by A. C. James
We finished our breakfast and made our way to his Venom.
I’ll drive you home. I want you to pack anything you might need and as many clothes as you can.”
“Where are you taking me? And why am I packing?”
“It’s not safe at your apartment. She can get to you there.”
“Who? Who am I running from?”
“Katarina.”
“Who is Katarina?”
Arie paused. “Katarina is very old and very strong. It is my fault that she is here. I suspect she’s responsible for breaking in to your apartment. She came looking for me but found you instead. Whether she was attracted to your aura first, or I was and then she tracked you through me, is irrelevant. What’s important is that I keep you safe until all this is over.”
“She’s the one who put the knife in my table. When will it be safe to go home? Although I don’t know how I’ll feel safe there.”
“I’m sorry for this. As long as it takes until the threat has been eliminated.”
“Listen, wherever you’re taking me, we have to take my cat. I can’t leave him if I’m going to be gone for more than one night.” I didn’t want to think about what Arie meant by ‘eliminated.’
“That won’t be an issue.”
Within minutes we pulled up in front of my darkened apartment. I stepped out of the car and walked to the front door, glancing over my shoulder at Arie waiting for me to unlock it. I flipped on a light and grabbed a large blue duffle bag from the hall closet.
I headed to my bedroom. Several minutes passed, and I startled when Arie stood in the doorway to my bedroom. I didn’t even hear him behind me as I rifled through the massive pile of clothing I’d dumped on my bed.
“What’s taking you so long?” he asked, his eyes trailing to what I held in my hand. “I don’t think you’re going to need that. It’s too cold for swimming.” He smirked at me.
I could feel heat rushing to my face and tossed the flimsy black teddy through the open door of my closet. “It’s not a…never mind. I haven’t had a chance to do laundry and I’m trying to sort out what’s clean and what’s dirty.”
I grabbed a pair of jeans from the pile, doing a sniff test and adding it to the duffle bag. Arie watched me complete the same process with a shirt. He seemed completely entertained by my packing methods. Without warning he crossed the room and swept up the pile of laundry on my bed. He stuffed as much of it as he could into the bag. I glared at him as he shoved my only pair of lacy underwear into the duffle bag too.
“Please just stop. I don’t want to pack stuff that’s not clean.” I reached for the duffle bag unsuccessfully as he swung it over his shoulder.
“I’ll send it out with my laundry. Don’t worry about it.”
I found the cat carrier in the kitchen. I gave Mystic a pat on the head, glad to be getting out of here and taking him with me. The apartment gave me chills after it had been broken into. Mystic walked in the open door without having to be shoved in like most cats.
“What do you mean you’ll send it out with your laundry? Where are you taking me?” I asked, while picking up the cat carrier.
“You’ll be staying with me. At least until Katarina no longer poses a threat.”
My mouth went dry when I heard his solution to protecting me.
Chapter 8
Living with Arie, living with a vampire—my life filled with constant strangeness and had become a series of awkward moments. This was just another of those moments.
“I don’t know whether I should laugh or do the sensible thing and run screaming from the room like a lunatic.”
But I had the chance to do neither of those things. Regardless of my desire, the threat to my life, I’d never lived with anyone—let alone a vampire.
Arie turned to leave, barely acknowledging my hysterical outburst. “Please don’t. I don’t feel like carrying you, the cat, and your bag.”
We drove in silence and I attempted to consider the lunacy of my situation with optimism. On one hand I would be taking up residence in a place where I was the primary food source. On the other hand, it seemed a more pleasant alternative to the angry Ancient who wanted to kill me. I resigned myself to whatever fate had to offer as I wondered what a vampire lair might be like.
Images of an underground earthen cubby with a coffin shrouded in darkness filled my mind. I pictured cob webs and spiders in an abandoned house. Perhaps he had an apartment in a gang-ridden neighborhood where he fit right in with his neighbors. A dusty place with creaking floor boards filled with vermin and graffiti. Maybe this isn’t the best idea.
I took several slow deep breaths. My mouth opened in surprise.
I never expected to see a tall building surrounded by immaculate landscaping. Arie pulled into the parking garage of a tower that overlooked the Chicago River and most of downtown. He pulled the BMW into an empty space. Arie had left the Venom outside my apartment, even though I had told him that wasn’t a good idea. He handed me the keys before stepping out of the car. I placed them in my satchel, following him in curiosity.
Arie led me through a lobby where a man sat behind an elegant reception desk. “Good evening, Mr. Cush,” the man said with a smile. “Good evening, ma’am.”
I stopped next to Arie at the desk. “Harry, this is Miss Ellis. Holly Ellis. She is my guest and will be staying with me.”
“We’ll take good care of her while she’s here, sir.”
“Thank you, Harry. Can you make sure that no visitors disturb Miss Ellis if I’m not here?”
“We always announce visitors, Mr. Cush.”
“No visitors when I’m not here,” Arie repeated, this time more firmly.
“Of course,” Harry answered with a bewildered expression on his face.
Arie continued past the desk and I followed him onto an elevator. He pushed a button that took us to the highest floor of a building that towered twenty stories. When the elevator doors slid open, I stepped into a hallway with only four doors. Two doors on each side of the elevator faced one another. Arie went to the last door down the hall on the right, metal and solid, and unlocked it, turning to me.
“I’ll make sure I get you a key.”
“That’s okay. I’m hoping I don’t have to stay long enough that I’ll need one.”
I trailed behind as he entered a loft apartment and I looked up at ceilings that towered twenty feet above my head. From the elegance of the lobby below, I didn’t expect to see exposed ducts and pipes in the ceiling and faded brick walls. I walked across a cement floor which flowed through a large living room to a wall made entirely of glass. It had glass doors that opened onto a balcony and I gasped at the breathtaking view of the river below. Turning toward Arie, who stood in the stainless steel kitchen stationed behind the living room, I met his eyes.
“This place is beautiful; not at all what I imagined.”
Arie grinned. “Oh? And what did you imagine?”
All my worries of my hair getting caught by cobwebs or bats were relieved as I regarded the sparsely furnished apartment. I walked past a brown leather sofa and sat in a large, matching oversized chair. It faced the sofa across a coffee table covered in books that looked very much like the coffee table in my apartment. Even though I didn’t see a television, I thought the large bookcase, filled with volumes that looked very old, would keep me occupied. A record player sat on another shelf with a massive collection of vinyl albums.
I smiled and looked over at Arie. “Certainly not this.” I’d started to feel more at ease when a sudden thought occurred to me. “How many bedrooms do you have?”
“One.”
I gulped.
“Holly, I need to be able to reach you at all times. Please add an entry with your number,” Arie said, as he handed me his cell phone. “Give me yours and I’ll add mine.”
It made me feel better knowing I would be able to reach him in case something happened. I handed my cell phone over to him and added a contact to his. Arie climbed the
stairs, carrying my duffle bag over his shoulder, and I followed a few paces behind.
When I entered the bedroom, an entire wall of glass filled the space with moonlight and showed the same view as the one below. Arie set the bag on his Mission-style bed and I smiled at seeing the sheets tucked in as neat as a pin. At least one of us is neat. He turned toward a cherry-wood dresser that sat next to a writing desk. He began to empty a drawer and stack its contents on a shelf inside a large walk-in closet.
I shook my head and began to protest. “I can take things from my bag when I need them. I just need to do my laundry.”
“I told you that won’t be necessary. I’ll send it out shortly. You can use this drawer, and there are some extra hangers in the closet for the rest. A simple ‘thanks’ would do, instead of your constant arguing.” Arie gestured toward the closet, glaring at me. “Look, it’s been a long time since I’ve shared living space with a woman. This will take time for me to get used to.”
I swallowed. “That makes two of us.”
He picked up the phone on his bedside table. “Harry, please send someone up for laundry. I need to put a rush on some things for Miss Ellis,” he said before hanging up the receiver.
I can’t even imagine what a place like this must cost. “What do you do, Arie?”
Arie looked at me as if he didn’t understand the question, and I immediately regretted asking.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean… What do you do for work?”
He narrowed his eyes. “I don’t. I don’t need to.”
“I thought you worked at the club. I remember you saying you were Chief Justice of the Council of Sanguis. Isn’t that a job working for Tessa?”
“In a manner of speaking. It’s my responsibility to investigate infractions and make sure our decrees are upheld.”
“And you don’t get paid for that?”
Arie grinned. “Not in terms of monetary compensation, but it has its perks.”
“Sounds like my job, except I don’t get any perks.” I paused. “Then where does your money come from?” I blushed. It didn’t occur to me until after I’d asked that my question must seem rude.
“Well for most of us, at least the old ones and the smart ones, retirement planning comes easy when you have so much time to do it.”
I looked away from his eyes, which danced with mirth, and tried to consider this.
“The tricky part is dealing with transferring your wealth and the documentation that comes with changing your identity over time. We have some very good people that deal with papers and accounting who work for us,” he said.
“Oh.” All you can say is oh. Do you realize how stupid you sound?
I walked to the window, placing my hand on the glass. The moonlight reflected off the dark water moving below. I’d lived with all kinds of people, having been bounced around the foster-care system, but nothing prepared me for this. Besides, I’d become used to the freedom that came with having my own space.
“If you need anything from your bag I suggest you get it now. I’ll be sending it out shortly.”
I turned toward his voice and walked to the bed, pulling out a relatively clean pair of pajama bottoms, a white tank top, and clean underwear out of the bag. Arie watched me yank out a hair brush along with my tooth brush.
“I’ll be downstairs making dinner while you’re getting cleaned up.”
“Dinner?”
Arie met my inquisitive look and my breath caught in my throat.
“Yes. I believe it’s usually considered the third meal of the day,” he said with a sarcastic smile before walking down the stairs.
I frowned at his retreating back.
I felt surprised by the idea of him cooking me dinner, although I wasn’t sure why. Maybe the normalcy of something as routine as dinner conflicted with my idea of the supernatural. My relationships were limited and had been disastrous. And none had been sexually satisfying, or at least not until I’d met Arie. None had made me feel connected on an emotional level either. I spent so much time hiding who I was—hiding that I had the Sight. With Arie I didn’t have to hide, and he understood. It made me feel connected to him.
Stepping into a bathroom, blinded by everything in white, I fell in love with a bathtub big enough to swim in. It sat next to a spacious shower. I smiled as I ran my hand across the fluffy white towels that lined a shelf above the tub. I sat my hair brush and tooth brush on the bathroom vanity across from both, which took up an entire wall. Standing in front of the enormous bathtub, I began to strip out of my clothes, letting them fall around my ankles.
Letting water fill the tub halfway, I brushed out my hair and pulled it into a ponytail. Stepping into the bath, I sank into its warmth and leaned my head back. The hazy timbre of Justin Vernon’s voice and the melody of Flume rose from below.
I smiled. Arie and I both loved books, and now I’d he was playing one of my favorite albums. And it seemed so incongruent with Arie that I wanted to laugh. Enveloped in warmth, I listened to the lyrics drifting from below. The song lyrics of Flume always made me think of my mother. I sighed. Thinking of her led me to the inevitable thought of death, which was something I ought not to think about given the situation. What price would this experience extract, and could I afford to lose anything else in my life? Maybe I would lose my life. I tried to dismiss the worry that creased my forehead as I frowned. My world had been turned upside down. I didn’t like laughing one minute only to think about death the next. But when there’s a threat to your life, anything can change at any moment.
***
I threw on my flannel pajama bottoms and white tank top. Pulling my ponytail loose, I let my hair fall around my shoulders. I bounded down the stairs two at a time and came to a stop in front of a counter, watching with fascination. Arie sliced a mushroom on a cutting board. I could smell onions and pork sizzling in a wok on the stove. A vampire—a real-life vampire—stood in the kitchen cooking me dinner. Sliding onto a stool in front of the breakfast bar, I curled my toes, wishing now that I’d remembered to grab socks from my bag. It had disappeared during my bath. At least I’d have clean laundry, and I couldn’t remember a time when I didn’t have to fold it myself.
“It smells good. Can I help?”
Arie grinned, making quick work of slicing all the mushrooms much faster than my eyes could follow. “Unless you think you can get it done faster,” he said with a pause, “No.”
I had to look away as his eyes met mine with searing intensity. I couldn’t help fantasizing about his hands deftly making work of the vegetables and what they felt like tweaking my nipples. And I bit my lower lip. “You’re showing off,” I said, looking back at him. Damn, he was good-looking.
“Not really.” He shrugged.
Returning my focus to his culinary proficiency, I noticed he used a sharp knife not just with speed but with precision. Within seconds a pile of broccoli that looked like tiny trees formed on the cutting board next to the mushrooms. He tossed the broccoli, mushrooms, and bamboo shoots into the wok. The stir-fry he whipped up smelled incredible, and my stomach rumbled in response. I was starving—my nerves had been so frazzled after the break-in that I hadn’t been eating as well as I should. Arie added soy sauce, sesame oil, and a bit of vinegar to the wok. While he stirred the mixture, I tapped my foot on the edge of the bar stool.
“I can’t stand just sitting here.” I walked around the counter and started opening cabinets.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for plates.”
“Over there, just set them here,” he said, pointing to the counter next to the wok. “Then I can just dish this out. Hungry?”
“Famished.” I smiled and found the drawer that contained the silverware and grabbed two forks. “Do you have napkins?”
“In that drawer over there.”
“Thank you for letting me stay with you.”
“Of course.”
“Can I ask you something?”
; Arie arched an eyebrow. “Depends on what you want to know.”
“How did you become a vampire?”
“A vampire named Arella turned me. She was like a mother to me.”
“Oh? What happened to your mother?” I put the forks on the napkins and hopped back on the bar stool.
“My father served as a soldier during Zedekiah’s reign. We traveled to Babylon after the Kingdom of Judah was conquered by the Babylonian army. My mother, weakened by having just given birth to me and from the arduous journey, died a short time after we reached Babylon.”
“Arie, I’m sorry. I never knew my mother either.”
“Then you can understand, but it doesn’t matter. It was a long time ago.”
Arie shrugged and grabbed a chilled Riesling from the fridge and poured it into two glasses. He sat them by the place settings I had arranged.
“Do you have any other family?”
His face darkened. “Not anymore.”
He dished out two plates of stir-fry. Then he took a seat on the stool next to mine and placed one of the dishes in front of me.
“So how did you meet Arella?”
“My father needed someone to take care of an infant. Arella took care of me and tended our home. Father fell in love with her even after finding out she was a vampire. Arella wanted to turn him and spend eternity by his side, but I don’t think he completely got over losing my mother. He died during our exile to Babylon and Arella raised me, giving me the choice when I became a man.”
“So you wanted this? You wanted to become a vampire.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
His face looked vulnerable. “Because I hate to be weak. It was a different time. There were no antibiotics. Life expectancy wasn’t what it is now.”
I tried to wrap my mind around how old he must be given his history, but thought it would be rude to ask him again. I stabbed a bite with my fork. “This is really good.”
“Well, I’ve had time to practice,” he said with a smile.
“Thank you for cooking me dinner.”
“You’re most welcome.”
We locked eyes and I could feel the heat building between us. I took a sip of wine, looking down into the glass to break the tension. I wanted him now more than ever.