Eternal: More Love Stories With Bite (29 page)

Footsteps clomped on
the roof
over my head.
I
wished I
could
put my fist through the
ceiling,
make
the roof buckle up and knock Gavin off. Not kill him, just make him a little less "high quality."

My future husband.

No. Way.

* * * *

I told my best friend, Bridget, the whole story while I helped her make centerpieces for tomorrow's reception. The theme was "Blood and Roses," probably the hundred-and-thirtieth time a vampire wedding has used it.

The bright red drops of blood on the white rose petals were fake, of course. Real blood rusts once it hits the air, because it has iron in it. I pictured my own blood rusting in my veins if I had to spend my life with Gavin Mallory.

"It's medieval," I said. "Marrying who your parents say."

"You didn't think it was medieval when you got set up with Liam." Bridget frowned at the tangled mess of baby's breath on the table. "You told him yet?"

"I'm not supposed to tell anyone until Brendan comes home and announces it officially." I leaned over to make sure Bridget's mom wasn't lurking on the basement steps. "But I'm meeting Liam tonight down by the creek. I'll tell him then, and we'll decide what to do."

"What do you mean? What's there to do?"

I shrugged and painted another streak of blood on the rose petal.

She lowered her voice. "What, Cassie, elope? You do that, you can't ever come back."

My hand trembled suddenly, almost as hard as Liam's, so I set down the rose. "We can make enough to live off of."

"It's not about money. It's about family. You'll lose everyone you ever knew."

"Including you?"

"Of course not." Her eyes turned sad. "But I don't count so much anymore."

"You count as much as ever to me." I wanted to put my arms around her, but since she'd been turned last year, she wasn't big on human hugs. She said we smelled too good.

"You didn't answer my question."

I held the rose up to the light, admiring my work. "I'd give it all up for Liam."

"Cass, you got no idea what it's like out there." Bridget started pulling the little white heads off the baby's breath.

My hand tightened, crushing the rose's soft petals. Bridget had only been fifteen when that nasty upstate vampire kidnapped her, turned her, and held her captive as his mate. Ever since my great-uncle Donal's posse killed her maker and brought her home, she never strayed far.

I reached over and scooted the rest of the baby's breath away from her, before she could rip off all the heads.

She jerked her hands back into her lap, then got up and moved to the vanity. "Must be nice, to be so sure about something. I can't even decide how to wear my hair tomorrow." She slumped onto the stool in front of the mirror. "If I was still human, I could go to the salon, but none of them are open after dark this time of year."

"I could give you a French braid." I picked up a comb so I could start dividing her long dark hair into sections.

"No." She swiped her hand over the charred-black, holy-water scar that ran from her left ear down past her collarbone. "We need to cover this as best we can." Her voice shook. "I meant, should I wear my hair curly or straight?"

"It'll be hot and humid." I kept my voice normal. "So your hair'll curl whether you tell it to or not."

"Curse of the Irish, huh?" She tugged up her blouse. "If it weren't summer I could wear a high-neck dress."

"You don't need to hide your scar. Your groom'll have one, too, remember?" My cousin Michael had been part of Uncle Donal's posse. During the raid on Bridget's maker's coven, both Michael and Bridget had gotten caught in the holy-water crossfire.

"And it'll heal one day," I reminded her. "Michael got one right after he was turned back in '93, right? Ten years later you couldn't tell it was ever there."

Her eyes went far away. "Funny. That. . . one, he said—"

Her breath hitched, and I squeezed her shoulder. She never told me much about her time in captivity, no matter how hard I tried to get her to talk. The few times she mentioned her maker, she just called him, "That. . . one."

Bridget got her voice back, all hoarse. "He said holy-water burns never heal."

"Well, that's bullshit." I lifted the veil from where it hung on the corner of her mirror. "Now put this on so we can figure out your hair. I don't know why you even care how you look. You're only marrying my sorry-ass cousin. He'll probably show up in ripped jeans and a Pearl Jam shirt."

A smile broke over her face. "Michael will look so hot in a tux."

"All vampires look hot in a tux. He's old."

"He's not even forty in human years. And he looks twenty-one."

"He still says 'rad.'"

"And in fifteen years, I'll be saying 'epic fail.' I think 'rad' will outlast that." She put a hand to her mouth. "Do people still say 'epic fail' now?"

"Sure, sometimes." My heart felt like it had been replaced by a stone. Vampires get "stuck" in the time they're turned, so they keep wearing the fashions and speaking the slang .they did right before they died.

It's the same for all vampires, from what I've heard, along with flaming out in the sunlight and drinking human blood to survive. They can technically live forever, but they pick up some pretty weird habits after the first few years. I hadn't seen Bridget go crazy counting or sorting stuff yet, though Michael had certain things he had to do three times, like turn a light switch on-off-on whenever he entered a room.

But Traveller vampires have their own rules, which keeps things simple and safe for everybody:

1. No voluntary vamping—that counts as suicide for the vamped, which is a major sin. You can vamp someone to "save" their life, but it can't be the dying person's choice.
   

1. No drinking from country folk—secrecy equals safety, for both Travellers and vampires.
   

1. No drinking directly from Travellers, either. Blood gets donated, pooled, and doled out by humans (my great uncle Donal runs one of the "blood banks"). This way, the whole community supports them, plus the vampires don't know who it came from so they can't get a taste for any one person.
   

1. In exchange, the vampires bring in a ton of money. Their magnetism makes them master con artists, and their stealth makes them beautiful thieves. Unlike us humans, the vamps don't keep the money they earn for their own families—it gets spread out over the whole community.
   

1. Vampires and humans don't marry. Duh.
   

1. Breaking any of these rules gets you kicked out forever.
   

I don't know if other Irish Travellers (either here or in the Old Country) keep vampires squirreled away, but our little group has been doing it for generations. We don't talk about it when we cross paths with Travellers from Memphis or Texas or even the ones from up in Murphy Village here in South Carolina.

We don't want them stealing our secret weapon.

* * * *

Down at the moonlit marsh, on a flat rock barely big enough to fit both our butts, Liam held me close while I told him how my stepfather was aiming to tear us apart and hand me over to Gavin like a piece of livestock. Through it all Liam stroked my back in big, soothing circles, not even tensing when I told him the worst parts.

When I was done, I heard nothing but the chirp of katydids. "You don't seem too surprised," I said.

"I always knew this would happen."

My heart wanted to scamper out of my chest and drown itself in the creek. "So you accept it?"

"Hell, no." He folded my left hand between his. "I always knew one day I'd have to fight to keep you. You and me were almost too good to be true."

"Almost?"

"Almost, because we are true." He brushed a curl off my cheek and tucked it behind my ear. "But still too good to be easy."

He reached into his shirt pocket and brought out two driver's licenses. I examined mine in the moonlight.

Cassandra Reynolds, age eighteen, of Little Rock, Arkansas. "Nice. And you are?"

He flipped the driver's license with a flourish, like he was dealing three-card monte. "Your devoted husband, Daniel. Age twenty-one, so I can buy us champagne for our wedding night."

"My Danny boy." I took his card and pressed it to my own, face-to-face. "Where'll we go?"

"Up north. Somewhere they can't tell a South Carolina accent from an Arkansas one."

"Somewhere they don't know about Travellers."

"That, too." He squeezed my hand, so hard I couldn't feel his own tremble. "You really wanna do this? Leave everything and everyone we know, forever?"

"It doesn't have to be forever. We go away, get married, and come back after I finish college."

"If we leave, they won't let us back. They'll say they can't trust us."

"You think if one day we show up on Mama's doorstep with her grandbaby, she'll turn us away? I'm her only child, and O'Riley women don't have many kids. So she's got lots of mothering left over."

He ran his thumb over my engagement ring. "You won't mind not having a big wedding?"

"I'd rather have a teeny tiny wedding with you than a princess's wedding to anyone else."

I raised my face to kiss him, just as my cell phone rang. I gasped at the name on the caller ID.

"Mama! Did you get my messages?"

"I got all three of them, honey." Her voice was steady and soothing, giving me hope.

"And?"

"And I understand how you feel. Believe me, I do."

My shoulders sagged with relief. "So you'll change Brendan's mind?"

She got real quiet, making me nervous.

"Mama, are you there?"

"I'm here. Look, sweetpea, you marrying Gavin is not about you and Liam. It's a lot bigger than that."

My throat closed
up.
She wasn't going to change Brendan's mind. She
didn't
even disagree.

"What's bigger?" I choked out. "What could ever
be
bigger?"

"Lots of things." Her voice hardened. "You've known all your life that
who
you marry
is
not about what you want. It's about doing what's right for the family,
for
our whole community."

"But..."
I
rubbed my lower lip to stop it from trembling. "When Daddy and Liam's father set us
up,
they asked us first if it was what we wanted. They wanted us to be happy." I wrapped my fingers around the edge of the stone. "And how is it good for the family and the community
if I'm
miserable?"

"You won't be miserable. A lot of girls would kill to marry Gavin."

"They can have him."

"You just need time to get used to the idea."

I leaned against Liam and closed my eyes as he put
his
arms around me. I needed his strength on top
of
my own to say what I was about to say.

"Mama." I spoke calmly, scrubbing the whine clear out of my voice. "I won't marry Gavin."