Honeymoon Bite (Golden Vampire Legacy) (27 page)

“Not like I don’t tip them. They’re conspiring. Holding out on us,” Gary said to the clear night air.

“Maybe they’re tired of us, Gary,” Robert said.

“Tired of this?” His friend brought his arms out to his sides and immediately was jolted by the blade of a knife that passed through his torso from behind. Gary tried to scream, his eyes bugging out with the shocked realization of his own death.

Robert saw Gary’s mouth open one last time to let out a gurgling sound as he threw up blood and sank to his knees. Fingers clutched under his jaw and ripped a hole several inches long, nearly from ear to ear.

The movements were so quick, Robert couldn’t make out who was the attacker. But he knew he had to get out of there as fast as he could. It was clearly too late for Gary.

He ran to the truck and nearly made it. The attacker had just smashed the driver’s side window and had reached around to tear at his neck like he’d just done to Gary, when Robert’s car horn went off. Momentarily stunned, the attacker hesitated, which gave him time to push the onCall button above the rear view mirror. He could hear the emergency phone ringing.

Then he couldn’t answer the pert operator who wanted to know what the nature of Robert’s emergency was because someone with black hair and boobs the size of cantaloupes was sucking at his neck.

With the squawk of the operator in the background, Robert felt a dark coldness descend on him. He was yanked from the cab of the truck and thrown. He landed on his knees, in excruciating pain. One leg had twisted and was under his torso at an odd angle. He’d also landed with his left arm tucked underneath him and he felt pain at his wrist and elbow.

He was aware blood from the neck wound was rapidly spreading over the asphalt.

And then mercifully, he passed out.

Anne was being questioned on a daily basis, and instead of it taking a few minutes, the interviews had lasted for over an hour. She lost her job at Starbucks. She was exhausted without Praetor’s blood. She had to travel farther away to find victims to feed on.

Occasionally she saw a police tail. Her tracing abilities were not yet perfected and she couldn’t trust doing it without winding up in some boiling cauldron or fire pit somewhere, ending her life. So she waited until she absolutely had to feed, and then ventured out.

Where is he?

 She was weary of the box that was beginning to close in around her as the days turned into nearly a week of hell.

Six days later, she was greatly relieved to find Praetor back in her living room when she returned late from a feeding in San Francisco. She ran to him and gave him a hug, genuinely happy to see him.

“I am sorry it has taken so long to get back to you. Council business has been neglected while I have been here with you. And I needed time with Marcus.”

“So he knows?”

“Yes. I got to him just before Maya did. But he already knew. He was not happy.”

Anne understood this reaction. But she felt Marcus had brought it on himself. He had caused the whole problem by lying to her in the first place.

“I have some news you are not going to like to hear, Anne.” Praetor hugged her again. Anne felt tears well up in her eyes as she steeled herself. She had some faint idea it was going to cause more pain than anything she had felt previously. Worse than her leaving Italy without Marcus. Worse than Robert’s infidelity. She sighed.

“Go ahead. I’m ready,” she said to Praetor’s’ shirt.

“Marcus has announced he and Maya will be fated. The ceremony is being rushed. I will have to return tomorrow for the preparation. By the weekend they will be formally recognized, and the ceremony makes it final.”

Anne’s knees gave out. Praetor held her as she lay limp in his arms, unable to move. She felt as dead inside as that night in Italy. She had no will to live. She couldn’t even cry. Everything was gone.

He laid her gently on the living room couch. She still couldn’t move. But she could cry.

“Anne, there is something else, though.” Praetor kneeled in front of her. “He has done this so that Maya will stop preying on you. I know about your ex-husband and his friend. Word traveled to Tuscany and the council is concerned. I have spoken to Laurel. She thinks Marcus sacrifices himself. She begged me to handle Maya myself.”

She looked into his eyes, which firmly said the obvious.

“She doesn’t want him to spend eternity in a loveless union,” he said. He underscored the predicament they were in with his words. “As much as I would like to, if I did that, it would mean the end of me, and possibly you. I cannot interfere.”

Marcus could do this, she thought. He could fate to Maya. Bind himself forever to the Queen of Hell itself.

She had not dreamed about him for several nights, which probably meant he was staying away from her, and spending time with Maya. He could bring himself to do this for her, he would try to appease Maya first, and then if that didn’t work . . .

What an ironic twist of fate.
She understood now just how deeply he had loved her, and what he would do to keep her safe. And now she knew how much she had loved him.

The reality of her barren life of forever without him loomed large. She inhaled and beheld her new reality, like she was walking up the steps to a hangman’s noose.

Except that would have been merciful compared to what she was going to have to endure.

Anne was arrested the day after Praetor left to negotiate and arrange the fating ceremony. Another man had been found with his throat slashed, draped over the fence of his house, where a group of children found him on their way to elementary school the next morning. They were fourth graders, and because of their age, there had been an outcry from the community, causing the Chief to make a quick arrest of the most likely suspect.

Anne. For the first time in her life, her picture was on the front page of the local paper.

As she sat in the cell awaiting her appointed legal counsel, she got the impression none of the guards or even the arresting officer believed she was the real killer. But too many things had pointed in her direction. The man who had been killed and left for the children to view had been the ex-husband of one of her clients, a man who witnesses had seen Anne argue with on more than one occasion. The circumstances were too compelling to ignore. Anne had to give it to Maya. That woman knew how to be diabolical.

Anne was glad Marcus would be in the boy’s life now more than ever, so that the boy wouldn’t fall prey to her family.

Anne’s feelings were so raw and ragged she wasn’t sure she could respond to anything. She was resigned to just let herself be the cog in the system. Let them take her away. After all, they couldn’t kill her. She would be able to trace at night, so even if she was confined to a jail cell, she would be able to spend the night in a comfortable bed away from the dangers of prison life. She just needed a little more training. Surely Praetor would have the time to do this. The wheels of the human criminal justice system moved so slowly, she probably had years before she would have to think about it.

Her biggest concern, other than trying to repair the hole in her heart, was what the vampire coven would do to her as punishment. There wasn’t much a human judge and jury could do to her, but the council was another story. If the human world thought she was guilty, why wouldn’t the vampire world?

And perhaps this had been worked out with the council. Perhaps Marcus’s capitulation to Maya included the agreement that Anne would be left untouched and perhaps banished by the coven, or at best, left alive in her vampire body.

Her eyes filled with tears as she realized this was perhaps the last thing he could ever do for her. She knew his fating would mean Maya would be placed before any other female in his past, present, or future. She would forever be his queen, someone he would defend to his own death, if need be. He would go on to father other children. One happy family, as if the day she came to the chapel never existed.

She spent the night crying her eyes out for the last time. Praetor traced her to his own bed. He held her all night long, stroking her hair, and when she closed her eyes, she pretended it was Marcus bidding her farewell. That somehow made it better.

She had come to see Praetor as her only friend in the world. Perhaps, if he would have her, if the scandal could be overcome in the coven, he would be allowed, would be willing to take her as his partner. She knew they would never be true mates. But not having the hundreds of years of experience, as well as a family unit in place to help, she was left at such a disadvantage that for the first time in her life, she felt she could not face eternity alone.

She asked him about it as they sat in bed and watched the peachy stain on the morning sky grow, and then fade into the bustle of the day. He’d have to return her to her cell before the guards checked morning rounds.

“I am honored, Anne. But then what would happen if I find my female? You would be discarded again, for the third time.”

“Is there any precedent for people to grow into a fating? Marcus is truly going to try. He must believe something like that is possible.”

“My honest opinion? The answer is no, regardless of what Marcus tells himself.” He continued to stroke her hair and the side of her arm. “You should not make any decisions now. Wait until after the ceremony. Wait until you hit bottom completely.” He kissed the top of her head and whispered, “And then you start to build back up. If you are mending, perhaps we can talk about it. But not now.” He leaned her head back examining her lips, which she parted for him.

Anne could fall in love with him, maybe. Her eyes drew him to her and he softly complied. His tongue tasted her bottom lip but did not pry its way into hers. When she began to push into his mouth, he closed his teeth and drew his lips together, sealing her out.

“You don’t feel anything for me, Praetor?” Anne asked.

“I love you like a sweet friend. As a most precious sister, or a long lost childhood crush. I think if you examine yourself, you will see it is the same.” He traced her lips with his forefinger and smiled. “You are a wonder, Anne. Those hours you shared with Marcus I’m sure made him feel like master of the universe, to have someone such as you love him.”

“And I think he did love me back. He did.”

“Yes, I think you are right. But now we have to accept another reality. Not healthy to dwell on the past. Time to return you to your cell.”

She was out on bail later that afternoon and came home to her apartment that had obviously been searched. She straightened up, cleaned some of the litter of multiple strangers who did not care about her or her things.

She went to the hospital to visit Robert.

He had a cast on each leg and on one of his arms. Bandages were wound around the top of his head. Someone had played a cruel joke on him and had tied the bandage around his neck with a big gauze bow right under his chin. Anne was most concerned about that wound, as she smelled fresh blood. She looked at him for signs Maya gave him vampire life, like Marcus had done for her. She decided he was healing as a human, not an immortal. Even a recent turn would have shown up.

She gave him a kiss on his lips, which were swollen and deep purple. “Are you in pain, Robert?”

“Uh huh. But I’m letting them blast me full of anything they’ll give me. I might fall asleep. They have me pretty much wacked out.”

“You go ahead and fall asleep if you need to. I’m just paying respects.”

“I’m not dead yet.”

That got her thinking. Had Maya intended on killing him or hurting him? Anne believed the attacks would stop, and, if she could survive the investigation, maybe she was finally at the turning point. The fating was scheduled for tomorrow morning. How nice it would be to just leave this all behind, have all the drama be finally over.

“You hear they are looking for a female who did this?”

“I’m not surprised. They have been questioning me non-stop. My contempt for some of these men was pretty well documented,” Anne replied. “And people knew I thought Gary was a scumbag.”

“Oh, no.” Robert tried to sit up but let out a sharp groan as something hurt and he stopped. “Anne, I told them it wasn’t you. I told them I met her, in a bar before.”

Anne looked at him with what she hoped wasn’t too much pity in her eyes. He was in enough pain.

“She’s a weird one. We met her that next day after you kicked me out.”

Anne remembered the jet plane ride, the lavender bubble bath. Robert could have told her he had screwed fifty women that night and she could have cared less.

“What did she say? Did she give a reason?”

“She told me she killed Gary. But she told me that she’d come after me over and over again until I jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge.”

Anne looked out the window. Surely that was before Marcus gave Maya the news he was going to give in to her demands.

“Robert, I don’t think you have to worry about her anymore. I think she has moved on to someone else. She’s in Italy, getting ready for her . . . wedding . . . tomorrow.”

“Hell she is. She came here not more than an hour ago. She untied this bandage and sucked more blood from me. I couldn’t do a thing. Hurt like hell.”

Anne looked at Robert’s white bow tie.

So that was how it was going to be. Anne understood now that Maya would never give up. She was going to needle her for the rest of her life, and everyone around her. She would make Marcus miserable. She would ruin his life, ruin the life of the boy. She would turn everything upside down for all eternity.

But maybe Anne could stop it. Maybe it was up to her, after all. Everyone would get what they wanted, or close to what they wanted. Marcus would be free. The boy would have a father. Laurel would live to find her fated love and comfort her brother. Robert would survive to go on his eternal search or find in himself the good part Anne had seen in the beginning, and, at last make a good husband to Monika, perhaps have that family he wanted.

And everything would revert to where it had been when she lay in the cobblestone street in Genoa, drained of blood. That was the night she
should
have died.