Cherry Stem (Vampire Cherry Book 1)

by Sotia Lazu

  A small table lay on its side next to me.

  I squirmed underneath the heavy man. I didn’t try to throw him off. On the contrary, I rubbed my body against his. “If you know me, you know what I can do.”

  He closed his fingers around my neck and pulled me closer. “Haven’t seen you in action, but I wouldn’t mind a private showing.” He slid his knee between my thighs. Gag.

  I reached out and closed my fingers around one leg of the table. There was no way I could break it without him noticing, but wood doesn’t need to be sharpened, to be lethal. Not if you use enough force.

  I arched upward and rubbed my cheek against my attacker’s neck. He roamed my body with his free hand, and I made an effort not to flinch away from his repulsive touch. “I have something in mind for you,” I said.

  “Oh, I’ll get what I want. Don’t worry.” He raised his head to look at me, and I went for the throat.

  I closed my jaws over his jugular, locking him in place. Before he could react, I brought the entire table up. Hoping I my aim was good, I plunged the leg through his back with all the strength I could muster. Flesh ripped and ribs cracked under the force of my blow. The next moment, my mouth filled with ashes. I’d heard staking led to instant death, but I couldn’t imagine that a person could be there one moment and simply not there the next—nothing but a thin layer of white powder.

  I didn’t have time to pull back before the end of the leg hit my chest. Sputtering and blinking hard against the dust that was everywhere, I rolled to my side and looked around.

  The second male vampire snarled and lunged at me. I was on my feet and swinging the table in no time. It caught him on the head and stopped him in his tracks.

  “You bitch.” He took a couple of steps back. “I should have killed you after all.”

  That voice I knew. “Willoughby?” Impossible. He met the sun half-a-dozen years ago.

  Before I could move, he was out the door, promising we’d meet again. “And the next time, I’ll make things right.”

  Vampires can’t faint, but I was as close to that as physically possible. I went to Alex on legs as sturdy as noodles, and let out a sigh of relief when he inhaled. I picked him up and carried him to the armchair we’d spent the night in. “Alex?”

  To my relief, he opened those beautiful gray eyes of his. “Cherry?” His lips moved slowly. “Who were—? What—? What?” He let his head drop back and squeezed his eyes shut again. “Were they vampires?”

  “Yes. I dusted one of them, but the other escaped.” I took his hand between mine, and my heart clenched when he pulled away. I tried to keep my voice from wavering. “Are you all right?”

  He looked at me with a rueful smile. “I’ll survive.” His voice was hoarse.

  “You’d better.” What was it with me and crying today? Tears filled my eyes again, making my vision blurry. Still, I made out the narrowing of his eyes as he studied my face.

  “These are real tears?” When I nodded, he muttered, “I thought they’d be blood.”

  “I’m so sorry I dragged you into this. The guy who escaped was my maker. He was supposed to be dead. Dead dead. He must have been after me, and you were in their way.” I shouldn’t have spent the night. I shouldn’t have—

  “What’s done is done.” He touched the back of his head gingerly and winced. “Why did you help me instead of running?”

  “Oh, I dunno. Because they attacked you?”

  His eyebrow quirked, one corner of his mouth twitching before he elaborated. “They’re your people. You should be on their side.”

  “That’s not how it works. We’re not a pack.” He’d offered to hold me and keep the sadness at bay, before the attack. For that reason alone, I wouldn’t lose my patience and bite him to shut him up.

  “So what?”

  “Do you help criminals out, ’cause they’re human?”

  He shook his head.

  “I didn’t think so. Besides, I like you more than I do them. Plus it’s my fault they were here. They must have followed me to the club and waited until it was dark again, to make their move.” My theory had enough holes to be used as a fishing net, but the gist of the matter was that I was to blame.

  “I don’t think they were after you,” Alex said.

  I reached for his hand again. He didn’t avoid my touch this time, and I gave him a gentle squeeze. “What do you mean?”

  “Can vampires enter someone’s home uninvited?” He coughed like his lungs were on fire, and I wondered if he’d taken a punch or two before I came out of the basement.

  I patted his back. “No. They have to be asked in by the owner. Unless the owner is dead, of course, in which case...” The horror of what I said made me numb.

  Alex searched his pockets like crazy. “My phone.”

  I spotted the cordless lying on the floor and rushed to get it for him.

  He snatched it from my outstretched hand, punched in the buttons, and brought it to his ear. His body relaxed after a couple of seconds. Not wanting to intrude on a family moment, I pretended to be preoccupied with my nails but watched him for signs of discomfort.

  “Hey, Mom. The house is fine.” He blushed and lowered his voice. “Yeah, I’m eating right. Mom, I’m thirty-two. I live by myself; I know how to... Yeah, okay.” He nodded a couple of times. Rubbed his throat. “I promise. See you soon.” A grin split his face. “Say hi from me too, and he better be taking care of you.”

  I didn’t look at him until he caressed my knuckles with his thumb.

  “She’s fine,” I said with a smile. His mother was unharmed, and he was being all chummy with the back of my hand. Things were looking up.

  He cleared his throat and nodded. “Which proves my suspicion. They’ve been here before.”

  Another coughing bout took him over. I went to the kitchen, filled one of the glasses on the drying block with tap water, and rushed back. He took it with a shaky hand and a mumbled thank you, and downed the water greedily. Choking on the second gulp forced him to take it a bit slower, but he still finished the whole glass.

  Reverting to cop mode happened instantly, in front of my very eyes. The line of his mouth hardened, his face becoming a stone mask. He was scary in a way that turned me on beyond words. “We’ve never met before last night, have we? You haven’t...” He waved a hand by his head.

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Then I was right. They were after me.”

  The idea seemed preposterous. “Why?” I didn’t mean for it to sound like I didn’t find him significant enough, but he scowled.

  “I’m a cop, Cherry.” The scowling lost its oomph by the way he rubbed his chest, as if in pain. He waved off my worry when I asked if he was all right, and said, “I go after bad guys. Most of the time, I piss them off.”

  I rolled my eyes and sat on the armrest, one foot tucked under my butt. “Supernatural bad guys? You couldn’t piss off the normal mafia kind?”

  His laughter caught me unawares. “It seems the supernatural is attracted to me these days.” He was still chuckling when he cupped the back of my head and pulled me in for a kiss. Brief and casual, it felt like something I could get used to—if I weren’t a vampire or he weren’t a human.

  He seemed to no longer resent my nature, and he was still attracted to me, but I couldn’t allow myself to get comfortable with that idea. “Any clue why they’d be after you?” I tried to pull away, but he didn’t let me.

  “Been looking into a series of disappearances lately. Girls in their twenties. Beautiful, sociable, no direct family. They go to a club or a party, then nobody hears from them again.”

  I pushed against his chest and straightened up. “Willoughby—my maker—he turned me after a party. If he’s part of it...”

  “You think he’s turning them?” His voice was flat, no emotion coloring it.

  “I think you should look for them in Dumpsters.”

  “He’s killing them?”

  “That was his plan for me.” Ma
king my voice gruffer, I said, “I should have killed you, bitch. His words, not mine.”

  Alex narrowed his eyes and furrowed his brow. “We haven’t found any bodies.”

  “Oh my God, I knew the other guy too. The one I offed? He lied the first time we met. He hasn’t seen me.”

  Alex looked perplexed. Of course Alex looked perplexed. Alex didn’t know, and I didn’t make any sense.

  “I was in a couple of films. Of the adult variety.” Biting my lip, I turned away. “It was a long time ago.”

  It was the perfect time for him to say something, but he was quiet, even the wheezing gone from his breath.

  “A long, long time ago.” I needed to know he was fine with it. “Never mind. Forget about it. The point is the guy whose remains I’m now wearing was the one who found me after my turning. His name was Ted. Back then, he said he recognized me. That he was a fan.” Alex was watching me, expressionless. I wanted to slap him. “Tonight he said he’d never seen me in action, which means he lied before. Also—hey—he was here with my maker. Isn’t it too much of a coincidence?”

  For the first time, I thought maybe my situation hadn’t been an accident. Maybe I was supposed to have been found. “I remember waking up, hungry and disoriented. I’d just found my footing when Ted appeared. He made a big fuss about how he loved my work, and insisted he take me to the council. If he and Willoughby are a team now, they could have been one back then too.”

  My maker’s insistence on leaving the party early also made sense with that scenario. Newly turned vampires don’t rise until the next evening, if their turning is less than a few hours from dawn. My rising had to be the same night as my death, or Willoughby would have risked someone else finding me first, and my awakening taking place in the morgue.

  “Are you sure it was him? Ted?” Nice. Alex would pretend he didn’t hear the porn-related part.

  “Yes. I knew his voice when he spoke, but I couldn’t place it till now.”

  “Hmmm.” He motioned for me to lean closer, and I did. He was hurt. Perhaps he needed me to help him up. He smirked. “Can I get my hands on either one of those films?”

  I matched his expression. “If you beg, maybe.” He licked his lips. He was about to kiss me again. Badness lay that way. Flirty territory was too shaky under the circumstances. I got back to the subject we should be concerned with. “We have to do something.”

  He grimaced. “I know. I finally have a lead, thanks to you, but I can’t tell my lieutenant that vampires did it.” He pulled me sideways onto his lap. “Any clue where we can find that guy?”

  “I told you, I thought he was dead. Executed for turning someone recognizable.” I loved how soothing his hands felt, caressing my back, yet I had to wonder how we got where we were.

  His acceptance of my undeadness had to be due to my fighting on his side, but could we pick up where we’d left off the night before? A question for another time.

  “A huge mess was stirred when I was found,” I said. “The existing council at the time was overthrown. My turning was the reason for the ruling against any but the oldest of vampires turning people, and even they must have a special permit.”

  “Maybe you should start at the beginning.” His chuckle sounded forced. “My head is spinning with all the random data.”

  I offered what I saw as a good alternative. “I can do better than that. I can make you forget that I—that we—exist.”

  He pushed me back. Not hard. Not a shove. He just grasped my shoulders and made me sit up, my upper body away from him. “No. You don’t mess with my head. Don’t even think about it.”

  I felt the need to explain, if not defend myself. “It won’t be messing. I won’t take away anything you need, just the—”

  “No. You will take away nothing.” He threw his arms in the air. “God.” Upset as he sounded, he didn’t make me get off his lap.

  “I’m only trying to help.” Maybe, just maybe, I was sulking.

  “Help?” He widened his eyes. “How? By making me forget important info about a case that may never be solved otherwise? By making me forget one of the best nights of—”

  He clumped his mouth shut midsentence, but what I heard was enough to make me stop sulking. I got the point. And I liked it. Not that I could show my improved mood, with him scowling the way he was.

  “I’ll pretend you never offered to do that,” he said, only slightly mellower. “Now tell me what I need to know about all this.”

  What did he need to know? “I guess I’ll take it from the start.” I bit the inside of my cheek. “I mean, I was sort of a celeb, I got bitten by a guy I met at a party, and until now I thought he left me for dead.” Alex’s gray-eyed gaze was locked on mine, making it exceedingly hard for me to remember what I meant to say next.

  I can proudly say I managed, nevertheless. “Ted—vamp who went poof—found me, said he recognized me from my films, and took me to the council to record my turning.”

  “The council. You mentioned it before. What is it exactly? How does it work?”

  I took an unnecessary breath, then let the air rush out noisily between my lips. “It more or less comes up with rules to be followed. And of course with the repercussions for not following those rules.” Like for spilling my guts about our kind to a human. But it wasn’t like he’d tell anyone while I was around, and I’d make him forget about us when I said goodbye, whether he wanted me to or not.

  Alex looked at me, waiting for the interesting part, I guess. Too bad there wasn’t such a part coming. “There are five council members. Used to be the oldest vampires that ran things, but after”—I pointed at myself—“well, most of the ones who overthrew them are younger.”

  “Why was the council overthrown over something an errant vamp did?”

  That was a great question, actually. Why didn’t I wonder about that before? Oh, right—I didn’t bother with logic. What I cared about at the time was that I’d never have the perfect abs, that I was hungry, and that my career would never take off. “The story was that the old council should have come up with rules against random turning earlier, and that by not having done so they betrayed the ones they were appointed to protect.”

  “And the new council cares more?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. The services that took me in were established when vampires were first organized, but they’re no longer necessary, since we don’t have more fledglings, so they were... discontinued. That’s the only change I know of.”

  “Services?” He tilted his head to the right and cocked an eyebrow. It was unsettling that I considered the movement a trademark of his, like I’d known him for a long time and not just twenty-four hours. “Like social services?”

  I could see the idea of a vampire society with an infrastructure similar to that of humans amused him. “Yup.” I popped the p. “Vampire Social Services. We called them VSS. They took in new vamps and taught us what we needed in order to survive.” I paused. “There were also leaflets and a handbook to be memorized and destroyed before we left.”

  Alex gave me a full-blown grin, and I swatted his shoulder. “Don’t mock, sir. It was helpful. I wouldn’t have learned how to control the thirst or fend for myself without it. I’m not sure I’d have even wanted to.” Constantine had helped me practice what I’d read, but it wasn’t the time to mention him.

  He caressed my back, his long fingers drawing soothing circles that drove the stress away. “In that case, I’m glad you had it.” He leaned closer to me.

  I wanted to kiss him, but there were things to be discussed. “I think I should talk to the council about tonight.”

  He sucked in his lower lip. I wished I were the one doing the sucking.

  “Sounds good.” His fingers crawled up my neck and began massaging my scalp. “And I should keep looking at what the missing girls had in common other than their age and looks. They didn’t even all vanish from the same place.”

  The massage relaxed me, and soon I felt my eyelids drifting
shut. “Can I take a look at their pictures? I know people. I could ask around, see if they heard anything about new fledglings.”

  “I can get you their files, but I don’t want you to take any risks. He already saw you with me. If he finds out you’re looking into this...” He stilled his movements and narrowed his eyes. “If he hurts you—”

  That was another sentence he didn’t get to finish, this time because I sealed his lips with mine. It was a spontaneous reaction. He was worried for me. Wanted to protect me.

  “Where did that come from?” He didn’t seem to mind.

  I shrugged, unable to meet his gaze. “Felt like it.”

  With his index finger, he tucked my hair behind my ear. “I’m glad you did.” His thumb brushed my chin, lingering at the corner of my lips.

  There was too much tension, too much something I didn’t want to identify between us. I wouldn’t be able to handle it if he kept being so nice, so cute, so...

  I looked around. The place wasn’t wrecked, but we had stuff to do. Thank God for small favors. The smashed coffee table lay by a broken lamp, the overhead light reflecting off the scattered shards of glass and sprinkling tiny dots of light onto the upturned couch. Dust covered a doily I was sure had been handmade. The table I used as a weapon was remarkably unscathed—more than could be said for the curtains, one side of which had been ripped off the rail.

  “Let’s clean up.” I hopped off Alex’s lap.

  He got up after me. “The front door lock is busted. I’ll have to go buy a new one.” He stood so close, I felt the heat of his body like we were still touching.

  I nodded. Casually putting some distance between us, I picked up the doily and shook it, in an effort to get dusted vamp off it.

  Alex turned the couch upright and replaced the cushions on it. “The bolt wasn’t on, so I can use that to keep the door closed, but I can’t lock from outside.”

  I studied the ruins of the coffee table, our glasses from the previous night miraculously intact on the floor. I tried hard not to stare at how his dress pants stretched over the curve of his ass when he bent down for the last throw pillow. I needed to get the vacuum and mop from the basement. Anything to keep from jumping him.