Authors: SM Johnson
“Lily? Is it okay?” Always before he let her lead, not wanting to coerce or damage her in any way.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. She was kissing him now, tiny baby kisses on his forehead, his eyelids. “It should always be okay between us.”
He slid his hand between her thighs and found she was wet for him. Love filled his heart as blood filled his cock and found no resistance as he slid inside her. Sweet, sweet Lily. How precious she was.
He set a slow languorous rhythm and she matched it, touch for touch, sigh for sigh. His teeth found her throat, grazed her soft skin. He hesitated. A foreign instinct was urging him to drive his fangs into her neck, drink her blood... drink, drink! He resisted and pressed harder into her warm center. “Lily, Lily,” he whispered.
And then her blood was flowing past his fangs, into his mouth and he moaned against her skin. She tasted insanely sweet and even when he realized what he was doing, he could not stop. Did not stop.
Until her heart ceased to beat.
And then he panicked. “Lily!” He shook her lifeless body. “Lily! Wake up, I didn’t mean to do it. Oh dear God and Jesus sitting there in heaven. Oh shit.” He started to cry. What happened to dancing? What had he done?
In desperation, he had a flicker of memory and tore at his wrist with his teeth. Pressed it, bleeding, to her mouth.
“Lily, drink! Be alive. Drink my blood. Please, please be alive. God, if You’re there, if You exist, help her drink, make her live!” And, burying his head into the pillows and blankets he let out a strangled scream. Took a deep breath, screamed again, “No no no NO NO NO!”
And then he felt it. A gentle sucking sensation at his wrist, her pink lips clamped against his skin, her mouth working, face screwed into a confused frown.
He took in a great gulp of air and felt giddy with relief. He had done it.
Exactly what he had done, he dared not think too hard about.
Her hands groped for his arm, held him tighter as she gasped and sucked and quietly mewled.
She was saved.
She suckled his arm on and off for what felt like a very long time, but probably wasn’t. Then she slept.
Or something.
She lay supine on the bed, hair scattered around her head, skin pale, eyes closed, lips parted.
Tony stretched out beside her and watched.
She did not stir. Did not breathe or swallow reflexively. He laid his head on her chest and heard nothing.
Again came the fear. “Lily? Wake up. C’mon, you’re scaring me. Please wake up.”
He grasped her shoulders and shook her, at first very gently, and then harder, faster, until her head and neck wobbled obscenely.
Dear God. She really was dead.
Tony lay his head on her again but this time he didn’t listen for a heartbeat. This time he wept. He wept in self-recrimination and pity. He had killed Lily. He hadn’t even meant to do it. What happened to dancing like last night? Dancing, drinking, watching that girl walk away. Roderick was right about one thing; he loved to drink. He could already tell it was something he would do over and over again. But killing? He couldn’t go around killing people like this.
Chapter 12
How to do everything badly
Roderick knew immediately upon waking that Tony was gone. He didn’t know where or for how long, but he was sure Tony was not in the apartment. Damn. He opened his mind wide in hopes that it was a fluke last night that he was blocked from Tony’s mind and that tonight he would have access to his fledgling’s thoughts.
No such luck. Damn, damn, damn!
Now he’d really blown it. A brand new, unsupervised baby vampire running loose in the wild wonder of Las Vegas. Shit.
Roderick hoped Tony didn’t have a mind to suddenly pay a visit to everyone he’d never liked. Ugh. He wondered how long Tony had been awake and gone. He wondered how many people Tony might have killed, and if, perhaps, he’d been caught.
How did you find a vampire from whose thoughts you were completely barred? How the hell would he ever find him? Roderick knew nothing about Tony’s mortal life, not where he lived, not who his clients or friends had been. Ah, Mavis. This could get so ugly.
Roderick could just wait here and hope Tony would come back. But patience was definitely not one of his virtues. Waiting here would be awful. So he might as well get dressed and start looking. Maybe if he opened his mind in the street and skimmed the surface thoughts of, well, everybody, maybe then he’d get a lead on Tony. It was worth a try.
He put on blue jeans, a dark green t-shirt and his soft brown leather jacket. Tennis shoes, because the kid took his boots. Damn kid.
The dead bolt on the bedroom door was unbolted. Gee, thanks, kid, for leaving me so well protected.
He noted the same about the apartment door. Nice.
He leapt off his balcony in a blind panic and hit the ground running, no care as to whether he was observed. He heard someone shout. “Holy shit! Did you see that?” but by the time he realized the yell was probably from someone who’d witnessed his grand exit, he was already four blocks away, screaming, “TONY!” in his head, even though he knew he was blocked from reaching Tony that way.
He forced himself to stop running and think, think. Oh Mavis, help me think this through. If I were a mortal and had no ability or expectation to crawl into someone’s mind, how would I find him?
I’d go to their house.
But he didn’t know where Tony lived.
Okay, then, find a phone book and look him up... Anthony... hmm, Anthony Something. Hell, he didn’t even know the kid’s last name. Well, all right, that’s another dead end.
So, if you didn’t know where someone lived and you didn’t know their last name, then you would show up in the place where you met them.
Huh. Well, he found Tony thrown away like garbage, in that stinking alley—the kid probably wouldn’t be visiting there any time soon.
There were the human options, considered and discarded. Perhaps there was a vampire option he hadn’t explored. If you couldn’t read the mind of your fledgling you could still... what? Surely there was something he could do.
It came to him. He could scan the thoughts of mortals, holding a visual of Tony, putting it into their minds. Even a random search was better than none.
He groped people’s minds along the street, sometimes violating them so they suddenly grabbed their heads and cried out. He was mildly sorry for this, but more than that he was desperate to find his fledgling.
DeVante would kill him. Roderick’s stomach sunk to his toes. If he created and then lost a fledgling, DeVante might
really
kill him. Roderick couldn’t think about that too hard right now. He had to look.
He tried to be gentler, sifting through thoughts—a young man worried his girlfriend was cheating on him, a middle-aged woman wracked with guilt because she’s just gambled her whole paycheck away at the Stratosphere and didn’t even have a few dollars left to pick up milk for her grand-baby on the way home. A teenager weighing whether he’d be more likely to die if he jumped off a building, shot himself in the head, or swallowed a handful of pills. Roderick stopped beside the teen, sent him a visual of laying in a casket with his face stitched up badly, and said, “Forget about it, life’s too short anyway.”
None of these people had seen Tony.
“Jesus, drained of blood,” Roderick heard in passing, and he tapped the mind who’d had that thought. It was a cop, and Roderick tried to catch more, slowly and carefully, without looking directly at the man. The cop was heavy with sadness thinking of a poor dead girl outside Treasure Island last night. Probably Roderick’s prey. Wow, there’s coincidence for you.
Damn it, Tony, where are you? Roderick felt desperate with fear. What would a new vampire do if left on his own? Destroy people, that’s what. Get drunk on blood. Exact revenge on those they deemed to deserve it. What else was there to do?
Oh, the impulse to change the dying boy. A terrible mistake. What had made him do it? Impulse. Looked at his face and just couldn’t help himself. And so he had created a new vampire without any discipline, without any of the preliminary things that DeVante had always insisted on and that so annoyed Roderick. He was always so impatient. This was the consequence. He had no control over Tony. Hell, Roderick didn’t even know how to find him.
Chapter 13
How to live in the modern world
Late the next night, Daniel found Reed at ‘Teasers. Daniel danced up to him, grinning, filled with the anticipation of another all-nighter. “Hey,” he grinned at his new crush. “You wanna dance?”
Reed looked at Daniel, and then his gaze seemed to change until he was looking right through him with alcohol-blurred eyes. “Sorry kid, you’re too fucking young,” and he pushed past Daniel to get lost in the crowd.
Daniel was crushed. He wanted to cry but he wouldn’t, because Roderick said he always gave in to his emotions so quickly he couldn’t think. And it was true.
So he followed Reed, but he was too late—Reed was already leaving the club with a twink. Fuck. Daniel followed them outside, watched them get into Reed’s Mustang, Reed pulling the twink’s head into his lap then dropping his seat back, eyes closed, hand at the nape of the twink’s neck. Double fuck.
Daniel went back into the bar, ordered three shots of Cuervo, and downed them in quick succession. The rush slammed into him, and it was totally intense even though he knew it would be short-lived.
The bartenders grouped together, hopped up on the main bar and did a silly shouting performance of “last call for alcohol.” Daniel laughed—he hadn’t seen that before. The kid next to him groaned. “It always ends too soon.”
“Yup,” Daniel agreed, knowing his buzz would be gone in ten minutes and he’d just be upset and angry that Reed blew him off. “You know anyone here?” Daniel asked the kid. “Because I got a place and we could move the party there, but I just moved here and I don’t know hardly anyone.”
“I know a couple guys here. But I’m supposed to meet up with my buddy, Mark, and his girlfriend.”
Daniel pictured his big empty house and shrugged. “They could come, too. I’m Daniel.”
“Caleb,” the boy said.
Daniel gave Caleb his address. He’d made sure he knew it, hoping to give it to Reed, actually. But a new thought was brewing, a half-formed vision of a flowing mass of mortals in and out of the house… the party never ending, a constant source of blood that Daniel could have often and at will. He wondered if it would work. Roderick had been feeding from Daniel long before Daniel realized it. For a long, long time, Daniel thought the love bites were just very passionate kisses, because that’s exactly what Roderick wanted him to think.
Daniel expected he could do the same, surround himself with interesting humans. Maybe he’d even start drawing again.
Over the next couple of days mortals were flocking to Daniel’s house after the clubs closed. He didn’t try to feed from any of them until the third night. Just talked and drank and laughed. Partied. That first night Caleb came with his friends, Mark and Gina, and a couple guys he’d brought from the bar. Daniel really wanted to fuck the one called Nathaniel. Or drink from him. He was as dark as Daniel was fair, and he drank with an angry intensity that didn’t leave room for words. Daniel tried to engage him, but he refused to be engaged until Daniel sat on his lap, took the kid’s face in his hands, and rubbed noses with him. And suddenly the kid smiled and kissed Daniel and the kiss made Daniel so hungry that he had to flee. He was a little disappointed that Nathanial hadn’t returned.
The third night Daniel walked through the house, hair wet from the shower, skin still damp, feeling positively spunky. His after-hours party was a big success. And Reed would come around, too, Daniel was sure of it, if he could just catch him at the right place and time.
He could hardly describe how Reed made him feel—the heat that rose up between them was so consuming he actually feared he might burst into flames. Freaking incredible. Daniel was surprised, remembering their night together, that Reed’s fingerprints weren’t literally burned into his skin, because that’s what it felt like. He’d had quickly fading bruises from moments when Reed barely had control, his fingers hard on Daniel’s limbs, pounding into him as though he would never, ever get enough.
Daniel felt that way. He was desperate go another round, helpless beneath Reed’s hands.
But at least Daniel had this, the party. He walked through his house and surveyed his collected tribe. There was a little group already that Daniel didn’t think ever left. Caleb wasn’t among them, or the friends that had come with him, but Daniel didn’t care. He liked all the mortals who were here.
Including DeVante’s housekeeper, Trina. Daniel suspected that DeVante had asked her to keep an eye on things, because she’d been here for two days, and Daniel noticed she’d moved a slew of personal belongings into the downstairs suite. It was a good thing, because they were a messy bunch, and it was a lot more interesting here than in DeVante’s silent lair. Trina loved to talk, she could talk softly for hours about anything, and now there was always someone here to talk to. She was a soft-spoken, long-blonde-haired ultra-femme little thing that always seemed lonely and lost. It was no wonder DeVante had been drawn to her—Daniel was convinced that some part of DeVante liked being the dark dashing hero, swooping in to save the day. And Trina had surely needed saving. The more Daniel talked with her, the more he realized she needed a safe place as much as any of them did. She told him she tended to hook up with very butch lesbians who, at the very least, railroaded her, and at the worst, abused her outright. She was willing to take the abuse if she thought she was getting back what she perceived as love or need.