Red gawked.
Kristoff caught the wine glass before she tipped it over. He smiled. “What about those ribs?”
Nodding, she took the glass, fingers brushing his before she sipped the wine. She tried to block the instinctive ‘ew gross blood what was she doing’ feeling by trying to put on the mindset of a supernatural anthropologist in the Brotherhood. There had been more than one that had sampled vamp blood and documented the results.
Red closed her eyes at the taste. The expensive cabernet masked the metallic flavor, leaving rich woody notes and an umami that she wished she couldn’t place. Intellectually, she knew she’d had his blood multiple times, but a part of her still braced herself. What if her research had been wrong? She opened her eyes to see him watching her.
A small smile, like a challenge, rested on his lips.
Red swallowed another mouthful. “Is this where I say it tastes like chicken?”
“I hope not, because chicken blood tastes godawful.” Kristoff smiled, leaning back on the couch.
Red already felt the throb easing in her side. Relaxing, she finished the glass in a few sips. Heat radiated from her belly.
“Let me top you off.” Kristoff dug his thumb in his wrist over her glass. The cut healed before he wiped off his stained skin with a handkerchief.
Wrinkling her nose, Red drank the pure blood. The dry red wine aftertaste masked some of the metallic flavor. She would have gagged, but a warmth spread down her throat to her belly, tingles radiating to her extremities. The pain lessened to only stiffness in her ribs. She stretched her newly healed hand, fully mobile. The palm didn’t even have a scratch. Running her finger around the glass rim, she set it on the side table. Red didn’t know what to say to him. Thanks for the astounding cure, text ya later?
He handed her his black silk handkerchief. His tattoos rippling over his biceps.
Accepting it to scrub the dried blood off her hand, Red dipped her head. She wouldn’t have guessed he had ink under his trademark suits. Regular tattoos didn’t keep on immortal skin. Kristoff must have gotten them when alive. Nervousness propelled the first stray thought out of her mouth. “It must be lonely keeping this secret from everyone.”
Kristoff rolled his broad shoulders in a lazy shrug. He gestured to the wine for her to continue drinking. “My brother knows. The Prince. I bet Nedda figured out long ago. And now you.”
“Is it too personal to ask how you found out?” Red sipped quickly, licking a stray drop on her lip. She bit her tongue when she noticed his focus on her mouth. “It can’t have been yesterday, not with how you play doctor.”
“This is not how I play doctor.” Kristoff smirked, resting his elbows on the back of the couch. “It’s personal, but then again so is all of this. I’ve never been good at keeping it just business with you.” He grew more serious, eyes lowering. “I found out when I tried to turn my brother, Arno.”
“It happened before you came to America.” Red furrowed her brow, remembering the entry on Kristoff in the Brotherhood database.
“I tried even earlier. He had been told I died on a trip to Germany, but there was no funeral. Lad had no way to grieve. How could he? I was buried in a root cellar to rise again.” Kristoff’s expression grew distant. His long fingers curled, nails digging into the upholstery. “It was his birthday. I hadn’t ever missed it when I was alive. The Byrnes were on business with some Alchemist, so I was supposed to be a look out. Instead, I walked to his boarding school. Habit perhaps. He was sixteen that night.”
Covering her mouth, she tried to hide her dismay. “You wanted to eat him.”
“I missed my little brother,” Kristoff insisted, blue eyes boring into hers, sincerity in his demon gaze. Unsouled vampires had the emotional range of a jackal. Or so the lore would have her believe. Kristoff had said once that he would exceed expectations.
Her breath caught. “You said you didn’t have feelings.”
“I’ve got a few for even fewer people. Don’t tell anyone.” Kristoff leaned his head back, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. He smiled ruefully as if not sure how he felt about his own sensitive side. “I raised Arno after our Ma passed. Without me, he was alone. Dead for awhile, it was like I had waited subconsciously until I had enough control to go see him.” Kristoff’s smile turned wistful. “He thought I was a dream.”
“What happened?”
“I couldn’t stand to see him as he was—the orphan on scholarship in a cast-off uniform and leg braces. One of those feelings, I guess.” Kristoff shrugged, then paused. His brows pressed together as he gathered his thoughts. Usually so smooth, his words came out slow and stilted as if pulling the past up like an old anchor dropped out to sea. “I was a young vampire trying to turn my first childe. Not just any bum off the street, but my own kin. I wanted to see Arno run for the first time. Life had been a prison, but I knew I could liberate him.” He dipped his head. “Are you sure you want to know? You’ve never gotten to see me at my best. A story about feeding on a minor isn’t going to make up for it.”
Sitting up, Red crossed her legs and shook her head, caught up in the story. “I’m just listening.”
“You’re not judging.” The surprise lingered in his hushed words. Forehead relaxing, Kristoff studied her face. He dropped his hands in his lap before running his fingers through his hair, as if not sure what to do with the restless digits. He crossed his ankle on his knee.
Donal called him a boardroom bandit. Kristoff was a smooth talker who straddled the human and vampire worlds. Not now. Red could tell that communication, outside a verbal sparring match in an interrogation or negotiation, wasn’t on his resume.
Staring into her eyes, he regained his line of thought. “I was precise, counting his pulse to make sure I got the right time. I had never done it before. I was a babe in unlife, after all. With Lucas as an example, I barely knew what a sire was, let alone what it meant to be one. When I fed Arno my blood, he was on the edge of death.” Remembered wonder lifted his brows. “Then my brother’s heart began to beat again, stronger than before. His crooked legs straightened. Not even my bite marks were on his neck.”
Red leaned forward, elbows on her folded knees. She wasn’t a soulmancer, but she felt his remembered confusion. If she had a brother… Thought experiment aside, she didn’t know what it was like to face such a decision. She just knew that she gave her all to those she called family. Maybe that love still survived the demon’s call in a vampire’s ear. “You freaked.”
“I left him under a saint statue in the courtyard. The religious fathers called him a miracle. I guess he was my first one.”
Red thought about Arno from the Halloween Ball—dashing and athletic in a designer suit. There was nothing of a lonely disabled boy in that Type A vampire who had ruled Club Vltava with a clipboard. “You figured it out in the end.”
“Like I would let anyone else turn my brother.” Kristoff scoffed. He dismissed the thought with a hand wave. “When he was old enough, I turned him.”
“How? Your blood heals. How could you even turn him?” Red lifted her eyebrows, trying to imagine the process.
“There aren’t many healers like me but I found another to teach me.” Kristoff shrugged. “It was more alchemy than anything. It wasn’t easy to learn but I got sick of him asking.”
“Wait- he knew you were a vampire?” She did a double take at the idea of a young Kristoff minding his sassy teenage brother. “Did you like parent him even after you died?”
“Don’t sound so surprised. I did a great job. Arno went to Stanford. Twice.” Kristoff lifted his hands, mock indignation on his features even if his repressed grin broke the illusion. “If there is one person that I’ve done right by, its him. It’s always been him. Once the Byrnes were souled, I came back to Prague. Alzbeta accepted us both into her clan. He lived quite happily as a human in her service.”
Shoulders slumping, Red chewed the inside of her cheek. All the nurturing big brother parts had been skippe
d over in the Brotherhood database in the entry on the Butcher of Cologne. “Different from your life with the Byrnes then?”
“Night and day. I would never have brought my brother into their charnel house.” Kristoff clenched his teeth, even the expired possibility visibly raising his hackles. Cheek tightening, the cleft on his chin deepened. He snapped his gaze away from her.
Red scrutinized the play of emotion on his face. Kristoff had been created as an offhand minion, chosen to serve the Byrnes until they left Prague in their eternal migration around Europe. Fate had chosen otherwise. Kristoff had ended up a full member of the Alaric Order, even if Lucas didn’t acknowledge him as a true childe. Then he made his own way. That took control.
Most young vampires were in bash and slash mode. They weren’t healing their little brothers and letting them decide on their own to be vampires. Even her skepticism had noted that, on the night they’d met, Arno had dashed for the fight between Lucas and Kristoff in Club Vltava without a second thought. The brothers acted thicker than thieves. It wasn’t just the sire bond. Kristoff’s relationship with his own sire was proof that blood didn’t always bind.
“How did you have such control as a fledgling?” The question burst from her lips. Loosened up by the wine, Red tried to pull herself together and sit up straighter. She was getting too personal.
Cocking his head, mild surprise washed over his face. He paused, mouth opening as if his words hadn’t caught up. “Do you really want to know?”
“You guessed it. Curiosity gets me every time.” Red rubbed her arms. The quip came out too serious.
“When I crawled out of the grave, the first heartbeat I heard was Juniper’s. Then every sunset after. I brought her tea, even when all I could think about was her blood. She was guarded by four elders, any one of whom would stake me for inconveniencing their social schedule, let alone attacking a claimed human.” He smirked, lazy pride in his gaze as he raked over her form. “I had to be strong in the face of temptation.”
“I’m serious.” Red put her hand on her hip.
“I was.” Kristoff sighed, flirty tone dissolving. “If you want to know why I am half decent, then it’s because of Alzbeta.”
“Half decent? More like a roguish scoundrel with latent heroic tendencies. Try a lot harder and you could be Han Solo- if he ate people.”
“I’m taking that as a compliment.” His phone buzzed on the desk. “Drink up.” Kristoff smiled. He answered his vibrating phone and stepped to the other side of his office. He tapped his finger on a black metal cube on his bookshelf as he listened, murmuring affirmations.
Drinking deeply, Red put the empty glass on a side table. She wiped at the side of her mouth with her thumb. She licked at the stray drop. Goosebumps rose on her arms. She had shared more than blood with him tonight.
Her third eye flicked to life as her mind scattered from Kristoff’s story. Protection sigils and drifting ether glowed in the room, left by a hired mage. She saw the radiance of magic behind her navel shimmer and grow. All seven chakras strobed rainbow colors. Her head felt light even as her ribs felt better. She looked up at Kristoff.
Kristoff made perfunctory sounds into the phone. Outlined in a dark royal purple aura marbled with snowy silver, his attention seemed to be all on her. His expression was remote except for the curiosity in his eyes. “Perfect.”
Red stood, feeling like she was walking on a rocking ship, and rubbed her ribs. They were tender, but she could breathe without pain. She forced her third eye to close. Her magic floated close to the surface. Rubbing her neck, Red resisted the call of the energy.
His blood could pack a punch. She knew it intellectually, but her research didn’t capture the feeling. Now, she understood how Nevaeh had been tossing orbs without a bespelled ring in the VIP room when she had been in Red’s body. Kristoff’s blood had been fueling the magic.
A high crept on her like the beginning of a mushroom trip. Her skin tingled. Red stared at her fingers, expecting sparks.
He hung up his phone before scanning her. Kristoff laughed. “You’re watching your hands move.”
Red forced her hands away from her eyes and onto her hips. Her head snapped up. Mr. Novak had a lot of explaining to do. “Why am I high?”
“Thought you did your research? It’s been a century since I last fed a witch my blood.” Kristoff walked over to her, cold fingers lifting her hand, and examined her healed palm. His thumb circled on her knuckles. “But depending on how much you’re injured, it can give you magic types a bit of a buzz. Excess potency and all. It’ll wear off.”
He pulled a ring out of his pocket. It was the golden ruby ring that Nevaeh had used on the roof of Club Vltava. Red had thrown it down into the alley. Kristoff must have found it. Sprinting in a vampiric blur, he went to her purse to drop it inside and returned, stopping before her. Not a strand of dark blond hair was out of place even after his speeding.
He smiled. “You’re a better guardian for that than I am.”
Red giggled, twirling a lock of hair around her finger before she became deathly serious and pulled her hand back. Chills rippled down her arms. She cocked her head, craning her neck to look up at him, eyes widening. “You’re really tall.”
“It’s a good thing you’re not driving.” Kristoff chuckled and put his hand on her back to guide her out of the office. His fingers traced up to her shoulder and lingered over the black lyre tattoo.
Shivering, Red adjusted her black tank top strap. She bit her lip, ducking her head. Maybe it was the blood, maybe it was the mutually assured destruction, but the balance had shifted between them.
Grabbing her jacket, Kristoff handed it to her. A grin stretching across his face, he leaned close to her ear. “Let’s see what we missed.” He opened the office door.
She pulled on her jacket, rubbing her hands on her sleeves as she walked past him through the threshold. She was uncomfortably hyperaware of his proximity and tattooed arms. The mystical buzz ebbed in waves that sparkled in the corners of her vision.
Not trusting herself to speak, she walked silently with him down the minimalist hall to an industrial stairwell and down to the floor below the club. The Novak brothers didn’t just have their own ventures in the five-story building. They passed closed rented offices marked with signs reading Stevie French – Night Lawyer and Charon Travel Services. She didn’t hear the beating until they came to a small antechamber. The sounds sobered her up.
Flinching, Red held back the dumb question on her lips. It was Sal, of course. That was a friend in there even if he’d tried to kill her.
Lunged legs bent and arms stretched out in front and behind her, Cora huffed through her nose. She rose out of a warrior yoga pose into a sun salutation. Hands pressed in prayer, she tightened her jaw. “Sal clammed up. I have Higbee on my ass, and I need something to tell her.”
Red looked away from the waiting supreme to hide her disquiet.
“It sounds like my people are making an impact.” Kristoff glanced between the supreme and the door.
Mouth twisting, Cora shook her head. “I don’t want him dead. I want him souled.”
“We agree on that.” Relieved, Red put her hands in her back pockets, shifting on her feet. Sal might have been a bastard right now, but he was a good man. They just had to slap empathy back into him so he remembered.
Cora crossed her arms. Arching an eyebrow at Kristoff, her sharp glance communicated a secret. Her lush lips stiffened.
Nodding, Kristoff put his hands behind his back. “You have orders?”
“Cool, cool, cool.” Red bobbed her head. She was at 110%. It was the middle of the night, but she could have hopped on a treadmill to run a mile. She was ready to get off the bench and into the game.
“Quinn is still checking on the other souled vampires and Lucas is… wherever.” Cora sighed, gaze hardening as she crossed her arms. “I need eyes at the Fine Line. One of the burrowers who killed Orval was spotted in the city. The party intel is the hottes
t lead we have to his location. Surprise surprise, my enemies prefer Fabio Gianni’s clubs. You two are going together.”
Gaze lowering, Kristoff inclined his head. “As you wish.”
Even though she was smaller, her regal presence still dwarfed him. Cora put a hand on Kristoff’s shoulder. Her long purple nails dug into his bare shoulder. She leaned closer, afro brushing his chin. “She comes back safely.”
“No worries, I got this!” Red bounced on her heels. The weird energy from Kristoff’s blood pumped through her system. She was ready to bust up the Dague before Vic even got back. That would show the Brotherhood. Red didn’t know why she had been nervous before. Undercover at a vamp club—old hat.
Chapter Seventeen
January 26th, Before Midnight, The Fine Line, Koreatown, Los Angeles, California
Tugging up the borrowed pleather bodice, Red tried not to feel naked as she moved through the gyrating crowd in the red strobe lights. The cropped black corset top, tight on her healed ribs, pushed too much up in the chest. It wasn’t a sense of modesty unsettling her. It was not having a hunting kit with her—the boxy brown leather satchel bumping comfortingly against her hip or the smaller one belted to her thigh. She didn’t even have a stake strapped to her. Not in deep cover with the unsouled set. It wasn’t like going under with Vic or another hunter.
Kristoff had claimed her.
This wasn’t a training simulation.
Located beneath a dingy parking garage in Koreatown, the Fine Line catered to the beautiful, the damned and the undead. The scanners at the hidden door to the underground club detected both metal and wood. The guards confiscated one woman’s wooden hair sticks. Kristoff had breezed them through security after a handshake from the guard, but they still had to go through them.
Mentally, she forced herself to admit he had been right. She couldn’t smuggle a stake into the vampire nightclub. But after they had spent the car ride bickering about it, she wouldn’t say it out loud.
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