by E E Everly
“I smelled them on campus. Their trail led right to your dorm.” Killian bangs the stairwell door open.
I cringe. “People are trying to sleep.”
His noisy, abrupt actions prove he’s not letting something go.
He feels guilty again.
Killian lowers his voice. “As I was racing up the steps to you, three of them intercepted me. I got in a good jab to one before the second iced me.” He pauses in front of the bathroom where the demons murdered the girl. Yellow tape marks the entry.
He’s back to business. This is the Killian I understand best.
I rise on tiptoes to peer over his shoulder. “Do you smell anything?”
He gives me a sidelong glance as if I’m nuts. A look that says, “Of course. I smell everything.” He breaks the tape and pushes the door open. The automatic lights glimmer to life. Brownish blood is partially congealed on the tiles in the puke-green shower room.
“Gross, when will they clean this up?” I cover my mouth and pinch my nose shut.
Killian shrugs. His eyes are closed as he’s breathing in the gruesome scene.
I speak through my hand. “Anything unusual?”
“Nothing but her blood and filthy unwashed demon stench.”
“Great.” I leave the sickening scene and head down the hall, with my stomach slightly nauseated.
“What about your wards?” Killian slinks along beside me, clandestine in his dark clothes and broody with his scowl.
“I’m exhausted.” I stifle a yawn. “I’ll do them in the morning. Or between classes.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“It has to be.” I reach my door. Such a vast change from the mood in the stairwell. I make a note to stay away from stairwells with Killian in the future. “Where do we go from here, detective?”
“I’m not sure. Without motive, how are we to know if it was a senseless killing?”
“Well, they do crave storm sprite blood,” I say. “They could have tailed her inside and grabbed her when she was alone.”
“Which brings up the question why she was here. The entry between Belyven and Earth is closed.” Killian absentmindedly tugs on a piece of hair hanging over my shoulder and coils it around his finger. “Storm sprites don’t just come and go as they please. She had to be here to see you, with permission from the mother storm sprite.” When Killian releases my hair, it hangs limp. My stark-straight hair never holds curl.
I brush the tempting strands behind my back, not wanting Killian to slip into his bizarro mood again. “Maybe.” I still maintain that she could have been here all along. The mother storm sprite doesn’t open the gateway for just any reason.
Killian pinches his face. “I don’t like how this draws a target toward you.”
“I’m already a target, thanks to the vamps at the mansion finally putting a face on me. I’ve laid low for a year now, since being on Earth, and you go and blow it for me.”
Killian leans on my door. “Let’s just pretend I didn’t make the hugest mistake last night. Will you forgive me for dragging you there?”
“Yeah.” I plunk my key into the lock and turn. Killian jumps away before I open the door and he falls inside. “I always forgive you.”
Why do I do that?
“You shouldn’t.” His voice drops even lower as he holds my door.
Lexa and Mandy are asleep in their beds, so I linger in the doorway, wondering whether Killian wants to come in.
He shakes his head. “I’ll patrol until daybreak.” His thumb runs around the bandage on my forehead. “Does it hurt?”
“Mildly. Nothing some ambrosia won’t fix.” He dips his head in acknowledgment. As he shuts the door with a gentle click, I make a beeline to my mini fridge and the chocolaty-chip goodness inside.
It’ll take a whole lot of ambrosia to settle what Killian stirred up.
Freaking vampire.
NINE
After a pint of cookie dough ice cream, I’m blissed out enough to fall asleep. I slide under my covers and linger in the state between waking and dreaming as my mind replays the last two days. Foolishly, I let Killian bite me, after he’s worked tirelessly to deny his cravings. The recent taste of my blood is why he went batty in the stairwell. He used to lurk in the shadows, keeping his distance, watching me, emerging only to warn me about supernaturals or to reprimand my behavior when risky.
Except for the past few months that he’s been bolder—sitting three tables down from me while I study in the library late at night, pretending to read a periodical when he’s really staring, following me to frat parties and scaring off ogling boys, leaving me cream-filled Danish pastries on my nightstand for breakfast.
Most nights he slinks by without notice, all vampy and stealthy, but I know he’s there because I feel his eyes on me. And not the sinister feeling of someone stalking me for nefarious purposes, like to drink my blood, but the feeling of someone watching me as if I’m something precious he’s afraid to lose.
I knew something was different the day he got a hold of my cell number and I received a text from him that said, Watch your back, followed by, Hot cocoa in the quad. I arrived to find a plastic foam cup of steaming cocoa sitting on the fountain wall with a note that said, You missed your 5 p.m. ambrosia run—K. He was right. I studied right through my break with a few friends and was seriously growing cranky. He couldn’t know how much that text melted through me, more than the cocoa.
That’s when I knew he was my vampire.
Actually my roommates dubbed the term. “Your vampire’s following us again,” Lexa would tell me.
“Gosh, that is so creepy,” Mandy would say. “You should call the police.”
He does his stalker thing because he’s duty-bound to protect me, because of what I am—a tasty treat.
And a few seed demons went and screwed up his low profile and made him drink from me.
I know he’s beating himself up over it.
Because of Killian though, I’ve learned my lesson about strangers in nightclubs. Running into my first vampires after a short week on Earth was a rookie mistake. I knew about them; I just didn’t know what to expect. I’d had the same schooling as other storm sprites. I knew about the different species, on Belyven and on Earth, from humans to imps to demons in all forms. But I didn’t know humans, and creatures who masquerade as them, could be so enticing when thrown onto a dance floor full of scantily clad, writhing bodies.
Chalk it up to the woman in me. Many men of humanlike species are attractive in one way or another.
It just so happened that two men, who I thought were human, were particularly swarthy and mysterious. After I flirted through several songs with them, all it took was their promise to take me to an ice cream parlor for me to be irresponsible. I was an exhausted and sweaty mess. I couldn’t help but accept their invitation. When storm sprites become tired, their need for ambrosia supersedes their sense of reason.
Stupid need for sustenance.
The men dragged me behind the club, and that’s when I learned what vampires and feeding really was. One of them sank his fangs deep into my neck. I’ll never forget the stinging and the pressure—the thickness of his fangs as they sliced holes into my skin, the drip of his venom on my throat. The shock made my body slacken. I couldn’t fight, and that was the most terrifying of all—and his ghastly lips, puckering on my punctured skin, pulling my blood into his mouth.
The first vampire let go, but only after the second one shoved him off, too eager to have his own taste. As he sucked, his row of teeth, with his pointed fangs, pressed to my neck, cutting into me. My body was sandwiched between the two vampires. I was afraid the first vampire would bite me somewhere else, but that’s when Killian found me, and saved me.
Then nearly finished me off himself.
But that was an accident.
My oh-so-human roommates, Mandy and Lexa, couldn’t understand why I forgave him or why I trusted him. They couldn’t understand the powerlessness I f
elt when the vamps attacked me behind the club. When Killian pulled those predators off me, I sank to the ground while he beat them senseless. He had this fuzzy halo that blurred around his body. I’m sure the effect was from my lack of blood, but it made him magical. He was my hero.
The warm fluid running down my neck and the brush of the air against my skin as he moved with inhuman speed are the only sensations I recall. And then he loomed over me, too quick for me to see his face. He swooped me into his arms where I knew I’d be safe. The heat of his body felt so different from the sticky heat of the sweaty vampires who held me captive. Killian’s heat was comforting. Like a sunbaked kitchen with counters overflowing with fresh cookies. I’m pretty sure I told him where I lived before passing out.
I wasn’t conscious for the part when Killian attacked me in my dorm room.
Our story is so messed up, but because I was unconscious, he didn’t frighten me the way those two men did. Even though I worked through the logic and the emotions of it, I’m being irrational with my positive feelings for him.
Because Killian is downright dangerous.
All vampires are.
I tell myself that I give him leniency because he saved me instead of drinking from me right there in the alley.
Since that night, Killian’s kept me safe, as a form of penitence, as a form of punishment. That’s why I wasn’t surprised to find him in the stairwell. He’d been trying to come to my rescue again.
“Sasha,” a smooth, soft-spoken voice coos.
My eyes fly open, and I stand at the foot of my bed, unaware of how I arrived here, as if I was sleepwalking. The room is dark, except where a woman shimmers about five feet in front of me.
I squint against her brightness and glance back at my bed. Oddly, my body is there, asleep, curled with the covers up to my neck. So this is an astral projection of myself, the only way the mother storm sprite, my mom, can communicate with me from the fae world. “Mom?”
“Sweetheart.” Her arms extend as a kind gesture, but we can’t really touch. Our projections would pass right through each other’s.
“I’m kind of panicking here. What was another storm sprite doing in my dorm, and why did seed demons kill her?”
Before my mom answers, my room’s door creaks open, and Killian slides in. He pays our twinkling projections no mind—he can’t see us. He blurs over to the bed and stares at my sleeping form.
“What’s he doing?” I mutter, mostly to myself.
Killian gingerly presses his palm to my forehead.
“Your heart rate has dropped dramatically while you’re in this state.” My mother smiles. “It looks as if he’s checking you for a fever.”
I lift my hand to my projection’s forehead, mirroring Killian’s movements, but it’s pointless; I can’t touch myself nor would a projection have a temperature. “A fever would speed up my pulse, not slow it down.”
“He’s just concerned. I’m impressed he was listening so intently for your heart rate while patrolling.”
“That would make him obsessive,” I say.
My body dips toward Killian when he sits on the bed’s edge. His careful fingers comb hairs from my forehead and tuck them behind my ear. He grazes my temple. I swallow as he leans in and skims his nose against my forehead, right next to the bandage near my scalp.
“If he peels that thing back and licks me in my sleep, that’s it. I’m including him in my wards.”
Instead, Killian brushes his lips across my forehead before pulling back.
I panic, remembering the stairwell. What’s he going to try? “Uh, I should jump back into my body.”
Mom holds up her hand. “It’s fine. He won’t hurt you.”
How can she say that? She’s the one who counseled me to be wary of vampires before I came to Earth.
A frustrated exhale breaks the silence as Killian cradles his head in his hands and rests his elbows on his knees. He doesn’t move from my bedside.
The room falls silent. Neither my mother nor I move. He’s just sitting there! A good thirty seconds passes before Mom dares speak. “About the girl—Serena.”
I don’t take my eyes off Killian, only half-listening while wondering what’s going on in that vamp’s head.
“Sasha?”
I shake my head, trying in vain to clear it. “Yes… Serena.” I hadn’t run into another storm sprite in this region until the dead girl, so I don’t know what to tell my mom. “I’ve never met her.”
“She was bringing you something, an amulet. The seed demons took it from her.”
My head’s still wagging. I can’t believe Killian kissed my forehead. And he’s sitting there, sullen and dark while I’m delicious and tempting. He could bite me, and I wouldn’t feel it. I’d just watch from above while my life drained away.
“Sasha?”
You trust him, remember? In a twisted way I do, or I wouldn’t have let him bite me yesterday. I wouldn’t even have let things go as far as they did in the stairwell.
The run-in with the mansion vamps threw my confidence. That’s all this weird tension is.
I inwardly sigh. He’s my vampire. It’s fine.
Making my mind up to be at ease over Killian, I give Mom my full attention. “An amulet. Whatever for?”
“It’s a long story, but the amulet has power to protect you.”
I’m skeptical. “How so?”
Mom looks as if she doesn’t want to tell me. Her projection’s shoulders lift as she tries to shrug off whatever guilt she’s hiding. “It allows you the ability to teleport.” Her nose wriggles up. “It gives you extra strength… enhanced smelling and hearing…”
My eyes round. “Those are demonic traits.” And some vamp traits, but mostly demonic. “Where’d you get this amulet?”
“Sweetheart, the amulet is yours.”
I scoff. “I’ve never had an amulet. What are you talking about?”
“I siphoned the power from you when you were an infant and put it into the amulet.”
I’m sure my heart would be racing if I were in my body, but Killian doesn’t budge, so he must not have cause for alarm. Everything about me must be stable. It’s strange that he has no idea of this playing around him.
“How’s that possible? What does this mean?” I’m a storm sprite. I have magic to control the weather and cast minuscule wards. Storm sprites don’t have any other power, so how else would I have obtained such power as an infant? “This has to do with my estranged father, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
I puzzle out the possibilities. I don’t like where this conversation is headed. “Next thing you’ll tell me is he’s a seed demon.”
Her mouth pinches up. “I wasn’t planning to tell you.”
“Mischievous mermaids!” I throw my hands into the air. “I can’t believe this.” I flutter to the side before I realize I can’t pace. “Did I inherit his powers?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“I can’t really be half a seed demon. They’re evil spirits who inhabit human bodies, and since he was in a human’s body, technically the sperm was the human’s sperm.”
“Physically, you’re half human, but you inherited, actually stole, the demon’s power.”
“How did I do that?”
“During my time here, before I closed the portal between Earth and Belyven, I fell in love with a human, but a seed demon entered him and took possession shortly after. The demon wouldn’t leave the host, even when I begged. I was heartbroken.”
“That’s awful.”
“I discovered I could take the seed demon’s powers during a single act—the moment of conception, if I had a pure host, meaning a fetus, to put the powers into.”
“Oh my gosh.” My projection waivers. I’d puke if I could. “You willingly had sex with a demon to take his power, knowing it’d go into me—your unborn, not yet conceived child?”
“I wanted revenge. It was the only way.”
“Okay. I’ll try to a
ccept the mistake on your part, but why take the powers from me?”
“You know seed demons can teleport,” Mom says. “One day I laid you in your cradle, and you disappeared right before my eyes. I panicked. You reappeared before I could scream for help, but you could have gone anywhere. Seed demons move freely between Grimoria, Earth, and Belyven. I couldn’t risk you getting hurt, especially if you appeared on Grimoria among a bunch of demons.”
“So you made the amulet to hold my power.”
“You were fine after I took your power, and I was relieved.”
“You think it’s safe for me to have the amulet now?” I ask.
“Once you take the amulet, you’ll absorb the power and be able to control it, now that you’re older. Doing so will also keep the demon from ever getting his power back.”
That’s the angle she’s really suggesting, keeping the demon punished. “He’s stuck inside the human since he can’t jump hosts without his power. Don’t you want to free the human? The man is my father.”
Mom frowns, unveiling a hidden hurt. “It’s too late for him. Without the seed demon’s power to suppress the human host’s thoughts, they both would have gone insane. Besides, our relationship would have never lasted. He’d eventually die because he’s mortal. I didn’t want any other fae to suffer my fate. That’s why I closed access to Earth.”
“You just abandoned the human after your little sexcapade! And now you want me to find the amulet and take the demon power back?”
“The power will keep you safe. Think about it. With strength, you could fight off vampires. You’d hear them coming and smell them before they got to you. You could teleport away from danger.”
“But not back to Belyven. That’s the only place I really want to go.” My heart aches thinking about the home I was obligated to leave behind.
“This is just a part of the demon’s plan to get to you. At least with the amulet you could be safe.”
“What happens if I don’t retrieve this amulet?”
“Nothing, at first,” Mom says. “Until the demon realizes you’re the only one who can wield it. Then I’m afraid he will come for you.”
