Broken Heart 01 I'm the Vampire, That's Why (8 page)

Someone needs to tell me the rules, damn it."

Nara's fury rolled off her in big, black waves. If she'd held a stake, she would've gladly plunged it into my heart. Cradling her injured hand, she whirled and stalked off, muttering and cursing.

"She's really nice," I said in a saccharine voice. "We should have her over for dinner some time."

"Patrick," said Stan, his eyes round with worry. "Did you tell her—"

"In time," said Patrick, his enigmatic gaze on mine. "Do you not find it interesting she performs the steps
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on pure instinct?"

"Hmph," Stan huffed. "I'll meet you by the RV." He walked away, PDA in hand, the
tapping
of the stylus meeting screen beating a nervous tattoo.

"I like her," said one of the tall males who remained in our circle. He had a Slavic accent… German, maybe. I gazed up at him and blinked. There were
two
of him.

The men looked exactly the same—from the black leather vests and matching pants to their inky-black hair tied back with black leather thongs. They wore biker boots, too. In the belts around their waists were an assortment of lethal weapons, most of which were strange-looking blades and knives. They had the same yummy build as Patrick. I looked at their faces: chiseled jaws, eyes as green as jade, and necks the size of Greek columns.

"Twins?" I asked.

"Darrius and Drake at your service,
liebling
."

"Really?" I asked. "Because I could think of all kinds of ways for you to serve me."

"Jessica," said Patrick. "Do not say things like that to those two."

"Do not worry,
mein freund
. We will not bite her. Too hard," said Darrius… or Drake. They grinned at each other, and then at me.

There was something very different about them. Something strange. "You're not vampires."

The twins grinned again, their lips curling with a touch of wickedness. "We are lycanthropes," said the one on the left. "We're shape-shifters,
liebling
. We are the wolf guardians for our vampire friends."

"Vampires have used lycans to guard their crypts for centuries," said Patrick. "They're not immortal, but they live a long time."

"The oldest recorded lycanthrope was one thousand and eighty-two," said the one on the right. "But most of us only live to our eight-hundreds."

"Tough break," I said drolly. "So you're the muscle, eh?"

"We compensate our lycans for their security expertise. The Consortium doesn't keep drones or guardians."

"Yeah, I get it. The whole live-in-harmony thing." I looked at my Irish vamp and tried to do the sigh thing. It didn't work. "Okay. Gimme the bad news. What did I do to your neck?"

"Later, love." A shadow flitted in his gaze then disappeared into the beguiling silver. Surely I imagined the combination of fear and of need. What could Patrick fear? And what could he want from me that caused such yearning?

Truthfully, I'd been trying to avoid the gruesome task of IDing a dead girl. If she was a resident of Broken Heart, then chances were good I knew her. A year ago, we'd been a quaint, old-fashioned town of seven hundred and three residents. Nowadays, we had fewer than three hundred people who called

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Broken Heart home. My guts clenched.

"Let's get this over with," I said, grabbing Patrick's hand. "Are the Bobbsey Twins coming, too?"

"
Bobbsey Twins
?" they said together in a tone that suggested death and dismemberment.

I laughed. Then, because I had a survival instinct, I broke into a run and took Patrick with me.

Levity faded as we exited the gymnasium and walked across the parking lot to a very large white, windowless RV. On the far side, I saw Stan and several others waiting for us. Slowing my steps, I readied myself to see a dead body. Technically,
I
was dead but I was still walking and talking. My stomach roiled at the thought of seeing some poor lifeless girl.

Patrick squeezed my hand, a silent show of tenderness, and nodded at Stan. He bent down and removed the white sheet that had been draped over the body.

"Oh my God." I clapped a hand over my mouth as I looked, horrified, upon the ravaged remains of a young woman with red hair. Her body looked as if it had been mauled. Her yellow summer dress was shredded; she wore only one yellow flip-flop on a manicured foot. The despoiled state of her body contrasted with the pale serene quality of her untouched face. Her lips were blue; her eyes a faded unseeing green.

"Jessica, do you know her?"

"Yes," I said. I stumbled back and swallowed my wail of despair. "Is there any way to save her?"

"
Non, ma chère
," said a handsome man with short black hair and sky-blue eyes. I remembered him from the Panel of Doom. What was his name? François something-or-other. He knelt at the woman's side, his fingers brushing away stray red strands from her face. "This one cannot be saved."

"Who is she?" Patrick asked.

"Emily," I whispered. "Emily Beauchamp."

Patrick frowned, obviously trying to place the last name. I laid a hand on his arm. "Emily is Linda's sister."

"What happened to her?" Linda cried, which was a hard thing to do when you couldn't shed tears.

"We don't know," said Stan, patting Linda's hand. "But I promise you, we will find out."

After we told Linda the bad news, she demanded to see her sister. By the time she'd gotten a glimpse of
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Emily, the girl had been redressed and laid out on a metal slab in a refrigerated truck. (No, I didn't ask why the Consortium had a refrigerated truck with metal slabs big enough for bodies.) Watching Linda's face as she recognized her sister was hell. She fell to her knees and pounded the truck metal flooring. Despite her vamp strength and tremendous grief, she didn't dent the floor. The Consortium knew how to construct things that wouldn't crush under a vamp's strength.

Emily was Linda's only sister and the only family, other than her own daughter, she had left. She held Emily's small, cold hand and wailed. It was a good, long time before I was able to draw her away.

Patrick, Stan, Linda, and I assembled in my living room and tried to make sense of why Emily was dead.

Linda sat between Stan and me on the tan couch; Patrick stood near the fireplace with crossed arms and a closed expression.

"Emily was a surprise baby," said Linda. "Mama nearly died when she found out she was pregnant at forty-six. Shoot, I was twenty years old, already married to that shit-eating prick Earl."

Stan handed her a tissue from the box I kept on the coffee table. He realized right away it was a stupid move, but Linda seemed to appreciate the gesture. She plucked the tissue from his hand and held on to it.

"My Marybeth was born when Emily was two. They grew up together, closer than sisters. Marybeth's birthday is next month. She's gonna be eighteen." Her lips lifted into a slight smile. "Emily is only twenty.

Oh my God. Was. Emily
was
twenty." Linda lost it. She sobbed without the wet satisfaction of tears until her entire body shook. I wrapped my arm around her shoulders and squeezed, heartbroken for her.

After several agonizing moments, Linda lifted her head. The tissue had turned into paper snow, fluttering to the floor as she twisted and ripped it. "Marybeth is all I got left. Mama's gone and now Emily, too.

And I ain't even human anymore. What's gonna happen, Jessie, when I outlive my own child? And her children? And their children? It ain't right to be this way. It's unnatural. It's
wrong
."

Her words were arrows of pain into my heart. I faced the same anguish with my own kids. With the rest of my family. All of us bitten by Lorcan and saved by the Consortium had the same problems. How could you be an immortal parent with mortal children? How did you cope with outliving those you loved?

My gaze sought Patrick's, but emptiness glittered in his eyes. I wanted to ask him so many questions, but I doubted he'd give me the answers I wanted to hear. I wondered who he'd lost when he was Turned.

Had he been a father? He'd certainly been a son. Maybe a brother. A husband. A friend. What happened to your heart when it had to bear witness to the deaths of mortals, especially those who loved you and whom you loved?

Linda's gaze followed mine. In that instant, her grief hit a flash point. Her distress melted to rage. She rose on shaky legs and pointed an accusing finger at Patrick. "This is your fault. You and your soulless vampires have damned all of us."

"Would you rather be dead?" asked Patrick coldly. "Would you rather your darlin' Marybeth speak prayers over your grave? If she didn't have you, she would have no one."

"If you had kept control of that creature, we'd all still be breathing. Don't you think for a second I'm gonna be grateful you saved my life when you and the Consortium are the reason I lost it. And now that
thing
has killed my baby sister!"