Ten, p.21
Ten, page 21
. . from time to time.”
“Trust me, it’s more pungent when you’re a vampire,” Steve added.
Paige’s cheeks turned bright red as she tried to sink further into the sofa. Her tail flicked menacingly back and forth, entrancing both Steve and her mother. As she noticed the attention, Paige lifted her butt and sat on her tail, but the tip still twitched by her knee.
“So, is anyone else I know a vampire? A werewolf?” Maria asked.
Both Paige and Steve nodded sheepishly. Maria sighed deeply.
“Well, you’re still family,” Maria said slowly, “and family sticks together.”
“You’re not. . . freaked out?” Paige asked.
Maria took a good long moment to compose herself before responding. “Of course, I’m freaked out, but you’re all I’ve got. I’m not about to let fangs or a tail come between us, especially not on the day when we buried one of our own. By the way, you both are telling me everything. Oh, do I need to get rid of the garlic or the cross by the door?” she asked with a sudden look of concern.
“I’m allergic to garlic, but the whole cross thing is just a myth for most of us,” Steve said. “Silver bullets won’t kill the pipsqueak either.”
“That’s good to know. Wait, you have the ability to erase memories, don’t you? Have you ever—?”
Steve grimaced as he nodded again.
“Does that mean that some of those nights I forgot in college—?”
Maria started.
Steve started by shaking his head but under the withering gaze of Maria Lucia, his head just turned into a nod. She cracked her knuckles menacingly.
“Mom—” She shut up as Maria turned her way.
“We are going to have a very long talk, Paige, but I think I need a few words with Steve here.”
“Yeah, I’ll check on the pack. Yes, Mom, I’m part of a pack of werewolves,” Paige sighed.
“And Morgan?”
“Werewolf.”
“All your friends are werewolves now, aren’t they?”
“Pretty much.”
Steve gave Paige a desperate look of “Don’t leave me” as the youngest DeMarco wandered to the kitchen to grab the multiple bags of leftovers. She waved as she got to the door. “I’ll be back for my turn,” she sighed as she left.
She didn’t have to go far to find her kind. The pack paced nervously in the function room of Mayweather’s pub. Paige eyed the mountain of empty whiskey bottles already on the tables as she slipped inside. Only Morgan seemed content to sit and stare at his screen until one whiff of Paige made him hop to his feet.
“Paige?” he asked as he started relieving her of the numerous bags she held, so he could give her a proper hug. “Are you…OK?”
“Oh, just having a little bit of awkward family bonding. Have you seen Ky—?”
A chill and a flicker of the lights answered her. She whirled around to see a concerned redhead and a rather perturbed looking vampire in the doorway. Lorcan didn’t need to say a word.
“I’ll be right back,” she said before giving Morgan a quick kiss on the cheek.
Morgan stared coldly at the vampire and crossed his arms over his chest. The rest of the werewolves kept glancing between the taller, broader blond and slimmer paler Brit. Toy didn’t hide the fact
that she was totally munching popcorn as she watched the testosterone display.
“Please, excuse us,” Lorcan said with a genial wave to the room.
He made a point to end his gaze right at Morgan and give a reassuring nod.
Paige eyed the vampire’s surprisingly formal black suit and tie.
As his jacket swayed, she could see a strange leather holster on his right hip. Kyle started following them both, but Lorcan raised his hand in front of his great-times-nine nephew’s face.
“I’m afraid this is a private matter,” he said keeping his voice in a dreadfully formal British clip. “Kyle, I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t mind having a toast for both Miss Paige and myself. We may be quite some time.”
“Grandpa?” Kyle growled.
“I believe it’s tradition to toast the dead. We must keep up appearances,” Lorcan said. “Paige, I am sorry for the timing, but there are some matters we simply must attend to sooner rather than later.”
“Seriously?” Paige spat. “You couldn’t even wait until they sodded his grave?”
“Time is a luxury we do not have. I will explain soon enough.”
Kyle stepped in front of them both. “Grandpa, are you sure that you have to—?” he started.
Paige finally let out a sigh and motioned back to the function room. “Please, Kyle,” she said. “If it’s what I think it is, I’m more than ready to get this done.”
“Paige—”
“It’s OK, just go,” she ordered. Kyle lowered his head in deference and shuffled back to the crowd.
Lorcan gave a slight smile as he looked at Paige. She glared back. “What?”
“You’ve certainly come into your own,” the vampire said appreciatively. “Now, let’s go. My car is out front.”
Paige furrowed her brows as her feet simply followed the vampire’s command without a second’s hesitation. Lorcan’s
gorgeous muscle car gleamed bright green in the streetlights and roared to life in spectacular V-8 fashion.
“Are you sure you want to be alone in a car with me?” Paige asked.
“This should be a rather different outcome, I hope.”
Paige stopped cold as she saw an honest to goodness sword sitting in the passenger seat. The vampire smiled apologetically and tossed it in the back with a few empty IV bags and fast food wrappers. “Sorry, I haven’t had a chance to clean. It’s been a busy few nights,” he said as he dusted off the seat.
“Is that—?”
“A replica?” The vampire offered. “That’s Caliburn. I need to have it with me on official business. Can you guess who happens to be in town?”
Paige remained deathly quiet. Her heart raced a little as they started heading east into the suburbs of Memphis. “Are you taking me home?” she finally asked.
“I’m taking you someplace familiar, and to answer the previous question, the sheriff of North America has been snooping around. As it turns out, one of her subordinates is still concerned that his missing brother is really dead.”
Paige gulped. The vampire’s face remained passive.
“Naturally I’m doing everything to help with the investigation, especially considering the mysterious circumstances of his disappearance. There are even rumors now among my kind that monsters are real,” the vampire continued. “All and all, it’s been a fascinating few nights of lying my lily-white arse off.”
“I’m sorry—”
“I don’t need you to be sorry. I need you to lay low and stay out of trouble for five minutes when I’m not around!” he barked.
“Oh, excuse me,” she barked right back. “You’re the one who told us to protect this city. I guess you meant protect it from everything but vampires—”
“Look what happened to your grandfather—”
“That’s completely different. That was a family matter—”
“Well your family is causing me nothing but trouble. The sheriff is already asking why that damn Jaeger is spending so much time in this city. Now she’s starting to look for anything and everything abnormal, and I happen to be hiding a full pack of werewolves right under her nose—”
“I’m sorry!” she snapped again. “We made a mistake—”
“Mistakes have consequences,” the vampire said in a dangerously low voice. “The pack is going to have to move on for a while.”
“What?”
“You need to split up, get out of town—”
“I can’t just leave my mom—”
“Your mother’s only protection right now is her ignorance. If she were to become involved—”
“Yeah, about that—” Paige started weakly.
Lorcan nearly slammed the car into a hapless SUV. The shadows started gathering around his eyes and he bared his fangs. “What?”
he finally growled.
“Great-Grandpa Steve kind of crashed the funeral reception,”
Paige confessed.
“So, he’s here, and he’s blatantly breaking the second law. Just when I thought that it couldn’t get any worse. Does no one in your family have any concept of consequences?”
“Well I’m not a vampire, and I was sick of lying to my mom,”
Paige said defiantly as she stared out the window.
“You might not be a vampire, but your great grandfather is one.
He’s also being watched. Damnit all to hell. Fine, I will figure this all out, but I need to be whole again. As long as you have my blood in you, there is a risk that the sheriff will find you, and in your current state that would be. . . very unfortunate.”
“Excuse me? What aren’t you telling me now?”
“Does no one in this city use a god-forsaken turn signal? Your sorry arse wouldn’t be worth eating, knob-gobbler!” Lorcan yelled as a truck veered into their lane.
Paige tried her best not to laugh as the string of incredibly English insults continued to pour from the vampire’s lips. The English
quickly warped into a mix of Gaelic and grunting until he finally ended with a fervent, “Wanker!”
“The answer is no, by the way,” Paige muttered. “I don’t even know why cars in Tennessee come with turn signals in them.”
“It has to do with vampire customs,” Lorcan muttered. “My kind may only have four laws, but we have millennia of traditions. I told you about vampire marriage, didn’t I?”
“I know that you are married,” Paige growled.
“Precisely.”
“You also told me that a vampire married a dog on accident.”
“Well right now, you might be considered the dog,” Lorcan said flatly.
“Excuse me?”
The car pulled into a familiar gated community, and Paige could only gawk as Lorcan drove to a cookie-cutter home not three houses down to the previous one he had owned earlier this year. This estate had the slight upgrade of an in-ground pool but otherwise matched the one for sale at the end of the cul-de-sac.
“Did you actually buy a house three doors down from—?”
“One of my other identities owned this one. I’ve found it prudent to own multiple residences in any city I chose to make my own.
You’d be amazed how rarely my kind checks with the neighbors,” the vampire said with a bemused grin.
“The car sticks out though,” Paige muttered.
Lorcan ran his hand appreciatively along the curve of the hood.
His glorious Plymouth Barracuda beautifully filled his otherwise empty garage. “Every once in a while, I find something beautiful, and it simply must be mine,” he said softly.
Paige quickly looked away as she felt the blush creep up in her cheeks. The vampire gave a genial little bow as he ushered her into his not-so-humble abode. He gave a sheepish grin as he slipped past her to fetch his priceless blade from the backseat. Paige flicked her claws and gave him a warning swipe when he tried the same trick on the return.
“I have too much of you in me,” she said flatly.
Lorcan waved to a distant doorway in the cavernous open floor plan. “Let’s remedy that before someone get the wrong idea,” he said. “But you’ll excuse me if for the safety of the neighborhood—”
She walked dutifully to the doorway and tapped on the reassuring metal door. Just like his other home, the master suite had been outfitted with a panic setting and steel guards on all windows and doors. She eyed the mattress suspiciously.
“It’s all I’ve had time to buy, I’m afraid. It is memory foam though,”
the vampire sighed. “With a waterproof and tear resistant cover.”
“Spare me the sales pitch, and let’s get this over with,” Paige growled. “I really don’t want anyone to think that we’re. . . we’re. . .
ugh!”
“You can’t even say it?” Lorcan asked.
Paige’s entire face scrunched up in horror, and she shook her head. She sat at the edge of the bed and pulled her curls to one side of her neck. As she tilted her chin awkwardly, Lorcan just stood there bemused. After a few uncomfortable moments of him staring, Paige bared her teeth and let out a snarl.
“What?” she snapped. “Aren’t you going to, you know, be a vampire and suck my blood?”
“I need to be careful, be thorough,” he explained. “As we’ve seen, I can’t drink too much of your blood at once. I need to figure out exactly why part of me wants to stay inside of you and lure it out—”
“Can you not describe it as being inside me?” she said with a little gagging noise.
Lorcan eased onto the bed and slid his finger into one of her bouncy brown curls. He leaned over and took a deep sniff of her breath. She jerked away.
“I hate to do this, but I need to know something,” the vampire said softly as he stared into her oversized eyes. “Paige, listen to me and only me—”
Paige swayed slightly as the words echoed in her ears. “A rún, can you hear me?” the vampire said in a tone that made Paige’s heart flutter. She tried to shake her head, but as the vampire stroked his hand ever so softly along her jaw, she nodded slowly.
“Come to me,” the vampire commanded as his heady scent filled the room. Paige leaned forward.
“Kiss me,” the vampire said softly.
She dutifully obliged, letting her lips hungrily toy with his until the vampire pushed her away reluctantly. “Stop,” he commanded and grimaced as the spell was broken and she recoiled in horror.
“You—” she snarled as she popped out her claws. He didn’t stop her as she slashed straight across his cheek. As the blood welled up, the werewolf spat at him.
“I needed to know if I still had power over you,” he said as he wiped his face. “Trust me, I could have ordered you to do far worse.”
“You made me kiss you,” she spat. “How dare you think that was OK?”
“It was a selfish indulgence, I admit that freely, but it also means that for all intents and purposes—”
“Shut up!” she barked. Much to both their shock and horror, his mouth immediately clamped shut. Paige’s eyes widened, and the corner of her mouth turned up ever so slightly. “Oh, so that’s how it is,” she said.
“Paige, please—” the vampire whispered.
It was her turn to stare deeply into the vampire’s bright green eyes. Paige leaned in closer and took great delight in tracing her claw along his extremely angular jaw. The monster let out a sigh as her other hand slipped around his waist and jerked him close.
“Get your blood out of me now,” she growled menacingly into his ear.
“As the lady commands,” Lorcan said before sinking his teeth into her neck. Paige whimpered at first, but soon those sounds turned to moans as she pulled him closer. She could feel a sickening lump wriggle and writhe in her chest until finally a solid mass pulsed against her windpipe and sent her reeling into the memory foam.
“Oh, God,” she cried out as the world began to spin. Her next exclamation morphed into a pure lupine howl.
13
“DEAR LORD AND MAKER, I don’t think that I can do this,” Mr.
Lambley said as he stared at the jiggling, pulsing, meat-scented wonder that was Mr. Army as it was propped on his plastic-covered chaise. His proud assistant stood over them both with one hand on her hip and the other holding up a plasma bag.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you need to actually bite people, Mr. Lambley. You’ve got to break those fangs in, if you want to be a full-fledged vampire again,” she sighed.
“It just is a bit uncivilized and certainly not kosher,” he complained.
“And you’re not Jewish, so suck it up and take a bite.”
Mr. Lambley’s lip quivered and he ended up making a rather Hannibal Lecter-ish slurping sound as he leaned in. He didn’t even make it within a foot of the strike zone before pulling away and shaking his head. “I’m not ready,” he whimpered.
“Isn’t this supposed to be second nature?” Georgia asked.
“Oh, I’m sorry, did you want to go out in the fields and throw seeds in the ground for your supper? How about shoot a deer and gut it? It’s simply not civilized to sink your teeth into a strange body and hope for something delicious. I’m not going back, Miss Sutherland.”
Georgia nodded slowly and turned a clamp to stop the blood from flowing into the artificial arm. The vampire let out a sigh of genuine relief as she scooped the whole mess up and dragged it back to the
bathroom so she could salvage as much of the expensive fluids as she could. As the red dribbled against the tub, however, Georgia’s head started to spin. She watched a single drop trickle down, down, down into the stained recesses of caulk and grout. Her heart began to race.
“Georgia?”
The sound of the voice behind her made her jump so much that the arm toppled, sending more blood into the tub. Instinctively, she turned on the tap to wash away the mess. As the water turned pink and she saw the fingers gripping the edge of the tub, her panic only worsened. As her breathing turned to shallow gasps, a pair of ghastly white fingertips wrapped around the jamb.
“Georgia—?”
She tried to scream as she saw glowing, monstrous green eyes, blood-drenched fangs, and a mountain of matted red hair. She tried to cry out. She tried.
“No—” she mouthed.
She blinked, and she heard that distinctive change in sound of a tub filling dangerously high. As she looked over again, it was only the puffy, concerned face of her friendly resident vampire greeting her in the doorway.
“Miss. . . Sutherland, are you. . . . are you alright?” he asked.
For the briefest of moments, Georgia could see her own face sinking into the water and the water turning red as she descended.
She blinked again and only a soggy pig-man arm waved at her in a stinky pink tub.
“I just hate making a mess,” she said quickly.
The vampire smiled weakly. “I might have been a bit of an ass.
