Blood Gift: Paranormal Vampire Romance (Blood Immortal Book 5)

by Ava Benton

  He knew I was talking about humans, with their completely bastardized traditions and rituals. Witches with pointy hats and broomsticks. How did they think women sat on those damn things? I wished somebody would try to get me on a broomstick. They’d end up with the business end sticking out of their ass.

  “Isn’t it better that they don’t know what to look for?” he murmured, elbowing his way through far too many people.

  But it was a Sunday, late morning, and the craving for pumpkin spice latte was too much for humans to resist.

  If I never saw another girl take a photo of a cup of coffee to upload to social media, I would die happy.

  “You mean it’s better that they don’t know we walk among them?” I asked as I got in what I guessed was the line.

  I was starting to regret my decision, but humans weren’t the only ones with a craving for pumpkin everything. One of the few areas where I could relate to them.

  “Exactly. It’s good cover.”

  “It’s insulting,” I muttered, grinding my teeth. Orange and black crepe paper, how tacky. Who chose the colors, anyway? “It’s one of our most important festivals, and they treat it like an excuse to bother the neighbors and develop cavities.”

  “I’m sure Christians feel the same way about Christmas,” he offered.

  “You’re just trying to pick a fight, aren’t you?” I sneered up at him. “That was one of our feast days, and they took it for themselves. Even I know Jesus Christ wasn’t born in December.”

  “I didn’t know it was a sore spot for you.”

  “Don’t get me started.”

  “I would never get you started on purpose, believe me.”

  “Ha, ha.” I looked around, already bored with the conversation.

  I’d have to do a little silent convincing to get anybody to abandon their table to me. It wasn’t strictly within the rules to use my powers for such trivial things, but a seat was a seat. And nobody would know.

  “You’re thinking about doing something you’re not supposed to do,” he muttered under his breath.

  “Stop spying on me,” I hissed. “And it’s not like I would get in trouble.”

  I was about to read him the riot act and maybe tell him to go to hell when a familiar pair of eyes stopped me from all the way across the room.

  “What?” Holden asked when he noticed my reaction.

  I looked down and saw that I was gripping his hand hard enough to leave crescent-shaped marks in his skin from my newly manicured nails.

  “I know that man.”

  I looked up again, craning my neck to see past a couple standing with their arms around each other’s waists. They separated.

  He was gone.

  “What man?” Holden asked. “There are roughly twenty of them here.”

  “He’s not there anymore. He was standing by the window.” I stood on tiptoe, then bounced up and down in the hope of seeing his head over the others. “Damn it, he couldn’t have left that fast!”

  “Where do you know him from?”

  My dreams. I’ve dreamed of him every night for a week. That wouldn’t sound insane at all. “I—I don’t know, really. He looked familiar.”

  “You nearly tore my hand off.”

  “I didn’t.”

  Damn it, where could he be? I wasn’t imagining it. Was I?

  I stepped up to the counter in a daze and rattled off an order without paying attention to what I was saying.

  All I could think about was those eyes. Sharp, clear, gorgeous. Staring into my soul.

  Yes, it had been a week.

  I thought about it as we left the shop—I didn’t feel like sitting in a crowd, not anymore. Not with all that silly, cartoonish Halloween décor hitting me in the face. Not with so much uncertainty swirling in my brain.

  I had slept well for a week, because my dream had changed.

  He saved me every night. Whoever he was.

  I wished I had gotten a better look at his face. All I ever saw were his eyes. But that was enough for me to know that the man I had seen in the shop was the man from my dreams. Somehow.

  “You only went to one store, and you already want to go home?” Holden didn’t bother disguising his glee.

  Big surprise.

  “I don’t feel well now. I think I need to lie down and rest.”

  “With your coffee?” he snorted.

  I had promised myself I would never be nasty to a Nightwarden again, but he was pushing me too far.

  “Shut up, already. I’m not in the mood.”

  5

  Gentry

  “Are you coming, or what?” Dominic was waiting for me outside.

  He couldn’t stand the thought of being pressed in with all those humans. They were vermin. Rats in a rat trap. He tapped on the glass again, then pointed to his pocket watch.

  I was holding him up.

  But she was there. It was her. The girl from my dreams.

  Yes, and that will earn a lot of sympathy from him.

  As if he would want to hear about a dream I kept having. Every night for a week, ever since that last morning on the road. It never changed. Always the same girl in the same place, and I always woke up just before I could ask her anything. Even her name, or who she was, or how she got there.

  But it was her.

  Even though she was clean and dressed up and wearing makeup, I knew it was her. I couldn’t have explained it if somebody put a gun to my head and demanded I do.

  Still, I knew.

  “What took you so long in there?” My brother was already striding down the sidewalk like he owned it by the time I stepped outside into the crisp air.

  “You saw how crowded it was.”

  “I don’t understand why you insist on adopting the habits of those people,” he spat.

  “No. You never could understand.”

  “Oh, as if your heart has bled for them all this time,” he sneered, sidestepping a woman as she hurried past. Like touching her, even briefly, would infect him.

  “For someone who hates them as you do, why do you still live here?” I asked.

  It seemed like a fair question. The city was fairly clogged with humanity, much more so than the last time I’d been there. Decades had passed since then, when I’d decided to move to Los Angeles at the advent of its explosion into the public eye. Manhattan wasn’t big enough for both Dominic and me back then. It was better to put a country between us.

  “It’s the only city in the world, or it might as well be,” he announced with a grin.

  “Not even Paris? Rome? London?”

  “All have their benefits, but this is home. I’m still bewildered at the way you adapted to the West coast.”

  “I’ve always been better at adapting than you.” And I would adapt to being human, too, as best I could.

  If only to show him it was possible. The thought still made my skin crawl, and I had to convince myself at least twice a day not to jump out a window, but I had to at least try to make a go of it.

  Especially after seeing her.

  She was real.

  “Are you even listening to me?” Dominic demanded, throwing an elbow my way. He hit my arm and made me spill my coffee, splashing my jeans.

  “Wonderful. Thanks for that.” I stopped, bent and tried to brush some of it away.

  Before I could get to them, the stains disappeared like they had never been there.

  I shot him a look as I stood. “Careful, now. What if one of them saw you?”

  “So what if they did? You mean to tell me you never performed even a simple little spell like that while in public?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “No. The point is, you’ve lost your spine along with your powers.”

  “And who do I have to thank for that?”

  The traffic light was red, and we stopped at the corner to wait for it while others crossed with no regard for the signal.

  He glared at me, and I at him.

  We were near
mirror images except for our clothing. His suit was nothing like my turtleneck and jeans.

  I could imagine the conclusions a passing human would draw—then again, they didn’t pay attention to much of anything around them, especially when they were in a hurry. And they were always in a hurry.

  “Is this what’s going to happen whenever we’re together?” I asked. “Will we always come back to this place? I would rather not, but you make it impossible for me to stay civil when you keep bringing up what happened. I’m willing to let it go, but I can’t if you refuse to stop bringing it up.”

  Rage, shame, guilt, frustration played over his features, so much like my own face.

  I would age faster than he would, even though we were born three minutes apart. There would come a time when strangers would assume I was his father.

  Strip a witch or warlock of their powers, you also stripped them of their longevity.

  And it was all his fault.

  And he knew it.

  “We’d better hurry,” he muttered, continuing across the street.

  I walked beside him with my coffee and didn’t say another word until we reached the hospital doors.

  “I don’t see why she has to be here,” he murmured, eyes scanning the lobby.

  He looked like he smelled something rotten.

  “Even the priestesses she sought out in India gave her the same advice she got from the doctors. She needs aggressive treatment. This is not the sort of thing that can be magically treated. And they want her to move to a hospice soon.”

  “I know what they want.”

  We were two grown men, more than three times as old as we looked. Yet there we were, standing in an elevator, bickering over our mother’s impending death because neither of us could process the thought of her no longer being with us.

  “You won’t tell her?” I confirmed before entering her room.

  “I wouldn’t do that to her. It would…”

  Kill her.

  He wanted to say it would kill her. And he was probably right.

  She couldn’t know about my disgrace. The only good thing about the timing was that she was too sick when the disaster struck to be aware.

  The first thing that hit my subconscious was the smell of death lingering in the air.

  Not even her death, per se, but the deaths of others who had spent their last days in a bed, covered in tubes. And the smell took me back to my dream.

  Crossing a large, death-filled room.

  Reaching the girl on the other side, bound to a wooden X. Only this woman was my mother, and she wasn’t bound to anything wooden—rather, she was tethered to countless machines which monitored her fading life.

  And I couldn’t save her. There would be no freeing her from this. Only death could release her.

  “My sons are here.” Her voice was barely a whisper. Not the loud, throaty, smoke-laced growl everyone who knew her had come to expect. A voice that could fill up a room, and a personality to go with it. She barely filled her bed anymore. “I’m sorry you have to see me like this. In this place.”

  Her smile was strong, even if she wasn’t, and I reminded myself to stay positive for her sake though she looked like a living, speaking skeleton.

  I had seen many terrible things—some of which I’d caused—but nothing like the ruined figure in this bed.

  Wrapped in an ermine-trimmed silk robe, as always. When the light streaming in through the windows touched her face, I could nearly see through her skin.

  I gritted my teeth against a sound of dismay.

  “Don’t you have clan business to attend to?” she asked, slowing turning her head to look in my direction.

  Her eyes were sunken, a pale version of their old vibrant blue, but as sharp as ever. She was a mother first, and could smell bullshit a mile away.

  Dominic glanced at me and cleared his throat. “I managed to convince him to take a little time away from palm trees and tanned blondes.”

  “You have to be convinced to visit your mother when she’s feeling under the weather?” she asked.

  I could deal with that. As long as she wasn’t aware she was visiting with a sorcerer and a human, instead of two sorcerers.

  “I’ve been busy lately, Mother. I’m sorry.” Yes. Busy.

  I took her hand—so tiny, the skin like paper, the bones clearly evident underneath—and offered a sheepish smile. She was always a sucker for my smile. At least I could tell her I’d been busy without it feeling like a lie. I had been very busy. Extremely so.

  Dominic sat on the other side of the bed, and we passed an uncomfortable hour making small talk before she was too tired to go on and needed rest.

  I knew how she felt. I was suddenly exhausted myself.

  We parted ways in silence, Dominic, and I.

  There was nothing more to be said right now.

  I walked back to the apartment on my own, which was a much more pleasant experience. No grumbling and bitching about humans, no putting on airs of superiority the way he’d been doing since the say we were born.

  Three minutes older than me and one would think it was years for all his smug assuredness. Didn’t he stop to think that when he insulted humans, he insulted me?

  Because I was human, practically. Instead of this helping him see that humans weren’t the scumbags we were raised believing they were, he silently lumped me in with them.

  It was probably easier for him that way, I guessed as I turned down Fifth Avenue. The less he thought about the implications of what he’d done, the better for him.

  Self-preservation was always Dominic’s highest priority.

  A group of young women left Lord & Taylor together, carrying shopping bags and cell phones, wearing what looked to me like pajamas but to them, evidently, like the sort of clothing people wore in public.

  I remembered when women dressed up to go shopping, especially in a store like that one; a lady had standards.

  Then again, I remembered when Times Square was called Longacre Square. New York certainly had changed. As a human, I would have to change with it. I couldn’t hold myself up to a lofty standard anymore.

  I waited at the crosswalk beside a young, dark-haired woman who looked at me with obvious interest.

  I smiled, but it was the sort of smile one offers when they’re trying to be polite. I had no desire to strike up a conversation with her or any other woman except the one from the coffee shop. From my dreams.

  This one reminded me of her, the hair was the same. Still, it was enough to get me thinking of her again, and maybe my overwrought brain needed something else to latch onto.

  I wanted to see her.

  I wanted to know she was real.

  If it meant going to that coffee shop every day for a month and sitting there from open to close, I would do it just for the chance to see her again.

  And it wasn’t like I had anything else to do.

  6

  Vanessa

  “I don’t see why you have to come with me when I’m only running to the shop for a latte and a scone,” I grumbled as I slid into my riding boots.

  He was waiting in the doorway to my room, and for once he didn’t criticize me for leaving it a mess.

  “Only a latte and a scone?” he repeated, raising an eyebrow. One corner of his generous mouth slid up in a smile.

  “What’s the look for?”

  “You know what it’s for.”

  “Indulge me, please.”

  “You’ve been trying to decide what to wear for the last half hour.”

  “How would you know? I only just opened the bedroom door.” Yes, and he was right there in the hallway when I did. “Were you listening outside the door?” I asked in horror.

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “For starters, it’s downright creepy. Like you’re stalking me.”

  His forehead creased as his heavy brows drew together. “Stalking? How can I stalk when I live with you?”

  “Don’t get technical with me.” I st
ood with a sigh, then fumbled around on my bed for the denim jacket I’d decided to wear. It had gotten lost under another hundred things I’d pulled out of the closet. “Sometimes I wish you were more like…” I trailed off, and my cheeks burned with shame.

  “Elias,” he finished, sounding resigned.

  “I didn’t mean to compare you two.”

  “Oh, no. I’m sure.” Sarcasm dripped from his voice.

  “How can I help it?” I slid into my jacket and pulled my hair out from underneath so it could rest against my back and trail over my shoulders. “He was my Nightwarden for years.” And I had loved him, which was something I didn’t see the need to bring up. But I was sure Holden could feel it when I thought about him. At least he was kind enough to never bring it up.

  “I realize that was a very personal relationship,” he said, speaking slowly. “But I can’t do my job effectively if you keep comparing us.”

  “Fine, sure, okay. I get it. I’ll do my best.”

  If he would only be a little more reclusive. That was my favorite thing about Elias, besides… well, everything that made me fall in love with him. Holden was just as stoic and strong, and definitely just as handsome with his angelic features and a body that could pass for a heavyweight boxer’s.

  But unlike Elias, he was more open. More talkative. More intrusive, and I still wondered if that had anything to do with my mother’s influence. My mother probably ordered him to spend time with me, like that would stop a sorcerer from kidnapping me again.

  I stepped out into the hallway and locked the door behind us with a heavy heart.

  Why did he have to come with me?

  For the last three days, I had camped out at the coffee shop with my laptop and my Nightwarden in the hope of seeing him again. My literal Dream Man.

  “Why don’t you admit why you want to go back and we’ll stop pretending?” Holden asked as we stepped into the elevator.

  “Why don’t you leave me alone?” I countered.

  “Don’t be immature.”

  “Don’t talk down to me like that. I don’t know who you think you are.”

  “You know exactly who I think I am.”

  That did it.