You're So Vein Read online

  His sarcasm went unappreciated.

  “What’s the third blood source?”

  “I know less about that one, and I have not tried it myself, but a laboratory in California has supposedly perfected a form of synthetic blood that can provide essential nutrients without requiring the donation of actual blood.”

  Something tight inside Ava’s chest began to loosen. “That sounds a lot more reasonable to me than munching on the neighbors. I’ll do that.”

  “Will you?” He pursed his lips and looked doubtful. “From what I understand, the product is not yet available outside of California. Also, at present, the cost is said to be prohibitive for all but the oldest vampires, those who consume the least.”

  Ava shrugged. She’d never worried much about money, not after she began modeling, and certainly not after M had taken off. “How much can it cost? I don’t mind paying more if it means I don’t have to give hickeys to total strangers or to their donation packets. And I’m sure that whoever makes it must be able to ship it. I mean, why else did God give us FedEx if he hadn’t wanted us to have guaranteed overnight deliveries?”

  “The prices I have been quoted begin at seven to nine thousand dollars per pint and go up from there. At your age, that would amount to a minimum of ninety-eight thousand dollars per week, or a little less than five-point-one million dollars per year.”

  Okay, maybe she could learn to worry about money.

  He must have read her second thoughts in her expression, because the corner of his mouth twitched upward by almost two millimeters. On anyone else, it would have looked like an involuntary muscle spasm. On this man, she thought it might actually count as a smile.

  “Come on. It won’t be so bad.” He held the blood bag out to her again. “You don’t even have to taste it if you don’t want to, though I promise it would not taste anything like you remember. Even your taste buds have changed now.”

  “Right. A-positive now exhibits the spicy piquance of a good pinot noir on my palate.”

  Her threshold of tolerance had never been very high, and this man had overwhelmed it long ago. She had to get out of this place, go home and pretend that this had all been a horrible nightmare.

  She opened her mouth to make a graceful—and desperate—exit, only to be cut off by an unexpected noise coming from just behind Dima. Someone was pounding on the loft door.

  She shot a quick glance upward. Judging by the look on Dima’s face, he hadn’t been expecting guests. In fact, he clearly hadn’t been expecting anyone.

  He grabbed her by the upper arm and urged her away from the door. “Go into the bedroom,” he ordered. “Wait there until I tell you to come out. If you disobey me, I will beat you until you bleed. Do you understand me?”

  His tone sounded as dire as the apocalypse, but for some reason, Ava felt not even an inkling of fear. She didn’t believe a word of his harshly delivered threat.

  “Who is it?” she demanded, digging in her heels and refusing to move. “Why are you acting like it’s the Gestapo at the door? Is there some sort of vampire Gestapo? Did you break the law? Are you in trouble? Can I watch them cuff you?”

  Dima growled and gave her a slightly more forceful shove. “Get in the other room, kurva. Do not come out until I come for you. Go!”

  She opened her mouth, fully prepared to continue the argument, when an enormous crash made her protests moot. In the time it took her to draw her breath to speak, the door to the loft crashed open as if forced by a medieval battering ram. Dima spun to face the intrusion, and Ava found herself trying to peer over the shoulder of a six-foot-three-inch guard dog.

  Damn it, she wished she still had her boots on. Without them, he was just a smidge too tall for her. She rose onto her tiptoes and prayed for balance.

  What she saw silhouetted in the doorway made her jaw drop.

  “Reggie?!?!?”

  Chapter Nine

  Dima mentally cursed himself for relaxing his guard so far that neither his poyasnie nor his bulawa was close to hand. The knife remained in the bedroom where he’d used it to cut Ava’s ties, and the mace sat atop his computer desk where he’d been working when he’d heard her begin to stir toward wakefulness.

  He glanced across the room toward the desk, measuring and judging whether he could cross the distance before the intruders were upon them. He had nearly decided to risk it when he felt Ava stiffen behind him and heard her gasp.

  “Reggie?!?!?” she shouted, stepping to the side and exposing herself to attack like a little fool. “What are you doing here? How did you even know where here is?” The question seemed to strike her and she shook her head. “I don’t even think I know where here is.”

  Dima looked from Ava to the doorway and guessed she must be addressing the small, curvaceous woman who stood there. He had already fixed his attention on the enormous masculine shadow lurking in the hallway behind her. He knew the woman called Reggie was vampire, but she was young—and female. He had instinctively prioritized her as less of a threat than the man behind her.

  “What am I doing here?” the woman in the doorway demanded, sounding irritated in the way only friends or family could become. “I think it’s more important to hear what the hell you’re doing here, Ava. You who have been missing for over twenty-four hours! Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been? Do you have any idea how many people are out looking for you right now?”

  Ava blinked for a moment, a fleeting expression of regret shadowing her features before she managed to stuff it behind her customarily arrogant mask. She stepped completely out from behind him and glared at the other woman, ignoring the hand Dima put on her shoulder. “The last time I checked, I was a thirty-two-year-old woman, Regina. As I mentioned earlier, I don’t need to be walked home from school.”

  “How about from the after-school program?”

  The shadow behind Regina stirred and stepped forward, filling the doorway and making Dima’s palms itch for his weapons. He could smell the man from here—Lupine. From the looks of him, he was no omega wolf, either. This one screamed alpha, and judging by the way he hovered over the third figure in the doorway, he wouldn’t hesitate to kick ass if anyone threatened the women he’d accompanied.

  “Just hold it, Graham,” the woman named Regina ordered, shifting so that the light caught and glinted off her dark red hair. “You can have a chance at Ava when I’m done with her. I think I deserve an explanation, and I want her to give it to me before we go any further.”

  “When we’re done with her,” the second woman corrected. Her tight tone contrasted sharply with her soft, sweet features and baby-perfect skin. “We’ve all been worried, Reg, and I want to hear this explanation, too.”

  “It’s good to want things.” Ava nodded, raising her brows. “In fact, I myself want a few things, like the reason why you two are here, not to mention how you found here at all. Did you have Graham follow my scent like a bloodhound?”

  Dima expected the Lupine to take offense to that. Instead, the man just arched his eyebrows and looked resigned. Annoyed but resigned.

  The second woman, the soft, mousy blond one, laid a hand on the Lupine’s arm and frowned. The instant their skin came in contact, it became obvious they were mates. “Of course not. We were really worried something might have happened to you. We brought Graham along for muscle, nothing else.”

  “We didn’t even need him to track you down,” Reggie said. “He just wouldn’t let Missy come unless he came, too. Finding you wasn’t hard, just time-consuming. We tracked your cell phone via GPS. But since you’re not a wanted criminal and you hadn’t been gone long enough to file a missing persons report, we couldn’t just call the phone company and ask for your location. We had to get creative. It took Misha’s assistant all night to hack into the system!”

  Dima stiffened at that, but Ava just tilted her head to the side and batted her lashes. “Oh, well, let me just apologize for the time it took your husband’s personal assistant to commit a felony. I don’t
know what I was thinking.”

  “I wondered about that myself, Av, though for completely different reasons. You see, for some reason I got all upset when I found out this morning that my best friend somehow managed to plant herself at the scene of a homicide last night when she told me she would be safe walking home on her own!”

  Ava blinked. “What did you say?”

  “You heard me,” Regina dismissed. “What? Did you think no one would notice? That while routinely patrolling the city, the Silverbacks wouldn’t spare a glance for two dead bodies, one of whom was Other and the second of whom had been obviously munched on?”

  “Noticing that stuff and cleaning it up is kind of what the pack does, Ava,” Missy threw in.

  “And of course when they found a woman and a vampire murdered in an alley along the route everyone knows you usually take when you walk home from my place, Graham thought Missy and I should know. The scouts said your necklace, the one Bertie North designed specifically for you, was found at the scene.”

  Fingers instinctively reached for her throat. Finding it bare, Ava looked confused for a moment. Dima hadn’t noticed her wearing a necklace last night, but he had been a bit preoccupied. If one had been there, he wasn’t surprised to hear it had gone missing. She had likely lost it while she had fought with her attacker. It would make sense if the clasp had broken in the struggle.

  “And you think I had something to do with killing those people?”

  “No! Frankly, we were afraid the necklace was all that was left of you! I nearly had a damned stroke!”

  A flash of guilt crossed Ava’s face, but it was gone so fast, Dima couldn’t be positive he hadn’t mistaken it. It was replaced with decided irritation. A more natural reaction for her, he was sure.

  “I didn’t ask you to wait up for me,” she snapped. “I didn’t ask for either of you to babysit me or act more like my mother than my goddamned mother ever did.”

  “That’s not fair, Av.” Missy’s voice had softened and she reached out to lay a hand on her friend’s arm. “We were worried about you. How could we not be? We love you.”

  Dima saw the way the Lupine—who he was guessing was the same Graham he had heard led the city’s largest pack of werewolves—pulled a face at that comment, but he was more interested in Ava’s expression. She appeared distinctly uncomfortable with such an outward show of emotion. Regina apparently noticed it as well.

  “Yeah, and we proved it by not letting Rafe tag along tonight.” She injected a note of irony into her voice, clearly trying to lighten the mood. The look of panic had faded from her eyes.

  “Why would Rafael want to come with you? I would think he’d be pleased at the prospect of my possible demise.”

  “He wanted to come in a professional capacity,” Graham said. “As the head of the Council of Others, he felt responsible for looking into the accusations.” That statement ended in a grunt as his mate jabbed a sharp elbow into his stomach. He frowned and rubbed the area. “What? Did I lie?”

  “What accusations?”

  “One of the bodies found in that alley you left wasn’t human. That makes the murders Others business.”

  Two of the women looked uncomfortable. Ava just looked baffled. “I must be missing something …”

  “The council can place you at the scene of a double murder. The first victim, a human, was obviously killed by the second victim, a vampire,” the Lupine explained. “It’s the second victim that concerns them. The council knows he was stabbed and died as a result of massive trauma to the heart, one of only two ways to kill a vampire. They feel there is a possibility that the vampire’s killer committed the act after becoming enraged over the human’s murder. That it was a sort of vigilante act.”

  Ava shook her head. Dima could see that she understood the implications, but that wouldn’t make them easy for her to accept.

  “We know you didn’t murder anyone,” Missy rushed to reassure her. “It’s obvious that as a human, you don’t have the strength to have killed a vampire even if you wanted to.”

  Regina sighed and eyed her friend soberly. “But the council knows how you feel about vampires, Av. You haven’t exactly kept it a secret. Everyone on earth knows you think we’re monsters, so you shouldn’t be surprised that the council might think—”

  Ava cut her off with a humorless laugh. “That in my spare time I do double duty as Buffy the Vampire Slayer?”

  “What?” Regina scoffed. “Are you going to deny it? Are you going to tell me you don’t think vampires are—and I quote—‘the filthiest scourge on earth since the bubonic plague’?”

  Teeth clenching, Ava turned away from her friend and swore. “Yes, well … maybe I’ve changed my mind.”

  Dima kept his expression carefully bland. “I suppose you could say that, couldn’t you?”

  “Shut up.”

  “No,” Regina protested. “What does he mean by that? And come to think of it, who the hell is he, and why are you in his apartment? I’m assuming this is his apartment?”

  “That’s a bit of a long story …”

  Missy folded her arms across her chest. “We’re not going anywhere until we hear it, Av.”

  Dima tried to suppress his urge to cause Ava trouble, really he did, but he failed miserably. It only seemed fair. She had already caused him a great deal of trouble, and he had a distinct feeling this was just the beginning. “Would you like me to tell them for you, diva?”

  “Tell us what?”

  Regina’s eyes narrowed at his casual use of the endearment. She looked from him to her friend, but it was obvious from Ava’s expression that she had no idea she’d been referred to as a beautiful fairy-tale heroine. She seemed to take all his endearments in stride. He should be grateful for that, since he seemed to slip and use them more often than he should. And since one or two of them hadn’t quite been endearments. Few women felt dear when a man called them kurva (a shrew), which he had done, or damochka (an arrogant little woman), which he’d certainly thought of doing. Kralya (regal beauty) he figured she would take as her due.

  He ignored Ava’s glare, her loud protests, and the hand she tried to slap over his mouth. At her height, it was in easy reach, but Dima was quicker.

  “Tell you that Ava is finding it just a bit difficult to hate the thing that she has herself so recently become.”

  Ava shut her eyes when the bomb dropped. He guessed she didn’t need to see her friends’ faces to know that shock had widened Missy’s eyes and made Regina’s freckles stand out in even sharper than previous relief against her milk-pale skin, but Dima found the sights fascinating.

  “You bastard,” Ava muttered, aiming the insult in his direction. Even if she missed, he doubted she would regret it falling on anyone currently in the room.

  “You can’t be serious,” Regina said, her voice breathless with shock and disbelief.

  Missy gaped. “Are you telling us … Are you saying that … you’ve changed? That you’re a … vampire?”

  “Newly fledged,” Dima answered cheerfully, ignoring the foot Ava slammed into his shin. It likely hurt her more than it hurt him anyway. “Shall we have a toast?”

  “Well, well,” Graham said, a smile slowly blooming across his face, “Ms. Ava Markham has become a vampire. What is the underworld coming to?”

  It took twenty minutes to get their visitors out of the loft, and Ava only managed it by promising to show up at Vircolac—Graham’s Other nightclub and the site of the chambers of the Council of Others—at the crack of dusk the day after tomorrow. On the penalty of death. Permanent death.

  “That’s as much time as Rafe can give you,” Graham had said. “The council’s meeting on Tuesday, and they’ll need an explanation by then.”

  Which left Ava approximately—she glanced at her watch—approximately thirty-six hours to flay Dima alive, cut him up into little pieces, and display him on spikes along the city walls.

  She leaned against the loft door for a minute, struggling to reco
ver her energy after the onslaught of her friends. She knew they meant well, as they always did, but she’d been overwhelmed enough for one night. Her head was pounding, her hands were trembling, and she felt as if she hadn’t slept or eaten in a week. All she wanted was to crawl back into the bed she’d been so eager to get out of a couple of hours ago and sleep until this nightmare had run its course and she could get back to her normal, sane, human life.

  Was that really so much to ask?

  A deep breath and a concentrated surge of willpower gave her the strength to turn away from the door and fix Dima with her special reserve Ice Queen Bitch from Hell Death Stare (patent pending).

  “I would like very much to know,” she began in a tone as even and silky as good dark chocolate, “exactly who the hell you think you are and what you think gave you the right to meddle in my affairs by telling my friends about events in my life that are entirely my business?”

  “You know who I am.” Dima didn’t budge, not even when she began to stalk toward him like a lioness intent on a kill. “My name is Dima. Vladimir Rurikovich. I am your sire.”

  “I don’t care if you’re my goddamned inner beach bunny, you had no right to do that.” Her volume didn’t increase, but neither did her intensity decrease. Ava wasn’t sure if she was just too tired to shout or if she’d reached an entirely new level of anger never before experienced by woman. It could be both. “It was my news, and they were my friends. I deserved the opportunity to tell them at my own pace in my own way.”

  “And when would that have been? When your hunger became so overwhelming that you bit your friend with the Lupine husband, who would have needed only a fraction of that excuse to chew on your heart? Or would you have first attacked your vampire friend, the one who may not be more than a few years old, but who could still have snapped your neck like a birch twig before she remembered to pull her punches out of love for you? Which of those would you have preferred?”