Bliss (The Custos) (11 page)

              I wanted to scream. "Where are we going?" Cash asked.

              "To look at the contract, her Father placed one with both sides; whoever finds her turns her over to Conlin."

              That had Cash off his feet and fast. "No way Leush, not gonna happen, I will not turn her over to a fiend."

              Leushus nodded but said nothing while Cash continued. "I can’t believe you are ok with this?"

              He looked at Leushus until Leushus finally spoke. "Are you finished?"

              Cash said nothing only nodded. "I’m glad. And
no
we are not turning her over. Nobody seems to know where the contract came from, looks like a mole in the mix. You are coming with me because I need no bullshit on this and Preacher is more than capable of keeping her safe for a few days."

              "I'll be fine." I said.

              "Glad to hear it." He said with a smile before looking at Cash as if they were leaving now. "I have a few more stops tonight but I will be by Preachers tomorrow at nightfall."

              Before Cash could answer Leushus disappeared right before my eyes.

              Cash turned around ignoring my shock and smiled. "Time to drink." he said and walked back in the bar.

*

Chapte
r
Nine

Cash

              I meant what I said to Leushus outside. I knew she was dancing for me, I knew she wanted me to fuck her and I
would
handle it. Before I left I would get her in bed. I had given up on fighting my attraction to her. Crazier things had happened. It would be difficult being with a human, there was so much power that I would need to leash to keep from hurting her. But I wasn’t fighting my want any longer.

              She wasn’t the only one who had game though. I didn’t need infatuation to get her, though it would help in proving my point. If I wanted her I would have her. Sitting at a small booth I smiled by fiercest smile and made her catch her breath. I loved that sound, and so did my cock.

              "Princess?" I asked making her pull her gaze from Preacher.

              "Hmm?" She batted her eyes.

              "The human you loved once? What happened?" I had picked up this man from her mind time and time again. Every time she thought of me she would get flashes of her former lover, made me hate him.

              Just sayin'.

              She cleared her throat and flipped her hair over her shoulder. I caught a whiff of her shampoo, and though the scent was entwined with the musty bar and stale tobacco it still made my cock jerk.

              Down boy.

              "Well?" I asked knowing I was pushing.

              "His name was Mark. He was a financial adviser fresh out of college. We met during the summer before my first semester in college. He was tall dark and handsome and I truly thought he loved me." She took a deep breath. "He
said
he loved me and everything about me. He didn’t know a damn thing though, but he played me like a harp. Turns out he knew who I was and my Father. He manipulated me into getting him a job with my father’s company."

              She started laughing and my heart broke for her and how hard it must be to tell me how she had been played. "The two of them would tease me, jokes always at my expense, but my Father seemed to like him and I had hoped Mark would have brought us closer." Another deep breath. "So one day I went to the apartment we shared, I had skipped my classes that day. I wanted a little afternoon delight but when I got home.... Let’s just say sky rockets were already in flight."

              "Jesus he was with another woman?" I asked. I was stunned; if I had her I wouldn’t look at another woman for all of my days, or nights as it was.

              "Yeah, my friend Chelsea, you met her at the bar that night."

              "What in the fuck do you still hang out with them for?"

              "Honestly? I mean do you really not get it?"

              "Guess not Princess. Where I come from we avoid poison."

              She looked at me, a look of complete.... realization. "Well where I come from poison is all we have. I grew up with snakes as friends. I knew they were poison and I knew they bit."

              "Sorry Princess." I felt for her I did and not just because of how badly I wanted her. She grew up with nothing good. She had been given everything but what mattered most. She had taught herself to bite back, to accept the worst in others. She had protected herself so well I wondered if I had the fight inside of me to try and let her see. But I would fight for her; I would fight for her to see what I was. I wanted her, not her money and not her status.

              "Why be sorry? I mean really why?" She just didn’t get it.

              "Because, after all is said and done you don’t see what I see." I leaned in close hoping that my nearness made her heart speed up. It did and I smiled, loving that sound. "You don’t have to watch your back with us; we will watch it for you."

              She smiled and looked like a ghost walked through her. Good. It was time she was able to breathe without fear of the next attack.

*

London

             
Preacher was funny. A vessel as full of faith as his you think would hinder him from a lot of things. But it didn’t. I watched as Preacher talked up the cute waitress, he had her smiling and laughing and the signs of the Infatuation were clear. She was leaning close and taking every chance to touch him she could. I had to smile.

              "It's weird, I figured he would abstain from sex like he does with alcohol and vengeance and...mirrors."

              Cash laughed. "He's vengeful let me make that clear, mirrors.... well keep working on it, as for sex, he's still a man Princess, his needs are the same and it was the first pleasure he sought out when he became Immortal."

              "Tell me what it was like, what you were like when you were human."

              He looked at me but said nothing and I wished I could read his mind. "Tell me, please."

              As if he took a second to think it over he finally spoke. "You think it'll make it easier, that it will be ok to want me if you know that I was human once."

              I recoiled but he was right, it would make it easier. "Yes." I said figuring there was no point in hiding it.

              He took a sip from his bottle of Bud and shook his head no. "It won’t. I was a drunk and had debts up to my ears. My wife left me and took our son James with her. I would steal to survive, and spend my nights in brothels and bars drinking till I passed out." He paused to laugh. "Divine intervention, I became a Vampire and learned I had to drink to keep from killing innocent people."

              "What made you want to be a Vampire? Preacher said everyone had a reason."

              "I didn’t chose it, it chose me in the back of an alley, she was beautiful and she turned me and I never saw her again but I learned fast."

              "I think it's fascinating that you have watched the hand of time change the world, I can’t imagine what it must have been like."

              He nodded and looked at Preacher who was now going outside with the waitress. "Will he feed from her?" I asked my voice low.

              "Probably, but Preacher will give her the choice, same as fucking it will all be her choice, the humans mind is masked by Infatuation but we know what the truth is, he'll know beneath the Infatuation if she wants what he offers. Some say yes some say no and he will listen and she will say yes."

              "Have you ever had a girlfriend?" I asked now on to something.

              "There have been women yes, some human some not."

              "Didn’t it kill the drama though, the chase?" It was the best part, the wondering and waiting for a call or a date. That excitement made it worth it. With knowing everything up front it would kill the excitement.

              "With human women it did, but with Vampire women it was different. Vampires are competitive and strong. Vampire women made you chase them same as all women but they were far more difficult to keep, long life makes it hard to continue to pique the interest of another. Humans, life is so short for them, its days in comparison to a Vampire. It hurts when they die."

              "You were hurt?"

              He nodded but said nothing and I knew the conversation was over. But he shocked me.

              "When my wife left, I sank deeper. It wasn’t her that I missed, I feel bad about that but she wasn’t the love of my life. She was a woman I would fuck when I had free time. When she found out she was pregnant I did what I thought was right." His face seemed lost, like he would have done it all differently if he only had the chance. "My son James was barely two when she left me. He was the only thing I did right in my human life. I found him a few years after I was turned and he was a good boy. He helped her with chores and throughout the years he grew to a man. He looked like me and sounded like me. Mary my wife, she would tell him he sounded like me. I would get as close as I could to them without revealing what I was. She had aged and seeing me would have given her a heart attack."

              He rolled the bottom of his Bud Light bottle in circles over the table. He was entranced by the story, he didn’t even realize he was talking, it was so robotic. "James held her hand when she died of a fever, he did everything the way that humans do to honor death. In that moment I realized what a shit I had been. He was alone now. Mary never remarried or had more children. My mistakes left him alone in the world."

              His gaze shot up to me then, as if asking me to forgive him. "I knew it was a mistake but I spoke to him, told him what I was and that I had watched him grow and live to become a man. He was seventeen, a man in those days. He told me to go to hell. I left and didn’t let him know I was around watching. I was terrified of something getting him. Then one night he walked out to the end of the property he inherited from Mary's Father. He knew all along I was there.

              "He asked me to turn him, to make him a Vampire so he wouldn’t be alone. I didn’t ask his reasons, I did as he asked happy to have the chance to make things right and this way we could be together and have a relationship without the human toll ringing, we could be side by side forever." He called the waitress over and asked for a shot of Jim Beam for the both of us.

              "I didn’t know that his anger would make him a
Nex
. His anger towards me is what fueled his idea to turn. It was the worst mistake of my long life. I was forced to kill him, I found him drinking the life from a young girl while he raped her. She was so close to death she had stopped crying and begging for her life."

              He said nothing more on the subject and I didn’t ask for details. I didn’t judge him like he must have thought I did. He didn’t know what would happen, he only wanted to right his wrongs. Killing his son must have been horrific and I would respect his privacy.

              "So dancing, you seem good at it." He asked and leaned in taking my hand in his and looking in the palm. He was thinking of Leushus kissing it earlier, I knew it. But even then it was more than that, he was teasing me trying to jest me because Leushus outed me.

              "I was making a point."

              "Consider it made." The look in his cobalt stare had everything inside of drawing me to my knees.. By saying that the move had been made, his king for my pawn.