CHAPTER 35 #4
“I’m relieved,” Iro said on a sigh. “I’m relieved. She’s gone. She can’t hurt you, me, or anyone else anymore.”
“You’re really okay?” Arwen looked up at her.
“Yes, I am. I just feel like I have to figure out what to do now. DeMarco can delete any trace of the woman being in this area, and that will help, but Gigi is buried in my backyard, and she’s a vampire, so if someone finds her, they will have a lot of questions.”
“I’ll ask Zara to handle that, too,” Arwen replied.
“Zara?”
“She’s taking care of some things for us.”
“Bodies? Zara?”
“Her and a few of the vampires that were in the house. Turns out, they didn’t like Cassia much, either, and they’re on our side now.”
“Her pull must… dissipate after she’s gone. I don’t feel it the same way, either. Wow! I don’t feel it.” Iro took a deep breath. “I’ve felt that pull to her for so long, I had forgotten what it was like not to.”
“And?”
“And it’s good.” Iro smiled softly. “I feel freer now. Do you still feel it?”
“I never really felt it. I was still human when she took me, and I was pretty angry and confused. She killed me, and you took me back before I woke up.”
“Right,” Iro said. “Well, that’s good news. Less to worry about right now, I suppose.”
“And you can just focus on healing.”
“And you,” Iro added. “Making sure you’re safe.”
She kissed Arwen’s forehead.
“I am. I’m okay. We’re both okay.”
“Arwen, Cassia’s phone… Do we have it?”
“I brought it in here with me. Why?”
“Can I see it?”
Arwen stood up, found it on the floor, and handed it to her.
“Why?” she repeated.
“She kept talking about all these vampires she has ready to take over the world or something.”
“You know her password?”
Iro cleared her throat as she sat up and replied, “It’s my birthday.”
“Oh,” Arwen said and sat back on the bed. “Of course, it is.”
“She never really loved me, you know? She just loved collecting people. She loved owning them.”
“I get it. She just got to be with you for three hundred years, so that’s a lot to take in.”
“Look at it like this,” Iro said. “She only got to be with me for three hundred years. You get to be with me forever.”
Arwen smiled at her, and Iro unlocked the phone and looked through it.
“She sent a list to people. It’s in her sent emails. Someone named Alexia. There’s a Sarah, Amy, and–”
“Those are the vampires who lived with her.”
“It’s a list of the vampires she has in certain positions. She made a fucking list of vampires she made. At least, some of them, anyway. There are over a hundred names here. Jesus! That’s a prime minister.”
Iro continued to scroll.
“She did say she wanted to take over the world,” Arwen noted.
“We need to find out if she alerted them or something; to do whatever she wanted them to do.”
“And we will, but not right now. Now, you’re going to lie back, drink more, and try to heal your body.”
“Arwen, we can’t sit on this.”
“We won’t. I’ll just ask them to tell me what they know when they get here. They’ll all be here soon. I’ll talk to them. We’ll find out what these other people know.”
“Okay. I need to be there, though.”
“Nope. You need to be in here, sleeping, getting better.”
“Sweetheart, I–”
“Iro, I love you, but you need to heal.”
“Touch me.”
“What? Now? You’re thinking about sex right now?”
“No, not like that. I mean, yes, like that as well, but sex, just like blood, heals, Arwen.”
“Wait. It really does? You said it helps with cravings.”
“Yes. I don’t know why. I didn’t make the rules. Cassia never explained why, either. It just does.”
“So, your body will heal faster if I give you an orgasm?”
“I swear,” Iro replied.
Arwen slid a hand into Iro’s shorts and said, “You better not be lying to me, Iro Black.”
Iro smiled and said, “Never again. I’ll never lie to you again.”
◆◆◆
“Okay, we’ve got them in the car. I think it was good to wait until it was dark,” Zara said. “Now, we’ll take care of it from here.”
“Thank you,” Arwen said.
“I cleaned up the blood, too,” Sarah added. “You might just want to clean the floor better than I did later, though, or it’ll smell like blood for a long time.”
“We will,” Arwen replied.
“Zara, did you get the–”
“I got it,” Zara said, finishing Alexia’s sentence when Alexia came back into the room.
“Oh, good.” Alexia smiled at Arwen’s friend. “Thanks.”
“Sure,” Zara replied and smiled back. “Amy’s in the car, ready to go. We should get out of here before anyone wises up to what’s going on.”
“Right,” Arwen said. “I need to check on Iro anyway.”
“Is she going to be okay?” Sarah asked, moving to Zara’s side and taking Zara’s hand.
“She’ll be okay. It will take a few days, though, I think. What will you all do? You can’t stay at Cassia’s after this.”
“I think go home,” Alexia replied. “But not for good. Just for now.”
“Me too,” Sarah added. “But we’ll stick together. Zara? We’ll stick together?”
“I think we will. I don’t know about Amy, though. She might want to be on her own, and that’ll be her choice.”
“Zara, we can’t have vampires running around DC, killing people,” Arwen said.
“Amy hasn’t killed anyone. Cassia did. I’ll still talk to her and make sure she understands, though. Are you two ready?” Zara asked, seemingly different now, more confident somehow.
She’d just instructed these women on how to pick up and deal with dead bodies, and they had listened to her. Zara looked like a leader, and the two women clearly saw her that way. It would have been nice under different circumstances, Arwen supposed, that Zara had come into her own.
“We’re ready,” Alexia replied and squeezed Zara’s arm before she turned to walk off with Sarah.
“So, what is going on there, exactly?” Arwen lifted an eyebrow at her.
“Well, we’ve…”
“Zara!”
“What? Cassia’s house was basically one big orgy after another.
It’s hard to explain unless you lived it, but it was…
intoxicating. I know I’ve got a lot to explain to you still, but there was something about being there, around her and all of these women she’d turned…
I’ve never been adventurous in any way, but becoming a vampire not only saved my life, it’s turned me into someone who I think I was supposed to be, maybe. ”
“That’s great, Zara, but you know those two like each other as more than just vampires with benefits.”
“I know. I like them, too.”
“You like them?”
“I like them enough to make sure that they’re okay and to finish this whole Cassia thing. Then, we will see. I’m kind of still in love with someone else, if you remember.”
“I do. And I’m still sorry.”
“Don’t be. I know the Cassia part of this was bad and what I did to you and Iro wasn’t okay and never will be, but I think becoming a vampire might be the best thing that has ever happened to me.
I’m not in pain anymore. No cancer. I’m not looking at the end of my life being in the next six months, and eventually, I might get my best friend back.
The sex has been out of this world, too, honestly, and that’s not something that was very good for me as a human. ”
Arwen laughed and said, “Trust me, I know.”
“Yeah? You and Iro? After you turned?”
“Fucking amazing,” she said.
“Yeah…” Zara replied and nodded. “I need to go. I’m not ready to hear all of those details yet.”
“Zara, you deserve to be happy.”
“So do you. I’ll call you when everything’s done.”
“Thank you,” Arwen said.
Zara left them alone, and Arwen walked into Iro’s bedroom.
Surprised to hear the shower running because Iro was supposed to be sleeping, she walked into the bathroom and saw her there, wiping blood off her body.
That made Arwen feel both horrified about what had happened hours ago and so grateful that Iro was still here.
She undressed and climbed into the shower.
“Hi,” Iro greeted.
“You’re supposed to be asleep.”
“I’m feeling much better. And the sun is down now, so it’s okay to be out.”
“Better, huh? I see only two fully healed stab wounds, babe.”
“The rest need to be cleaned anyway.”
“Then, let me,” Arwen requested. “How badly do they hurt?”
“I’m okay,” Iro said. “You can clean them if you want, but I already did while you were talking to Zara, who may or may not like Alexia and Sarah. Did I get that right?”
“We’ll see.” She chuckled and wrapped her arms around Iro’s neck. “After this, it’s back to bed for you.”
“You need to eat.”
“I did. Your delivery guy stopped by, so I’m okay.” She kissed Iro’s neck. “Zara will call us when it’s done.”
Iro’s arms went around her waist, and she said, “Arwen, we shouldn’t stay here.”
“In DC?”
“This house. Alexia and Sarah told you that they didn’t do anything with Cassia’s call-to-arms list, right?”
“Yeah. They’re going to tell them all that Cassia is dead and that they shouldn’t expose vampires because they would be doing so without her support.”
“Well, that’s something, I suppose, but someone might still get the idea that they can take over for Cassia. I’d give it a year or so before I start hearing about dead bodies piling up and the unexplained deaths.”
“Really?”
Iro nodded and said, “If you want to stay here, we can, but not in this house. I’ll buy another one in the name of a company or something. We’ll move in as soon as we can, but we also might have to leave sooner than I promised earlier if someone makes a move.”
“You think they’ll come after us?”
“I don’t know. It depends on what she told them about me. But if they start doing things that risk us being exposed, I’ll have to–”
“Fight them?”
“Kill them, yes. I can try to talk to them how I did with Cassia first. She was much stronger and older, and we had a connection that ran for so long; her compulsion could have broken because of that. I’ll practice to get better, and I will have to be careful, but yeah, I can’t risk us being found out. ”
“Okay. So, we move,” Arwen said.
“We?” Iro asked, hopeful.
“Into a new house here first and maybe somewhere else later, but if you’re going off somewhere to fight for all vampire kind and prevent people from dying, I’m going with you.”
“You are?”
“I am,” she replied.
When Iro leaned to kiss her slowly, Arwen heard her grunt, but it wasn’t her usual grunt that would’ve told her that Iro was turned on. Instead, it was pain. Iro was still hurting, and Arwen needed to get her to bed.
“Iro, baby, let’s get some sleep. We can talk about a new house and maybe you teaching me how to fight to save humanity tomorrow.”
“I love you,” Iro replied with a soft laugh.
“I know. I love you, too,” she said and kissed her on the nose.