by Zoe Winters
Anthony laughed. Paul was an impertinent little fledge. Young, cocky, but entertaining as hell. Vampires were only allowed to turn a certain number of people for obvious survival and food supply reasons.
Anthony had doubted he’d ever use up that allotment or turn even one human, but when a twenty-something boy had saved his life, he knew he owed him something in return. Learning Paul had been dying only reinforced the choice to gift him with eternal life.
“I ran into a little problem.”
It wasn’t standard practice for a vampire to let his fledglings in on his personal plans and goings-on, but Paul was a friend. Anthony briefly filled him in on the events from biting Greta to siphon the poison, to Charlotte holed up in her room with anti-vampire protections in place.
“Damn, Boss. When you fuck shit up, you fuck it up.”
Anthony growled, but there was no menace behind it. “I wish you’d stop calling me that. It makes it sound like I hired you to work for me at the Piggly Wiggly.”
The boy’s brows scrunched up. “What’s a Piggly Wiggly?”
“Never mind.”
Paul shrugged. “I guess you don’t need to feed then.”
Anthony grimaced as his mind flashed to his earlier feeding with Charlotte wriggling on his lap, the air so heavy with the scent of her arousal he’d nearly drowned in it. They’d both been on the edge of throwing caution to the wind for a good old-fashioned animal fucking. But her fear and the manners he’d somehow developed where she was concerned, had put it to an abrupt halt.
Which was probably for the best. The night before the tournament wasn’t the wisest time to be indulging in such things. He needed to stay focused.
“Hey, Boss?”
Anthony looked up.
“Have you considered withdrawing your name from the competition?”
He’d considered it about forty times since putting the claim on Charlotte, but if Linus won and Anthony didn’t at least compete to try to stop it, he’d never forgive himself.
Linus would end their kind and all the progress they’d made. It would celebrate the worst of them and leave the weakest for the picking by junior Van Helsing or Buffy wannabes stalking the night with crosses and holy water.
“You know I can’t do that.”
Paul nodded in understanding and fell back into a fighting stance. The younger vamp was no match for Anthony’s strength, but he had a different enough fighting style, the elder vampire believed he was gaining some benefit from the sparring.
Paul fought dirty. Being young, he just about had to. Even taken under Anthony’s wing, there were times when things got ugly. Anthony was betting Linus would be fighting dirty as well, so for once he was learning from his fledge instead of teaching.
“Why do you want to lead the coven anyway?” Paul asked an hour later. He appeared wiped out, not yet having developed quite the standard level of vampire stamina. “If it was me, I’d take the girl and run.”
Anthony grinned. “I wish it were that simple. She’s tied to me now. If I run and Linus wins, then we’re always running, for at least the next century. More, if whoever wins after Linus is someone he’s groomed for the position.”
The state of the vampire race had grown restless. A small faction was tired of hiding and heavily supported Linus and his policies. Anthony felt they were short-sighted, and Linus would drive them further into caves and crypts. Whereas now, cloaked in secrecy, they existed alongside the human world without incident.
There were too many young vampires who didn’t remember a time when the world knew they existed and hunted them when they were most vulnerable. It would have been so easy for Charlotte to kill him in his sleep. Some of the coven didn’t fully comprehend the problems that would come their way if they went back to being the horror-movie creature that lurked in the night.
“Someone’s coming,” Anthony said, pulling Paul into the shadows.
“Who’s that?”
He realized he was growling. “Jane. Gregory’s girl.”
Paul scented the air. “But she’s human.”
Anthony chuckled. “Yeah, that seems to be going around.”
“She smells good.” Paul’s eyes flashed and glowed, his fangs extending.
“Easy there, sport. It’ll piss Gregory off.”
The fledge turned with a toothy grin, his fangs flashing in the moonlight. “So? Do we care?”
“I knew there was a reason I turned you.”
Paul chuckled and went to hunt his prey.
Anthony hung back and watched for awhile. He could hear the soft crying that had driven her out to this isolated place to lick her wounds in private. Then he smelled her fear. Of Paul?
Paul closely resembled a department store catalog model. Hardly threatening, even alone in a playground at night, especially to someone like Jane who’d decided to throw her self-preservation instincts to the wind and hang out with vampires as a fun hobby.
He lingered for a minute and focused in on Jane to see what he could get from her. The girl could sense vampires, handy skill for a vampire groupie. How she’d managed to fall under the radar without being enthralled to Gregory, he didn’t know. But he was going to keep an eye on her.
Chapter Twelve
Charlee woke to find herself tangled in the bedsheets as if she’d gone three rounds with a prize fighter. She’d been sleeping later at Anthony’s place with so little sunlight streaming in. Her arm dangled over the side of the bed, fumbling until she found her purse. She dug in the bag for her cell, then pressed one on the speed dial.
“Lawson’s Bookshoppe, Greta speaking.”
“It’s me,” she said, her voice still thick with sleep.
There was a pause from Greta’s end.
“I remember everything.” Somehow it sounded anticlimactic when she said it out loud. It should have felt like bigger news, but the past couple of days without her memory were starting to feel like a glitch. “Greta, are you there?”
“I’m here. Sorry, I was helping a customer and trying to figure out how to ask my next question away from prying ears.”
Charlee solved the conundrum for her. “I know about the cat thing. When my memories came back I got all of them, even those Anthony erased the first time.”
She was beginning to wish she’d had this conversation face to face. She climbed out of the bed with the phone still pressed to her ear, listening to Greta ring up customers.
She stopped in front of the mirror and stared at her neck. Unlike the first bite, this one had left a mark. She suspected it was the claiming, rather than the later feeding. She shivered at that last thought. No, don’t think about that. She wasn’t an expert on the ways of the vampire, but the mark seemed to say: This one’s mine. Trespassers will be shot on sight.
“Are you okay?” Greta finally asked.
“Yeah,” she lied, running her finger over the puckered mark. It wasn’t discreet. What was she going to wear from now on? Hello, high school turtleneck flashback. Only now it could be a permanent problem instead of a temporary embarrassment.
“I’ve got you on the schedule for tomorrow.”
“That should be fine, I guess. The tournament is tonight.”
“Wait. What? What does that have to do with you? Where are you?”
“I’m at Anthony’s apartment.”
Greta shrieked over the phone at a decibel level that would make a banshee proud. “You’re WHERE? Why are you still there? Don’t you remember anything I told you about him?”
Yes, she remembered. And for once she wished she’d listened. Not that her level of listening skills had much to do with her current predicament.
“I’ll drop everything and come get you.”
“Calm down. We’ll talk about this tomorrow, okay?”
Another pause. “Fine. But don’t let him smooth talk you. You don’t want to be any more closely connected with a vampire than you have to be. You’re new to this world, but trust me when I tell you this.”
&
nbsp; Her finger traced over the claiming mark again. Too late for that. “Yeah, okay.”
She laid the cell on the vanity and looked back at her reflection. She took the cross off, placing it next to the phone, and went to turn on the shower. She was well and truly fucked.
On the bright side, it seemed as if her jury-rigged protections against Anthony had paid off. Nothing had been disturbed. She stepped around the makeshift cross and into the living area, tripping over something in her path. She looked down. Anthony had moved his mattress to just outside her door, careful to keep it out of the path of sunlight.
She couldn’t decide if it was creepy or endearing. A little of both maybe. She turned to find a wiry college boy lying on the floor with a goth chick asleep on top of him. Jane. Hmm. Weird.
Charlee glanced back down at Anthony. Almost sweet-looking in sleep, no threat to her at the moment. She wondered what it would be like to curl up with him without their baggage. She wasn’t going to do what she was thinking about doing. She bit her lip and looked at the empty spot on the mattress.
He was in hibernation mode. What harm could it do? He wouldn’t wake up; he couldn’t hurt her; there was no chance she’d have to deal with sex. Having made her decision, she pulled back the covers and snuggled in with the vampire.
Before she could decide whether she liked this feeling, his arm had closed around her like the point of no return on a roller coaster ride when the safety bar comes down. Then his fangs were in her throat.
She tensed. “Anthony?” This shouldn’t be happening; he was supposed to be asleep.
Then she realized, he was still asleep. She screamed. “Jane!”
Jane scrambled off the college guy and turned toward the shrieking.
“Jane, help. I can’t get him off me. He’s going to drain me in his sleep.”
She rushed over. “Well hell, Charlee. I don’t know what to do. He’s too strong for me, too. Do you feel weak? Like you’re losing too much blood?”
The panic left her for a minute, and Charlee glared at the goth. “No. He’s just taking a little, but you can drain blood out of a body slowly or quickly. Either way I’m screwed if we don’t get him off me.”
Jane stood contemplating like she had hours to figure something out.
“My cross is on my dresser. I took it off to shower.”
“Gotcha.”
She returned moments later and laid the cross against Anthony’s arm. It repelled him, and Charlee scrambled off the mattress. She put her hand to her neck, expecting to still be bleeding.
Images of 911 calls floated through her mind. You couldn’t just hit that artery and not bleed out. Her hand came away cleaner than she expected.
“Jane, is there blood on my neck?”
“A little, but no holes. It healed.”
“But that can’t happen.”
The goth shrugged. “You’re in way deep, sister.”
“No shit.” Well, there went the picket fence version of her and Anthony. Not that she would have pursued it now anyway. Would she?
“Who’s the guy, and how come he didn’t wake up?”
“Oh, that’s Paul. Greg dumped my ass, and Paul and I hooked up at the playground. He’s Anthony’s minion or something.”
“Anthony has minions?”
“Just the one, I think.”
Charlee took a quick shower and fastened the silver cross around her neck. She had no intention of removing it again. Ever. Potential hard water damage be damned. If it got tarnished, she could clean it. Her life was more valuable. If she’d been wearing it from the beginning, Anthony couldn’t have gotten his fangs into her. Though he wouldn’t have slipped his arm around her in that possessive/protective way either.
For a split second, before he’d started feeding, she’d felt the little flip she’d always gotten in her stomach when Anthony was near. Before all the vampire crap. That low twinge that said there were definitely sparks. At least from her end.
She lathered her hair in the apple-scented shampoo she liked. She’d instinctively reached for it on the big shopping trip when her memory had been gone. Now it felt like safety. A comforting sense memory she could lose herself in for a little while.
She wondered how she would have felt about the most recent bite had Anthony been awake. Didn’t she trust him at least a little? That his mercy would always win out with her over his more primal nature? Nothing drove that home like the panic she’d felt with his fangs in her throat and him unconscious, unable to stifle instinct.
After showering, she dressed in some of the clothes she’d bought the previous day with Anthony’s money and sat at the kitchen table. Jane had made them a couple of mugs of cocoa with whipped cream on top and frozen waffles with strawberries and whipped cream. Jane liked whipped cream. For this reason, Charlee liked Jane.
She dug into her dessert/breakfast with gusto. Between bites and sips of cocoa she said, “So what’s the story on Gregory?”
Charlee had thought they were doing okay. Aside from his weird aversion to drinking from the source and refusing to turn Jane.
The previous day, she’d shared how they’d met. It sounded like a goth fairytale. Jane sensed vampires, and it got her hunted when one got into close enough to figure that out. Gregory had played the gallant hero and taken responsibility for her.
“Oh my god. He’s such a wanker. It’s bad enough he won’t turn me, even though I’ve explicitly told him that’s what I want. But last night he starts this thing about, ‘I need to take my political career more seriously. The tournament is coming up, and if I win, I’ll have to take a mate.’ Gag. If he’d turn me like I’d asked, he could do that. But I guess I’m not worth eternity. Fine. What the fuck ever.”
She dug back into her waffles then started talking again with her mouth full. “Will you go with me to get my things? I ran out of there real dramatic-like last night, and I need to get my stuff out while he’s sleeping.”
“Sure,” Charlee said.
“I should just stake the motherfucker in his sleep. I can’t believe it. You know, we’ve been together three years. And I get that I’m not queen material or whatever, but seriously, what a wanker. Political ambition my ass. If he had political ambition, he’d drink blood like a real vampire. That is not going over with the fanged crowd. I can tell you that much already. And I’m not even one of the sunlight-sensitive.”
Charlee focused on her breakfast, wishing she’d tied a scarf around her neck. Now wasn’t the time to point out that she had very close to what Jane wanted, and she’d accomplished it in less than forty-eight hours living together and no nookie. Jane might just stake her for that one.
She must have been thinking this really loudly because Jane suddenly came out of her funk, and looked up, alert and perceptive. “And why is there a mark on your neck? Vamps don’t leave marks on their victims and pets.”
Apparently victim and pet were the only two ways one could be bitten in Jane’s world. Charlee didn’t like it, but she didn’t completely disagree either. “Ummm . . . ”
Jane narrowed her eyes and looked closer. “Oh my God. I don’t believe it. See, this is why Greg is so lame. How long have you known Anthony?”
“Um . . . well, casually for several months, more up close and personal, a few days.”
“Exactly. In that time, Anthony knows what he wants. I can’t believe he claimed you. Vampires almost never do that with humans, you know.”
Charlee perked up. Jane had an unexpected wealth of knowledge. Of course she did. She’d co-habitated with a vampire for a few years. How could she not be a fount of information?
“You know about claims?”
“I’ve only had to hear about them daily for the past year since Greg decided he was going for this whole king thing. And really, how lame is that? King? What are we? The Tudors now? They need cooler titles. With their lifespans surely they could come up with something more interesting than king.”
It was possible Jane could do with le
ss sugar first thing in the morning, but Charlee was too focused on the someone knows about claims part of the equation.
“Anthony hasn’t told me much of anything about what this means. I’m not happy about it.”
Jealousy flitted over Jane’s features, then she nodded. “I guess I can understand that. I’ve known about vampires my whole life. And knowing about them, without them being able to erase that knowledge, makes me bait. I need to be one of them or I won’t survive. I’m not kidding myself here. Anthony wants to keep an eye on me so I don’t screw his world up. And Paul is momentarily infatuated.”
Charlee hadn’t considered that. She’d thought Jane wanting to be a vampire was all an overdone punk/goth thing, some kind of social rebellion. But now she could see Jane was a survivor. She was going to have to take lessons from the goth chick if she wanted to be one as well.
“So how do I undo it?” Charlee asked. She was trying for casual because she didn’t want to unleash the sugar-high angry bazooka Jane had poised and ready to go off again.
Jane picked a syrup and cream-covered strawberry off her plate, and chewed slowly. She might as well have been sitting cross-legged saying “oooooom” because clearly, she was trying to get to a Zen place before she exploded.
“I know it’s a little tactless to ask you under the circumstances, but really, I can’t be tied to him.”
Jane sighed. “Yeah, I get it. I wish I was you, but I get it.” She popped another strawberry into her mouth. “Death is the only way.”
Charlee’s eyes drifted back to the vampire on the mattress. “Mine or his?”
“Either.”
Charlee took a deep breath. “Good to know.”
But it wasn’t. Not really. If she couldn’t kill him the day before, she didn’t see it happening now. Not when ten minutes ago she was trying to snuggle with him out of curiosity. She turned back to Jane who was looking thoughtful, an expression Charlee hadn’t yet seen on the hyperactive goth.
“You can’t kill him,” Jane said with understanding.
“I hate him, though.”
