Chapter 14
ALEXANDER
It was going to be damn near impossible to concentrate when Alexander’s body was still thrumming with pleasure and his mind was still entirely occupied with remembering how Tobias had felt clenched around him, the tight, perfect heat.
The scent of him clung to the lapels of Alexander’s suit, the confines of which felt too tight for his body.
He needed air.
Once Tobias had left with a well-fucked grin on his face, sauntering back to the library, Alexander had gone back to his office to collect himself.
His normally dead-white skin was flushed in a way it almost never was except when he’d just fed, and in a way he felt a similar sense of satisfaction.
Like the hunger inside of him, the void that was always there and present had been temporarily filled.
There was something about that that was deeply unsettling indeed.
Grabbing his wool coat and scarf, Alexander packed his bag, shoving the still-unmarked essays in along with his laptop.
He looked at the open genealogy website window before he shut the computer, and felt a vague sense of guilt, compounded with growing unease and frustration that he hadn’t managed to figure out more about what was going on with Tobias.
But the fact that they’d shared something so intimate had to count for something, and maybe now Tobias would be more open to sharing the guardrails of what they were doing with each other.
Alexander would have to entice the other man to explain how, precisely, he could avoid hurting him.
Maybe now that Alexander had literally been buried in Tobias’ body, it would bring down a wall between them that would help Tobias articulate how Alexander could be good for him.
It was both thrilling and terrifying, the urge to be good for Tobias.
As Alexander walked out of the building and into the sunlight of a perfectly crisp fall day, he tried to force himself to focus on what was necessary – rooting out the rogue vampire of the Damianos clan so that he could get the entire mess over with and get his father off his back.
When he finally managed that, he’d be able to get Tobias onto his back far more often.
He pulled up the email that Maria had sent him on his phone, scrolling through the details she’d managed to pull from news articles about the attack.
The young man had been found slumped against a wall on campus, and while initially the police had suspected that he had almost overdosed and rushed him to the hospital, that suspicion had quickly been squashed when he was found to be missing nearly all of his blood, just like the other student who’d been attacked a few weeks prior.
The fact that he’d survived was called yet another miracle.
The media was talking about it like there was a psychotic would-be killer on the loose pretending to be a vampire, someone who must be using a knife to create puncture marks in victims’ necks.
People were speculating on internet forums how the blood from these victims had gone missing, and the consensus was that the killer had been attacking people in some secret location, draining their blood out through their punctured jugular, and then moving them to second locations to display them until they were found by passers-by.
The theories made Alexander roll his eyes.
It was sometimes so much easier for humans to believe completely ludicrous theories than to understand that things existed beyond the realm of their comprehension.
Although he did wonder why the vampire was leaving victims alive – it would be safer, and more satisfying, to kill them.
It must be a message of some sort, but Alexander couldn’t for the life of him puzzle out what it meant.
Hiking across campus took nearly half an hour, with Alexander having to remind himself where to go – it was disorienting sometimes, returning to universities that he’d seen built from nearly the ground up, seeing all of the new buildings and altered streets.
He eventually found the building that had been mentioned in the online article Maria had sent, and skirting the outer wall took him to a corner where the scent of human blood still lingered.
There was no subtle way to sniff around to see if he could identity which of the vampires had done this, so Alexander dumped his bag on a nearby bench and wandered over to the stone wall, trailing his fingers over the ivy clinging to the mortar and pretending like he was admiring the plant while inhaling deeply.
All he could smell was Tobias. Alexander cursed himself, because he’d made this mistake again, and it would be harder to find the culprit if every time he breathed in he smelled nothing but the scent of Tobias’ skin.
He wasn’t even sure if it would be possible for him to pick up a faint scent weeks after a killing – he was no tracker, which was part of why he was so frustrated by his father’s insistence that he, personally, go investigate – but he certainly wasn’t going to be able to do anything useful now.
Still, he wouldn’t trade being able to fuck Tobias for anything, even making this entire situation with his father far easier.
The weather was at least pleasant, so Alexander settled himself down on the bench next to his bag to pull out his laptop.
A few searches of the news articles turned up the student’s name – the more reputable journalists had taken pains to hide the name in the news articles for privacy, but it wasn’t that hard to unearth it in some of the seedier tabloids reporting on the attacks like they were true crime entertainment.
Something about it bothered Alexander’s memory, and he bit his tongue between his teeth, trying to decide where he’d heard the name before.
In the end, searching his email was the thing that made the difference.
The boy’s name came up in a list from his department administrator, who had sent him the shortlisted CVs of the top students looking for research jobs in his area of expertise, asking him if he’d be interested in hiring any of them.
His eyes narrowed, because there was another email right under it with the heading post-doctoral fellows, and the first name in the preview of the message was…
the student who had been killed behind the club.
He’d been too busy to respond to either of them, but the names were there in black and white.
One connection was a coincidence. Two was far more than that.
His phone was in his hand before he realised it, dialling Maria’s number.
“Alex?” She was whispering, her voice muffled like she had her hand over her mouth and was trying not to be heard. “What’s going on? I’m with Father.”
“I found a connection.” He didn’t care that Vladimir would hear his voice through the phone. For once, he was doing exactly what his father had asked. “Between the attack victims. I can’t find a scent, but this is something that I need you to help me chase down.”
“What is it?” From the way the connection was echoing now, Maria had put him on speakerphone. “What did you figure out?”
Alexander swallowed, hoping that he wasn’t right but sensing that he was. “The first victim had a fellowship in the department and was supposed to work under me. The second had applied to work as my administrative assistant.”
“So what, they’re all students you were going to hire?”
“Right.” Alexander shoved his computer back in his bag and slung it over his shoulder, jamming the phone in the crook of his neck as he gathered his things and stood up.
“It’s too much of a coincidence. Oxford is a big place – even if you were going after uni students, what’s the chance you’d kill two that were going to work for me unless I’m the connection? ”
Maria replied, “Are you saying that whoever has gone rogue is doing it to… impact your research? Alex, you realise that sounds–”
“No,” he said, cutting her off too harshly.
He swallowed and softened his tone as he wove through the crowd of students on the path, all hurrying to get to class.
He didn’t know where he was going, but he needed to find Tobias.
“No, I’m saying that whoever is nearly killing these people is trying to send me a message.
I’m the heir. What is this but a challenge? ”
There was a rustling noise, and his father’s voice came on the line. “Son.”
“Father. I trust you’ve just overheard my theory. Or do you need me to repeat it?”
Vladimir didn’t take the bait, instead remaining preternaturally calm. “I have. But what I care most about is knowing what you are going to do about it.”
“Kill them,” Alexander said as steadily as he could manage. “As quickly as possible.”
“Good.” He could hear the pleasure and satisfaction in his father’s tone, and he knew that it was because Vladimir thought this was the bloodthirsty side of his son finally coming to the surface, that Alexander was finally ready to seize power. “You’re learning.”
The connection was severed as Vladimir hung up without another word.
Alexander was, in fact, ready to break the neck of whoever was doing this – if, in fact, he was being targeted and wasn’t just paranoid.
But it wasn’t for the reason that Vladimir thought.
If the rogue vampire was trying to challenge his authority in some plot to convince Vladimir that they were more suited to take control of the family than Vladimir’s own eldest son, then anyone connected to Alexander was at risk.
Normally he’d worry about Maria, but he knew she could more than take care of herself.
Before, they might be able to kill whoever Alexander was feeding on at that moment, which would undoubtedly be an annoyance and would likely send him into a rage.
But ultimately, it wouldn’t have done much to him.
But that was before. Now, there was Tobias.