Chapter 21 Rowan
TWENTY-ONE
ROWAN
Bombs Away
Naomi was glowing.
She always glowed with an ethereal energy, but tonight she was absolutely resplendent. With the happy pink on her cheeks and the sheen of sweat on her brow as we danced, she was the picture of total happiness.
And I loved it.
Loved her.
I really, really did.
We’d packed so much into less than a year of knowing each other, and although it was extremely fast—at least from my perspective—I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my time with her.
How long that was, and whether she’d eventually take the bite to make that forever, were decisions to be made down the road, but I knew without a singular doubt in my mind that whether it was five, fifteen, fifty, or five hundred years, I wanted them all to be with her.
The emotions surging through me were a little discordant with Lil Jon’s proclamation for me to get low, but no matter. I’d agonized over how to say the words for weeks now, and now they began to burst out of my mouth of their own accord.
“Naomi, I—”
“Wow, this is quite the little party you have going on here.”
If it were anyone else, I probably would have kept right on dancing. The thing was, it wasn’t just anyone. Although we weren’t close, I would recognize Orthallow’s voice anywhere, even if it was completely impossible that he would ever attend our misfit mixer.
Naomi noticed that I jolted, losing the rhythm of the side step we were doing, and looked over my shoulder with a warm, welcoming smile that my fellow vampire didn’t really deserve.
“Hello. Are you a friend of Rowan’s?”
“Something like that,” Orthallow said. “We’ve known each other for a few years. Obviously, I had to come and support our favorite music nerd. If anything, I knew the music would be rockin’.”
Huh.
This was not the confrontation I had expected. Was that pessimistic of me? Or was my fellow vampire pulling a trick?
I didn’t think so, as he sounded quite genuine. Even with the whole Celestia situation, I had been able to tell something was up with him. As much as Orthallow tried to be the cool, debonair undead, his tones were pretty readable sometimes.
“Well, I thank you for your support. If you’re thirsty, we have a small supply of chilled bloodwine in the kitchen. I can put it on a warmer for you, or you can have it as is.”
“Don’t worry yourself. You’ve got a lot of signage around, so I’m sure to figure it out. I just wanted to make sure I thanked you for doing this, Rowan.”
There was warmth to his voice that I hadn’t expected, and when I met his gaze, I saw a myriad of things there. Some uncertainty, some shame, and maybe it was na?ve of me, but mostly I saw someone who wanted to change.
If he wanted that, who was I to stand in his way? He was still young, after all.
“Glad to have you here. But you should know, the real brains behind this is Naomi, my partner.”
Orthallow’s glance went from me, to Naomi, then back to me. This time, his smile was more certain. “I see your taste has much improved. Charmed, Miss Naomi. Don’t let this one fool you, he can be a right beast when he wants to be.”
I didn’t know if my girlfriend had sensed the tension when he’d first walked up or if the triumph of the day had her loose-lipped and fuzzy, because she looked him right in the face and said, “Oh, believe me, I know, and I like it.”
That got a laugh out of the vampire. “Well then! I’ll leave you to it. Happy Valentine’s Day, you lovebirds.”
“Right, it’s V-day this weekend,” Naomi murmured, her eyes going wide. “Kind of crazy to think about. I was so caught up in planning the mixer, I didn’t realize it was coming up.”
“That’s all right. I think it would be nice to celebrate with a low-key night in. Just you, me, and some delicious food for you and drink for me.”
“And no garlic?” she teased, batting those gorgeous eyes of hers at me.
“And no garlic,” I agreed wholeheartedly. “Although I wouldn’t mind the part that came after…”
Naomi rose on her tiptoes and kissed me hard enough that my fangs responded. After all these months, I was still so viscerally affected by her.
“It’s a date,” she said, pupils blown and her stare heavy-lidded when she broke the kiss.
God, she was perfect. So perfect. More than I could ever ask for. Again, I was swept up in a torrent of affection, admiration, and attraction, those three words I’d been trying to perfect swan-diving off my tongue.
“I need to sa—”
It was almost as if the same fate that had united us was trying to give me a hint, because suddenly the double doors of the front entrance slammed open, and a group of people strode in, breezing right past Iko and Carolina.
Naomi and I parted, and my guard was instantly up. I didn’t even need to see who it was to feel that this group did not mean well. But once I was facing the dozen intruders, I realized I recognized about half of them.
Celestia, Vinicio, who I assumed was her newest boytoy, Maldras, and two other members of the coven. As for the others, I thought I didn’t recognize any of them, but then some part of my mind reminded me that I was actually quite familiar with the frog-shouldered shifter at Celestia’s side.
Naomi’s eldest brother.
Oh come on! It was the Friday before Valentine’s Day. Didn’t these people have anything better to do?
“Ain’t no fuckin’ way,” Naomi growled as she strode forward. I was right there with her, containing the rage bubbling up inside me.
Except we weren’t the first ones to get there.
Carolina did, a stormy expression on her sharp features.
“Excuse you,” she said firmly, with a surprising amount of strength in her voice. It reminded me exactly why she and Naomi were two peas in a pod. “I believe our greeter welcomed you to our event. Perhaps you didn’t hear him?”
“Who the hell are you?” Celestia asked, and honestly, I was surprised she cared enough to crash our event. Certainly, her attention would be better spent working on her painting or sculpting techniques.
“What a strange thing to ask when you never even paused to introduce yourself,” Carolina shot back so quickly that Celestia’s expression shifted to one of shock.
Clearly, she still wasn’t used to people verbally volleying with her rather than just mindlessly nodding along to whatever she said.
“But for what it’s worth, my name is Carolina Crestworth; I’m one of the heads of this event. I’d be happy to show you around.”
“We don’t need a guided tour around this freakshow,” one of the ones I didn’t recognize spat, derision dripping from every single syllable out of his mouth.
I didn’t know how it happened so fast, but suddenly Iko was behind the group, putting his hand on the shoulder of the stranger who smelled like a shifter.
“That was rude,” he said, voice lower than I’d heard it in ages. It was easy to forget that my very large friend was from an extremely mighty species known for being able to crush a man’s skull with one bite. “Apologize.”
“I-I-I—” the man stammered, and I reveled in the satisfaction of it. More people were joining, surrounding the group of intruders like an immune system reacting to an infection.
“The question is who the hell are you?” Xiánlü asked through her assisted-speech device, and maybe I was mistaken, but I felt like the choppy, robotic voice had a bit more steel to it.
It made me wonder just how much the siren would be able to express herself if her device could put emotion into her words.
Matter for another day, I supposed.
“Yeah,” Daniella also chimed in. “Why ya coming in here all aggro? Not matching the vibes at all. If you guys just want to have a fun time, that’s all right, but you do need to come correct.”
There were only around twenty-five or so of us “freaks”, and yet it felt like so much more.
Perhaps because this was the most community any of us had in a long while, or even ever.
And Naomi was absolutely right. I was seeing exactly what having people to rely on and support each other could help accomplish.
Celestia and her little gang clearly hadn’t realized it was way harder to bully people en masse.
“Please, as if we would ever be desperate enough to care about the ‘vibes’ of such a rancid event.”
“And yet here you are,” Carolina said. “At the rancid event. Is this the attention you wanted? Are you so desperate to be worshipped at all times that you had to come to a mixer for people who are regularly terrorized by people like you? Is the thought of us having a space so terrifying to you that you had to get all dolled up in your pseudo-goth Victorian outfit and traipse here in those platform shoes of yours to… what exactly was the point of this again? Did you think you could just show up and shame us into slinking out of our own party?”
“Enough of this fucking chit-chat,” Naomi’s brother said bitingly. “The rest of you abominations and losers can do whatever you want, but I’m here to get my sister out of this cesspool. Maybe she doesn’t have a wolf, but she’s not like the rest of you. I’m going to take her home.”
I snarled, my body reacting on its own, because suddenly I was within biting distance of the man. Although “man” was a generous term. I didn’t often use the accelerated speed that came with my gift, but the idea of the douchewolf making Naomi do anything she didn’t want to was motivation enough.
“You dare—” I started, and the tension all around us ramped up even further.
But then Naomi touched my elbow. I would have loved nothing more than to rip her brother limb from limb and show him that his time of bullying and terrorizing the wonderful woman beside me was over.
But I also recognized that this was her battle, and she was asking me to stand down.
I would gladly do so in order to watch her back.