When she started in with her brushes
and mineral powders it only took a couple minutes, some mascara,
some lip blush and gloss, and she declared Min
“Rocky-chic!”
Min rolled her eyes then turned to the
mirror again. Besides the little band-aid, she had never looked
better. Min couldn’t see even a shadow of the bruising, and her
skin really looked flawless. The hairstyle and the expert
application of mascara and eye shadow really made her eyes pop.
“Remind me to have you do my makeup for my next date.”
“
And when would that be? I
haven’t seen that blissfully happy look on your face since that
first time.”
Min shook her head. Maybe she would’ve
had that “blissfully happy look” if she hadn’t had so much to think
about. “You ready to go?”
“
Just one more
thing.”
“
What?” Min sounded so
tired, even to herself. She took a double take at the intense look
in her sister’s eyes.
“
So the thing…whatever did
that to mom…it was here last night?”
You can’t tell her…but god,
the look on her face…
“
In a way, yes.”
“
And it’s tough?”
“
Kicked my ass but good,”
Min tried to smile.
Andy got a scared look on her face that
melted almost immediately to determination. “Are we going to be
able to beat it?”
Min was about to say,
“
I’ll
beat it.
You’re not going anywhere near it.” But she saw the look on her
sister’s face. Andy needed more than anything right then to feel
like she would be able to help. “We’re Boccherini women, aren’t we?
We’ll beat the shit out of it in the end. We always do.” Min was
surprised at how certain she sounded, for she certainly didn’t feel
it.
Chapter 15
Exhausted from the sale, and the
relentless conventioneers, Min came home and crashed on the couch.
Her head aching, her body stiff—both demanding Motrin…and to never
move again. It hadn’t been a completely unpleasant experience. Some
old friends stopped by the sale, witches and practitioners of the
craft she hadn’t seen in years, even a minor deity that usually
only bothers to venture out of his lair once every ten years, and
only on All Hollows Eve.
She was shocked to see him, and he
bought some lavender bath salts…and funny enough, a small pewter
likeness of himself. He thought it was cute. She had to agree.
She’d always thought Ptah, the Egyptian God of Craftsmen had been
extremely good looking.
Finally she had to ask why he was out
and about, and he gave her the most salacious look.
“
Because something big is
coming.” He smiled wickedly as he leaned down and looked into Min’s
eyes. It was only when he wanted you to that you realized he was
not only a god, but mightily intimidating. Nearly seven feet tall,
broader shouldered than two men, and brimming with supernatural
strength. His eyes flashed silvery as he gazed deeply into her. Not
a soul gaze, not merely a trick where it seems someone is looking
into you, but the real thing. He was looking right into the core of
who she was.
The Egyptians called it your secret
name, to be able to see everything that you had been and were. A
secret name was a very powerful and a very dangerous
thing—especially in the hands of as wily a heavy hitter as an
ancient Egyptian god.
“
But you know all about
that, don’t you?” he stood there, staring into Min’s eyes for maybe
another ten seconds, and laughed as he straightened to his usual
height. “Just remember Min, daughter of Katarina of the Boccherini
Clan, there are things in this very store that can help you in most
any task. All you have to do is use the right one.” And then he
turned and majestically swept from the magic shop, his form fading
into nothingness before he reached the front door.
Okay, that had been majorly
creepy.
Min closed her eyes now, too tired to
move or to get the Motrin she so desperately wanted. She’d use
magick to summon the bottle of Motrin, but that would probably lead
to a worse headache.
She listened to the wind outside, and
to the stillness of the house. But she felt him. Luca was standing
right beside her. It should have scared her. It should have at
least made her flinch. But she sighed with relief as she reached
out and touched his face an instant before her eyes
opened.
“
You’re hurting worse than
yesterday.” He hadn’t made it a question.
“
That happens,” Min replied.
“Get your butt kicked, feel even worse the next day.”
Luca’s eyes looked so
worried
. Jeez, another one! Who’d have
thought I’d see the same look in both my sister’s eyes and my
vampire’s.
She knew she couldn’t think like
that, that he was her anything. But she did think that. Not that he
was her lover, but her vampire, and that thought infused her
immediately with such cool comfort.
Luca moved closer and very gently
picked her up in his arms. He took her upstairs to her bedroom,
helped her off with her clothes, and somehow just his touch took
most of the pain out of her injured arm and shoulder. He took his
shirt off too, and holding her bare flesh against his own cold,
smooth skin made her muscles loosen, made the riot of pain in her
head fade. He placed her in bed, enfolding her in his arms,
planting chaste kisses on her face and over her shoulders as he
held her.
Min finally drifted off to
sleep.
Not smart
,
she thought as he gently undid the braid of her hair with his
nimble fingers, caressing away the pain as she faded into
nothingness.
~*~
The dream had been strange and
irritating—about five ninja hamsters and their Siamese Sensei. When
he wasn’t trying to eat them, he taught them assassination martial
arts style. When Min awoke she was calm and if anything, relieved
to be out of her dream. To her surprise her shoulder was only
marginally stiff, and all her other pains were just gone. She
trudged, still rather tired, into the shower. She washed her hair,
and then stood there under the spray of water until the hot water
ran out. She wrapped herself up in a big fluffy towel and headed
back into her bedroom. There she looked into the mirror and the
gash in her head was now only a healing scratch, and the bruises
were all but gone. They were only a shadow of what they should’ve
been.
Shit…
What the hell was going on?
How did she just suddenly heal those wounds like…like what? Like a
vampire?
No, not that fast…but
still.
Then she thought of how good Luca’s
touch had felt last night, how it had eased her pain. And then she
thought of how quickly his wounds had healed after she’d burned him
that first night. Not instantaneously, no, he’d still felt them.
And hers weren’t healed completely, but they were pretty
miraculously faded and healed up. Had she somehow borrowed his
ability to heal last night? And what the hell did that
mean?
Min shivered.
Creepy.
Arriving at work a half hour later, her
sister looked at her appraisingly and asked, “Did you go out and by
some mineral makeup? I mean, I can still kind of see a shadow of
the bruise, but it looks tons better.”
Min didn’t get too close, because she
wasn’t wearing any makeup. “Something like that.”
Andy raised her eyebrows. “Oh, you did
some sort of glamour. I forgot you could do that.”
Min let her believe the glamour
explanation. It was convenient and neat, and truthfully she didn’t
know why she hadn’t thought of hiding her wounds that way in the
first place. She silently kicked herself; she could have kept the
entire episode from her sister.
Between the two-day sale and the Sci-Fi
conventioneers, they were hit hard again—which strangely made Min
start to feel better. Less sore, and even the shadow of a bruise
she had was almost completely gone by closing time.
Andy told Min she should go home. “I
can clean up.” Min made to object but Andy headed her off. “After
all, we’re closed tomorrow—might as well rest those weary, old-lady
bones.”
Min gave Andy’s smart assed words the
dirty look they deserved, but she took her up on her offer,
deciding to go home instead of clean and restock and place special
orders over the laptop that hummed and sneered at her on the back
counter of the storeroom.
She stopped and inhaled deeply when she
got out of the shop. Freshly polluted city air was better than the
stale, musty aroma of the shop any day. She walked down the street,
but didn’t take her usual turn, and instead found herself wandering
the streets, subconsciously trying to kill time…inwardly dreading
going back to her home, where Luca was no doubt waiting for
her.
It’s not like I didn’t know
what he was…or is.
Min felt the headache
from the night before knock dimly, yet persistently in her head. It
wanted to come back in and do a repeat performance.
And it’s not like I can stay
away from home forever.
Though it did sound
tempting, to just cut and run, to never have to face her problems
again. Maybe start over in a new city, a new state…hell, a new
country. She stopped walking and shook the need to run from her
body—the idea of taking the easy way out—out of her head.
I’ll be damned if I’m going to let some bigwig
faerie bitch and one lone vampire drive me from my home.
Not that Min believed Luca was a threat
like the mysterious winter faerie was, but she really, really
didn’t like having this kind of link to him. Every ounce of common
sense she had screamed that she was in deep, deep shit. It also
told her the only trustworthy vampire was a dead one.
But she knew she couldn’t
just kill him. He’d surprised her, really surprised her, and now
with how she’d healed so quickly; not vampire fast, but faster than
any human had any business being able to do so. She hadn’t taken
any of his blood, so there went the whole
True Blood
explanation. Could it just
have been him being skin to skin with her? She really had felt so
much better just from touching him. Or was there some sort of link?
She stopped in her tracks as she remembered how he seemed to know
what she was thinking and feeling.
Cripes! Shit, shit, shit, shit,
shit!
Do I love him, or is it just
some Jedi-vampire mind trick?
Whatever her subconscious
might have answered, she stopped across the street from a familiar
place. The bar, which was literally humming with human patrons,
called to her. A drink was exactly what she needed.
Maybe two or three.
The
sun was setting, and she somehow knew that Luca would be at her
home soon. He wouldn’t be able to keep away. She found herself
crossing the street, yet worrying if he’d fed enough as of late,
and then shaking her head in disgust. Whether he had taken care of
her or not, he was still a killer. Vampires didn’t just go to the
blood bank and sip at a cup of O Negative like it was coffee. He
was out there, probably right this minute, sinking his fangs into
some poor innocent’s neck.
Min made her way through the throng of
people and took a seat at the bar that happily just became vacant.
She ordered a glass of cabernet and settled into her seat. And then
she got the strangest feeling, that that had been exactly what he’d
been doing. Not drinking his blood from the source, but from a
plastic bag. She could practically feel how it had cost him,
weakening him. And he had done it for her…
She called out to the bartender,
changing her order to “Bourbon, neat.” Chugging it the instant it
was placed in front of her, she ordered another before the
bartender had a chance to get away. He gave her a hard look, but
she just glared right back at him. She needed some medicinal
reinforcements. Hell, she needed an entire bottle of
reinforcements.
She was halfway through her second
drink, her mind starting to loosen up, when Min felt a sudden rush
of guilt; she had stopped thinking about her mother.
She gritted her teeth and squeezed her
eyes shut, loathing herself. She shouldn’t be obsessing about the
vampire, or anything that was happening with him. She should be
thinking exclusively about what he’d told her, about the faeries.
The Sidhe, he’d called them. How could they have done this to her
mother? And how the hell hadn’t she remembered anything about them.
Her mother had to have taught her about them.
Again, as she tried to focus on what
had to have been in her memory about the fae, she simply couldn’t
get hold of it, as it slipped and rushed away, out of her
grasp.
It was fucking infuriating.
And then, just like that, she had the
abrupt feeling someone was watching her. It made her body tighten,
her heart thud and her breath catch in her throat. Was it the
vampire? Or something that wanted to hurt her? Was she just being
paranoid?
As she turned, she looked around the
barroom. It was filled with every kind of human, from corporate
suits to nurses in scrubs, even some brawny construction workers.
But who she saw standing in the corner near the jukebox made every
alarm in her body go off. And not all in a bad way.