Ten, p.8
Ten, page 8
“Believe me when I say that the only reason that I’m not boxing you about the ears right now is because—” Mr. Lambley huffed.
“We’re in public and that would draw a lot of unnecessary attention from a room full of humans with camera phones?” Steve interjected.
Mr. Lambley managed an expression that only an Edwardian Brit could muster. His nostrils flared, his eyes burned, but his voice was utterly genteel and calm as he spat out, “No, you are only in my presence because of the good graces of Miss Sutherland. In the interests of her and her human beau—”
“So, where is he?” This time Georgia interrupted.
Georgia froze as Steve gave a little wink and raised his glass towards the bar. A tall, lanky form in a black suit and black ponytail was speaking to the bartender. As he turned around, time stood still for Georgia. Her lip quivered as she saw a pair of almond-shaped green eyes that stood out from his otherwise perfectly Japanese face. He only gave the tiniest of smirks, but it was enough to send a shiver down Georgia’s spine.
“Minerva sends her regards, by the way,” Steve said. “It’s a shame that she’s stuck on business in Washington through the end of the year. Lucky me gets Mr. Matsuoka all to my—”
Georgia’s feet were already clicking across the marble floor. The bartender set out two glasses on the counter. Georgia laughed as she smelled ginger and sugar rather than more booze.
“Miss Sutherland, I figured you might need one of these after I noticed the distinguished guests in the room,” he said as he handed her the fizzy beverage.
Georgia flicked a tear off the corner of her eye, which drew Mr.
Matsuoka’s attention to the sparkle of her ring. He slid his own left hand into view and showed off his own black metal band.
“Ren,” she finally choked out.
“Miss Suther—”
She interrupted him by throwing her arms around him and planting an unapologetic kiss on his lips, right in front of all the bemused onlookers. He stiffened for a second as he noticed the titters and whispers but couldn’t resist closing his eyes and all but
sweeping her off her feet. A few of the crowd applauded as he dipped her and kissed her again properly before finally letting her go.
“I missed you too,” he whispered in her ear. He toyed with an errant lock that had popped out of her crown braid. “You grew out your hair.”
“Like you’re one to talk. You’ve gone full Conan the Barbarian on me,” she said as she twirled one of his loose strands around her finger.
“Funny, I thought I looked more like Rain from Big Trouble in Little China,” he said with a sly grin. “I also think that my master has the deed to a very exclusive hotel with lots of available rooms, and I haven’t seen my girlfriend in nearly a year.”
“I’m perfectly fine with shoving those two vampires in the back of your car and leaving right now. I’m pretty sure that they won’t kill each other in the half hour it takes to get to the waterfront,” Georgia said as she used all her willpower to keep her hands off Ren’s well-built chest.
“I may have crushed Xanax and mixed it in my master’s breakfast.”
“Why are we still here again?” she asked.
Ren kissed her forehead. She held onto his hand as long as possible. “I will be right back then,” he said.
“And I will pack up the kids.”
She sighed deeply as she watched him slip away in his trademark ninja-like fashion. He stopped briefly to talk to the strange bleached-blond Asian man before disappearing into the crowd.
Georgia pranced all the way back to their vampire masters steeling herself for whatever trouble those two had gotten into, while she was away. Her jaw dropped.
“—I know!” Steve was laughing, while Mr. Lambley spat out,
“With that goat!”
“Yeah, that drama lasted about as long as expected,” she muttered. She snapped her fingers and waved to get their attention.
“Come on you two, the night is young!”
Paige rested her face against the tile as she let the tail end of the hot water run down her back. Her own tail drooped between her legs and she hurled the third disposable razor into the corner of the shower as she finally finished stripping away the last bit of hair around her knees.
“It’s not me, it’s the wolf,” she whispered. “It’s not me, it’s the wolf.”
She grabbed one more razor to do yet another pass. As she saw the soggy, sad tip of her tail, she let out a scream of frustration and began slapping the tile until her hand was numb. The water shifted suddenly, cutting into her skin in icy rivulets, but only once she was totally shivering did she finally shut it off and grab a threadbare towel. As she wrapped herself up, she took deep, raspy breaths. Her dark eyes nearly disappeared in her haunted reflection. Her hair had already grown out into damp ringlets that stuck to her forehead and neck.
She grumbled as she fought her way into jeggings and yanked on a T-shirt. She groaned as she realized she had grabbed a man’s NYU T-shirt and not one of hers. The faint aroma mixed in with the detergent made her blush uncomfortably. She padded into the tiny living room where Kyle stared, with a furrowed brow, at some scribbled notes. Paige’s eyes widened as she saw four empty pizza boxes at his feet.
He nodded to the other side of the cheap coffee table where a full stack of untouched pepperoni remained. “You better hurry. There are only six left. Wait, is that my shirt?”
“I’m pretty sure Toy only brought your shirts,” Paige grumbled as she dug through the plastic grocery bags of supplies her friends had dropped off. “On the flip side, I hope you can fit in my pants. Ugh, that came out wrong.”
“If I had a dollar for every time I heard that. . . . Um, never mind.
Paige, I’ve been doing some thinking—”
Paige grabbed a pizza and sat on the opposite end of the sofa making sure at least one full pillow-width separated her from the redhead. He scratched something else on the bottom of his current page then flipped over the notebook to reveal a bunch of doodles.
“Why is it so hard to think?” he growled. “I knew that the change affected hormone levels and the brain, but this is awful. Sometimes I can’t string two thoughts together without eating something or jacking off. Yeah, that is way too much information, isn’t it? You know what makes this all worse? The best possible scientist to figure out what happened to me. . . is me, and right now I’d have a better chance starting for the New York Jets than doing a simple round of bloodwork.”
“I’m so sorry,” Paige said softly. “This is all my fault.”
“We don’t know that—”
“I bit you!”
Kyle tugged as his hair. His upper lip rolled back, and his canines gnawed at his lower. He stared at the claws that now easily popped in and out from under his bruised nails.
“Correlation does not imply causation,” he muttered. “It’s dangerous to assume that the bite from you changed my physiology, just because the timing was convenient. Why would it be that particular bite? It’s not like it’s the first time you’ve taken a chunk out of me when you’ve gone all out—”
“Wait, I’ve bitten you before?” she asked.
Kyle hitched up one of the legs of his painter’s suit. “There’s a reason I call you ankle-biter behind your back, woman,” he said as he pointed out a row of scars. “It’s not just you but here are Toy and Nadia and Sammy. Oh, this particularly nasty one on my shoulder came from my sister, so we simply have too many variables still.
Damn it! I need to get to a lab, but I’m not calm enough to look at cultures and data and boring crap like that. Damn it to hell!”
“Well, we’ll find someone to help—”
“Who?” he barked. “I was the expert on werewolf physiology, but now that I have a perfect first-hand perspective on the subject, I feel like I’ve been wrong this whole time.”
“Yeah, it’s a bitch,” Paige muttered. “It gets a little more regular after a few changes. Remember how you looked out for me? Well, I need to do the same for you.”
Kyle nodded. “I need to find a focus, a better focus because jacking off will get rather awkward, rather fast. Maybe I’ll try cleaning like you—”
“Just promise me you won’t start watching chick flicks,” she said with a little laugh.
Kyle finally broke a smile. “Yeah, that would be a fate worse than death.”
They sat awkwardly on opposite arms of the sofa, chomping on pizza and staring at the notebook. Finally, he buried his face in his hand and let out a deep sigh.
“I’m going to have to call him, Paige. I need his help,” Kyle said.
“No, not Lorcan, anyone but—”
Kyle stared right at her. “It’s not like there are tons of werewolf experts out there, Paige. You know that we need his help—”
“No!” she barked. Kyle cowered instinctively. Then it was Paige’s turn to bury her face in her hands.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “We will find a way to fix this, so just try everything you can before we go running back to him, OK?”
He nodded. They returned to awkward silence. The old school clock in the kitchen kept ticking, while groups of kids yelled and howled out on the street.
Eventually the tears started to roll down Paige’s cheeks. Kyle reached across the sofa and dragged her over until she curled up against his side. He rested his chin on top of her head. “Come on, kiddo,” he whispered. “We’re supposed to be getting calmer, not working ourselves up.”
“I keep telling myself that it was the wolf, that it was just the wolf,”
she choked out.
“It’s an intense change. Like Nadia says, it’s your identity. It’s that animal part of yourself that the virus brings out—”
Paige shook her head. “You don’t understand. I wasn’t a wolf when—”
“The wolf isn’t just fangs and claws. Like I said, it’s hormones and a cycle. We do what we do to contain and control—”
“We went after those bloodsuckers, Kyle. We. . . I hunted them like animals and even in my right mind, I was perfectly. . . perfectly willing to—”
“Vampires aren’t humans, Paige, and that vampire killed people, good people, just for fun. You can’t—”
She broke into full sobs. Kyle stopped talking and held her tight.
This time, however, he kept his kisses to familial pecks to the top of her shaking head.
“I’m going to hell, aren’t I?” she asked softly. “I’m going to go to hell.”
“Paige, I’m a gay, ginger, atheist werewolf,” Kyle sighed. “If anyone has their ticket punched for Hell, it’s probably me. . . not that I believe in it anyways.”
She pulled away and looked at him. He had a few extra wrinkles around his puppyish green eyes as he forced another smile. “How can you even be this close to me after— after, you know?” she asked.
He pushed a wayward curl off her forehead. “I can be this close because I know who I am. Right now, you’re just my friend Paige and nothing’s changed. I have to believe that whatever the wolf wants is just some tiny part of me, and that I can still have the rest of my life back once I control him.”
She nodded and leaned against him once more. Her eyelids became heavy as she listened to his heartbeat in his chest. “So why you?” she muttered. “Is my wolf side some fundamental puritan determined to fix you?”
“Nah,” he muttered as he looked up at the stained ceiling of the safe house. “I’m pretty sure you were just awed by my fantastic ginger fur and amazing intellect. Also, I’ve heard that alpha werewolves have an uncontrollable attraction to the biggest asshole in the area. Since you’d already killed the vampires, I was the logical choice.”
“You can be such a wonderful ass, Kyle.”
“Sam has no complaints,” he muttered. “Now shut up, stop beating yourself up, and we’ll deal with this in the morning. We’ll get through this, I promise.”
“Don’t make promises that you can’t keep,” Paige sniffled before curling up to sleep.
5
“SO, you’re telling me that you spent a whole week in Vegas, and you didn’t get into any sort of trouble,” Georgia sighed as she carried the tray of crusty goblets to the sink. Ren rolled up his sleeves as the suds filled one side. Georgia furrowed her brows as she saw more circuits and feathers working their way up beneath his sleeves.
“I did spend three days in a strip club if it makes you feel better,”
he said as he started hand washing, while Georgia took care of the biohazards.
“Please say it was high-end,” she teased.
“Bottom of the barrel and way out of town,” he sighed. “It was all business, I swear.”
She leaned over and kissed him. “So predictable. Next time we’re going to go and gamble, drink, and behave shamelessly, while the kids are in bed. I’m sure Vegas can be just as fun during the day—”
“So I’ve heard. We can beat some little old ladies to the loosest slots before hitting a buffet—” he offered.
“—Trounce them at Keno!”
“I know, take in a matinee of Cirque du Soleil!” Ren laughed. “No, in this case the sheriff had us cleaning up after a bunch of conspiracy crazies trying to fake a chupacabra sighting. The only thing that got me through the day was knowing that it was one less favor that my master owed. Well that, and I found a slave Leia costume in their dressing room, and they let me take it back as payment.”
Georgia raised a brow. “If you think that you are getting me in a golden bikini and chaining me up for some sort of geeky-kinky-sex romp. . .” she said as she curled around to whisper his other ear.
“Then you know me better than anyone in this world.”
Ren smiled and started washing dishes as quickly as he could.
He tried not to stare constantly at the edge of Georgia’s bright red bra that kept peeking over the neckline on her tank top. Although she’d switched to hip huggers and sneakers, her hair was still done up and traces of mascara and lip stain echoed her fancy outfit from the gala.
“I still hear them talking, so they are staying out of trouble—”
Georgia said as she peeked around the corner, “For now. Hey, why was the sheriff having you clean up a chupacabra sighting anyway?
That seems more like a job for the X-files.”
“The conspiracy nutcase was taking payment from vampires. He was drawing too much of the wrong kind of attention, so the sheriff wanted him silenced. He made the mistake of talking back, so he got to kiss his career goodbye—”
“Wait, this wasn’t the guy from Ancient Aliens who had the meltdown on air was it? You didn’t. . . oh, you and Steve. . . oh—”
Ren’s green eyes darkened. “Trust me, he got off lightly after everything he did,” he muttered. “Not everyone who serves vampires is a gorgeous, intelligent servant with unquestionable loyalty.”
He finally finished his last goblet and sauntered over to wrap his arms around Georgia’s waist. She shook her head at him. “You were talking about yourself, weren’t you?” she asked.
“Of course, I was,” he said flatly in his best robot voice. Just as he was leaning in to kiss her again, they heard someone clear his throat.
“Look, I know it’s been a few months, but can you at least sign us into Netflix before you take care of the other part of Netflix and chill?”
Steve asked as he peeked into the kitchen. He returned Georgia’s stunned look. “What? You think that just because I was born in the times of gosh and golly and sensible hemlines that I don’t know what you two want to get up to? How the hell do you crazy kids think your generation came to be if we didn’t get laid?”
“Lay off the rum-laced plasma for a while, OK?” She sighed.
“Anything for you, Sweetheart,” the vampire said as he dragged Ren back to set up the media center.
Georgia, meanwhile, tucked Mr. Lambley in with a fresh blanket.
The ginger vampire curled on the loveseat and wriggled his toes with delight. “Georgia, did you know that while they were traveling for the sheriff, Steve got to see Graceland? I’ve always wanted to see Graceland now that they’ve turned it into a museum—”
“But it was a lot more fun when the King was alive,” Steve whined.
“Sounds like you guys had quite the whirlwind tour,” Georgia said.
Steve leaned back and kicked his feet on the coffee table. As he stretched his hands, Georgia could see some sort of reddish markings running along his arms. He jerked down his sleeves the moment he caught her glance.
“Atlanta, Chicago, Miami, Memphis, Houston, Austin, Dallas, Reno, and Vegas,” Steve rattled off. “However, my favorite has always been and always will be L.A. Did you like seeing the old hometown, Ren?”
“I missed In-and-Out Burger,” Ren muttered. He walked the remote and a dark green bottle over to his master. “This should be enough to get you through the evening, but I did put a tray of snacks in the butler’s pantry if you get peckish later. Mr. Lambley, I took the liberty of preparing a furry frappe for you as well. It’s marked with your name and already in a travel cup for you. Straws are on the counter—”
“Good man!” the ginger exclaimed. He then gave an exaggerated smile to show off his burgeoning fangs. “Won’t be needing them forever though. Oh, Georgia, did you remember—?”
Georgia went to her purse and pulled out a little pack of dental floss. The vampire giggled with delight as she handed it over. “Don’t worry, it’s unflavored.”
“Is there anything else that you two require this evening?” Ren asked, giving both vampires pointed looks.
“Do we have a bedtime?” Steve asked.
Ren gave a pained smile. Georgia, on the other hand, didn’t fight the urge to roll her eyes. Steve gave her a wink. “Come on, you know you missed me, Sweetheart,” he sighed.
“Call if you need anything,” Ren said with a little bow.
“Urgent,” Georgia added. She glared pointedly at Steve.
“Goodnight, you crazy kids!” Steve called as the two humans left the penthouse.
As soon as they had made it to the stairs, Georgia took Ren’s hand. He smiled, but Georgia instantly noticed the sadness in his eyes.
