Unnatural (42 page)

Vaughan ran his fingers through his hair, stopping only to hit himself in the forehead several times for being unable to control his son. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Michael. I’m doing the best I can.”

Howling with laughter, Michael reached for the bathroom doorjamb with his free hand. “Seriously?! Well, I got a newsflash for ya, Dad. Your best really sucks.”

“What did you say to me?”

Still laughing, Michael replied, “You might be a brilliant businessman, but as a father you totally suck.” Michael turned off his cell phone and paced the room again, mentally adding his father to the list of people who were gone from his life, not that he was ever really in his life to begin with. When Michael thought about it, examined their relationship, he found it hard to keep laughing. Vaughan never wanted to be a father. Getting Michael out of Nebraska, away from his mother’s family, was merely a business coup, something that made him feel like he won a deal. No, for better or worse, Michael had no family. For the rest of his life, he could very well be alone. For the rest of his life—or in other words—for infinity.

“Damn it!!!” Michael roared, flinging his cell phone across the room in frustration. He grabbed the bedspread and yanked it off the bed. It floated to the floor slowly and by the time it fell in a clump next to Michael’s feet, he was already finished kicking the end table. He didn’t stop because he was tired or because his aggravation was quelled; he stopped because he saw something familiar.

Bending down, Michael picked up the drawings, variations of the ones Ronan had made of Michael months earlier. They had fallen out of a book that had been hidden
underneath some other papers in a drawer of the end table. Pushing the drawer to the side, Michael realized the papers had fallen out of the oversize red book that contained page after page of Ronan’s unmistakable handwriting. It was Ronan’s journal.

Sitting on the floor amid the debris, his back against the bed, Michael began to read, and slowly his anger and frustration were replaced with a kind of peace.

   No such luck for Vaughan. He tried but was unable to find peace with his son, himself, or his current situation. Failure was becoming an all-too-common occurrence in his life. He had failed at his marriage, he had failed at being a parent, he had even failed in his attempt to secure his own future by uniting Michael with Brania, the daughter of the most powerful man he knew. “My son, it seems, is quite cross with me.”

“Sons usually are,” Brania said, zipping up her skirt. “The relationship between a father and daughter is much more satisfying.”

Vaughan grabbed the zipper and started to unzip it. “So too is the relationship between a father and the daughter of his business associate.”

Slapping his hand away, Brania slipped her feet into her black patent leather pumps. “I have a headache.”

“Oh, come on!” Vaughan protested. “You can come up with a much better excuse than that.”

No, he definitely wasn’t as handsome as his son. Or as interesting. “Of course I could, but I don’t feel like making the effort.”

Vaughan slammed the door shut before Brania could leave. “Don’t be such a cheek. You know how much fun we have together.”

Suddenly, Brania found this man standing in front of her, blocking her exit, revolting, and most important, no longer useful. “Michael is now a water vamp, Vaughan, and probably at this very moment locked in a sweaty, passionate embrace with Ronan, his boyfriend and creator,” Brania goaded. “You have alienated your son and as a result he wants nothing to do with you. So therefore, neither do I.”

“Brania, wait!”

On the other side of the doorway, she paused and turned back to face this arrogant lackey. “You really should have chosen Edwige. She’s far more desperate to have a man in her life than I am.”

This was unfathomable, losing twice—first Michael and now Brania—no! That was absolutely unacceptable. “After everything I’ve done for you and your father, you can’t just walk out on me.”

Brania sighed. It was time to take a short vacation from the opposite sex. “If you don’t want
le petit
Edwige, perhaps you should call my father. I know he’s quite grateful for everything you’ve done.” Buttoning a button that had come undone on her silk blouse, Brania added with a lascivious grin, “And He fancies the company of both genders.” When the door slammed behind her, it only made Brania chuckle even louder.

* * *

Nakano found nothing funny about Brania’s comment. He might be a vampire, immortal, preternaturally powerful, but he was still sixteen, surly, and very serious. “What do you mean Michael’s not here?!” Nakano shouted, though Ciaran didn’t even flinch. “Where the hell did he go?!”

“Ronan took him.”

This human was really getting on his nerves. “You mean you
let
Ronan take him.”

Unhurried, Ciaran finished the paragraph from his chemistry textbook, then placed a bookmark between the pages. When he looked up, his face was calm. “And what was I, a mere mortal, supposed to do to prevent one vampire from leaving this room with another?”

“You’re resourceful, Ciaran! You could’ve thought of something.”

And then the calmness disappeared. “I’m always thinking of something!” Ciaran bellowed, losing control. “I gave you an alibi so no one would find out the truth, that you killed Penry.”

Like I needed your alibi,
Nakano thought.
What can the police possibly do to me?
“I don’t care about that and I never asked you to lie for me! What I want to know is why’d you let Ronan take Michael away from here?”

It was hard to believe that Nakano, thinner and shorter than Ciaran, was so much more powerful, but that was the truth. Luckily, Ciaran was more cunning than he was strong. “What would it have mattered? Even if I could have prevented Ronan from taking
Michael, it would only have prolonged the inevitable,” Ciaran said while walking toward Nakano. “He would have come back tonight or tomorrow or the next day and eventually Michael would be in his arms again just as he is right now.”

Pushing that image from his mind, Nakano focused on the boy in front of him. He wasn’t nearly as handsome as Ronan. Well, he was completely different, but he was better-looking than Penry. And Penry had really good-tasting blood, so Ciaran’s had to be that much more delicious. His mouth watered as Ciaran got closer. “The only way I can really help you, Kano, is if I had more power,” Ciaran said slowly. “If I was more like you.”

Standing an inch away, Ciaran ran his fingers down Nakano’s arms, his soft nails gliding over even softer skin. He tilted his head and lengthened his neck so it was within reach of Nakano’s mouth. All Kano had to do was allow his fangs to descend and bite down. “I thought you weren’t interested in boys?” Nakano asked, a bit out of breath.

Pressing Kano to his body, Ciaran whispered in his ear, “I’m interested in power.” He didn’t even try to slow down his racing heartbeat. He wanted Kano to feel it thump, thump, thump, and for him to imagine his blood flowing through his veins. It was working. Ciaran felt Kano’s body pulse with desire and his fangs graze his neck. Finally, finally he was going to join his family. He may not become exactly like his mother or Ronan, but it was close enough. It would have to do.

Unfortunately, it was not to be.

Stop!
The word thundered in Nakano’s brain and involuntarily his fangs throbbed in protest.
Do not take Ciaran. Father says he is worth more to us as a mortal.
He wanted to betray Brania’s command, he wanted to take Ciaran from humanity to satisfy his own hunger and to spite Ronan, but he couldn’t. He heard something in Brania’s voice, a tone he had never heard before, and he knew that if he went against her wishes again, he would be destroyed. He hated caution, but he had no desire to die.

“Do it,” Ciaran pleaded, cringing at the sound of desperation in his voice. He pushed his neck into Nakano’s mouth, but all he felt were lips, dry, uninterested, like Ronan’s. “Take me!”

“I can’t!” Nakano cried, pushing Ciaran away from him.

Reaching out like a blind man about to fall, Ciaran’s fingers sought out Nakano’s flesh. He felt his shoulder, then his neck, and pulled him closer to him so once again Nakano’s mouth was against his neck. “Do it! Do it now!”

Against his will his fangs descended, instinctively searching out the human flesh that was coated in a thin layer of sweat. Nakano’s arms clutched Ciaran around the shoulders and waist, his mind desperately trying to override his craving. He couldn’t do this, he couldn’t, but how could he ignore this boy who was giving himself so willingly?

“I SAID NO!” Brania’s voice was so loud, so unyielding,
it transcended space and even stung Ciaran’s ears. Nakano pushed Ciaran away from him brutally, a fang scraping the skin of his neck, and fled the room.

As he crashed into the headboard, Ciaran heard the door slam shut. “Not again!” Livid, Ciaran knelt on the bed and banged his fist into the headboard several times, shaking the bed frame. His body heaving, he grabbed his textbook, held it over his head, and let out a guttural cry as he slammed it against a lamp, smashing it to the floor. He kept slamming the book onto the end table over and over again until the fury, the despair, that clung to his body was released.

Exhausted he collapsed onto his bed too tired to even cry when a shard from the lightbulb pierced the palm of his hand. As he pulled the sharp remnant of glass from his flesh, he saw his blood spill out, the blood no one wanted. Quickly the bleeding stopped, producing only a small puddle of the red liquid, but enough to taste. He cupped his hand and brought the blood to his mouth and drank it, the taste intoxicating, even if it was his own. His free hand shook slightly, so he reached out to steady it, resting on the surface of his chemistry book. Tracing the sturdy, reliable edges of the book with his fingers, he suddenly knew what he had to do. What he had done practically his entire life, rely on himself. If Ronan and Nakano wouldn’t create him in their images, he would have to take matters into his own hands.

“And when I succeed,” Ciaran said, the taste of his own blood still fresh on his tongue, “I’ll make the both of you pay.”

* * *

Revenge didn’t only fill the space of Ciaran’s room, it hung over Penry’s memorial. Imogene gazed down at the flowers, wilted, lifeless, like Penry’s body must now look in his coffin, and her blank stare hid her outrage. She had been hiding it for days. She didn’t share it with anyone at the trauma center in Carlisle or with the police; she kept it to herself. Now standing on the soil where Penry took his final breath, she was no longer able to keep it contained and felt the rage bubble to the surface.

Her scream was so loud the birds high above in the trees flew from their nests, frightened. She covered her mouth with her hands, her wails spilling out through her fingers.
Why?! Why was Penry taken from me? Why did his life end so violently?
She didn’t know why, but she thought she knew how.

There was no way he was killed by an animal; it was the act of a man. Her boyfriend was murdered. She knew it instinctively, just as she knew there was something wrong with the headmaster when she saw him walk toward her from the other side of the brush. His stare was blank, empty, the line on the left side of his face so deep it was like a scar, and when she called out to him, he didn’t respond. He was just staring at her, but not at her face; he was fixated on something else.

“Professor Hawksbry,” Imogene said. “Wha … what’s wrong with you?”

Alistair almost laughed in the girl’s face. There’s so much wrong with me, so much inconceivably wrong, I
don’t know where to begin
. He wanted to leave her, return to his office and close the door, shut the blinds and be alone, the way he’d spent most of his days since the festival. But even a monster will seek company when isolation becomes too unbearable.

And even a reluctant vampire will seek blood. In one clean rip, Alistair pulled the bandage off of Imogene’s neck, exposing the two small puncture wounds. Imogene tried to scream again, but this time she was too frightened because she saw a vision of that face, the face she had seen right after Penry told her that he loved her. It was only a flash. She saw it only in shadows, out of the corner of her eye, but she would never forget it. The face was long, the teeth huge, and the eyes the same empty black color as the headmaster’s. She wasn’t sure if it was a hallucination or if she was seeing a ghost, but the last thing she saw before she fainted was Penry’s face. He looked the same way he did the last time she saw him alive. He looked terrified.

When Alistair placed the girl on the table, however, Brania wasn’t terrified; she was simply appalled. “Why the hell did you bring her here?”

“I didn’t know what else to do,” Alistair said meekly. “Please, she needs help.” He went on to explain how he had found her and why she had fainted.

Although she was disgusted by Imogene’s presence, Brania did love the way her scent mixed in with the dampness of the room. A virgin’s blood always smelled better in the dark, entombed by stone. “I know you’re
struggling with your new existence, Alistair, but you need to be more careful. You can’t reveal your true self to humans willy-nilly.”

God, how he loathed being here among these … things. He hated them almost as much as he hated himself. “Just help her.”

“You mean help ourselves,” Jeremiah said, his fangs already descended.

Pushing him away from Imogene, Alistair cried out, “Get away from her!”

“You touch me again and that’ll be the last thing you do!” Jeremiah growled.

“Boys!” Brania shouted. “There’s no need to squabble.” She stood over Imogene and admired the girl’s youthful beauty. She bent down and inhaled deeply, sniffing the entire length of her body, then she stood upright and placed a hand gently on the girl’s foot. “I’m sorry, Alistair, she is far too scrumptious to receive clemency. Her time has come.”

His knees buckled under the cruel simplicity of her words; he wanted to help the girl and he had brought her to slaughter. Devastated, Alistair could only watch as Jeremiah threw Imogene over his shoulder and walked toward the stairs that led up to his apartment. “I want to take this one in private.”