Chapter Seventeen
I didn’t recall dreaming or having any awareness of my surroundings after Stark did the ungentlemanly thing for the fiftieth time by disregarding my right to…not be controlled by him! Dang it! But when I heard him speak the magic word, “Wake,” the lights flipped back on in my head. My rage, too.
I catapulted upright in an elevated bed, eyes wide and teeth gritted. Hot adrenaline pumped through my veins like lava with a vengeance. “You fucking backward pile of shit!”
“My goodness, Masie. What would your mamma say?” A shirtless Stark chuckled, casually manspreading in a black leather armchair a few feet away.
The single lightbulb dangling above us cast an ominous shadow over his face—cheekbones, brows, and muscled jaw—along with the contours of his bare chest. He looked like a dark lord sitting in his throne, waiting for a virginal sacrifice.
Luckily for me, I wasn’t a virgin. (Sorry, Mamma.)
My eyes quickly scanned the room for an escape route. Stark’s chair blocked the only exit, and the walls were covered in black satin, button-tuft upholstery.
“Your scream-proof waking chamber?” I assumed that was where we were and that I’d been asleep for hours while Stark had waited out the sunlight to get me here. What had he been up to all those hours in the warehouse? Probably drank all our whiskey.
“This room is well insulated, yes; however, my waking chamber is—shall I say?—much more stain resistant.”
Ew. “Then this must be one of your kinky sex rooms.” I’d told him never to bring me here. “Is it the his or hers?”
“Depends on who’s enjoying themselves.” He leaned forward, threading his fingers together, resting his elbows on his knees. “Who told you about the waking chambers?”
I was not about to rat out Teri. “My-my…new vampire boyfriend told me,” I lied.
He scoffed. “Masie, you are many things, but a great liar you are not.”
“That’s the thing about great liars, you never really know when they’re lying. Isn’t that right, Stark?”
He shrugged, as if nothing I said had meaning. Probably because it didn’t.
“Well,” I sighed, “might as well spill the chili beans. Why am I here?”
He stared coolly. No reply.
“At least you had the decency to remove the toys.” I’d never seen the collection, but Stark had mentioned it once, when he’d first wanted to prove I was Anna reincarnated.
She had been a prolific journaler, and that included documenting her kinks with vampires, humans, and marble phallic items from her private collection. To each her own.
Anyway, Stark, in his infinite wisdom, had thought if I entered one of his two sex rooms and picked out Anna’s five favorite cooter gadgets, it would prove I was her.
Like a lady, I’d declined to participate, though it hadn’t helped.
My resistance was exactly what Anna would have done, according to him.
Sometimes people see what they want to see. Like the time old Burt, our local junkyard man, saw the image of Neil Diamond shaking hands with Jesus in a bucket of rusty screws. He’d charged fifty cents to take a look, and I couldn’t resist queueing up like everyone else in town.
Just a bunch of rusty screws, in my opinion. But all around me, people had been crying and falling to their knees after looking at the same thing. Years later, I began to wonder if what they’d seen was real—I just couldn’t see it.
Point was, sometimes people saw what they wanted to see. Other times, they couldn’t see things they weren’t ready for.
Me? I hadn’t been ready to accept that my plan to sit behind my computer, screaming to the world that we were all in trouble, wasn’t enough.
Telling the truth wouldn’t make the problem go away.
In fact, things had gotten worse. Charlie was dead.
Congress would pass a bill to give vampires the tools they needed to take over.
No one was coming to save us. And I’m trapped in a sex dungeon.
I’d played this whole thing wrong. That included getting involved with Stark when, deep down inside, I knew what he was.
But why had I been so resistant to face what had been staring right at me?
After a long moment of chewing on the factual cud of my choices, I decided that if I had any chance of turning this apocalyptic boat around, I had to begin facing the truth—about me, my situation, and the fact that it would take a miracle to stop the fanged wheels already in motion.
“I don’t know why you brought me here, or what you plan to do to me,” I said, “but I want you to know that…I did…love you. More than anything I’ve ever loved in my entire life besides my family. Maybe I still do in a way.”
“Then why couldn’t you stand by my side?
” he asked acerbically. “Now we have humans hunting vampires, vampires pre-emptively stockpiling humans, and our coven leaders disappearing, creating a power vacuum. No one knows whom to negotiate with or align to. It’s every vampire for themselves. Complete chaos.
“Add to this, your lawmakers being hours away from passing the Repurposed People Act, and you have a mess beyond anyone’s control.” He shook his head. “We could have stopped this together. But nooo. You had to push and fight. Why couldn’t you trust me, Masie?”
“Why couldn’t you be trustworthy?” I threw back.
He gazed past the shiny satin walls. “I am not…accustomed to placing my fate in the hands of others.”
“Then what did you expect to happen? No trust. No truth. No transparency. Our relationship never stood a chance.” Also, you’re evil as fuck. He was great at sex, though, so I’d give him that.
He nodded pensively. “Perhaps I see that now.”
I slid from the bed and kneeled in front of him on the cold concrete floor. A tiny piece of my heart hoped he could change—that it wasn’t too late. If we just put our heads together, maybe we can stop what’s coming.
But could I trust him one last time?
Would he ever be honest with me? Everything I loved was on the line. Also, soundproof sex room. Not a great place to be.
I took his hands, preparing to test him. If he passed, maybe I could trust him just enough to tell the truth about kissing Charlie.
“Why did you really save me that night at the Rooster?” I asked.
He’d claimed he came across my scent, and it had reminded him of Anna.
But I already knew there was more to the story.
Stark and my uncle were already good friends when he’d turned my father over twelve years ago.
Stark had to have seen me or caught my scent before that night.
Stark slid his hands from mine, his moss-green eyes intense. “Passion.”
“I don’t get what—”
“Anna had passion. In five hundred years, I have never encountered so much fire in a living being. She was like…” he paused, searching for words, “Earth’s magnetic force, but grander.
Unbendable. When she wanted something, the universe bowed to her.
” He pressed a hand to his heart. “I wept in Anna’s presence the first time we met, as did every vampire fortunate enough to be looked upon by her. ”
Who knew vampires could be such crybabies?
Stark drew a long breath and continued, “Anna could gaze into a person’s very soul and ignite the same fire she held within her.
It was why, when she told us we could rise above our savage tendencies to become something greater than mere animals, many believed her.
Even I began to question my separatist beliefs.
And when the voices of her skeptics grew too loud to ignore, too angered by a human telling them what they could or could not be, she gave up her humanity.
All to show vampires the potential within our souls, not our immortal bodies.
” Stark shook his head slowly, as if coveting her memory.
“I disagreed with her about coexistence, but I can admit that she transformed us with her passion, like a goddess with a divine spark.”
I got up and sat on the edge of the bed, pushing my hair from my face.
His raw words explained why so many years later, vampires still worshipped her.
“I understand she was special, but why did you come into the Flaming Rooster that night?” Tell the truth.
For once in your life! My stomach rolled with a mixture of hope and dread.
“I had been watching you for a long time,” he confessed. “Since you moved to town.”
I’d been fifteen when we came here from Kentucky. “Why?” Because a vampire spying on a teenage girl? Super inappropriate. He’d better have a good explanation.
“One evening, you were leaving the Flaming Rooster, and your sister said something mean to you. Your ass was too fat and pumpkin-like, I believe. When she turned her head, you spit in her hair.”
I didn’t remember doing that, but it tracked. Sometimes, Maybell could be a bitch, and I enjoyed dishing back.
He added, “It made me laugh for the first time in centuries—the way you put on airs of innocence. Meanwhile, a large, goopy glob was sliding down the back of her head.”
I made a sour face. “So you started stalking me because I spit on Maybell?”
“Over the next several days, I would come find you, searching for a bit of amusement. Without fail, you were always up to something mischievous.”
My mouth dropped. “I was not.”
“One evening, I witnessed you hide your mother’s undergarments from the clothesline, in a bush. She spent days searching for them, yelling to your entire family, ‘Where are my panties?’”
I remembered that. I thought it would be funny to make her go commando for a week. “I was just a kid.”