Authors: SM Johnson
So now he knew.
What did he give up in coldness were he to allow his humanity some freedom? Who but himself might be harmed by his own pain? Who but himself would pass judgment?
Roderick moved again in his arms, and DeVante realized with sudden sharp clarity why Emily had needed to leave, why she had to pursue a life with the possibility of children.
This
, this fragile fearful hope that made him suck in his breath and hold it, eyes ever watchful for some sign of good news, of strength. Heart ever swelling to embrace this marvelous scamp who, were DeVante human, would drive him either to prayer or alcohol.
Then, in his head, as if speaking to his very thoughts,
I think I’m okay.
Are you?
DeVante whispered soft mind-speak in reply.
Yes, I feel like I was lost and confused for a very long time, but I’m okay now.
The time for grief was over, and anger surged. “He had you like a rat in a cage,” DeVante said out loud, and felt in his voice the ferocity that was palpable in his mind.
Roderick’s voice was a weak plea. “But I’m okay. I am.”
“You are amazingly undefeatable, Bratling.”
“I am,” Roderick said, and laughed his impish laugh. “Where are the others?”
DeVante went still, stretching out his mind, reaching. “I left them behind. I could take only one. You.”
His mind brushed Daniel’s, then Lily’s, the only ones he could touch from a distance.
We’re safe,
Daniel answered.
Reed kept us safe.
Reed. A born leader, perhaps. What to do, what to do. There really was no question. He would have to be changed. But would he choose it, or be forced? Which way, DeVante wondered, would serve Reed better in the end, with his will, or against it? Which would make him stronger?
“Come, Roderick, we should hunt, if you are so well.”
Roderick shook his head. “I want to take a shower first, clear my thoughts.”
DeVante groaned. “I will never understand your love of the shower. We are no longer human—we do not leak, nor sweat, nor stink. And yet you shower nearly every day.”
Roderick rolled out of the bed and stood carefully on his feet, swaying just a bit. “What? You don’t want to pay for the water? Get over it. A hot shower, and I mean so hot you feel the stream like tiny needles piercing your skin—clears my muddled head, lets me daydream, remember sleeping dreams. Even, sometimes, shows me where I need to go in my life and how to obtain happiness. Fleeting thoughts, and often I lose them as effortlessly as I found them, but still… just one of the little pleasures of existence that I devour. So patience, O Wise One, I ask of you—give me this little time to clear my head and process where to go from here.”
“I know where we have to go from here.” DeVante knew he sounded snappish, and he knew he was impatient.
“Really?” Roderick asked.
“Yes. I abandoned the whole crew of our family in L.A. You and I need to collect them.”
“Family? Since when do we have a family?”
DeVante sighed aloud, then let himself smile. “Since they started gathering around me and refusing to leave.”
“Who all do we need to collect?”
“Daniel, Lily, Tony, Reed.”
“It’s an unusual family, DeVante. Two vampires, one something-or-other… and a human.”
“Four vampires, one old-world spirit, two humans. If she’ll come.”
Roderick grinned his wickedest grin. “Three vampires, one teen-age freak, one damn-near fledgling, one pregnant human,” his voice dropped to a whisper, “if she’ll come,” then resumed normal volume, “which technically equals two humans right there, three if there’s a daddy somewhere, and countless more that Daniel attracts and adopts as his food source. Top that.”
DeVante laughed outright and almost cut the sound short as Roderick first shuddered with pleasure and then preened. “I could never. You win. Take the shower, Brat, perhaps it will sting you stupid.”
***
Roderick’s shower wasn’t quite the head-clearing experience he expected because he was too busy pondering DeVante calling them all family to let his mind just drift. And, amazingly enough, DeVante joined him. That about blew his poor benighted mind. Again. “Have you ever done this before?” Roderick asked his mentor. “Shared a shower, I mean?”
“I certainly have not.”
“Wash me,” Roderick said, turning to face DeVante. “Wash me like a father would, with love and tenderness. No, scratch that—wash me like a lover.”
DeVante did all that and more.
He smoothed Roderick’s skin beneath his hands, turned his body, licked the hollow of his throat, then kissed where Roderick knew he would rather bite.
“It is strange,” DeVante said.
“What?” Roderick asked.
“The love of a parent, but the need of a lover.”
“It’s the vampire way, DeVante, surely you know that. Mentor, teacher, lover, father. You get to be everything.”
DeVante laughed, but underneath the water it sounded like a snort, and Roderick pulled slightly away, placed his palms on the sides of DeVante’s face, and smiled into his eyes.
“What, Dark Father? Do you suddenly like hot showers?”
“I like it,” DeVante said. “Not as much as I like the blood, but it will do.”
“Well, what do you know... you learned something from me. That’s a switch.”
“New tricks for old dogs. Why not? Except that we do not have time for this—the others are waiting.”
They dried and dressed, and because they both needed strength, stopped to feed along the way.
As they walked up the steps to the large old house where the others waited, Roderick asked, “Are you ever going to sleep with me?”
DeVante stopped dead, the look on his face one of pure astonishment. “No. Why?”
Roderick pouted. “It’s just a question. I mean, why not?”
DeVante stared at him, then finally said, “You are teasing me.”
Roderick ducked his head and peered at DeVante through his lashes. The shy flirt. “Come on, are you?”
“I prefer blood,” DeVante said.
Roderick still pouted. “And women.”
“No. Blood. Well. Emily is the exception.”
A dramatic sigh from Roderick. “And you’ll wait for her until the end of time,” he said, filling his voice with melancholy.
DeVante laughed. “For awhile, at any rate.”
Roderick shook himself. Time to let DeVante off the hook. “Oh well. I was just checking. You like women, and now you have Lily. Daniel has Reed. I think Tony’s straight. Damn. I’ll have to make a new one.”
“Roderick!”
He laughed at DeVante’s outrage. “I’m just messing with you. I know, I’m forbidden, and you’re not kidding.” He sighed again, turning eyes on DeVante, and then gave his maker his best grin. “Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure I can turn Tony queer,” and laughed at DeVante’s expression of sheer exasperation.
They found the others lounging and talking and laughing in a literal sex dungeon in the basement, all but Tony, that is, who eavesdropped from a perch on the stairs.
Roderick nudged Tony and said, “Who’s the guy Lily’s talking to? And what are you doing here on the stairs?”
“The guy is Peter—he lives here. Reed knew him way back when. I came upstairs to get something to drink and the conversation got naughtier, so I decided it might be more interesting to stay out of sight. They censor themselves in front of me. They think I’m a baby.”
Roderick grinned at him, said, “I don’t,” and nudged Tony to follow when DeVante went down the stairs.
And even though Roderick couldn’t ‘hear’ Tony in his head, his skin prickled at the beautiful dark one’s proximity. Yeah, he was pretty sure Tony swung both ways. And there would be time to sort it all out.
DeVante had stopped at the doorway, eyes intent on Reed, who had Daniel, fully clothed, buckled in a spread-eagle to a St. Andrew’s cross.
Daniel’s voice carried across the room, a laugh edged with excited tension. “What would you do to me, Reed, if I were here all helpless and naked?”
“This,” Reed said, and picked up a flogger. He swung it lightly against Daniel’s back. “And this,” he flicked the tails between Daniel’s legs, from underneath.
“Ahh,” Daniel moaned with a smile, playing along. “And when is this going to happen?”
“Soon,” Reed promised.
DeVante’s voice cut through the room. “If you ever should go too far and hurt that boy, I will kill you.”
All movement in the room stopped. Lily and Peter, who were tucked into a corner talking quietly, went silent.
The room lost air and even Roderick, standing beside DeVante and quite used to DeVante’s many moods and powers, had to work to suck in a breath.
Reed turned in slow motion to look DeVante full in the face. “Of course. I expect nothing less.”
DeVante did not stop there. His voice flew through the air like a single-tailed whip. “They are MINE, every one, before any one of them is yours.”
Reed nodded and bent to unbuckle Daniel.
Roderick thought DeVante might be losing his mind. First calling them family, now claiming them out loud.
Chapter 39
How to love a family
He stood off to one side of the house, across the driveway from the door, and watched Emily step outside and hoist a white bag into a trashcan. The cat that had been Daniel’s at her heels.
DeVante cloaked himself in shadow and darkness, but it made no difference. She stopped, stiffened, and he could see she knew he was there. The cat hissed and fled into the cover of the bushes. It had tolerated him, that cat, for so long as Daniel remained human. But after Daniel’s change, it transferred all its affection and loyalty to the last remaining human in the St. Paul penthouse.
“What are you doing here?” Emily said, as her eyes found him in the dark. There was a hint of… something, tension perhaps, threaded into her voice.
“Watching, to know you are well.”
“Well don’t. You can’t be doing this all my life. I mean, it’s flattering and all, but still…” she let her words trail away.
“Come back to us.”
“I can’t. I’m pregnant.”
He knew it was true the moment she spoke, could feel the stirring of a new presence in her womb. “All the better. You can be happy. We can be happy for you. Come home.”
She shook her head. “I’m building a life here.”
“I can give you a better one.”
“And what?” she asked, her voice filled with sarcasm. “Raise this child in darkness?”
“Daniel misses you. He is growing up, and you are not there to see.”
“Ah, yes, blame Daniel. The truth is that you must have your own way.”
“That too, of course,” DeVante admitted, and she laughed, tension flowing out of her body as everything was set right between them again. He stepped into her space, folded her into his arms, and dipped his head to bury his face into her soft blonde curls.
She allowed it, but it seemed only moments until she said, “Don’t make this harder than it is,” and pulled away.
“It doesn’t have to be hard at all,” he said. “Just come home.”
“Where is home these days, anyway?”
“Oakland. San Francisco.”
She grinned. “Daniel must be in heaven.”
“Something like that,” he groused. “He is almost as much trouble as Roderick.”
“Impossible!”
“I said ‘almost,’ —but he finds his share.”
“How are they?” she asked. “I try not to wonder, but I still do.”
“Drink from me—I will show you.”
He knew she would not. She refused his every attempt, as if she somehow knew that once she tasted his blood she would belong to him for all time.
“What? Blood, the vampire newsletter?” She giggled at her own wit.
DeVante chuckled, but truth was her quirky way of thinking caused him pain. He wanted his nights filled with her viewpoint and endless commentary.
“How can you resist me, Emily?” he asked, and offered his wrist. “It will catch you up on all that has happened, how much we have changed in these two years, and how much we have stayed the same.”
She flashed him a smile that tore his heart out. “Resisting you is one of my numerous charms.” Then she shook her head. “It would only make me love you unbearably. And it could hurt the baby.”
“I doubt that. It could make the baby stronger.”
“But you don’t really know.”
He raised an eyebrow and a shoulder. “The Blood has few harmful effects.”
“I thought it almost killed Daniel. Wasn’t that the story, he had to be changed or he would die, because Roderick’s blood infected him somehow?”