The Immortal Compromise (The Mortal One Series Book 3) (12 page)

She grabbed the mug with two hands and held it up to clink with my glass. The bartender stood there, waiting for her to try it. She brought it to her lips, took a long sip, and then set it on the bar.

“It’s really good. What do you call it again?”

“Diesel,” he said.

“Thank you,” she smiled.

I handed him money and he nodded in my direction. It figures. Once I show him cash, he acknowledges that I exist.

I took another sip of my beer and then walked over to the stall that had the
Flammkuchen
. I ordered two of them and pointed to where we were sitting at the bar.

After we sufficiently gorged on food, beer, and more than a healthy amount of pretzels, we left Alexanderplatz and headed back to the Checkpoint Charlie area. I called Gregorio so he could meet us at the station.

“Are you drunk?” He asked as he found us at the station.

“Maybe a little bit,” Jen admitted, holding her fingers apart.

I smiled. “Chocolate would sober us up.”

“How much beer did you have?” He laughed.

“Hmmm,” I thought about it. “Maybe a liter each? Wait, no. Two?”

“You each had two liters of beer?” He asked, looking back and forth between the two of us.

“Is that a lot?” Jen asked.

“You’re slurring your words, so yes,” Gregorio said.

I leaned into him when we got into the train. Standing on my own was too much effort. Yep, perhaps I did have one liter of beer too many.

Chapter 15

“YOU WENT TO what club?” Gregorio asked, laughing a little too loud.

We had all gone to the dinner cruise, but Jen wanted to party and made it very clear that it needed to be a girls only venture. He had left us in the city with clear directions of where we could go and to call him if we needed anything.

Jen stumbled into the guest room and I sat on the couch, kicking off my heels.

I closed my eyes, reliving the nightmare. “I didn’t know it was a sex club when we went inside,” I said.

He continued to laugh, taking a seat next to me. “You said the two of you could handle the club scene alone, so I left you to go get some sleep. Why didn’t you call me?”

“To join us at a sex club?” I asked, my voice squeaking in the process.

“Why didn’t you leave once you saw what it was?”

I shrugged and had asked the same question of myself a million times already in my head.

“You enjoyed the perversion.” He made it a statement.

That earned him a smack across the chest. “No, I didn’t.”

I remembered when we arrived, there was a lot of positive energy. Everyone was friendly and the people at the door spoke English, which Jen and I took as a plus. There were several large bars throughout the club and the music was pounding. That wasn’t the only thing that was pounding, we quickly took note as we followed where some of the moving dance lights flashed to.

There were people everywhere. While most of them were at the bars or on the dance floors, we also noticed that there were couches along the walls. People were peeling their clothes off and climbing on top of each other. Whether people knew one another or not was impossible to tell.

“What did the two of you do there?” Gregorio asked, breaking my thoughts.

“What do you think we did?” I asked, surprised he would even go there.

“I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking.” Typical man, he was glued to the edge of his seat, waiting for any juicy details I was willing to dispense.

I shook my head. “We drank, we danced, we left.”

He laughed and rubbed the top of his head. “I can’t believe you walked into that club. They have the reputation for being one of the wildest sex clubs in Berlin.”

“Have you been there?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No. Those aren’t the kinds of clubs I go into. If I’m going to have sex with someone, I will take her back here. There’s no need to have an audience.”

I blushed.

“You watched it all, didn’t you?”

“Will you shut up?” I said, smacking him again. There was no need to tell him that I did watch and it turned me on. I wondered if there were clubs like that in Paris. I would never be able to bring myself to ask Nico or Olivier about it, so it would just stay inside my head.

“I’m glad the two of you made it back okay, and am actually a little bummed now that I didn’t go out with the two of you. At this point, I’m headed back to bed,” Gregorio said, standing up. He stood in front of me with his arms extended.

I put my hands in his and let him pull me off the couch. I was tired and toasted, so I wandered to the guest room, holding onto the walls periodically for support. Once I got into my pajamas, I was short lived for the night.

***

Jen and I discovered Berlin thoroughly, acting like two college girls. Now that I had the sovereign’s permission to be in the city, I could relax and enjoy without having to worry about any of the vampire politics haunting me. Gregorio was the perfect host, showing us all of the city. He also kept us from drinking too much, which was appreciated for the most part.

We both slept late after last night’s adventures. I made it out of the guest room first.

Gregorio was making coffee, having his own good time reliving the fact that we made a poor choice on clubs to walk into.

Jen staggered out of the bedroom a few minutes later. Her hair was messed up and she wasn’t making a run for the bathroom. She wasn’t trying to impress anyone, which meant that Gregorio wasn’t her type.

“Can you pour me a cup, too, Greg?” She asked, pointing to the coffee maker.

“Your boss allowed you to have five days off, right?” I asked her as I sat cross-legged on the couch.

“Yeah, why?” She smiled, knowing I had an idea.

“Well, you were here for one day without me and we have seen so much of Berlin over the past two days. Why don’t we fly out tonight and see Paris? You can see our house and we can do some sightseeing there?”

Her eyes lit up. “Really? But wait, my flight leaves out of Berlin.”

“We will change it,” I said, waving my hand. “It’s fine. I can book tickets right now to fly us back to Paris and either Nico or Olivier will pick us up from the airport.”

“Wait, Nico?” She asked.

Fuck. “Umm, yeah.”

“So Nico
and
Antonio went with you to Paris?” Her eyes were wide, trying to make sense of my new life.

I didn’t know how to dig myself out of this hole. I couldn’t tell her the truth because it would be a death sentence. Fuck. “Why don’t I just explain everything more once we get to Paris?”

She nodded, ready to drop it, at least for the moment. I was hoping that by the time we got to Paris, I could figure out some way to explain at least something to her.

“Gregorio?” I called from the couch.

“Yes?” He asked, walking over with a cup of coffee for Jen and one for himself.

“Can I use your computer for a minute? I want to book tickets for Jen and I to Paris and my phone doesn’t want to cooperate,” I said, tossing the phone on the bed with frustration.

He raised his eyebrow at me. “Sure.”

“I know what you’re thinking,” I whispered to him as I followed him to the room where his desk was set up.

He pulled out the desk chair. “Not thinking anything.”

“I would just be more comfortable in Paris, in my own house for a while. That encounter with Wenzel still has me spooked,” I said, pulling up the website for the flights.

“Do they know?” Gregorio asked.

“Nico and Olivier? Nope, and oh look, it’s light outside. I guess I will have to make a decision on my own,” I said.

He laughed. “You really like to push their buttons, don’t you?”

I smiled and shrugged. I knew he was right, but I liked to make my own decisions from time to time. My best friend in the whole world was here and I wanted to show her Paris as well as Berlin. They could get mad, but in the end, it was my life to live.

“That was easy enough,” I said after entering my credit card information on the computer. Sunset was early in the winter, which allowed us to fly in earlier. Our plane would be landing a few minutes before seven. I would call Nico before getting on the plane because he should be up by then. If he wasn’t, I could call Olivier. We still didn’t know why he was waking up earlier than actual sunset, but we assumed it had to do with the second bloodline.

I desperately wanted to know more about the bloodlines and what powers were associated with which ones. Olivier already proved that it was possible to gain more power from having a second bloodline. If I was to become a vampire at one point or another, I could choose the powers that I wanted. This curiosity was the very reason I was called a truth-seeker. Apparently most people don’t care about these things, even the vampires.

“What time are you flying out?” Gregorio asked as I printed boarding tickets.

“We fly out at five thirty,” I said.

He thought about it for a moment. “You will want to be at the airport by four so you can check bags, so we should leave here at three.”

I looked at my phone. “Okay, so we have a few hours to hang out.”

Gregorio nodded. “What do you want to do?”

“Let’s check with Jen.”

We went out to the living room where Jen was sipping coffee and falling in and out of consciousness.

“If you’re still tired, why don’t you go back to bed for a while?” I said.

She yawned and shook her head. “I’m good. Once I take a shower, I’ll be fine.”

“If you say so. Gregorio said we should leave here at three, so that gives us time to do something around Berlin,” I said.

“Well, what do you suggest, Greg?” She said, turning to him.

It made me smile. No matter how many times she called him that, I wouldn’t be able to see him as a Greg.

“We don’t have a whole lot of time. We can take a walk down to see the Berlin Wall, have lunch and –,” he started.

“Stop by the chocolate place one last time?” Jen interrupted with hope in her eyes.

He laughed. “Sure, we can do that. Dylan?”

“Yeah, that works for me,” I said. “Just give me a few minutes to change into some comfortable shoes and pack up the last of my luggage so we’re ready to go.”

Jen followed me into the guest room to do the same. “So we’re headed to Paris tonight?”

I nodded. “You excited?”

“Hell yes. Are we going to go up to the Eiffel Tower? Can we go to a few clubs? Where are the best places to eat?”

“Slow down,” I smiled. “We’re about an hour outside of Paris, so it will take some time to get out there. Parking is a bitch, so I will see if one of them can drop us off around where we want and then we can walk around from there. We can do the Eiffel Tower and a club. We will have two nights in Paris before you have to fly out, so there’s plenty of time for all of it.”

“Okay,” she said, piling some of her clothes into the open suitcase on the bed. “You have certainly helped me to see the world.”

“You’re right,” I said. Prior to her visiting me in Italy, she had never been outside of Florida. Now she has seen even more thanks to me being able to fly her over here. I was hoping that this could be a regular thing. She and I could do a lot of sightseeing around Europe when she had the time to take off. Though, I knew at some point I would have to become a vampire. Probably sooner rather than later, but I didn’t want to think about that at the moment. I just wanted to have some fun with my best friend.

I zipped up my last suitcase and wheeled it out into the living room.

“Want me to put that in the car now?” Gregorio asked, nodding in its direction.

“Can you bring this one, too?” Jen said, lugging hers out of the guest room.

Gregorio nodded. “Let’s get them packed up now so we don’t have to worry about it later.” He took my two down and then came back up for Jen’s.

“Let’s go,” Jen said, practically bouncing up and down. Patience never was her strong suit.