Chapter 30
“Wren?”
I turn, tearing my eyes away from the koi pond. The sun just set and I’ve been in the garden, trying to clear my head. I don’t know who to believe or what to do. Vivian said my parents are alive. She could have been lying, of course, to save herself.
Or she could have been telling the truth.
“Yes?” I reply to Xavier.
“Would you like to go out to dinner?”
I cross my arms. “Why? You need me to suss out another human for you?”
“No, not tonight. It’s been a rough day for you. I was going to suggest you pick a place tonight. Anywhere. I have our personal pilot on standby, so distance is no issue.”
“Seriously? We could go to Disneyland?”
He shrugs one shoulder. “If that’s what you want, sure.”
“What about New York? I haven’t been to Long Island before.”
“Do you have a place there in mind?” he asks without flinching.
“No.”
He strides over and it’s like I suddenly can’t breathe. My body reacts to his on its own accord and I find myself turning so I’m facing him, repressing the urge to grab his hand and bring it to me, letting him touch me until I’m undone again.
“Don’t think too much, just tell me the first place that pops into your mind.”
“Marie Elena’s in Asheville,” I say honestly. “It’s a Mexican restaurant we would go to when we’d come home after a hunt.”
“Then let’s go. Maybe you could find a succubus to kill on the way.”
“You heard about that?”
Xavier gives me a sly grin. “This is my house. I hear everything.”
“Everything?” I raise my eyebrows.
“Everything,” he repeats and extends his hand.
I take it, lacing my fingers through his.
“You are quite a force to be reckoned with.” He pulls me toward him and steps close at the same time.
I almost stumble on the cobblestone and reach out, hand landing on his waist for support.
Swallowing hard, I look up, knowing I can easily get lost in his eyes.
“I am a hunter,” I say softly. “And you know what they say. You can take the girl out of the Order, but you can’t take the borderline abusive training the Order beats into you out of the girl.”
“You don’t have to hunt demons anymore.” His eyes widen ever so slightly with excitement. “But you’ll always do it for the thrill.”
Deep down, I know he’s right. There’s something so intensely satisfying about killing demons. The entire process from the hunt to the kill, it makes me feel alive and exhilarated.
“And because it’s the right thing to do.”
“Right by who?”
“Humanity,” I say without thinking. He’s not human, not anymore. “I have the skills and abilities to kill demons. And, yes, I like it. I like the chase and the risk, and the fact that I’m facing death quite literally and I’ve always made it out alive. So why let them live?”
“What about bad people?”
“That’s where things get gray. Demons…demons are black and white. Good versus evil.”
“You don’t think people can be evil?”
I cast my eyes down, thinking about the way Marco looked at me in the club.
He and Vivian were shocked, but not in a what have we done sort of way.
They weren’t expecting to see me, and they weren’t expecting things to have gone the way they did.
No, they weren’t worried or feeling riddled with guilt.
They were scared of what would happen to them because of this.
“They can be sure. But is it another human’s job to kill them for it?”
“What’s the alternative? Lock them up instead?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. Like really, I don’t know what’s right here.
Maybe we should bring back capital punishment and give people a one-strike-and-you’re-out kinda deal.
But then what constitutes a crime that should be punishable by death?
It’s a whole big debate and one I’d rather have after eating a gummy and laying outside under the stars. ”
“Gummy?”
I raise an eyebrow. “Oh come on, you know what kind of gummy I’m talking about even though you wouldn’t consume one.” His lips curve into a smile and I realize this is the perfect chance to ask about vampires doing drugs. “What would happen if you smoked weed?”
“Nothing. Inhaling the smoke would bring it into our lungs but then it would just stay there until it went back out. Nothing would be absorbed into our bodies.”
“Huh. Interesting. Have you tried it?”
“Yes,” he tells me and I’m genuinely surprised. “When I was a younger vampire, I was desperate to mask any emotion I felt that wasn’t pleasant. It was a quality I had when I was human.”
“You were an addict?”
“By today’s definition, yes.” He tells me this with such poise, like he’s not at all ashamed, not that he should be. “For maybe a good year or two after being turned, I tried to find a way to get that feeling back.”
“Mental health issues don’t go away when you’re turned?”
“No.” He brushes my hair back. “Why are you so interested in this?”
I bring my shoulders up in a small shrug.
“It’s interesting. Dying sounds so scary.
So final. But it’s not and having to live—in a sense—with the same problems you had before isn’t something I even thought about.
It’s probably not something most have thought about.
I’ve heard a lot of people talk about being turned and waking up undead like it would solve all of their problems.”
“In a way, I suppose it could,” he says.
“Though now the process is a bit more complicated since being undead isn’t the same as legally dead.
Back in my day, you could fake your death and clear your debts.
” He playfully nudges my arm. “And get out of a marriage or anything else you didn’t want to do. ”
I laugh softly. “Yeah. Nothing beats not doing housework like laying cold and unmoving on the floor.”
The wind blows, bringing with it the scent of rain.
“How did you beat your addiction?” I ask. “Is there some offshoot of AA for vampires?”
“There probably is now,” he says and looks up at the sky.
It’s the weirdest thing, standing here with Xavier like this.
He’s being vulnerable and it’s making me see him in a new light.
“Physically not being able to consume anything mind-altering forced me to change the way I dealt with things. And you do get a new perspective when you wake up undead.”
“In a good way?”
“Yes.” He tips his head back down, dangerously close to mine. I inhale deeply and blink a few times, wanting to feel him against me. He inches closer, knowing how much I want him right now. “What is so special about this Mexican restaurant?”
“Nothing, I suppose. The chips and salsa are good, and they have good veggie fajitas. It’s the nostalgia of it, really.”
“You miss your old life because it was familiar, not because it was good.”
I make a face and lean away from him. “That’s presumptuous to assume.”
“You didn’t know any better before. A makeshift raft can look like a luxury cruise ship when you’ve been treading water and that’s exactly what you experienced. I am right.”
“No, you’re not. You might think you’re better than most humans, but you don’t know better when it comes to what’s going on inside my head.”
“Fair,” he agrees but doesn’t look like he’s going to change his mind. Xavier was just so open and honest and real with me before being a condescending asshole. It’s so confusing, but maybe that’s just his nature because he’s a vampire. Or maybe he’s just an asshole.
“Everything has been turned around, but there were good moments,” I start and then shake my head and take a step back. “Why am I even defending myself to you? I lived my life, not you.”
“Thankfully.”
“Oh, shut up.”
He just flashes a cocky grin and it’s only then I realize his fangs are showing. “It’s a two and a half hour drive to Asheville. We should go. Do you need to change?”
“Is there something wrong with what I’m wearing?” I ask, motion to my body. My wardrobe is still a bit limited, and I ran out of athletic clothes after my workout this afternoon so I’m wearing one of the black dresses I bought.
“Not at all. You look beautiful,” he tells me and sweeps his eyes over me, letting his gaze linger as if he’s mentally undressing me.
“It’s a new moon tonight,” I say.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“We’re going to the Blue Ridge Mountains,” I say slowly, waiting to see if he has any sort of reaction. “In Appalachia.”
“I’m not following.”
“Hmm, it seems the big bad vampire doesn’t know everything. Appalachia is cursed as fuck. It’s like a beacon for monsters and dark energy.”
“Home sweet home for you.”
“Seriously. There’s never a shortage of something to kill.”
“We’re not that different, you and I.” He speeds closer again, taking me by the waist. My hips press against his and a rush of warmth goes between my legs. “You rationalize your kills as morally acceptable.”
“I kill demons.” My hands tremble ever so slightly as I bring them up, brushing a small leaf off Xavier’s chest that just landed on him. “Going to Asheville is stupid.”
“No, it’s not. The place has meaning to you. And now I’m curious. We’re going.”
Something tells me that once Xavier makes up his mind, there’s no getting him to change.
“Okay,” I just say and let my eyes fall shut.
My mind is too chaotic right now to get a good read on what I’m feeling, but the more I think about Maria Elena’s the more I feel a desperation to sit down in my favorite booth, feeling the worn and cracked pleather cushions on the seats beneath me.
I can almost smell it now, and my stomach grumbles at the thought of a vegetarian fajita with a heaping side of coconut rice.
“I need weapons,” I say.
“You have me,” he replies and for a second, I think he’s serious. He takes my hand and begins walking toward the house.
“You better hope we don’t run into a Wampus cat.”
“Pray tell what that is.”
“Nothing we actually have to worry about. That one is just a legend. But Wendegos…that’s another story. Though, um, speaking of demons, I have a question.”
“Go ahead and ask,” he says and go down the cobblestone path.