As if summoned by the thought, I heard their doors creak open. Soft footsteps paused outside my room, and Collins loosed a heavy sigh.
“She’s probably checking in with Vin,” Mandy whispered. “She can’t have the food anyway. Why would she want to watch us eat?”
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Collins whispered back.
Their footsteps resumed, fading as they headed downstairs to eat with Delilah’s harem.
Tears stung in the corners of my eyes. I was too proud—or maybe too ashamed—to face them just yet. Which meant I was trapped in this room. At least until sunrise. Maybe the awkwardness would die at dawn when I did. I could hope.
I should call Vin, I thought. Maybe it would shake me out of the downward spiral I was stuck in.
I dropped my duffle bag on the denim bedspread and took a slow breath. This was just a room. Just an ordinary room. Lots of people had probably slept here.
My holster grated my hip as I unhooked it from the waistband of my jean shorts and deposited it on the night table. I dug my cell phone out of my back pocket next, before sitting on the edge of the bed and pulling my legs up to cross them. Then I uncrossed them and put my feet back on the floor.
My restlessness only seemed to grow worse as I dialed Vin’s number.
“How’s the vampire hotel?” he asked by way of greeting.
“It’s a B&B,” I reminded him. “And it’s fine. I guess.”
“Do you miss me yet?” he asked next, his voice dropping to a sensual whisper.
“Of course I do.” My heart ached at the lie, fueling the fires of shame that were steadily burning through my chest cavity. “I thought you had to work tonight. I was expecting your voicemail to pick up.”
“I called in,” he said breathlessly, and I realized his whispering wasn’t all to do with seducing me. “I think I made a breakthrough tonight in the lab, I—”
“You”—I snapped, cutting him off before he said something damning—“should probably share this with me when I get back. It sounds like a surprise best revealed in person.”
“Oh? Oh! Yes, of course.” He cleared his throat and swallowed loud enough for me to hear through the phone. “I can’t wait. It’s so exciting. Gosh, three months. The anticipation—”
“Will make it even better,” I assured him, hoping like hell my suspicions were wrong and we weren’t being listened to by whoever the vampire equivalent of the NSA was. That seemed like a pretty fast way to end my new career before it even began. My paranoia felt extra justified when I recalled Roman’s extensive FBI resources as a Blood Vice agent.
A soft knock had me nearly jumping out of my skin, and panic hiked that paranoia into overdrive. But when Stella’s muffled voice crooned through the door, some other emotion took hold of me.
“What was that?” Vin asked.
“Room service,” I answered under my breath as I slid off the bed. “I asked for fresh towels. I’m going to take a shower before heading to bed.”
“We’ll talk more tomorrow?”
“Yeah, yeah. Have a good day,” I said.
“Sweet dreams,” he said, the farewell clipping off suddenly as I ended the call.
“Ms. Skye?” Stella called as she knocked again. I cracked the door open.
“Y-yes?” My mouth was painfully dry. I licked my lips and tried to smile at her.
“Dee wanted to offer you a drink—on the house.” Her voice was sweeter than before, as if she wanted to be sure I understood that she was offering herself to me as a kind gesture. A pity drink, I scoffed to myself. And just when I thought I couldn’t sink any lower.
Ragtime piano music bubbled up from downstairs. It was loud and playful.
“Your harem is enjoying a little entertainment,” Stella explained, that alluring edge seeping into her gaze. Their entertainment was our privacy.
A shiver rocked my shoulders, but she acted as though she hadn’t noticed. She was using kid gloves. Vampling gloves. But I was a vampling. Maybe letting a veteran donor treat me like one wasn’t such a bad thing. After all, I hadn’t minded so much when Lydia had done it.
I opened the door wider and invited Stella inside.
Chapter Three
Lydia was no veteran donor, I decided after letting Stella into my room. The flapper presented her wrist to me like a bottle of champagne, holding a white cloth beneath it with her opposite hand. We sat side-by-side on the edge of the bed, her sequined dress pressed against my jean shorts and bare knee. Nothing but the distant piano music to keep the silence at bay.
“I don’t often feed from strangers. Or straight from the vein,” I said. The confessions didn’t faze her.
“I gathered as much from your harem’s behavior.”
“Sorry.” I gave her a sheepish smile.
“They are young. So are you. Give it time,” she said, shifting beside me. My head swam with the scent of her perfume. This close, I was keenly aware of the depth in her gaze. Was she half-sired like Roman? I had to know.
“How old are you?” I asked before I could think better of it.
Stella’s laughter rippled across my skin. “My, my. You are quite young, aren’t you? I didn’t think that was considered a polite question even by human standards.”
“Sorry.” I glanced down at my lap while my brain searched for something less nosy to ask her, but a million invasive questions begged for answers. As an officer, I’d been expected to ask prying questions. It’d been my job. I was no good at beating around bushes.
“I’m one hundred and twenty-three.” Stella lowered her arm, resting it across my legs with a relenting sigh. “Dee ran a speakeasy during prohibition. Cal, Angus, and I were in her employ. She’d lost her only child—or so she’d thought—during the Civil War. So we became her children. She took good care of us misfits.” Stella chuckled, but then she fell solemn. “When Dee grew ill, there was nothing we could do. That’s when Vanessa returned—”
“Wait, Vanessa was her human daughter? Delilah didn’t sire her?”
Stella shook her head. “Au contraire, Vanessa sired Delilah.” She hiccupped a soft laugh. “Mother and child are now scion and sire.”
“What a strange world we live in.”
“It gets stranger every day,” Stella said, nodding in agreement. “Dee’s speakeasy was raided in her absence, and we were thrown in jail. By the time we got out, Vanessa had Dee set up here.” She waved her hand around the room. “We didn’t have anywhere else to go, and when Dee revealed what had happened to her and what she was in need of—well, I won’t say it was natural transition. But we got through it.” She smiled fondly at the past.
“And…the intimacy?” I couldn’t resist prying further. Like she hadn’t shared enough already. “How long did that take to get through?”
Stella blinked at me, and her lips curled in amused understanding. “There are all kinds of intimacy. The variety shared between lovers is a far cry from that shared between mother and child, or friends for that matter.”
My face flushed, the heat spreading down into my chest until I felt sweat prickle along my collarbone. Stella’s hand in my lap turned and gripped my knee.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” she said gently. “You’re familiar with Freud’s Oedipus complex?” I nodded, my voice frozen by humiliation. “It’s very similar. It affects new vampires and new donors.”
“I—we don’t know how to get around it,” I said, unable to meet her gaze.
Stella sighed and moved her hand from my knee to my arm, massaging her fingers into my shoulder. “Do you enjoy back rubs?” she asked.
“I-I guess?”
“When you go to a massage parlor, do you feel sexually aroused by the person massaging you?”
I shook my head.
“And when you were human and ate a meal at your favorite restaurant, did you feel compelled to sleep with the chef?” she asked.
“That’s different.”
“Is it? Does it not make you feel good? Relaxe
d? Satisfied?”
“Well, yeah, but…” I met her knowing gaze and huffed. “Do you not feel…aroused when someone drinks from you?”
She tilted her head from side to side. “Sometimes. Depends on the vampire.” Her grin grew mischievous. Lydia had made me feel something I never thought I would for a woman. But when I really dissected my attraction to her, it was her blood more than anything else that I craved.
“I’m not really into women that way,” I said.
She raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t offer myself to you that way.”
My cheeks warmed, and my stomach fluttered as I tried to relax. Stella extended her wrist in front of me again, and I took her arm in my hands this time, holding the linen around it like a wrapper around a burger. Thinking of her in this way took some of the tension out of the act, but it also made it feel more degrading.
I lowered my mouth, but paused to look up at her for some final notion of consent. She dipped her chin in a soft nod. It was all I needed. My fangs popped free, and I sank them into the shallow meat of her wrist.
Blood welled instantly, like juice rising up from a ripe plum. Stella remained perfectly still. Her breath and pulse were steady. Slow even. She’d been doing this for over a hundred years, and it showed in more than her disciplined calm.
Her blood was rich. Like Roman’s. Maybe even richer. She was older than him, after all. But where Roman’s blood had been fed to me in an act of desperation and survival, Stella’s was unnecessary and offered with quiet patience.
And unlike Vin, she expected nothing from me in return. Not sex. Not money. Not a vial of my own blood.
I wondered if I would ever be comfortable enough with Mandy and Collins to share a moment like this with either of them. Maybe I’d formed my harem too suddenly, out of need rather than waiting for people with the right…rapport. Some friends made bad lovers, and vice versa. Maybe the same applied to friends and blood donors.
After I’d had my fill of Stella, I slowly pulled my fangs free and wrapped her arm with the linen. The blood soaked through the material, but it didn’t spread far. And after a second, she swiped it across her skin, cleaning the remaining blood and revealing two pink circles of flesh. I blinked, and the marks were gone.
She grinned and winked at my surprise. “Perks of the job.”
* * * * *
“I can smell her on you.” Mandy folded her arms in the front passenger seat of the Toyota and refused to look at me as we pulled out of the Cottage Crypt’s driveway.
By the time I’d risen, the two of them had already supped with Delilah’s harem. Cal, the dashing piano player, had offered to take my duffle bag out to the car, but Collins collected it before I could answer. He seemed almost as agitated as Mandy.
“I would have given you some blood if you’d asked,” she said, the tips of her ears turning pink.
I shrugged. “I thought you’d appreciate the break.”
“I’m a werewolf. I don’t need a break, and my blood is better than a human’s anyway.”
“Hey, now.” Collins sat up straighter in the driver’s seat.
“Are you jealous?” I asked, unable to keep the shock out of my voice. “I thought you hated the idea of opening a vein for a bloodsucker?”
“That was before I met you!” Mandy threw her hands in the air and twisted around in her seat. “I offered to be part of your harem. Remember?”
“What is the problem here?” I said, feeling oddly defensive. “Do you think I should have asked your permission first or something?”
“No!” Mandy shouted back at me.
“I think what she’s trying to say, Skye,” Collins said in a more even if tight voice, “is that we’re a team. You make us a team. And when you step outside of our circle, it makes us all vulnerable.”
A chill gripped my insides. “Did I miss something? Did something happen?”
Mandy snorted and angled around again. “Granny Fangs tried to take a bite out of him after breakfast.”
“What?” I shrieked. My blood vision flashed alive in a hot, angry burst. Had Stella been a diversion? Was her free drink a set up so Delilah could get a little strange from my own harem? Was this sickening feeling scouring my insides betrayal…or was I just as jealous as I accused Mandy of being?
“She didn’t try,” Collins quickly amended. “But she hinted that she’d like to, more or less.”
“Mmmhmm.” Mandy reached over the center console and pinched his cheek. “I could just eat this one right up,” she teased in a creaky, old voice.
Collins nudged her away with his shoulder. “I’m driving here, kid.” His eyes met mine in the rearview mirror and he frowned. “Are you all right, Skye? Your eyes look…different.”
“I’m fine.” My blood vision slowly faded. I could make out the green of his eyes and the soft brown sweep of his hair once more. “I didn’t mean to leave you guys out in the open like that,” I said, blowing out a slow sigh. “I just... Stella let me drink from her wrist.”
Collins cleared his throat. “I get it. And hey, maybe we’ll eventually work our way up to that.”
“Speak for yourself,” Mandy grumbled. “I like you, Jenna, but that’s just too much like what I went through before.” She glanced over her shoulder, panic tightening her expression. “You understand, right?”
“Of course.” I smiled and reached out to squeeze her arm. “It’s fine. Really.”
“And you’ve always got Vin,” Collins added. “For the times you need a little more touch with your meals.”
I cringed, remembering how I’d lied to him when Stella had come to my door. He’d been wigged out about Lydia, and that had been for an undercover job. If he knew that I’d fed from Stella for no other reason than I wanted to, he would not be thrilled.
“What’s wrong with Vin?” Collins asked, interpreting my silence the way a therapist might.
“I’m breaking up with him when we get back from Denver.” Something about saying it out loud made it feel more finite. And more tragic. But at the same time, I felt a weight lift off my shoulders. This had to be done.
“Suckage.” Mandy’s hand pressed down on top of mine where it lay on her arm. She gave me a pitying frown. “I guess it’s a double whammy with him being a blood donor, too, huh?”
I leaned back in my seat and pressed the side of my head to the cool glass of the window. “I’ll figure something out. It wouldn’t be right to stay with him just for his blood.”
“Don’t put on the red light just yet, Roxanne,” Collins said, eyeballing me in the mirror. “Let’s get through this training course first.”
Mandy sighed and leaned over to dig through her bag of snacks in the floorboard. She ripped open a bag of pork rinds and clicked on the radio.
The highway was mostly empty. And flat. And straight. With nothing else to do but wallow in self-pity, I dug my phone and earbuds out.
“¿Dónde está el burdel de sangre más cercano?” the digital Spanish tutor greeted me.
“Where is the nearest blood brothel?” her English assistant echoed. That’s what I wanted to know.
I played it again, committing it to memory should I ever find myself thirsty and alone in Mexico. Then I wondered if Denver had their own version of Bleeders.
Collins and Mandy wouldn’t be vulnerable if I didn’t take them with me.
Chapter Four
“What the hell kind of airport is this?” I stared out the back window of the Toyota, my neck craning so I could look up at the monstrous, blue horse statue whose laser-red eyes observed the traffic below.
“That’s Blucifer,” Mandy said around a mouthful of popcorn. She’d snagged the treat along with a tourist guide at the last gas station we’d filled up at. “Says here the thing is cursed.” She slapped the back of her buttery hand to the magazine page. “Even killed the guy who made it.”
Collins nodded. “If old blue gives you the heebie-jeebies, you should see the gruesome pieces displayed inside the airport.�
��
“We’ll have to skip the morbid art tour. Kai’s meeting us in the parking garage.” A creepy shiver rattled my spine as I gave the demonic statue my back and took in the strange terminal sprawling beyond it. The novel architecture of the roof made it look like a few dozen giant teepees had been crammed together, their white canvases glowing under the looming moon.
According to Roman’s notes, the Blood Authority Training Center was nearly impossible to find. The entrance was located off a defunct baggage tunnel from the airport’s faulty first run at an automated system. The notes hinted at the possibility of some government bunker hidden beneath the airport, too. But as long as the apocalypse kept its distance, the BATC officials didn’t have to worry about sharing the bat cave.
Collins braked as we entered the east parking garage, letting the Toyota crawl past the rows and rows of vehicles. It was pushing four in the morning, so we didn’t encounter too many travelers. Just a winding, endless sea of cars, packed in tight to await their owners’ returns from whatever business or pleasure had sent them jetting off across the country.
I counted down the numbers and levels, helping Collins search for our designated spot. We were an hour earlier than the time in the admittance letters requested we arrive. Make that two hours, I noted, as the time zone updated on the screen of my cell phone. But when the Toyota was finally parked and we stepped out to stretch our legs, Kai Natani was waiting. His bald head shone brightly in the harsh overhead lighting.
If I hadn’t known he’d be meeting us, I wouldn’t have recognized him. The black fatigues he wore were a stark contrast to the fancy suit he’d prowled around in at Nigel’s party. Though the cocky confidence was familiar.
“Eager thing, aren’t you?” His voice echoed through the garage as he reached to take my hand. I didn’t consider myself dainty by any means, but Kai was a beast. His sausage-sized fingers engulfed mine, and he gave me a jarring shake that I strained to smile through. No flirty knuckle kisses this time.
Blood in the Water (Blood Vice Book 3) Page 3
