The small twitch of a smile on his face made me roll my eyes. I’m just using you, don’t get all excited.
“You said you don’t want anyone else to get hurt. What if Emerret has Adara?”
Could he? It was possible, I supposed. Dammit. Did I want to take the risk that he did, or did I want to just ignore the suggestion?
“Okay fine, that’s a possibility. But you’re making this assumption that she’s in trouble based on how some human guy found your guy and had a special phrase you and Adara concocted. You really have a hero complex, don’t you?” I groused.
The corner of his mouth twitched again. “I just like to protect and help people I care about.”
Cared about? That was a bullshit reason considering he’d spouted off about wanting to protect me all the damn time. It didn’t make any sense in the least bit.
“You didn’t know me when you leapt to my defense,” I reminded him, then, with a strange pang in my chest, I whispered, “And I don’t fall into that ‘care about’ category either.”
“I…” he paused, tapping his finger against the counter. “Okay, you didn’t then, and I won’t sit here offering some random answer that neither of us can make sense of, but whether you want to believe it or not, you do fall into that category now. I care about you. A lot.”
His voice came out gruffer than expected. Kind of like he had something stuck in his throat that was cutting his air flow off. He was right about one thing. I didn’t believe him.
We were stuck together, because of his and my own stupidity. That was all. His soul now depended on my own, just as mine depended on his. They were no longer two individual souls. Our souls were halves of a greater whole. Whatever made him haul my ass out of that club that night was beyond me. If the situation had been reversed, I’d have left him behind. I didn’t stick my neck out for humans. No matter how good they smelled.
Wait. A lot. He said a lot.
The hair on my skin stood up along my arm. It took everything I had in me not to make a snarky comment in response. Some part of me felt something by those two tiny words. Something that I couldn’t understand. Other parts of me felt nothing but disgust. I didn’t want some witchy dumbass human caring about me at all. Things were complicated enough without throwing that stuff around.
I huffed out a sigh and reached up to touch the long braid draped over my shoulder. Ryker’s eyes tracked the movement. I flipped the braid back, feeling it thump down my back. “Hmm,” I hummed in response. “I’ll go and help you find the annoying vampire. But if it turns out she just flitted off because she was tired of messing around with that guy, you’ll owe me big time, and I will definitely collect what I want.”
“Oh? Like what would you want?”
Shrugging, I stretched my arms above my head to pop the strain from my spine. “I don’t know yet. I have time to figure it out.”
“Then I’ll hope that she just flitted off as you say, for both her sake, and my curiosity at what you could possibly ask of me.” Ryker looked like he was debating saying more, but seemed to think better of it. His shoulders squared as he pushed off the counter. “Thank you. I’ll go pack us some stuff.”
“I don’t know why we bother to unpack the way we keep jumping around places,” I muttered.
He gave me a wane smile before leaving the kitchen. His presence seemed to suck all the warmth out of the room with his departure. An uneasy chill trickled down my spine.
Had Emerret really gotten ahold of Adara? We knew he had eyes on us. Plus, it had been a few weeks since his last move. He’d been quiet. Too quiet. Was this his next move to draw us out?
I debated staying behind again, even though I’d just said I’d go. Call me selfish or whatever, but I had no desire to help that vampire after the horrid display she put on that led to me losing my goddamned mind and doing something stupid.
The vampire world was dangerous. Which was precisely why I stayed far away from it, hiding near humans, whom I loathed just as much. Vampires had their own communities, rules, and too many pompous society expectations to get along with the humans.
You know need to go with him.
No. I didn’t. Shut up, stupid voice.
The feel of abnormally soft lips against mine danced in my head. I reached up to touch the faint lingering sensation that I couldn’t seem to shake off. Ryker really shouldn’t have such soft lips. It was just wrong. But as I slid the pad of my index finger over my bottom lip, I knew I’d stay by Ryker’s side for now.
Why? Fuck only knew.
6
Avery
“Why are we here?” I questioned, peering out of the car window at the tall brick building.
It was one of those old narrow style ones with connecting buildings on either side. The only difference was the coloring of the brick. A single sign hung over the double doors. Crest Holding and Storage. “I thought we were meeting that guy Norin. Does he work here?”
Ryker turned the car off and popped his door open. He glanced at me before getting out. “Norin doesn’t stay in one place, so we have safety deposit boxes set up around the country to pass messages back and forth. This place has one of them. He’ll have the address written on a note inside my box here.”
I narrowed my eyes a bit at him. Until now, I didn’t question Ryker’s professional business, but after learning about all his safe houses, hearing the odd secretive way he did things in, meeting the obnoxious Adara, then this, I’d grown even more curious to know exactly who Ryker was and what he did. Focus on the present, you can ask questions later.
Following him inside, the quiet squeak of our shoes on the tiles echoed against the empty walls. The lobby area was void of anything but a single desk positioned in the center where a man sat monitoring three different computer screens. He turned his gaze toward us, and I was startled to realize he was a vampire.
“May I help you?” he lisped through his dropped fangs, his gaze flipping between Ryker and me. It wasn’t uncommon for a vampire to be with a human, but I could see the curiosity flickering in his eyes. Probably wondering why I was standing behind Ryker instead of at his side. I’d been through this song and dance with Ryker before about pretending I was some kind of owned pet. I figured I might as well keep that up here just in case. Plus, this place creeped me out already.
“I need to retrieve something from my security box.”
“Name?”
“Dodson. Nathan Dodson.”
It took everything I had not to snort in surprise. Though, it shouldn’t astonish me at all. Ryker was full of mysteries. Why wouldn’t he have made up names too?
The vampire—who didn’t have any kind of name tag or identifier on him—rose to his feet, refocusing his attention on Ryker. “May I see your key, please?”
I found his politeness to be rather amusing, but I held my laughter in when I got a good look at him since he was no longer sitting. He was probably one of the biggest vampires I’d ever seen, close to Ryker’s size in body structure, though Ryker was taller. The vampire didn’t have that willowy frame almost all vampires had. He was stout and boxy, with more muscle than I’d ever seen on a vampire. What they hell have they been feeding you? I’d never felt so small before.