[Venom 01.0] Venom & Vanilla

by Shannon Mayer

  I stepped closer to him and lowered my voice. Not because I thought it would actually keep the vamps from hearing. No, that wasn’t it at all. “I lost you five years ago. I cried every day for years. Every. Day. You were my best friend, Tad. If it had been reversed, I would have sent a letter or called, or just shown up. Something to tell you I was okay. That I was alive. I wouldn’t have let you grieve like that.”

  His face paled. “I couldn’t get out until recently.”

  “Buffalo balls.” I spit and spun on a heel. “You are in my bad book, Mr. Budrene.”

  “I paid for you to be turned!” he yelled. I whipped around, my hair flying out in a twirl along with my skirt.

  “You owe Merlin a favor. You didn’t pay him.”

  Tad stepped closer to me so we were nose to nose. “I did pay him. You turned him down. I had to offer him a favor in order to get you another chance.”

  Chagrin flowed through me. I put a hand to my forehead. “I’ll fix it, then. You won’t owe him anything.”

  “How?”

  “Merlin can have the favor from me.”

  A low, sensual laugh rolled out from behind us, and I slowly turned.

  The man who walked toward us was not what I’d expected. A vampire mob boss made me think of the old Italian bloodlines, fine-boned men with heavy accents and suits custom made for their slim builds. Maybe an extra-long mustache.

  This man who approached us was anything but that. He was taller than me by a good five inches, which put him easily at six five, and was built as though the person in charge of his genetics were making a Viking warrior. Thick muscles in his arms and chest strained against the long-sleeved pale-gray shirt he wore. His hair was shorn close to his head, a perfect buzz cut that gave off only a hint of color. Light brown, I was guessing. In his chin were two piercings that looked like fangs hanging from the middle of his bottom lip. He lifted his top lip in a tight snarl, and the effect was obvious. What was better than two fangs as a vampire? Four, of course. As he drew closer, the tattoos on his neck were visible, a curl of dark ink I couldn’t fully make out other than it started from somewhere under his shirt.

  I finally locked eyes with him. Dark eyes, like the night in which we stood right down to the hint of purple that flickered in their depths. Damn, he made Roger look like a total pansy. Not that Roger wasn’t a pansy, but if I stood them side by side, my husband would have fit in this man’s shadow in more ways than one.

  He frowned and I frowned back. “Who are you?”

  “Alena.” I lifted an eyebrow. “And who are you?”

  Around us a quiet, collective groan rose in the air. He smiled, though it was a mere hard line of his lips. “Remo. And I am master here, so watch how you speak to me, Alena.”

  Something in his tone reminded me of the pastor at our church. Like I was not good enough to stand in his presence, let alone disagree with him. Anger snapped through me. No more, I was not going to let another man try to put me in my place.

  I pulled myself up to my full height and tipped my chin in his direction. “I will dang well say what I want, to whom I want, regardless of how important they think they are.”

  The crowd around us shifted back with another low groan. Remo stepped closer and I put out a hand, stopping him, poking him in the chest with a single finger. Even that much contact sent a flare of awareness through me. This man was dangerous.

  And a part of me rather liked that fact.

  “Personal space. Respect it.”

  Both his eyebrows shot up. “What are you?”

  I shrugged one shoulder. “I’m not telling.” I wanted to groan, because the words did not deter him but only seemed to draw him closer. Dang it all. Maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. What was I saying?

  “I think I could make you tell me.” His eyes roved my body once, sliding down and then back up to stare into my own again. “Anything I wanted.”

  “I doubt it.” What in the world was wrong with me? He brought out the worst in me, the parts I’d tried my whole life to tamp down. The mouthy, sassy girl who got in trouble for making inappropriate jokes during Sunday school. I’d almost forgotten about her. She’d been far more like her yaya than Mother had wanted.

  We stood there staring into each other’s eyes for several minutes. He frowned, opened his mouth, shut it again, and then smiled. A slow curling of his lips, just enough to show the flash of white teeth again.

  “Oh, I think I like you. Apparently you are right, I can’t make you do what I want. At least not in the conventional sense. You seem immune to being rolled, and there’s some fire in there. You weren’t always a firebrand, though, were you?” Remo reached out and touched a finger under my chin. I twisted my head away from him and batted his hand away. The feel of his skin on mine was far too personal.

  “Did I give you permission to touch me? No, I didn’t. Let me be crystal clear. You don’t touch me or my brother without permission.” I stepped back. “Tad, we’re leaving.”

  “There are no cars that come out this way. No public transit.” Remo smirked.

  “We’ll walk. We have a lot to talk about. And we won’t turn into crispy critters when the sun comes up.” I herded Tad ahead of me as if I knew where I was going. I waved to Dahlia as we went by. “Thanks.” She tossed me something and I caught it. A set of keys.

  “Take it. I’ll catch up with you later.” She winked at me and I winked back.

  Remo growled from behind us. “Dahlia, you are going to end up in the box.”

  I didn’t know what the box was, but I doubted it was anything good. I couldn’t let her suffer for us. I stiffened and spun. “Dahlia, you want to come with us?”

  “Yeah”—she glanced at her boss, then to us—“I do.”

  Remo smacked the wall next to him, and the room trembled along with the remaining vampires. “I am the law here. I will not be disobeyed.”

  “Really? That’s what Oberfluffel said. He was the law and I had to respect him. You want my respect? You can earn it.”

  Remo’s lips twitched. “Oberfluffel?”

  “Whatever his name was. He thought he was in charge, and you showed him he wasn’t. Maybe you’re about to get the same rude awakening, Remo.” I purred his name a little too much, and something in the air shifted. His eyes widened, and he drew in a slow breath.

  “What are you that you can draw me?”

  “Never you mind, it’s not a single bit of your beeswax.” I gripped Tad tight, unable to believe the words that flowed out of me.

  Dahlia and I pushed Tad ahead of us, leaving behind a vampire mob boss with, at last glance, his chin on the floor.

  I handed the keys back to Dahlia, and she ran ahead of us to a tiny purple punch-buggy car. I laughed and piled in, Tad with me.

  “Dahlia,” Tad said, “you can’t leave here. The sun will come up and Alena is right. Crispy critters are not the worst of it.”

  “Worried about me, lover?” She smiled. “I’ll be fine. There’s a safe house in the city, we can go there for the night. Remo will calm down. He always does. He’s really not as bad as he seems. He’s just on edge right now.”

  “He’s a horrible donkey butt,” I said as we sped out of the castle and back the way we’d just come.

  She snickered. “You mean an ass?”

  “Yeah, that.”

  “Still not cussing?”

  “No. I’ve broken so many rules, at least I can hold to that one. It’s simple.”

  Tad shook his head. “You aren’t breaking rules, Lena. You’re surviving. There are no rules when it comes to making it in this life.”

  I shrank into my seat and stared out at the night sky; the cold stars so far above us had in the past been a source of solace, a thought that one day when I was dead and gone I’d be there, in the heavens, with all my loved ones who’d gone on before me.

  Dahlia reached over and took my hand. “The loneliness fades. Honest.”

  I put a hand over my eyes, tears slipping past the
m. From behind me, Tad reached forward. “Don’t cry. She’s right, it will get better.”

  But they didn’t know why I was crying. It wasn’t the loneliness, though that was there under my skin too. It was the reality of being forced to face that maybe everything I’d believed for my entire life was no longer what I could hold on to, not even with my fingertips.

  The rock I’d thought was solid turned out to be nothing but a pile of sand that tried to hold me down, burying me under the weight of beliefs I could no longer turn to for solace because now, I was everything I’d once believed was evil.

  How did one reconcile a belief system with a reality like that? There was only one answer.

  You didn’t.

  We reached the safe house, and Dahlia let us in with a flourish of one hand. “Make yourselves at home, I’ve got a few things to do.”

  The morning was a few hours off, but she disappeared as soon as she made sure we knew where everything was.

  “She’s gone to feed,” Tad said, and I startled.

  “Feed?”

  “Drink blood. They probably have someone chained up in the basement. They’re animals, sis. Seriously. You can’t be friends with—”

  I pushed past him, running in my bare feet after Dahlia. She wasn’t like that; I couldn’t believe it of her that she would be okay with holding someone against their will. Through the house I bolted, skidding to a stop on the white tile floor of the kitchen. The fridge door was open, and Dahlia peeked out around it. “You hungry?”

  My stomach rumbled. “Apparently. You don’t have anyone chained up in the basement, do you?”

  Dahlia grinned. “No. That’s a story Remo spread around. He’s not the badass he looks like. I mean, I wouldn’t seriously cross him, he’s stronger than any of the other supernaturals, but he’s kind of a softy.”

  “He’s not going to punish you for helping us?” Tad asked.

  She shrugged and stepped away from the kitchen, pushing the fridge door shut with a foot. A glass milk jug in one hand and a glass in the other were her only accessories. If it weren’t for the bold-red filling of the milk jug, it would have looked normal. “Nah. I might have to do day duty, which sucks because we do need to sleep contrary to what others will tell you. And a few days up on both shifts is no fun.”

  She pulled a pot out from under the counter and poured the contents of the milk jug into it, then put the pot on the stove. Her eyes met mine. “It’s better warmed up on the stove. The microwave does weird things to it.”

  “Of course,” I murmured. A twist of hunger rolled through me. “Is there other food here?”

  “Yup, the basics.”

  Tad and I went on a search. I found crackers and cheese, and a can of some sort of processed meat. He found a half-opened box of pastry tarts and a jar of jam.

  We cracked it all open and dug in.

  I dipped a pastry tart into the jam, the multilayers of sweetness making my teeth ache at the same time that I couldn’t help but want more. I flicked my tongue out to take the jam from my lips.

  “Holy hell, now that’s a tongue.” Dahlia stopped stirring her pot of blood in midmotion.

  I put a hand to my mouth. “What?”

  “Your tongue is long, my friend. I didn’t notice when I kissed you. You’re a naga like your brother?”

  I swallowed hard and looked at Tad. “I think so. But Oberfluffel said I didn’t smell like a naga. Could he be wrong?”

  Tad licked crumbs off his fingers. “I told Merlin to make you the same as me. There’s a couple of other nagas around, but they’re solitary. Here, let me see your teeth.”

  He scooted over and I obediently opened my mouth. He peered in. “Damn. Where are your fangs?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Dahlia tapped her spoon on the counter, then poured from her pot into her glass. A steaming glass of blood. I shuddered, I couldn’t help it. “Vampire fangs are always there too. You’re sure hers aren’t retractable?”

  Tad shook his head and opened his mouth. Tiny fangs, almost unnoticeable, were there. Much smaller than a vampire’s mouthful.

  The idea of retractable fangs, though, that would be okay. No one would ever know I had them unless I bit them. Which I would never do. With my mouth closed I flipped my tongue up and touched the roof of my mouth. Two fangs were indeed there, along the roof of my mouth. Only two, thank God. But they went way back, far further than I thought they should have.

  “I think Dahlia’s right. I can feel them in my mouth.”

  Tad grabbed me and tipped me backward. I grunted and opened my mouth again.

  “Shit, you’re right, those are not naga fangs. That bastard Merlin! I told him what to do.”

  “He gave me options. I said I wanted to be something unique.”

  Tad shook his head. “But that’s just it. We won’t be allowed to be around each other.”

  “We’re doing it right now. So what as long as we’re both alive?” I pointed out, and Dahlia nodded.

  “Yeah, so what? The SDMP is too stupid to find out, and besides, we’re small fish. They won’t be looking for little old us.”

  My brother paced the kitchen. “Yeah, except they’re cracking down for some reason. They’re shutting the border crossings next week. Not even those with legit day passes will get through.”

  “Temporary. Remo isn’t concerned.” Dahlia took a sip of her drink.

  “No.” He shook his head, his green eyes worried. “For good this time. No more day passes, no more nothing passes. They are shutting down the hospital on Whidbey too. When people get the Aegrus virus they’ll be shipped over the Wall from now on.”

  I felt like a child listening in on the adults’ conversation. “Why would they do that?”

  “The virus. There’s been another outbreak way deep down in Sonoma County in California. Government is putting a stop to all connections. They’ll ship in blood and willing bleeders for those who live off the blood.” He took a bite of a cracker, swallowed it, and went on. “At least, that’s what they’re saying.”

  “They can’t let us starve up here, and they can’t really keep us in. It’s a willing thing for us to stay; we can leave if we really want. You know that,” Dahlia said, but there was no fire in her voice. Tad looked at her, and then away.

  “What would happen if no food sources came in? You’d start targeting the other supernaturals. You’d wipe us out within fifty or a hundred years. Maybe less.”

  Whatever hunger I had fled. “You think that’s what they’re going to do?”

  “It’s a distinct possibility. Let the monsters kill each other, then the problem of what to do with them is solved.”

  “Then we have to get over that border before they close it down.” I stood up and brushed off my dress. “We need to go see Mom and Dad right now. Tell them we’re alive. They have to know.”

  “You aren’t even going to ask to phone them?” Dahlia paused with her glass halfway to her mouth. I shook my head.

  “The phone lines are blocked across the Wall. Even I know that.”

  Tad put a hand on my shoulder. “There are bigger issues than visiting Mom and Dad.”

  I took a step back. “How do I get a border pass?”

  “You have a tracking device put in, and then you can maybe get a border pass,” Dahlia said softly. “I could get one.”

  “You’re tracked?” Tad pushed away from the counter; Dahlia hunched her shoulders.

  “I didn’t have a choice. Vampires more than anyone else are stuck with a device. The only one who doesn’t have one is Remo.”

  I put a hand on her arm. “You don’t have to be ashamed, Dahlia. You’re alive. That’s what matters.”

  Tad grunted and I swung a hand back at him, smacking him hard enough to knock him off his chair. He landed on the floor with a thump.

  “Hey!”

  “Don’t you ‘hey’ me. You have seriously forgotten your manners since you died. Don’t be rude to someone who save
d us and is a friend.” I half turned to glare at him. “Now, you know another way over the Wall. Right?”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Why would you say that?”

  I leaned forward. “That jacket-hoodie combo? Same as the old man who ate my bagels. Same old man who gave me the Aegrus virus.”

  Dahlia sucked in a sharp breath and Tad blanched. “It wasn’t like that. I didn’t know I was sick. If I thought I would hurt you, I never would have come near you. Merlin suggested I go for a visit, to see you. I missed you, Alena. And I knew I could get close to you, but not Mom and Dad.”

  The fact that he didn’t deny it was him who infected me . . . I wasn’t sure if that made what happened worse or not. Not that it mattered now. Better to focus on the task at hand.

  No point in prepping batter meant for a cake yesterday.

  “How do you get over the Wall?”

  Tad cleared his throat before answering. “First thing in the morning they do a shift change. The guards are lazy and sleepy. It’s easy to make it past them.”

  “Then it’s settled,” I said. “First light we’ll get over that wall and go talk to Mom and Dad. Neither of us is sick, so we won’t be putting them in any danger.”

  Dahlia looked at the clock on the stove. “It’s late enough that I have to get underground. I wish I could come with you.”

  I smiled, but it felt strained. “You’ve done a lot. Thank you. For still being my friend even though we have—”

  “Different fangs?”

  I laughed. “Yeah, something like that.”

  She drained the last of her glass and licked her lips. “There are extra clothes in the upstairs bedrooms, if you want to change.” Dahlia wiggled her fingers at us and left the room. For several minutes, neither of us said anything. Five years apart, and now dealing with everything that had happened, I wasn’t sure what to say to him. Or if I wanted to say anything at all.

  “Lena, you have to know I didn’t mean for this to happen,” Tad said, his tone soft. I closed my eyes and nodded. That much I believed. Tad would never hurt me intentionally, not even when we were children and fought on a regular basis.