Lost Angeles (30 page)

As soon as my ass hits the seat, I pull out my phone and start checking the stats. Three different clips of Lore stomping off the set with her huge-ass sandwich. Fourteen different bootlegs and counting of her in her underwear, but the primary upload came from a burner account run by one of the Scion PR lackeys, under a pseudonym, of course. Despite what Cas thinks about how I run my company, I don’t let people get the jump on me when it matters. And it’s nice footage, I will admit, of Lore’s pretty ass working its way up my staircase.

Her gaze slide over to the screen, drawn by the backlight. “Jesus, they didn’t waste any time, did they?”

“Nope.” It sounds a little more cheerful than it ought to, given the circumstances, and she doubles-down on the frown when I hit repeat. “Five thousand hits and counting.”

“
Why
?” she says, sounding a little bewildered by it all.

Welcome back, Fuzzy Bunny.

Punching up my iTunes account, I jab at the screen until “In Your Light” starts to play for her. “That’s why, sweetheart.”

I hand it over, watching her face as she cradles the cell in her palm. It’s one thing to hear your song in the studio, but something else entirely to hear it like it’s the new release from Taylor Swift or Katy Perry, fresh off the internet. She probably doesn’t realize it, but she’s stroking the phone case. Conflicted, because she’s probably daydreamed about something like this, and now it’s happening while her friend is dying by inches.

“They’ve been playing it nonstop on KIIS and KROQ all day,” Lonan adds, turning on the radio.

Then she gets it in stereo, her voice chasing mine. I reach out and shut off my phone, because the Jeep has decent speakers, but I leave my hand over hers. Then she’s petting me instead, which is more than fine by me.

“We need to do that again,” I observe softly when she doesn’t say anything all the way through Noah Carmichael’s newest single. “Just you, me, and the studio. It was a good time.”

She gives me a flicker of a smile, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “You think so?”

“You don’t?”

“It was… not what I expected?” There’s the half-shrug to go along with the question that’s not a question. “It
was
awesome, but y
ou
were different than I thought you’d be.”

“Yeah, I can see how my up-close-and-personal might surprise you,” I tease her, just to feel that blush intensify.

“No, I mean… it wasn’t like the rookie and the rock star. It was just you, and me, and the music…” Her voice trails off, because she can’t find the words to explain herself.

Me, I have the words. I’ve been in that bubble often enough, burning through the hours like they’re nothing. When I’m in there alone, it’s a frenzy that lasts hour upon hour. Forgetting to eat, forgetting to sleep, forgetting everything.

Or trying to.

Lore is right. It
was
different, sitting in that bubble with her. Crosslegged on the floor together, like we did onstage at Scion, except for the times she was at the piano and I was on the soundboard instead of the guitar. Even caught in the throes of her muse, Lore takes the time to savor the notes, to neatly write out the lyrics, to meticulously record everything in perfect pitch and time so that the raw notes-on-bars echo inside my head without a single word sung. There’s deliberation there, the sense of a soul at ease, a bird gliding on an updraft. She’s a worker bee, too, with a precise and focused purpose to everything she does. Hell, in those short hours, she taught
me
a few things about composing, about the mixing software she uses, about taking the skeletal remains of a two-decade-old napkin scratch and making it a song.

I know where Lore’s version of “In Your Light” came from. The piano, the violin, the vocals, the guitar, the percussion… it was all her. One line at a time, each instrument in turn. The girl is a closet virtuoso. Unfortunately, in an industry where every pretty voice and pretty face is spit-shined and run through the mass-production wringer, nobody’s even going to notice. She’ll be famous, no doubt about that, but nobody on the planet is going to know what I know about Lore. Nobody’s even going to ask.

Their loss. My gain.

I tilt my head back and close my eyes, wishing we were back there right now, instead of headed for the shitfest waiting for us at PFC. When Lore’s fingers tighten down on mine, I crack an eyelid at her.

“What?”

“Maybe you should eat something before we go in there?” She chews the inside of her lip before adding, “You know what we’re walking into. There’s going to be a lot of blood. And if you haven’t eaten…”

“I know, sweetheart. Like an alcoholic wandering into a bar, or something.” I scowl and try to count back the hours, because I never eat when I’m on set, and I was too distracted by her staircase stunt to give a single fuck about food. “Lonan, we need to make a pitstop—”

A soft little snort interrupts me, and then Lore sticks her wrist under my nose. When I wrap my fingers around her arm and push it down onto the seat, she crosses the other one over and tempts me with that.

And absolutely no lie, I
am
tempted. She smells like makeup, and under that, she smells like my shower wash, and under
that
she smells like warm female. I’ve been on my best behavior since she stepped foot in my house, especially since she planted all those curves in my bed, so I guess somewhere along the way I’d acclimated to the constant tingle in my fangs.

And my dick
.

While I’m wholly unwilling to fix the thwarted dick situation in the back of Lonan’s Jeep, I raise Lore’s wrist to my mouth and break through her fragrant skin. She sucks in a breath, then exhales and leans against me, body going lax when I disengage my teeth and drag the first warm mouthful in. Then we’re back in the bubble… that space where everything is quiet except her pulse, a heartbeat that’s set the rhythm for my every waking second since the moment she walked onto the stage at Scion. In the vaguest of ways, I hear Lonan mumbling about how he could have pulled through Starbucks, and Christ, don’t get anything on his seats, but then he’s smart enough to shut his mouth and concentrate on the road.

I don’t intend on taking much, because the last thing I need is Lore falling out of the car at PFC and into Asher Reece’s Popeye arms with two fresh holes in her. Hell, I didn’t
intend
on
any
of this. You’d think pulling a girl into my insane world would be enough to knock her on her ass and then some; instead, I’m the one whose life has been upended, like someone took my snow globe and shook the living shit out of it.

I keep her wrist against my mouth long after I’ve stopped drinking, lips pressed to the wounds until the blood slows to a trickle. Takes me a moment to realize that mellow haze has taken up residence in the back of my skull again, another to realize I’m murmuring new song lyrics against her skin. Lore has her head against my shoulder, and I know she’s transcribing the whole thing onto mental Post-Its for us.

Soon
, I promise myself.
Back into the studio, and the entire world can go fuck itself.

Only one hurdle to clear first.

“We’re here,” Lonan says, and I catch his nervous, frowning glance at Lore in the rearview.

The second we pull past the first industrial gate and checkpoint, Lore sits up straight, sucks in a deep sigh, and pulls her wrist free of my grasp. Her other hand wraps around it, twisting loosely as she works through the worst of the aching. A shiver runs the length of her spine, visible, raising goosebumps on her pale flesh and causing her teeth to chatter. That’s how I know she’s cold. That’s how I know I took a little too much. Scowling, I reach out and recapture her hand.

When her sweet face turns my way, she’s quick to reassure me. “I’m okay.”

“You sure?”

She nods, offering up a sleepy smile. “Yeah, I’m good. Not even dizzy. Let’s do this.”

The sooner we get in, the sooner we get out, but I’ve got to brace myself for what’s to come. Lore may be utterly clueless, but every moment of every turn that I’ve ever witnessed is burned into my cerebral cortex, the same as every note of music I’ve ever written.

“Let’s get this over with, then.”

Phantom Firearms is ghetto-adjacent, but the crackheads know better than to go near the industrial fencing that encloses the concrete building. At one point in time, it was probably a shipping warehouse. Pretty much a box with windows, it takes a closer look to see that those windows are frosted over on the upper levels. Vague discolored outlines on the lower floor show where other old panes have long since been bricked up. Someone carved out enough earth underneath it for a subterranean garage space, and I know for a fact that Asher’s stashed a veritable convoy down there. There are cameras everywhere, from the second gate that swings open when Lonan punches in a code to the reinforced steel door bearing the company logo. It’s nothing short of a fortress, and while some men might pump their dick with huge houses or fancy cars, Asher Reece compensates for his in the form of big guns, bad bullets, and a vamp-killing research facility like nobody’s ever seen before.

It
must be
really
fucking tiny.

Before we’re even out of the car, the proprietor is already headed out to meet us. His gaze goes straight to Lore, skimming over her from head to foot but dodging away before he looks her full in the face. She’s still wearing my clothes, and I must admit that the jeans are far more interesting on her. Judging by the disapproval on Asher’s face, he doesn’t quite agree.

A few feet closer and I start to notice other details about our host. He’s limping a little, walking with a slight hitch in his normally regimented step. One of his eyes is rimmed in purple, and there’s a scabbed-over cut across his left cheekbone. Bandages are wrapped around one arm from wrist to elbow, too, which tells me that some serious shit went down in the twenty-four hours since we parted ways.

“The fuck happened to you?” I ask.

A single sour look is all I get before he turns to Lore. “You need to mentally prepare yourself before we go in.” Dark eyes return to me. “She’s not doing very well. I’ve had her on an IV most of the day, trying to get enough blood into her.”

I raise an eyebrow at that, because if Jess isn’t able to drink it, then “not doing very well” is a polite way of saying she’s completely fucked. With weak-blooded amateurs trying to force-turn a girl, it really couldn’t have gone any other way. “She’s sweating that out, too, isn’t she?”

Far from surprised or horrified, Lore looks grim. Her lips are pressed together in a thin line that reads ten kinds of pissed. “I want to see her.”

Asher’s eyes meet Lore’s, and whatever he was about to say goes right out the window. It takes a second for me to realize what I’m looking at, but when I do, I can’t stifle a surge of irritation. There’s sympathy there. Commiseration. Pain, and suffering, and all those other human traits that make martyrs out of men. Asher and Lore
care
about Jess, and it gives me pause, because Asher’s never once taken an interest in anything but stroking off his guns. Pause, because the only person I’ve ever seen him actually care about is Reille. Even his own sister is something of an obligation, but some borough-born lackey is his new BFF, apparently.

“Are you trying to wait us out?” I say, drawing Asher’s attention to me. His eyes flash with irritation, and I can practically see him drumming up enough spit to tell me to go fuck myself with a cactus. “Because if we stand out here much longer—”

“Come on.” Turning on his heel, Asher strides into the building, almost like he’s in a hurry to return to the sweaty, bleeding mess we’re sure to find dying inside his warehouse.

I keep my eyes trained on his back, taking mental inventory of the man with us tonight and weighing it against the Asher Reece I know. There’s a slouch to his shoulders and a curve to his spine that has nothing to do with his injuries. Beyond the bruises and limp, he’s broken down. I’m still considering his cocked-up body language when I hear the telltale beep of a security sensor. My stomach clenches as the heavy door swings open, and it completely bottoms out when I put one foot on the other side. I’m in a building devoted to UV weapons development, and either of the men walking with me could ram enough concentrated sunshine up my ass to reduce me to a pile of dust in half a second flat. Knowing Asher and his father’s reputation, I’ve no doubt that they wouldn’t even have to exert themselves to kill me; there are probably UV tubes in the overhead lighting throughout the entire building. Flick a switch or thumb over a touchscreen, and I’m toast.

So this is the bit where I should be grateful that Asher and I have become unlikely allies. Next comes the part where I’m supposed to hand the whole thing off to a pair of studio tosspots and have them cough up a movie script for our little bromance over a flat of Red Bull and Chinese take-out.

Or not.

After a long corridor and a set of metal stairs, we end up in an observation room kitted out with a two-way mirror. Asher gestures that we should stay here, then ducks through a second door. Through the glass, the three of us watch as he pulls back some hospital-style privacy curtains, revealing the baby vamp in the bed. Lore sucks in a breath, reaches out, and places her hand flat against the pane. A thin, steamy outline forms around her fingers.

Damn cold in that room.

“Asher’s hoping the lowered temp will slow the blood flow.” Lonan pauses, flashing a quick glance at Lore, but her attention is fixed on the room beyond the glass. “That maybe it’ll keep her from bleeding out so quickly.”

“How long will this go on?” is Lore’s softly worded query.

She’s talking to Lonan, but what does he know?

“It goes on until it stops,” I mutter.

Jess looks like shit
.
The blood those vamps pumped into her is matted in her hair and clotted under those slick, lacquered acrylics of hers. Her skin has a yellow pallor to it, as do her eyes, because the juice headed into her arm via IV is oozing out her pores. The linens are soaked-through red, shiny from the liquid, and I can’t help the way my teeth ache at the sight of it. The flavor of metal hits the back of my throat with every breath I take.