Crying for the Moon (24 page)

“I’m fine,” Tate said, using his foot to shut the fridge door because his hands were full. Alex watched in amusement as Tate slapped together slices of meat and cheese and rolled them up, eating them with the enthusiasm of a longshoreman. “What?” Tate asked, chasing a piece of ham that threatened to fall out of his makeshift sandwich and tucking it away in the corner of his mouth. “I’m hungry; so sue me.”

He was popping the lid on a can of soda to wash down the food when his cell phone rang. “Shit,” Tate said vehemently, with uncharacteristic anger. He apologized to Alex with his eyes as he answered the phone.

“Yes, this is Dr. Edwards,” he said. Alex watched as tension and then resignation set in. “Slow down, Mrs. Dinwiddie. Take a deep breath. Well, now, if it’s really bad, he should go to the emergency clinic in town.” Tate paused, listening intently to the client on the other end of the phone. He made eye contact with Alex before suppressing a sigh. “Okay,” he said. “Let me come down and take a look at him. But if he’s really bad, we’ll have to send him in to the clinic. They’ve got an oxygen chamber.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.” He disconnected the call.

“I’ve got to go,” he said unnecessarily. “I’ve got a cat with asthma in a crisis. He’s done this before and he usually responds to a dose of albuterol and steroids, but I need to assess his condition and see if he needs to go to the emergency clinic this time. If he’s in trouble, I’ll send him straight on and be back in time for dinner. If he’s not too bad, I’ll give him a shot and see what he does. I’ll call if it looks like I won’t be coming back right way.”

“You know, I only understood part of that, but I can wait for the full explanation later. Go, go.” Alex waved him off. “It sounds urgent.”

Tate flashed a quick grin and stepped forward to claim a kiss before hurrying out the back door. The house felt empty in his absence.

That was foolish. Alex had spent much of his adult life alone and he knew how to entertain himself. In fact, he could take advantage of the relative emptiness of the house and catch up on some things that needed doing. He glanced at his watch. It would be at least forty minutes before he could expect Nick and the others to return. Maybe longer. If nothing else, he could clean the room upstairs.

S
CARCELY
ten minutes had passed when Alex heard a car coming down the driveway. He reflexively glanced at his watch, even though he knew it couldn’t be Nick and the others. Perhaps Tate had forgotten something. He went to the front door to see.

It was Julie. She got out of the minivan and moved with a determined stride toward the porch, where Alex waited for her. The wind picked up several long strands of hair and draped them across her face. She pushed them aside with one hand as she tightly gripped her shoulder bag with the other. She halted at the bottom of the stairs and looked up at Alex.

“I’m here to see my brother.”

Alex had to give her credit; she had more courage and determination than most humans he’d met. He thought that once he’d revealed he was a vampire, he would have seen the last of her. Wordlessly, he stepped aside to indicate the front door. Julie moved past him with dignity and waited just inside for Alex to come in and close the door behind him.

“Peter’s upstairs.” He hoped Nick would bring back enough food for an extra guest and almost laughed aloud at the thought. Since when had he begun to worry about his hosting skills?

Julie looked around uneasily at the quiet house. “Where’s everyone else?”

“Nick and the others went on a food run.” Julie’s pupils widened, and this time Alex snorted aloud. “Chinese. Food, that is; not people.” He grinned when Julie gave a nervous little laugh. “Tate had an emergency, but everyone should be back in a bit.”

Julie just stood looking at him. He could sense her escalating tension in the stiffness of her posture, and as he listened, he could pick up the thready pulsing of her adrenaline-fueled heart.

“Julie,” he said into the thunderous silence.

Her hand tightened around the strap of her shoulder bag. He could see her knuckles turn white. “Yes?” Her voice was admirably calm.

“You’re not my type.” Alex flashed a grin at her and drifted nonchalantly into the living room. He heard Julie’s breath release in a rush as she started up the stairs.

After the bedroom door closed, Alex wandered around restlessly before sitting down at the computer to pay some bills online. Julie and Peter didn’t come downstairs, so when he was done, he decided to clean up the small mess that Tate had left in the kitchen in his hurry to take his emergency call. Alex carried the plate to the trash can on the porch, dumping the remnants of food into the can. The sun had gone down; the rain-fresh air smelled sweet and clean but carried with it the promise of frost.

A small whisper of sound made him look up and peer out into the darkness of the yard. “EPT?” he called out. He waited, listening hard, but no plain-faced tomcat came forward to demand food.
Probably the damned raccoon
, he thought. The night seemed as though it were holding its breath, and the chill air set up goose bumps on his bare arms. He felt a little shiver rush over him as he hurried back into the house.

The light in the kitchen seemed too bright to him. No doubt a residual side effect of having slept in the coffin. He washed the plate and put it in the dish rack beside the sink, switched off the overhead lights, and headed back to the living room, where he’d left his sweater earlier.

The yellow glow of the small table lamp was soothing to his eyes when he entered the room. He moved over to the fireplace, debating whether he was really justified in lighting a fire this evening, when the voice behind him made him jump.

“Miss me?” Victor said.

Alex turned sharply to see Victor standing there, a smugly superior smile on his handsome features. His hair was so blond it was almost white, and he’d taken to wearing it slicked back off his forehead and long at the collar since Alex had seen him last. He was dressed in a black turtleneck over black jeans, wearing a long, dark leather coat that on anyone else would have pinged Alex’s fashion-appreciation meter. As it was, he couldn’t help but think that Nick would have carried off the outfit with more grace because it would have seemed less like a costume on him. He could also hear Tate’s voice, asking in all seriousness, “So, was it your
intention
to make yourself look like Draco Malfoy?”

A small laugh escaped his lips. He could see that his amusement surprised Victor. His dark eyes narrowed into slits and Alex remembered that Victor didn’t like the thought of someone making fun of him.

“So,” he said, lifting his chin a little and hoping that his tension didn’t show. “How’d you get in?”

“Oh, come now, Alexei,” Victor openly mocked. “You know better than to pay heed to that old wives’ tale. A vampire doesn’t have to wait to be invited in order to come into your home.”

“No.” Alex let the dryness edge into his tone, even as his teeth began to elongate. “But it
is
considered polite.”

Victor laughed without humor. “We’ve known each other too long for such formalities. You’d have me, of all people, knock on the front door and wait to be let in, when the place is positively crawling with werewolves?” He curled his lip so that one sharp canine gleamed in the lamplight.

“My friends are always welcome here,” Alex said, placing slight emphasis on the word
friends
. He realized uneasily that Victor must have been watching the house from somewhere nearby.

He was unprepared for how quickly Victor moved, and his mind registered almost unconsciously that Victor was nearly all vampire now; hardly any of his humanity remained. Alex suspected that Victor had not only lost his reflection, but that any sunlight at all was poison to him now, and Alex wondered how many hundreds of people he’d killed to achieve that state.

Victor was on him in a blink of an eye, moving so rapidly it seemed as though he had transported through space and time. Suddenly he was there, right up in Alex’s face between one breath and the next with no apparent movement, save the swing of his leather coat.

“Vampires don’t have friends, Alexei. At least, the smart ones don’t.” Victor tipped his head sideways slightly and bared his teeth in an expression just this side of insulting.

“You always said you were smarter than me,” Alex said, meeting Victor’s eye without flinching.

To his surprise, Victor laughed and took a step back. “Well, well, looks like little Alexei has found some fangs after all. How very interesting.”

“What do you want, Victor?”

“What do I want? I would think that would be patently obvious. I want you to come back to me. You know where you belong, Alexei, and this isn’t it.” He made a dismissive gesture at the room, encompassing the house and the life Alex had tried to create for himself.

“Listen to yourself. You sound like a fucking cliché from a bad movie of the week. Why don’t you put on a Dracula accent while you’re at it?”

“Where have you learned such coarseness, my dear? Oh. Right. It must be the company you’ve been keeping.”

Alex laughed, sincerely amused now. “Who writes your dialog?”

The blow landed across his cheek so abruptly that it didn’t even sting at first. Alex sucked in his breath sharply, feeling the heat that the imprint of Victor’s hand left behind. A cold rage began to sing in his veins. Carefully, aware that he was a hair’s breadth away from losing his temper altogether, he spoke with surprising evenness. “Go back to New York, Victor. Get the fuck out of my house. Don’t come back.”

“You misunderstand me. I’m not leaving. I’m staying
here
, with you.” His smile was so inappropriate that it made the hair on the back of Alex’s neck rise.

“Alex?” Peter spoke from the bottom of the stairs. “Is everything all right?”

He was wearing a shirt left untucked and jeans with holes in the knees, standing with one hand on the banister. He looked worried and vulnerable standing there with his bare feet, despite the fact Alex could see that in his other hand, Peter clutched a hammer. He must have snagged it from the spare room upstairs. That small act made him love Peter and fear for his safety at the same time.

“Stay out of this, Peter,” he snarled. “This is between Victor and me.”

“Yes. Stay out of this, Peter,” Victor said condescendingly. “If you know what’s good for you. If I were you, I’d go upstairs and pack my bags. Or just leave. While you still can.”

“What are you doing here?” Peter frowned. He stood in wary alertness like some sort of wild creature, and Alex willed him to have the sense to go away.

“I’m moving in,” Victor said smoothly, as though it were a cause for celebration. “I’m afraid Alexei won’t have much time for you and your little furry friends in the future.” The look he turned on Alex was smugly confident. “As a matter of fact, you’ll find as time goes by, my dear, you won’t want their company anymore.”

“What the hell are you talking about, Victor? Are you on drugs or something?” Alex’s seething anger banked suddenly as all of his instincts began screaming at him to get Peter to safety.

“What drug could possibly have any appeal over the Life? If you would just embrace your rightful place, you’d know that, Alexei.” Victor continued to speak as though Alex were a woefully ignorant child, and though it pissed Alex off, it disturbed him as well.

“I have everything I need right here.”

“Yes. Yes, you do.” Victor glanced up at the staircase before turning that unearthly smile on him again. “That’s why I’ve decided to stay with you.” He quickly caught hold of Alex’s wrist in a grip that felt as though he’d slapped a manacle on him. He turned toward Peter, even as Alex tried to pull away. “Leave us.
Now
.”

Peter took an angry step forward.

“Peter, don’t!” Alex was sharp. “I can take care of this. Please. Stay out of it.”

“Yes, Peter,” Victor said, imitating a woman’s voice in a falsetto pitch. “Stay out of it.”

Peter lifted his chin stubbornly, his hand tightening around the handle of the hammer. There was just the barest tremor to his voice as he spoke. “Maybe
you
should leave while you can.”

Victor let go of Alex. Moving with a speed so great the eye could hardly follow it, he gripped Peter by the throat, pinning him against the wall. Victor’s movement caused his coat to billow behind him like a set of wings; it swirled around his legs as he lifted Peter off the ground. Peter clawed at Victor’s hand, his bare feet kicking against the wall, even as Alex jumped forward to pull at Victor’s arm.

“Damn it, Victor! Stop!” he yelled. He closed his fingers over Victor’s arm and dug in. He snarled at him, his teeth fully elongated in his mouth as he bared them in a threatening hiss.

Peter brought the hammer up to clock Victor in the head. It stunned him momentarily, giving Alex the leverage he needed to break Victor’s grip on Peter’s throat. Peter sank along the wall to the floor, whooping for air as he let the hammer fall with a clatter.

Victor reached up and wiped away a trickle of blood from the side of his head, the wound closing cleanly behind his action. He sucked on his finger as he eyed Peter with disgust. “I was willing to let you go before,” he said. “Now, not so much.”

Alex kicked Victor solidly behind the knee, shoving him forcefully off his feet when Victor lost his balance. Alex swooped down to pick up the hammer in one fluid move. Victor turned a stunned expression on Alex, as though he hadn’t expected Alex to be so strong.
A miscalculation on your part, buddy
, Alex thought.

A vehicle roared down the driveway at full speed. It careened to a halt with the sound of scattering gravel, and Peter gave a nasty smile at the sound of slamming doors and feet pounding up the porch stairs. The door sprang back on its hinges as Nick and Duncan burst inside the house with Tish close behind them. The three of them came in and immediately spread out to flank the room. Peter looked visibly relieved.

“Alex,” Nick drawled. “Having a party? And you didn’t invite us?” When he smiled, he bared his teeth.