by Evie Byrne
More striking, though, was his face. As he came closer, she saw that somehow he’d shed his damaged skin. His newborn skin was as pink and tender as the flesh you’d find under a blister, and here and there he had a scab where the healing wasn’t finished. Still, it was an amazing improvement.
He’d lost weight. And the short hair made his cheekbones sharper, his eyes bigger and darker than ever. She found his frailty compelling. And familiar. They both needed comfort that night. In a perfect world they could snuggle together on the couch under a big blanket.
But the world wasn’t perfect. He was a vampire. So she kept her distance. “You look better.”
He shrugged, a little sheepish. “Elk.”
“Did you really eat an elk last night?”
Like quicksilver his expression changed, becoming abstracted. “I drained one.” He sounded like he didn’t quite believe it himself.
“But what happened to your skin?”
His abstracted look faded and his dark eyes searched her face intently. “The dead skin fell off. When I drank the elk dry, I absorbed its life force, and that accelerated my healing.”
“I thought you never killed when you ate.”
“I’m not supposed to. I never have before. There’s no rules about animals, but any vamp who kills a human or another vamp by draining them dry is anathema. It’s a death sentence. Only the Knyaz exsanguinate their enemies.”
“You mean Mikhail exsanguinates…” Helena wished she didn’t know what that word meant. “Maybe I don’t want to know more about that.”
Alex smiled a little. “It’s okay. The point is that it’s all too natural to kill while eating. It makes you strong, but it’s addictive, and it messes with the mind. I found that out last night. I don’t know how Mikhail deals with it.”
He shook his head, dispelling whatever he was thinking about. “Anyway, if we didn’t follow our discipline, I don’t know what would have happened to our kind. Or yours.”
He tilted his head to one side. “I’m giving you too much information again. I know. But I was wrong in not giving you enough information when we met. And I’m not lying to you anymore. Or sugar coating. If you have any questions, I want to answer them.”
“You’re leaving tonight?”
“Isn’t that what we agreed?”
Helena noted the careful choice of words. It was up to her. She figured it couldn’t hurt to be polite for a few minutes. They’d been through a lot together. And she was still curious about him. About all this. “Would you like a glass of wine for the road?”
They walked into the kitchen. He picked up the wine bottle and she handed him the corkscrew as if it were the most natural thing in the world for them to be hanging out in the kitchen together.
“I wanted to thank you for breakfast this morning. That was sweet. I wouldn’t think you’d be interested in cooking. I mean, I didn’t think vampires ate food. But I suppose that’s another one of those myths.”
Alex laughed. “No, actually, you’re right. I don’t know any other vamp that cooks. It’s pretty pointless.”
“Then why do you do it?”
“Because I’ve always liked humans.” He popped the cork. “Liked the human world. Wished I were human, often enough.”
Maybe that was why his mother matched him to a human.
She took the bottle from him and gave him back a glass of Pinot Noir. “Why’s that?”
“Why? I don’t know. I guess I’m just curious about what goes on in the daytime. I want to know what it’s like to swim in a clear blue Caribbean sea. I want to see the Grand Canyon in real life. I want to watch bees work. And then there’s the food thing. We can’t eat solid food, and I’ve always been curious about the different tastes and textures you humans get to enjoy.”
“Does all blood taste the same?”
“No.” The very idea seemed to surprise him. “Not at all. No more than all wine tastes the same. It’s all blood, but each person’s is unique. And each person’s flavor changes depending on all sorts of things. Age. Diet. Stress. A woman tastes different in different parts of her cycle.”
Oh really. “So you’ve had a lot of people. Some that you know well.”
He put down his wine glass and looked her in the eye. “I can’t count how many people I’ve fed from in my life, but since I’ve been an adult most of them have been women, and most of those have been my lovers. I prefer to feed while making love.”
Helena did some quick math. One meal a day, he’d said that first night. Three hundred and sixty five days in a year. He couldn’t feed off of a single lover very often without making them anemic. How frequently could you give blood? No more than once a week, she figured. He’d had hundreds of lovers. Her expression must have been appalled, because he added, “My chemistry is radically different than yours. I can’t pick up human diseases or pass them on. I can’t get humans pregnant either.”
As if that made it okay to be a huge man slut. She folded her arms. “You must have had some pretty open-minded girlfriends over the years.”
“I’ve never been in a monogamous relationship.” He widened his eyes at her in frustration. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m not a complete dog. Some of my donors are one night stands, yes, but many are friends.”
“Friends you suck on.”
“Friends I’ve sucked on for years.”
“But you never offered one of them a commitment, never tried to take it to the next level?”
“Never wanted to. I was waiting.”
“For…?”
Leaning against the counter, he gave the wine in his glass a thoughtful swirl.
“Not everyone gets a dream. Some of us, I guess, are meant to go through this life without a destined mate. Mikhail doesn’t have his yet, for instance. Maybe he never will. But ever since I was a kid I knew my bride was out there, somewhere, waiting for me. Maybe she was vamp, maybe human. Maybe she lived in Nepal, maybe down the block. Every woman I met, I asked myself, is she the one? The answer was always no. And I’ve never been one to settle.”
Helena rubbed the gooseflesh off her arms. He sure could draw reactions from her, but they were always confused. She didn’t know if that reasoning was noble and romantic or just some advanced form of commitment phobia. “When you came to my door…?”
“I knew. Even if Ma hadn’t given me your name. I’d have known. Like I would know if a freight train ran me over.”
“Why didn’t I know?”
“Didn’t you?”
“I don’t know. It was more like you hypnotized me or something.”
“I didn’t. I haven’t ever. Not with you.” As he spoke, a dark flush crept across his cheekbones. “Not that I haven’t been tempted.”
“But you came here looking for love? How would you know it when you found it? Oh Alex. Love isn’t a bolt from the blue. It takes practice, commitment, work. And when all is said and done, it’s not worth it.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do.”
Helena’s face was as set and grim as a hanging judge. Alex wanted to rip out Jeff’s lungs. He tossed back the last of his wine, hiding his snarl in the glass as a tumult of Helena’s bad memories washed over him.
It was time to stop talking about relationship stuff. He didn’t think it was anything that needed lots of talk anyway. She was his. Sooner or later she’d realize it. That was the only way he could think and stay sane.
He cast around for some way to distract her. Maybe even make her smile. He loved her smile. Her real smile. She had a fake smile, but the real one wrinkled the bridge of her nose and made her eyes dance.
“You have a vampire kitchen, you know.”
She blinked in surprise. “You mean I don’t cook.” Instead of smiling, she frowned suspiciously. “You think I should cook?”
Careful, Faustin. Here be dragons. He was going to tease her about her diet, but that was obviously a very bad idea. Fucking Jeff. It had something to do with him.
A very gratifying blush bloomed on her cheeks. His heart began to beat double time. It was saying hope, hope, hope. He knew she wanted him. She’d walked into his dream last night, or maybe it was the other way around, but whichever, it had been spectacular. It was the source of the tension that danced between them. But lust wasn’t love. It wasn’t even like. He knew that better than anyone.
“That’s nice—but you don’t have to.”
“It would be fun. It’s not something I ever get to do.”
“You don’t cook for your lovers?”
You are the only lover I’ve ever wanted to feed. But he couldn’t say that without scaring her, or sounding like a jerk. Should he have fed his donors? He’d didn’t know anyone who fed their donors. He gave them drinks at least, coffee in the morning. Sometimes. Christ, I am a jerk.
What he did say was true. “I never knew I could cook solid food before this morning.” He laughed. “My luck may not hold, either. I’m not saying this is going to be great.”
Still she looked suspicious. Talking with her was like negotiating a damn minefield.
“I’m staying in a hotel tonight, not matter what. Just so we’re clear.”
He watched her relax, and even though her smile was not big enough to wrinkle her nose, it was genuine. “Then let’s have dinner.”
Chapter Nine
Helena drove him to the grocery store, thinking she knew nothing about vampires if a trip to Safeway could get one so excited. Alex commandeered a shopping cart in the parking lot and tried to ride it like a scooter all the way into the store. She felt oddly domestic as they passed through the sliding doors together, while he was as gleeful a kid with a pass to the country fair. And among the crowd of beleaguered Monday-night shoppers, he was the only one grinning.
“It’s huge!” he said. “It’s like a city of food.”
“Don’t you have grocery stores in New York?” She turned to glare at a woman who was staring at them and kept glaring until the woman turned her cart around and walked the opposite direction. Alex didn’t look bad enough to cause a scare, but between his pink skin and manic grin, anyone would take a second glance at him. That didn’t make it okay to stare, though.
Alex said, “We’ve got a few, I think, but they’re smaller. Which way to the fruit and vegetables? You know, that’s the section you never go to.”
“You mean that place with all the nasty green things lying around?”
“That’s the one.”
Helena pointed to the opposite end of the store. Alex picked her up and dropped her into their cart, and started to push it at a dead run.
“Alex! Stop!” But of course he didn’t and all she could do was squat down, grab the sides of the cart and hold on for dear life.
This was no way to keep people from staring.
They skidded around a paper towel display at high speed. The cart banked and she shrieked like a teenage girl as he pulled them out of the curve. They shot past the same old biddy who’d been staring at them before. Helena grinned and waved.
Alex tossed a loaf of French bread at Helena. And another. She caught them the best she could while laughing, then ducked a third. “Stop it! You’re not going—” He silenced her by spinning the cart until tears of laughter streamed down her face.
Every aisle brought up a barrage of questions. “Do you like oysters? Radishes? Gingerbread?”
On the way to the produce section he dropped a pound cake in her lap. A bottle of cocktail sauce. An enormous plastic-wrapped fish.
All she could say about the fish was, “Why?”
“It’s beautiful, that’s why. What do you think we could do with it?”
Helena raised her brows at the fish and shrugged. Improvisation was way out of her league. She’d cooked for Jeff, following the strict meal plans from his training journals. He sent her to the grocery store with lists and for five years she dutifully produced grim, healthy meals for him. Chicken breasts by the hundreds, mounds of steamed vegetables and whole grains. He ate whatever she put in front of him, but he never liked her cooking. Neither did she. When they broke up she swore she’d never read the back of a package, consult a calorie chart or weigh a piece of food again. Her four food groups were fat, sugar, white flour and caffeine, and she ate things that gave her these four essential nutrients with as little trouble as possible to herself.
Alex, on the other hand, chose food by sniffing. Even things in packages. He didn’t read labels, or look at prices, he just snuffled everything he picked up. “This is amazing!” he’d say, drawing a deep breath over his latest discovery. Or he’d say, “What is this? This is crap.”
Whatever he liked he tossed in the cart. She gave up on trying to guess what he was going to cook and just enjoyed the show.
They spent a long time in the produce section. While she sat there, buried to her chin in French bread, cradling the fish, offering apologetic smiles to the other shoppers, he walked around fondling the vegetables, holding them up to the light like a connoisseur and of course, sniffing them. “This doesn’t smell right at all.” He extended a melon toward a mom with a stroller. “Don’t you think?”
“It’s not in season,” she said, nice, reasonable mom person that she was.
“Ah! What fruit is in season right now?”
She pointed. “Try the mandarins.”
Alex buried his face in a box of mandarin oranges. “It’s perfume! It’s like heaven.” His flashbulb smile stunned everyone within its range. “Thanks for the tip.”
“Your boyfriend’s a doll,” the mom whispered to Helena with a wink.
“I can juice these, Helena.” Alex said, running up to her with his arms full of oranges. He really was kind of cute.
When they reached the checkout line, he lifted her out of the cart. Swinging high in the air, she instinctively braced her hands on his shoulders. Neither of them let go of the other when her feet touched ground. They were posed for a slow dance, but the store speakers were playing Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA”.
“Who’s the DJ in this place?” Alex murmured, looking into her eyes as if he’d just asked a much bigger question.
Remembering the train, she forgot how to breathe for a second. It wasn’t good. Liking him this much. The only place it could lead was somewhere she didn’t want to go. A life without sunshine. A liquid diet.
“What are you thinking about?”
“That you’re healing fast.” She pitched her voice for his ears only. “Do you need to find another elk tonight?”
His hands tensed on her waist. All his playfulness evaporated. “I don’t think I can do that again. But I’ll probably go hunting later.”
“People?”
“Yes.”
“Paper or plastic?” The bagger asked. Alex let her go.
While he paid for his groceries an idea occurred to her. It was a horrible idea, but it took hold, the pressure of it growing and growing until, as they unloaded their groceries into her trunk she blurted, “I want to watch you hunt. Here.”
Alex shut the trunk. “That’s a bad idea.”
“Why? You said there’d be no more sugar coating.”
“You’re not ready to see it.”
“I am.”
He met her eyes, his expression full of warning. “Then let’s say I’m not ready.”
“You’re ashamed. You want me to forget what you are.”
She knew what she was doing. She was distancing him. But knowing didn’t make it stop. It made her all the more determined to finish the job. “Why don’t you pick someone out right here?”
“Helena, no. Just no.”
“It’s that ugly? You’re ashamed?”
He gave her a long “what have I done to deserve this?” look and seemed about to say something sharp. Instead he threw up his hands. “If that’s what you want, I�
��ll do it. Choose your victim. Someone alone.”
Helena scanned the parking lot until she spotted a cute little blond in a fur hoodie unloading her groceries. “That one.”
“I only hunt men.”
“You told me you prefer women.”
“Women offer me their blood. If I’m going to take someone by force, it’s going to be a man.”
“You’re very delicate in your distinctions. What does it matter?”
“You’re right. I’m a monster. I can take anyone I want. Old ladies, babies. What the hell.” He turned on his heel and headed toward the woman with long, determined strides. Helena hadn’t really expected him to agree. She expected him to tell her to fuck off.
Swinging back around, he grabbed her arm. “Stay close to me. Smile and don’t stop smiling.”
Their victim was just climbing into her SUV. Alex raised his hand and called out to her like he was an old friend. Helena smiled nervously. Then it happened. Fast as a snake strike. Helena couldn’t understand how it went down, but one moment Alex was saying “Hi,” and the next the woman was wilting in his arms. Alex held her up like a puppet, so it looked like he was hugging her.
Helena locked her face into a smile. Happy happy. We’re all happy here. Just hugging and saying hi. No one glanced at them.
Alex pulled the woman’s hair to one side and bent over her throat, just like a movie vampire. Helena was close enough to hear him make a small noise of animal satisfaction as he bit down. The woman made no noise at all. Her eyes weren’t closed, just vacant.
After just a couple of seconds he hitched her up in his arms and refastened his mouth on her throat. As he did, one of his hands grabbed hold of the woman’s perky ass. Helena clenched her fists. She really hated that he was holding her that way. Hated it.
A few seconds later Alex murmured something in the woman’s ear and kissed her gently. On the lips. Then he had Helena by the arm again and they were walking away. Helena looked over her shoulder and saw the woman standing there, dazed but apparently undamaged. Sort of like in nature shows when they catch animals for tagging and then drop them back on the savannah.
