His temper erupted.
Johnathan shoved his chair back and vaulted over the table. He left the log hook where it was to contend with the vampire barehanded. His mind was a blank buzz of rage as he grabbed Vic.
It didn’t matter that Vic could rip his throat out in seconds, or how outmatched in strength he was against the fiend. He was furious, stripped down to basic schoolyard instincts as he yanked the vampire from his chair into a headlock.
“You selfish bastard,” Johnathan shouted.
“Really now? We were having a civilized conversation,” said Vic, his words slurred through his pinched cheeks.
“Was this a bloody game to you?”
“This is just undignified.”
“You’ve ruined my life.” Johnathan’s voice broke. The second vampire to do so.
Vic went very still. His eyes slid sideways to glance at Johnathan’s face. Whatever he saw there made Vic sigh into his armpit.
“That was not my intent, John.”
A throat cleared across the room, one of feminine impatience. “What exactly is going on here?”
Both men froze and looked up. Alyse Shaw glared at the pair of them, arms crossed as she tapped a foot on the floor. Each footfall made Johnathan and Vic flinch.
“Just working through a disagreement, my dear,” said Vic through a mouthful of Johnathan’s shirt.
My dear? Johnathan shook him. “Does she know, too?”
“Of course she does. You think I could keep something like that from her?”
Alyse gasped. “You told him?”
“He didn’t have a choice,” snarled Johnathan.
Alyse’s gaze darted, noting Vic’s bloodied clothes and Johnathan’s less-than-presentable appearance. “What happened?”
“Perhaps we could resume our discussion?” Vic piped up from under Johnathan’s arm.
Johnathan’s temper dissipated, and it dawned on him that he had an impossibly patient vampire in a headlock. His mouth went dry. He released Vic, who stepped back with his hands up in a gesture of surrender.
Johnathan stared at him, baffled. “I don’t understand you.”
Alyse snorted. “That makes two of us.” She moved beside Vic, her lips pursed as she tugged at the slash in his pants. “He saw you healing. What predicament did you two land in?”
“We had a chance encounter with our mysterious quarry,” said Vic.
Alyse bounced on the balls of her feet. “You did? Did you recognize it? Was it terrible? What happened to it?”
Vic righted his chair and slumped into it. “I did. No, I didn’t recognize it. It was quite dreadful. And John, here, dispatched it.”
“He did?” She looked at him, eyes nearly popping out of her skull.
“Your confidence is overwhelming,” sneered Johnathan. She didn’t have to know he managed it purely by accident, or possibly not at all.
He picked up his toppled chair as he studied the pair with measured distrust. It would be daft to trust them. But what other options did he have left? He could crawl back to the Society and deal with the fallout of his failure. Why did Vic allow the headlock? Why let Johnathan live at all? Was he truly so desperate for aid?
“What did you find out?” Vic’s question pulled Alyse’s attention off Johnathan, a question that quenched her rabid curiosity. Her expression fell.
“You were right,” she said and tapped a pile of handwritten notes on the table.
Vic closed his eyes. “I’ve never wanted to be more wrong.”
Alyse crouched in front of him and pressed her forehead to his, their bowed heads communicating a quiet grief.
Johnathan glanced between them, caught up in their damned intimacy once again. “Right about what?”
Alyse looked to Vic first, a question in her eyes. Vic nodded.
“The latest victim wasn’t from here,” Alyse said, “but from Hampshire, a town fifty miles away. I don’t know whether she was brought here or lured—”
The word made Johnathan’s muscles go taut. The chair creaked in his grip.
“—but she was the second girl to go missing from Hampshire. There were at least nine reports all told from this region over the past year, six which took place in the last three months.”
Vic stroked his upper lip, his expression distant. “Why the sudden increase?”
Johnathan scowled. The same thought occurred to him. He wanted nothing to do with this mystery, felt tricked into it, but the dead girl’s face flashed through his mind. So young, so terribly young. And the distance between the murders meant there was likely more than one beast out there, running these girls down.
“How old was she?” Johnathan ignored the shared glance between Alyse and Vic.
“Not yet fifteen,” said Alyse, her voice careful and slow, like she were coaxing a wounded animal. In a way, she was. “Most of the girls weren’t a day over eighteen. Their features vary, this one just happened to bear a striking resemblance to, ah, me.”
“What else?” Johnathan asked as a dreadful theory took root.
Alyse appeared puzzled by his question. “What do you mean?”
“Patterns, commonalities. What did these girls share?”
She pursed her lips. “Not certain about all of them, but the girls from here, and the ones in Hampshire, would be considered debutantes if they lived in the city proper.”
Wealthy then, and sheltered. Country or city, the wealthy families apparently treated their daughters like delicate crystal decor.
“Virgins,” said Johnathan. A blush burned the back of his neck.
Vic’s gaze snapped to him. “What?”
Alyse raised a brow. “You can’t possibly know that.”
“No, he couldn’t, though Stebbins noted as such in his autopsy notes before the bodies dissolved to ashes,” said Vic. “It’s likely the other girls dissolved before they were found.” His sentence made her lose all color.
“They never found the other girls, none of them,” she whispered.
Vic subtly leaned toward her. “What else did you find?”
Johnathan tuned them out and stared at his hands. They were not well trimmed and manicured like Vic’s, or clean and kept like Alyse’s. There were a fighter’s hands, scarred and calloused. He turned over his injured palm, the blackened circle of flesh nearly forgotten until he held it up to the light.
He was invested in this whether he wanted to be or not. There was no simple retreat to Boston to throw himself to the mercy of the Society. He was a marked man, though for what purpose, and by what manner of creature were still unknowns. His throat felt tight. He wasn’t the only one pulled into this against their will.
“What was her name?” he said.
Vic and Alyse’s conversation ground to a halt.
“Mary Elizabeth,” said Alyse.
We are connected, Mary Elizabeth and I, thought Johnathan. She would no longer be a nameless phantom who haunted his dreams. His fingers curled, the pad of his forefinger pressed against the black circle. Did it feel warmer than the rest of him, or was that a product of his imagination? Were the others marked beforehand? Is that how the creature found them? What on earth was it? And why this manner of death? Why did the bodies turn to ash? Why did the creature turn to ash when he struck it? The questions piled up without end.
He lowered his hands and eyed Vic. “What do you propose we do, vampire?”
Alyse glared at Johnathan, but Vic perked up, clearly surprised by his words. Johnathan was rather surprised himself. He would be an outcast back in Boston, if he survived Cress Haven.
“Form a partnership,” said Vic. “We work together, share information and theories while solving the mystery. We protect one another.” He watched Johnathan as he spoke.
“And what happens after? If we survive, that is?”
“We go our separate ways.” Vic’s smile was bitter. “I may have to relocate or rest with one eye open after you return to your people.”
“Oh, this,” Johnathan mot
ioned between them, “will never be mentioned to the Society.”
“Trust me, we won’t mention you again either,” said Alyse.
Johnathan’s leg bounced up and down in a quick, anxious rhythm. Was he truly considering this? A partnership between nemeses? His leg went still. Could Johnathan do this on his own? Vic brought strength, speed, and preternatural healing to the fight. He was an asset Johnathan couldn’t ignore against such a dangerous, unknown enemy.
Johnathan sighed. “All cards on the table. Anything else you care to share?” There was a sour note in his voice.
Alyse shifted in her seat. “Well—”
Vic’s hand landed on her thigh. She went still, cheeks a brilliant red.
“Nothing of importance,” said the vampire.
Johnathan clenched his jaw. Really, they were still going to keep something from him? Was the matter inconsequential enough to let it slide? If he were being honest, there were things he kept close to the vest as well. One never dealt all their cards when the partnership was so skewed, but that meant not hinting that one still withheld information. Alyse would make a terrible gambler. He would have to press the young lady another time, without Vic’s guiding hand to stay her words.
He extended his unmarked hand, which Vic clasped in a firm, cool grip.
“I’m in.”
Chapter Eleven
Alyse left for home shortly after they reached an accord, assured Johnathan wouldn’t decapitate or skewer Vic without good reason. She might refer to herself as a “near spinster,” but her absence from the pastor’s household for any length of time was too apparent. Johnathan admittedly regretted her departure. She made him uncomfortable, but she was human.
And Vic was not.
The knowledge sat between them, unseemly, unsightly, and now, painfully obvious. Johnathan mentally berated himself for missing the blatant little signs, though he suspected he hadn’t noticed them before because they weren’t there. How was Vic in such control of his hunger? How did he conceal that preternatural grace so well?
A quiet tension wound through Johnathan, but he kept his face carefully blank. Would a more seasoned acolyte of the Society have picked up on the signs? His gaze strayed to Vic’s fingernails, not only glossy and well-manicured, but without a hint of dead man’s hands. How did the fiend hide one of the key physical signs of vampirism? The internal differences were another matter, but the discolored nails were a surefire sign, a signature of vampiric nature that kept the Society from unfortunate mistakes. A vampire might try to disguise the discoloration with dyes or ink, but that itself was a tell for further scrutinization.
No, Johnathan was certain his fellow Prospectives would take one look at Vic’s hands and dismiss him as a potential vampire. That was a small comfort, but the mystery of it was a constant distraction from the true matter at hand.
Johnathan drummed an annoyed beat on the table.
Vic eased back in his chair with fluid grace, studying Johnathan in turn. His clothing was barely rumpled from their brief scuffle, the homespun linen shirt plain but well made, neatly tucked into a pair of loose dark pants that tightened around the man’s thighs as he crossed his legs. The top buttons of his shirt were undone in careless contrast, a seemingly conscious choice that displayed the full breadth of Vic’s pale throat. The easy elegance made Johnathan even more awkward and uncouth in comparison. His oft-hemmed and patched Society hand-me-downs were thoroughly wrinkled between outrunning beasts and wrestling vampires.
Vic’s long fingers played along his jaw, drawing Johnathan’s gaze. “If you were any more bottled up, I’d expect steam to come streaming out your ears. What’s wrong with you?”
In for a penny, in for a pound. If they were going to be working together, there had to be a level of trust and openness between them. Johnathan would take whatever intel the vampire gave him in good faith, and it would remain in good faith unless he felt like explaining the origins of such knowledge to his superiors.
“Your hands. How did you manage to make them look so…pink?”
Still pink, since Vic bled like a stuck pig from the creature’s claws, which meant he’d fed since then to replenish? With Johnathan in the house? Had he fed from Alyse? The woman didn’t have the slightest weakness in her gait, hale and flush without a hint of blood loss. How was the fiend doing it?
“You mean, why don’t I look like an animated corpse?” The vampire raised a brow.
Johnathan flinched. “Not in such impolite terms. But it is the most obvious sign of your condition.”
“My condition?” There was a lilt of amusement in Vic’s voice as he ran his splayed fingers over his full mouth. “You make it sound like a bothersome cough.”
“I’m not used to discussing such matters openly.” Johnathan shifted in his seat. “With one of you.”
A smirk hid behind Vic’s fingers. “Tit for tat. I shall answer your inquiry if you answer mine.”
Johnathan went still. That was a dangerous offer, for both of them. “Maybe another time,” he murmured.
Vic stared at him, taken aback. Johnathan’s answer surprised him. “A man whose curiosity is tempered by what? Fear?”
“I’m not afraid,” insisted Johnathan. He wasn’t, not really. Truly, he wasn’t. There were simply elements of his past that should stay buried. He wasn’t afraid.
Vic’s eyebrow rose so high it disappeared into his hairline.
“I’m not,” snapped Johnathan.
The fiend leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. There was a gleam of interest in his gray eyes. A strand of auburn hair fell from its queue, brushing along the sharp angles of his cheekbones as he tilted his head at Johnathan. “Now what would I do with your secrets, John?”
Johnathan shifted, uncomfortable with the way Vic looked at him, the tone of the fiend’s voice. Far more discomfiting was the flutter in his chest. Much as he despised vampires, certainly this one, an odd warmth rose along his skin when Vic’s gaze roved over him.
Johnathan swallowed hard and huffed through his nostrils, shaking off the fleeting feeling. “Fine. Three questions, three answers.”
His gut churned. This was a bad idea.
Vic leaned in. “I don’t take blood from the vein,” he said with a conspiratorial wink.
Johnathan blinked. “Oh come now, you can’t leave it at that, and I’m not going to waste three questions on how you feed.”
Vic’s expression couldn’t be mistaken for anything but delight. “And you are clearly more than a pretty slab of muscle.”
The description made him blush, but also made a muscle jump between his shoulder blades. Sir Harry used to call him pretty, one of the many descriptors he used for Johnathan. It was definitely confusing to hear the word now because, for some reason, he liked hearing the word from Vic’s mouth.
“This is better explained with visuals than words.” Vic rose to his feet with a flourish and flowed from the room in full predatory grace.
Johnathan’s gaze locked on those familiar movements. He swallowed through the sudden painful tightness in his throat, quick to reassert a passive mask when Vic sauntered back into the room with a roll of bulky leather. However, he could not conceal his perplexed expression as the vampire unfurled the roll to reveal a collection of instruments, familiar yet not.
Johnathan picked up one of the glass tubes with care, examining the curiously fat needle. “It’s hollow,” he said.
A hollow needle that fed into a glass vial, a syringe, though he’d never seen one with a needle like this. The plunger served the twofold purpose of creating suction for extraction and pressure for injection.
“What is this?” A note of curious wonder tinted Johnathan’s voice, and the vampire grinned.
Another oddity of the vampire clicked into place. Vic’s fangs were smaller than most, fine delicate points that blended in his smile, their size seeming almost human at first glance, which is why Johnathan hadn’t noticed them until he’d had cause to look for t
hem.
“It’s a syringe.”
Johnathan made a face. “I meant this part, dolt.”
“Ah, yes, of course,” said Vic. “The hollow needles were developed in Europe in the last couple of years, but they aren’t quite commonly used in the Americas yet. I purchased them from a fine German merchant, with a hefty commission for future stock.”
Johnathan stared at the device. Summoned from the abyss of a dream, a hazy memory rose from the other night, one so convoluted it took him a moment to unravel its meaning. “You inject the blood directly to your vein, by way of your thigh.”
Vic nodded. “I wondered if you’d ever remember that.”
“I didn’t quite remember until now,” Johnathan admitted.
Vic tapped a needle against the pad of his finger. “It gives me easy access to the femoral artery. I’ve found this method maintains a great deal of vitality over traditional methods of consumption. Hence the lack of dead man’s fingers.”
“Don’t you still hunger?” Johnathan blurted.
“That counts as two.”
“Bugger.”
A small smile played on Vic’s lips. “I find myself driven by…other appetites.”
“Other appetites. What other…oh.” Johnathan’s blush burned up through his ears.
The vampire chuckled. “How did the Society snatch up someone like you?”
Now Johnathan was truly puzzled. “I don’t understand.”
Vic opened his mouth and paused. He closed it with an audible click of teeth, pondering how to explain. “You’re bright red at the hint of intimate relations, but you were completely unfazed by the torn-open body of a young woman. What sort of upbringing did you have before the Society brought you into the fold?”
Just the sort of question he wanted to avoid. “Not a pleasant one.”
Vic snorted. “Oh, come now, you berated me for being vague.”
Johnathan’s jaw tightened. Dr. Evans lectured at length that the key to lies was partial truth. “My guardian was a violent, controlling brute who kept me half-starved to draw sympathy when we begged for scraps.” It was truth, though incomplete in the details. “The Society saved me from a life of starvation and abuse.”
A Bargain of Blood and Gold Page 8
