Bound to the Vampire Chapter 8

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CHAPTER 8

Kayla

Teleporting was not for the weak. It took a stomach made of steel, which she most certainly did not have. As evident by the fact that her mostly digested dinner was now on the cobblestone beneath her feet. She tried to get her stomach to settle.

“You will be well.” A strong hand rubbed at her back.

She was so pathetic even a vampire took pity on her.

Only she would figure out a way to embarrass the hell out of herself at a time like this. Why couldn’t she have found her way to the dumpster five feet away to relieve her guts there? She glanced toward her father who stood at the entrance looking up and down the street. She was going to ask what he was looking for, but opening her mouth made her stomach push its contents on the cobblestone again.

One thing was for certain; she was never going to have the school’s beef stroganoff again. Forget it. It tasted awful coming back up and smelled even worse. She dry-heaved, then forced herself away from the foulness. At least with it empty, her stomach settled.

“I think we can go…” Her father turned around; his face puckered into a frown before he stormed over. “Get your hands off my daughter.”

In one sudden motion, the warmth on her back was gone.

Her head jerked up. Garrick caught her father’s wrist and had him pinned against a neighboring building. The wind around them picked up, flashes of magic pulled from the cobblestones, then up to her father’s hand and into Garrick, forcing him to his knees.

A cry of agony ripped through him as he clutched at his skull like he was trying to recover from wasabi burn and brain freeze at the same time. Kayla immediately turned to her father.

“Stop, what are you doing?”

Her father doubled down on the pain.

“Stop,” she pleaded. “You’re hurting him… Dad!”

Begrudgingly, her father let his magic dissipate from Garrick. The tension in the alley relaxed. For a moment, the vampire rocked on his knees in a daze.

“Are you okay?” she asked, wobbling to check on him.

“Don’t go near him,” her father warned.

She bumped into an invisible screen three feet from Garrick. Her father put some sort of bullcrap forcefield around him. Anger rolled from her shoulders down to her fists as she turned to her dad.

“Dad, let me go. He’s hurt.” The words were pushed through clenched teeth.

“He’s dangerous. Look at him.”

“He’s not—” She didn’t even finish her sentence before a hiss erupted from Garrick’s throat. He wasn’t helping his case.

Come on, work with me here, she thought wryly.

In case he hadn’t noticed, her father was the one holding all the cards at the moment. Hissing was the last thing he should have done. He already looked like a demon summoned from the pits of hell with his eyes black as night on display for everyone to see. He couldn’t go around hissing at her father too.

“We should have left him back at the house.”

“What? Of course not. He saved me,” she argued. There was no way she would have ever left him behind. Not after what he’d done for her. She owed him her life. She bumped into the invisible screen again. Her nostrils flared. “Dad. Put it down.”

“I am fine,” Garrick breathed, using the fissures in the brick building to guide him to his feet.

Her father mumbled under his breath, then checked the street again. He motioned for her to follow. “Our window is open.”

“For what?”

“A safehouse. I’ll explain when we get there.” He paused when Garrick stepped behind her. “He can’t come.”

Really? Her feet stopped moving. “Then I’m not going.”

Her father sucked his teeth the same way he did when she was a child and he’d lost his patience with her for wanting him to use magic to tidy up her room instead of having to clean it up herself.

“His kind is not welcomed where we are going.”

“I’m not leaving him here. He doesn’t even know where we are.”

“His kind think themselves superior. Let him find his own way.”

“But Dad…”

“Kayla,” he boomed in his fatherly voice. “This is not up for discussion. You’re coming with me.”

Usually, that voice was enough to make her eat all her vegetables. She didn’t flinch now. One glance at the silent vampire who seemed wary of speaking out of turn and she knew she wasn’t going to leave him behind. She couldn’t. It wasn’t right.

Unfortunately, her father had other plans. Crossing the alley to get to her, he grabbed at her until he got hold of her forearm and tugged. “Let’s go.”

Garrick moved again.

“You.” Her father gave him a pointed look. “Stay.”

He said it like he was a dog and not the hero who saved her from a house full of wolves. Her cheeks turned all sorts of red, her face heated. If she’d had her freaking magic, it would’ve come ripping out of her.

Fine. If he stayed, so did she.

She dropped her weight onto her feet and dug her heels in. Well, what was left of her heels anyway. Crap, that hurt.

Her father jerked her forward. She and her righteous convictions yelped in pain as the bottom of her feet scraped against the cobblestone alleyway. Her father paused; concern changing his set determination to that of a dad whose kid was hurt. He looked her up and down.

“My feet.” She pointed to her bare toes.

He crouched down and wrapped a hand around her shin and tugged at her leg to lift it. He examined the bottom of her very dirty soles. They were caked in filth. Even through the grime, several red blisters puckered up under the skin.

“Why aren’t you healing?” He pulled her foot closer to his face. Her entire balance came undone.

“Dad, what the hell?” She teetered, using the opposite foot to painfully shimmy around until she found her balance again.

“Your magic should be healing you. Why isn’t it?” Her father cast a distrusting stare at the vampire behind her before returning his attention back to her foot. “We’ll deal with this later.”

Her father ran a hand over her heel, then her arch, then up to the ball of her foot. His hands were so warm, it almost felt like having her feet dipped into a hot pedicure bath. She’d give her left tit for a full-service pedicure right now. The magic emanating from her father’s hand had just the right amount of soothing and healing.

The skin on the underside of her foot was clean, and when he put her foot down, she was already forcing the other one in his face to heal that one too.

He did, like he’d done so many other times throughout her life. For every scraped knee, elbow, and even the occasional ankle sprain, he’d patiently heal it, no matter how upset he was with her. Once he was finished, he gently placed her foot back on the cobblestones.

 They felt brand new. She wiggled her toes and stared at her feet just to be sure they were still there. Wow, this was a hundred times better than a pedicure. “Thank you.”

“Come on.” His dark eyes flickered to Garrick before he let out a compromising sigh. “Marnie doesn’t like his kind. It’ll be up to her if he stays.”

That was dad code for saying the vampire was going to be out of his hair one way or the other, so there was no use in fighting him about it now. He’d done it a hundred times when she wanted to wear something to school that was off dress code. He’d tell her not to wear it, but would inevitably give her the ‘the school’s going to decide if that’s acceptable or not’ spiel before she left the house. Sometimes he was right. She hoped this time he wasn’t.

She didn’t know a thing about Marnie, but if someone ran a safehouse, they had to be pretty understanding. Right?

Before exiting the alley, her father grabbed a hold of her wrist tightly, then rushed them across the street. This late at night, the only cars passing were people either leaving work late or going to work early. At least there would be no one to scream when they saw Garrick.

His eyes hadn’t seen a shade of normal since she’d seen them in the warehouse. The shirt he’d draped over her to go through the fire was back on his back, but in tatters. Burned to hell in places. He really did look like a demon who’d escaped hell. The vampire was unsettling, but she guessed he knew that. He seemed to keep a few paces behind them, but followed them closely.

They scurried along the mostly vacant streets, dodging in and out of alleys until they rounded the corner to what looked like a slice of the French Quarter in the middle of Sun City.

Dual two-story homes with double decker balconies kitty cornered around a cobblestone courtyard. Plants and vines wound up the wrought-iron spindles connecting the porches together. Each was colorfully decorated, in bright pinks, purples, and sunshine yellows, although this dark out, their colors were muted in the moonlight.

Her father walked toward them.

This was the safehouse?

Nothing about the oddity in front of her screamed safe. It stuck out like a sore thumb. Or was that the point? Stick out so much no one would dare think it harbored… who? Criminals? Fugitives?

Her stomach lurched at the thought. Which were they? She stared at the sprinkle of grays peppering the back of her father’s head. This entire night had been because the greasy man at the warehouse was looking for her to get back at her father.

She needed to know why.

They climbed up the stairs to the front porch, and her father knocked in a sort of rhythm on the front door before waiting.

Lights illuminated the house, traveling from room to room until someone opened the door.

A woman with high cheekbones, dark eyes and the most lustrous brown skin she’d ever seen cracked the door open a sliver. A lit cigarette dangled from her mouth as she drew an inhale. With her hair tied back by a colorful scarf, it was super easy to read the look on her face that said they must have lost their minds showing up to her door at such an indecent hour.

The woman gave her a long sweeping look, the lines at the corners of her eyes deepening with disapproval. “I don’t have any vacancies.”

“Marn, I need your help,” her father said, stepping into view.

“Donovan?” Her eyes widened, then darted behind them down the street in alarm. The lights in her house dimmed like someone had turned the dial down. Marnie pulled her silk caftan tighter around her and moved into the shadows of her house. Her dark pensive eyes flickered from her father, then to her, but paused when they met Garrick and settled into distrust.

Of course, it was too much to hope she’d miss the vampire who stood behind them, cloaked in the shadows of the tree at the bottom of the front steps.

“Who’s he?”

“He’s a friend,” Kayla answered even though uncertainty lingered in her voice. She focused on looking directly into Marnie’s pensive eyes.

The woman raised a disbelieving eyebrow before her gaze settled on Garrick.

“Only those pure of spirit can enter my house.”

With that she moved from the doorway to allow them inside. What did she mean by that?

Kayla entered behind her father to a quaint front sitting room. Marnie eclipsed the doorway again, watching Garrick with keen interest. In the folds of her caftan, a spark of red magic twisted around her fingertips as she watched her next guest come up the stairs.

His heavy footfalls walked across the porch evenly, yet the wood underneath his feet groaned like it was going to splinter, then crumble under him. It was an old porch, but this sounded much different than the settling of old creaky wooden planks. It was as if Marnie’s front porch was weighing Garrick’s honor as he passed over it, judging him as he walked, threatening to collapse at any moment if it deemed him a foe.

Something deep inside of her wanted him to be good. Wanted Marnie’s enchanted porch to deem him worthy.

He made it to the threshold without the entire thing collapsing so that had to be a good sign. Relief softened her face into a grateful smile.

But Marnie’s face twisted and an emotion passed over it before she moved back a step to let him in.

“Now, let’s see the heart of you,” Marnie purred in a sultry voice, daring him to cross the threshold.

It was clear from the smug smile upturned at the corner of her lips that this was not a test she thought he could pass.