Chapter Twenty-Three
There isn’t much in the world that can’t be cured by music. At least I’d always thought so. But that night no number of dancers leaping about in tights to a marginally talented orchestra could drag me out of the funk I’d sunk into. Oh sure, my toes still tapped to the allegro bits, but the slower numbers made me want to cry. If my date noticed, he didn’t say so until we were back in the limo again, on the way to his hotel.
“You seem subdued tonight, milaya,” he observed aloud, his hand covering mine.
“I’m sorry, Aleksandr,” I squeezed his hand back. “It’s been one of those days, so to speak. I’m sorry if I ruined your evening.”
“Not at all. Don’t worry though, I have something I believe will put a smile on your face.”
“Oh? Like what?” I asked, but he wouldn’t say anything more about it until we got to his place. The gray suits were back in place again, conducting their own synchronized ballet of servitude as we were escorted into the luxurious penthouse suite. Kursik went straight to a side table where a bottle of champagne sat chilling. There was no sign of the big bodyguard Booth, but I had no doubt he’d come running at the first hint of danger to his boss. Almost as if he was reading my mind, Aleksandr turned to me, a cautious expression on his face.
“You aren’t expecting a visit from Bishop tonight, are you?” he hesitated, glass in hand.
“No, I don’t think I’ll be seeing him again for a while.”
“Have you found another place to live then? I was surprised to find you still sharing a residence with him, given your conflicts of late.”
“I’m currently considering my options,” I hedged, accepting the tall glass and sipping politely.
“If I may urge a little patience, he might be relocating soon enough, then you have no need to leave your home,” he winked, raising his glass to me before he drank.
“Relocating? He didn’t say anything to me about that.”
“It hasn’t been finalized yet, but I have reason to believe your troublesome brother will be out of our hair for quite some time.” There was no mistaking the satisfaction in his voice with that statement.
Did he mean that he’d had a hand in sending Bishop away? Or was that another reason why Bishop hadn’t wanted to start anything with me? Had he known he was leaving town soon? Why hadn’t he said as much?
“Now then,” he said, gesturing for me to take a seat on the couch beside him. I took my place at his side, and he immediately closed the distance between us, his thigh pressed to mine. “To getting to know each other better,” he proposed.
“The better to know you,” I agreed, lifting my glass. This time I was prepared for him, I knew my bio backwards and forwards, but Aleksandr didn’t seem interested in my past.
“I was thinking…” His fingers reached from the back of the couch to stroke the edge of my shoulder in the lightest caress.
“Yes?”
“That we could be of mutual benefit to each other.”
“Mutual benefit?” I wondered if he was going to suggest I become his mistress or something. I’m sure there would be all manner of benefits socially and politically, but I wasn’t sure if I was ready to get into bed with him, if you’ll pardon the expression.
Aleksandr continued his caress, fingers exploring the curve of my shoulder, across the back of my neck, to rest on my other shoulder. “Yes, if we align our interests, there’s nothing we might not conquer on the west coast.” A light of avarice shone from his eyes and I realized we were thinking about two different things.
“Oh, you mean business.” Lord, he must think I had quite a portfolio. How did vampires make their money? It seemed like they never had to worry about it much, and I made a mental note to ask Bishop about it. “Sorry, I thought you were referring to something else,” I admitted sheepishly.
“They aren’t mutually exclusive, are they?” He pressed a kiss to my shoulder and I had to force myself to relax.
“Ah no, I suppose not. I was always taught not to mix business with pleasure, or at least, that’s the old adage. My mother never really broached the subject of pleasure with me or business really, I guess it’s more of a guideline than a rule. But um…” shut up Anja, shut… up! I was babbling, unable to stop as he pressed another kiss to my shoulder, neck, jaw… until he covered my lips with his, stemming the nervous flow of words as he took possession of my mouth in a deep kiss.
I tried, I really did. But as sexy as Aleksandr was in a rakish sort of way, it wasn’t what I wanted. He wasn’t what I wanted. “I’m sorry, I don’t think this is such a good idea after all,” I apologized, breaking the kiss.
“Surely you don’t tease…” There was a hint of coiled anger in his tone, and I scooted farther away from him, not liking the direction things were going one bit.
“Well no, I… that is, I think maybe we’re moving a little fast is all.”
Quick like a snake, his hands encircled my wrists, holding me fast. “I am accustomed to getting what I want.”
“Let me go,” I wriggled against his hold but didn’t gain a centimeter. I knew he was older, but I hadn’t expected him to be that much stronger than I was.
“How prettily you protest,” he chuckled, shifting both my wrists to one hand to leave the other free to explore and conquer. Had I thought he was sexy? God, how could I have been so stupid? Bishop had warned me and now this was my own fault.
“Stop it… I don’t want this.”
“No worries, milaya, I know your game. I wonder, will you taste as sweet as the scent of your fear?” I felt the sting of his teeth at my throat in the same instant he reached inside my bodice and I screamed.
“I said, no!”
All at once the door burst open from the terrace and I felt Aleksandr lifted bodily into the air and thrown across the room. Oh no, not again…! Not that I wasn’t grateful for Bishop’s interference, far from it, but he’d said so himself - Kursik was a dangerous man, and now he’d made an enemy because of me.
“I’ll have him flayed alive,” Aleksandr muttered darkly, picking himself up.
“Please, Aleksandr, he’s just trying to protect me.” I started to put myself between them before it erupted into an all out fight. As I scrambled to my feet, I saw it wasn’t Bishop at all, but a complete stranger standing over his body.
No, not a complete stranger…
As he turned, I saw those same blue eyes and flowing blonde hair that caught my attention from across the auditorium that night. “You…” I gasped, frozen in place.
No sign of recognition lessened Aleksandr’s rage as he picked himself up. “I don’t know who you are, but let me assure you, this will be the last mistake you make. Booth!”
My savior seemed unconcerned with the threat, his eyes never leaving mine. The hint of a smile curved his lips. “One moment, petal,” he promised, stopping Aleksandr’s charge one handed without even looking. Booth appeared, guns drawn, but before he could squeeze off a single shot, he’d been disarmed in a blur of motion too fast for my eyes to track. As I stared in horror, Booth sank down to his knees, a look of shock mirrored on his face as he keeled over, a gaping hole where his heart used to be. While we watched, his skin darkened, turning a mottled purple as he started to decompose.
“Who are you?” Kursik demanded, still sounding a little too uppity in my books and obviously to the newcomer’s thinking as well.
In one swift movement, he had Kursik down on his back, easily holding him down without breaking a sweat. “I do not judge you because you infringed upon my property, as I have not publicly claimed her, in that I have no quarrel with you. I judge you because you attempted to soil this delicate flower with violence, and that I can not abide.” His voice was deep and rich, in perfect English with an odd cadence I couldn’t quite place. He commanded our attention as though we were his subjects, but he wasn’t dressed in a kingly fashion.
His faded blue jeans and long sleeved shirt had obviously seen plenty of wear, but they were scrupulously clean, except for the new spatter of blood from Booth’s chest wound. Pale blonde hair fell past the tops of his shoulders, giving him a slightly wild look, as if the bloody hand wasn’t enough. He scared me to death, but at the same time I couldn’t look away. He was magnificent.
Aleksandr was definitely having second thoughts about his earlier threats. “Master… please, I did not know she was yours. I thought...”
“Think again.” Slowly… far too slowly, he reached into Kursik’s chest, grabbing hold of his heart, he squeezed. Kursik gave a strangled cry and I sank to my knees beside him.
“No… you can’t just kill him!” Nevermind the fact that the guy had attacked me not two minutes before, I couldn’t stand to see the torturous death Kursik was subjected to because of me. My hands chased his away from the wound, knowing that he only budged because he’d decided to, not because I had the strength to stop him doing anything he wanted to do. I pressed my hands to Aleksandr’s chest, knowing it was too late, there wasn’t anything to be done. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…” I breathed as he started to decompose, his body turning to little more than ash in seconds, the moment the spark of life left his body.
“Why do you weep for this vermin?” He frowned down at me. “He would have taken far more than you were willing to give had I not intervened.”
“I know,” I sniffed, looking down at my bloodstained hands. “But he didn’t deserve to die like that.” No one did. At least Booth’s death had been quick. A glance showed he was still mostly intact, slowly decomposing.
“Enough,” he reached down to pull me to my feet. “We must be off.”
“You’re him, aren’t you? My Sire,” I blinked.
“Guilty as charged,” he sketched a half bow. “And now you must take your place by my side, as is your right.”
“By your side… I don’t even know you.”
“Don’t you?” he smiled, his eyes sweeping over my body in an overly familiar way and I was reminded that he’d stripped me and dressed me in Viking clothing on the night he’d turned me.
Killed me.
“I’m not going anywhere with you. Who do you think you are, anyway? You show up after ruining my life…”
“I gave you eternal life, it seemed a fair trade at the time.”
“You left me to figure out what’s going on all by myself without even the tiniest of instructions! I had no idea I was even a vampire until I tried to eat my best friend!”
“All due to circumstances completely out of my control. Now, leave off being cross with me, we have much to discuss and this is not the place to do it.”
“You want me to go with you?” I couldn’t help but hesitate. Though I felt a definite pull to him, I wasn’t sure I was ready to leave everything behind to cater to his master plan.
“All I want is to take care of you. Come with me and you will want for nothing. You have all eternity to ask me your endless questions.” A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth and I was struck by the fact that he must have watched me for a while to know about my tendency to ask questions. The idea unsettled me, despite my need for answers. Even if I did need someone to guide me through the vampire world, somehow I knew that if I left with him, Anja Evans would cease to exist.
Still, I had so many questions! “How about we slow this down a minute? Why don’t you let me get cleaned up and we can talk?” I proposed.
“I would like nothing better, but we really must leave now, petal.” His hand stretched out towards me, the same bloody hand that had gone through Aleksandr’s chest. My Sire didn’t seem to notice, or think I’d care, and that alone kept me from taking his hand without another thought.
A crash sounded from the hallway drawing our attention. Right on cue, Bishop strode in, the look of righteous indignation fading as he beheld the state of the room.
“Hello, Ulrik,” my Sire greeted him coolly, and Bishop froze, his face a mask of shock.
“Jakob…” he hissed, eyes narrowing to slits.
“Ulrik?” I turned to Bishop, but he wasn’t looking at me, his every muscle tensed and ready to spring.
“I will come for you, beloved,” Jakob pledged, but by the time I turned to look back at him, he was gone.
“No, wait!” I yelled, I had no way to contact him! Just because I wasn’t ready to run away with him and become his property didn’t mean I didn’t want to talk to him or get to know why he’d done what he did to me. But he was long gone. Another chance ruined because Bishop couldn’t stay away, despite his continued protests that he was done with me.
“Damn it, Bishop, what are you doing here?” I demanded, hands clenching into fists as I took out my frustration on him. He didn’t even bother to look at me, his eyes still trained on the terrace door Jakob disappeared through. “Did you hear me? You can’t keep doing this to me!”
One of the gray suits stumbled into the room, blanching as he took in the carnage. Kursik was little more than a pile of sooty ash, and Booth had started to collapse in on himself, the hole where his heart used to be black and gaping. Belatedly I wondered if I was standing in the middle of a crime scene, or if it would all be swept under the rug (especially since you could now vacuum up what was left of Aleksandr, and Booth was well on his way to joining him).
“Bishop?”
“You.” Ignoring me, he snapped his fingers at Kursik’s servant. “Secure the premises, no one else in or out.”
“At once,” he nodded, desperate to leave the room. I heard shouted orders echoing down the halls after that, and I wondered if I would get to meet more of the Order now, since it definitely started to feel like a crime scene.
“What’s going on? Did you know him? Why did he call you Ulrik?” I asked in a low voice.
“Not now,” Bishop muttered, his fingers flying over his phone.
“What do you mean not now? What’s going on? Am I under arrest or what?”
Brows drawing together into a single dark line, Bishop seemed to see me for the first time, taking in my disheveled state, the drying blood all over my hands. “Clean yourself up, I’ll try to keep your name out of it as much as I can. Your best bet is to pretend you didn’t see what happened.”
“Keep my name out of it… but I’m in the middle of it, and I have a right to know what’s going on,” I insisted, not liking the tone of voice he used with me - as if I was guilty of something and he was angry for having to clean my mess up.
“I said get washed up, there isn’t much time,” he hissed, grabbing me by the elbow, he walked me over to the wet bar and thrust my hands under the spigot.
“Hey, I didn’t do anything wrong,” I muttered, scrubbing at my hands. “Besides, it’s not like they won’t find traces of blood in the sink. And what about the guard? He saw me here with blood all over my hands. Why can’t we just tell the truth?”
“Because this isn’t about you. Not anymore.”
“Not about me? How can you say that? Aleksandr practically mauled me and now he’s dead. Booth? Dead because of me. That Jakob as you called him, he came for me, called me his property. You expect me to believe you came charging in here because you didn’t think it was about me?”
“I do have other concerns besides you, you know,” he scowled. That was it, the last straw. I’d just met my elusive Sire for the first time and been abandoned by him again in the space of a few minutes, nearly been raped or worse by Kursik, and seen him killed in front of me, and Bishop didn’t care at all!
“Fine. Then you worry about your concerns, I’m out of here.” I could care less that he’d given instructions that no one should be let in or out of the penthouse, I stormed out. The look on my face was thunderous as I approached the door, expecting an argument, but the two suits stepped aside, bowing low. The stony expression remained on my face until I got all
the way to the lobby and out the front exit, only crumpling into tears as I realized I wasn’t sure where to go.
It didn’t seem right to go home, not in the mood I was in. I started walking, having no particular destination in mind. After a while I found myself in a completely unfamiliar part of town. I could hear the cry of gulls nearby and smell the brine of the sea, but all I saw was ugly, run down buildings.
At the time I didn’t care if I looked hopelessly out of place, alone in my ruined gown on the darkened streets of San Francisco, or if Jakob was nearby, waiting for a chance to swoop down and steal me away again. All I knew was that Bishop had hurt me far worse than Kursik had for the second time that night. So you can understand why I didn’t slow down when I heard him behind me.
“Anja… wait up.”
I pretended like I didn’t hear him, the click of my heels accelerating as I hurried on ahead, as if I had a destination in mind.
“Anja… I’m sorry.” His voice sounded closer. “Can you stop for a minute? We should talk.” I swiped at my eyes, steeling myself before I turned around to see him loping up behind me, his features etched with worry. “Are you alright?”
Oh sure, now he was concerned. “Could you not be nice to me right now? Because I’m trying to decide if I can hate you and it’s mixing me all up.” It was such a polar opposite to how he’d acted in the hotel room, I started to wonder if he suffered from schizophrenia or if he secretly had an evil twin.
“Are you alright?” Bishop repeated, his hands lightly clasping my arms.
“No. I’m really not. On an epic scale. You chase off my Sire just as I’m finally getting some answers and then turn around and act like I’m the bad guy. How could you do that to me?”
“It’s my job.”
“What is? Following me night and day? I don’t need you riding to the rescue.” Okay, so maybe I had needed help with Kursik, but I started to believe Bishop wasn’t following me to protect me from him, he’d been trying to catch my Sire. I was a means to an end, nothing more.
“Then stop getting into such stupid situations,” he growled, getting angry again.
“Why do you even care? You know what I think? I think you’re so screwed up inside, so miserable, that you need to fill your life up with parts of mine, because then you can convince yourself that you have a purpose,” I shot back at him.
“I have a purpose, I have the Order.”
“You can’t blame this on the Order, they didn’t ask you to give up your whole life.”
“You have no idea what I’ve given up.” His eyes blazed green fire, his hands tightening around my arms painfully, but I didn’t flinch or pull away.
“What about Mason? He doesn’t live like a monk,” I challenged.
“Mason’s still wet behind the ears, he’s only been dead for thirty years. Have him come back in two hundred and tell me if he’s still scamming on girls.”
“Alright then, what purpose was there in pulling me out of there?”
“Because I didn’t want to see you get hurt, is that so hard to understand?”
“Don’t pretend you care about me,” I laughed on the edge of a sob. “I know why you were really there. This is all about that Jakob guy, isn’t it? I saw your face when you finally laid eyes on him. You don’t give a damn about me, I’m nothing but bait to you. I’m…”
All of a sudden his mouth crashed against mine as he silenced me with a deep kiss, arms wrapping around my waist as he pulled me close. After half a second I recovered enough to kiss him back. Scared to death it might end at any moment, I wrapped my arms around his neck, but he gave no sign of letting me go. Instead, he walked me back towards the nearest building, pressing me up against the cool concrete bricks. What was it about us and kissing up against buildings? Not that I was complaining…
All too soon, the kiss ended, but Bishop made no move to pull away. To my surprise, he didn’t look at all conflicted about having kissed me in the first place. I was too afraid to say anything for fear of breaking the magic spell between us and sending us back to another argument. Or worse, send him pulling away from me again. It was Bishop who spoke first, fingers lightly tracing the shell of my ear. “It’s partly about him, yes,” he admitted.
“Who is he?”
“His name is Jakob, and he sired Carys. I should have thought of it before, only I… we all thought he was dead.”
He’d sired Bishop’s Sire? That sounded horribly convoluted in a sick kind of way. “Does that make us cousins or something?” Better than brother and sister, but still…
“No, it doesn’t work like that, that’s not the part that troubles me.”
“What troubles you then?”
“He’s an Ellri, which means if he comes for you again, I won’t be able to do anything to stop him.”
Which meant I was probably about to be dumped again before we really got things started. Before I could open my mouth to ask anything else Bishop plied me with another slow, drugging kiss.
It didn’t have the same desperate heat of the blood-fueled kiss, but it was all that much sweeter for knowing there wasn’t anything behind it, except that he wanted to kiss me. At least I hoped so. As the kiss drew to a close, I gathered my courage around me like a shield, my eyes pleading with him to be honest with me for once.
“Tell me that wasn’t about blood or making anyone jealous or anything to do with your job.”
“No, that most definitely wasn’t anything to do with the Order,” he smiled, teeth scraping over his bottom lip as he looked down at me. “What am I going to do with you?” he sighed, thumb brushing over the corner of my mouth.
Chasing after his thumb, I drew it into my mouth, tongue swirling over the rough pad of his thumb. “I can think of a few things,” I replied, my voice hoarse after hearing his little groan of desire.
“You make me forget everything I am.” Bishop’s anguish twisted my heart as he traced the curves of my face, and I caught hold of his hand, pressing it to my cheek.
“Maybe that means its time for you to be more?”
“I can’t lay claim to you, not now.”
“Maybe I don’t want to be claimed by anyone, did you ever think of that?”
“Anja…”
“I know, it’s more complicated than that. But I don’t care if this guy is as old as dirt, I’m not going to fawn all over him just because he crooks his finger. Am I curious about him? Yes. Do I want to learn more about him and why he chose me? Yes. But I’m not ready to be anybody’s property.” I didn’t care how dreamy his smile was.
“I’ll help you find him if that’s what you want. It’ll be harder if he doesn’t want to be found, but now that we know who we’re looking for, I think I can manage it.”
“Thank you, I appreciate that a lot. But just to be absolutely clear, he’s not the one I want.”
“Are you sure? The bond between Sire and progeny is not to be taken lightly.”
I thought back to the pull I felt when Jakob stretched his hand out to me. It was there, but nowhere near what I felt when Bishop looked at me. “Can we go back to the part where you kiss me again?” My hopeful smile widened as his lips descended over mine again. I could definitely get used to this…
“There’s just one thing I want to know,” I asked as we parted.
“What’s that?”
“Who’s Ulrik?”