Night Reigns (20 page)
“Sap,” he muttered.
But he couldn’t help it. He enjoyed spending time with her. When he reached the landing, Marcus opened the door to the ground floor and couldn’t stop the broad smile that stretched over his face.
Ami waited for him in the hallway, pacing back and forth. Like him, she had left her hair to dry on its own, merely combing it back from her face. The ends had already begun to lighten and draw up into curls that floated on the breeze her smooth movements created.
Her small bare feet trod the bamboo flooring with fascinatingly inhuman silence. Her clothing mirrored his: dark sweatpants that settled low on her hips and a matching T-shirt that hugged a slender waist and full breasts that swayed with each step despite the bra he could glimpse the outline of beneath the soft cotton.
As soon as she saw him, Ami leaped forward. “Finally!” Grabbing his hand, she took off down the hallway toward the front of the house.
Marcus grinned as she pulled him along after her.
No, he just never knew what she would do next.
His stomach fluttered as their palms merged and she twined her delicate fingers through his, reminding him how he had felt as a boy sneaking into the shadows to share his first kiss with the blacksmith’s daughter.
“Hurry,” she urged him, “before he leaves.”
He?
Who the hell was
he
?
Who the hell was
he
?
Marcus sent his senses searching as she swung him around the corner and tugged him toward the kitchen. His ears registered no vampire, immortal, or human on his property.
Into the kitchen she led him and over to the sink. Her sweet scent, free of perfumes, distracted him as she drew him up against her side.
“There,” she said, and pointed out the window.
Marcus leaned forward and peered into the night. Like most immortals, he lived apart from others in a relatively isolated location. No nearby neighbors. Only field and forest.
The years he had spent in the house next door to Bethany in her typical, middle class suburban neighborhood in Houston, Texas, had been—apart from the time he had spent with her—fairly miserable ones.
Living amongst the humans he protected hadn’t always been so. But, in recent decades, humans had become a noisy, inconsiderate lot, acquiring a narcissistic, fuck-you-I’ll-do-whatever-I-want-whenever-I-want-and-if-you-don’t- like-it-you-can-kiss-my-ass attitude, blasting music in their garages, on their back patios, and in their homes for hours on end and booming ludicrously loud music in their cars and trucks every time they drove past. It was an assault on the senses that raised blood pressure and eroded peace of mind in humans who still believed in practicing common courtesy and proved physically painful, sometimes agonizingly so, to immortals with hypersensitive hearing.
Those brave (or insane) few immortals who lived in cities and suburbs sometimes had to spend tens of thousands of dollars soundproofing their homes just to achieve some level of peace.
Thankfully, Marcus no longer had that particular problem, surrounded as he was by nature rather than humans.
Beside him, Ami leaned forward and flicked on the back lights installed purely for her benefit.
Marcus could see clearly without them and scoured the backyard, looking for predators of any kind.
The trees in the yard itself were young, planted in the meadow when his house had been built eight years ago. Little could hide behind them. Nothing moved in the much larger and thicker trees that horseshoed around the yard and house. No figures lurked on the back deck, seeking entrance.
He and Ami had transferred their combined multitude of potted plants into the garage the day before to protect them from the freezing temperatures that would blanket the area for the next few nights, leaving the deck sadly bare save for several hanging bird feeders, a bowl of birdseed on the wooden planks, and a small, furry creature that stood with one foot in the bowl.
“You see it?” Ami asked.
Marcus glanced at her, followed her gaze, and realized she was watching the creature stuff its furry face. “Yes.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“An opossum,” he said.
“Opossum,” she repeated, seemingly fascinated.
Marcus smiled. Like him, she had proven to be a softie when it came to animals. “Many people simply call them possums. They’re the origin of the saying
playing possum.
”
playing possum.
”
She glanced up at him. “I haven’t heard that one. What does it mean?”
“Playing dead. When an opossum is frightened badly enough, it will lie on its side with its mouth and eyes open and emit a revolting smell, dissuading predators who prefer fresh meat by convincing them it’s been dead for several days.”
Brow furrowing, she looked back at the young marsupial. “What an odd tactic.”
The opossum, hearing their voices, looked up at the window, crumbs clinging to the white fur around its mouth and pointy snout, then went back to eating.
“It’s sort of creepy looking,” she said, brow furrowing. “Its paws look like hands. And its tail looks like a rat’s.”
Marcus nodded. “The opossum sort of reminds me of the platypus. Both look like an amalgamation of several other species.”
“What’s a platypus?”
Marcus leaned against the sink, still holding Ami’s hand, and contemplated her thoughtfully. “It’s a mammal native to Australia that lives near rivers and lakes.”
Shouldn’t she know that? The platypus was right up there with kangaroos, koalas, elephants, and giraffes in terms of peculiar animals that sparked children’s curiosity. It seemed odd that she wouldn’t know it or at least have heard of it.
Added to the myriad of other things that were new to her, yet commonplace in much of the world, it left him wondering anew about her background.
“Where were you born, Ami?” he asked.
Turning away from the window, she looked up at him.
He hadn’t seen that spark of fear in her eyes since the night he had suggested taking her to the network for medical care. It disturbed him to see it now and know he had inspired it.
Her gaze slid away from his as she nibbled her lower lip.
“Why don’t you ever talk about your past?” he queried softly, rubbing his thumb across the back of her hand.
“You never talk about yours,” she countered hesitantly.
An unpleasant laugh escaped him. “Yes, well, my life has been a fairly open book. One that damned near every immortal and his or her Second has read and reviewed ad nauseam. Don’t tell me you don’t know. You referenced it the night we fought the first wave of vampires together.”
She cast him a sympathetic look from beneath her lashes. “I’ve heard a few things.”
He started to withdraw his hand, but she held on tight. “How much do you know?”
“Only what I’ve gleaned from Seth’s and David’s conversations with Roland.”
So Roland really had been worried about him. Who would’ve thought? “And what might that be?”
“That a few years ago you lost a woman you’d loved for a very long time.”
He sighed, not wanting to go into all of that. But he couldn’t expect her to share her past with him if he didn’t share some of his own with her. “If it came from Seth, Roland, or David, whatever you heard was probably far kinder than what some of the others have said. It’s getting late. Why don’t I start dinner, then we can talk?”
She nodded and released his hand. “I’ll make the salads.”
“No, you won’t,” he admonished. “Roland may have healed your wounds, but you lost a lot of blood before he did. You need to rest, Ami.”
“I’m fine,” she insisted.
She wasn’t, but would never admit it, so he played the card he knew would gain her cooperation. “You’ll either sit and rest while I do the cooking, preferably in here where you can keep me company, or we can make a quick trip to the network so you can get a blood transfusion.”
Her pretty face paled. Lips tightening, she all but stomped out of the kitchen, then returned carrying one of the dining room chairs. Plunking it down facing the sink, she sat down and crossed her arms.
His lips twitched. It would no doubt infuriate her if he admitted he thought her adorable when she was pissed.
“Why do you loathe the network so much?” he asked as he filled a pot with filtered water and put it on the stove to boil.
“I don’t loathe the network,” she responded, choosing her words carefully. “I just don’t like doctors. I don’t trust them.”
He smiled. “Neither do most older immortals.” He crossed to the refrigerator, retrieved the pot of homemade pasta sauce they had prepared together earlier, and put it on another burner to warm.
He started transferring organic vegetables from the refrigerator’s veggie bin to the counter beside the sink.
Immortals were predominantly vegetarian. Foods that raised blood pressure and cholesterol and increased the risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and other illnesses in humans caused the same damage in immortals. The virus simply repaired it. Those repairs, however, necessitated greater consumption of bagged blood, which was generously donated by Seconds, their families, and network employees, and immortals didn’t want to take advantage of their magnanimity. Plus, immortals’ acute sense of taste enabled them to taste the chemicals in non-organic foods that humans couldn’t.
“Why don’t
they
like doctors?” Ami asked.
they
like doctors?” Ami asked.
“If you knew how primitive medicine was in medieval times, you wouldn’t ask that question. Most illnesses and injuries were treated with leeches, shaving heads, and cutting or bleeding us to relieve the buildup of foul humors.”
She looked appalled. “Do you share their sentiments? You’re considered an ... elder, aren’t you?”
Again he smiled. (He did that a lot around her.) “It’s all right, Ami. You can say it. I’m old.”
She waved her hand in a
pshaw
gesture and, with an exaggerated lack of care, said, “What’s 850 years, give or take a decade?”
pshaw
gesture and, with an exaggerated lack of care, said, “What’s 850 years, give or take a decade?”
Marcus laughed and glanced at her curiously as he washed the vegetables. “It doesn’t bother you? That I’m so much older than you?” Did that question reveal too much?
She shrugged. “No. Why should it? I’m older than
I
look. Does that bother you?”
I
look. Does that bother you?”
“Not the same thing, really, but I see your point.” He dried his hands on the dish towel, then retrieved the peeler and his favorite knife. “And, to answer your question, I don’t fear or dislike doctors because my mortal life was very different from that of most immortals my age, thanks to the influence of two very unique women.”
“Was one of them the woman in all of the portraits?”
“Yes.” The living room, his study, his music room, and his armory all boasted portraits, drawings, and photographs of Bethany with Robert and their children in the past, with her brother in recent times. Marcus was in many of them as well.
“My father died when I was very young,” he stated baldly, his eyes on the carrots he peeled, the celery he chopped.
“I’m sorry,” Ami said softly.
“Less than a year later, my mother was forced to wed an abusive bastard who ultimately murdered her.”
She gasped.
“I knew my stepfather would kill me, too. He needed little excuse to deliver a beating that would lay me up for days at a time and despised what he called my madness, viewed it as a weakness.”
“You mean your gift?”
“Yes.”
“Were you ... Did you see someone at Roland and Sarah’s house tonight?” she asked.
Surprised that she had noticed, he glanced at her over his shoulder. “I did. Bastien’s sister.”
Her eyebrows flew up. “Sebastien Newcombe’s sister?”
“Yes. Well, her ghost or spirit or whatever you want to call it. She’s been hanging around Roland and Sarah ever since Bastien nearly killed Sarah and Roland nearly killed Bastien. I’ve seen her at Roland’s place several times, but haven’t said anything because it tends to creep people out knowing someone they can’t see is watching them.”
She considered that a moment. “Does she mean them harm?”
“No. I think she’s just curious about them. And, perhaps, grateful to Roland for bringing her killer to justice and not slaying her brother.”
She frowned. “I thought ghosts haunted places, not people.”
“That’s what most believe. But, based on everything I’ve seen, ghosts can attach themselves to places, people, or possessions. Furniture. Clothing. Toys. Jewelry. And inanimate objects don’t have to be antiques to be accompanied by spirits.”
She glanced around uneasily. “Are there any ghosts here?”
“No. The network is aware of the unique problem my gift presents and has been very cooperative. When I moved here, I was given my choice of several construction locations and allowed to carefully inspect them. This was the only one that wasn’t haunted. A lot of blood has been spilled in North Carolina.
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