3. Soren #2
“I don’t talk like that,” Lazarus counters but he quickly realizes he just fed Vex the exact reaction he was looking for.
“You do.” He holds up a thumb and pointer finger for little. “Wee bit.”
Lazarus gives Vex a slow rolling gaze down his body pausing at his groin before settling back on his eyes.
“Well played.” Vex gives a slow clap.
“The younger a vampire the more susceptible you are to the sun. Kryptonite doesn’t kill Superman, it weakens and poisons him, same theory.” Lazarus walks again. “We’ll need to move him. Now.”
“Move him, and by him I assume you mean me. But also where?” Vex brushes past me to walk beside Lazarus, backward. “Field trip.”
“This is your fault,” I tell Lazarus ignoring Vex entirely. “A simple background check. Instead you changed him based entirely on emotions.”
“In his defense I was dying,” Vex says.
We ignore him.
“I didn’t have the time I thought I had,” Lazarus says quietly.
“Why did that make you sad?” Vex gets close.
“Because he wants a bride.” I answer him. Mostly because Lazarus won’t give him a straight answer. And someone in this room owes Vex the truth.
“A bride.” Vex tests the word like a flavor he can’t place.
Brides are chosen. Lazarus did not choose Vex. He found him bleeding out in a parking garage and made the call most of us would not have made.
Not only that, but we cannot even smell our perfect bride until we are a complete coven. At least three vampires, on special occasions a bound human to a vampire counts. Otherwise a bride may never survive.
“Soren.” Lazarus’s nostrils flare. He is irritated with me? He’s the one with impulse control issues. “In part.”
“In part.” I let the agreement sit.
Lazarus didn’t choose me either. And yet here we are, three degenerates making up a coven.
“I want to know.” Vex leans into Lazarus’s personal space because he doesn’t have a meter on when not to do that. “Everything.”
“With time,” Lazarus counters. “I saved you because…” He pauses. “I couldn’t watch you die.”
“You love me.” Vex holds his hands to his heart before spinning in a circle and falling to the ground. He doesn’t even catch himself he just falls. Slapping to the concrete with his entire body. No bracing.
“Get. Up.” Lazarus is officially over his shit.
“No.” Vex lays there, his eyes closed, hands on his chest. “I want to meet the pretty girls again.”
“Girls?” My head comes up.
No.
“The sister.” Lazarus puts it together a half-beat after I have. “Fuck.”
“I want to smell them,” Vex carries on, dreamily. “Lick them. But I only want to bite one. Which one. Which one.”
I know which one.
I know because some traitorous thing in my chest has already gone still and listening, the way it does any time her name surfaces. A small crush really on the girl whose job I stole.
Vex smelled her in a hallway and decided he had to have her.
Calliope stood over my desk stripping down not just my manhood but my title in the museum. Her ire shouldn’t be so alluring. Except it is. She is.
It keeps me up at night.
Here is the thing that interests me. We are officially a coven of three and Vex just Houdinied out of this subbasement because he smelled her.
It means something.
Lazarus grabs Vex by the scruff of his neck and yanks him upright.
“Enough.” Lazarus is at the edge of his patience with him. I can tell by the way his nostrils flare. “You will not meet anyone. You will not touch anyone. And if you bite anyone, I will end you myself.”
“But she smelled so—”
“I said enough.” There it is. The end of Lazarus’ patience. “You will learn control before you interact with a single person, or I will put you down myself.”
Vex’s eyes widen. For the first time since his turning, he looks genuinely afraid.
I wore that look once.
Across a different table. Across a different bargain I hadn’t agreed to. Three weeks in, give or take a few centuries, and you’re still asking the same questions. What am I. Who decided. What did it cost.
“Good,” I say, because Lazarus is watching and I have to mean it. “Maybe that’ll knock some sense into him.”
It is unlikely though.
“I wasn’t going to actually hurt her,” he mutters, brushing dust from his sweats. “I just want to... know her better.”
I snort. “Yes. That is what they all say before they get someone killed.” I chew on my next words but they need said. “You have no control right now, you could bite the unwilling and die.”
Vex just cocks his head to the side and mouths, “willing.”
Lazarus releases him and turns to me. “We move him now.”
“And where exactly do you suggest?” I rub my temples, a headache coming on. “And the girl? If he’s fixated on her...”
“I’ll handle it.” Lazarus’s jaw tightens. Oh yeah, he knows what it means and he is not thrilled.
We just found a bride in the wild. And now he has to change his stance on her. Well unconfirmed, but I’ve always had my suspicions about Calliope.
“How?” I ask. “By threatening her? Scaring her away? You’ve already done that. She still comes around.”
Vex perks up. “So she does come here! I knew it!”