by Cameron Dean
“I have some business matters to attend to,” he said. “And I’m sure the two of you would like to be alone. I’ll be in my study if you need me, Candace.”
Bibi made a slow circuit of the living room, her high-heeled shoes clicking sharply against the polished wood floor. I saw her pause before a case of Egyptian artifacts. The house was filled with priceless antiquities, objects related to Ash’s business.
“This is absolutely stunning,” Bibi said at last. “Precisely what I would have expected from Ash. You’ve done well for yourself, Candace. But then you obviously know that. It’s pretty clear you’re here by choice.”
“Is that why you’re here?” I asked. “To insult me? If so, maybe you should go right now.” I sighed, realized Bibi was the last person I wanted to fight with, then softened my tone. “We’ve both had long nights, Bibi. I am genuinely sorry about what happened to Randolph, and about the way I reacted. You called me for support. I let you down. Is Randolph—”
“Recovering,” Bibi answered shortly. “They’ve given him a transfusion. He’s stabilized.”
“Then why have you come?”
“You can ask me that?” she said. “For the love of God, Candace, you’ve moved in with Ash. The sonofabitch is a fucking vampire, a fact you seem to have forgotten.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” I said. “And that sonofabitch is the man I love.”
“How in hell can you say that?” Bibi exploded. “How can you love him, knowing what he is, what he does?”
“I don’t have to explain myself.”
“I think you’d damned well better,” Bibi all but yelled. “I want to know why the man I love is lying in a hospital with his throat torn out, and you’re getting all cozy with a vampire, Candace. I think I deserve that much.”
“Bibi,” I said holding up my hands. “Ash did not attack Randolph. He wouldn’t have. In the first place, the timing isn’t right. We’ve been together since the afternoon. In the second place, it just doesn’t make sense.”
“Don’t be deliberately stupid,” she said. “Of course it does. The scarab is missing, Candace. The one from the auction. The one Randolph and Ash both bid on. Randolph made special arrangements to take possession of it early. The last person on the security tapes is the courier from the auction house. Randolph took what Ash wanted, and Ash came to take it back. Randolph fought, so Ash tore his fucking throat out.”
“No,” I said, moving to her, taking her shoulders between my hands. Bibi was shaking, deep, hard tremors that started in the gut. “That is not what happened, Bibi. Ash wouldn’t do that.”
“Will you listen to yourself?” she exclaimed, pushing my hands from her shoulders. “You’re defending him! You’re defending a vampire!”
“Not just any vampire,” I said. “We’re talking about Ash. I know he did not do this, Bibi. I know it.”
The scarab. The scarab is missing, I thought. Now, more than ever, the true culprit seemed plain. It had to be Sloane.
Bibi actually backed away from me then. It would have been a ridiculous, theatrical gesture if it hadn’t gone clean through my heart.
“For pity’s sake, Candace,” she said. “Just how stupid do you think I am? I saw what Randolph looked like before the paramedics arrived. I’m the one who found him. I know what a vampire does to a human body. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten that, too.”
“No,” I said. “Of course not.”
“Then tell me what the hell you’re doing here,” she said. “What the hell is going on?”
“I don’t think I can answer that,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Then come with me,” Bibi said at once. “You simply cannot stay here, Candace. You can’t stay with Ash. Surely you can see that much.”
“I have to stay with him,” I said. “And no, I can’t tell you why. Just please believe me when I tell you Ash did not attack Randolph.”
“You can’t even hear yourself anymore, can you?” Bibi asked. “You sound like an addict coming up with excuses.”
I knew that was exactly what I sounded like. And I knew that there was nothing short of the truth that would persuade her otherwise.
“You tell me Ash didn’t do this,” she went on, her voice furious. “Okay, for the sake of argument, let’s say you’re right. It doesn’t change a goddamned thing. Ash is a vampire. Precisely the kind of vampire you once swore you would dedicate your life to stamping out.
“But here you are, singing the same old song. Telling me how much you love him. How in the hell can you do that and still sleep at night? How can you love him knowing what he is, what he does? Your love is going to literally be the death of you, Candace. You have got to let Ash go.”
“I can’t, Bibi,” I said. “I know it seems wrong. But that is the one thing I simply cannot do. It would be better for us both if you stopped asking it of me.”
Her face went blank, as if I had struck her so hard a blow, I had wiped all expression from it.
“That’s it, then,” Bibi said. “We’re done. I can’t be your friend if you’re going to do this, Candace. And you shouldn’t ask that of me. We both know what Ash is capable of. You’re not the only one with scars.”
She turned toward the door.
“Bibi, don’t go like this,” I said. “All I’m asking—”
“It doesn’t matter, Candace,” she said as she spun back around. The emotion was back now. In her voice and in her face. Great silent tears tracked steadily down her cheeks and she made no attempt to stop them.
“You don’t have the right to ask anything of me. Not anymore. As of this moment, our friendship is officially over. Somebody else can have the dubious distinction of identifying your body at the morgue.”
“Bibi, you don’t understand,” I said.
“You know what, Candace?” she replied. “You’re absolutely right. I have never understood how you can love Ash, knowing what he is. The difference now is that I just don’t care anymore.”
Once again, she turned to go, hands scrunched deep inside her jacket pockets. And suddenly, Ash was there, materializing as if from thin air. I had no idea if he had heard any of what had passed between Bibi and me. It doesn’t really matter, I thought.
Bibi started at his sudden reappearance. “You just stay away from me, you undead bastard,” she snarled.
As if in slow motion, I watched it happen. Saw the way her right hand rose, straight up, out of her jacket pocket. Her fist was clenched, and in it, something long and straight that caught the light. I was running before I even knew my body was in motion. Stepping between the woman I had trusted more than any other human in the world and the man I loved. As finally, finally, Ash himself began to move, pivoting away from her, turning his body aside. He pulled me with him, and the silver stake Bibi clenched so tightly in her upraised fist missed him and sliced cleanly down my arm. The cut was shallow, not deep enough to kill, the pain more intense than any I had ever known.
I gave a shrill and startled cry, cradling my wounded arm against my body. I felt Ash’s arms come up to protect me as he completed the pivot, placing himself between me and Bibi, my face against the wall as he shielded me with his own body. But even as he turned, I heard Bibi’s horrified exclamation, the clatter of the silver as it tumbled to the floor.
“No,” I heard her gasp. “Sweet God in heaven, no. No. No!”
And I knew, in that moment, that our friendship was truly over. Because, in that moment, Bibi knew the truth. My reaction to the silver had given me away. I had not reacted like a human being, but like a vampire.
“Are you all right?” I heard Ash say. “Answer me, Candace. Are you all right?”
I swallowed once, then a second time before I could force words up and out of my throat. My arm was throbbing as if Bibi had dragged a red-hot poker down it. “Yes,” I said, then swallowed once again. “Ash, I’m fine.”
“The hell you are.”
I felt his arms fall away then heard Bibi’s startled, terrifi
ed cry. And then there was a third and final sound: the sound of Bibi’s body as it smacked up against the opposite wall. After that, a silence so profound it seemed to me that it had swallowed the entire world. Slowly, leaning against the wall for support, I turned toward that silence.
Bibi was pinned against the wall, trembling and gasping. Her hands were above her head, wrists captured tightly between one of Ash’s hands. With his other, he had forced her head back to expose her throat. I watched as he put his mouth upon it, parting his lips so that his teeth rested against Bibi’s bare skin.
“Ash,” I said, my voice no more than a promise of sound. “No. Don’t.”
“You are going to listen to me, Bibi,” he said, and I knew she felt every single motion of his lips, his teeth against her throat. “And you are going to do exactly what I tell you…. You are going to leave this house and never come back. You are going to leave Candace alone. If you hurt her again, in any way, I will do something much, much worse than end your life. I will make you a drone to the end of your days. My drone. You will never have an instant of existence that does not have me in it, and I will do my best to make it a living hell. Tell me that you understand me. Nod your head.”
Her eyes shut tight now, Bibi managed one shaky nod. Ash stepped back, releasing her as if she were filthy and he could no longer bear to touch her.
“Then we’re finished here,” he said. “Get out.”
She doubled over, clutching her stomach as if in pain—or to prevent herself from throwing up. She staggered down the length of the hallway, crashed against the door. Sobbing openly now, she wrenched it open then dashed out into the night.
Ash turned to me, took me in his arms. “She hurt you,” he raged, and I could hear the open anguish in his voice. “She hurt you. I didn’t stop it.”
“She didn’t mean to,” I said as I felt my own arms come around him. The burning in my right arm was a little less now. I knew why. The skin near where the silver had touched was dead. “She meant to hurt you.”
“And so she did,” Ash said. “Just not the way she wanted. You should go to the pool, Candace. The water will help.”
“Come with me,” I said.
He stepped away, released me then. “No. There is something else that I must do.”
Even as I asked, I knew what it was.
“Not a human being, Ash,” I said, moving so that I was between him and the open front door. “Promise me it will not be human.”
“I can’t do that, and you know it. Now get out of my way.”
“Ash,” I said, my voice breaking even on that single syllable. “For the love of God.”
I saw it happen in that moment. Saw the beast inside the man, saw the desperate needs of the vampire. Ash’s eyes glowed with a fierce and feral light. His cheekbones stood out in stark relief, as if the skin was stretched over them too tightly. His hands flexed at his sides. His body seemed to ripple, as if struggling to contain that great need inside his own skin.
“Candace,” he said, and I heard the almost unimaginable control in his voice, a control he possessed only through the power of his love. “You can’t stop this and neither can I. If you love me, if you ever loved me, get out of my way. Right now.”
I moved then, no more than a single step, and Ash moved past me, into the night.
I waited up for him, unable to sleep. All that night my thoughts circled: Sloane’s attack on me. Whatever it was he wanted with Ash. The scarab. Sloane’s attack on Randolph. My house being ransacked. The Board. They were all pieces of a whole, I was sure of it. I just couldn’t quite see how those pieces fit together.
Ash came back to me shortly before dawn. I did not hear the front door open, but suddenly I knew he was there. I don’t know that I can truly explain how. In the primal fashion that every animal recognizes the nearness of its mate, I suppose. One moment I knew I was alone; the next, I was absolutely certain I was not. I swung stiff legs over the side of the couch and stood. Ash was standing just beyond the reach of the light.
He smelled of blood.
“Candace,” he said, and I almost did not recognize the sound of his voice. Weakness and strength, elation and self-loathing. All these were there, all so inextricably bound together they would never be wrested apart. Bibi looked at Ash and saw only evil. I saw so much more.
His voice was quiet when he spoke. “You shouldn’t be here. I don’t want you here now. Go away. Leave me alone.”
I took two steps and watched the way he shifted back.
“No,” I said. One single syllable, without heat. “I am not ever going to leave you, Ash. There’s no point in asking me to step back. There’s no place I can, or want, to go.”
“Candace,” he said again, a shuddering, tortured gasp of sound. I moved to him then, and this time he did not step away. Bloody as he was, I took him into my arms. He bent his head and buried it against the crook of my neck. “Alive,” he choked out. “I left—I didn’t—”
I kissed him then and felt the way his body trembled at my touch. “That is part of why I love you,” I said. “Now come with me and take your own advice. Let the water soothe you, Ash. Let me soothe you. Let me wash away the blood.”
Silently, arms around each other’s waists, we walked through the darkened house. When we reached the pool, I eased Ash down onto a seat, knelt to slip off his shoes, then stood and slid out of my robe. I led him into the water fully clothed, glad the water that enveloped us was dark. I did not want to see the way the blood leached away from his clothes, from his body. I dunked his head, and heard him give a gasp of what might be the beginnings of a laugh. Then I stripped the clothing from his body and let it sink to the bottom.
I felt him reach for me then, pulling me to him so that we stood toe-to-toe, pressing me tight along the length of his body. His hands splayed against my back as if he wanted to touch as much of me as possible.
“Feel me, Candace,” I heard him whisper against my hair. “Do you feel the way we fit together? There is no part of me that does not love you.”
“That makes us even, then,” I said. “In spite of the fact that you’re taller.”
He laughed then, the sound ringing out into the moist darkness. “I can’t decide if I am cursed or charmed.”
“You are both,” I said. “And so am I. It’s part of what holds us together, Ash.” I slid my hands down his back to cup his ass, felt the way his cock came to life against my thigh.
I reached up, and brought his mouth to mine. There, in the darkness, we made a slow and healing love. The water around us moving as we moved, stroking as we stroked, buoying us up, offering the chance to be reborn. And when it was over, as I held Ash in my arms, I was glad of the water, for it meant he could not know that there were tears upon my cheeks. Even as Ash had filled me, as I had cried out his name in the fierce joy of climax, listened to him cry out mine, I knew the truth.
This could not go on.
He had taken human blood tonight, living human blood. For me. For both of us. But soon, very soon, not even this would be enough. Which are you, Candace? I asked myself, as I held Ash tight. Which will you be?
Dead or undead. No life at all or vampire. I must make the choice, or I would lose us both.
Twelve
“Tell me about Sloane.”
We were in the kitchen, the shades drawn against the bright mid-morning sun. The scent of coffee filled the air. I sat at the counter that ringed the perimeter, perched on a high stool. Ash stood just opposite. The remains of croissants littered two plates. It looked like a normal, human morning, a scene we had deliberately conjured up. As if determined to make everything look as normal as possible while we discussed the far-from-it.
Ash gave me a weary look. “Candace, I’ve already told you I won’t discuss this. For your own safety and—”
“No,” I said. “That doesn’t work anymore. Sloane not only attacked me, and is apparently after you, but Randolph Glass is now lying in a hospital, half dead. How many mor
e people is Sloane going to take apart before you decide to tell me what you know?”
“I don’t know all that much about him,” Ash admitted. “I first encountered him in San Francisco, the same night I met you, in fact.” He paused for a moment, took a sip of coffee.
You’re stalling, Ash, I thought.
“How?”
He glanced up as he set the mug back down on the counter. “What?”
“How did you meet him?” I asked. “Vampire social club?”
“Not precisely,” Ash said with an attempt at a smile. “We met because we were…selected, I guess you could say. To be competitors in a high-stakes contest.”
He paused again and I knew the instant he gave up his internal struggle, just as I knew the reason for it: There was nowhere else to go.
“What sort of contest?” I asked.
“To fill a vacant seat on the Board.”
And there it was. Almost literally the last thing Ash and I had quarreled about in a night filled with bitter pain and recriminations. A night that had occurred almost three months ago. A quarrel that had resulted in an utter break between us, an estrangement that had ended only because of Sloane’s attack on me. The Board. I had asked about it then, and again after the auction, but Ash had refused to explain, claiming that it was safer for me not to know.
“Who won?”
“Depends on your perspective,” Ash said. “Certainly most vampires would say it was Sloane. He is now a member of the Board, able to draw upon their powers, which are considerable. On the downside, in my book anyway, he’s also their pawn. To join the Board means absolute dedication to its goals, even at the expense of your own. The only option is absolute obedience to the Board’s will. It’s either that or be destroyed.”
I took a sip of my coffee. “How did he beat you?” I asked. “I would have said, having seen the two of you together, that you’re both stronger and smarter than Sloane. He’s certainly vicious, but it seems to me that you have more…depth.”
