“I spoke of this already, Tristan. Do you not pay attention to the things I say to you? I am doing this for you, to find answers on why you are being hunted. What the link is. Now stop complaining and come along.”
Tristan made a dirty face at the back of Ash’s head as he followed him out the front door. “Oh hey, on the way back from this meeting, we should stop off at my place so I can get the spelling on my last name for you. You know, my Japanese one. Uru—Uu, rue… That.”
Ash let out a heavy sigh. “Ew-rue-wah-she,” he recited slowly, pronouncing it so that the silly American could understand. “Yes, I think that is a good idea, especially if this does turn out to be a dead end as I suspect. The sooner we find out why Malik wants you, the sooner we can end this.”
“What,” Tristan asked with a small laugh, “tired of me already?”
Ash shot him a quick over the shoulder glance. There was something up with Ash tonight, he was not the same calm, collected young man he was last night. Tristan was so busy with his musings that he didn’t notice when Ash had stopped and nearly ran into the back of him. They were standing in front of the carport at the far end of the drive. Tristan’s car was farther down, towards freedom. At the carport there were only two choices, a snazzy looking Benz sedan and a sports bike. One sports bike. Tristan had a bad feeling as Ash moved towards it.
“Here,” the other man said as he shoved a helmet at him that matched the bright blue of the bike. Not seeing the dumfounded look on Tristan’s face, Ash hopped on and started the machine. He had no helmet of his own and ended up twisting his hair at the base of his neck and shoving it down the back of his top.
“Now wait a minute,” Tristan started and Ash shot him an annoyed look. “One, how the hell am I supposed to put this on? It’s like child sized for your tiny head.” Ash sat upright, crossing his arms. “And two, I’m not riding bitch. What’s wrong with that Mercedes? Or my car? Oh, I know, you can ride bitch, you so—”
“No.”
Tristan’s first reaction was to throw the helmet at him, bounce it right off his tiny head. Instead he glared, hoping his gaze would strike fear into the weak. But Ash wasn’t weak.
Tristan motioned to the sword hanging at his side. “That is illegal.” Not to mention fucking stupid to have it on a motorcycle. Who did he think he was?
“I am not bothered over such trivial things as the legality of carrying weapons concealed or otherwise.”
“Trivial things...” Tristan mumbled, still glaring at the other man.
“Wear the helmet or not. Leave for all I care, but I am going.”
Tristan felt like he lost ground with Ash. He had gone to bed last night thinking they had an understanding. Now he wasn’t so sure. Was he really worried about something or was he having second thoughts about saving Tristan? About helping him? Tristan thought he should try to be a little nicer to the dude.
“Fine,” Tristan answered with a long, resigned sigh.
Impatient, Ash made a rude noise. Tristan had to keep a dirty glance to himself as he struggled into the too small helmet and climbed on the too small motorcycle seat behind Ash—the too small dude. Almost immediately, his stomach started to bother him. He knew it wasn’t nerves, he wasn’t afraid of the bike... he just couldn’t say what it was. “God,” he shouted over the noise, “this helmet must feel how David Spade’s coat did when Chris Farley put it on.”
“I suggest holding on,” was Ash’s only response. Before Tristan could answer with a snarky, and probably childish quip, Ash jarred forward and down the drive way, fishtailing in the gravel like a squid. Tristan yelped, happy the helmet muffled the noise and grabbed Ash’s shoulder with one hand, the other on the seat edge behind him. He was sure they were going to wreck before they even got to wherever it was Ash was taking them.
They were only ten minutes into the ride when it became painfully clear that Tristan needed a better grip. Not only was Ash’s katana sheath tapping out a constant Morse code into his shin, but his hold was not nearly what he would have liked against the nutball driving. He’d almost fallen off the seat twice. As they approached a stoplight, which Ash didn’t even blink at, Tristan quickly moved his right hand from Ash’s shoulder to wrap around his waist. Ash stiffened under the sudden change of grip and Tristan made a small surprised noise. There was something hidden inside Ash’s kimono—he suspected it was a gun. But what really surprised him was how little Ash’s waist was under all of the cloth. Almost immediately, his overactive mind went straight to the woman with the big rack that he’d dreamt about.
Thinking about hot women while pressed up against the backside of another man—awesome.
After another ten minutes of accelerated red-light running the pair reached their destination. Or what Tristan hoped was their destination. He wanted off the crazy Ash ride. The dude was driving like a he was filming for a Wachowski Brothers film. That and without a jacket Tristan had started to shiver. Okay, okay, so being pressed up against the guy bothered him too.
As soon as Ash stopped and got the kickstand down, Tristan was off the back, locked in epic battle with the helmet. Ash dismounted with the grace of a professional dancer and switched the machine off, leaving the key behind. In the middle of nowhere, who was there to take it? Tristan concentrated hard on not looking Ash in the eye as the other man moved towards the house. He was still feeling weirded out about holding him around the waist. Oh yeah and then thinking about a beautiful, seductive woman that looked like him while pressed up against his lean, curvy back tightly.
“God,” Tristan groaned under his breath as he balanced the helmet on the motorcycle’s gas tank.
Ash was almost to the front door already. Not that they needed to use a door to get in. Fire had taken a big chunk out of the side of the house. Inside were the skeletal remains of a living room set. The rest of the house was overrun with weeds and discarded garbage from the kids who used it to get stoned. No one had lived there for years.
So why were they there?
Tristan jogged to catch up to Ash’s hurried pace. “Dude, what’s the rush?”
“It knows we are here.”
“Uh, what?” He felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck at Ash’s ominous tone. “What do you mean it?”
“Vampire,” Ash answered, as if it were a dirty word, a curse, something so bad that you would get called your full name and scolded by your parents no matter how old you were.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me…”
The look Ash shot him said he was indeed not kidding. Tristan gave him a look back, letting him know he didn’t buy it, but inside, below the tingle around his navel, he was a little worried. What if Ash was telling the truth? What if all those outlandish things really existed?
Shit.
When they reached the front door, Ash brought one of those slender, leather-clad legs up in a quick kick. The wood shattered, sending broken splinters and dust inward.
A snorted sort of snicker shot out of Tristan’s mouth. Guess they weren’t hiding the fact that they were there. “That’s one way in.” He expected a sneering look for his comment, but the one he received was pleased. Ash was enjoying himself.
Ash looked into the dark interior and yelled, “I know you are here!” He lowered his voice to a husky sort of growl. “I can smell the blood from here.”
Tristan looked to Ash again, wide-eyed. His face was masked by the shadows of the building but he could clearly see the dark smile.
Inside, the floorboards creaked loudly announcing their progress through the house. To the right a narrow stairway with no railing led up. Most of the steps were broken and burnt, proving a hell of a trip up, or down. To the left they passed the open side of the house where the living room had been. The whole place reeked of mold and smoke, and looked like it was ready to come down any second. He wondered how safe they were.
“Wait,” Tristan whispered. Ash kept on walking, ignoring him. “He-ey,” he hissed and reached out. He grabbed t
he edge of Ash’s kimono sleeve, pulling him to a stop. The other man turned, expression clear of any emotion as he looked up at Tristan. He snapped his hand back to rub his palm across his pants. He’d broken out into a sudden cold sweat, though it wasn’t hot inside the house. He didn’t know why he stopped Ash, only that he felt an overwhelming sensation suddenly. Something told him, “bad, evil. Stop.” But more than that, “danger.” He didn’t understand the feeling, couldn’t even begin to explain it, only that he’d had it once before, more than a year ago. Right before the car accident that killed his family.
Ash’s eyes softened and his lips almost curved into a wry smile. Without saying anything, he turned away and started towards the back of the house again. After a few seconds of gathering himself, Tristan followed behind, sticking close to Ash. Still, he couldn’t shake off that bad feeling. He was ready to leave. Screw talking to whoever they were supposed to, coming here was a bad idea. He just knew.
They reached a doorway and that was when Tristan noticed Ash had pulled his katana at some point. He stopped and let the armed man go first into the next room. Ash disappeared past the threshold. Fifteen deafening silent seconds later, after there was no screaming or sounds of anything trying to eat Ash, Tristan let out the breath he’d been holding and followed in after him. There was no one there but them.
“Who paints their kitchen red?” Tristan mumbled under his breath. As he looked around, taking in every inch of the space, he realized it wasn’t that the room was painted red, but that it was covered in blood. Raw meat scattered across the entire kitchen—the floor, the walls, the countertops—stuck to every surface. It looked like someone had tossed a rack of raw meat into a blender and turned it on high, forgetting the lid. There was just so much carnage. And as he met the cloudy brown gaze of a single, extracted eyeball sitting on the countertop directly across from him, he realized what he was looking at.
Oh fuck. It was a person.
Tristan took a step back, but couldn’t turn away. He felt dizzy and lightheaded, the smell of blood overwhelming. He could almost taste the salty tang of it in his mouth, coating his tongue like a full bodied wine. His breath came in and out of him too fast. He wished he hadn’t eaten dinner so recently, he really wasn’t up to seeing it again.
Damn, he knew he should have left when he had the chance. He never once imagined that he’d see something like this in his lifetime—a human ruined to nothing but dark meat and crimson liquid. He wanted to turn away, to run from the horror of it, but he couldn’t. Not anymore. He was its unwilling captive.
He swallowed past the lump in his throat and looked up. There was no reason to, but yet, there it was and he did, and oh god he wished he hadn’t. Blood and bits of meat clung to the ceiling like bad fright house decorations. His breath caught when he recognized a shape in the meat as a fingertip. He quickly looked away and some other little horror caught his eye. He watched in revulsion as a thick chunk covered by a scrap of skin slid slowly down a cabinet front, leaving a slick crimson trail. He tasted bile in the back of his throat when he recognized the meaty bit as a breast.
So, it was a woman.
The dismembered body part made a heavy plop into a puddle, splattering congealed blood across the floor. He put a hand to his mouth, half covering his nose. He wasn’t sure if it was to mask the smell or encourage his gag reflex to behave.
Oh my god, what the fuck did this? The frantic thought hit Tristan’s forebrain as a scream he couldn’t let out.
Ash’s whisky voice sounded softly nearby. “The vampire I seek. Come.”
Tristan swallowed hard, dropping his hand away. He whispered, “Yeah, but, does this vampire really know—” He had started to turn his head to look at Ash, but another monstrosity caught his attention. Bile burned the back of his throat as his brain translated too quickly what he’d seen. Set out on a sooty plate, as if waiting to be served, was another eye, the color indistinguishable from across the room. With it, there was a heart, still dark with blood and another body part Tristan was very familiar with.
There was a man too.
Something solid and firm touched his arm and the panic overtook him. “Oh fuck!” Tristan jumped back and hit the wall near the doorway, heart pounding and head throbbing with the new rush of adrenaline. He sucked in air as fast as he could, letting it out faster as he tasted the foulness of the air. The place was suddenly toxic, threatening to kill him, or at least take his sanity. He managed to look up and find it was only Ash’s hand on his arm. The other man was staring sympathetic eyes at him, almost as if willing him to calm himself through his composed demeanor.
“We shouldn’t be here,” Tristan whispered.
“The wisest words I have heard from you yet.” Ash’s expression was as cold as the hand he held onto Tristan’s arm with.
Feeling defiantly himself again, Tristan stared down at the hand with too long fingernails, making sure Ash knew he was annoyed. The other man scoffed, snapped his hand back and retraced his steps out of the room. Without a second’s hesitation, Tristan followed him and stopped to take deep breath outside the kitchen where the air felt cleaner.
By the time Tristan got his shit together, Ash was already halfway up the rickety stairs. Tristan stopped at the bottom, looking up. “I’m going to laugh when you pull a Humpty Dumpty on those stairs.”
Ash harrumphed and took a sudden leap up, skipping three steps and landing on the top floor. All he needed was a fancy little finishing move like they did in gymnastics.
“Show off,” Tristan muttered. Ash was already out of sight, lost to the darkness that was the second floor. Tristan let out a resigned sigh as he made his attempt up. One of the steps about halfway up broke under his weight. He cursed under his breath, but managed to avoid putting his knee through the wood. He frowned at the big hole left in the middle of the stairs wondering how he was going to get back down without breaking a leg. Definitely didn’t want to do that again in his lifetime.
After he managed to get to the top of Fuji, Tristan stopped for a breath. But then there was a shriek from the back of the house, followed by a loud bang and a grunt. He didn’t see it happen, but there Ash was, plastered to the wall three feet from him. What was left of the wall had dented inward, cradling Ash’s still body. Dust had fallen over him, coating him in pepper colored powder. And then there was red. Coming from his mouth. Tristan’s entire body ran with gooseflesh.
“No, way,” Tristan whispered. “That... that didn’t just happen.” He reached out. “Hey, you dead? Ash w—” His unfinished question turned into a surprised yelp as a dark mass shot out and slammed into his stomach, forcing the rest of the air from his lungs. The thing riding him had ahold of his upper arms, fingers biting into skin and took them airborne and down the flight of steps in one bound. The two hit the first floor in a cloud of dust and a chorus of grunts and groans with Tristan on the bottom. He couldn’t breathe, the weight on him keeping his lungs from fully inflating. His whole body pulsed with pain.
“Fuuuuuck,” he groaned with all the air he had.
There was a husky laugh over him. “Come for a bite, then, love?”
Tristan’s vision cleared and he finally got a good look at the guy with the dirty accent who’d tackled him from inches away. Fear, instant and cold, immobilizing, seized him.
He hadn’t really believed. How could he? Even after all Ash had told him. He hadn’t really bought into it. But now, now...
“Fuck me,” he whispered, “it’s true.”
7: If I Was Your Vampire
THE eyes of the monster pinning him down widened with amusement, fangs still red with someone’s blood bared in full relief right in front of Tristan’s face. He had a fleeting thought, a hope that it wasn’t Ash’s blood. The monster was enjoying itself way too much. Then again, it wasn’t the one who ended up on the bottom of that fall. God, did it have an erection?
Tristan had only a moment to react as the vampire reached for him. He gasped and swung out. The ang
le was bad and his fist was stopped by a hot, hard palm. His hand was lifted and he felt the graze of fangs as the monster tried to bite him.
“Oh shit!” He jerked back, somehow coming out unbitten. Just. The vampire let out an angry roar and reached for him with a clawed hand. He had only seconds to suck in a sharp breath and turn his cheek away, throwing his arms over his face. Nails raked across both arms, shredding his shirt sleeves open. Seconds later he felt the warm burn of his skin slicing open.
“Fucking bastard,” Tristan hissed through clenched teeth as pain sizzled up his arms.
The monster shrieked like a mad animal, swiping clawed hands back and forth across Tristan’s arms, trying to reach his face. Tristan gave a hard shove and it grunted in surprise, tipping back. The vampire’s knees tightened into his side as it rocked back towards him, mouth first. Tristan gasped and jabbed his right hand into its throat. It gagged, looking momentarily disorientated. Tristan felt the frantic beat of its heart under his hand where he pushed against its chest. And as he realized that he had stopped it just short of sinking fangs into his jaw, he wondered how he was going to get out of this mess. Alive.
After a stunned moment, the vampire gave off a shriek that sent goose bumps across Tristan’s entire body and reached for him again. He was helpless, weak under the monster’s strength and he was just starting to understand how out of his element he was. That his fate may be the very same as the two he saw in the kitchen.
He was well and truly fucked.
Instead of fear, hot burning anger welled up inside him. He was so not ready to die yet. The arm holding the monster at bay started to shudder against the weight. He was going to give out any moment and then, snack time. Knowing he had to act now or die, Tristan growled an angry noise and shoved with all his might, lifting the vampire inch by inch until suddenly the weight pressing down gave. The vampire jerked back, grimacing all fang and then dove on him, cutting deep into his right arm with those clawed hands. The blood came out in a gush of heat down his arm.
Beautiful Death Page 7
