The Nightlife: London (Urban Fantasy Romance) (The Nightlife Series) (15 page)

“I don’t do girls, and I don’t do vampires, and I especially
don’t do two at once.  It’s a wonder I survived this long with you two treating
me like a bloody chew-toy.”

“Actually, we weren’t feeding.  We cleaned up your wounds, but
nothing more.  I bit you for the taste, just to get my venom into your
bloodstream.  Like I said, it helps.”

“Okay Mr. I-didn’t-inhale.  Gone to college with the
Clintons, eh?”

He laughed.  The bastard had been banging her stupid for
days and nights, biting her repeatedly with his devil’s teeth, and he laughed
like it meant nothing.  She knew him too well, like old lovers.  How the hell
did she get to know his body so damn well in such a short time?  Her hands
shook, betraying her inner turmoil.  “I don’t need any more of your kind of
help, thank you very much.”

“I didn’t see you complaining a few minutes ago.  Looked
like you were enjoying my help.”  His eyes penetrated into her soul.  She
remembered those eyes hovering over her, making love to her, pouring himself
into her body like a man possessed.

She felt her reaction to him.  Her nipples hardened again. 
Her sore pussy wetted for more.  He already had her trained to perform like a
damn bloodslave.  She didn’t believe for one minute they hadn’t been feeding from
her.  She knew the truth.

Michelle reached out to tuck a stray curl of hair out of
Katya’s face.  “You did not complain when I helped to clean your wounds.  You
are lucky to be alive.”

“Sure, I enjoy a hard cock as much as the next girl.”  Katya
looked at Michelle, as though assessing what she might have to offer, and then
addressed Aaron again.  “That doesn’t give you the right to get your leg up on
me thirty times a day.”

“Fine.  Talk to Urvashi.  She’ll tell you.  I’m not lying.”

“You know what, we are not fucking anymore.  I can smell
myself.  I smell like blood and death and sex, and you.”  She wrinkled up her
nose at the stink.  “I need a shower.”  She finally abandoned all modesty and
shoved the covers aside.  She swayed and almost collapsed as she stood.

“Whoa, wait a minute.  Let me help.”  Son of a bitch scooped
her off the ground into his arms and carried her to the bathroom.

“Put me down you stupid ass!”  He only hugged her closer.

He set her down gently in the bathtub, but by then she was
shivering with the cold.  “Leave me be!”  She growled as her teeth chattered
and her hands shook.

He stepped back, but didn’t leave the room.  “I am trying to
help you.”

She looked at that Loch Ness monster swinging between his
legs and almost asked him to help her one more time.

He watched her sizing up his package with a smirk and
reached over to turn on the hot water tap, mixing it with a touch of cold water. 
“I am not your enemy.  I have been making love to you for three days and nights,
healing your wounds.  If that doesn’t make me your friend, nothing ever will.”

“And how does that explain her.”  She pointed out the
bathroom door at the naked blonde vampire lying in her bed with a tongue that
would have every lesbian in France begging for marriage.

“Michelle and I share everything.”  The asshole grinned, as
if sharing her was their right.  “And she did help.”

“I can't even count all the ways that is so fucked up!  Besides
tongue-fucking me in my sleep, what did she do for me?”  Katya felt like
crying, screaming and laughing all at once.  Not even the hot water filling the
bathtub could calm her storm of emotions.

“I was taking from her to give to you.”

That’s when she noticed the dark circles around Aaron’s
eyes, the sunken look of his face.  He had lost weight.  And Michelle appeared
much the same with dark, bruised eyes and sharper cheek bones.  They both
looked starved.

“What do you mean taking and giving?”

“It’s kinda complicated, but I can take Michelle’s strength,
her
Qi
, and then I can give it to you to help you heal faster.  Very
fast, actually.  It’s miraculous.”

She looked down at her chest, at the bruise and the scabs of
what must have been a bullet wound.  She had done a month’s worth of healing in
three days.  But if she could have changed, she wouldn’t have needed their help
at all!  “You’re not kidding?  I really was shot?  How many times?  Where? 
Where are the bullets?”

Aaron knelt beside the tub and put a reassuring hand on her
shoulder.  He was so god-damn calm about the whole thing.  It was unnerving. 
“You were shot three times.”  He pointed at the scab on her chest.  “Here.” 
Then down to a scab she hadn’t noticed on her belly.  “Here.”

His hand trailed down her belly towards her warm, ready
folds.  She almost thought he was going to do it, give her a ride on his
fingers, with his blonde bitch watching.  She wanted him to do it.  Then his
hand slid off to the side to her left hip to another scabbed wound.  “And
there.”

She didn’t want him to stop touching her.  She bit her lip
as her hands twitched with the desire to grab his hand and move it lower where
she needed him.

The bitch stepped up beside Aaron in all her pale, naked
glory, nipples perky, large juicy clit readily visible on her shaved mound. 
She smiled as Katya checked her out, and held out her hand in some kind of
peace offering.  “These belong to you.”

Michelle dropped three disfigured metal slugs into Katya’s
hand.

Three bullets.

She hadn’t been hurt that bad since WWII, when the blonde
bitch damn near cut her to pieces.

She stared at the bullets and looked up into the eyes of two
hungry vampires, and realized just how totally strange this whole thing was. 
They should have killed her.  They should have drained her body and left behind
a desiccated corpse.  And why would they play the sex sandwich game just to
save her life?  Since when do vampires ever give a shit about anyone beyond
themselves?

And why did she have this constant urge to let Aaron fuck
her again, right now, in the bath tub, or on the floor, or bent over the kitchen
sink?

* * * *

Aaron watched Katya moping around her apartment, so weak she
could barely walk.  In nothing but her bathrobe, hair plastered to her head,
bruises around her eyes, she was
so
unsexy.  She had lost weight, they
all had.  “I’m starving.”  Katya rummaged in the freezer and pulled out a huge
slab of steak and promptly dropped it on the floor.  “Bugger!”

“Let me help.”

He scooped the meat off the floor and shoved it in the
microwave to defrost.

When he turned back around, Katya was staring at him.  “I
can feed myself.”  Her stomach audibly growled and she watched the microwave
with a look of impatience.

Aaron snagged a frying pan hanging from an overhead rack,
set it on the stove and cranked up the gas burner all the way.  “You got some
oil?”

She squinted at him suspiciously and pointed towards an
overhead cupboard.  “Since when are vampires domestic?  You couldn’t cook a
steak if it jumped in the frying pan for you.”

He looked at her, bit back a retort, and poured a dash of
olive oil in the pan.  In a far simpler life, months ago, Aaron had once been a
waiter in a New York Italian restaurant.  And though he was a very different
creature today, he still knew how to cook a steak.

Katya glanced at Michelle who sat at the kitchen table
wearing one of Katya’s t-shirts with her boxer shorts.  Aaron smirked as the
wolf obviously didn’t know what to make of Michelle lounging around her
apartment like she lived there, wearing her clothes.  Katya threw up her
hands.  “Shit.  Where’s my bloody phone?”  Her mood seemed to sour by the
minute.

Michelle sauntered over to the low table in the living room
and snagged Katya’s cell phone and brought it back with a smile.  Aaron thought
she looked cute in Katya’s clothes, almost like a normal human being.

“It’s practically dead!”  Katya shuffled over to the wall
and plugged her phone into a charging cable.

Aaron yanked the steak out of the microwave, tossed the
wrapper in the trash, and dropped the meat into the sizzling oily pan.  The
stench of cooked meat did nothing for him.  All those years he had enjoyed
barbequed burgers and hot dogs were lost to him now.  Food had no appeal.

He needed blood, and now, but Katya needed to eat something
solid first.  So he swallowed down his hunger.

After a few seconds Katya had powered her phone up and a
series of tones chimed indicating new voicemail.  “A dozen messages?  Who’s
blowing up my phone?”

She dialed her voicemail.  Aaron could just hear Ivan’s
telltale growling voice.  “Idiot!”  Katya’s eyes rolled as she looked at him.  “Ivan
got nicked!  He’s in the cells!”  Katya shook her head and listened to several
more messages from men speaking Russian, and one from a woman.

Tears slid down Katya’s face at the woman’s voicemail
message.  Though the words were foreign, the tone was unmistakable – hatred. 
Whoever had called Katya was seething.

Aaron figured it had something to do with the deaths of her
packmates.  He wanted to go to her again, hold her in his arms and reassure
her, as he’d done for three nights and days.  But those tender moments were
over.  Katya didn’t seem to appreciate his actions to save her life.

He stabbed at the steak, watched red blood ooze from the
center, and figured that wolves probably prefer their meat on the rare side.  A
plate of steaming steak in hand, he turned around to find Katya shutting
herself in the bathroom, the sound of her sobs muffled by the door.

“Go to her.”  Michelle glanced at the bathroom door.  “She
needs you.”

He wondered if he would ever truly understand Michelle.  Perhaps
she was changing.  Maybe their relationship had changed her.  A few days ago
she would have laughed at Katya’s woes.

Quietly, he opened the door and slid into the bathroom. 
Katya sat on the toilet, her face in her hands.  She looked miserable.  All he
could do was hold her, and so he did.  He hugged her and she wrapped her arms
around him and shook and cried.

Words don’t suffice in moments like this.  Words are a cheap
measure against the grief of loved ones lost.  He held Katya silently, and let
her grief run its course.

“She hates me.”

He wanted to ask who, but didn’t.

“She told Dimitri they were coming.  And now Vitaly and
Abram are dead.  I never should have trusted her.  Bloodslaves are the worst
kind of addicts.  They will do or say anything to protect their bloody
leeches.”  In her grief, the walls blocking her mind became thin and cracked. 
The horrid truth of the situation leaked out for Aaron to read.

Her own niece, Kristina, was a bloodslave.  It all clicked
into place, Katya’s intense hatred of vampires.  She hated what Dmitri had done
to Kristina.  But Kristina chose Dmitri over her own family.

What a mess.

“Here, eat something.  You’ll feel better.”  Aaron helped
her up and steered her over to the kitchen table and sat her down in front of
the plate of food.

Michelle poured a glass of water and set it on the table.

Katya’s grief did not get in the way of her appetite.  She
wolfed
down a forty ounce pile of steaming meat like it was nothing.  Finishing the
scraps on the plate, she glared at both Aaron and Michelle.  “Stop staring at
me like a fattened cow for the slaughter.  I can see you’re both hungry.  Go
find your meals elsewhere.”

Aaron looked at Michelle.  She looked as hungry as he felt.

With the food, Katya had visibly improved.  But her feast
wasn’t over.  She stood abruptly and dug through the refrigerator to pull out
milk, cream cheese and bagels.  She proceeded to slather each half of the cold,
untoasted bagels in cream and inhaled them like it was the last food on the
planet.

She looked to Aaron and Michelle again, hunger and
aggression swirling through her aura.  “Well, go on.  Go bite some poor sucker,
I’m fine.”  Her voice had dropped several octaves into the growl zone and her feral
eyes were the veiny yellow of her wolf.

He looked to Michelle, and she nodded in confirmation.  Time
to give the wolf some space.  She didn’t want vampires in her den anymore.

“Alright, we’ll leave.  Just tell me where to find Ivan.  We’ll
go check on him.”

Shoving most of a bagel into her mouth, cream cheese smeared
all over her lips, she growled.  “He’s at West End Central on Saville Row.” 
She paused to cram more food in her mouth then snapped her fingers.  “Get him
some clothes.”  She pointed at a tall oak dresser and continued wolfing down
the last of her bagels.

* * * *

Aaron wondered at Katya’s behavior.  There was something
unnatural about her appetite, something desperate.  Must be one of those wolf
things.

After hitting their motel room at Knightsbridge to shower and
change clothes, he and Michelle infiltrated a swarm of women, an office party
in the lounge.  Aaron had always loved ladies’ night for feeding – the drinks
were as cheap as the women.

They gorged themselves, each tagging several donors.  He
drank so much blood he felt bloated.  But he needed it.  This reverse incubus
shit left him completely drained, like he had run a damn marathon.

He let Michelle go to town on the ladies, but after more
than an hour, he decided it was time to prise her off her food and get moving. 
It was eleven p.m. by the time they arrived at the West End Central police
station.

Michelle took charge.  “Let me handle everything.  Say
nothing.  Smile.  Pay the money when they ask for it.”

Aaron didn’t argue.  He knew nothing of jails and police. 
Though he had killed men in four different jurisdictions around the world, at
twenty-two years old, Aaron had never once been arrested or even had so much as
a traffic ticket.  Michelle had decades of experience managing dirty cops and
back-alley dealings – far more qualified to handle this situation.

“We are here to see Ivan Solomin.  We would like to pay for
his release.”

The officer at the front desk frowned at Michelle
suspiciously.  “Surely you’re not suggesting …”

“The ticket.  There is a ticket,
oui
?
”

Relief crossed his features as he smiled tentatively. 
“Right, you mean a fixed penalty.  Let me check on that.  And you are?”

“Michelle Pilan.  We are old friends”

Aaron fought hard not to show his surprise at her use of his
surname.

The officer clicked his mouse and typed in a few things. 
Aaron read it all in his mind.  Officer Farnsworth knew exactly who Ivan was. 
They had been putting the screws to him for a day and a half, trying to see if
he’d talk, confess anything that might connect him to a crime.  They’d checked
his immigration status.  Ivan was legit.  They had nothing on him except some
disorderly conduct.  And they couldn’t hold him much longer without any
official charges.

Ivan never said a single word beyond his name.

Michelle pinned the officer with her intense emerald gaze,
waiting expectantly.

Dazed by her stare, he finally spoke up.  “Mr. Solomin is
being issued fixed penalties for Drunkenness and Drunkenness with Aggravation. 
He gave the boys a hard time, started yelling and having a fit.  Oh, and
Outraging Public Decency – we found him naked in a skip.  Completely legless.  Guess
he tanked it up good that night.”

“And how much?”  Skewering the man with her intense emerald
gaze, she didn’t let up for one second.  He could hardly look away to his computer
screen.

“That totals up to two hundred sixty pounds.  Normally, we’d
issue a notice, with thirty days to pay, but we don’t have his address, and he’s
Russian
, on a temporary visa.  Wouldn’t happen to have his address would
you?”

Michelle didn’t even pause.  “
Non
, that won’t be necessary.  We will pay now.”

Since Paris, Michelle had been throwing money at Aaron left
and right.  From their first moment together, she had always bought him
designer clothes, but these days she had become a regular money bag.  Almost
like she was buying his affections.  He had his own money, from his high roller
nights in Vegas, but she wouldn’t let him spend a dime of it.  It felt good to
be able to contribute something for once.

Aaron whipped out a fold of fifty pound notes and counted
out four hundred.  The man looked at the pile and grew a smug grin.  “It’s
after hours, the business office is closed.  We will need
exact
change. 
Sorry.”  The man was most definitely not sorry.  In fact, he fully intended to
jack them around until the morning, if he could find a way.

Michelle snagged one of Aaron’s fifties and replaced it with
a ten pound note from her jacket pocket.  “Please release him now, thank you.”

The officer took the money and grinned again.  “Well, I’ll
need to have the supervisor to sign off, and then there’s the matter of
clothes.  You see, he had none, and we don’t have any to give him …”

Michelle set a large tote bag filled with Ivan’s jeans,
t-shirt and boots atop the counter.  “We brought his clothes.”  She leaned
close, almost nose to nose with the officer.  “I would very much appreciate his
release tonight.”

He cleared his throat.  “Miss, these things take time …” 
Her eyes held him, and her fingers stroked the top of his hand.

“
Oui
,
monsieur.  We have time.  Your job is very demanding,
non
?
  If you’d like to take a
break, I can help ease your tensions.”

He looked at her funny, sideways.  “Miss, that wouldn’t be
appropriate.”  His eyes flicked to Aaron, and then the truth became clear in
his mind.  Officer Farnsworth appreciated men far more than women.

Michelle looked at Aaron, a twinkle of mischief in her
eyes.  He shook his head. 
No fucking way, uh uh
.  Michelle pulled out a
wad of bills in a tight roll, all fifty pound notes.  “Perhaps there is a way
to expedite?”

The officer glanced around as he considered the little-known
fact that the CCTV camera covering his desk had been on the blink for over a
week.  He quickly slid his hand out to snatch the roll of money.  “I think we
can have him out in no time, Miss.  No time at all.”  He smiled and the money
disappeared.

Michelle winked at Aaron.  He felt a great surge of relief. 
He wanted nothing to do with Officer Farnsworth.  Though Michelle carried an
anything-goes bisexual attitude, Aaron was a steadfast hetero.

After a few mouse clicks and a phone call, the officer
pointed to the chairs lining the wall.  “You can sit there and wait, he’ll be
around shortly.”

A half-hour later Ivan walked down the hallway to the
reception area in the clothes Michelle had brought, hands cuffed behind him, a
cheesy grin on his face.  He looked a bit thin, needed a shave, his uncombed
hair spiked up on one side, but he was alright.  He didn’t seem to be injured
at all.  The gunshot wounds had mysteriously disappeared.

The officer removed the cuffs and sent him on his way with a
stern
put a limit on it next time, mate
.  Ivan ignored him as he rubbed
his wrists and headed straight for the exit.  Officer Farnsworth nodded to
Michelle with a smirk.

Ivan was moving so fast, Aaron had to jog to catch up to
him.  “You’re looking pretty good compared to the last time I saw you.”

Ivan shook his head with a look, as if to say
not here
. 
Michelle followed them out the door and to the nearest taxi cab.

As soon as they were all seated in the back of a cab,
driving towards the apartment, Ivan whispered low.  “Did she change yet?”

Aaron and Michelle looked at each other, puzzled. “No? 
Why?  Was she supposed to?”

Ivan cursed.  “How is she?”

“All things considered, she’s doing pretty good.  I helped
her.  She’s much better now.”