Cunningham, Pat - Legacy [Sequel to Belonging] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (26 page)

“Orange juice,” Jeremy said above her. “I’ll see if we’ve got any cookies.”

“I’ll be fine,” Colleen protested. She should have known Wallace would ignore her. He scooped her off the chair and carried her out of the kitchen and up the stairs. His arms were incredibly strong and so nice to just lie limp in. “I’m fine,” she said again, though not so forcefully this time.

“Of course you are.” He laid her on the bed. Jeremy came in seconds later with a tall glass of orange juice and a plate with a turkey sandwich and a handful of chocolate-chip cookies on it.

“There,” Wallace said. “Anybody can bring you breakfast in bed. We do dinner in bed. How cool are we?”

She couldn’t help glancing at the dishtowel wrapped around her wrist. The sensual memories wouldn’t go away. “Please don’t ever bite me again.”

“He won’t.” Jeremy set the glass and the plate on the nightstand then kissed her on the cheek. Wallace started forward, but stopped himself. Perhaps the stink of blood still hung too heavy on her skin. Whatever the reason, he kept his distance. However, his eyes gleamed at her, right up until he left the bedroom and shut the door behind him.

* * * *

Jeremy waited until they hit the bottom of the stairs. He stopped Wallace with a hand on his arm. “All right. She can’t hear us. Now tell me what you wouldn’t say in front of her.”

“What? I told you already. Her blood’s got a kick like a goddamn volcano.” His gaze skittered away from his Scarecrow’s.

“Wallace…”

Shit. When would he learn? He couldn’t lie to those puppy-dog eyes or the steel that lived inside them. “Okay,” he growled, “okay. I’ve tasted human blood before, here and there. I don’t like it. After a steady diet of bat blood, human’s like drinking skim milk. Thin and tasteless. Christ. I don’t mean yours. You’re—”

Jeremy held up his hand. “We both know you didn’t pick me for my blood. Back on topic here. What about Colleen?”

“I want to say she’s human. I want to, but I can’t. Not with the kind of blood she’s got. You want God’s honest truth? She tastes just like a vampire.”

Chapter 14

The following evening, Colleen returned to the townhouse to find a van at the curb. It had only one small window on the back, already covered by a blanket. Wallace stood in the van’s shadow with its bulk between him and the setting sun. He wore his bomber jacket, a baseball cap, and dark glasses. Jeremy stood beside him, looking especially miserable.

Small wonder, Colleen thought. The center of his universe was leaving him. Her stomach slid a little. He was leaving both of them. Only temporarily, but still.

She came in on the tail end of what sounded like a heated argument. Jeremy cut through whatever Wallace was trying to shove on him. “Don’t. Just don’t. I don’t need to know.”

“Gus says this guy keeps tabs on other slayers. We may never get a better chance.”

“I don’t care. For once in your life, will you listen to me? Leave it alone. Please. For me.”

“I’m doing this for you,” Wallace said then noticed Colleen and broke off. “Hey, sweetheart. Looking good. I was hoping to catch you before I left.”

She glanced at the sky and its lingering streaks of blue. “You’re out early.”

“Sooner gone, sooner back.” He removed his dark glasses and squinted against the fading sunlight. His smile showed fang. “You going to miss me, too?”

“Not your mouth.”

Wallace laughed. “Y’see that, Scarecrow? She’s got the right attitude. You can take a lesson from her. Stop giving me that look. I’ll be back sucking on your body parts before you know it.”

“You’re going after a slayer. How do you expect me to look?”

“So? I’m a slayer, too. If he’s as good as he’s supposed to be, he’ll know who I am. I’ve got a rep, too, y’know.”

“Swell. A slayer
and
the vamps will be after you. We’re a flock now. We should be going with you.”

“Don’t start that again. You’re both safer here, and both of you know it. Anyway, with you two along, I’d never want to get out of bed. Unless you want to go for a foursome with that other guy?” He winked at Colleen.

“You’re sick,” she said. “Just go already.”
Before I do what Jeremy wants to and drag you back into the house.
She didn’t add that aloud but figured from the quirk of Wallace’s lips he must have caught the gist of it anyway.

Jeremy hauled Wallace into his arms and bear-hugged him as if he would never let go. “You watch your ass, you stupid shit.”

“Back atcha.” Wallace half turned in Jeremy’s embrace and beckoned for her to come over. He pulled her up against him. His lips caressed her cheek. “Take care of Scarecrow,” he murmured. “If he goes all broody on you, just kick him in the ’nads.”

Jeremy released him. “Good-bye, Wallace.”

“I love you, too.” He kissed Jeremy with a ferocity that belied his flippant tone. His emotions blew through Colleen’s mind. He didn’t want to leave them. His love was a physical force that made her eyes water and her knees buckle. Abruptly, he vaulted into the van. The sun had finally set, and the Tin Man was back on the clock. He stuck his arm out the window for a farewell wave before the van turned the corner.

Colleen continued to watch the corner long after the van disappeared. Already, she missed his snark. Poor Jeremy looked positively bereft. She slid her arm around him in the hopes she could hug the growing emptiness out of both of them. It actually helped a little. She urged him toward the house.

“Come on. He thinks we’ll go to pieces without him. We don’t want to give him the satisfaction of proving him right, now do we?”

* * * *

Once inside, and in his kitchen, Jeremy perked up a little. He got out pots, pans, chicken, flour, veggies, and cutlery with an efficiency Colleen found a little too precise, just a hair too controlled.

“Why don’t I cook tonight?” she offered. “I do know how, you know.”

“No. You sit your butt down, and let me wait on you.” He emphasized his order by firmly placing her in a chair at the kitchen table. He began to bread chicken with a vengeance. “If I don’t do this, I’ll go nuts. You can cook for us when Wallace gets back.”

“Are you sure? My stroganoff kicks ass.”

“I can’t wait to taste it. Just not tonight, okay?”

While oil warmed in a pan, he turned to the counter and attacked the vegetables. He chopped faster than Colleen would have dared, with impressive accuracy.

“You’re really good,” she admitted.

He grinned faintly. “Out of necessity. I guess you know by now I was raised by vampires. Well, vampires and one human. Ken was one of my mom’s other adopted kids. He looked after me during the day, until he died when I was thirteen. That left me as the only member of the household who had to eat actual food. It was learn to cook, or live on mac and cheese.” He dumped the vegetables and chicken strips into the pan. “Home Ec. saved my life.”

“Didn’t you get any grief from the other kids? I mean, this was middle school, right? And you were a boy in Home Ec.”

“No, I was a jock in Home Ec. I helped our softball team make the semifinals. That bought me a lot of slack. Well, that and my growth spurt.” He waved his hand in a six-foot-five, head-to-toe sweep. “Nobody wants to mess with a giant, especially one with access to baseball bats. Besides, I was too valuable at the bake sales. My muffins were always in demand.”

He turned to stir the veggies. Colleen eyed his ass and licked her lips. “Nothing’s changed.”

“What? Oh.” Jeremy laughed. A healthy chunk of his anxiety faded from his face, replaced by that special look he saved for her alone. “There’s still time to take this off the stove.”

“No, now I’m hungry. That smells delicious. You may have missed your calling.”

“I don’t think so. I couldn’t do this all day long. I enjoy cooking for Wallace, and he’s happy to let me. I guess I’m lucky. I found the only vampire who eats.”

“It sounds like you were luckier than me. Your family didn’t keep you around just for your blood, did they?”

“Of course not. Mom wasn’t like that. She must have raised dozens of human kids over the centuries. She loved children, but vampires can’t—” He clipped that off.

Colleen let it pass. “She sounds really special. Better than those bastards from the commune.”

“Not all vampires are evil. I guess it depends on what they were like as humans.”

“Uh-huh. So Wallace was always a smart-ass jerk?”

“Pretty much. That’s what Annie tells me.”

By now, both of them were chuckling. “I’d love to meet your mom,” she said. “Is she still around? Well, of course she would be. Vampires live forever, right?”

Oh no. She knew she’d screwed it when all laughter vanished from Jeremy’s eyes. “If I just tripped over something bad, I’m sorry.”

His anguish lasted only a moment, just long enough to alarm her. He dropped onto the chair across the table from her. “You didn’t know. You couldn’t. They’ve been gone for a couple of years now. A slayer got into the house. I couldn’t stop him.” The bleak look that replaced the anguish only scared her more. “That’s how I ended up in a brothel. I went kind of crazy for a while. Wallace pulled me out of it.” Whatever he saw on her face prompted him to take her hand. “I’m fine now, really. I’d just rather not talk about slayers.”

“Okay.”
Change the subject. Change the subject
. “Back in school, you were a jock, and you were in Home Ec.”

“Is this your subtle way of finding out if I dated boys or girls?”

Colleen gulped. “I didn’t know you could read minds, too.”

“I’m learning how yours works.” Thank God, his storm-cloud eyes had lightened up again. “I had a girlfriend.”

“So back then you didn’t know you were, um…”

“I’m not.” Jeremy leaned his folded arms on the tabletop. “I see I’ll have to bring you up to speed on vampire mores. We don’t follow rigid gender roles. We can’t afford to.”

“We?”

“They, I guess I mean. In this case, mostly they. This is where I really get ticked off at the movies and the TV shows. They make it look like vampires kill all the time. That’s hardly ever the case. You’d be surprised how little blood a vampire actually needs to survive. I mean, when you’re hungry for steak, you don’t eat a whole cow, do you?”

“No,” she said cautiously, “but blood isn’t steak. There’s a difference between chugging an energy drink and chugging Jane Doe in an alley.”

His smile surprised her. “You’re starting to get the picture, but there’s more to it than that. Vampires can go for decades without killing anybody. Every few days you go out and take a couple swallows from a couple different people. The donor doesn’t die or get turned or anything bad like that. Some flocks do keep blood banks, but the humans are all volunteers. They’re treated damned good, too.”

“I’ll bet. The vampires wouldn’t want to mess up their food supply.”

“I’m sorry about that. What those vampires did to your mother and the others was unforgiveable. Most vampires are decent, like most people are decent. They keep their heads down and try to blend in. Then you’ve got the deviants. Some of them do chug Jane Doe in the alley. That’s where the problems start. It’s like binge eating. They overdose. They overload their systems and they…” He waved one hand vaguely. “You ever watch
Star Trek
? You know how Mr. Spock has to get laid every seven years or he dies? That’s what happens to a vampire who takes in too much blood at once. It’s almost like their body snaps back to living, and their undead system can’t handle it. They have to get relief or the stresses will kill them. It literally shakes them to pieces. I saw it happen once.” He shuddered. “Way not pretty.”