The Devil You Know

by Jena Gregoire

  Michael’s thoughts were interrupted by his cell phone ringing in the other room. In the silent house, "Dirty Deeds" cut through the air and the AC/DC song serving as his ringtone seemed much louder than it really was. He eased off the bed, careful not to wake Dez with his movement. While in the throes of passion, he hadn’t been particularly focused on where his phone had been thrown. The ringing song came to an end just as he clicked on a small table lamp. It was quiet for about ten seconds when the ringing started again. Must be important. He followed the incessant noise and eventually found the phone under the edge of the couch.

  “This is Michael,” he answered, voice still gravelly from sleep and too much Captain Morgan. He listened as the caller hurriedly explained why he was needed. “I will be on the first flight out.” The caller thanked him and disconnected.

  Michael gathered his things and put on his clothes. He went back into the bedroom, contemplating whether or not to wake up Deziree and let her know he was leaving. Fear of the impending conversation made the decision for him and he resolved to call her later in the day, after he landed. He quietly made his exit from the bedroom, making his way to the front door and stepped out into the night to retrieve his Aston Martin from across town.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Dez

  Deziree opened her eyes and pain rocketed through her skull. She winced and closed her lids tight, rubbing her temples. She opened them again, only just enough to steal a glance at her bedside alarm clock. It was six in the morning: far too early to be awake after the night she’d had. She shut her eyes again and rolled over, expecting to feel the warmth of another body beside her. Instead, she was greeted with cold sheets and no Vegas. Maybe he’s making coffee. I could seriously use some coffee. She blinked away the sleep and leaned up on her elbows, listening for the shuffling noises of life in her apartment. Nothing but the steady pounding in her head.

  “Vegas?” she called out, much to her own detriment.

  When she received no response, Dez climbed out of her bed and threw on her worn-out Nine Inch Nails t-shirt. The front of the shirt was emblazoned with their signature logo in blue, and on the back, it simply said like an animal… The shirt was ratty and stained but it was so comfortable, she refused to give it up. Coupled with a pair of panties, she was dressed enough to wander the house without giving any neighbors a free peep show.

  She passed her vacant bathroom, walked out into the living room, and found that Vegas was not making coffee. In fact, Vegas was nowhere to be found. She grabbed the phone off her kitchen counter and dialed a number so ingrained in her, she didn’t even need to think about what buttons to push. She put the phone to her ear and listened. Instead of ringing, she was greeted by his voicemail message.

  "You have reached the voicemail of Michael Tremayne. Please leave your name and number, and I will get back to you as soon as I can."

  Beeeeeeeep

  Dez hung up without leaving a message. She didn’t know what to think.

  “Son of a …”

  Had he actually left in the middle of the night without a word? This was not the Vegas she knew. Even if he did regret what happened the night before, he wouldn’t have just left without saying anything. There must have been a reason.

  Deziree took the phone with her back into the bedroom. If he tried to call while she was sleeping off her hangover, she wanted to be able to take the call without traveling too far from the comfort of her pillow. She climbed back into bed and as she shut her eyes, Vegas was on her mind.

  There must be a reason.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Dez

  5 ... 4... 3... 2... 1... ... ...

  "Charlie, you dumb shit!" She rounded on her accomplice to find him looking angry. She'd half expected him to be cowering and apologetic. Instead, he was angrily pawing through his box of goodies looking for what she could only assume was going to be a fix for their little problem.

  "Explosives, Charlie. Aren't they supposed to, you know, explode?" She tried to make an exaggerated expanding circle motion with her arms. “Not fucking impressed.”

  “I'm looking, I'm looking," he mumbled. With a sour scowl on his face, he continued to rifle through the tool box. Deziree eyed him with suspicion. This foul mood and surly demeanor were not the type of behavior she’d grown to expect from Charlie. He was always so calm and laidback when they were on jobs.

  “Charlie, do you know why I like you so much?” The glare he aimed at her told Deziree he was annoyed and certainly didn’t want to cooperate with her line of questioning. “You're the best explosives guy in the business, you value money more than your own life and, as such, your fealty goes to the highest bidder. As it happens, that's usually me. More important than all that is you're frightened of me. Since I pay a king's ransom every time I hire you, and I could still easily kick your ass, what could you possibly have your panties in a bunch over right now that's got you so out of sorts?"

  "My panties are just fine, thank you very much, and I won't have you insulting my work. Say what you want about me personally, but my work is solid. Now, if you'll excuse me for a moment, I need to find out where the problem lies."

  She watched him return to his task and allowed her mind to drift. She wondered where Vegas had gotten off to for the past week and then quickly pushed him out of her head, mentally scolding herself for allowing him to take up even a fraction of her thoughts. You need to accept the fact that you were a one-night stand, and he did what every normal guy does. Only he was not a normal guy and she knew it.

  "Ahhhh, here we are!" Charlie traced through the wiring and suddenly turned, breaking her away from her thoughts. He was holding what appeared to be a broken gadget of some sort. "Dez, tell me something? How is it that you are a top-shelf thief and a cold-blooded killer when the circumstances call for it, but you don't notice when you step on and crush an expensive piece of high-end circuitry? Hmm?"

  Immediately on the defensive, she placed her hands on her hips and demanded "How do you know it was me?"

  "Let's see. I would bet my king's ransom, as you so eloquently put it, the hole in the top of the casing precisely fits the heel of your impractical stiletto boots." The look he was giving her was an outright challenge to protest. With fleeting satisfaction and a switch to intensely serious, he nearly growled. "That's what I thought. Never question the quality of my work again, bunched panties or not."

  "Fine," she replied. "Let's just get this done and get out of here. We will liberate the bracelet from its jailor—"

  "You mean steal it from its owner," he corrected with a smirk.

  "Semantics, Charles. Once this job is done, we will both get a fat payday and then you can take some time off." That got his attention.

  "Really?" The word was loaded with far more surprise and enthusiasm than she was anticipating.

  "Yes," she replied eying him curiously. "Why?"

  “You don't take time off.”

  “Well,” she replied, “I’m ready for a vacation.”

  She watched as he thought about that for a moment, then he relaxed and set down what he was working on.

  "I'm out, Dez."

  “What do you mean, 'you're out'?" she cautiously inquired.

  "For a little while, at least. I believe it's time. I have ties here now which I am not willing to walk away from, and she's a mortal. Since their lives are so abbreviated, I want to spend what time I can with her." The look on his face was resolved yet sad. "I am also finding I am not fully enjoying this work anymore. It's become just work. The money is good, but I don't really need it. I haven't needed it for quite some time, actually. I'm sure I will come back one day. Until then, you can consider me on an indefinite hiatus."

  Deziree was unexpectedly sad at the news. She and Charlie had always worked well together, but she hadn't thought of him as much more than a work associate. The deep disappointment setting up shop on the pit of her stomach took her by surprise. She swallowed down the lump in her throat and tried to ignore her e
yes, which were threatening to well up with tears.

  She cleared her throat, and awkwardly responded, "Well, don't get any ideas in your head about going-away parties or a farewell shag. That's not my style." Then with an affectionate smile, she added, "I'm going to miss you."

  Charlie wasn't letting her off the hook that easily.

  "Deziree Davanzati! Was that you expressing, dare I say, an emotion? Keep it up and I won’t be scared of you anymore. Could this possibly have something to do with that bloodsucker you've been spending so much time with? What's his name? Reno?"

  "Charlie, you know full well his name is Vegas. Well, Michael, actually. And no, he's not the reason. And that most certainly was not emotion. That was me expressing appreciation for an asset in the business." You just keep telling yourself that, she thought.

  Charlie smirked, obviously not buying her story. "Yes, well, at any rate, I’m going to miss you too." He paused and then added, “Dearly, in fact."

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Dez

  After raining for the previous two days, the constant barrage of water had finally come to an end. Just in time to have to go to work, she thought while glancing in her car's rearview mirror. The downside to living in New York City was the completely unpredictable northeast weather during the summer. The forecast could call for sunny, cloudless skies one day, and snow the next.

  The shrill sound of her cell phone ringing cut into the best part of her favorite song. Turning the radio down, she picked up her phone and answered. She touched the speakerphone button and waited. It was quiet for a moment and then the sound a familiar voice filled the interior of her fully-restored 1951 Mercury.

  "Did you miss me?" He offered no greeting or introduction.

  "Vegas. Nice to hear from you." She was trying to sound aloof and nonchalant, "And where the fuck have you been?" and failed miserably.

  "I’m sorry. I had to leave town for a while," he replied. "Had to take care of a few things and had to run out at the last minute. I didn’t want to wake you up, and I didn’t anticipate going this long without getting in touch with you. It’s a long story, and one I promise to explain later. What are you doing tonight?"

  No matter her level of irritation, the sound of his voice was perfectly disarming. Something along the lines of gravel wrapped in velvet, rugged and raspy but still silky smooth. Disgusted with herself, she rolled her eyes and then answered, "Onyx. To work, not for fun. Why? Are you going to come see me?" Her heart began to pound. She wanted to see him. Until this moment, she hadn’t realized how much she missed him.

  "I'll be there." She could hear the smile in his voice and grinned in return. She pushed her gas pedal to the floor, suddenly wanting to be at Onyx more than ever.

  She arrived at work fifteen minutes earlier than she planned. The staff members were gathered by the bar for a pre-shift meeting. She tried to make her way into the back of the crowd as quietly as possible to avoid notice.

  "Hey, Dez," the bar manager, Jack, greeted her with a warm smile.

  He’d been a brilliant choice to run the bar in her absence. The whole staff loved him. He was strict about business but also extremely friendly; a quality her last few managers had severely lacked. He’d been there for about six months, and he fit right in with the family of existing employees from day one. The thing she loved most about having Jack around was his ability to deal with the shape-shifter community in a civilized manner and, more importantly, one that never resulted in her establishment needing repairs. If the average someone were to meet Jack on the street, they would never guess he turned into a tiger on occasion. At six-foot-one and roughly two hundred and thirty pounds, he just looked like any other guy who spent far too much time in the gym. His eyes didn’t look wild either, a common trait of shifters. Instead, he had calm eyes: yellow-green close to the pupil, fading out to a gray-blue color. He always looked entirely at ease and she guessed it was part of the reason the staff got along with him so well.

  No matter how laidback he seemed, Jack was a fiercely capable fighter in a bad situation. The recent increase in shifter clientele at Onyx was to be expected, but the violent outbursts which had come with it were not. Jack's ability to strong-arm even the biggest of shifters had created a reputation which prevented most incidents. Moreover, there was something about Jack which they could sense, maybe something about his tiger, and they knew better than to push their luck with him.

  “Hi, guys.” She waved and continued toward the staircase. She climbed the stairs to her office and glanced around once inside. She had purchased artwork to hang on the bare black walls, but the spots she had chosen remained vacant, the pieces on the floor leaning against the wall, still wrapped in protective paper from the gallery. She dropped her purse into the black and plum throne-style armchair in front of her desk and walked over to the large window, giving her a bird's-eye view of the club. The staff meeting was over and the employees were busily running through their normal routine, getting ready for the night to come. Onyx was a well-oiled machine.

  She sat down at her desk and checked her messages before descending to walk the floor for the night. Observing the club was a safety measure she didn't normally take. She wanted to see for herself that Onyx was going to survive while she took some time off to travel. So far, she had nothing but confidence in her staffing choices. In addition to Jack, she had a good, hard-working group of people on her hands, all of whom seemed to care about the success of the club as much as she did. She hadn’t told them yet that she was planning to leave for a while, but she assumed they had picked up a difference in the atmosphere by her more frequent presence. Although anxious thoughts haunted her anytime she thought about her upcoming departure, moments like this one told her that the club would survive without her for a little while.

  But one more night of keeping an eye on things couldn’t hurt. She turned and headed back downstairs.

  Onyx was busy almost as soon as they opened the doors, and the time passed quickly. She ended up spending the first couple of hours helping out behind the bar. In a brief moment of peace between drink orders, she’d taken a second to scan the room and felt the small pinpricks of disappointment when she didn't see Vegas anywhere. They were still going to be open for a few more hours, so she did her best to extinguish the spark of annoyance developing in the back of her mind. After their phone call earlier, all her previous worries about why he’d left that night two weeks ago began to fall away. She couldn’t see him standing her up again. Not after reaching out to her to say he’d be there. That just wasn’t Vegas.

  "Hey, Danni,” she called to the slender bombshell of a bartender. She was the top earning bartender in the whole place and with good reason. Danni was stunning with her olive complexion, long black hair, chocolate brown eyes, and perfect veneers. She was pleasant to everyone and customers liked her, both the men and women. Before her interview was even over, she and Dez had become fast friends. “I’m going to take a break up on the roof. When I come back down, I will run out back and grab some refills for you."

  “Thanks, boss lady,” Danni said, punctuating it with a flash of her pearly whites.

  “No problem,” Dez replied over her shoulder.

  As she stepped out of the access door onto the flat expanse of tarred roof, Deziree pulled a cigarette from the freshly opened pack, put it to her lips, and lit it. She could feel his presence as she took the first drag. She exhaled and smiled when she heard his voice behind her. She pushed it back and straightened her mouth into a hard line.

  "Those are bad for you, you know." The sound of his voice sent a thrill running through her. When she spun around, he was standing just a few paces away.

  "Hey, you." She gazed up at him and couldn’t stop the smile from creeping across her lips again. Besides the fact that he was her best friend, she loved to look at him. He was by far the most beautiful creature she'd laid eyes on in her extraordinarily long life. He had the stereotypical bad boy image without all the pesky bad boy tendenci
es. Well, not ones that bothered her anyway. Tall, dark, and every bit of him was dangerous. He was just over six feet tall, the top of his smooth, shaved head towering above her. She idly pondered the number of razors he’d gone through over the centuries to keep that look. He had the perfectly chiseled appearance of a deadly hunter; which he was, in every way. Most people would have to spend hours in the gym every day for a body like his, but his undead status meant he didn't even have to try. He would look like that forever. Upon first glance, his eyes were the only tell-tale sign he was a vampire. Those irises – each a gleaming gold with a dark brown ring bordering the edge – were the only giveaway to the general public what he was. She, on the other hand, could feel it. She could feel the electricity crackle in the air whenever he was around. In more than four hundred years, she had never met someone as exciting as Vegas, and she'd wanted him from the moment they first met. But they had convinced themselves it was a bad idea, and standing here before him now, she couldn’t remember why.

  "Can I bum one off you?" He nodded toward the cigarettes.

  "You would make a terrible spokesperson for anti-smoking public service announcements," she retorted with a snarky edge. As she fumbled with the pack of cigarettes, he stepped closer to her. Her nerves instantly hummed to life.

  His predatory smirk and the slight glow of his eyes revealed his intentions, and in a blink, he closed what little remaining space there was between them. Reaching his hand around the back of her neck and tilting her head, he brought his lips crashing down to meet hers. Her head spun with euphoria. His scent washed away every negative thought she'd had about him in the last couple of weeks. When the kiss finally broke, it was not her doing. Taking a deep breath to calm herself, she opened her eyes to see his smile had grown wicked.