Wake Me When the Sun Goes Down (29 page)

A crash sounded from the hallway drawing our attention.  Right on cue, Bishop strode in, the look of righteous indignation fading as he beheld the state of the room. 

“Hello, Ulrik
,
”
m
y Sire greeted him coolly, and Bishop froze, his face a mask of shock. 

“
Jakob
…” he hissed, eyes narrowing to slits.

“Ulrik?” I turned to Bishop, but he wasn’t looking at me, his every muscle tensed and ready to spring. 

“I will come for you, beloved,”
Jakob
pledged, but by the time I turned to look back at him, he was gone. 

“No, wait!” I yelled, I had no way to contact him!  Just because I wasn’t ready to run away with him and become his property didn’t mean I didn’t want to talk to him or get to know why he’d done what he did to me
.  B
ut he was long gone.  Another chance ruined because Bishop couldn’t stay away, despite his continued protests that he was done with me. 

“Damn it
,
Bishop, what are you doing here?” I demanded, hands clenching into fists as I took out my frustration on him.  He didn’t even bother to look at me, his eyes still trained on the terrace door
Jakob
disappeared through.  “Did you hear me?  You can’t keep doing this to me!” 

One of the gray suits stumbled into the room, blanching as he took in the carnage.  Kursik was little more than a pile of sooty ash, and Booth had started to collapse in on himself, the hole where his heart used to be black and gaping.  Belatedly I wondered if I was standing in the middle of a crime scene, or if it would all be swept under the rug (especially since you could now vacuum up what was left of Aleksandr, and Booth was well on his way to joining him).

“Bishop?”

“You
.
”
I
gnoring me, he snapped his finger
s
at Kursik’s servant.  “Secure the premises, no one else in or out.”

“At once,” he nodded, desperate to leave the room.  I heard shouted orders echoing down the halls after that, and I wondered if I would get to meet more of the Order now, since it definitely
started
to feel like a crime scene.

“What’s going on?
Did you know him?  Why did he call you Ulrik?” I asked in a low voice. 

“Not now,” Bishop muttered, his fingers flying over his phone.

“What do you mean not now?  What’s going on?  Am I under arrest or what?”

Brows drawing together into a single dark line, Bishop seemed to see me for the first time, taking in my disheveled state, the drying blood all over my hands.  “Clean yourself up, I’ll try to keep your name out of it as much as I can.  Your best bet is to pretend you didn’t see what happened.”

“Keep my name out of it… but I’m in the middle of it, and I have a right to know what’s going on,” I insisted, not liking the tone of voice he
used
with me
-
as if I was guilty of something and he was angry for having to clean my mess up.

“I said get washed up, there isn’t much time,” he hissed, grabbing me by the elbow, he walked me over to the wet bar and thrust my hands under the spigot. 

“Hey, I didn’t do anything wrong,” I muttered, scrubbing at my hands.  “Besides, it’s not like they won’t find traces of blood in the sink.  And what about the guard?  He saw me here with blood all over my hands.  Why can’t we just tell the truth?”

“Because this isn’t about you.  Not anymore.”

“Not about me?  How can you say that?  Aleksandr practically mauled me and now he’s dead.  Booth?  Dead because of me.  That
Jakob
as you called him, he came for
me
, called me his property.  You expect me to believe you came charging in here because you
didn’t
think it was about me?”

“I do have other concerns besides you, you know,” he scowled
.  T
hat was it, the last straw.  I’d just met my elusive Sire for the first time
and been abandoned by him again in the space of a few minutes
, nearly been raped or worse by Kursik, and seen him killed in front of me
,
and Bishop didn’t care at all! 

“Fine.  Then you worry about your concerns, I’m out of here.”  I could care less that he’d given instructions that no one should be let in or out of the penthouse, I stormed out.  The look on my face was thunderous as I approached the door, expecting an argument, but the two suits stepped aside, bowing low.  The stony expression remained on my face until I got all the way to the lobby and out the front exit, only crumpling into tears as I realized I wasn’t sure where to go. 

It didn’t seem right to go home, not in the mood I was in.  I started walking, having no particular destination in mind.  After a while I found myself in a completely unfamiliar part of town.  I could hear the cry of gulls nearby and smell the brine of the sea, but all I saw was ugly, run down buildings.   

At the time I didn’t care if I looked hopelessly out of place, alone in my ruined gown on the darkened streets of
San Francisco
, or if
Jakob
was nearby, waiting for a chance to swoop down and steal me away again.  All I knew was that Bishop had hurt me far worse than Kursik had for the second time that night.  So you can understand why I didn’t slow down when I heard him behind me.

“Anja… wait up.”

I pretended like I didn’t hear him, the click of my heels accelerating as I hurried on ahead, as if I had a destination in mind.

“Anja… I’m sorry
.
”
H
is voice
sounded
closer.  “Can you stop for a minute?  We should talk.”  I swiped at my eyes, steeling myself before I turned around to see him loping up behind me, his features etched with worry.  “Are you alright?”

Oh sure,
now
he was concerned.  “
Could you not be nice to me right now?  Because I’m trying to decide if I can hate you and
i
t’s mixing me all up
.”  It was such a polar opposite to how he’d acted in the hotel
room
,
I started to wonder if he suffered from schizophrenia or if he secretly had an evil twin. 

“
Are you alright?
” Bishop repeated, his hands lightly clasping my arms. 

“
No.  I’m really not.  On an epic scale
.  You chase off my Sire just as I’m finally getting some answers and then turn around and act like
I’m
the bad guy.  How could you do that to me?”

“
It’s my job
.”

“
What is?  Following me night and day?  I don’t need you riding to the rescue
.”  Okay
,
so maybe I had needed help with Kursik, but I
started
to believe Bishop wasn’t following me to protect me from
him
,
he’d been t
rying to catch my Sire.  I was
a means to an end
,
nothing more
. 

“T
hen stop getting
into such stupid situations,” he growled, getting angry again.

“
Why do you even care?  You
know what I think?  I think you’re so
screwed
up inside, so miserable
,
that you need to fill you
r
life up with parts of mine, because then you can convince you
r
self that you have a purpose
,” I shot back at him.

“
I have a purpose, I have the
O
rder
.”

“
You can’t blame this on the
O
rder
,
they didn’t ask you to give up your whole life
.”

“
You have no idea what I’ve given up
.
”
H
is
eyes blazed
green fire, his hands tighten
ing
around my arms painfully, but I didn’t flinch or pull away
.

“
What about Mas
on
?  H
e doesn’t live like a monk,” I challenged.

“
Mason’s still wet behind the
ears
,
he’s only been dead for thirty years.  Have him come back in
two
hundred and tell me if he’s still scamming on girls
.”

“
Alright
then, what purpose wa
s there in pulling me out of
th
ere?
”

“
Because I didn’t want to see you get hurt, is that so hard to understand?
”

“
Don’t pretend you care about me
,” I laughed on the edge of a sob
.
  “
I
know why you were really there.  This is all about that
Jakob
guy
, isn’t it?  
I saw your face when you finally laid eyes on him. 
You don’t give a damn about
me
,
I’m nothing but bait to you.  I’m
…” 

All of a sudden h
is mouth crashed against mine as he silenced me with a deep kiss
, arms wrapping around my waist as he pulled me close.  After half a second I recovered enough to kiss him back.  Scared to death it might end at any moment, I wrapped my arms around his neck, but he gave no sign of letting me go.  Instead, he walked me back towards the nearest building, pressing me up against the cool concrete bricks.  What was it about us and kissing up against buildings?  Not that I was complaining…

All too soon, the kiss ended, but Bishop made no move to pull away.  To my surprise, he didn’t look at all conflicted about having kissed me in the first place.  I was too afraid to say anything for fear of breaking the magic spell between us and send
ing
us back to another argument
.  O
r worse, send him pulling away from me again.  It was Bishop who spoke first, fingers lightly tracing the shell of my ear.  “It’s partly about him, yes,” he admitted. 

“Who is he?”

“His name is
Jakob
, and he sired
Carys
.  I should have thought of it before, only I
…
we all thought he was dead.”

He’d sired Bishop’s Sire?  That sounded horribly convoluted in a sick kind of way.  “Does that make us cousins or something?”  Better than brother and sister, but still…

“No, it doesn’t work like that, that’s not the part that troubles me.”

“What troubles you then?”

“He’s an
Ellri
, which means if he comes for you again, I won’t be able to do anything to stop him.” 

Which meant I was probably about to be dumped again before we really got things started.  Before I could open my mouth to ask anything else Bishop
plied me with
another slow, drugging kiss. 

It didn’t have the same desperate heat of the blood-fueled kiss, but it was all that much sweeter for knowing there wasn’t anything behind it, except that he wanted to kiss me.  At least I hoped so.  As the kiss drew to a close, I gathered my courage around me like a shield, my eyes pleading with him to be honest with me for once. 

“Tell me that wasn’t about blood or making anyone jealous or anything to do with your job.”

“No, that most definitely wasn’t anything to do with the Order,” he smiled, teeth scraping over his bottom lip as he looked down at me.  “What am I going to do with you?” he sighed, thumb brushing over the corner of my mouth. 

Chasing after his thumb, I drew it into my mouth, tongue swirling over the rough pad of his thumb.  “I can think of a few things,” I replied, my voice hoarse after hearing his little groan of desire. 

“You make me forget everything I am.”  Bishop
’s anguish twisted my heart
as he traced the curves of my face
, and I caught hold of his hand, pressing it to my cheek
. 

“Maybe that means its time for you to be more?”

“I can’t lay claim to you, not now.”

“Maybe I don’t want to be claimed by anyone, did you ever think of that?”

“Anja…”

“I know, it’s more complicated than that.  But I don’t care if this guy is as old as
dirt
,
I’m not going to fawn all over him just because he crooks his finger.  Am I curious about him?  Yes.  Do I want to learn more about him and why he chose me? Yes.  But I’m not ready to be anybody’s property.”
I didn’t care how dreamy his smile was.