7. - – Misha
CHAPTER SEVEN
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MISHA
It’s been three weeks since the fire, explosion, and the resurrection of my best friend right in front of me. To say things have been a little weirder than normal would be an understatement.
For one thing, the guys have been relentlessly hunting every night, and not only for their food, but for the person responsible for the arson of the tour buses that brought us all to this awkwardness.
Lucian is, of course, the one most affected, needing to exact revenge on whoever tried to take out his woman, even if that was a byproduct of another motive.
I’ve never seen him so focused on something before, and the fact that he’s been coming in later and later every morning, sometimes cutting it way too close to dawn, has me worried.
I mean, he may be the undead and capable of taking care of himself, but he’s still one of my boys, and I still love him.
The tour has continued, and it was my job to hire extra security after everything happened.
Each show now starts with the guys already being on stage, with no grand entrances and nothing unpredictable, giving the new bodyguards the capability to actually do their jobs, at least where the concerts are concerned.
After the shows, when the night is pitch black and the fans are all gone home, that’s when the guys behave like themselves again, and in fact, worse than before.
The amount of bodies they’ve dropped in each state we’ve been to has been astounding, and it’s becoming difficult to cover everything up, even if I do have the knowledge now of what I’m actually hiding for them, unlike before, when I only had an idea of what it all was.
Every night, though, Lucian and Cary go back to the scene of the fire, sniffing the air, tasting the ground, and hunting like unrelenting wolves.
Standing in the dressing room before yet another show, Lucian looks in the mirror above his makeup table, adjusting the white and red theatrical paste on his face, frowning at the application on his mouth.
He’s obviously agitated, just as he’s been every night, but tonight it seems like it’s really getting to him.
“Do you need help?” I ask him, coming up behind him, looking over his shoulder in the mirror, laughing quietly to myself that he has a reflection and that it must be just another vampire myth that they don’t.
“No.” He says flatly, not bothering to look up and make eye contact with me in the reflection.
After a few minutes of watching him struggle to get it just right and listening to him grunt under his breath in frustration, I finally step up behind him, placing my hand on his shoulder, which stops him in his tracks.
“Will you stop being difficult and just let me help you?”
You would think that I’d be afraid, approaching someone who claims to be a monster from behind and touching them.
But he's still my Lucian, still one of my boys, and nothing has changed between us since the discovery of what he really is. In fact, if anything has been different, it’s the fact that once I could kind of overlook what I thought they were, now I find myself thinking about it, dreaming about it, and even fantasizing about it.
Sometimes at night, as I lay in bed waiting for them to come back from their hunt, I even question if I made the right decision in denying what Paul wanted them to do for me.
“It's just not right. It doesn't look real enough.” He sighs, tossing down the red lipstick pen onto the table.
“Is that it?” I ask him, already knowing that it isn’t what’s really bothering him.
“No.” He huffs, then flops himself down in the chair at his knees. “Fuck Mish. Everything feels like it’s gone to shit.”
“How so?” I ask, kneeling next to his side, watching him kick his feet up onto the dressing table with a hefty sigh, his black boots clunking loudly on its surface, rattling the mirror.
“The fire, the hunt, Red, and…you.”
“Me?” I say, my voice cracking higher than expected in shock.
“Yeah, you. I can hear your thoughts every night, babe. I know what you’re thinking.”
“Ooohhh.”
“Yeah.” He sighs again, leaning back in his chair and swiftly grabbing me, pulling me into his lap.
I land on him with absolutely no grace, laughing and failing, but the super-strong beast has a secure hold on me, and I’ve never felt safer, which is the opposite of what I should be feeling in the embrace of a real ass, blood-sucking vampire.
“I keep thinking maybe we should bring you over. I mean, it would solve everything for you.” He says, closing his eyes and pulling me against his hard chest, like a father holding a child, resting his chin on the top of my head.
It’s the strangest feeling, held in his muscular arms, placed in his hold like a child, listening to him speak as he presses my ear to his sternum.
“Lucian, you have no heartbeat.” I whisper in awe as I wriggle my head harder against him, listening to the sound of absolutely nothing inside of him except the sound of his little, amused chuckle.
“I’m dead. Well, undead.” He laughs, petting my shoulder and arm, sliding his hand up and down. “My heart stopped when my human life ended. Every now and then it moves a little, when I’m really excited, but it’s not anything life sustaining.”
“Did it hurt? When it stopped?” I ask him, the thoughts of my own mortality swimming in my mind, overtaking me, making me shiver even though the friction of his touch tries to keep me warm.
“Like a motherfucker.” He says and squeezes me harder. “It’s one of the reasons I haven’t offered it to you. I could never cause you pain. You mean too much to us…me.”
“Paul wants me to do it.”
“I know.”
“It’s been weird since that night. I mean, he looks at me like he always did, but he hasn’t touched me since. Nothing.” I confess to him. I thought after what we did that, fuck, I don’t know. That it would be more.”
“He’s afraid. He’s madly in love with you, you know. And he’s afraid to lose you, and if you don’t turn, then he will lose you. But he can’t force you to do anything.”
“I know.” I sigh, relaxing deeper in his arms, letting him completely support me, to hold me unlike anyone has in a very long time. “What do I do?”
“What do we do?”
“I don’t know.” I say, closing my eyes and just letting him keep me in his lap as long as he’ll allow. “But I do know something about makeup. And you have a show to get ready for still.”
“Fuck it. This is more important.” He says, and I have to agree with him. Moments like this, especially out on the road, never happen, and who am I to rush it for him to get up on stage?