Chapter 13
Chapter thirteen
Tressa
Lilith take me now and put me out of my misery.
Tressa slumped against the wall just outside her bedroom.
When she’d woken up to Ethan cuddled against her, part of her hoped he was fully awake and initiating something.
Something she was more than interested in.
But the moment she realized he was dreaming, she had no choice.
She couldn’t take advantage of him like that.
Even if he didn’t know what it was, he would feel the pull of the mating bond.
And judging by his reaction, she’d made the right call. If things had progressed much further, she wouldn’t have been able to stop herself—wouldn’t have wanted to—and she had a feeling he would have been halfway back to San Jose when he realized what they’d done.
She thumped her head against the wall a few times, then climbed to her feet.
Wallowing in what could have happened wasn’t getting her anywhere.
That rogue was still out there, and her mate was still in danger.
While the compound might be the most secure place they could hole up, the incident with Bianca a few months back had shown them it wasn’t entirely impenetrable.
Which meant she needed intel, and she needed it fast.
Tressa knocked once on Baylin’s door, then pushed it open before he could say anything.
Entering the sterile room that contained little more than a wall of computers, a blood cooler, and a door that led into Baylin’s actual bedroom, she paused briefly when she saw Derrick slouched in a chair off to the side, his face drawn with melancholy.
“Morning, Derrick,” she chirped, but he only grunted in response.
She waited for his typical smirk and a snarky quip—two things you always got from Derrick—but he just folded his arms and scuffed a shiny loafer on the marble tiling.
Since he wouldn’t meet her eyes, she turned to the other male in the room.
“Hey, Baylicious,” she said, dropping into the computer chair beside her cousin, careful not to knock over the open can of Red Bull that sat a little too close to the edge.
She picked it up and read the label, cringing when she saw the amount of caffeine.
Her cousin was the only vampire in the world who seemed to crave more energy than they were naturally blessed with.
“Hey, person who doesn’t wait for permission to enter,” Baylin replied without pulling his eyes from the monitor. A chat box was open on one of the screens, but he closed it before Tressa could see who he was talking to.
“Oh, come on,” she teased, kicking up her bare feet to set them on the arm of Baylin’s chair. “At least I knocked. Saiden doesn’t even do that much.”
“And he’s fully aware how I feel about that.”
“So why not lock your door?” she asked, poking his ribs with her big toe.
Baylin grabbed her feet and dropped them to the floor before snatching the energy drink from her hands. “No reason. I just keep forgetting.”
Tressa studied her cousin and the complete lack of annoyance on his face. That, combined with the fact Baylin never forgot anything, made her wonder if some part of him actually enjoyed how they entered his space so casually.
Like a family would.
They all knew how Baylin had been turned and abandoned, left in a back alley of Galway to either die or become a rogue.
It was only by the grace of Lilith that Marquin found him and taught him how to function as a real vampire.
Baylin’s life before that, though, he never talked about.
Not even with Saiden, who was more or less his brother since they were turned around the same time and grew into their fangs together with Marquin watching over them.
It was almost like an unspoken rule in their cadre. If someone wanted to volunteer their history, great. But you didn’t ask.
You never asked.
And she had every intention of hiding behind that rule.
“So what’s he moping about?” Tressa thumbed a finger at Derrick who only scowled at her in response.
Baylin shook his head, then turned his attention back to the monitors. “That is… not my story. Just leave it alone, Tress. He’ll tell you when he’s ready.”
Ignoring Baylin’s advice, Tressa scanned her sulking cousin—the tension in his body, the almost greasy appearance of his normally coiffed hair, and the wrinkled Armani dress shirt that looked like it had been slept in.
Twice. Whatever had her cousin tangled up must be major for him to be anything but runway ready.
“Derrick?” she asked, hoping he might offer her a brief distraction from her own issues.
He ran a hand through his messy blond hair and shook his head.
“Not now, Tressa. I’ll… I’ll tell you later.
Why don’t you update us on your own mate?
Bay says you took him to bed last night?
” Derrick’s voice held a hint of teasing, but there was no levity behind it.
None of the normal joy he would take in tormenting one of his family members.
Deciding it would be best to let it go, Tressa sagged back in the chair.
“What update would you like? The one where he woke up in my arms completely freaked out because he thought he was taking advantage of me and I can’t tell him he’s my mate so it was a perfectly normal reaction?
Or the one where I can’t stop panicking about how he almost died in that hospital so now he lives here and I have to make sure absolutely nobody exposes our vamp-ness before I’m ready to tell him the truth? ”
“Ooof,” Baylin said, only half paying attention to her while the other half of his brain was clearly occupied with whatever the lines of numbers on his computer represented.
She couldn’t even be mad about his lack of concern for her problems since that was pretty standard for Baylin.
If you ever had his full attention, something was seriously wrong.
“Yeah, oof indeed,” she replied. “We need to find this rogue and take her out so I can focus on convincing Ethan that not all vamps are evil.”
Baylin laughed. “So, what I’m hearing is that operation VAJ is making a return?”
Tressa blinked. “Operation what? Scratch that, I don’t want to know. What I do want to hear is what you’ve found out about her. I’m going to assume you haven’t been doing anything but researching ever since I told you.”
Baylin slid an eye in her direction before taking a sip of his energy drink. “I do have a life, you know. It’s not cadre business a hundred percent of the time.”
“Good one, Bay,” she said, grinning. “We all know you only leave this room to go into town like once a month.”
He drained the last of his Red Bull, wadded it up like a paper ball, and tossed the crumpled can over his shoulder, where it sailed perfectly into the trash bin on the other side of the room.
“Whatever,” he huffed out. “I talked to Saiden about the attack when he got home this morning and then pulled some footage from the hospital cameras. I found your vamp in the Ruling Coalition’s database, but I didn’t alert you right away because it honestly doesn’t make any sense.
” He tapped a few keys, and a new screen popped up.
“Her name is Renata Da Silva, and she was born in Portugal in 1502. According to her file, she has been a model vamp. Five hundred years without a single mark against her. Not even a natural feeding gone wrong before the invention of blood banks. She’s as clean as they come. ”
Tressa frowned at the photo on the screen. “Any chance it’s not actually her?”
Baylin spun in his chair and raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“Her ability,” Tressa said, leaning forward to scan the file more closely. “She has some kind of perception filter Gift. She can look like whatever she wants. Maybe she’s just pretending to be this person?”
“Doubtful,” Bay said, pointing to the bottom of the screen.
“Her ability is noted right there. Not to mention I caught her on a traffic cam minutes after the attack on the lab. A perception filter doesn’t work on cameras.
No, it’s her all right. And if she’s started killing humans, not only is it a recent change, but she’s managed to stay off the Coalition’s radar somehow. ”
Tressa continued to study the photo as if something might pop up and scream, ‘This is why I went rogue.’ When nothing solidified, she sighed and turned to her other cousin who had remained suspiciously quiet. “Derricula, grab me a bag, would you?”
Ignoring his pained groan, she held out her hand and wiggled her fingers insistently. He snagged a blood pouch from the small cooler beside the sofa and tossed it over to her.
Piercing the bag with her fangs, she sipped on the blood and read through the details of the file again.
Baylin was right. Not a single red flag to be seen.
“What’s her motivation, then?” Tressa mused aloud.
“How do you go from five hundred years of squeaky clean to murdering humans and destroying labs?”
Baylin just shrugged, but Derrick scoffed. “Maybe she got dumped and went on a rampage.”
At his bitter tone, Tressa whirled around. “Okay, what is your deal, Derrick? Did some girl reject your advances or something? I know it doesn’t happen to you often because of your Gift, but not every woman is going to fall for your so-called charm.”
Derrick clenched his jaw for a moment, then sprang to his feet. “I’m going to see if Saiden is up for training. I’ll catch you two later.”
He stormed out of the room, and Tressa turned back to her less angry cousin. “What in Lilith’s name crawled up his ass and died?”
Baylin waved a hand. “Not my story,” he reminded her.
A strong part of her wanted to go after Derrick and make him spill the beans about whatever had him pissier than a teenage girl on her period, but that would have to wait. There was a bigger mystery staring at her from Baylin’s computer screen.
“So, any theories?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I’ll keep looking, but I got nothing.
It might help if we had some idea what Ethan was working on because I doubt it was just a simple heart medication.
With Renata going rogue out of the blue, I have to imagine it’s related.
If we can uncover that connection, we might be able to figure out her motive and what her end game is. ”
Tressa drained the last of her blood bag, then tossed it in the trash. “A great plan in theory, except for the part where Ethan’s staying mum on his research.”
Baylin waggled his eyebrows. “Does that mean we’re back to the idea of you seducing it out of him? Use that mate bond attraction to suss out the dirty deets?”
Tressa smacked his arm hard enough to bruise a human, but her cousin didn’t so much as flinch.
“First off, no,” she told him. “Ethan and I are not getting busy any time soon. For multiple reasons. And secondly, don’t say ‘dirty deets.’ I know your Gift is absorbing information at a crazy rate, but can you maybe not adopt every bit of modern slang you find? ”
He rolled his eyes. “Sorry, didn’t mean to offend your delicate ancient sensibilities.”
“Aren’t you older than me by a decade or two?”
“Maybe. But I’m not delicate.”
Tressa scoffed and rose from the chair. “Whatever. I need to get back to Ethan with breakfast. Everything is in place with the staff?”
Baylin nodded. “Yup. All the rooms with blood storage have been locked up tight, and the human employees have all been compelled to keep the vamp thing under wraps. Anyone he runs into will support your bullshit spiel about this being a group of vampire hunters.”
“I wouldn’t call it bullshit,” she argued. “You even admitted that’s basically what we are. Just… a very specific kind of rogue vampire hunter.”
He laughed and turned back to his monitors. “If that’s what you need to tell yourself to feel better about lying to your mate, then by all means. Keep repeating it.”
“Bite me, Bay.”
“No thanks. I already ate.”
“Cute.”
“So the ladies tell me.”
Tressa reached down to the black mini-cooler that Baylin kept hidden under his desk and pulled a can out. “Have another energy drink, why don’t you?”
He held a hand out without shifting his attention from the computer, and she slapped the can into his palm before striding toward the door.
“So what’s your plan?” he called after her.
Tressa stopped and glanced back at her cousin who was still mostly absorbed in whatever chat screen he’d pulled up. “Well, first I need to get my mate some food,” she answered. “After that… I might have an idea. Heck, it worked on Cora, maybe it’ll work on Ethan.”
“Cora knew about us, though,” he replied absently.
“Details,” Tressa tossed over her shoulder as she raced off down the hall toward the kitchen.
Step one was grabbing a plate full of their chef’s buttery croissants to bribe his stomach.
And if that worked, she’d move on to step two—showing him the compound’s massive garden in hopes she could bribe his heart as well.