by Kayleigh Sky
Was that what it had been like for Maisie?
A desperate hope rose in Otto that the guy had gotten away. Nobody appeared to pursue him. After a few minutes the fog floated up, drifting as lightly as the mist he’d seen here the morning before.
What the hell?
Was the fog a coincidence? A weird but natural phenomenon?
If the camera had caught a body in the field, it wasn’t visible to Otto, but he knew it was there. Fog didn’t kill, and in the pit of Otto’s gut that was the only certainty about this murder he could grab onto yet. He was as sure as he was of his own lost soul that whoever had run away from there wasn’t the killer either.
So what the fuck was going on?
7
Chased
Other than a towhee hopping across the veranda, nobody was in sight. The kitchen was empty too, so there was no Bettina to spy on him through the patio door.
Slipping outside, Jessa ran for the garage. Rune’s car was closest to the garage door and also the one Jessa most loved to drive. It had taken forever begging and pleading before Uriah had broken down and taught him. Now he jumped behind the wheel and pulled his knit cap over his head. The driveway split, leading in one direction to the front of the castle and in the other down the valley to a neighboring town now called Garnet. That wasn’t where Jessa wanted to go, but it was better than pulling out in full view of the castle.
A few minutes later he flew along a narrow ribbon of pavement that wound through the foothills into Comity. It took his face hurting to realize he was smiling like a maniac as he drove. He wasn’t a prisoner. He always had Uriah or one of his cousins to take him places. It was just that… Well, this time he was out alone.
On my own.
The wind tossed a few strands of hair that had worked out from under his cap. The day was young with clean, puffy clouds in the pale blue sky. Rain was on its way, but it wasn’t here now, and he was strong.
Like everybody else if he didn’t think about the tattoo on his neck.
And that’s what he wanted—to not think about the way he was different. He was pretty sure those bastards the other night had seen his tattoo, though all they’d seemed to care about was how he’d crossed in front of them in the parking lot and made them stop. His mind had been on his books and getting back to Comity House before Uriah arrived to fetch him home. Isaac would keep his secret, but if Uriah ever found out Jessa had gone out by himself, he’d tell Rune and—
Well, Jessa would be grounded for a thousand years.
So, yeah. At twenty-three, he needed his freedom. And sex.
Oh, yeah.
Jessa chewed his lower lip and thought of the big guy who’d saved him. He wished he’d gotten a good look at him, but with the light shining from behind the guy, he hadn’t.
Imagining him made Jessa’s belly hot and his balls heavy. He wanted something to grind himself against. Something hot and smooth like the dip inside the big guy’s hip.
Jessa groaned.
The guy probably had dark eyes like a full vampire, burning and entrancing.
Shit.
He wriggled on his seat. He needed to stop thinking about this before he drove Rune’s car off the road.
When he reached Garnet, he got onto the freeway and headed into Comity, trying to focus on Mal’s birthday present. Money wasn’t exactly an object, but Mal had no reservations about buying herself whatever she wanted. She loved her pleasures. Jessa loved flowers and jewelry and sex. At least he thought he loved sex.
Stop thinking about that.
But it was hard. The more he tried not to think about it, the more he imagined the big guy’s hand on his dick, squeezing and pulling until Jessa stood on his toes, trapped by those burning eyes, spurting helplessly into those sticky fingers.
“Oh damn,” he muttered.
He ached now. Idiot.
Luckily, there was nobody at the co-op. The city sprawled in front of him, the earlier clouds broken apart, the shine of the sun bright and cold.
The co-op was in a commercial section that was slowly limping back to life, but half the space was still unrented. The streets had been made for more cars than anyone drove now, but there was still light traffic as people took care of errands on their lunch hours. He parked in the service alley behind his building and used his key to get inside. In addition to a storage area, kitchen, and bathroom, there was a large space on the street side that was divided into sixteen stalls. Jessa didn’t actually rent his stall because the Seneras owned the building—for him—but he made enough money from the sale of his jewelry to pay for it if he wanted to.
He headed through the quiet room to the last stall in the corner by the window.
His space was cluttered with plastic tubs and containers for his beads and crystals, jars and tubes of glue and paint, and spools of various grades and types of wire. Stuck to the walls was a collage of pictures he’d taken of the flowers he designed his jewelry around. His pieces sold well, and scaling up if he wanted to made sense, but like Rune, he created for the love of it. He already knew he needed acceptance and didn’t want to add in the pressure of hoping strangers would like him enough to become his customers. The thought of it bent his shoulders with an invisible weight, so he made things when he wanted to, but today was about Mal.
At his worktable, he set down his bag and pulled out a collection of round copper medallions and several glass cabochons. His plan was to paint a sprig of wildflowers and make a necklace with the cabochon and a matching bracelet and earrings out of his best glass beads. The painting would be something small and intricate like the scrimshaw so many vampires had tattooed on their teeth.
After he’d gone through his tools and fetched the right sized brush and a hole-punch for the paper, he propped the photo of a sprig of yellow sweet clover under the window. As he painted, he thought of his own plant—at least, he thought of it as his own. He’d never seen another flower like it and had found no references to it. Rune had told him they were finding new species of plants all the time. His flower was yellow too with orange dots on it, a delicate cross between a sunflower and an orchid, except it grew on a vine and had tiny, serrated leaves. It was a little flower and hard to see. Jessa called it the Gold Star.
After he finished his artwork, he set it on the windowsill, grabbed his camera, and headed outside to take pictures of the wildflowers in the field while he waited for the painting to dry.
The yellow tape fluttering in the breeze didn’t register until he started across the street. His stomach did a little flip. Well, that was strange. Had there been an accident? Or maybe a mugging? This wasn’t the greatest neighborhood—one of the reasons he wasn’t supposed to be out on his own. He was a drainer, and without trying, he tempted humans and vampires alike to hurt him.
As though he had been the cause of the war.
He paused when he came on the tape and looked around. Though the coffee shop on the corner was open, nobody sat at the tables outside or approached on any of the sidewalks, so he took a breath and stepped over the tape. Pastels and occasional splashes of jewel tones dappled the field with color. Lacy white crowns of wild carrot grew with sprigs of baby blue-eyes and buttercups. He took a couple shots before bending down to comb the weeds. He didn’t expect to find his flower, yet there it was. The spark of orange caught his eye and he gasped in surprise. It was just beginning to bloom, a few stray blossoms on one tendril. He straightened, changed the focus on his lens, and bent down again.
“HEY!”
Jerking back, Jessa stared. Somebody was coming across the field at him. A big guy and moving fast. Fuck. Did the guy want to hurt him? Jessa’s tattoo wasn’t visible, not from this far away. He stumbled over a clump of dirt.
“Stay where you are! Police!”
Jessa spun, leaped over the yellow tape, and raced back down the street. The ricochet of the slanting sun on the plate glass windows half-blinded him, and he blinked, eyes smarting in the light as he zigzagged like an idiot, t
orn between going back for Mal’s necklace and making a run straight for his car.
Rune’s car.
Getting caught wasn’t an option. Not pissing off the humans had been pounded into him from the first day they’d discovered he was a drainer.
Don’t go out alone.
Don’t make a fuss.
Don’t argue.
Don’t disobey.
Don’t disappoint.
The last was the worst. Jessa’s family trusted him. Veering away from the co-op at the last second, he made a beeline for the alley.
“POLICE! I’m ordering you to stop!”
The gravelly voice woke heat in Jessa’s belly. He hadn’t gotten much of a look at the cop’s face, just the dark, short hair, but he imagined the guy was gorgeous and tough. He wasn’t so interested he planned to stop and get a close-up though.
He grabbed onto the corner of a building, propelled himself into the service alley, jumped into his car, and got it going right as the cop came careening into the alley behind him. Slamming his car into reverse, Jessa gunned it out of the alley onto the street, where he shifted into drive and took off. He was already turning onto a cross street when the big guy trotted onto the pavement and stopped, dropping his hands to his knees.
Shaking, he gripped the steering wheel and took the back streets out of town. His lungs didn’t want to take in any air, and he was dizzy by the time the trees hung over him again.
Luckily, Jessa was pretty forgettable, and the cop wasn’t likely to know who he was. They hadn’t gotten close to each other, and hopefully, Jessa had gotten far enough away the cop hadn’t gotten a good look at Jessa’s license plate either. Was he really as gorgeous as Jessa imagined—wanted him to be?
Were his hands rough? His skin hot?
A shiver ran down Jessa’s spine and heat bloomed in his belly again. His attraction bewildered him in a way because he still fantasized about the guy in the parking lot. Vampires were gorgeous. Hot guys surrounded Jessa every day, so why was he fixated on these two?
Maybe it wasn’t anything more than sex. He was long overdue. Isaac had had sex, and Isaac was twenty-two. Not that Jessa wanted to have sex for money. No, he wanted the kind of sex that would shatter his brain, fling him spiraling into unforgettable bliss, and give him the expression of ecstasy all the heroines on his book covers wore on their faces. Kiss-plump lips and dreamy eyes.
Was that even real, or a fantasy of romance novels like fated love?
Abadi, the first wife of Jessa’s father, Qudim, had come to him through an arranged marriage. They hadn’t loved each other and neither had been faithful. Jessa dreaded a loveless marriage. He wanted passion, but he understood duty. The story of Qudim’s marriage to Jessa’s mother, Dawn, warmed him to his soul. That was fated. They’d been fated to meet and marry, and when Qudim lost her, he lost his sanity.
Both Abadi and Dawn had died in the Upheaval. Before that, Abadi had attempted to murder Dawn and had been banished with most of her family. Jessa had been born of a love some people said only existed in myths. Maybe that’s why he loved romances and happy ever afters so much.
True love was rare.
A treasure worth obsessing over.
A treasure that would never be his.
You have enough.
He was royal, and when he scaled the rise in the road as it curved toward the garage, the castle rose before him, its stone pale and bright in the sunlight.
The massive edifice was older than the Upheaval but only by a few years. It wasn’t a real castle, only made to look like one, and had turrets on the corners and a pair of curved stairs in front that led to each side of a half circle portico. Trees covered him again then opened back up to a lawn and garden that extended to the faraway tree line. The mountain in the background rose craggy and green.
After Jessa returned the car to the garage, he peeked out the side door, waiting for somebody to accost him and haul him before Rune, but nobody did, so he hurried out and headed to his greenhouse.
The building wasn’t large, but Jessa grew most of the annuals they planted around the estate and a few perennials. He tossed his car keys on the table by the door and grabbed a hat off a hook. After cranking open a few windows, he pulled a cart away from the wall, loaded the bottom rack with bags of soil and set flats of pansies, stock, and violas on top.
The day passed as he loved it—with his hands in the dirt, doing something productive. Now, new flowers bloomed in all the planters that circled the castle.
Happy and sweaty, he returned his cart to the greenhouse, not entirely surprised to see Uriah waiting for him. Uriah’s usual job was taking care of Rune, though Rune didn’t really need muscle. It was just that his work took him into dangerous places sometimes, so Uriah, one of their distant cousins, was never far from his side.
With a sigh, Jessa pushed his cart back into its place against the wall then flashed Uriah a smile. “What’s up, Uri?”
A slow smile crept onto Uriah’s face. “What’s up?”
Jessa shrugged. “Yeah. Does Rune want me?”
“No. But I’m to escort you inside.”
Jessa hung his hat up. “I’m not done.”
“Prince.”
That was all Uriah had to say. Uriah wouldn’t hurt him, and he had no fear of Mal or Rune either. They loved him, though probably too much. Jessa had no control over his illness, but it made him guilty anyway for the way it flowed into everybody else’s life. Marrying would set his family free by turning him into somebody else’s problem. Jessa knew his duty and would do it, but a part of him—the part that believed in true love—kept putting it off. Guilt ate into him for that one too, so he obeyed. He was complacent and amenable and cheerful—most of the time.
“Fine,” he grumbled, grabbed his keys, and stormed outside.
Uriah appeared at his side a second later and kept pace with him. They entered the castle through a small door under the back steps and through the kitchen to a flight of stairs to the second story and Jessa’s room where he stripped, washed the sweat off his body, and picked a new romance from his stash. A few hours later, Bettina brought him a bowl of soup and a plate of cheese and bread on a tray.
At some point, he fell asleep. He wasn’t sure what woke him. The light was already on, so it wasn’t that. He rolled over and squinted at Mal, who stood in the doorway with her arms crossed under her breasts, chin dipped down, eyeing him along her nose the way Uriah did. But Mal’s smile danced on her face with dimples that played peek-a-boo on her cheeks. Her smile was like a viper’s though. Fangs lurked underneath it.
With a sigh, she let her arms fall and crossed the floor. “What am I going to do with you, blossom?”
“Don’t call me that.”
She wrapped her arm around the pencil post at the foot of his bed and leaned her cheek against the pale wood. “It’s an endearment.”
“Well, I’m not a blossom. You are though.”
Mal’s smile broadened. Her skirt hugged her hips, black like the shimmery spaghetti-strap top she wore. She stood in thigh-high, six-inch-heeled boots. Long black braids spilled from a silver tie on the top of her head. Jessa’s braids were always a mess, and definitely not that glossy black. Not like a vampire’s at all.
“Flattery will not get you out of this room, my darling. You were bad.”
“I’m grown, Mal. I want to work. I have a business to run.”
She cocked her head, black eyes glittering. “I wasn’t aware the co-op was open on Mondays. And besides, you know it’s dangerous to go out alone.”
“Lots of drainers go out.”
“I doubt that, Jessa, and not one of them is a prince.”
Being royal doubly flawed him somehow. He wasn’t sure how that worked, other than being a colossal letdown to everybody.
“Take me out with you.”
“Out where? I just got in, and I’m going to bed.”
A quick glance to his window showed him the first hint of color in the sky.
“Tonight.”
She yawned behind her hand. Mal was like the vampires of myth. She tolerated the day, but she didn’t love it.
“I have papers to grade.”
“Did you meet anybody?” he asked.
“No.” She released the post of his bed and returned to the door. “My fair princess continues to elude me.”
“Is it because of me?” he murmured.
The days of the Seneras ruling the vampires had died with Qudim and the war, but Jessa was afraid their fall from importance had really been because of him. Before the Upheaval, he’d been normal. Drainers hadn’t even existed. To Jessa, they were a constant reminder of the things vampires had lost, especially the right to drink blood as they had for thousands of years. But the Seneras had lost everything, and the thought it was Jessa being a drainer that had compounded their ruin stuck to him like his tattoo. Though maybe having a drainer in the family was a cosmic punishment for Rune turning on Qudim. But for Jessa, it always came down to him. His father had once told him the Seneras had special powers, but even with those powers, they had fallen to the second lowest family. That Mal and Rune had found somebody willing to marry Jessa bordered on the miraculous.
“Silly,” she murmured back.
“I’m serious though, Mal. I really want to go out. Anywhere. I won’t be a bother.”
She dipped her chin again with her viperish smile. “I like to dance.”
“I can dance,” he lied.
Her smile widened. “We’ll see.”
After she’d gone, he got off the bed and stepped onto his balcony. The damp air stung. It was light enough now to reveal the shadows below and a pale wisp of mist in the trees.
Jessa shivered.
The mist was always there. Always watching.
8
Comity House
Ten years ago—ten years after the Upheaval and eleven months after Synelix distribution reached every city—the first bodies began to appear. The victims were all human and all completely drained.
