Flesh And Blood: House of Comarre: Book Two (House of Comarre 2) (15 page)

‘Believe it. It’s me.’ He smiled back. Hard to imagine a chick that petite could be a threat to anyone, but he’d seen a fae-varcolai remnant purposefully sneeze on her once. Bad idea. Mia’s fear of germs bordered on the manic. She’d hit the offender with a blow to the windpipe so fast and hard the creature had required two weeks of ventilation to recover.

She leaned against the counter. ‘What are you doing here? I haven’t heard from you since your pride … you know.’ Her smile faded, memories flickering in her eyes. ‘Well, it’s really good to see you.’

‘You too.’ He dropped his smile as well. ‘How have you been?’

‘Good. Busy. You know, same old same old.’ Her face twisted in the wistful look of pity he’d gotten all too accustomed to. ‘How are you doing?’

He paused. Mia wasn’t just anyone. They had history. He’d once thought they also had a future, but those days were gone, and the only woman he wanted a future with now was Fi. Still, Mia was a friend. Seemed to still be. ‘Things are okay.’ He shrugged and sat back, tried to smile away the truth. ‘Nothing you need to worry about.’

She tilted her head, her eyes shimmering to their icy wolf blue for a brief second. ‘Whatever you say, Maddoc. You want a white Russian?’

She remembered his usual, but he hesitated. Varcolai social laws made turning down food or beverage from another varcolai
highly disrespectful, but Mia was a bartender. Offering drinks was her job. ‘Just a club soda.’

‘You on the wagon?’ She made a funny face but snagged a tumbler and started filling it from the gun.

‘No. I’m here to talk to Dominic.’

‘Ah.’ She squeezed in a lime before setting the glass in front of him. ‘Sure a drink wouldn’t be a better idea?’

‘Gotta stay clearheaded.’ He sipped, watching her wash her hands. The water beaded on her skin like it was coated in oil. He turned the glass in a small circle, shifting the ice. ‘You wearing latex?’

‘Spray-on latex is my best friend.’ She wiggled her fingers at him. ‘But then you knew that.’

He ignored the subtle jab at their past. ‘Speaking of Dominic—’

‘Which we weren’t.’

‘But we are now. Where is he tonight?’

‘In his apartments, I guess.’

She leaned in and he caught a whiff of vanilla. Flashes of the past, of bare skin and hot nights, flitted through his brain. ‘Between us, he’s been scarce on the floor lately. Real scarce.’

‘What about Mortalis?’ He sucked in a chunk of ice, cooling himself down. Mia might still get a little physical reaction out of him, but she’d get that from most men. Fi was where his heart was.

Mia straightened as a server came to the service bar and put in a drink order. Mia nodded and lined up glasses. ‘He’s usually here, but I haven’t seen him tonight. I think he was taking somebody home.’

Since when had Mortalis become the designated driver for anyone but Dominic? He turned, watching the crowd in the
lounge while Mia filled the order. Some were barely keeping their clothes on, but that was status quo in Vanity. You didn’t come here to fade into the background. One vamp, Middle Eastern and possibly noble-blooded, had a horde of fake comarré around him, but his gaze seemed stuck on Mia. Doc reminded himself it wasn’t his place to care anymore, but that didn’t stop the protective feelings from surfacing. The server took her drinks and left. He turned back to Mia. ‘Who’s Sheik Fang over there? He looks noble. And he’s staring you down pretty hard.’

She snorted. ‘He might be noble, but if he’s in Paradise City, he’s probably anathema. He intro’d himself as Nazir or something. He tried to kiss my hand. Can you imagine? Dead lips on my skin? Like that’s going to happen.’ A pair of remnants sat at the end of the bar. She greeted them with a smile, before glancing at Doc. ‘Let me get their order and I’ll be right back.’

He nursed the soda until she returned. ‘I heard Ronan got beat down in the Pits.’

Mia laughed. ‘Man, that was beautiful. Well, from what I heard. I wasn’t there.’ She sighed as she wiped down the bar. ‘You’re never going to believe who he fought.’

He swallowed the ice he was chewing. ‘Who?’

‘Remember that anathema who used to fight here all the time, hardly ever won, had those names all over him like tattoos – Hey, you know, I think that’s who Mortalis was taking home.’

Mal
. Doc dropped the glass. ‘I gotta go.’

Within moments, he was back outside and running toward the freighter. If Mal had returned to the Pits, there was a damn good reason why. Not that Mal wouldn’t welcome a chance to turn that Irish neck biter into ash. Doc ran with a speed no human could match, but it wasn’t nearly as fast as he could have gone in his leopard form. His lungs barely straining, he plowed
through street after street. The neighborhood surrounding Seven was about as ghetto as you could get, but the chances of someone giving him trouble were slim. This was fringe country, and the uneasy peace between fringe and varcolai had so far survived the covenant’s breaking.

He turned a corner, putting the worst of it behind him. An acrid odor rose up around him, clinging to his skin like spider-web. He slowed down, scanning the street for the source. He knew that smell from somewhere. It reminded him of … of … He came to a complete stop.

Piles of ash dotted the asphalt and sidewalk. The bitter scent reminded him of the way the vampires they’d killed at Tatiana’s had smelled when they died, because that’s what he was looking at.

Pile after pile of vampire remains.

E
ven with his back to her, Mal felt Chrysabelle with his whole being as she walked toward where he stood by the pool. Her heartbeat, which had ratcheted up the moment he’d stepped out of the car and then again when he’d told her she smelled good, echoed in his veins. Her scent, thicker and more hypnotic with the fresh blood on her palm, draped him in a magnetic haze. Only a few weeks had passed since he’d seen her, but the memory of her preternatural glow and glittering signum paled in comparison to her in the flesh. With her sunny blondeness and eyes that matched the summer sky, she remained the essence of everything he craved.

And like a fool, he’d let her affect him. Had he actually said, ‘Would you like me to kiss it and make it better?’ Chalk that up to another moment of his life he’d like to erase.
Fool, fool, fool
was the best the voices could do, subdued by ingesting so much blood in such a short amount of time.

Her slippered feet halted a yard or so behind him. ‘Well? Talk.’

Without turning around, he could picture her. Arms still
crossed, one hip cocked out, that ‘I dare you’ look on her face. He closed his eyes, dropped his chin to his chest, and, so help him, he inhaled.

His muscles tensed to steel wire, his nerves pinging shocks of pleasure and need through him faster than he could register. The desire to maintain his human face vanished in a shiver of angled bones and jagged fangs. He rolled his head to one side, mouth open to let the tangible scent of her slide over his tongue. The ache in his gums mirrored the ache piercing his gut. Holy hell. If she’d deliberately given her blood to Ronan, it might be enough to push Mal over the killing edge. Back to that blind hungry rage that had once owned him.
Yessss …
There was only so much betrayal one man could take.
You’re not a man. You’re a monster.

The soft
tap, tap, tap
of her fingers drumming on her arm broke through the sharp, white urgency surrounding him. ‘I’m waiting.’

Yes, he was a monster. She would do well to remember it. He spun, knowing how he must look and not giving a damn. ‘I am aware, but considering the circumstances, patience might be a better option.’

Surprisingly, she didn’t say a word. Instead she walked past him, not touching him but close enough to tighten the noose of desire around his throat. If she hadn’t done it deliberately, he’d be shocked. She walked to the chaise, sat, then lifted a glass of juice from the side table. Juice that had barely been touched. Had his arrival interrupted something? Another visitor? One glass didn’t mean she’d been alone. Vampires didn’t ingest human foods, except alcohol.

She held it up to him in a mock salute, then took a long, slow sip. Her throat worked as she swallowed, her eyes never leaving his.

Hades on a cracker. She was torturing him on purpose. And probably enjoying it. Maybe he deserved it. And maybe she deserved a little in return, except he had no idea how to torture a woman who clearly didn’t care if he continued to exist or not. ‘What were you doing at Seven?’

She set the glass down. ‘I could ask you the same question.’

‘I think it was pretty obvious what I was doing there.’

‘I meant besides making a spectacle of yourself.’

Is that what she thought? ‘I don’t owe you an explanation.’

‘No, you don’t.’ She swung her legs over the side of the chaise as if to leave.

‘I’m giving you one anyway. Katsumi promised me Dominic’s help in exchange for winning.’

Her forehead crinkled. ‘His help for what?’

‘For removing this curse.’

The muscles in her jaw tightened. She looked down at her wounded hand. Was she hiding shame or anger?

‘That was certainly a good reason to fight, then. Also a good reason to drink the blood I sent you.’

‘It was good enough for Ronan.’

Her head jerked up. ‘What does that mean?’

He saw no injuries on her that might indicate Ronan had taken her blood by force, which meant she’d either given it to him willingly – something he couldn’t imagine her doing – or she truly didn’t know he’d gotten his hands on it. But how would that have happened? ‘Ronan had your blood in his system when he entered the arena. I didn’t smell it on him until he started to bleed.’ The combination of her blood already ingested and the anticipation of the fight had refocused his senses to the purpose of winning. ‘I tasted his blood to be sure. It was heavily laced with yours.’

The shock in her eyes told the truth. She hadn’t known.

‘How is that possible?’ The heels of her palms came down against the chaise’s frame as she pushed herself up. She flinched, pulled her wounded hand to her chest, then shook it off like it was nothing.

That nothing drove a small, gold dagger into his shriveled heart. He hated that she hurt almost as much as he despised how pathetic she’d made him for caring.

Hands cupped to her stomach like she felt ill, she paced a few steps toward the pool and stood there, facing away from him. Gleaming with that mesmerizing comarré glow. ‘Actually, I know how it was possible.’ Her hair spilled down her back like moonlit silk. ‘Dominic’s driver came by with a letter from Dominic requesting blood. I sent some.’

A hard surge of possessive anger shot down his spine. She
had
given another vampire her blood. This from the woman who had spouted the tenets of comarré law to him as the reasons for so many of her secrets and actions.

Still overlooking the pool, she continued. ‘He just seemed so needy in his letter and after all he did to help with Maris … ’ She shrugged. ‘It seemed like the right thing to do.’

He struggled to maintain a level of calm, quickly realizing he was not going to maintain it much longer. He clenched his hands until his knuckles popped. ‘What does comarré law say about a comarré giving her blood to a vampire who is not her patron?’

‘That it is not allowed … ’ Her voice faded into the night air and she turned. Her thumb stroked the side of her bandaged hand. ‘Yes, I see what you’re saying. You’re assuming you still own my blood rights, which you very well may. Comarré law doesn’t really cover blood rights reversion in a case where your patron gains your blood rights by stealing them, then gives your
blood to a ghost who is actually haunting
him
, who then turns human again only to die for a second time.’ She stared at him, a small storm brewing in her eyes. ‘Yes, that is rather a gray area. One I’m surprised you’d even care about … Oh, I get it. You’re jealous.’ A false smile lifted the corners of her crimson mouth. ‘Isn’t that touching.’

He moved toward her a step. ‘I am not jealous. I am simply tired of being betrayed.’

Her smile disappeared. ‘I did not betray you.’

‘You promised help, got what you wanted, and withdrew.’

The angry sparks returned. She jabbed a finger in the air. ‘Just because I haven’t helped you yet doesn’t mean I’m not going to. Besides, I sent you blood.’