Vaillant had grown up in Faery, due to a deal Rhys had made with a faery regarding handing over his firstborn (the deal was made way back in the eighteenth century). Presented with twins, the faery’s unfortunate choice had been Vail. The sidhe preferred half-breeds to procreate with their own kind. Full-blooded vampires didn’t cut it. Vail had come to the mortal realm for the first time when he was in his late twenties, nursing a nasty faery dust addiction. But Vail had met Johnny’s mother, Lyric, and the rest, as they say, was history.
Or so Johnny hoped. He’d called his mom this morning. Vail had found his way home and he’d confessed to Lyric about the faery dust. She was keeping a close eye on him, and Vail was cool with that. He understood the implications of even one more hit of dust.
Only a little relieved, Johnny couldn’t help but wonder what his dad had meant last night when he’d said he wanted to dance with the devil. He was too smart to fall into addiction again.
“How’s the little biter?” Viviane asked.
She sat beside him on the couch, paging through a book. Always clothed in gorgeous gowns with diamonds and elaborate stitching, she embodied goddess. And sensuality.
“She’s not biting yet, G-ma. Summer is a usual one-year-old. She doesn’t walk either, but she does run.”
Summer was Johnny’s little sister by a few decades. He loved that little bundle of giggles and spitup, and suspected she would forever have a twist upon his heart with those springy blonde ringlets that bounced when she toddled through a room. He couldn’t imagine her sucking on a mortal’s neck, but innocence was always abandoned when the blood hunger struck at puberty.
A finger trailed along Johnny’s neck. Upon sitting down, Viviane had handed him a time-yellowed book of lascivious drawings that had been bound in the eighteenth century. Rhys had purchased the prize for her at an auction for a cool quarter million euros.
“G-ma, don’t.” He shooed away Viviane’s hand. “This one is insane.” He tapped the sketch that featured a lusty fop in a hip-swinging frockcoat offering his lover a huge wooden dildo; his erection was as large and bursting through his breeches. “An excellent definition of morning wood, eh?”
Viviane giggled and sniffed his neck.
“Seriously, G-ma, no biting! That’s not cool. Leave family members alone. Do you need me to drive you in to town for a bite?”
His grandmother needed blood daily; a condition of her insanity. And she had no boundaries with family members, which made family get-togethers challenging. Johnny took it in stride. She couldn’t help that she’d gone mad. And she was sane more often than insane, so there was that.
He set down the book and clasped her hand, beringed in diamonds and rubies. A tilt of her head onto his shoulder, spilling her thick black hair over his shoulder. Like the darkest night without stars, she’d once described the family’s propensity for dark tresses to him.
“You hungry, G-ma?”
“Just teasing, my pretty. I drank Rhys’s blood this morning before he left for the office.”
“You know I’d give you my life, but drinking from your grandson is not cool. The sexual connotations make it squicky.”
“My twenty-first century boy, I have no idea what that word means.”
“It’s like squirmy and icky mixed together.”
“You’re such a prude, Johnny.”
“And you are a libertine, Viviane Hawkes.”
“And proud of it!” She hugged him and snuggled in closer, tugging away the book to tuck alongside Johnny’s thigh and the sofa cushion. “So what have you been up to since we last spoke? Tell me tales!”
His grandmother loved to talk about her paintings and gardening projects, and in turn listen to him talk about his life.
No way could he tell her about Vail’s mistake.
“I climbed to the top of the Eiffel Tower last night. With a pretty woman.”
“I’ve a rival for my heart?”
“Never, G-ma. You will always be my favorite vampiress. But this woman. She’s…” He sighed and shook his head. An irrepressible smile was impossible to hold back.
“Oh. That’s the way of it. My bright young boy can’t even find the words? She must be special indeed.”
“I haven’t known her long, but I feel like I already know her so deeply. Like I can see inside her. I want to win her heart, G-ma. I’m not sure how to do it.”
“I once ripped out your grandfather’s heart.” She giggled.
“I know about that. Well deserved, as I understand. If at all possible, I’d like to keep Kambriel’s heart where it is, inside her chest. There’s gotta be less violent ways to woo her.”
Viviane mocked a pout. “Not as interesting, but certainly easier to prolong a relationship when one’s paramour has an intact heart.”
“Most definitely. How did Grandpa Rhys win your heart?”
“He won it twice. So long ago, and not so long ago.” She danced her fingers before her as her mind slipped into the past.
Johnny knew the past was more dangerous to Viviane than the present so he abruptly stood and took her hand. “Let’s wander out to the patio and check the flowers climbing the pergola. While we’re at it, you can give me some suggestions how to woo a lady.”
“Oh, sonnets!” she trilled as she danced out behind him onto the stone-paved patio that was shaded from the burning rays. “When Rhys taught me to read sonnets he won me forever.”
“Sonnets, eh? I’m not sure Kam would be into that.”
“Do you even know what they are?” Viviane peeked around a spill of delicate white moonflowers.
He leaned closer to the flowers, nudging one aside with his nose, and gave his grandmother his patented charmer smile. “’My lady carries love within her eyes’
“’All that she looks on is made pleasanter’
“’Upon her path men turn to gaze at her’”
He tipped up Viviane’s chin to meet her bright blue eyes, and she fluttered her lashes.
“’He whom she greeteth feels his heart to rise’
“’And droops is troubled visage, full of sighs’
“’And of his evil heart is then aware’
“’Hates loves, and pride becomes his worshipper’”
That was about half the Dante Alighieri sonnet. He knew it all, but it proved as effective as he’d hoped when his grandmother sighed.
“Oh, Johnny, you’ve become a real heartbreaker, haven’t you?”
“I would never break your heart, G-ma.” He kissed her on the forehead. “I love the classics. Mom introduced me to them when she homeschooled me. But Kam’s probably more a Rimbaud kind of girl.”
“Something more dark and disturbing?”
“Exactly.”
“Your mother raised you well enough.” Viviane made the face she always did when she spoke of Lyric. So she didn’t get along with her daughter-in-law. Who could ever be good enough for her son? “I’ve a chapbook signed by Rimbaud in my room. Another gift from Rhys. You stay here and I’ll run fetch it.” She floated away like the ethereal ghost of the past that yet haunted her.
Johnny flicked a white flower near his shoulder, pinching if off at the stem, but finding it didn’t have a scent. “Signed by Rimbaud? My grandparents are so cool.”
*
He stood up in the balcony again tonight. Watching her with that crazysexy switchblade smile. While Kam sang to the frenetic crowd of sweating bodies drowned in leather, lace, studs, and blood she could only wonder what Johnny’s blood tasted like. It would be like nothing she had ever tasted and like everything that could drown her.
Or it could rescue her.
As the guitarist peeled into a thundering riff on his glittery black Stratocaster, Kam wandered to the edge of the stage, allowing the red spotlight to infuse her pores as she looked up at the man who swam through her veins. He made her smile, and that wasn’t cool. Not during this stage show.
The song she sang was a popular one, though her rendition hardened it,
burned the edges to a crisp. Johnny knew it; she’d seen him singing it a few times. Winking at him, and waggling the microphone in invitation, she received from him a ‘what me?’ point of his finger to his chest.
She nodded, and announced over the guitar solo. “We have a treat tonight, my dark pretties. You want a duet between the Dark’s Mistress and Johnny Angel?” The name for him just came to her. It was corny but it fit with him standing high above promising her salvation with a spread of his arms and a wink from his blue eyes.
The crowd chanted and bounced, pumping their fists.
Kambriel threw the microphone toward the balcony.
Johnny leaned out to snatch the mic, and picked up the next line without missing a beat. He stepped up to the railing, balancing on the narrow iron bar. From his scuffed boots, up the snug-fitted black leather pants to the tee shirt and vest studded with spikes, he was heavy metal to the bone. Add in the guyliner, and a raspy croon and the vampiric angel won them over. He crouched on the railing and growled the dark and sexy lyrics to the masses, which they sucked up like blood raining from above.
And there it was. That gorgeous smile. Singing and smiling, and commanding those below him with his dark charm.
Kam grabbed the backup mic from a stagehand and met his vocals with a harmonization that meshed as if they’d been born to make music together.
Johnny climbed onto the outside of the balcony railing, one hand clasped about a bar and his body leaning out wide. He knew how to work the crowd. She was surprised he wasn’t a headliner in the local clubs. Hell, on the international stage. He was that good. His voice liquid and deep, she wanted to lose herself in Johnny Santiago. She was one of those who stood below, arms raise in worship and voice honed to a shout.
Bringing the song to a close, Johnny screamed out the repeating, defiant pledge to rock the night. He thrust up a triumphant fist. The audience raged and stomped their feet.
Thumping the universe, he’d called it. Yeah, it sure as hell felt like it.
The guitarist nodded to Kam, sort of a ‘he’s not bad’ acknowledgement, and the band took their leave of the stage to wait for the encore.
*
Johnny tossed the microphone down to a stagehand, and jumped back onto the balcony booth. He was high on the adrenaline rush singing always injected through his veins. And Kam had given him that injection.
High-fiving a demon who walked by and acknowledged him with a raise of his whiskey bottle, Johnny headed for the stairs. He’d meet Kam backstage, and—
The flash of a silver brooch caught his eye. Odd, as jewels and spangled clothing sparkled everywhere in the club. What held fast his interest was the knowledge he’d seen that diamond jewelry before. It was shaped like a dragonfly, and he knew it was old, from the eighteenth century.
“G-ma?”
Heart dropping to his knees, he pushed through the hyped-up crowd and to the hallway that led to the dark rooms lighted along the floors with violet stripes where couples slipped away to engage in illicit sex and lots of blood and biting.
He reached Viviane, who was being fawned over by two men and a woman. Dressed in a clingy red sheath, her eyes were shadowed with blue to match her irises. Not her style, at least, not that Johnny had ever seen her wear.
“Grandma, what the hell?” He tugged her from a groping fang junkie and away from the entrance to the dark rooms reeking with incense and anticipation. “Where’s Rhys? Did he bring you here for a bite?”
“Oh, Johnny, sweetie.” His grandmother twirled, extending an arm above her head in display. “I’ve made a great escape!”
“No. You don’t go out alone, Viviane. You’re not allowed.” He mined for the cell phone in his back pocket. “I can’t believe Grandpa Rhys let you go out on your own.”
“I had to leave without telling him, Johnny. He called to me.” She tilted her head aside his shoulder and walked her fingers up his chest.
Johnny clasped Viviane’s fingers. “He? Who are you talking about, G-ma?”
She tilted up on tiptoes to whisper at his ear, “Himself.”
“What? No,” came out in a gasp.
Viviane had just uttered the devil’s name. Every paranormal breed that walked this realm was aware of the dark prince, and took pains to never speak his name. What was Himself doing talking to his grandmother? She must be in one of her crazy moods. She was imagining things.
“He whispered ‘wolf slayer’,” Viviane said. “That’s me, you know?”
Yes, Viviane had told him tales of her slaying a wolf with her bare hands back in the eighteenth century.
“I don’t know what’s going on, Viviane, but I am calling Rhys.”
“Please, Johnny. I want to find Him. He’s promised the wolf slayer dark pleasures.” Viviane dashed her tongue over her lower lip.
Johnny pushed speed dial and was thankful when Rhys answered on the first ring. “Where is she? Johnny?” Apparently Rhys was aware of his missing wife.
“I ran into her here at Club l’Enfer.”
“Shit. I didn’t hear her leave. Will you keep an eye on her until I can get there?”
“No problem, Grandpa. Hurry. She’s not in top form.”
Rhys promised it would be less than half an hour. Johnny added another fifteen minutes for traffic. Viviane grabbed him by the face and said urgently, “It’s in her heart, Johnny. You can get it out.”
“What? G-ma? Who are you talking about?”
“The pretty one.” She smiled sweetly, slipping into another persona. Rhys couldn’t arrive soon enough.
“Come with me.” He directed Viviane to the back of the dance floor just as the crowd’s incessant shouts brought The Dark’s Mistress back on stage for the encore.
Babysitting his grandmother was not what he’d had in mind for tonight, but there was no way he’d leave her alone. She wasn’t right in the head now if she thought the devil Himself had called her here. But good thing she’d been compelled to the one place he was tonight.
Strange coincidence.
“Dance with me, Johnny!”
Viviane grabbed his wrist and tugged him to the dance floor, where she was sucked into the bustle of jumping, gyrating, fist-pumping bodies. She was quickly sandwiched by two men who took her in from breasts to thigh.
Johnny gave them the evil eye and showed them his fist and fangs. Enough to make them back off.
“Oh, G-ma, you are trying my patience tonight.”
*
After half a dozen encore songs Kam thanked her band mates and headed to her dressing room. The guys in the band, well—she didn’t know where they went after a show. Or where they lived before shows. They never practiced together. What were their names? The four musicians simply came together in an amazing cohesion when all were placed on stage.
Devilish magic, she knew that. Questioning it would not get her any answers. And really, she didn’t want to hear the truth.
She wasn’t surprised to find Johnny lounging on the black velvet chaise in her dressing room, but she was surprised when he leapt up to kiss her in greeting.
She’d been so far from closeness and sharing and empathy lately, it was nice being with someone who wanted to be around her and touch her and didn’t demand such with threats to her very soul.
And yet.
She pushed him away before his lips could touch hers. “I saw you on the dance floor with a gorgeous woman.”
“Really?” His switchblade smile irritated her now. “She is gorgeous. I’ve known her forever.”
“Oh.” Kam brushed past him, readjusting the horns on her head so they stopped slipping over one ear. “I suppose I do have a boyfriend, so I can’t complain that you have other women.”
“Kam, really? You’re jealous because you saw me with Viviane?”
“Her name is Viviane? Pretty.” She bowed her head. Something in her chest pulsed too hard for a heartbeat. Is that what disappointment felt like?
Johnny wrapped his arms around her from behind
, and even as she struggled to push him away, she reached up and clasped his fingers to hold him close. Couldn’t he be all hers?
He kissed her cheek and said, “Viviane Hawkes is my grandmother, Kam. She’s a vampiress who was born centuries ago.”
“Oh.” The pulse in her chest stuttered then resumed normal function, a joyous leap through the meadow after butterflies. “Oh hell, Johnny, I was jealous. Do you go out with your grandmother a lot? I mean, she looks as young as us, but you have to admit that’s kind of weird.”
“I did tell you family is important to me.” He sighed and walked around to sit on the edge of the bed. “But no, I don’t go out often with my grandmother. Once in a while. She’s a lot of fun. She was out on her own tonight and that’s not supposed to happen. She’s…touched.” He tapped his temple. “Crazy, actually. And Grandpa Rhys didn’t notice her slip out. It’s a good thing I saw her. She was mumbling weird stuff about the devil telling her to come here.”
Kam clutched the hard leather bustier lined down her middle with metal clasps. Again her heartbeats thudded too hard, painfully.
“But like I said, she’s not right in the head,” Johnny explained. “Though she did say something to me like, ‘it’s in her heart; you have to get it out’. I think she was talking about you. Do you have any idea what that could mean?”
Kam stopped herself from turning from him, and cautioned her expression not to freak out and give away her deepest fears. “Something in my heart?” she managed lightly. “I don’t even know your grandmother. You say she’s crazy?”
“Happened a long time ago. I shouldn’t bother you with it. Rhys picked her up. And my dad is safe—“
“Your dad?”
He waved it off with a shrug. “Just some weird stuff going on with him lately, too. But it’s all kosher. Now I can focus on you. Sorry if I made you jealous. But then, it’s kind of cool you were. Come over here, mistress of the dark. Can I have a real kiss now?”
Relieved to dismiss the subject of what may be in her heart, Kam slipped into Johnny’s arms and kissed him with a desperation that chased away her fears and guided her from the smothering darkness and toward a misty kind of hope.
Love's First Bite: Bad Boys and Alpha Vampires Boxed Set (6 book bundle) Page 37
