“Yes, and before you ask, it’s not my job to tell you. You probably need a therapist.”
“Thanks for the advice I won’t take.”
“You’re welcome.” Someone called her name in the background. “Need to go. Call me in a week, lad, or you’ll have me following you too. By the way, the fella and I may be heading to New York in the fall. Right! Laters.”
Brigid hung up before he could get another word in. Ben stuffed his phone in his pocket and stared across the city.
Trying to have a conversation with Brigid was usually like jumping into a minor tornado for a moment, then jumping out naked and trying to figure out where all your clothes had blown off to.
Work with Tenzin for this job. Check. Fine. He could compartmentalize as well as the next guy.
Set boundaries, but don’t burn bridges. Fine. That was all fine. Good advice.
Brigid thought he was avoiding something?
Tenzin. He was avoiding Tenzin.
Because you love her or you hate her?
Both?
How about because she’d betrayed him? She’d broken a promise.
Were we supposed to be disappointed that she saved your life?
Ben knew why everyone was happy. Even his closest friends and family understood why Tenzin had done what she did. And most of them, if they were being honest, were glad. They didn’t understand why he’d been so reluctant to be a vampire in the first place.
But Ben had stared into monsters’ eyes, human and immortal, and he knew what evil looked like. He saw the darkness in himself. He’d seen it flash hot and bright over the years. In Rome. In Shanghai. In New York. He’d felt the oozing blackness that crept through the darkest parts of himself and he knew—he knew—that taming that would be far harder than taming his thirst for blood.
You’re a little bastard. His mother’s slurred words across the kitchen haunted him. Five-year-old Ben didn’t understand what it all meant, why his mom was lying on the floor with red eyes, her speech nearly unintelligible, but he understood what hate sounded like.
You’re such a little bastard.
No. Done. She was gone and he was a different person. Ben Rios was well and truly dead now. He’d taken his last breath in a little stone house outside of Shanghai.
The Ben he would become? He was still working on that.
12
Ben woke the next night to the sound of Chloe in his anteroom and the smell of delicious Romanian coffee and some savory pastry. His mouth watered. He sat up and reached for the half-empty bottle of blood-wine on the table next to him. He’d drunk half the night before, trying to wash the taste of the Romanian mugger out of his mouth before he fell into day rest.
After finishing the bottle, he rose and pulled on a pair of loose-knit pants and a tank top. Unsealing his door, he walked straight to Chloe, who was already working on her laptop.
“I know you’ve probably got plans for the evening but—”
Ben pulled her up from the sofa and into his arms. “I’m sorry about last night.”
She hugged him hard. “I don’t want to make light of your feelings. I know it must have been a shock to see her.”
Ben released her and sat in the chair across the table before he reached for the coffee thermos. “You could say that.”
Chloe stared at him. “I don’t know how you want me to react. It’s harder to read you now.”
Ben sighed. “It’s harder to read myself now.” He shrugged. “I don’t always understand my mood swings.”
“Okay.” Chloe closed her laptop. “Just to give you a little perspective, I want you to imagine, for a minute, what it would have been like if it was me. If you’d gotten news from Gavin on the other side of the world that I’d been stabbed in the back—literally stabbed in the back—and there was nothing you could do to help. There was nothing you or Tenzin could do and Gavin was taking me to… his sister.”
Ben made a face. Gavin hated his sister.
“Exactly,” Chloe said. “And you didn’t get any news for an entire day. Nothing. And then you found out that I was alive and a vampire and that was the only way to save my life.”
“But that wasn’t the only—”
“Stop.” She raised a hand. “You don’t know any of that. You only know that I was dying and now I’m okay. How would you feel?”
“Happy.”
“But I hadn’t decided that I want to be a vampire, Ben. It’s a big decision, and I hadn’t decided yet.”
“Haven’t decided is different than having your wishes overruled.”
Chloe blinked shine from her eyes. “Gavin’s right. You expect a hell of a lot from her.”
“Yeah, I did.” He woke his tablet. “Guess she’s not the person I thought she was.”
“That might be truer than you know.” She opened her laptop. “I’m forwarding an email Tenzin sent me about the Corsican gang. Also, she wants to meet you at the club at ten if you have time.”
“Radu’s club?”
“No, the one here.” She pointed down. “I think she may already be here.”
“And yet she didn’t barge into my room,” he muttered. “Wow, she really has changed.”
“Ben.”
“Fine.” He poured a cup of coffee. “I’ll be nice.”
Chloe looked skeptical. “If you really want to be nice, you’ll share some of that coffee.”
“Sorry,” he said. “This coffee is part of my immortal territory now. You’re going to have to get your own.”
He stared at the clothes in his suitcase, debating what to wear.
What the fuck does it matter, Vecchio? You don’t care what she thinks.
Except he did. It was foolish and petty, but he wanted her to want him. Wanted her to miss him and hunger for him like he hungered for her.
Had she taken a lover? Had she gone back to Cheng in Shanghai? Maybe she’d looked up René DuPont.
Ben picked out a pair of slim black slacks and a dark grey shirt that brought out the stone colors in his weird eyes. He rolled up the sleeves to show off his forearms. Tenzin liked his forearms.
He’d always kind of wanted a tattoo, but he never got one. Too late now.
Ben left his apartment and walked down to the club on the first floor, entering from the owner’s hallway behind the bar.
It was the exact opposite of Radu’s place, though the clubs were within walking distance of each other. Green velvet cushions softened the seats in the wood-paneled club. The long bar was burnished wood, no doubt bought from some establishment that had been in business for a hundred years. Soft music drifted overhead instead of pounding from speakers in every corner.
Human servers moved among vampire and mortal patrons, serving whiskey, blood-wine, and other cocktails. A small red pin on the collar of their button-down shirts identified which waiters or waitresses were available as donors if a patron requested it. He turned his head as one particularly attractive server passed him. She smelled like dark roses with a layer of something heady underneath.
Divorce your hungers, one from the others. Blood hunger. Sexual hunger. Social hunger. Emotional hunger. His sire’s voice echoed through his mind. All these are needs you must meet in their turn, but learning to understand their subtle flavors is vital to taming them.