Absolution (League of Vampires Book 3)

by Rye Brewer

  The more time went by, the more lying we had to do.

  And the worse I felt.

  He looked miserable as he sank into his chair with an ungraceful thud, tossing his phone onto the table in disgust.

  I glanced around, and guessed it was my turn to ask, “What’s up?”

  His mouth was drawn into a thin line, and worry lines creased his forehead. “She’s not answering her phone.”

  “Sara?”

  He looked at me like it was stupid to even ask. “Yeah. It’s not turned off—but it keeps going to voicemail.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” Gage offered.

  “You don’t even know her,” Scott reminded him.

  Philippa made a sort of strangled noise like she was trying to hold something back, but couldn’t quite manage it.

  I rolled my eyes at her, but she didn’t react. It was obvious she never liked Sara, but she’d been even more negative toward her than usual over the last few days.

  I couldn’t figure out why, and she wasn’t telling. I wondered if she would ever get over her hatred of Anissa and her sister, then doubted it. I had known my sister long enough to know she didn’t get over things easily. If ever.

  I turned back to Scott. “You know, Anissa was looking for her. I bet they’re together someplace and she just can’t get to her phone. I wouldn’t worry too much about Sara—Anissa would never let anything happen to her.”

  Again, I couldn’t be completely honest with him, and it killed me. I was no good at keeping secrets from my siblings—I could keep information to myself if it was for the good of the clan, I had been doing it for decades, but lying to my brother was something else.

  It would be as simple as telling him that Anissa wanted to take Sara to see their mother for the first time since the Great Fire. But I couldn’t do that, because too many other random bits of information were tied up with that. He had missed so much.

  He didn’t look convinced. “Where did Anissa go, anyway?”

  “Oh, you know. People to see, things to do. Sometimes I forget she had a life of her own before we met,” I said, and the words rattled off like I had practiced them in front of a mirror. I hadn’t, of course. It surprised me how easy it was to come up with a half-truth.

  He was too worked up over Sara to notice how lame my explanation was, anyway. Good thing, since I didn’t want to talk about it.

  I didn’t know until she told me she needed her space how much I needed her. It’s one thing to know the sun will burn your skin, but it’s another thing to feel that burn. It was the same thing with her, only worse.

  I didn’t know there was such a hole in my life until she came along and gave me what I was missing all along. Somebody to love and protect, someone to fight for. Without her, I felt rudderless. I had no desire to go further along the path we were on, with all the secrets and revelations and danger to us and the clan. What did it matter, really?

  My mood fell even lower than it already was. We must have been the most somber table at the club. One good thing about everybody else having such a good time was that none of them noticed. And if they did, they didn’t care.

  I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and turned in time to see Scott go stiff. “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Excuse me.” He hurried away in the direction of the bathroom.

  Philippa frowned. “He’s worrying himself sick over that…”

  “Watch it,” I warned.

  “What? I’m not allowed to have an opinion now?”

  “Keep it to yourself. Please. There are bigger issues at hand right now. You know that.” I gave her a meaningful look, and she turned away.

  It was ridiculous of her to be so consumed by jealousy or whatever it was she held against Sara when Valerius’s body was in our vault.

  “Yeah, bigger issues like this.” Gage tapped the inside of his forearm, and I knew what he meant.

  “Does it still burn?” I rolled my sleeve up to my elbow, keeping my arm under the table so no one but us could see.

  “No. Yours?”

  “No.” I turned my arm, studying it. “But they look the same. They haven’t faded a bit.”

  “At least the pain’s gone. I thought I was gonna go out of my mind.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said with a grimace. “And there I was, thinking I had a high tolerance for pain. This was blinding.”

  “I wish it would go away,” he chuckled, and I understood why he did. If we didn’t laugh, we would lose our minds. It was just one more thing to be concerned over.

  “Quick. He’s coming back.” Philippa waved her hands under the table, so Gage and I unrolled our sleeves and buttoned them before Scott saw us.

  “You feeling all right?” Philippa asked him.

  “Oh, yeah. It’s just like one thing after another, you know?” He shook his head.

  The three of us exchanged looks that said ‘If he thinks things are bad now, he’s in for a rude awakening’.

  I hoped again that his awakening didn’t take much longer. I wasn’t sure he would forgive us for withholding the truth so long.

  26

  GAGE

  “Does anybody want a drink?” Philippa asked as she got up from the table.

  I was worried about her; she put a little effort into her appearance for the sake of looking good in front of the rest of the clan—we had to put on a united front and all that—but I knew her well enough to know she was suffering.

  There was no light in her eyes, no energy in her voice. She might as well have been dead. I told myself to stop being so morbid, but it was hard not to be after what I had been through.

  I was just about to ask her to grab chalice of blood for me when something hit me. Not a thing, though it might as well have been since the sensation was something like hitting a brick wall would be.

  My head spun. I was almost dizzy. I looked around for the source of it.

  Her.

  I had to find her. I knew it was a her—how, I couldn’t say. Instinct.

  Something about the girl I had just caught scent of told me I had to find her.

  “Excuse me.” I got up without looking at the rest of my family and ran down the metal staircase that led straight to the street from the second floor deck I had been sitting on.

  My head swiveled back and forth, my nose searching for her scent. I knew she was out there.

  She had reached me from two stories away.

  I hurried to the corner, almost pushing humans out of the way to get there in time. The conflicting odors of their colognes and perfumes and deodorants and hair products screwed with my head, but there was one scent that was stronger than any of them.

  Blood.

  I had smelled blood.

  Blood I had to have.

  There.

  To my left.

  Halfway down the block, in the middle of a group of girls dressed up like they were out on the town and living it up.

  I followed her, single-minded, honing in on her scent as I drew closer and closer. I caught a flash of dark blonde hair, long and wavy the way the girls liked to do it—funny how trends seemed to double back on themselves, a creature alive as long as I had been knew how often that happened over the decades.

  I heard a voice as familiar to me as my own—even though I had never heard it before.

  “I don’t wanna go!” She was laughing when she said it, but I could tell she meant it. She was only pretending to joke around for the sake of her friends. I could tell the insincerity from the scent of her.

  “Come on, Carissa. Don’t be a pain in the ass tonight. We’ve been talking about this all week!” This came from a brunette in her group.

  Carissa.

  The girl that had saved me in the forest was named Carissa.

  I decided I didn’t like that mouthy tall, dark-haired girl with the poker-straight hair and the big ass, teetering like a horse on stilts in a pair of ridiculous shoes. She was pushy.

  “Yea
h, I know, and I’ve been telling you all week that I don’t want to do this. Why don’t you ever listen to me?”

  “Because she wants to get laid by a buff, hot, steamy piece of man meat tonight!” Another girl, this one with hair even redder than my sister’s, shrieked with laughter as the dark-haired girl took a swipe at her.

  A third girl—the short, plain one, who was just along for the ride, every group of friends had one—piped up. “I’m practically drooling over the descriptions on the website. Have you seen some of the pictures of the guys who go there? Oh, God!” She fanned herself.

  Carissa gave her a wink and linked an arm through hers. “I hope you can handle all that hotness in one place,” she said, and I liked that.

  She was a nice girl, encouraging the friend who would most likely go home alone.

  I kept my distance, following along the way as they and a few others made their way another three blocks the club they talked and shrieked and giggled the entire way there.

  When they arrived and I saw—and smelled—what the big deal was about, I froze.

  They were going into a shifter club. And not just any shifters, either.

  Not the werewolves I was used to. That was clear. I wondered about this different breed of shifters, but not for long. My mind was preoccupied with Carissa.

  Who the hell were these girls, and what were they thinking? A human girl had to be crazy to go into a club with a bunch of shifters. Didn’t they know what they were getting into? How they could be ripped apart? It wasn’t a good idea to even let a werewolf get too familiar in a social setting, since they could claim a human as their own and basically stalk her until she either gave in—or else.

  I shuddered to think of Carissa going into a place like that.

  What was worse, I couldn’t follow her.

  They would kill me the second I walked through the door. I wanted to go to her, order her not to step foot inside, tell her she would regret it for the rest of her short, vulnerable life.

  Except…

  Either she had incredibly sharp instincts, or she was smarter than the rest of them. She hung back, closer to the curb than the velvet rope designating the line to get into the club.

  I realized that none of them knew what kind of club it really was. They just thought it was a meat market.

  But she must have sensed differently.

  “What’s the matter with you, Cari?” The tall girl took her arm and tried to pull her—playfully, or at least pretending to be playful.

  “You know I don’t do this sort of thing,” Carissa said, pulling away.

  “What sort of thing?”

  “You know.” She looked around like she was embarrassed. “I don’t go to clubs and pick up guys just to sleep with them.”

  Tall Girl’s hands found her hips, and she cocked one of them out to the side.

  I knew that pose. My sister gave it to me at least once a week.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing! Nothing!” Carissa sputtered, waving her hands. “That’s great for you, if that’s what you’re into. I’m not trying to comment on anything else but that. It’s just not for me, is all. I would feel too… awkward.”

  “Believe me, you’ll get over that real fast,” the other girl laughed.

  “I don’t know.” I noticed then, too, that Carissa was dressed differently from the other girls. They wore tight, short, low-cut dresses—even the bigger girl—while she wore a sleeveless dress cut across her clavicle that almost reached her knees. And what most women would never understand was this: she was much sexier than the ones with half their body hanging out.

  I looked up at the door to the club, where a trio of males was walking up red-carpeted stairs to get inside. Werewolves. No shifters, I corrected myself. The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and my fangs threatened to descend. Only they weren’t the sort of werewolves I was used to. Instead of a bunch of hulking thugs wearing grungy clothes, half-covered in fur, these shifters were classy. Sophisticated. They didn’t stink of dirt and grime. They wore Rolex watches and tailored dress slacks, polished shoes and sunglasses even though it was as dark as night could get. I still didn’t trust them.

  I could almost understand why human women would want to go there. Almost.

  The girls watched the shifters enter the club, then just about dissolved into the sidewalk. “Oh… my… God!” Tall Girl looked and sounded like she was either going to have an orgasm or a seizure. “That’s what I’m talking about! You mean to tell me you’re gonna stand out here—alone—and miss out on that?”

  Carissa hesitated, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. She didn’t look anywhere near as sure of herself as she did before.

  I could sense that she was starting to buckle, just like I could smell her rich, fragrant, sweet blood.

  Don’t do it. Don’t you give in like that. You know there’s something wrong, don’t you? You can sense it. You’re smarter than your friends. They’re not like you, those men.

  “I really don’t feel comfortable, you guys.”

  I could sense her friends losing their patience—I could see it, too.

  “You’re all going to hook up with random guys and leave without me, and I’ll be all alone.”

  “Come on, Cari! You’re being ridiculous. You know you could pick one of those guys if you wanted to. Jesus Christ, you’re ruining the whole night.” Tall Girl tottered over to the red carpet. “I’m going in. You can go home if you want to.”

  Yes. Yes, go home. Go anywhere. Just don’t go in there.

  “Wait.” Carissa went after her.

  I shook my head; she couldn’t be that gullible.

  “Okay. If it means that much to you.”

  Tall Girl folded her arms and looked the other way.

  So, she was the alpha of the group. What she said was law. And Carissa fell for it.

  As she was crossing the sidewalk to go after her friend, a pair of shifters stepped out of a long, sleep, black car and walked toward the door.

  I watched them warily.

  “Hey, gorgeous,” one of them growled, looking at Carissa. “What are you doing out here? You should be inside with me.”

  I wanted to rip his throat out and shove his designer sunglasses in the hole I left.

  Slimy bastard.

  Tall Girl, on the other hand, pounced on the chance to pull Carissa in with her. “She’s a little shy,” she purred, walking up to the shifter who hit on Carissa. “I think she needs a little coaxing.”

  He smiled—and his teeth flashed white in the light from the streetlamps. The smile of a predator. “Don’t worry. I can do all the coaxing in the world.” He slid an arm around her waist and left no question about whether or not she was going in with him.

  I watched, barely holding myself back, as he steered her inside.

  Her friends, as well as his friend, followed them in.

  Never in all the years I’d been alive had I ever felt so useless. I couldn’t step out of the shadows and save Carissa from the shifters. They would be on me in a minute—them, and all their friends. I couldn’t follow her in, so there was no way of knowing what was happening.

  I hoped she was as smart as I tried to give her credit for.

  She wasn’t smiling as she walked in, so she might call it an early night.

  I could only hope.

  I waited for her to come out. What choice did I have? I couldn’t let her go. Her blood sang to me. I couldn’t get the scent out of my head. I wouldn’t be able to exist without knowing whether she was all right.

  I saw one after another walking in and out—and when they walked out, they inevitably had a hot young thing on their arm.

  Sometimes, the crowds outside the club were so thick, I could barely make out one face from another for all the moving, teeming bodies and their conflicting scents. Not that it mattered; I would’ve known her scent anywhere. It cut through all others.

  When the redheaded friend stepped ou
tside, giggling the way a girl giggles when she’s had just shy of too much to drink, my senses went on high alert.

  Were they leaving? There was hope yet.

  A well-dressed shifter stepped out behind her and stroked her hair. She nearly swooned. They walked off together.

  I checked my watch. It had been two hours. Two hours! I could hardly believe how time flew. It didn’t matter when I was waiting for her. All my senses were focused on one person.

  The tall, dark haired alpha girl stepped out maybe twenty minutes later with a beefy creature on her arm. She was practically draped over him—he nearly had to carry her, but not because she was drunk. He waited for a valet while she nuzzled him, arms around his neck.

  My blood boiled. Did she leave Carissa in there? Selfish. It was one thing to separate during the night if that was everybody’s plan—I had done that enough times with my brothers when we were out at the club, and the disco before that, decades ago.

  But when somebody didn’t want to be there to begin with, it wasn’t right to leave them.

  I muttered curses under my breath as they got into a sports car.

  The rest of her friends left the same way over the next half-hour. Even the bigger girl, who looked like she wanted to pinch herself as she walked hand-in-hand with a massive shifter whose thick, black hair hung past his shoulders.

  But no Carissa.

  I wasn’t sure what to think.

  She couldn’t be having a good time in there.

  I couldn’t go in and get her—what would I say if I could? I smelled your blood and need you to come with me? Right. That would seem much less threatening than a bunch of shifters.

  Suddenly, my problem solved itself when she hurried outside.

  Alone.

  I could almost taste my relief, leaning against the cool, brick wall for a second.

  She looked back and forth, maybe debating on whether to catch a cab or walk, before heading in the direction from which she came with her friends.