8. Alexander
8
ALEXANDER
F ear was not something that had concerned me for many centuries now. Not since I had left Sanguine Nox and joined the United Covens. I didn’t fear death or what would come after it—if there was anything—nor did I fear physical pain.
But for the first time in my recent memory, a kernel of fear was seated in my chest. It was a strange thing. A twisting knife of anxiety, a cold rush that sent my thoughts spiraling, and it was all thanks to her.
I sat on top of the apartment building opposite Emily’s watching her through her bedroom window. Her room was dark, but she was easy to make out, her body moving on the bed, her hand in the tight pink shorts she wore to bed.
She cried out softly, a whisper of my name on her lips, and adrenaline rushed through my veins. The fear grew thicker, mingling with a desire to leap from the top of this building to hers, to make my way into her bedroom in the dead of the night.
To pin her down and ravage her neck with sweet, hot kisses, to bite and feed on her even as I filled her and brought her to the edge of pleasure again and again.
I shifted on the rooftop, irritated at my own lack of control.
I had spent the last week watching her, hoping that she would take the book out of her home at least once. I could steal it then and be gone. But she left it in the apartment, and until I had figured out where the ward had been placed, I couldn’t enter it.
My options were to wait for her to bring it out or to approach her again and convince her to let me see it. But being close to her made me weak. Weaker than I had ever been before, and in our world, weakness was unacceptable.
The soft click of heels on the rooftop behind me was preceded only by the strong scent of another vampire.
I didn’t bother turning toward her.
Cassia sat down beside me, pressing her thigh to mine, and cooling the heat that had flooded my veins at the thought of being near Emily.
I pressed a hand to her shoulder and shifted Cassia away from my side. “Ooh, have we fallen that far?” Cassia asked. “That you can’t even stand to be in close proximity to me?”
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I just came to see how you were doing,” Cassia said. “We haven’t seen you around headquarters, Alex. You’ve been awfully busy.”
“I’m on a mission. Leave.”
“On a mission to stare at an apartment building?”
I kept my gaze on the window. Emily had fallen asleep. She had left her window open a crack, and the breeze drifted in, toying with her curtains. Unsafe. But that was why I was here—to ensure that no vampires encroached on her space.
No, you’re here for the book.
“The coven is growing anxious, Alex,” Cassia said. “There are rumors floating around that you can’t complete your mission. There’s talk of replacing you. The longer you spend out here …”
“And you’re telling me this, why?”
“Because I care for you, of course. I want you to succeed. ”
“Cassia,” I said, “you and I both know that I wasn’t turned yesterday. Do not toy with me.”
“I do love it when you come over all aggressive.” She bit her bottom lip then sent me an air kiss.
“I don’t need a reminder from you or anyone else about the importance of my task. Leave.”
But Cassia remained on the rooftop, staring at the side of my face. She gave a soft, musical laugh before turning her gaze back to the building opposite. “Is there a particular reason you haven’t broken into that apartment yet to retrieve the book?”
Asking how Cassia knew the details of the mission was pointless. She had an uncanny knack for manipulating people and drawing information from them.
“I haven’t seen it yet,” I lied, ensuring my mind shield was in place, just in case she tried to pluck the truth from my brain.
“You haven’t,” Cassia said, and the answer wasn’t full of mocking. She sounded as if she was considering it. “Do you think it’s in there? With the little girl.”
“She’s not a girl,” I said. “She’s a woman.”
“She’s how old, Alexander? Twenty-seven?”
“What does it matter? It’s the book I’m concerned with.”
Cassia rose from the rooftop. “Oh, I hope so. The alternative would mean getting sanctioned by the coven. If you were, oh, let’s say holding back because you had an infatuation with a human. That might raise some eyebrows.”
“Leave.”
“I was just on my way out,” Cassia said. “Really, Alexander, must you be so forceful? Enjoy staring at her. She’ll be dead before the week is out.”
I was up and on her before she could go much further. I grabbed her arm, and she grasped my throat, both of us baring our fangs.
“Who?” I asked. “Who will kill her? You?”
“You.” Cassia spat it out.
I released her, and she did the same, taking a step back, a sneer on her lips. “If you don’t kill her,” Cassia said, “and bring back the book, I’ll report you for negligence. And then they’ll put me on the job, and I assure you, Alexander, I won’t have any compunction about ripping her limb from limb.” She leaped off the roof and transformed into a cloud of bats before I could reach her.
The bats tittered and swept off into the sky, and I gritted my teeth. Cassia had gotten what she wanted out of me. A rise. And that meant she would use what she’d discovered to her advantage. If Emily hadn’t been a target before, she was now, simply because Cassia knew that I cared.
And that was my fault. I was the fool for allowing her the knowledge that I cared.
But why do you care?
I stepped off the roof and fell toward the sidewalk, my coat billowing and whipping at my back. I landed easily and strode toward Emily’s apartment building. The night embraced me, and I made myself invisible as I approached.
The cracked glass door was shut, but I unlocked it with a wave of my hand and entered, striding up the stairs toward her floor, my thoughts running wild with how I could reach the book and?—
Michael, the neighbor who despised me, was in the hall outside her apartment. He stood there, holding a single red rose, his fist raised to knock on her door.
Anger swept through me, a cloying sensation that struck me motionless.
“Hi, Emily,” he muttered. “I’m sorry to wake you, but I’ve been thinking a lot about—” He shook his head. “Emily, I know that you’ve been seeing this other guy, but I wanted to tell you how I feel because I?—”
Emily’s apartment door scraped open, and her roommate, Morgan, the enthusiastic one, nearly ran into him.
“Michael? What the—?” Her gaze fell to the rose in his hand. “Thanks, but no thanks.”
“It’s not what you think,” he said, clearly his throat .
“Not what I think? I think that you’ve got an unhealthy obsession with Emily,” Morgan said. “And that you’d better back off, bucko.”
I added Morgan to the list of humans who weren’t as annoying as I’d first thought.
“Bucko?” Michael stiffened. “I found this rose out here. I thought maybe you?—”
“Okay, so you’re a liar too. Cool. I’ll be sure Emily knows that,” Morgan said. “Look, do yourself a favor and just leave her alone. You’re acting weird and possessive, and you don’t even know her that well.”
“We’ve been friends for like a year.”
“Friends?” Morgan rolled her eyes heavenward. “Friends. You’re not friends. You’re just trying to get into her pants.”
“Keep your damn voice down.”
“Get lost, freak.” And then Morgan pushed past him and pointedly shut the front door.
I stepped out of her path as she hurried down the hall and toward the staircase.
Michael glared at her retreating back, the rose clutched in his fist. He swore under his breath then backed away from the door slowly. Finally, he returned to his apartment, rose in hand.
I waited until the door was shut until I approached Emily’s apartment, irritated at my own desire for her. She was a human. A regular girl. Beautiful, yes, and kind, even though it didn’t pay to be in this world, but human nevertheless. Weak. And a weakness for any vampire.
The only way a vampire could keep a human partner was to turn them, and that was a fate worse than death. To be trapped in a state of forever , to be dependent on blood and subterfuge. Humans didn’t know what they had until they had lost it, and that included their mortality.
I braced my hands either side of the door to her apartment, bowed my head, and felt for the ward. It was difficult to pinpoint through the door, but it was in there, and I had to get it out if I wanted to get the book and distance myself from this woman.
The longer I spent near her, the worse the attraction became.
What are you? Where are you? I sent a sliver of crimson magic through the keyhole, and it spilled onto the kitchen floor, traveling and seeking, moving through the apartment. While I couldn’t physically enter the apartment, my magic could—the tiniest amount, slipping through the cracks.
Whoever had made this ward was an amateur. Usually, Hunters warded thoroughly against both vampire magic and vampires in their physical form, but this one had rushed the job.
My magic felt toward the kitchen counter and hit a wall.
The object, the source of the ward, had to be there. In the kitchen. So, it wasn’t that the ward couldn’t stop magic. It was just that it was too weak to stop it entirely unless it was in close proximity.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t pull the book out of the apartment without the door being open.
But perhaps …
I sent the magic through the living room, seeing everything as if I was the magic itself, and down the hallway, seeking. Emily’s bedroom door was shut, and I slipped through the keyhole again, pouring myself into her space.
The skin on the back of my neck prickled at my proximity to her. A low tug dragged my magic up the bed and onto it.
She slept in a silk negligee, one arm thrown over her head, delicately, and her auburn hair strewn across her white pillow.
I itched to touch her, even now, to slide magic up her thigh toward the edge of her negligee, beneath it, to the warmth between her legs. To pleasure her so that her dreams were sweet and full of me, of cries of my name.
But if I was to have Emily, I would have her when she was awake, and she could claw at my back and hold onto me like I was all that mattered.
You won’t have her .
My magic slid up the desk in front of the window and found the book. I opened the cover with difficulty, the distance from my body weakening my sway over the magic.
Emily moaned softly on the bed.
In the hall, my frame stiffened. My body tensed.
“Alexander,” she murmured. “Alexander, please.”
I wasn’t touching her. My concentration waned, and a cool sweat broke out on my forehead. I forced myself to turn a page of the book, and her groan was louder this time.
“Please!” Emily cried out and sat bolt upright in bed, clutching her chest and gasping.
Her gaze moved toward the book, and I opened my eyes, stepping back and retracting my magic instantly. She hadn’t seen. She couldn’t have.
I’d been here too long, regardless. I would return tomorrow, and I would have the book, whatever the cost.