He lifted his eyebrows. “You don’t care how I feel about them?”
“She hates vampires. And maybe the boys we were, too.” Caesar crossed in front of me to look around. Without another word, he left the living room and went straight into the small bedroom.What is he doing in there?
“Do you?” Griffin tilted his head. “Hate us and the boys we were?”
I stared at him. “Do you care?”
“Emotions like hate don’t really matter. They’re human and pointless.”
I thought he was going to say that, so I smiled at him. “Then the conversation is pointless.” I walked into my bathroom, stopping to call over my shoulder, “Go get whatever stuff you guys need. By the time you get back, I’ll be done, you can shower, and I’ll be ready to go.”
“Fine.” Caesar called from my bedroom.Seriously, what is he doing in there?I left the bathroom to find him standing in the center of my room, staring at the walls. “You lived in here?”
That seemed obvious. “I did. Why?”
“It doesn’t seem like you.” He turned to me. “Even your room in the trailer had more stuff. Why didn’t you go there and get your stuff?”
I shrugged. “Seems like the life another girl lived. I didn’t live here as much as I was grateful to survive. I don’t need stuff. I would think that was something a vampire could understand.”
“Maybe some vampires but, truthfully, vampires love stuff,” Griffin said, walking into the room. He shrugged. “Why does it bother me that she hates me?”
Caesar lifted an eyebrow. “It bothers me, too.”
Okay. Enough of this.“I don’t hate either of you. Better?”
I had to be careful. I couldn’t let myself soften too much to these guys. I had no illusions about vampires being warm and loving. I wasn’t one of the servants who wanted to be them or even a paramour who liked what she could have in their presence. I’d seen firsthand how callous and uncaring vampires were as a rule. I couldn’t fall for them like they were still who they’d been. They’d died and been reborn as a different creature. I was certainly not the person I had been before all of it started.
My shower called to me, so after getting the hot water going, I got inside. Luckily, Wanda’s bar never ran out of hot water. It was lovely. My current shampoo smelled like strawberries. Although I used whatever was on sale, I liked this one. I scrubbed my hair, applied a conditioner that had no scent, and then soaped up my body. It took ten minutes.
By the time I got out, I hummed to myself again. It wasn’t a song I even knew, just a melody that came to me. My body didn’t hurt—a remarkable gift I’d never get over. Gratitude of just being fine was a real, palpable thing.
Enough to hum over. If I knew the words to the made-up song, I’d even sing, and I had a terrible singing voice.
I ran my hands through my hair, wincing as each knot came loose.When was the last time I did this?I couldn’t even remember. Lately, it had been too much effort, but tonight I felt like taking extra effort. I blinked. If this became a thing—me hanging out with those two vampires—would I start thinking of nighttime as daytime? It was something to ponder.
A noise of someone coming through the front door caught my attention. A second later my bathroom door swung open.
“Hey,” I yelled. “I’m not dressed yet.”
“Then you can die naked.”
One of the vampires—Bash—who I’d been paying to feed off me stood in my apartment. His eyes were bright red.Fuck.He’s in a rage.
“W-what are you doing here?” I didn’t know any of them knew where I lived. I tried to grab for my bathrobe, but he took me by the neck and slammed me against the wall.
“You missed your appointment, and I want my money, bitch.”
I winced. “I don’t have any. I’m sorry. I have no way of canceling you or anything. I mean, none. I have no way to pay you. I’m sorry. I can’t do that.” My last fifty dollars had gone to the now dead vampire. I hadn’t showed up at work, and I hadn’t been paid.
He scowled at me. “That’s really too bad, because now I’ll have to take my payment in blood. Fifty dollars’ worth of blood will kill you.
With a twist, I tried to knee him in the balls. Tried was the key word, because I failed. It only resulted in him squeezing my neck harder. He loosened his hold only enough so that he could tear into my skin. I screamed. It wasn’t pretty, and for the last thing I was going to do, it was really pathetic. I clawed at him. It did nothing.
He was wrenched off me and thrown to the side. Griffin breathed heavily, his eyes blood red. He roared, a completely non-human sound as he pulled Bash off the floor. His fangs elongated, but he didn’t bite him. No, using one hand, he broke my kitchen chair in half, separating the leg from the rest of it. With the pointy end he staked Bash right the through the heart.
I’d never seen anyone staked before. Sure, I might dream of becoming a vampire hunter, but even trying would make a vampire laugh at me. Bash’s body flopped once before he died on my floor.
A great time to get up and say something pithy.Not that I could, because blood dropped down my neck, and it took every bit of my energy to try to hold my neck together.This is bad, nothing like when they bit my neck.