Chapter 21
Chapter twenty-one
Tressa
“You need to tell Ethan the truth.”
Tressa wiped the water from her eyes and looked up to see Saiden and Derrick looming over her. Groaning, she let go of the edge and sank back under.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t hide at the bottom of their swimming pool forever.
And even if she could, it wouldn’t matter.
Her vamp hearing could pick up their voices just fine underwater.
It was how she knew it was her cousins and not Ethan who’d entered a few moments earlier.
She’d been keeping one ear open just in case Ethan wondered in and she needed to reduce her level of vamp speed that made Olympic swimmers look like kids with floaties.
“You know we’re having this talk whether you come out or not, right?” Saiden asked.
Tressa glanced up to see the distorted face of her cousin leaning over the edge, glowering at her. Well, maybe not glowering so much as looking at her with his normal menacing expression.
Accepting that her peace and quiet were gone, she pressed hard against the bottom of the pool to launch herself up and out of the water to land next to her cousins. Snatching the offered towel from Saiden’s grip, she wrapped it around her body.
“Okay, fine,” she said, collapsing onto a lounge chair and staring up at the night sky visible through the open ceiling.
Marquin had the retractable roof installed at her request since she was pretty much the only one who used the pool regularly.
There was something about swimming under the stars that reminded her of the few peaceful moments from her childhood.
An outdoor pool would have been ridiculous, given they had to severely limit their time in the sun unless they drastically increased their intake of blood. So she accepted the cloying smell of chlorine in the enclosed room as long as she could open the roof when she swam at night.
Tressa cracked her neck side to side, then glared at her cousins. “Let’s get this over with. You do know I already got a lecture from Marquin a couple days ago?”
“Clearly it didn’t take,” a smooth, cultured voice came from behind Saiden and Derrick.
Tressa glanced around them to see Marquin and Eliana strolling through the doors to the pool.
They practically looked like twins with their long blond hair and icy blue eyes, though Eliana was likely hundreds of years older than him.
They were all curious about her age, but nobody wanted to risk their undead life enough to pry the actual number out of her.
Tressa groaned and dropped her head into her hands as her pseudo parents joined Saiden and Derrick. “So this is what?” she asked. “An intervention? Shouldn’t Baylin be here?”
“Baylin is… occupied,” Eliana said as she gracefully lowered herself onto the chair beside Tressa.
“Not with finding Renata,” Tressa muttered.
She knew Baylin was likely doing his best to locate the rogue, but it still itched at her.
The way he immediately closed a window on his computer whenever she went to see him for an update.
Whatever he was working on was keeping him from the search for Ethan’s attacker.
Even though she knew his facial recognition programs ran in the background, she still felt like he was… distracted.
“The rogue will be located when the time is right,” Eliana said, her tone leaving no room for argument. Not that anyone ever argued with Eliana. Her delicate beauty might give her an angelic appearance at first glance, but there was death in her eyes.
No, you didn’t argue with Eliana. You bowed your head slightly and accepted whatever she said. Which is exactly what Tressa did.
“Okay, then,” she replied, switching her attention to Marquin. “Are we going to do a repeat of Monday’s discussion? Because I told you, I’m waiting for the right moment to tell Ethan about us. He’s still not budging on the whole vamps are evil thing.”
“Well of course he isn’t,” Derrick huffed out. “Until you tell him the truth, all he has is the one experience.”
“But if I tell him the truth, he’ll leave.”
Derrick shrugged. “Then he leaves. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be.”
“Derrick!” Eliana scolded. “You will not bring your own issues into Tressa’s predicament.”
Everyone’s head rotated toward Derrick. “What issue is she talking about, Derricula?” Tressa asked, amused that she was no longer the one in the hotseat.
Derrick glared at her, then stormed out of the pool, tossing a “Fuck you guys,” over his shoulder.
They all glanced back to Eliana who just waved a hand. “Do not ask. Derrick’s story is his own to tell.”
Okaaay, Tressa thought, wondering what, or who, had her arrogant cousin on edge. It couldn’t be that he found his mate because he wouldn’t be hanging around the compound if that was the case, but something clearly had his Armani boxers in a twist.
Saiden shoved Tressa’s legs to the side and sat on the edge of her lounge chair.
“We’re worried about you, Tress. Ethan has been here over a week now, and it’s getting increasingly difficult to keep our identities secret.
I slipped up the other day when we were working out and mentioned something that happened forty years ago.
How was I supposed to remember that? Time sort of loses all meaning shortly after you turn two hundred. ”
Tressa sighed. “I know. I’ve had my own fair share of near fuckups. But I swear, I’ve been trying to open his eyes to our kind. Anytime he’s not in the gym, I’m talking to him about how our research has shown that rogues are not the same as other vampires.”
“And how is that going?” Marquin asked as he took a spot against the wall, crossing his arms and legs in a pose that exuded relaxed and casual.
Or it would if you didn’t know Marquin. Relaxed and casual on the outside meant you could be seconds away from either getting a lecture or getting murdered.
Tressa thought back to the conversation earlier that day when Ethan had asked her if she’d been brainwashed for her continued assertions that some vamps might be good.
“Not amazing,” Tressa answered. “He’s just been so focused on getting his strength back for his revenge mission. He’s not really open to hearing anything that isn’t that.”
“Tell me about it,” Saiden grumbled. “He’s got me in the gym training him to fight multiple times a day, and he won’t shut up about how he’s going to murder that vamp.
It takes everything in me not to laugh and reveal this whole training bullshit is just a ruse.
I’m kind of starting to like him, and I feel bad about the lies.
He genuinely has no concept of how much stronger we are than him. ”
“So perhaps we educate him,” Marquin mused.
Tressa’s head snapped up. “Say what now?”
“I’m merely suggesting that if he’s fixating on his revenge because he thinks he has a shot at eliminating Renata, then maybe you should let him encounter another real vampire.
He might realize just how outclassed he is.
I could ask one of the members of the East Coast cadre to come visit for a few days. ”
Tressa leapt out of the chair, nearly kicking Saiden in the balls as she did.
“Are you insane?” she barked. “You think having him get attacked by another vampire is going to help? Every night I sit outside his room for a few hours with the door cracked, listening to him whimper in his sleep from the nightmares he’s still dealing with.
It kills me not to hold him in my arms and tell him it’s going to be okay.
And you want to put him through that again?
Have you lost your marbles in your old age? ”
“Careful,” Elianna said quietly from her seat. “I might take offense at that considering I’m older than everyone in this compound combined.”
They all stared at her for a moment, each of them likely doing the math in their heads. It was the closest Eliana had come to revealing anything about her age. If she was older than all of them, that would put her at well over a thousand years.
Okay, so Tressa would definitely not be arguing with Eliana anytime soon.
“If you would let me finish,” Marquin said, his voice dangerously calm.
“We could have him encounter another of our kind in a non-hostile scenario. Perhaps we tell him that we’ve been working with them to hunt down the rogues.
It would give him exposure to a friendly vampire and let him see that even a young one would overpower him in seconds. ”
Tressa pondered his plan for a moment, then shook her head.
If anything, the fact she actually considered his insane idea for even a minute made her realize just how far she was going with her deception.
Cora’s words flitted through her brain multiple times a day, and she couldn’t deny it had all gone on too long.
She’d been banking everything on Baylin finding Renata right away so she could tell Ethan the vamp was dead at the same time she revealed the truth about herself.
Sort of like softening the blow with a head on a platter.
Not literally of course, she wasn’t that gross, but if Ethan knew she killed the rogue for him, surely he could see that she was one of the good ones?
But days had passed, and they were no closer to finding Renata. It was time she accepted the truth of the situation. The sooner she ripped off the bandage and told him what she was, the sooner she could start repairing the wound.
“No,” she told Marquin. “I can’t keep piling on more lies and deception. I already have to deal with his inevitable feelings of betrayal when he hears about us. I don’t want to tangle up the web anymore. It’s time I told him what’s really going on.”
“Are you being serious?” Saiden asked, narrowing his eyes at her. “You’re going to confess everything to him?”
Tressa nodded. “I am. He deserves the truth.” She paused, then added. “Tomorrow. He deserves the truth tomorrow.”
Saiden quirked an eyebrow at her.
“Come on,” she said, backing toward the exit. “It’s after midnight. I’m not waking him up to shred his world.”
“I doubt he’s asleep,” Saiden replied.
Tressa continued to head for the door. “Best not to risk it. Tomorrow, I promise.”
“You better,” Marquin called. “Or we will, and I don’t think we’ll be as gentle as you might be.”
Tressa waved a hand over her shoulder as she left the pool.
Her hopes that she could put off telling Ethan the truth until after the rogue was dealt with had been delusional thinking born out of fear.
There was no way Ethan would actually believe Renata was dead unless he saw it happen with his own eyes, and they would have to reveal their true nature to accomplish that.
Which meant it was time to come clean and beg him to let her turn him.
She just needed to butter him up first.