by Mary Hughes
This was what no one understood about my brother. He was always thinking about other people first, looking out for their comfort and wellbeing. He’s really all-the-way-down sweet. “Thanks, Dirk. But I’m meeting a suspect. What time is it?”
“Nine-fifteen.”
“Damn it. I have to go.”
“Okay.” He waved buh-bye. “Well, I’d better tell Captain Titus I found you.”
That froze my feet. “Titus wanted me? Why?”
“Oh, he wanted an update right away. No wait. He said—” Dirk punched himself in the gonads, and sang, “Right away!”
Blow me down with the Four Winds of Fuck. I’d done good cop work taking my phone to CSI, but I’d thrown it away for a good…okay, great…okay, mind-blowing orgasm—which, while awesome, was neither good cop nor work.
Much as I wanted to run down Smith, I suddenly realized I’d been an imbecile. Confronting a Most Wanted alone without backup was even worse cop work, and too-stupid-to-live besides. I sighed. The smart thing was to see what Tight-Ass wanted.
Many hours later, my ears ringing from the searing lecture Tight-Ass gave me, I walked home depressed. I’d done good cop work but now even my good cop work didn’t cut it. Less than a week on the job and I bungled even the things I’d formerly done well. So Ruffles.
I opened my kitchen door and was smacked in the face with eau de wet skunk doused in garlic. “What…?” I coughed, waved aside nose-hair curling smoke. Vaguely I saw my mother at the stove, stirring a concoction that sparked pea green and sickly yellow. Lumps waved at me from the sauce pan. Not really, but it seemed like it. “Mom? What are you doing?”
“Sunny! Come in, come in. The new green bean casserole recipe with the lovely protein-packed fried earthworms gave me the idea. Crunchy yet healthy.” She pointed at the windowsill and a row of what I’d thought were suet balls. “Cheese balls rolled in a coating of crunchy-yet-healthy protein-packed fried—”
“Thanks, Mom. I’ll be surprised.” I pressed a hand to my mouth and ran.
My bedroom was stuffed back under the sloped roof of our Cape Cod home. I managed to get upstairs without my stomach hitting the emergency ejector.
There, I sat slumped on my bed, waiting for the energy to undress and go to sleep.
A tingling crossed my skin. My nipples perked up. I stared at them, flabbergasted. How dare they be excited when I was having a good sulk?
The shadows shifted. “Are you all right?”
“Blackthorne?” I jerked straight. “Blackthorne?”
He didn’t appear so much as divide from the slanted shadows, like cells of darkness reproducing.
I blinked at him. But he didn’t waver or poof or turn out to be the product of sniffing too much cheese ball smoke. “I’m fine.”
“Ah.” He sat next to me, not touching except for the heat emanating in delicious quantity from his forceful body. “Fine.”
“Yes.” When he didn’t say anything, I added, “Mostly.”
“Hmm.”
“All right, not really. But I will be fine. I always am.”
“Work?”
I blew air. The man—vampire—was too damned perceptive. “Yes. Being a cop is my job, the only one I’ve ever wanted. It’ll work out. It has to.”
“What happened?”
Just those two words and then silence. Silence and caring black eyes, focused totally on me. Or actually caring slightly bloodshot eyes. I opened my mouth to ask him if he was okay. My only excuse is a lifetime spent trying to be heard over the roar of Ruffles—trying to even get a couple words in edgewise. A lifetime of words, forming in my brain, never making it any further.
All my troubles came pouring out instead.
Blabber-blah-blah-blippity-bloppety-boo. I told him everything, Titus taking my gun, my concern that Smith was after him, my fear that I couldn’t cut it as a cop, even that Elena had set me on him.
Through it all he nodded and simply listened, silent except for when he made encouraging noises. “Ah”, “I see”, and “umm-hmm”. That deep “umm-hmm” was more effective than any truth serum.
As I wound down, a drip trickled along my cheek. I extracted a hand—somewhere along the way I’d burrowed into his arms—and brushed it off. “I’m such a Ruffles.”
“That’s not what I see.”
“Oh? What do you see besides a complete failure? A pipsqueak mouse who can’t cut the job?”
He brushed a kiss on my forehead. “I see a strong, determined cop. A woman who’s hit a roadblock but who won’t let that stop her.”
I straightened and stared at him. How did this man, this vampire I’d only met a few days ago, know exactly the right thing to say?
I grabbed his ears and kissed him. I would’ve done a lot more but he pulled away. “Sunrise is coming. I need to go.”
You’re needed here. I was silent.
He rose and went to the window, where he stood gazing out. “You keep Meiers Corners safe. Don’t worry about Smith. Her real name is Eloise and she’s a vampire, so she’s my problem.” He turned from the window. “Don’t try to find me anymore, or follow me.”
I sat in stunned silence. The only thing I heard was Smith wasn’t Smith, but a vampire named Eloise.
“Sunny. Promise me.”
“Sure.” It’s not a promise if you don’t know what you’re promising.
“Good. Be well, Sunny.” He dropped into mist and filtered out the cracks in the windowpane.
My heart followed him out.
Chapter Fifteen
Chicago area, 1810
The boy clawed his way from the grave in terror. He burst into the light, spitting dirt, his mouth dry. The moment he left the soil, any strength the terror had given him drained away, leaving him weak and trembling. He lay on his back, gasping, his heart rattling his ribs.
Then, in his head, he heard, “Beautiful Son. Life, friendship and love. Fight.”
His mother’s voice focused him. The bright light resolved into a silvered moon. The rattling of his heart slowed, revealing a second heartbeat.
He didn’t think, only reacted. He leaped for the heartbeat, teeth aching to bite, not knowing what he intended, only that he was so thirsty.
A fist sent him plowing back into the soil.
“First rule. I own you.” It was the rich trader. The vampire. “Your name is now Aiden. Do what I say and you’ll have shelter and full veins. Defy me and you’ll know more pain than you thought possible. Come.”
The boy followed, crawling after the vampire—to kill him. Drink his blood.
He stopped, shocked at his own thoughts.
As if the trader had heard those thoughts, he turned, a smile twisting his lips. “If you attack me, I’ll tear your arms from your body, break both your legs and take your head off.”
Aiden kept any further thoughts buried deep.
It took all his concentration and will to drag himself after the vampire. His limbs were almost useless. His skin was torn and his muscles aching by the time he reached the trader’s home, a large two-story house. Servants buzzed in and out, maid and man. Aiden didn’t detect any other vampires.
The trader bound Aiden’s limbs with stout rope then signaled a burly man. The servant picked Aiden up. The man’s pulse pounded just out of reach of his fangs, calling. Aiden strained but the ropes held.
The burly servant clumped down a set of stairs and dumped Aiden onto bare ground. Soft and cool, the soil felt strangely like the finest furs to Aiden’s torn flesh.
The rich trader followed—and slashed the burly man’s neck.
Aiden’s mouth gaped in shock.
The vampire tilted the body. Blood spurted into Aiden’s open mouth. He swallowed on reflex.
The blood hit his veins like air, bright, pure and alive. He swallowed more, and more, until it hi
t him what he was drinking.
He spat out the mouthful and clamped his lips shut. The burly man’s final moments of life splattered across his face.
The trader picked Aiden up and backhanded him. Aiden plowed into the soil. Instinct made him burrow like a worm.
Hands wrapped around his ankles and dragged him topside. The vampire grabbed Aiden by the jaw—and crushed it.
Aiden screamed in pain. The vampire laughed and flipped Aiden on his back. Then the vampire seized the corpse’s feet and held the body upside down over Aiden’s face. Blood streamed into Aiden’s ruined maw. Aiden tried not to swallow but the stuff poured in, directly into him, into his veins.
When the last drops dribbled out, the rich man threw the body away.
A loud crack shocked Aiden’s ears. His pain ebbed, heralding a miracle. His jawbone was knitting.
He looked down at himself. His torn flesh had closed as well. He felt stronger. Better than he’d felt in his life.
He tested his strength on the rope. A yank of his arms and the rope didn’t just break, it burst. He tore the bonds from his legs and threw them disdainfully away.
“Good.” The rich man gestured—and the long blade of a hunting knife swept into Aiden’s view.
Aiden rolled. The knife slashed the soil where he’d been. Aiden sprang to his feet. A slender, quick human in black was already pulling the knife from the soil and attacking in the same motion.
Aiden stopped the blade between his palms. “Impressive,” the vampire said. “Most newly risen can barely move.” Aiden ignored the trader. He twisted the knife out of the slender man’s grip and threw it away. It flew across the cellar into the fieldstone wall—embedding in the mortar. A head-butt to the jaw sent the quick man, not just reeling, but crashing.
Aiden stared at the man’s broken form, fetched up against the fieldstones. How had he gotten so strong?
The trader vampire only smiled. “You have some training already. Good.” His fist plowed into Aiden’s face.
Blackness.
He woke to another knife stabbing toward his chest. He rolled away, barely before it cut his heart out.
That was the start of Aiden’s life with Nosferatu.
The training was harsh to the point of soul-killing, but that was the point. Aiden was the only one in those early days, and Nosferatu bragged to him of his plans to make an assassin army. The vampire meant to turn more boys, make them dependent on him, brainwash them into utter loyalty, and turn them all into killing machines with one finger on the trigger, Nosferatu’s own.
The vampire master set Aiden the task of watching the graves of the bitten, waiting for the one in a hundred that rose.
Those were dark, dark days for Aiden. For all of Nosferatu’s horrific training, his depredations, that was what really nearly destroyed Aiden’s soul. Waiting for dead boys, killed in terror and pain, to rise. The ones who did were filled with unnatural hunger and fear. Aiden took them home to Nosferatu—where else would they go? But there he watched them transformed into monsters.
Those who stayed dead were the lucky ones.
Then one night a clever boy with hair of sunshine rose. Though an orphan like all the rest, he didn’t automatically buy into Nosferatu’s brainwashing. His name was Ric.
For the first time Aiden felt like he wasn’t alone.
Life, friendship and love. They are worth fighting for.
Aiden only realized after Ric came, and he’d heard her once again, that his mother’s voice had gone silent.
Aiden went directly to the Dawn barn from Sunny’s home. He worked off his frustration from that kiss…and everything before it…by bucking freight. He did a night’s worth of loading in an hour. By the time he was well and truly tired, the front office staff had gone for the night. Aiden joined a couple of truckers heading downstairs to the subterranean rec room, with its plasma television, rich soil and plenty of cold beer.
Good beer, because he’d handpicked most of the six-packs himself.
Elwood passed around pics of his new baby. His mate was a human living in St. Louis, near the southern edge of Coterie territory. He couldn’t wait to get back to her.
Even last week Aiden wouldn’t have understood that. Now, he thought of Sunny. To see her again… But it would have to wait until after meeting with Ric tonight. He deliberately settled back, closed his eyes and concentrated on soaking in as much energy as possible.
Chicago, 1816
Sixteen-year-old Aiden was plotting with his best friend Ric how to escape their hated maker when he felt danger on his skin.
An instant later he smelled blood. Human.
Eloise. Their little friend was in trouble. Aiden was too young to mist, so he raced along the underground passages, Ric following. He chafed until she came into view, struggling against a muscular boy.
She was in the clutches of the assassin-trainee Nosferatu had dubbed Samson, an overdeveloped fifteen-year-old with both ego and appetite to match. A spray of posies lay scattered on the soil.
Aiden growled. She’d been mooning over the ass for weeks now. Both Aiden and Ric had warned her off, but Eloise was stubborn. Had she tried to make nice with the vampire boy? Had he smelled human and only thought food? Nobody knew Eloise was Nosferatu’s daughter.
Aiden tore the boy from her throat. Her blood welled from fanglet-sized holes. Ric ran in to seal them. Aiden let his emotions get the better of him and punched the ass Samson in the nose.
Stupid, because it gave the boy time to draw his knife. Aiden disdainfully palmed the knife to one side, even more stupid because the boy had somehow gotten hold of one of Nosferatu’s silver-edged blades. The knife sliced Aiden’s palm, deep enough to cut tendons—and the silver meant it wouldn’t heal for months.
Laughing, Samson attacked again. A mistake because Aiden was equally facile with his other hand. He blocked easily then spun a hook kick into the little bastard’s head, caught the knife midair when it popped out of Samson’s hand—by the handle this time—and with a couple sharp whacks made sure Samson wouldn’t bother anyone for awhile.
He turned to Eloise. Her eyes were big. “My hero.”
“Hardly.” Aiden pressed the heel of his uninjured hand against the cut to slow the bleeding. “A hero wouldn’t have rushed in without a plan.”
“You’re hurt. Let me help.” She tore the sash from her dress. He leaned against the wall and let her wrap it around his cut, watching her. She was being unusually tender.
It made him uncomfortable, which made him brusque. “What were you doing with Samson anyway? We warned you against him.”
“He was so comely. I didn’t mean any harm.” She hesitated in her wrapping. “I just wanted a kiss on the cheek. But he was mean to me.”
“Poor Eloise.” Ric patted her head. “He didn’t deserve your kiss.”
She flashed him a brief smile, then went back to wrapping Aiden’s hand. Still tender.
“We’re your friends,” he scolded. “Me and Ric. Not asshole Samson. We’re your partners and you’d do well to remember that.”
She peeked up at him. Her cheeks were rosy. “Partners.”
Aiden’s neck prickled.
A stream of gray mist shot around the corner. Aiden stepped back, an arm barred over both Ric and Eloise.
The mist columned, resolving into their master, Nosferatu. “Eloise, are you all right?”
He shoved Aiden away so hard Aiden hit Ric and the two tumbled. When Aiden came to a stop the vampire was peering closely at his daughter’s neck. He switched his red glare to Aiden and Ric. “If she were bleeding, you’d be dead.” He turned his attention back to his daughter, solicitous. “Come away from these ruffians. These dirty boys aren’t meant for the likes of you.”
“Yes, Papa.” Eloise tucked her hand in his and went with him, her gaze on him full of filial love.
Nosferatu glanced at Aiden over his shoulder. His gaze promised retribution as soon as his daughter was safely in her room.
While Nosferatu glared, Eloise also looked over her shoulder at the boys. She tipped a smile and small wave at Ric.
She blew Aiden a kiss.
Aiden’s eyes opened automatically at sunset. The television was dark, the room silent except for Elwood, quietly conversing on the phone with his mate. Aiden lifted himself from the soil and shook off most of it. For his work tonight, a little dirt obscuring his scent would help. He made his preparations then headed for the door, passing the trucker on his way with a mouthed, “I’ll be out.” Elwood nodded.
Aiden had carefully picked his meeting spot with Ric. Not too exposed, not too enclosed. He’d settled on the Caffeine Café, the local 24/7 eatery. The café itself was always busy but they had a private room upstairs that was swept regularly for bugs. Not many knew about the room but Aiden made it his business to know such things. He’d called earlier to reserve it and now misted inside from a block away so his scent wouldn’t lead enemies to him.
Then he waited. Enemies couldn’t smell him but Ric could locate him by blood memory. Assuming Ric had driven down last night and stayed somewhere near, but not in, Meiers Corners, he’d be here soon.
Sure enough, just before nine the air swirled. Reflex made Aiden slide back into the shadows as the mist collapsed into his best—his only—friend.
Six-two with spiky blond hair, Ric Holiday’s chiseled features and his eyes, the color of a summer sky, used to make human women sigh and open both their advertising purses and their beds. Now Aiden’s friend only cared about making one woman sigh, his wife and expectant mother, Dr. Synnove Byornsson.
“Where’s your better half?” Aiden asked.
Ric stiffened before his head came around. “I see you’re still skulking in shadows, trying to scare the cool kids.”
Aiden could hear the bravado in his friend’s voice. “What’s wrong?”
Sure enough, Ric crumpled into a chair. “Synnove. Eloise took her.”
