Blood Faith

  Blood Faith

  Kara Sharpe

  Contents

  1. ADRIAN

  2. ADRIAN

  3. XAVIER

  4. ADRIAN

  5. XAVIER

  6. ADRIAN

  7. XAVIER

  8. ADRIAN

  9. XAVIER

  10. ADRIAN

  11. XAVIER

  12. ADRIAN

  13. XAVIER

  14. ADRIAN

  15. XAVIER

  16. ADRIAN

  17. XAVIER

  18. ADRIAN

  19. XAVIER

  20. ADRIAN

  21. XAVIER

  22. ADRIAN

  23. XAVIER

  24. ADRIAN

  25. XAVIER

  26. ADRIAN

  27. XAVIER

  28. ADRIAN

  29. XAVIER

  30. ADRIAN

  1

  ADRIAN

  Most of the sci-fi and fantasy section lies in a messy spread across the floor, a puddle of old worn-edged paperbacks and former library hardbacks that made their way into the circulatory system of the second-hand book trade.

  “No, no, let me help, don’t try getting up on your own,” Adrian says hurriedly, moving over quickly to steady the customer now sitting and blinking in surprise in the middle of the scatter of knocked-over used books. It’s an old man, a guy Adrian remembers selling a bunch of George R R Martin titles to a few weeks earlier.

  Adrian steadies the man’s elbow as he shakily gets back to his feet. “I’m so sorry, I’ll help you pick these up, I’m so clumsy these days…”

  “It’s fine,” Adrian assures him, offering a friendly grin. “Seriously not your fault at all. My stacking was a mess. We’ve run out of shelf space, see? So I’ve just been making towers. This is punishment for my hubris, nothing to do with you.”

  He steers the guy over towards the door to the bookshop. It’s already fifteen minutes past closing, and this is the last customer of the evening. Adrian didn’t want to hurry him along with his browsing, because he was clearly moving as fast as he was able already, but Adrian skipped lunch and his stomach is well and truly ready for dinner.

  His stomach will have to wait a little longer still, though, since now he’s got all this re-stacking to take care of. Ah, well. He was pretty much telling the truth when he said it was his own fault. There are always more books than there is shelf space in that section.

  He starts to tidy the spilled books back into place, checking out the titles as he does so to see if there’s any unexpected treasures. One of the great advantages to working in the used bookstore is that Adrian gets to borrow the merchandise and take it home, a few paperbacks at a time, to the dilapidated walk-up where he lives.

  He reads them huddled under a layer-cake of blankets, because there’s no heating in his place, distracting himself from the cold with the wildest tales he can find.

  Lucky for him, his boss never docks his pay with overdue fines if he forgets to bring them back for a month or two. Adrian used to run into trouble with the library for that, back when he got his reading matter there.

  “Ah!”

  Hardbacks that began as library books are one of the hazards of the job, but even though he’s known that for ages Adrian still gets caught by them more often than he should. The thick plastic coating on their covers turns hard and brittle with age, breaking off into jagged edges and sharp corners.

  An especially lethal point has scraped across the pad of his thumb, deep enough to leave a stinging jagged line in its wake. The pain makes Adrian wince as sluggish blood begins to well up along the cut.

  He pauses in his re-shelving to get out the store’s first aid kit, cleaning the injury — even more stinging, this the sharp medical bite of antiseptic — and taping gauze over it. Then Adrian finishes putting the books back in order, closes up the shop for the evening, and breathes a sigh of relief.

  After that series of unexpected complications, he decides that he’s earned a trip to the pizza place nearby to satisfy his grumbling stomach. The guy he splits his rent with hates it when Adrian keeps cheese in the fridge — which is ironic, considering they live two doors down from a Chinese restaurant, and all kinds of mouth-watering and decidedly non-vegan smells waft through their place all the time — so he doesn’t get to indulge in a slice of margherita all that often.

  It’s cold enough this time of year that there aren’t many people out on the evening streets, but the warmth and light inside the pizza restaurant envelopes Adrian like a hug after the bite of the walk to get there.

  The pizza slice and soda are perfect, exactly what he wanted to soothe the tiny irritations of his day. The place is packed, and Adrian spends a few idle minutes people-watching as he munches on his slice of cheese and tomato goodness.

  One guy stands out as especially striking, or maybe it’s just that he’s Adrian’s type and gets a second look because of that. He has dark hair and dark eyes, with skin a little paler than expected with that combination of coloring.

  He’s probably pale from the chill outside, Adrian thinks, chewing his pizza a little more slowly as he holds off having to brave it again himself when he’s done.

  The cute guy waiting for his take-away near the counter is well-built and well-dressed. Adrian might be barely scraping by, but he knows what money looks like, and the guy’s clothes look like an awful lot of money. Not in a tacky way or anything, just subtle and understated and expensive in a way that cheaper clothes, however stylish, never quite manage.

  The thing that makes him Adrian’s type isn’t any of those easily-described attributes, though. It’s the kind of intense look on his face, like he’d look more at home as the VIP concierge at an edgy nightclub than hanging out waiting for his number to be called for his fast food dinner. He seems powerful, so powerful it borders on dangerous.

  Okay, that’s definitely Adrian’s libido talking, daydreaming up idle fantasies about bad boys, starring random people who pass through his life.

  It has clearly been way, way too long since he went on a date, much less anything racier.

  The daydreams come to an abrupt halt when Adrian misjudges the distance between the bottom of his soda and the tabletop, and has to fumble for a moment to stop anything from spilling.

  His injured hand lands against the edge, reopening the wound and making him suck in a surprised breath at the sudden pain.

  The hot guy near the takeout counter, now holding the awkward square of a pizza box, turns towards Adrian at the commotion at the same second that another man, a nondescript guy standing off to one side, shifts posture as well.

  Recognition zaps through Adrian like a shot of poison. He’s never seen either of them before in his life, but he knows that stance, recognizes the tiny tells in the angle they hold their heads, how they shift their weight on their feet, the stillness as they look at him.

  Leaving the rest of his meal, Adrian heads directly for the door, every instinct in him telling him to escape. He’s so afraid that he’s dizzy with it, vision swimming as his heart beats too fast inside the cage of his ribs.

  A second later, he realizes what a terrible error he’s made. By trying to flee, he’s let them know that he noticed them, that he knew what it meant when they caught the scent of his blood and reacted to it.

  Damn, damn. Adrian’s furious at himself for not recognizing the greater danger he’s placed himself in by moving. There are some predators that you have to stay perfectly still around if you want to survive an encounter with them, and now he can see that this is clearly one of those situations.

  But seeing it now, too late, isn’t going to do him any good. All he can do is try to —

  He makes it through the door and out into the cold and dark before a hand, ju
st as cold as the air around them, clamps down around his wrist.

  2

  ADRIAN

  It’s the second guy, the nondescript one that Adrian didn’t notice at first.

  He’s less nondescript now that Adrian sees him up-close. Not as strikingly handsome as the other one, but with the same preternatural charisma that all his kind have.

  “I knew this would turn out to be a great place to grab dinner,” he says conversationally, as if he isn’t holding one of Adrian’s wrists in a vice-grip, as if Adrian isn’t trying and failing to wrench free of that iron grasp. “I used to come here all the time when I was alive.”

  “I think you’re a little confused about some stuff, buddy. Better go sleep it off,” Adrian replies, trying again to pull away. But all that happens is that the guy smiles and holds on tighter. It’s really starting to hurt.

  The vampire smiles, fang teeth gleaming, making to no pretense whatsoever at hiding what he is. “I think you’re the one feeling confusion.”

  His eyes burn into Adrian’s, a pitiless deep blue, deep like arctic waters, and Adrian can feel the pull of enthrallment dragging him down into a soft hazy nothingness. Even after such a long, long time, the feeling is so familiar that it would be something like home if he didn’t hate it so much.

  Hate and love don’t really matter anymore, though, do they? Not here, not in this easy place where all he has to do is what he’s told. He doesn’t even have to be Adrian anymore. He doesn’t…

  The moment shatters, the haze dispersing like mist under cold rain. The second vampire from inside is here now as well, his own eyes — the darkness revealed up close to be a rich forest green, Adrian notices as he comes back to full awareness properly — narrowed into a glare as he stares at the first one.

  “I don’t think you want to do that, Davis,” he warns Adrian’s assailant calmly. “This one belongs to Emelie, and you know firsthand,” a pointed pause as his eyes drop for a moment, glancing down. “How possessive she can be when it comes to her pets.”

  Adrian’s gaze follows the vampire’s down, and he sees that the hand holding his wrist is the only one that his would-be abductor — who is named Davis, apparently — has. The other sleeve of his shirt is folded and pinned to just below the elbow.

  Davis holds for a beat, and so does the second vampire, and Adrian is about to say something that he’s sure is going to be incredibly inappropriate and stupid, just to break the tension. It’s that or pass out from terror, and honestly he could go either way right now.

  Davis drops Adrian’s wrist with a scoff of disgust and walks away into the night.

  For a second, relief makes Adrian almost as breathless as fear had.

  “Thank you, I—” he begins to say, but the words die on his tongue as he takes in the way the remaining vampire is looking at him, appraising and ruthless, eyes cold.

  “I’ll… just be going…” Adrian says instead, taking a tentative step backwards.

  “No.”

  He freezes.

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” the vampire goes on. “Not after that little scene. You’re going to have to come with me.”

  This is it, this is the end. He’s going to end up dead and chopped up in a dumpster or enthralled, and from what he can remember of the latter Adrian isn’t sure which fate would be worse.

  “Here,” the vampire goes on, apparently not caring whether Adrian has anything to say about the sudden change in his evening’s plans. “You might as well make yourself useful.”

  He shoves the warm pizza box into Adrian’s hands. It should make the whole situation even more ridiculous, a vampire making him carry pizza, but the smell of the cheese and the solidity of the sturdy cardboard makes everything real, makes Adrian even more frightened.

  “Carry that while I decide what’s to be done with you,” the vampire tells him. “Come on, this way.”

  3

  XAVIER

  Xavier is aware of the cold in the air, though his understanding of it is purely observational — his body neither generates nor requires heat, and so no temperature leaves him feeling uncomfortable. It’s chilly enough that the human’s breath creates small ghosts in the air in front of him on each exhale.

  The other pedestrians out in this weather are sparse enough that they mostly have the sidewalk to themselves, walking side by side. Xavier considers putting himself a step ahead of the human, more visibly leading the way as a show of dominance, but decides it might attract unwanted second glances to do so.

  The young man is attractive, above and beyond the alluring vitality that Xavier’s drawn to in all humans. His hair is light brown, his eyes a clear grey. He’s a little smaller than the average size for a man of his age — early twenties, Xavier would guess — and his clothes do nothing to help him look larger. They look worn and slightly outsized, as if they’re hand-me-downs or remaindered items that couldn’t be obtained in exactly the correct fit.

  Xavier can’t help but feel a little bewildered as to what his next step of action should be. Suddenly and without any kind of prior planning, he’s responsible for a young life, one he has no idea what to do with.

  When he was a child, he and his friends once found a stray kitten dumped in a local abandoned lot. The feeling Xavier has now isn’t unlike how he’d felt then, so many decades ago now. He’d known that he couldn’t simply leave the animal in its current, unattended state, but there hadn’t been an obvious solution as to what to do next, either.

  Deterring Davis by mentioning Emelie by name, and referencing the simmering discord that Davis’ faction had against her rulership, had been a spur-of-the-moment tactic Xavier had used as a way to spare this young man from an abrupt and painful end, but it also meant that the human now has more information about the goings-on in the underworld than any human not truly affiliated closely with Emelie should have.

  And so here they are, with the young man carrying the pizza Xavier had gone into the shop to buy for Lennon, walking back towards the apartment building together, with Xavier wracking his brains to try to decide what to do when they get there.

  For the time being at least, he can distract himself from larger questions with immediate considerations.

  “Your phone.”

  “What? Oh.” The young man’s eyes widen as he takes in the meaning of the demand. Fumbling one-handed in his pocket, he produces a cheap model and hands it over without hesitation, his fear of punishment for defying the order overriding his clear desire to protest. Xavier pockets it for later disposal.

  Several minutes later they reach the apartment building. The architecture is deco-inspired, the clean and slightly brutalist lines making the dark height of it appear like an elegant monolith rising above them.

  Xavier uses the security fob on his keyring to activate the high glass doors, which open into an equally lofty-ceilinged lobby decorated with a large framed Keith Haring print, several bright and comfortable sofas, and a refreshments table offering the makings of tea and coffee, along with dispensers for hot or chilled water.

  The look of the entry room was Emelie’s choice, and while her personal aesthetics aren’t those that Xavier preferred himself, he does think it’s a welcoming and pleasant space. There has been more than one night when he’s come back shortly before dawn, exhausted and dismayed by whatever grim business he’s had to do, and felt his spirits lift as he came through the doors.

  Even the human, despite his obvious continued fear, seems to relax somewhat. It was hard to stay in a state of absolute terror for very long, in Xavier’s experience. The mind was too good at adapting to its situation. Nerve receptors became numb.

  The elevator on the far right is designed to reach the top two levels, and only the top two levels, of the building. None of the other elevators have access to Xavier’s floor, or to Emelie’s above it. He uses his fob again to call it down to the lobby, then gestures for the human to step inside when it arrives.

  “Fifteenth floor, huh?
” the young man says as they began to rise. “Seems a little closer to the sun than I thought you guys preferred. Isn’t six feet under more standard?”

  The fact he’s capable of making jokes despite the situation makes Xavier’s mouth twitch up in a brief smile. “Bats like open sky,” he quips back, deadpan.

  When the elevator opens on Xavier’s floor he steps out into the wide hallway, feeling himself relax. Being back in his own domain makes everything seem more manageable, even a complication as unexpected as his new house guest.

  The young man doesn’t follow Xavier out, instead pressing frantically at the button to close the elevator doors. Xavier holds up the key fob, waiting until the man gives up in defeat a few seconds later.

  “It doesn’t operate without this to activate it, so you shouldn’t bother with stupid ideas like that.”

  Shoulders slumping, the man follows Xavier through to the main living area. “‘Shouldn’t bother with stupid ideas,’ huh? Should have gotten that advice thirty minutes ago, when it might have done me some good, I’d’ve skipped getting pizza.”

  He pauses, clearly realizing something about their surroundings. “Wait, this whole floor is one apartment?”

  Xavier nods. “Yes. It seemed simpler.”

  There are high, wide windows in every room, equipped with automatic blackout blinds. They leave Xavier free to roam throughout his home as he wishes throughout the day, but he thinks they would make him feel somewhat claustrophobic if the space was not as extensive as it is.