Chapter 4
TIMOTHY
The glass was cool in my hand as I looked out at the neon lights of the city. Wearing only my boxer briefs, I was still somehow hot under the collar.
I’d been overheated since seeing him.
My place near the top of Sinopolis was dark, but illuminated well enough by the lights from the Strip. Assirak lay on the couch behind me, watching me but giving me space. I knew he was at the ready if I needed him.
While Seth was definitely up to no good, Miranda, Assirak, and I left because we couldn’t prove anything was amiss.
Seth had created an absolute spectacle and did it as a show of power.
He was up to something, and I’d no doubt he delighted in igniting my paranoia. But he couldn’t have known what Aaron was to me.
And Aaron clearly didn’t know about Seth, if he was foolish enough to blood-bond with the god.
“I can’t believe it.”
Miranda words echoed back to me from when we stalked back into the lobby of Sinopolis while the crowd cleared. “Aaron seems the same, yet...different. I mean, his stutter is gone, but is that a vampire healing thing? More importantly, he’s been here for months? What are we? Chop liver?”
“He’s obviously been occupied,” I had said, my words controlled, belying the way my fingers tapped against my thigh as my stomach twisted, desperate for something to hold onto. Or perhaps crush.
Miranda’s hand on my arm forced me to stop so I would look at her.
“Just because they are blood-bonded, it doesn’t mean they are...more.”
The queasiness had turned into an all-out scalding nausea. Even now, acid rose up my throat as sweat beaded along my hairline.
Not just at the thought that Aaron had been in the city, practically under my nose for months, not just because he’d been turned, but because the flash of guilt in his eyes when Seth held him by the scruff of the neck.
As if Aaron were some kind of possession. Some kind of dog he could hold up and show off.
Seth had no more respect for vampires than he did for humans. Hell, he had no regard for anyone other than himself, god or otherwise.
I’d like to believe I’d achieved some kind of mastery over my own baser instincts, that all these years observing humans and their endless dramas had distilled in me a stoic calm, a detachment from the frantic, animal workings of passion.
But standing there, I felt the crude machinery of my anger whir to life in ways that surprised even me. The sight of Seth’s hold on Aaron sent a tremor of raw, involuntary rage reverberating from the base of my skull down through my rib cage.
My vision, usually so precise and clinical, blurred at the edges. It was all I could do not to rip Seth’s arm out of its socket and beat him with the wet end.
I did not, of course. But the violence of that urge still called to me in vivid fantasy.
Seth’s shriek, the spray of dark blood, the look on Aaron’s face when he realized that, at the end of all this, the only hands left to touch him would be mine.
I sucked in a shuddering breath, attempting to calm myself. Closing my eyes, I tried to clear the violent images I couldn’t stop replaying.
I’d always ruled my emotions with the iron logic of a chess player, weighing each move, calculating the cost, the potential gain, focused on the long game. I could talk myself down from anything.
Except this.
Watching Aaron be touched—claimed, even, by anyone but me—made all that careful discipline go molten. It was as if I’d spent a century damming up a reservoir and had, in a single second, decided to blow it all to hell.
And though a blood-bond was not necessarily sexual in nature, the idea they had...that they might be...
Whipping away from the window and crossing to the dark kitchen, I gripped the edge of the kitchen counter.
I suddenly wished I had a vice I could turn to. Drinking, smoking, gambling, anything. But my only vice had ever been a blond human with sparkling turquoise eyes, a stutter, and an easy confidence that kept pulling me to that coffee shop day after day.
Shutting my eyes tight, my brain flicked through too many memories, too many emotions.
A crunch preceded the countertop giving way under my hands.
White marble bits fell from my hands, hitting the tile floor. Assirak sat up where he lay on the couch, ears alert and at attention.
“I can’t do this,” I said out loud to myself. “I need to stay in control. Aaron belongs to someone else. I have my duty to uphold. It’s as simple as that.”
Decision made, I went about doing what I did best. Cleaning up the mess.
“May I have an extra hot cappuccino?” I requested at Perkatory.
It had been another long day of judging souls. The sun had long since set, yet there was still more work to do managing the hotel and planning the Convergence. We were days from the alignment of the stars, and it was important I made a show of strength.
I needed fuel and a place to work. Preferably somewhere in the middle of a crowd where I wouldn’t be noticed but could use the sweep of energy all around me to focus.
The barista fumbled with the buttons on the screen in front of her, as a red tinge flooded her cheeks. “I’m sorry, I’m new. I just need to find the button for extra hot.”
“And add cinnamon,” a familiar voice came from behind me.
Every nerve ending prickled with desperation and fearful hope. Heat coiled tight in my lower abdomen.
Aaron sidled up next to me, washing me in his clean ocean scent.
He wore board shorts and a tank top that showed off the perfect swell of his biceps and shoulder muscles.
A leather necklace adorned with a shark tooth fell to the top of his chest. For a moment, it was almost like no time had passed.
Except I couldn’t ignore the glow of his crystallized soul.
“He needs a dash of cinnamon on the top to remind him it’s okay to go a little wild sometimes,” Aaron instructed the barista with a wink, then turned his ultimate weapon on me. His thousand-watt smile.
The weight of duty and responsibility dropped away from me as a heat spread out from the center of my chest.
The world bent toward him until I could believe that everything would work out just fine as long as I stood next to this man. As long as he continued to look at me just like that.
“Can I get you anything?” I gestured to the cafe, determined not to let him see me affected.
Aaron’s expression darkened. His eyes dropped to the floor as the words left his mouth, one hand rising to rub the back of his neck. “Not exactly the kind of thing I drink anymore.”
My throat tightened until it nearly closed off.
Of course not. He was blood-bonded to Seth.
There was only one thing he consumed. And only one person he could drink from.
Even as I tried to block out the visions of the two of them together, jealousy roiled in the pit of my stomach.
Another reason I couldn’t indulge in fantasies of Aaron. I trapped my thoughts between the unforgiving covers of a hardback tome in my mind before shelving it away at the back of my brain where I couldn’t reach them. A tactic that worked, but never for long.
After I paid, we stepped aside. “I’m glad to see you,” I said, proud of the businesslike manner I was able to maintain in Aaron’s presence, though my entire being screamed at me to touch him.
That infuriatingly mischievous grin curved his mouth again. “Yeah? How glad?”
My entire body heated as something turned weightless in my chest.
“Glad because I need to speak with you,” I clarified. “Do you have a few minutes to spare?”
Aaron shoved his hands into his pockets. “For you? I have several handfuls of minutes.”
His face lit up as he spotted Assirak next to me.
“I can’t believe you actually got a dog.
” Aaron crouched down. The reaper’s mouth opened, his tongue lolling out as Aaron ruffled his ears and scratched his head, then worked his way down until reaper rolled over and Aaron attacked his exposed belly.
“Who’s a good boy? You’re a good boy,” he said in baby talk.
“A dog?” The barista said, perking up from behind the counter. “I love dogs.” She rounded the corner in search of the pup, only for her face to cinch in confusion and disappointment.
It took several attempts to clear my throat to get Aaron’s attention. When he finally looked up, he realized the barista was giving him the strangest look.
‘You’re a vampire now. You can see the reapers,” I said to him under my breath.
Realization dawned on Aaron’s face as his gaze swung from me to the barista who stared at what looked like empty space under his hands.
The reaper dogs fetched souls of the deceased then brought them to me for judgment. They could only be seen by Gods and Vampires.
“Oh, right,” he said. While Aaron had never seen them before now, he’d known of them.
Aaron laughed nervously as he stood again, wiping his hands on his shorts. “Sorry,” he said to the barista, “I’m practicing for my mime act later. You know, all kinds of shows happen on the Strip.”
I worked to suppress a snort, failing miserably.
The sheer disappointment on her face made it seem as though he had committed an unforgivable sin by pretending there was a dog she could pet.
“Still getting used to this vamp business,” Aaron muttered, falling into step with me and making a quick getaway from the girl’s accusing glare.
I sat behind the desk in my office, setting down my untouched coffee as Aaron chose to stand instead of taking the seat across from me.
Floor-to-ceiling bookcases lined the walls of my stark white sanctuary, their shelves punctuated by artificial greenery amid my alphabetized collection.
Between the volumes sat carefully arranged mementos—each positioned with the precision of chess pieces on a board.