Lost Angeles (16 page)

“
Science
says you have a parasite,” I remind him. “Or, in this case, lots of tiny parasites creating a symbiotic life-cycle in each and every cell of your body. That’s why it’s impossible to cure, because it’s not only a virus, it’s quintillions of microscopic animals who are aces at waste recycling and cell regeneration.” A slight pause, before I repeat, “Quintillion. That’s ten zeros, in case you were wondering.”

He snorts. “Thanks for the pro-tip.” There’s a rustle as he moves enough to twitch the sheets.

“It also explains why your junk still works.” I grin against the pillowcase. “Even if it doesn’t
work
work, I mean.”

Xaine gives me a strange look, like he can’t quite believe I said that out loud. “Science might explain why vamps are faster, stronger, more powerful than everyone else, but it doesn’t explain why I can hear the screams of the fallen in my sleep. It doesn’t explain what the turn did for my music. And it sure as shit doesn’t explain why
living
burns like such a motherfucker now.”

“Does it?” I ask tentatively. “Burn, that is. Is it really so bad?”

“Not all kinds of burning are bad. You should know that by now. Unless you don’t know that. In which case, shame on your boyfriends.”

“Boyfriend.” I tell him. “And it wasn’t exactly a burning sort of relationship.”

“Well, shame on him, then.” One hand finds me in the dark, somehow avoiding my skin entirely while hooking a finger under one long, slightly damp tendril of hair. “Sometimes the burn is so good that you’re okay with the idea of falling into the fire. You welcome it. Would upend a can of gasoline to keep it going.” A pause. “It always goes out. That’s just the shitty way of all things.”

“A candle burned at both ends.” I quietly contemplate the way he wraps one color-tipped gold strand around his finger again and again, brushing his thumb across the shining coil he’s created. “You’re right. One end or both, the fire always goes out.”

“Well, when my fire goes out, it’s going to be with a big goddamn bang, I guarantee it.” Xaine’s mumbling now, like rubbing my hair was the big, scary vampire version of handing a toddler his blankie. Sure enough, a second later his eyes drift shut and his breath evens out.

It takes a few minutes of silence, patiently waiting for the rise and fall of his chest to become a slow and deep cadence, but I know the very second he slips into sleep because his fingers stop moving, still twisted in my hair, the backs of his knuckles pressing the heavy locks into the pillow. Tentatively, I reach out and lay a hand on the bare expanse of his chest. The skin is cool to the touch, but not the sort of cool that comes from the chill air or a brisk fall night. Nope, this is the kind of from-the-inside cool that can only be attributed to a vampiric metabolism. It’s why everyone thinks they’re undead.

Everyone except Xaine, apparently. Nope, oddly enough the shallow vampire rock star has deep thoughts, and as I lie next to him in the darkness, I can’t help the smile that tilts my lips. Angels and demons and fires that burn too bright to go out; it’s the stuff of song lyrics, and it suits him perfectly.

“Well, cowboy,” I speak softly into the night, “one thing’s for sure. You’ll still be burning long after I’m gone.”

Relaxing into sleep is an exercise in torture. I haven’t been afraid of the dark for a long while, because my monsters have been on hiatus, but if the car ride here is anything to go by, then the demons have returned with a vengeance.

Perfect.

I’m glad I’m next to Xaine, curled up against his cool body. Maybe I won’t dream of silver shark teeth and golden tiger eyes. Maybe there won’t be any blood in tubes or burning pain. Maybe I won’t wake up in a sweat, face buried in the pillows, screaming until my throat is raw.

Maybe my unreasonable fear of the dark is completely unfounded.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

The bedroom’s dark. It isn’t ever anything else, actually, between the smoked glass windows and the heavy curtains. Vampires don’t exactly experience sensory deprivation, so I can still make out the nuances in the shadows. I can tell it’s early evening without glancing at the clock on the bedside table. Normally, it takes me the better part of an hour to wake up, but not this time. Not this evening, with Lore snuggled up against me like I’m not a human-shaped chunk of ice against the sheets. She’s warm, her own little furnace now that she’s cocooned in the blankets. Completely limp, out cold, breathing nice and even, heart rate—

Mmmmph.

Yeah, lying here, listening to the steady, subtle rhythm of her pulse isn’t doing my dick any favors.

It’s almost surprising to see how soft her features are when she’s asleep. No more smart-ass half-smiles or sardonic twitches of the lip. It’s just her and me right now, and waking up with an armful of soft-and-sweet really is my idea of heaven. I’ve said on television interviews, in print interviews, during radio banter, that this is how I want to go, but that’s not the truth. Because when I’m here, in this moment, with the soft weight of a head resting on my shoulder, an arm thrown over my chest, a long leg hooked over my knee, and a fan of hair decorating the pillows, I don’t want to
go
anywhere.

Lore does that thing where her breath catches as she shifts, rearranging herself against me like I’m her own personal body pillow. I hitch my free arm under my neck and stretch out, making more skin available for her comfort and my own general amusement. As far as I’m concerned, she can sleep in my armpit for as long as she needs to, working whatever’s left of the sin-eater juice out of her system. When she wakes up, I can cram some food into her…

Shit
.

With the passing thought of food, my fangs start tingling. It’s been ten, eleven, twelve, too-many-to-count hours since I fed, which means I’m going to have to ease myself out of paradise and get something to eat. The exact second that I start to move, Lore jerks awake. Her hand spasms reflexively, nails digging into my bare chest. Her arm clamps down on my middle, her leg tightens around mine like she’s the red stripe on my candy cane, and then she hits me with the full force of a startled pair of baby blues. She looks a little frantic, heartbeat kicking into overdrive as she blinks once, twice, then relaxes, burying her face against my skin with an exhale.

When she looks up again, she mutters, “You okay?”

“Am
I
okay?” I say, keeping tabs on her double-time metronome heart. “Are
you
okay? You just jumped so hard you almost fell off the damn bed.”

Lore runs a hand through her sleep-rumpled rainbow locks, smoothing down the fly-aways and tucking bits behind her ears. She stares at me, bleary-eyed, and I can tell that she’s thinking hard about something.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m good. You caught me dreaming.” She offers up a small smile and a half-shoulder shrug. “No sweat.”

Plenty she’s not saying right now, but none of it’s my business. Not that we didn’t hit ninety-miles-an-hour kind of intimate on the stage at Scion, or hell, even on the floor in the hallway when I returned to reality to find her straddling my lap. Still, the awkward morning-after is still the morning-after, even with vampire rock stars and Fuzzy Bunny bedmates who are clutching a ticket to ride the pony but have yet to cash it in.

As it is, I let the arm she’s currently occupying tighten, a reassuring squeeze from the guy trying to beat a hasty retreat to the kitchen. “Well, if you’re fine, I’m fine.”

Just hungry. And you smell like breakfast.

Well, not exactly true. Lore smells like shampoo and clean skin and the subtle perfume that’s wholly and unmistakably female. It doesn’t help that she isn’t wearing anything under the hole-riddled T-shirt I put on her.

I don’t have very many rules, but one tried-and-true is that I don’t fuck when I’m hungry. I know vampires who do. Hell, I used to do it myself, but over time, the risks started to outweigh the thrill. Even if I never killed anyone doing it, there are a couple of women who had really close calls at my hands and dick, so whatever else is going to happen with Lore, it’s not going to happen this second.

“I need to get something to eat,” I finally mutter, realizing she’s not filling the silence with a bunch of meaningless chatter. Waiting. Just waiting. Waiting for me to answer. Waiting me
out
, like a spooning blonde cipher. It takes me another couple of minutes to realize she still hasn’t said anything, and I haven’t so much as twitched toward the door. “A hungry vamp is a dangerous vamp.”

Pathetic. It sounds like something you’d get out of a fortune cookie, which means two seconds later, my brain tacks on—

In bed.

Lore’s head comes up until her chin digs into my chest. Approximately two feet of rainbow-threaded hair tumbles around her heart-shaped face and across my shoulder and over my stomach. One set of fingernails trace a tiny pattern across my chest. I don’t think she even realizes she’s doing it, but hell if I’m going to be the one to clue her in.

“You didn’t eat anything last night?”

“Yeah, I did.” Back at Scion, but as far as those girls were concerned, it was basically
hors d’oeuvres
. “But not enough.”

Not enough, because performing takes as much out of me as it does anyone else. I ride that stellar high for a few hours before crashing hard. Normally when I crash, it’s face- and fangs-first into a willing neck. Two, on a concert night. Then there’s fucking and more feeding and then crashing for a few hours. Lather, rinse, repeat.

“Look, I don’t actually want to get up,” I mutter. “I think you and I could use about twenty-four hours of downtime before facing the real world, and I’d like nothing better than to stay put.”

“So, breakfast in bed?” Lore hits me with a wry grin. “I don’t mind. At least… I don’t think I’ll mind?”

The way she says it gives me pause, mostly because I’m not sure she really understands what’s she’s offering. Those curves and that innocent face make me want to devour her whole, but it’s that now-familiar question that is not a question that makes me pull back.

“Have you ever been bitten, sweetheart?” It’s pretty much the same as asking if someone’s still a virgin. People lie about it, and a lot of them stretch the truth, if they’re addicts.

But Lore’s not a liar or an addict, and her expression more than confirms my suspicions before she ever says, “No?”

There it is again.

It’s like the hallway back at the club, with big blue eyes and importuning looks.
Elizabeth
all over again. Except Lore is her own woman, with her own agenda and her own dreams, and she can make immortality happen without me. Her music will echo longer than anything else. Her particular brand of magic is still reverberating through me, hours later, leaving me hungry for the next hit.

Huh. Who’s the addict now?

I tease a brilliant blue strand of hair away from her face, gauging her reaction when my fingers slide along her neck and over her shoulder. I don’t know I’m waiting for… a flinch, maybe, or that sudden intake of breath that would indicate she’s changed her mind. But Lore keeps those eyes of hers trained on me, unblinking, waiting for what comes next.

Just like a virgin on prom night.

I slide my arms around her waist and pull her against me. A slow roll, and she’s on her back with me atop her. Then I see it: a tiny measure of fear, the slight widening of the eyes, that moment of
are we really going to do this?

Wedged between Lore’s mile-long legs, I breathe her in. My lips find hers, and I know I probably taste like metal, the iron sting of the blood doll offerings I downed a few hours back. It’s still in my mouth, on my teeth, flavoring the tongue that slides past her lips. There’s a moment of hesitation, then her tentative tongue flicks out, like she’s on a quest to get to know me one millimeter at a time. It’s sensory overload, between the way she smells and how soft she feels and that steady
tick-tick-tick
of her pulse. I move down to nuzzle under her jaw where I can hear it best. Listening to the heavy double-thud of each ventricle makes my mouth water, makes my teeth ache, makes my cock twitch until there’s no other sound in my world but the racing drumbeat of her heart
.

“You sure about this, sweetheart?” I murmur against her skin, the question just another kiss.

For an answer, Lore arches her entire body against me, and I sure as shit take that as a “yes.” Sinking my fangs into the side of her neck, I break the skin. Crack her seal. As the razor points of my canines sink into her flesh, she hisses. It’s a sharp noise of surprise, of pain, that reflexive action that says it hurts, but so
good
. She tenses, braced for the crashing impact of her world falling down around her, but a moment later I get the tickling flutter of her lashes as her eyes drift shut.

Mouth still latched on, I gently extract my fangs from her flesh, and the hot spill of her warmth across the back of my throat is intoxicating.

Sonuva—

I wasn’t lying when I told Reille those girls in my dressing room were “just food.” Truth is, every girl
but Reille
was just food.
Her
blood was like taking a case of Red Bull, a gallon of espresso, and a kilo of really high-grade cocaine, shaking it in a paint-mixer, cutting it with napalm, and shooting it straight into my bloodstream. One of a kind.