11
The next morning I was waiting in the diner, resting my head facedown on a Formica table. It was a good position for me and I was embracing it thoroughly when a hand skimmed lightly over my hair. I knew who it was. I’d smelled her unique scent the moment she’d opened the door to the diner. Promise.
“I thought I was the night dweller.” There was the whisper of a kiss against my jaw. “Not sleeping well, little brother?”
Apparently I was being adopted. More family who could kick my ass; love does take some curious forms. “Little?” I yawned hoarsely, straightening and rubbing the bristle I hadn’t bothered to shave. “Bigger than you.”
“Certainly you are,” she said solemnly, patting the back of my hand lightly. “Big and strong and ever so brave.”
“Yeah, that’s me all over. I got here a little early and decided to put my head down. It wasn’t as if I were napping or anything.” Yet. Belatedly I remembered to stand. She gave me a gracious smile that ignored my defensiveness, and sat in the cheap plastic chair. The diner was practically a fishbowl, the front all glass, and Promise kept on her cloak. She seemed to have an endless supply of them; I guessed all vampires did. At least all the ones that didn’t want to end up in a burn unit. This one was the same deep brown as the glossy streaks in her hair. The hood shadowed her ivory pale face, but not her eyes. Warmly glowing and heather purple, they rested on me with patient assessment.
“I hear I’m to advise you on how to win a woman’s heart without annoying the love of her life, the captain of her heart and mate of her soul.” Tiny fangs were revealed with the curve of her lips. “More precisely, her meal ticket.”
If anyone would be qualified in the subject, it would be Promise. And I didn’t mean that in a derogatory way. I had no idea what had gone on with her and her husbands—her many, many husbands—but I did know Promise well enough now to know that she would’ve been honest with them. Not honest about being a vampire, let’s be realistic. But she would’ve been honest about her emotions, about what she offered and what she expected. Although I had the feeling Promise’s expectations were high. Very high.
“Yeah, well . . .” I tried for a grin, but I could feel the humorless stretch of it. “I haven’t had much experience with girls. You know, other than trying to kill them.”
“The two aren’t as different as you might think.” She patted my hand again and picked up a menu. “Now, tell me, before we discuss the way to a succubus’s heart, do they have anything here that is as delicious as your pancakes?”
There wasn’t a hint of dimple in that smooth cheek, but the high arch of a delicate brow had me scowling suspiciously. “In your dreams,” I muttered as I reached for my own laminated list of heart attack specials. “I am the pancake king.”
There was no comment. A very tactful no comment.
After a careful study, Promise decided to go the safe route with a muffin and glass of orange juice. Coward. I ordered the bacon grease special. Bacon, eggs fried in bacon grease, and fried potatoes with bacon and onions. I took a runny yellow bite of egg and a forkful of potatoes, then ignored the rest for a cup of lethally strong and pathologically bitter coffee. Promise sipped orange juice from a squat, ugly glass, treating it as if it were the finest crystal. Blotting her lips delicately with a napkin, she encouraged, “Eat, Caliban. You’re not doing anyone any favors by starving.”
I shook my head and replied honestly, “I’m not hungry.”
“Really? That’s very interesting,” she said lightly. “Now eat.”
I couldn’t describe the tone of that last command. It was no longer cajoling or encouraging and it damn sure wasn’t a suggestion. On the other hand, I wouldn’t call it threatening, not quite, but there was definitely steel under it. Whatever it was, it made me feel simultaneously sullen, weirdly appreciative, and about thirteen years old. Pulling the plate closer, I grumbled, “Damn it, you’re pushy. Are you this pushy with Nik?”
“I thought that particular subject was one you didn’t wish to discuss.” Her eyes glittered with warm amusement.
Oh, man. I glared at her as I ate a piece of bacon. I hadn’t been hungry—that had been the truth—but once I started shoveling it down, my appetite woke up fast. I buttered a biscuit and ate it in two bites before mumbling, “So, what about that crown?”
“So, how about those Yankees?” She shook her head and smiled. “Master of the conversational segue, I bow before you.” She didn’t wait on a response. It was a good thing because other than an egg-choked snarl, I didn’t have one. “There wasn’t much that I could discover. Apparently the crown is so ancient that it has been mostly forgotten. I was able to match the description we received from Caleb, although I was unable to discover its origin. The crown is actually one of a paired set and they were called, I believe, the Calabassa. At one time both were highly sought after. But that was thousands upon thousands of years ago. They’ve apparently been long separated, and in this time, few have heard of them, no one knows what they do, and no one particularly wants them, together or apart.”
“Except Caleb.” My lips thinned and I stabbed a chunk of ketchup-covered potato with unnecessary force and malevolence.
“Yes, except for him.” Copper-colored nails passed over the muffin she held in her hand. “And Cerberus. He has it, does he not? If it has a function, he may know what it is. Then again, the onyx and rose gold it’s made of, while not overly valuable, might make an interesting bauble. He may have it as a plaything for his mistress with no idea it could be more.”
And we knew it had to be more. All this for some cheap trinket? No. Caleb was a ruthless and amoral son of a bitch, but he wasn’t stupid. After all, he’d gotten the better of us . . . for the moment. This time, I really was finished with breakfast. I dropped my fork on top of the food, and Promise didn’t try to push any further. I suppose she recognizes an angst-ridden snit when she sees one, I thought as I abruptly shoved away from the table. “I’ll be right back.”
In a diner, a nice bathroom wasn’t precisely like winning the lottery, but it was close. As the door opened, I grimaced. Still a loser, all the way around. It wasn’t dirty, simply gray and bleak and smelling strongly of Lysol. It matched the rest of the eatery. I was surprised Promise had picked a place like this to meet. The entire joint wasn’t as big as the living room of her apartment. And the bathroom? Hell, she probably had makeup cases bigger than this. It was a few steps down from a penthouse on the Upper East Side, no doubt about it. I closed the door behind me and took a cold, calculating look around. Something had to go. There was no way around it. Garbage can, empty paper-towel dispenser, the mirror . . . the goddamn gleefully, horrifically bright mirror. I automatically averted my eyes and stood with impotently clenched fists. I shook minutely as the rage inside struggled for release. It wanted out.
And it wanted out now.
When I finally returned to my chair nearly ten minutes later, Promise tilted her head and asked with resignation, “Can the damage be covered in cash or do I need to write a check?”
“Neither.” I picked up the coffee mug and drained it. “I was a good boy.” Not that it hadn’t been close; it had been . . . right down to the wire. But just before my fist would’ve hit the mirror, I changed my mind. I wanted to save my rage, every molecule of it. It was all for Caleb. I wasn’t going to deprive the bastard of that, and I wasn’t going to deprive myself. Reaching into my pocket, I fished out a tie and pulled back my hair. “You know, I was wondering,” I said, once again master of the segue, “why this place? Why’d you want to meet here? It’s kind of . . .” I let the words trail off as I took another look around. There were overweight waitresses with straggling hair and spider vein legs, and a cook with a shaved head and homemade tattoos who slouched behind the counter with a toothpick between his thick lips and a floor so coated by grease fumes that it was as slick as an ice rink.
“Dingy, unsanitary, cheap?” she filled in archly.
“Not you,” I temp
orized with a tact I didn’t know I had in me.
“I think you might be surprised.” She popped a cranberry from the muffin into her mouth and crushed it between white, white teeth. “This is a palace in comparison.”
“In comparison to what?” I asked with genuine curiosity. All I knew about Promise was the here and now. Her history, her past . . . it was a mystery.
Her hands began to pink in the spill of sun reflecting on our table, and she quickly tucked them back under her cloak. “To where I was born.” Her face was as smooth as always, but beneath that, I thought I saw an almost imperceptible tightening.
I couldn’t remember precisely when I found out vampires were born and not made, how old I was. I thought it was our first year on the run. Maybe. Part of that time was a little fuzzy. Two years in the tender loving care of the Auphe will do that to a person. I hadn’t remembered any of those two years when I’d returned, still didn’t, not consciously anyway. But it was clear that in the muck and slime beneath the conscious, something had lingered. For months after I’d reappeared, I’d slept under the bed, a tightly wedged fetal ball with a knife in hand and nightmares that were never remembered in the light of day.
Sixteen then. I would’ve been sixteen when we ran across the vampire children in the park. They were playing beneath a midnight sky. Running, jumping, laughing, they were just like human kids, except they were faster. And they could jump higher. Flat-footed they would leap into the branches of a tree, swing, and giggle. They were cute . . . bows, barrettes, and tiny baby fangs. It could’ve been a scene from one of those creepy horror novels with all the velvet, homo-erotic vampire nooky, and tormented vampire children who could never grow any older. And for a second I’d actually bought into that. Sickened, I’d stood beside Niko and waited for them to drop out of the tree and drain some night jogger dry.
Then we saw their mother.
Or maybe it was their nanny, babysitter . . . Who knew? There were quite a few kids, and as long as vampires lived, I couldn’t believe they’d breed that fast. Whoever it was, she was pregnant. A pregnant vampire, elegant in white maternity wear—no black velvet for her. With glossy blond hair coiled on her head and large, dark eyes, she was the picture of contentment and impending motherhood. That is, until she saw us. Hormones—it was the same for pregnant humans and pregnant vampires. Cranky, cranky, cranky. She must’ve sensed we were different from the average park goer, whether it was the Auphe in me or the hunter in Niko. We ran. What else were we going to do? Stake a mom-to-be? As options went, it wasn’t so hot. To sum it all up, vampires reproduce, not recruit, and pregnant vampires can still run pretty damn fast.
Live and learn.
“Where were you born?” The waitress refilled my cup with more coffee-flavored sludge. I dumped three sugar packets in it and waited for it to cool. Caffeine and sugar, they were my new best friends.
“Seven hundred years from here,” she said obliquely before giving me the shadow of a smile. “I’m an older woman. Don’t tell your brother.”
I was sure he already knew. I was sure he knew more about Promise than I would ever know. “You know Nik,” I offered, curling up one side of my mouth. “He’s mature for his age. A geezer on the inside.” I rolled the mug between my palms. “Seven hundred years, huh? That means you used to . . . you know. . . .” Lifting my upper lip, I bared nonexistent fangs.
“Yes,” she replied simply. “I once did.”
From the nineteen hundreds on, most vampires discovered a different way to live. That was a story I’d already heard from Promise. They had discovered what drove the vampire thirst for blood, and it wasn’t that different from a human condition known as porphyria, which caused a sensitivity to light and a less proved craving for blood. Some vampires even thought they and humans might share a common primitive ancestor. A genetic mutation had occurred, a species had split, and voilà: Humans clubbed their prey by day to eat the flesh, and vampires clubbed their prey by night to eat the flesh and drink its blood. After some time that blood didn’t satisfy the physiological need. It was too different from their own. Who did that leave? Yep, you bet. That’s when the humans became the prey. Hey, no hard feelings. It’s just biology. The mammoth in his boneyard no doubt laughed his woolly ass off. After all, turnabout is fair play.
But science does march on. For the better part of the last hundred years, the majority of vampires depended on massive doses of iron and other chemical supplements to fill the need for blood. That wasn’t to say some didn’t still indulge. Blood became like alcohol, not needed for survival, but a pleasurable vice nonetheless. Of course, there are always psychos . . . in every species, in every walk of life. The vampire ones needed the kill more than they needed the blood. But that was the psychos. Still, you couldn’t escape the fact that any vampire over a hundred years old had once drunk blood. Human blood.
But that had been a hundred years ago for Promise, and I was all out of stones in my roomy glass condo.
“Seven hundred years, huh?” I drawled. “No wonder you’re so short.” It was an exaggeration. The top of her head reached Niko’s chin, which put her at about five six. It wasn’t tall by any means, but it wasn’t short either . . . quite.
“I’ll have you know I was an amazon in the old days, a veritable giant,” she said with mock outrage. Then she rested her fingers lightly on the back of my wrist and went on to say softly, “Thank you.” She didn’t have to elaborate. I knew why she was thanking me.
“I’m a lot of things, Princess.” A lot of nasty, nasty things. “But a hypocrite is not one of them.”
An emotion, so fleeting that it was impossible to identify, shimmered behind her eyes and then was gone. “No, never that,” she responded sadly. Straightening in her chair, she moved on briskly. “Now, let us plan a little romantic strategy for seducing your succubus.”
“Flowers and candy?” I said with a grimace.
“Oh, Caliban.” Eyes bright with humor, she shook her head. “The only use a succubus would have for flowers is to lay them on your grave.”
Sounded about par for the course.
It was hours later when I realized Promise hadn’t gotten around to telling me where she was born, the place that made that diner look like a palace. Unintentional oversight? Doubtful. Promise wasn’t the type for unintentional anything. Always careful, always discreet, every action analyzed before it was performed . . . every word considered before it was said.
It was too bad that this time her carefully considered words hadn’t done me a damn bit of good.
Goodfellow’s weight settled next to me on the park bench as his long legs stretched out to bask in the nonexistent sun. “You rang?”
Oh, I’d rung all right. Pride, dignity . . . I’d flushed it all down the toilet and sent out a big fat SOS. I wasn’t big on asking for help, yet here I was. For the first nineteen years of my life, Niko had been the only one I’d turned to. Then we had met Robin, a stranger, who oddly enough wanted to help us. That was a first. It had only taken him risking his life a few times before I actually believed it. And even when I’d believed it, I’d remained reluctant to accept it. A year later it was still difficult for me . . . admitting I needed someone besides my brother. Lifelong habits, they die hard, don’t they? Shifting my weight, I tapped irritable fingers on the wrought-iron armrest before admitting reluctantly, “I need some help.”
“I gathered that.” With hands locked behind his head and eyes hidden behind sunglasses, he clucked a smug tongue. “My expertise in all matters is legendary. Many worship at the altar of my brilliance and who can blame them?”
Yeah, this was improving my headache. I closed my eyes and knuckled my forehead for a few seconds. “Brilliance. Worship. Gotcha. Now how about we get down to business?”
“Aren’t we especially cranky today? And after I took a bolt in the leg for you too.” Sighing, he sat up and waved an imperious hand. “What do you need, ungrateful supplicant?”
I ignored that little rew
riting of history and focused on the matter at hand. The humiliating matter at hand. “It’s the succubus.”
That perked him up. “Today was the day, then? Niko mentioned this morning that you were going to pump her for information.” Eyebrows rose suggestively. “So very unselfish of you, throwing yourself on the grenade like that. What nobility, what fortitude.” He gave a lecherous smirk. “Tell me all the filthy, filthy details.”
Details. He wanted details. I looked up at the sky. It had been clear earlier; now it was a morose gray. I wondered if the sun was disappearing along with George. Gunmetal gray and heavy with heat, the clouds hung low . . . almost as low as I was hanging right then. Finally, I turned back to Goodfellow with a scowl. “I taste bad,” I gritted between clenched teeth. “There’s your detail. I taste bad. Happy?”
Mobile lips twitched with surprise and something less flattering. Slipping off the sunglasses, he looked at me with suspicious blandness. “You taste . . . bad.” He rolled the statement over his tongue and repeated, “Taste bad.”
I was glad he was so fucking entertained by this. “Yeah, taste bad,” I snapped. “But, hey, that’s okay because the snake sex is not me.” I suppressed the shudder before it made it to the surface. The tongue had been bad enough, forked and slick and cold. Ice-cold. Bad enough all right, so much so that I had absolutely no desire to know what lurked under her clothes . . . what little of them there were. I’d gone in with no idea how far I would go. I did know how far I couldn’t go. I wasn’t willing to risk birthing another Auphe/human mix, and I damn sure didn’t think an Auphe/succubus/human mix would be any better. I didn’t know if it could happen or not, but it was one lottery I wasn’t going to play. But thanks to my genes, push hadn’t come to shove on the carpet of the warehouse office. For George’s sake, I shouldn’t have been relieved, but, goddamn it . . . I was. This time the shudder did surface as a twitch in my shoulders. “Very much not me.”