CRAVING (The Elite Book 2)

by Hanleigh Bradley

  He moves next to me, pulling away from me.

  “Where are you going?” I ask.

  I sound needy in a way I really don’t like. I don’t know why I’d want him to stay. If he’s not next to me, my chances of survival surely skyrocket. Or at least, I can put off the inevitable a little longer.

  “Got to go,” he says before moving around my bedroom, putting on his clothes, so quickly that he’s just a blur.

  “Why?” My brow is furrowed.

  “I’ve got work to do. If you’d have come to my house, I wouldn’t be leaving.”

  I hear his frustration loud and clear. I hadn’t considered that there might actually be a reason for why he wanted me at his house. His house just scares me…

  It’s big and gothic with dark corners and endless hallways for me to get lost in. It’s creepy and exactly the sort of place that belongs in horror movies.

  But I can’t exactly tell Everette that his house creeps me out any more than I can tell him he scares the shit out of me. Except, I’m pretty sure he already knows that.

  He’s a Vampire, in what world wouldn’t he scare me?

  “Work?”

  Does Everette even work? He’s never talked about having a job before. Do Vampires even need to work?

  Coming to sit on the edge of my bed, he reaches for my face.

  “Nothing important,” he tells me softly, not answering my question at all.

  A part of me, the part of me that doesn’t care that he intends to kill me, wants to go with him.

  “I could…” I stop myself. I don’t want to die.

  He smiles at me and I get the sense that he knows exactly what I was about to say.

  “You have work today,” he says almost huffily. “I’ll pick you up when you’re done.”

  I nod my head in agreement. I don’t need to live.

  “And you will come to my house for the weekend.”

  “The weekend?” I gulp. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”

  A whole weekend with Everette will almost certainly kill me.

  “It’s not up for discussion, Farah,” he says tersely. “I’ll pick you up later.”

  I should refuse but what’s the point. He’s not human. He’s not weak. He could kill me right now if he wanted to. I should probably just be grateful that he wants to keep me alive. For now.

  Then he’s gone, back through the window he came in through last night.

  “You could use the door,” I say to no one.

  Chapter Six

  Everette

  Once I get back to my house, I stride into my study. There’s no time to waste. My phone has been going off for a solid hour demanding my attention.

  I’d ignored it, furious that my time with Farah was being cut into. But it could only be ignored for so long.

  “What the hell is going on?” I demand of the man waiting for me.

  He turns quickly, almost as if he’s shocked by my sudden appearance. He’s not. Vampires are very rarely taken by surprise.

  “There was a murder in the city,” he tells me quickly.

  “And?” I ask, taking my seat behind my desk.

  Murders aren’t that uncommon and they definitely don’t fall into the scope of my interest. The humans are someone else’s problem.

  “A Vampire was killed.”

  That catches my attention. It’s rare that a Vampire hurts another Vampire. We pride ourselves on being the most evolved species on Earth, stronger than the humans, less primal than the shifters.

  “Do we know why?” I ask quietly.

  “No.”

  “Do we know who?”

  “Who did it? No.”

  “What about the victim?”

  “Er…” He hesitates.

  Hestin knows me well. I changed him a couple of centuries ago. In many ways, he’s become a sort of friend.

  As a non-royal Vampire, Hestin is useful when I want to know the minds of those that live at my discretion.

  The thing about power is that it’s easily lost. All it would take is for the masses to revolt against the royals and I’d lose everything and perhaps more importantly, so would the humans.

  The peace that we’ve tried so hard to uphold would be gone with the click of a finger.

  That’s the reason I changed Hestin. I needed eyes and ears amongst my children. That’s what the royals call them. Our children. They’re anything but children. The youngest are more like unrefined killing machines. It’s only with age that they begin to control the bloodlust.

  “It was Kirdem.”

  “I didn’t even know that Kirdem was in England,” I remark.

  My words lack the emotions that humans would expect when a person hears that their brother is dead. Kirdem was my brother, not in the human sense, but no less so for it.

  We were both changed by the Mother and that makes us brothers. It’s also what makes us royal; European Royals to be precise.

  The Mother’s children each rule over their given country. At the Mother’s discretion, of course.

  The other continents all have their own systems, none that work so well as ours, but they keep the peace in their own way.

  “He was in London, has been for weeks, but I don’t know why.”

  I can’t understand why my brother would leave his responsibilities in Scotland. Unless he was removed. But the Mother would not let him live if she decided to remove him. Not for a moment, let alone weeks.

  “The body?” I ask, getting back to my feet.

  “At the morg in the city. They’re asking for it to be sent to Scotland for the ceremony.”

  I nod my head. It makes sense. Vampires are superstitious. We rarely die but when we do, we all become insanely religious for fear that we might actually all be destined for hell.

  I say we… I should say they. I don’t give a fuck either way. Apparently, there’s nothing like immortality to make you fear mortality.

  “First, I want to see the body and then I guess I’ll need to inform the Mother.”

  “There’s a lot of talk,” Hestin says. “It’s likely she already knows.”

  “Fucks sake,” I bark.

  Leaving the room, we walk into Sybil, my housekeeper.

  “Leaving so soon, sir?” she asks friendlily.

  “Yes.”

  I’m not as polite as she is. Nowhere close. I’m almost down the hall and at the front door before I turn back to her.

  “Farah will be here later,” I inform her. “Can you prepare something nice for dinner?”

  It’s a demand hidden in a request and she knows it. With a nod of her head, she agrees to it.

  “Farah, huh?” Hestin asks.

  Damn. I hadn’t planned on telling Hestin about Farah. At least not yet. Probably never.

  “Just dinner,” I lie.

  I shouldn’t lie to Hestin. He’s one of the few people I trust.

  “Dinner, huh?” He’s not convinced.

  “Yeah. I think.”

  Hestin grins at me as he asks for my car keys. I fling them at him, more than willing to let him drive.

  “So, what are people saying?” I ask.

  “About Farah?” Hestin quips.

  “No. About Kirdem.”

  “Just that the Mother must have offed him.”

  “She won’t like that,” I reply, swiping through emails on my phone.

  Farah

  As promised, Everette is waiting for me when I finish my shift at the café. He’s standing outside in the cold, leaning against his car, his arms crossed with an impatient arrogance that I can’t imagine would look so good on anyone else.

  “You’ll freeze,” I say before remembering that he won’t.

  He chuckles.

  “Not likely.”

  It’s weird. It seems impossible that I can forget even for a second that he’s not human. The cold can’t kill him. Hell, I’m not even sure he feels it at all.

  He opens the door for me like a gentleman, something
I know he’s not. I try not to hyperventilate as he makes his way around the car slowly or at least slowly for him. There are humans around and so he’s on his best behaviour.

  And I’m grateful. I really don’t need the reminder of what he is.

  “So…” I try to broach a conversation when he’s inside the car, “what did you do today?”

  “Nothing important.”

  His words irritate me, not that I know why. I want to know what he does when he’s not with me but he has no intention of telling me and perhaps its better if I don’t know. Safer.

  “Work?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It seems crazy to think that Vampires work,” I blurt out.

  “Why?”

  He glances at me momentarily before returning his attention to the road.

  “Just seems too…”

  “Human?” he asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t work for money,” he tells me seriously. “I don’t need money. I have plenty of that, not that I have much use for it.”

  “Then why do you work?” I ask, leaning towards him, eager to hear more.

  “Because it’s my duty.”

  It doesn’t make sense. In what world do Vampires have responsibilities. In my books, Vampires are always monsters lost to bloodlust, hellbent on killing as many humans as possible. Then they fall in love with a human girl and they change, become more human.

  But nothing about Everette matches the characters in the books I love so much. Except perhaps his snarky mood.

  “Someone has to keep you safe,” he says gently and I take in a sharp breath.

  “Me?”

  “You and the other humans,” he says with a shrug.

  “You keep us safe?”

  “Well, not me exactly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re full of questions today,” he says instead of answering my question.

  “You’re interesting.”

  He doesn’t reply. It’s disappointing. I consider asking him another question but I’m pretty sure he won’t answer that one either so I don’t bother.

  “How was work?” he asks, breaking the silence several minutes later.

  “Boring.”

  “You could quit.”

  “I don’t want to. I mean, what would I do all day?”

  He smirks, still staring at the road in front of him, without answering my question. I can imagine what he has in mind.

  “I mean… I just found out you actually have a job.”

  Stopping at a red light, he turns to look at me.

  “It’s not exactly a challenging occupation,” he replies. “I just boss people around a lot.”

  “Oh, really? Sounds like the perfect job for you,” I snipe.

  “Yeah?”

  He grins at me, not at all bothered by my jibe.

  “Sibyl is making dinner.”

  He sounds almost domesticated. But that’s surely impossible.

  “For me or for you?” I ask.

  “For you,” he answers. “I’m pretty well fed, right now. Thanks to you.”

  It’s awkward and bizarre and yet I feel strangely happy about it. Happy that I’m the one that quenched his thirst. It’s insanity but at least part of me likes the fact that he craves me.

  “That’s good,” I say quietly. “So, if you don’t want to drink my blood, what do you plan to do with me this weekend?”

  “I didn’t say I don’t want to drink your blood.”

  “Oh.”

  “Only that I don’t need to. It doesn’t mean I won’t. Humans eat when they’re not hungry, right?”

  I don’t know how to answer him. He’s right. Plenty of humans eat when they’re not hungry, just because they crave the taste of a specific food. But that doesn’t mean I want him to get into the habit of drinking my blood just for the sake of it.

  It’s one thing if he needs it, another if he’s just being glutenous.

  “So, you’re just keeping me around in case you crave my blood?”

  “There’s no ‘in case’ about it. I always crave your blood. I have done ever since the first time I smelt it.”

  His tone has changed and he sounds so serious. It would be scary if I wasn’t already terrified.

  “It’s not as simple as keeping you around so I can drink your blood whenever I damn well please,” he says, “although it’s true that I want that.”

  “What else is there?”

  Chapter Seven

  Everette

  “What else is there?”

  It’s a good question and one I’m not sure I can answer. At least not honestly.

  This morning if she’d have asked me the same question my answer would have been simple. I would have told her that I planned to spend at least two thirds of the weekend in bed but now, even that would only be a half truth.

  I’ve had a crazy day and it’s left me feeling off-kilter.

  I’m tempted to tell her about my brother’s death but that would mean explaining things that could get her killed. No. The knowledge would require her death and that’s something neither of us are ready to face.

  I don’t want to lie to her though.

  “Everette?”

  “Sorry. It’s just safer this way,” I answer her eventually. It’s as close to the truth as I can offer her without telling her too much. “Plus this way, I get to keep you with me.”

  “Safer?”

  “Farah, don’t ask questions you won’t like the answers to.”

  “And how am I supposed to know the difference?” she retorts with a smirk.

  “Maybe just stop asking questions all together,” I suggest.

  “Yeah… That’s not likely to happen.”

  “I didn’t think it would, in fairness.”

  I might not have known Farah for long but I at least know that much about her.

  “I wonder what Sybil is cooking,” Farah says.

  Barking out a laugh at the sudden change in conversation, I begin to tell Farah all about Sybil’s ‘experiments.’

  “She’s always trying to cook something that I might actually enjoy.”

  “Is that even possible?”

  “I guess… Maybe. Richer meat tastes slightly better. So red meat, rarer the better.”

  Of course, what Farah and Sybil don’t need to know is that they’d probably need to feed me a tiger for me to even half-way like the taste.

  “I hear lion is tasty,” Farah quips. “Ever tried it?”

  I consider denying it, though I don’t know why. I’m not ashamed of what I am.

  “Sure. Tastes alright, I guess. Better than anything you’d get in the UK… Except you.”

  I probably shouldn’t have said it. Even if it is the truth, she probably doesn’t like being compared to food.

  “I taste better than lion?” she asks in a whisper.

  “Yes.”

  “What tastes better than me?”

  I consider the question, unsure how to answer.

  “What about elephant? Have you eaten elephant? Or kangaroo? Do I taste better than them?”

  “I haven’t eaten every animal on the planet, Farah, but I’d happily bet that you’d taste better than all of them.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re human.”

  Farah

  What am I supposed to say to that?

  “So, human meat tastes best?” I squeak out nervously.

  “I’ve never had a human steak or anything, but if your blood is anything to go by, then yeah, human wins.”

  There’s nothing I can say to that.

  “Don’t look so nervous, Farah. I don’t want to eat you.”

  “Or at least not today, right?” I retort almost bitterly.

  “Not ever. I don’t need to eat. There’s no reason that I’d make you into a burger. It would just be weird.”

  “And it’s not weird that you drink blood?”

  “To you, maybe. But no, drinking blood
is not weird. It’s just an evolutionary requirement.”

  “Are you trying to imply that you’re just more evolved than I am?”

  “Oh, I thought that was obvious,” he replies, raising one eyebrow as he turns to look at me.

  We’ve just pulled up outside his house but he leaves the engine running. Unlike normal, he’s in no rush to get me inside.

  “Farah?”

  “Yeah?”

  “If you meet other Vampires this weekend,” he says it almost casually but I notice the way he grips the steering wheel, “just ignore them.”

  My heart rate spikes.

  “I promise you’re safe.”

  “If other Vampires are here, how can that be true?”

  “They can’t touch what is mine.”

  His answer is simple and he says it almost indifferently and yet for me, it means more than it should.

  I’m his. It’s a death sentence and yet I like the sound of it. Clearly, I’m barmy.

  He turns off the engine and moves in his seat so he’s facing me.

  “I’ll keep you safe, Farah.”

  I don’t know why but I believe him.

  “Why will other Vampires be here?”

  “Don’t ask…”

  “Questions I won’t like the answer to?”

  “Exactly. Just know, not knowing keeps you alive.”

  If that’s the case, he should have left me well alone. Surely, I was safer without him in my life. I consider telling him that but really, what would be the point?

  His eyes are focused on me and I wonder if he knows what I’m thinking. The gentle grin on his face suggests he does.

  “The world isn’t as safe as you think, Farah. You’re safer by my side.”

  “That can’t be true.”

  “You only have to fear me,” he says, “instead of all the monsters.”

  “I thought you weren’t a monster.”

  “I might not be but that doesn’t mean that other Vampires aren’t. Or that Vampires are the only thing worth fearing.”

  I’m not sure I want to know what else there could be. It’s disconcerting to think that all the monsters in my books might not just be fictional.

  “You’re the safest human in the country,” he tells me calmly.

  “How can that be?”

  “Because you’re mine.”

  I shouldn’t ask, I shouldn’t even want to know, but I can’t stop myself asking, “who are you?”