Something Wanton (Mystics & Mayhem) (34 page)

“Such insolence,” he grumbled, frowning.  “You wound me, Miss Blaylock, you truly do.”

I giggled as he took a long drink directly from the bottle.  He lowered it, licking his lips, and winked at me when I moved my hand.  This time, it really did look like wine. There was no glimmering light or flowery aroma.  It had a deep, rich scent to it instead that reminded me of something.  I arched my eyebrow in question and he corked the bottle and resumed his seat, feet up, before answering me.

“Essence,” he said finally, taking a long drink of the fairy concoction in front of him.  “Not just any essence, but that of a master vampire.  It was a gift.  It’s very good, if a bit…vivid.”

“But…how did you get it in that bottle?”  I asked in awe, holding it up and staring up through the bottom of my glass, like I would be able to see the person it had belonged to that way.

“It is done using a spell,” he said, smiling at me in genuine amusement.  “Understand, I have no true knowledge of these things. If you want specifics, it might be best if you ask your grandmother exactly how it is done.  From what I have gathered, it is harmless to the donor.  The spell simply siphons a portion of their essence and transforms it into liquid.  There was more to it, of course, but I am not a witch so I am afraid that is all I can tell you.
  We do it often for darklings recovering from stasis to protect the donors.”

I hadn’t understood what he meant by the essence being vivid, but it didn’t take me long to figure it out.  The second it touched my tongue, flashes of color and light blurred my vision.  I could see a field full of wildflowers, and feel the warmth of the sun on my skin and the sensation of a summer’s breeze blowing through my hair.  The vision only lasted a second, but that was enough to make me want to take another drink, to see and feel more
.

“Quite nice, yes?” Skippy asked, watching me.  “There are very few souls who can do that, infuse a single memory into their essence when they give it.  She was an amazing woman.”

“Was?”

“Yes, she sleeps now,” he said sadly, tracing the rim of his glass with his finger.  “Eternity can be very trying when you are alone.  Most go mad without a mate to anchor them, others sleep.  She may rise again when she is ready to face the world again.  Then, she may not.  For my part, I hope she does.  I find I miss her.”

“You were…friends?” I asked, wondering if I wasn’t overstepping my bounds.

“Yes, of a sort,” he said, smiling wistfully again.  “We were very close.  I shall leave it at that.  To say more would be ungentlemanly.”

He could leave it at that if he wanted to, but I could figure it out pretty well all by myself.  She had been his girlfriend.  Not his mate, but someone he cared about deeply.  I wondered why he had shared her essence with me if she was so special to him.  Then, maybe he was just letting me experience something nice for a change.  He knew the memory the essence contained and he wanted to share that with me.

“Why do you help them?” I asked, staring down into my glass.  “The darklings, I mean.  Tyler said you created Nexus, and you said you help darklings recovering from stasis.  I’m just wondering why.”

I glanced up to find him staring into his glass too, a haunted look in his eyes.  There was something about that look that made my heart go out to him. 

“I knew a young woman once who suffered your fate,” he finally said softly, still staring into his drink.  “She was a remarkable creature, so full of light and warmth.  I was with her the night she turned.  I watched as the light in her was snuffed out, replaced by utter darkness.  She did
not have your strength, Miss Blaylock.  She could not control what she had become.  In the end, I was forced to kill her.”

How awful for him—and for the girl.  Sierra had warned me about the darklings that couldn’t control their demons.  They became animals, the
ir sole purpose for living being to feed.  It was what she had feared would happen to me.

Thinking about Sierra brought to mind the last time I’d seen her, tossed in that closet like she was no more important than trash.  But she
had
been important.  She had been important to me and to Nathan and to who knows how many other people.

And now, all she was was a memory.
 

“I wish you could have helped Sierra,” I whispered sadly.  “She tried to help me.  She didn’t deserve to die that way.”

“No, she did not,” Skippy said with a regretful sigh.  “Miss Lovell was an extremely wise and lovely creature.  We attempted to revive her, but the stasis was too far advanced.”

I swallowed hard and nodded so he would know I understood.  It was terrible for me, thinking of Sierra forever lost in Oblivion.  Maybe her other half would find her the way mine had found me while I was lost in that darkness.  Then she wouldn’t be so alone.

Skippy looked away, but not fast enough for me to miss the blood tear that slipped from the corner of his eye.  He discreetly wiped it away and cleared his throat before turning back to look at me with a friendly smile.

“And what of you, Miss Blaylock?  How did you become a darkling?”

“I was infected when I tried to save a friend during a ritual called the
Rituali Cinis
,” I told him with a shrug.  “I couldn’t watch my friend die.  It’s not in my nature.”

“And did you succeed?  In saving your friend?” he asked, sounding genuinely curious.

That question was tougher for me to answer.  Jack had never really recovered from his time playing host to a demon.  I hadn’t seen him personally, but Kim and Blake had kept me updated on how he was doing—and the general consensus was that he was not doing
well.

He had spent some time in a hospital in Colorado for a while after the Black and White Ball.  When he’d returned to school, he’d seemed like he was better.  Then he’d gone to the movies with some of the guys from the football team, not knowing that the movie they were going to see was some kind of supposedly
true story about a demon possession.

They had to call an ambulance halfway through the film to remove his nearly catatonic body from the theater.

After that, he just kind of snowballed downhill.  He had floodlights installed in his bedroom and kept them burning all night and day.  One of his parents’ housekeepers made the mistake of turning them off one morning and he attacked the poor woman, screaming that she was working for the Shadows that were trying to get him. 

He stopped going to school.  He refused to leave his room.  He didn’t eat.  He couldn’t sleep without waking up screaming from the nightmares that plagued him.  He talked to himself constantly.  Not in the ‘Oh, damn.  I forgot to study for Trig’ kind of way, but in the ‘I have an imaginary friend and his name is Bob’ kind of way.  By all accounts, he had gone completely off the reservation.

The last report we had was that his parents were sending him to a different hospital for treatment, for his own safety and theirs.  The truth was, they were afraid of what the neighbors were thinking about them as their Golden Boy son slowly lost his mind.

And this time, I couldn’t save him.  I didn’t know if anybody could. 

“I don’t know, Skippy,” I told him, unable to hide the sadness in my voice.  “I honestly don’t know.”

We sat there for a long, silent moment, both of us lost in the memories of those we had lost.  I wondered then if that was what being immortal was all about—loss.  How many people would I lose?  Not Nathan, of course, or Tyler.  But Kim and Blake, Grams, Mrs. Val.  They were human.  One day, they would d
ie and move on to the next life.  They would become other people and forget about me, while I would remember them until the end of time.

“
I believe we have become entirely too maudlin,” Skippy  said, bringing me back to the present.  Setting his empty glass aside on a small table, he got to his feet and looked me over with a grimace.  “I find I cannot bear looking at you like that any longer.  We must find you some clothes.  If we are to engage our enemies in battle, you cannot go wearing an autopsy sheet.”

Yeah.  He just
had
to remind me of that, didn’t he?

“We?” I asked, shaking off my revulsion.  “Giving up naptime to help the masses, Skippy?”

“They attacked people under my protection, Miss Blaylock,” he said, his expression turning dark.  “I will not let that insult go unanswered.”

“Ember,” I told him, sick of the formality, as he came around the desk and offered me his arm.  When he looked confused, I rolled my eyes.  “You can call me
Ember
, Skippy.  Or is my name yet another thing about me you don’t like?”

“Actually, I find your name suits you,” he said, not quite meeting my eyes.  “You remind me of a flame.  Warm and full of light, but blazing hot and dangerous if one gets too close.  Yes, I think Ember suits you very well.”

There was actually something about me the little man liked!  He thought I was rude with bad hair, but he liked my name.  The shock was almost too much for me to stand.  Then again, maybe he was just trying to lure me into a dark room to use that hooked skewer thingy on me.  Hmm…

“What are you thinking?” Skippy asked, grinning at me as I gave him a look dripping with doubt.  It was just too easy, his turnaround from potential murderer to new best friend.  I didn’t trust it.

“That I would prefer not to be autopsied, since I’m not
technically
dead.”  I rolled my eyes when he just stared at me, his expression a mixture of horror and amusement.  “Don’t give me that look, Skippy.  I know you were fantasizing about dissecting me a couple of hours ago, so don’t deny it.  Where is all this tolerance coming from all of a sudden?”

He looked bemused for a second and then he laughed, really
laughed
, and I saw surprise flash across his face before he looked at me, his eyes wide.  “Why, Ember!  I do believe I
like
you!”

Oh-kay.  I didn’t know whether I should smile or run screaming down the hall.  I mean, what kind of guy decides he likes someone because they have the nerve to be
mean
to him?  That was just too bizarre.

“If you can find me some clothes, I might like you, too,” I told him, flashing him a cautious look when he gave me another wide smile.  “In fact, I’ll make you a deal.  You find me something to wear and I’ll stop calling you Skippy.  What do you say?  Deal?”

He seemed to consider my offer for just a second, his face set in lines of contemplation.  It was an eerie look on a kid.  That’s the thing about vampires; you can be fooled by the face.  Beneath the surface, though, is a being who might be hundreds of years old.  The mind, the soul, might be ancient.  When their true age really shows through, it can be kind of weird.

“Very well, you have a deal, you ungrateful little imp,” he said, his face transforming back to that of a kid barely into his teens fluidly.  “Let’s go see what we have in the closet, shall we?”

I let him lead me from the room and down the hall to the elevator.   As we walked, I tried to figure him out.  He was obviously powerful, but he also seemed very lonely to me.  How long had it been since the little man had had a real friend.  Not one of the goons that worked for him, but a
real
friend?

I watched him curiously as he laid his palm flat against a panel next to the elevator door
and softly murmured, “Ground floor.”  The elevator doors slid open soundlessly and Skippy, smiling, waved me in ahead of him. 

“How many levels are in this house?” I muttered after he’d joined me and the doors had closed behind him.

“Three levels underground and four above,” he said with a slightly patronizing smile.  “We use the subterranean levels as a sort of laboratory and hospital for creatures such as yourself who can’t be helped my modern medicine or healers, like your dear grandmother.  The lowest level is a dungeon.  We keep criminals in the cells there—under strict guard, of course.”

A dungeon
and
a morgue.  Oh, no! 
That
didn’t make my skin crawl!  Uh-uh, not me!

“Do I even want to know what the upper levels are used for?” I asked warily.

“The upper levels are just what they appear to be—a rather luxurious home.”

If I hadn’t been so lost in my thoughts
of dungeons and mad scientists, I might have seen the way Skippy’s body suddenly stiffened.  I might have heard the soft growl that started to build in his chest.  But it wasn’t until the doors opened to reveal a lavish pink marble entryway that I realized something was terribly,
terribly
, wrong.

“What’s that light?” I whispered shakily, watching the flickering light that was coming through the open front door.

I knew what that light was.  I had seen it many times in my dreams.  I knew it was the fire of torches…or maybe even something worse.
   

The question was, who had lit the fire.

“I believe we have company,” Skippy snarled.  “Stay here.  I will return shortly.”

Stay there? 
Was
everybody
that I dealt with just plain stupid?  There was about as much of a chance of me standing there as there was of my other half slamming back into me with a ‘Hey there!  I missed you!’