“Great. How will I know when I’m ready to try it on Blade?”
“You’ll know.”
As frustrating as his answer was, it made a lot of sense. He couldn’t have any idea when I’d be comfortable taking on Blade, and from my past experience with these guys, his idea of “ready” would be a lot different than mine.
I couldn’t rely on everyone else’s opinions. I had to find people to practice these mind tricks on. Maybe I could learn to use my powers for good, instead of evil.
Maybe I could learn to leave well enough alone.
“So, the female vamp hanging around with Soul Divider,” I needed to change the subject before he berated me for not embracing evil. It didn’t come naturally to all of us. “Did you create her?”
“I did. I thought I needed a female vampire to work against Talis, but now, Mistress, that is no longer the case,” Cash said as if I asked him about lunch. “Rachel is weak.”
“How can that be? If I’m automatically the leader just because I’m a woman, but she’s not a leader. It makes no sense.”
“She was no longer needed for the purpose I intended for her.”
Just like that, huh? “Did you use mind control on her?”
“You’re catching on.”
“I’d appreciate it if you’d continue to control her, instead of letting Blade get his mitts on her, so she doesn’t screw with me, please and thank you.” This felt like an appropriate time to lay my demands on the table.
“She’s got nothing to stand on.”
The memory of Blade putting his arm around her at the Soul Divider show flashed in my mind. “She doesn’t seem to think so. There’s dissension in the ranks, and it doesn’t end with me. And you have no idea what Blade is telling her.”
“No, Callie. You have no idea what Blade is telling her.”
How infuriating. I wondered how much of Rachel’s thoughts he actually did control. “Do you know?”
“I do. But what fun would it be to give you all the answers? You need start figuring these things out on your own. And the sooner you take care of Blade, the less you’ll have to worry about what Rachel does.”
I sighed. “Good point.” Even if I hated it.
“Rachel is not your problem.” Cash reiterated. “You know what you need to do to solve your problems. You just don’t know how yet. But you will.”
Cash saw something in me I was just starting to discover in myself.
Tony’s black SUV waited for me outside of Circus Circus. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the cool glass of the window on the short ride back to the Alta Vista. I concentrated as hard as I could on Tony, to see if I could break through to his mind. I needed all the practice I could get before I went after Blade. On a human, it always felt like stealing.
I picked my head up, startled when I reached inside and read him. Tony’s brain radiated anxiety, and that was the last thing I expected from the head of security. He should be the most confident man on earth. I continued to concentrate on the waves his brain sent out, it was almost like heat wafting on pavement.
Deception.
Tony was lying to someone, and I had a bad feeling it was me and Tristan.
I thanked him profusely for bringing me back, probably too much, because he seemed confused by my appreciation of him doing his job. My poker face sucked. What did Tony really know about being a vampire? After all, he’d been assigned to guard Tristan, and Tristan certainly didn’t know anything about being a vampire.
But Cash seemed to think Tristan had settled in to this life just fine.
Cash shattered everything I thought I knew about being a vampire.
“I need to talk to you.” I grabbed Tristan by the arm the minute the director announced a wrap on the night’s shoot of Immortal Forever.
“I missed you too.” Tristan frowned. He didn’t know where I’d been. Last time he knew that I had any contact with Cash, he’d asked me if I was going to have sex with him. I didn’t want to go through that again. “Are you ready for another girl?”
“Jesus. No.” I pulled him towards the elevator. “Away from the cameras.”
“Are you sure? Because there are a couple of good ones here tonight.”
I hissed at him and pulled him into the elevator. “If you don’t stop asking, it’s going to be you I drain dry.”
“So we never get to do that again?” He looked like a little kid who didn’t understand that his mom was pretending to be Santa Claus.
“Oh my God, shut up about the threesomes! Not tonight.”
Once in the bedroom, we curled up together on the bed. You’d never know just a couple nights before, a girl died in the very spot we lay. Honey’s body was long gone, and in its place were now a new mattress and bedding. A reward for bad behavior.
“I don’t think we can trust Tony.” The words felt traitorous coming out of my mouth.
“What? Beautiful, Tony’s my man. He’s been with me since Immortal Dilemma started.” Tristan wasn’t going to just buy into this one.
“I read his thoughts, and he’s deceiving someone. I’m afraid it’s us.” I left out why I was fishing around in Tony’s head. No need to complicate things with details.
“That’s his job. He needs to keep things from people who aren’t on a need-to-know basis. I think you’re overreacting.”
Tristan knew he’d said the wrong thing. I opened my mouth to speak and closed it. I couldn’t afford to lose my cool, even with Tristan. “I’m not overreacting. I don’t think we can be too careful. That sex tape got out, and God only knows what Blade and other people have on us. That should have never made it out of the surveillance office.”
“That’s the team. That’s not a reflection on Tony.”
“Yes it is! Either he allowed it, or they don’t respect him. Either way, it’s a problem. Just be careful, okay? From now on, Tony is on a need to know basis.”
“I can do that,” Tristan conceded.
“Good.”
“So can we have someone send up one of the groupies?” He raised his eyebrows and smiled.
I fell back on the bed, disgusted. “That isn’t going to be an all-the-time thing. You’re still making me feel like I’m not good enough for you.”
Tristan climbed on top of me. “I thought you liked the power. I like you with that power.”
“Well, when I want it, I’ll ask for it.” I pulled him down on top of me by his hair, and he laughed as he fell in a heap on my body.
Whatever the hell he wanted that other girl for, I made sure he forgot she existed.
On Martha’s Vineyard, there was no need for me to learn how to drive. I could walk or ride my bike everywhere I had to go. My mother never trusted me learning to drive with her car. As infuriating it was, in retrospect, I couldn’t blame her. I mean, look what I did with a little bit of freedom. But still, I cursed that now, resenting the fact I needed a chaperone to get anywhere in Las Vegas.
Tony knew too much. If he was working against us, we couldn’t let him go. Keep your enemies close and all that. I hated the fact he’d been at that first meeting with Cash. Hell, he set it up. All the blood in my veins ran cold. Was this whole arrangement with Cash a set up? There was no way to tell. I had to trust my instincts.
And they still insisted that I needed them both.
I had to learn mind control, and Tony would be the perfect guinea pig. If I could learn to read his thoughts, and he really was working against us, I’d have a warning against what was coming next. And if I could learn to control his thoughts, I could use Tony to work against any enemies.
Lennon came to pick me up that night, and we headed back to her apartment.
“It smells like hamburgers in here.” I inhaled deeply. Bloodlust made Lennon crave red meat. She’d tried to cover the scent up with candles, but now it just smelled like apples and cooked meat. A good, juicy cheeseburger sounded like heaven right now.
For the first time, I realized I hadn’t cooked for anyone
since I began my afterlife. I had loved to cook. I thought back to the restaurant, training Tristan to be a barista. Believe or not, he made a hell of a latte. Now he was training me. It was lonely, being the only one who mourned for the parts of myself that died when I did.
“I’m going to get fat if I don’t stop eating all this meat!” Lennon collapsed on her couch after handing me a Venom cocktail. She got the good stuff from Embrace and brought it home just for me. A lot of the novelty gift shops around the Alta Vista sold a knock-off Venom drink, something that was safe for humans to drink. It didn’t even have the right to be called by the same name. “But Cash and I can’t keep our hands off of each other. And he knows just how to bring me to the brink. He drinks my blood until the world goes fuzzy. Most intense orgasm ever.”
If he wasn’t careful, he was going to kill her or turn her. “What do you guys talk about when you’re not doing, you know, that?”
Lennon looked at me like I’d sprouted a second head. “I tell you that he brings me to the moon and you want to know what we talk about? Seriously, doll?”
Maybe I was being too transparent. I smiled at her, trying to cover up my digging in her brain. She was on the moon, alright. Her elation filled me, making me feel like I’d just fallen in love myself.
It was one of those feelings I could be drunk on forever. I needed to focus. I couldn’t let her distraction with Cash throw me off course.
I debated whether or not I should tell her what Tristan and I did to Honey, speaking of mind blowing sex acts. It would probably scare the hell out of her. I knew it would freak me out if I was still human. Lennon had never expressed any interest in being a vampire, so it was surprising that she’d let Cash drain her like that. I had to wonder if she wanted to be turned, since she was so comfortable in our realm. Besides Melanie and me before I turned, I wasn’t sure if Lennon had any other friends who weren’t vampires.
Cash had to be manipulating her emotions, even though she was too smart for that.
“It’s not that,” I pulled back out of her brain. “It’s just that sex is different as a vampire, so—“
She cut me off, rolling her eyes. “My mind blowing sex doesn’t impress you, Mistress?”
I smiled, surprising myself by embracing being called Mistress. Lennon didn’t think of me as sarcastically as it sounded. And I deserved it. “I’m glad you’re having it. But Cash intrigues me for different reasons.”
“That’s a good thing, I don’t need you getting your fangs into my man.” She pushed at me with her foot playfully. She exhaled, and I could feel her mind flipping, almost like turning pages. Too fast for me to read. “We don’t talk about much. Mostly about me, the bar, what brought me to Vegas, and my life before I came here.”
“Anything specific?”
“He wanted to know about the strip club I worked at. He had a lot of questions about that.” She twisted her lips nervously and looked up at me. Her mind darkened. “And a few questions about my family. Why I walked away from them.” Lennon hadn’t had the easiest life as a little girl, and she was usually reluctant to talk about it. I knew so little, but when she hinted, it was shrouded in sorrow. She didn’t want me to dig in that hole. Admitting that she’d talked about it didn’t mean she was willing to do that now. At times like this, being inside someone’s mind felt dirty. Fear flashed like a yellow warning light. That Cash could get it out of her shocked me.
Definite mind control. But it seemed like he was looking for something specific from Lennon. I wondered what it was.
“Doesn’t he ever tell you anything about him?” It didn’t surprise me he indulged Lennon and showered her with attention. It was the ultimate manipulation, and I’d expect no less from a master of deception.
“Yeah, he tells me about the show, and his old show in New Orleans.” Lennon’s face brightened. “Can you believe I grew up in Arkansas and I’ve never been to New Orleans? It sounds amazing there.”
“But nothing about him? He’s almost three hundred years old. He was created alongside Talis, it sounds like.” I knew I was losing ground as her smile faded. “He has had to have had a fascinating life. I’d think he’d want to brag about it.”
“I don’t know.” She traced the hemline of her skirt. “He seems to understand hard times, and struggle. I don’t dig, doll. I know what it’s like to have secrets.”
Damn it. She totally cut me off. I respected it as much as I resented it.
“Yeah, I get it.” I did. My family didn’t understand why I could only call them back late at night, or why I wasn’t running back to Martha’s Vineyard now that my mother reconsidered disowning me. My family would never understand what I was. I didn’t want to risk them not accepting me. It would be impossible to keep them in my life if they knew. I got it, more than I wanted to think about, so it was time to change the subject. “What’s going on at the bar?”
Lennon groaned. “Blade is acting like he owns the place, which pisses me off to no end. I wish I could figure out a way to poison his Venom. Soul Divider is there all the time, and they’re making friends fast.”
Great. Just what I needed. “How is Melanie?”
Lennon didn’t question my motives. “She’s going along with it. She thinks Blade will keep her out of jail, so she’s not going to question anything.”
“Blade isn’t the one she has to worry about.” My tone was more bitter than I intended.
“Oh, come on, Callie, you’re not going to throw the girl in jail, are you?” Lennon asked. “She caught her boyfriend in bed, screwing some other chick. What would you do?”
I didn’t even have to think about it. I knew exactly what I’d do, because I did it. “I’d kill her.”
“Exactly!” Lennon jumped a little as she said it, like it was the easiest decision in the world.
It was so easy to say when you weren’t speaking from experience.
Time to change the subject away from my latest sins and back to the old ones. “Has Blade done anything, besides acted like an asshole? You know he’s behind that awful sex tape.”
Lennon clapped her hand over my mouth. “As if it was possible to hate that bastard more. God, he was so sweet as a human. What happened to him?”
“I happened to him.” Tears threatened to break the threshold of my eyelashes.
“No, doll, you can’t blame yourself for him.” She crawled over and snuggled against me, wiping tears from my cheeks and not even wincing when her fingers came away red. If that’s not a good friend, I don’t know what is. “That evil had to be brewing deep down inside of him before he changed. I’ve known a lot of vampires, before and after, and not one of them has done a one-eighty like that, besides him.”
I gave Blade everything I had when we were both human, and not once did I think he was capable of becoming what he was now. I didn’t want to think I had that sort of darkness brewing inside me, just waiting for the right time to rear its ugly head. I might have been naïve, but I wasn’t stupid.
“That’s why he scares me so much,” I whispered, leaning into Lennon. Her skin radiated heat and she smelled so good, like cucumber melon body wash. I forced myself to keep my eyes open, to stay in the moment. I could never let myself hurt her.
Lennon’s instincts were probably better than most humans, swimming with Bloodlust. She pulled away from me slightly, bringing her sweet scent away with her. Or did I tell her to do that? I dove back inside her brain, willing her to move back towards me. She looked at me, puzzled, like I might have said something she didn’t hear. Then she pulled me back in to a hug.
I did it. How I wished I could tell her. But she wouldn’t want to celebrate with me. She’d want to run.
“I believe in you, Callie. I really do. I know you have your doubts about Cash, but he’s a good man. He cares about me, and from what he says about you, I think he cares about you, too.”
My mouth dropped. I hadn’t even thought of asking her if Cash dug for information on me. Crap.
“What d
oes he say about me?”
“Well, he asked about our friendship, when we were roommates, how you knew Tristan, and that. Basic stuff.”
“And you told him?”
“Of course.” Lennon tilted her head. “Why? Shouldn’t I have?”
“I don’t know.” I hated this feeling, the uncertainty. I was wrong so often, I assumed my instincts would lead me where I wouldn’t want to go. I trusted all the wrong people, and betrayed the ones who didn’t deserve it. “I guess if he really wanted to know about me, he’d find out one way or another, right?”
I couldn’t get Cash out of my brain. I wondered if he was there on purpose, trying to tell me something. There was no reason for me to go back and talk to him. He’d given me my assignment and directions. But I wished there was some way I could get inside his brain without him knowing and figure out if he was screwing with me.
All I had was Tony, and a morbid hope that he knew something about what was going on with Cash. I headed down to the Sin City Vampire Club with Tristan, ignoring his babbling about other girls. It hadn’t stopped since the other night. He was on my last nerve. It took everything I had not to tell him that if we brought anyone back to our bedroom, I would kill every single one of them.
Instead of crossing my legs and watching Tristan from behind the side stage curtain, I decided to wander around. A concert within a TV show was a massive undertaking, with crew people milling around, a thousand different jobs. Some of them seemed to do nothing but hang out at the snack table. I always caught them shoving nuts in their face but never doing real work. I grabbed a water to give myself a reason to be there, saying hi to a couple of producers I’d become friendly with in the last few weeks. Then I continued my mission.
Tony surrounded himself with his crew, it must have been just after a shift changed and he needed to debrief the new arrivals. His mouth dropped slightly when he saw me coming, as if he didn’t expect to see me. After a beat, he went back to his clipboard and continued his meeting.
We Own the Night (The Night Songs Collection Book 3) Page 13
