Live and learn.
"Where were you born?" The waitress refilled my cup with more coffee-flavored sludge. I dumped three sugar packets in it and waited for it to cool. Caffeine and sugar, they were my new best friends.
"Seven hundred years from here," she said obliquely before giving me the shadow of a smile. "I'm an older woman. Don't tell your brother."
I was sure he already knew. I was sure he knew more about Promise than I would ever know. "You know Nik," I offered, curling up one side of my mouth. "He's mature for his age. A geezer on the inside." I rolled the mug between my palms. "Seven hundred years, huh? That means you used to… you know…" Lifting my upper lip, I bared nonexistent fangs.
"Yes," she replied simply. "I once did." From the nineteen hundreds on, most vampires discovered a different way to live. That was a story I'd already heard from Promise. They had discovered what drove the vampire thirst for blood, and it wasn't that different from a human condition known as porphyria, which caused a sensitivity to light and a less proved craving for blood. Some vampires even thought they and humans might share a common primitive ancestor. A genetic mutation had occurred, a species had split, and voilà: Humans clubbed their prey by day to eat the flesh, and vampires clubbed their prey by night to eat the flesh and drink its blood. After some time that blood didn't satisfy the physiological need. It was too different from their own. Who did that leave? Yep, you bet. That's when the humans became the prey. Hey, no hard feelings. It's just biology. The mammoth in his boneyard no doubt laughed his woolly ass off. After all, turnabout is fair play.
But science does march on. For the better part of the last hundred years, the majority of vampires depended on massive doses of iron and other chemical supplements to fill the need for blood. That wasn't to say some didn't still indulge. Blood became like alcohol, not needed for survival, but a pleasurable vice nonetheless. Of course, there are always psychos… in every species, in every walk of life. The vampire ones needed the kill more than they needed the blood.
But that was the psychos. Still, you couldn't escape the fact that any vampire over a hundred years old had once drunk blood. Human blood.
But that had been a hundred years ago for Promise, and I was all out of stones in my roomy glass condo.
"Seven hundred years, huh?" I drawled. "No wonder you're so short." It was an exaggeration. The top of her head reached Niko's chin, which put her at about five six. It wasn't tall by any means, but it wasn't short either… quite.
"I'll have you know I was an amazon in the old days, a veritable giant," she said with mock outrage. Then she rested her fingers lightly on the back of my wrist and went on to say softly, "Thank you." She didn't have to elaborate. I knew why she was thanking me.
"I'm a lot of things, Princess." A lot of nasty, nasty things. "But a hypocrite is not one of them."
An emotion, so fleeting that it was impossible to identify, shimmered behind her eyes and then was gone. "No, never that," she responded sadly. Straightening in her chair, she moved on briskly. "Now, let us plan a little romantic strategy for seducing your succubus."
"Flowers and candy?" I said with a grimace.
"Oh, Caliban." Eyes bright with humor, she shook her head. "The only use a succubus would have for flowers is to lay them on your grave."
Sounded about par for the course.
It was hours later when I realized Promise hadn't gotten around to telling me where she was born, the place that made that diner look like a palace. Unintentional oversight? Doubtful. Promise wasn't the type for unintentional anything. Always careful, always discreet, every action analyzed before it was performed… every word considered before it was said.
It was too bad that this time her carefully considered words hadn't done me a damn bit of good.
Goodfellow's weight settled next to me on the park bench as his long legs stretched out to bask in the nonexistent sun. "You rang?"
Oh, I'd rung all right. Pride, dignity… I'd flushed it all down the toilet and sent out a big fat SOS. I wasn't big on asking for help, yet here I was. For the first nineteen years of my life, Niko had been the only one I'd turned to. Then we had met Robin, a stranger, who oddly enough wanted to help us. That was a first. It had only taken him risking his life a few times before I actually believed it. And even when I'd believed it, I'd remained reluctant to accept it. A year later it was still difficult for me… admitting I needed someone besides my brother. Lifelong habits, they die hard, don't they? Shifting my weight, I tapped irritable fingers on the wrought-iron armrest before admitting reluctantly, "I need some help."
"I gathered that." With hands locked behind his head and eyes hidden behind sunglasses, he clucked a smug tongue. "My expertise in all matters is legendary. Many worship at the altar of my brilliance and who can blame them?"
Yeah, this was improving my headache. I closed my eyes and knuckled my forehead for a few seconds. "Brilliance. Worship. Gotcha. Now how about we get down to business?"
"Aren't we especially cranky today? And after I took a bolt in the leg for you too." Sighing, he sat up and waved an imperious hand. "What do you need, ungrateful supplicant?"
I ignored that little rewriting of history and focused on the matter at hand. The humiliating matter at hand. "It's the succubus."
That perked him up. "Today was the day, then? Niko mentioned this morning that you were going to pump her for information." Eyebrows rose suggestively. "So very unselfish of you, throwing yourself on the grenade like that. What nobility, what fortitude." He gave a lecherous smirk. "Tell me all the filthy, filthy details."
Details. He wanted details. I looked up at the sky. It had been clear earlier; now it was a morose gray. I wondered if the sun was disappearing along with George. Gunmetal gray and heavy with heat, the clouds hung low… almost as low as I was hanging right then. Finally, I turned back to Goodfellow with a scowl. "I taste bad," I gritted between clenched teeth. "There's your detail. I taste bad. Happy?"
Mobile lips twitched with surprise and something less flattering. Slipping off the sunglasses, he looked at me with suspicious blandness. "You taste… bad." He rolled the statement over his tongue and repeated, "Taste bad."
I was glad he was so fucking entertained by this. "Yeah, taste bad," I snapped. "But, hey, that's okay because the snake sex is not me." I suppressed the shudder before it made it to the surface. The tongue had been bad enough, forked and slick and cold. Ice-cold. Bad enough all right, so much so that I had absolutely no desire to know what lurked under her clothes… what little of them there were. I'd gone in with no idea how far I would go. I did know how far I couldn't go. I wasn't willing to risk birthing another Auphe/human mix, and I damn sure didn't think an Auphe/succubus/human mix would be any better. I didn't know if it could happen or not, but it was one lottery I wasn't going to play. But thanks to my genes, push hadn't come to shove on the carpet of the warehouse office. For George's sake, I shouldn't have been relieved, but, goddamn it… I was. This time the shudder did surface as a twitch in my shoulders. "Very much not me."