We Own the Night (The Night Songs Collection Book 3) (8 page)

“I’ll help you out,” I said quietly, raising my hand to still Melanie before she rose to hug me. “But I think I need you to help me, too.”

“B
ack so soon?” Tristan raised an eyebrow and smirked. I made it back to the side of the stage in time to watch the encore. Like nothing unusual had happened tonight.

“I do my dirty work quickly.” I smiled and pecked his cheek as I slipped my fingers around his. I felt better, being here. Excitement and adoration of the crowd filled me even if it wasn’t intended for me. “I need to talk to you, though.”

“Can it wait?” He’d turned so he leaned his forehead on mine. His skin didn’t feel cool anymore, since my body temperature now matched his, but he never broke a sweat. “I was thinking I should do the meet and greet tonight.”

Before Blade tried to pull rank, Tristan had taken the band’s fan events for granted. He knew he’d always have girls begging for a sliver of his attention. I knew it too, and I hated it. Once he saw how easily it all could be taken away from him, he seemed to have a newfound appreciation for his fans.

“It can.” I liked him caring about things. “But don’t keep me waiting too long.”

“Got to keep the master happy.” Tristan swatted my ass then walked away to join the rest of the band.

I headed back to the apartment, really glad for the alone time. Too much had happened tonight. And I’d made a lot of it happen. It was exhausting. I’d be glad when the sun rendered all of us down for the count in a few hours.

I peeled off my clothes, replacing them with a tank top and sweatpants, wrapped myself in a blanket on the couch, and fired up my laptop. Immediately, I looked up Melanie Vaughn. Everything she told me was here; she was wanted for questioning in the double murder investigation of her boyfriend and a neighbor. The authorities considered her to be on the run, and their trail went cold in the middle of the country. I clicked on link after link, not liking what I found as I dug deeper.

A girl named Erin Monticelli, who was reported to be Melanie’s best friend, had been found dead in the Alta Vista, which sent a shiver down my spine. Soul Divider’s singer, Drake Bonham, had been reported missing by his wife.

What was going on with Melanie? What had she done? Did she really want my protection, or did she want something else from me?

I read the stories about Erin over and over, haunted by the memories of my former roommate Janelle, who’d been murdered in an eerily similar way. A gruesome end with no real clues, except for a connection to a vampire band. Some of the articles linked Erin to Drake.

“Whatcha looking at, beautiful?” Tristan slid his body behind mine, becoming my new cushion. I’d been so absorbed in the computer screen I hadn’t heard him come in.

“Do you know anything about this girl?” I tapped the screen over Erin’s picture. “It says she was dating Drake Bonham.”

“I thought that dude was married. Not that it really means anything.” Tristan’s words punched me in the stomach. He leaned over my shoulder to take a closer look. “She looks familiar, but she looks like a thousand girls I see every night.”

“She died. Here.” I pushed the laptop to the far cushion and turned around to face Tristan. “Why does this keep happening?”

“When you want to play with things that go bump in the night, bad things happen.” Tristan’s hands ran up my shirt in a fluid motion and he bit my lip. “You should know that.”

I pushed him back, meeting his challenge, nipping him repeatedly until I drew blood. I licked away the crimson as it pooled on the surface of his lip, then pulled away quickly.

He tasted like Blade.

Not that I’d ever had Blade’s blood, but I’d tasted everything else he had to offer. My head swam, the essence swirling around in my brain, strangling my soul.

If I still had one.

“What’s the matter?” Tristan pulled me back towards him.

“What happened in that hotel room? With Blade?” Tristan shouldn’t have won that fight.

“The fifth ring of Hell, you mean? Leave it to Bradley to make the Strat even worse.” He sighed, but it sounded more like a groan. “I took care of it.”

This was a hell of a time for Tristan to start pulling his man card. “But how are you stronger than him? If he’s a clan leader, shouldn’t he have won that fight?”

Tristan’s eyes darkened. “Did you want him to?”

“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just trying to figure out how these things work.”

“I don’t really give a shit.” Tristan pulled my tank top over my head, maybe in an effort to distract me, maybe in an effort to work out some of his obvious frustration. He lowered his head to my chest, his hair tickling my belly as he scraped his teeth against my nipples.

As much as I wanted to let him crawl inside of me and stay there forever, I pulled him away from my skin by his hair so I could see his eyes. They’d changed again, from dark and disastrous to sparkling and sensuous. I had to count to three before speaking to keep my bearings.

“We need to go talk to Ryder Maddox.”

Tristan backed away from me, irritated. “Why?”

“His girlfriend asked me for protection. Talis was going to give it to her. She was there the night Blade killed Talis. It happened at Embrace. You were there, too, Tristan. She says everything she knows about being a vampire is from that band he’s in.”

“Where else would she find out about vampires?” Tristan leaned back and grabbed a bottle of Venom from the table, drinking directly from it. I looked at the bottle and curled my lip. I shook my head when he offered me a sip.

“I don’t know, Tristan. Why don’t you tell me about being a vampire?” I pulled the blanket back up around my shoulders.

He took another swig from the bottle but didn’t say anything right away. He just stared into space. I’d seen this look before, and it never led to anything good. Usually just drunken rages. I wasn’t in the mood. This night, Tristan, everything about this new world I lived in, it just exhausted me.

He licked his lips and didn’t say a word. After a minute, he got up from the couch and whipped the alcohol bottle against the wall, sending glass and alcohol showering all over the records and awards hung there.

“What the hell was that about?” Sometimes it was hard to remember not to be frightened. But irrational behavior didn’t change, even in the afterlife.

“I’m sick and tired of not being good enough for you.” Tristan reached for another bottle.

I jumped up off the couch, not knowing what his intended target was. I grabbed his wrist, still holding the blanket tightly under my neck like a superhero cape. I met his eyes, refusing to blink. “When did I say that?” My voice was hardly more than a whisper.

“You say it every day.” He looked away from me, not moving his hand. He stared out the window, his mouth settled in a hard thin line.

“That’s what you think?” I ran my hand up his arm and he flinched. I wanted to die. For real.

“All you care about is Blade.” Tristan never used Blade’s nickname, and it sounded way more obscene than if he’d mocked him and called him Bradley. He finally looked back at me, his eyes black again. “You would have left me for dead if you thought you could save him.”

I closed my eyes and sighed. It was true, to a point. I was responsible for everything that had happened to Blade, and I’d felt responsible to get him out of it. That’s why I drained Tristan. And turned myself.

But Tristan was as much a part of me as my skin.

“Do you think I’d be here if I didn’t care about you? If you hadn’t dominated my every thought ever since I met you?”

“You’re only here because you think you need to save me.” Tristan‘s tone frightened me. “I’m not a fucking rehab project.”

“I’m here because I’m in love with you.” My voice broke, tears threatened to flow. “And if you can’t handle that, maybe I shouldn’t be a part of your life.”

Tristan’s expression softened with my words, and finally I no longer felt like I was withering. His lip curled up in a smile. “You’re stuck with me. I created you.”

“You destroyed me.”

The smile faded. “You destroyed yourself.”

I gasped. Truer words had never been spoken. But still, if it wasn’t for him, I’d be living in oblivion on Martha’s Vineyard. Living.

“I hate it, beautiful. But it’s true.”

I regained what little was left of my composure. “I just want you to be at peace with what you are. You need to come to terms with this. Play time is over.”

Tristan raked his fingers through his hair and looked up at the ceiling. Letting the blanket fall to the ground, I slid my arms around his waist and pressed my body against his. He didn’t soften, but his hands touched my bare back tentatively. His hair brushed my shoulders as he brought his head back down, his chin resting on my head. Neither of us said anything for a while, we just stood there, holding on to each other because we didn’t know what else to do.

“I need to know what I am, Tristan,” I said softly. “But tonight, I just want to go to bed.”

L
ennon served as my otherworldly diplomat and my escort to meet with Ryder Maddox the next night. I didn’t wait for Tristan’s night off. That way I could save Tristan’s pride and get the answers we both needed.

The city quieted as we drove towards Ryder’s house, but my anxiety rose. My track record with vampires not named Tristan was nothing short of piss poor. Could I trust either him or Melanie?

I didn’t have much of a choice.

Melanie answered the door and wrapped Lennon up in a hug. Jealousy panged against my insides. Melanie was still alive, and I couldn’t compete with that. I knew Lennon still loved me, but I could see her slipping from me as I moved further away from being human.

My reception wasn’t even close to that warm. Melanie smiled at me nervously as she pulled free from Lennon and motioned for us to follow her. She seemed to have as many reservations about me as I did about her.

“This is Ryder,” she said as she led us to the living room. Ryder rose from the couch to greet us both. He had long dark hair, more styled than Tristan’s, and tawny skin, kind of like Tristan as well. He could have almost been his older brother, or a cousin. Just his demeanor made me feel more welcome.

“Babe, you know Lennon, and this is her friend Callie.” Melanie did a quick introduction. These two were so comfortable together. The way they looked at each other, the way Melanie’s hand trailed softly against Ryder’s back as she sat down. I wondered if Melanie had acted like that with her ex-boyfriend, before he was found dead in her bed with another woman.

Lennon sat, and I followed, just perching myself on the edge of the chair cushion. Lennon was always so relaxed everywhere she went. I had yet to earn that luxury.

No one knew where to start. Awkward.

“So, as I’m sure you guys know, Callie’s a vampire, and Ryder’s a vampire, so I guess maybe you should talk about vampire things?” God bless you, Lennon.

“I have some questions for you, if you wouldn’t mind answering them,” I managed.

“That’s what I expected,” Ryder said quietly. He sounded much more accommodating than I’d been with Melanie. “I have some questions for you as well.”

Fair enough.

I took a deep breath. “Melanie tells me that you were there when Blade, um, did whatever it was he did to Talis. So you know that makes him the leader.”

“Okay.” Ryder let me continue.