Covet (48 page)

“Right. Once I’m leader, everything will be better. I’ll make sure the peace treaty stays in place. And I think in time I can maybe even teach the descendants not to hate the vamps. Well, maybe. Some of their issues run pretty deep. But we’ll work on it. In time, they’ll come around.”

“That would be nice.”

But she was still holding back.

“What is it?” I sighed. “You know becoming more of a vamp hasn’t made you any better at lying to me.”

She shook her head and looked away, her pale fingers plucking up bits of grass to shred. “I’m happy for you, Tristan. Really, I am. You’re going to do what your parents always dreamed for you. What you were
born
to do. And that’s the important thing. So let’s just leave it at that, okay?” She leaned forward, pressed a hand to one side of my face and slowly, gently kissed my cheek. It felt like a kiss goodbye. “You’re going to be a great leader for the Clann. Your dad would be really proud of you. And I am, too. You need to do this. The descendants need a leader with a good heart like yours.”

I caught her chin when she tried to look away again. “Then why does it sound more like you’re begging me not to do it?”

“I’m not. I’m telling you that you
should
.”

“Liar.”

She shifted her feet under her like she was going to get up. But she’d forgotten, in our connected dreams she didn’t have the physical upper hand. I moved faster, leaning forward until she was lying on her back in the grass and I half covered her.

“Stop running away,” I growled, nuzzling the curve of her neck, testing her. If she had tensed up beneath me, if she had given me one sign that she didn’t want to be close to me, I would have moved away again. Instead, her hands crept up to circle my waist.

Resting most of my upper body weight on my elbows at either side of her head, with our faces only inches apart, she had to know she couldn’t possibly hide anything from me.

“Tell me you don’t miss what we had,” I whispered into her hair, daring her to try and lie to me now.

“I do.”

“Tell me you don’t think about us every day and regret breaking up with me.”

Her hair fanned out in the grass around her head, begging to be touched. I buried my nose in it, filling my lungs with that warm lavender scent that I missed every waking second now.

My chest expanded with the deep breath, pressing against her, and she shivered.

“I do think about it. And I wish I hadn’t had to break up with you.”

“Tell me you don’t love me.” I stared into her eyes now, frustrated, hurting, missing her so much it formed its own kind of physical pain that burned my lungs and throat. “Because I’ve tried, Sav. I’ve really tried not to be in love with you, even to the point of hurting others along the way. But I can’t make myself stop loving you. So if you’ve figured it out, if you’ve found some spell or something that will end my feelings for you, I’m all ears here.”

She closed her eyes, covered her face with her hands and sobbed, her shoulders shaking. “I can’t! I wish I could. I wish every day that I could find a way not to love you. But I still do. I—”

It was all I needed to hear. I covered her lips with mine, careful to also press a palm to the ground and draw energy.

Then I remembered. I’d fallen asleep indoors in my room tonight. There was no real ground beneath me to draw energy from.

So I kissed her cheeks instead, her nose, her wet eyelids, her throat, the ridge of her collarbone.

“It’s going to be all right,” I promised her over and over in between kisses. “I’ll be Clann leader soon, and then no one can tell us that we can’t be together.”

Her hands froze in their journey from my hair to my shoulders.

Too caught up in the moment, it took several seconds for me to notice how tense she’d become beneath me.

“Sav?” I lifted my head to look at her.

Her expression was unreadable for a change. “Are you sleeping outside tonight?”

“No, I’m in my room—”

She twisted her head to look down at my right hand cupping her shoulder. My hand was shaking.

Suddenly she scooted up and away before I could stop her.

“Oh come on, Sav!” I sat back on my knees. “You’re driving me nuts here.”

“You don’t get it! Nothing’s changed between us. Learning how to do magic hasn’t made me suddenly not a vampire anymore. I’m still draining you when we kiss, still psychically draining you with a kiss even in our dreams together. I haven’t learned a single thing about how to turn it off. And you becoming Clann leader? That doesn’t change anything, either. In fact, it just makes it more impossible for us to be together.” She scrambled to her feet.

I stood up as well. “Fine. I won’t become leader.”

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. We’ve already covered all the reasons why you need to. You have to, Tristan. This isn’t about you and me or what we want anymore. It’s way, way bigger than that now.”

I closed the distance between us. “We can make this work. We’re good together.”

She took a deep breath then looked up at me, letting me see the tears in her eyes. “How? Are we going to live in a tent with a hole in the floor so you can draw energy every time we kiss?”

“I’ll find a way to make the vamp turning process work on me. Then we’ll be the same again, two vamps who can’t hurt each other.”

Her jaw clenched. “And then the Clann will choose Dylan’s dad to be their leader. And then what will our life be like together while all the descendants and vamps and innocent humans die in another pointless war?”

I opened my mouth to argue. She shut me up the only really effective way that she could.

“Goodbye, Tristan. And good luck on Saturday.”

Then she kissed me, psychically draining me despite the physical distance separating our actual bodies, until I didn’t have enough energy left to keep the dream connection going.

* * *

I woke up in my room. Yelling out a curse, I rolled over and punched the mattress beneath me.

CHAPTER 34

SAVANNAH

The next morning, as soon as I ended the dream with Tristan I ran downstairs, found Dad in the living room reading a newspaper and told him what had happened to Tristan’s father.

He jumped to his feet then froze, losing the few humanlike traits he had. Finally he breathed and blinked again. “This is…quite disturbing news.”

“Has the council made any headway in tracking down the New York Clann killer?” Restless and needing something to focus on, I started looking around for the paperback I’d dropped here last night when Tristan called.

“They have Gowin working on it.”

That explained why I hadn’t seen him around much lately.

“I do not believe they have any new clues,” Dad continued. “I have not spoken with him in some time, though, so I am not sure. He has been quite busy with the investigation and reporting to the council. Whom I must now call with this news regarding the Clann’s leader.”

“Um, while you have them on the phone, maybe you could see if they want to keep in contact with Tristan, just in case he gets chosen as the new leader?” I dropped down onto my knees and peered under the couch. No paperback book. “It might be a good idea for them to start working on some kind of friendship. Or maybe the council has an official ambassador or something who could represent them in talking with the Clann?”

I stood up again in time to catch Dad’s frown. “No, we do not have anything like that. Peace was created only a few decades ago.”

He was kidding, right? I rested a hand on one hip. “Okay, I know you’re hundreds of years old, so to you maybe a few decades doesn’t seem that long. But to a descendant, that could literally be over half a lifetime. You really need some kind of official rep who can meet with the Clann elders every so often to make sure everything’s all good between the groups.”

He continued to frown at me. “We always assumed any vampire who attempted to make contact with the Clann leader would be set on fire or staked.”

What a drama vamp. “I’m pretty sure the tradition of killing the messenger went out of style a few centuries ago.”

“You would be surprised.”

“Well, I’m just saying Tristan might become the new Clann leader in a week, and it would be smart if the council made some kind of official outreach effort to him. His dad was just murdered by what looks to be a vamp attack. Not to mention the tiny fact that the council
kidnapped
Tristan last spring. They haven’t exactly made the best of first impressions on him and his family, you know.”

Dad had covered the couch with pages of newspaper, making it impossible to sit down anywhere. I began gathering it up.

After a minute, I heard him say, “Perhaps
you
would make the ideal ambassador.”

I whirled around in horror. “Me? No way. Leave me out of it. I hate that vampire politics crap—”

“Though I did not actually speak those words, that is indeed what I was thinking,” Dad muttered, his face darkening into a scowl.

Oh crap. I’d read his mind. Not good. And now he knew it, and soon the vamp council would too…

There went any hope of a normal life I might have ever had.

“Forget it, Dad. I don’t care what the council says or demands.” I shook a handful of wadded-up newspaper at him. “I’m
not
going to spy on the Clann for you guys. And I’m not going to be any ambassador, either. I mean, come on! Besides the fact that I’m only seventeen and completely clueless about playing the political game, I want to have a life of my own. A normal life, or at least as normal as possible. Playing peace ambassador doesn’t fit in with that.” Seeing how I’d mangled one sheet of the newspaper already, I gave up trying to refold the rest of it and settled for tossing the whole stack onto the coffee table so I could check under the sofa cushions for my book.

“At least consider it.” Dad remained standing, staring down at me. “Now that you quite obviously can read vampire—and I assume Clann—minds, you are uniquely positioned to always be able to discern the truth from the lies that either side might attempt to employ. And you already have a…connection to the descendant who, as you pointed out, may very well become the next Clann leader. The…friendship has already been forged.”

“Your…pauses already point out why that’s a bad idea.” Aha! There it was, under some papers on the floor under the coffee table. I snatched up the paperback and tried to figure out which page I’d stopped at last night.

“Or a very good one. He listens to you, values your opinion.”

“I’m not using my history with Tristan to push the council’s agendas.”

“You are seeing it from the wrong angle. I am merely suggesting that, rather than having to get to know some strange and as you would say ‘ancient’ vampire, Tristan already knows one who is his age. Someone he trusts and is capable of having logical discussions with. Someone who also happens to be the daughter of a former councilman who—”

“Who clearly is still looking for a way back onto the council,” I grumbled.

“—who still converses regularly with the council and could easily pass on any of Tristan’s concerns or requests,” he finished with a glare.

I really hated to see his point. But I did. Still, it seemed an invitation to trouble at the same time. And then I had the perfect argument.

“The council will never go for it. Remember? They made me promise to stay away from him.”

One thick black eyebrow arched. “They have also been known to change their collective minds when it suits their needs.”

Whatever. They would still never choose me as vamp ambassador. Not as long as Tristan was my contact with the Clann and there was any risk that my feelings for him might overwhelm my reasoning and cause me to lose control and kill him. Dad was just trying to lose the argument gracefully. I flipped through the pages until I found the spot where I’d last read.

“Also, you are not going to school this week,” he ordered, walking from living room to kitchen to parlor to living room and back.
Where is that blasted cell phone? And why must the makers forever insist on making them smaller and smaller?

He’d managed to lose his cell phone somewhere in this house yet again. What was this, the seventeenth time? Or the twentieth?

“Fine. Want me to call it?”

“Call what?”

“Your phone. That’s what you’re looking for, right?”

Pulling himself up straight, he puffed out his chest and scowled. “Stop reading my mind, please. It is rude. And I am a vampire. I do not lose things.”

“I can’t help the mind-reading thing any more than you can help overhearing my phone conversations when I’m in my room. It doesn’t have an on/off switch. And even vamps can lose itty bitty phones that tend to fall out of the pocket of their slacks every time they sit down to read the newspaper.” On a hunch, I dug in between the cushions and the back of the couch to my left, then held up his phone.

“Hmpf.” He took the phone and flipped it open, then paused. “Now about your missing school this week—”

“Are you going to call the school, or should I?”

He stared at me through narrowed eyes. “You are not arguing with me about it?”

“Nope. Why would I want to be anywhere near that campus this week? Do you have any idea how bad the descendants will be now that their leader’s been killed? Besides, it’s exhausting dealing with them all the time as it is.”

And now with Tristan gone all week… He would be preparing for his dad’s funeral. And becoming even more out of my reach as a boyfriend.

The memory of his breaking down in front of me last night jolted through me. I’d never seen him like that. At first, I hadn’t realized he was even crying while I held him. He had been so quiet. It was only when he leaned away and I felt the dampness on my shoulder that I’d understood my shirt was wet from his tears.

He’d always been so…strong. So confident and sure and capable of handling absolutely anything.

Every time I thought about how much he must trust me in order to lose control in front of me like that, I got choked up and teary-eyed.

“I am glad you see this my way,” Dad said. Then he circled around in front of me and frowned. He tilted my book so he could read the title on the cover. “
The Art of War
makes you tearful?”