“Where’s Grace?” he demanded.
“Can’t last an hour without her?” his director teased.
Christian gave her his coolest stare. Nim Wei knew he wasn’t doing this film for her benefit.
“Oh, all right,” she relented. “Grace and Mace”—she paused, grinning, to allow him to admire the coupling of their names—“are out leasing motorcycles for the boys.”
“Motorcycles,” Christian repeated, trying not to bristle at the thought of Grace alone with the hulking actor.
“Mace used to be a member of a real motorcycle gang—a ‘social club,’ I think he called it. He’s going to teach Bonehead, Growler, and your father to ride half a block without falling off. Which leaves Charlie, Philip, and Matthew to be brought up to speed by you. Grace found an empty parking lot that should be perfect for practicing.”
Andy must have been used to working around conversations that didn’t include him. He was holding up a jacket for Christian to slide his arms into. If the mortal hadn’t been standing close enough to do violence to, Christian might have donned it more forcefully.
“You expect me to train them,” he said.
“Just enough so we can get a few shots of them actually riding, even if it’s behind a tow car. Consider it a bonding exercise for Joe Pryor and his boys. Or a challenge, if you prefer. Mace has taught people to ride before. You wouldn’t want your students to fall short compared to his.”
Nim Wei’s smirk was deliberately insufferable.
“I’m not twelve years old,” he said.
With her lips still curved, she considered the leather jacket he was now wearing. Her littlest finger flicked one feather of short black hair from her white forehead.
“Too many zippers,” she and Andy declared in unison.
As they laughed, Christian wasn’t certain what irked him more: that his old enemy was enjoying herself this much, or that her human associates were clearly enjoying her.
Possibly, his anger leaked past the walls he’d erected to keep the vampire queen from probing his thoughts. Her laughter ceased, and her head swivelled toward him with the machinelike swiftness
upyr
occasionally employed. Noticing something off, Andy widened his eyes at her.
“Andy,” she said gently, “why don’t you and Wade have coffee while Christian and I sort out a few matters.”
Startled, Andy looked from her to the DP. Blood had risen into the costumer’s cheeks, suggesting Wade’s fascination with the younger man wasn’t one-sided. “Sure. I’ll show Mr. Matthews where the break room is. Just holler when you want us back.”
Christian was still wearing the idiotic Marlon Brando–from-
The Wild One
jacket. With a restraint that should have earned him a medal, he pulled it off and draped it carefully over the clothing rack.
Watching him, Nim Wei put her tiny hands on her tiny waist, like a miniature superhero from a comic book. “Exactly how long
are
you going to sulk?”
Christian’s fury frosted over his face—almost literally; his poreless skin was noticeably chill. “I shouldn’t be surprised you have the sand to ask me that.”
“You’re holding a grudge for something I did five hundred years ago, something that changed your life for the better.”
“For the better!”
“You think every
upyr
gets to be transformed by a queen?”
“Oh, that’s rich.” A dry laugh scraped across the infinitesimal ice crystals on his face. “Tell me,
Naomi
, at what age would I have become a master if I’d been turned by anyone but you? A hundred? Maybe one fifty? If you had your way, would I ever have come into my full power?”
“The idea that elders can prevent their children from becoming masters is a myth.”
“In every elder’s case but yours, maybe. What percentage of the children you’ve created reach master level? Two? Three? Compare that to the ten percent of your sire’s get who crossed the threshold, and a blind man could see a pattern. Unless you’re implying Auriclus was stronger than you?”
Nim Wei turned a look of frigid contempt on him. She’d had daddy issues with her dear departed maker, to say the least. “No one’s stronger than me.”
“And that’s the root of your problem. You need so intensely to believe that. You’ve never understood there are different forms of strength from the magic or physical. If you keep your people on a choke chain, they’re going to resent you.”
Though Nim Wei opened her mouth to argue, Christian was far from done. He’d been wanting to lay out these truths to her for some time.
“Frank Hauptmann went mad dog under your leadership. Not Auriclus’s. Not Lucius’s or Aimery’s. You’re the one who brought out the psychopath in him and his girlfriend.”
“Well, of course you’d blame that on me.” Though the queen appeared controlled, she was sufficiently enraged that her objection rode out on a puff of white vapor. “What else would you say, you being so cozy with the shapechangers.”
A sudden revelation streaked through his mind like a lightning bolt.
“That’s why you chose me for this project. You can’t stand that the shapechanging vampires trust me. It isn’t just that I slipped out from under your rule. You’re jealous that they like me. You’re still fixated on Edmund Fitz Clare. Directing me in your movie is your way of stealing me back from him.”
It was a sign of how well aimed his thrust had been that her parry was not particularly good. She waved her hand as her top lip curled. “You can throw out all the outlandish theories you please. The fact remains that if it weren’t for me, you’d be dead.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” he said, thinking of Wade and Matthaus and Grace.
“Maybe not! You were mortal, Christian. Even if your father had failed to kill you, you’d have died of old age.”
He had no desire to explain himself. “Now I understand what you’re playing at with these humans,” he said instead. “They can’t threaten to turn into rivals like your children. It’s safe to gather them around you like pets.”
“They’re colleagues,” she said stiffly. “Friends.”
The cracks in her facade were widening, the hint of defiance suggesting even she didn’t believe her assertion.
“
Friends
,” he scoffed. “How long would that be true if these humans knew who and what you are? Hell, how long would they keep circling your orbit if you didn’t hold the key to their livelihood?”
The alabaster serenity that smoothed over Nim Wei’s features told him he’d delivered a coup de grace. She’d never admit it, of course. It would have to be enough that he knew.
“Christian,” she said, one slender finger tapping his chest lightly. “Training those boys is part of the job you agreed to do. Fulfill it, or break your precious word. Just spare me any more flak.”
She spun away and strode off, following the route Andy and Wade had taken across the cavernous soundstage. She wore one of her more piratical looks tonight: a red satin blouse with skinny black trousers and knee-high boots. In the way of the oldest vampires, her pointy heels didn’t clack on the concrete floor. They wouldn’t unless she focused her power on the sound effect. Christian truly had rattled her cage if she’d forgotten this.
He thrust off the guilt he might otherwise have felt. He had no reason to be ashamed for having injured her in the one spot she was capable of feeling it.
C
hristian didn’t actively dislike humans; he simply counted few of them as friends. Humans were fragile and, in most cases, needed to be lied to. Unlike his queen, he associated neither of those qualities with forming meaningful connections.
As a result, he was less than delighted to be ferrying his mortal students to their lesson in Nim Wei’s pink and cream Plymouth. Christian’s Thunderbird had arrived from Texas that morning, but the black convertible seated only two, and Grace insisted on operating the pickup that was carrying the bikes. To his added annoyance, Christian’s high-spirited passengers seemed intrigued by the novelty of riding in the car Grace customarily drove.
“Grace likes going fast,” Charlie informed him from the backseat, where he’d been banished with Philip for chattering. “I mean, she tries to act businesslike, but put her behind the wheel and that girl can burn rubber.”
“Grace is a hottie,” Philip agreed.
“Too bad her knees are glued together,” Matthew put in glumly. The quietest of the trio, he’d earned a seat up front beside Christian. Now he rubbed his arms as if they were prickling, not realizing his comment had sent Christian’s energy spiking. It probably didn’t bode well for his control that these silly, barely grown humans were riling him. With an effort, he reined in his asinine jealousy.
“I thought you liked Grace,” he tried to say calmly.
“We adore her,” Charlie assured him, regrettably scooting forward to drape his forearms over the front seat. “Grace is the most. We wouldn’t talk like this to her face.”
“I don’t know what
you’re
complaining about,” Matthew said to Charlie. “You got Viv to pop her clutch for you.”
“A Pyrrhic victory, my friend. The little Forrester is not a fireball in the sack. She lays there like a wet rag.”
“Or a fish,” Philip interjected with a snicker. “The whole time, I thought she was deciding what color to paint her nails.”
Matthew clucked in disgust. “You slept with her, too? You’re not any better-looking than I am. Why am I the one the chicks say no to?”
“Must be your cooties,” Philip teased, smacking Matthew’s head from behind. “Wait until the film comes out. Then maybe you’ll get lucky.”
“You need to pick your target,” Christian said absently, as usual making sense of patterns in human behavior quicker than they could. “Focus on a single girl instead of chasing half a dozen. Females like to think they’re the only one on your mind.”
“Really?” Matthew rubbed his hair where Philip had slapped it. “That works?”
“It doesn’t work all the time,” Christian clarified. At least, it didn’t work all the time for humans. “Sometimes a girl simply isn’t going to dig you. It’s a good place to start, though. Intensity can be as appealing as good looks. Anyway, you’re good-looking enough for most girls.”
“You think?” Matthew asked with an innocence Christian doubted he’d ever had.
“
You think?
” Philip mimicked before Christian could respond. He turned to Christian with his hands folded girlishly beneath his chin. “Do you think I’m pretty enough, Christian?”
Philip fended off Matthew’s retaliatory slap before it landed, turning the right half of the car into a Three Stooges war of blows.
“Cut that out,” Christian said quietly.
The two boys froze mid-flurry.
“Whoa!” Charlie let out a peal of giggling laughter. “You’re like John Wayne or something!”
“Or something,” Christian muttered, wondering just how interminable this lesson was going to be.
T
he practice spot Grace had selected was an empty elementary school parking lot. Trees shielded it from its neighbors, and the high-intensity lights would help the humans see. The lot’s surface was smoothly paved and recently swept. Christian concluded he couldn’t have found a better place himself.
He’d have preferred the tension inside his chest not uncoil when Grace drove up. It did, though, as if a missing part of him had slipped into place. The sensation of sudden wholeness unnerved him. His only recourse was to keep his face impassive.
His onetime ghostly lover looked unfairly fetching getting out of the pickup in her casual shirt and jeans—a tomboy rancher’s daughter with world-class breasts. The cone-shaped bras females were favoring this decade might have been designed with bodies like hers in mind. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen anything as cute as her red bouncy ponytail. To make matters worse, Grace seemed unconscious of her attractions. When she lowered the door to the pickup’s bed, she displayed the confidence of someone who’d done the task before. Christian supposed working for Nim Wei demanded all sorts of skills.
“We’ll get that,” Charlie cried, rushing over with Philip and Matthew.
Grace smiled, stepped aside, and left setting up the unloading ramp to them. Christian joined her, probably standing too close but unable to help himself. His left side tingled where it faced her.
“You got big-twins,” he observed, referring to the three large Harley-Davidsons lying on their sides.
“I know,” Grace said, her lips pulling ruefully. “The guy at the lease place said the smaller models are easier to learn on, but these are what Miss Wei will use in the film. Can you teach them to ride on them?”
Her worried eyes turned to his, their clear green beauty pulling heat into his midsection. For a second, he’d have promised her anything. He caught himself at the last moment.
“I can teach them a little. Hopefully enough not to kill themselves.”
She laughed, though he didn’t think he’d been joking.