Tristan raked his fingers through his hair and looked up at the ceiling. Letting the blanket fall to the ground, I slid my arms around his waist and pressed my body against his. He didn’t soften, but his hands touched my bare back tentatively. His hair brushed my shoulders as he brought his head back down, his chin resting on my head. Neither of us said anything for a while, we just stood there, holding on to each other because we didn’t know what else to do.
“I need to know what I am, Tristan,” I said softly. “But tonight, I just want to go to bed.”
Lennon served as my otherworldly diplomat and my escort to meet with Ryder Maddox the next night. I didn’t wait for Tristan’s night off. That way I could save Tristan’s pride and get the answers we both needed.
The city quieted as we drove towards Ryder’s house, but my anxiety rose. My track record with vampires not named Tristan was nothing short of piss poor. Could I trust either him or Melanie?
I didn’t have much of a choice.
Melanie answered the door and wrapped Lennon up in a hug. Jealousy panged against my insides. Melanie was still alive, and I couldn’t compete with that. I knew Lennon still loved me, but I could see her slipping from me as I moved further away from being human.
My reception wasn’t even close to that warm. Melanie smiled at me nervously as she pulled free from Lennon and motioned for us to follow her. She seemed to have as many reservations about me as I did about her.
“This is Ryder,” she said as she led us to the living room. Ryder rose from the couch to greet us both. He had long dark hair, more styled than Tristan’s, and tawny skin, kind of like Tristan as well. He could have almost been his older brother, or a cousin. Just his demeanor made me feel more welcome.
“Babe, you know Lennon, and this is her friend Callie.” Melanie did a quick introduction. These two were so comfortable together. The way they looked at each other, the way Melanie’s hand trailed softly against Ryder’s back as she sat down. I wondered if Melanie had acted like that with her ex-boyfriend, before he was found dead in her bed with another woman.
Lennon sat, and I followed, just perching myself on the edge of the chair cushion. Lennon was always so relaxed everywhere she went. I had yet to earn that luxury.
No one knew where to start. Awkward.
“So, as I’m sure you guys know, Callie’s a vampire, and Ryder’s a vampire, so I guess maybe you should talk about vampire things?” God bless you, Lennon.
“I have some questions for you, if you wouldn’t mind answering them,” I managed.
“That’s what I expected,” Ryder said quietly. He sounded much more accommodating than I’d been with Melanie. “I have some questions for you as well.”
Fair enough.
I took a deep breath. “Melanie tells me that you were there when Blade, um, did whatever it was he did to Talis. So you know that makes him the leader.”
“Okay.” Ryder let me continue.
“But I turned myself into a vampire by mistake,” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Melanie’s jaw drop. “And because I’m a woman--”
“That makes you the leader.”
I sighed, exasperated. Was I going to get any information tonight? “That’s what I’m told. But I don’t know the first thing about what I’m supposed to do.”
Ryder’s eyes twinkled, the smile lines crinkling around them. Great, someone else who thought I was cute. “About being a clan leader?”
“Actually, about being a vampire.”
Now it was his turn to look surprised. “What about your creator?”
“He’s conveniently avoided those details.”
“He’s just not telling you?” Ryder’s lips curled downward.
“No. I think he really doesn’t know. He doesn’t care.” Pride went out the window. Sorry, Tristan, I couldn’t protect your ego anymore when our asses were on the line. “But I need to. So please, tell me, what am I?”
Ryder’s shoulders slumped and he looked down at his hands. I watched him rub them along the long line of his thighs. In an instant, he was on me, his fangs against my cheek, his eyes glowing. Melanie screamed.
“I’ve seen that before.” I tried to act unimpressed.
He relaxed, still sitting too close to me. “But can you do it?”
Good question. “I don’t know.”
“Try.” His voice was still a growl. “Go over to Lennon.”
“How do you make your eyes glow?” I stalled. His skin still burned against mine.
“Emotion.” He didn’t say any more.
I closed my eyes, and concentrated on the energy in the room. Tension. It rippled through me. I focused on Ryder, feeling anger, suspicion, sadness. Overwhelming sadness. I’d never tuned into just one person before. It was almost like reading his mind, but only getting jumbled pieces of information. I swallowed the sadness deep and channeled the anger. I felt the fire rise in my body. I lifted my lids in what felt like slow motion to let the flames escape.
The girls gasped. Something must have happened. I concentrated on Lennon, on getting over to her. The next thing I knew, I landed in her lap in an awkward heap. We both jumped from the shock. Lennon squealed, and I burst out laughing.
This being scary thing really needed some work.
“You know about the blood, right?” Melanie asked.
“Yeah. But I do have a question. Would too much make you go crazy?”
Ryder shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Because Blade’s lost his mind. He’s been taking out his aggression on hookers, and from the look of his hotel room, he’s eating them like meatball subs.”
“I think Blade’s just pissed off.” Ryder’s assessment didn’t comfort me. “Our emotions are different. Being a vampire can changes people’s personalities.”
“Maybe he’s just an asshole now, doll.” Lennon looked sad as she said it.
Maybe she was trying to be funny, but she might as well have dropped my heart on the floor and let it shatter into a thousand pieces. Whatever the reason was he was like this, it was all my fault.
“The thing that concerns me the most about Blade is that he can manipulate fire. I’ve never heard of another vampire doing that,” Ryder continued.
“Could it be because he’s a leader?” I asked. “Maybe I could do it, too.”
Ryder shook his head. “You’d know already, I think.”
I covered my face with my hands. I just wanted to scream. “I suck at this. No one takes me seriously.”
“It’s going to take time,” Lennon pulled my hand down, threading her fingers through mine. “You’re not going to get everything perfect the first time you try it. But that doesn’t mean you stop trying.”
“But poor Melanie asked me for help, and I can’t even help myself.” I raked my fingers through my hair. “I’m going to get steamrolled. Blade can already dominate me. What happens when word gets out? This is what I need help with.”
Ryder leaned forward. “So when you read me—“
“You knew I did that?” Now my mouth dropped. “I thought it only worked one way.”
“Don’t you know when someone’s pulling from you?” His eyes narrowed.
I thought about it for a minute. “Well, I can always feel Tristan inside my head. And I get tired a lot, but I didn’t know why.”
“When you concentrate on people, their weaknesses will always come through. No one can stop it. Whatever you don’t want the world to know, we can pick up on as vampires. Use it to your advantage, Callie.”
I nodded. Before I’d always focused on the energy of groups. It was easy to do, living so close to the Strip. It always buzzed like white noise. I never knew to actually listen.
“Now it’s my turn.” Ryder smiled and I tried to relax. “Will you help Melanie out?”
I swallowed as Melanie looked on hopefully. “What happened to Erin and Drake?”
“Drake was an asshole.” Melanie looked disgusted, anger flaring from her. My eyebrow
s shot up.
“Did you kill him?” I asked.
“No. I did,” Ryder said. “There’s another female vampire in the city. We don’t know who created her. Drake blamed Melanie, but she’s got nothing to do with it. He wanted her to kill Rachel, the vampire. Long story short, I staked him, and Rachel lived.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Another female? Just what I needed. “What is she doing?”
“Living a normal as possible life with the band’s rhythm guitarist,” Melanie added, her rage from seconds ago forgotten. “She couldn’t give a shit about dominating anyone.”
I didn’t totally relax. “But what about Erin?”
“We don’t know.” Melanie’s body slumped. “But she didn’t deserve it. Josiah, Rachel’s boyfriend, was poisoned as well out on tour. We think that maybe that, and Rachel, and Erin could be connected.”
Could Blade have done this? No, the timing didn’t add up. If Melanie tried to destroy the band, why would Ryder want to protect her? Why would people be attacking Soul Divider?
“Do you guys have any enemies?”
Ryder shrugged. “I always ignored things like that. I couldn’t care less about things like rivalries. It’s possible, but the girls shouldn’t have had anything to do with it.”
But he killed Drake. So what did Ryder care about? My spine stiffened again, reminding me I was possibly in enemy territory. With no idea what to do. This had to be the last time I put myself in this situation. “So what do you want me to do?”
Ryder’s eyes had a hint of red again. “Make sure none of this shit continues.”
“Hello, Lover.” Noah wrapped his thin arm around my waist as he whispered in my ear. I was still so wrapped up in what had happened with Ryder and Melanie, I never sensed his approach, which sent me way over my usual irritation level with him.
I shoved him away, sending him flying against a stack of road cases beside The Sin City Vampire Club stage. The stack imploded, landing heavily on his body. Good. I hoped he broke a bone or twenty.
He shook it off easier than I would’ve liked. “That wasn’t very nice.”
“What the fuck do you want?” I said through clenched teeth. My eyes burned. Did they turn red? I wished I could have asked him but it would have totally crushed any shred of credibility.
“You, as always.” His voice pooled on my nerves like oil on water. “Speaking of fucking.”
Would anyone miss this bastard if I killed him while Immortal Dilemma played? “You’re not going to get what you want here.”
He pulled himself out of the rubble, wincing, and hobbled over to me. “You say that every time, lover.”
I clenched him by the groin, squeezing his business as hard as I could through his lycra pants. His eyes bulged in their sockets. “Tell me whatever it is you feel the need to tell me, and then get the fuck out of here. Or I’ll keep Little Noah as a pet, do you understand me?”
“You’re sexy as a dominant.” His voice strained. “You can pet me any time you like.”
He had a point, although I’d never tell him. This being in control thing was heady. I twisted my hand, making him moan. So gross. “Make it quick.”
“I wanted to be the first to tell you that Fire Dancer decided to call it quits, since one of your boyfriends killed our guitarist.”
“Too bad he didn’t kill you instead.” I was really sad to hear about Fire Dancer. Besides Noah being a complete asshole who more or less tricked me into having sex with him under the guise of helping Blade, they were a great band. Without Jacey, they wouldn’t have been the same. But I didn’t tell him that. I smiled, making sure my fangs were visible. “But maybe he wanted me to have that chance.”
“You know there’s a thin line between love and hate, muse.” He grunted. “I can fuck you like I hate you all day long.”
I only let go of his crotch to smack him across the face. His body bowed, but besides a quick stagger, he stayed on his feet. A thin rivulet of blood ran from his nose down his chin. He touched his face gingerly, then licked the blood of his fingers in a way he probably meant to be seductive. I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms against my chest. His blood didn’t even tempt me.
“I’m sorry to hear about your band, Noah. But that isn’t why you came here. So tell me and get out.”
“I was getting to that.” He smiled. How could he possibly still think he was amusing? “I’m still going to be in residence at the Riviera. I wanted to invite you to come see my new band, Soul Divider.”
My mouth dropped. I tried and failed to speak.
Noah kissed me on the cheek, his hand making its way to my behind, squeezing it almost as hard as I’d done to his balls. “I’ll see you soon, lover.”
Frozen in place and flabbergasted, my mind reeled. How was that even possible? Soul Divider was in my clan. Noah was so not. And why didn’t Ryder say anything about this? I just came from his house.
I rubbed my face hard and headed to Video Village to wait for Tristan to finish filming his bit for Immortal Forever. Hopefully, the presence of a film crew would thwart the possibility of any more surprises. I felt naked and betrayed. And I had no one to turn to for help.
Noah had got inside me once under false pretenses, and Ryder’s lie of omission made it even worse. Did Ryder know what Noah had done to me? What Blade had done to me?
I laid my head against Tristan’s chest when he finished his scene.
“Did you earn your superhero girl scout badge tonight?” he asked, playing with my hair.
“Consider yourself lucky I’m too exhausted to properly respond to that remark.”
“I’ll take that as a yes, then.” Tristan’s fingers now worked at my shoulders. I might have purred. “I’m done filming. Why don’t you show me?” He nuzzled my neck. “In private.”
We headed back to the elevator, hand in hand. Tristan kept looking at me out of the corner of his eye. He had to have known the night hadn’t gone smoothly.
He didn’t let go of my hand when we got back to the apartment. Instead, he led me over to the couch. He sat down, pulling me still standing between his thighs. With both my hands in his, he rubbed his thumbs lightly against my palms, the calluses tickling my skin. He looked up at me, the light from the outside bouncing against his eyes. “Tell me what happened.”
After all the time we’d spent together and all the things we’d shared, little things like that could still give me butterflies. Sadness rushed in, overwhelming me. “I talked to Ryder, which was helpful.”
“But?”
“I don’t think he’s telling me everything. A lot of it was useful, that’s for sure.” Finally I could ask. “Do my eyes go red when I’m mad?”
The corners of Tristan’s mouth turned upwards. “A little.”
“Nice.” We both burst out laughing.
“So what don’t you think he’s telling you?” Tristan pulled me down into his lap and wrapped his arms around me.
“I don’t know if I trust his girlfriend.” I felt bad saying it out loud. “There’s a lot of death surrounding that band, and a lot of questions. I mean, every time someone mentions Soul Divider—it is Soul Divider, right? It’s almost immediately followed by the fact no one has cared about that band in years. So why would anyone care enough to want to cause trouble with them? I mean, Ryder killed the singer—“
“Whoa,” Tristan interrupted me. “I didn’t know that. That’s some serious shit. It’s considered treason to kill a member of your own clan.”
“Another reason not to trust them.” I nestled my head on Tristan’s shoulder as I digested that bombshell. “He said he did it to protect Melanie.”
I stopped myself short of asking Tristan if he’d do the same thing for me.
“And there’s another female vampire in town. But they tell me she’s not a threat.”
“All female vampires are a threat.” He pulled a curl away from my hair, as if he wanted to examine it. “There’s no way around it.”
&nb
sp; I sat up and turned to face him. “All of this would be so much easier if you had told me anything. Not that I can trust you, either. I won’t forget that, you know.”
“Elephants and clan leaders. They never forget.”
I swatted at him, and he caught my hand, bringing it to his mouth so he could kiss my fingers. I moaned softly as he sucked on my fingertips.
“What else did he tell you?”
“He showed me how to do that quick movement thing, and told me about getting energy from one person.” Since Tristan nodded, I figured that was pretty reliable. “Have you ever done that? From me?”
“That’s how I knew you were in Vegas.” He locked eyes with me. “I was thinking about you, and I could feel you. I could feel your anticipation. When I could feel you, closer, I knew you were here.”
I closed my eyes. Thank God I didn’t need to breathe, because I couldn’t. Tristan responded by continuing to kiss me, making his way up my arm.
“Noah was at the theater tonight.”
That stopped him dead in his tracks. His eyes blackened. “Why didn’t you tell me? I could have killed him.”
“God, I wish.” I pictured the cases raining down around him, wishing they’d crushed his skull. “So he’s the new singer of Soul Divider.”
“What?” Tristan’s jaw dropped. “How is that even possible? Soul Divider is in your clan. What the hell are they doing?”
“I’m sure Ryder and the band have no idea about what happened with Noah and me.” I wished I didn’t have to bring it up. “I don’t know if this means they’re working with Blade, or if Blade’s working against the band. I was so shocked, I didn’t think to ask questions. Noah wouldn’t have helped me, anyway. My first thought was that Ryder should have mentioned it.”
“Damn straight he should have.” Rage rolled off of Tristan’s skin. “I think you’re right. You can’t trust those people. What the fuck. What happened to clan loyalty?”
“Like you can talk.” I moved his face back to mine. “You betrayed Talis by spending time with me.”
We Own the Night (The Night Songs Collection Book 3) Page 6
