25. Twenty-Five
Twenty-Five
R yker’s friends all arrived within ten minutes of each other, and for those first minutes, Leslie put all her effort into meeting and greeting. Five people in ten minutes stretched her social capacity, but she’d had busier days at the art fair at home. She could certainly handle getting to know five people at once if they were Ryker’s closest people.
First came the twins, Nova and Logan Anderson. They looked as identical as fraternal twins possibly could. Their teal eyes were like the lagoon water Leslie had admired in Florida. Their faces were spattered with freckles that, combined with their corn-silk-blond hair, made them look somehow more mythical fae than real vampire. Nova’s hair was cropped into a pixie cut, while Logan’s trailed in a ponytail a few inches past his neck. They were friendly, outgoing, funny and articulate. They finished each other’s sentences in a way Leslie had thought was only a twin legend.
Philippa Gill followed them a few minutes later. Of medium complexion, with heavily highlighted brown hair and strikingly pale lavender eyes, she exuded a soothing energy that balanced the exuberance of the twins. She clasped Leslie’s hands in greeting, and something passed between them, as if Philippa had absorbed Leslie’s mood into herself and read all the way to her heart.
“What…?” Leslie couldn’t find her words, could only feel a sense of being wholly seen.
“Oh!” Philippa released her hands. “Vampire empath, honey. Sorry to be a lot.”
“No, it’s okay, really.”
“I don’t usually touch new people until I’ve gotten to know them, but with you I forgot. You’ve made Ryker so happy.”
Leslie could have asked her a dozen questions, but before she had the chance, another vampire stepped into the house.
Ryker nodded from the newcomer to Leslie. “Mackey, this is Leslie. Leslie, meet Thomas Beckett Mackey, who refuses to answer to anything but his surname.”
Mackey gave a low hum of confirmation. He was starkly pale like the twins, his hair a rich mahogany-brown, his eyes a deep, dark blue that seemed black in the light of Ryker’s den. His expression was so reserved, even a vampire would have difficulty reading it. But an intense intrigue crackled underneath. He studied Leslie with force until she broke eye contact first.
“Hey,” Ryker said. “Chill, Mac.”
Mackey blinked, nodded, and held out his hand. “Good to meet you, Leslie.”
Grasping his hand didn’t result in any connection like the one she’d shared with Philippa. Mackey wasn’t a vampire empath. Yet his handshake seemed to offer her something more, because everyone in the room went still.
“Whoa,” Logan said. “Mac the Key has given his approval.”
Nova clapped. “Welcome, Leslie.”
Leslie laughed, somehow not feeling awkward at all. “Mac the Key? As in Key to welcoming doors?”
“Gatekeeper, more like,” Logan said. “He’s more guarded than the rest of us put together.”
They were all so different, yet they interacted with the genuine ease of years of friendship. Now Leslie had more questions. How long had it taken them to collect each other?
Just then the last car parked in the street, and Claire came in carrying a cooler full of blood bags. Leslie hardly knew what to say at the sight—and the scent—of it.
“To celebrate Leslie,” Claire said, and while the rest of them cheered, Ryker went to a kitchen cupboard and brought down wine glasses for all.
Was this okay? Indulging in a second slaking without the excuse of a hard workout or a dire injury? Maybe she should abstain, but that might offend Claire.
Ryker set the glasses out, then went to her and leaned down to whisper against her ear. “Perfectly safe. I promise.”
Now the entire roomful of strangers was studiously ignoring them. Without context, they must think her the oddest vampire ever.
She could let it go. They were already moving on, filling glasses with the rich, red liquid that kept them all alive…and it appeared, on occasion, also helped them celebrate.
Perfectly safe. Okay. Leslie cleared her throat, and as one Ryker’s friends turned to her. “I, um, I wasn’t raised among our kind. I keep learning all sorts of new things about vampire culture. That’s why I wasn’t sure about this.” She nodded to the cooler on the floor.
Their eyes brightened with questions. Philippa said, “Were you adopted?”
“No, but my parents weren’t always forthcoming with information about us.”
“For real?” Logan balanced his full glass on his palm and seemed to forget it was there. “Most vampire parents are a nuisance with all the culture-passing and oral history and blah-blah-blah. I wonder why yours were different.”
“I’m hoping to find that out.”
Ryker had meanwhile broken the seal on another blood bag and poured its contents into the last empty wine glass. “Pause on the questions, y’all.” Then he held out the glass to Leslie. “Start with a sip. See how it feels to slake when you’re not depleted at all.”
Leslie brought the glass to her lips and took a small sip. Her fangs descended with the familiar passing ache, and then… Whoa. She was alive. She was awake. Pure energy surged from the center of her body to the tips of her toes and fingers, raced across her scalp, buzzed back to her center. She bounced from one foot to the other, and the liquid swirled in her glass; of course, she didn’t spill a drop. She bounced again, sipped again.
“Wow,” she said.
“Doesn’t it feel amazing?” Claire said.
“So amazing.”
“Okay.” Ryker was grinning. “Now we can keep talking.”
As if Ryker hadn’t paused the conversation, Mackey said, “Ryker told us you live in a town with a population below a thousand people.”
“Harmony Ridge,” Leslie said. “I love it.”
“How many vampires live there?”
“Three. Me and my parents.”
She had rendered all of them speechless. A moment later she was answering a volley of questions about her life experience, but in no way did she feel like an outsider. In fact their interest had the opposite effect. Leslie felt accepted as she never had before, not by a group anyway. Coworkers, acquaintances, neighbors—she could chat it up with the best extroverts, but this was different. Maybe because they were vampires. Maybe because they were getting to know her out of their friendship with Ryker.
They drifted into Ryker’s den, which was Leslie’s favorite room in his condo. Unlike the dark wood and coffee-brown walls of his study/workroom, his den was bright. The wall of windows showed the last ebbing glow of the sunset past his modest green strip of backyard and, past that, a reassuring privacy fence. The walls were a faded sort of blue like light-wash denim. The furniture was pale-gray leather; the bookcases were unstained, natural pine. His pine-green throw pillows and blankets all popped as the only dark things in the room.
Less than an hour ago, Laurence and Senna had sat here with them. Now Ryker’s friends sprawled or perched on his furniture or the floor and made easy conversation, peppering Leslie with more questions.
She answered while continuing to take little sips of her drink. The vigorous rush didn’t last long, only a few minutes past the first sip. After that her body settled into a more relaxed enjoyment of the company as well as the liquid in her glass.
At last, when everyone had at least half-finished their beverage, Leslie said, “My turn. I want to know how y’all met, how this friend-group happened.”
“Ooh, memories,” Philippa said.
“So,” Logan said, “obviously we should tell this chronologically. First of all, I became friends with Nova when we were very, very small.”
“Roughly the size of limes.” Nova nodded with mock gravitas.
“We spent two-and-a-half decades growing our friendship.”
“And then about three years ago we met the rest of these apex predators.”
Leslie nodded along with the ping-pong of the story, each twin taking up a line as if they’d scripted the whole thing. Leslie was willing to bet they hadn’t.
“Hold up,” Claire said. “You said chronological. You skipped a few years.”
“True,” Nova said. “We’re the newest additions—or we were until you, Leslie.”
Logan made a broad motion toward Claire, giving her the floor.
Claire nodded acknowledgement but didn’t maintain the twins’ dramatic delivery. “Right, so about five years ago, Pippa and I hit it off when she cut my hair.”
Before Leslie had to ask, Philippa said, “I’m a licensed stylist.”
“And we had a ton in common. We both like to ride horses. We like the same music, the same movies. We value a lot of the same things.” Claire still had over half her drink left. She kept taking deep breaths over the glass, seeming to savor the scent as much as the flavor. She took a longer sip before continuing. “Then for a hot minute, she tried to convince me and Mackey that we were a perfect match.”
“Mmhm,” Mackey hummed, the first thing he’d said in a while.
Leslie looked from him to Claire, alert for tension, but they both appeared at ease with their history. “Did you date?”
“Three dates,” Claire said. “We really got along, but not romantically.”
“The three of us got together a few times after that,” Mackey finally chimed in. “Then I brought Ryker.”
“We”—Ryker gestured from himself to Mackey—“had connected when I bought the desk in my study from his cousin, an acquaintance of mine, and Mackey was the one who delivered it. Again, same thing—we started talking and just clicked. The four of us kept meeting up for drinks, dinners… And that kept up for about two years, until Claire met Nova.”
“How?” Leslie leaned forward. This was a fascinating saga.
“Online at first,” Nova said. “I’m a conservation grant writer by trade, but I’m also just a stupidly prolific writer with a decent online following. Claire read an article of mine, and she messaged me, and then we figured out we were local to each other. Pretty soon I was introducing everybody to Logan, as twins do.”
“Okay, wait.” Leslie pointed around the room to each of them in turn. “Nova—grant writer. Philippa—hairstylist. Claire—Slake It Off’s bartender and proprietor. Obviously I know what Ryker does.”
When she pointed at Logan, he raised one hand and, with the other, brushed back a few pale flyaway hairs that had escaped his ponytail. “I’m a sous chef, hoping to be an executive chef one day.”
“Nice,” Leslie said, then pointed at Mackey. Gosh, he was quiet. “Last but not least.”
Mackey nodded to her as if conceding something. “Trauma nurse.”
Leslie had to blink, to replay his words. “I’m sorry…what? Can one of us even do that job?”
“Obviously yes.” The left side of his mouth lifted slightly. If that was a smile, it was his first since arriving.
“But…how do you…” She couldn’t imagine it. No, she wasn’t tempted by the scent of blood while it still circulated within a human body. She wasn’t even tempted when Hannah or Jake or any of her other human friends got a paper cut. But to work in an emergency room… That was a whole different world, a whole different level of physical contact with humans.
“How? Why?” she said.
“I can help,” Mackey said with a shrug. “Vampires are really useful in human medicine. I can work longer shifts without sleeping. I save lives every single day, and sometimes it’s because I catch something the humans missed. Or because my hands are stronger, faster.”
“And you don’t find it difficult?”
He didn’t answer her for a long moment, instead studied her with the same piercing look he’d leveled before shaking her hand. At last he said, “I have coping tricks when my senses get overwhelmed. For me, the rewards of my work outweigh the challenges.”
“That’s incredible.”
“Mackey’s one of a kind,” Ryker said.
Mackey shot him a disapproving look that seemed well-worn. “I’m a vampire like the rest of you. I chose a job where I could do some good. So did you, man.”
“Yeah, but I get to sit behind a desk in my office downtown—or in my home office, where I munch on snacks, sip my coffee, and put on a jazz record.”
“And fry your brain with endless screen-time and math. No thanks.”
“It doesn’t fry my brain. It energizes my brain.”
“Until you refuse to go to bed and forget to slake,” Leslie said.
The room rang with the laughter of Ryker’s friends.
“You know him better than I realized.” Nova was still laughing. “Gosh, this man and his one-track brain.”
The group didn’t leave until after two in the morning. The conversations flowed so easily, Leslie lost track of time. As everyone headed for their vehicles, Philippa took her aside.
“You know about her,” she said. “Don’t you.”
“The person who got her name banned from your group?”
“That’s the one.” She bared her teeth in an expression that proved even empathic vampires were ultimate predators. “And you know how she treated him.”
“I do. He told me.”
“Good. He worried us for a while, but he came through it. And now here you are, and I wanted to say…I’m really happy for both of you. Thanks for treating my friend well, Leslie.”
“It’s my pleasure.”
On impulse, she drew Philippa into a hug. Nothing extraordinary conveyed between them this time, only the sense of a new friendship that would keep growing from tonight on.
When only Leslie and Ryker were left in the house, they wrapped in blankets and snuggled close on the couch. For maybe fifteen minutes they rehashed highlights of the evening with his friends. Then Ryker kissed her with something close to desperation.
“I don’t want you to go home tomorrow,” he said against her hair, his hands immersed in it.
“I don’t want to either.”
“Maybe you could…”
A heavy vehicle turned onto the street. For a second, Leslie ignored it, but—
Threat . The vehicle smelled wrong. Then it parked across the street from Ryker’s front door.
Her brain and body coiled for action. The power of the vampire built in her, freezing cold and intensely alive. She glanced to Ryker. Neither of them had risen from his couch yet, but he looked the way she felt. He was statue-still, gaze trained toward the street, fists curled tight at his sides.
“Threat,” she whispered.
He nodded.
Leslie’s senses widened, stretched out to pick up every possible detail. Six men inside the vehicle. Their sweat smelled of human nerves. The vehicle’s interior smelled of gunpowder; a weapon had discharged inside within the last week or so. And of course, they were armed now too.
And they were discussing Ryker.
“You know how to take one of them down, right?”
“I heard only a perfect head shot does it.”
“Right. It’s got to be instant brain death or they’ll kill you and they’ll survive whatever wounds you give them.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, they’re like roaches, keep jumping back up for more.”
They knew how to kill a vampire. They likely didn’t know that no human was fast enough on the trigger to manage a perfect head shot unless the vampire was already restrained, but their ignorance didn’t change their intentions.
They wanted to kill her Ryker.
“Angstrom?”
“Has to be,” he said.
“But how do they know it was you?”
“I’d love to know, but first we should neutralize them.”
“I’ll call 911.”
He seized her wrist when she reached for her phone on the coffee table. “No.”
“Ryker—”
“We don’t need human cops, Leslie. We’re vampires.”
Yes. Yes . Time to be exactly everything that she was. Her fists curled tightly again, and when she spoke, the words came with a breathy undertone that sounded like the hiss of a serpent. “We are vampires.”