by Eris Adderly
Radoslav was gone, having left her with no hints as to where, considering it should be daytime up there. Where else he was holing up during the Sun’s hours was beyond her.
Wild curiosity had November slipping into the single, separate bedroom at one point, to see if the other vampire had left anything obvious or out of place lying around. Anything that might back up or contradict his outrageous revelations outside under the stars.
The man lived like a monk in the compact space. Bed made military tight. No clothing draped over the back of the lone chair at a bare desk along the far wall. No shoes on the floor. Every storage cabinet and drawer thumbprint-locked. She’d slid the door shut behind her when she’d left, knowing no more about the other vampire than she already had: that he was in some capacity trying to look out for Leo, that he seemed to have insider knowledge about a whole bunch of nefarious shit, and that he was kind of a prick.
You’re kind of my type.
Of all the things he’d said out there, it was the entertaining one she’d chosen for a distraction. It didn’t make her guts twist or her head ache like contemplating the inevitable shitstorm her news would bring to the right people underground. She was no conspiracy nut. She’d seen it with her own eyes. Felt it on her skin.
She’d felt Rado on her skin, too. And pricks were kind of her type. Sometimes.
November had burned a segment of time masturbating. Why not? One leg sprawled off the edge of the sofa, fingers lazy between her thighs while she’d imagined patient tongues and teeth on her body. Male hands gripping, cocks pushing. Sometimes Leo, baring his throat in unearned trust for her to feed. Sometimes Rado, pinning her to the back end of that surface vehicle, jerking his fly open. Sometimes both, and her touch had come with a fury, climax singing out uninterrupted at the thought of rolling between two pairs of hips. Of stretching for the two men.
She’d nodded off after the rush of release, and only opened her eyes again at the sound of the front door.
Leo slipped into the apartment while November was pushing herself upright on the couch. She blinked and made a face when he turned on the light panels, but the man had some mercy and only brought them up to maybe half-brightness. He was carrying a small duffel over a shoulder.
“I got you a new uniform,” he said, and tossed the bag to the cushion beside her.
She groaned into a stretch, and he already had one foot up on one of the chairs at the small dining table so he could lean down and unlace his boots. His shift had clearly come to an end for the day, but November resisted the urge to ask how it had gone—the scene was feeling far too domestic, already. Instead, she turned to the bag and began to pull out clothes.
“Um”—she unfolded a slate blue shirt—“I’m not trying to be ungrateful here, but, uh … this is a surface uniform.” Underground guards wore black.
“Yeah, well.” He pulled off the second boot and set the pair near the door. “It’s the best I could do. Just try not to smile at anyone, and we ought to be able to make it back.”
“Did you find a way?” November put her feet on the floor and sat forward, full attention on her partner now.
Leo’s mouth made a flat line. He started unbuttoning his uniform shirt. “Kind of?” he said. “I don’t know. Every plan I can think of has holes.”
She raked a hand back to sort out her sleep-mussed hair. “Holes?”
“That uniform is only going to get us so far,” said Leo. “The second checkpoint when you approach our gate—any of the gates—needs a thumbprint id on every body. So the minute you hit the scanner, the system will read you as V-positive. Then it won’t matter if I get you through the gate, or not.”
Leo pulled out one of the chairs from under the table and sat. November made a sour face. He was right. As soon as GateSec registered a vampire above ground, there’d be an escalation unit trooping down there before they could think. And simply slipping underground didn’t mean she would be home free. There would be questions. An interrogation, even.
Why are you in a surface uniform? Where have you been these last few days? Why haven’t you reported to your post? Why was there a sunshine canister on the floor the night you went missing?
And how would the truth sound at a probation hearing? She was still in the middle of working off a sentence. ‘Oh no, see, I was attacked by Goodnighters, and my gate partner panicked and dragged me to his apartment. So everything’s fine, right?’
Forget the rest of the truth. Radoslav’s warning still reverberated in her head.
You go back there and make an official report, you’re going to disappear.
Her toes had curled, body balling up against the thought. She made a conscious effort to let go the muscles, and to turn her attention to Leo. “So that’s our only plan?” she said. “You take me back there and we wait for shit to go sideways?”
Her gate partner leaned back and pushed his palms down his thighs. “Unless you want to keep hiding out here while I try to come up with something else.”
“She can’t stay here.”
Rado slid the door shut behind him, and the two gate guards both started. Leo swore under his breath and rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, regaining composure.
“We know that,” he said. “And I thought you had work.”
“What I have,” Rado said, “maybe, is a way to get her back down there.”
“Well, you’re eager enough to be rid of me, aren’t you?” November held the other vampire’s eyes, challenging.
“The longer you stay here, the more trouble we’re in,” said Rado.
“How are you involved?” asked Leo from behind crossed arms.
“Because I’m going to be an accomplice if they find out she’s been up here for days and I knew about it.”
November cocked her head the slightest degree and watched Leo’s roommate lie. Her partner had no idea he was living with a vampire. No idea what Rado’s real motivations were.
And how much focus was it taking for Radoslav to sustain hypnosis the whole time he spoke? So that Leo would never see his fangs? There had never been a need for November to interact that way with negs. Nearly everyone underground was V-positive, and their pheromones didn’t work on each other, anyway. She’d never had to hide who she was.
If she were to out Rado to his roommate, there would be chaos. Where did her loyalties lie? With the man who’d saved her ass from a beatdown and probably worse? Or the man who’d brought her in on a truth almost too horrifying to contemplate?
She glanced between the two and frowned. There was no picking sides. And this was no time to launch everyone into a tangential argument.
“So what’s the way, then?” asked November.
Rado leaned his back against the door and hung his thumbs on his pants pockets. “I found another gate.”
“What difference does it make?” Leo said. “She’s gonna have the same problems at all of them.”
“A dead gate,” said Rado. “I don’t even think it’s registered.”
November sat up straighter at this.
“It’s old,” Radoslav went on. “Late nineteenth, maybe early twentieth century. It’s from the original underground. Foot traffic only. And none of that system was ever stable enough for cargo vehicles. It never got integrated.”
“Sooo you’re saying … you take me through that gate, and then what?” Leo looked as skeptical as November felt. “I’m supposed to turn up at my post the next day? Like nothing happened?”
“You can’t go back to GateSec,” said Rado. “Not now.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?” Her voice had risen, and she was sitting forward on the cushion.
“Disappear,” he said. “You’ll have help.”
“What are talking about?” Leo tossed an incredulous hand at his roommate. “She has to ‘disappear?’ You’re out looking for unregistered gates? You’re a fucking night shift coder. What do you even know about what goes on down there?”
Radoslav fixed his roommat
e with a long, unreadable look, and the tension in the room flattened out like a bootsole was grinding it into the floor.
“Because I’m a goddamn vampire,” he said, at last.
There was no change that November could see, but watching Leo’s eyebrows and jaw part ways told her Rado had given up any hypnotics he’d been holding.
“What?”
Leo shot to his feet, his chair barking back over the hard floor. November stood too, fight or flight responses crackling with the energy in the room.
“You heard me.” Rado held steady and waded into the flood he’d caused.
And here I was, not trying to step on any mines.
“How?” said Leo. “How are you living on the surface?”
November’s mouth turned in a grim smirk. She’d asked nearly the same thing. And from the drama involved, she could see why Radoslav wanted to keep a lid on the subject. Why he’d revealed himself now was beyond her.
“It isn’t important,” Rado said. “What’s important is that she gets back underground. Soon.”
“And you—I’m on fucking Fortizan!” Leo would not be deterred. “You’ve been living here six months; you’ve got fucking fangs!”
The vampire exhaled through his nose. “There is a lot going on here.”
“No shit!” Leo turned on November. “And you didn’t tell me, either?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought it would make things worse.” It was a slipshod apology, but she wasn’t going to bring up that Rado had threatened her. That was a moot point, now, and it would do nothing to deescalate the situation.
“What else don’t I know?” Leo said, rounding on his roommate again.
Radoslav closed his eyes and let out a breath. Opened them. “A lot.”
Thick silence spread in the room, and November looked from one man to the other, the first exasperated, and the second fatigued. She let her gaze fall to the clean uniform draped over the edge of the sofa, and to Leo’s undershirt she’d been wearing for a day and a half.
“You know what?” she said. “You two need to sort your shit out. I’m going to take a shower.”
Rado gave her a single nod, and Leo slumped back into his chair. While she rounded the back of the couch, the other vampire was heading to pull out the table’s second chair.
“There are some things that are going to be difficult to understand, Croix.” Radoslav spoke to Leo in the same low, patient tones he’d used to pull her up from the ground outside. “And you will not want to believe them.”
She slid the bathroom door shut on the beginnings of a story she wasn’t ready to hear again, just yet. One more night. One more night where she could pretend things were normal. Where she didn’t have to think about disappearing. Or the Athanati. Or the entire night sky drowning her in awful, impossible truth.
The water in the shower painted her in warmth, and November wasted time doing no more than leaning back against the enclosure wall with her eyes closed.
Could she even go back to her apartment now? Everything she owned was there. All her books. She groaned and scrubbed at her face with her palms.
And if GateSec was corrupt—well, more corrupt than she’d imagined—what service could she trust to contact her mother in U-Tokyo? Not her id bracelet, that was for damn sure. How soon would her employer contact her next of kin after she was a no-show at her post?
November lathered her hair and skin, rubbing and sluicing as though the onslaught of answerless questions would circle the drain with day-old sweat. When she finished and cut the water, the steam inside the shower walls clung to her like a held breath.
In the quiet of the spray’s absence, the bass of male voices came through the wall. The pace and volume varied but, as she stepped out and toweled down, it didn’t sound like they were about to come to blows.
With the words themselves muffled, all November could hear were tones. Undefined male sounds while she faced her own nude self in the bathroom mirror. The connection to her idle fantasizing on the couch stirred awake and stretched.
Both.
Gooseflesh spread on her arms and thighs. One more night. No complications.
She wrapped herself in the towel and slid the door open a crack, listening before she reappeared in the middle of some new dispute.
“… they were placebos this whole time, then she could have been influencing me, too.” Leo sounded concerned and still somehow helpless.
“I don’t think she has,” said Rado.
“How would you know?”
“She seemed upset when she found out I’d been doing it.”
They weren’t arguing, exactly. And November knew well that dogged effort to make sense of things that Leo was hanging onto now. She stepped out into the living area.
“Ask her yourself,” Rado said, tipping a nod to where she stood.
Leo turned his head to find her, but she was already moving to stand behind his shoulder. He leaned to look up at her. “Were you using hypnotics on me?”
“No.”
He shot a look back to Rado and shrugged. “How would I even know if she’s telling the truth?”
Radoslav sat back in his chair and raised a brow. November leaned low and smoothed Leo’s shirt down over his chest with a palm on the opposite side from where she spoke at his ear.
“Am I using it now?” Her question was for the other vampire, who shook his head.
“Then tell me, Leo.” The wet ends of her hair soaked little dark patches into the fabric near his collar. “If you had another chance, would you fuck me again?”
His intake of breath was answer enough for everyone in the room. And the energy between the three had shot off, perpendicular, down a lightless corridor. Anything could come of it. Or nothing.
She came around her partner’s side and sank into his lap, her ass perched on his left thigh, knees crossed between his legs and arms linking around his neck, while November leaned sideways against his chest. The towel shifted against her skin, damp and scratchy, and she stared into searching, hazel eyes.
“How much does he know?” she asked Rado without looking away.
“As much as you do.” There were sounds of the other man shifting in his chair.
Not ‘everything,’ though. It would do her well to remember Radoslav still had his secrets.
“And do you want to think about it right now?” she said to Leo.
There was the finest crease between his brows, and his lips had parted, whatever questions he had lost to confusion.
“Because I don’t.” She tilted her head. Brushed her mouth over his, an invitation. “Want to think about it. Not right now.”
His arm circled her lower back, fingers curling to hang on her hip. “He’s right there,” Leo reminded her from under heavy-lidded eyes, but that didn’t stop his other hand from slipping over her bare knee.
“Is he?” November drew a wet line along his upper lip with her tongue.
“She’s about to slide off your lap, Croix.” The vampire was still in his chair, but his voice had dropped an octave. “If you don’t put a cock in her,” he said, “I will.”
“Fuck off, Rado.” Leo claimed a kiss, territorial, and she couldn’t help a smile. An erection was nudging awake against the back of her thigh.
“Oh?” She teased when he broke it off. “You don’t want to watch me suck his dick while you’re inside me?”
The grip tightened at her knee, and Leo bit off a growl. Gave her a fierce look. Another glimpse at some of the fire she might stoke. November pushed herself out of his hold and away from his chest. She went to her feet and abandoned the table and chairs.
“I’ll be over on the bed while you two figure it out,” she said over a shoulder. “You both wanna get naked and wrestle for my favor, I’m happy to watch. Seems like a lot of extra work when we could all just share.”
The steps she took, without looking back, carried November deeper into the gamble. A selfish move, but it was only a matter of time before
her life became more oppressive than it already was, and she didn’t care.
Before she made it past the sofa, a hand closed on her upper arm. Yanked to spin her around, and Leo was kissing her before she could speak.
She came up on her toes to meet him, hungry, and his grip slid to the back of her neck. The kiss was work. An aggressive bid for supremacy, jaws and tongues on either side trying to force the other one back. She nipped him with her fangs and won a moan, and then a second set of bootsteps rounded the couch.
A new hand tugged at the back of her towel, even while Leo moved to rough his mouth over her jaw, her throat. In a rasp of material, Rado made her naked and closed in to press her between the two clothed men.
Gambled and won.
“About time,” she said to the ceiling. Leo dropped his grip to take handfuls of her ass, and her heartbeat sped.
“I told you,” said Rado, grazing knuckles along her spine. “Impatient.”
She let her head fall back on his shoulder. “You’re a dick.”
The vampire smiled. “And bitchy.” Thumb and fingers took hold of her jaw, and he pinned her there for a kiss. Leisure informed the caress of his tongue, the slow pressure of fangs at her lips. He tasted her like he had all the time in the world and, on some level, he just might.
A mouth closed over one of her nipples and November groaned into the kiss. Her knees tried to give way, but Rado circled an arm below her ribs. Male hands groped her, cupping flesh, squeezing, pinching. Separating. A palm slid past her navel. Teeth worried her throat. There were fingers between her legs, smearing arousal, and November felt like she was trying to drown in midair.
A tightening grip squeezed around her neck, just below her jaw, and November opened her eyes to find Rado staring back, from over her shoulder. The lines of his face had slackened and flushed with hunger.
“You want to be used, Kitamura?”
She gave a little hiss as Leo’s teeth found her nipple but didn’t break the other vampire’s gaze. “Do you?”
He smirked and let out something of a chuckle. The clamp of his hand propelled her backward to the bed, and November made a quick, sharp noise when her flesh slipped away from Leo’s attentions.
