by Chloe Garner
Colette snorted.
“Who’s in charge these days?” she asked.
“Elroy,” Tina answered from memory. Oh, how she wished she had her notebook. Colette nodded, leaning her head against the window again.
“No way it’s shorter. If anything, it’s going to be more complex. He likes looking like he’s got all of this insight and power. He’d make you hop on one foot the whole time, if he thought he could get away with it.”
“Do you know which parts actually do anything?” Tina asked. Colette turned her head.
“Looking to enlist?” she answered.
“If we’re going to pull him out of it, I’d like to know how much magic he has going on in his body that we’re going to have to detox out of or whatever,” Tina said. “Or if they’re killing him by inches and he’s going to need medical attention.”
Colette nodded.
“Most of the important stuff will come at the end, when it doesn’t have time to wear off. I mean, there’s no telling what parts of the diet matter, because that could take that long to get really set up the way they want it, but I don’t think he’s going to suddenly keel over because you took the massive quantities of ginger away.”
“Ginger,” Tina said. Colette nodded again.
“It’s almost inedible, what they’re expected to be eating for most of that time.”
“Power,” Tina said, and Colette nodded.
“It’s a loyalty test, as much as anything,” the woman said. “So how is he doing?”
“Kyle?” Tina asked.
“Tell.”
“Who knows,” Tina answered honestly. “This last week has been wretched, and he’s doing a lot to get himself in shape to come keep you safe by tomorrow night, but other than that? I think he’s happy. He doesn’t seem unhappy.”
“That sounds like him,” Colette said. “How long have you been with him?”
“Little over a year,” Tina said.
“And you’re dating the awful one?” Colette asked.
“Surprised me, too,” Tina said.
“Are you seeing anyone?” Tina asked. “Got, you know, like a family or anything back in Albert?”
“Town like that, people pair up young,” Colette said. “Though I suppose I’m odd enough that I could have ended up with one of the strange ones that got left over, anyway. No. I’m the spinster aunt, as far as they’re concerned.”
“You aren’t that old,” Tina said, and Colette laughed.
“Thanks. Says the one who’s going to be twenty-one forever.”
“Twenty-six,” Tina said. “I would never stay twenty-one forever. Oh my gosh.”
“Thank you,” Colette said. “The pretty young things running around in their tiny turned-down shorts thinking they’ve got the world in their palm? No.”
Tina frowned.
“Did you ask him to turn you?” she asked.
“Wouldn’t you have?” Colette asked. “The life he leads, that you lead? It’s amazing. He can do anything he wants. Survive a bullet. And a knife.”
“No,” Tina said. “I never asked for this.”
“What, it happened by accident?” Colette asked.
“No,” Tina said. “It was this or die. And I chose undead over death. I’ll admit that I don’t regret that, but I would prefer to be alive, certainly.”
“Why? So you can get old like me?” Colette asked. “Die when someone shoots you? That isn’t what happened, is it? Did you get shot?”
“Bit by a poisonous dragon,” Tina said. Colette’s eyes went wide.
“I swear, history misses so much,” she said. “But, yeah. I mean, I’d rather stay where I am now than keep getting older. Better than nothing.”
Tina looked over at her.
“I’m worried about how I’m going to lock you up today so that you don’t either kill me or run off, because once the sun comes up I’m worthless. I have to go to a single club here in town and find someone who’s willing to feed me because I need to eat. I’m completely preoccupied with my next meal, and I don’t have any normal relationships because of it. Being a vampire is terrible.”
“Oh, poor you,” Colette mocked. “You have no idea what it’s like to go through your thirties and realize that your body is going to start breaking down way before you get old. Or your forties and realize that most everything you’re going to accomplish in your life is laid out for you to either get or not get, but you can’t do something new. I’m now in the ‘moderate risk’ group for every old-age disease, and my doctor remembers me from last time. You? You’re going to be young and beautiful and healthy for another hundred years, so feel sorry for yourself some more.”
“Why did he say no?” Tina asked. “When you asked?”
“He said that I didn’t know what I was asking for,” Colette answered.
“You don’t,” Tina agreed. She parked the car and looked around.
“Keep your eyes open,” she said. “I’m going to have to go back into the back without you, so you should be okay, but… Don’t let anyone get any ideas, why you’re here.”
“And why am I here?” Colette asked. “If anyone asks.”
“Tell them that you’re with Tell and me,” Tina said.
“Never did get a name,” Colette said, raising an eyebrow.
“Tina,” Tina said. “Tina Matthews.”
“It has a last name,” Colette said. “Surprise.”
Tina shrugged.
“Come on. Stay close. You warm enough?”
“I’m fine,” Colette answered, following her across the street, through the corrugated metal door that led into the front yard in front of the building where Partridge was. Tina went down the set of stairs into the club, pulling off her coat and going to the bar. She leaned against it on her elbows, facing the room.
She needed to keep moving.
Needed to get somewhere safe and underground where she could keep Colette pinned down, both from hurting Tina and from disappearing.
Needed to leave her clue for Tell to find them.
Needed to figure out where she was even going.
But.
She still had a sense of being an apex predator, one that the entire room pointed at as she stood there.
Tina hadn’t yet done the meat market thing, here. Hadn’t even been here since she’d turned.
She hadn’t ever seen it before, but sitting there at the bar, she could identify every working fountain in the room by the way that they all watched her, the way that they reacted to her.
Even with all of the urgency and the frustration and everything else, she could easily, thoughtlessly sit here, taking her time and playing the game as she picked one of them out.
They were so attractive.
How had she not seen that before?
The way they looked at her, Tell was right. They were just offering themselves. Certainly, they thought that they were pursuing her, but it wasn’t the truth of it at all.
There was one, over leaning against the wall, who was looking her in the eye, his head tipped to the side, and Tina smiled, looking back over the counter at the bartender.
“Can you tell Maestro I need a word with him in about thirty minutes?” Tina asked.
“Who’s asking?” the woman asked, tough but not unwelcoming. She knew Tina well enough.
“Tell,” Tina said. “It’s his business.”
The woman nodded, finishing pouring a drink. Tina jerked her head at Colette.
“Get yourself something to drink, if you want,” Tina told her. “Tell has a tab here.”
She pushed her self off of the bar and tipped her head toward the back rooms, watching the young man. He grinned, following her through the heavy black curtain and into the last room on the end. Two of them were occupied, and Tina was glad to find this one empty. This was where she’d come with Hunter, each of the times she’d been back here.
“Haven’t seen you back here much,” the man said, unbuttoning his shirt. Tina watched, re
pulsed and entranced at the same time.
“I’m pretty transactional,” she answered, lifting her chin. “What’s your name?”
“Nathan,” he said.
“How long have you been doing this, Nathan?” Tina asked, lifting her arms out and forward for him to walk under them.
“Couple years,” he said.
“Liar,” she answered with an easy grin. He came to stand with his face all but touching hers, and she slid her own face to the side, feeling the heat of his skin against hers. She tipped her head back, just luxuriating in it. He had a feline sense of motion to him, as well, the way his head followed hers, just there without touching.
She could have taken him.
There on the couches, it would have been easy and it would have meant all but nothing to her.
Instead, she put her thumb under his chin to lift his head, and his breath came faster. The scent he gave off confirmed easily that he knew what he was here for and he wasn’t afraid of her.
She bit him.
The holes from the bullet wound had already closed, but the flow of blood, first up into her head and then down into her stomach, gave the wound a sort of concentric heat as it healed more rapidly, then the heat spread through her body along her arteries. His hands were gripping at her back, trying to close her in, but it wasn’t there. Even if he never knew it, it wasn’t for him to hold her like that, to own her like that.
Her fangs recessed back up into her palate, and Tina kissed Nathan’s neck where she’d bit him, then under the jaw.
His fingers still looked for the edges on her shirt, but she twisted her head away.
“I told you I’m rather transactional,” she murmured, looking down at the wedge of exposed skin that went all the way to his slacks. “You have an online account?”
He swallowed, putting his thumb and forefinger around the back of her neck as though for balance, then he nodded. She took out her phone and held it where he could see it, typing in the account he gave her. She transferred money to him, then turned her face up and kissed the spot where his ear and his jaw met.
“Pleasure,” she said.
“Until next time,” he answered as she pulled away gently, just detaching, and left. She heard the door open and close once behind her, but she didn’t look back to see.
It was that easy.
And that impossible.
That ridiculous.
How was any bit of that okay?
She was working on it.
Something about Tell. Something about his blood. Something about what they were doing to Kyle.
She was going to figure it out and she was going to be done with this.
The thought gave her pause, as easy as it was to want it in the abstract. She didn’t want to do this. The backroom exchange of fluids, quite literally, with the easy power she had. It was dehumanizing and it was isolating.
She felt more at home with Tell and Hunter than she ever had, certainly, but she’d lost the entire rest of the world.
She found Colette at the bar, sitting over a martini.
“All better?” the woman murmured as Tina sat down.
“All better,” Tina answered, ordering a blood rum from the bartender and relaxing with her elbows on the bar.
“Vampires are exposed during the day,” Colette said. “I remember.”
“It’s true,” Tina said.
“Tell had a heck of a bunker, back in the day. I’d imagine that they just continue to get more sophisticated, as time goes on.”
“I imagine,” Tina said.
“Why am I not going there?” Colette asked.
“Why didn’t you stay there, before?” Tina countered.
“Because he had to come and go a lot, and I would have been on my own,” Colette said easily. “He needed someplace where he could leave me that no one knew where I was.”
“Should apply about the same, today,” Tina said, but Colette shook her head.
“No, because there are two of you, now, and because he’s coming to see me tomorrow tonight. I could just as easily go where he is, tonight, and then figure out what happens tomorrow, after that.”
“There’s a man at his apartment with smallpox,” Tina said. “You could catch it just by going there.”
“Smallpox?” Colette hissed. “How? How did that happen?”
Tina shook her head.
“I’m afraid that isn’t your business, just now. You have to stay away from the apartment until they get that all cleaned up, and in the meantime, you’re with me. Besides, we don’t want to bring the entire Order down on our heads, because apparently they know how to fight vampires. If we bring you in there, the Order might just try to storm the building during the day to come get you, and that puts a lot of innocent people at risk. Better if we take you someplace else and let Tell come when no one is following him.”
“And having smallpox in the building isn’t endangering innocent people?” Colette retorted.
“I’ll let Tell worry about it,” Tina said. “He was the one who agreed to it.”
Colette snorted.
“I do know some things about vampires. If this is all just some elaborate ruse…”
“What kind of ruse would you be worthy of? For a vampire? I mean, yeah, the Order has it bad for you, but I killed one of them tonight. Other than that, in what world are you even interesting?”
Colette paused.
“Ouch,” she finally said. “You’re right. Tell is about the only person who cares about me, around here anymore. The rest of them think I’m dead.”
“Well, there’s Janna,” Tina said, sipping at her drink.
“Rats,” Colette said. “He found that?”
“You didn’t know?” Tina asked. “He sent-didn’t-send you a message.”
“I haven’t opened a computer since I got to down,” Colette told her.
“Oh, yeah,” Tina said. “He’s going to nuke the whole thing, sooner than later, to keep her safe. You’re putting everyone at risk, being here.”
“He’s my brother,” Colette said. “Idiot or not, I can’t let him walk into that without knowing what he’s actually doing. I expect he thinks it some kind of game, still. Even with everything.”
Tina nodded.
“I get it.”
Colette shot her a quick look.
“You do?”
Tina nodded.
“My parents died, about a year ago. They got caught up in something that had paranormal aspects to it. If I could have gotten them out of it, I would have done anything. I mean… At the time, genuinely anything.”
“About a year ago,” Colette echoed. “How long have you been a vampire?”
“Six weeks next Tuesday?” Tina answered reflexively. It wasn’t accurate, but it captured the thing well enough.
Colette’s mouth dropped open.
“He turned you, didn’t he?”
Tina played her tongue along the back of her teeth, but she was a bit annoyed at Tell and vampires in general just now. She nodded.
“He did. Instead of letting me die.”
“I actually put it to him,” Colette said. “I asked him, point-blank, if he would turn me or let me die, and he said he’d let me die. Because I deserved to die human. That bastard.”
“Twenty years is a long time,” Tina said, almost feeling bad that she’d thrown him under the bus.
Almost.
“Oh, I’m going to give him a piece of my mind, when I see him.”
Tina smiled, continuing to drink her drink. Colette seemed to get lost in her own fury of thoughts, and it wasn’t until Maestro came out from the back office that either of them spoke again.
“Miss?” Maestro said to Tina, his voice deeper than reason allowed.
Maestro.
Oh, Maestro was an Orc.
Huge and capable of great violence, he ran Partridge with its ever-changing decor, and he participated in very little violence of any kind, as far as Tina knew.
But
.
He was safe.
Tina got out her phone and put it on the bar.
“I’m going into hiding for the day,” she said. “Can I leave this with you?”
He raised an eyebrow, looking down at it.
“Someone gonna come in here looking for that?” he asked.
“Tell,” Tina said. “Tomorrow night. In the meantime? Maybe. But they’re all of them human.”
“You have any affection for them?” Maestro asked. Tina shook her head.
“Wouldn’t mind it at all if none of them left again, but I’d leave that up to you and them.”
Maestro gave her a small but dark smile.
“Been a long time since I’ve had men come in here who didn’t know better than to pick a fight with me.”
He lifted his head to look around the room.
“Gives me a few ideas, actually.”
“I’m hoping that they’ll come and see you and decide that you aren’t worth it and leave without introducing themselves,” she said. “More, they’ll come and see that you aren’t me, and they’ll leave.”
Maestro nodded.
“I see. You know that I run a bar, not a storage locker, right?”
“You and Tell go back a long way,” Tina said, and he nodded slowly. Tina pointed her thumb at Colette. “They go back further. I’m keeping her safe. You like it when Tell owes you a favor, anyway.”
Maestro nodded, smiling broadly.
“I do, at that.”
He went to cover the cell with his hand and Tina slid it to the side, opening a text with both Hunter and Tell.
Polo.
She sent it and handed the phone to Maestro.
“When he gets here, tell him to go find the first dragon,” she said.
“The first dragon,” Maestro said, and she nodded. He pursed his lips.
“You vampires and your frisky games,” he said. “Don’t you know that you’re just as old as the rest of us?”
Tina shook her head with a bright smile.
“Nope. We haven’t got any idea. Thanks, Maestro.”
He tucked the phone away into a custom-sized apron, then he trundled back into his office.
“Polo?” Colette asked.
“It’s possible for someone else to get ahold of anything I send him,” Tina said. “I’m just trying not to be obvious.”
