Younger, Bree - Burn [All American Vampires 1] (Siren Publishing Classic) (22 page)

The others nodded. The first few weeks and months after a turning were often very difficult, depending on your maker or makers. “She guided us. Tended to us. Cared for us,” Quinn told them. “We were totally dependent on her. Like fucking newborn babies. We believed her when she said it was necessary to kill each donor. That humans were lesser beings, meant to give us nourishment and entertainment. Nothing more.”

Ty swallowed down his bourbon with one gulp and held out his glass for Quinn to refill. “She kept us close to her. We were her right and left hands, she said. We would do anything for her. And often did. Things that I look back on now and I can’t believe that was even me.”

Quinn’s hand came down on his shoulder in a comforting gesture. No one said anything. “We were completely in her thrall, just as her other followers were. She used sex and blood and pride and fear to bond us to her. But after a while…” He took a sip of his drink before continuing, “After a while we both began to realize that not everything she had told us was quite true. That humans were not lesser beings. That we didn’t have to kill to live.”

“Yeah. We took our discoveries to Simone. We thought that she would be receptive. Instead, she laughed at us. Told us not to be foolish. Demanded that we not spread our subversive ideas among the others.” Ty frowned. “I think that was the first time that I started to suspect that Simone was not completely sane.”

“We decided we had to leave. It took a while, a lot of planning. We knew she wouldn’t accept our desertion easily. She could be quite vindictive when she felt betrayed.”

He stopped talking, listening as Quinn continued the tale, and let his mind drift back. Deep into his past. A past he’d hoped had been wiped from his memory completely. He should have known better. Some things you could never forget.

Ty could still remember it as if it had been only yesterday. Simone had been beautiful. Beautiful in her ferocity. In her brutality. That last night they’d been in the ballroom of the mansion she had purchased on the outskirts of Albany, New York. It was another “feast,” as she liked to call it. Her cadre of vampires danced and laughed with the unsuspecting fools who had accepted her invitation to a weekend house party of decadence and depravity.

And Simone had shined. Gowned in a beautiful silver confection, she had drawn all eyes as she’d danced and laughed her way around the ballroom.

The party had soon disintegrated into another orgy. After that it wasn’t long before the vampires began feeding. It was a bloodbath. Ravaged bodies lay everywhere, some dead, others dying. He could remember thinking that they would have to move—again. They never stayed in one place too long. Simone and her followers did not do discretion well. They would play nice for a while, drawing to them the defenseless and pathetically eager-to-please humans who lived in this or that town, enslaving the weakest, the most disposable, for their personal bloodslaves. Then all hell would break loose. Simone would tire of pretending to be civilized, and she and her voracious horde would attack and feed until it was impossible to hide the bodies or disguise the deaths as random acts of violence.

Simone had already been talking of immigrating to Canada. She’d heard Montreal was growing by leaps and bounds, and she missed being around fellow Frenchmen and hearing her native tongue. So tonight…another slaughter.

Sickened, he’d turned away, and his eyes had met Quinn’s over the heads of the other vampires as they’d feasted, and he had known. It was time. They’d talked of leaving many times before in the six decades they’d been with Simone. Had planned it meticulously, down to the last detail.

The planning had started the night Simone had laughed at them when they’d made the suggestion that they spare the lives of the men and women from whom they drank. “Oh, You are
très amusant
,
mes coeurs
. These humans…they are like
bétail
. Cows and pigs. They are here for our
plaisir et amusement
. Do not worry yourself over their petty little lives.”

They should have left then. But instead they had let her beauty and her sensuality persuade them. Perhaps she was right. They were better than the lowly humans, weren’t they? Stronger, faster, more beautiful. Surely she knew. After all, she’d been alive a lot longer than they. She was from the old countries, where vampires even older than she had lived, and she was a thousand years old. She had to be right.

But the stirring discontent the brothers felt had grown with each blood orgy, with each needless butchering. They had given her lip service, and they had begun to prepare. They knew the price if she caught wind of their plan. She did not tolerate betrayal, and she would definitely see their leaving as exactly that. But Ty had known that somehow, in some way, he and Quinn would find a way to get away from the woman they had once worshipped. And that night, after the feast, they would leave.

She and her faithful would be sated, exhausted from their gorging. They would sleep the rest of the night through and the following day as well. It would give them enough of a head start. It had to. They would disappear. Travel south. Into the war-torn Confederacy. Amid the confusion and the chaos on the fields of battle, the two brothers would be able to lose themselves, to disappear. Simone, with her love for all things expensive and beautiful, would be horrified at the thought of having to endure the hardship and struggle. No, she was much too fastidious—except for when she fed—to venture into the ravaged Southern countryside. She might send a few henchmen after them, but Ty was confident that he and Quinn would have no problem in avoiding them, or eliminating them if necessary.

There was a reason the two brothers were her favorites, and it wasn’t just their expertise in the boudoir. They could always be counted on to take out any enemy. The years spent with Simone as their mistress had honed them both into battle-ready warriors. Yes, tonight was definitely going to be the night. He looked back over at Quinn and nodded. A few more hours, just a few more hours of tolerating Simone’s insanity. And then freedom.

Ty shook off the memory and forced himself back to the present. Quinn was speaking. “So we need to find out if she’s got any connections to the area. Properties she owns, friends, acquaintances in the surrounding states. Anything. She’s been living in Canada. Owns a string of hotels up there, last I heard.” Ty could hear the determination in his brother’s voice. “If she is connected to this shit, we need to know what her role is. I’ll be honest. She’s dangerous. Very dangerous. There’s nothing she won’t do to further her own ends. Nothing.”

* * * *

After she left the den, Libby went to the kitchen to make herself a sandwich. She took it out onto the balcony and sat staring over the Gulf of Mexico as she slowly ate, determined to keep herself from speculating about the conversation that was taking place in the other room. Once she’d finished, she stood up and walked to the railing, lifting her face to the night breeze coming off the water and just relaxing. That was where Ty found her about thirty minutes later.

She knew he was there before he even spoke. Glancing over her shoulder, she met his gaze and smiled. He was such a beautiful man, his blond hair tousled as though he’d been running his hand through it. His face, which had been creased with a frown, lightened when his eyes met hers, and he walked up behind her and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her back so that she rested closely against him.

The silence flowed around them, and Libby couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so content. She let out a deep sigh, and Ty’s arms tightened around her. “Penny for your thoughts?”

She smiled. “Oh, they’re worth more than that these days. Besides, a girl needs some secrets, don’t you think?”

He chuckled. “No.”

“Hmm. I see. You get yours but I don’t get mine?”

He turned her around in his arms and she looked up. “You know I’d tell you if I could, but you are really better off not knowing some of the things that we talked about. The more you know the more dangerous it is for you. You’re already involved more than I’m comfortable with. If anything happened to you because of me—”

“I know. It’s just…I’m worried about you, Ty.”

He smiled, a slow, engaging smile that set her heart to beating heavy in her chest. “That is just about the sweetest thing that anyone has ever said to me, Libby. But you do remember that I’m a vampire, right? Near-indestructible?”

“What I remember is finding you staked out like some turkey platter, working on extremely well-done.” She couldn’t resist reminding him.

He put his hand over his heart. “Ouch! You got me there.”

Shaking her head, she asked, “Can you at least tell me about the tattoo? I think I have the right to know why it made you all go so tight-lipped. I’m the one that told you about it, after all. You know my curiosity is going through the roof, right?”

She could see the indecision on his face, but he finally shrugged. “Let me go grab some wine and a couple of glasses, and I’ll tell you as much as I can.”

When he returned, he led her back over to the table. Once they were seated, he poured them each a glass.

As she watched him, she found herself curious. “I thought you guys didn’t eat human food. Just, you know, blood. So why are you drinking alcohol?”

His eyebrow rose. “Our bodies can’t digest food, but we are perfectly capable of handling liquids. It takes a lot more alcohol to get us drunk than it does humans, but eventually we can get there. If we try hard enough.”

“Ah, I see. So later, if I ply you with enough wine, I might have my way with you?” She waggled her eyebrows, trying to lighten the mood a bit.

“Maybe. If you play your cards right.” He winked, and those gorgeous blue eyes of his slid over her in a manner that had a shiver of anticipation running down her spine.

He sat back, and she prodded, “So, the tattoo?”

His smile faded from his face to be replaced by the same expression he’d worn when she’d first mentioned the tattoo. “Right. I told you that the tattoo was associated with a particular group of vampires. These vampires all follow the same leader, a vampiress named Simone d’Amboise.” If anything, as he said her name, Ty’s expression grew even colder and more forbidding. “She’s completely ruthless and lacking in any principles. If I could define her in one word, it would be evil. She doesn’t care who she hurts or what she has to do, so long as she gets what she wants.”

Libby digested what he was telling her. “She’s dangerous?”

“The most dangerous person I’ve ever met.”

“You and Quinn…you know her well, don’t you?”

He stared off, into the distance, and for a moment Libby didn’t think he was going to answer her. Then he spoke. “She’s our maker. The one who turned us. She believes we betrayed her. And she’d probably just as soon kill us as look at us.”

She reached out toward him, “Oh, Ty.”

“Yeah. Anyway, we were once her followers. We did things for her that I’m ashamed of now, Libby. I’m not gonna lie. Horrible things. We wore the same tattoo as the one you saw. That’s why, when you described it, Quinn and I knew exactly who we were dealing with.”

Libby thought about what he had said, sure she hadn’t seen any such tattoo on him before. “Did you have the tattoo removed? Because I know you don’t have it anymore.”

Ty explained, “It’s difficult for a vampire to be tattooed because of the way our skin heals. It takes a special kind of ink and several long and painful sessions. Once it’s on, it’s permanent. Quinn and I couldn’t have ours removed, so we had them tattooed over.”

She remembered the intricate tribal design that he had on his arm and understood what he meant. “And Quinn? He tattooed over his as well?”

He shook his head. “The same. We didn’t want any connection to her after we left, especially not something permanently stamped on our bodies. That marked us as hers.” He rubbed his shoulder over the spot where his tattoo was. “But sometimes…sometimes I can still feel it there, underneath, you know? Always there. Reminding us of the things we’ve done.”

She reached out and clasped his hand, weaving her fingers into his, offering what comfort she could to the dark thoughts she could see echoed on his grimly held features.

“Ty...it was a long time ago, right? When you did those things.”

“Some things seem like they happened yesterday, Libby, and they leave a scar on your soul. When you were running from me in the woods, you remember how scared you were of me? You would have been ten—a hundred—hell, a thousand times more afraid if you’d known me back then. Because I was more than capable of doing all of the terrible things you must have been imagining I might do to you. And worse. Much, much worse.”

She tried to imagine the man she’d come to know doing the things he was implying. Killing and torturing humans. But it was impossible. Ty was too honest. Too gentle. Too caring. He’d been nothing but good to her. Oh, she didn’t doubt that he could be dangerous himself if the occasion called for it. But not without cause. She looked at him closely and realized that he still felt deep guilt over his past actions. And she knew that wasn’t all that bothered him. In the depths of his eyes she also saw a hint of fear. But what could he be afraid of?

“I don’t think you could do those things now, Ty.”

His eyes pierced her. “But you don’t really know that, Libby. I mean, you’ve known me for, what—a few days? How could you possibly know what I might be capable of? Hell, I don’t even know. You judge a man by his actions. Right?”