Fifth Vision of Destiny - Brett (4 page)

Had he made a terrible mistake? Leo had
accepted his ring, and for that Brett was both proud and grateful,
but Lisa was an integral part of both their lives. She was the one
who had brought them together in the first place, who had pushed
them closer, helped their relationship grow in ways she would never
allow where she was concerned. If what Brett had tried to do
destroyed what they had shared with her, he would never forgive
himself.

The front door closing with a snick drew him
out of his increasingly darker thoughts. Pushing himself out of
bed, he took a quick shower and pulled on jeans and a t-shirt
before padding barefoot to the kitchen. He felt a pang when he saw
the untouched table set for three, the cartons of food still
waiting on the counter. He put the take-out in the fridge; eating
it alone would have been like twisting the knife in a
still-bleeding wound. A frozen dinner would do just fine for
now.

As the microwave hummed and warmed his food,
Brett found himself falling back into old habits. He usually
watched the club’s video surveillance feed on his laptop when he
had dinner, a quick check that the night was starting smoothly. He
turned on the computer and set it on the kitchen counter. With a
touch of his thumb, he flicked from camera to camera until he found
Lisa. She was dancing with a woman, but her movements weren’t as
smooth or seductive as they usually were, as though she were only
running through the motions of what was expected from her, rather
than really enjoying herself on the dance floor.

He was surprised that Leo wasn’t there
yet, but by switching through the different camera feeds he soon
found him, leaning against the guardrail on the catwalk overlooking
the dance floor. There was no doubt in Brett’s mind that Leo had
seen Lisa and that he was watching her, but Brett wasn’t sure why
Leo wasn’t going to her yet. Splitting the screen, he kept the
image of Leo on one side and Lisa on the other. He watched them,
waiting for
something
he
couldn’t quite explain. Leo was very good at reading people, a
quality he had honed with years of bartending, and Brett envied him
a little, but Leo’s grasp of what went on in Lisa’s head was deeper
than that, born of decades spent together.

As closely as he looked, Brett never saw
anything change in Lisa’s demeanor. But after a few minutes, Leo
pushed away from the railing and went down to the dance floor. He
moved through the crowd, ignoring a couple of people who probably
recognized him from the bar and tried to get his attention, and
went straight to Lisa. Approaching her from behind, he slipped his
arms around her waist and pressed his body to her back; she never
flinched or tried to pull away, and Brett figured that she must
have known it was Leo. She was facing away from the camera so Brett
couldn’t be certain, but she seemed to say something to her dancing
partner, who soon moved away and found someone else to dance
with.

Lisa turned in Leo’s embrace, resting her
hands on his shoulders as she continued to dance. She was now
facing the camera, and Brett could see her expression. He had never
seen her so sad. His chest tightened painfully, and he shut down
the laptop before he even realized he had moved. It was his fault
that she was unhappy; he had to go and try to fix it.

All he did was
slip on his shoes before hurrying down to the club. As he was
crossing the first floor toward the staircase that led to the lower
level, the head of security intercepted him, wanting to talk about
some guy who was apparently drunk and causing trouble. Brett loved
his club, and he had worked hard for years to make it successful.
Even now he still conducted just about all of the business himself
rather than delegating. At that moment, though, the last thing he
wanted was to deal with any of this.

“I trust your judgment,” he told John and
meant it. “However you want to deal with it is fine with me.”

The look of surprise on John’s face was
unmistakable, but Brett was already walking away.

The staircases that descended to the dancing
floor were a crisscross of crowded stairs and catwalks spanning all
four walls, but Brett wove his way through them easily, finding the
shortest route down.

When he reached the lower level, rather than
going straight to Leo and Lisa, Brett approached the DJ at his
station against the back wall, leaning in close to tell him, “Give
us a few slow ones.”

The DJ touched two fingers to his forehead to
show he had understood. Brett started heading toward his lovers. He
wasn’t even halfway there when a slower beat began playing along
with the current song, its volume slowly rising while the faster
one became quieter.

He approached from behind Lisa, and caught
Leo’s eyes over her shoulder. Leo’s faint smile and nod were all
the encouragement Brett needed to press his body to Lisa’s back,
both his arms slipping between her and Leo to encircle her waist.
She tensed in their double embrace, but for no more than a second.
Relaxing again, she pressed back against Brett as she continued to
sway to the music. Brett lowered his head to press his mouth to her
neck.

“I’m sorry,” he said after a few moments.

She didn’t react right away, and Brett
started to wonder if she had heard him. Her hearing was better than
a human’s, but with the music coming at them from every side, he
might not have spoken loudly enough. Before he could decide whether
to repeat his apology, though, she turned in Leo’s embrace, facing
Brett and shaking her head slowly. Her arms easily slipped around
Brett’s waist, and when he stepped closer to her so that his body
molded to hers, she leaned in to breathe into the shell of his ear,
“You have nothing to be sorry for.”

Brett kissed her temple, then her cheek,
before leaning in again so she would hear him over the music. “I
upset you. I didn’t mean to.”

“I know you didn’t,” she sighed. “And it’s
not you. It’s got nothing to do with you. My issues are my
own.”

Brett was surprised enough that he drew back.
He had never heard her say anything like that before. Her past
wasn’t something she had ever liked talking about.

The song changed while he was looking at her.
She returned his look without flinching, but he could tell how
uncomfortable she was. Was she regretting having shared this much
already? There was so much he wanted to ask and so much he wasn’t
sure he was allowed to ask. At least, he didn’t have to make that
decision; the music was too loud now to have any kind of
conversation without shouting, and this wasn’t exactly the kind of
topic he wanted to explore at the top of his lungs.

“Let’s go upstairs,” Leo said, loud enough
for both of them to hear.

He didn’t wait for either of them to reply
and took hold of Lisa’s hand. Brett took her other hand, and he and
Lisa followed Leo through the dancing crowds and to the staircases.
They had to walk up in a single file, one behind the other, but
they never let go of each other’s hands. Brett didn’t know what it
would have taken to make him release Lisa’s hand, especially since
her fingers had closed over his and were holding him just as
tightly. He had been so afraid to lose her that even this small
gesture was reassuring.

When they reached the main level of the club,
Leo stopped and brought Lisa’s hand to his mouth to kiss her
knuckles.

“Why don’t you two go up?” he suggested,
dropping Lisa’s hand and briefly touching her waist instead. “I’ll
get us drinks and join you in a minute.”

Lisa’s hold on Brett’s hand tightened a
little, and without looking at him, she led the way to the door at
the back of the club that led to their private quarters. They both
remained silent until the apartment door had closed behind them,
shutting out the music and the noise of the club. They finally
looked at each other for the first time since the dance floor, and
Brett was sad to see how tense Lisa looked.

“Sit down with
me?” he asked, and when she nodded, he led her to the sofa, his
thumb gently stroking the back of her hand.

He sat first and drew her in, hoping she
would sit on his lap, longing for an increased connection. He
didn’t protest when she sat next to him with her legs curled under
her. She was there, with him, and it was more than he had expected
earlier.

“
Do you want to tell me?” he asked, trying
not to pressure her but unable to fully hide how much he
wanted,
needed
to
understand.

Lisa’s answer was flat, almost automatic.
“No.”

Before Brett could figure out how they were
supposed to move forward from that, she gave him a pained smile as
though it were an apology. “But maybe I should,” she continued more
gently. She looked down at her left hand and rubbed the inside of
her ring finger with her thumb. “I was engaged,” she said quietly.
“When I was turned, I mean.” She looked up, but didn’t meet Brett’s
eyes. “I was just weeks away from getting married.”

In all the years they had known each other,
lived together, she had never given a hint of this, and it took a
few seconds before Brett could wrap his mind around the idea of an
engaged Lisa. He always had a hard time picturing her as a human,
but it was even more difficult to think of her as monogamous. He
loved her immensely, and while he didn’t mind sharing her with Leo,
there had been times, over the years, when he had been tempted to
ask her not to sleep with anyone other than them. He never had,
though, not because he knew those affairs meant nothing to her, but
rather because he was convinced it would be the fastest way to push
her away from him and lose her for good. That was one reason why,
even though he had wanted to offer his lovers wedding rings, he
hadn’t intended to say the word ‘marriage.’ All he had wanted was
to offer a symbol of his love, not chain either of them to him with
a bit of shiny metal.

She was quiet for such a long time, staring
ahead, her gaze unfocused, that Brett caressed her arm softly to
draw her attention back to him. “Lisa?”

She finally looked up at him, her lips
curling into the ghost of a smile, and shrugged. “Vamps don’t
love,” she drawled, her mouth twisted as though the words were
bitter. “That’s the first lesson I was taught. And as proof that I
had learned it, I had to… to hunt down my fiancé.”

She hesitated on the word ‘hunt,’ and Brett
could easily guess why. What she did every night—going to the club,
shimmying on the dance floor, finding willing prey that would give
her a throat or wrist along with a few mouthfuls of blood—that was
hunting. He had no doubt that her Sire had made her do something
different. She had said hunt, but what she really meant was
kill.

“I’m sorry,” he offered quietly, derisory
condolences for a death that had occurred long before he had even
been born.

“I still loved him,” she continued as though
she hadn’t heard him. “But I didn’t have a choice.” A sad, resigned
smile rose to her lips. “A day-old vamp, under my Sire’s thrall…
No, there was no way I could have resisted.”

Brett frowned, confused. His thumb, which had
been rubbing small circles on her hip, gradually came to a stop.
“If you know that,” he said slowly, “then you can’t blame
yourself.”

“I do know that,” she conceded. “It took me a
while to understand it, but I finally did. But my fiancé didn’t
know I was under thrall.” Her voice was trembling by now, and so
quiet it was barely more than a whisper. “He thought it was me
attacking him. He kept telling me he loved me while I…”

She trailed off, closing her eyes but not
before Brett could see they were full of tears. He caressed her
hair, and gently drew her head down to rest on his shoulder. In all
the years he had known her, he had never known Lisa to be squeamish
about what she was and what she did. She bit and took blood from
humans with no apologies for what she was. He had never given much
thought to why she had decided to go against her Sire’s wishes and
stop killing, but he was beginning to understand why her rebellion
had started.

“Every time you say it,” she whispered,
“every time you ask me to bite you…”

Brett’s heart sank to the pit of his stomach.
“Lisa…” He breathed her name like a caress against her cheek. “I’m
so sorry. I never imagined… I won’t ask anymore, I promise. I won’t
say—”

“No,” she sighed. “You can say whatever you
want. Whatever you need to say. But… I just wanted you to
understand why it’s so hard to believe it.”

He caressed her face with his fingertips, a
gesture he had done dozens, hundreds of times before. He knew her
face as well as he knew his own, knew that light dip beneath each
of her cheekbones, and how it always made her smile seem a little
wider, a little brighter. She never smiled as warmly for anyone
else as she did for him. But she wasn’t smiling now, not even when
he stroked the corner of her mouth, trying to draw her lips up.

“I really do love you,” he murmured.

She shook her head, and even if she softened
the denial with a faint smile, it still broke Brett’s heart.

“I know you think you do,” she said, a little
apologetic. “But at the same time, you only know part of me. And I
don’t think you’d like that other part at all if you ever met
it.”

“Is that… is that why you wouldn’t take the
ring?” he asked, trying to piece it all together.

“I never wanted to hurt you,” she said, and
if at first it sounded like she was avoiding the question, Brett
realized it was an answer, of sorts. “I never want to hurt you
again.”

“Lisa…” Caressing Lisa’s cheek and looking
into her eyes, Brett wondered if there was anything he could say to
make her see that she was wrong. In any case, he had to try. “I do
know all of you,” he said, and put all his conviction into his
words. He had rarely been more certain of anything in his life.
“That other part you’re talking about, it’s gone. It was never
real. It was your Sire making you do what he wanted. But you proved
you were stronger than him. You proved you’re your own person, and
no one’s puppet. You proved it twice. And the woman who left her
Sire and stopped killing? The woman who chose me and Leo over him?
That’s the woman I love.”