Chapter 5
AARON
My chin rose over the pull-up bar, my back and biceps straining with fire.
I should stay away from Timothy. It’s for the best.
Lowering my body slowly, my thoughts did a one-eighty as I pulled myself up again.
Now that I’ve seen him, I can’t stay away! I refuse to stay away.
Another pull-up.
No. It would be idiotic to force Timothy into my problems with Seth. I need to get free on my own.
Sweat dripped down my face and torso, audibly hitting the tile floor of my apartment. Or maybe my heightened senses made the droplets seem impossibly loud as they punctuated my violently volleying thoughts.
I’d lodged a pull-up bar in the doorway to my bedroom, a place I could never have imagined living a few years ago. It was one of the high-roller suites in Seth’s hotel, and despite the expansive square footage and luxe finishes, it felt more like a gilded cage.
I was on maybe my six hundredth pull-up when I dropped. Still not worn out.
Vampire strength was amazing, but it made it all the harder to work off my restlessness. I walked to the kitchen to get myself a glass of water more out of habit than necessity.
There was one person I’d like to work off this tension with, but Timothy couldn’t—no, wouldn’t—let himself even entertain doing such a thing.
He’d say it was too dangerous.
He wasn’t wrong.
Despite being back in Vegas, I’d stayed away from him for so many reasons. The main reason being the devil I’d struck a bargain with. Seth kept close tabs on me, and if he caught me running to Timothy, I didn’t think that would end well.
I was right. Turns out, they had a long history that was anything but chill.
My hesitance was also because I’d also been determined to get out of the mess I’d gotten myself into before I went to Timothy.
The whole plan was to become a vampire to show him I wasn’t a weak, breakable, mortal anymore. We were equals now and could be together.
Ha! What an idiot I was.
Timothy looked at me like he always did when I got too close. Like I was a tornado about to touch down on his perfect world and ruin everything.
My insides gnashed with jagged parts of wanting, knowing I’d do anything to make him mine. Even now.
In his office, our hands touching, I’d been on the verge of grabbing him by the throat and pinning him to his perfect little bookshelves.
I wanted to ravage him with hot, open mouth kisses until we knocked over all his trinkets and books, and his control snapped like the stupid, brittle twig it was.
But I wasn’t free to do so.
I swigged my water, closing my eyes tight, swallowing the frustration.
There was a knock at my door. Frowning, I crossed the apartment to open it and found Miranda standing there.
She wore high-waisted black leggings and a snug compression fit, a cropped tank that showed her shoulders and kept her free to move.
Bob was sheathed on her back while a lightweight zip hoodie was tied around her waist. Judging by the outfit and the slight sheen of sweat on her body, she’d either just been out at the gym, or monster hunting.
Her eyes flashed with black cat energy. Everything about her screamed “touch me and die.” But as the labrador retriever type myself, I didn’t much let it bother me.
“Hey,” I said, my shoulders dropping a couple of inches.
“Hey,” she said with a sharp jerk of her head. “Can I come in?”
“Oh, yeah.” I stood back and waved her in.
“Wow.” She whistled, her head swiveling to take in all the finishes on my place. “This is a far cry from that shithole place you shared with...what was it? Three roommates?”
“Four,” I corrected, as I headed toward the bathroom. “But one of them was always out of town on business so it might as well had been three.”
Miranda followed me, her hand casually encircling the hilt of her sword strapped to her hip. I grabbed a fresh towel to mop up my sweat as she nosed around my apartment, opening closet doors and poking into the different rooms. “Your stutter is gone. Is that a vampire thing?”
Straight to the point as always. Miranda never pussyfooted around what she was thinking. A trait I found incredibly reassuring in a friend as well as amusing at times.
“Nah, after I left, I hit my speech therapy with a new zeal. Got it mostly under control.” It did still surface, but only when I was under extreme anxiety or exhausted.
She opened my fridge.
Bracing a hand on the kitchen island, I asked knowingly, “Looking for something?”
Miranda closed it again, a water bottle now in hand, shaking it at me. “Just for something to...drink.”
I suppressed the need to roll my eyes. That’s all she’d find in there. No bags of blood or anything else. While I could still eat human food, I didn’t miss it all that much.
She cracked open the top and leaned a hip on the island as well, facing me. She took a long swig then gestured with the bottle at me. “Tell me everything.”
A wry chuckle escaped me. “Man, this is a far cry from the girls’ nights we used to have with Vivian.”
Miranda shrugged, her expression even and unapologetic. “She was always the fun one.”
My brows screwed up in offense as I laid a hand on my chest. “I thought that was me.”
Her amused smirk faded. “What the actual hell, Aaron?”
My brow raised at the sudden attack.
“You’re back in town for months, you’re suddenly a—” she gestured up and down my body, “—vampire. What? How? Why? How?”
Watching the normally cool Miranda get tongue-tied would be more amusing if she weren’t bringing up everything I wanted to avoid.
“It's a long story.” I started to walk by her, but she slammed a hand to my chest, forcing me to look her in the eye.
“I got time,” she said in a tone that probably would scare the Cheez Whiz out of anyone else.
I wasn’t sure if she developed that voice of command when she served in the army or out of necessity as a single mom.
Even though I was equipped with fangs now, I had to admit to a little Cheez Whiz escaping me when she pulled the authority card.
“You better sit down,” I huffed, knowing there was no way out of this.
Situated on the green leather couches that faced each other in my sunken living room, I leaned my forearms on my thighs.
“Two years of trying to forget everything that happened here in Vegas by rafting in Costa Rica, jumping out of planes in Switzerland, and rock climbing in Australia, it was when I was surfing in Japan that I realized I couldn’t let it go.”
“Let what go?” Miranda asked, eyeing me with suspicion.
Timothy.
Instead, I said, “The lifestyle. The excitement of being near such incredible power and beings. I saw vampires attack, battles between gods. The supernatural turned out to be under our noses all along, and I was on the front lines of it unfolding into the public eye then I just...left it behind.”
“And that spiked your adrenaline-seeking behavior?” she asked flatly.
“Probably,” I shrugged. “Being mortal is cool, but being immortal? Armed with strength and dexterity like nothing else? I knew I was meant for that kind of life. So I decided I’d find a way to become a vampire.”
Miranda groaned and pinched the bridge of her nose. I ignored her and kept going.
“It took a long time to find someone who would help me do that. And the only way I could achieve that was by coming back to Las Vegas.”
Face still arranged with incredulous doubt, Miranda asked, "And you didn't think to ask your good friend, Vivian? The vampire we know and love?”
I raked my nails through my hair. “By the time I got here, she was gone. So I had to resort to someone else.”
“Seth?”
Unable to sit for any longer, I stood and paced the sunken floor.
“He found me. He’d heard I’d been asking around.
Asking how to get turned. But, as you know, most vampires are too new.
So new to their own fangs they don’t know how to function, much less turn someone else.
So after another failed attempt of trying to find a vampire to turn me in a bar on the outskirts of town, there was this guy.
Full of charm and promises, he told me he could help me with my little problem. ”
A sound resembling the snort of a bulldog escaped Miranda.
“He knew a vampire skilled enough to turn me, but Seth told me if I turned, I would be a danger to others. The vampire who could turn me wouldn’t be able to help me control my new.
..urges.” I shook my head, remembering the way Seth swirled the olive in his dry martini.
Decked in a fitted striped suit with his slick hair, looking completely out of place in the dive called The Hairy Harbinger, I couldn’t tell if he was an angel or the devil.
Turned out it was the latter.
“But Seth said he could help me with that. If I did what he said, he’d make sure I didn’t hurt anyone.”
This time, Miranda swiped a hand over her face as she groaned.
“Yeah, I know,’ I said, flexing my shoulders. “Hindsight is twenty-twenty. Yadda yadda.”
What was done was done. There was no use going on about what a gullible dumbass I was. There were only consequences to deal with now.
“He told you to bite him and drink his blood after you turned,” she filled in the rest.
I didn’t mind skipping over the awkward part of the story where I met up with Seth and the vampire in a room at the Menaggio. Idiot that I was, I didn’t even realize that it was Seth’s hotel and he was a god.
Yet the whole thing felt eerie, wrong. Still, I had committed to my plan. I knew what I wanted, and I was going to get it. I knew it’d be painful, but I wasn’t prepared.
The vampire got a taste of my blood and instantly went berserk.
He tore my throat out with zero control while Seth looked on from his seat, legs crossed, watching like some kind of cuck.
As my neck was ravaged, no ability to scream, my blood gushing out from my jugular, I realized I’d only stupidly served myself up to be a quick meal for a vampire and this was the end.