Rebel Obsession (2 page)

What was she doing now? Was she keeping clean? Most likely she was still using, so it was only a matter of time before they brought her back into AKM from another overdose. Io frowned and pressed his teeth together, because the thought of Miriam coming back under such circumstances shouldn’t have given him hope the way it did.

But Miriam overdosing again
was
Io’s only hope of seeing her again, especially since her father had refused to admit her for treatment, which Io didn’t understand. King Bain’s daughter was on a fast track to death by cobalt. Why wouldn’t he admit her to the treatment program?

It wasn’t like her overdose and drug use were big secrets anymore. Rumors of Princess Miriam’s overdose and subsequent drug-induced forays in the public eye had been splashed all over the Internet in the past two weeks.

But his hands were tied. He had been commanded never to attempt contact with her again. Even when he had approached Tristan with his concerns over her well-being, Tristan had told him that Miriam wasn’t his problem and that her condition was to remain a private affair of the royal family. Io had left Tristan’s office feeling helpless, relegated to see her picture only on the gossip sites littering the Internet. And he was sure that pleased the king to no end, being that he had worked so hard to keep Miriam’s identity and reputation protected since she had been born.

He smiled weakly at the six sets of eyes staring at him. He hadn’t said anything for nearly a minute. Nothing like making them feel more uncomfortable than they already did. Bonehead. He needed to get his mind back in the room and out of the Miriam-induced clouds.

“Sorry, I lost my train of thought for a second there.” He paced to the side and cleared his throat, pushing Miriam to the back of his mind as best as he could before continuing. “For me, using cobalt was about taking a risk.” He steepled his fingers in front of his torso. “It was about rebelling against society, as well as myself.” He walked slowly around the circle, touching the shoulders of each vampire as he passed, connecting with the members of his group. “See, I’m a gambler. I like to give life a run for its money. To me, life isn’t worth living if you don’t take chances once in a while. And if you never experience the bad, how can you appreciate the good?” He stopped and shrugged. “Think of me as the human who rides a motorcycle without a helmet and his mouth wide open. You know, so I can swallow as many bugs as possible.”

As he had hoped, that got a few yucks and a couple of quiet chuckles, which was good. Io needed them to open up. He needed them to feel safe here, and smiles and feedback were signs they were beginning to feel that way. Trying to be funny always seemed to help make that transition happen.

“I know, I know. Pretty stupid, huh?” Io continued his slow trip around the circle, chuckling to himself. “But I thought I could beat it. I thought I could be that one person who wouldn’t get addicted.”

A few nods answered him, the six vampires watching him with more interest now. They could relate.

Io smiled to himself. Each opening speech was the same, and each group reacted the same, too. In a few weeks, they would look at each other as family.

“How many of you felt the same way? That you could do the blue demon once or twice and never need another hit?” He raised his hand, glancing around the circle.

One by one, the hands of the six group members crept upward.

Had Miriam thought that way after taking her first hit of cobalt? If she were in the room, would her hand be in the air like all the others? And what were her reasons for turning to cobalt?

Io dropped his hand, acknowledging them with a compassionate nod. “Sucks, doesn’t it? Feeling so helpless, wondering how you got to this point so quickly, trying to hide your drug use from those around you while falling deeper into its grasp.”

Io’s arms began to itch. He noticed a couple of others scratching their arms, as well. Would the itching ever stop?

“Some days I fear I’ll never lose the physical symptoms of what getting off cobalt felt like. What it did to me….” Io clenched his fists in front of him as if wringing a wet towel. “Cobalt is the one thing I regret. It’s the one thing I’ll never do again, because I know now that it’s stronger than I am. For us….” Io waved his tattooed arm in an arc to encompass the members of the group. “Not much can kill us. As vampires, we heal quickly and don’t die easily. But cobalt….” He spun around in the middle of the circle, eyeing each person, pointing his finger for emphasis. “Cobalt can kill us. It’s one of only a few things that can.”

And the drecks know it, don’t they?
How could they not? Cobalt was the ultimate weapon for the drecks to use to weaken the vampires. A way to even the playing field. And the drecks were winning. For every vampire who got cleaned up, two more began using. And half of all overdoses ended in death. At least that’s what the numbers indicated from arrests, street talk, and medical records.

How was the drecks’ agenda so obvious to Io, but not to everyone else? Especially the king?

His fingers curled into fists, and he clenched his teeth. Knowing in his heart that cobalt was a weapon more than it was a drug infuriated him, but losing his cool in front of the group wouldn’t be a good idea. But it didn’t stop him from eyeing his empty chair like it was a football and he was being called on to kick a game-winning field goal from the forty-five-yard line.

Io had no doubt the drecks who were making cobalt knew what they were doing. What better way to get rid of your enemy than to create a drug that was not only highly addictive and could affect vampires in a way no human drug could, but also kill them? He wouldn’t be surprised to find out their scheme went all the way to the top, to Premier Royce himself. They didn’t fool him, even if they did have King Bain snowed.

How could the king not see what was happening? His own daughter was an addict, for God’s sake. Drecks had invaded the royal home, even if only by way of infecting her with their fucking toxic blue shit, made of their venom, made of their blood. How could King Bain not see this as an attack? He had to be blind.

Io returned his attention to the group. “Each of you should be proud. You’ve defeated the demon. You’ve survived.” He clapped, encouraging the others to do the same.

Once the applause quieted, Io sat back down in his chair before he could follow through on making like a placekicker. “Let’s go around the room and everybody tell us your name and how you got here.”

He motioned to the first person to his left, sat back, and listened as each told his or her story. Io was always amazed to hear the painful tales of how people became addicts and how they had finally conquered their addiction. Recovering addicts were some of the strongest people he had ever seen. To fall into such hell and still be able to find a way to fight out of it was nothing short of remarkable.

By the end of the hour, many tears had been shed and hugs given as new friendships were forged in the support system Io was so committed to.

The drug rehabilitation program had been a part of AKM for a while, but Io had made it his passion in the past year. He could practically oversee the entire program if the enforcers weren’t so short-staffed. That was his dream, to quit enforcing and run the program full time. Just the way Arion had quit to follow his dream of—

Io sighed, cutting off the thought. He had been doing so well, not thinking about Arion all day. And now, wham! He’d gone and re-opened that wound. Just pulled the scab clean off. Again.

Arion hadn’t spoken to him since the night Io had met Miriam. The same night that he had found out Arion was gay.
Gay.
How had that happened? He’d never seen that coming, but sure as shit filled the crevices in the sole of a tennis shoe after being stepped on, Ari was as gay as the ocean is deep. And he had mated Severin, another member of the team.

And now Io missed his best friend—or maybe ex-best friend by now—like crazy. He’d been a homophobic gay basher since forever. It was no secret Io had always knocked the gay lifestyle. Hell, he had even bashed Severin…to Ari, of all people. After they had already…
done stuff
with each other. Io’s lip curled, his stomach knotting.
Stuff.
Would he ever be able to get used to the idea of Ari and Sev together? Like
that?
Could he get past his prejudice to mend the friendship he’d once had with Ari? Why did he even give a flying rat’s ass what a guy did with his own dick, anyway?

He couldn’t think about that right now, though. People were waiting on him to wrap things up.

After giving the final group member a hug, Io straightened the room and pulled out his smartphone to check his schedule. With Arion leaving AKM, scheduling patrols and shifts had become a day-to-day routine, and no one knew until right before a shift where they would be stationed.

When he saw who he was scheduled with, a pit opened at the bottom of his stomach, making his balls try to creep up and fill the void.

“Oh, come on! You’ve got to be kidding me,” he muttered under his breath. He would patrol with Micah and risk having that bastard dip into his private thoughts all night, but this? Anything but this.

He groaned and closed his eyes then opened them again to make sure he had seen right. Yep, he was scheduled to patrol with Severin tonight.

Sev.

Ari’s mate.

Shit just got better and better.

Tonight was going to be about as much fun as chewing glass.

CHAPTER TWO

Bishop strolled across the darkened den of his Arizona ranch house, his long smoking jacket hugging him like expensive wrapping paper tied with a gold bow at the waist. A plume of smoke blew from his nostrils and swirled around his head as he inspected the cigarette tucked between his index and middle fingers. His other hand was stuffed inside his pocket where his fingers smoothed over his gold, engraved lighter, rotating it slowly.

When the gold tip of the cigarette touched his lips again, and he inhaled the glorious smoke, all felt right in the world. For that brief moment, he didn’t have a completely inept brother who had fucked things up so badly in Chicago that he had been forced to rethink his entire operation. His other brother still lived, and the only use he had for his pet scorpions was to admire them.

The Sobranie Black Russian. The most exquisite cigarette ever made. One of life’s simple pleasures. One that took away all the shit for that single, indulgent moment when the smoke filled his lungs.

He had discovered Sobranies while visiting Russia six years ago, and now had an arrangement with the manufacturer so he could order them directly. The idea of gambling with the online riffraff filled Bishop with disdain. He didn’t trust the filthy, unscrupulous humans to sell the real deal, and he hadn’t the time to hunt down anyone who tried to swindle him.

And, rest assured, he would hunt down any fucker who dared to interfere with any endeavor he undertook, even one as seemingly insignificant as purchasing his brown cigarettes with the gold, foil-wrapped filter. After all, he wasn’t feared by those who worked for him because of his congenial nature.

Bishop kissed the tip of the cigarette again, drawing in long and deep to hold the flavor against his tongue and feel the exquisite expansion as his lungs filled with smoke. After a moment’s hesitation, he breathed out the succulent richness and walked toward a line of aquariums along the far wall.

Time to return to reality and the pile of shit his brother had created.

Inside each dark, black-lit glass tank, a glowing arthropod skittered almost eagerly toward him as he approached. Scorpion exoskeletons contained a chemical that glowed under black lights, and the effect on those he tortured with his pets was always quite striking.

Only one thing mattered more to Bishop than his Sobranies: his scorpions.

“I knew I shouldn’t have sent Deacon to Chicago.” He sighed with irritation, snuffing the glowing end of his cigarette into a crystal ashtray sitting on a round, wooden table.

A form shifted in a darkened corner of the room as if he had awakened it. Or maybe even scared it. The disgusting human form was cast in shadows, and Bishop squinted in that direction. Contempt oozed from every pore, his brother’s failure a personal affront that Bishop had made him pay for since he’d shown up here two months ago.

Sucking his teeth, tsk’ing with a shake of his head, he reached into one of the aquariums. A small, black scorpion, which appeared blue under the black lights, flared its pincers, curling its stinger-tipped tail as if preparing to strike.

“Do you think your brother’s life meant nothing to me? You’re useless. Why do I keep you alive?” He refused to look back at the shifting form in the corner, even when a groan broke from his brother’s throat.
Weakling. Deacon wouldn’t have groaned like a sniveling human. Deacon was stronger than that.
“I sent him to help you because you asked it of me, and look how you thanked me. You let him die. How are we to correct this travesty, brother?”

Bishop wiggled his fingers at the scorpion, encouraging the arachnid until it scampered onto his palm so he could lift it out of the aquarium. Slowly rotating his hand as the creature crawled around to the back, he walked to the corner and knelt down, not taking his eyes off the tiny but deadly scorpion.

“Do you know that in some countries, they use scorpion venom as an anti-inflammatory? In others, they make the venom into wine and drink it as an analgesic.” His voice crooned softly as he admired his poisonous pet.

His brother disgusted him. It mattered not that he was Bishop’s own blood. Deacon had been the real treasure of the siblings—the one who had held the most promise to oversee Bishop’s growing operation. But now Deacon was gone. Dead at the hands of the vampire enforcers who dwelled in the cesspool known as Chicago. And that left this poor excuse for a dreck, shivering naked in his human form, to be Bishop’s second in command.

“You will require a new human form, my brother, as the fool vampires believe they killed you when they killed Deacon in your place.”