Hope the Fuzzy Bunny doesn’t mind getting buried under the FTD welcome wagon.
Smirking, I cut through Griffith Park and head up the hill toward the Observatory. The houses here are old Hollywood-style residences with lists of previous owners that read like a Who’s Who of Tinseltown, and the mansion I’m headed for is the jewel in the proverbial crown. Graceful lines, pristine white stone, slate roof, trailing vines. The central fountain offers a few notes of music. Under that, the sound of distant traffic drifts up from the city at the bottom of the hill.
I’d labored under the delusion that the next time I came here, it would be to introduce Reille to Roman. He’s been out of the country for nearly a year, so I guess I figured she and I had plenty of time. That we’d work out our shit before he came back from Italy. That I would slide her into a slinky green bit of something and pile on the diamonds and…
What? Show her a good time at one of the orgies he likes to throw belowstairs?
Actually, that’s exactly the kind of thing she would have liked. Reille was insatiable in the best kind of way, always up for a quick shag or a slow burn. In bed, she didn’t know the meaning of the word “no,” and she had a few tricks up her sleeve that were new, even to me. Wish I could get her out of my head, but with my mark still on her, she’s there, ever-present, the one fucking itch that I just can’t scratch. And it’s going to stay that way unless some other shithead vampire comes along and shoots his venom into her veins. Until then, Reille Reece is going to be the white noise at the back of my skull, a little voice that’s constantly telling me just how good it would be if I could have her one more time.
Problem is, it was never really good at all, was it?
With a scowl, I climb out of the car, crushed shell crunching softly underfoot. Walking with my hands jammed in my pockets and my shoulders hunched up to my ears, I stare at the ground right up to the point when my feet hit the glossy marble steps and the front door swings open. I’m expecting Magnus, who’s exactly the kind of manservant you’d expect to find presiding over Roman’s house. He’s there, all right, but he’s not opening the door to let me in.
He’s opening the door to let Caspian Declan out.
Not just Cas, but Patrick St. John. The lily-white aristocrat and the down-and-dirty street rat are, as usual, a pair of Prada-clad bookends. Surprising to see them here at all, given that they don’t pay a shit-ton of fealty to our sire on any given day, but right now, the two of them stand between me and the bottle of hundred-year-old Scotch that Roman has stashed in his study.
“Swing by to get a business loan?” I fire off.
One corner of Cas’s mouth curls slightly. You can bait him all day, and every so often he’ll rise to the occasion, but only if he’s spoiling for a fight. A long moment passes as he weighs his options, mind flicking through all the possible outcomes before responding.
“I should ask you the same,” he says, then adds, “I heard you had a bit of trouble with your… man of business. It really is a tragedy, the way you don’t run your company, Xaine.”
“It’s tragic that you give a shit.” Yeah, catching Matty running millions through the clubs came as something of an unpleasant surprise, but I still prefer the hands-off method of management. It no doubt irks Cas on some primal level that Apocalypse does as well as it does without me micromanaging every damn thing. It probably also irks Cas that I never tried to take over the world. There’s dominance and domination, and he has both acts down pat so well that it probably never occurs to him that not all of us want to feed that need.
“Well, someone has to look after you,” he tells me, expression as deadpan as ever, the ultimate poker face. “Otherwise you’d be blissfully poor, living in a hovel somewhere.”
I give him a smile then. The fangy one. “Reille’s looking after everything, thanks for asking.”
“Yes, well, she did always know how to handle a man’s assets.”
Trick’s ice-blue gaze jumps between the two of us, and I can tell that the Cockney Shadow is going to make me eat my own shoes, given half the chance. He remembers that evening two hundred years ago, in Scotland. Gretna Green, to be precise, which was the Las Vegas drive-through marriage capital of the United Kingdom at the time.
Ten days after Elizabeth and I had stolen away in the dead of night.
Three days after she and I had gotten married.
One night after she’d begged me to send for Cas, because she was dying.
Because I’d killed her.
And he wasn’t there because I’d gotten a letter to him; he had to have pieced it together and set out after us riding hell-for-leather to arrive at the inn when he did, with Trick in tow. Unfortunately—for everyone—it was approximately ten minutes too late. When they stormed in, I was still clutching her, both of us covered in blood. She’d died in my arms, reassuring me to the end that she loved me, that it wasn’t my fault. But her last blood-choked gasp cried out to God and her brother, in that order.
Cas likes to think that he could have saved her if he’d only turned up sooner, but I doubt it. Women have a much harder time with the turn. Precious few of them survive. But I’d been so certain that my blood was old enough to help her through it. So certain that we could walk together, forever, in a darkness that wouldn’t ever grow bleak because we had each other.
I was a fool.
Probably still am, because people don’t ever grow out of that shit. Just like Cas will hate me forever, and our rivalry can have no end, not when both of us have an eternity to feed the flames. Not even Roman has been able to broker a truce between two friends, two blood-brothers turned into enemies over the course of one moonrise.
Cas’s fingers move toward his neck, long digits curling around a tie that needs no fixing, but he straightens it anyway, clearing his throat and drawing my attention to the silken fabric laid out across the pristine light gray of his shirt. Instant recognition flashes through my memory; I couldn’t forget that particular shade of purple if I had a thousand years to try, because it’s the lavender of the dress Reille bought when she was with me in Paris. The dress she wore the night she rode Enemy Number One like a carousel horse.
The dress Cas apparently had made into a motherfucking tie, twisted in a perfect double-Windsor knot, because I hear his voice, clear as anything, back at the museum the night he ended it all for me:
I have it hanging in my closet.
Before I can stop myself, my fist plows into his mouth. There’s the give of skin as it compresses between my hand and his teeth, a split-second of surprise and resignation on both our parts, then everything’s smeared in red. Blood trickles over his lower lip, out between the cuts on my knuckles, then Cas’s eyes close and he rocks back in his shiny goddamn shoes.
There’s no time to stop and appreciate anything, because any second now, St. John is going to close his gaping maw and tackle me. I dip down, slam into Cas’s chest with my shoulder, and send us both flying past Magnus and into Roman’s foyer. For a long second, I entertain serious notions of sitting on Cas and beating the ever-loving shit out of him until someone stops me. The thing that catches me up, though, is the vivid mental image of blood spattered across marble.
Except I’m picturing Reille’s blood, not Cas’s. The pale-veined black marble of the Palisades house, not the shining, gold-threaded floor I’m looking at now. On this floor, the blood would be rubies and garnets, faceted and glinting. On my floor on that night, the flecks and droplets and tiny puddles were like onyx, impossibly dark in contrast to the diamond-twinkle of scattered Swarovski crystals and the fragmented glass pieces of her iPhone screen. It was only when I touched the blood later, after the smears had gone cold, that I could see the red—
Trick catches me around the middle, clamps down, and hauls me off Cas. I don’t go easily, throwing an arm back to land a lucky elbow to his nose, and I’m gratified by the instant spurt of blood trailing down St. John’s face when he lets go.
“Oy,” he yells, the
gutter accent bleeding through as it always does when he’s pissed. “Give over arsehole, before I beat your fuckin’ face in!”
I spare one more look at Cas as he gets up from the floor like it’s no big deal that I tackled him, then I shift my ire to the man at my back. “You level up to full-fledged pimp yet, Trick? Or are you still working your way up the whore ladder?”
“Need a few more bitches in my stable, X,” Trick grunts, dabbing at his busted nose with his previously immaculate and likely designer pocket square. “You should swing by sometime for an interview.”
“No thanks,” I mutter. “I’m pretty sure even a vamp could pick up syphilis from one of your sofas.”
Trick opens his mouth to retort, but shuts it just as quickly. Roman’s headed down the hall, his expression thoughtful, and suddenly we’re three kids in the schoolyard, old enough to know better but mad enough to act up anyway. I take a step away from Cas and Trick in an unspoken denial of guilt. Looking unperturbed for all that his mouth is seeping blood at a slow trickle, Cas runs a hand over his vest and combs his fingers through his hair. He makes a big deal of accepting his coat and scarf from Magnus, shrugging his shoulders into the tailored trench, and handing the same items plus a crisp fedora over to Trick before he finally glances my way.
“Men are more easily governed by their vices than their virtues,” he tells me, “And no virtue in this world is going to make you a better man, Xaine. Understand that, if you understand anything at all.”
Slightly ironic that two hundred years later, the guy who lost friends at Waterloo would toss Napoleon Bonaparte quotes around like it’s nothing. At least when Cas straightens his motherfucking, girlfriend-fucking tie this time, he has a reason for doing it. Still wish I could choke him with it. Tighten it down until his face turns purple to match. That, or make him eat it, inch by impeccably-sewn inch.
“Good evening, Xaine.” Roman extends his hand to me. What follows is not a simple clasping of palms, but the full-formal hand to forearm. More than a greeting, it serves as a reminder of respect and loyalty owed as his fingers curl around the spot on my skin where the family sigil is branded. I have it, Cas and Trick have it. Margot and that little shit, Matty, too.
By the time the shake is quite finished, Roman’s maneuvered me to the opposite side, positioning himself between me and Cas, Trick, and the door. He walks out with them, leaving Magnus to guard the threshold, and that guy gives me a look that says if I so much as twitch, I’ll regret it. Hell, I’ve regretted a lot of things, but the way he can clamp a hand down around a windpipe would remind even the undead of what it might be like to die.
“No worries, Magnus,” I tell him, leaving Roman to his goodbyes and my good-riddances. “I’m just here for the Scotch.”
It only makes sense to put more distance between me and Cas right now. Taking the hall at a prowl, I look for an excuse to give someone a hard time. I catch the scent of human female and follow it to the library, expecting dolls here to party, people dressed and ready for what’s surely already in full swing downstairs.
What I get is a slim brunette wearing a heavy green sweater and tailored pants. Her hair’s pulled back in that sloppy sort of mess that most women fuss over for an hour, but you can tell this one managed it in less than thirty seconds. Very little makeup, no jewelry, no perfume, and no scent.
Bingo.
Unmarked, and yet she’s running a hand over the priceless books on Roman’s shelves like she belongs here. There’s also a giant, hairy animal the size of a small pony curled up on one of the extremely expensive and eons-old Persian rugs. Neapolitan Mastiff, by the looks of it; I had a set back in the day. Impressive guard dogs, as a general rule, but this one only cracks an eye at me, snorts softly, and goes back to sleep. It weighs at least a hundred pounds and change, and the damn thing is drooling in its sleep like spit’s its job.
What the hell?
“Sure you’re in the right place, sweetheart?” I lean against the doorjamb and cock an eyebrow at the visitor.
Startled, she turns around. Then she’s still, frozen like a bug under my magnifying glass. I get the huge brown eyes, the tentative smile, the tiniest burgeoning excitement, then she bursts out with, “Xaine! Mi sei mancato così tanto, fratello maggiore.”
I’ve missed you very much, big brother.
Only one person has ever called me that. “Lumen?” I peel myself off the wall and take a step toward her. Twenty years ago—
Jesus, twenty years.
—she was a child following Roman’s latest conquest, Elin, around this mansion like a shadow. Same dark hair, same big eyes, completely fearless of the predators who surrounded her, not that any of us would have dared touch Roman’s human ward. Then, when the paramour died, Roman went into deep mourning. The pain cut into him in ways I could all too easily understand, and Lumen’s very presence in the house was sandpaper rubbed over the wound. The day after the funeral, he carted her off to Europe, presumably dumping her into a convent or a boarding school and leaving her there to turn into…
Well, this.
This is why he was gone. He went to fetch her.
“Your Italian’s gotten better.” I meet her halfway across the room and fold her into a hug. Now I catch the scent-memory of the child under the fragrance of the adult. “Your accent’s still shit.”
She pulls back far enough to shove at me with both hands. “Don’t be a jerk. You know it’s not.”
“Oh, I’m a professional jerk. Don’t you have the internet in Italy? Not keeping up with the gossip rags because you’re too busy riding Vespas and pretty boys?”
I swear she flushes bright pink. “No Vespas. And no boys. No time for anything, really, other than studying.”
“Getting double doctorates?” I realize I’m fishing for information, which is disconcerting in and of itself, but there hasn’t been a single minute of this day that hasn’t been weird, so why stop now? “Did Roman have you tracking down the Ark of the Covenant or something?”
She doesn’t answer, making me wonder if he actually did have her on an Indiana Jones-style crusade over there. Except that’s not Lumen. This girl is about as far from action-adventure movie as it gets.
“Hardly,” she finally says, hitting me with a Mona Lisa smile that tells me that’s all the answer I’m getting out of her. “You just missed Cas and Trick.”
“Actually, I didn’t miss them. Well, not Cas, anyway.” I bring my hand up to show her my knuckles, already healing over but still bloodied up.
Her eyes widen a bit more, if that’s possible, and then she goes into Florence Nightengale-mode, pulling out an old-school linen handkerchief and wiping the worst of the gore away. “You hit him?”
“Yeah.”
“Did he deserve it?”
“What do you think?”
“I think,” she says slowly, “that the two of you have a lot to sort out, and that it probably won’t happen in group therapy.”
I bark out a laugh, one that startles the sleeping monstrosity on the rug. I don’t want to talk about Cas anymore, so I switch the subject. “Is that thing housebroken? Because as guard animals go, it’s a little useless.”
Lumen glares at me and drops onto the carpet next to her pet. “This is Arcati, and she thinks you’re useless.”
Bending down, I scratch her damn dog behind its ears before chucking Lumen under the chin like she’s still the kid who used to climb into my lap when no one was looking. “You’ve turned into a tiny harpy, haven’t you? I miss when you wore your heart on your sleeve and I could read you like a book.”
Lumen leans against Arcati, arm looped over the giant animal, and she goes quiet. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that tells me I’ve hit some unintended nail on the head again. It’s weird as hell to get flickers of the little girl she used to be, sitting in that same spot on the same rug. She’s changed so much, but I guess we all have, even if some of us don’t look it…
“Stop teasing her, Xaine,” Roman says fr
om the doorway. “The two of you will have time to catch up later.”
When he gestures, I fall in step behind him, leaving Lumen to her books and her dog and her secrets with a half-wave. Roman heads toward his office, moving like the warrior he’s always been; it’s only the battlefields that have changed. He must have been at least thirty when he was turned, which is impressive considering that was when the apostles walked the earth. Tall enough that I have to look up at him, broad enough through the shoulders that I know he can handle himself in a brawl. Dark, close-cropped hair makes no effort to conceal the spear scar that runs across the left side of his skull. Private beyond measure; you’d have a better chance of digging secrets out of the Sphinx. All in all, Roman’s the kind of guy you wouldn’t bet against in a game of cards and the one you sure as hell wouldn’t want to go up against in a fight.
That was the thought I’d had when I’d first laid eyes on him, anyway, with the lamplight flickering over those eyes and that scar and the crisp white of his collar against the liquid black velvet of his dress coat. I wasn’t looking for trouble, just chasing a pretty piece of ass. Dressed head to toe in blue silk, she’d led me on a merry chase through the kaleidoscope of color that was carnivale. I was young, stupid, horny, invincible, and human. She’d brushed a hand over mine, smiled, and ducked down an alley…
Roman was at the end of that alley. He didn’t ask and I didn’t give permission. Mortality traded for hedonism and infamy, and I still think, for the most part, that I got the better end of that particular bargain.
“So,” he says, opening the door to his office. “I hear you’ve been busy while I was gone.”
One simple sentence and I know I don’t have to say shit about what happened with Reille. With Cas. With Matthias and the money and everything else. Roman knows, and he probably got all the stories from someone paid to be impartial. I’m annoyed, but at least it saves me the hassle of having to fill him in.
I put the brakes on the second I catch an eyeload of Matty’s raggedy ass parked on Roman’s expensive leather couch. The surprise is mutual, because I can practically see his nuts shrivel up from here. And with good reason: I fired the little fucker, and I would have been well within my rights not only to have him arrested but also to kick his fangs in.
Lost Angeles Page 5
