DeVante's Coven (5 page)

Daniel thought that was crazy. When he slept in the day, he was dead to the world. There could be construction crews and jackhammers right in his room and he would not be stirred. And once he was awake, well, it was a simple matter to tune out unwanted noise. Tamping down the noise his heightened hearing allowed was probably the first skill Daniel had mastered. He’d had to, or the never-ending cacophony of traffic and people’s conversations, never mind television and radio, would have driven him absolutely mad. Maybe as vampires aged it was the first skill to go. He made himself laugh picturing elderly vampires driven insane by all they could hear and see.

But DeVante didn’t tolerate irritation—he eliminated it. He single-mindedly focused on things the way people who live alone for a long time tend to do. Like the noise. It probably was irritating for a whole second and a half the moment he woke up each evening. But rather than deal, DeVante would have the house soundproofed. And not just his personal lair, but the whole damn house. There. Irritation eradicated.

Daniel often feared that’s all he was to DeVante now that Roderick was gone, an irritant. DeVante claimed to stay out of Daniel’s way? Well, Daniel would surely make effort to stay out DeVante’s way, too.

Staying here was a good idea, because DeVante never did. It would be easy to keep clear of one another. DeVante wasn’t a collector of stuff, but he certainly collected properties. This one had two stories and an unfinished attic, six bedrooms, and two full bathrooms. Daniel would rattle around like an old lonely woman.

And with all this room, DeVante still kept another home in Oakland, perfectly within commuting distance. Crazy, two houses practically in the same city. Daniel didn’t think DeVante ever sold any of his dwellings. Call them safe houses. Master of a real life game of monopoly. The first of Daniel’s experience had been DeVante’s penthouse in St. Paul. The penthouse itself was simple enough, but DeVante owned and designed the whole building. Even the security system was his creation, with blackout panels that dropped over the windows and the skylight. Secure from thieves for sure. But mainly it was secure from the daytime intrusion of the sun.

With DeVante involved in Daniel’s “training,” they had been more settled, spending months at a time in DeVante’s favorite cities. And each was secure in its own way, by virtue of acreage or security system. A ranch in Colorado, a hacienda in Arizona, a condominium in Miami.

After staying in hotels and motels during his yearlong wild cross-country tour with Roderick, the amenities of real homes had been comforting to Daniel.

Daniel remembered cracking up at the kitchen filled with modern conveniences completely superfluous for a vampire. But when Daniel was still human and wanted coffee, well, it was there.

He missed coffee. Possibly more than he missed anything else about being human. The smell of coffee brewing still created a craving—a craving for comfort, giddiness, hanging out with friends. Once in a while he went into a Starbuck’s and bought a mocha, just to carry it around and breathe in the scent of it.

He needed friends. If he moved into this house on the hill, maybe he could make it something more. He could invite people he met to come here, hang out. Drink coffee. Party.

It was something to think about. He would have to work on his people skills, allow himself to be less afraid and more outgoing. And he’d made a start, hadn’t he? He’d met two people just tonight—the twenty-something guy. And Reed.

Just thinking his name made Daniel’s belly flutter. He needed a shower, but he’d rather fall asleep with Reed’s scent lingering on his body.

Chapter 4


How to avoid a mortal boy

Reed woke up and the boy was gone. Thank God. He didn’t have to deal with him. Didn’t have to think about him, or justify any of it. Hell, he didn’t have to face it at all.

Well, at least not until he got into his Mustang to go to work. Then he seemed to see the kid in his peripheral vision, sitting in the passenger seat grinning at him. Damn it. He didn’t care how cliché it was, the kid had a smile that lit up the night. A smile that pulled Reed right in, got the kid stuck in his head. Reed found himself smiling back at the memory, despite an almost desperate determination to shove everything about last night out of his head.

Because there was never going to be a repeat. Let the kid go his own way and be done, like all the rest of the twinks Reed picked up. Because the fact that he’d spent last night with a teenager made him want to vomit. The fact that he’d fucked the kid until every bad thing that might have ever happened to him was meaningless and the kid was yelling his name, his brain as well as his body turned to jelly.

Reed’s brain and body, too.

Oh, God.

What an asinine thing to do—take a kid home. He should have checked the little twerp’s ID. Oh yeah, except the little twerp had already bragged about his fake ID.

He wondered how old the kid was, really. And wondered at himself, bringing the tyke home, fucking him breathless, senseless. And loving it.

Well, it wouldn’t be happening again. That was a rule of Reed’s anyway, a personal credo—don’t get tangled up in emotional bullshit. Don’t get caught. Stay easy, but stay free.

And stay the hell away from that kid. Jesus Christ, the kid was practically the same age Aidan would have been now. And thinking about Aidan wasn’t allowed. Ever.

His new client, a recent transplant to California from Wisconsin, needed a house. Reed would find her one. He would find her the perfect house. And that is all he would think about today.

His phone chirped. He dug it out of his pocket and looked to see who was calling. Maggie. Oh, hell, he didn’t want to talk to her.

Maggie was probably his closest friend. Well, actually, she’d been Reed’s ex-wife’s friend first, but as the marriage fell apart, she and Reed had become pretty tight. She was the first person Reed had come out to, in an emotionally charged discussion about why he had to leave his marriage despite everything he and Veronica had been through.

The phone chirped again. He had to answer or Maggie would panic and do something extreme... like show up at his office with flowers or lunch.

“Hey, Mags,” he greeted her.

“What are you doing for lunch today?”

He couldn’t face Maggie for lunch. Not this soon after the thing with the kid, not when he needed to keep Aidan out of his head. “I’m working through lunch, Maggie. Got to find the perfect house for the perfect client, you know, busy, busy.”

She didn’t buy it. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I just have a lot to do today.”

“Bullshit. You met someone. You met someone and you don’t want to tell me. Haven’t I been telling you that you can avoid love all you want but one of these days it’s going to hit you in the gut like a sucker punch?”

“Maggie, I didn’t meet anyone, I swear.” Sucker punch, my ass. A bit of the truth might satisfy her. “I’m just avoiding a trip down memory lane, that’s all. I don’t want to have lunch.”

“A trip down memory lane? What brought that on?”

“Nothing, Maggie. God, you are so suspicious. Trust me, if I meet someone you’ll be the first to know. You’d know anyway.”

“Damn right I would. Well, instead of avoiding the memories, why don’t we meet for coffee and walk down the lane together? You can cry on my shoulder. It’s a lot healthier. But it’ll have to be late, like ten. I’ve got dinner with Sophia’s parents.”

“Ooh, dinner with the girlfriend’s family. How fun and lesbian.”

“Shut up. Are we on?”

Reed thought about it. By this evening he’ll have certainly shaken himself free of the kid’s smile. It should be safe enough. “All right, coffee at bedtime. Where?”

He hung up. He didn’t need to cry on her shoulder. He’d done plenty of that in the past. But she’d be bursting with weekend stories to tell him and it was better to humor her sooner than to have her calling him ten times a day later.

As he drove to his office he let his thoughts wander. Aidan. He didn’t want to talk about Aidan, or think about him, or walk down memory lane. All he wanted to do was pretend he didn’t have his dirty way with a teenager last night, pretend that being unable to stop thinking about said teenager had something to do with mourning his dead child.

But he was terrified that it wasn’t that simple. He had laid Aidan’s ghost to rest quite some time ago.

He sighed. He was grateful to have Maggie. Lucky to have a sounding board in the beautiful, witty woman who had known him then and knew him now.

Reed and Maggie had talked about his and Veronica’s marriage at length, how they probably would have divorced even if Aidan hadn’t gotten cancer and died and the whole marriage became a quick-moving ride straight into hell.

Reed and Veronica had had nothing in common but their son. Their son who came into existence with a playful romp in the back seat of Reed’s classic 1972 Impala when Reed was seventeen and Veronica barely sixteen.

Oh, the stupid things we do to ourselves.

Reed had been so desperate to be straight, normal. He’d been popular with girls. He was the strong, silent type who would open up to the right woman if she were kind and patient. The truth was that Reed had practiced silence because he was terrified he would do or say the wrong thing and suddenly everyone would know he was gay. So he’d carried on with the girls, got downright friendly with a few, and then met Veronica. She was tiny and blonde and cute, and she’d decided to become Reed’s girlfriend long before she’d ever spoken a word to him. All of a sudden she was everywhere. Leaning against the locker next to his chatting with her girlfriends, giving him a glance and a smile before heading to her next class. Sitting one table over in the cafeteria, laughing and giving him playful looks. Bringing her car to his dad’s shop after school, first for an oil change, then to have the brakes checked, then to have the battery cables tightened. Reed rolled his eyes when he saw her pull into the garage that third time. He was starting to catch on. It didn’t take a genius.

He finally asked her out. She wasn’t allowed in boys’ cars alone, she told him, but they could go out with a group of her friends, as long as Veronica didn’t use the word “date” when she asked her parents. As soon as they pulled into the movie theater parking lot Veronica had it all worked out. “Hey, you guys go on without us,” she said to the other girl. “Reed and I want to talk. We’ll pick you up in a couple of hours.”

And this is how Reed came to be having sex every weekend with a girl who wasn’t even allowed to date. He liked Veronica. She was easy to be with and when they did actually talk, she had a quick no-nonsense intelligence that Reed admired. She made a point to take people at face value and not waste time analyzing or trying to read between the lines. Reed thought that was refreshing, because so many of the girls at school were over-dramatic. Veronica was a nice girl. A good girl. No wonder her dad flipped out when she got pregnant.

They’d never talked about pregnancy or birth control. Reed had kind of thought she had it covered because she was the one who initiated having sex, the one who arranged the often convoluted details that would give them time alone together. She was the one kissing him and pulling at his clothes. As an adult Reed wanted to kick his younger self for being an idiot. It was like he never even considered Veronica would get pregnant because he was gay and it was all pretend anyway. But it wasn’t pretend for Veronica, and she was playing for keeps.

She and her parents showed up at Reed’s house during dinner one night and announced that she was pregnant. Her parents cried. Reed’s mom cried. It was decided that they would get married, and it would be hard, but they would grow up quickly and raise this child.

They grew up quickly, all right. Reed graduated high school just after his son, Aidan, was born. He went to work for his dad fixing cars. Veronica graduated when Aidan was almost two, and started college the next fall. That’s where she met Maggie, who she described to Reed as “this really cool lesbian in my Econ class.”

Aidan was diagnosed with cancer before his third birthday. So instead of hanging out in bars and partying at twenty-one years old, Reed was hanging out in hospitals and oncology specialists’ offices. And although Reed sometimes felt sorry for himself living the life of a straight man, he also knew that Aidan was the best thing that had ever happened to him. He went to church and prayed and bargained with God, that if his boy beat cancer, Reed would devote his life to his family and being straight, would never think another gay thought for all time. He bargained and he begged. He loved his bright little boy with a ferocity he’d never felt before or since.

But prayers and bargains made no difference to Aidan’s fate.

Reed had mourned his son in a series of self-destructive behaviors that went on and on, until Maggie forced him to look at himself, his life, forced him to admit he would die if he continued to live in the closet. And she was right. Happily ever after was for fairy tales, not real life.

Chapter 5



How to raise and train a vampire

The shout came from the master bath.

“Hey! Anybody home? What the hell?”

“Is there a problem?” It was too soon for his guest to be awake, too soon by at least two days. Roderick leaned against the doorframe and let his eyes trail over the lean naked boy looking out the window. His latest creation.

Wow.

“Problem?” the boy said. “Umm . . . I’m not sure.” The boy looked at Roderick and his words trailed away. His eyes trailed away, too, up to Roderick’s face, down to Roderick’s boots. “Are you a client? I’m sorry, man, but I have no memory of getting here. I was supposed to be dropped back in home territory after the party. My memory’s pretty fuzzy. Did I hit my head somewhere along the way?”