Dark Awakenings (Danse Macabre Book 2)

by Christina Quinn

  It didn’t hit me until I reached those massive round conveyor belts that I was going to meet a total stranger. After I snatched my bright red luggage off of the sea of black, fear settled into the pit of my stomach as I looked around nervously. I proceeded through customs and the moment they saw my passport I was flagged through. I wasn’t even asked to declare anything, the customs official added a page to my passport and stamped it.

  “You get in trouble, you show this card.” The official declared in heavily accented English as he handed me a bright red plastic card, a card that was Aleksi’s color. Without another word I was waved on.

  Exiting customs I was confused and suddenly very aware that I should have opened the envelope and read what was inside instead of napping on the flight. Outside of the customs there were lines of people but no one was standing around with a sign that said Darling. My stomach did a backflip as I rooted around in the envelope for the little piece of paper with Nikolai’s number. I dialed and didn’t even hear ringing around me—he wasn’t there. My hands were shaking while I juggled my purse, the envelope, the handle of my suitcase and my phone. After a few rings it answered.

  “Allo?”

  “Nikolai Zelenko?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Autumn Darling… Aleksi’s servant. I’m at the airport.”

  “Oh, hi. Your plane’s early, I’m at the Starbucks still.” A sweet tenor replied with accented but otherwise perfect English. “I thought I had another forty minutes.”

  “No… I’m here.” I nervously sighed into the phone and looked around.

  “I hope this doesn’t take points off.” He laughed nervously.

  “It won’t, I’ve a feeling it’s going to be pass fail.”

  “Well, I’ll try hard not to disappoint.” He chuckled nervously and I froze—I knew that laugh. That was Aleksi’s laugh. I saw him as he rounded the corner and my heart stopped in my chest. With the phone pressed to his ear, Starbucks cup in hand - he looked so normal, so utterly completely normal, and so much like Aleksi I actually panicked. The mouth was different but everything else—minus coloring— was exactly the same. I knew that mouth, that adorable, playful kittenish mouth—that was Colette’s mouth. What was Colette’s mouth, doing on Aleksi’s face? Oh you know the answer to that. The coloring was slightly different but I could chalk that up to the fact that he was living still. He was slightly darker than Aleksi, or rather his skin tone seemed more alive. It was a healthy slight tan as opposed to the other’s delicate, vampiric pallor. His hair was somewhere between light brown and dark blonde, almost that dishwater blonde shade that I could envision as Aleksi’s before his hundred year partial moratorium on sunlight.

  The only real difference that couldn’t be explained away were the eyes. Aleksi and Colette had eyes that were surreal in color. They were electric blue, shockingly vibrantly blue. Nikolai’s eyes were so pale blue they almost lacked color. The same color Colette told me her child’s eyes had been. But she said he died. No, she didn’t. You assumed, and you know what happens when you assume things. Colette’s words from four months ago flooded my mind as I watched him approach me. You look frightened, smile. I forced myself to smile as he approached, but that smile stayed clear of my eyes which remained wide and fixed with terror at the quasi-incestuous love child of Aleksi and Colette. Did he know? She certainly knew but did he?

  “I think I see you.” I mumbled into the phone, there was no saving my tone. I ended the call and quickly switched the phone to camera mode and snapped a photo. While he approached I sent it to Leslie.

  [I know it’s your wedding night, but I don’t know what to do. Did you notice this?] I quickly texted her as he approached me.

  “Autumn?” He asked and I nodded pulling some of my hair behind my ear.

  “Yes.” Again you sound utterly brilliant. Swallowing I nervously smoothed my coat as silence settled in—we were both nervous.

  “Let me help you with your bags.” He offered as he reached for the handle of my rolling suitcase and I let him. Honestly, I was in shock. He could have asked me if I was okay with him decapitating me; I would have just nodded and said yes. “It’s good your flight came in early. I haven’t stayed up this late in years and I was starting to get exhausted.” Again that nervous laugh sounded as we started our way through the airport. In reality I was just following him, my brain didn’t know how to cope with what I was seeing or what I should do in this situation. Do I tell Aleksi? Did he know? You’re repeating your thoughts. Thank him for helping you, your mother didn’t raise an ingrate.

  “Thank you. I don’t know how I would have juggled everything if you hadn’t offered to help.”

  “It’s no problem at all.” My phone erupted in my pocket. I took it out and checked my messages.

  [no looking @ Aleksi n Colette now. freaky. u think he knows] Leslie sent back, she was probably still at the reception. [Keep me posted]

  [I don’t know if Aleksi knows. I don’t think Nikolai does.] I sent back as we reached the doors.

  “I’m sorry, it’s my best friend’s wedding tonight. I was actually at the reception when I was told I was coming here.” I offered him a small smile as we slipped into the back of a cab.

  He spoke to the cab driver in what I assume was Russian and we were zipping along through the streets of Moscow before I could blink.

  “What’s Aleksi like? I’ve heard that he’s very intense.”

  “Intense…” I trailed off as I thought of every time Aleksi tied me up and used my body as he pleased. My toes curled in my boots as blush flushed my cheeks. “He is certainly intense.” The sadness crept into my voice like a home invader as I remembered everything that had passed between Aleksi and I—everything that would never pass between us again. I sunk back against the leather of the seat as the cab came to a stop.

  “We’re here.” He offered with a playful smirk as he hopped out of the cab with the energy that betrayed his statement about being exhausted. I gathered my things and followed him.

  The building was ultra-modern, but a far cry from the large black glass fortress that Aleksi called home. It was a box that had only six floors, the upper floors were a darker colored brick than the base of the building which was a light blue colored sandstone that had a row of about six windows on either side of the door. I was amazed by the universality of the lobby and the elevator. With the tasteful modern art and security desk I could have walked into any high scale apartment building in the world.

  The apartment itself was large and laid out similarly to mine, but I knew why that was—there were only so many combinations of boxes you could come up with. Everything was very modern it looked like it had been professionally decorated, but the colors were suffocating. It was so dark. Everything was black or dark gray, it was what I’d imagined living inside of Aleksi’s head was like. It took a moment for it to sink in that this was Nikolai’s apartment. I followed him into the bedroom where he took my suitcase and couldn’t help but to notice that the room was enormous and continued with the theme of darkened walls.

  “You have your own bathroom, and you can put your clothes in the dresser here.” He gestured to the dark colored dresser. This was the master suite, I furrowed my brows. Did he move himself out of his room? I walked around the room for a moment, and stared at the bed. It was a king sized bed with charcoal grey bedding with black embroidery on top of it. But the bedding wasn’t what caught my attention. The posts of the bed were black wood painted with shiny black lacquer that seemed to form a box around the bed. About a foot above where the post met the platform for the bed was a spot where the lacquer had been worn off, someone had been tied to the bed habitually. I swallowed remembering how Aleksi tied me to the bed at the Petite Trianon when he put me en Pointe.

  “Thank you.” I almost whispered as I untied and unbuttoned my coat.

  “You’re welcome.” He flashed me that playful smirk. “If you need anything I’ll be in the other room. The coffee wasn’t one of m
y better ideas—I’m probably going to be up all night.” Again there was that nervous laughter and I realized that this was going to be difficult. I slipped off my coat and those pale eyes of his turned into all heat. They were laser eyes of a different kind, his eyes traced the path of my hands as I smoothed the soft fabric over my sides. However, that look was brief. He looked away from me and shook his head a little. I walked to the closet and tried the door, it was locked. “Oh, I…that’s the only place in the whole apartment that you shouldn’t think of as yours. I’ll put your coat on the coat rack.” And just like that he was gone in a flash with my coat leaving me in the foreign room.

  After tucking away my clothes I sat on the bed with the large envelope Aleksi had given me. I up ended it on the bed, and out fell two packets of paper and six stacks of 5000 ruble notes. He did say Moscow would be expensive. There was also another scrap of paper. It simply read, “You’ll do fine.” I glanced over the packets one was information on Nikolai; his supposed parents, his employers, his education, his sexual orientation, list of known sexual partners. Was there a file somewhere like this about me? Probably. The second packet was all of the questions I was supposed to ask him. Just glancing over them I could tell I wasn’t going to ‘do fine’ at all. Rubbing my face I groaned before slipping off of the bed and taking the packet with questions, and my phone with me. I glanced at the time, it was only one thirty in the morning. I needed wine; that was the only way any of the questions were going to get asked or answered.

  Outside of the door I got a full view of Nikolai lounging on the couch watching TV. He glanced up at me when I entered the room and immediately muted the program.

  “Do you need anything?” He asked eagerly.

  “I thought we could start on these over a glass of wine.” I held up the packet and he slid off of the couch and walked into the kitchen.

  “Aleksi said you like blushes, so I got a few different kinds. But I have a very good red. It’s a 2002 Bordeaux—I got a case for good luck from a fan last year.”

  “No, thank you. I’d appreciate a glass of the blush though.” I watched as he produced two wine glasses from a rack above the breakfast bar and two bottles from the refrigerator. “What else did Aleksi say?”

  “That I’m to treat you with the respect I’d show him, and I’m to answer your questions truthfully. I’m sure it was a standard conversation. He’s very cold isn’t he?”

  “Aleksi is…” I trailed off as he slid the glass of blush in front of me. I ran my fingers through my hair and pursed my lips. “Aleksi is… complex.” My fingers slipped over the bite at my neck and my mind slipped back to that hard desperate kiss in my hotel room in Paris. “I’d say mercurial but I doubt that would encompass him. Have you met him?”

  He shook his head. “No, but I did meet Colette Deveraux last year when my petition was initially approved. She seemed very sure she’d be the one turning me. We had lunch and she answered some of my questions. By comparison Aleksi seems almost unapproachable.” He sipped his wine and took the bottles with him to the living room and set them on the coffee table. I hesitated before joining him. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to continue the conversation, it was more or less the uncertainty of where me, plus a bottle of wine and someone who looked like Aleksi would end up.

  “I only know him as my Master and he treats me differently than everyone else.” I murmured between sips of my wine as I joined him on the couch. “He’ll be your sire and…” I trailed off and thought of the way he so casually discarded Kendra—the first vampire he sired and my once friend—and allowed her to be cut to pieces. “That’s a different relationship.” He nodded slowly to my words and took another sip of his wine. “Speaking of which.” I picked the packet of paper back up and reread the first page of questions. “How many tattoos do you have?” The benign question made him suck in a slow breath. He had to think, the fact that he had to think made me pause.

  “Twenty…six?” He raised a brow and smirked.

  “You don’t know?”

  “I’ve lost track.” A sheepish grin tugged at his lips and he blushed before snatching up his wine glass again. How do you forget how many tattoos you have?

  “Oh…do…do you mind if I…document them?” I asked as I felt my face grow hot from my own blush.

  “Not at all.” The eagerness in his voice bordered on the obscene. He stood and stripped off his shirt without another word and then started unbuttoning his pants. I wanted to crawl into my skin and hide. The paper said document the tattoos, Aleksi even had an annotation ‘email me pictures’. But I was oh so unprepared for Nikolai’s mostly nude body. I frantically seized the wine glass and downed the entirety as fast as I possibly could. “Shy?” He asked with a smirk, the heat from his eyes before had reached his voice. I had to force myself to look at him. But I didn’t respond, I turned the camera mode on my phone on and walked closer to him.

  His body told a story. Just by looking at that lithe, defined physique you could read his life. The center of his chest had a serpentine dragon in bold black lines curled around itself, the similarities to the House Dracul crest were disturbing. There was also something else disturbing about the tattoos, there seemed to be no cohesion. His skin was littered with angry dragons, the Russian crest in not one but three incarnations, and various lists and phrases. His tattoos were like what prisoners had done to pass the time while incarcerated. As I documented the numerous markings I also got pictures of the scars, they looked deliberate; some mimicked claw marks, others, like the one on his inner thigh—an elaborate Phoenix rising from the flames—were amazingly detailed.

  When I finished documenting Nikolai’s tattoos I sent them to Aleksi as I took a step back. Nikoali’s body wasn’t cluttered with tattoos and their eclectic placement was intriguing. The placement wasn’t because he was trying to hide them. He had a double headed eagle on the back of his right hand, and another smaller bold lined dragon on his wrist.

  “Thirty five.” I commented sitting back down on the couch. He pulled up his pants and joined me.

  “Honestly, I was a little afraid it was closer to fifty.” He laughed nervously and sipped his wine.

  “Well… it’s forty eight if you count the scars.” I shifted nervously and he nodded.

  “Is that bad?”

  “I…I don’t know.” I shrugged and my phone buzzed causing me to jump. My heart started to race like I had been caught doing something wrong. I snatched up my phone.

  [Masochist.] Aleksi had replied to the pictures. I raised my eyes to Nikolai’s, his darted to mine from the phone. He read the text. I swallowed and tucked my phone against my thigh.

  “I’m going to get more wine.” I stated as I stood and tried to process the text message and the tattoos.

  “Do you have any tattoos?” The curiosity in his voice was thick.

  “No, I never really thought about getting one.” I answered as I retrieved the bottle of wine from the counter and walked back to the couch with it. “I’m not that interesting.” I divulged before I started to nurse my wine.

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  “Compared to you, I’m very…average. I’m non-threatening. I think that’s why Aleksi likes me.” It was my turn to laugh nervously before I practically guzzled my glass of wine.

  “I think Aleksi loves you because he finds it impossible to take his eyes off of you. There’s something about you, you have…it. Whatever the hell it is, you have it. I could stare at you all night. And trust me, it takes a lot to hold my attention.”

  My face burned as I poured myself another glass of wine. I was flattered, no I was beyond flattered, but I was also confused. Aleksi kissed me hours ago. But Aleksi has Charlotte, and put you on a plane to Moscow. I drained my wine and poured another glass. I was too sober to deal with such a blatant compliment.

  “I’m sorry, did I cross a line? I know you’re his… I was just making an observation.” He furrowed his brow and drained his wine before setting the glas
s down.

  “No and… Aleksi and I aren’t… involved. I’m his servant, I feed him.”—I gestured to the fresh bite on my throat—“nothing more.”

  “That’s not what he told me. He told me that you were completely his and off-limits.” He wet his lips and sighed heavily. “Aleksi is going to stay here when he comes to town… in the room with you. He asked me specifically if I had a bed he could share with you.” My anger flared.

  “Nikolai… I thi—“

  “Call me Niki.”

  “Niki, I need to make a phone call.” I finished my fourth glass of wine and walked back into the bedroom with my phone. As soon as the door closed, I dialed Aleksi’s number. I was so angry the dresser drawers started rattling.

  “Is everything okay?” Aleksi purred into the phone, I could hear that heat in his voice.

  “No, no it’s not!” I practically screamed into the phone.

  “Calm down.” He snapped. I had never heard him go from aroused to angry so quickly before.

  “No! I’m…I’m your servant. I’m not your… your… we’re not sharing a bed!” I yelled into the phone. How was I so drunk off of four glasses of wine? And the four at the reception, and the martini on the plane… oh and you didn’t eat anything.

  “Autumn!” He snapped again, and I could hear him moving off of the bed and Charlotte groaning in protest in the background.

  “I’m completely yours? What the fuck, Aleksi! What the fuck! Didn’t we break up? I’m sorry, didn’t you break up with me?” I yelled into the phone, utterly fearless with intoxication. The drawers from the dresser shook free and hovered in the air as my errant powers sought out any object near enough to me.

  “Calm down.” Were I not made ballsy from the three hour flight between us, I would have been silenced by his frosty tone.

  “Calm down? Calm down? Do you even have anything you can fucking say in defense of yourself, and your fucking up my life, other than calm down, or some stupid fucking order?” I waited. With my chest heaving I was practically panting with rage, the dresser started vibrating again.