"Don't turn this around and try to make me feel bad. You lied to me. If you had told me what happened to Blade, none of this would have happened."
"So it's my fault." Light danced in his eyes. Of course he wouldn't take any of this seriously.
I felt tears rising in my eyes and I fought them as hard as I could. The time for crying was long past. "It is your fault."
"What are you going to do about it, beautiful?" He smiled again, and this time it was genuine. Damn it.
"I don't know." I turned on my heel and headed to the guest bedroom, locking the door behind me. Of course, Tristan could rip it clear off the hinge if he wanted to, but my message was clear.
What was I going to do about it?
Vampire clan leaders didn’t sulk. Unless that vampire clan leader was me.
I sat with my cheek against the wall of windows lining the guest room, which I’d claimed as my haven, watching the city flitter below me. They had no idea there had been a change in the guard. Hell, they didn’t even know vampires really existed. As far as the general public knew, vampires were something Immortal Dilemma pretended to be on stage.
Closing my eyes, I channeled the energy from the street below. Hopefulness. How appropriate.
I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I’d spent most of the time I’d been in Vegas avoiding any contact with Talis de Rancourt. She thought I interfered with her control over Tristan. Not enough that he’d tell me what was really going on, I thought to myself as I traced my finger in the mist my breath created on the window. We didn’t need to breathe, but we needed to keep up the charade. I drew a heart then wiped it away.
Tristan avoided all things vampire. His coping techniques included ignoring the problem and self-medicating with Venom, an alcohol so strong it was lethal to humans, and anything else he could get his hands on. So many times he refused to answer my questions about what he was. Even now that I had drank too much of his blood and had joined his ranks, he still didn’t have much information for me. I’d come to terms with the fact that I was going to learn as I went, but that was before I thought I had any responsibilities. Like a whole city to attend to.
Damn it, I hated needing Tristan. I resisted the urge to slam my fist against the glass. I still didn’t have control of my new emotions, strange electric feelings flowing through my veins. I don’t know if I’d ever had any control over my emotions. It bothered me more and more. I got up, checking myself in the mirror before I went to find my hapless mentor.
Tristan cast a spell on me the minute he walked into my life, four years ago. I’d known he was trouble, but once he got under my skin, he’d made his way into my heart and soul. I’d never wanted to let him go. Even when he disappeared from my life, reemerging as a vampire with a whole new set of problems I couldn’t handle. Now we were bound to each other forever.
At one time that would have made my stupid heart skip a beat. Right now, it just made me want to scream.
I was used to not fitting in. Growing up in a multiracial household prepared you for that. People were always trying to figure out where I belonged, with my wild blonde curls, courtesy of my mother’s Irish heritage, and my deeply tanned skin from my Jamaican dad. I hadn’t exactly been welcomed into the Immortal Dilemma fold in Vegas, either. Not only had Talis found me to be a problem, but Tristan’s throng of rabid fans didn’t exactly fall in love with me as we rekindled our relationship.
I got in the way of their fantasy lives. Right now, I’d trade places with any one of them. Their fantasy had quickly become my nightmare.
I followed the sound of Tristan’s guitar to the living room. He played it absentmindedly, picking at its strings with no particular melody. His legs, still clad in the leather pants he wore on stage, were thrown over the deep purple velvet chair like it was a bean bag. A bottle of alcohol was in reach. It was one of those nights Tristan didn’t bother with a glass. He’d kicked off his boots and dropped them in the middle of the floor. I wasn’t sure if his eyes saw anything, as he didn’t react to me.
I sat on the couch and watched him for a few minutes. His mouth was pressed together in a hard line. He had just as much reason as me to be pissed off about tonight. Did Blade really mean what he said? Was Tristan no longer a part of Immortal Dilemma? Could he really do that? And why would he want to?
“Hey,” I said quietly, as if a loud noise would startle him.
“Hey.” He put down the guitar and swung his legs around to sit in the chair properly. If this had been a normal night, I would have crawled into his lap. I wasn’t sure if anything was ever going to be our version of normal again.
“So what are we going to do?” I twisted my hands together in my lap. Being mad at Tristan never worked for me. But I didn’t want to give in. Again.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.” Tristan had no problem making eye contact with me, even though I looked away from him. “About everything. I didn’t think you’d believe me if I told you Blade was the one who attacked Janelle or Jacey. And I never thought you’d become a vampire. I wasn’t prepared to have to train the queen, you know?”
I looked back at him just in time to catch his crooked smile, to get reeled in once again. “Which one of us is really in charge? You and Blade can’t both be right.”
I never wanted Tristan to be wrong more in my life.
He got up and sat beside me, his hands resting on my shoulders. “Technically, you both are.” He began working away the tension that had knotted itself just below my neck as he talked. I melted against his fingers. “Women vampires are leaders. But so isn’t anyone who can overpower a leader.”
A shiver went down my spine as I thought of Blade tricking me, pushing me around in that office. He’d overpowered me. Just like he’d done to Talis.
But Blade had caught me off guard. Would it be different the next time? God, I didn’t want to fight with him.
I had little room to accuse Tristan of being the world’s worst vampire.
“Bradley’s been working with Peter, so he’s got a leg up on things. But Peter’s going to want that power, too. He won’t do anything he can’t gain from, so if Bradley’s at an advantage, it’s not much of one.”
“I just wish you told me.” I sighed. “We could have avoided all of this.”
“You could have said something, too.” Tristan’s hands stopped, squeezing my shoulders.
“It wasn’t a secret I was trying to help Blade escape from Talis. Or that I was going to see Fire Dancer.” I turned to face him. “Even if I wasn’t, Lennon was my roommate. It was pretty easy for Peter to get his hooks into me if he wanted to.”
Peter was the clan leader in charge of Fire Dancer, the band that my old roommate Lennon’s boyfriend Jacey was in, before Blade killed him. I hadn’t had time to figure out why Blade would want Jacey dead yet.
“Talis might have had this city by the short and curlies, but Peter is far more volatile. He’ll never be on top, and it pisses him off. He’s been trying to sabotage this clan forever. I didn’t want you hanging around his people, but I knew better than to tell you what to do.” Tristan’s hands had made their way up to my hair, his fingers twirling around my curls.
This is why I could never win an argument against him.
“If you had told me the truth, I might have listened.”
He shook his head and smiled. “Like hell you would have.”
“Okay, you’re right.” I pulled his hands away from my hair carefully, wrapping my fingers around his and letting them fall in between us. I had to stop letting him distract me, as good as it might feel. “Who has been handling Talis’ affairs since she’s been, um, gone?”
Tristan shrugged. I tried not to get too annoyed. What else did I expect? “She’s got people to take care of everything. As long as the checks keep coming, they’d have no reason to act differently.”
“Does anyone know she’s dead?”
“It’s on a need-to-know basis. No one needs to know. Or else there woul
d be chaos.”
Fantastic. “So is there any way to get into her offices? Look at her records? See what the hell she’s been doing for the last three hundred or so years?” As if she’d leave me an instruction manual.
“Well, there’s an easy way, and a hard way. The easy way would be to talk to my dad, and his lawyers, and figure out a way to buy Talis out and opt you in. But that would only take care of things that have to do with the hotel and the band.” Tristan picked his guitar back up, his fingers began to pluck the strings without knowing the story they wanted to tell. “The hard way you’re not going to be able to avoid, beautiful. You have to go before the other vampires and announce yourself.”
I fell back against the cushion. “And that’s going to be complicated if Blade beats me to the punch.”
The sun began to rise, closing the chapter on that awful night. I lay in bed against Tristan’s chest, fighting the unconsciousness that pulled me under as regular humans began their day. I hated that I became automatically useless, powerless during daylight hours. My brain didn’t quiet just because my body couldn’t move.
My day used to be well underway by now, when I lived at home. My family rose before the sun to open the Magnolia Café and help the rest of the island start their day. I never thought I’d miss it. But I just had to walk the tightrope without a net, and I plunged right into an underworld that three months ago I would have insisted wasn’t real. Now morning would forever bring my day to a close.
I’d been a vampire for a little less than three weeks. It wasn’t like changing jobs. I truly had become a whole other race of being. Sure, I still came in the same packaging, but everything else was different. The way I processed the world, the way I thought, saw, felt, smelled things had all changed. I fed off of energy. Positive, hopeful energy felt like the best cup of coffee ever, while anger or anxiety sent my world into a tailspin. I craved blood, it was a sexual elixir for vampires that drove us into a dimension of bliss that wasn’t even measurable as a human. I don’t have the words to properly describe it because it’s not supposed to exist. I’d had Tristan’s blood many times before I’d changed, which had been a mind-blowing experience at the time, but nothing compared to what I experienced as an immortal.
I was stronger, I was faster, and I was bound to Tristan, my creator. He could read my mind and draw me in like a magnet. In the vampire pecking order, I was supposed to answer to my creator, but that got complicated by me being clan leader. Why couldn’t anything in our relationship ever be straightforward? But otherwise, I didn’t know much about what was expected of me. Tristan was probably right keeping me away from other vampires. So far my meeting with Peter, who I’d thought I could trust, had led me to the confrontation with Blade.
All of it was inevitable. Still, a little advanced warning would have been nice. I was getting real tired of being on the receiving end of inevitable shit. Tristan needed to stop keeping things from me. This was my business now.
Oblivion claimed me and I dreamed about Blade again, covered in blood, doing things that would make a wild animal blush. The problem with being a vampire was that you couldn’t wake up from your nightmares. You just had to buckle your seatbelt and hang on for dear life.
I woke up to the sensation of Tristan’s lips against my stomach, working their way up from my belly button to in between my breasts, light as a whisper. My muscles, still knotted from yesterday’s anxiety, spasmed and clenched uncomfortably as he slipped his fingers in between my legs. I let him play for a few minutes, moaning as I dug my fingernails into his shoulders. I dragged my fingers across his skin, smiling at the crimson track I left. I curled myself around him so I wouldn’t miss a drop of the blood. Tristan purred as my tongue went to work on his body.
I pushed him over on to his back once the wounds closed, and I kneeled down between his legs so I could take him in my mouth. I loved the way Tristan’s body reacted as I sucked and licked and teased every inch of him. He wrapped his fingers in my hair and pulled as he came in my mouth, the warm liquid sliding down my throat. Barely giving his body a chance to relax, I moved my mouth to his thigh and sunk my fangs in, drinking from him again, his fluids swirling through my body like a tornado. My skin burned and tingled, and I felt like I could reach out and touch every star in the sky. Tristan watched me as I sucked, powerless to do much else, his dark eyes locked on mine. They glittered like topaz stones in a crown. Mesmerized by their color, I crawled up the length of his body, to the soft pink of his lips. I locked mine to his, still covered in his blood. He sucked it greedily back from me as I mounted him. Tristan pushed me back and forth rhythmically until my body gave into the frenzy. I threw my head back and screamed as I reached my peak, digging my fingers roughly into his shoulders, and then caressed them as I came back to earth, covering his closed eyes and cheeks in light kisses.
I wanted to wake up like that every day for eternity.
My shower brought me back to reality. I towel dried my hair and got dressed, unable to relax. I paced through the living room as Tristan got ready for his show.
“I think I’m going to stay here tonight.” I didn’t always watch the band perform. A lot of Tristan’s days were as long as the night would allow. In addition to the nightly concerts, the band also filmed Immortal Forever, a reality show where they pretended to be humans pretending to be vampires. The excitement of watching a TV show film wore off fast, somewhere around the twentieth take of the same scene. Plus, I didn’t want any of Immortal Dilemma’s groupies, or as we called them, Vultures, catching wind of what I was before I even knew what I was. I couldn’t drown in their negative energy tonight.
“Lucky.” He wrapped his arms around me as he kissed me goodnight. “I wish I could just stay in bed with you all night.”
“I’ll be waiting.” I smiled at him, our eyes locking. I had to look away before he missed his show and I got nothing done.
As soon as the elevator doors closed to bring Tristan to his public, I picked up my phone and called Lennon. Before I’d become a vampire, we’d been roommates. Thankfully, she didn’t see Jacey’s death as being my fault, even though I knew I was responsible for Blade’s rage. Hopefully that wouldn’t change when she found out who did it. And why he did it.
Lennon would always be my best friend in Vegas. My cousin Keisha held the all-time title for that, but she had yet to know I’d joined the ranks of the undead. Hardly anyone in Vegas knew yet, and I sure as hell wasn’t in any hurry to tell my family.
Lennon needed to know what happened last night with Blade. I needed her to be safe. I couldn’t lose her too.
“Hey, doll!” She enthusiastically greeted me when she answered. Lennon was kind of a pro when it came to newly turned vampires, and to my relief, nothing in our relationship had changed. “I only have a few minutes to catch up. I’m headed into work.”
“Have they found anyone to replace me yet?” I’d met Lennon working at the private vampire bar Embrace. After I turned, Tristan refused to let me go back to work. I fought him so hard but as usual, I gave in to him. He’d said if I didn’t quit, he’d get me fired. Since Tristan had a penchant for engaging me in sexual acts in front of a crowd, I quit.
“No one will ever replace you.” She laughed. “Hopefully Jack doesn’t hire some pathetic Vulture chick. There have been a ton of them trying to get the job. They think you hooking up with Tristan had something to do with you working here. They aren’t even supposed to know about this place.”
The overzealous fans who obsessed over Immortal Dilemma couldn’t see anything in the world past Tristan. If they only knew how different his world was from their own. “So, has there been any added security in there lately? Any changes?”
“No, why?” Lennon sounded slightly alarmed, and I momentarily was sorry I’d said anything. I didn’t know if anything had changed now that Talis was gone and Blade was hell-bent on Vegas domination. What his next move would be. She was one of the only humans working at a vampire bar. When I was a human
on the staff, I always had my guard up.
“Just be careful, okay. When’s your next day off? I need to talk to you.”
“Thursday. Come over and hang out! I miss you.”
“Sounds awesome. I miss you, too. And I was serious about being careful. Please.” I hated hanging up with her. I didn’t know if I needed to protect her from Blade. How could I do it, stuck in this apartment?
Damn Tristan for not knowing anything about what our kind could do. I was on a need-to-know basis now more than ever. Would Blade be satisfied with his past kills? Or would more people—and vampires--have to die to prove his point?
The elevator doors opened unexpectedly, making my eyes widen. Who could it be? Tristan would be gone for hours.
Or maybe not.
“That fucker was serious!” Tristan wiped his arm across a table in rage, sending books and vases scattering all over the floor. He stormed over to the bar, pouring himself a tall glass of Venom and emptying it completely in one gulp.
I put my hand over his as he lifted the second glass to his lips. His eyes told me I shouldn’t have done that, but I didn’t care. If I was going to start taking charge, it needed to start right here.
“What happened? What are you talking about?” I kept my hand firmly on his arm. “Is there no show tonight?”
“Oh, there’s a show tonight. I’m just not playing it. Bradley had me remooooooved from the theater.” Tristan spared no dramatics as he slipped his arm out from under mine and downed glass two. He smiled. “It took six guards to get me out.”
I sighed. Tristan usually had nothing to lose and no one to answer to. Of course he would have gotten violent. No was a word his brain didn’t process properly. I hated it when he acted this way. I thought of myself as his living security blanket; somehow, I had the ability to make him chill out. Some days that ability deserved a Nobel Peace Prize, but this was too much for either one of us to take lightly. Tristan was Immortal Dilemma. He was right; the band’s whole empire would crumble without him.
We Own the Night (The Night Songs Collection Book 3) Page 2
