Ashes of the Day (7 page)

“Well, they can do that now.” Conrad turned to the twins. “Go ahead, children. You may go in now and start your meal. But carefully, just as you were taught. No roughness. Is that understood?”

The children nodded and ran off. Damian stared after them, his expression uneasy. “Conrad, are you sure it’s wise to leave them alone with your guest? They’re still so young… I don’t think we can reasonably expect them to be in complete control of their impulses yet.”

“I know. I’ll go after them in a moment,” Conrad promised. “But, first…what’s really going on here tonight?” He laid his hand on Damian’s sleeve, far more lightly than he wished. Too lightly to even count as a caress. Still, Damian seemed to stiffen. Conrad lifted his hand away at once. “I’ve just come from the kitchen. Have you been…cooking?”

“
Sí
. Baking, to be precise. I’m just trying to help the children feel more normal; and act more like normal, human children as well. It’s important that they be able to fit in—both now and also when they’re adults. I thought teaching them a basic familiarity with the kinds of things other children seem to like was a good place to start.”

“And wishing on stars? Is that also something you feel will help them fit in?”

“Perhaps. Why? Have you something against wishing now?”

“No. I just wonder if it’s wise to put such foolish notions into their heads. Do you really imagine the heavens are at all concerned with the likes of us?” They were vampires, monsters, freaks of nature. And it had always seemed to Conrad that the constellations were not just distant, but also supremely disinterested in anyone’s wishes—human or otherwise.

Damian merely shrugged. “They’re children, Conrad. What harm could there be in letting them dream? Or, would you take away their innocence so soon?”

“I didn’t say there was harm in it, exactly, I just…” He just wished it could ever be that simple. He wished he knew for certain whether any of their dreams had even the slightest chance of coming true, never mind a few of his own. “I’d hate to see them disappointed and it seems farfetched to expect such wishes to come true, does it not?”

Damian sighed. “I suppose so. But, tell me, Conrad, farfetched or not, have you never once wished for something you knew you couldn’t have?”

Once? Conrad shook his head. More like every single night for the past hundred and twenty years. Try as he might, he couldn’t keep the sneer from his lips—or his voice. “Frequently. Only I’m not fool enough to believe that wishing alone will ever make such dreams come true.” Or so he kept telling himself.

A fool? Damian drew in a startled breath.
Is that how he thinks of me?
But why even ask? He was a fool, was he not? Why else would he have spent decades clinging to the same hopeless dream? “I see.” And he did. Finally. He saw that, by waiting on Conrad, praying that someday things would change, Damian had not merely been wasting time. He’d been squandering years of his life, throwing away any chance to find love or happiness elsewhere. He smiled coldly. “Well, I’m sure you’re quite right,
querido
. As always. And, on that note, if you’ll be so kind as to monitor the children’s progress? I think I’ll go out for a bite to eat myself.”

“Certainly.” A faint look of disappointment appeared on Conrad’s face. Damian ignored it. He was finished with trying to puzzle together what Conrad wanted, or thought or cared about. Damian dipped his head in a brief nod, then turned away.

“It’s getting close to morning,” Conrad called. “You won’t be out late, will you?”

“
Sí
. It’s entirely possible,” Damian replied without turning around. “Don’t wait up.”

Chapter Four

December 28, 2009

Night had fallen. The vampires were waking up. In the small efficiency apartment located over the estate’s garage, Julie Fischer’s eyes blinked open. She sucked in a quick breath and glanced around, surprised to find herself sprawled on the floor. Had there been an earthquake? Or had something else knocked her out of bed and startled her from sleep?

Whatever the cause, she was grateful for it. Her dreams had been so far from pleasant, she was glad for any excuse to escape them. An instant later, however, the dreams were all but forgotten. Somewhere close at hand, the anxious throbbing of a human heart begged for her attention.

Come and take me… Come and take me… Come and take me…

Fangs unsheathed, Julie went into a crouch and surveyed the room. The darkness aided her vision, which was always sharper by night, and she quickly oriented on the sound. There. Brennan stood just out of reach on the far side of the bed. Tousle-haired and naked, he had the look of a man who’d just had a good fright. Disappointment settled in Julie’s heart, fueled by an uneasy feeling of déjà vu. They’d been here and done this before. This was not the first time she’d seen that look on his face. This was not the first time she’d scared him.

It took her a moment to dial down her hunger the necessary notch or two, to keep it from showing too obviously on her face. While she waited, she licked her lips and peered at him curiously. He looked good—no surprise there—tall and dark with bright blue eyes and a day’s worth of stubble shadowing his jaw. He looked altogether scrumptious, except for the scowl. That scowl was all wrong. Julie cleared her throat. “Something bothering you, Bren?”

The scowl deepened. “Why don’t you tell me?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Julie asked as she picked herself up from the floor.

Brennan took a quick step back, his eyes never leaving her face, his expression shifting from annoyed back to fearful. “N-nothing. Never mind.”

“Nothing” it certainly was not. The telltale patter of his racing heart gave that away, but Julie decided to let the lie pass. She slid back into bed and waited for him to continue.

It took a moment. Finally, Brennan heaved a deep sigh and shoved his hands through his hair. “I guess, maybe… You musta been dreaming again or something, huh?”

Julie nodded. “Just one of my nightmares,” she lied. “I can never remember what they’re even about.” Oh, if only that were true! “But, never mind about that. Why don’t you come back over here now?” She shot Brennan an inviting smile and patted the bed beside her. “You still have some time before work, don’t you?” They both knew he did.

There was more than enough time for a quick snack or even a not-so-quick tumble between the sheets. The two urges were so closely aligned Julie occasionally found it hard to keep them separate, especially at times like these, with the scent of Brennan’s fear tingeing the atmosphere. It was an atavistic response, or so her uncle Damian had explained, a result of her combined human-vampire heritage.

Hunger and reproduction were no more than two sides of the same survival coin, inextricably intertwined. Both were thwarted when Brennan shook his head. “Nah, no sense in that. I’m up now, might as well get an early start to the day. I’m just gonna go grab a quick shower.”

But I’m hungry
. Disappointed, Julie watched as he backed up another couple of steps, pausing only to snag his clothes from on top of his dresser before continuing his retreat. “Brennan…”
Don’t make me force you to come back here. Don’t make me compel you to give me what I want
.

She knew she could do it. She was pretty sure he knew it too. The real question was this: Would she ever? She’d never acted that way with him up until now and she certainly didn’t want to start. It was not who she was. It was not who they were. Or so she’d always thought. Until Brennan vanished into the bathroom and Julie heard the unmistakable snick of the lock.

Suddenly, she was a whole lot less sure. She let out an angry snarl.
Still hungry!
Then she picked up Brennan’s pillow and hurled it at the bathroom door in a fit of hurt and frustration.

Maybe she’d only been fooling herself. Maybe “they” were already not who she thought they were. Maybe they never had been.

Even in the dubious safety of his bathroom, the sound of Julie’s growl reached Brennan’s ears and raised the hair on his neck. He winced at the muffled thud of something hitting the door and reached into the shower, hoping the rush of water would mask any other noises. The sight of his face in the mirror, wide-eyed and paler than it should have been, had him shaking his head. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked his reflection. “Why are you still here? How the hell did you get yourself into this mess, anyway?” They were pretty much the same questions he’d been asking himself ever since he took this job.

Night watchman and gate guard at the Quintano mansion—just one of the many Victorian-era houses for which San Francisco was justly famous—should have been a cakewalk. The fact that a rent-free, furnished apartment in one of the city’s priciest neighborhoods came as part of the gig was a nice bit of extra icing. But the generous pay—that should have been his first big tip-off that things weren’t exactly what they seemed. No one would offer that kind of hazard pay for a job that wasn’t…well, hazardous. This job was all hazard.

Vampires. Who’d have believed it? A year later and Brennan was still in a state of disbelief. He supposed the exceptionally high salaries he and the other employees were being paid were meant as an incentive to keep their mouths shut, but if that was the case, Quintano could’ve saved himself some cash. It wasn’t the money that kept people from talking. Brennan had figured that one out pretty fast. It was the realization there was no one who was ever going to listen even if you did try and talk to them. It was the fear of being thought crazy that kept most of the staff quiet—that and the even bigger fear of being sliced, diced and served up as part of a midnight buffet.

They’d all seen what the vamps were capable of when rubbed the wrong way. No one in their right mind went looking to get on the wrong side of big, bad and perpetually bloodthirsty.

It had taken him a little longer to admit to the third reason. It was the lure of the venom. The thrill of the heat as it spread through his veins. The craving if he went too long without. He was a slut for it those first few months. He couldn’t get enough. It was a monster high with no discernible cost. It was easily accessible. It was part of the job. Hell, it wasn’t even something he could ever get busted for. So, really, where was the bad?

The idea that there could be a downside, that nothing in this world came for free, that he was paying—quite literally—in blood, didn’t even occur to him. Not until, finally, so gradually he didn’t even realize things were getting out of hand, it got to be too much. Until it reached the point where he was having trouble dragging his tired-assed self out of bed every night and feeling like crap every minute he wasn’t high. By then he couldn’t stop. He didn’t want to stop and, even if he had wanted to, he wasn’t sure they’d have let him.

There was always someone wanting a piece of him, and another someone, and someone else after that. He was so used to saying yes he didn’t know how to say no. Then along came Julie, so pretty and sweet. She saw what was happening much more clearly than he did. She’d saved him. She’d chosen him for her own. She’d gone to Conrad and fought for him and, just like that, all the others went away.

He was grateful. He was smitten. And once again he forgot—nothing comes for free. But, in his own defense, how the hell could he ever have guessed she would prove a bigger danger than the whole rest of the vampire nest combined?

Brennan stepped into the shower and let the spray of the water unkink his muscles and wash away some of the tension he’d woken up with. He leaned his hands against the tile and contemplated how really and truly screwed up his life had become.

The reason for it wasn’t hard to figure out. Most of the time Julie looked so normal and acted so normal she made it easy to forget that “normal” was the one thing she would never be again. As a result, he’d opened his arms and his heart…and stupidly kept his eyes squeezed shut.

And now? Well, waking up to find a pointy-toothed, fiery-eyed fiend clambering on top of you, trying to pin you to the bed sure had a unique way of opening a guy’s eyes and re-ordering his priorities. Even if the fiend in question did happen to be his girlfriend.

It was a lucky kick that had dislodged Julie and sent her tumbling to the floor—not that he planned on ever disclosing that piece of information—and lucky was not the kind of bet you took more than once. Not when it was your life you were playing for.

Damn it, tonight never should have happened. He should have read the writing on the wall the first time he’d woken up to find her snarling and snapping in her sleep. He should have made a clean break of it weeks ago. Doing anything else was just plain stupid.

She was Vampire. He was human. Nothing was ever going to change either of those facts. A smart man would have done a better job of keeping that in mind. A smart man would also have likely put several hundred miles or a couple of times zones between the two of them by now. Which just went to show, he supposed. Obviously, he was never going to be that man.

She should have waited for me,
he thought as he grabbed for the soap—as if hopelessly fucked was a feeling that could ever be scrubbed away. Intellectually, it wasn’t difficult to grasp the appeal. Immortality, eternal youth and, so far as he could tell, endless piles of money came with being one of the Quintano undead. How could she resist?
But, all the same, she should have known I’d come along. If only we’d met each other sooner…