by Tami Lund
“Why do I put up with you?” Luther asked Selina.
She trailed a finger along the lapel of his suit, down until she circled the bulge in his crotch. “Because I bring everything I learn from those interactions to our bedroom.”
He pushed her hand away. “No, it’s because I’ve deluded myself into believing I love you. I hope you treat Camden with far more respect.” He gave me a stern look. I nodded enthusiastically, as if he were my father and I wanted to please him.
Cam’s arm abruptly pulled away from my waist, and I glanced to the side in time to see him charge through the crowd of vampires, chasing Hollis, who had apparently decided now was a good time to make his escape. With a growl, he took a flying leap and landed on Hollis’s back, dropping him to his knees.
Hollis wasn’t about to give up without a fight, though. “You bastard. I’m sick of you ruining my life. Chicago should be mine. You’re gonna meet the true death, and then I’m taking over this city, whether your maker allows it or not.”
He grabbed Cam’s head, but Cam twisted out of his grip. And then a knife was in Hollis’s hand. He lashed out, catching Cam and leaving a welling red slash across his cheek. Cam punched him, whipping Hollis’s head to the side as spittle flew from his mouth. The knife moved with lightning speed, leaving trails of blood everywhere it touched Cam’s body.
“Why aren’t you doing something?” I turned to Selina and Luther.
Selina started as if she’d awakened from a trance. “Oh, right. Of course. Boys!” She clapped her hands. “Boys.” No one paid her any heed. Finally, she shouted, “Enough!” and once again, Cam and Hollis were paralyzed.
“Are all vampires able to do that?” I asked no one in particular.
“Nope,” Selina said, and she sauntered over to where Cam and Hollis were frozen in the act of attempting to punch each other.
She grabbed the front of Cam’s shirt, which somehow released the spell, and gave him a shove that sent him stumbling away from her, until he landed on his backside and sat there with his palms pressed to the industrial carpet.
She then turned to Hollis and twisted her hand in his hair, freeing him from his frozen position, and then she gave it a jerk hard enough to free more than a few strands from his head.
“Ow!”
Using his hair as leverage, she lifted him until he crouched before her, his hands covering hers, trying to ease her grip, no doubt.
“I’ve had it with you. Yes, you were a good fuck. A phenomenal fuck, truth be told. But the rest of your personality sucks. And I think it’s high time you were taught a lesson that just might alter your perception of yourself.”
“Let go.”
“No.” She turned her gaze to Luther. “I think a trip to New York is in order. What do you think?”
He glanced at Hollis, who continued to attempt to wiggle out of Selina’s grasp. “I think that’s a rather excellent idea, my dear. As soon as I help Cam get things settled here in Chicago, I’m happy to join you there.”
“Why don’t you go on with her?” Cam suggested, standing and making his way toward us. Although he was limping slightly, his wounds were healing even as I watched. “I can get things under control here. To be honest, I’d be more comfortable knowing you both were ensuring Hollis managed to get to New York and was securely detained there. I don’t think any of us want him to go unpunished this time.”
“Good idea,” Luther said.
“What’s in New York?” I asked.
Luther responded, “The oldest and strongest coven in the country. They have ways, ancient ways, to bring unruly vampires to heel.”
Hollis paled, even more than he already was. “Don’t you dare,” he warned.
“Don’t I dare what?” Selina said, her voice like ice. I shivered, and Cam wrapped his arm around my shoulder.
Hollis cowered. Apparently the relationship between maker and, er, made, was one of absolute power over the other.
“Are you sure you can handle the mess Hollis has created?” Luther asked Cam.
He nodded. Luther extended his hand, and they shook, clasping elbows instead of hands. And then Luther nodded at Selina, and she kept her hand twined in Hollis’s hair as she led him toward the exit. “I really do want to come back and buy that dress,” I heard her say before her voice trailed away into nothing.
Cam and I were left with a cluster of vampires who had once answered to Hollis but now apparently answered to him. I wasn’t sure; I had no idea how this whole vampire world worked.
“Do you want Peadar to take you back to my house? This will probably take a few hours to straighten out before I’m able to join you.”
I wasn’t ready to let him go. “I’m fine. I can wait.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. As long as you make it worth my time later.”
“Oh, I will most certainly do that. It’s a promise.”
“Well, hurry up then.”
Chapter 10
I should have taken him up on his offer.
Waiting around, trying not to get in the way while Cam went about managing the business side of being the Chicago Boss, or whatever the hell he was called, was actually pretty boring. And I hadn’t had much sleep in the last two days, so I was running on fumes by the time some guy called out my name.
I turned toward a man with a shining bald head and mocha skin, who stood there looking almost uncomfortable. Almost, but not quite, which led me to assume he was a vampire.
“You don’t know me, but you are so familiar to me,” he said, smiling a little. There was sadness in that smile.
“You know my sister?” Was this Parnell?
He shook his head. “Your aunt.”
“My … aunt?”
He offered his hand, and I shook it. “Name’s Spade. I met your Aunt Samantha shortly before she died. Cam told me what you think happened. Do you want to know the truth, from someone who was there?”
“You were there the night she was kidnapped?”
“No, not that night. But for several before then … yes.”
“Okay, now you really have to explain.”
He waved at a wooden bench situated outside the dressing rooms. I sat and he lowered himself onto the seat next to me. “You look so much like her. How old are you?”
“Twenty-one.”
Nodding, he said, “Samantha was twenty-five when we met. So beautiful.”
His eyes took on a far away look, and I patiently waited for him to continue.
“I’ve been here in Chicago for about ten years. Before that, I was living in Mexico, but I had been looking for a change. I had heard about the Chicago covens, that Cam ran a fair and honest business here, so I headed this way.
“Since I wasn’t in any hurry, I made a vacation of it. Traveled cross-country on my Harley. Drove by night, spent the days in local brothels or hotels that catered to vampires. Ended up spending two weeks in Dallas, actually, and considered staying there. But then I decided to continue on with my original plan, so I headed north, through Oklahoma.”
Where my aunt and uncle lived.
“It was spring. April. I remember setting out around dusk, and I stopped at about eleven to stretch my legs at this rinky-dink bar in some no-name town. She was sitting at the end of the counter, and the only seat was the one next to her. I bellied up, ordered a shot of tequila. Didn’t intend to talk to her. Humans in small towns, they aren’t always as open-minded about the concept of vampires as those in cities tend to be.”
“Tell me about it,” I muttered. Of course, this story he was telling was the reason my small-town family was so close-minded.
“After a few minutes, she said to me, ‘You aren’t from around here, are you?’ I said no, and she replied, ‘I am. Well, I live here anyway. Wish I didn’t, though.’ I didn’t say anything, just nodded. Then she said, ‘I’m supposed to be out with girlfriends, but I really just wanted to be alone tonight.’ I figured she’d stop talking after saying that, but apparently
, to Samantha, being alone meant carrying on a conversation with a complete stranger.” He smiled, like he was enjoying the memory.
“She started asking me questions, and soon we’re talking like old friends, and then we were flirting, and I was thinking that even though I just had a courtesan the night before in Dallas, maybe I was hungry again. She was certainly sending off all the right signals. But she abruptly slid off her barstool and told me she had to get home, and then she ran away like she was Cinderella or something.”
“That’s it? That’s your entire interaction with Aunt Samantha?” The way he acted, I had been certain they’d had an affair. Not to mention the bite marks I saw on her neck the morning she died.
“Not at all. I should have left, though. Should have gotten on my bike and kept going north. Who knows how things might have turned out? But I didn’t. I was so fascinated by Samantha that I hung around that town for the rest of the night then found an abandoned farmhouse with one of those underground tornado shelters, and I bunked down there for the day. As soon as the sun set again, I headed back to that bar and waited, hoping she’d show up. And she did.”
He paused, the silence stretching far longer than it should have in the middle of a story. I touched his arm. “What happened?”
“She was beat up. Bruises, a black eye, split lip. Ignoring everyone else in the place, she headed straight for me, slid onto the barstool next to me. I took one look at her and practically dragged her out back, where we could have some privacy. She said her husband beat her up.”
“What?”
Uncle Dirk beat up my Aunt Samantha? I hadn’t known him well; he’d actually gotten killed in a bar fight not too long after Aunt Samantha died. But I’d never heard a whisper of abuse. Surely, my dad, Samantha’s brother, would have known.
“That can’t be right,” I said.
“That’s what she told me. She was supposed to be home by a certain time, and she’d lost track talking to me, and that was her punishment. She said that wasn’t out of the ordinary, although usually he made sure the bruises were hidden or could be explained away by her telling people she’d fallen or injured herself accidentally in some way.
“I felt so bad for her, I kissed her, knowing my saliva would heal her wounds. When her lips were healed, I kissed her eye, the bruise on her cheek, the one on her shoulder. And then I went back to her lips. She didn’t stop me. Actually, she participated. We were pawing at each other like animals by the time I suggested she come to Chicago with me. I hardly knew the woman, yet I wanted to save her, give her a better life. Even if whatever lust was between us petered out, I knew she’d be better off away from that man.
“She said, ‘I can’t. Not right now. My brother and his family are coming to visit tomorrow. I haven’t seen them in so long, and I miss them so. But if you’ll wait a week, I’ll go with you.’ I was so enthralled by her, I would have waited a year at that point.”
“She was talking about me, my family. I was in kindergarten that year. We took a vacation to visit her during spring break.”
He nodded. “She was so excited to see you all.”
I studied his features for a moment. “Did she know you were a vampire?”
“Not at first. I told her when I kissed her. I think she was so relieved to be free of the pain and the injuries, she didn’t even care. She told me I was the first vampire she’d ever met, and if they were all like me, vampires sure were nicer than most humans she knew.”
“Like Cam says, there are good and bad humans as well as vampires.”
“She was one of the good ones. I wish I had taken her away that night anyway. She’d still be with us today if I had.”
I blinked rapidly to keep the tears at bay and squeezed my hands together in my lap. If only… “I still can’t believe my uncle beat her up.”
“He didn’t just beat on her. He killed her.”
Shaking my head, I said, “No. I was there the morning it happened. He was in the house with my dad. I saw the truck, the guys who pushed her out and then drove away. They had kidnapped her the night before, when she went out to the barn to check on the animals.”
“How come he didn’t say anything that night? Surely he noticed she never came to bed.”
“He said he fell asleep, didn’t even realize it until he woke up in the morning.”
Spade shook his head. “Lies.”
“How do I know you aren’t lying?”
“She told me about you. Her nieces, Anya and Abby. ‘They look just like me,’ she said. And her brother and his beautiful wife. You all lived in Illinois, your parents had taken over the family farm. You were happy. She wanted the life you all had.”
These were facts I hadn’t told Cam, so he hadn’t relayed them to Spade, but it wasn’t exactly information that couldn’t be found, thanks to the Internet.
“She called you Anya Banana, saying the ‘a’ so it rhymed with your name.”
Crap. Now that was a fact he wouldn’t have known without someone close to me telling him. “You really knew her?”
“I could have fallen in love with her, had your uncle not interfered.”
“I don’t understand. Why would he kill her? How? He was in the house with us. He called 9-1-1 when she was dumped in the front yard, bleeding and unconscious.”
“He found out about us.”
“But you didn’t do anything. I mean, besides talking in a bar and kissing, which you did to heal her. After he beat her up, I might add. Plus, you said you went out back, where no one would see you.”
He cast his gaze to his hands, loosely clasped in his lap. “We … did much more than that. That night, I took her to that old farmhouse. We made love. I drank from her. It was … exquisite.”
So many aspects of this story were hard for me to comprehend. My uncle abused my aunt. My aunt cheated on my uncle. And the kicker—my uncle killed my aunt.
All on top of the fact that the man my aunt cheated with was a vampire.
“I still don’t understand how you think he killed her.”
“Two days later, she came out to the old farmhouse. She was upset, shaking, crying. Said he found out about us. Someone saw us together and told him. We had stopped at a liquor store to purchase a bottle of wine the night we made love, so I presume it was there or at the bar. Either way, he knew. But he hadn’t beaten her up this time, probably because you all were there, staying at their house. She said he told her he knew, and then turned around and walked away and didn’t say another word to her about it. But she knew that wouldn’t be the end of it.
“Fearing for her safety, I suggested we leave right then. She didn’t even need to pack anything. I had plenty of money; I could buy her whatever she needed. She never had to be afraid again, and we could be together, every night. But she still wouldn’t leave, not until you all headed back home. I couldn’t convince her otherwise.
“It happened the next night, although I didn’t find out until three days later. When I didn’t hear from her, I went back to the bar, asked the bartender if he knew her, had heard from her. He showed me the obituary, told me vampires had done it. They found a bite mark on her neck, he said. I knew it was a lie right then, because I hadn’t bitten her neck, and I’d healed the wounds where I had fed from her. Besides, dumping her, alive but still bleeding, isn’t something a vampire would do.”
Part of me wanted to ask, but considering where Cam preferred to drink from me, I didn’t really want to know that much detail about my own aunt.
“Luckily, he didn’t realize I was a vampire. I wasn’t afraid of one human, but a mass of them, angry and grieving because they believed my kind had killed one of their own, would be a dangerous adversary.”
“What did you do?” I asked. “How did you figure out it was my uncle? And how could he have done it if he was in the house with us at the time?”
“I started asking around, quietly. It’s amazing what you can learn over a few games of pool and shots of tequila. Her husband had paid a
couple of locals, guys with records so they were theoretically less inclined to roll over on him, to kidnap and beat her and make it look like vampires did it. I don’t think he knew her lover was a vampire; I think he figured it was the easiest way to divert blame and get rid of his cheating wife. But he was even more of an ass than that, because he tried to renege on paying those guys. And you don’t not pay cons. So they jumped him and beat the shit out of him in the parking lot of the same bar where Samantha and I had met in the first place.”
“The same guys who killed Aunt Samantha killed him?”
“No.” His voice was quiet. Almost too quiet. “I did.”
“You…”
“I needed revenge. It wouldn’t bring her back to me, but the man needed to be punished. I am old enough to have lived during an era when an eye for an eye was the rule, not the exception. So I stood in the shadows and watched the attack until a noise or something spooked them and they took off.
“And then I stood over him while he lay on the ground, half conscious, begging me to help him. And then I told him everything. How much I coveted his wife, how I made love to her, how I had planned to steal her away from him. I told him I was a vampire. And then I crushed his skull against the asphalt and walked away.”
Chapter 11
“Shower,” Anya said as soon as we stepped across the threshold and into my house. A weariness hung around her shoulders that hadn’t been there several hours ago. I should usher her straight to bed, but selfishly, I wanted a bit more time with her tonight.
I waved off the lieutenants who made to follow us. Hollis was in Luther and Selina’s custody. While I didn’t remotely trust her, I trusted him explicitly, not only because he was my maker but because he had been a vampire long enough to know how to deal with those like Hollis, who did not seem to understand their place in our hierarchy.
There was no threat at the moment, and I wanted to spend what remained of this night alone with Anya. I wanted us both naked, as quickly as possible, and I wanted to remain that way until daybreak.