Six rules undying book 2, p.30
Six (Rules Undying Book 2), page 30
“Um, no,” he said as he fumbled with the remote and light.
Only when they were curled up in the quiet and the dark did Paige open her mouth again. “Morgan?” she whispered.
“Yes?”
“When we first met—”
“I was stalking you in a grocery store.”
“No, I meant at Schuyler.”
“Oh.”
“When we first met there—why? I mean, why did you smell so intense? Why did we, um, you know, practically jump each other?”
Paige asked.
“I don’t know. You smelled really intense too. That’s all I remember.”
“That a werewolf thing?”
“Considering that you’re the first female werewolf I’ve ever met, I don’t know. Usually any intense experiences I have involve baby oil and my right hand.”
“Good night, Morgan.”
“Good night, Paige.”
- 24 -
The next two days blurred into a mix of yoga, jogging, reruns, and pancakes. As part of Morgan’s arrangement with the Open Range Motel, he spent most of his morning shirtless, assisting some of the local guys shingle the roof, while Paige ended up folding towels with a nice housekeeper named Rita.
Paige tried to summon her inner Morgan as she struggled to line up the corners, but no matter how hard she tried, her pile ended up slightly lopsided. Still, Rita only gave her a pleasant “gracias”
before taking her cart on the rounds.
Paige took it upon herself to pick up some stray cans and sweep around the trash cans by the door. As she was just emptying the dustpan in the lobby, she heard a pointed “Ahem.”
She found herself face-to-face with the little old lady from their arrival. The lady stared pointedly at Paige’s souvenir sweatpants and T-shirt.
“I hope you’re not wearing that to your wedding, dearie!” the lady exclaimed.
“Pardon?” She blinked a few times before recovering with, “Oh, yeah, well, we didn’t have much time to pack.”
“Well, if you don’t mind doing dishes, Marge needs help next door.”
“I don’t mind at all. Thank you so much—”
The lady gave a little wink. “What can I say? I’m a hopeless romantic! Also, it’s cheaper for me to give you guys a room than to hire another crew to get this place ready for the summer travel
season. Oh, dearie, can you let your fiancé know that his brother called and is on his way from Tucson now?”
“Will do.”
The little old lady squeezed Paige’s arm. “It’s rare to see young folks who don’t mind doing a little work. You’re good kids!”
Paige smiled. “You’re too nice.”
The old lady gave her another wink. “I’ve seen it all. Worked here since before you were born. I tend to know good people when I see them. Take care!”
As Paige wandered over to the diner, she paused to take in the impressive sight of Morgan lugging an entire bundle of shingles on one shoulder. She lingered a little longer on the sweaty biceps and pecs.
“Should I drop something and pick it up for you?” he asked as he noticed the stare. “It might give you a better angle.”
“I’ve, um, got dishes to do. Lots of dishes. Hey, do you have a brother in Tucson?”
“No; why do you ask?”
“Because apparently he’s coming for us,” she said. She braced herself for the next round of panic and terrible news. Instead, she found herself the victim of a sudden, sweat-infused hug.
“Hah!” Morgan cried as he swung her around with one arm.
“So this is good? You do have a brother—”
“No, but it’s the kind of thing Billy would say. Hot damn, the cavalry is coming!”
“You are scary when you smile like that. Also, my feet can’t reach the ground—”
He grinned sheepishly as he eased her down to the pavement.
He scratched his head and did another round of his trademark nodding.
“Sorry; it’s just nice to have something not be terrible, you know?” he said. “It’s a nice day, get to work with my hands, and, oh, no vampires beating the crap out of me in a cupcake shop. If Billy really is coming, he’s the one who can help you figure out whatever you need. He’s the brains of our little outfit; well, he’s the brains when he’s not completely baked—”
She backed away slowly, laughing. “I’m glad for something not terrible too.”
Soon she found herself in a kitchen, scrubbing barbecue sauce off plates, hands covered in soothing lemon-scented foam. She made certain that none of the other kitchen staff was looking as she used a claw to scrape away a particularly stubborn hunk of mashed potato off a plate.
“Here’s to something not terrible, Paige,” she cheered to her reflection in the dish. Her smile faded as she saw a dark liquid dribbling from her nose. The plate shattered on the floor as the world went black.
Paige woke up at a dining room table that was covered with a board game. She recognized the walls full of bookshelves and a little green alien doll tucked in the chair next to her. She stared at the map of the world printed in primary colors on chunky paperboard. Piles of yellow wooden squares were lined up in front of her, while the green and red pieces were scattered across Europe and North America.
“Where am I?”
“Just outside of Omaha,” Mordred said as the shadows pulled away. He placed a green block on Great Britain. “But I’m afraid we needed to talk and this memory was available.”
“My dad told me that he never let me win, but I had my suspicions. Looks like red controls Western Europe and Japan for some reason. Why is there one blue piece in China mixed in with all the white?” Paige asked as she studied the board.
“The conscious and the subconscious can blend. This is part of your teaching,” Mordred said. “I don’t know how much longer I can survive your rather aggressive immune system, a rún.”
“You want me to go back?”
Lorcan pulled one blue piece and set it on the line between the eastern and western United States. He stared intently at the mix of colors.
“A Lung showed up in Chicago. That means that they made it through all the Chinese families, past my enemies the Jaegers, and
right into the heartland of my family’s domain. If they are willing to risk that much just to get their hands on some werewolves—”
Paige reached her hand across the table. Mordred’s hand shook.
“What is it that you said?” he asked. “Too many variables, and now there are more werewolves in play—”
“Couldn’t I have just one good day?” Paige asked him. “You couldn’t let me feel normal for just one minute, could you?”
“I’m sorry, but I needed to remind you about the unknowns.
Never get complacent, Paige. We can’t trust anyone. You don’t know how dangerous the feral werewolves can be—”
“But you know him,” Paige said. “Oh, god—”
She grabbed her head as the image of a woman sinking under a sea of red flashed before her eyes. She screamed and shot straight up in bed, startling the werewolf camped beside her. Morgan eased her back against the pillows and wiped the sweat off her forehead.
“Hey, are you OK?” he asked. “They said you fainted in the kitchen. I had to threaten to report the entire kitchen staff to Homeland Security to stop them from calling an ambulance.”
“It just happened. Maybe it’s the drugs wearing off from the other night—” she said, rubbing her eyes.
“Or it’s withdrawal of a different sort,” Morgan said.
Paige pulled the covers over her head. Morgan tugged them back.
“I don’t judge people for their vices. I have my own,” he said softly. He helped her get some water. “Just because it doesn’t come in a syringe doesn’t mean it’s not addictive.”
She shook her head. Morgan wiped under her nose and took a sniff of the pink stain. “I know what vampire blood smells like, Paige.
It’s how you’re controlled, right?”
She bared her fangs.
Morgan raised a brow. “Hit a nerve?” he asked.
“I’m not controlled,” she finally growled.
“Vampires control with their blood,” Morgan said. He looked away and muttered, “—and other fluids.”
“If I wasn’t still dizzy, I’d slap you,” Paige muttered.
“Withdrawal sucks,” Morgan said. “You should sleep. I’ll watch over you.”
“Morgan, you are the nicest asshole I’ve ever met. I don’t want to sleep though. The dreams are—”
“Yeah, I know that too,” he muttered. “I can put on the TV or get you something—”
“Morgan, the vampire that . . . the vampire that killed your parents—” Paige trailed off as she saw Morgan’s entire face darken.
“I guess now is not a good time.”
“When is there a good time to describe the murder of your family?” Morgan growled. Paige tried to speak but was cut off by a wild-eyed Morgan hopping to his feet and stomping around the room.
“Hi, I’m here about the job. Did I mention that my parents were murdered by vampires? Happy birthday—vampires slaughtered my family!”
“Morgan—”
He burst into hysterical laughter. “I’ll have a bacon-double-cheeseburger with a side of supernatural slaughter. I’ll take vampires who killed my sister for two hundred, Alex—”
He devolved into sounds more in tune with a hyena rather than a wolf. He let out one more satisfying guffaw before kneeling down next to Paige and staring right through her.
“Does the laughing help?” she asked.
Morgan nodded, but the nod quickly changed to him shaking his head. She reached out and brushed the sweat off his forehead this time.
“Nothing helps,” he said softly. “The disease we share makes us unstable. It’s a little too much change, a little too much different, and it makes it hard for me to concentrate. For years I could pretend so well that I was normal, and it’s a little hard to have everything upside down. I have to start over—”
“Why don’t you start over by telling me what happened?”
“Only if you tell me why you want to know,” he said. “The truth.”
“How many vampires do you think there are?” she asked.
“And you’re afraid that your precious vampire might be the one who ruined my life? You’re worried that he might be guilty and that this could be awkward? Maybe you’re worried that my big bad wolf will come out and it won’t be pretty for either of us?”
“Well, yes,” she confessed.
Morgan slumped back on his ankles. “I won’t attack you. I don’t let that part of me take control,” he grumbled. “You’re being honest, so I suppose I can do the same.”
She slid over so he could take a seat beside her on the bed. He shimmied awkwardly beside her but stared at the ceiling rather than her face.
“My father, my uncle too, honestly believed that it was their duty to protect the world from vampires, one vampire at a time,” Morgan said. “Most vampires are weak, mindless creatures that attack the homeless, but they have masters. Irvine thought that if they could kill just one master, it would be enough to scare the vampires out of the United States at least. It was wishful thinking at its worst.”
“They were just two lucky idiots stabbing in the dark,” Morgan continued. “They used baseball bats and pointy sticks at first. Then they learned that it was safest to just blow the kneecaps and then shoot the bastards full of antibiotics. My mom would get them piles of penicillin and other antibiotics that were about to expire. They thought that they were taking out the minions of ancient evil—”
“But that’s not how it works, is it?”
“Twenty-twenty hindsight,” Morgan muttered. “You see, the master vampires aren’t really masters at all. The smart ones want to kill off the weaker guys just as much as my family did, and one night after a particularly successful month of bad-guy slaying in the greater Atlanta area, Irvine caught the attention of a real vampire. It was finally going to be the big score, and they stalked this skinny blonde bimbo, as they called her, into the old Olympic compound. It was two big bad werewolves against one little unsuspecting girl . . .”
“As unsuspecting as our cupcake killer?” Paige asked.
Morgan nodded. “She broke Irvine’s wrist and my dad’s leg.
They managed to gouge her eyes out, but before they could finish the job, she hit my dad with some sort of kung fu vampire magic.
Those were Irvine’s exact words. Even without eyes, she beat the crap out of both of them, and the brothers barely made it back home.
Normally Dad never went straight home after an attack, just in case, but he was scared and too hurt. He told me to pack a bag for me and my little sister. We were supposed to go to Grandma’s, but I was too slow.”
“Morgan,” she said as she squeezed his hand, “you were—”
“I was too slow,” Morgan growled. “I remember getting in a fight with my sister. She wanted her stuffed bunny, and I called her stupid.
She got so mad that she ended up crawling under her bed and having a tantrum. I should have just looked for the bunny, but I lost my temper. Mom had to stop patching up Dad just to break up our yelling. I’m sure you can guess what happened next.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said. She leaned against him and listened to just how loudly his heart thundered in his chest.
“I wasn’t fast enough to get Irvine. Apparently Kung Fu Barbie Vampire had a boyfriend or something. I can never forget his face and the eyes. He had those freaky green eyes just like our cupcake killer, but he had the face of a bulldog and bright red hair—”
“Red, not brown?” Paige asked.
“Red, like blood. When Irvine and I made it back—”
Paige wrapped her arms around him. “You don’t have to—”
“Vampires clean up their messes, at least they usually do. My dad was still lying on the living room floor, his blood soaking into the carpet. I found Mom—I found her in the bathtub. The water had turned red from all the blood, but the worst was seeing the tiny handprints on the tile—tiny handprints and streaks of blood. Those monsters dragged my little sister out of there, and—”
“Mor—”
“She was four years old, Paige!” Morgan said as he choked up.
“She fought them though. My little sister was the single most stubborn girl I ever knew. She made those vampires fight. Her blood trail made it all the way to her closet, but all we found was the shredded, bloody body of her stupid stuffed rabbit.”
Paige hugged him for a good, long while. She looked up to see a ring of liquid pooling on his lower lids. He blinked rapidly but ended
up having to wipe the tears away.
“The police reported it as a murder-suicide. They thought that Dad murdered both me and Gwen, slit my mother’s throat, and then slit his own. My body was never found, but the remains of . . . the few remains of my sister that were left showed up in a dumpster behind a construction site where my dad worked. The vampires made sure that their handiwork was buried and that my father’s memory was ruined as well.”
He cleared his throat a few times. “I do get some joy, though, out of all this—sick, perverse joy.”
“And what is that?”
“The redheaded vampire ripped out my dad’s throat with his teeth. If Dad’s blood got into his system, then that vampire died a slow, painful death twenty-five years ago, and it only leaves me a skinny blonde vampire with no eyes to hunt. Sometimes I dream, though. I dream that the bastard didn’t drink the blood. That way I get to find and kill him very slowly. So is your vampire a redhead or a blind woman?”
Paige shook her head.
“Good.”
“Vampires killed a four-year-old girl?”
“They only found her torso, stripped of most of its flesh. They identified her by the tattered remains of her pajamas. They ripped off her head, just like the toy. That’s what vampires do.”
“Not all of them,” Paige said softly.
“You’re right. This one was vile even by their standards. I wonder if he is related to that Ping-Pong chick. Anyway, now you know the sob story of one Morgan Blaylock, his star-crossed parents Lincoln Wolfe and Deidre Blaylock, and little Gwendolyn Blaylock, who never lived to see her fifth birthday. You can look it up in the Savannah Tribune archives if you ever need a good tragedy.”
She curled beside him and pushed the hair off his forehead.
Soon he rested his head on her shoulder and listened to her heartbeat for a good long while.
“You have a really good reason to want all vampires dead,” she whispered as she kissed the top of his head.
“As nice as that sounds, no,” he said. “Running off and attacking vampires just makes them kill innocents. There’s never been a situation calmed down with calculated murder. To stop the vampires, to really protect people, you have to cripple the network that supports them. They need to be exposed and held accountable for everything they’ve done. I won’t stop them by becoming them, Paige.
I won’t give them the satisfaction.”
“Really? You think that you can be better?”
“I have no choice. It’s all I have,” he said, staring deeply into her eyes.
“It’s not everything, you know,” she said softly as she leaned closer.
He pressed his lips against hers for just one second. She tasted the salt from his sweat and tears. He pushed her away reluctantly.
“Paige, I—”
“I don’t know what it is about you,” she said. “Maybe it is a werewolf thing.”
“Well, you deserve better than a werewolf thing, Paige. We should probably make sure we aren’t still drugged or something, because right now, I’m about three seconds away from doing something really . . . something probably . . . yeah, something stupid
—”
She stared at him for three solid seconds. He gave her one more quick kiss before rolling out of bed and walking purposefully toward the door.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Saving you from a big mistake.”
