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Authors: V.K. Forrest

Ravenous (9 page)

BOOK: Ravenous
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“Not a problem,” Liam muttered.
“Just the same, I want you to know I really do appreciate it. I don’t know if I could handle this alone. Not right now.” Again, the eyes. The touch.
Liam almost groaned out loud. He was in trouble. Big trouble. Fortunately, he’d thought this through on his way over. The easiest way to avoid having sex with women you weren’t supposed to have sex with was to never be alone with them. Never have the opportunity. She had a father in his seventies and a dog practically glued to her hip. How hard could this be?
The plan was to take them to his mom’s vacant house. They’d be safe there until he could figure out what was going on. No one would ever be able to track them there because no one knew who he was or where he’d come from. Not even Cousin Suzy. The plan was perfect.
Chapter 9
O
kay, so the plan was
almost
perfect.
Liam stood in his mother’s kitchen in the dark in half an inch of water.
“It’s wet,” Corrato announced. “Water all over the floor.” He peeked into the half bath off the laundry room where they’d come in the back door. “Looks like your toilet overflowed.”
“This is ridiculous.” Liam stood there, baffled. “No one’s been here in months.” But the minute he flipped on the kitchen light, it became obvious that wasn’t true. “Son-of-a-bitch,” he muttered. “I’ll kill them.”
“Kill who?” Mai laid her hand on her father’s shoulder. “
Babbo,
why don’t you take Prince outside for a potty break? Keep him on his leash and don’t go anywhere.”
“Wet in here. Cold out there,” Corrato grumbled as he went back out the door.
Mai walked into the kitchen, taking it all in. It looked something like her kitchen right now, only not to the same degree. Cupboards had been left open, dirty dishes in the sink, packages left open on the counters, but no one had been looking for anything. Except maybe snacks.
She wrinkled her nose. “You said this is your
mom’s
house? I swear, I think I smell marijuana.”
Liam grabbed his phone from the pocket of his leather jacket, flipped it open, and scanned his contacts for the right number. She answered on the third ring. “You know anything about your buddies hanging out in my mother’s house?” Liam demanded.
“
My buddies?
What are you talking about?” Kaleigh asked, her hackles going up immediately.
Liam was so angry, he was gritting his teeth. Mai and her father couldn’t stay here tonight. The water had run from the bathroom, through the laundry room, and all the way into the living room, soaking the carpet. There were thousands of dollars in damage here. It would take days, weeks to clean up this mess.
“You know who. The fucking teens. My house smells like reefer and someone apparently had the munchies!” He kicked an empty can that had once held peaches across the floor. It didn’t go far; it only splashed water on the cabinets.
“I don’t know anything about that, Liam, I swear I don’t,” Kaleigh said, taking on a placating tone. “But I’ll see what I can find out.”
He hung up without saying good-bye.
“You know who did this?” Mai asked.
He stuffed his phone back in his pocket. “I have an idea. Everyone in town knew the house was empty. It wasn’t meant maliciously. The kids, they just get a little—” He didn’t finish his sentence, thinking it better she just assume this was typical teenage mischief. Actually, young vampires, trapped by the pressure of what they were and how the process was played out again and again, were usually much more badly behaved than their human counterparts.
“Well, you obviously can’t stay here.” Liam gestured at the mess and let his hand fall to his side.
“It doesn’t smell. It’s just water. If we got a wet vac, maybe—”
“No. Those kids are going to have to come here and clean this mess up.” He walked around her, avoiding eye contact with Mai. In the car on the ride over, he’d become obsessed with her lips. He hadn’t been able to stop stealing glances at them. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about how perfectly shaped they were. How full and kissable.
“Then just take us to a hotel,” Mai said. “There’s got to be a hotel in town.”
Actually, there wasn’t. Not one open. By this time of year, the seaside town of Clare Point was closing down for the winter, its inhabitants gently ousting the human tourists to give the vampires a break. Everything would be open again Halloween weekend for the big annual Pirate Parade, but the doors of the little hotels and bed-and-breakfasts were closed tighter than a drum this week.
Time alone in the winter allowed them to let their guard down a little and take a breather. It was hard keeping your life a secret from the outside world, especially when you depended on it for your livelihood, as a tourist town did. But over the years, the Kahills had pretty much figured it out. Part of the trick was never putting a house or a business up for sale, thus preventing any humans from moving into town. In Clare Point, not a single piece of property was owned by a human.
“Everything’s closed.” Liam flipped off the kitchen light, leaving her in the dark.
“So we’ll go to a hotel somewhere else.” She followed him. “No big deal. I’ll drop you off at your place and we’ll go to Dover for the night. I’ll figure this out tomorrow.”
He turned so fast in the doorway that he startled her and she took a step back.
Good
. If she had any sense, she
would
be afraid of him. “Use your head, Mai. Whoever this is who’s calling you, he isn’t screwing around. If you’re not at home, he’ll start checking hotels. What did the coroner say about your uncle’s death?”
She looked up at him, her hands clasped and held to her breasts. “What do you mean? He . . . he said they slit his throat. You saw him, Liam.”
“I saw the wound, Mai. Exactly. And the first nick didn’t kill him.”
She looked away, but he saw moisture gather in her eyes. “How the hell do you know about mortal wounds?” she asked. “The coroner said they cut him a couple times superficially, but maybe because they didn’t really want to do it, or weren’t sure how.”
“That’s bullshit.”
She let her hands fall and looked up at him stubbornly. “That’s what he said.”
“Then he’s wrong.” Liam glared. “They cut your uncle to try to scare him, to get information out of him. When he wouldn’t or couldn’t give them what they wanted, they got pissed and slit his throat. They wanted him to suffer. You want to go to a hotel and wake up to find your father lying in a pool of blood in the hallway in the morning?”
She opened her mouth to argue, then closed it. Even in the dark, he could see her face perfectly. She was scared. But she was angry, too. With herself. With him. But she still desired him. He saw that, too. Which made plan B all the more dangerous . . . for both of them.
He flexed his fingers, balled them into fists, and flexed them again, trying to release the energy coursing through his body. Part of it was his attraction to her, but part of it was his inherent resentment of anyone who preyed on others. It seriously pissed him off. It made him do things he shouldn’t do. Like the night he had gone over the wall after the Gaudet brothers.
“You’re coming to my place,” he said, when he trusted his voice.
She didn’t argue.
The short ride to the shop was filled with awkward silence. He parked Mai’s van around back in the alley. Liam knew he was taking a serious risk with the Council, bringing humans into the town to stay in his home in the winter season. He didn’t need to piss them off any further than he already had, but he couldn’t, in good conscience, send Mai and her father to a hotel. Clare Point was the safest place for them until he figured out who was after them and why. Here, they not only had Liam to protect them, but an entire clan of naturally suspicious vampires. Nothing happened in Clare Point that wasn’t seen or heard by a Kahill, and strangers were immediately suspect, especially this time of year. So not only would the sept be watching Mai and Corrato, but they would know if the Italian mafia came to town.
Liam got out and opened the back door of the van to let Corrato and the dog out. Just as he slid the door open, he felt two vampires approach in the darkness. He didn’t know who they were from this distance, but he shot out a warning telepathically.
Back off, guys.
Back off yourself, Mr. Hotpants.
Liam groaned. At the same instant, Mai, half out of the van, gasped.
Jake and Elwood Hildegard walked down the alley, straight toward the van, dressed in black suits, white shirts, skinny ties, and dark sunglasses, their fangs bared. The two were up to no good; Liam could smell it in the night air.
“Liam?” Mai called from the other side of the van. Her voice was higher pitched than usual. Even though she wasn’t aware of what the danger was, she seemed to sense they were trouble.
The Prince of Dogs, trapped in his owner’s arms, began to bark ferociously. So, the dog had a good sixth sense, too.
Liam ducked to look at Mai through the center of the van, over the front seat. “It’s okay. I know these bozos.” He helped Corrato out of the vehicle.
“It’s okay, boy,” Corrato soothed, stroking the dog. “Just silly boys in silly costumes. Let’s make a wee-wee before we go to bed. Shall we?” He tottered off.
“Bozos?” Jake demanded. He was the older of the two brothers, but only by a year. Both of them were general pains in the ass, but Jake was a bigger one. He’d had a thing for Liam for centuries and no matter how many times Liam told him he wasn’t interested, or threatened to cut his head off with an ax, Jake still came on to him. “
Avez-vous entendu cela, frère?
He calls us clowns.”
Liam hurried around the back of the van, coming up behind Mai. She grabbed his arm. It was dark in the alley, but you couldn’t miss the fangs. Hopefully, in the shadows, she wouldn’t realize they were the real thing.
“Little early for Halloween costumes, boys? Parade’s not until next weekend.”
“Liam,
mon amour
. If you weren’t so sweet”—Jake licked his upper lip suggestively, still not drawing in his fangs—“we’d be offended, wouldn’t we, brother?”
“The pretty one is Jake. Elwood is the sidekick.” Liam pointed, in introduction.
Mai surprised him by laughing. “As in the Blues Brothers?”
“Don’t ask,” Liam muttered. The guys had, in fact, named themselves Jake and Elwood after they saw the movie about ten years ago, right after their rebirth. Most vampires kept the same first names century after century, for simplicity’s sake, but there were no rules saying you couldn’t change your name. So they had. Everyone called them Jake and Elwood, mostly because they thought it was funny. Except the grandmother who raised them. She still called them by their given names, Peadar and Muirgeas. Equally funny.
Liam glanced over his shoulder, afraid of letting Corrato get too far out of his sight. The old man was ignoring the vampires; he walked the dog on his leash in a little section of grass that ran along the building.
Liam turned back to the brothers. “You two shouldn’t be prowling.”
Jake lifted a carefully drawn eyebrow, gesturing grandly, his other hand propped on his hip. His lips were blood-red, his eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses. He wore skin-tight black pants, a shirt, and jacket, his movements over-the-top exaggerated. Liam had no problem with his homosexuality; he disliked him because he was an idiot. And idiots were dangerous.
“
Oui
. And you, my bad-ass loverboy,
vous ne devriez pas jouer avec des humains
.”
Corrato walked up behind Liam and Mai. He ignored the Blues Brothers. “It’s cold. Are we going in?”
Mai glanced at Liam.
“We’re going in,” Liam said. He opened the back door of her van on the passenger side and grabbed the bags. “If you’ll excuse us, gentlemen.” He put himself between the vampires and the humans. “
Le retour ce soir et vous souhaiterez que vous n’ayez pas eu,
” he warned under his breath as he passed them.
Back off or someone will be hosing your blood off the pavement.
At the back door, he unlocked it and held it open for Mai and her father. Once inside the tiny hallway, he locked it behind him. “Straight up the steps. They’re a little steep,” he warned.
“Big stairs are hard on little dogs,” Corrato announced to no one in particular.
Mai went up the staircase first. Corrato scooped up the dog and followed, and Liam brought up the rear. He could still feel the presence of the Blues Brothers outside, but sensed they were moving on. He didn’t think they were any real threat to Mai and Corrato, but their sudden appearance reminded him that even though he was protecting Mai and Corrato from humans, he put them at risk from the vampires. It was a crazy cycle they all experienced century after century; a part of them desperately wanted to save the humans, from themselves, as it were. But a part of every Kahill wanted their blood.
BOOK: Ravenous
6.73Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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