His Lover's Fangs Page 2

  Willing away the memories and his love, he stood and cleaned up the glass debris more thoroughly than on his first try. If there was a job to do, it had to be done fast and right. As he threw the glass away, he looked out through the broken window, his eyes searching the darkness. Was she truly gone? Would he find her if he went after her?

  There was only one way to find out.

  His resolve renewed, he returned to the bedroom, intending to pick up his boots and jacket. As soon as he pushed the door open, he saw her. She was standing behind the open window, her hands pressed against the immaterial barrier that kept her out. She gave him a twisted smile. Logan’s determination wavered. He paused on the threshold and watched her. Her clothes were the same, cotton shirt and pants; her long, dark hair was still gathered in a tight ponytail at the nape of her neck. But it wasn’t his Olivia standing there anymore. With that thought echoing through his mind, he finally stepped into the bedroom.

  * * * *

  “I was trying to decide what anniversary present to get you. What would you prefer? The neighbor’s head or her heart? Or maybe your parents’? I still have time to cross town and come back.”

  Olivia kept her eyes on Logan as she taunted him, certain that she’d know when she crossed the line and finally pushed him over. She was a little disappointed when his only outward reaction was a snort.

  “My parents know better than to let you inside their house,” he said, not looking at her. He picked up the laundry basket in the corner of the room and started throwing in the clothes that had been scattered about. “So do the neighbors.”

  She shrugged the news off. She wasn’t really surprised. It was standard procedure to immediately inform family members as well as casual acquaintances when someone was turned into a vampire. She wondered if he had done so himself or if he had had someone else do it.

  He stopped just in front of the open window, his dark eyes scrutinizing her as he added, “And so do your parents.”

  Olivia braced herself for the emotions she was sure would rise at these words. All she felt, however, was mild curiosity. Who had said they knew this would happen first, her mother or her father? It didn’t matter much anymore.

  “Maybe I’ll visit them when I’m done here,” she said, still trying to get a rise out of Logan. “See what the food is like in Texas.”

  Logan still didn’t react. His scent, however, shifted abruptly when he picked up yet another item of clothing from the floor. Olivia took an absentminded step forward, curious as to why he smelled so… hurt, suddenly. She had first learned to recognize this scent from the humans her Sire had brought her to feed from. Thralled, the two young men had not felt any fear, but her bite had caused them pain, and their scent had reflected it.

  She rubbed at her nose as she recognized the lace-edged nightie she had slept in a few nights earlier. She hadn’t known until now that mental anguish held the same bitter scent as physical pain.

  “Are you going to keep patrolling like this, lover?” she asked, her voice raw and throaty. She tried to move a little closer to Logan, only to be stopped, yet again, by the protective barrier. “So depressed and wounded you can’t even see straight?”

  He threw a hard look at her, and maybe he was trying to sound mocking, but he missed by a mile and only sounded angry. “Seeing straight or not, I got Ann, didn’t I?” He shook his head, his gaze hardening a little more. “Even you couldn’t do it. But all it took me was two nights. Two nights of hunting one stupid vamp—”

  Before she even knew it, a growl rose from deep in Olivia’s chest, from the same place where the pain of losing her Sire was still tearing her apart. She had not liked Ann, but that didn’t matter to the force inside her that only knew Ann as the person to whom she owed her complete obedience, along with her existence.

  “Careful, Logan,” she said, venom tinting her words. “Insulting my Sire isn’t all that wise.”

  He snorted, then shook his head and turned his back on her. “Really?” he threw over his shoulder. “What are you going to do? Threaten me some more?”

  Without thinking, Olivia lashed out, hitting the barrier of thin air with her fist. She could have sworn she could feel the magic rippling beneath her skin. She growled again, drawing Logan’s eyes back to her.

  “She did that a lot, before I staked her,” he said, almost idly. “Threatened me. Said she’d kill me as easily as she had killed you.”

  As hard as Olivia tried not to react in any way at his words, she flinched. She wasn’t proud of her last fight as a human. She had made stupid mistakes, let Ann get much too close. She had no one to blame for her death but herself. Her Sire had made sure she knew it, twisting the knife in only hours after Olivia had awakened in her lair.

  “Oh yes,” Logan said, triumphant. He must have noticed his words had hit straight home; he had always been able to read her face much too well to her liking. Now, he used that to push his advantage. “She wasn’t all that complimentary toward you. Kinda mean, actually. You sure you want to avenge her?”

  Pulling away from the window, Olivia made a conscious effort to clear her face of emotions and let her arms hang loose at her sides. She didn’t feel the calmness she was trying to project, but she clung to it with all her might and even managed to push a smile to her lips.

  “I’m not here to avenge her.” Her smile deepened a little to punctuate her words. “Funny you’d use that word, though, lover. Is that what you did? Kill her to avenge me? You must have been heartbroken, you poor thing.”

  “I killed her because she was a killer,” Logan replied at once, too fast, too loudly; whom was he trying to convince? “You were only the last of her victims. And I’m not going to be your first.”

  It struck her suddenly that Logan shouldn’t be doing this. He shouldn’t have been talking to her, arguing with her, allowing her to goad him—even if that barrier stood between them. They had learned this together at the Academy; they both knew it was a mistake to engage a potentially violent vampire like this. But if she could make him forget his training this far, maybe she’d make him forget more, make him break other rules. After all, almost from the moment they had met, he’d always been unable to resist her.

  * * * *

  Olivia had dreamed of attending the Academy and becoming a Special Enforcer for as long as she could remember. Her parents had thought it was cute, at first, and they had often made a joke out of it.

  And this is our youngest, Olivia, they would say, introducing the family to new friends. She just turned six, but she already knows what she wants to do when she’s a grown up. Go ahead, Olivia. Tell them what you want to hunt.

  By the time they understood it wasn’t all a silly dream imagined by a child, to be forgotten by the time she grew up, it had been too late to make her change her mind.

  And by the time she understood that the reality of the Academy was far different from the romantic idea she had imagined, giving up was not an option anymore.

  The physical aspect of it was just as she had expected: close combat, endurance and strength training, basic weapons at first with the promise of being able to choose from a few more advanced ones later on. She was pretty good at it; years of martial arts helped—and surprisingly, so did the ballet training she had only stuck with to appease her mother.

  But she had never thought she would need to read textbooks, attend lectures, memorize things, participate in discussions, and actually write essays about what she learned.

  She had always been terrible at writing essays.

  Up to their first graded essay, she was at the top of her class.

  After… she wasn’t anymore.

  It wasn’t all that hard to identify the candidates who were better at the academics part of things than she was. It was a little more difficult to find someone who wasn’t too snooty—or too boring—for her to approach. She first talked to Logan when they were paired up for close-combat training.

  “I need help organizing my thoughts for our nex
t essay,” she said, inches from his ear, while they were in the middle of practicing a new move the instructor had just demonstrated.

  Logan chuckled, drawing a sharp look from the instructor, and it was a few more moments before he could answer without earning a reprimand.

  “And I need to get a better aim when I shoot a crossbow,” he said dryly.

  “Done.”

  Her reply seemed to puzzle him, but she didn’t have a chance to elaborate as the instructor broke up all pairs and reassigned the partners. The rest of the day passed very fast. That afternoon, after they had been assigned another essay topic, it was time for their daily crossbow practice. Olivia wasn’t near Logan, but she was close enough to observe him closely.

  After dinner that night, she took her notes to the men’s dorms. Women were allowed there until nine thirty at night as long as they signed in with the dorm master when they arrived.

  She easily found his room number and headed there. When she knocked on the door, it took a few moments before he opened it, and she understood why as soon as she saw him. His hair was wet, a towel draped over his bare shoulders, and he was tugging the drawstrings of his sweatpants tight at his waist.

  He blinked several times when he saw her there, then frowned. “Huh… Hi? Can I help you?”

  “I hope so,” Olivia said with a grin.

  She couldn’t help following a bead of water with her eyes as it glided over the tendons of his neck and right down the center of his chest. He crossed his arms, and her gaze snapped back to his face.

  “You drop your shoulder,” she said, returning to the business at hand. “Every time you’re about to hit the crossbow trigger, you lock your breath, and when you do your right shoulder drops half an inch. That’s why your aim sucks.”

  His frown deepened. “I do? Huh. No one ever noticed before. Are you sure?”

  Olivia nodded. “I watched you. Twenty-five arrows, you dropped your shoulder twenty-two times. And the other three times—”

  His eyes widened excitedly as he understood. “Were the three arrows I put in the center of the target. Wow. That explains a lot. Thanks.”

  “No problem. I can watch again tomorrow if you want, tell you when you’re doing it right so you get a feel for it.”

  The frown returned, now cautious. “Thanks,” he said again. “But why are you doing this?”

  “I told you I needed help with my essays,” she said, grinning. “And you said you needed help with your aim. I helped. Your turn.”

  The look he gave her was pure fish out of water, complete with a mouth opening and closing again without any sound coming out.

  Patience had never been Olivia’s strong suit, or at least it wasn’t when there was no good reason for her to be denied what she wanted at the moment she wanted it. She looked down pointedly at the books and notebooks she was carrying, then back up at him. Eyebrows raised high, she asked, completely aware of how this would sound to the people passing in the hallway behind her and not caring one bit, “Are we doing this outside or are you going to invite me in?”

  * * * *

  Pulling herself out of her memories, Olivia forced a grin to her lips. “So. Are we doing this outside or are you going to invite me in?”

  Logan blinked very slowly, and she could tell that he remembered, too. Of course he did. Back then, he had been flustered when he had answered. Now, he seemed angry.

  “If you think I’m going to sleep with you—”

  “Who said anything about sleeping?” she cut in, her grin taking a predatory turn. “I was thinking a bit of a fight.” Raising a hand to her face, she tapped her lips thoughtfully with a single finger. “Although we could precede that with a nice fuck. What do you say, lover? A last fuck for old time’s sake?”

  Logan’s cheeks darkened in anger. He had always hated that word. Sometimes, though, there was no other way to describe what they did. Olivia’s body remembered climaxes wrenched out of her, frantic thrusting by moonlight, claw marks and light bruises that no vamp had inflicted on them. They had often been tender, but when the mood had struck them both, flesh could take over minds for a few minutes, or even a few hours.

  Without a word, he picked up the laundry basket and turned away. As she watched him walk out of sight, bristling with anger and pain, Olivia could only wonder what it would have been like to sleep with him one last time. She doubted she’d get to know before it all ended.

  “Doing my laundry?” she called out, knowing he would still hear her from the laundry room. “You were always so thoughtful, lover.”

  He didn’t reply, and soon she could hear the low buzzing of the washing machine starting its cycle. It was a few more minutes before Logan returned to the bedroom, long enough for Olivia to wonder what he would do with her clothes after washing them—what he would do with all her things.

  “Did you call the Salvation Army, yet?” she asked as he reappeared. “When are they going to come to pick up my stuff?”

  Logan started to shake his head, only to stop himself short, but it was too late. If he wasn’t going to donate her belongings, what was he going to do with them? He wasn’t going to keep living like this, with reminders of her all around him, was he? The mere thought made Olivia’s hands clench into tight fists, her nails digging into her palms.

  “It’s getting late,” Logan said abruptly. “You going to stay there all night and let me watch you burn at sunrise?”

  Olivia forced a savage grin to her lips. “Would it upset you if I did?”

  “Upset me?” Logan snickered, but it sounded forced. “It’d just save me from having to kill you myself.”

  “Save you, huh?” She tapped a thoughtful finger to her lips. “Now that’s an interesting choice of words. Are you saying killing me would hurt you?”

  Logan shook his head, but he didn’t reply. She expected him to leave the room, get away from her, maybe even call for backup; it was what he should have done the moment she arrived, and they both knew it. Instead, he remained standing there, watching her, hiding his pain so badly that it angered her all over again.

  “You should never have become a Special Enforcer,” she spat at him. “You were always a weakling, always a bleeding heart with a savior complex. Guess what, lover.” She spread her arms out. “Here I am. The love of your life. And you couldn’t save me, could you?”

  “I tried,” he snapped back. “I told you to wait for me. I ran—”

  “You ran?” she interrupted him, laughing. “Of course you ran. You ran away, you coward. Four vamps against two, those were not odds you wanted to play, were they?”

  His face reddened, and she could hear his heartbeat accelerating. She knew him too well, knew exactly what buttons to push, and—

  “You’re calling me a coward?” he shouted, incredulity and anger equally thick in his voice. “Come here and say it to my face if…”

  For just a second, he looked just as shocked by the words that had passed his lips as Olivia felt. She had been almost sure that in the end he would come out to her, that he wouldn’t be stupid enough to invite a vampire in their—his home. She had been so sure of it, actually, that a flash of rage ran through her even as she realized that she could now step inside. She rushed in with a snarl.

  Logan’s eyes flickered to the crossbow he had left on the dresser, but she was closer to it. Turning on his heel, he ran from the bedroom, and she knew at once where he was going, just like she knew that she had to stop him before he reached the dining room and the swords on the wall. The rest of their weapons were in the trunk of the car or at the agency, and a sword would be his best chance to hurt her without letting her come close enough to hurt him.

  Running as fast as she could, her boots screeching on the tiles, she caught up with him just as he exited the kitchen. She grabbed his t-shirt before he could enter the dining room and flung him to the opposite side of the hallway into the living room. He crashed into the back of the sofa, and for a moment Olivia thought she had knocked him out
. She froze, hesitating, but then Logan stood again, stumbling backward and putting the sofa between them.

  She grinned at him, baring her fangs as she approached. “Think you can hide?”

  He shook his head. “No. I think I need a weapon.”

  She didn’t understand what he meant until he grabbed the edge of the wooden coffee table and flipped it over, then tore off one of the legs.

  “Improvisation?” she said, mildly surprised, stopping as she eyed the makeshift stake in his hand.

  “You taught me well,” he replied, and didn’t wait to finish before he launched himself at her.

  She blocked his arm as he swung the stake toward her and pushed him hard enough that he stumbled back, crashing into the coffee table and completely destroying it. He attacked again at once, but this time the swinging stake was only a decoy. He kicked at her leg, wrecking her balance. She crashed into the wall hard enough to leave a dent in the plaster. She glared at him but didn’t say a word and attacked. It was his turn to parry, counter-attack, defend, and they continued to move around the room, circling each other, destroying the furniture, breaking a window, chipping the tiles they had laid out together around the fireplace. Neither of them was gaining the upper hand.

  As she struck at him, Olivia kept having flashbacks of the many hours they had spent training together. They had sparred together at the Academy sometimes, but it had always been by chance, even after they had started enjoying each other’s company. The instructors paired the trainees up with different partners for each lesson, and there were enough trainees that they didn’t train with the same partner more than two or three times a month.

  After they had graduated, though, when they had funded their own agency together, sparring had become part of their daily regimen. Most sessions finished with kisses at the very least, shared showers usually, and when they pushed each other to their limits and beyond, they always ended things with a lot more than kissing.