by M. A. Grant
“You okay?” he asked her quietly.
She let out a shaky exhalation and finished off her drink. He waited her out while she avoided his question by setting her glass down on the table, and celebrated silently when she reengaged with him. “Bad memories,” she said. She pointed at the dance floor. “He’s down there, in case you’re curious.”
He let her change the subject, even if she was less subtle than usual. “That seems faster than normal. Did he need another donor?”
“No. Said he wasn’t hungry yet. He finished up quickly and was asked to dance with her. Took her a while to convince him.”
“Does he usually go this long without feeding?”
“Not that I can remember.”
“Would it be easier if he had a regular partner?” He glanced over his shoulder at Dinu and Vasilica. He shuddered at their obvious affection and inspected the crowd. It took only a few seconds to pick Cristian out. The woman he was dancing with was lovely, with dark hair and a confident sway to her hips. He looked from the woman to Ioana and back, noting the similarities. “Why not you?”
Ioana laughed. A full blown, accidental guffaw so out of sorts with her serious demeanor Atlas actually boggled at the sound. “Sorry,” she apologized when she got herself back under control. “Sorry. It’s just...” She wiped at her eyes and took an unsteady breath. “God, we’d be such a disaster. Our needs are too different. I usually feed on bagged blood. Sometimes I’ll feed from a friend, but not often. I just...it doesn’t do much for me. I don’t like having someone else that close when I’m vulnerable. Cristian needs the connection he makes while feeding, more than any other vampire I’ve ever met.” Ioana shook her head. “And yet, he always puts his donors’ needs first. He shuffles them around so no one gets addicted.”
“Donors can become addicted?” Atlas asked doubtfully.
“All too easily,” Ioana confirmed. “Having the chance to step into your partner’s mind, to share their memories, is an easy way to get lost. The connection is...intimate.”
Atlas curled his lip. His experience with Cristian had been traumatizing. There’d been no rush, no joy from it. And the attack—yeah, there was no chance in hell he’d repeat that. “The connection can be nonexistent too,” he argued.
“What are you talking about?” Ioana asked slowly.
He clutched at the balcony railing, pressing each finger against the metal, one after another, to ground himself. “The attack Cristian and I survived...it wasn’t the first time I’ve gone up against a vampire.”
“Shit, Atlas, I didn’t know.”
“I told him not to say anything. Anyway, the vampire that got me, that fed from me, there was no connection between us. Nothing. Just pain.”
Ioana’s stillness was too absolute, too perfect. She stood there, a frozen statue staring back at Atlas. The only sign of her uncertainty was the tiny furrowing of her brow. “That’s impossible,” she said at long last. “We don’t have a choice about the bond if we’re feeding fang to living flesh. The donor can choose to reject the bond, but it is still offered. You must have felt it...the pressure in your mind?”
“With Cristian, maybe. But not during the attack,” Atlas said.
“Atlas, then whatever attacked you wasn’t—” She bit her lower lip. “It was something else, then.”
“Like what?”
She trembled with the same shivering misery she’d suffered at Desolation House. Every instinct screamed she knew more than she was letting on. He just had to convince her to tell him.
“Ioana,” he whispered, “what else could it have been?”
“I—I can’t,” she stammered. “I won’t—”
Movement on the dance floor. Cristian had noticed them both and was extricating himself from his partner. Atlas wanted to urge him to stay down there, to not come up and interrupt his attempted interrogation of Ioana, but it was too late. Cristian ascended the stairs to join them.
“Something wrong?” he asked, looking between Ioana and Atlas.
Ioana lifted a hand to her face, trying to hide herself from his view. Atlas gave up all pretense and stepped between her and Cristian, offering her what little shelter he could. “No,” he lied. “Did you have a good feeding?”
Cristian rubbed a hand over the back of his neck and looked away from Atlas. And from the dance floor, where the woman continued to watch him. “Sure. I suppose so.”
“We’ve got plenty of time if you want to find someone else to—”
“This is not a conversation I want to have with you, Mr. Kinkaid,” Cristian interrupted.
“Then what do you want to do, Mr. Slava?”
“Come with me. I want a drink.”
“From the vein or the bar?” he asked without thought.
Behind him, Ioana sputtered. Dinu howled from the booth, and even Vasilica laughed. Cristian, who’d frozen, recovered quickly enough. He gave his friends the finger and managed to get his voice even enough to tell Atlas, “From the bar. The bar, you utter bastard.”
Atlas followed after him as they worked their way through the crowd. He scanned the nearest faces, irritated by the close press of bodies against his and envious of the way Cristian slid through them with minimal contact. They made it to the bar, a beautiful metal thing with a thick wooden top that was worn from use, but well polished. It looked like it had been plucked from some ancient keep, a splash of Old World elegance in the midst of the contemporary splendor.
The barman approached with a smile for them both. He knew Cristian well, and Atlas left them to their conversation in favor of people watching. He caught Andrei on the edge of the crowd, slipping off with a young man, maybe to feed, maybe to enjoy each other’s company. He didn’t know, nor did he care much. It was enough to linger here, leaning against the bar, knowing Cristian was safe for now.
Cristian’s earlier partner sidled out of the crowd, eyes fixed on the back of Cristian’s head until she noticed Atlas standing beside him. She drew up, eyed them both, then shook her head with a smile and gave Atlas a farewell wave. Her good-natured forfeit surprised an answering grin from him, and he waved back to her before she disappeared once more into the crowd.
“It didn’t mean anything,” Cristian murmured. He wasn’t looking at the woman, and Atlas wasn’t sure what to make of his half-lidded gaze, or the emotion he saw in it and couldn’t quite recognize.
“Wouldn’t be my place to complain if it did,” Atlas countered.
“I suppose not.” Cristian reached behind the bar and snagged a thin straw to fiddle with. He began folding it. “What were you and Ioana talking about?”
“I’m not sure. But I think she may know what attacked me all those years ago. I was describing it to her and she recognized something and then...she shut down.”
“Hmm.” Cristian abandoned his poor attempt at a straw star. “She’s never mentioned anything to me.”
“Does she know you’re asking around about them?”
“No.” He peered up toward their balcony, far too serious for Atlas’s tastes. “And I haven’t heard from anyone else I contacted. I know Father and my aunt said they don’t exist, but if there’s this much silence around the topic...there’s more to this. I’ll talk to Ioana. Maybe I’ll have better luck with her than you did.”
“Later,” Atlas urged. “I think I scared her.”
“That would be a trick,” Cristian muttered.
He was too lost in thought to notice the bartender’s approach. Atlas nodded his thanks to the man, who set Cristian’s order down on a thick, dark crimson napkin before moving away. “I know. Think we should be worried?”
Cristian plucked up his drink with a frown. “No. If she’s scared, I know we should be worried.”
Chapter Sixteen
“Nothing,” Cristian declared a few nights later when he slid into the backseat of the car
with two heavily loaded duffel bags.
“What?” Atlas turned around in his seat, only to lose his train of thought at the sight of Cristian in worn jeans that clung tight over his thighs and a soft t-shirt that hugged his shoulders. His forearms were on display again. It wasn’t like Atlas hadn’t seen them before, but every time, he found himself distracted by the curve of the muscle, the taper of the wrist, the dusting of hair that caught the light. It was infuriating.
“Ioana told me nothing,” Cristian went on, as if Atlas knew what he was talking about.
Atlas did not. “Nothing about what?”
“Your lovely interlude at Rapture,” Cristian said. “I might have lied and said you were worried you’d upset her with your conversation and had asked me to check in on her. Don’t worry. I made sure you came across as thoughtful rather than needy.”
“I’m so grateful,” Atlas mumbled and started the car. Cristian hadn’t given him a destination, but duffel bags meant a visit to Nell, and Atlas had gone there enough he could probably drive the route in his sleep.
“What were you two even talking about?” Cristian asked.
“Feeding,” Atlas said.
Behind him, Cristian went so still he could have been mistaken for a statue. “Oh? Anything in particular?”
“I learned feeding from the vein is different than a bag.”
“Blood is a carrier for emotion and memory,” Cristian said. “Outside the vein it loses those things and becomes sterile quickly. It’s why donors are so important to us.”
“And the bond, right? Is that why donors get to choose what’s shared during a feeding? She said that I would always be able to see into your head, but could keep you out of mine if I wanted.”
“That’s true,” Cristian said carefully. “What happened between us at Hahn Lake was my fault. You seemed calm and reached back quickly, and I assumed you wanted us to share in the bond.” His next words were so soft Atlas strained to catch them. “Once I saw what you were thinking of, I knew you hadn’t meant to let me in at all. I wish I’d broken it off sooner.”
Retreating from the conversation was tempting, but seemed wrong considering Cristian’s genuine apology. Atlas took a breath, and said, “It wasn’t just your fault. I didn’t know feeding you would be different from what I felt during the attack.”
“Atlas,” Cristian whispered, his voice low and aching.
He rushed on, desperate to get them back on track. “When I told Ioana the bond wasn’t there, wasn’t even offered, between me and the creature, that’s when she froze. It was...it was like she knew what I was talking about, but when I tried to ask her about it, she said she wouldn’t talk about it.” He tapped his hands on the steering wheel as they drove through the dark streets. “What do vampires fear the most? Other than the sun, obviously.”
“The Council?” Cristian guessed. “A bunch of ancient beings happy to kill you if you break their rules is fairly frightening.”
Atlas shook his head. “No, not frightening enough.” He made another turn, this one a little sharper than normal so he could slip in under the yellow light. The duffel bags slid into the door with an odd, crinkling sound. “There’s got to be something else, something so scary no one will talk about it... Like a...a bogeyman, or something.”
Cristian snorted in amusement. “A bogeyman? Please, Mr. Kinkaid, don’t make me lau—”
He cut off so suddenly Atlas twisted around to check he was okay. Cristian stared vacantly out the window at the passing buildings, lost in his own head.
“Mr. Slava?” Atlas asked, refocusing on the road. The riverfront and warehouse loomed ahead of them, but Cristian hadn’t noticed yet. “Cristian?”
“When I was young,” Cristian said slowly, “Andrei used to tell me stories he had heard when he was a boy. Mother hated it. They were always dark and bloody and would keep me up all day. He loved telling them to me over and over again. Except one. There was a story he only told me once. It was about monsters, vampires who gave in to the bloodlust and changed. You could always tell they were out hunting because of the screams they’d make from the darkness.”
Atlas remembered the odd wails echoing around their convoy in the forest. His skin prickled and he rubbed a hand over his jacket sleeve, trying to will the sensation away.
Cristian didn’t notice his unease. Every word he spoke stuck into Atlas. “If they caught you, they would drag you off into the night and eat you. Or, if the sire wanted, they might turn you so you become a strigoi too.”
Strigoi. Atlas mouthed the word, feeling out the syllables. Finally, a name for his nightmare. “Why would strigoi be in Scarsdale?” he asked, proud when he didn’t flinch as he said the word.
“That’s what I can’t figure out,” Cristian replied with obvious frustration. “It would be nearly impossible to keep them a secret here. Father does a regular census of vampires in our territory. He tracks violent crimes and assaults. He bought out most of the local medical groups and doctors so he’d know if anyone came in with injuries. He hired an advertising firm to encourage donors from other territories to visit Scarsdale on vacation. He runs the fucking blood drives at the local high schools, Mr. Kinkaid. We have a regular surplus so no one has to go hungry. That’s what was attacked at the clinic.”
He ran a hand through his hair and laughed. “My father’s one of the most hated vampires on the Council because he runs his territory well enough no one can demand to absorb it.” His eyes widened. “If there are strigoi here, and if he can’t prove he’s not responsible for their creation, the Council will happily overthrow him. No one, even his allies, would stand by anyone who creates such creatures.”
Atlas’s throat was dry. He wiped his clammy palms on the thighs of his slacks. He tried to breathe and calm the rising nausea. “Who would benefit from his fall?”
“Everyone?”
“No, I meant who would...what did you say? Absorb his territory?”
In his heart, Atlas knew Cristian’s answer, but it still lodged like a poisoned arrow when he heard, “Mother’s family. The Wharrams.”
He thought he’d known what evil was. He’d thought Decebal fit the description, thought Cristian was a monster, and he agreed so easily to a deal with the devil. Bryony played his anger and guilt with an artistry he’d had no hope of comprehending. She’d used him, just as she was using those creatures who nearly killed him. They were all nothing but tools at her disposal, and he had no idea how to go about fixing the damage she’d already done.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
“Prove to Father that the creatures hunting here are strigoi. Stop anyone else from getting hurt.” Cristian gave him a bemused look. “What else could I do, Mr. Kinkaid?”
He worried Cristian wanted him to respond, but the man was unbuckled and exiting the car before he could find any words. Atlas accepted the bag Cristian offered him and followed him toward the warehouse, still lost in thought. He needed to escape the Wharrams’ clutches for good. He needed to ensure Cristian and Bea would be safe from them, no matter the cost.
The door cracked when Cristian neared, and he smiled when he saw Nell peering out at them. She looked cleaner than the last time Atlas had seen her, and smelled much better. Her hair was pulled back from her face in a series of intricate braids that joined together into a soft plait resting over her shoulder.
“Artie? Is that you?” she asked Cristian.
“Artie?” Atlas whispered.
Cristian hushed him before saying to Nell, “Who else would it be?”
“You hadn’t come in so long... I was worried,” Nell said.
“I’m fine. Promise.” Cristian smiled and pointed to her hair. “That’s lovely. Who did it?”
Nell preened, running her fingers over the plait. “Peggy. She said we shouldn’t put off washing it for so long next time.”
“
I agree,” Cristian said easily. “I know you’re most comfortable with her, but don’t forget everyone else who’s willing to help.”
Atlas swallowed against the lump growing in his throat. The way Nell nodded and stroked her hair reminded him of his grandmother. He’d never forget her pleasure when the assisted living facility’s hairdresser stopped by for rare appointments, or when Bea would have a free afternoon from work to come in to wash and dry her hair. Peggy, whoever she was, took the same loving care of Nell as Bea had with his grandmother. Cristian gave a teasing tug of the plait, which was as gentle as his smile. “We want to take care of you.”
“Best prove it then. Did you bring the good stuff?” she asked him.
“Of course,” he said, lifting his bag a little higher. “And Mr. Kinkaid has the rest.”
“Mr. Kinkaid?” Nell asked, eyeing Atlas nervously.
“I’ve told you about him before,” Cristian soothed. “Remember? Atlas?”
The name rang a bell. Nell lit up and swung the door open widely. “Oh, this is Atlas. Oh, Artie, you were right. He is a pretty one.”
The back of Cristian’s neck went pink. Atlas was positive he was blushing too, though he prayed Cristian wouldn’t notice.
“Evening, ma’am,” Atlas murmured to the older woman as he and Cristian slid past her into the building. The halls were dark thanks to the boarded windows and Atlas swore when he bumped into something with his foot.
“Atlas?” Cristian asked, somewhere to his right.
“Give me a sec,” he bit out. “Light transitions give me trouble.”
“Shit, sorry. I forgot you wouldn’t see as well,” Cristian said. “Close your eyes?”
Atlas obeyed. Even through his eyelids, he could tell when Cristian turned on his phone flashlight, illuminating the area. Cristian waited patiently while Atlas tried to adjust. Eventually, he cracked open his eyes and slowly began processing what he could see within the circle of light, as well as in the gloom beyond.
