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  But he also understood that the phone call they’d received tonight must’ve scared the hell out of them.

  It was a good indicator of their self-restraint that they let him walk away without dragging him back as Abby’s mother might have done. That woman had no chill. Of course, as an officer of Castle Cove, she probably saw more of the dark underbelly of this town than his parents did. And after Landon...maybe they should all be afraid.

  Grayson wasn’t really sure where he was going, but the night air felt great on his face. Unlike by the water, it felt warm now that he was insulated by the city buildings. It had become a proper summer night.

  He passed the corner store and considered going inside for a slushie and a candy bar. But his stomach turned at the idea of that much sugar this late into the night. So he kept marching north-northeast until the narrow streets of Midtown opened up on the North Quarter, or what the kids at Castle Cove High liked to call Red Light.

  This strip of town was known for its dark bars and raucous nightlife. The chances were high that Grayson would encounter more vampires than humans if he went down this road. Every single one of the bars were full of blood drinkers. He knew a few other supernaturals must be mixed in. Werewolves, shifters, and demons were here too, but this was definitely vamp territory.

  Usually his sense of self-preservation kept him from wandering around these parts of town late at night. But he was eighteen now and he was more than curious.

  If I’m going to stay in this town, he thought. It’s about time I see the place for what it really is.

  Because a dead best friend didn’t have a clue, another voice chided. And look where it got him.

  He turned left and walked toward the thickening crowds.

  There seemed to be a bar for every type of party-goer. He passed several upscale establishments with men and women queued at the door, dressed to kill. He passed a couple pubs that seemed more casual with patrons wearing jeans or floral skirts.

  Then Grayson stopped dead in his tracks.

  A Victorian mansion loomed in front of him. It was massive, taking up half of the block on the north side of the street. It looked like a frat house going through a moody, gothic phase. Spires stretched skyward from its roof and the sharp slopes. Rock music blared through the open windows into the night. There were people lying on the grass in the yard talking and laughing. Grayson could smell the pot from the sidewalk.

  The sign read House of the Setting Sun. By the front door, a guy stood, bare chested except for the fringed leather vest hanging open. The vest matched his leather pants and he was barefoot, which struck Grayson as a strange outfit for a bouncer.

  Grayson mounted the wooden porch steps anyway.

  “ID?” the guy asked. He held out a long, slender hand toward Grayson, expectantly.

  Grayson hesitated. Maybe he had to be 21. “How old do you have to be?” he asked.

  “Eighteen.”

  Grayson slipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. It took him a moment to get the plastic card out of its holder and hand it over.

  “Happy birthday,” the doorman said with a mischievous grin. Grayson caught the glint of fangs in the moonlight and his heart stuttered in his chest.

  The vampire took Grayson’s hand in his and put two large black X marks, one on the back of each hand.

  The light brush of his fingers made Grayson’s heart beat faster. The vampire’s smile only widened.

  Because he can probably hear your heart in your chest, he thought and wondered if it was true. It was impossible to tell if this guy was a living vampire or a dead one.

  They were different, living vampires and undead vampires. The living vampires were those who had not died as a result of their attack and transformation. Their hearts never stopped. Therefore, the virus living inside them had more of a symbiotic relationship with its host. It gave the host strength, and eternal youth. They were not allergic to sunlight. They simply preferred the night. Their bodies emitted pheromones that attracted and disoriented their prey. They were warm and had a pulse.

  The undead were a different story. Unlike their living brethren who seemed to rely on their physical attributes to attract prey, the undead relied on magic. The undead died during their transformations and it was at that moment of death that a demon entered their body and took residence.

  Most of the person’s previous life and human connection were instantly forgotten. They were also strong and fast, but they didn’t spread a virus from their bite. Their powers included telepathy, mind-control, telekinesis and flying, depending on how strong the demon that inhabited their body was. The undead were very clannish, too. The oldest vampire maker was usually the strongest, with the most connection to the demon within. Those created further down the line deferred to their matriarch or patriarch. Living vampires seemed to be more...democratic. They were free-spirited loners who answered only to themselves.

  The doorman handed the license back. “Birthday boys get a free drink at the bar.”

  “Isn’t that illegal?”

  The doorman smiled even wider. His eyes held and reflected the light the way a wolf in the road would in the dead of night. “I’m not talking about alcohol, Grayson.”

  A group of five or six girls, probably CCU undergrads stumbled up the walkway, laughing and calling out to the doorman. “Oli! Is Liam here tonight?”

  “Yeah, somewhere.” Oli, the doorman, offered Grayson his license between two fingers. “Be careful in there, birthday boy.”

  Grayson took his license and stepped across the threshold.

  The music swallowed him whole. The crush of bodies was overwhelming but not complete. With a few polite words, he could navigate fine. People stepped aside for him. A few eyes lingered on his, which surprised him. But what surprised him most was how easy it was to tell the humans from the vampires.

  The humans dismissed him almost immediately. It was as if they knew he wasn’t what they were looking for. Probably the giant black X marks on his hands. By contrast, the vampires seemed to watch him closely. Some smiled, some looked away. Grayson suspected there was a whole exchange happening here, a subtext he didn’t understand.

  Instead he made his rounds, getting the lay of the land so to speak. It was like a large house with rich wooden bannisters and high ceilings. Bodies filled most corners and a great deal of the throughways, but it wasn’t too hard to make his way through. Eventually he found a ballroom complete with bar and a dance floor. At the head of the dance floor was a band playing some kind of dark rock music.

  Since Grayson didn’t drink, he moved on.

  He was on the stairs when he saw a young man that looked about his age. He had soft brown hair and sharp blue eyes. His thick lips quirked into a smile when he saw Grayson. In one hand, he had a cocktail of some kind. He saw Grayson looking at it.

  “Can I buy you a drink?” he asked, pausing on the stairs two steps above Grayson’s.

  “I’m only eighteen,” he said. He held up his X-marked hands. “But the guy at the door said I could have a free drink for my birthday.”

  “Oh they didn’t mean a cocktail. He meant blood. You can have a free shot on your birthday. House policy.”

  “Oh,” Grayson said. He wasn’t sure what to do with this information.

  “You’re cute,” the guy said. His lips quirked into another smile. “I’ll open a vein if you want.”

  He turned over a pale wrist in offering.

  Vampire blood. Grayson’s stomach turned. “No, thanks.”

  The guy placed the hand on his hip. “Good call. It can be addicting.”

  Grayson leaned into the bannister.

  The vampire mimicked him. “What’s your name, birthday boy?”

  “Grayson.”

  “Happy birthday, Grayson. Why did you pick The House for your birthday celebration?”

  Grayson wasn’t sure how to answer this question. He didn’t want to talk about the cove or Landon. He didn’t want to think about a
nything, really.

  “Something new,” he said.

  The vampire seemed to sense his dark mood. “Are you here alone?”

  “Yeah. I was with my friends earlier.”

  “Yeah, birthdays always depress me,” he said, taking a casual drink from his red cocktail. The liquid shimmered strangely in the martini glass. “Of course, it could just be that I’ve had too many.”

  “How old are you?” Grayson asked.

  The guy crossed the staircase and leaned into the bannister beside Grayson, now just one step above. “That’s rude, Grayson. Didn’t your mother teach you not to ask about a lady’s age?”

  When Grayson looked apologetic the vampire laughed harder.

  “Oh you’re too sullen for me, birthday boy. Lighten up. I’ll be 98 this year.”

  The guy looked no older than 22 or 23.

  “How old were you when you turned?”

  “You go right for the jugular, don’t you?” The vampire smiled. “You’re like a puppy who has no idea how cute he is, you know that? You could’ve at least asked me my name first.”

  Grayson felt his face flush. “Sorry, I—”

  This only seemed to encourage the vampire. “I’m Daniel and to answer your question I was 26. But I’ve always looked young. I didn’t mature much after the change, either. Some do.” He gestured at a guy on the landing above them as if pointing out a friend in the crowd. “Liam was changed when he was a kid and matured through his late twenties. Now he looks like that. It can go either way, you know what I’m saying? Well, if you’re a living vampire that is. You’re undead, you’re stuck.”

  Grayson recognized the name Liam. Wasn’t that who the girls at the door were looking for?

  “Who is he?” Grayson pointed at the vampire leaning against the wall talking to a group of girls. They were crowded in around him, cornering him and laughing at every word out he said.

  “Liam?” the blue-eyed vampire asked. “He owns this place. He’s kind of a big deal in town. I’m guessing you’ve never heard of him otherwise you’d be chasing him like half these groupies.”

  Liam was beautiful and Grayson felt the strange allure that seemed to emit from him, almost like an aura, if one believed in such things. But he couldn’t imagine walking up to the guy and saying hey, bite me.

  “He owns this place?” Grayson asked. He felt like there was a lot more to the story than that.

  Daniel didn’t seem to hear. “Oh, don’t get me wrong. He’ll show you a good time, but he’s not on the market, if you know what I’m saying. And he’s not what you want for your first time. Heartbreaker doesn’t even begin to cover it. Of course, you could do worse. There are some real freaks up in here. I’m very mild by comparison, you know what I’m saying?”

  Grayson couldn’t say he did. There was something about this guy that made Grayson’s mind fuzzy around the edges.

  Living vampire, he thought. This one is a living vampire. I’m reacting to his chemistry or something.

  “Are you a living vampire?” The words were out of Grayson’s mouth before he had a chance to consider the propriety of his question.

  The vampire didn’t seem offended in the slightest. “Oh yeah. That’s all you’ll find around here. The undead have their own haunts.”

  “Like ghosts?”

  The vampire laughed and leaned his body into Grayson’s. His lips trailed over Grayson’s neck up to the lobe of his ear. His breath was hot on the inner folds as he spoke. “Grayson, you’re killing me. If you get any cuter, I’m going to lose it. You wanna go somewhere else? We could head up to the Heights—”

  “No, not the Heights,” Grayson said, pulling back to look into his eyes. Perhaps not the smartest thing to do with a vampire. Weren’t their eyes supposed to be hypnotic or something? He couldn’t remember. The closer the guy stood to him, the harder it was to think.

  But he knew about the Heights. Vendetta Heights was a glorified make out spot on the edge of town where vampires and humans hooked up. But it was also where people went missing sometimes. Going there in the middle of the night was beyond stupid, especially after his run-in at the cove.

  “Okay, not the Heights,” the vampire said, his lips quirking. “There’s also my apartment. It’s three blocks from here if we walk east, toward campus. Then a block south.”

  “Toward Midtown? I live in Midtown.”

  The vampire’s lips quirked again. “You want to be telling some strange vampire where you live, Gray? You know we’re hunters, right?”

  Grayson felt the heat in his face and throat.

  The vampire’s eyes seemed to dilate in tandem with Grayson’s growing flush. “So what do you think? You want to get out of here or not?”

  “What would we do?” he asked. “Once we got to your place?”

  The vampire smile deepened until both upper fangs were visible. “Whatever you consent to, birthday boy. It’s your party.”

  Grayson Choice 5

  Go with the vampire (ES)

  Call it a night

  Reese: Refuse to go to caves

  “I’m sorry, but I am not comfortable doing that. Reef sharks don’t usually swim through deep open waters.”

  Ethan smiled. It was a mischievous grin that set Reese’s teeth on edge. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m sure you can find someone else in town to do that for you.”

  He turned his glass in the light. “In that case, I have one other task for you. If you would follow me.”

  Her body rose against her will. Much to her horror, she realized she could not open her mouth or speak. Like an obedient dog, she trailed behind him, through the garden away from the house. They followed on a stone path. No weeds or grass had pushed themselves up between the paving stones. The flowers and thick vines seemed to deepen here. They brushed her face and neck, tenderly as she pushed through.

  No, she thought. No, no, no.

  She was supposed to be immune to demon magic.

  “I am not a demon.” He said, glancing over his shoulder at her. “I am a chevalier. Do you know what that is?”

  Help, she cried in her mind. She wondered if she could reach Kristine, or any other shifter in range. She needed to send out an emergency beacon if she could. Somebody help!

  As Reese felt her body pulled forward she was forced to accept two facts. First, Ethan’s villa was on the westernmost cliffs. They were quite far from town. Whatever dark business Ethan wished to fulfill here, he wouldn’t be disturbed.

  Second, no one would hear her scream—even if she could.

  The cloying garden broke open suddenly to reveal a small cottage. Reese wasn’t sure if cottage was the right word. It had one maybe two rooms in the stone building. The front door was a carved wood with an elaborate floral design.

  Ethan stepped up to the door and pushed it open with the gentle brush of his hand.

  “I would take you into the house for this,” he said. “But Liam would disapprove.”

  They stepped into the cottage, her boots scuffing the wooden floor. To the left there was a desk beneath a large picture window, offering an unobstructed view of the sea. To the right, an enormous four-poster bed.

  “Lay on the bed,” Ethan said.

  Against her will, Reese’s body moved to the bed. Her hands moved over the soft coverlet.

  “I will not rape you. I don’t have the taste for that,” he said.

  Reese didn’t feel any better in the light of this confession. She wanted control of her body, her voice, all of herself.

  “I know,” he said, as if she’d spoken. “But you see, I am Vendetta’s chevalier. I serve her without question. All my power is her power, used on her behalf to serve her will. Unfortunately, there is another in town who threatens her. Lie on the bed.”

  Reese’s body lowered itself onto the mattress.

  “Liam will be furious with me when he finds out what I’ve done.” Ethan sat on the edge of the bed before sliding in beside her. “But
I cannot take any chances with Vendetta’s life.”

  You always have a choice, she thought, her heart hammering, terrified.

  He pushed the hair away from her face. “Surely you’ve heard the stories of Vendetta.”

  She couldn’t have said yes even if she wanted to.

  “I have only one purpose in my life. I was created for the sole mission—to serve and protect the living goddess we call Vendetta. And she is in danger now. You must understand there is nothing I won’t do to protect her.”

  Why me? her mind begged. Why?

  She felt tears build in her eyes before spilling over her cheeks. Ethan wiped it away with a thumb.

  “You are a powerful shifter,” he said. “A barrier made of shifter magic will protect Vendetta. I will use it to cocoon her in an impenetrable shield until the danger has passed. Unfortunately, when I take your shifter magic, it will end your human life.”

  Reese thrashed, screamed, threw everything she had into the moment, but her body would not move. Ethan had enthralled her entirely.

  “Your sacrifice will be rewarded,” he said again. “I will make sure of it.”

  With fire in his eyes, Ethan lowered his mouth to hers and began to kiss her.

  No, not kiss her, she realized. Drink her.

  He was drinking her dry...

  When Reese next came to awareness, at first she didn’t know where she was. It was dark and the shallow warm waters moved smoothly around her. Her strong, lithe form cut a trail through the reef, weaving in and out of the coral gardens. Small, trembling creatures dove into the coral and rock crevices, escaping her path.

  She didn’t give chase. She wasn’t hungry. In fact, she didn’t want for anything. She enjoyed the steady rhythm of her strong body in the water and the way the underwater forest gleamed in the moonlight.

  She couldn’t remember where she had been before this moment, or what she had been doing.

  It didn’t matter. She had no destination in mind. No ambition to fulfill. She simply wanted to enjoy these moments, at home on the ocean floor, as her fins cut through moonlit waters.

  It was a good life, she thought.