Forever Vampire (20 page)

No right to make things better for one innocent shifter sidhe whom Zett had marked in his sights? Vail would do the same thing and take the punishment over and over again.

“What's done is done, Cressida.”

“Yes, and done so well. I may not approve, but you know I admire your courage, Vaillant.”

She shuffled him against a wall so plush his shoulders settled into the softness of fabric, or perhaps foliage, he couldn't determine which.

“What do you ask of me to answer my questions?” he asked. With the sidhe, a bargain was always demanded.

Her violet eyes twinkled. Wings like a dragonfly's, yet three on either side, fluttered at her back. Her pale hair always wavered as if the sea about her lithe form.

“I know why you are after Zett,” she said. “It is to ultimately bring you to Constantine. Your mortal stepfather holds you in wicked supplication with a bargain made in blood.”

Like it or not, they had a connection, and always Cressida knew his mind.

“You've made it clear over the years you hate Salignac,” Vail stated. “Won't you help me now to find him?”

“While it would please me immensely to see you stake that bastard, I'm not entirely sure I wish my pretty vampire child to commit such violence.”

“Cressida, do not affect love toward me. It is some thing you and I both know the sidhe cannot embrace.”

“Admiration.” She cooed against his ear, her cool touches gliding down his throat and chest, yet remaining chaste. “Pride. Even respect, I have for you, Vaillant the Dark. I do not believe destroying your father will put you in a right place.”

Vaillant the Dark.
My dark prince
.

False affection, all of it.

“Then be gone with you. I don't need you. I don't need…”

He glanced to the faery on the couch. The frail thing smiled and tilted her head to reveal her long neck, which was unscarred. Was it possible no one had yet supped from her?

Vail inhaled, testing the cool allure of ichor at the back of his tongue.

“Yes, Vaillant, you need what she offers,” Cressida cooed. “You will never be like them. They are bloodthirsty fiends who feed upon unclean mortals. You are starving for ichor. Take her. Be the man you are and can only ever be. My Vaillant.”

She'd not told him he disgusted her. She'd not hissed at him or demanded he leave. Cressida, in her own twisted manner, would always be the mother he could never have yet pined to love.

As he focused on the tender stroke of Cressida's finger along his cheek, Vail inhaled the spiced forest scent. A heady dizziness swirled his thoughts. He nodded and bent to sit beside the faery. Cressida kissed his head and whispered some unaffectionate endearment. The whoosh of her wings crackled in his brain as Vail leaned in to bite the faery's neck.

D
ESPITE KNOWING IT
was the safest place in Paris, Lyric hadn't wanted to return to her brother's apartment. And if Rhys Hawkes would not accept the gown from her, then she needed to find Vail and settle things once and for all.

She couldn't fathom innocents getting hurt because of a deal her mother had made with the Unseelie lord. Getting the gown back in the hands of the Seelie court would stop that from happening. And then she'd go to the Council with the information she had about her mother's dealings in FaeryTown.

Maybe. She wasn't sure she could turn in her mother.

Connor must be behind this. Charish would not stoop to such low tactics to make money. Would she?

Lyric realized now she knew her mother not at all. On the other hand, maybe she was lying to herself. She'd grown up in a family of thieves; why suddenly expect morality?

Trystan had dropped her off at Vail's building.
Before he drove off, he gave her the address for his penthouse in the second quarter, and had given her the entrance code, in case Vail was not home and she needed somewhere to crash.

That confirmed Trystan Hawkes as one of the good guys.

Without thinking to knock, Lyric started to enter the code on the digital box outside Vail's loft door— Leo had taught her to pay attention whenever someone entered a code—when she noticed the door was ajar. Listening for noise inside, she carefully pushed in the door and slid along the inner wall, carefully pushing the door closed.

Someone could be inside right now, or else Vail had left the door open when he'd gotten home, which didn't seem likely. Then she noted the upturned couch, the shattered coffeepot and the scatter of kitchen drawers strewn about.

Had he been robbed? Was the thief still here?

Something glittered all over the living room floor.

“Faeries.” They'd found Vail's home but hopefully not Vail.

The steel floors would announce her presence, so she slipped out of her high heels and crept along the kitchen counter, being careful not to step on Green Snake, whose branch had been broken and tossed in a corner.

The white shirt Vail had borrowed from her brother's closet lay crumpled on the floor before the bathroom. A peek inside found it was empty and dark.

“No faeries,” she muttered. If Vail was home he had to have seen this mess and…

The cowboy boots abandoned in the bedroom doorway gave her a stumble, but Lyric caught herself with a balancing sway of arms. Her gymnastics training gave her impeccable agility.

There on the bed, sprawled facedown in a beam of pale moonlight, lay Vail. Was he injured? Beaten?

Moonlight slashed the white bedsheets. Trails of faery dust glittered everywhere. Vail's back looked as though a faery had spread its dust into it. His hair shimmered, and there, at the base of the bed below his head, it looked as though he'd spit out ichor.

Lyric gasped. “He's high on ichor. Did the intruders do this to him? But why?”

And then she knew that couldn't be the case. Faeries would have killed him, or forced him to take them to her. Vail had to have arrived after his place was trashed.

Cruelly rejected by his mother, he had gone straight to FaeryTown, possibly the only place in this realm that provided some means of sanctity for him. “Oh, Vail.”

Unsure what to do, wondering whether it would be better to dash out and leave him alone in whatever crazy realm his brain traveled right now, Lyric couldn't force herself to turn away from him.

She knelt on the bed, careful not to touch the dust that spilled like talcum across the sheets with her movement. “Vail?”

He stirred, and she stroked her fingers through his
hair, but quickly wiped the dust off on her skirt. The last thing she needed was a contact high.

“Vail, it's Lyric. Did you see the faeries who did this?”

He grunted and smirked, turning his face aside to give her his ichor-dusted cheek. “Lyric,” he said drunkenly. “Pretty vampire who I love to fuck.”

It was the ichor speaking, she told herself. He was high, stoned, whatever they called it. A dust freak.

“I'm sorry, I shouldn't have made you see your mother.”

“You can't make me do anything.” He rolled to his back.

His chest was wrinkled from the sheets, and his pants were unbuttoned and shoved down his hips, and his muscles pulsed and tensed with the movement. A sheen of dust coated him as if he'd sweated it from his pores. It was at once beautiful, and then horrible.

“Fucking faeries,” he spit. “Trashed my place.”

“I'm sorry, they were looking for me.”

“Need more,” he murmured. “So sweet. Ichor. Lyric?”

“Did you do this because of your mother?” she asked, wanting to curl up next to him, to hold him and make it all better. What a lie. “Vail, this won't make things better.”

“Makes everything better,” he slurred. “You don't understand.”

“No, I don't. But I think you'd see more clearly…”

How dare she preach to him while he was in such a state? He'd never remember, and it was foolish to
argue with an addict. Words would fall on deaf or defensive ears.

“I thought of you,” he said, reaching out, but his hand dropped to the sheets. “Wasn't going to do it. Heard your voice telling me to get clean.”

Lyric swallowed. She felt so helpless. Could she have prevented this?

“Then she showed up.”

“She?”

“My faery fucking stepmother. Heh.” He laughed deeply and turned to his side, coughing. “Hot in here.”

He did look hot. If the ichor was sweating out of him, he could have a fever. But how was that possible? Would an overdose cause it? He must have taken too much. She didn't want to think about the faery that may have provided him this high.

She remembered the ichor-addicted man who had worked for Charish. He'd been a literal zombie, and had puked ichor and stank, all the while screaming for more ichor. Charish's demon guards had wrestled him out of the mansion and taken him—Lyric had no idea where he'd been taken. Most likely they'd dumped the hapless wreck in FaeryTown.

She would not allow that to happen to Vail.

Lyric dashed to the bathroom and ran cold water over a towel. She squeezed it out and caught a gasping sob in her throat, searching vainly for her reflection in the mirror.

Why the hell did she care at all for the stupid vampire who thought he was a faery? It wasn't as though
they meant anything to each other beyond a means to get what they wanted, both in life and sexually. He was arrogant and cocky. He didn't have a clue how to exist in the mortal realm. The guy stood alone, and he liked that. He didn't need anyone.

Oh, but he did. Just as much as she needed someone. Anyone. One single soul she could relate to. And Vail, for good or for ill, was that soul.

Rushing into the bedroom, she crawled onto the bed, wary of the dust. A little skin contact shouldn't hurt her. As far as she knew, a vampire had to imbibe ichor to get high.

She pressed the cool towel over Vail's forehead and he moaned pleasurably. The skim of his iron rings tickled her thigh.

“You're good to me, vampiress. Why?”

“Because you deserve good. Because I like you.”

“Not like this.” He pushed away the towel, but she persisted, and sopped it along his neck. “Feels good. Too good. I don't deserve you.”

“Just close your eyes, lover. I'm going to take care of you.”

 

V
AIL SLIPPED IN AND OUT
of consciousness. His brain had been floating through a loopy dream since taking the faery ichor. But he'd regretted it the moment he'd seen Lyric standing in his bedroom doorway.

He should have resisted.
For her
. He could be different for her.

Hell, he must still be high. He didn't do anything to please anyone.

Except, apparently, Cressida.

You did as she asked you. You succumbed to the addiction you've always had, much as you deny it. It is how she kept you all those years. It is how she will always keep you
.

Close by, his vampire lover fretted, “I don't understand why the dust doesn't seem to go away.”

The cool towel annoyed him when Lyric pressed it against his neck, and across his shoulders and chest. He'd felt feverish after taking the ichor, yet now he shivered.

He'd taken too much. He wasn't sure if the faery had survived. He'd left her…
I didn't kill her. I would never
.

And yet, he didn't know. He just didn't know.

If only he'd come home earlier, when the faeries had been trashing his place. They would have beaten him, perhaps killed him.
One less thing for Lyric to worry about.

“It sticks like nobody's business,” Lyric complained softly. “How do I get this stuff off your skin?”

Keep it there. Don't take away the one means to oblivion I have left
.

She wants to help you. Let her
.

Resisting what he wanted most took too much out of him. Vail groaned and shoved away the towel.

“Rain,” he muttered. Outside the patio window, rain battered the small iron deck hugging the penthouse. “Faery dust repels mortal tap water,” he murmured. “Rain…can drown a faery.”

Lyric slid off the bed and opened the patio door.
A gush of raindrops whipped in on the wind, and the cool spatters tickled Vail's face.

Did she think she could save him? Dredge him up from the mindless oblivion of the high? Hell,
the high?
He'd not been high on ichor since he'd first started drinking it. He must have taken a lot.

But he hadn't killed. No. The faery had been smiling, waving to him as he'd stumbled out from the ichor den. He'd left her all the money he'd had in his pocket, which was probably a thousand euros. Much more than the den charged, but he sucked at math, and didn't care about paper money.

A heavy, wet glob of towel landed on his stomach. “That's cold!”

“I'm sorry,” Lyric said sternly. “But if you want to get clean, this is the way to do it.”

“Who said anything…” About getting clean?

She'd decided for him? Hell. Why hadn't he forced her to give him the gown that first night? He'd be done with her now.

And all alone.

You don't want to be alone. Alone sucks. Lyric makes life right
.

He admired her courage, and yes, he did want to get clean. To purge the dust from his system.

And after that? He wasn't sure. He'd take things as they came.

“You're shivering.”

“You noticed?” he said sharply. “I need another fix. I'm coming down. Fuck!”

The towel washed over his hips, and now he realized he was naked.

“You took off my clothes? What are you up to, woman? I don't want this. I don't…”

But again, he couldn't force himself to speak the lie.

Some achy part of his tattered soul did want this. He needed this. Lyric's touch worked a balm to his pain. It was the first and only touch he could endure since leaving Faery.

“You're right, the rain takes this stuff off your skin.” She returned to the patio, and he heard her wringing out the towel.

Tilting his head, Vail saw through blurry eyes the image of a beautiful vampiress, her thin pink dress damp with rain clinging to her skin. Red ruffles spilled below her curvy ass, which segued into long, gorgeous gams. He wanted to lick the rain from her skin—but only if it was shimmering with ichor.

Gripping the sheets, he growled and tore the sheet from the bed. Ichor dried to dust spilled over his face. He lapped at it like an animal.

“No!” Lyric grabbed the sheet and wrestled him for it. “You idiot vampire. I'm trying to help you!”

“Fuck you!”

She gaped at him, bewildered by his violence.

His heart pulsed. “I'm sorry, Lyric—no, I'm not!” He did not release his hold on the sheet. “I want another taste. I need it!”

She pulled so hard, he reneged and she won the
sheet. Vail turned his back to her. He was hurting her. And she only wanted to save the wib vampire.

“You don't know how to save me,” he muttered. “This is what I am. I—” He bent double, wincing at the pain clamping his stomach. It radiated through his muscles. Clawing at the dust sprinkled on the mattress, he pressed his fingers into his mouth.

“Just try it,” whispered from the sodden angel. “Give it a chance, Vail. If not for me, then for your own sanity.”

“Why? You think I will go mad like my crazy mother?”

“No, I didn't mean that. Don't you want to see clearly?”

She was an angel he didn't deserve, but, oh, did he desire her. And not just for sex. He desired her admiration, and her trust. But most of all, he desired her respect.

Smashing his fist against the headboard averted some of the pain tracking his nerves. With a shout to curse all the sidhe in Faery, Vail surrendered to his lover's selfless determination.

 

I
T WAS WORKING
.

Lyric had no idea about addicts and how they functioned, but she had seen a few television shows. Denying the addict the drug and helping them through withdrawal was the way to do it. And now that she had gotten Vail's skin wiped clean of dust, he seemed to be in less pain. His tight abdominal muscles had
relaxed, his chest now rising and falling as if in sleep. And he'd stopped insisting on more ichor.

The fact that no more dust emerged on the surface of his pores gave her hope. Had the vicious fever racking his body expelled all the dust within his veins?

Blinking and catching the heel of her palm against the headboard, she cautioned herself not to fall asleep. It couldn't have been more than forty-eight hours. She only needed a few hours of sleep. But she couldn't risk Vail waking and leaving to get more dust while she was catching a few Z's.