A golden Labrador Retriever bounded by my picnic table, dragging its leash. It dashed into the playground and barked at the kids, tail wagging. A few protective parents approached as the owner, a tribal-tattooed young guy in cut-off blue jeans, ran to claim the pooch.
“Nothing is wrong with you, babe. Nada.”
“No, seriously. I think this is some kind of magic spell. My brain short circuits around him.”
“It’s not magic.” His firm tone failed to convince me.
I raked my nails on the table’s smooth surface. “But it has to be. I can’t think at all and my body goes crazy. It has to be some kind of vampire mind trick. Why else would I feel like I’m a sex addict who can’t survive even one second without touching him?”
“It’s no trick.”
“How do you know, Adrian? How can I know? Because that’s the thing—I don’t know this guy at all. I mean, he’s hot, but that’s not usually enough for me, as you know. How long was it before we moved from platonic friends to sex friends?”
“One year.”
I flicked my hand. “Exactly. And along comes this unbelievably sexy guy, a vampire no less, and suddenly I don’t care about his story? What kind of person he is? Suddenly, I’m ready to do it with a complete stranger I’ve known for, what, several hours at most? He’s got to be messing with me, right? Because the real me would be asking a whole lot of questions or checking him out on the Internet. Or, making our tech dudes run a background check. I don’t know where he’s from, if he has a family, a job, a life beyond drinking blood. Who is this guy?” My voice crackled, tinged with panic.
“Whoa, breathe, babe,” he soothed. “I was wondering when you’d flip out. You were so caught up in the moment, letting it happen, and I was proud of you for that, my little control freak. You were doing so well.”
My eyes watered and I sniffed.
“Are you crying?” Adrian sounded astonished. Contrary to my recent weeping willow behavior, crying was far from a regular habit. In fact, I doubt he’d ever witnessed a tear leave my body the entire time we’d known each other. Five years and counting.
“I’m coming over.”
“No, you don’t have to.” I blinked back the tears. “I didn’t know who else to call. You’re the only one who—”
“I get it. It’s okay.”
“You know Faith’s my girl, but I can’t talk to her about this. She practically has me married off already. She calls him The Key and is convinced he’s The One—”
“Well, isn’t he?”
“No.” Liar, my inner voice taunted. Mine.
Adrian chuckled.
I stretched out on the long tabletop. Tattooed boy jogged by, pulled along by his enthusiastic dog. I stared at the tree branches above my head, picturing Alexander. Mine, the voice repeated. “Okay, maybe, but—”
“But what, babe? Listen, there’s no magic in play here, no vampire tricks. There’s just you getting in your own way. You’re a control freak, Rina. The ultimate type A, the top string puller, diva of decision making, runner of every show in your life. Except this one. You can’t run this one and that’s what this little freak out is all about. You, feeling out of control.”
He was right. It both relieved and annoyed me.
“You can’t put him in one of your boxes, Rina.”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, you’re the expert vampire lover now?”
“It’s not about that and you know it.”
“Isn’t it?”
He blew out a noisy breath tinged with impatience. “No. This is the real deal and you have to let it play.”
“The real deal?” I echoed.
“Do I need to spell it out for you?”
“I guess you do.”
“Stop.” His voice hardened. “Now you’re just arguing for the hell of it. You’re not under any magic spell and you know it. So get out of your own way and let this happen.”
My anger spiked at his harsh tone. “Shut up!” Several parents eyed me, assessed the danger threat, deemed me harmless and focused on their kids.
“Hey, you called me remember? You wanted to hear this, so listen up. Faith is right. He’s it, he’s The Guy. Your one and only. So don’t fuck it up by thinking it to death.”
We sat in silence for an awkward stretch while I processed our conversation. This was happening. All of it was happening.
“I’m afraid,” I admitted.
“Of course you are,” he agreed, tone gentler now. “You’re out of your comfort zone.”
“Way out,” I added.
“I—oh hey, Jonas wants to talk to you.”
I sat up. “Why isn’t he talking in my head?”
Jonas’s voice came through the phone. “Get in the car.”
“What?”
“Now,” he ordered.
“You do realize I’m in the park, right? I ran here.”
“Go.” He hung up.
With a long-suffering sigh I wished he could hear, I hopped off the table and scanned my surroundings. It didn’t take me long to spot my chauffeur.
Stella waited under a tall, shady tree near Twentieth Street. I hustled through the playground and up the slope to join her, my lips curling upward in amusement at her anti-sunlight attire. Bowler hat, sunglasses, long leather coat, gloves, black turtleneck and skinny pants tucked into knee-high riding boots.
“You’re up early.”
She shrugged and sauntered toward the street.
I fell into step with her. “Seriously, shouldn’t you be fast asleep until sunset?”
“I am strong. I have no need of the moon to wake me.”
“Oh. This is another one of those older, stronger, can-do-more-things, right? What else do you have in your bag of tricks? Like the sun thing—nice, protective outfit, by the way—how much sunlight can you guys withstand before you turn into a pile of ash? Because I know you do, if you get burned enough, I’ve seen it, I—wait a minute.” I stopped. “I’ve seen that?”
A vampire reduced to a pile of ash. Just a mound of dust on the ground.
Yuck. It was an old memory and my brain didn’t want to linger there. But I had to know. “I see a pile of ash in my head. I can’t pull up the rest of the memory, like I was too young to get it or something is blocking it. Do you know anything about it?”
She shrugged.
Stop talking and get in the car, Jonas growled in my head.
I jerked. “What the hell, go away.”
Stella stalked into the street, timing her movement so any passersby would assume I yelled at her. I caught up with her at the double-parked car, Lorenzo’s favorite Ferrari. My eyes widened in disbelief. “Lorenzo let you take this?”
She ghosted inside. I followed suit and buckled up. “But this is his baby, Stella. No one touches this car. No one.”
“I am persuasive.” She shoved the car in gear and roared us up the street.
“Ohmigod, you didn’t,” I laughed. “Mind control? He’s going to kill you when he figures out you compelled him.”
“I am already dead.”
My brows shot up. “Did you just make a joke?”
“I do not make the jokes.”
“You did. Anyway, what happened to the ‘do not touch the Tranquilli bloodline’ rule?”
We turned onto Eighteenth, toward the heart of the Castro.
“No mind control. Your brother said, ‘Take the Mercedes.’ So, I took the Ferrari.”
I grinned. “I get it. I don’t like being told what to do, either.”
“No man commands me,” she grumbled.
“Ditto.” I thought of the three worst bossy offenders in my life. Lorenzo. Thomas. Jonas.
We drove onto Hartford. This was not the way to my house. “I thought you were taking me home,” I complained.
We pulled into Adrian’s driveway, parking in back. Our arrival here meant Brigid and Faith had indeed blown the whistle on me. Jonas knew about my creepy dream and had clearly ordered Stella to bring me here
to discuss it. But I was sweaty and starving. I wanted to go home, shower, stop by the clinic to check on Mark and Ren, and meet my brothers for dinner. Discussing Team Evil’s recent hijacking attempt could wait.
“I thought you were my bodyguard now? I’m sure feeding me to the cranky lion isn’t part of the job description.”
She turned off the car. “You are not food, Tranquilli Child.”
“Speaking metaphorically here. I have plans. Take me home.”
Jonas growled in my head. Get in the house.
“Get in the car, get in the house,” I mimicked him. “Stop barking orders at me. I’m not your slave.”
Now. A trickle of power accompanied the order.
He power-smacked me. Damn him. I crossed my arms, unwilling to budge. Stella settled in, too, removing her hat and gloves and tossing them in back. We opened our doors for a cross breeze.
I broke our silence. “Stella, something has been bugging me about that night in the park. You know, when you and your guys, um, tried to eat us for dinner.”
Stella took off her sunglasses, dark eyes narrowing.
“You’re Tessa’s right hand woman, right? Yet when we met in the park, you didn’t know who I was.”
Stella frowned.
“Tessa practically raised me, so, why didn’t you know about me? Are you new to her...?” What did vampires call their groups?
“Cosca,” she supplied.
My eyes widened at the word clan in Italian. A very gangster, very mafia term. “I was right. You guys are like a gang.”
Her eyes flashed, lips curling, baring fangs. “No child, we are not human, nor are we criminals,” she admonished me in Italian. “We do not traffic in drugs or slaves. We do not extort money from innocent business owners by maiming and torturing their wives while they watch, nor do we kidnap children and sell them into prostitution when their fathers cannot afford to pay us tribute.”
She gazed through me, eyes distant. Instinct told me she spoke from personal experience.
“We do not brand a young girl with our family crest as if she were cattle and make her our clan’s personal sex toy. We do not addict her to opium to render her incapable of escape. Do not whip her for amusement, let the wounds heal, and then whip her all over again. We do not make her fuck men and women while we watch and take her ourselves when she is barely conscious. We do not reawaken her with cocaine and begin it all again.”
Stella blinked and refocused her gaze upon me. “No child, we are not those people.”
My stomach braided into a horrified knot. I swallowed hard. “Mi dispiace. I’m sorry, Stella. I meant no disrespect.”
“You have much to learn, Tranquilli Child.” Her voice was brusque. She switched to English. “But it is not my place to teach you our ways. Now, to your question. I am not, as you say, the right hand of my Mistress. I am her fourth in the chain of command. As far as I know, she told no one of your existence.”
“But she spent so much time here when I was a kid. You never asked where she was going, or what she was doing away from Italy?”
“It is not my place to question my Mistress.”
“So when you attacked in the park you had no idea—?”
“I had just arrived in the country. I was hungry.”
I resisted pointing out that feasting on unwilling humans was a criminal act. “I can’t believe Tessa didn’t tell you about me or why she’d ordered you to come to the States.”
Stella shook her head, straight bobbed hair swinging around her pale pixie face. “Child, you do not understand. I am Soldier. Mistress calls, I come. I do not ask why.”
“But—”
She raised a hand. “No more. I have answered your question. Now, your body hungers and it could smell better.”
I blinked. “Did you just call me stinky?”
“Eh, it happens.” She gave me her classic shrug and blurred from the car, reappearing on my side as I stepped out.
“How did you escape?” Her story included a happy ending since here she was, undead and well.
“They went too far one night, with the drugs and beatings and other things. Left me for dead in front of the gate to their familial estate. My dead body would serve as a warning for the local villagers—pay tribute or we will do this to your daughters. But I didn’t die. Not there, anyway. Contessa’s soldiers found me, took me to her. She was the most beautiful creature I ever beheld. An angel. She held me, kissed my forehead, wiped the blood and dirt from my face with her tiny, gentle hand.”
Stella touched her cheek.
“I glimpsed Heaven in her eyes. She pulled my story from my mind while I lay dying in her arms. She wept bloody tears. This beautiful, perfect angel cried for me. A stranger. A nobody. A nothing.” Raw emotion crackled Stella’s voice.
“Then the angel, my Mistress, leaned in close and said, ‘You are dying. But I can save you, child. Do you want to live forever, with me?’ I replied yes, of course. She said, ‘So be it. We shall rain down a terrible vengeance upon your transgressors, my darling girl. With my blood, I give you my solemn vow.’”
Stella strode toward the house.
I followed. “What happened next?”
She glanced over her shoulder, her smile slow and full of tooth. “We killed them. Slowly.”
Eleven
Adrian’s master bathroom was spacious and white, from the tiled floor and walls to the frosted glass shower stall and huge claw foot tub under a bay window. Two red rugs, a green spider plant, and lucky bamboo in a ruby vase added splashes of color.
I hovered at the double sink, poked at the bamboo and wolfed down a banana Adrian tossed to me when I’d dashed through the kitchen. The two men had looked super cozy at the kitchen table, Jonas with an arm across Adrian’s shoulders, his pale fingers sifting through my friend’s silky hair. A lover’s caress.
The bathroom held more signs of their intimacy. A new blue toothbrush, a wooden boar’s head brush with strands of dark hair wrapped around the bristles, a black silk robe hanging next to Adrian’s fluffy white one on the door. My robe used to hang there, my toothbrush and hair accessories stored on the vanity. Where were they now?
Every aspect of my reality was changing so quickly.
I dallied in the shower, replaying the recent events caused by the resurgence of vampires in my life. Good—meeting Alexander and reconnecting with my brothers. Bad—the attack by Dixon and the shadow dude. The water ran cold. I shivered from both the frigid water and a sense of impending doom.
Ensconced in Adrian’s robe, wet hair secured in a towel, I padded into the bedroom, noting the rumpled bed. Gold duvet twisted in a bunch, the cream sheets stained with blood and lube—evidence of lovemaking and a feeding. The French doors leading onto the deck hung wide open. Fog blanketed the sky, muting the rays of the early evening sun. Many San Francisco vampires were probably out and about under the fog cover. Vampires like Jonas. And maybe Alexander?
The thought of my vampire love interest generated instant goosebumps. I should call him. We fast approached our agreed meeting time, and he was unaware of the family dinner plot complication. Our hot and heavy make-out session at the clinic knocked that significant detail right out of my head.
Oops.
I grabbed my workout gear and phone and headed to the guest bedroom, home to a stash of my clothes.
“You about done up there?” Adrian called from the foot of the stairs.
I leaned over the hall banister. He tapped his watch. “Tick tock.”
“Yeah, just a sec.”
“Okay, babe. I’ll make you a snack.”
“Thanks.” I fussed with my damp hair and dressed in a hurry in a shell-pink baby doll tee and low-rise, flare leg jeans, heavily distressed with rainbow silk fabric behind the holes. Gold, T-strap sandals with a three-inch heel completed my outfit. Passable for a family dinner. I’d unearth date clothes later. For my date with Alexander. A giddy smile cracked my face. I sank onto the bed to check my messages and m
ake that all-important call to Alexander.
My brothers had called to confirm dinner. Text from my friend Gen to meet at Haven tonight. And lastly, voice mail from Faith. She and Kai were at the clinic. Mark was awake and recovering. Ren remained unconscious, but Doc Scott anticipated a full recovery.
I replied via text and told her to punch them both in the arm. Code for, I love you guys and don’t ever do anything stupid like almost getting yourselves killed for me, ever again. They’d get it. And ignore me. God, I missed them.
Now, for the big call.
My stomach performed a tap dance while I waited for him to pick up. The call went to voice mail.
“Hi, Alexander. It’s Carina. When we were hanging out yesterday, I mean, this morning, you mentioned hooking up tonight. But I can’t, I mean, not right now. I have this dinner thing with my family in a couple of hours and I don’t know how long it will last, but probably not super late since it’s dinner. But I shouldn’t, I mean, I can’t bring a date, because it’s a family thing. Anyway, I was wondering if you wanted to get together after? Maybe meet me at Haven around midnight? We could hang out and talk. I mean, if that doesn’t sound too boring or anything. Well, okay. Talk to you later.”
The phone slipped from my fingers. Had I done that? Rambled like an idiot on Alexander’s voice mail? Self-sabotage anyone?
“Ohmigod. Worst. Message. Ever!” I flopped back on the bed.
An answering chuckle sounded from the doorway.
I pouted at Adrian. “How long have you been there?”
“Long enough.” He joined me on the bed.
I covered my face, peeking out at him through my fingers. “I blew it. He won’t show. I sounded like a dork.”
“Well, yeah,” Adrian agreed, with a wide grin. “You did.”
“Not helping!”
Adrian stretched on his side and uncovered my face. “But you’re such a cute dork. Don’t worry, he’ll show.” He smoothed errant strands of damp hair off my forehead.
I rolled on my side to face him. “Do I want him to? Part of me still thinks this is some kind of magic. I don’t feel like me.”
Haven Page 17
