by Michele Hauf
“I’m not offended. Hell, my mother is a vampire, and my dad is half-vamp. There’s nothing about you that offends me, sweet—”
“Enough with the sweetie. Your brother uses the same tired endearment. I’m no one’s sweetie.”
“I bet you’re not. So Vail got scared by Mother and left you behind?”
She twisted on the seat to face him, and noticed he instantly sat straighter, more alert. Who was more leery of whom?
“Why do you hate your brother?” she asked. “From what I’ve learned, you two don’t know each other enough to form an opinion worthy of hate.”
“My mother is insane because of him.”
“She is not, and you know it. It was Vail’s father who buried her alive. Vail had nothing to do with that.”
“He’s told you a lot in what—the few days you two have known each other?”
“Something like that. So? Are you going to blame the son for the father’s sins? Come on, Trystan, I suspect you’re a smart man. Don’t give me tired excuses.”
The werewolf whistled and gave her an appreciative nod. “I like you. Do you love my brother?”
She bowed her head and looked out at the long ditch grass that blurred as the SUV sped past. “Of course not. Love doesn’t come so easily.”
“Tell me about it.”
That made her smile. “A good friend of mine is a werewolf, but I’ve never been alone with a male wolf before. Well, I’ve never been around one at all.”
He waggled his brows. “Impressed?”
“I am. You’re a tough guy, but I think you want a relationship with Vail as much as he does with you.”
“Ch’yeah, right.”
Lyric swung her head around. “Make that noise again.”
“What? I didn’t do anything.”
“That sound you just made.”
“Ch’yeah?”
“Vail says the same thing.”
The werewolf cocked a goofy look at her. “No kidding? Huh.”
The brothers had more than a few things in common. It gave Lyric hope that the family she sensed Vail needed was only a few heartfelt conversations and an open-minded understanding away.
“So where we headed?” Tryst asked. “You hungry? No, that was a stupid question. Mind if I get a burger? There’s a great little cafe at city’s edge just ahead.”
“Go for it. My brother’s apartment is in the eighteenth. But maybe…”
Maybe she should go to Vail’s place. He wouldn’t return to Leo’s apartment. And much as he thought he needed to be alone, she didn’t want the vampire to sit and stew about things too long.
* * *
VAIL WALKED FOR HOURS to get into the city. He entered Montmartre around three in the morning. The skitter of wings across his ankles reminded him he’d not worn the necessary ointment to see what he desperately wanted to see.
Didn’t matter. This was as close to home as he’d ever get. And they knew him here.
“FaeryTown,” he said with a drunken smile.
He wasn’t drunk. He was out of sorts and still riding the wicked high of crashing the car. Easier to destroy than to face reality.
His mother didn’t love him? Screw her. He didn’t need a mad vampiress mother.
And soon enough he’d plunge a stake through his father’s heart, obliterating all ties to anything remotely family.
And what about that werewolf brother of his? The cocky wolf was too busy with his own life to give a crap about Vail. And yet he managed to make Vail feel as though it was his fault Viviane was insane.
Maybe it was. Had he never been born, had he never gone to see her today, she would not have been reminded of that awful night in the eighteenth century when Constantine de Salignac consigned her to hell.
“She said I looked like him,” Vail said, and stumbled through the arched stone doorway to an ichor den. “Figures.”
Pushing past an overgrown fern frond, he navigated the bright darkness. A tacky replacement for the real Faery, the decor was similar to the Lizard Lounge with wild, verdant plants and bright colors. The colors tended to attack when he was high on ichor—which was the cool part.
It smelled like forest after a sun shower, with a hint of the spices, cinnamon and clove, that faeries loved so much. A low rhythm pulsed, yet it wasn’t exactly music, but perhaps the combined beat of the inhabitants’ heartbeats. The atmosphere hummed in Vail’s senses, pleading he succumb to decadent pleasures.
Beyond the delicate silver chains spilling like rainfall before various rooms and lounges, Vail heard the satisfied moans of vampires enchanted to a macabre supplication.
It was said after the first taste of ichor the vampire was powerless to stop taking more. Like meth to humans, the drug became the vampire, changed his thinking and made him weak and unpredictable. A vampire could fight real demons barehanded, yet after a hit of ichor, could never defeat the inner demons that occupied his soul.
If Charish Santiago had made a deal with Zett, it would be for the faery women and men who serviced these addicts.
“Monsieur Vaillant.” A sweet, heart-faced sprite fluttered before him. She was small enough to fit into Vail’s fist, which also made it easy for her to dash when a client got out of control. “Your usual?”
Nodding, he followed her into the azure room. The domed ceiling was painted with cheesy clouds and cupids. He’d come here weekly since his arrival in the mortal realm. It was a home like no other, a reminder of what he could never again be a part of, of the lie that had been his life. And still was.
But he didn’t need ichor like the dust freaks did. It was something he’d been born to; it was simply a part of him he must replenish and sustain.
Ch’yeah, right. Tell yourself another one, dark prince.
Viviane had called him her dark prince. It was difficult not to want to clutch that endearment and make it something it could never be. A declaration of love and acceptance.
It was a silly name. Like the names he gave Lyric.
The sprite fluttered off, leaving Vail staring at a pretty faery sprawled on an orange sofa. Her wings were pale, and one looked broken, though it could have been tucked at an odd angle against the velvet sofa. She was half-drained and smiled weakly at him as she patted the cushion for him to sit next to her.
He peered into her violet eyes and heard Lyric’s voice. What if you got clean? Why do you need to maintain?
It was what he knew. It was easy. And he did need this. Because if he ever stopped, he wasn’t sure how to live. On mortal blood? The idea of it disgusted him not so much as it usually did. And why was that? Vail toyed with the May bells circling his wrist. Protection.
Home.
“Monsieur?” Her thin fingers grasped for his hand, but he slipped from her frail touch.
“I changed my mind.”
“Tut-tut.” A cool breath tickled his ear.
Vail did not turn to see who stood beside him. Her presence always lowered any room’s temperature by a few degrees. Faery gossamers slipped about his leg and she walked her fingers up his spine.
“My pretty vampire child doesn’t want what makes him strong?”
“Get the hell away from me, Cressida.”
“You are using mortal oaths now? Oh, Vaillant.” The disappointment in her voice was nothing new to him. “You are in tatters. What’s happened?”
“I like to drive fast.” He lifted his head defiantly and turned his back to the weak faery sprawled on the couch.
Tiny and seeming frail, though Vail knew otherwise, the Mistress of Winter’s Edge hugged him from the side and tilted her head onto his shoulder. Rare had she shown him affection in Faery. It was as if she could not be emotional there, and in the mortal realm she was released from a binding spell.
It was possible. But it mattered little.
She touched the lily bracelet. “Only a few bells left. Poor child.”
“Bring me a new one,” he demanded.
“I will.”
&nbs
p; So easy as that? Without asking a boon in return? “Why would you do anything for me, Cressida?”
“I do everything for you, Vaillant. You won’t see what you don’t want to see. Was your life in Faery so awful?”
“You damned me because I was bloodborn. I was not the child you would have chosen. You wanted my brother Trystan. Everyone loves Trystan.”
“I’ve never known you to be so self-deprecating, Vaillant. You’ve always been a scrapper who will stand against any who look at you the wrong way. This mortal realm has weakened you.” Had it?
He tightened his muscles, but still she clung to his arm. “If anything it’s opened my eyes to the cruelties of Faery. Not that I wasn’t fully aware all my life. Cressida, what is Zett up to with the Santiago clan?”
“Oh, now you wish to speak with me? When you’ve important business you seek my knowledge, but never to simply wish me well or want a visit?”
“I can never return to Faery. You know that.”
“Zett does rather despise you. You had no right doing what you did.”
No right to make things better for one innocent shifter sidhe whom Zett had marked in his sights? Vail would do the same thing and take the punishment over and over again.
“What’s done is done, Cressida.”
“Yes, and done so well. I may not approve, but you know I admire your courage, Vaillant.”
She shuffled him against a wall so plush his shoulders settled into the softness of fabric, or perhaps foliage, he couldn’t determine which.
“What do you ask of me to answer my questions?” he asked. With the sidhe, a bargain was always demanded.
Her violet eyes twinkled. Wings like a dragonfly’s, yet three on either side, fluttered at her back. Her pale hair always wavered as if the sea about her lithe form.
“I know why you are after Zett,” she said. “It is to ultimately bring you to Constantine. Your mortal stepfather holds you in wicked supplication with a bargain made in blood.”
Like it or not, they had a connection, and always Cressida knew his mind.
“You’ve made it clear over the years you hate Salignac,” Vail stated. “Won’t you help me now to find him?”
“While it would please me immensely to see you stake that bastard, I’m not entirely sure I wish my pretty vampire child to commit such violence.”
“Cressida, do not affect love toward me. It is some thing you and I both know the sidhe cannot embrace.”
“Admiration.” She cooed against his ear, her cool touches gliding down his throat and chest, yet remaining chaste. “Pride. Even respect, I have for you, Vaillant the Dark. I do not believe destroying your father will put you in a right place.”
Vaillant the Dark. My dark prince.
False affection, all of it.
“Then be gone with you. I don’t need you. I don’t need…”
He glanced to the faery on the couch. The frail thing smiled and tilted her head to reveal her long neck, which was unscarred. Was it possible no one had yet supped from her?
Vail inhaled, testing the cool allure of ichor at the back of his tongue.
“Yes, Vaillant, you need what she offers,” Cressida cooed. “You will never be like them. They are bloodthirsty fiends who feed upon unclean mortals. You are starving for ichor. Take her. Be the man you are and can only ever be. My Vaillant.”
She’d not told him he disgusted her. She’d not hissed at him or demanded he leave. Cressida, in her own twisted manner, would always be the mother he could never have yet pined to love.
As he focused on the tender stroke of Cressida’s finger along his cheek, Vail inhaled the spiced forest scent. A heady dizziness swirled his thoughts. He nodded and bent to sit beside the faery. Cressida kissed his head and whispered some unaffectionate endearment. The whoosh of her wings crackled in his brain as Vail leaned in to bite the faery’s neck.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
DESPITE KNOWING IT was the safest place in Paris, Lyric hadn’t wanted to return to her brother’s apartment. And if Rhys Hawkes would not accept the gown from her, then she needed to find Vail and settle things once and for all.
She couldn’t fathom innocents getting hurt because of a deal her mother had made with the Unseelie lord. Getting the gown back in the hands of the Seelie court would stop that from happening. And then she’d go to the Council with the information she had about her mother’s dealings in FaeryTown.
Maybe. She wasn’t sure she could turn in her mother.
Connor must be behind this. Charish would not stoop to such low tactics to make money. Would she?
Lyric realized now she knew her mother not at all. On the other hand, maybe she was lying to herself. She’d grown up in a family of thieves; why suddenly expect morality?
Trystan had dropped her off at Vail’s building. Before he drove off, he gave her the address for his penthouse in the second quarter, and had given her the entrance code, in case Vail was not home and she needed somewhere to crash.
That confirmed Trystan Hawkes as one of the good guys.
Without thinking to knock, Lyric started to enter the code on the digital box outside Vail’s loft door—Leo had taught her to pay attention whenever someone entered a code—when she noticed the door was ajar. Listening for noise inside, she carefully pushed in the door and slid along the inner wall, carefully pushing the door closed.
Someone could be inside right now, or else Vail had left the door open when he’d gotten home, which didn’t seem likely. Then she noted the upturned couch, the shattered coffeepot and the scatter of kitchen drawers strewn about.
Had he been robbed? Was the thief still here?
Something glittered all over the living room floor.
“Faeries.” They’d found Vail’s home but hopefully not Vail.
The steel floors would announce her presence, so she slipped out of her high heels and crept along the kitchen counter, being careful not to step on Green Snake, whose branch had been broken and tossed in a corner.
The white shirt Vail had borrowed from her brother’s closet lay crumpled on the floor before the bathroom. A peek inside found it was empty and dark.
“No faeries,” she muttered. If Vail was home he had to have seen this mess and…
The cowboy boots abandoned in the bedroom doorway gave her a stumble, but Lyric caught herself with a balancing sway of arms. Her gymnastics training gave her impeccable agility.
There on the bed, sprawled facedown in a beam of pale moonlight, lay Vail. Was he injured? Beaten?
Moonlight slashed the white bedsheets. Trails of faery dust glittered everywhere. Vail’s back looked as though a faery had spread its dust into it. His hair shimmered, and there, at the base of the bed below his head, it looked as though he’d spit out ichor.
Lyric gasped. “He’s high on ichor. Did the intruders do this to him? But why?”
And then she knew that couldn’t be the case. Faeries would have killed him, or forced him to take them to her. Vail had to have arrived after his place was trashed.
Cruelly rejected by his mother, he had gone straight to FaeryTown, possibly the only place in this realm that provided some means of sanctity for him. “Oh, Vail.”
Unsure what to do, wondering whether it would be better to dash out and leave him alone in whatever crazy realm his brain traveled right now, Lyric couldn’t force herself to turn away from him.
She knelt on the bed, careful not to touch the dust that spilled like talcum across the sheets with her movement. “Vail?”
He stirred, and she stroked her fingers through his hair, but quickly wiped the dust off on her skirt. The last thing she needed was a contact high.
“Vail, it’s Lyric. Did you see the faeries who did this?”
He grunted and smirked, turning his face aside to give her his ichor-dusted cheek. “Lyric,” he said drunkenly. “Pretty vampire who I love to fuck.”
It was the ichor speaking, she told herself. He was high, stoned, whatever they called it. A
dust freak.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have made you see your mother.”
“You can’t make me do anything.” He rolled to his back.
His chest was wrinkled from the sheets, and his pants were unbuttoned and shoved down his hips, and his muscles pulsed and tensed with the movement. A sheen of dust coated him as if he’d sweated it from his pores. It was at once beautiful, and then horrible.
“Fucking faeries,” he spit. “Trashed my place.”
“I’m sorry, they were looking for me.”
“Need more,” he murmured. “So sweet. Ichor. Lyric?”
“Did you do this because of your mother?” she asked, wanting to curl up next to him, to hold him and make it all better. What a lie. “Vail, this won’t make things better.”
“Makes everything better,” he slurred. “You don’t understand.”
“No, I don’t. But I think you’d see more clearly…”
How dare she preach to him while he was in such a state? He’d never remember, and it was foolish to argue with an addict. Words would fall on deaf or defensive ears.
“I thought of you,” he said, reaching out, but his hand dropped to the sheets. “Wasn’t going to do it. Heard your voice telling me to get clean.”
Lyric swallowed. She felt so helpless. Could she have prevented this?
“Then she showed up.”
“She?”
“My faery fucking stepmother. Heh.” He laughed deeply and turned to his side, coughing. “Hot in here.”
He did look hot. If the ichor was sweating out of him, he could have a fever. But how was that possible? Would an overdose cause it? He must have taken too much. She didn’t want to think about the faery that may have provided him this high.
She remembered the ichor-addicted man who had worked for Charish. He’d been a literal zombie, and had puked ichor and stank, all the while screaming for more ichor. Charish’s demon guards had wrestled him out of the mansion and taken him—Lyric had no idea where he’d been taken. Most likely they’d dumped the hapless wreck in FaeryTown.
She would not allow that to happen to Vail.
Lyric dashed to the bathroom and ran cold water over a towel. She squeezed it out and caught a gasping sob in her throat, searching vainly for her reflection in the mirror.
