended up on my couch on a regular basis, English grammar would be a considerable part of his treatment plan. “Vasili, he can smell this when he comes into office.”
Liam grabbed a handful of Vasili’s tank top and jerked it toward him. “You didn’t answer my question, Boris.”
“He licked me,” I accused.
“Just mouth!” Vasili insisted, loosening Liam’s grip on his shirt. “I lick mouth only.”
I caught Liam’s hand as it dove inside his duster. “He’s a vampire,” I said. “Shooting him won’t do you any good.”
“I don’t care what he is. I’ll sleep better tonight if I put a bullet in him.” He strained against my grip but didn’t pull free.
“Is pirate sleep in car again tonight?”
If someone had swung a mallet directly at my chest, it might have hurt less. The image of Liam sprawled out—or worse, curled up—in the backseat of his car squeezed my heart in a relentless iron grip. “You’re sleeping in your car?”
Awareness of my touch on his skin crackled in his eyes. “You offering me somewhere else to sleep?”
Pain in my throat as it tightened. In the history of shitty ideas, Liam and Crixus sharing the same roof ranked right up there with the Roman General Varus marching his Legions into the Teutoberg Forest. “Liam, tell me why you’re here.”
“Because whether you want to believe it or not, that shit-weasel you’re married to is up to something. And I’m not going to stop until I find out what it is.”
“How do you know?”
“Can you think of any reason he’d be talking to Boris in the parking lot outside your building before he showed up in your office this afternoon?”
My scalp tingled with a thousand needles. Liam’s wrist fell out of my hand. “What?”
“Well?” Liam looked at Vasili. “Why don’t you tell her what you two were talking about?”
Vasili shifted uncomfortably on his sneakers and looked around the parking lot.
Over by the gym doors, the dude bros were growing restless. Casting suspicious looks in Vasili’s direction that suggested both jealousy of his supernatural physique and disgust at his clear distaste for the tanning bed.
“Vasili does not know what pirate talks about.”
Children are terrible liars.
They lack the ability to sync their facial features and body language to an artificially contrived agenda in real time. The young vampire before me, a child in his own respect, was no different. He twisted on the hook of his own guilt, looking anywhere but my eyes.
No matter how this conversation ended, I would be having another very soon. My husband had some explaining to do.
“This is why you’ve been fo
llowing me around? To protect me?”
“Yes.”
Liam’s capacity for deception was far more developed.
As was mine.
“You don’t need to do that anymore. Let me call around. I can find a place for you to go. At the very least, you’d be warm and fed.”
“And miserable.” His smile was small and sad. “If you’re not there.”
“Look, I understand you have some strong feelings—”
“They’re not just feelings. They’re memories. My head is full of images I can’t explain. Of you, and me, and HUUUURGGEHHBLEAARRGH!”
Vasili and I jumped back just in time to avoid the hot splatter at our feet.
“Is garlic!” Had there been a telephone pole in the immediate vicinity, Vasili might just have run up it. “He eats gar—hurrp.” He gagged mid-word and clapped his hand over his mouth as a dry heave hunched his massive shoulders.
Liam dropped to all fours and commenced horking his guts up in violent, back-arching spasms.
I leaned over, dropped a hand between his shoulder blades and held it there, unsure of what else to do.
“Is he okay?” A few people had fractured from the crowd of lookie-lous beyond the crime scene tape and wandered over to witness Liam’s gastrointestinal pyrotechnics.
“He’ll be all right.” For the first time, I realized that I had no idea whether this was true.
Finding no meat to pick over, the vultures took themselves elsewhere.
The spine beneath my palm felt knobbier than I remembered. I patted Liam’s back and murmured words of comfort until another searing flash of déjà vu shifted the asphalt beneath my feet.
Patting another back.
A smaller one.
Crooning similar phrases of comfort.
Liam’s words returned to me, pushing me further off kilter.
They’re not just feelings. They’re memories.
Déjà vu. Already seen.
I steadied myself against my car, waiting for the world to cease its reeling.
Having evicted all but his intestines themselves, Liam rocked back onto his heels and looked up at me. His violent retching had pushed tears into his visible eye. The iris glimmered like polished onyx in the day’s dying light.
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