Chapter Twenty-One
Soph floated between moments of lucidity and periods of uncontrollable hunger. She kept to her bed mostly, feeling weak and cold. Her body still craved vampire blood, though her head was clear enough now not to act on it. Sometimes she slept and sometimes she woke to find Eli sleeping beside her. His companion, Cole, never seemed to rest and the occasional urge that Soph had to escape to go and find a vampire was quashed by his ever alert presence.
Outside, the storm raged. The TV was on with constant rolling coverage of the evacuations and lists of suburbs that were going under water, but the sound was drowned out by the howling wind.
At one point Soph woke from an uneasy sleep to a pitch black room. She was in absolute darkness, with not even the city lights filtering through the window.
“Eli?” She called out in alarm.
“Here.” He appeared in the doorway, his face illuminated by the light of his phone. Soph climbed out of bed and shuffled towards him.
“What happened?” She asked as she reached him. He moved aside so she could see into the lounge room. Cole was at the dining table, working on a laptop with the light of a few candles beside him.
“There’s a city-wide blackout,” Eli explained. He headed back to the dining table, where he sat down with a notebook. “We’re just trying to do some work on the Sinister opening.”
Soph slid into the chair between them and pulled her knees up to her chest to stave off the cold. Cole glanced at her before pulling a blanket from his lap and handing it to her. She accepted it gratefully and wrapped it around her shoulders.
On the table, aside from Cole’s laptop, a disused tablet and the men’s phones, were several neat piles of paper. Soph recognised some of them as her own household bills, and she experienced a pang of guilt that Eli and Cole had taken care of them. Many of them had angry ‘overdue’ stamps across the top. On other papers she saw the Paxus letterhead, and it was these that drew her attention. She didn’t pick them up, of course. She didn’t work for Paxus anymore and they were none of her business. But she was curious.
As she tried to read the top proposal, Eli reached over and took it from the pile. He set it in front of him with a frown and began marking it with a red pen. Several times, he sighed until he finally sat back and rubbed his face.
“I can’t work it out, but it’s just not enough.”
“Can I look?” Soph asked tentatively. Eli handed the proposal over without hesitation. She read over it in silence, then reached for Eli’s red pen and notepad. Eli watched as she drew, and even Cole looked curiously over his laptop. As she sketched, she talked.
“The proposal is too similar to the Sinners one. That’s why you don’t like it. It doesn’t offer the mystery that Sinister needs. We did social filters for Sinners, and that worked really well… I assume. How about this time, you leak some sneak peaks from your own social media accounts? I know you rarely use them, but your profile has grown with these clubs. People follow you now not just for business reasons, but because you’re hot.” She flushed, remembering Cole was listening in. She glimpsed the curl at the corner of Eli’s lips before ploughing on.
“If you use your accounts in the lead up to the launch, people will flock to them. On a smaller note,” she added, finishing a quick sketch of a few dark fantasy creatures. “Get an artist to do these up and put them on billboards around town. That’ll get the really curious there. Imagine going out for the night, not knowing if you’ll meet a vampire, or a witch, or something supernatural. Of course, that happens on the down low on a night out anyway… but at Sinister, both the humans and the supernatural can be themselves around each other.”
She handed the notepad back to Eli, and he looked at it with raised eyebrows. He exchanged a look with Cole, who nodded, then he set the papers aside.
“It seems that you’re the missing link,” he said with a smile. Soph returned it.
“Don’t tell Paxus. They probably wouldn’t like me looking at their stuff.”
Eli nodded absently and rubbed his temples. “I think I’ll get some fresh air.” he stood and started towards the balcony. Soph jumped to her feet.
“There’s a storm out there!” She reminded him. He glanced over his shoulder as he opened the sliding door. Rain and wind blew inside.
“I know,” he stepped out.
Soph stared after him then, with a quick glance at Cole, who continued to work on the laptop, she headed for the balcony. The moment she opened the door, she thought she would blow away. Gripping the frame, she slid outside into the whirling storm.
“Eli?” Her voice was lost to the wind.
“Here,” he responded from surprisingly close. He materialised from the darkness and took her hand in a firm grip, pulling her to the far edge of the balcony where there was a pocket of calm created by the wall that separated her apartment from the neighbour. They both leaned against it and stared out into the storm.
The city was an eerie place when it was so dark, and Soph could only make out the other buildings when an occasional flash of lightning illuminated them. Where they stood, the wind didn’t quite reach them, but rain still swirled in, a mist upon their skin. The air was fresh and Soph breathed deeply, revived.
Eli squeezed her hand, and she glanced at him. His eyes were on the storm, but they were soft with deference, respectful of the sheer force of it all.
“I can’t believe we’re out here in this!” Soph shouted so he’d hear her over the roaring wind. His eyes flicked down to hers and he smirked.
“Scared?” He teased. She snorted.
“Of course not. It’s only the worst storm to hit the city in a hundred years. Why would I be scared?” She laughed through her words, yet her hand tightened involuntarily in his. She could feel her heart racing faster than normal. Could he hear it over the storm? His gaze was unnerving, but before she could look away, his other hand rose to cup her face. His eyes glowed with a warmth that she’d never seen in them before, and he dipped his head to kiss her.
It was unlike anything Soph had ever experienced. Electricity sparked where their lips met and his skin was hot where it connected to hers. She melted against him, submitting completely. This kiss wasn’t lust-driven, rather it was carved from the stones of eternity. A promise, a glimpse of something so much bigger than herself. This kiss was different. He was different.
A spark ignited in her chest, born from something that had always been there but now grew rapidly. A glowing star that was both wonderful and terrible. She should fear it; it couldn’t come to anything good, but right now it was perfect.
Mist sprayed over them in waves and Eli wrapped his arms around her as if he could protect her from the storm. Maybe he could.
* * *
The following morning dawned with the storm still upon them, though less intense than it had been the night before. Outside, it was grey and wet, but at least the power had been restored. Soph also had a small win in her road to recovery; she kept down half a sandwich without being sick.
From there, she improved dramatically. As her appetite increased, her blood-lust faded. She still felt weak, with occasional cold chills, but she was beginning to accept that those were just part of being human.
There was also her growing dilemma that was Eli.
Nothing had happened after he’d kissed her, and they went about their days as though they hadn’t shared that moment, but something was different now. Soph was hyper aware of him everywhere he went in her apartment. If he went to the kitchen, she found herself at the door watching him cook. When they sat on the lounge to watch TV together, it felt like the heat of his thigh against hers would set her on fire. When he slept beside her in bed, she’d lay awake for hours listening to his deep, even breathing. She knew exactly what the problem was, and it wasn’t a good one.
She was fucking falling for him.
Every fibre of her being warned against these feelings. They couldn’t come to anything good, they never had before. And yet, while he resided in her apartment, she couldn’t stay away.
He seemed to have changed too, always finding small ways to be in contact with her, always watching her with soft grey eyes. They talked. A lot.
Never about whatever was drawing them together like moons to a planet, but no less intense.
“Tell me something,” Eli whispered in the darkest hours of the night, while rain lashed against the windows, narrowing the world to only the room they slept in.
Tell me something.
It was like that first night he’d come to her apartment, fleeing the black witches. Tell me something about yourself.
She’d had the feeling then that offering him something at the surface level of herself wasn’t enough. He was demanding a piece of her, one she found herself giving. Each night he asked the same thing and each night she obliged. Three nights in a row she spilled her secrets.
“I watch other people with their parents and wish I’d had that growing up. I hated the dysfunction, that my mother wasn’t around and my father even less.”
“My first real boyfriend cheated on me. He took me out to dinner and I thought he was going to propose. Instead, over the finest bottle of wine he’d ever bought, he told me he’d gotten another woman pregnant.”
“When I was eighteen, my best friend, Casey, and I joined our first coven. We’d made this pact as kids that we’d always be in the same coven and we’d grow old together and become co-matriarchs. On the way home from that first meeting, we were in a car crash. Casey had been driving. She’d been speeding, and we hit another car. I watched her go through the windscreen and hit the asphalt. She died instantly. The toxicology report came back and said she had drugs in her system. I hadn’t even known she’d taken any.”
That last confession had felt like a release, a guilt as heavy as a stone finally lifting. Eli had held her through all her confessions, but at this one he’d looked stricken and she knew he was connecting that trauma to so many other things about her.
“I’ve hardly talked to anyone about it since,” she confessed, attempting a nonchalant shrug but feeling a tremor of emotion cross her shoulders instead. “The drugs had everyone saying Casey was a bad person, a murderer because the driver in the other car died too. Her parents moved out of the city from the shame of it all and I just… never spoke about it again.”
She’d tried not to think about it either, but now that the memory was fresh in her mind, so many of the aversions in her life now made sense, her reluctance to join another coven being the main one. But when she’d finally relinquished, look at what had happened?
Eli had murmured soft condolences as he’d stroked her hair. She didn’t cry, but she buried herself against his chest and clung to him the entire night.
By the next day, the storm blew out and with it came time for Eli and Cole to leave.
“Call me,” Eli told her as she farewelled them at the door. He looked worried. “If you even so much as feel peckish for blood, call me and I’ll come and get you.”
“I’ll be fine,” she assured him, though she didn’t quite believe her own words. “Thank you.”
“I have to go to Europe later in the week, so if you can’t reach me, call Cole. I’ve put our numbers in your phone.”
“I’ll be okay,” she reassured, nodding a farewell to Cole as well. He inclined his head in response.
“Rest well, Miss Sophia,” he started down the hallway and after another worried glance, Eli followed him. Soph closed the door and went to her lounge. The sudden silence of the apartment was too much. For a stifling moment, she didn’t think she’d be able to do it alone. She picked up her phone, intending to call Eli back.
Her hands stilled. How silly, she thought. He wouldn’t even be out of the building.
And she needed space from him, desperately. Having him so close but act so platonically the past couple of days had driven her wild. She needed the headspace to try to get rid of the feelings she was developing. He was a billionaire vampire; way out of her league.
Instead, she opened her social media and started scrolling through the pictures. Luie was in Bali with Stefan. When had that happened? She scrolled on, through holiday snaps, baby pictures and artfully arranged meals, until she came to an image of a shirtless man lifting a barbell. She stared at it for a long moment, remembering other feelings she’d had before turning into a raging vampire hunter. Safe feelings, ones her grandmother approved of. She tapped to comment, then thought better of it.
It had been her turn to set up a date with Marco. She hadn’t even given him closure.
Maybe it was for the best. Every time she’d gone out with Marco, she’d ended her night with Eli.
Her screen lit up with an unknown caller. Hitting the green button, she pressed it to her ear.
“Hello?”
“Hello, is this Sophia Giannopoulos?”
“Speaking.” Soph cradled the phone in the crook of her neck and went to the kitchen. Eli and Cole had had groceries delivered, and now her fridge was as full as she’d ever seen it.
“This is Ester Hart from Saint Joseph’s hospital. We’ve tried to reach a… Zita Del Monte, who told us to get a hold of you.”
Panic spiked tight in Soph’s chest and she clutched the phone, turning away from her perusal of the fridge. “Zita’s my mother. What happened?”
“It’s not Zita, it’s Teresa, your grandmother. She’s had a fall and we’re trying to locate her next of kin. Are you able to come down?”
“Yes.” Soph was already hunting for her handbag, finding it stored neatly in the linen cupboard. “Yes, I’ll come right away.”