Chapter 21 Diantha #4
“Were you always such a feeder?” I ask, pushing myself upright.
I forgo the knife and fork on my plate and lift a piece of steak to my mouth with my fingers.
He’s right, I’m famished. And something primal has been released in me.
I watch him move and I no longer just see the sweet, sexy vampire from my Medieval relics class.
I see thousands of years of evolution converging into one perfect specimen, celestially developed to stand in front of me in this exact moment and blow my mind.
Dickmatized doesn’t even cover the half of it.
“Absolutely not. Human Orfeo ate once a week, and it was usually something stolen or from the fucking garbage. You wouldn’t have looked at me twice.
” He pushes his curls back and presses a cigarette to his lips, lighting it with a flourish of his fingers.
He wipes the kitchen counters clean, then washes his hands.
Every movement feels like a still from my favorite movie.
I just can’t make sense of it—of this molecular change.
“Orfeo?”
He lifts his gaze to mine and I see it happen in his eyes too. His face softens immediately when his eyes land on me. His mouth even relaxes into a small, content smile. “Yes?”
I abandon my plate of steak on the end table, wrap myself in the couch blanket, and slide into his arms. Orfeo holds me to his chest. His mouth finds mine and his fingers stroke my wound, and my entire universe feels like the eye of a camera, zoomed in and focused so tightly on the energy that moves between us.
“What is this?” I ask, pulling away and pressing a hand to my heart. “Is it really how I feel?”
“You are still thinking like a human, Diantha. What lives between us is real because we feel it. It is powerful because we have acknowledged it. And it will only grow for as long as we feed it. All right?”
I nod. “I can see how this could be really dangerous for a human. Earlier, I wasn’t even…even worried about whether or not you would stop. All I wanted was more.”
He makes a small noise in the back of his throat. “Some vampires…they live off of that. They suck blood and energy. The humanity of desperation and fear is part of it.”
I shiver. “I can imagine.” I think back to Kat falling limp in the shadows. “I can imagine,” I repeat.
We manage to get dressed and restore some order to the carriage house by the time the doorbell rings, but when I pull open the door, Misha’s and Leo’s eyes immediately fall to the fresh wounds on either side of my neck.
“Oh, brother.” Misha rolls her eyes. “Fucking honeymooners.”
“Heathens,” Leo grumbles, letting himself in and abandoning Misha who obviously needs my express permission.
“Come inside before you freeze. Where’s Evie?”
“Hasn’t answered any of my texts or my calls.” Leo and Orfeo dab each other with the nonchalance of modern bros. It’s both jarring and deeply intimate.
“What? Seriously? That’s not like her at all.” I grab my phone from where it’s charging and immediately fire off a text: everything ok??
I stare at our messages back and forth, at the space and time that stretched between “where are you?” and “miss u!! Talk tonight??” I tighten my grip on my phone, watching the message sit unread. It’s only been a few seconds, but I have a bad feeling. A dark sinking stone in the pit of my stomach.
“I even waited outside that damn café for her, but the windows were dark on the first and second floor. Any chance she might have skipped town?”
“No way.” I shake my head without tearing my eyes away. “Evie’s a local, and she wouldn’t do that. She’s a believer.”
I feel the steadying heat of Orfeo’s hand on my lower back. “She will be okay,” he says. He must feel my worry.
I let my phone screen turn black before setting the device aside. She’ll be okay, I repeat to myself, moving into the kitchen and taking a seat at the island. She has to be. And if she’s not okay, I’ll make sure she becomes okay.
Orfeo uncorks a bottle of blood he describes as “oak-barrel-aged” and pours himself and Misha a glass. Leo grimaces at both the blood and the wine Orfeo offers. Then, we settle around the island, under the dim pendant lights, like mobsters at a jazz club.
“I managed to reach Davìd,” is what Leo opens with, light eyes cutting nervously to Orfeo.
“Ah, sì?” His features remain placid but there’s a thrum of excitement followed by the hot twist of anxiety in my gut, and I know those feelings belong to him.
“They’ll be here by tomorrow afternoon.”
Orfeo clears his throat. “Incredible.”
“We’re going to need them because tomorrow night—we strike.”
“Already?” I reach for my glass of wine.
“The former owners of Hades House are holding a masked ball at Paquet Manor. Everyone’s going to be there—it’s perfect.”
“What? How is that legal?”
“Well, Zane Tamblin—CEO of MedTek Enterprise and former owner of Hades House—is married to Maeve Joy Paquet, third heir to the Paquet fortune and current board executive of the museum trust.”
“Damn,” I say. “Fucking rich people.”
“I won’t be able to leave town, which is probably for the best. I think we’ll need as many bodies as possible on our side.
” Leo drags a hand over his eyes, his jaw ticking.
“And as you can imagine, if Zane was willing to sell off Hades House to Alfo, of all creatures, it’s because he’s not much better himself.
Birds of a feather and all that shit. Oh, and rumor is that he and Maeve love to invite a vampire into the mix. ”
“So, what, this party is just going to be like an enormous cocaine-fueled masked orgy?”
Leo lets out a dry laugh. “Yeah. Essentially.”
“How many people are going to be there?” Misha asks.
“Fifty humans at least. And maybe an equal number of vamps, demons, and miscellaneous supers.”
Misha drops her chin to her chest and levels Leo with a scathing look. “No fucking shifters, I hope?”
“No, princess,” he snarks. “None that I’m aware of.”
“At least they’re keeping things classy.”
“Do we not like shifters?” I ask.
“I don’t like shifters,” Misha says. She pulls what looks like an electric cigarette from the front breast pocket of her jean jacket. “They’re pigs.”
“Anyway.” Leo rolls his eyes. “I thought you were going to quit vaping?”
Misha gives it a hearty suck, rolling her eyes back in her head. She lets out a deep moan as she blows a cloud of smoke at him. “Nope.”
“Let’s focus,” Orfeo says, rapping his knuckles against the countertop. “Daje, ragà. We have to head to town in three hours.”
“Right.” Leo extracts an envelope from the inside pocket of his leather jacket. It’s a manila envelope that looks like it’s from a different century. He unwinds the string closure and slides out a very fragile-looking piece of folded paper.
“This is a map of the entire Echidna campus, plus downtown. It’s the only existing copy outside of whatever’s stored in City Hall, and I had to pinch it from Alfo’s disgusting desk while he was fucking a new waitress, so everyone—please, be very careful.
” He begins to gingerly peel the layers apart and soon the onion-skin-thin paper covers the entire depth of the island and nearly half of its length.
Misha and I get to our feet and take up residence at a respectful distance.
I recognize campus right away—oversized gothic buildings form a crucifix, with paths connecting them.
I spot the iron gates that separate the Art History building from the end of Main Street, and on the far side of the map is St. Haeverth’s, the rectory, and the rose gardens between them.
What doesn’t make any sense to me is the snaking, tangled set of lines that are overlaid.
At one point, all of the wild, waving lines seem to tangle together, a few inches north of the cathedral.
Leo pulls a number two pencil out of his pocket—which almost makes me laugh out loud—and uses the eraser to direct our attention through the chaos.
“These lines”—he drags the eraser tip over the tangled web—“are the catacombs and the tunnel system that connects them to buildings outside the university. They’re purposefully designed to trap and ensnare lesser beings.
These catacombs were built by the archdiocese after the crypt was moved underneath St. Haeverth’s.
You can imagine why.” Leo flutters his eyelashes in exhaustion.
“There are more dead ends than could ever be tracked and it would not surprise me if there were creatures still surviving down there.”
Goose bumps rise across my arms. How many nocturnal beings have gotten lost in these unholy crevices and survived on weaker beings, also trapped and lost? Suddenly, my skin feels tight and itchy. “Jeez Louise. Makes sense why the portal is so active then.”
“Good point,” Leo says, and he almost sounds scared too.
“If you follow the main artery, this double-lined path here, you’ll notice it connects all the way back…
” He traces the path starting from the cathedral, working sideways through the rectory, all the way east until it cuts through the Paquet mansion and grounds.
Then his pencil swerves left and cuts south through a thicket of trees, down through the library, and finally all the way past the iron gates, until he finally lands on Hades House. “Here.”
“So, Hades House is the beginning of the tunnels that connect to the catacombs?”
“As far as we know, yes. Before Alfo bought the place, Hades House was a club for a secret fraternity of Echidna elites. Apparently, it was started by a coalition of families that all had one thing in common.”
I frown at the map. “They were demons?”
“Oh, god. No.” Leo laughs. “They all liked to fuck vampires.”
“Oh.” I shrug. “Duh.”