We Own the Night (The Night Songs Collection Book 3) (21 page)

I ran my tongue over my bottom lip, tasting my own blood. Tristan’s tongue met mine, and his hands fell from my face to my hips. His skin warm against mine, even through my clothes, I writhed just enough to make him moan. In the distance, silence rang in my ears, like I heard it through cotton, only broken by the protest of female voices.

“They’re waiting for you,” I whispered.

“I’m waiting for you.” He kissed me one more time before heading back on stage.

Wiping at my face to rub away Tristan’s makeup, I watched him run around on stage, like what we had done was part of the show. Enough of the Vultures watched me like I was part of the scheduled entertainment every night I was here.

Stars fogged the corners of my vision for a minute. I looked away from the stage to regain my composure and jumped when I saw Rachel sidle up beside me and lean against my roadcase.

“What the hell are you doing here?” All the anger from the girls backstage and Tony’s deception had totally thrown me off. How could I let a female vampire get so close to me?

“I came to see the show.” She didn’t look at me, her eyes were fixed on the stage, almost as if she was looking right through the band. “And to see you.”

“Maybe you should have arranged this through your creator.” Now that the shock wore off, I was pissed she wouldn’t even look at me. She might as well have spit on me to show that level of disrespect. “Some warning would have been nice.”

“Cash doesn’t pay any attention to me.” Rachel still spoke to the stage. Oh boy. What was she up to? Last I’d seen her, she confronted me and got dragged away by Blade. Now she complained that her creator was neglecting her? This couldn’t be good.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” I didn’t want to encourage her.

Finally, she tore her eyes away from the stage and looked me right in the eye. No fear. “What do you miss most about being human?”

Her question felt like a punch to the gut. That’s what she wanted to know? I hadn’t thought about it at all since I’d been a vampire, because I was so focused on becoming a vampire. But like the smell of hamburger in Lennon’s apartment, the mention of it brought everything back, the dirty window that I saw my former life through, that I could put my hand against but never touch.

Blinking back tears, I could barely choke words out. Rachel smiled at me sadly. I took that as an invitation to dive inside her brain. Her thoughts looked a lot like mine.

“My family. Sunshine,” there was no harm in telling the truth. “And cupcakes.”

Rachel’s eyes rolled back in her head. “Oh my God. Chocolate! And bacon. I wish Josiah tasted like bacon.” She giggled, then her face fell. “I miss my family, too. And honestly, I kind of miss going to church. It was a big thing in my town. I just felt good when I left.”

“I guess I just try not to think about it. Because that’s not my life anymore.” And it was causing me actual pain to think about it now.

“It kind of feels good to talk about it though, doesn’t it?” She looked at me hopefully.

“It does.” Even through the pain, memories came in a warm rush. Much like sunshine. I snuck a look over to the stage to see what was happening over there. Business as usual. “I hate to ruin a nice moment, but I have to ask you what you want.”

Rachel looked around, then moved in closer to me. “Listen, Blade’s crazy. He’s really taking control of Soul Divider.”

“No shit.”

“Melanie and Ryder were really pissed at you. Not so much anymore, since you apologized, which I think is a big thing. But they can’t go back on their agreement with Blade. They’ve done so much for me, they saved me when that asshole Drake kept me in a cage like an animal.” She shivered. I still was inside her head, the vision of being locked up like a starving animal choked me. “I don’t want to go behind their backs, but I think they’re making a mistake.”

My skin tingled. Either Rachel intended to hand me the keys to the kingdom or to lead me into the world’s biggest trap. I didn’t answer her right away. Tristan came to the side of the stage to change guitars. He looked Rachel up and down, winked at me and nodded. I rolled my eyes and shook my head.

Rachel burst out laughing. “How’s that going for you?”

“Impossible.”

“I bet.” She watched Tristan rile up the crowd before his solo. This was always my favorite part of the show, the only time he let anyone in besides when we were alone. I couldn’t even hate her for being totally captivated. Something about these few minutes every night were just magical.

Once the band joined into the song, Rachel turned back to me. “Josiah’s not like him at all. He’s so chill. I don’t know how you do it.”

“It’s a full contact sport.” I smiled, then looked back out at Tristan, who was lost in the music. “But I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Almost. Except a cupcake.”

“Right?” She laughed. “Listen, everyone tells me that I’m supposed to want to rip your face off, but that’s just not me. I want to help you, Callie. And not because I want to betray Cash or anyone else, but because I want to help my friends. And Josiah.” She looked down at her feet once she finished talking.

“I want to help them, too,” I said quietly. The main part of the show had ended, and the only sound in the theater was the pleading of the audience, begging for an encore.

Rachel saw Tristan coming towards us, and her body language changed, deflating a little. She must have realized she was in enemy territory. “We’ll talk soon, okay?” She scurried off before I had a chance to respond.

“Where did your friend go?” Tristan raised an eyebrow as his arm made its way around my hips.

“No encore?”

He raised an eyebrow. “We did it.”

Wow. I’d really been absorbed in that conversation. I was pissed at myself. I needed to be aware of my surroundings. Always. “She wanted to leave us alone.”

“Good,” Tristan whispered in my ear. “I wasn’t in the mood for company tonight.”

My muscles clenched as I slid off the case, down the side of his body.

“Did the producers catch up with you?” he asked, as we walked back to the apartment.

“I said hi to a couple of them, but that’s it.”

“They want to film up here. They think it makes sense, because our video is making the rounds.”

“What do they want to do, recreate it?” My voice went up an octave. I still wasn’t comfortable using sex to my advantage.

“Think about it. It would totally cockblock Bradley, if we did something official, and then that cheesy tape would be obsolete.”

I took Tristan’s drink out of his hand and emptied it. I wasn’t sure what troubled me more: Tristan with business sense or Tristan’s business sense. Then I realized that he was just repeating the words that came out of my own mouth during the last board meeting. Did he read my thoughts or was it a line he got fed by production?

I thought about Rachel, now my unexpected new friend. She thought Blade was nuts and she wanted to help me. It looked like I might have a favor to ask her. If I could actually trust her.

My troubles only began with that stupid sex tape.

O
ff in the distance, someone was singing. I still laid in bed but Tristan was gone. I hadn’t quite come to yet, but the sound of the melody made my heart pound.

Was someone in the apartment? Had they done something to Tristan? Now I sat bolt upright in bed, clutching the sheet to my body, looking for my clothes. The sunlight was our biggest enemy, and with our current circumstances, that was saying something. We truly became corpses in those hours. Dead and defenseless.

Once I’d thrown on my jeans and one of Tristan’s T shirts, I followed the sound of the mystery voice. It wasn’t an unpleasant sound at all. In fact, it was beautiful. Rich and deep. I didn’t have to go far, it turned out. Only the sound of the shower distorted the song.

“Hello?” I knocked on the door, smoothing my hair that had to be wild from just waking up.

The singing stopped. I knocked harder.

“Come in, beautiful,” Tristan called from behind the door.

I opened the door slowly, not knowing what I’d find. Was someone enjoying torturing him so much they sang while they did it? Tristan didn’t sing. I racked my brain, thinking of any of our enemies that did. Enough of my friends had come face to face with such horrible ends that it didn’t seem so far-fetched that the singing signaled something would be terribly wrong.

He was alone, and I delighted in watching suds slide down his wet body when I opened the door to the shower. I leaned against the wall, not saying anything, letting my heart come back down into the stratosphere after the scare.

Reaching over and laughing, he dragged me in with him, fully clothed. He pressed me against his body, the water running over me, soaking him. “Good evening,” he murmured before kissing me.

My hands and lips quickly became so busy my brain completely quieted. Tristan pulled the wet T-shirt over my head and undid my jeans, pushing them down so I could step out of them and kick them aside before he pushed me up against the wall. I’d almost forgotten how scared I’d been for him just moments before.

I pulled his head up so his eyes met mine. “Were you singing?”

He looked at me like I was out of my mind. “You heard that?”

“Yeah. That’s what woke me up.”

He looked away from me quickly. “Sorry,” he mumbled and then lowered his head back to my neck.

“I didn’t know you sang.” I tipped my head so he had to follow my body.

“I don’t,” he snapped at me and slipped his fingers in between my legs, like punctuation to his statement. I closed my eyes and tipped my head back. Then I realized his fingers moved in the same rhythm as the song he sung.

“It was beautiful.” My words came between ragged breaths.

Tristan looked back up me, with annoyance. “What was?” His fingers wiggled deeper inside me.

“The song,” I gasped. “Your voice.”

He didn’t respond to me with words, his fingers came back to the surface of my body, pushing my legs further apart. He lifted me up against the wall, thrusting inside me until my body crumpled off the wall and against his.

My legs shook violently when he put me back on the ground. He might have thought this conversation was over, but I didn’t. His fangs sunk deep into my neck, as if he thought he could drink the memory of his song from me. I held on to him by the waist as he drank, the vibrations bouncing back and forth between our bodies. The world clouded over, like suds in my consciousness, and I lost my footing, pulling Tristan down on top of me.

He licked my neck clean as we lay on the bottom of the shower, then offered me his wrist. I tore into it like a starving, dirty refugee. I needed to take my power back from him.

Finally sated, we held onto each other in a heap with the water raining down on us, washing the wasted blood away.

“Why are you so upset that I heard you singing? That’s not the sort of thing you should keep a secret. I mean, you don’t even sing backup in the band.”

Tristan’s eyes flashed anger. “There’s a reason for that.”

“Which is?” Why was he acting so ridiculous about this? I was trying to pay him a compliment, and he was furious.

“It sounds different to you than it would for regular people.”

I wrinkled my eyebrows in confusion. “Tristan, I’m telling you, it was beautiful. And I don’t think anything the band does sounds any different to me now that it did before. No subliminal messages, no nothing. Why are you so embarrassed to be good at things?”

He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “The record producers decided I shouldn’t sing back up.” The words dripped with indignation.

Unbelievable. I needed to fire those hacks. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“It’s not.” Tristan’s tone evened out a bit. “Remember that song I wrote you?”

All the muscles surrounding my heart twinged. My taste in music was the complete polar opposite of Tristan’s, and that piece of music, simply played on an acoustic guitar, sounded like the soundtrack to one of my dreams. “How could I forget it?”

“That was something I wrote for me, not for you.” His words broke my heart. “Because I never thought it would sound like anything more than a bunch of broken, backwards notes to you. It was my way of keeping you with me when I couldn’t have you anymore.”