The Vampire's Favorite

by V. R. Cumming

  The picture bounced off her arm into the wall, and Di turned a murderous glare on me. “He’s a vampire, Jason, a monster, and I’m not going to allow him to endanger my family anymore.”

  Oh, fuck. Time to play dumb. “Where did you get a crazy idea like that?”

  She smacked the lamp sitting on the nightstand next to the window. It teetered sideways and thumped onto the bed, a dull counterpoint to her anger. “From him the first time he tunneled into my mind. How stupid do you think I am?”

  “Right now? Pretty fucking stupid. You’re burning the house down.”

  Her face contorted into a furious mask. “I’m smoking you into the sunlight, you and that evil filth you brought here. Pop and Ma won’t care about the house. They’ll thank me for getting rid of you, once they see what you are.”

  I didn’t even bother to argue. Fuck, I didn’t have time. I raced into the bathroom, dumped every towel in there into the bathtub, and cut on the shower. I yanked the first semi-wet towel out and ran back into the bedroom. Eric had rolled under the bed by the time I got there. Di was crawling across its top on her way to the last window.

  And part of her was out of the treacherous sunlight.

  I dropped the towel and dove for her, landing half on and half off the bed. She screamed right in my ear, goddamn her, and raked her fingernails down my bare skin. I dodged her fists and kicks as I scrambled to subdue her, and finally managed to pin her down on the bed. A good pop to the jaw, and she went limp under me.

  I slid off the bed and dumped her on the floor beside Eric. He needed blood. She could donate.

  Something thumped into the other side of the door. I snagged the towel, held it over my face as I skirted blinding daylight and wood, and fumbled the door open. Pop stood at the threshold dressed in unbuttoned work jeans, no shirt. Ma was at his side covered in a ratty robe. Charity was right behind them, her normally tanned skin so pale, it glowed. Tangi, in wolf form, wedged his way between her and Ma.

  I shoved the towel at Pop. “Fire.”

  He and Ma pushed into the room and began scattering wood and ash everywhere.

  Charity coughed and put a hand over her mouth, half-turned away from us. “Fire extinguisher.”

  She and Tangi were gone in a flash, down the hallway toward the kitchen. I went into the bathroom and grabbed two towels out of the bathtub, both soaking wet. One I threw to Ma. She wrung it out over the fire’s embers, and they hissed and dimmed under the thickening smoke.

  I dropped to the floor beside the bed and ducked down, searching for Eric around Di’s prone form. He clung to the shadows, so still, panic gouged into me. Oh, God. Surely he was still alive. Surely the sun hadn’t taken too much of him. Fuck, no. I couldn’t lose him now, not when we were just getting our lives back together again.

  I groped around for him and hit a warm, life-imbued limb, and the panic dumped out of me in a rush of bone-numbing relief. “Come out now, baby.”

  His breath gurgled out of his lungs on a low moan. “Hurt.”

  “I know. We’ve got blood out here and a towel to clean you up.”

  A whooshing sound filled the room, then Pop’s heavy strides beat against the floor. The windows slid open, smoke flushed out of the room, and still, Eric huddled under the bed.

  Ma crouched down beside me and draped a spare, wet towel over my nudity. “How bad is he?”

  “Bad.”

  So bad, if he were fully human, the sun would’ve scarred him for life. Thank fuck he wasn’t, but damn. Another few minutes and he might’ve burned up right on the bed. This wouldn’t have happened if he’d been aware of what was happening. Eric was learning to control his body’s internal workings by slow degrees, the way he was learning to control others. But he needed to be conscious to do that.

  Fuck Di and her ignorant hatred.

  I shoved my anger away, struggling for my own control. “He needs help.”

  “A doctor?”

  I shook my head. Doctors would run blood tests. No telling what they’d find. We simply couldn’t risk it. “Can you get something over the windows?”

  “Your pop’s working on that.” Her gaze drifted away from mine and fell on my eldest sister, and her brow furrowed. “Did she do this?”

  I slumped against the bed, worn out by the sorrow in her voice, by the defeat weighing her shoulders down. “Yeah, she did. She set the fire, she uncovered the windows. She thinks he’s a monster.”

  “We know what he is, Jason.”

  “Ma.” My voice broke and wavered, and the most awful fear grabbed my heart and squeezed. “Let me help him. Please, God, let me help him. He won’t hurt you, I swear.”

  “I know. He saved me, has been saving me since you came home.” She swiped a hand across her eyes and dropped onto her bottom, and her hand crept to the side of her right breast and lingered there. “I found a lump a couple of months ago. Didn’t even tell your father about it, but Eric knew.”

  Holy hell. So that’s what he’d been up. I guess I should’ve prodded a little deeper when the subject had come up. “He asked me if you were sick, then didn’t say another word about it.”

  “I asked him not to. I figured if he could fix me, no one else needed to know.”

  I smoothed a hand down her disheveled hair, smoothing it the way she used to do mine when I was the short one. “Ma, come on. You should’ve told us.”

  “We can argue about it later. What can I do to help?”

  “He needs blood,” I said bluntly. “He has to come out in the open first so we can tend his skin until he can heal it.”

  “Then we need to get cracking.” She stood, grabbed one of Di’s arms, and dragged her out of the way, then stuck her head under the bed. “Eric Logan, you come out right now. Don’t make me tell you twice.”

  Laughter barked out of me, sharp and full of relief. Thank God she was on our side. “Christ, Ma.”

  “It was worth a shot.” She popped up and snuck a peek over the bed. “Your pop’s almost got the blinds back up, at least.”

  I hadn’t even noticed the dimming sunlight. “That’ll help. We need to get that wood out of here before Di wakes up and decides to try again.”

  “Nothing doing,” Pop said. “Wood needs to cool down.”

  Ma thunked down beside me on the floor. “And Di’s going to be busy for a long time cleaning up this mess. I can’t believe she started a fire inside the house.”

  Speaking of. “The alarms didn’t go off.”

  “She took the batteries out,” Tangi said softly.

  I poked my head cautiously around the bed’s footboard. He was standing in the doorway dressed in his white pajama bottoms, one arm in front of Charity, blocking her way into the bedroom. Char was poking his ribs, probably in the hopes it would get him to move. I eyed Tangi’s set expression and the stiff set of his widely spaced legs. Nope, he wasn’t moving anytime soon.

  “A well-planned strike,” I murmured, or would’ve been if Tangi’s beast hadn’t whispered danger into my dreams. “You knew what she was up to.”

  Tangi nodded solemnly. “I heard her moving around the house and smelled the smoke.”

  “You woke everybody up?”

  “Eric’s scream did that,” Ma said. “Everyone except Anna Grace. I swear, that girl could sleep through a hurricane and not stir a peep. Charity?”

  Charity nodded and pivoted around on one bare foot. “I’ll go get her up.”

  Di moaned and rolled her head along the floor, and Ma shot a knowing look at me. “That bruise on her jaw looks suspiciously about the size of your fist.”

  I grunted. “She deserved it.”

  “Mmm.” Ma took the towel I’d intended for Eric away from me and nodded at my arm. “Let me have a look.”

  I glanced down. Blisters dotted the skin over my right hand and up my arm. As soon as I looked at them, raw agony throbbed through me. I hissed in a breath. Christ. I hadn’t even felt it around Eric’s pain seeping into me through our bond.

>   Charity’s footsteps pattered rapidly down the stairs. She ran down the hallway and skidded to a stop in the doorway, her eyes wide. “We can’t find Anna Grace.”

  Ma scrambled upright, me right behind her. Fuck the sun. For Anna Grace, I’d walk right into it if I needed to.

  Pop held a hand out to us. “Now, don’t panic. She probably just wandered into the kitchen for a bite.”

  “Tangi’s checking, but Pop.” Charity gulped in a huge breath and a tear rolled down her cheek. “Her room is a mess, and you know how she is.”

  Yeah, we knew. Anna Grace was a neat freak, way worse than Ma about keeping everything around her tidy.

  “Oh, no.” Ma skirted me and picked her way over wood and ashes. “I’ll check the barn.”

  “I’ll check the shed,” Pop said. “Charity, you finish getting these blinds up.”

  “Go.”

  The hoarse word was followed by a dragging scrape of flesh over carpeting. I inched away from the bed as Eric’s uninjured hand appeared out of the shadows and clenched into a fist around a handful of the carpet’s short pile. He heaved himself into the open one clawed hand at a time, and I sucked in a breath as his sun-damaged body was slowly revealed. The skin covering the left half of his face had blistered into one, oozing sore in the short time he’d been exposed to the sunlight. His hair was singed, his ear was a lumpy mass, and his arm and part of his torso were little better.

  Bile gagged me, and I swallowed it down. Sweet God. I was going to kill Di for doing this to him.

  “Bring her,” he said, and I didn’t even hesitate. I launched myself at my faithless sister, latched onto the front of her t-shirt, and dragged her to him. It was a shitty offering in light of his suffering, but by God, she had it coming and then some.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Eric maneuvered himself out from under the bed and collapsed on top of Di. Her body jerked under the swift strike of his fangs into her throat and she yelped.

  Just in case, I straddled her thighs and held her free hand down. She would by God not get away until he was finished with her.

  And if he killed her? I examined my heart good and proper, and discovered I was pretty meh about the idea. If she’d done something to Anna Grace, there was no question. I’d keep holding Di down and encourage Eric to drain her dry, and I’d bury the body, if I had to. Targeting me and Eric was one thing. We’d known what we were getting into when we signed on with the Vampyr. Anna Grace was just a kid, an innocent. She had no idea what she was. As far as I was concerned, she was a victim of her own fucked up genetics until she was old enough to decide what to do about it.

  Eric’s bond blossomed in my mind and half-formed images popped into my head. Di chained in the stone room, naked and filthy, her hair chopped scalp short, her nails broken. Scars marred her formerly milky skin, twisting her mouth into an odd angle and her nose to the side. Her back was hunched and malformed, and one shoulder dropped lower than the other.

  I grunted. Yeah, Eric really knew where to hit when he projected a threat into somebody’s mind. He always went for the worst fear first. Di’s vanity was a shiny smudge on her soul, her fatal flaw. He probably hadn’t bothered to mentally walk her through the torture first. Hell, he wouldn’t need to. The end results would be enough to send any peacock proud teenager screaming in the other direction.

  Another image flashed past, too quickly for me to catch it. The next one was Technicolor clear: Carl Landis, hauling a galvanized steel trough out to Pop’s truck.

  Carl Landis, the man Eric hadn’t been able to read our first full day here. I’d forgotten all about him, truth be told, but what did he have to do with anything?

  Eric mmphed and tightened his hold on Di, and the images abruptly dried up.

  The kitchen door slammed shut, bare feet slapped against the floor, and Charity skidded into the room. “We can’t find Anna Grace anywhere.”

  “We’re working on figuring out what’s going on,” I said.

  “How?”

  “It’s an Eric thing.”

  She sniffed and swiped moisture off her cheeks. “I want to help.”

  “Not with this, Char.”

  “She’s my sister, too.”

  “I know,” I said gently. “Where’s Tangi?”

  She tapped her nose. “Sniffing around outside, searching for a trail. Ma and Pop are helping him.”

  I winced. “Ah, about that.”

  “Get real, vampy boy. I knew what he was the minute he walked into the house.”

  Oh, shit. Was there a single person in my family who didn’t know what we were? So much for protecting them from the realities of my life. “Char—”

  “He showed me, Jase, and it was…” She shook her head. “Can we talk about this later?”

  Oh, yeah, we were gonna talk, all right. “I need Tangi in here as soon as he’s finished. Eric needs blood.”

  “He can take mine.”

  Eric grunted and released Di’s neck. He pushed himself slowly onto all fours. “Half…pint.”

  “Eric,” I said. “She’s just a kid.”

  He swiveled his head toward me. His ear was still raw, but the blisters on his face had receded, leaving his skin bright red. “While…the pain…helps…bloodlust,” he panted. “Anna…need find.”

  “Ok. Ok.” I inhaled through my nose and beckoned Charity over, prepared to interfere if I had to. “Give him your wrist and try not to look at him. He won’t take much.”

  She high-stepped over the wood and settled on the floor beside him, seemingly unaware of his nudity. “I’m not afraid.”

  “You should be.”

  I couldn’t watch them. It was bad enough she knew what I was, what he was. I couldn’t sit there while she became immersed in the reality.

  But I wasn’t completely helpless. I tapped Di’s unbruised cheek hard enough to wake her, and she groaned and flinched away from me.

  As soon as Eric eased out of the way, I leaned over her and jammed my face close to hers. “Hey, pretty girl. What have you been doing with Carl Landis?”

  Her eyes popped open and her glare returned, laser sharp and mean as a rattler. “I’m not telling you anything, you freak.”

  “Yeah? How about I let Eric work on you a little more? Better, I will.” I forced my fangs out and smiled, flashing the sharp points just for her. “Looky, looky, little sis.”

  Her glare flickered and waned. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “I would,” I hissed. “Where’s Anna Grace?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I slapped her, hard, and her head jerked around smack into the carpet. “Next time, I use my fist. Where is she?”

  She pressed a hand to her jaw and wiggled it, and some of the mad faded out of her expression. “I don’t know, I swear. He took her while I was setting the fire.”

  “You packed for her,” Charity said. “Even you’re not so callous you’d let a stranger run off with her without knowing what he planned to do.”

  I pointed at her, then Di. “Give Eric your wrist, Char, and you, Di. You’ve got three seconds to spill the beans.”

  Di’s hands flew up, protecting her face. “He wouldn’t tell me. All he said was that there was still a chance to save her, if he could get her away from Eric.”

  A glimmer of an idea popped into my head and I immediately shook it off. No, that couldn’t be right, could it? Could Di really have been so vain and self-centered, she’d give her own sister up just to punish Eric? I turned the notion over in my mind, examining it from every angle. The more I thought it over, the more certain I grew that I’d hit the nail on the fucking head.

  I leaned back on my haunches, so sick of Di’s nonsense, I could’ve puked. “Eric was never a danger to her and you know it. This wasn’t about saving her. It was never about Anna Grace at all. Fuck.”

  “What?” Charity asked.

  “She wanted to get back at Eric for hurting her.”

  Charity’s eyes flared and her expression
hardened. “You bitch.”

  “Please, Char, just listen to me,” Di said, and for the first time in her life, genuine emotion threaded through her words. “Eric is a vampire. Carl said he’d turn Anna Grace, make her just like them, a soul-sucking monster. Is that what you really want for her?”

  “She would’ve had a choice,” Charity said. “I overheard them talking about it.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. Well, shit. This day just kept getting better and better. “You were awake when Kyle and Trilly came over.”

  Charity nodded. “Oh, yeah. A guy like that? Hard to miss, but again with the laters. Where was Carl headed, Di? You have to know something.”

  Di’s hands fell away from her face and her gaze met mine squarely. “Swear you’ll never hurt Anna Grace. Swear it on your life.”

  I flashed my fangs, and took a great deal of pleasure from her flinch. “I swear it on yours.”

  “Fine, then,” she gritted out. “There’s one thing, maybe. He mentioned something a couple of weeks ago about a friend of his who lives near Minneapolis.”

  The blood drained out of my head and I swayed. “Oh, fuck.”

  Oriana.

  The single word vibrated between me and Eric. Our eyes met and held, and fear jumped between us, stark and vividly clear.

  Charity wrinkled her nose. “I really hate it when you guys do that. What’s wrong with Minneapolis?”

  “You know those people who hurt me and Eric when we first got here, the same ones who hurt Tangi? It wasn’t people, Char. It was a vampire and her stable. They’ve been trying to get to you and Anna Grace for years.”

  The color leached from her skin and she shrank into herself. “Oh, shit.”

  “Yeah, it gets worse. We were about to move against her, and now, that fucking hunter is taking a bargaining chip straight into her territory.”

  “Surely he wouldn’t be that stupid,” Di said. “He has to know about this vampire, right?”

  “We can’t take that chance.”

  I gathered the memory of Tangi’s scent close, shoved it into the ether, and hoped really hard he understood that I needed him. We didn’t have the luxury of waiting until the weekend to hit Oriana. We only had until her spies caught wind of Carl Landis headed her way with a prodigy beacon in tow.