Chapter 9
Chapter
Nine
ECHO
There was muffled thumping coming from somewhere, but I couldn’t have given less than a shit because I was cuddled up to something warm, grounding, and squeezing the ever-loving stuffing out of me.
I opened my eyes to see a bare chest I’d gotten to know intimately the night before. I squirmed until I was able to press a hand over Vale’s heart, wondering if it was the muted thumping I’d heard.
Did vampires have beating hearts? Popular media had mixed views on the matter, so only empirical knowledge was going to give me answers.
There was a steady rhythm under my hand, and Vale’s skin was warm, if a bit pale. My man was violating vampire lore left and right, but his heartbeat wasn’t the thumping in question.
My man? Slow down there, heart. No need to get hasty. I was there for a good time, not a long time.
Vale was clearly one of the magic beings running around the valley I lived in, and a goodly portion of them seemed to be immortal in one way or another. The way Vale spoke with a muddied variety of expressions and accents told me he was very likely one of the long-lived varieties.
If Vale was trapped in the world indefinitely, he didn’t need to get caught up with someone like me. Especially not if he was as unhappy to be alive as I was.
Well, as unhappy as I usually was. Being snuggled up to a vampire who had just fucked my brains out was far better than life generally got for me, and I was wallowing in the afterglow.
But afterglows always faded, and cold, harsh reality always took their place. I knew it would be better for both of us if nature took its course and Vale killed me before he caught feelings.
It didn’t matter if I caught feelings. Having someone I cared about send me off to my dead loved ones sounded like the perfect way to go.
And let’s face it, I was catching a feeling or two for Vale. He was beautiful, fascinating, and don’t even get me started on his hair. It was a work of art, and I was its number one fan.
The muffled thumping started up again, and the door began to beep. Unlike the thumping, the beeping didn’t come and go. It was continuous and grew louder as time passed.
I tapped Vale’s chest, “Hey, sleepy. Get up.”
There was no response. My tap turned into a light punch, but Vale was dead to the world.
The noise by the door was impossible for me to sleep through, but Vale seemed to have no trouble.
Vampire lore said they sleep during the day and can’t be roused, but that didn’t apply to Vale.
When we’d run into each other earlier, it had been late afternoon, and while he hadn’t seemed excited about being in the sun, it hadn’t hurt him, and he’d been enthusiastically active when he was rearranging my guts a few hours ago.
Besides, it was probably nighttime. Vampires weren’t supposed to sleep at night.
I punched Vale again, only harder, and I finally got a muttered, “Fuck off, Gareth,” before he rolled over, freeing me from my trap.
“I’ll just get the door, then, shall I?” I asked, not yet realizing how odd that was for me. I was sleepy too, okay? And I’d had a long series of bizarre events happen over a short period of time. I should be forgiven for being stupid.
Vale gave me a few incoherent syllables, which I interpreted to mean, “Your ass was so dazzling earlier that I’ve been incapacitated, so if you could be a dear and get the door, I’d be ever so grateful.”
So, I got up, took the blanket with me, leaving Vale bare-assed and curled up to fend for himself.
I went to the door and saw that it had a touch screen next to it that was flashing. The text on it read:
Emergency protocol activated. Door will open automatically in:
5 seconds…
4 seconds…
3 seconds…
2 seconds…
Oh shit. My sleep and sex addled brain finally clued in to what was happening, just as the counter hit one and the door slid open.
“I know you don’t like to be interrupted, but we need to get the body out before it starts to smell… Oh, hello, Echo. You’re looking refreshingly alive for someone in your situation.” Baz reached out and took my hand, shaking it vigorously.
Behind him was a second, less manic-looking Baz, and I blinked furiously as the first Baz continued to congratulate me for being alive.
“Oh, this is Vix. We’re a matched set, but Paris refuses to fuck both of us, which is dumb as shit in my opinion.” Baz stopped shaking my hand and shoved it into Vix’s hand, who began to shake it with the same amount of vigor as Baz had.
“It’s okay, Gareth! There’s no body for you to carry.” Vix said, still shaking my hand. “You can carry yourself on your own, right, Echo?”
“I don’t know about that, Vix.” Baz eyeballed me and my rapidly escaping blanket skeptically. “Look at the bruises on this guy. Are you sure you’re still alive, Echo? We can come back in a few minutes if you were in the process of croaking. Don’t let us rush you.”
I rescued my hand from Vix in time to keep my blanket from slipping away entirely, but everyone was able to get an eyeful of the bruises littering my body.
“That is a lot of blood, Echo,” Vix said.
“And cum,” Baz added.
“And bruises,” Vix finished. “I’d say we’ll get you medical assistance for you if you want, but Vale is our medical assistance, so if he’s planning to finish you off, there’s not a lot we can do.”
“Unless he’s planning to fuck you to death, in which case, I volunteer to help out in any way you’d like,” Baz offered right before he was yanked out of the doorway by Gareth.
I looked at the floor immediately so I wouldn’t pass out from the combination of blood loss and fear.
“Vale, get out of bed and either patch this guy up or kill him. You’ve had twelve hours with him, and we’ve got a job to do,” Gareth called into the gloom of Vale’s… bedroom? Lab? It had a bed, a ton of instruments, crazy evil doctor-style gadgets, and no windows.
Lair. I was going to go with lair.
Was Vale a villain? Were his friends villains? I was starting to think they were.
After the events of the night before last, what with the cultist discussion, Haruka’s mercenaries, and all the blood-sucking, I felt confident in thinking that Vale wasn’t one of those animal munching, all human life is sacred, can’t we all just get along kind of vampires.
Especially since his friends were not only surprised to see me alive but seemed to be fine with the outcome either way.
I was pretty sure Vale was a bad guy.
So, why the fucking, flipping, farking hell was I still alive??
I stormed back to the bed, dragging the blanket behind me, snatched Vale’s pillow out from under his head, and began to beat him with it.
“You… Are… Such… A… Crappy… Vampire!” I shouted as I whacked him over and over again.
Vale stirred after the first two hits but didn’t get his shit together enough to stop me until I finished my sentence.
“I’m not a vampire, Echo! Stop hitting me,” Vale hissed, trapping my hands in one of his and tossing the pillow off the bed.
“Then what are you? If it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck…”
“Yes, Vale, what are you?” Vix shouted from the doorway.
“Enquiring minds want to know!” Baz added.
I was beginning to think Baz wasn’t kidding about him and Vix being a matched set. Their voices sounded so similar that I wouldn’t have known a different person was speaking if I hadn’t been watching them talk.
“None of your fucking business,” Vale said, but he was looking at the door when he said it, not me.
Vale pulled the blanket over my shoulders, and I realized it had slipped off during our struggle.
“Close the door, Love,” Vale called out.
Was he talking to me? Were we on a pet name basis?
I got a tummy flutter that made me want to be, but then it sank when I realized that for Vale, I didn’t want it.
Brains and hearts are weird, people. They rarely get along, and they both tell you to do the opposite thing with equal amounts of insistence and fervor.
Fuck if I know how to deal with it. If you figure it out, please let me know.
I realized Vale was talking to the door itself when it responded, “Emergency override code, please,” in the cutest, sassiest voice ever.
“Close the door, or I’ll rip your circuits out of the wall and melt them in the fire pit.” Vale’s voice had an edge to it that left me with no doubt that he meant it.
The door slid shut with a ssssss, and we were alone once more.
“We have at least five minutes before Gareth overrides the lock again,” Vale informed me, rubbing his face tiredly.
“That’s plenty of time,” I said, sitting down primly and offering Vale my neck. “Is this okay, or do you want the other side?”
Vale rolled his eyes and shoved me off the bed, leaving me in an undignified sprawl on the floor.
“I’m not killing you,” Vale said bluntly.
“Why does Lyle warrant the vampire treatment, and I don’t?”
“Because the world is better off without Lyle,” Vale snapped.
I snorted. “Please. Like you care about that fluffy bunny bullshit. Why won’t you kill me? You know you want to.”
“You’re quite chatty this morning,” Vale observed.
“If you think you can just change the subject like that, then…”
I stopped, suddenly smacked in the face by the truth of Vale’s words.
I was being very chatty for me. What the hell?
“What did you do to me?” I asked, grabbing my neck. “Did you suck the words out of me? Into me? Is that a thing? A not-a-vampire thing?”
Vale let out a laugh. And when he saw me patting my throat frantically, he broke into deep, hearty chuckles.
“I liked you before your words were unlocked, but I clearly didn’t know what I was missing. Tell me more.” Vale was on the floor in a flash, kneeling on the blanket and keeping me pinned. “Tell me everything.”
“I’m not telling you shit until you tell me why I’m not good enough for you to kill.”
Vale’s eyes narrowed, and then the ghost of a playful smile played around his lips. “Then I suppose we’ll both be frustrated together.”
He got off the blanket, plucked me off the floor, and placed me back on the bed. It didn’t escape my notice that he was much more careful when he put me down than he was when he’d chucked me off the bed.
“Will you at least tell me what you are?” I was dying to know. If even his friends didn’t know, it had to be something good.
“Maybe later,” Vale said vaguely. “We should shower. I hate going to jobs without a shower.”
“It’s the middle of the night… isn’t it?” I didn’t actually know what time it was, but if it was twelve hours after Vale brought me to his lair like Gareth said, it had to be late. Or really early.
At a certain point, they really end up being the same thing, don’t they?
“Crime waits for no one,” Vale said, and that ghost smile? Yeah, it was becoming a lot less ghostly. In fact, I was pretty sure he was teasing me.
“So, you’re a criminal?”
“Does that bother you?”
“I don’t know. Do you kill puppies and kids and shit?”
“No puppy killing, I’m afraid. Paris would never allow it.”
“What about kids?”
“Is that your hard line?”
“I think it should be everyone’s, don’t you?”
“We don’t kill children. Your standards are quite low, Echo. Is that all it takes to satisfy you? Not killing animals and children?”
“Low standards come with being older than fifteen.”
Vale’s smile faded. “Your standards should be impossibly high, Echo. Someone like you-”
I didn’t want to hear what he was about to say, so I covered his mouth. “Spare me. I’ve seen it in your eyes. You don’t like this world. It’s complete bullshit. You and I both know it, so don’t fuck around. Just answer me. Are you going to kill me or not?”
Something complicated passed across Vale’s features, and he studied me for a long time before saying, “What will you do if I refuse?”
“I’ll…” Something told me not to tell him I’d find some other way to do it. I wasn’t even certain I would try that route. After tasting Vale, after seeing what being with him was like, I couldn’t imagine dying by anything other than his hands.
Vale seemed to get the answer he was looking for and said, “I’ll consider it. But for now, shower.”
“And then crime?” I asked. My mood had lifted at his non-refusal. Maybe I could still get what I wanted from him if I played my cards right.
Vale laughed. “And then crime.”