TheSmallPrint

by Barbara Elsborg

  “Nothing happened,” Catch said.

  Matty scrambled to her feet and tugged down her sweater. “You rushed to help me? Thank you. I really am all right. This idiot’s like a big puppy.”

  Turner’s fangs finally gave up and retreated.

  “See?” Catch said. “Everything’s fine.”

  Turner hit him as hard as he could on the jaw. Catch flew backward and landed on his ass. Surprise competed with shock on his face.

  “Now everything’s fine,” Turner said, and walked back upstairs.

  Except it wasn’t. How could it be? He’d moved house to escape his past and it had barreled up to bite him on the backside. Turner slammed into his room and stalked to the shower. He stood under the torrent and faced the wall, his hand around his cock, frantically jerking himself off. What the fuck was wrong with him?

  He cut off a deep groan and froze when he heard the bathroom door open, not sure who he wanted this to be.

  “Turner?” Matty whispered.

  “Go away.”

  “I heard you groaning. Are you all right? Did you hurt your hand when you hit him?”

  Turner unwrapped his fingers from his cock before she realized what he was doing. “No.”

  “Shall I throw him out?”

  His mouth twitched. “He’ll just boomerang back. Seems the two of you have something in common.”

  “He says he’s here to protect you.”

  Turner switched off the water and reached to snag a towel from the rail. He wrapped it around his waist, held it bunched up in front so she couldn’t see his erection and stepped out of the shower.

  “Is he an old friend?” she asked. “He claims he’s known you for twenty years. Is he lying?”

  “Did he tell you it’s been that long since we spoke?”

  Turner strode to his closet and grabbed pants and a shirt.

  Matty blew out a long breath. “You mean you fell out when you were kids and haven’t spoken since? Must have been bad. Did he steal your marbles or something?”

  “Or something.”

  Twenty years ago, Catch’s name had been Logan and he’d worn a different face. He’d pretended to want Turner, pretended to love him, and while they fucked until Turner’s head spun, Catch persuaded him to cooperate with Gabriel. He’d made Turner believe and trust when he should have known better. Catch soothed his concerns, talked him round, flattered him in a honey trap that Turner had fallen for hook, line and cock. Never again. Catch had made him look a fool, destroyed his reputation and his happiness.

  “Catch seems…nice,” Matty said. “What’s his real name?

  Dickhead? “No idea.”

  “He told me how he got his nickname, how he and his brothers played ball with their father and that he ought to have been called Drop.” She gave a nervous laugh. “You’re not brothers, are you?”

  “He doesn’t have any brothers. As far as I know, he doesn’t have a father.” Or a mother. He’d probably been manufactured in a lab.

  Although maybe he’d been lying. Turner’s heart twisted. Maybe the arsehole had a loving family somewhere. Catch had lied about so many things, how did Turner know what was the truth?

  “He lied to me?” Matty whispered.

  “Are you going to stand there and watch me get dressed? Want to make sure I put my boxers on the correct way around, my socks on the right feet?”

  “You can’t put socks… Ah, sorry.”

  Turner watched her pad to the door, his ugly heart a heavy weight in his chest.

  “He’s not what he seems,” Turner said. “Don’t trust him. Don’t get involved with him.” He had no idea whether that was for Matty’s protection or selfishness on his part. Maybe a mixture of both.

  She turned to face him. “Nothing happened. He just chased me. We were playing hide and seek. I had fun. I’d forgotten how to have fun.”

  She closed the door behind her.

  Turner sagged. How was it fair that Catch brought fun to her when he’d stolen it from Turner? Now he had two people in his house he needed to get rid of.

  He pulled on pants and a shirt and caught up with Matty before she reached the bottom of the stairs. Turner wrapped his hand around hers and she gulped. Her eyes widened but she tightened her fingers around his.

  “Where is he?” Turner asked.

  “Here.”

  Catch stood at the door of the drawing room.

  “Has your lip stopped… Oh wow, it isn’t even swollen anymore,” Matty said.

  “I heal fast.” Catch smiled at her.

  At her, not me. The bastard.

  Turner tried to swallow the lump in his throat and failed. The bloody thing grew bigger. He gripped Matty’s hand hard as Catch stared at him. Could brains implode? Turner’s mind whirled like a tornado, flinging out random thoughts that slammed like bullets into his skull. Even as his temper flared, Matty’s thumb stroked his hand, calming him as if she knew how he felt.

  Catch looked much the same as he had twenty years ago. Turner had liked his face as Logan, but once he’d revealed his true features, the night he told Turner who he really worked for, his good looks had blown Turner’s mind. Maybe Catch appeared a bit older and wiser, but he was still the same mouthwateringly handsome guy. He lounged against the door, looking like trouble with scruffy blond hair and sharp cheekbones, his pants riding low on his hips. His eyes were a dazzling green, not Logan’s electric blue, though Turner hadn’t remembered those dark shadows beneath. Turner wanted to hate him but couldn’t, wanted to hurt him and couldn’t do that either. Not beyond the thump on the jaw. Even that hadn’t made Turner feel better.

  “I need to talk to you,” Catch said.

  Turner didn’t want to talk to him.

  The doorbell rang. Catch changed in an instant, slouch gone, every sense alert and a gun appeared in his hand.

  “Hey,” Matty said. “Overreacting a touch? It might be the vicar.”

  Catch gaped at her.

  Turner’s jaw twitched and he bit back a laugh. “It was last time.”

  “I’ll get it,” Catch said. “You disappear.”

  Turner shrugged and went to the kitchen. No vampire could enter the house without invitation, and whatever else Catch was, he wasn’t stupid. Shame the same rules of entry didn’t apply to a mongrel like him.

  Two bags of Plasmix emptied, the hole inside him still there, Turner’s fingers hovered over a third. He shouldn’t need it, but maybe it would boost his willpower, numb his libido. Oh yeah, he’d woken when he shouldn’t. That was why he was hungry. Nothing to do with Catch. Turner sucked up the last and tossed the empty bags in the garbage.

  When he came back into the hall, the front door was closed and Matty jumped up and down, holding an envelope, her eyes bright with excitement.

  “I got mail. I got mail.”

  “Good for you. Now leave us alone,” Turner snapped. He pushed Catch into the drawing room and closed the door with the pair of them inside.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” Turner asked.

  Catch had it all ready in his head, the exact thing he wanted to say, and he couldn’t speak. Turner took his breath away. He hadn’t changed a bit, still the same arrogant, bad-tempered, gorgeous guy. Catch opened his mouth and managed one word. “Dava.”

  Turner glared at him. “I can count. I know she’s out.”

  “Not just out. She’s disappeared.”

  “Ah.” Turner sighed. “Gabriel?”

  Turner didn’t seem surprised she’d run but then neither was Catch.

  “No movement by Gabriel. Yet.”

  “Fine. You’ve told me, now you can go.”

  “Turner, please.”

  “The SBI worried I’m all eager to help him?”

  “They don’t know I’m here.”

  Turner strode toward him and shoved his shoulder. “Well, you’re not. Get out.”

  “No.”

  “This is my house. I don’t want you in it.”

  Cat
ch stood firm. “There’s trouble coming. I feel it.”

  Turner came right up against him, close enough to kiss. Catch wished he would.

  “So what do you want to do?” Turner asked. “Be the hero? Stand up for me instead of running away? Speak up for me instead of speaking against me?”

  Catch winced. “I want to help you.”

  “By making a move on Matty?”

  “I didn’t know she was…yours. I’m sorry.” Oh God. Part of Catch wanted to rip Turner’s head off, the other part wanted to fuck him senseless.

  “She’s not mine,” Turner muttered, and Catch’s heart stuttered.

  “But—”

  “I don’t want to talk about Matty. You lied to me.”

  Catch banged his head on the wall. He hadn’t even registered he’d been moving backward. He never backed away from anything.

  “I had to lie, otherwise you’d have served the same sentence,” Catch said. Or be dead.

  Turner stared at him a moment and then stalked away across the room. When he reached the opposite wall, he stormed back. “You let twenty years go past and then you come and want to make everything right? What can you say now that you couldn’t say then?”

  “While Gabriel and Dava were still incarcerated, you were safe. Now you’re not.”

  “Why would they want me? I’m nothing to them.”

  But the flicker in Turner’s eyes told Catch he wasn’t sure that was true.

  “I lied to protect you,” Turner whispered. “And you didn’t come and find me.”

  Catch sighed. “I lied to protect you and I did find you. Twice a year for the past twenty years I’ve paid you a visit. I needed to see you, make sure you were okay.”

  “You were that creepy feeling skating down my spine? Well, I wasn’t fucking okay,” Turner snapped. “What gave you the right to decide that was all I needed?”

  Twenty years ago, after it was all over, Catch had thought Turner would rip his heart out if he’d got near enough. He deserved it. Had anything changed?

  “Sit down. Let me talk to you,” Catch said.

  He breathed out when Turner settled in the middle of the couch but then sent a look daring Catch to sit anywhere near. He took the chair opposite.

  “You know some of this but not all,” said Catch. “I went to work for Gabriel’s organization Purelight Calling almost two years before you came on the scene. Golding, the head of the SBI, had grown alarmed about the number of vampires joining the cult and I was sent in undercover. Two years of slow work, getting vamps to trust me, and I moved up the ranks. Gabriel’s a master manipulator. He could sell sand in a desert. He sold sunshine to vampires. Some would give anything to walk in daylight and the money poured in for his research.”

  “But you can only go so far on promises and rhetoric,” Turner muttered, a bitter tone to his voice. “He needed to prove what he claimed. Who better to have on his side than a respected historian? The most respected vampire historian. And he made sure I found what he wanted me to.”

  Catch swallowed hard. “Gabriel wasn’t the first to claim that vampires originated from another planet, that myths and legends about Transylvania and the Carpathian Mountains had been created to ensure that fact remained hidden.”

  “Not the first, no, but it doesn’t suit the Council for vampires to believe we come from space. If mortals accept there’s life out there, then that’s a step toward accepting we really exist, that the threat we pose is real and the need to destroy us urgent. Better we’re make-believe creatures who mortals invented to scare themselves than real-life monsters who invaded their world long ago.”

  Catch sighed. “It sort of makes sense vampires would come from the stars. Why would they evolve in a world where light means life?”

  Turner gave a short laugh and leaned back in his seat. “Thing is, we don’t and haven’t evolved. We haven’t changed over centuries. Longer than that.”

  “So where do you think vampires came from?”

  “The question I devoted my life to answering. Then along came Dava and Gabriel and you. And Gabriel preached that our origins lay beyond the Milky Way, that vampires had arrived with a means to survive in the light and that means would soon be available again. And I was going to help him find it.”

  “Unwittingly,” Catch said.

  “But it wasn’t, was it? He sucked me in like all the others.”

  And that, Catch thought, was Turner’s cross, that he’d not seen straight through Gabriel’s bullshit.

  “Is it true that it was your idea to use Dava to persuade me to the cause?” Turner asked.

  Catch had once told him no. Now he told the truth. “Yes.”

  Turner’s fingers tightened on the edge of the couch.

  “But I hadn’t met you,” Catch said. “I didn’t know you then.”

  “And if you had, you’d have said no to Gabriel? I bet you laughed about me, a geeky academic being led by his dick, and when Dava failed to make my cock jump, you stepped in and, guess what, I was always hard for you. Laugh about that too? You fucked with my head until I couldn’t think beyond wanting you, needing you, trusting you.” Turner’s fists clenched at his sides.

  Catch swallowed hard. “I felt the same.”

  “Right.”

  He didn’t know how to make Turner believe him. “I wanted to stop the whole thing, but my boss insisted it continue. When Gabriel’s plans grew larger than a scam, the Council needed to see who’d support him, who they could trust.”

  “Hardly fair, was it? Smacks of entrapment. Who among us wouldn’t want to walk in the sun?”

  Purelight had evolved into something far larger than a misguided, evangelical group of sunseekers, something far darker. Gabriel had milked more and more funds from an increasing number of suckers on the promise of a new life. He didn’t need to proclaim himself messiah, others did it for him. The more powerful he grew, the more ordinary vamps loved him and the more the Council feared him. Once Gabriel started to talk about Revelation, coming out to mortals, his fate was sealed.

  Turner stood and began to pace. “You know how I felt when I was handed those books? When I read that the earliest vampires arrived here with a way of walking in the sun? As though all my life had led to that one point. That my reason for being had just been revealed. That all the misery I’d gone through, the mortal life I’d lost, the world I gave up—it had been worth it because now I was going to help make the lives of all those like me so much better. We’d be equals with mortals instead of hiding in the shadows.”

  “Gabriel didn’t want to be equal, he wanted to be better,” Catch said, and stood up. “And he didn’t want it for all vampires, only for a select few. You can imagine what a guy like him would do if he could actually walk in the sun. No mortal would be safe.”

  “I still believe in the innate goodness of our kind. We have our share of murderers and crooks, but no higher percentage than exist in the mortal world.”

  There was defiance in Turner’s voice and Catch didn’t contradict him, but Turner was wrong.

  “By the end, I had a feeling Gabriel had come to believe his own lies,” Catch said.

  “You really think so?”

  Catch squirmed. “It got hard to figure out what was the truth.”

  Turner snorted. “It was all lies. Vampires didn’t arrive here on a spaceship, bringing a plant extract that enabled them to withstand the sun. Why choose the Earth? If they had the capacity for space travel, there had to be more suitable, darker planets. The diaries they wrote, those books I pored over, were nothing but fakes. Excellent fakes because, after all, Gabriel had plenty of money to employ the best forger, but fucking fakes nonetheless. I suspect the guy who produced them is long gone, dead the moment he handed them over.”

  Turner had just spouted the official line, but Catch had no idea whether either of them believed it. Turner had been so obsessed with the diaries, so convinced they were the real thing, Catch had almost believed in them too.

 
; Turner stepped in front of him. “And just as I’m about to confront Gabriel, someone I trusted with the truth persuades me not to, makes me promise on his life not to say a negative word about the books. He shows me his true face and asks me to trust him. And I do. Then Logan, my lover, denounces the Purelight Calling, calls the books fakes and goes into hiding. And I find my name is on the list of accused along with Gabriel’s.”

  “Because if it hadn’t fucking well been there, you’d be dead,” Catch shouted. “Do you think Gabriel would have let you live if he thought you’d betrayed him? Once I realized he wasn’t going to be executed, that instead he’d be imprisoned, I knew someone on the Council had intervened on his behalf. Better that it seemed you were fooled right up to the end, better that it looked as though you still believed—”

  Turner’s face was inches from his. “You destroyed my reputation. That idiot, Turner, the historian who knew fuck all, who’d believe in Santa Claus if you showed him a reindeer with a red nose, hey, he wasn’t really a bad guy, just a stupid one. They laughed at me. Fucking laughed at me.” Turner spat the words out. “I trusted you and said I believed in the books right up until the end. I continued to say nothing, but you didn’t come. You didn’t come. And no one wanted another book from me. No more lecturing. No more respect. No more of anything. And no more you.” He slumped back on the couch.

  Catch’s heart pounded. “I knew you’d hate me. I couldn’t tell you why I’d lied.”

  “So whose face do you have on this time? Is there someone else lurking inside? Endless good-looking guys you can morph into? You need to humiliate me all over again?” Turner’s voice was dull.

  Catch took a deep breath. “My ability to change my face is what got me into this mess in the first place. I had no choice about working for the SBI.”

  Turner narrowed his eyes. “No choice?”

  Shit, too much. No one needed to know that truth. “They made an offer I couldn’t refuse,” Catch said. “Money and an adrenaline rush? You know what I’m like.”

  “Do I?” Turner stared at the floor.

  “I wanted you to live. The only way I could make that happen was to give you up and make out you still believed in the books. Gabriel would have pulled you in, blamed you. I didn’t want you in prison for decades.”