DeVante's Coven (12 page)

Daniel couldn’t imagine. He treated her with friendly respect and hoped she’d learn to stop being a doormat.

A set of gay twins, Eve and Evan, had been here since the first night. They’d told Daniel how their parents got a shock and double shock. Eve came out as a lesbian first to pave the way for Evan, whom she had always protected. They did it in tandem, at home, first Eve explaining that she always knew there was something about her different from other kids.

Eve and Evan were an interesting pair and Daniel thought he was a little in love with both of them. They were the kind of brother/sister twins that were almost too close, almost too affectionate with one another—it was a little creepy. His first impression was that they were very strange, possibly incestuous. But he knew better now. They were just really tight.

The other two that seemed to be here all the time were goth kids, the boy named Jeremy and the girl Primrose. They were about his own age, but much more street-smart and savvy than Daniel thought he would ever be. Daniel admired their cynical view of the world, their sarcastic comments that passed for humor. Jeremy had offered to create and print some old-fashioned calling cards that Daniel could hand out at the clubs, so Daniel had spent most of last night hovering over Jeremy’s laptop computer in creative corroboration.

Jeremy and Primrose were, so far, the only straight couple Daniel had invited to his after-hours party—although he wondered, privately, if Trina was actually straight but deluding herself thinking she’d find a kinder, gentler mate in another woman. So far she hadn’t had much luck with that.

Daniel had to choose one of them for an experiment. He had to find out if he had the power to ask what he needed of them—if he could take their blood and leave them breathing without outcry or horror.

Trina, he decided, would be his first victim. Eager to please, pliant, open to suggestion… she would be the easiest test subject. Plus if it didn’t work, she’d probably run screaming to DeVante, and there was some semblance of safety in that.

“Can you keep a secret?” he asked, and she nodded. “I like you, too. And I want to kiss you, but you understand it can’t go anywhere, right? I don’t mean that you can’t tell anyone—I don’t care about that. I mean that it won’t make me your boyfriend or anything like that.”

“I understand. I like girls most, but I like you so much, Daniel.”

“Do you? It’s not that I don’t want to be your boyfriend. I think you’re special, beautiful and sweet. It’s just that I belong to
all
of them out there. You, Eve, Evan, Jeremy, Primrose… I am yours, and theirs, and we’re all perfect together… and still perfect when someone new comes or someone decides to leave. This is my place, my flock, and each of you means something to me.”

She nodded.

So he kissed her. Kissed her sweet soft feminine lips, so different from Reed’s, so hesitant, gentle. Then he put his arms around her, let his lips trail to her ear, nibbled for a second, but quickly licked down to her throat, the artery throbbing beneath his tongue… feeling and hearing her heartbeat. And his fangs slipped in easily, her blood flowing in a quick rush, filling his mouth… the taste of her, the smell, her memories and secrets available if he’d only pay attention, but he didn’t, he didn’t… only wanting her blood, not her soul… and he swallowed and moaned, and drank her in… and then remembered he had to stop.

He pulled back and looked at her face. Her eyes were glazed, lips curved in a small smile, weaving just a little on her feet. Daniel reached his mind out to her.
That was an amazing kiss… and that’s all, just a kiss from Daniel to Trina… nothing more, nothing promised.

If he was able to do it without them knowing, and he thought he could because Roderick did it with him for so long, then he might have just created the perfect modern vampire life.

Six permanent residents in the house and there were still empty rooms. Trina had the small suite off the kitchen, the Mother-in-Law apartment, she’d once called it. Eve and Evan shared a room on the 2nd floor. Jeremy and Primrose had claimed the smallest bedroom because they liked the ground floor where they could keep track of the comings and goings of the whole house. Daniel didn’t choose a formal bedroom at all. He’d lugged blankets and pillows down into the wine cellar below the basement fearing to be above ground if, one day, an earthquake toppled the house. He kept his clothes in the master suite on the second floor, rooms he still thought of as belonging to DeVante, remote-control window covers and all.

Chapter 14



How to lose your mind

Roderick spent the whole next night eavesdropping on humans but never even got a lead. By morning he was frantic but had no choice but to go home.

Oh Mavis,
what am I ever going to do?
He could see three options. Stay here in Vegas and keep on this fruitless search. If he did that, he’d have to think of a new approach, maybe look for some street punks or prostitutes, because hadn’t Tony said something about sex being his business, just two nights ago when he first woke a vampire? Obviously this random search of random people’s thoughts wasn’t accomplishing anything.

The second option was the most appealing. Run away. Run far, far away and leave this horrible mess behind him. Leave Tony the weird vampire here on his own. Roderick could just take off and not deal with any of it. The panic in him was growing, filling his chest with a choking weight that hardly let him breathe. His very first all-by-himself fledgling gone the very first day. Roderick, poster child for incompetence. And not only had he misplaced his very first all-by-himself fledgling, but he hadn’t made him correctly, which is the whole reason the kid came to be misplaced at all. If Tony were normal, Roderick would have crawled right into his head, known where he was, and would be at his side right now. But something went wrong. It just figures that something should go wrong his first time on his own. Roderick had a history of fuck-ups, so why should he have expected this to be different?

He tried to imagine what kinds of awful things Tony was doing, a new vampire capable of massive destruction. Roderick couldn’t run away from this. In fact, just considering that an option brought forth a twinge of guilt for leaving behind Daniel, the beautiful boy that Roderick
did
run away from. Daniel was truly Roderick’s first fledgling, even if he and DeVante had made Daniel a vampire together. But DeVante’s many rules finally suffocated Roderick, and he ditched, leaving Daniel under DeVante’s control. Maybe it wasn’t okay, but Roderick didn’t know what else to do. The weight of DeVante’s expectations made him lose his mind. But at least with DeVante in the picture Roderick had back-up.

He didn’t have that for Tony. Oh, no, he was truly on his own with this one.

He could not run. If he did then he might never be welcome in DeVante’s company again. Who knew what DeVante would do if Roderick created some kind of awful mess and then disappeared. Maybe DeVante would even come after him, hunt him down... which DeVante had once said he would do if he felt Roderick were out of control. So no, he couldn’t run from this. Either he stayed here until he found Tony, or he would have to exercise his third option.

Go to DeVante on his own; admit what he had done, and ask for help.

***

Tony lay curled around Lily all day, and then all night. He knew it wasn’t rational, knew it was shock or something, but just couldn’t make himself abandon her.

And by the next dawn, he’d convinced himself that she wasn’t dead, she just slept hard, like Roderick. He jumped out of their bed in a panic. What if she wasn’t dead, the sun came up, and somehow she burned? Roderick had not been able to contain his fear of the sun, and if Tony had done to Lily what Roderick clearly thought he’d done to Tony, then she had to be protected from daylight. He looked around the room wildly, then shook his head, laughing at himself. They’d built this room without windows, on purpose. Lights would have been the first thing to give away their presence here.

He kept telling himself that Lily couldn’t be dead. Did he hear a moan? Did her pinky finger move just now?

Denial. He was going to have to give up, soon. For sure by tomorrow. But he had to hold her for one more day. He desperately wanted to sleep because too much had happened in too few days, and he didn’t want to think about any of it anymore.

But sleep never came, and later that day Tony noticed that Lily’s skin felt damp and clammy. He tried to ignore it, tried to chalk it up to stress and fear, but another hour and he could no longer ignore the fact that the pillows and blankets were wet. And there was a strange smell, like rotting vegetation, or the rotten meat smell that the supermarket tries to cover with disinfectant, but never quite manages to hide completely.

He left the bed, shaking, starting to cry, wondering why he’d thought he could fool himself in the first place. She was dead. She was decomposing. His Lily was gone.

Chapter 15



How to do everything perfectly

He’d fed from Trina successfully, and because he felt invincible, Daniel went looking for Reed. And found him, at one of the lower-key clubs—one with fewer twinks, a lot less cruisers, and about a million more lesbians.

Reed was there with Maggie—which probably explained the lesbians. Maybe she was one. Actually, watching the easy way they leaned into each other while they talked, he’d lay bets that they’d known each other a long time. Daniel’s heart skipped, watching Reed smile, laugh, flick his fingers at Maggie’s hair, bump shoulders with her as though sharing a joke. Daniel was torn between wanting to approach them and enjoying this voyeuristic opportunity to study Reed without his knowing.

Reed was a beautiful man. Daniel could really appreciate that as Reed relaxed with Maggie, his every gesture fluid and unselfconscious, filled with cat-like grace. His open-mouthed laugh changed his face, made him look so appealing, almost boyish—teeth straight white perfection, eyes flashing with humor.

It was inevitable Reed would be approached. By a twink, even. A dark skinny guy who interrupted Reed and Maggie’s discussion by saying something that cracked Reed up. Reed whispered something in response, directly into the guy’s ear, then got up and left Maggie with an apologetic grin.

“Ah-ha,” Daniel said. “So you
are
a lesbian,” and immediately blushed, because it was a stupid thing to say.

“Yes,” she agreed, perfectly comfortable. “Have you met any before?”

Daniel shook his head. “I haven’t been out here very long,” he told her. “And everybody’s normal where I come from. Nobody’s queer.”

Maggie smiled at him, and rested her hand on Daniel’s arm. “We are normal. But for some of us it’s a long journey to come to that conclusion. No wonder you like Reed, dear, he
makes
being gay normal, doesn’t he?”

“I guess.” Daniel thought about it for a moment. “No, it’s more than that—he makes it cool, like it’s better than anything, like it’s beautiful.” And he blushed again, because it wasn’t a very sophisticated thing to say. He tried to recover. “I mean…” but words to express the idea didn’t come.

“I think to Reed, it
is
better than anything. He tried for a long time to be straight. Ah, maybe don’t mention to him that I told you that. It’s part of his personal journey, and it isn’t something he talks about.”

Daniel nodded, unable to even imagine Reed pretending to be anything for someone else’s benefit, then gestured toward Reed and the guy, now across the bar throwing darts. “Who’s he?”

“Age, idealism, innocence, what have you. All the way around, Reed’s a bad bet. The only thing he’s capable of is hurting you, because you’ll fall in love with him, and he can’t reciprocate.”