I set my foot up on the seat of the stool, effectively blocking a man from sitting down next to me. He had been smiling at me and trying to catch my eye for the last fifteen minutes, but when I snagged the seat and refused to return his smile, he glowered at me, putting his hand on the back of the chair and trying to pull it out from under my leg. I arched a brow at him, wondering how that kind of display was supposed to impress me, as if the twenty year age difference wasn’t already killing his chances.
“Thanks, man,” Steven said brightly, clapping him on the shoulder and sliding my foot off of the stool with his hip as he sat. I let my foot fall, hooking my toe on one of the rungs of my stool, and flashed a full smile at the affronted man. Steven grabbed Jodi around the waist and pulled her close to him, settling her hip between his legs and blocking out the man entirely. He stared for a few moments and I felt his annoyance and anger snapping at the back of my neck, but he caught sight of another girl that was way too young for him at the other end of the bar and walked over there without a word.
“Has it gotten hotter?” Jodi fanned herself and shook out her hair that was already starting to lose some of its volume. Since I had stayed away from all the heat of human bodies, my hairstyle was surviving. But I had to admire the way her blue eyes sparkled with the heady mixture of excitement and confidence she didn’t often truly feel.
“Too many bodies,” Steven said, echoing my thoughts, as he lifted two fingers to one of the bartenders. I was happy to see it was one of the girls that responded to him, not wanting to spoil my good time with the greaser with Jodi or, Heaven forbid, Steven competing for his attention.
“Couple of waters, please?” he ordered and the scantily clad girl pulled two bottles out of the ice bin and smiled broadly at him, her eyebrow and nose piercings catching the strobing lights.
“On me, dollface.” Steven smiled back at her, not one to turn down free drinks of any kind. I shook my head, not wanting to be the one to break the news to the poor girl she was so not his type.
“Are you okay over here by yourself?” Jodi asked as she took the bottle Steven offered her over her shoulder, uncapping it and taking a long pull.
“Yeah, it’s better this way. I can actually enjoy the show if I stay this far back,” I assured them, but I could feel the guilt coming from both of them. “It’s okay, really, don’t feel like you can’t have a good time because I’m here. I’m having a good time, I promise.” I crossed my heart for emphasis and Jodi leaned in and kissed my cheek before setting the now half empty bottle on the bar in front of me. Steven chugged the rest of his before setting the empty bottle down.
“Flag us down if you want to leave or need some company,” he said to me as Jodi slipped out from the frame of his legs and he stood, giving me a kiss just like Jodi had before she caught his hand. She pulled him back into the crowd just as the fourth band finished with their checks.
“So you’re not alone then,” the familiar voice asked from behind me, and I knew without looking he was much closer than the bar should allow. I turned in my seat to see that the bartender had leaned against the bar, putting his forearms flat, and his face was a little more than two feet from mine. It was an odd sort of intimacy.
“No, I’m rarely alone these days.” I slid my watery glass towards him and widened my eyes before blinking slowly at him. He chuckled again and I wondered if he ever laughed fully. He took my hint and my glass, pouring me a fresh soda, this time plopping a couple of cherries on top. I liked cherries.
“So are one of them, or both of them, your, ah…” He stumbled for the right term and I was surprised to find not a hint of embarrassment come off of him as he tried to ask if the three of us were a couple. I laughed lightly at the thought to spare him the struggle and shook my head, picking out one of the cherries. We actually dealt with those sorts of rumors at school all the time because teenagers needed gossip like they needed air, so after so many years of it, I was used to the question.
“No, just very close friends.” I held the cherry up to my lips by the stem and bit into it, the overly sugary syrup bursting into my mouth as I broke the skin. A small drip of the red juice clung to my lip and, with more bravado than any high schooler would show, he reached out and brushed it away with his thumb. I watched as he brought his thumb to his mouth and sucked the juice off, his lips parting and pursing as he did so, and I suddenly wondered what it would taste like to kiss him.
“Very close friends, huh? I got you.” No, he didn’t, no one ever did, but that was okay. He could think what he wanted; he was just a distraction tonight.
“So, do you have a name?” I ate the other half of my cherry, laying the bare stem on the cocktail napkin my glass was sitting on.
“Maybe, what do I get if I tell you?” he teased.
“I’ll tell you mine.”
“Don’t like ‘Red,’ do you?” I actually never let anyone call me “Red,” but for some reason, tonight it didn’t bother me. Or maybe I just didn’t want to come off like a girl who would mind something so small, so instead I just shrugged.
“Then what do you want for it?” I felt the butterflies swarm again as the question left my mouth. The new band started up and I realized vaguely that I recognized their sound from one of the local radio stations. He turned to look up at the stage as if they had just caught his attention too, waiting a moment and nodding to a couple of people to wait before he turned back to face me.
He leaned a little further over the bar and I realized I too was leaning in on my forearms, though when I had shifted positions to do so, I had no idea. That heat was back in his eyes as he considered me before he said, “Maybe you’ll just owe me.” If the music hadn’t been so loud, I knew he would’ve whispered that to me, rough and low like his chuckle, sending shivers up my back.
“Giovanni,” he said, answering my question. “But most people just call me Gio.” I crinkled my nose at the nickname and that finally made him laugh. He pushed away from the bar, his head back and his mouth open in a smile, and when he looked at me, the warm honey of his eyes was alive and liquid.
“I think I like Giovanni better,” I said. He rapped the bar in front of me with two knuckles saying, “Then you can call me that,” before he went back to work. I watched him walk away, enjoying the view, and felt every nerve in my body flush with heat. This was so casual, so normal it was absolutely absurd to me. I wasn’t even bothered watching him flirt with the other girls as they ordered drinks, and gave him larger tips than they probably intended to, because he didn’t stop to talk to any of them like he did me.
I sipped at my soda, letting my eyes sweep the crowd. Jodi and Steven were practically in the same place as before they got their waters. I knew they were staying where we could all see each other. I continued my sweep, entertaining myself with how people had dressed, both of the male and female persuasion. Some looked amazing, faces and hair done perfectly and clothing clinging in all the right places and all the right colors. But the ones that were most fun to watch were the ones who thought a concert was just a mini Halloween, dressing in some of the most absurd outfits I had ever seen outside of Hollywood in the summer.
Some girls were pretty tame, wearing too short skirts and actual corsets, while others were garbed head to toe in black: black shoes, black fishnets, black micro-mini skirts, black straps meant to be a shirt, black makeup, and bleached blonde hair. It was all just different styles of showing off as much flesh as possible while still being legal and proclaiming silently which band they’d come to see. The men weren’t quite as entertaining; either they dressed like they had something to prove or they dressed like they’d given up and were just trying for geek-chic now.
Of course there were inevitably the men that were just a little too old to be here if they weren’t chaperoning their own kids, and you always knew which ones they were. Their stares lingered a little too long, they drank a little too much, and they always seemed to be sweating, even if they were just sitting at the bar. These
men always drew my attention, my internal warning system flaring to life as I caught their desperate signatures in the air around me and so many other young girls.
One of these men sat seven seats down from me at the face of the bar. He leaned on his elbows on the bar, facing the audience and ogling the girls young enough to be his daughters. I shuddered at the look in his eyes, revolted. I swirled my glass on the bar top, trailing the small puddle of condensation, as I stared at him and opened a thin chain of awareness between us. Almost instantly, his head snapped up from the droop it had been in and he turned in my direction, his eyes locking with mine.
It’s time to leave, I thought at him, my mindvoice edged in fire, and I saw a shadow cross his face. What you’re thinking is despicable. You’re going to go home and go to bed alone. When you wake up in the morning, you’re going to start to act your age. His eyes glazed over as the compulsion settled into the back of his mind. With mechanical stiffness, he pulled out his wallet, dropped a bill on the bar, turned around, and walked out. Just before his body disappeared around the door, I let the connection break between us, not wanting to be tied to him.
I never liked using my powers to control people. I really didn’t, even if I did it for the greater good. But as they say, you vote for the lesser of two evils. Sometimes when I opened a channel between me and others, I got a glimpse of their true intentions and men like that had nothing but bad intentions in them. He had been making eyes at a trio of sixteen year olds, each wearing a neon green wristband marking them under eighteen to the staff. All of them smiled back at him, thinking he’d be an easy mark to buy them drinks.
Little did they know at least one of their drinks would be doctored with something stronger than rum. That is, if he had gotten up the courage to drop the little white pill into the glass. Maybe he wouldn’t have acted upon his desires tonight, but there was always tomorrow and there would always be gullible young girls out there to prey upon. And I wouldn’t be there tomorrow to do anything about it, so I did something about it tonight and felt none of the guilty karmic weight of messing with the universe. I shook off the slimy feeling the stranger left behind.
I knew I had effectively cut off the connection I created with that man, so when the prickling fingers of awareness ran up the back of my neck, my stomach knotted up against my spine. A true predator was in this room and he was too close for my comfort. My increased heartbeat had probably already given me away. The sweat that broke out on the back of my neck in the wake of that prickling sensation had nothing to do with the body heat around me and I knew he could smell it. I also knew that he knew what I had just done and he was trying to make a connection with me, but my shields were keeping him out.
The muscle in my jaw jumped as I clenched my teeth. I found enough courage to lift my chin and raise my eyes from my glass, arrowing in on his gaze. With less surprise than I expected to feel, I looked into the steely depths of the vampire sitting at the bar across from me.
Chapter 7
I had only ever met one other vampire in my life. I was twelve years old on a school field trip to a museum in Los Angeles and got separated from the group. Jodi had recently moved and I hadn’t yet met Steven, so in effect, I was totally alone in my magical world. I was staring at a picture of a girl in a flowing white dress floating down a river on her back. Her hands were bound over her stomach and a halo shimmered above her head.
She was breathtaking. Standing next to me was a man who didn’t look older than a teenager. I had no idea when he had stepped up next to me or how long he was there before I noticed him, but when I did, he seemed surprised when I looked at him. He had the strangest feeling radiating off of him; it was neither alive, nor dead and altogether new to me. I had a vague sense of fear staring at him. I didn’t know what he was, but everything in me told me he was no longer human, no matter how well he blended in. I realized he hadn’t wanted me to notice him and I had broken his compulsion all on my own. With a start, I realized he was a little afraid of me too.
“You must be some kind of fae creature,” he spoke in a low voice with a strange accent I couldn’t place at such a young age; years later I realized it was a fading Scottish brogue.
“A what?” I turned wide green eyes up to him, blinking slowly.
“A faerie? Or a sprite perhaps? Obviously too big for a pixie you are,” he explained, considering me from his great height. I felt my young heart flutter as he studied my face. He was classically handsome with thick mahogany hair brushed back from a face set with dark eyes and fair skin. There was a sprinkling of freckles over his face, making him seem a little younger than he was.
“No, just a girl,” I said, mortified to hear my voice break in the middle.
“No, you’re definitely not ‘just a girl.’” He shook his head at me, clasped his hands behind his back, and turned his face to look at the painting again.
“What do you mean?” I asked a little too aggressively; no one knew about my powers besides my mother and Jodi, so I was a little unnerved to have a complete stranger speak so plainly.
“You wouldn’t have seen me here if you were just a girl,” he explained calmly. “Interesting though; you’re entirely too young to be a vampire yourself. You would have been destroyed long ago. Besides, I can hear your heart thundering, so you’re obviously alive.”
“Vampire?” I whispered, my eyes going wider as his words sunk into my mind. “You’re a vampire?”
“Of course.” He said it so casually, as if this wasn’t something terrifying and thrilling all at the same time.
“But it’s the middle of the day.”
“Why, yes it is.”
“Shouldn’t you be hiding from the sun?” I whispered urgently. His face broke into a smile as he looked down at me again, making my heart clench and my stomach flip. It was so easy to get crushes at that age.
“Don’t believe everything you read, lass.” His accent slipped deeper when he laughed. I would always love the sound of a Scottish accent after that day.
“So I guess the other stories aren’t true either.”
“Most of them aren’t, got to keep ourselves safe, you know,” he said, winking at me. “But what I want to know is what you are. How can someone so young break my will so easily?”
“I don’t know.” It was only a half-lie. “I’ve never met a vampire before,” I whispered again. I knew the powers I had over other people’s emotions helped me break his compulsion, but I didn’t know how.
“And you’re not afraid of me, are you?” he asked, and I took a moment to think about it. That vague sense of fear had faded away when I wasn’t paying attention because somehow I knew he meant me no harm. If he had, he would’ve done something to me already.
“No,” I answered finally with a shrug.
“Interesting.” He smiled again before he started to turn away. “Well, lass, just remember to be careful; you’re not the only powerful thing that still walks the earth.” And with that, he left. I didn’t even know his name. I spent a great deal of time during junior high reading every book on vampires and their legends that I could get my hands on, watching every vampire movie I could, trying to wheedle out the truth about them. After that brief and strange encounter, I was almost obsessed with the subject.
I always kept my eyes open for other vampires, but never came into contact with another one. Not until this moment. I knew what they felt like now, and sitting here so close to another one, I knew he was the first in six years that I had seen since that day in the museum. We stared intently at each other across the length of the bar, never breaking our gaze, even when one of the bartenders stepped into our line of sight. I strengthened my shield against his probing touch, disliking him trying to read me as if I was some kind of amateur.
He tilted his head to the side when I blocked him entirely and I cocked an eyebrow at him, challenging him to push me, but he didn’t. I felt his power pull back and away from me and I relaxed my shoulders, not wanting him to think he was ma
king me uneasy. A corner of his mouth quirked up in a smile. I should be worried, I thought, that he picked me out of the crowd before I found him and that I might’ve missed him entirely if he hadn’t tried to read me. Maybe I’d missed others over the years. People moved around us, looking like they were moving faster than they should as we both sat still, waiting for the other to break eye contact first.
I couldn’t look weak in front of him; I knew that, and the words from my memory echoed in my mind. Remember to be careful. You’re not the only powerful thing that still walks the earth. Obviously, just like humans, the vampire community had good and bad members. I had no idea which one I was staring at now.
To my surprise, he broke away first. He nodded his head slightly and picked up his glass before pushing away from the bar. For one heart stopping moment, I thought he was going to come over to me, but then he disappeared into the crowd at the front of the bar, only to appear next to a girl who was talking to a group of friends. I didn’t even notice him nudge anyone aside or fight for the now vacant chair. It was as if he had just materialized next to the girl. I realized she was saying goodbye to the group of friends when hugs were exchanged and they left her alone at the bar.
She hadn’t noticed him yet, even though his arm was nearly touching hers, and I knew he didn’t want her to see him. Not yet anyway. His eyes flashed my way. I was waiting for that, watching his face for it, so he knew I saw him. I wanted him to know he was being watched. The confidence dimmed the light in his eyes, satisfying me enough to take my eyes off of him for the moment it took to glance at the pretty girl’s wrist. She was wearing a bright neon green wristband. Not yet eighteen and therefore entirely off limits.
Elemental Series Omnibus Edition Books 1-4 Page 89
