by Lucinda Dark
I had my wrist to my mouth before he could change his mind. I bit down and released, letting the blood pool and flow out of the twin holes I’d made as I reached for her with my free hand. Sliding a palm beneath her skull, I cradled and lifted it up and pressed my wet wrist to her mouth. The blood painted her plump bottom lip red as it trickled inside.
“How much does she need?” Maverick asked as he watched.
I shook my head. “I don’t know, but I can’t give her too much. We’re playing it by ear. I’ll give her just a bit now and see if it makes a difference and if it doesn’t, I’ll give her a little more.”
“What if we’re already too late?”
I didn’t want to think of that. So, I refused to answer as I gently eased her head back to the table and licked my wound closed. Maverick looked at her. We both held our collective breaths, waiting for something—anything—to show us that we hadn’t been wrong, that we’d made the right decision.
Slowly, but noticeably, her color began to ripen. A sigh of relief slid from between my lips and I nearly sagged against the table. I’d never given my blood to another before. I hadn’t wanted to show it, but I’d been just as unsure as Maverick. Now, though, I saw the evidence of my blood healing her right before my eyes. Her wounds closed, the skin stitching back together. Her bruises—which had been popping up all over her body as we’d worked at cutting off her clothes—began to fade. Her cheeks, so pale before, were growing pink with vitality, with health.
“Yes.” Maverick’s whispered praise echoed my own sentiments as I reached for her face, touching her cheek. His head turned, his eyes sought out my hand and paused. I knew he wanted to ask, but he didn’t.
I took a breath. “Let’s get her cleaned up and changed and then we can talk,” I said, stepping back.
He nodded and straightened. I left the room and retrieved a bowl of warm water and some washcloths. When I returned, Maverick had moved all of the supplies I’d originally brought out of the way, stacking them together in the corner of the room. I handed him the bowl and a washcloth. Together we worked in silence to clean the cracked and crusting blood from Barbie’s skin.
When she was as clean as we could get her without actually dumping her into a soapy tub full of scalding hot water, I left Maverick to remove the last of her clothes while I darted to one of the bedrooms and returned with a long flannel t-shirt. He didn’t say a word as we worked together to get it on her and then moved her into the bedroom.
“Torin.” I stopped as I reached the hallway, turning back as Maverick looked up from her bedside.
“Yeah?”
“Are you going to answer my questions this time?” he asked.
I hesitated. There was no point in keeping the truth from him now, I acknowledged. But after all the years I’d kept my secrets, it didn’t make me feel any more comfortable knowing that I was about to reveal all of them, even if it was to him. I scrubbed a hand down my face.
“Yeah,” I finally said. “Yeah, I am.”
He stared at me as if trying to determine the truth of my answer. He must have found what he was looking for because instead of responding, he looked back to Barbie and bent down, kissing her brow before joining me in the hallway and shutting the door behind him.
I couldn’t say what seeing him kiss her did to me. It was a confusing experience. A mixture of jealousy, anger, understanding, and lust. Maverick looked at me and frowned.
“Let’s go.” He strode past me, back to the living room, but I remained behind, my attention locked on the door housing the person that had brought him back to me. Two years ago, I’d let him go to protect him and now he’d been brought back. We were together not because he gave a single shit about me, but because of the girl beyond that door.
Whatever Barbie was to me, she was also something to Maverick. What would happen if neither of us could let go?
Twenty-Seven
Maverick
I strode into the guest house’s living room and then straight past it as I headed for the kitchen. Or more aptly, the liquor cabinet. Pulling open the frosted glass doors, I snagged a handle of whiskey and another of brandy before slamming them closed once more with my knuckles as I clutched the bottles.
I met Torin in the living room again, setting the brandy down in front of him while I popped the cap on the unopened whiskey and took a drink. The liquor burned down my throat, but it also relaxed my fucking muscles, calming me enough so that I could look at him without wanting to throw him through a goddamn window—or puke.
“I think you should sit down if we’re going to talk about this.” He gestured to a chair across from him. I didn’t even fight or tell him where he could shove his suggestion as I usually might have. I was too fucking tired for that. I sat.
I took another drink and wiped my fingers across my mouth. “Talk,” I said. “What are you?”
“I’m a dhampire,” he said. Silence stretched between us.
“You’re gonna have to give me more than that,” I snapped. “I don’t know what that fucking means.”
He sighed. “Maybe you should—”
“No.” I shook my head, cutting him off. “Let’s just get this over with. Rip it off like a big fucking Band-Aid, asshole. Tell me what that means and then tell me what the fuck you were doing in the janitor’s closet with Barbie.” His eyes widened. “Yeah,” I said. “I fucking know.” I put the mouth of the bottle to my lips and tipped it up. Fire licked a path over my tongue and down my throat. I couldn’t quite bring myself to give a fuck if getting drunk was a good idea or not.
Torin took a breath and released it. “Okay,” he said, watching me carefully. “A dhampire is the product of a human and a vampire mating. I’m—” He paused and grimaced before continuing. “As far as I know, I’m the only one in existence, at least right now, I am.”
“Why?” I set the bottle down on the coffee table between us, nearly losing my grip on it and sending it crashing to the floor before I caught it and nudged it back onto the hardwood.
Torin watched the entire scene without comment. “How much do you know?” he asked.
I shook my head from side to side, stopping when the room grew fuzzy in the corners of my vision. “Nothing,” I managed to say. “I didn’t even know they existed until Barbie said it after she’d finished staking that bitch through the heart. And if I hadn’t seen the psychotic cunt turn to ash right before…” I stopped, realizing that I was slurring my words. I nudged the whiskey bottle another inch or so away before continuing. “Right before my eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it.”
“That makes things … well, I’m not sure if that makes this simpler or more complicated,” Torin admitted.
I spread my arms out and sat back. “Just treat me like a beginner,” I suggested.
He shot me a look. A Torin look. One I hadn’t seen since before we had ended our friendship. The one that told me I was being a smartass and he didn’t appreciate it. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed it until that moment. I lowered my arms back to my sides and watched him.
“Vampires were created by the mating between a minor blood god and humans when the creature escaped from hell thousands of years ago,” he started. “It was more of a powerful demon than an actual god, but vampire ancestors are particular about the difference between gods and demons. Those children were the original vampires and they found that, once born, they couldn’t procreate. The only way they could create lasting families was to turn already existing humans.”
My fingers itched to reach for the whiskey, but this was important. “So, how did you come to be born?” I asked.
Torin’s eyes held mine as he continued talking. “The word ‘dhampire’ originates from the Albanian language, meaning ‘to drink through one’s teeth’,” he explained. “My existence is not an anomaly. I wasn’t an accident, but the product of centuries of research. When my father was turned in the early eleventh century—”
“Wait.” I stopped him with a raised palm. He
frowned as I reached for the whiskey, but fuck that, learning that your best friend’s—ex-best friend, I reminded myself—dad was older than the founding of the United States of America tended to need a little something extra. I swallowed down another gulp of the amber liquid before taking a shaky breath. “Your dad is…” I tried to work out just how old we were talking here.
“Old,” Torin said. “He’s very old.”
“What about your sister?”
“She…” Torin took a breath. “I do think of her as my sister, but I guess she’s kind of my niece?”
My eyebrows shot into my hairline. “What the fuck?”
“Katalin was turned closer to the mid fifteenth century. When my father was turned, he left behind a wife and a son. His first son, my brother, went on to live a perfectly normal human life. Met and married a woman, they had children. Their children had children and so on until Katalin.” Torin waves a hand absently. “I don’t know how many generations down she went, but my father met her in Egypt around the time of her twenty-fifth birthday, realized the relation and turned her.”
So much information. “Why?” I couldn’t possibly imagine that Katalin would have wanted that. As quiet as she was, at least when I’d known her, she had seemed to enjoy simplistic surroundings and uncomplicated relationships. Finding out your great-great-however many greats-grandfather wasn’t just alive, but was a fucking vampire? I just didn’t see her jumping head first into a life with him.
Torin shrugged. “She’s never said,” he admitted. “Not in all of the years she’s raised me. I don’t think it was something she had much of a choice in, though. Things were different then.”
My fingers played against the bottle in my grip. It was lighter now, half empty. I set it down once more. “Continue,” I said.
Torin looked up and focused on me. “My father enjoyed the powers of being a vampire for several centuries. The speed, the control he had over humans, the strength. Immortality agreed with him, but with the immortality of being a vampire, there also came weaknesses.”
“Garlic?” I asked.
He snorted. “No, garlic simply has a pungent smell. It has no effect on us. Holy water, however, does.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “I suppose because it would have had an effect on the creature from which vampires were created. Waters and weapons blessed by those favored by God don’t necessarily agree with creatures from the pits of hell.”
“So, God’s real then?”
Torin leaned back and scratched the underside of his jaw. “I guess,” he replied. “I don’t really know, but if vampires are real then why not?”
I sucked in a shaky breath. “Okay.” I nodded more to myself than him. “Okay,” I repeated. Then, after a beat, “What about bats?”
“What?” He frowned my way.
“Do you turn into a bat? Because that would be fucked up if you did.” God, I couldn’t fucking imagine it. Or—actually, I could, and it creeped me the fuck out. Winged little rats. A shudder worked its way through me.
“Do I look like a bat to you?” Torin deadpanned before shaking his head. “No, and before you ask—mirrors are fine too. It was the silver behind them that had any sort of effect.”
“So, weaknesses include silver and holy water?” I clarified.
“For vampires, yes,” he replied. “Suffice it to say—silver, holy water, and blessed weapons are the main weaknesses. Vampires can’t enter a home inhabited by humans without receiving permission—”
“That’s why Barbie told me not to answer the door,” I surmised. “I wasn’t planning on giving her permission—the vampire—but when she commanded me to, I just … couldn’t stop myself.”
He nodded. “Simple mind-control is something most vampires can do after they’ve grown older than a hundred or so,” he said. “It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have known.”
I heard what he said, but it still didn’t forgive what I’d done. I’d let the bitch in. I was the reason Barbie had nearly fucking died. I hunched over, my stomach churning as I sank my head into my hands.
“I shouldn’t have opened the fucking door,” I said. “She told me not to. I didn’t—”
“Mav.” Fingers gripped my wrists and pulled my hands away. I jerked. I hadn’t even heard him move. Torin didn’t step away though once he had my attention. “It’s not your fault, man. Don’t start thinking like that.” He eyed me. “If you start that shit now, you’ll never stop.”
I gritted my teeth against the urge to tell him he didn’t know what the fuck I was feeling. Now was not the fucking time. I closed my eyes and breathed through my nose. In. Out. In. Out. Until the urge to pound my head into the nearest hard surface receded and I was ready to hear the rest.
“Finish this,” I said, gesturing for him to return to his seat. “I want to know everything. Anything to help her.”
He released my wrists and stepped back. “You’ll need more than just knowledge to help her, Mav.”
I stared up at him. “Then give me what I need to help her.”
Torin met my gaze and something passed between us then. An understanding. Something we hadn’t had in two fucking years. But before we could address it, I needed the information he had. Torin took his seat once more, steepling his fingers as he resumed his explanation.
“I don’t know why I was born,” he said. “But I do know that my father contracted a black witch from one of the Eastern continents. I don’t know specifics, but I do know that my father’s intention was to create something that had all of a vampire’s strengths and none of its weaknesses. I can walk in sunlight. I can eat. Holy water gives me a mild allergic reaction, but other than that, I can drink it or bathe in it just fine. I have the speed, night vision, and healing capabilities of a vampire. With that, however, I also have to drink blood to survive and if I don’t feed both sides, food and blood—I’ll lose control of the vampire.”
I nodded. That made sense—or whatever kind of fucked up sense this shit was supposed to make. “So, what about Barbie then?” I asked. “Why did that bitch come after her?”
Torin grunted, a sound of irritation in his throat as he released his hands and stood up, pacing across the room to the windows. “Because she’s a fucking fool,” he snapped.
I grinned. “Smart mouth?” I asked. He nodded. “Doesn’t listen to a fucking word you say?” Once again, he nodded. “Drives you crazy, doesn’t it?”
“Like you wouldn’t believe,” he replied. “She attacked Delia—the vampire who attacked you—at the party last Friday. One thing about many vampires, you need to know, is that they are a vile, spiteful bunch. They hold grudges for eternity—literally.” He shook his head and turned away from the window, staring at me from across the room. “Barbie comes from a family of vampire hunters. They were killed six months ago by vampires. She hasn’t given up the fight.”
“She told me that she recognized someone at the party,” I admitted. “She told me about her family; she just left the part about them being killed by fucking vampires out of it.”
Torin tilted his head. “Can you really blame her?”
No, I supposed I couldn’t. “What now?” I asked. “She killed the bitch, but does that mean it’s over?”
Torin’s eyes filled with cold steel. “No,” he said. “It’s not over.” He looked me over. “Are you still going to insist on helping her?”
I stood up. My knees bumped against the coffee table, so I moved away from it. “Of course I fucking am,” I replied.
He nodded and then strode across the room until he came to a chest against the wall. Bending down, he flicked open the locks and reached inside. “Then you’re going to need to learn how to use one of these.” He turned and held out a gun.
I stared at it and then at him. “You’re fucking serious?”
There was no hesitation in his expression. It was stone cold determination. I reached out, my fingers closing over the black metal. He held on and my eyes flashed back
to his. “You take this, there’s no turning back, Mav.” The warning was clear.
I didn’t have to think. I finished closing my fingers over the gun and took it from him. I held it up and examined it. “Did you sleep with Maryanne?” The question barreled out of my mouth out of nowhere, but once it was out, there was no taking it back. I kept my gaze fixated on the weapon in my fist as I waited for an answer.
Torin’s breath was loud in the nearly silent room. “No,” he finally said. “I didn’t.”
My eyes flashed up to his. “Then why did you let me believe you did?”
His shoulders were wound tight, his jaw clenched. “It was easier,” he admitted.
“For what? For who?” My hand squeezed around the gun as I lowered it to the side, keeping my finger from the trigger. It probably wasn’t even loaded, not that I would use it on him.
“For me, for you, both of us, I guess.” Torin’s breath shuddered inside his chest, shaking his whole body. “You were in danger and it was the easiest way to get you away from me.”
“Your father?” I guessed.
He nodded.
“What’s changed then?”
Torin met my eyes. A beat of silence slithered through the air and then he answered. I didn’t know it then, that his answer would change the rest of our relationship. “Barbie.”
Twenty-Eight
Barbie
Blood. It covered me from head to toe. Soaking into my skin, far beneath my flesh until it couldn’t be removed. The only issue was—it wasn’t mine. This was someone else’s blood. There was something different about it. I was somewhere I’d never been before. Curling into a ball, I closed my eyes and tried to find my memories.
