Jolie Blonde (Vigilare Book 3) (29 page)

Johnny shakes his head, the corners of his mouth presenting a detracted grimace. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Let me see your palms.” Lon steps up to him, investigating.

Johnny takes a step back. “Easy, bro. Unless you’re looking for another round, you better lighten up on my personal space.” He keeps his fists closed and hanging at his thighs.

“Save it.” Lon leers at him, tired of his antics. Taking hold of Johnny’s hands, he inspects his palms—nothing except some callouses.

Johnny smirks, the bragger in him emerging, he simply cannot help himself. “You looking for this?” He extends his middle finger in the air, which just so happens to be right in line with Lon’s face. There on the side of the long, bony appendage is a barely noticeable scar.

Lon identifies the three little beads that align the healed laceration. Although smaller in number and size, it is the same mark he and Brianna share from their contact with the skull.

Johnny snatches Lon’s hand away from him, turning it palm side up, pointing out the matching and much larger scar. “Question is, what have you been up to?” Johnny challenges. “You and your
jolie blonde.
I know she’s got one, too. Have anything to do with why she disappeared?” His cocky demeanor is at odds with the flashing sincerity in his pale blues as he asks the question, legitimately concerned with Brianna’s whereabouts.

“Must get awful tiring,” Lon begins, his low, soft tone full of antagonism, “pretending you don’t care. ‘Look at me. I’m Johnny Vito. Bad boy. Aloof. Untouchable.’” He swipes his fist over his mouth aggressively, wiping away a speck of dried blood at its corner. “But she got to you, didn’t she,” the perturbed comment has no innuendo of a question.

“Nobody gets to me.” Johnny pushes past Lon purposely knocking shoulders with him. Taking a moment to gather himself before he turns back around, he continues prodding, “Where is she? You two been doing some exploring of your own? With the aftereffects of that skull? What’d you do, screw it up, Castille? Do something you can’t take back?” Johnny works through his thoughts, each question building upon the last.

Lon bites down on his lip, contemplating the truth in Johnny’s last two questions. Yes, he did kind of screw things up. And he did do something—created something—he can’t take back. Not that he would want to, if he could only make her see that they should be raising their child together.
Their
child, not Johnny’s. It can’t be Johnny’s, right?

A tiny glimmer of doubt bleeds into his thought process. He fights saying anything to Johnny about Brianna’s condition, but he can’t help himself. The need to know, the need to see the look on Johnny’s face, in search of the truth in his eyes, when confronted with the burning question wins out.

“It has nothing to do with the goddamn skull,” Lon asserts. “She’s pregnant.” He doesn’t tell Johnny of Brianna’s confession that it is his. Not yet. He simply awaits Johnny’s reaction, his steel blues astutely inspecting the bad boy as the news hits him.

“She’s…what?” A genuinely baffled Johnny replies, his eyes wincing as if he heard wrong.

Lon says nothing, just looks at him. He knows Johnny heard what he said, he simply needs time to process it, the same way Lon was processing it forty-eight hours ago.

“Pregnant?” Johnny flops down, defeated, on the couch. The wind effectively swept from his sails, he knows there’s no way she’ll ever be his now that’s she’s pregnant with Lon’s child. Shaking his head vigorously, in true smart aleck form, he recoups, that infamous smirk forming at the corner of his mouth. “Gotta hand it to ya, didn’t take you long to knock her up.”

“Don’t say it like that, man.” Lon isn’t too impressed with Johnny’s less than complimentary expletive. His feelings for Brianna far surpass the casual romp in the sack and Johnny knows that. Letting his body fall down on the opposite end of the couch from Johnny, Lon’s elbows rest unsettled on his knees, his hands subconsciously taking turns pressing into his palms, cracking his knuckles.

“She gonna keep it? You want her to?” Johnny presses, his next spontaneous thought.

“I didn’t even think to ask. I’m sure she is. And yeah, I want her to. What kind of question is that?” Lon has reverted from cautionary to genuine in his conversation. He and Johnny have had many sincere talks as such over the course of their friendship together, albeit the topic usually not quite as burning.

“I’m just asking you questions I’d be asking myself if I were in your situation, that’s all.” Johnny shrugs. “Man, that’s gonna change your lives, bro. You do realize that?”

Lon nods agreeably, having only an inkling of an idea of exactly how life-changing it’s going to be. “If you were in my situation…” Lon repeats Johnny’s thought. “What would you do?”

“If I got a girl pregnant?” Johnny prepares to answer.

“Not just any girl,” Lon interrupts timely, “Brie. What would you do if she was pregnant with your child?” He prods without coming right out with her declaration.

“Huh!” Johnny exasperates. “That’d have to be immaculate conception, bro.” The closest he will ever come to actually admitting that he has never slept with Brianna. “Wait.” Johnny eyes Lon, his savvy mind finally catching up, it reads between the lines. “Is that what she said? I knocked her up?”

“She didn’t mean it like that,” Lon says. “She wasn’t trying to throw you under the bus. Just trying to convince me it wasn’t mine so I wouldn’t
ruin
my life thinking I had to take care of her and a baby.”

“Un-fuckin’-believable,” Johnny releases at a frustrated exhale. “All the shit I’ve done for that girl. How many times have I been locked up to save her ass? ‘Johnny, I’m going to fix this. I’m going to get you out of this, I promise.
I’m sorry,’”
he mocks her feminine tone. “And now she’s telling people I knocked her up?” His grievance transparent, it’s obvious a part of him wishes her muckraking to be true.

“Cool it, bro,” Lon’s tone grows harsh with warning. “She’s not telling people you
got her pregnant,”
he exaggerates the gentler replacement. “I’m the only one she said that to. To scare me away. Like I said, she’s only trying to protect me. She didn’t do it to hurt your impeccable reputation.” The facetious comment escapes with some zing.

Johnny chuckles in agreement, knowing fully well if his reputation is in danger it’s not because of Brianna.

“Besides, she’s done a lot for you, too, man,” Lon reminds the egotistical bad boy. “Don’t forget that door swings both ways.”

“Yeah, I know,” Johnny mutters, slightly disappointed in himself for badmouthing her. The thought that he would probably still be living at home with his abusive father if it hadn’t been for Brianna flashes through his mind. “Guess I’m just sore, that’s all. Hell, I knew the two of you would end up together.” He stands from the couch, the conversation venturing into uncomfortable territory as he knows even that fact does not change the way he feels about her. “I need a shower. Good luck with that whole pregnancy thing,” the best he can muster as he heads up the stairs to his room.

Lon follows shortly behind. His mind in need of some urgent relief, Brianna’s pregnancy and Johnny’s glowing pale blue eyes and superhuman strength weighing heavily in order of importance to be dealt with. Shutting the door behind him to his room, he goes immediately to his bedside stand, his hands in search of the familiar crinkled sensation of a brown paper bag.

“Jackpot,” he expels, pulling the half-smoked, rolled up treasure from the bag. Sliding down the wall beside the bedside table, he presses the joint to his lips, holding in his other hand a lighter.

You say you’re not a boy. That you’re ready for this. You live in a frat house. You smoke pot…daily. For stress relief. You don’t even know what stress is.
Brianna’s words come flooding back to him.

Gently banging his head off the wall behind him, his conscience wins out as he stuffs Mary Jane back into the bag. Pushing himself up off the floor, he advances hastily to the window where he slings it along its track letting it slam up against the other side completely open. He throws the bag out onto the lawn leaving the window open, the cool night air providing a much needed relief to his flushed, irritable skin.

Nearly tearing holes in the carpet of his room, he paces, waiting for the sound of the running water coming from behind the wall separating his and Johnny’s room—their shared bathroom—to come to a halt.

“Hurry up with that shower, bro.” Lon bangs his fist impatiently on the wall, getting
clean
the operative mission, in more ways than one this time.

In a warehouse district on the wrong side of the tracks in New Orleans, Dr. Godfrey works in his personal laboratory. Far removed from ETNA, this secret location is where all of his
real
work in supernatural exploration happens. A dark, misty morning adds to the reclusive lore.

He obsessively studies Lon and Brianna’s blood, having found that the key to its effectiveness is the meshing of the two. Singularly—alone—their blood is not so
extraordinary.
It is the compilation of their Rh-negative blood factors that creates the fluorescent emerald green glow.

The hematologist is unmoved by the sound of a rumbling motorcycle pulling up in back of the lab. Having grown quite accustomed to the gnarly pitch, its operator has become a regular at his discreet sanctuary these days.

“Shouldn’t you be in class,
Daredevil?”
Dr. Godfrey can’t help himself from addressing Johnny as such, his bad boy persona a perfect match for the handle as he arrives brazenly without a helmet.

“I told you a thousand times, don’t call me that. It’s hokey.” Johnny shakes the rain from his sexy, haphazard mess of dark hair upon entering the lab.

“My apologies,
Mr.
Vito,” Dr. Godfrey corrects in a professional, playful tone, his spirits elevated with such a new and fulfilling project.

“Johnny,” the bad boy barks his preferred title. “It’s just Johnny.” His tone settling now, he mumbles his discontent, “What are you so fucking cheery about? Can’t you ever just be normal?”

“I find normalcy to be highly overrated. And there’s no need for profanity,” Dr. Godfrey warns in his most diplomatic way. “Aren’t you supposed to be in class?” He eyes the clock on the wall—09:00, Monday morning.

“Screw
class,” Johnny pokes fun at the elder’s request, although honoring it, as he exaggerates a less profane expletive. “I’m ready to get this show on the road.” He rolls up his sleeve, offering up the interior fleshy part of his arm alternate to where his elbow bends. “Stick it to me, Doc,” he prods the round-faced hematologist for more of Lon and Brianna’s commingled blood.

“In due time, my boy.” Dr. Godfrey gingerly taps his hand off the inside of Johnny’s arm where he would otherwise puncture it with a needle.

“You keep saying that,” Johnny argues. “What the hell are we waiting for? I’m ready.”

“Stand up,” Dr. Godfrey prods, to which Johnny obliges. “Call on it. Your power.”

Johnny closes his eyes, focusing his breathing, his body growing attentive from fingertips to toes. Feeling his heartbeat enhance nearly twice its normal rate, his chest contracts and expands to keep pace. His eyes flash open, the pale blue lustrous glow filling the room.

“Very good!” Dr. Godfrey coaches, backing away from him, the BTU’s his body produces causing the scientist to grow warm simply by proximity. “Now move this table.” He taps on a formidable wooden table in the middle of his laboratory. “Without using your hands.”

Johnny bears down on the table with his eyes, the pale blue ray covering its frame. “Argh!” He emits, frustrated, the table remains in position. His body, as flexed as his eyes, grows tired from the energy it expends, feeling as though he may collapse. Losing his focus, the pale blue glow zigs and zags about the room, shattering a lamp, a microscope and a glass cabinet to pieces.

Dr. Godfrey ducks, finding a safe corner, his arms protectively sheltering his near bald head.

Completely irked, Johnny leaps through the air until his boot-covered feet land upon the wooden table with a force beyond the mortal realm. As he comes down on top of the table, he extends his knees pushing them through the thick, knotted wood causing it to give way at the center. Johnny and the table crash to the floor. The jolt to his system returns him to his natural state, the pale blue glow vanishing.

“Ugh!” he moans, his hand latching onto his aching lower back.

Dr. Godfrey emerges from the corner. “And that, my boy, is what we’re waiting for,” a hint of
I told you so
in his tone, “control. It’s not going to be of any use until you master complete control.” He offers Johnny a hand in getting up.

“How long is that gonna take? Ahhh,” Johnny mutters, purposely hyperextending his back and helping it pop into place.

Dr. Godfrey shrugs, contemplating. “I’d say you’ve done quite well in the short five months you’ve had to prepare. But this is an entirely new phenomena,” his voice is laced with wonder. “We have no idea what we’re up against. Our advantages. Our limitations. We’re swimming in uncharted waters, Johnny, my boy.” He tidies his work station, propping both ends of the table upright until further repair. “One thing’s for certain, we must be patient. Otherwise, we will ruin before we even get started. Understood?” Pressing his small, round eyes up over his bifocals, he awaits Johnny’s acknowledgment.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it…patience.” Johnny paces, his heavy boots as weighted as his disturbed mind.

“You knew this would take some time. I told you that when we started. It could be years before you’re ready. It could be years before we know exactly what your purpose is,” Dr. Godfrey continues, working his way around to finding out the root of Johnny’s angst.

“I thought my purpose was to help you bring
Jolie Blonde
and
Loverboy
on board.”

“You doubt your ability to do that?” Dr. Godfrey picks up on Johnny’s agitated tone in using Brianna and Lon’s least favorable monikers.