A Drop of Red (23 page)

“Wolfie,” Violet said, her envy traveling in wave upon wave over all of them, “if we cannot go out or even feed here, then how can we decently survive? How can we
recruit
?”

He took Noreen’s wrist and smoothed his long fingers over first one, then the other, healing any raw skin with the glow of his touch. All the while, the redhead gazed upon Wolfie with adoring relief.

He smiled down at her while addressing Violet’s question. “You will have ample time to recruit. Truth be told, you have already done very well in that department this year.” He’d finished his healing, but remained with Noreen, undoing the shirt button at her wrist, sliding his fingers inside to tickle her. “Hence, it’s time for you to see the fruit of your labors.”

The girls tensed, holding their breaths.

“That’s right, my darlings,” he said. “A field trip is in order, just as soon as I can be assured of your manners.”

Exhaling, the girls glanced at each other, eyes shining. Ever since being turned, Wolfie had dangled the promise of the main Underground; after all, they had been the ones bringing in more members, growing the community’s numbers.

But no matter how proud Wolfie was of their recruiting endeavors, not every choice of candidate had been successful. Consider the last one, Kate, for instance. They had recognized what they thought to be a kindred spirit—fun, pretty, someone Wolfie would have enjoyed in the long term—yet she had ultimately been horrified by their courting, so they’d used her for the short term instead.

Della had always burned to ask Wolfie if they might see Briana and Sharon in the Underground—if they had perhaps returned for his sake especially, knowing how he’d favored them. Yet Della didn’t chance it because of what she feared she might see in Violet’s reaction—a familiar smugness indicating that the departed girls weren’t in the Underground at all and that only Violet, the privileged leader, knew of the girls’ true fates.

After all, if Briana and Sharon were Underground, wouldn’t Wolfie have told them?

But Della would not challenge him
or
Violet.

By this time, Wolfie had left Noreen and was coming toward Della. Her blood thundered with every step he took, and when he flicked his wrist to undo her restraints, she gasped with the shock of the freedom.

Then, as she drew shallow breaths, he healed her with the play of his fingers, which burned into her with his glow.

Warmth rushed to her chest, her belly, a deluge.

“You’ve had a trying weekend, haven’t you?” he said softly, his power fizzing over her skin.

“Yes,” she whispered, looking into his feral eyes and buzzing with the current from the visual connection.

He seemed so mild when he added, “Pity the authorities were able to identify a victim very quickly because her head was buried in the area we’ve used to hide our prey’s remains. Imagine—an entire head.”

Confusion gripped Della, mixing with the pleasant ache of his hands caressing her wrists.

“It’s my fault,” she said, knowing he would know, anyway, even if she had been able to hide what she had done with Kate’s head until now from the girls. Wolfie had access to all of them if he wished. “I was saving some of my meal share for private, but then I realized how repulsive that was and I buried it instead.”

He put his fingers under her chin and raised her head. “And how could you have known that it would turn out this way?”

She started to apologize once more, but he shook his head. “Don’t concern yourself, Della. But this is why you girls are receiving an education—so you might learn from situations such as these and never repeat your mistakes when you move on to the Underground, where you’ll be free to feed Above on your own.”

Looking at the other girls, he allowed his fingers to slide from Della’s chin to her neck, where he rubbed his thumb against her jugular. Her belly strained; her legs quivered.

“I’m afraid we’ve been overly careless recently,” he said. “Freedom is a fine matter, but cleverness goes with it hand in hand.”

Then, as if he’d driven home his message and was content, he moved away from Della, his fingers brushing near her breast.

She bit her lip, wanting to touch where he’d just touched.

But she didn’t, instead watching him go to Polly, where he released the other girl with another flick of his wrist and then healed her with a glowing touch, as well.

Violet shifted in her chains, as if to remind him she was waiting. But Wolfie would draw her out, if only for sheer entertainment.

The brunette tried to get his attention anyway. “Are you saying we won’t be able to nightcrawl anymore? Is that the price we’ll have to pay for Della’s ridiculous buried head?”

Wolfie laughed, but it was only a rumble in his throat. “You do welcome trouble, Violet, don’t you?”

She narrowed her eyes at him, and he chuckled, concentrating on Polly.

“Not to worry, dears. You’ll be getting back to your favorite pursuit soon. But tonight, you’re scheduled to have another rodent meal to show what’s in store if you should be defiant again.”

None of them groaned out load, but Della could feel their frustration in the very air.

Yet Wolfie would keep his promise. Della couldn’t imagine him remaining hidden, denying himself their nightcrawls. In his assumed “human” identity, he took great joy in parading in the open, especially when it involved spending the fortune he had once wheedled from Thomas Gatenby after the man had donated the land for Queenshill.

And after he had died from such “natural” causes.

Wolfie finished with Polly, tweaking her nose. “We will be more careful in the future, yes?”

“Yes,” they all said.

“Excellent.” He approached Violet. “Man was born wild, and being a vampire has only allowed us to expand on that pleasure. Certainly, there’ll be a time when the rest of the world fully accepts what we are, but we haven’t quite arrived at that point yet. And until we do, we must roam more carefully while easing society into one phase, then another.”

Violet seemed ecstatic to have his attention now, and she leaned her cheek against her raised arm, sending him a provocative look that seemed more fashioned for a twenty-five-year-old than a schoolgirl.

Intrigued, Wolfie made his slow way toward her. “I have lived hundreds of years, and I have seen society accept what they never thought to
be
acceptable. These days, anything goes and, fairly soon, we will not have to hide during our most joyful experiences. Until then, patience is an asset.”

Listening to him was like hearing a familiar bedtime story: a tale of how, once upon a time, he’d infiltrated society bit by bit, a vampire learning and adapting and traveling in human circles until he could be thought of as nothing else
but
human.

At least in public.

The moral of that story also remained the same: in keeping to his wildness, Wolfie had found himself.

Della only wondered if she could find the same ending. . . .

He had come to stand before Violet, and she angled closer to him, causing him to lower his brow, as if sizing her up.

Violet glanced up from under her lashes. “Undo me now?”

They locked gazes, so intensely that Della’s pulse took up the thud of Violet’s. All the girls’ heartbeats joined.

With a rakish chuckle, Wolfie motioned toward Violet’s shackles, which opened like jaws releasing prey. She stumbled, catching her balance, but not before he walked off toward Blanche and left Violet to heal herself.

The girl sullenly held a hand over the flesh where the iron had chafed.

The rest of the group tittered, yet Della was still worried about trouble during their next nightcrawl.

As Wolfie released Blanche and glow-kissed the inside of one of her wrists, Della asked, “So we won’t have to worry about the authorities watching for us?”

Blanche leaned back against the wall, as awestruck as ever by Wolfie’s presence while he stroked her wrist and glanced at Della. His expression should have assured her, but . . .

Anxious, she accidentally slipped into Wolfie’s gaze and went so deep that she found herself swirling in his disjointed thoughts.

Depends on where the
custode
is . . . Perhaps off chasing ghosts around London? . . . And what if another blood brother is . . . ?

She tore herself out of him. Always causing the most trouble—What now?—

When she heard Wolfie laugh, Della realized he was . . . amused?

Yet then his gaze lowered, and the other girls stared at her, shocked. None of them had ever,
ever
broached Wolfie.

“You forget yourself, my sweet,” he said. “I didn’t bring you in for a listen, now, did I?”

Punishment. It would only be a matter of time.

He began to shed his jacket while wandering to a divan, then tossed the leather at the foot of the furniture and slunk down to the cushions. “I should be ashamed for letting down my guard, really. Girls are curious by nature. I know better, and it certainly won’t happen again.”

That feeling of sweat—the pinching, clammy memory—consumed her in her coolness.

“Della,” he said, commanding her to look at him.

When she did, she saw that he had leaned back, his wicked hair spread over a pillow, his limbs splayed in lazy abandon.

“From the day you were turned,” he said, “haven’t I always said you will be cared for? That you should never fear me?”

“Yes.” Dry throat. Hurt. “If we obeyed.”

“I daresay,” Wolfie continued, “that each of you joined because you
wished
to be cared for.”

Della nodded, unable to speak altogether now. Maybe it was because shame kept her silent. Shame in knowing he was right, that they had all wanted to stay young girls—the apples of Wolfie’s eye—even when everyone else in the world outside had forgotten them.

And to lose that . . . ? She mustn’t think it.

“What heaviness there suddenly is here,” he said.

Then a smile appeared on his mouth, starting slowly, growing, widening until his eyes glinted with the unfettered abandon they loved.

“I think,” he said, “Della must learn what it is to really play.”

Violet had sidled away from her chains, as if unsure of her place with Wolfie now. “Della will never learn.”

“Are you sure of that?”

As if to prove that Della
could
learn, his eyes flared, and the other girls jumped back, then giggled. Della only smiled a bit, hoping . . . no,
knowing
she’d been forgiven on his end. Knowing Wolfie was going to make everything better and protect them.

He always did.

While the girls held their collective breaths, he growled again, then sprang off the divan.

Even Della squealed now, especially when he grabbed for Blanche, who laughed and broke away from him, coming to hide behind Della.

“Deny me?” he asked in a dramatic bellow. “Who are you to do that?”

Blanche peeked out from behind Della as Wolfie hunched down to his hands and knees.

He crept toward them. “Who’s . . . denying . . . me?”

“Not me!” Polly said, pulling Blanche out from behind Della and tossing her to Wolfie.

He caught the dark-haired girl and pawed her to the floor, the two of them rolling over the rug until he ended up on top. Blanche could hardly breathe, she was laughing so hard, and Della felt it, too—the rush of cleansing gaiety.

At the liberty of it, all the girls sprang on him, piling as he nuzzled Blanche’s neck and she squealed some more.

Then Wolfie’s back arched, and they all tumbled off, backing away in delighted fear as he began to change into his play shape.

His ears pointing.

His snout lengthening.

His tail emerging.

His skin sprouting hair while he howled at the ceiling.

Gleefully, the girls pounced on each other, still in human form, swiping, laughing, tumbling round.

Forgiven,
Della thought.
Free and happy, just as Wolfie says we should be—

Noreen sent Della sprawling across the carpet to the tunnel entrance, and she sprang to all fours, ready to jump at Noreen and join in again.

But a sight behind the beads iced her.

A pair of eyes glowing through the clacking orange and red strands, then disappearing.

Della’s chugging blood eased to a stomp, stomp, stomp.

It had been the cat, but it had left them to continue playing, thanks be.

The ever-watching creature was leaving them to Wolfie.

With a relieved hop, Della darted away from the beads, then jumped on Noreen, forgetting the cat eyes in the giggling chaos.

It wasn’t until Blanche failed to show for class the next day that Della even remembered.

FIFTEEN

THE OUiJA INTERViEW

BRIDGET
O’Connell, Eleanor’s older cousin, lived in a wealthy area of Harrow in a Victorian house that sat back on the rain-combed grass, reclining behind elm trees and a low brick wall. The inside was just as mellow and well-appointed, with dark, rose-patterned woodwork smelling of oil soap, plus dark-hued, layered window draperies that reminded Dawn of a dress that a fancy woman might’ve worn at a ball.

“The house is all a bit much for me now,” the seventy-some-year-old Mrs. O’Connell had told them after they’d doffed their coats and sat down to tea in one of three reception rooms. A hint of an Irish lilt painted the elderly woman’s tone just as colorfully as the pink tinge on her soft cheeks and the blue of her eyes. “My husband passed on years ago, and now it’s me and far too many rooms.”

Dawn, Kiko, and Natalia smiled back, their tea in front of them on the low cherry wood table. Mrs. O’Connell had already told them all about her husband: how he used to give music lessons here, how she could occasionally hear the memory of a violin or clarinet in an empty room.