Bite of Envy (Just One Bite #4)
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Authors: Kay Glass
Bite of Envy
Copyright 2012
By Kay Glass
Kindle Edition
License Notes
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Dedication
This one goes out to all of you who have stuck with me from the
beginning of Love Bite to the end of this story, Bite of Envy. Thank you for
believing in me, even when I didn’t always. Thank you for supporting me, when
not everyone did. And above all, thank you so much for believing in my
characters as much as I did.
And special thanks, as always, goes out to my husband. 6
years together, baby, and we’re still going strong. Thank you for staying by my
side, and thank you for supporting me and encouraging me to follow my heart
before anyone else did. I look forward to so many more years by your side. I
love you, forever and always.
Chapter One
Lizbeth stood in the clearing behind the precinct where only
one short week ago she had nearly lost her life. What her life had become was a
mystery to her, and her heart broke as she considered just how different it all
was now. So many hopes and dreams she'd had, kept hidden deep in her heart as
she struggled to make it through one unending day at a time. All those hopes
and dreams, and none of them were like this. None of them were to be some
mythical creature that, by all things rational, should never exist outside of a
book or movie.
One short week ago, almost to the minute, her life had taken
a swift nosedive. Instead of being a typical human, she was a pathetic vampire,
sharing a home, a bed, a life, with the most skilled vampire Eamon claimed to
have seen in his 270 years as one. Diandra was some sort of super vamp, and
Lizbeth was merely a pale, poor imitation of the woman she loved beyond all
reason. Even RaeLynn, the daughter of her heart, was more powerful and more
useful than Lizbeth could ever hope to be. She kicked angrily at a tree trunk
and winced as the jolt resounded up her leg and into her hip.
If Diandra had kicked the damned tree,
somebody would stand by and yell, "Timber,"
Lizbeth thought
bitterly, hating herself for it even as the thought hunkered down in the
darkest part of her mind and settled in to stay.
She'd taken only a day off from work to rest, recover, and
lay out a new plan for her life. Her speed of recovery was about the only
freaking advantage she had going for her, and it rankled. Instead of
maintaining her appearance and gaining wonderful powers as Dia had, she gained
little in the way of advantages, and now had to struggle to adapt to the
contacts she was forced to wear to hide the changes to her eyes. Once a shade
of pretty sky blue, now they were more of an electric blue, and her pupils were
elliptical like a cat's. The contacts made the changes more subtle, and the
natural color of the lenses hid most of her pupillary problems. If only they
made something that would soothe the pain of her new life.
Lizbeth tried hard to keep the resentment she felt from
showing, and she thought she was doing a pretty decent job of it. Outwardly,
she treated Dia and Rae the same as she always did, and she attended her
training sessions with Eamon without so much as a whisper of protest. The only
change she'd made to her schedule was the pity party she held for herself at
the end of every shift, standing alone here where it all had gone wrong for
her. She'd take a few minutes to calm her nerves and slow her heartbeat down to
its eerie new rhythm before heading to her ratty old Nissan and heading home. Living
her life this way, going through the same lie over and over again, had her
teetering on the edge of despair. She wondered idly how many vamps ended their
lives through the years before shaking it off. No, if she'd survived a horrible
existence on the streets- she was strong enough to adapt to her new life.
If not for the strange eyes and blood drinking, her life
wouldn't be much different. Maybe that was the key to getting through this life
with her sanity intact- maybe she could just pretend she was still human. After
all, she was hurting no one by living the lie. In fact, the council encouraged,
no, demanded they live their lives as though they were mere humans. Why
couldn't she actually try to pretend it was true? The thought almost cheered
her up, even as she knew Diandra wouldn't let her get away with living a lie.
She stood rooted to the spot, staring at the tree where
Carson had slit her wrists and throat. He'd fucked everything up, and now the
bastard had the nerve to disappear. She'd talked at length with Dia about what
had happened that night after she'd lost consciousness so she knew he'd been
badly injured. She also theorized that he was powerful enough to heal fairly
quickly. After all, she was pretty fucking weak, and yet she was whole and
untouched now. It stood to reason that even though Diandra had nearly ripped
his arms from his body and may have possibly damaged some internal organs, he
was as healthy as she was now. He was probably healed by the next day at the
most and possibly within an hour. Eamon said the speed of recovery varied
depending on how strong the vamp was, and since she was one of the weakest and
Carson was a lot stronger than she was, he was probably fine before he'd even
gone to bed that night.
The bastard
,
she thought angrily.
With a huff of anger, Lizbeth approached the tree and
started ripping the bark free with her bare hands. Although nothing was visible
to the naked eye, she could still smell her own blood, or imagined she could.
As she did each day she stood here, she pulled at the bark, tearing it free and
ripping her hands up in the process. She ignored the healing as the wounds
closed almost instantly- she was amazed the first day, but it no longer
mattered to her. She simply needed to erase what had happened here. It never
crossed her mind that she could still smell her blood because she left it
behind on the trunk each time she attacked the tree. The blood was fresh merely
because she renewed it each day. The deeper, animalistic part of her mind
recognized the difference between the smell of her blood before the change and
the way it smelled now, but she refused to acknowledge it in the forefront of
her brain. She tore at the tree until she tired and then returned to her car
for the drive back home.
As she tugged at the bark she played visions of her
expectations over and over again in her mind. She had thought she'd be
Diandra's equal at the most, or Eamon's at the least. Now she wasn't even good
enough to hover so much as an inch off the ground. She was barely stronger than
she'd been as a human- she couldn't lift more than her own body weight, and she
certainly couldn't fly. As a human she could converse with Dia, and they used
to hold silent conversations as they held each other before falling asleep. Now
they couldn't communicate that way any longer, and the pain of that was just
one more disappointment in an eternal future of them.
Panting lightly and cursing like a trucker under her breath,
she slumped to the ground for a moment before standing up and walking away
without a backward glance. Lizbeth climbed behind the wheel of her battered and
beaten Nissan, resenting the drive that gave her too much time to think. Her
heart broke all over again as her mind looped the differences between herself,
RaeLynn, Eamon and Diandra. She'd never measure up- she'd never be as powerful,
she'd never be as useful, and she'd certainly never be as thrilled with her
life as they were with theirs. She would always be the woman who longed for the
life that was no longer her own, and she cried silent tears until she pulled
into the driveway. Drying her eyes, she stiffened her spine and prepared for
another night of misery and regret. Gathering her briefcase, she shut her door
quietly and pasted a fake smile on her face. "I'm home," she called
as she walked into her home, and wished desperately that she could be anywhere
but there.
Chapter Two
While Lizbeth worked on demolishing the tree one inch at a
time, Diandra was having a conference of sorts with Eamon. Adrian was sitting
on the floor with RaeLynn, brushing her hair to calm her down before bed. It
had become a nightly ritual of sorts- Dia would bathe the six month old baby
and get her dressed, and then Adrian would brush her hair and hum a bit to
soothe her. He'd quickly become an invaluable member of their household, and
not just because of the blood he was able to donate as needed so Diandra stayed
strong both of body and mind. No, the greatest point in his favor wasn't his
blood or his cooking and cleaning skills. It wasn't even in pitching in with
Diandra's charity work, although she was grateful for his help. He was
priceless to her merely because of the love and care he showed Rae. She knew
there was a story to his life, but he'd come up clean on every check they'd run
on him, and the baby trusted him as she trusted her mothers and Eamon. His past
didn't matter- all she needed to know was that if she had to leave her child's
side, she had a fierce protector in Adrian.
Tuning back into the conversation she'd been having before
she drifted off in her own little world, she resumed her side of it.
"Look, she's not right, Eamon. She's not happy, and I know without a doubt
that if she knew what she'd be like after the change, she'd never have agreed
to live life this way."
Eamon settled back on the loveseat with a bowl of tuna
salad. "I understand that, Dia, I really do, but what can I do about it?
What can any of us do for her? She has to adapt- there's no two ways about
it." He took a big bite of tuna and washed it down with a large sip of his
room temperature glass of blood before he continued. "She chose this
option, hon- there's no do-overs, no take-backs. She's made her bed."
Diandra growled deep in her throat. "Do you not give a
fuck about her feelings at all? I thought you cared about Lizbeth." She
stood up and began to restlessly pace from one end of the parlor to the other.
Her bare feet were silent on the hardwood floors, the only noise coming from
the gentle whooshing noise of her ankle-length black robe brushing against her
legs. Her coppery curls were loose around her face, wild and untamed, and she
gave the appearance of an angry elemental, not the mild-mannered human she
pretended to be.
"Damnit, Dia," Eamon yelled, jumping to his feet,
setting his empty bowl aside and grabbing hold of her arms. She broke his hold
but he grabbed her a second time. "No, you listen to me. I do care about
Lizzie- I love her, same as I love you, you thick-headed, idiotic,
foul-tempered vamp." The words were spoken quickly, like a series of sharp
slaps, and she was speechless. She'd seen Eamon angry before, or so she
thought, but she'd never seen him like this. She knew she was stronger than he
was, but a part of her was afraid- not so much of Eamon but of his words, and
the fury behind them. Stunned silent, she merely stood passive as he continued
berating her. "You're so fucking caught up in yourself right now and your
worry about how she feels about you that you can't see how anyone else feels.
It pisses me off."
"Obviously," Adrian mumbled from his seat on the
floor, and quickly returned to the task of softening RaeLynn's strawberry blond
curls as Eamon turned to glare at him.
"If I could stop Lizbeth's pain, if I could make her
the vampire she truly wishes she could be, don't you think I'd do it without
hesitation?" Eamon continued, his grip nearly bruising as he continued to
clutch Diandra's forearms. "She's become family to me, and not just
because she's a vampire now. I've been watching over this little family since
not long after you two met, and long before even you were changed. She's a part
of my life, and my heart fucking hurts for her, okay?"
Unnoticed by the feuding couple, RaeLynn had crawled over to
the pair of them. Adrian let her go, worried about her safety between the two
angry vamps, but curious to see what she intended to do once she reached them.
He stayed unmoving, with his eyes focused fully on the baby's movements as her
chubby knees shifted back and forth with her forward progress. Sitting down on
her diapered behind, she glanced up first at her mother and then shifted her eyes
to Eamon. Looking back and forth to the both of them, she lifted her little
hands and placed a hand on each of their ankles.