Chapter 2 #2
But he was a cool customer, and he didn’t react to the name he should have known. It really was like talking to a rock. A good-looking rock, but a rock nonetheless.
I hadn’t intended to fill the silence, but I did it anyway. His quiet was very… compelling. “Esmé couldn’t be here.” Shit, I sounded more desperate than I’d intended.
He nodded, but the gesture could have meant many things.
Perhaps the idea Esmé couldn’t be here was obvious from the fact that I was.
Or maybe he already knew. More likely, he didn’t care, but I didn’t expect this guy wasted even one muscle twitch of his body if he could help it.
The nod had meant something. I wanted to keep talking to find out what, but I pressed my lips together instead, afraid to overplay my hand now, afraid to let more of my need show.
He half stood. “I came here to see Esmé. Not her…” His lip curled and I tried not to recoil at the disgust the small movement telegraphed my way. “Pet.”
I forced a laugh, and it was loud and fake, but hopefully, the discordant sound hid the tremor present in my voice. “Well, I’m all you’ve got, pal.”
He was a stiff, good-looking rock with an attitude problem. In short, he was a bastard. But I could shrug that shit off. Vampires were all fucking bastards. Humans were beneath them. Hell, we were food. No one was nice to their actual food.
I nearly laughed again, and it was almost genuine.
He didn’t sit back down, instead pulling out his billfold and snatching a couple of bucks for the table. Shit. I was losing him.
I held out my hand, stopping short of actually touching him. He looked like he definitely operated on a hair trigger.
“Wait. I mean it.”
He looked at me, his eyes like hard stones now. As cold and stiff as the rest of him.
I stifled my shiver. “I really am your only shot. You can either accept that I will take you to Esmé or I can walk out of this bar right now and your opportunity to get in with the Blackbloods disappears.” I held his gaze, but it was difficult.
As much as something about him drew me in, I wanted to look away.
There was too much there. Too much intensity. Too much pain.
And there was too much I wanted.
I needed him to come with me. I needed to make an ally on the inside, and it had been too long since there was anyone new, someone I could maybe use to my advantage. Although looking at him, he wouldn’t be used by anyone. He’d do the using — and the throwing away at the end.
Still, I didn’t have a whole lot else going for me but hope these days. And sometimes not even that.
I held my breath and waited. Almost crossed my fingers for good measure.
“If this is a trick—” His voice had taken on a hard edge, but then he softened it. “I’ll kill you.”
His last words were almost seductive, and again I nearly laughed. Homicide or a rescue? I couldn’t decide which he’d offered me.
But I forced a casual shrug. “It’s not the first time a vampire has offered to end things for me.” Then I stood and walked out of the bar, not checking to see if he was following.
I could sense him behind me, though. And he should have been cold like his stony facade, but the heat from his body sent a buzz of awareness right through me.
I wanted him to wrap his arms around me and hold me like he could put me back together through sheer force of will, like he could hold me in one piece when I was falling apart in slow motion.
But I shook that wild impulse off. I didn’t need anything from this guy but his help to get out of my current situation. And first, I had to take him to Esmé.
“My car’s over here.”
He didn’t say anything when I turned to face him, but he did lift his right eyebrow just enough that he almost looked amused.
I got in behind the steering wheel and waited.
He seemed to almost fold himself into the passenger seat, but he didn’t complain.
Served him right for being so stiff and muscled in the first place, anyway.
I pulled out of the parking lot, squealing my tires just a little as I watched the last of the lights in the bar flicker out for the evening in the rearview mirror. I gripped the steering wheel, my knuckles whitening as my anxiety increased. Damn, this needed to go well.
“So, you know what you’re here for?”
He nodded; the movement short. My question didn’t open the conversation I’d hoped for. I wanted to know more about him, to find out his story. Esmé hadn’t told me shit. Perhaps if I volunteered part of myself first, he’d say something.
“I’m Sam.” I’d said that part, but it was always worth repeating.
“When I first met Esmé, I was looking for a job. My brother introduced us.” My laugh rang dangerously close to hollow because I could do without the sudden memory of Sean.
I couldn’t imagine any other job hunt that led to a slow death like mine. “Are you looking for work, too?”
He didn’t say anything, and I sighed.
“Look, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. My only job tonight is to get you to Esmé so you two can work out all your secret squirrel shit.” Yeah, and then collect my venom. My pulse sped up at the thought of a hit. “You don’t have to confess your deepest, darkest secrets to me.”
He made a noise that sounded like a snort, and I shot a quick glace in his direction, but his face was as expressionless as ever. If I’d conjured either amusement or annoyance in him, it wasn’t on display now.
“Esmé is going to vouch for you with Brock and then…” I paused as I told him the only things I knew. “Then you’re on your own.” My stomach twisted, and I almost felt bad for him.
I was kind of abandoning him to the Blackbloods.
I’d never felt personally responsible for one of the new recruits before.
Maybe this was different, though, because he had some sort of ulterior motive, and I had an ulterior motive for wanting to know more about him, and that made us kind of kindred.
It almost made me want to turn the car around and tell him to run while he still could.
But that was a ridiculous thought. He wasn’t a helpless human.
His story wasn’t like mine. He was a vamp and all vamps deserved to burn.
Nothing would ever shake me from that belief.
I’d seen the worst of them when they’d killed Sean and now… Now this life with Esmé was my penance.
I turned into the driveway of the house where Esmé kept me holed up. It wasn’t much to look at from the outside, with bits of siding hanging clean off, and it was even worse on the inside. But it was home, and I guessed my final resting place at some point, so it was good enough for that.
There was one lamp burning in the living room. The glow shone through the window, and that meant Esmé was already there. I shivered. Part in fear, part in anticipation. If she was already here, that meant she was hungry, so what happened next wouldn’t be pretty.
Sometimes, it was like she forgot she was also denying herself when she sent me off to do her bidding using her venom as the reward at the end. There really were no bounds to her control freakery.
I opened the door. I didn’t unlock it first, because it was never locked—there was no point.
No self-respecting burglar would waste their time in here.
Inside, Esmé was pacing like a crackhead jonesing for his next fix, her white-blonde hair flaring behind her like a fine mist every time she made a turn to walk back the other way.
She faced me, her fangs already extended, her nostrils widening.
Her eyes shone the red of hunger, and her cheekbones were prominent, making a monster from her normally elfin face.
Without even waiting for me to step over the threshold, she grabbed me, dragging me against her and pinning me with her superhuman strength.
I caught sight of the guy’s expression as Esmé’s fangs sank slowly into my neck, and I nearly startled out of my bliss state from the intensity of it.
Far from his face being his usual blank slate, he looked murderous, like he wanted to kill Esmé.
His own fangs grazed his lower lip, and his eyebrows were drawn over dull red eyes.
But then I was gone. Sinking into the waiting warmth of Esmé’s arms, listening to the steady rhythm of her sucking as she drew mouthfuls of blood from me, the slowing of the blood racing through my ears.
I surrendered myself to the familiar sensations, to walking that tightrope that could tip me into death.
But Esmé was an expert. She wasn’t ready for me to die yet, and she groaned as she released me. She wiped the blood carelessly from my neck with her fingertips and left me to crumple to the floor.
I lay there for a moment before strong arms lifted me and I rested my head against a chest of hard muscle. I was placed with surprising gentleness on my ratty old couch that smelled like too much sweat and stale blood. Then I closed my eyes as he faded from my view.
The high would only last twenty minutes, but it would be the best twenty minutes I’d had in days.