by Kaia Bennett
I unbuckled to get out and open the gas tank, but Vaughn placed a hand on my chest. “You stay here. I’ll pay and pump. Gotta keep a low profile, right?”
“Shit. Almost forgot about security cameras.” My rush to get back on the road almost made me sloppy. In the past, I’d never cared who saw me. Provisions were in place to cover my tracks if need be.
I’m on my own now.
He jerked the hood of his sweatshirt over his head before he hopped out and jogged inside to pay for our fuel. I stayed put, keeping an eye out for anything suspicious.
A knock sounded at the window of the divider and Stark called from the back of the van, “Why are we stopping?”
I tossed the answer over my shoulder. “Fuel pump’s fucked. We’re filling up. Then, we should be good to go till we get to Syracuse.”
“Fine.”
I didn’t see Evie and craned my neck to catch her eye.
“She’s fine. Asleep, finally.”
I plotted the trip in my mind, a mental map sprawling from Ottawa to Alberta while humans—and some vampires prowling for a kill—filtered in and out of the convenience store. We’d be traveling at least a week if the weather held up. A week of sitting in cars and hunting in off-grid campgrounds, of stopping so the witch side of Evie and the wolf could piss and eat human food. Days of—
I homed in on Vaughn, springing out of the store. He slammed the door open with such fury, he barely spared the glass. A man followed him, wearing a brown leather jacket and a newsboy cap to conceal the top half of his face. I spied his malicious grin under the brim.
He stood half a foot taller than Vaughn, moving gracefully in spite of the thick muscle covering his frame.
Vampire.
I drew ramrod straight in my seat, wondering if one of our kind recognized Vaughn, and by proxy, me. I spied auburn hair and the glitter of dark predator’s eyes before Vaughn pulled his knife and spun on the man. My brother grabbed the vampire by the back of the neck, shoving the stranger into the shadow of a column where the fluorescent lights thankfully couldn’t reach the dark.
Fuck!
People swarmed the rest stop, each passing glance a threat of exposure. Wide glass panes wrapped around the front of the store, bleeding light into the brick archways encircling the building. Vaughn chose a dark corner to threaten the stranger, but if they lingered, if their aggression caught attention or their voices rose too loud, word could get back to Metis about our true location.
A state police car rolled by, headlights bathing Vaughn’s back just as my brother concealed his weapon.
No telling if those cops were human or on the payroll, but their presence felt like tempting fate. Vaughn had his hood up, but light refracted off his furious gaze as he glanced behind him to watch the police car pass. The glint of steel caught my hyper-focused eye.
So did the stranger’s wave to me. A waggle of the fingers nearly stopped my heart. He whispered something in Vaughn’s ear baiting Vaughn into shoving the stranger against the pillar with a shout.
Nothing ever goes according to fucking plan!
I jumped out of the van, sparing a glance at the police car before venturing to the other side of the building. Diesel fuel and human food mingled with the subtle scent of blood, like a heady cocktail of bad omens. The blood belonged to the stranger, the bite of Vaughn’s blade leaving a superficial cut on the other vamp’s throat. Vaughn pushed him around the side of the building, disappearing into a corner of the lot cloaked in nightfall. Which was where I needed to be in order to avoid stares and the cops who settled into a parking space on the west side of the lot.
Mindful of the pace of my jog so I didn’t draw undue attention, I followed Vaughn into the dark. A wooded area that probably threw shade over the side of the building during the day muted the sound of traffic beyond, but still, the noise would provide cover for me to help Vaughn kill our bold interloper.
Sounds of a scuffle reached my ears as I rounded the corner. No panes of glass and no audience. Just a blur of movement as Vaughn thrust his knife into the stranger’s gut.
“Come on, Vaughn,” he rasped. “You used to be such a good pet. I knew you inside and out. Now, you act like you don’t know me.”
Vaughn answered him by stabbing the stranger over and over, hitting the same soft area with crazed ferocity.
“Why the fuck are you here?” my brother roared into the other man’s grinning face. “Why did you follow me? I told you days ago at Asylum, if I ever saw your fucking face again, I’d carve it off!”
The man cackled, not appearing the least bit threatened.
“Vaughn.”
He ignored me. I wondered, as I inched closer, whether he’d heard me at all. The stranger inclined his face in my direction.
When Vaughn tried to pull the knife from the man’s stomach, the stranger held my brother’s bloody hand and twisted the blade in his own entrails. He kept Vaughn trapped in his embrace, spun him, and slammed Vaughn’s back against the wall with a firm hand wrapped around my brother’s throat.
The stranger kissed him, tearing Vaughn’s lips with his fangs, then shoving his tongue into Vaughn’s mouth. He pulled away and turned to see me just as I reached for him.
Silver light refracted off his eyes. Blood dripped from his lips. I recognized the face beneath the predator at once.
Eamon, the man my father punished for turning a human’s pretty, golden-haired son. He turned humans that met his fetishistic tastes, and he’d done so often enough to get Father’s attention. Could Vaughn be one result of this true born vamp’s fetish? Could this piece of shit be the reason Vaughn had left Asylum, spooked after searching for me?
Ashen hair, pale eyes, tall and fair-skinned. Yes, this one had a type, and Vaughn fit that type to perfection.
“This doesn’t concern you, Oldman. This is between me and my pet.”
Vaughn’s maker shoved himself off the knife, pinning Vaughn’s wrist to the wall as he readied himself for a fight with a tilt of his head. I fought the impulse to flinch at the loud honk of a horn on the interstate beyond the trees. A distant set of headlights flashed over us, then vanished. We might be in a dark corner, but how long we stayed obscured depended on drivers remaining oblivious as they entered and parked on the east side of the lot.
Time to end this.
“Everything Vaughn does concerns me, Eamon. Why are you following us?”
Vaughn threw me a shocked glance. “You know him?”
I took a step forward.
“Oh yeah. We met a few days ago, when my father put this piece of shit in his place.”
My true born peer put distance between us by releasing Vaughn and circling to my right. A distant panic rippled through me when Vaughn didn’t immediately attack Eamon.
The tree line sat to our right, adjacent to the store. All three of us were poised for confrontation that could sprawl into the cover of the woods. I’d dump his body there and be back in the van before anyone noticed the altercation, if I timed this right.
“That’s your name, yeah? Eamon? Almost didn’t recognize you with your tongue intact.”
Eamon sneered and swiped the back of his tongue over his bottom lip. The gesture evoked movement from Vaughn.
A shiver.
“Before Vaughn ran off—”
“I didn’t ‘run’ anywhere! You abandoned me and left me to die when you got bored!”
The delusional true born ignored Vaughn.
“Vaughn’s my business. I made him, and he didn’t stop being mine just because you’re fucking him now. Thanks to your father, I can’t make any more, but that changes nothing. None of them stop being mine.”
“He’s not fucking me.” Vaughn’s voice trembled with rage. Or fear. “He’s not chaining me up and beating the shit out of me every day for kicks, either. I’m at the top of the food chain now, man, and I was never yours.”
Distracted by Vaughn’s defiance, Eamon glanced sidelong at Vaughn, but kept me in his sights.
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“We both know better, Vaughn. I bet you can still taste my come. I can still taste yours. I’ve turned others since, but you were always my favorite little screamer—”
“That’s enough, motherfucker! Say one more word to him and I’ll do more than cut out your tongue.”
Eamon retreated another step, but smiled at my outburst.
From the corner of my eye, I spied the rapid rise and fall of Vaughn’s chest. He gasped for breath. The sound made me think of cornered prey. His heart beat in his chest like a speeding train. No way Eamon didn’t hear my brother’s panic.
My brother’s maker gave Vaughn a hard stare that made the turned vamp swallow hard, even as he held Eamon’s gaze. “I. Made. You. And I just wanted to know how you were. You ran off in such a hurry yesterday, I thought I should follow. Seems like you’re still in a hurry.”
Eamon looked at me and grinned broadly. “I started out following you just because I missed the old days. But more and more, it looks like I’ve stumbled onto something interesting.”
A slight shuffle forward. Then another. One more step and I could snatch him before he retreated into the tree line.
The glare of headlights cast Eamon’s face in a sinister glow. Stark red blood bloomed on his shirt, bloomed like the leverage he held over me.
“You’re trying to get away from New York as fast as possible, Oldman. I wonder why? Why would Metis’s son flee with a turned piece, a girl, and a wolf, then switch to some beat up old van waiting on the side of the road?”
Perceptive fucker.
I tasted the same anxiety I had just before Altani revealed Evie to my father.
“Metis and I go way back, you know? Why don’t we call him and sort this out. He’ll understand now that he’s denied me new toys, I should be able to claim the old ones. Or we can skip the phone call and I can take Vaughn off your hands now—”
I lunged at the true born rat who’d terrorized and turned Vaughn, but he’d measured his distance perfectly. He spun and sprinted for the trees. I pursued him with every ounce of my strength. Legs pumping, heart racing, I ran like death chased me. I had to stop him before he galloped through the forest and weaved through the oncoming traffic on the other side. I couldn’t afford to be seen or venture too far from the van.
I had him. I reached out, so close I brushed his hair with the tips of my fingers.
So close I could hear his breath like my own.
So close I touched the collar of his jacket, wrenching him back to grasp him and tear out his spine.
He picked up his pace as I ripped the leather off his arms. I almost closed my hand in the prick’s hair. If there’d been another foot of maples and pine to offer concealment, I’d have killed him, but Eamon broke through the tree line with a roar as I skidded to a halt.
“Goddammit!”
I suppressed another bellow of frustration as he sped through oncoming traffic, racing through cars with vampire speed no one would see but another vampire.
The true born escaped into the median on the other side of traffic, thick with trees and bushes. He turned to gloat, leaving me with only his ripped jacket and the specter of panic.
He’d seen us.
He knew we were running. Only the small miracle of his coat in my hand, and his phone within, stopped him from calling my father as soon as he reached the far side of the interstate. I pulled his phone out of his pocket and crushed the plastic device in my fist. Eamon faded from sight like a ghost.
“Vaughn,” I whispered. I spun and sprinted for the store, just in time to see my brother collapse to his knees on the pavement. Sobbing.
His breaths were shallow. I could barely tell the beats of his heart apart.
“Vaughn, we gotta go. You can’t make a scene here. We have to leave, now.”
Spit dangled from his mouth and tears rained from his eyes, splattering the concrete. His entire body shook with anguish, with rage. He balled his fists, one around his knife handle, the other pressing in the ground until the flesh split and the bones scraped the grit. He clenched his teeth, a low, keening wail vibrating in his throat.
I grabbed his face in my hands and he sprang away like a spooked animal, snarling. The wall met his spine and he poised his knife for the kill, the blunt edge braced against his forearm and the blade facing me. I doubted he could see my face through the haze of tears in his black eyes. He tried to breathe through his mouth, but coughed instead, struggling to stay upright.
“Vaughn.”
I said his name firmly, sounding to my own ears like a father who would sooner set me on the rack than wipe my tears. Cold. A brutal bark in the face of weakness.
I wasn’t my father. I wanted to hold Vaughn and press my forehead to his. I wanted to tell him I’d caught and killed Eamon. But, I had no words of comfort now.
“We have to go. We have to get out of here before he finds a way to follow us, Vaughn.”
I overpowered him easily, twisted the knife out of his hand and hid the bloody blade inside my jacket pocket.
“Motherfucker.” Blood all over us, blood on our hands and on his sweatshirt. The only upside was Vaughn had already paid for fuel. “We gotta jog, Vaughn. I need you, man. I need you to be strong just a moment longer.”
I rushed him to the van still waiting for gas. The bright lights of the overhang make me feel exposed, like I’d waded into a fluorescent nightmare. Sparing only quick glances to make sure no one’s gaze lingered on us—especially that of the cops visible through the windows of the store—I hurried him into the back of the van, where Evie and Stark, who’d been holding hands across their pallets and talking, sprang up to a sitting position.
Startled because of Vaughn, or because they’d been caught sharing some strange moment, I didn’t know.
“You, up front with me.” I pointed at Evie and shoved a struggling Vaughn into the back. He tried to wipe his face free of snot and tears and only succeeded in smearing his face with blood and tugging at his hair.
Evie looked liked she wanted to fight my order. She frowned. She reached for Vaughn then pulled back, struggling not to burn her hand on the flame of compassion.
“I don’t have time for your empathic bullshit right now, baby. Get out of the back of the motherfucking van. Now!”
Her lips twisted and her eyes a narrowed, but she crab-walked out of the van quickly. Giving me death eyes the whole damn time until she landed on her feet. She gave me that look even as she rounded the end of the van.
This is why I didn’t want a fucking mate.
Evie hurried into the passenger seat of the van and slammed the door, while a shaken Vaughn settled on her pallet in fetal position, facing the wheel well. An alert, but thankfully calm, Stark gave me a tip of his head, signaling he could subdue my brother if he attacked him. I’d taken Vaughn’s knife, sitting heavy as guilt inside my jacket pocket, so that should help. Being a detective probably meant Stark saw his fair share of breakdowns. The wolf sat across from Vaughn’s trauma-induced fetal curl, cross-legged on his pallet with the back of his head resting on the van wall. Watching.
I reluctantly closed the doors on the pair. Hurried to fill up the gas tank, then hopped back in and raced onto the interstate.
“What happened to him? Did someone find us?” Evie, to her credit, tempered the panic in her voice with concern for a man she hated.
“His maker paid us a visit.”
Evie jerked her gaze to her clenched hands, as if I’d dropped Vaughn’s shame in her lap and she couldn’t believe the weight.
“Did you take care of it?”
“He got away.”
I hit the gas at the same time as she exclaimed, “What?”
“I fucking had him. I almost had his spine in my fist, but he sped up at the last second and risked exposure on the road just to escape. I broke his phone and ran.”
“He can get another one, Jesse!”
“He won’t use a civilian phone to call Metis, not about business concerning his son
. He’ll have to go to him or follow us. And right now, he’s gonna be hunting to heal the knife wounds in his gut. I bought us some time to call Cai and warn him.”
I pushed the van to her limits, a hundred miles an hour with my eyes on the rear-view mirror. I hoped my hunch was right.
I’m scared. Even if I hadn’t heard her thoughts, Evie’s eyes spoke loud and clear.
I didn’t hold her hand this time. I listened to Vaughn’s sobs and thought of Stark holding Evie’s hand, of Eamon’s grin. I thought of my father and strange new pains growing under my skin like bones.
I’m scared, too.
30
I’d experienced plenty of tension-filled nights, but this one had to be in the top three. We were virtually silent for rest of the two-hour trip, especially Evie. She decided to fume in a way that reminded me exactly of Vaughn.
She swiveled her head toward me when she latched onto my thought. “You’re a prick for even thinking it.”
The only humor I’ve managed to muster in days and you gotta break my balls?
“I’ve told you over and over to stay out of my head—”
“It wasn’t intentional—”
“Not everything I think is your business, Evie, so swivel around and stare at the road, and I’ll go back to thinking whatever the fuck I want.”
“Oh, that’s rich. Hilarious, even. Here’s an idea, asshole, go back to the night you killed me and unkill me. Then, you can think all the stupid shit you want and I won’t be the wiser!”
And just a few hours ago she had me coming like a geyser. What a fucking nightmare.
“Oh, you mean like being kidnapped, raped, and murdered? That kind of nightmare?”
I gnawed on my tongue to keep from responding. I’d seen enough TV to know that this would be a bone of contention forever, had we not been on our way to break the bond. Humans and their couplings were full of grudges and baggage. Forever is a long time for your mate to hold her murder over your head. Her smug “Tuh,” as she turned to stare out the window told me she’d heard that thought, too.
We pulled into the warehouse address Cai had given us a little after midnight. The second we pulled into the lot, a human male sprinted outside to motion us to circle around the back of the building. I followed his flannel shirt and flashlight to the storage unit he opened.
