Tapping against it a few times, he released a litany of curses for the old piece of junk. Julian probably hadn’t changed the oil or something. It wasn’t like Armando was a car guy himself, but at least his stuff had never crapped out on him to leave him in a snowbank with more flakes accumulating over the windshield.
He pocketed his phone and took up the compass. “I blame you,” he told it. Though he was loath to leave the bubble of warmth in the vehicle, he wasn’t about to sit around and wait for help. He’d push the car to a mechanic, but first he had to find the closest one.
Boots crunching against the snow, he drew his coat up to his chin and knitted cap all the way over his brow and ears. He followed the curve of the ramp down the rest of the way to this side street, where there was a convenience store on either corner. Bingo. He trundled his way inside the first one, grabbing a package of candy and the knowledge that a repair shop was still open a few miles down the road.
Sighing, he decided to hoof it to the shop first. He could get in line for attention, flash some cash, and try to get the car up and running by nightfall. Maybe if he was lucky, the snow would let up and he could still find Charlotte’s father in time. He munched his candy on the way there, savoring the sweetness. Vampires could still eat solid food, but he didn’t need it anymore. He’d always thought the super-skinny and svelte look of a vampire who only drank blood was unappealingly small, so he ate to keep up his own appearance.
He hunched over to fight against a blast of icy wind. It felt like the very elements didn’t want him to succeed, like this was a trial to earn what he really wanted. He thought of Charlotte. How her smile would be accentuated with full vampire fangs. What would she think when she realized he was her lifemate all along? Would it be shock or relief to finally know why he’d never given up hope for a date?
Something vibrated in his coat pocket. His brow creased as he fished out the compass. Its needle pointed straight ahead, gleaming with its own light. As he glanced up, he saw he was on the drive of an automotive shop.
Chapter 8
Armando
The door was locked, but a teen let him in and sat behind the reception desk. “Can I help you, sir?” she asked, setting aside a cell phone as she fumbled with pens and a stack of paper. The little space was decorated with a tiny Christmas tree and miles of tinsel and string lights. Someone had been very bored, he thought.
“I need my car fixed. It broke down not far from here,” he said, flashing his best smile despite how his bones ached the moment he sat down. This room abutted the shop, where he heard someone working with power tools.
She told him they had only one mechanic working right now, and a sense of surety gripped Armando as he asked, “What’s his name?”
Her brow creased, as if it were an odd question. “His name is Darius.”
“Yeah?” He shot to his feet. “I need to talk to him.”
“Sir, that area is off—” The door slammed behind him as he entered a space made to hold several cars. A variety of power tools and equipment hung on the walls all around.
There was one vehicle in the shop at the moment, and the mechanic tending to it rolled out from underneath it to fix him with a steely look. He’d seen that face hundreds of times for every bad idea he’d ever uttered in Charlotte’s presence. “No guests in the shop,” the man said, sitting up when Armando didn’t move. “Safety 101, sir, don’t want you getting hurt.”
Armando’s gaze flashed from the embroidered “Darius” on the man’s overalls to the vitiligo spots breaking up the brown of his skin around his neck and face. He sensed a fellow vampire as well.
“I need to talk to you,” he blurted.
Darius released a weary sigh. “If you want to schedule in a vehicle, talk to the receptionist.”
“No no, you don’t understand. I, um…” Yeah, this was going well. So much for the hours of pep talk and going over what to say to this man. All of it had fallen out of Armando’s brain with the shock of being face-to-face with the right person.
He cleared his throat. “My name is Armando Nizzola, and I came to tell you about your daughter.”
Surprise colored Darius’s expression. “I believe you’re in the wrong place,” he said carefully.
“If you’re thinking, ‘I don’t have a daughter,’ then that’s okay. That’s why I wanted to tell you about her,” he said, feeling his palms moisten. He pulled up a picture of Charlotte smiling wide enough to show her short fangs, mid-laugh at something dumb he’d said. It was a candid moment, one of those pictures his female friends always wanted deleted.
He showed it to Darius, hoping he would see some resemblance. “Her name is Charlotte Smith, and she’s a dhampir. She’s been looking for you for a long time.”
Grabbing a towel to wipe grease off his hands, Darius used it to hold the device closer to his face. “You try this on every vampire you meet?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
Darius passed the phone back to him, shaking his head. “I don’t have a daughter. That girl doesn’t even look like me.” He circled his face and neck with one hand. Scoffing, he bent to retrieve his rolling bench.
Wetting his lips, Armando pulled out the one fact he hoped Charlotte and this man had in common. “Marlene,” he said.
Darius paused and shot a look over his shoulder. “What did you say?”
“Her mother’s name was Marlene.” He waited for a spark of recognition, anything. The other man stared at him stonily.
“Did you need a car repaired, or what?” he asked instead.
“That’s not the point. I came here to find you because you’re the only person in this whole world who can turn her into a vampire.” A note of pleading entered his tone as Darius sat on the bench, his arms crossed. “I know this is a lot from a stranger, but hear me out. She’s been looking for you for a very long time. All she’s ever known about you is your first name and your skin condition. You are her gateway to a better life. An immortal life.”
Darius inspected his knuckles and the vitiligo on his skin. “Marlene would be an old woman by now. She and I parted on bad terms, but I never expected…”
Armando bit his tongue, watching the other man as he considered. This was the hardest part, the waiting. Making sure Darius overcame the shock of learning about something and someone he’d missed for decades.
“She never got over that I was a vampire. I respected her wishes and left. Far away from her, so far she couldn’t even tell me…we had a child together.” Darius shook his head, his shoulders sagging. “How did you find me? How did you know you found the right guy?”
“Little bit of magic.” Very few vampires knew about the real magic of fae. To say anything more would start an explanation that would take all night. “Little bit of luck, too. I’m Charlotte’s lifemate, you see. We’ve both been trying to find you.”
Darius smiled and released a disbelieving laugh. “To think anyone wants to find me. But you did. Is it Christmas yet?”
“Not yet. Would you like to meet her, though? For Christmas?” Armando offered.
“I’d love to,” Darius murmured. “Just…let me finish this shift.”
“Oh, um. Got room to repair another car?”
Before he knew it, he was pushing Julian’s old vehicle through the snow alongside Charlotte’s father, both of them in good spirits despite the cold.
The drive back felt like a quiz. They played twenty questions Charlotte Smith style, where Armando tried to answer with the depth of everything he knew about her that wasn’t too personal. He felt a little guilty sharing that she’d once been a glorified servant to the leader of Coven Rosas, who’d kept her around as a bodyguard by restricting who she fed from.
Darius fumed over the knowledge. “Tell me the name of the man who did this to my little girl,” he demanded.
Armando glanced over nervously. “She’s out of that situation, and they’re decent with each other. There’s no need to pick a fight.” And as far as
he could tell, Darius was a rogue, otherwise known as a vampire without a coven. He’d laid low all this time to avoid being caught up in inter-coven warfare. Picking a fight with a coven master was exactly the opposite of what he should do upon getting to New York.
Darius had packed a single bag for the trip. He lived on his own, with no family left to visit for the holidays until now. “Well, fine,” he grumbled.
The snowfall was slowing, making the return trip much smoother than Armando’s marathon. Darius drove, with Armando running GPS on his phone to take him to New York the most efficient route. They’d left Julian’s car in the shop to make it an overnight journey and give Darius the opportunity to shower and shave.
“She’s going to be so happy to see you,” Armando said, deflecting them back to the joy of the moment to come. No matter what followed, at least she would finally know the mysterious father that was her vampire heritage.
“Do you think she’ll want to become a vampire right away?” Darius had quickly realized that was part of the urgency of searching him out.
“That’s entirely up to her.” But Armando hoped she would. Since she was already half-turned, surely the transition would be easy for her.
The two men lapsed into an easy silence as the New York skyline filled the horizon. The moon peeked out between the clouds, lighting the way home.
Chapter 9
Charlotte
Charlotte slept in. Her thumb hovered over Armando’s name several times that night, wondering where he’d gone off to since, for once, he wasn’t texting her casually to pass the time on an evening off.
She couldn’t complain about time off, except she totally could. After the wonder of a fae festival to occupy her mind with colors and noise, her sleepy little house seemed dull by comparison. As did the sappy Christmas specials on television.
“Ugh.” She shut off the television and rested her eyes, sighing. She’d already set out the dress she’d wear for the Christmas Eve party tomorrow and a variety of accessories she’d bought to go with it. Yes, she’d overthought what to bring to it. She remembered last year’s event, a huge party celebrating that they all were alive and had survived the insanity of a pair of demons determined to usher in the apocalypse.
Hopefully this year’s bash was tamer. Less drinking, more gifts. A real Christmas event. She knew Olivia and Violet were spending time with their men, and a twinge of jealousy hit her that she wasn’t wherever Armando had gone.
She bounced her knee as her mind turned over an array of ideas. She couldn’t deny that she was attracted to Armando—his sense of humor, his patience with her, and not to mention that smile. Even if the djinni had looked her in the face with three eyes and said, “wish granted,” there was still no vampire father figure showing up at her door. But Charlotte could admit to herself it was time.
She was ready to kiss Armando’s silly face. It was past time for her to plant her lips on his and say that they could figure out the rest as they went.
In the midst of her whiling away the time, a car honked right outside her window. She shrugged it off, thinking it was one of her neighbors being obnoxious. And then someone really lay on the horn to show her the true meaning of “annoying.”
She drew up the blinds, ready to give someone a piece of her mind. Instead, she saw Armando leaning out of the window of an unfamiliar car as it pulled into her drive. He waved urgently with both hands, motioning for her to come outside.
“Of course it’s him,” she said to herself, putting on a coat and heading out. She was careful stepping off the porch, having learned the hard way how the steps iced over moments after the first snowflake hit the ground in late autumn.
Armando met her halfway, biting his lip to keep from smiling too brightly. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey. You could’ve, you know, texted,” she said.
“My phone died,” he admitted, showing her a dark screen as he pulled it from his back pocket. Now that she looked at him more closely, he seemed exhausted and jittery, as if only awake due to regular shots of coffee. But those jitters meant something else as he turned to gesture to the car.
Someone else was getting out and dusting off invisible wrinkles on a thick sweater. He wasn’t someone she knew, except deep down, she did the moment he turned and their gazes met. The vitiligo was hard to miss. But she looked into eyes like his every day in the mirror. She recognized the uncertainty in the set of his lips.
Her father. Wish granted. She pulled an Olivia, releasing a breathy cry somewhere in the octaves of an excited scream. She held the nearest person, Armando, clinging as she rode a wave of emotions. “That’s him,” she said, waiting for the most minute of confirmations.
He nodded. “Yup! I got him.”
She moved without thinking, pressing her lips to his in the midst of her delight. It was their very first kiss, and she hadn’t meant any romance here. At least not yet. But she recoiled a second later from a pulse of electric shock on that contact.
Her eyes widened as she took a step back, touching her still-tingling lips. How strange. Must be the storm, she reasoned, turning to greet her father for the first time.
She was within a pace, her hand outstretched, when she decided to just go for a hug instead. Embracing a stranger wasn’t the weirdest thing she’d ever done. “Are you Darius?” she asked without letting go of him.
“Yes. And you must be Charlotte,” he said, grasping her shoulders to take a good look at her face. “You look just like your mother. Marlene.” He spoke with a wistful sigh, brushing a curl behind one of her ears.
She nodded, feeling her eyes sting. “It’s really you. You’re really here.” It was a moment out of any of her dreams, but there was one thing here that marked it as reality. She turned to Armando, who waited with his hands in his pockets, watching the wind caress the tiny set of chimes she’d strung up on her porch.
“You guys want to come inside?” she offered.
She sat with Darius late into the morning. Armando had plugged in his phone to charge and hung out for an hour or so until calling Julian to pick him up so he could rest at his own place. She hated that he seemed like a third wheel, but she was glad to get some time alone with her father.
She could pinch herself. The man she’d searched so hard for, only a few states away all this time. Instead of getting caught up in vampire politics, he’d laid low and repaired cars. Cars didn’t ask questions about his diet habits, and as long as he worked hard, no one seemed to care that he was oddly enthusiastic to take the night shifts at the shops he worked at.
“Armando really broke down two miles from you?” she asked in the midst of his story.
How incredible, really. She saw the djinni’s work in there somewhere. Maybe it was the mysterious compass that’d pointed out the way or how the very thing her father could fix was what broke within walking distance. Going to Faerie was one of the best things she’d ever done.
“He really did. Burst into my shop and changed my life,” he said. “I packed a bag, and here I am.”
“Did you take it in? You’re free to stay here,” she offered. She was happy to lend out her guest bedroom. This house was too large for just her. Even though she’d just met Darius, she had the feeling she could trust him to share a roof for the day.
“Are you sure? I could try to find a hotel.”
“No way. Not this close to Christmas,” she protested.
He ended up getting his stuff to spend the day here. She only showed him the guest bedroom after a tour of the house, though, pausing before a collage of pictures. Some were new and glossy, showing her smiling with her friends or posing in front of the new house she’d bought with her own money.
“This house is the first stable place I’ve had that’s all mine,” she admitted, her thumb resting on the frame of a picture of her hugging the side of the porch with a silly smile. “I’ve bounced around a lot.”
His gaze flashed from that picture to others above it. Faded and preserved by thi
s point, they were images of her with other family. She’d aged normally until she was exiting her teen years. Following the progression of time were pictures of her and her mother, Marlene. While Charlotte stayed the same, Marlene started to age in each until she was a wise old woman with a cap of white curls and a gentle smile.
“I could take you to visit her if you like,” she said in a hush. “She’s not buried far from here.”
His eyes shimmered in the low light. “I would like that.”
She had another reason for showing these immortalized memories to him. They were proof. If he didn’t recognize Marlene, well, he wasn’t her pops. But now she felt herself getting misty too, wishing her mother was still around to see this moment.
Maybe she could find Saniya and ask for it one day. What person didn’t want their mother back, though? Who wouldn’t want their parents to be together and happy again?
She would hold on to what she had. A small miracle she couldn’t just thank a djinni for. No, the one who’d made her wish come true was Armando, and she’d been so excited she’d barely thanked him. She vowed to change that the next time she saw him.
“Anyway, you probably want to get to bed,” she said rather than bore him with extended tales of her new job and life.
“It has been an exciting day.” She felt his attention on her as she took him to the guest room, which she’d decorated with abstract designs and splashes of color. It was so unlike the man she’d only begun to know that she had to laugh to see him there.
Still, he took it in and set his bag on the bed. “One more thing,” he said. “Do you want some of my blood?”
Charlotte’s mouth popped open in surprise. Usually, she was wary of offers of blood. Her current host was Armando, who offered with no strings attached. But most folks wanted something—even just her protection—for a taste of their blood.
Holidays Bite: A Limited Edition Collection of Winter Holiday Vampire Tales Page 40