Sleepless Beauties: A Rejected Mates Paranormal Romance (The Vampires Vendetta Series Book 1)

by A. K. Koonce

  Usually.

  “Croft four is currently vacant, but will be filled by an appropriate candidate soon.”

  “Empty?” I ask.

  Both Vuitton and Louis peer over their broad shoulders at me, and the stark silence that settles in after my question lays a blanket of eeriness over the room.

  “Yes.” Prey carries on. “Croft Five—”

  “What happened to the vampire in charge of Croft Four? Did they pass away?”

  Prey closes his eyes slowly, and his tolerance with my hunger for more information is very obviously wearing thin.

  “Croft four was found dead twelve nights ago.” Louis says from across the room.

  My heart stutters.

  “Um. Hold on. Time the fuck out.” I stand suddenly and face Prey. “Is this a common thing for vampires? Members of your immortal council just fucking drop dead on the regular?”

  Prey’s attention shifts over my face, his gaze scanning. For what? I don’t know.

  He lowers himself lazily into the spot on the small green couch that I just vacated. He kicks his feet up on my little coffee table as he goes.

  The asshole.

  “There have been some… issues recently. Creature Control is investigating, but a small group of us are looking into it ourselves. Hence, recruiting a pain-in-my-ass human to delay everyone from finding out Kyra Vega has been murdered.”

  My pen itches to write down all those words that stand out in his explanation.

  Issues.

  Creature control.

  Delay...

  I try to process each of them slowly.

  Issues is his pretty way of saying someone is slaying vampires. Important ones. I already knew their kind were deadly. I just didn’t know they killed their own kind. Until Kyra warned me when she last visited me during an unapproved meeting in my own bedroom.

  That’s how I knew it was serious. She never bothered to come see me aside from our monthly catch-ups. If she risked coming here to see me, I knew she was scared. She spoke of her rape and how she was turned.

  I try not to think of it now with Prey watching so closely but the memory of the fear in her eyes creeps in every day.

  I can’t help it.

  The notebook in my lap calls back to me.

  What I don’t have any details on whatever Creature Control is.

  “What’s the Creature Control?”

  Prey’s head leans back and his eyes close as if he’s asking God himself why his perfect afterlife is being tormented with my questions. His feet hit the floor and his legs spread wide.

  “Creature Control is Crimson City’s body of law and order. They’re equivalent to the FBI of your world,” Vuitton tells me thoroughly. “Louis and I are agents for Creature Control.”

  Aww. He’s such a good boy, of course he’s a critter cop.

  The way he kneels on his hunches, soaking up the sunlight against his smooth golden skin gives me the immense reminder of how puppy-like he really is.

  My heart settles. It’s a strange elation when someone calms you without even trying to. Maybe Prey finds me annoying, and the other vampires don’t care if I live or die, but at least I’m not completely alone in all of this.

  “She’s back!” Vuitton bangs his forehead off my newly smudged glass window and Louis perks right up as they both turn irate.

  Over what, you might ask?

  “Not again,” I whisper to myself.

  “She ran past this building three times in the last hour!” Vuitton’s shoulders flex as he stands tall before the window.

  “You’re fucking right, she has.” Louis slams his hand wide open against the wall and their eyes are so wide they’re bulging. “Running by here three times. She’s got some balls.” The two of them fog up the glass as they huff in unison. “Come down my street one more time you flat-footed floozie! See what happens!”

  Their heads swivel as far as the laws of physics will allow them, until the menacing jogger passes out of sight.

  Vuitton claps his friend on the back once more, both of them beaming with pleased smiles plastered on their obnoxious faces.

  These are their police?

  I sigh heavily and turn my attention back down to the vampire dozing on my couch.

  “Croft Five, Aston Cardence.” He doesn’t even look at me, which is good. Because the moment he says that name, my heart thunders to life. I try to keep a straight face. “You won’t like him. And he’ll make a point to make sure you don’t.”

  I swallow hard.

  I wait for him to say the one thing I’m waiting for.

  Say it. Say you suspect him!

  “Croft Six—”

  My breath shakes as I cut him off. “That’s it? He’s mean, that’s all you have for me?”

  One of his eyelids creeps open as he makes little effort to look at me. “That’s it. He’s an idiot, and he isn’t important.”

  I shift on my feet and try to swallow down the apprehension that’s crawling through me from everything my sister told me about the cruelest man on the vampiric High Council.

  Tell me they’ve looked into Aston’s whereabouts during my sister’s death.

  “Croft Six—”

  “How many deaths have there been in the council this month!?” My jaw clenches, despite how hard I inhale and exhale through the grinding of my teeth.

  “Why are you so impossible to train? Why can’t I just give you the information and you accept it? Council issues are none of your business.”

  He stands then, and his lean height towers over me. Slitted eyes like a snake’s glare down on me.

  “I’m putting my life on the line, and for what? Closure? What are we stalling for?”

  “To further CC investigations.” Vuitton fully turns away from his perch at the window now, giving me his full attention. “CC has jurisdiction over all supernatural crimes. Vampires have their own council, wolves have their own pack, and pixies have their own pods, but the CC are neutral outsiders. Rival thinks someone within the vampire’s council is responsible for a few human murders and the last two killings that have occurred within the council. He wants to delay Creature Control from stepping into the Council’s domain. He doesn’t want the lower vampires to start doubting their superiors. He wants the council to handle it internally and quietly. I’ve agreed to help buy him a little time. He’s using you to delay the inevitable.”

  My anger lowers. How does he manage to do that? How does this mangy shifter ease every tense thought in my mind with just the soothing rumble of his voice?

  “Two?” I ask innocently.

  Prey doesn’t give a shit about my need to know, but Vuitton does.

  Vuitton is the sweet one.

  “Croft Four, Elizabeth Morton died first about a month ago. And your sister, Kyra Vega died two nights ago.” Prey folds his arms hard across his chest. He’s so wired with strength and protection that it literally seeps out of him.

  And into me.

  I knew there was another vampire who died before my sister.

  Kyra said he was getting reckless. That he was becoming too controlling and daring.

  I just didn’t do enough to help her before it was too late.

  And now my life is on the line too.

  Seven

  Vuitton

  Humans sleep so restlessly. I’ll never understand what these creatures have to fear when all the monsters are lurking in a different zip code.

  Kira turns over once more on the tiny queen mattress. The bed would barely sleep myself, but I suppose it’s comfortable enough for her petite size.

  Shit she’s small. Breakable… bendable even.

  The thin sheet shifts around her and the black lace of her panties are revealed along with the smooth curve of her ass. My brow lifts as I watch her from the doorway, toeing the line between protecting and creeping on her all at the same time.

  “Wasn’t Edward totally creepy for watching Bella Swan?” Louis pipes up in barely a whisper from where
he leans, just near the window.

  I look away so fast, I regret not memorizing the little moaning sound she makes just before I close the door with a soundless click.

  “Edward was a creep. And a vampire,” I correct.

  “Ah, so it’s only creepy when vampires lurk over sleeping women?”

  I pause to really articulate my response.

  “No, it just seems to happen more frequently with vampires. A creepy little hobby for some creepy little undead creatures.”

  I push my hand through my hair and try not to dwell on the fact that my partner is absolutely right.

  I’m being a fucking creep with this woman.

  But fuck, someone better be watching ovetr her. Someone needs to help her along.

  Instead, it seems like everyone else around her is happy to just toss her into a pit of death and watch her squirm.

  Shit.

  That got a little too serious.

  Kyra always told me to be as calm and happy as I try to make everyone else.

  I wish I could be.

  It’s better if I hold on to my worries and process them over and over again until they consume me. That’s what keeps everyone I know safe.

  Because just look what happens when I don’t. You can see the results of when I distance myself and try to focus on my own health. Just look at the fucking mess of blood I’ve made! And it’s all because I couldn’t love the woman who took care of me.

  And now I’m obsessing over the shadow of her memory.

  The one who’s now sleeping restlessly in the next room.

  Eight

  Kira

  Days pass with little to no information being offered to me. Dresses and shoes and how to part my hair and hold my shoulders are all it seems Prey wants to focus on. On the surface, in this tight navy dress that makes my eyes seem more sapphire than gray, I really do look like her. My hair is pulled back so tight it hurts. My spine is so stiff I swear it might break from the strain. But my steps glide like perfection when I strut past the critical vampire for the twelfth time in an hour.

  It’s only now that I realize, my sister truly was a stranger to me. I can’t remember her laughter ringing out like it used to even once over the last two years. She wasn’t the life of the party any longer. Her face was so smooth and flawless, smiling lines could never have disrupted her perfection.

  I’m standing here, three inches taller and so formally poised that I feel like I might fall apart with even the smallest of stumbles. This is supposed to be who she was? This eternal frowning pull of my lips, this is who they made my sister become?

  It’s tragic.

  “I think you’re perfect,” Prey praises. It is literally the first positive feedback he’s ever given me.

  “What was that again?”

  I’m clearly not used to any form of kindness from him. His face becomes serious once again as he too realizes the error of his ways. He shifts from one foot to the other.

  “You’re decent. As close to my Kyra’s flawlessness as your lowly human self can perform.” He nods slowly, happier with that backhanded compliment.

  We’re far too uncomfortable now. We have no idea how to function side by side unless we’re clawing each other’s eyes out while attempting to strangle one another.

  This—this basic kindness shit is weird.

  “Thanks,” I mumble.

  He smiles, and this time he truly smiles. It isn’t a sneer or a cocky grin. It’s… genuinely sweet.

  Why is my heart warming? No! I will not accept bare minimum, borderline insults from beautiful men and allow my neurotic heart to think it’s flirting.

  … Is it though?

  I give him another look from the corner of my eye and I note his attention gliding down my frame, along my throat, my breasts, my hips, my long legs…

  No! Eye fucking is not flirting, Kira!

  … Isn’t it though?

  “I’ll inform Rival,” Someone with more brain cells than my infatuated mind says.

  I turn and spot Louis making his way to the door. Still shirtless and animalistic, but obviously uncaring of what anyone in the outside world might think of him.

  He doesn’t say any more before he closes the door and silence settles in with his absence.

  What just happened?

  “Rival?” I ask.

  Prey grabs his shirt from the floor and pulls it over his messy dark hair. “We’re all set. We leave tonight for Crimson City.”

  My heart freefalls.

  “T—tonight? You want me to go with you to Crimson City tonight?”

  Vuitton’s attention perks up and he looks away from his post at the window. He seems to check on me fully just by noting the shaking sound of my voice.

  “You should rest,” he says with that soul touching rumble in his tone.

  “I cant!” I nearly shriek. “I’m not ready! I barely know the names of the council by memory. I have no idea what all of them look like. How am I supposed to address anyone?”

  “You shouldn’t.” Prey shrugs flippantly. “Don’t address anyone. Give vague answers. Just do the bare minimum to get by. You do not want to make any friends here. We only need you for a little while. A month at the most.”

  “A month!?” My hand trembles, and I have to fist my fingers into my palm to stop myself from lashing out at him. “A month is not a little while.”

  “A month is barely a blip of time at all. Someday, when you’re old and failing, you’ll come to understand that.” His cold blue eyes cut into me.

  Why is he always like this?

  He’s charming and cruel all at the same time. Who turned this beautiful man into something so dead inside?

  “Come on,” Vuitton opens my bedroom door for me and I’ve never felt so used in all my life.

  I pause and look at the two men I’m trusting with my life. And for what?

  To find Kyra’s killer. To look her rapist and murderer dead in his eyes and take his life from him, just like he did to her.

  My pulse speeds up. I keep pacing, I have to keep focused. My goal is so similar to theirs, but I don’t want to just investigate.

  I want to avenge.

  And I will.

  An hour seeps away, and still I stare at the flat white ceiling of my bedroom. The sun blazes warm light into my chilly apartment.

  I can’t sleep.

  Instead I go over my facts:

  Zavia. Pavel. Rival. Aston.

  Zavia. Pavel. Rival. Aston.

  Zavia—

  The squeal of hinges slices through my anxious mantra and I sit up beneath my thick blanket to find Vuitton lingering within the partially open door.

  “May I come in?” He waits tensely and I can’t help but see how different the polite shifter is in comparison to the asshole vampire who would have just stormed into my room, stolen my blanket and attacked me with my pillow on his way out.

  That’s where the myths got it wrong: Vampires clearly don’t give a fanged fuck about any formal invitations.

  I nod, and the room holds so much quietness as he comes in, closes the door and slowly makes his way toward me.

  He’s carrying something small in his large hand, and he offers it to me when he’s just at the edge of the bed.

  I take the little stack of polaroids from his hand, and not only do the pictures seem tiny, everything around me, including myself, suddenly looks minute in the shadow of his massive stature.

  The confusion within me fades when I turn the pictures over to find faces and names scribbled across the bottoms of the white sections.

  Rival Royale.

  The handsome vampire who threatened me in the hall stares up with a brooding look of seriousness. His lips form a hard line across his hard features. The lighting of the flash seems to have smoothed his appearance into a vision of impossible perfection.

  But there is one remarkable thing that strikes me.

  “So, vampires do show up in photographs.” I smile to myself and wonder what
else the legends and stories about these monsters got wrong. “Where did you get these?”

  Vuitton shrugs his shoulders like it was no big deal. “I stole them from the Council’s filing cabinet.”

  I smile even harder.

  As does he.

  “You got them for me?” I look up at him from beneath my lashes as he nods slowly. “Thank you.”

  I slip Rival’s picture to the back and find a beautiful redhead featured in the next picture. Her green eyes are so piercing and knowing, I realize who she is before I even read her name at the bottom:

  Zavia Laurent.

  I slide her to the back as well and the most strikingly beautiful man appears in the next photo. The angles of his cheeks and the sharp lines of his jaw are as deadly beautiful as his pure white smile. Bright pink hair rises into a messy mohawk atop his head. Fangs come down to a point that brush against his full lower lip.

  Aston Cardence.

  My stomach twists hard.

  He’s the cruelest man of them all. He’s the one my sister told me was a nightmare come to life. He’s the one who turned her, then raped her, and I’m certain he’s the one who killed her.

  I close my eyes slowly, memorizing his face more than any of the others.

  I shake away the thoughts and flip his picture to the back.

  A woman with a big smile and long black hair as dark as her eyes is in the next one.

  Acessa Milane.

  My brow lowers as I look at the pretty young woman.

  “I thought there were only six crofts.” I remark as I trace the edge of the thick film.

  “Seven. She’s the newest. Her space is just to the right of yours.” Vuitton explains.

  “Who’s to the left?”

  “Aston.”

  My lips curl, but I do my best to hide my disgust.

  I can’t believe my sister had slept next to her tormentor day in and day out without murdering him herself.

  I shake my head as I look at the final picture.

  The moment I slip Acessa’s picture away. My hands tremble as the next man—no, monster—stares up at me.