Forever Vampire (19 page)

He nodded. He'd hoped to avoid mention of his father's name. It couldn't bring good memories to her.

“Step closer. Let me look at you.”

He took a few steps, too quickly, for she hissed and backed toward the canvas.

Vail stopped, putting up his palms. “Sorry.”

He tried a few slower steps until he stood about six feet from her. Now her fingers flexed at her sides, unsure. As did his. He should have worn a jacket, something to protect—

You don't need protection from your own mother!

“Your paintings are incredible. You are talented.”

“Of course.”

Not chatty, then. What had he expected? That she'd wrap her arms about him and coo that everything would be all right?

Yes
. Oh, yes.

“I'm Vaillant.” Duh.
You said that already!

“Vaillant.” And then so softly he had to lean forward to hear, she murmured, “My dark prince.”

Vail swallowed. She had claimed him in some small way. Or did she mistake him for someone else? His father? Did he look like him? Dare he ask?

“Why have you come to me now?”

“I…” He had expected this reaction, but to stand
here receiving her vitriolic question confused him more than he could have imagined. His sweaty fingers and racing heart gave away his nerves. At once he wanted to pull her into a hug, and yet keeping his distance felt wiser. Safer. “I wanted to look at you.”
Mother
. “To know where I came from. Forgive me.”

“Forgive you what? You've done nothing to me.”

“No, but…”

“That bastard.” She hissed and snarled at him. The diamond pin in her hair flashed angrily. “You look like him.”

“I do?” If he reminded Viviane of the one man she must despise most…

He could sense her agitation. The scent of anger always hit the center of his tongue with an acrid bite. He should leave. “I'm sorry.”

“You apologize too much. I hate you.” She flung up her arms and declared loudly, “I love you!” She slyly eyed him from over her shoulder. “You are pretty, my dark prince. Like me. You think me pretty?”

“Very.”

“Your eyes are bright.”

“Never so bright as yours…”
Mother
. The word dallied at the tip of his tongue. The notion to step forward and pull her into his arms—

“Go away from me. I don't want to see you.”

Vail stiffened. For a moment his heart stopped beating.
Go away
echoed between his ears in a screeching red tone that scratched at his soul.

“Now!”

“I will.” He nodded and stepped back, grasping for
security, yet his hands found nothing. He was stepping away from a tragedy he wanted to fix but could only further break beyond repair.

She did not want him. Could not stand to look upon the man who reminded her of her rapist.

“Sorry. Goodbye, Viviane. Mother.”

She hissed and clawed at him.

Vail retreated, leaving the gallery door open. The breeze from the patio wafted chlorine into his nostrils. He winced at the sudden plunge back to reality. Marching into the kitchen, he swerved as Lyric put out her arms to embrace him.

“I have to leave,” he growled.

“It'll take a while,” Rhys tried. “She needs to get to know you.”

“She doesn't want to know me!” He gained the foyer and turned, unable to look either of them in the eye. “Will you drive Lyric to her brother's home? It is the only place she can be safe. I need to be away from here.”

Rhys nodded. Vail didn't meet Lyric's eyes, because to do so would reveal to her his failure. She'd had such high hopes for Viviane and him. He'd let them both down.

Turning and entering the cool night air, Vail's boots dug into the pebbled surface as he raced toward the car. He shifted into gear and peeled out of the driveway. The security lights flashed on as he peeled down the long curved driveway.

He had to get away from it all.

Turning onto the main road, Vail jammed his foot on the accelerator and raced the car into the night.

 

L
YRIC STOPPED HERSELF
from running after her lover when he made his hasty retreat. She knew better. He needed to get away.

She glanced beyond Rhys, who leaned against the kitchen counter, then to the gallery, from where Vail had charged out as if hellhounds snapped at his ankles.

Was Viviane LaMourette so much the monster, then? To have made her son, a powerful, confident man, flee as if the devil Himself were on his heels?

“Sorry,” Rhys offered.

“He just wanted to know his father,” she blurted out, feeling defensive for her lover. “Why won't you give him the information to find him?”

“We have a deal.”

“A deal? You sound like the sidhe who won't agree to anything without a return reward. You want the gown? I'll hand it over.”

Rhys's eyebrows lifted. Of course, both he and Vail had to have guessed she had the gown all along. Wasn't as if she could have fenced it in the mortal realm.

“He's in love with you,” Rhys stated.

“No, he's not.”

“You are in love with him.”

A statement she couldn't find words to deny, so she kept her silence.

“It would be a betrayal of Vail if I allowed you to hand over the gown.”

“How so? It would end this stupid deal the two of you made. End of story.”

“He needs to hand it over to me. To complete the quest, so to speak.”

“But I insist! I'll go retrieve it right now. Don't you see how hurt the man is? He wants connection with a family he's never known.”

“He has family. I am his family. His mother—”

“Just sent a grown man racing out of here. What kind of monster is she?”

Her comment struck a painful chord in Rhys, and he turned away from her.

“Sorry.”

Rhys sighed and shook his head that it was all forgiven. “Do you know when I first met Vail, he sat down before me in my office, and said as a means of introduction, ‘I'm Vail the Unwanted.' Just like that. And he believed it. So, no, I will not make this easier for him by taking away his opportunity to learn that he is truly loved and can become the vampire we all want him to be.”

“Thank you for telling me that. He's getting better.”

“I hope so. He's a fine man. Honorable in ways even he isn't privy to.”

The front door opened and in marched a wild, red-haired man sporting two black eyes and a split lip. A gash cut across his nose, but he managed to smile with a wince and at the same time blatantly ogle Lyric.

“Who is this fine bit?” he asked Rhys, who had moved alongside Lyric protectively.

“She's vampire,” Rhys stated.

The man stepped back and put up a palm. “Oh.” That one word dismissed her to the ranks of something vile and of small regard.

“What happened to your face, Tryst?”

“Tryst?” Lyric looked from him to Rhys. There was resemblance about the square jaw and eyes. “You're Vail's brother?”

“Who are you?” the werewolf asked defiantly.

“I'm Lyric Santiago,” she said, holding out her hand, which he almost shook but, at the last moment, flicked his hand away from her offer. “Vail told me the Unseelie got to you. I'm sorry.”

“Yeah, man, faeries are after Vaillant. Because of her. I can see why, too. Nice. For a vampire.”

“Tryst, mind your manners. Lyric is a welcome guest in my home.”

“Yeah? I thought she was the one you were supposed to find for the client? Aren't you going to hand her over and end all this?” He pointed to his bruised face.

“You can't handle a few cuts and bruises?” Rhys chided teasingly.

“You know I can. But do you see the trouble my brother has brought to us? Where is he, anyway?” The werewolf sniffed. “Did he abandon her here like yesterday's baggage? Because if he did, that bastard is luring the faeries right to my home, and I warned him not to.”

“That's not it at all,” Rhys said. “He came here to warn me after I missed his phone calls. As well… Vaillant finally met Viviane.”

The wolf stilled and shoved his hands in his front pockets. “Oh.”

At that moment, Lyric sensed Trystan Hawkes was much more receptive to the idea of having a vampire brother than he wanted anyone to know. He didn't hate Vail; he just acted the role he assumed others expected of him.

Rhys cleared his throat. “I was going to offer Lyric a ride into the city, but if you are able?”

She exchanged looks with the werewolf and suspected the last thing he wanted was to spend a moment with her. Yet she wanted to get to know the brother better. To determine the accuracy of her assessment of the brothers' relationship.

“Good, then.” Rhys shuffled Lyric toward Trystan. “He can give you a ride into the city. Don't worry, his bark is worse than his bite.”

“But I just got here,” Tryst said. “I was going to sit with Viviane.”

“She's in a mood,” the old man said lowly.

The werewolf sighed, and cast his gaze down the hallway toward the gallery.

“Return tomorrow, why don't you?” Rhys offered his son. “Bring her some of those white chrysanthemums she favors so much.”

“I can do that.” He flicked a gesture toward Lyric. “Come on, faery bait.”

 

T
HE
M
ASERATI SKIDDED
on loose gravel. Vail pulled up the emergency brake. The vehicle spun. The back tires left the ground.

He opened the door and flung out his body, hitting the gravel with a bounce. Stones spattered his face, hands and skull. The car door narrowly missed shaving his scalp. The car spun and went over the edge of the riverbank.

Water splashed over Vail's dirt-dusted face. He tilted back his head to laugh.

R
HYS
H
AWKES CLOSED
the door behind Trystan and Lyric and turned into his wife's embrace. Her frail limbs trembled against his body. It had been too much for her to see Vail. It tore his heart open that the two could not have a relationship.

Perhaps it needed time and patience. God knows, he had learned patience in this marriage. He'd once thought her dead, and to find her alive decades ago had put back together the pieces of his broken heart. He adored Viviane, even when she raged.

“You told me Constantine was no more,” she said, her voice warbling. “You told me, lover. Did you lie to me?”

Sometimes it had been easier to allow Viviane to believe what she wanted. He'd never told her as much, only that he had no idea where Constantine was—which was true.

“Never, my love.”

“Why has my dark prince only come to me now? Why so long?”

He swept the hair from her face and tilted up her
chin to gaze into her lucid blue eyes. Lucid, but for how long, he could never know. “Remember when the faery Cressida chose one of your sons as payment for enchanting my werewolf?”

She nodded. “You promised your firstborn. She took him. We had the other. I know it broke your heart, lover. It did mine, too.”

“He's always been in our hearts, even though he was gone. Vaillant wants to get to know you, Viviane. He needs a mother.”

“I like being a mother. Trystan was easy to raise. He takes after his father, so proud and kind. But my dark prince…he looks like him.”

Indeed, Vail had his father's square facial features, and yet the dark hair and blue eyes had come from both his parents. Pray, he did not develop a malicious streak as Constantine had. And pray, the two boys, Trystan and Vail, could have a better relationship than Rhys and Constantine had.

“He is not his father, Viviane. Vail is quite new to the mortal realm. He needs guidance. But most of all, he needs family. Do you want to be his family, Viviane?”

“I could be. But my heart…” She pounded a fist to her breast.

“I know.” Rhys pulled her head to his shoulder. “Your heart bleeds for the travesties visited you by Constantine de Salignac.”

“I will kill him.”

Would that she could, and then perhaps Salignac would haunt her no longer.

Rhys had had opportunity when they'd been tracking Viviane after she'd been released from her centuries-long prison in the catacombs. He'd held Constantine by the neck, his talons emerging with anger. But no matter the evils Constantine had brought to Rhys and Viviane's life, he could not kill his own brother. The past could never be erased.

In truth, Rhys did not desire a relationship with his brother, but neither would he be the hand to bring him down, as was, he suspected, Vail's focus.

“You're hungry?” he asked, but didn't wait for her answer.

Sitting on the chair, Rhys drew Viviane onto his lap and tilted his head aside. She stroked his neck. Her touch always sent shivers through his system and ignited desire. As a half-breed, his werewolf could not abide being bitten by a vampire. But he was in vampire form now, and though his mind was all wolf, the vampire always won the insistent desire to have his blood drawn out by his wife. It was a sensual experience they both enjoyed.

He gave Viviane strength, and in turn, when he took blood from her, it calmed his raging vampire.

They could not survive without the other.

 

L
YRIC CLUTCHED THE EDGES
of the passenger seat. Trystan Hawkes drove exactly like his brother. Did no one take driver's education classes anymore?

The brown SUV sported red and orange flames along the exterior sides and laughing skulls across the back. A gold skull capped the stick shift. The interior
was pasted with graffiti of skater logo stickers. All very colorful. As was Trystan.

The man was tall and built like Vail, but where Vail's muscles were streamlined, his brother's were meaty and imposing. As she would expect from a werewolf. One of Lyric's friends was a werewolf—Blu Masterson; she spent the summers in Paris with her husband, Creed Saint-Pierre—but the female wolves, while muscular, were often slender and athletic in form.

Trystan cast her a sideways glance. “I can smell your fear, Lyric.”

“Yeah? Who'da thought, a werewolf capable of scenting out fear.” She wasn't afraid of him. Well, maybe a little. Lyric had never been this close to a male wolf.

“Don't be afraid of me. I won't bite. You, on the other hand…”

“Wouldn't dream to bite a werewolf. You're not afraid of me, are you?”

He shrugged, and turned onto a different road. “Vamps don't scare me, though I am fearful of the blood hunger I could develop if one ever bit me. Keep your fangs locked and loaded, sweetie.”

“Will do. Surprised, though, you'd be offended by me.”

“I'm not offended. Hell, my mother is a vampire, and my dad is half-vamp. There's nothing about you that offends me, sweet—”

“Enough with the sweetie. Your brother uses the same tired endearment. I'm no one's sweetie.”

“I bet you're not. So Vail got scared by Mother and left you behind?”

She twisted on the seat to face him, and noticed he instantly sat straighter, more alert. Who was more leery of whom?

“Why do you hate your brother?” she asked. “From what I've learned, you two don't know each other enough to form an opinion worthy of hate.”

“My mother is insane because of him.”

“She is not, and you know it. It was Vail's father who buried her alive. Vail had nothing to do with that.”

“He's told you a lot in what—the few days you two have known each other?”

“Something like that. So? Are you going to blame the son for the father's sins? Come on, Trystan, I suspect you're a smart man. Don't give me tired excuses.”

The werewolf whistled and gave her an appreciative nod. “I like you. Do you love my brother?”

She bowed her head and looked out at the long ditch grass that blurred as the SUV sped past. “Of course not. Love doesn't come so easily.”

“Tell me about it.”

That made her smile. “A good friend of mine is a werewolf, but I've never been alone with a male wolf before. Well, I've never been around one at all.”

He waggled his brows. “Impressed?”

“I am. You're a tough guy, but I think you want a relationship with Vail as much as he does with you.”

“Ch'yeah, right.”

Lyric swung her head around. “Make that noise again.”

“What? I didn't do anything.”

“That sound you just made.”

“Ch'yeah?”

“Vail says the same thing.”

The werewolf cocked a goofy look at her. “No kidding? Huh.”

The brothers had more than a few things in common. It gave Lyric hope that the family she sensed Vail needed was only a few heartfelt conversations and an open-minded understanding away.

“So where we headed?” Tryst asked. “You hungry? No, that was a stupid question. Mind if I get a burger? There's a great little cafe at city's edge just ahead.”

“Go for it. My brother's apartment is in the eighteenth. But maybe…”

Maybe she should go to Vail's place. He wouldn't return to Leo's apartment. And much as he thought he needed to be alone, she didn't want the vampire to sit and stew about things too long.

 

V
AIL WALKED FOR HOURS
to get into the city. He entered Montmartre around three in the morning. The skitter of wings across his ankles reminded him he'd not worn the necessary ointment to see what he desperately wanted to see.

Didn't matter. This was as close to home as he'd ever get. And they knew him here.

“FaeryTown,” he said with a drunken smile.

He wasn't drunk. He was out of sorts and still riding
the wicked high of crashing the car. Easier to destroy than to face reality.

His mother didn't love him? Screw her. He didn't need a mad vampiress mother.

And soon enough he'd plunge a stake through his father's heart, obliterating all ties to anything remotely family.

And what about that werewolf brother of his? The cocky wolf was too busy with his own life to give a crap about Vail. And yet he managed to make Vail feel as though it was his fault Viviane was insane.

Maybe it was. Had he never been born, had he never gone to see her today, she would not have been reminded of that awful night in the eighteenth century when Constantine de Salignac consigned her to hell.

“She said I looked like him,” Vail said, and stumbled through the arched stone doorway to an ichor den. “Figures.”

Pushing past an overgrown fern frond, he navigated the bright darkness. A tacky replacement for the real Faery, the decor was similar to the Lizard Lounge with wild, verdant plants and bright colors. The colors tended to attack when he was high on ichor—which was the cool part.

It smelled like forest after a sun shower, with a hint of the spices, cinnamon and clove, that faeries loved so much. A low rhythm pulsed, yet it wasn't exactly music, but perhaps the combined beat of the inhabitants' heartbeats. The atmosphere hummed in Vail's senses, pleading he succumb to decadent pleasures.

Beyond the delicate silver chains spilling like
rainfall before various rooms and lounges, Vail heard the satisfied moans of vampires enchanted to a macabre supplication.

It was said after the first taste of ichor the vampire was powerless to stop taking more. Like meth to humans, the drug became the vampire, changed his thinking and made him weak and unpredictable. A vampire could fight real demons barehanded, yet after a hit of ichor, could never defeat the inner demons that occupied his soul.

If Charish Santiago had made a deal with Zett, it would be for the faery women and men who serviced these addicts.

“Monsieur Vaillant.” A sweet, heart-faced sprite fluttered before him. She was small enough to fit into Vail's fist, which also made it easy for her to dash when a client got out of control. “Your usual?”

Nodding, he followed her into the azure room. The domed ceiling was painted with cheesy clouds and cupids. He'd come here weekly since his arrival in the mortal realm. It was a home like no other, a reminder of what he could never again be a part of, of the lie that had been his life. And still was.

But he didn't
need
ichor like the dust freaks did. It was something he'd been born to; it was simply a part of him he must replenish and sustain.

Ch'yeah, right. Tell yourself another one, dark prince
.

Viviane had called him her dark prince. It was difficult not to want to clutch that endearment and make
it something it could never be. A declaration of love and acceptance.

It was a silly name. Like the names he gave Lyric.

The sprite fluttered off, leaving Vail staring at a pretty faery sprawled on an orange sofa. Her wings were pale, and one looked broken, though it could have been tucked at an odd angle against the velvet sofa. She was half-drained and smiled weakly at him as she patted the cushion for him to sit next to her.

He peered into her violet eyes and heard Lyric's voice.
What if you got clean? Why do you need to maintain?

It was what he knew. It was easy. And he did need this. Because if he ever stopped, he wasn't sure how to live. On mortal blood? The idea of it disgusted him not so much as it usually did. And why was that? Vail toyed with the May bells circling his wrist. Protection.

Home
.

“Monsieur?”
Her thin fingers grasped for his hand, but he slipped from her frail touch.

“I changed my mind.”

“Tut-tut.” A cool breath tickled his ear.

Vail did not turn to see who stood beside him. Her presence always lowered any room's temperature by a few degrees. Faery gossamers slipped about his leg and she walked her fingers up his spine.

“My pretty vampire child doesn't want what makes him strong?”

“Get the hell away from me, Cressida.”

“You are using mortal oaths now? Oh, Vaillant.”
The disappointment in her voice was nothing new to him. “You are in tatters. What's happened?”

“I like to drive fast.” He lifted his head defiantly and turned his back to the weak faery sprawled on the couch.

Tiny and seeming frail, though Vail knew otherwise, the Mistress of Winter's Edge hugged him from the side and tilted her head onto his shoulder. Rare had she shown him affection in Faery. It was as if she could not be emotional there, and in the mortal realm she was released from a binding spell.

It was possible. But it mattered little.

She touched the lily bracelet. “Only a few bells left. Poor child.”

“Bring me a new one,” he demanded.

“I will.”

So easy as that? Without asking a boon in return? “Why would you do anything for me, Cressida?”

“I do everything for you, Vaillant. You won't see what you don't want to see. Was your life in Faery so awful?”

“You damned me because I was bloodborn. I was not the child you would have chosen. You wanted my brother Trystan. Everyone loves Trystan.”

“I've never known you to be so self-deprecating, Vaillant. You've always been a scrapper who will stand against any who look at you the wrong way. This mortal realm has weakened you.” Had it?

He tightened his muscles, but still she clung to his arm. “If anything it's opened my eyes to the
cruelties of Faery. Not that I wasn't fully aware all my life. Cressida, what is Zett up to with the Santiago clan?”

“Oh, now you wish to speak with me? When you've important business you seek my knowledge, but never to simply wish me well or want a visit?”

“I can never return to Faery. You know that.”

“Zett does rather despise you. You had no right doing what you did.”