Blood and Thunder Read online

  For now, that desire would have to wait. My first priority was getting a harem put together so I could convince Roman to somehow arrange an interview for me with this duke.

  As I lay in bed, waiting for the sun, I thought long and hard about whom I could ask to do something so morbidly essential. Laura was moving back to Hollywood, Mandy was out of the question, Collins was freaked out, and the idea of the Bankses discovering what I was terrified me.

  I wasn’t sure what options that left me with. Maybe I could track down Lydia’s number and see if she wanted to go steady. That wouldn’t scream desperate at all. My only other choice was to ask Roman again about where to find a different vampire club, one that hadn’t been frequented by Buffy these past few weeks.

  As I ran out of ideas and was about to succumb to self-pity, the sun rose, saving me from myself.

  * * * * *

  The mall was quiet Wednesday night—except for Mandy’s non-stop chattering. The girl was so bubbly, I began to wonder if I shouldn’t search her room for a hidden stash of happy pills. I could use one about now.

  I hadn’t rested well. I’d gone to bed hoping to put some distance between Vin and me, and instead, I dreamed of nothing but him. When the sun finally set, I’d woken feeling guiltier than a nun watching porn.

  “Do you think Serena would like this?” Mandy asked, holding up a thick, glittery bracelet.

  I grunted a sound that could be interpreted however she liked. “One date and you’re already buying jewelry?”

  “Yup,” Mandy chirped. “Sometimes you just know, you know?”

  I lifted an eyebrow and turned back to the rack of dresses I’d been scouring ever since we arrived. I wanted to look like I belonged at this party. More than that, I wanted to be the best-looking thing there. I wanted Roman not to be able to peel his eyes off me. Of course, that would probably make our job a little more difficult to manage. Decisions, decisions.

  “Which one of these would stand out the most at a vamp party?” I held up a tight, strapless dress that looked more like an undergarment, and a lacy number with a thigh slit. Both were black.

  Mandy’s mouth tucked to one side. “You really want to stand out?”

  When I nodded, she reached behind me and pulled a white cocktail dress off a rack. The cap sleeves and high collar were constructed of a loose-knit crochet, but the bottom was a silky material. It fanned out into a flirty skirt that fell mid-thigh. It looked like something an ex-girlfriend might wear to a wedding to piss off the bride.

  “No way,” I balked. Maybe taking fashion advice from a teen wearing cut-off shorts and a breakfast cereal tee shirt wasn’t the best idea.

  Mandy nodded firmly. “Everyone at that party is going to be wearing black. You know why? Because blood doesn’t show as well on it. Wearing white is as racy as it gets for a bloodsucker. You would totally steal the show in this.”

  I considered her reasoning as a recorded voice announced over the speaker system that the mall would be closing in ten minutes. Mandy stole a glance at the bracelet display and shoved the white dress at me.

  “I know bloodsuckers, but you know Serena,” she said. “Which one?” She held up the chunky glitter bangle again and grabbed a leather cuff with braided detailing to model alongside it.

  “The leather one.” Mandy squinted at my hasty answer, so I added, “She’s going to school to be an artsy fartsy architect. Total hipster.”

  Mandy tilted her head from side to side. “Fair enough.” She put the other bracelet back and gave me an expectant look, waiting for me to make a decision on the dress.

  “You’d better be right about this,” I said, hanging up the two black gowns.

  We checked out of the little boutique, and Mandy snagged a pretzel with cheese before we exited the mall.

  My old Bronco sat by its lonesome in the middle of the parking lot under the glow of a security light. With the top off, it looked more like a truck or Jeep. As soon as we crawled inside, I opened the back window to let in some air. I really needed to get the air conditioner fixed, but I was putting it off, holding out hope for a fancy SUV like Roman’s.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Mandy said as we buckled up and I started the engine. “Blood Vice might not hire me until I’m older, and mowing lawns is pretty seasonal work…” She paused to give me a serious look and tucked her mousy hair behind one ear. “How much would you pay me to be part of your harem?”

  I took my hand off the shifter and left the Bronco in park so I could turn in my seat to face her. “Wow, that’s… Wow.” Knock me over with a feather. “I don’t know about that, Mandy. You seemed so opposed to it before, and I’m still a total newb. Hell, I was worried about taking too much from Vin last night. It took two months to work up the nerve to bite him again after the first time.”

  Her cheeks flushed, and she looked down at her lap. “A different vampire drank from me every other day for nearly a year, and they weren’t exactly gentle about it. If they’d killed me, Scarlett would have made them hunt down a replacement and called it a day.”

  I swallowed. “All the more reason why I would never expect you to bleed for me.”

  “I know you care about me, Jenna.” Mandy looked up again and gave me a small smile. “You wouldn’t have let me stay with you scot-free for the past few months if you didn’t. You wouldn’t have tracked me down in that barn—”

  “That was my job.” I shook my head. “And you’re just a kid. You deserve to have someone looking out for you. You don’t owe me anything.”

  Mandy’s eyes unfocused, and she turned to gaze out the windshield. “I haven’t been a kid for a long time.”

  “You know what I mean.” I sighed and turned to look out into the darkness with her. “I’m not taking care of you because I want something in return.”

  “And I’m not offering because I feel obligated to.”

  We sat in silence for a few moments while I wrestled with the thought of feeding on Mandy. Roman had said werewolves were as good as two humans. But Mandy was my responsibility—maybe not exactly a daughter, but close enough that the idea of doing what I’d done with Roman and Vin with her seemed wrong on multiple levels.

  The conversation wasn’t over, but I had the feeling we both needed some time to absorb what had been said. I grabbed the gear shift and put the Bronco into drive, signaling a reprieve from the iffy subject, and pulled out of the mall’s parking lot, heading for home.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “You’re sure about this?” I asked Collins.

  We sat on the back patio under the lit-up pergola while Mandy, Serena, Vin, and Lazlo played cornhole in the dark, navigating by the light of the waning moon and a swarm of fireflies. Duncan ran back and forth, yipping his little head off in between snatching up unattended beanbags. It was such a normal scene, I could have almost forgotten that I was a creature of the night, if not for the subject matter of our hushed conversation.

  Collins sipped on a bottle of beer and leaned back in his chair. I hadn’t seen much of him outside of work lately, so the cargo shorts and plain tee shirt took some getting used to. He looked younger and less serious, especially with the light stubble sprouting up along his jawline.

  “We’ve been friends since we were eleven,” he said. “My feelings were really hurt at first—and I won’t lie, it freaked me out. But…I get why you didn’t tell me. I remember how long it took me to work up the nerve to tell you that I was gay.”

  “That was the week after graduation, if I remember right.” I whispered out a nervous laugh even though there wasn’t anything remotely funny about the heart-to-heart we’d had before college.

  My mind was still doing laps around Collins’ earlier offer, one that echoed Mandy’s from the night before. Mandy and I hadn’t talked about it again yet. It seemed my desperate prayers had been answered, and I wasn’t sure if I trusted the sudden good fortune. I’d been a skeptic for far too long. My heart wanted to swell three sizes like the Grinch’s, but my bra
in kept screaming Danger, Will Robinson!

  “The point is, I want to be supportive,” Collins said. “I want to help, and maybe you could return the favor by setting me up with an interview for this…Blood Vice, was it?”

  My eyeballs bulged so violently, I thought they might fall into my lap. “You want to work with a bunch of vampires?”

  “You said some of them are human, right?” His forehead crinkled, and he gave me a questioning frown. “There’s not another local police department that’ll hire me after the bridge I just burned. I don’t want to move, and I’d rather be working alongside you anyway.”

  “How does Laz feel about this?” I glanced across the yard to where his husband played beanbag tug-of-war with Duncan.

  Lazlo Ramirez was the younger brother of Collins’ former partner within the PD. And I thought my holidays were going to be rough. The very Catholic family had just accepted Collins as one of their own after six years, two of which he and Laz had been married. I imagined Laz’s brother wasn’t too happy with Collins right now either.

  Laz was a pediatric nurse for a private family doctor. His income was nothing to sneeze at, but they liked to keep up with the Joneses. Their lifestyle couldn’t be sustained on one income for very long.

  Collins sucked down the rest of his beer before answering my question. “Laz is not thrilled that I went all flame-on and lost my job, but he’s proud of me for sticking up for you. And no,” he quickly added, “I haven’t told him that you’re a vampire. Though I did share that you’re working with the FBI now, and that I hoped you could hook me up with a job there, too.”

  I winced. “I’m not actually working for the FBI. Not yet anyway. I was just an undercover civilian for a single assignment.”

  “So you weren’t a mole looking to bust some hate group within the department?”

  “Nope,” I confessed.

  “That’s a shame. The place could have used a little house-cleaning.”

  “I had to quit because Laura is going back to Hollywood. But Langford thought he was going to keep Star—Mandy—and that wasn’t happening. And I couldn’t get arrested over it, for obvious reasons. So Roman helped me out with a cover story that fixed both problems.”

  Collins smirked and stood up from the table to grab another beer out of the cooler he’d brought. “That Special Agent Roman Knight sure talks a good game, doesn’t he?”

  I kicked my feet up onto the table and folded my hands over my stomach. “He’s got fifty years’ experience with a department where he’s required to lie his pants off to keep a lid on the most dangerous secret imaginable.”

  “And what nice pants they are.” Collins sat down beside me and took a long pull from his new beer. “If I weren’t a married man, I’m sure I could find a more enjoyable way to help him lose those.”

  I swallowed and kept my mouth shut, which was damning enough on its own. Collins gave me a knowing look, but to his credit, he didn’t comment on my awkward silence.

  “So blondie is a super old vamp?” he asked instead.

  “He’s actually human—well, sort of. He’s half-sired, so that’s why he looks so good for his age.”

  “Half-sired, huh?” Collins’ brow creased. “How’s that work?”

  “He drinks vampire blood, so if he dies, he’ll rise as one. Or after a hundred years on the force, he gets to…off himself and become one, I guess.” There was probably a ridiculous ceremony or, hell, a marching band for all I knew.

  “That would be weird,” Collins said, running a hand over his jaw. “I wouldn’t want to stay young forever. I like the idea of growing old with Laz too much, and if I turn into a vampire, I’m thinking his family will take it as their personal mission to hunt me down and stake me in the name of the Virgin.”

  I held my hands out. “No family is perfect.”

  He snorted. “I think I could learn to get along with vampires, though, and if I’m donating blood to you, the rest of them should leave me alone, don’t you think?”

  “I would kill them if they didn’t,” I said, surprising us both.

  I’d meant the statement as a joke, but who knew for certain when dealing with vampires? If it came right down to it, I would kill another vampire before letting them harm any of my friends. No doubt. Dying hadn’t robbed me of that principle. If Mandy hadn’t already taken care of Raphael, I’d still be hunting his undead ass to exact justice for Will. Archaic vampire rules be damned.

  “So, what do you say?” Collins asked. “Do you vant to suck my blood?”

  I snorted out a quiet laugh and rolled my eyes. “How are you going to explain the bite marks to Laz? Won’t that become an issue?”

  He shrugged. “I’m sure we can get away with making a tiny cut that could be easily covered with a bandage. You don’t actually have to sink your teeth into my flesh, do you?” He made a sour face.

  “I don’t think so, but I’m not an expert by any means,” I said. “I’ve been drinking bagged blood mostly, but Roman says straight from the source is best. He didn’t say anything about how it came out of that source.” I felt the gums around my fangs throb at the prospect of a fresh meal, and my mouth watered.

  It was almost ten, and I needed to be thinking about getting ready for the party. I had an uneasy feeling that Vin’s backyard surprise party was meant to stall our feeding until the last moment. He was probably hoping to hang around and beat his chest like a territorial gorilla in front of Roman.

  I’d stuck to bagged blood Wednesday night, and while I was feeling that nagging hunger in my gut once again, it wasn’t to the point of full-on agony yet. Still, Roman had said to eat a proper meal before he picked me up. I had a feeling he would be able to tell if I didn’t.

  Collins stood and waved for me to follow him inside. The rest of the gang was too preoccupied with their game and Duncan’s shenanigans to notice our departure. We slipped through the kitchen and down the hallway to my bedroom. Laura was tucked away in her room, video chatting with Hollywood, so the house was quiet.

  “I should warn you,” I whispered as Collins clicked on the light and closed my bedroom door. “The few people I’ve bitten and drank from have had pretty strong reactions.”

  Collins’ eyes widened. “What? Did they scream? Piss themselves?”

  “Vin jizzed in his shorts.”

  Collins made a strained face. “Well, that’s better than pain, I guess. But maybe if you’re not biting down, just drinking the blood as it drips out of my arm, it won’t have that effect?”

  I shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “What if I bled into a cup? It would still be fresh, yeah?” He made for my bathroom, and I followed, curious to see what this experiment would reveal.

  My bathroom was a disaster. Mandy showered in the one she shared with Laura, but she still pilfered through my makeup drawer and borrowed my curling iron, especially after Laura’d had a meltdown the first time she touched her collection of designer hair gadgets and products.

  Collins picked up a toothpaste-spotted cup off the counter and wiped it down with the hand towel hanging from the circular bar on the wall. I dug through the cabinet behind the mirror and found a pair of manicure scissors, some rubbing alcohol, cotton balls, and a bandage. I lined everything up on the counter.

  The setup reminded me of the time we’d planned to pierce our own belly buttons when we were in the eighth grade, which really, probably should have been my first clue that Collins was gay. Looking at the similarities in our arsenals, I began to worry that the outcome of this might be just as horrifically unsuccessful. I wondered if we’d ever learn.

  Collins chattered nervously as he cleaned the scissors and then his wrist with the alcohol. “You don’t, like, freak out and go ravenous at the sight of blood or anything?”

  “Not anymore,” I answered truthfully. As long as I had my blood bags, I could muscle through any dark desires to maul and maim.

  “Good,” Collins said. “Not that I plan on maki
ng a big, bloody mess in your bathroom or anything. I just wanted to make sure.”

  My nerves were stoked by his excitement, and red pulsed at the edges of my vision. “I have bagged blood in the refrigerator if you change your mind,” I said, taking a step back toward the door to give him some space.

  “I think we can do this. It’ll be fine.” Collins took a deep breath, and then he opened the tiny pair of scissors and pressed the bladed edge down on the inside of his wrist.

  I turned away as a slight queasiness pinched my insides. In the heat of passion, drawing blood didn’t seem so…icky. But here, like this, was a little different. A second later, I heard a drip of liquid echo as it hit the bottom of the cup. Then several more followed. After what felt like forever, Collins finally nudged my shoulder.

  “How’s this?” he asked, handing me the cup. His dark blood filled it halfway. I swirled it around and gave it a sniff like I’d seen fancypants wine connoisseurs do on television. Then I downed it.

  It wasn’t as hot—temperature or otherwise—but it was tasty, and I felt it warm my insides almost immediately. It was a better kick than drinking three blood bags at once. Far more successful than a botched middle-school piercing, too.

  Collins cleaned up his wrist and applied the bandage. It was less obvious than the holes I’d left in Vin’s neck. I offered him a high-five once he’d finished.

  “And no tingling in my nethers,” he happily proclaimed. “What do you think?”

  I nodded and gave him a hopeful grin. “I think I’ll put in a good word with Roman tonight.”

  * * * * *

  I didn’t expect Vin to be so butt hurt over me drinking Collins’ blood, but I got an earful after everyone had left. He sat on my bed as I got dressed in the closet, presenting his argument in a pitifully disappointed tone.

  “I like Collins, and I think he’s a great addition,” he said in a voice that suggested anything but. “I just think it would have been nice if you’d discussed it with me before drinking another man’s…fluids.”