Ravenous (16 page)

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Authors: V.K. Forrest

BOOK: Ravenous
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Mai turned from the refrigerator where she was stacking containers of leftovers. “I think he’d like that.” She glanced at Liam in the hallway. “If . . . if we can make it work.”
“I think he’d be fine with Kaleigh,” Liam responded, understanding that she was concerned for her father’s safety. Of course, she didn’t know that Kaleigh had the ability to protect Corrato and take on several mafiosi, should the need arise. “In fact, maybe we should go to your place and have that look around while your dad hangs here in Clare Point with Kaleigh.”
Mai closed the refrigerator door. “That would be great. Thanks.”
“Good night,” Kaleigh called from inside the hood.
Liam waited until they were outside before he spoke. The air was cool and there was a breeze off the water. Leaves fluttered at his feet. He let the rat terrier down and Prince took off along the grassy spot he had marked as his own. “What the hell is wrong with you, talking to Mai about having sex with Rob?”
“She wasn’t supposed to say anything to you,” Kaleigh said from the shadows of the hood. He could hear the pout in her voice.
“That’s not the point, Kaleigh. Mai is a human.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
Liam exhaled in frustration. “If you’re having problems, if you need to talk to someone about a vampire problem, you talk to a vampire.”
“Right. Like who? My mom?” she burst out. “Who likes to pretend I’ve never had sex in fifteen centuries? Katy, who’d have sex with everyone? Or how about you? Could I come to you and talk about my personal problems? You, who keep yourself so walled off that no one can reach you?”
The questions were obviously rhetorical. She kept going. “I’m the sept’s wisewoman. You know what that means? That means I’m responsible for all of you. Every damned one of you.” She sniffled and reached into her hood, to rub her nose, he suspected. “I have to listen to all your problems, help you solve them, and I’m not just talking little problems like who you are and aren’t having sex with. I’m talking big problems. Like . . . like world peace and if we should kill some guy in Australia.”
“Push back your hood,” Liam said.
Kaleigh looked up. “What?” she snapped.
“Push back your hood. I can’t see your face.” He made a concerted effort to remove the antagonism from his voice. “I want to see your face when you speak.”
“What if I don’t want you to see me?” But she pushed it back and he saw her pretty face, her teary eyes, and her runny nose.
“That’s better,” he said softly. Then he looked around. “Where the hell did that dog go?”
“Prince!” Kaleigh called and walked along the side of the building. Liam followed.
“So . . . what is going on with you and Rob?”
She threw him a look over her shoulder and went around the corner of the building. “There he is. Prince!”
“Kaleigh, don’t make this any harder for me. I’m trying. I really am.” He followed her across the grass in the dark. The next street over was residential. Faint light shone in the windows “Tell me what’s going on with you and Rob.”
“Like you would understand monogamy,” she threw over her shoulder. “Prince, Prince, you can’t run away. Your daddy would worry. We can’t have that, can we?”
“Kaleigh, I don’t have a life mate. That’s not my fault.”
“No, but it makes things easier sometimes, doesn’t it?”
“Sometimes,” he agreed. “Especially with what I do. But it makes it harder, too.”
“How’s that?”
They reached the sidewalk. Prince sashayed across the street just in front of them.
“You know. I don’t
have
anyone.”
“You have hundreds of people all over the world. You have the Kahills.”
“It’s not the same thing. I don’t have one person who will. . .” He groaned inwardly. This wasn’t his style. He didn’t like talking about this shit. But he genuinely cared about Kaleigh, and he sure as hell didn’t want her running around sharing her problems with humans. The next thing he knew, she’d be at the guidance counselor’s office in her human high school.
“You don’t have one person who will
what?
” Kaleigh crossed the street.
“I’m going to kill that mutt when I get my hands on him,” he muttered, flexing his fingers. He hadn’t put his coat on and it was getting colder by the minute. “I have no one to come home to, Kaleigh. No one to hold me. No one who loves me, knowing what I am. What I do. If someone beheads me in an alley in Kandahar, no one would care.”
She waited for him on the other side of the street. Prince had stopped to check out a dead beetle lying belly-up on the sidewalk. “A lot of people would care. I would care. I know it doesn’t seem like it right now, but people here are thankful that you do what you do for us, for God’s people—” She twisted her mouth. “That sounds corny, but you know what I mean. Some of us, we can’t kill. No matter how right we believe it is, or how many humans we’ll save, we can’t do it, Liam.”
“I know,” he mumbled, feeling uncomfortable. He wasn’t looking for compliments from her; he was just trying to explain how he felt. Maybe so it would help her. “But we’re not talking about me, we’re talking about you and Rob.”
She started walking again. “You going to tell my mom?”
He laughed. “Have I ever told
your mom
anything? To your knowledge, have
Cassie
and I
ever
been tight?”
At that, she laughed. And hearing the sound of her voice, Prince sprinted forward.
“Just kill the dog. Throw a ball of fire at him, levitate him and hurl him into a trash can, or something, will you?”
“Stop saying things like that. You’re scaring him. That’s why he’s running. You’re mean.”
“You think I’m mean?” Liam fell into step beside her. He thought about what Mai had said about forbidding him to be mean to her father. That was two in one night. “Do I strike you as a mean person?”
“You strike me as a jelly donut.” She prodded him with her finger. “Dipped in, like . . . cement. You’re, like, all hard and manly on the outside and all soft and squishy on the inside.” She laughed. He didn’t.
“You and Rob, doing the nasty. That’s what we’re talking about.”
She sighed, throwing up her arms. “Okay. He wants to do it. He says we’ve already been doing it for all these years, no big deal. Of course I can’t
remember
that yet, so it’s like I
haven’t
done it yet. Big deal. I argue, I’m the wisewoman, I should be following sept rules. Blah, blah, blah. He says I’m the wisewoman, I’m more powerful than anyone in the sept—”
“Not yet,” Liam corrected. “I could kick your ass in a fight, and I know Peigi can make a bigger bonfire than you can.”
“Yeah, whatever.” She stopped and watched as the dog sniffed a fire hydrant and cocked his leg. “So that’s basically the problem.”
“That Rob wants to have sex and you don’t?”
“That he wants to have sex and if I don’t, you bet he’s going to do it with someone else. He’s at Princeton, for God’s sake. Free ass everywhere.” She turned to look at him in the darkness.
“Aha,” he said. “Which makes it more complicated.”
“Which makes it more complicated.” She exhaled. “Because I know, by sept rules, he’s allowed to. I know we’ve all done it. It just happens, some lifetimes more than others.” She pushed her hair behind her ears. “I just don’t want it to happen right now. I don’t want him to have sex with another girl. I want him to wait for me to be ready. And I don’t want to feel like he’s pushing me into doing it when I don’t want to,” she added quickly.
“So you’re not ready?” Liam asked.
“No, I’m not. Yeah. Maybe. I mean, I think about it. And it’s not like I haven’t done it before. No big deal, right?” She threw up her hands, looking at him. “I don’t know! That’s the problem.
I don’t know
. I’m supposed to be so smart and here’s this little, tiny, itty-bitty problem, and I don’t know what to do.” She walked toward the dog. “You move again, Prince,” she threatened, “and you’re a weenie on a stick.”
The rat terrier froze. Kaleigh walked over, picked him up, tucked him under her arm, and walked back toward Liam.
“You know what I say?”
“What do you say, Liam?”
They walked side by side, back down the sidewalk toward the shop. He stuffed his hands into his jeans pockets for warmth. “I say wait until you’re ready. Don’t listen to Rob. Don’t give in to his pressure. Don’t listen to the sept, either.”
“I don’t think you’re supposed to say that. You’re supposed to be an adult. You’re supposed to tell this unformed creature to follow the rules.”
He stopped and turned to her. “Follow the rules of your heart,” he told her. “Have sex with Rob when you’re ready, whether it’s tomorrow or when you turn twenty-one or sixty-one. If he wants to go have sex with someone else, you can’t let that be your problem. That’s his problem.”
She hugged the dog. “You think so?”
“I know so. Hand him over.”
She held the dog up in front of her as if he was an infant and spoke directly to him. “That’s a good boy. I’ll see you another day. Now, be a good boy and no more running off.” She handed him over. “If you need me to come over one day this week and hang with Mr. Ricci, I can do that. No problem. Then you and Mai can do whatever it is that’s so top secret.” She giggled.
“
That’s
not what we need to do.” He snatched the dog from her. “We need to go back to her house and look for something.”
“You going to tell me what’s going on with them?”
“No.”
“I could just read your mind, you know.”
He smiled. “Guess you could try.”
She grinned back. “How about Tuesday? I’ve got Honor Society after school tomorrow.”
“Works for me.” He turned to go, then turned back. “Hey, Kaleigh.”
She had started to go the opposite way. “Yeah?”
“Another favor?”
“Maybe.”
“Poke around, see what you can find out about my hearing. I’m supposed to have an interview, then be put on the docket to appear before the Council. I haven’t heard a word about even the interview yet.”
“I’ll see what I can find out.” She headed back down the sidewalk. “ ’Night.”
“Good night.”
Liam walked back to the apartment, dog under his arm, kind of smiling to himself. It was nice that Kaleigh had talked to him about her problem with Rob, even if she did need a little coercion to do it. It was nice to think that she trusted him enough. That she valued his opinion.
As he approached the outside door, Prince began to growl.
“Hey, knock it off,” he told the squirming pooch as he started up the stairs.
Then the dog began to bark, softly at first, then louder and more ferociously. Liam took the steps faster. Something was wrong upstairs. Just as he put his hand on the doorknob, he heard something heavy fall, then breaking glass.
“Take another step closer,” Mai threatened from the other side of the door, “and I’ll knock the hell out of you.”
Chapter 16
L
iam halted, one hand holding the dog under his arm, the other on the doorknob. Was Mai talking to
him?
No, it couldn’t be. In a split second, he realized what was going on. He’d been so wrapped up in his conversation with Kaleigh that he hadn’t been paying attention to his surroundings.
Intruders. Vampires.
He jerked open the door at the top of the stairs and shoved the dog in, pushing him across the floor and, hopefully, out of harm’s way. Instead of racing toward his master in the living room, tail tucked between his legs, however, the pooch hung a left, directly into the kitchen, barking his little head off.
“Elwood! Back off,” Liam growled. His fangs vibrated and he stretched his lips over them, trying to keep them from protracting. He didn’t want to scare Mai any further.
“I got this,” Mai called, her voice amazingly steady, considering the circumstances.
Elwood had her backed up against the kitchen counter, his fangs bared. But she was holding a chair over her head, threatening to hit him with it. “I tried to tell him Halloween was over,” she quipped.
“But technically, it isn’t,” Elwood responded. “It’s the 31st.”
“It’s Sunday,” she corrected. “Halloween was observed this year on Saturday, October 30th.”
At that moment, Prince growled and dove for the vampire’s ankle. Elwood gave a yip as the dog clamped down on flesh.
“Ouch!
Condamnez-le! Appel outré du chien!
I meant no harm!” Elwood cried, trying to shake the dog loose.
Liam reached out, grasped Elwood by the collar of his black suit jacket, and yanked him backward, off his feet, laying him out flat on the kitchen floor. “What the hell are you doing here?” Before Liam could get turned around and sink a knee into the jerk’s chest, Prince hopped up on the prone vampire and thrust his little snout in Elwood’s face. The dog growled, baring vicious little needle teeth.
“Please,” Elwood whimpered, looking at the dog. “
Je voulais pas de mal.
I meant no harm. I only came to call on the little lady.”
“Dressed in that stupid costume?” she demanded, slamming the chair to the floor and thrusting it under the table. She was royally pissed.
Liam kind of liked seeing her this way. Defending herself. It made him less worried about her future when he was long gone.
“I only came to say hello,” Elwood insisted.
“So when I told you to take a hike, you pushed your way in?” Mai demanded as she stomped by. “
Babbo?
You okay?” she called as she went down the hall, leaving Liam and Prince in charge of the intruder.
The Road Runner was now beep-beeping on the TV.
Liam pressed one knee to the floor and looked at the dog, still poised to snap off Elwood’s nose. “I think I got this one,” he said respectfully to the rat terrier. “Go check on the old man.”
Prince turned his face, looked into Liam’s eyes, then hopped off Elwood’s chest and trotted down the hallway toward the living room.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Liam grunted under his breath.
“Trick-or-treating?” Elwood pleaded hopefully.
“
Again,
a day late.” Liam grabbed him by his shirt and tie and, in one movement, rose to his feet, taking Elwood with him. “I thought I was clear the other day that you weren’t welcome here.”
“I . . . I just wanted to be sure the little lady felt the same way.”
“I could seriously hurt you. You know that, don’t you?”
“Aren’t you in enough trouble?” He put up his hands to protect himself. “How would this look to the Council, you harming me over a human?”
“Fuck the Council.” Liam began to half-carry him, half-drag him out of the kitchen. “I think I’d like to hurt you.”
“I’d like it if you didn’t,” Elwood managed as he clawed at Liam’s hand, trying to catch his breath. “I meant no harm. Truly. We were just goofing around.”
“We?”
Elwood’s eyes got bigger than they already were. He broke into a sweat.
“Where is he?” Liam demanded.
“I—”
Liam gave him a shake for good measure.
“Down the hall! I. . .I don’t know! Maybe he had to take a leak!”
Liam thrust Elwood through the open door so hard that the would-be blues singer hit the wall before he started the long tumble down the steps.
“Jake!” Liam bellowed as he headed down the hall. The first door was Liam’s bedroom. It was closed. Ahead, he saw the bathroom and the second bedroom doors open, lights out. He felt Jake’s presence as he threw open his bedroom door.
“Surprise?” Jake said in a tiny voice. He crouched on Liam’s bed, in the dark.
“Get out!”
“Like Elwood said, we—”
“Get out!” Liam shouted, pointing toward the door. He was so angry he was shaking. These two were relatively harmless, considering what was out there in the world, but it angered him that they had crossed his turf. Scared
his
girlfriend. “Get out now, or I’m throwing you out the window.” As his last words came out, he was unable to control himself and his fangs came down.
Jake, dressed in full Blues Brothers’ garb, took the opportunity to leap off the bed and sprint for the open doorway. A couple of seconds later, Liam heard the door to the apartment slam shut and Jake clamber down the staircase. No doubt, Elwood was still lying at the bottom of the steps in a heap, if Liam was lucky, with a broken leg.
Standing in the dark in the middle of his bedroom, Liam took a deep breath and exhaled. He couldn’t let Mai see him like this. He flexed his fingers, curled them until his fists were balls, and did it again. Adrenaline raced through his body. His heart pounded. In this state, his natural instincts were much sharper, but that made him more dangerous to a human like Mai.
As if thoughts of her conjured her up, Mai appeared in the doorway, silhouetted against the light coming from the kitchen and living room. “Liam?”
“Lock the apartment door,” he said, turning his head to speak to her, his voice deep as he struggled to gain control of himself.
“I did.”
She took a step into the dark room and even at the distance of a few feet, he could feel her heart beating. He could imagine the blood pumping from her heart, through her circulatory system. Just a tiny nick on her neck and—
“Mai! Go check on your father!”
“I already—”
“Get out!” he barked.
Startled, she backed out slowly, staring at him. In the dark, he knew he was concealed well enough. She couldn’t see his fangs.
“Close the door,” he said, quieter. “Please.”
She did as he instructed and he felt, as much as heard, her retreat.
Liam waited a full ten minutes in the dark in his room. He touched his fingertips to the crucifix around his neck. He prayed to God to give him the strength to spare this woman the curse of being marked by a vampire. By him.
His fangs retracted. His heart slowed to a normal pace. Only when he was sure he was himself again—his safer self—did he leave the room. He found Corrato and the dog, perched on the couch beside him, watching TV. The cartoons had ended. They were watching an episode of
Mister Ed
. For a moment, Liam stood in the arched doorway and watched. It was the episode where Wilbur removed the phone extension from the barn, angering the horse because he could no longer make phone calls.
The Prince of Dogs looked no worse for wear, having momentarily held down a vampire. If Corrato knew his daughter had had an altercation in the kitchen, he gave no indication.
Liam glanced over his shoulder, wondering where Mai had gone. The apartment wasn’t that big. It couldn’t have been far. He could see she wasn’t in the kitchen. The bathroom door was still open, the light out. Her bedroom door, however, was closed, light streaming from beneath it.
Liam walked down the hallway, leaned against the wall, and knocked.
She didn’t answer, but he could feel her on the other side. “Mai? Can I come in?”
She still didn’t answer. He could hear her moving around in there. He took a chance of being hit with a chair and opened the door. She had her gym bag on the bed and was stuffing clothes into it.
He walked in and closed the door behind him. “What are you doing?”
“What’s it look like I’m doing?”
“It looks like you’re packing.”
She didn’t respond.
Liam stood there for a second. His first impulse was to just walk away, open the door, and walk out. It was the smart thing to do. For everyone: for Mai, for him, for the whole sept.
He got as far as putting his hand on the doorknob before he turned back to her. “I didn’t mean to snap at you like that. I’m sorry.”
She was facing the wall, her back to him. She dropped a T-shirt into the bag. “You scared me,” she said softly.
He had one last chance to make his escape.
He let go of the doorknob and walked up behind her. He very gently put his arms around her. Any anger left inside him was gone, drained out of him. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I . . . I was upset. Those guys, they—”
“What is with them, anyway, walking around in those stupid costumes?” She turned in his arms, looking up at him with those big, dark, innocent eyes of hers. “The Blues Brothers didn’t have plastic fangs.”
He almost laughed aloud. With relief, as much as amusement. She still didn’t realize the fangs were real. Thank God. Because how was he going to explain that one? If she became too suspicious of the Hildegard brothers, of Kaleigh, of him, or of anyone in Clare Point, he’d have no choice but to take her blood. The Kahills had a way of erasing a human’s short-term memory when they partook. It was a safety mechanism for both humans and vampires.
“I guess they just like Halloween,” Liam said lamely.
She frowned. “Nut jobs is what they are.”
He looked down at her, closing his arms around her. “Will you come tonight? To my room?” He kissed her very gently. “To me, and let me make love to you?”
She groaned, letting her eyes drift shut. “This is getting weird, Liam. Maybe I should just go home.”
“No, no, you can’t go home. You’re still in danger.”
She opened her eyes. “Really? Do you really think there could be any truth to this diamond thing?” She exhaled. “With every day that passes, I wonder more if I just . . . I don’t know, imagined the whole thing. What if it really was just a burglary that Uncle Donato got caught up in?”
He stroked her back. “That doesn’t explain the phone calls.”
She pressed her cheek to his chest. “Not just prank calls, were they?”
“Not just prank calls. And having your house tossed wasn’t a prank, either.”
She was quiet for a second and Liam took the opportunity to enjoy the feel of her in his arms. However this played out, he knew she’d be gone soon. He knew their time together was going to be brief and he wanted desperately to hold on to this feeling as long as possible.
“I’m going to get to the bottom of this. I swear I am,” he told her.
“Soon,” she insisted. “Otherwise . . . otherwise I’m going to, I don’t know. Go to the police?”
“If you didn’t go before, if you didn’t answer their questions completely honestly before, they’re going to be suspicious now, Mai.”
“I know.” She smoothed his T-shirt under her hand.
“Just give me a few more days, a week.” He stroked her long hair, liking the feel of its silkiness in his fingers. “A week. Two, tops. Come on, it’s not so bad staying here with me, is it?”
She smiled and looked up at him. “Not so bad.” She patted his chest and pulled away. “You want some dessert? I made pumpkin pie.”
“Pie would be good.” He still held on to her hand, even as she moved toward the door. “Will you come tonight?”
She cut her dark eyes at him, a playful smile on her lips. “Guess you’ll just have to wait and see, won’t you?”
“So, exactly what are we looking for?” Mai asked, standing in the middle of the mess that had been Donato’s bedroom. They’d spent some time in her shop, but they both thought it less likely her uncle would have hidden the diamonds there. He was rarely in there, and where could he have put them that he wouldn’t have had to worry about her selling the item, with the diamonds in it?
Just looking at her uncle’s room made her want to cry. The entire house was trashed like this. It would take days to clean up.
They had left her dad with Kaleigh, watching TV. Unfortunately, it was raining, so a walk on the beach was out of the question. But Kaleigh had taken a checkerboard, and the two had big plans to watch
Oprah.
Liam had decided that Donato’s bedroom was the place to start looking for clues as to the mystery of the pink diamonds. They’d pretty much ruled out her shop for various reasons and would concentrate on the house. Mai didn’t have high hopes of finding anything, but it was nice to be in her own house again, even for a couple of hours. Staying with Liam wasn’t bad, but she missed her home; she missed the life she’d had before Uncle Donato was murdered in her store.

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