Blood Entangled (4 page)

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, Kos leaned against the wall outside of his room and banged his head. Hard. From behind drawn curtains, the light of dawn seeped into the hallway. He should encourage Lena to go back to her own bedroom, but she seemed so sad whenever she mentioned the memories waiting for her there.

Still, it was excruciating to have her so close.

Every night that he watched over her sleeping form, his urge to protect and take care of her grew. And those weren’t the only urges. When she’d throw back the blanket and bare her long legs, it was all he could do not to kneel at her feet, kiss her slim ankles, and slip his hands up her smooth thighs.

He’d known better than to get so close, known she was the one woman to tempt him. As much as she made him wish it weren’t true, love was something to be feared. Love meant an addiction to her blood worse than any human street drug. Love would be a noose around his neck, or worse, a razor blade in her bathtub. And he wanted both his neck and Lena’s delicate wrists safe from its seductive destruction.

A suffocating pressure at his throat made him realize he’d been squeezing off his airway.
Krist.
He needed a distraction, and there were plenty waiting for him in his office.

The house was quiet, its rooms filled with every Croatian antique his father could acquire—rustic tables, ornately carved chairs, oil paintings and watercolors of their homeland. Croatian humans weren’t sentimental about old junk. But vampires were different. Nature made them nostalgic in their very blood. Amidst the historical objects, Kos could almost believe he was back in their family home on Šolta. Not a bad fantasy, since an escape into the past would rid him of the troublingly gorgeous blonde in his bed.

Papers were piled on his desk in the same neat rows and precise angles as everything in his office. He sat down and straightened their already straight edges, mentally listing his priorities for the day. Rhythmic noises from the master bedroom overhead told him all too clearly why Zoey wasn’t in the office yet. He didn’t begrudge the new couple their happiness—they should enjoy it while it lasted.

Because it wouldn’t last forever. Andre’s marriage to Kos’s mother had proven that. Theirs had been a passionate, love-at-first-sight kind of match. Although Kos was only five when they met, he remembered the way Andre had gazed at Mila, or touched her. But that love had soured quickly, their misery a shroud over Kos’s childhood—until Mila’s suicide, which had nearly killed Andre.

He shuddered. Kos had learned the lesson well. Love could not withstand the eternal demands of a blood bond, and when it failed it tore everyone apart. He could not stand to be the destruction of a woman, especially not Lena.

The sounds of Andre and Zoey’s
happiness
thudded overhead—just one of the many ways his vampire-sharp hearing was a nuisance. He queued up some classical music on his computer. Booming symphonies and dramatic violin sonatas were perfect for dampening the sounds of their love.

He powered up his computer and found the email he was looking for—a shipping notice from the bottle supplier. The shipment had left Santa Rosa already. Getting Blood Vine bottled immediately was his number one priority. Beneath the house, in the wine cellar, barrels and barrels waited. And all around America, vampires waited too, slowly wasting away. Only last week, Kos had been aged and weak. But the Blood Vine had cured him, had even made him strong enough to fly. And he’d played the hero, taking Lena in his arms—

The door to his office swung open, startling him. Andre stood there, freshly showered and radiant with health.

Kos turned off his music. “Good morning.”

“Yes, good morning.” Andre’s smile spread the width of his face.

It was very much worth noisy mornings to see his father happy. “What’s in the box?”

“The wine labels have arrived already.” Andre set the small cardboard box on Kos’s desk and ripped it open. “Zoey did a fine job on these.”

Kos examined the roll of labels, branded with the efforts of Zoey’s marketing campaign for Blood Vine. Metallic red letters spelled the wine’s name, overlying the looping Glagolitic letters of the Croatian text on ivory paper. The words sent a shiver of nostalgia up Kos’s spine. Just letters and words, and yet, somehow, they took him home to Šolta. Surely the labels would speak to the other Croatian refugees too, no matter where the vampires had hidden themselves after fleeing the homeland, driven out by Hunters so long ago.

“The bottles will be here any minute,” Kos said.

Reaching across the desk, Andre grazed his knuckles across Kos’s arm in a playful, fatherly assault. “Soon, all our old friends will be cured.”

Since Andre had begun drinking Blood Vine, the lines around his green eyes had vanished and his sweater had pulled tight across his chest, thick with new muscle. Somehow, the wine restored their strength, as if they’d returned to the land of their making and been cured of the wasting disease caused by their forced exile.

Andre wove around Kos’s desk. At the window, he shielded his eyes from the bright sun and peered out. It was the same gesture Kos repeated a thousand times a day, and he went to Andre’s side. The low hills in front of the estate were golden with the dry grasses of late summer. On the opposite side of the highway, the boulder on the peak of the tallest hill was vacant. No Hunter lookout there for more than a week.

“Every time I hear a door slam, I’m convinced they’re back with their rocket launcher,” Kos said.

“I’m rather jumpy myself. I would feel better if I could see the damn shield. Every five minutes I look out the window and wonder if it is still functioning.”

“It’s hard to believe that skinny Trys has to eat thousands of calories to fuel her magical energy for the shield. She likes some fancy chocolate from London, but she’s settled for ice cream—gallons and gallons of it.”

“Bel told me as much. I understand absolutely nothing of her witchcraft, but chocolate seems an absurd fuel. I never tasted the stuff,” Andre said. “Smells decent, though.”

“It is. Better than decent, if I recall.” Kos wet the roof of his mouth with his memory of the delectable food, a memory more than a century old.

A barely audible scuff alerted him to Zoey’s entrance. Freshly showered and put together, she entered the room on newly light feet. She’d adjusted with ease to becoming a vampire and already moved with supernatural grace—silent and fast.

She held up her phone, her posture unusually rigid and her knuckles white where her fingers curled around the edges. “RSVPs are coming in for the Blood Vine launch party. All the Sonoma County locals are coming, and a few of my contacts in San Francisco. Even some folks from the national wine magazines.”

“Really?” Kos asked. “That’s great.”

Andre watched her with the most idiotic look on his face, like she deserved the Nobel Peace Prize for throwing a damn party.

“Thanks,” she said. “But there’s something else.” Fangs retracted, she bit her lower lip, as she had so often as a human.

“What is it?” Andre asked, no doubt already clued into her anxiety through their blood bond.

“I got an email from a person named Dana through the website.”

Andre’s eyes lit up. “Dana Zulim?”

“That’s right.” She handed him her phone. “She says her husband Teodor died last month of the wasting disease.”

The phone trembled in Andre’s hand. “Just one month too late.”

“She heard about Blood Vine because her American son owns a wine store. She didn’t say where, obviously. That’s the good news—the PR is working.” Zoey’s voice was thin, forcing the point.

Kos poured them three glasses of Blood Vine from a decanter on his file cabinet.

“To Teodor.” He raised his glass.

“To the homeland,” Andre said and took a sip.

Zoey lifted her glass in silence. She took a sip and then said, “Tell me what happens, what
actually
happens, when someone dies of the wasting disease.”

“To a human, it would look like normal aging.” Andre set down his glass and moved his hands as he spoke, as if to illustrate his words. “A thin, frail vampire, wrinkled and desiccated because he cannot take enough nourishment from the blood he drinks.” His hands came to rest on his hips. “The vampire experiences the wasting as a constantly cold, aching hunger and fatigue. Blood satisfies for only a short time.”

“This is what you felt, before Blood Vine?” she asked, looking first at Kos, then Andre.

Kos nodded in time with his father.

“Was Teodor your friend?”

“Yes,” Andre replied. He picked up his glass and stared into it, twirling the stem in between his palms. “Teo was quiet. Rather retiring for a vampire. But a good neighbor, reliable.”

“He made piss-poor wine, though,” Kos said.

Andre laughed at their old joke from the good old days. The sound heartened Kos. It was his job to keep his family laughing in hard times. Hunters may prevent them from returning to the homeland, but they had not forgotten their home.

Zoey finished her glass in one swallow and slammed it on Kos’s desk. “I don’t want anyone else to die. We will do our damnedest to get Blood Vine into the hands of all the refugees.”

“Yes, we will.” Kos tipped back his glass.

Blood Vine was his priority—bottled, delivered, shipped far and wide, with marketing targeted at all the Croatian vampires. Perhaps they could distribute it to all displaced vampires, if they had enough time. But the Hunters would be back any day, attempting to drive them away from Kaštel, and the cure, once and for all. They must do everything they could to save their old friends first.

“Back to work, then.” Zoey slid her phone into her pocket before heading to the door.

When she was gone, Andre asked, “Any luck finding Lena a job?”

“None.” Kos sat on the edge of his desk and rolled his shoulders.

“What’s the hold up?”

“I don’t know. The ad’s been online for five days with no response.”

“Online.” Andre snorted. “In the old days we did these things by word of mouth.”

“Well, since all the vampires are in hiding, word of mouth doesn’t work anymore. Don’t worry. It’s the same thing, and I used the same old code words.”

He brought the ad up on his computer and read it aloud. “Female, twenty-six, seeking live-in position as cook in an established household. Trained at the California Culinary Institute. Willing and able to work all hours. Excellent references. Experience with special diets.” That part made him chuckle every time. Special diets was part of the vampire code, but today’s unknowing reader would assume it meant vegan, or gluten-free, or one of those other trends.

“No wonder no one is interested.”

“What do you mean?”

“Vampires do not care if she is an excellent cook. You have left out the most important part—she is beautiful.”

Of course he was right. Sex and feeding went hand in hand; prospective employers would want to know just how delicious Lena was. “You think I should mention she’s gorgeous?” It made Kos feel like a pimp to advertise her beauty, even though Lena wanted to leave Kaštel above all else.

“Yes. That should help. Why not say so in the first place?”

“She helped me write the ad. She’s modest.”

“She did not look very modest stripped down to her panties in my room last week.”

Kos raised his voice, surprising himself with a near shout. “Andre, you drove her crazy for years. She came here expecting to serve you in every way. And then Zoey showed up and you were clearly falling for her. She was desperate.”

“I never promised her anything.”

“That’s how households work.”

“That is how they used to work. This is the twenty-first century. She is a professional, she is paid to cook and give me her blood. She is not entitled to get fucked.” Andre wiped his hands down his face then pinched the bridge of his nose. “That is all she needs—a good fuck. You should give it to her, make her happy.” Before he finished his sentence, Andre turned toward the door sniffing the air. “Someone is coming.”

“Someone’s already here,” Lena said, pushing the door open. Her mouth was pinched, her eyes narrowed.
Krist,
she was light on her feet; it was damn near impossible to sneak up on a vampire.

Andre’s face twisted, his lips pressing into a thin grimace. He could be insensitive, but he wasn’t intentionally cruel. “Lena—”

“Save it. I’m leaving, so there’s no need to pretend we like each other.” Her dark eyes shimmered with unshed emotions, but she stood tall and spoke with confidence, once again proving tougher than Kos expected.

He wanted to fold her in his arms, but he settled for apologizing on Andre’s behalf. “Lena, please. He didn’t—”

“It doesn’t matter Kos. Just find me a job and get me out of here as fast as you can.”

When she’d closed the door behind her, Kos shook his head. “She has every reason to think you’re an asshole.”