by Liz Meldon
“Well, I know you’ve been up here for hours, and I thought you might be hungry, so I—”
“What, are you stalking me?” Delia crossed her arms. Like their meet-up in the coffee shop, she suspected her encounter with Claude Grimm would be harmless.
Physically, anyway.
Emotionally? She might leave in a bit of a loop again.
“Well…” He had the decency to look at least a little sheepish, his handsome features morphing into some semblance of apologetic. “I—”
“Look, Grimm—”
“Claude,” he said with a frown. “We’re more familiar than that.”
“Are we?” Delia adopted her best sneer, though it probably looked as forced as it felt. “Look, we had sex once. At a party. And I was drunk.”
“Hardly—”
“So you can just…” Her words died on the tip of her tongue, a cold panic gripping her suddenly. Her mouth went dry as she glanced to the laptop screen, then back to Claude. “How did you know I was here? Do… Do they know I’m here?”
Claude opened and closed his mouth a few times, his arm finally falling to his side. “From what I gather, you weren’t exactly subtle in your arrival.”
Cursing under her breath, Delia stalked to the edge of the roof and placed a hand on the concrete edge, peeking over to get a better visual on her two vamps. They paused their conversation, and while one grabbed another cigarette, the other looked up, directly at her, and waved. She pulled back sharply, heart hammering.
Could she really be surprised? She made a hell of a racket trying to get that emergency exit ladder down—the damn thing was beyond rusted—but at the time she’d thought she had gotten away with it. After all, the vamps didn’t scurry inside their little safe house while she set up her equipment.
Delia turned back and tried to ignore Claude as best she could, her arms hanging limply by her side. In her peripherals, she saw him take a step forward.
“Delia, don’t be disheartened,” he said softly, then pressed his lips together when she shot him a heated look.
“I’m not.” Nor did she need consoling from him of all people.
“The trades are going on tonight,” Claude continued after a beat. “All the clans know the League has surveillance across the city. One of my people heard a broadcast on the clans’ private line about some blonde hunter earlier this evening. Then everyone radioed in once they’d placed a hunter at their location. There are five of you, I believe. I volunteered to check on the location with the physical description that suited you best.”
Of course vamps had radio-chatter. Delia bit the insides of her cheeks, then forced out, “And why are they letting us spy on them?”
He’d moved another two feet toward her when she glanced his way again, and he gave her another one-shouldered shrug. “Why not? You ought to know by now the clans like to show when they’re being aboveboard. The trade nights are one of the few things they do by the book.”
“And your clan?” she asked with a hint of venom. “Do they do it by the book too?”
“My clan does not participate in the trading of humans,” Claude remarked somewhat coldly as he all but shoved the bag of fast food at her. Delia raised her chin and looked elsewhere. He sighed. “Humans are of course welcome at my estate. A room can be provided for them in the guest wing if they choose to stay the night.”
She half-expected him to add a bit of a leer to that, as to hint at a repeat encounter between them, but when Delia looked back at him, he was still studying her with the same neutral-bordering-on-friendly expression he’d had since he arrived.
“What the hell is this?” she asked, pointing to the bag in his hand in an effort to divert the conversation from the overall League failings that evening. Hopefully none of the higher ups caught wind that all five hunters had been compromised.
Claude pulled the bag back to look at the logo. “Food.” When she stared at him blankly, he added, “For you.”
“Why?”
“Because I thought…” He exhaled noisily again and set the bag down beside her toppled chair. When he straightened, his wavy black hair had fallen across his forehead. Delia’s fingers twitched, wanting to sweep it back, but he did it himself once he was upright. “I feel this conversation is going in circles. I brought it because I thought you might be hungry.”
Her stomach gave a little gurgle of agreement, but Delia refused to even blink. “I’m not.”
“Really?” His head cocked to the side and he seemed to be biting back a grin. “Because I’m pretty sure I could hear your stomach from the other side of Harriswood.”
That made her wonder. “Can they hear us talking down there?”
“I was joking, Delia,” Claude muttered, then added a little louder, “we don’t have supersonic hearing. Though vampires like myself who can walk in the daylight have worse hearing than those who can’t.”
“Right.” This was going nowhere. Shaking her head, Delia suddenly found herself fixing her chair before plopping back down on it, arms crossed and glaring.
No wonder she never got any of the good assignments. Sure, somebody else had been outed first—Ali, probably, given that they said it was a blonde hunter—but Delia should have known better. Tried harder. Not made so much noise as she got into position. Not been so comfortable as to agree to Devin’s invite for a Scrabble session while working.
Suddenly her eyes were stinging with tears, and she leaned over to reach into the fast food bag and fish out some fries. Once she was upright again, she’d blinked away the impending flood. Claude had busied himself with her laptop anyway, and as she shoved the fries in her mouth, she found him crouched in front of it, hands on his knees, watching the vamps on the screen.
“Are they still hot?” he asked, not looking back at her. Delia frowned, then realized he was referring to the fries that had left smears of grease across her fingers. She wiped them on her pants.
“Sort of.”
“I overestimated my ability to get you to eat it as soon as I arrived, I suppose.” He shot her a grin, one that made the butterflies flutter in her stomach, then stood and cleared his throat. “I wasn’t sure what you liked on a burger, so I didn’t get anything outrageous.”
Delia shrugged, all her fiery retorts extinguished now that her cover was blown, then reached into the bag to grab the burger and the rest of the fries.
“So what are you going to tell your little vamp buddies about the hunter you checked in on tonight?” she asked once she’d unwrapped the burger. The damn thing smelled so mouth-wateringly delicious that she wanted to devour it in two bites, but she held back from even picking it up. There it sat atop the wrapper, which spilled over the sides of her legs, the little box of fries sitting precariously close to the edge of her knee.
“I don’t need to tell them anything.”
“Won’t they want a report?” she said stiffly, an eyebrow up. “Won’t they want intel—”
“You know, the League is much less of a threat to the established clans than you think,” Claude mused, arms crossed. He towered over her as he stood at his full height, a decidedly generous gap between them. “We each dispatched a few men tonight to make sure you hunters didn’t cross the line—”
She snorted in disbelief. “Hunters crossing the line? Are you serious?”
“It happens regularly.” Claude looked away, his profile rather fetching in the moonlight. Delia blinked hard and looked down at her burger so she wouldn’t find herself distracted by his jawline or cheekbones or lips…
Ugh.
“Right.”
“Some hunters like the power,” he added. “No different than ordinary humans… I’ve met many young vampires, traveling alone, who have been harassed needlessly by hunters. It goes both ways.”
“Well, hunters don’t eat vamps, so—”
“Doesn’t mean they can’t kill them.”
A muscle flickered out along his jaw like he was biting down hard on his back teeth. He wa
s right, of course. Anyone, vamp or human, could abuse power in any given situation. Rather than acknowledge it, however, Delia picked up the burger and took a bite. Her eyes drifted closed, but she managed to swallow the moan that crept up her throat.
So. Good.
“Verdict?” Claude asked.
When she opened her eyes, Delia found him watching her again, wearing a ghost of a smile. She forced an indifferent expression.
“S’okay,” she told him, mouth full of food.
“You know, in Europe, there are no hunter leagues,” he told her after a moment. “Not like the ones here, anyway. Most of the European League equivalents actually help vampires.”
She swallowed fast, her throat hurting a little at the effort, and shook her head. “That’s not true.”
The League had offices all over North America. She’d always been told the fight against vamps was a global effort.
“It is true.”
“No,” she said, setting the burger down on her lap, “it isn’t. The Charter says…”
Delia straightened at the sound of vehicles rolling down the street below, and she motioned for Claude to get out of the way so she could get a better look at her laptop. He obliged, taking a dramatic sweeping step to the side, hands clasped behind his back, as what appeared to be two party buses pulled into view on the camera. Seconds later, a whumping bass filled the air, music and laughter and shrieks echoing into the night.
Setting the food aside, careful not to let it fall onto the dirty rooftop, Delia moved to the edge of the building to see for herself, but only after making sure the camera was recording everything. It wouldn’t get the audio. There was no way she would have said two words to Claude Grimm if the camera recorded audio. No, its settings were to take high quality video, while the microphones on the street she’d planted during the day recorded the arrival of the trades.
Humans, most of whom had to be around her age, filed off the busses and stumbled toward the buildings across the street. Some were dancing, others were paired up with linked arms.
Everybody was smiling. It was like one giant party down there.
Something in her stomach tightened. She hadn’t been assigned to record many human trades, but the last two were definitely more subdued than this.
Maybe this particular clan—Reyes, if she remembered correctly—preferred their humans drunk and high before they sunk their teeth into them.
Her neck tingled at the thought, fingers pressing into the faded marks of Claude’s bite before she realized what she was doing. Delia dropped her hand to her side, hand coiled in a fist.
“Are you okay?”
With some effort she glanced at Claude, who had moved in beside her to watch. At least he didn’t look thrilled with what was happening down there, though he didn’t quite seem to share her disgust.
“Fine,” she said tightly. “Does this happen at your place? Do you, I don’t know, bus in your meals?”
“No.” His jaw muscles flared again before he continued. “Any humans staying with men and women in my clan are there voluntarily. Not for a meal. They are there to be with the vampire because they choose to be. No one is forced… or drugged.”
“You think they’re drugged?”
“Well, drunk, at the very least.”
“Yeah.” The whole scene smelled like the inside of a keg.
Not that it was for her to judge. All she had to do was obtain the footage and get out. Still, she couldn’t shake the unsettling feeling about the fact that those people were going to be traded between the vamps waiting inside. Bartered and haggled over. Assigned a value. Traded like playing cards. They could only be bitten twice—the third time turned a human to a vamp like clockwork—but she knew there were more creative ways to acquire a person’s blood. A shiver ran down her spine, despite the summer night’s warmth.
As she settled back in her chair and grabbed her food, Claude lingered a few moments longer at the edge of the rooftop until he finally turned away and met her stare.
“Do you want to know why I’m here? The real reason?”
She swallowed her most recent bite with a bit of air, surprised by the question, and coughed until everything went down the right pipes.
“Please t-tell me the thought of human trades didn’t just remind you of why you’re h-ere,” she forced out. It had sounded snarky in her head, but the wavering voice and watery eyes and strained breath kind of ruined it.
“On the contrary,” he said lightly. “I wanted to switch to something a little more pleasant…which brought me back to you.”
Delia raised her eyebrows as high as they could go. “You think I’m pleasant?”
“Not tonight,” Claude fired back, “but I… have thought so in the past.”
“Oh.” She made a show of rolling her eyes—it was better than the soft smile that threatened to surface. “Right. Thanks, I guess.”
“I wanted to, uh…” He scratched at the back of his head. “I wanted to propose a courtship when I wasn’t—”
Delia laughed before she could stop herself, one of those biting, incredulous laughs she usually reserved for Kain. “A what?”
If he could, Claude might have blushed. Instead, he looked a little embarrassed.
“Apparently courtship is the wrong word choice,” he muttered, running a hand through his hair.
Still unable to help herself, Delia grinned. “For this century, maybe.”
Then, just for a moment, something shifted in the air. It didn’t last for long, but as Claude studied her and Delia picked at her fries, pretending not to notice, it almost felt comfortable.
“When I heard you were here, I thought… this was my chance to ask you out on a date where I wasn’t sneaking up on you and forcing you to talk to me, which I admit was in poor taste at the café.”
And then, just like that, the easy comfort was gone. Delia frowned and dropped the couple of fries she’d been holding back down onto the wrapper.
“Not sneak up and force me to talk to you… I’m sorry, but what the hell is happening right now that makes you think you aren’t doing that?” She gave another laugh, one with slightly less bite this time. “Let’s see, you still snuck up on me, and—”
“I do apologize, Delia, sincerely,” Claude said insistently, taking a few steps toward her but stopping when she visibly tensed. “I’ve been trying to find a way to approach you that didn’t seem, well, frightening—”
“I’m not scared of you.” Partially true. Claude didn’t scare her because he was frightening. Quite the contrary, actually.
“But I seem to keep making a mess of it,” he finished, sighing heavily. Those bright blues darted down to her laptop screen briefly before returning to her. “It’s been a very long time since I’ve done…this.”
She had another snarky comment that involved stalking women and lurking in the shadows, but the genuinely uncomfortable expression he wore as she drew in a breath made her drop it. Instead, she continued to pick at her fries in silence. Her brain should have been going a mile a minute trying to process everything—that the leader of a pretty established vamp clan wanted to take her out on a date, the same vamp who had bitten her and exposed her to his disease. Instead, she concentrated on ignoring the slight tingle in her neck, but that only seemed to make it worse.
“I think I’m a little out of practice,” he offered softly. While she knew she had to reject him, Delia couldn’t help but appreciate that a guy so super out of her dating stratosphere was struggling this hard to ask her out. Used to spending time with Kain and his boys, men who knew they were attractive and capitalized on it in their interactions with women, this was uncharted territory.
“I’m not asking you to dive into bed with me again,” Claude told her as the silence dragged on. When heat rose to her cheeks, he grinned and added, “I mean, you’re welcome to, of course, but I’m not here for that. I thought we might get along, even if you’re adamant about being the biggest, baddest vampire killer in
town.”
“I never said—”
“I like you, Delia,” he said, his voice akin to a lullaby, “despite all your bark and bite. I don’t know why, but I haven’t enjoyed someone as I’ve enjoyed you in some time, and I’d be a fool not to at least ask you for a chance.”
She smirked. “Well, you are a fool.”
The Fool, in fact.
“That I am.” Claude’s lips spread into a warm smile. “So? What do you think? Can I take you out for dinner sometime? It’ll be something more than burgers and fries, I promise.”
He knew nothing about her if he thought Delia even wanted something more than burgers and fries. She swallowed hard and looked back at her food, then to her laptop at the sound of shrieking. All thoughts of dates and burgers went out the window at the sight of a pair wrestling across the screen, and in an instant Delia sprang to her feet and peered over the edge of the building, her heart racing.
“Ugh…” Delia eased back and crossed her arms at the sight of two people kissing like their only source of oxygen came from the other person’s mouth. To make matters worse, one of the face-eaters was a vamp guard from earlier, clearly enamored with his human.
What had she planned to do if it was something worse? Dive off the building, land in a superhero pose, and stake the bastard?
Nope. All she was supposed to do was record. Still, her heart thundered painfully, body gripped with tendrils of adrenaline, as if the life of that woman had been entirely in Delia’s hands.
“Boisterous pair, aren’t they?”
Claude’s voice broke the illusion, and slowly her body started to settle again. Delia brushed a hand over her hair, the nervous sweat in her armpit catching the wind. She glanced down, half-wondering if it was noticeable, half-cursing it for even being there. Professional hunters, the good ones, probably never broke a sweat.
“Delia?”
“I can’t go out with you,” she said suddenly. Her rejection didn’t strictly stem from the fact that Claude was a vamp. It was because, in that moment, she knew that if he had kissed her like that vamp kissed that woman, Delia could have easily ended up in the same position as the night they met at the masquerade—and she couldn’t let that happen again, as much as her subconscious mind may have wanted it to.
