Vampire Debt: Supernatural Battle (Vampire Towers Book 2)

by Kelly St Clare

  Yet I’d known my feelings—natural or not—were going to deepen as a result of the exchanges. So which were they? Natural or unnatural?

  “Never mind,” I whispered.

  “Okay,” he answered.

  Kyros wasn’t home right now.

  I pushed away. “What’s the time?”

  “Four in the morning.”

  Fuck. My sleep pattern was messed up these days. I felt wide awake. “I need to go.”

  Recalling my messed-up balance, I stood with the help of the graphite wall. “I’ll pay for the wall to be repainted.”

  “I’m keeping it.”

  I set my jaw. “It’s going.”

  Kyros growled.

  “I mean it,” I snapped back, backing out of the shower slowly so I didn’t fall on my ass again.

  He didn’t answer. “I’ll give you privacy to dress.”

  Yeah, I saw right through that answer. The painting was going. He’d lose that battle, guaranteed.

  Towelling dry was excruciatingly slow—as was dressing. I managed without being rendered to helpless maiden a second time.

  “How long until I get used to this again?” I asked, blinking several times to adjust my vision upon entering the main room.

  “Anywhere from a few days to two weeks. When Vissimo exchange blood, their senses heighten, but they’re more used to exerting control, so I believe your adjustment will be closer to two weeks.”

  Huh. “Did your senses change?”

  “A little. You’re human, so the effect of your blood on my power level wasn’t as dramatic.”

  He’d felt a tiny blip of difference, I took that to mean. I felt kind of bad that the big bad alpha was pairing with a comparative weakling.

  He stared out the windows. “You should consider staying here so I can show you how to handle the influx.”

  I wanted to go home to remember who I was in isolation from Kyros. Because right now we were so tangled, I couldn’t tell where I started and ended. “Will the influx be bad?”

  “This room is soundproof. I’m speaking very softly right now.”

  He was? I thought back to how loud the shower was. “That’s a yes then.” Dammit.

  “You’re still leaving?”

  I nodded.

  Jaw clenching, Kyros sighed. “Then come here.”

  I teetered over.

  “Look outside. As far as you can see.” He steadied me in a cage of his arms, his voice centering me.

  Doing as bade, I gasped as dizziness slapped without warning. His arms tightened around me.

  “What can you see?”

  See? What about feel?

  His voice. The current between us. His scent. His heat.

  Focus, Basi.

  The dizziness receded somewhat. What could I see? Shit, I could see the theme park. Not just the Ferris wheel. I could make out the blurred outlines of the people on the Ferris wheel.

  Freak out time!

  I wasn’t entirely human anymore.

  How had I accepted this with cool calm before?

  “Hush,” Kyros rumbled. “You’re not in danger, true mate. You are the same. Just a different model.”

  My body trembled in his arms. “Do not compare me to a fucking car.”

  His chuckle rolled through me.

  “I think I’m really overwhelmed, Kyros.” My voice was thick and the urge to cry fell upon me like a heavy blanket. Really overwhelmed.

  “Then here’s how you will sort through each sense,” he said, his lips next to my ear. “Look as far as you can, my beauty.”

  Latching onto his voice, I obeyed, staring at the blurring forms on the Ferris wheel again.

  “Draw your vision back. Just a little. Say, to the freeway.”

  I adjusted and found myself staring instead at the houses in Green. Frowning, I tried to find the middle and ended up back at the theme park.

  Pressing my nose to the glass, I shifted my gaze backward by a whisker. “Ha! Got you, fucker.” I watched the cars zip over the freeway.

  His pride swirled through me. Adoration. Humour. “Now to Blue.”

  I managed after three tries. It was somewhere between short and long vision.

  “Grey,” Kyros whispered.

  Following his prompts, I tried with varying success to move my eyes. It was as though I was driving a car with touchy brakes compared to a car where I had to shove the pedal in all the way.

  Blinking to return my gaze to the room, I carefully turned in his arms.

  “Thank you,” I told him, tipping my head back. “I should do that with each sense?”

  Kyros’s pride made me uncomfortable. Like he was a doting parent.

  “Yes,” he said, smoothing the grin from his face. “Hearing will be hardest because it’s also your balance. You’ll need to practice locating where sounds are coming from and how far away they are. You must learn how to block out noise so you’re not overwhelmed constantly. This is something all Vissimo have to go through. That’s why we tend to raise our young in isolation—like Safina.”

  Phew. I was nowhere near ready for this. “I guess our driving lessons are on hold for a while.”

  He placed a finger under my chin. “Yes. But they will happen.”

  A tiny bit of normalcy.

  Right now, it was nowhere near enough to latch onto.

  25

  He wasn’t kidding about the overwhelming part.

  I’d taken the last three days off work, barely able to manage my own agenda and estate with my exhaustion from trying to isolate and sort through everything.

  For a segment of each waking hour, I forced myself to practice honing my new senses. Turned out there were a lot of waking hours when you could hear really fucking well. I’d taken to sneaking down to the noise-cancelling office to sleep on the chaise.

  Touch and vision exercises done for the hour, I closed my eyes and tuned into my ears.

  I could hear just past the edges of my property to the front, left, and right. My hearing pattered out about one hundred metres from the back of the estate. I’d had Kelsea walk out and stop every twenty-five metres to test it.

  Focusing, I stretched my hearing as far as possible. Recognising a passing car was easy. Muted thuds—hmm, Indebted around the perimeter? I drew my hearing in and picked out Georgia and her team of gardeners spread through the lavender tiers and hedge-way. Splash. Pool. Squeals and shouts. Seven or eight vampires in the pool.

  I listened a while longer and then checked the pool houses. I backed the fuck away at a rhythmic grunting. My head chef was apparently partial to an afternoon delight. With Rosie—that sly ol’ thing.

  Drawing in again, I studied the area immediately surrounding the main house. Pretty quiet. A maid was cleaning windows in the west wing. I shuddered at the squeaking of cloth on glass. Daniel typed frantically in the security room. Fred was whistling.

  Three people in the kitchen.

  Oh my god, who was watching Truth Ranges? I was nowhere near up to date! Spoiler alert!

  I latched onto Tommy’s voice in my suite upstairs.

  “Tonight?” she said breathlessly. “I thought we weren’t leaving until morning. Where are you taking me?”

  A man answered, and I strained to hear—eavesdropping without shame. I was yet to figure out some way to alert Tommy to the changes in me. She’d been absent every other night and exhausted on the nights she stayed in.

  I wasn’t so jealous now that I’d gotten some. Though sex with Kyros hadn’t solved my problems one bit. I’d sampled the goods and couldn’t stop thinking about taking a bigger bite.

  “Well, what should I wear, handsome?” Tommy pressed. “Or is this an activity that doesn’t require clothing?”

  That’s my girl.

  I backed out before she said anything more. Phone sex was only fun if I was involved. Though tuning out sounds was much harder. I could focus on another sound to block out another noise but blocking out everything was nearly impossible.

&
nbsp; After the first day spent trying to block out one sound by focusing on another, I’d tried visualization—first, squishing the sound to nothing, then by placing an imaginary glass over the sound. In the end, stuffing my ears with figurative cotton worked the best. I’d shoved in more and more cotton until only whispers in the bordering rooms remained. The problem being it took me twenty minutes to achieve and I needed total focus.

  Today, I’d try something harder.

  I focused until my ears were adequately stuffed. Holding on to the muting feeling in my ear tube things, I opened my eyes a crack. The sounds around me flared to life again, and I paused to stuff in more cotton until I regained control. I opened my eyes wider, repeating the process until they were totally open.

  I fixed my gaze on Tom Hanks’s autobiography, my mind entirely on my ears. I stood and walked around the room until my head began to hurt from the concentration of managing two senses at once.

  Phew. That wasn’t comfortable at all.

  Fatigue rocked me, and I sat again. Morning practices were the easiest. Pretty sure I’d fainted last night while practicing.

  Time for smell.

  This was the easiest. Maybe I didn’t use my nose very much or maybe it was that smell was the weakest sense—it only extended a couple of rooms at the most. I wasn’t constantly assaulted with information as with my eyes and ears. Touch, I could control by avoiding contact—and by turning down the water temperature in the shower. The worst thing with my heightened skin sensitivity was clothing. At the beginning of the day, I could don tight clothes, but inevitably by lunch, I’d switch into something flowing and loose.

  Nakedness would be preferable.

  Settling in, I catalogued the smells around me, picking up Fred’s spicy cologne, the maid’s window cleaner, my body wash and hair products, and Grandmother’s lavender.

  Adding another sense, I sniffed while shifting my gaze around the room.

  Whoa, dizzy, dizzy.

  That was enough for now. I crossed the room and switched on the noise-cancelling, sighing as my ears popped and normalcy returned. Throwing myself on the chaise, I slipped out my phone. My Live Right shifts only took up about five hours each weekday, but I had some serious downtime without them. The Le Spyre teams were so efficient, I literally listened to their reports and redirected them as needed, researching when I didn’t understand something.

  I had a whole three messages. “Miss popular.”

  My heart raced as I saw one belonged to Kyros. We hadn’t spoken since he, well, washed me and gave me a baby Vissimo lesson. I’d made myself look like a fool being a wuss over all the thrall stuff.

  Dammit, I didn’t like that Kyros saw me acting all insecure and vulnerable.

  Practicing?

  His question was accompanied by a GIF of Magneto, arms out either side of him and metal flying everywhere.

  A laugh burst from me. What? He knew how to send GIFs? And I couldn’t believe he’d watched X-Men but not the television phenomena known as Truth Ranges. Though I seemed to recall him mentioning one of his sisters liked the movies.

  Humour filtered through our bond, and a small smile graced my face. Was he amused because I’d laughed? He couldn’t possibly know that it was at his joke.

  Perhaps I’d tell him.

  Using a heart emoji was okay, right? I used them all the time. It didn’t mean anything.

  Get a grip!

  I clicked Send and tossed the phone aside.

  Tommy burst into the room. “I’m going on a secret date tonight.”

  I feigned surprise as I rapidly tried to stuff cotton in my ears. “I thought you were heading to Furnley Gorge tomorrow?”

  “We are. But he said he couldn’t wait to see me.”

  Uhm, cute. “What kind of secret date? Like fun secret or I’m going to propose secret?

  “It’s only been two months,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  My jaw dropped and I abandoned my efforts. “Oh my god. You’re totally hoping he asks you.”

  “I’m not. I’m twenty-one.”

  “Are.”

  “Basi.”

  “Tom.”

  She plonked down next to me. “Don’t be silly.”

  I nudged her with my foot. “If he did ask?”

  Her eyes widened, and my heart squeezed—not in a good way. I hadn’t even met this guy yet. No photos or details. I had to put him through the best friend grinder and make him nervous to the extreme. I had to threaten him with a show of power and money and ask what TV shows he liked.

  “It’d be a maybe,” she said. “As in, let’s reassess in a year. He wants to take things slow, too, so I guarantee you it’s nothing like that.”

  Better not be. “Any guesses then? What are you wearing?”

  We settled into a gossip session, and I kept half my mind on curbing my powers in her company. I was already so relaxed with Tommy—in that I could look as strange as needed—that I succeeded in toning her voice down to levels that wouldn’t deafen me by age twenty-two.

  “Hey, Tom?” I asked, yawning. My watch beeped, and I groaned.

  Practice time.

  “Basil?”

  I smiled at her flushed face. “Can you take a picture of you and the man? And maybe call me while you’re with him one time so our voices can meet.”

  She snorted. “That’s gross.”

  “So our voices can meet.”

  “Stop it.”

  I hollered the words after her as she all-but floated from the room in her happy bubble. It made my heart lighter to see her so in love.

  My phone vibrated—because allowing it to ring was no longer an option. The sound was like nails on a chalkboard.

  Huh, what did he want?

  “Neelan,” I answered.

  “Basilia. Are you coming to work tonight?”

  I contemplated that. “Not sure I can handle that many people yet. Should be okay by Monday though.”

  Their whispers were 100 percent audible to me now.

  “—we’ll have to ask her now then—”

  “—it’s too easy for her to say no—”

  “—I can’t wait until she sees the pictures of her all over the walls—”

  My brows climbed. I wouldn’t be revealing this advantage anytime soon. Kyros’s siblings gave me the shits even if I also liked most of them now.

  Neelan cleared his throat. “What are you doing this weekend?”

  “Not coming to Kyros’s new house to hang with your family,” I said, hanging up.

  Snickering, I flipped my phone in my hand, grinning at the ceiling. Kyros’s amusement flared again. What was he so happy about?

  A knock sounded at the door, the booms battering my brain.

  I sat up in case it was someone I had to scare. “Come in.”

  Mrs Gaughton poked her head in.

  “Mrs Hannah! Have a seat, please.”

  The mid-sixties woman shuffled in, glancing around with wide eyes.

  “Have you settled in okay?” I’d placed her on the first level right at the back of the west wing. I’d moved the Vissimo out, letting Laurel, Josie, and Kelsea share my grandmother’s suite after making it clear that harem activities wouldn’t occur outside of the room.

  I’d have to pack up Grandmother’s stuff soon to make more room for them. Not something I looked forward to.

  The older woman sat, perching stiffly. “Yes, dear. I’m just wondering how on earth I ended up here. It’s so fucking fancy.”

  I relaxed, glad she wasn’t going to be one of the weird ones.

  “Basilia Le Spyre pulled my weeds and watered my garden.” She cackled. “Wait until I tell my bingo friends.”

  “Let me know what they say.” I lay down again, crossing my feet.

  “The gardens are beautiful. Makes me ashamed of my old one.”

  “You’re welcome to get in the garden, too, if you like,” I told her. “If you want your own patch, just talk to Georgia, the head gardener. She’ll set you u
p.”

  “I do want to make myself useful somehow,” she said darkly. “You’re sure you won’t take any money?”

  I shrugged a shoulder. “Don’t need it.”

  “Why do you work then?”

  Pondering my answer, I replied, “Regular penis and world domination.”

  “Better reasons than most, I suppose. Got a picture?”

  Twisting, I fixed her with a look.

  “Of the man, Basilia. What do you take me for?”

  She didn’t fool me for a second.

  Opening my phone, I clicked on the picture of Kyros and his family—having deleted all my naked thrall pictures—and held it over my head for her to look at. “He’s the one in the middle.”

  “You sure you ain’t got a penis picture?” she whispered.

  Snorting, I yanked the phone back.

  Mrs Hannah hummed. “He the one that messed with you?”

  “Yeah. He pretended he didn’t know who I was, then I found out he was interested in my money.”

  God, that felt good to say to someone other than Tommy.

  She swore long and hard, then added, “Still. Great body.”

  Tipping back my head, I laughed. “Excellent body.”

  “Back to me being useful,” she said abruptly. “I’ve been hiding in a closet for five years and I need to catch up on life. I want a challenge. Maybe some new friends. My bingo crowd is too wild. I want to find a quieter circle.”

  I considered her.

  This was the perfect entry point for what I had in mind for her. It would require a bending of the truth with how my operations worked, but if I was right about the remaining properties in Bluff City, Mrs Gaughton would boost my acquisition rate big time.

  “You know who you should talk to, Mrs Hannah? My friend, Tommy.”

  “The pretty brunette who’s disgustingly in love?”

  “That’s the one. She set me up when I was looking for work. Maybe she could help you find something interesting. I only have one friend, so I’m not the best person to talk to.”

  Mrs Hannah stood, touching my shoulder. “We both know that’s a lie. You must have forty friends or more here at the moment. The sexiest friends I’ve ever seen.”

  “Yeah, I met them through Live Right. They’re here for security, but I’m also helping them out of a jam.”