Just then, a strident ring blared from the phone in her coat pocket. They both ignored it.
With a hunger less about the cream and more about the sweetness of her skin, Sebastian closed his mouth around her fingertip. It was less than an inch of her flesh, but he made sure that it sang with sensation when his tongue wound serpentine around the end. She shuddered and he repressed a low growl of pleasure.
When the phone rang again, striking a discordant note in their secular moment, Sebastian retrieved it from her pocket. He never broke eye contact as he flicked it open and held it to her ear. Her ‘hello’ was distracted and distant as she locked gazes with him.
The expression on her face changed so swiftly that it took him a second to understand the cause.
Gone was the bliss. In its place: fear.
A vicious rant slurred down the line. Laurel, pale and stricken, tried to ease the phone from his hand.
It was unfortunate for the person on the other end that Sebastian heard every word.
“…think you’re so slick, don’t you? Screw the answering machine, Laurel. Betcha didn’t think I’d actually get through, didja?”
The look Laurel wore sliced Sebastian straight to the core. Fearfearfear, his instincts whispered, a quiet choir in his head. Rage rolled over him like a wave, rising up in his soul like the shadow of a monster on the wall. His eyes -- which had darkened with seduction while he tasted her -- turned to silver ice.
Sebastian’s courtesy came to an abrupt end. His predatory instincts took control and his territorial nature urged him to act. Gazing at her with that glittering, violent look in his eyes, he plucked the phone away from her ear and brought it to his own. The plastic groaned from the power of his grip. He asked no permission, made no apologies.
For the next thirty seconds he listened to the threatening diatribe on the other end of the line, staring at Laurel all the while, sleek danger in every tick and twitch.
“Who the fuck is this?” Sebastian's voice rang with a compulsion that no mortal would ever be able to name, urging the man on the other end to answer his question. Obey me.
Using this skill was much more difficult over the phone. Eye contact usually worked best. But the drunk mind was susceptible and verbal connection was all Sebastian required.
Laurel stepped close, almost into him, her hand coming to rest on the lapel of his jacket. He knew by the worry in her eyes and the trip-hammer beat of her heart that she wanted him to hand her phone back. There was less than zero chance that he would. Nothing could have compelled him to expose her to the man on the other end again.
Surprised silence stretched on the other end of the line before Sebastian’s suggestion took hold and the drunk slurred the answer to his question.
“Kyle.”
“Kyle what?”
He gazed down at Laurel as he spoke, his body like hard, cold marble beneath her hand. There was the distant desire to gather her close, to shelter her, but touching her then would have been a slippery slope. His anger had stripped away the layers of his polished, gentlemanly veneer, and the creature who stood before her now radiated violence. In that moment, his duality was stark.
With an urgent whisper, Laurel stood on her tiptoes. Like she thought getting on eye level with him would change things.
“Don’t talk to him, Sebastian. Please don’t. I’ll tell you about him, I’ll tell you. Don’t listen to him, he’ll say anything …please don’t.”
Anxiety laced through every word, and although he was not unmoved by her obvious fear that he would hear something unflattering from the man, he was not inclined to return the phone.
“Kyle Weller.” The drunk’s monotone reply was followed by a thin growl when he heard Laurel's down the line.
Kyle Weller. Sebastian would not forget. Kyle Weller had no idea of the unhappiness he had just brought into his own world. Sebastian, in his present state, relished the idea of bringing horror to this man. Somewhere in the darkest part of his soul, he anticipated it. His smile was ice cold.
“What do you want? Laurel is unavailable.” Sebastian put a preternatural stress on the word. Unavailable. It insinuated things, conjured to mind an image of Laurel on her knees with a man’s hand wrapped in her hair, her mouth poised just so.
The ability to create illusion in the mortal mind was just one thing in a big bag of vampiric tricks, and it could be used in both pleasant and unpleasant ways. Sebastian knew he would yield more information from pushing this man's buttons than from asking questions.
He continued to watch Laurel, heard the mewling noise of distress. Insulated but not immune to her upset, he concentrated on Kyle. He was gratified when he heard shouting on the other end of the phone.
“What the hell is she doing? She better not be cheating on me, that bitch.”
Sebastian could almost imagine froth building at the corner's of Kyle's mouth, outrage making his face purple.
“If she thought the last time was bad, this time’ll be ten times worse getheronthephonerightnow!”
She recoiled when she heard the screaming, and Sebastian raised a hand to her hair to soothe her. In counterpoint to the manic ranting on the other end of the line, Sebastian never raised his voice, never lost his cold control. He smiled again, a slow gleam of white teeth and dark anticipation.
Laurel angled her head into his touch, maintaining eye contact. She stopped trying to get him to give up the phone.
“She is with me," Sebastian said. Those were the words that made it to Laurel's ears. With a twist of vampiric skill, the ones Kyle heard were somewhat different. “She has the sweetest --- ah --- mouth, doesn’t she?”
“I will kill you when I find you, you worthless piece of trash. She’s mine, she’s always been mine. How does it feel to know I’ve had her? Huh, bastard? You’ll always know it, you’ll --” In the midst of the tirade, there was a clank and a clatter. The line went dead in Sebastian’s ear.
Sebastian said nothing for a moment as he watched Laurel. He understood, in the aftermath, that she had not wanted him to know about this. She hadn’t told him. And though he was involved now, he was unwilling to question her about it, to invade her in that way.
He snipped the phone closed and deposited it in his pocket, searching her face with eyes that seemed silver in the night. Silver with something powerful and potent. Something dangerous.
“I believe we will return to the house.“ His voice was a growl, though his darkness was not directed at her. He brought his hand close to her lower back to usher her out of the park. She moved at his prompting, face a mask of worry. Neither of them spoke as he set a brisk pace. He wanted to get her someplace where she was less exposed. Needed a couple quiet moments to calm the dangerous instincts that writhed like snakes in his gut.
Laurel’s hand shook so badly that she almost spilled her hot chocolate, he noticed. Pale, withdrawn, she tucked her chin down close to her neck and deposited her un-gloved hand into her pocket. He guided her back through the park and across the street in tense silence.
Sebastian learned a lot from this brief exchange. He learned that she’d had a lover. That the man hurt and abused her. And that she had not trusted him enough to tell him about it.
It was only when they gained the privacy and security of Mystique's library that she spoke, peeling her remaining glove free as she did. Her eyes were luminous.
“Please don’t go, Sebastian. I can explain. It’s probably not what you think, or whatever he said.”
Sebastian’s gut clenched at the idea that she thought she had to plead her case. He realized that she blamed herself for whatever had been done to her, and he hurt for her. She was watching him with worried, expectant eyes, needing something, and the complex emotional web the situation brought momentarily stymied him. It was alien, something that had long been dormant inside him.
She looked small juxtaposed against the burning fireplace, and Sebastian tossed his coat over the back of a chair as he stalked toward her. He didn’t stop
until he was close enough to touch her, and then he dropped to his knee. Reaching up, he brushed her chilled hands aside and took over the unbuttoning of her coat.
“What I think … what I know, is that this man hurt you,” he said. With deft fingers, he slipped the buttons free of their holes. “What I don’t know… Is why you think the knowledge of that would make me desire your absence."
“…he did.” Her voice shook. “But I don’t know what he said and I thought-- I thought he might have given you the wrong idea about he and I. He is not above lying. He’s done it in the past to get his way.”
Sebastian’s expression remained enigmatic. At the same time that he was trying to sort out the truth of the situation, he was still trying to tame his own anger. He stood up and stepped behind her to slide the wool from her shoulders. Once free, he tossed the garment across the nearest chair. He took her shoulders in his hands, rubbing them with reassuring firmness and urged her back against him.
“I know his type. And I also know that there is nothing he could have told me that would make me want you to leave.” His voice was low, raw around the edges. He felt the wave of her tension swell and break before it drained out of her small frame.
She nestled her spine against his chest, turning her chin so she could look at him as she spoke. “I met him when I first came here. We dated a few times and then he started getting weird. Called too much, showed up where ever I went. He got rough and aggressive—and then physical. I won't let a man hit me, so I threatened to call the cops if he came near me again. I'm worried if he finds out about you, he'll try and hurt you, too.”
He reached down to turn her chin, to ensure her attention to his next words. “Kyle cannot hurt me, Laurel. And he will not hurt you anymore. Do you understand?”
Kyle had been simple enough to find using his cell phone number.
It was several hours past the time Sebastian left a calmer Laurel in the library of Mystique. The night was deep and thick on his skin, the acrid scent of the city clogging his senses.
He stood for a moment in the shadows, watching the run-down row home on a street in Sperling's south side. It was not a pretty neighborhood, though perhaps it had once been. The fences separating each small yard were sagging and rusted. His eyes picked out one dirty tricycle lying on its side, left to the mercy of the elements.
The row-home that held his attention was no better. What had once been a cheerful awning now hung broken and dangling from one stressed screw. Ripped and crooked, the screen door was an eyesore. Overgrown grass suggested a yard no one bothered to tend.
With his senses, he determined four heartbeats inside, the rhythms of which hinted at different things. Two hearts beat the calm, slow rhythm of sleep. Two were quickened as though engaged in some sort of physical activity. He could imagine what that might be at this hour, but he was not dissuaded.
On a hunch, he slithered into that room first, bleeding like a slow oil leak through the thick shadows where the glow from one uncovered light-bulb didn't reach. The scent of alcohol was almost overwhelming, coupled with the underlying reek of sweat, cigarettes, and sex.
Kyle –he recognized the voice, and the face because he had taken the image of the man from Laurel's thoughts-- sat on the edge of a ratty bed, raking a hand through his messy hair. Brown eyed, built like a greyhound. He'd pulled a pair of boxers on and a cigarette hung from his mouth, smoke curling toward the ceiling like escaping phantoms.
The girl, a hooker to be certain, tried to fix her skewed stockings with dull tugs. She seemed drugged and unsteady, blue eyes glossy and distant. Bottle-blonde hair ran riot around her head.
Her resemblance to Laurel made Sebastian's blood run cold.
"If you weren't so used up, I'd have been able to get off," Kyle said, standing up. His slurred words were punctuated by a slap that jerked the girl's head to the side. The next time he raised his hand, Sebastian stepped from the shadows, around empty bottles and discarded soft packs, and snared Kyle's wrist.
"What the fu--" The cigarette tumbled out of Kyle's lips.
"Shut your mouth." Sebastian's voice must have penetrated Kyle's haze; his bloodshot eyes bulged wide. With one hand around the back of the man's neck, Sebastian flung him across the room. He impacted the wall with a sharp crack, landing in a heap on the floor, momentarily stunned.
The girl, too dazed to realize the possible danger, lifted her fingers to dab at the blood on the corner of her mouth.
"Excuse us. We have business to discuss," Sebastian said.
"But my money…"
Sebastian reached into a pocket and withdrew a clip, peeling off several hundred-dollar bills. He pressed them into her hand without touching her skin. Bruises marred her face and track marks dotted her arms. He wondered how long it would be before she went home with a fatal john or injected a lethal dose of drugs into her veins. She tottered out of the room, one shoe on, one shoe off.
Disturbed by the waste, Sebastian pushed the clip back into his pocket. His business here tonight was anything but humanitarian. Behind him, he heard an empty bottle break.
"I'll gut you." Kyle sneered, but his drunkenness sapped any real steam from the threat. He lunged, stabbing the jagged edge of the bottle at Sebastian's back. With preternatural speed, much quicker than the human eye could follow, Sebastian knocked the bottle out of Kyle's hand and slammed him against the wall, pinning him by the throat.
"Good luck," Sebastian said with a dark smile.
Kyle, for all that he clawed and struggled, could not dislodge or even budge the vampire's hold. Sebastian tightened it to drive his next words home.
"If you contact Laurel again, I'll kill you." Cold menace dripped from his tone.
His eyes were unforgiving, inhuman.
Sebastian saw the moment recognition flared in Kyle's eyes. He could almost hear the pieces snick into place as Kyle matched his face to the voice he had heard on Laurel's phone. Prepared for the rage that would follow, he withstood the impotent thrashing until he tired of the game and slammed Kyle once more against the wall with enough force to shake the house.
"Do we have an understanding?" Sebastian asked as he loosened his hold on Kyle's throat to allow the man to answer.
Kyle swung a fist, gasping for air.
Sebastian caught it and bent Kyle's wrist back until the bones snapped. Kyle didn't even have time to howl in pain before he was thrown across the room like a rag doll, impacting with so much force that the drywall buckled and the lone bulb swung in wild arcs from the ceiling.
Kyle curled into a fetal ball, slurring incoherent threats, barely conscious.
One moment Sebastian was in one place, the next he stood over Kyle, staring down with disdain.
"Do we have an understanding?" Sebastian repeated.
Kyle wheezed in defeat, holding his ribs.
"Good. Because the next time I lay eyes on you will be the last. Do not call her, do not write her. Never let me catch you anywhere near her." Sebastian thought he heard Kyle whisper 'okay' before the boy--he really was nothing more than that--vomited all over the floor.
Kyle's misery gave Sebastian a measure of dark satisfaction. He now knew what it felt like to be knocked around by someone stronger. Confident his point had been made, he stepped back into the shadows, disappearing between one breath and the next.
Darkness. It enveloped him like a lover, obscuring his presence across from the row house. Luceph's sensitive hearing picked out every word between Sebastian and Kyle Weller, right down to the threats before the violence.
Caleb's assessment that Sebastian's involvement with Laurel ran deeper than mere acquaintances was correct, and here was the proof.
Watching them earlier in the park from a distance, Luceph gleaned much from their intimate interactions. The lingering way they stared at each other. The possessive touch of Sebastian's hand on her back. Kyle Weller's name during the phone call. He wasn't too surprised to find Sebastian had arrived here before him and knew the exact second
the Prince left the property. And still, Kyle lived.
Luceph could hear his ragged breathing, the erratic thump of his heart. He wondered if Sebastian allowed Kyle to live for the same reason random killing of humans in his territory was forbidden; mortal life had value, even if it was only to keep the secret of their existence. William, before his death, had ruled the same way. Luceph thought both Princes had noble values despite their bestial natures, a trait he did not share and struggled to understand.
It had nothing to do with Sebastian's skill or strength. The Prince was renowned for his battle prowess and cunning strategies. In the current world of vampire elders, there was not one, himself included, that wished to take Sebastian head on.
He traveled from one patch of black to another until he stood inside Kyle's room, nostrils flaring at the stench. One brief sweep of the room told Luceph all he needed to know about Kyle Weller. The two other heartbeats in the row home were no threat to him, only an annoyance. With a thought and mild exertion of his will, he cast a cloak of obfuscation over Kyle's bedroom, blocking any sound from escaping.
Through a maze of discarded clothes, old food wrappers and random bits of trash, he walked to where Kyle still lay curled into a fetal ball against the wall. Luceph did nothing to hide himself from view.
Kyle saw his boots first and sat up with a gasp of pain, smearing spittle off his lips with his wrist. "Who the fu--"
"How long you live will depend directly on how prompt and thorough you answer my questions. I'll know if you're lying," Luceph said.
Kyle struggled for a breath, holding his ribs with one arm. Staring with wary eyes, he said nothing more.
Luceph thought Kyle may not be as ignorant as he looked.
"Very good. How and where did you meet Laurel Mayfield?"
"That whore," Kyle spat.
Luceph cocked his head a fraction.
Kyle swallowed, shrinking back. "Met her here, in Sperling. At the bar she works at."
The scent of Kyle's fear was ripe on the air. An almost tangible taste Luceph absorbed through his senses. In reaction, his teeth started to sharpen and elongate. Keeping his predatory instinct in check, he asked, "And where was she from?"
Bound By Blood Page 7
