Garden of Thorns Read online

  Need an update in the morning. Hope I didn’t wake you.

  Ian.

  He texts every so often, always from a different number, each a new burner phone so it can’t be traced. He never calls though unless it’s through the computer when Lexington can reroute the signals.

  I look to the door, debating for a moment. I jump to my feet and pull the door open to go tell Lexington.

  Light glows through the hallway, the sound of the shower coming from the second bathroom. I hesitate just outside my door, trying to listen for Lexington’s location.

  Movement through the crack in the door draws my attention to the bathroom. Lexington shifts into view. He sets something down on the counter, looking down for a few moments.

  He then lifts his shirt, pulling it up and over his head, dropping it into the laundry basket in the corner.

  A big scar lances from his right hip, zigzagging across his back, cutting over his spine before ending under his left shoulder blade. On his right shoulder blade is a tattoo, a list of three roman numerals.

  The muscles of his back are defined and toned. With an immortal body he doesn’t have to do much to maintain such a chiseled physique. Being the ultimate predator is in his Resurrected blood.

  I feel my face flush, knowing I’m being creepy, standing here staring when he doesn’t know I’m here. With one last glance, I step back into my bedroom, and close the door.

  The ceiling stares back at me as I listen for the faint sound of the shower. I pull the covers up, crossing my hands over my chest.

  I don’t know if I trust myself in these things I’m starting to feel. I’ve never been in any kind of a relationship. I’ve only been on about a dozen dates in college, one since I moved to Boston. Do I really have any idea of what a relationship looks like? Of the things I’m supposed to be feeling for another person?

  Lying to myself seems impossible though. There’s something building in my chest, growing in my stomach, setting into my heart.

  There’s chemistry between Lexington and me. The comfortable ease I feel with him that I’ve never had with anyone else. The way we always seem to finish each other’s sentences. The way he sticks up for me when I clam up and can’t find the words. The fact that no one else has ever been able to get me to smile like he does.

  I let out a slow breath between my lips, trying to push back these thoughts. I need sleep.

  But as I roll over onto my side, all I can focus on is the sound of the water shutting off. The footsteps as they walk down the hall to the door across from mine.

  The sound of that door shutting.

  And the wish I have in my chest that there were no doors at all.

  The next day is one of the most agonizing and long of my life.

  I consider myself to be more aware than most, having lived the life I have, knowing what I know. But the way I am hyperaware of everything Lexington does the next day is over the top.

  Every movement he makes in the shop. The speed of his breathing. The amount of space between his body and mine. It’s driving me insane.

  It’s making my chest hurt.

  It’s hard to breathe.

  “Are you okay?” he finally asks around noon. He looks over at me with those blue eyes of his, his eyebrows slightly raised, a look of curiosity and concern on his face.

  “Yeah,” I say, looking away quickly before he can see the torment I’m feeling. “I just…I’m hungry I guess. Maybe you could run and get us some lunch?”

  This brings a smile to his face. He’s always saying I need to eat more regularly, and I knew it was one of the few things that would make him jump to leave. “Yeah,” he says enthusiastically. “What are you in the mood for?”

  I shrug. “Surprise me.”

  Somehow I also knew it would widen that brilliant smile. And I’m not wrong.

  “K, I’ll be back in a little bit.” He winks at me as he walks out.

  I watch him go through the windows until he’s finally out of sight. I collapse back into my chair, feeling exhausted.

  I wish I had someone to turn to for advice right now. Another female figure. Someone who could tell me how to deal with these overwhelming desires. How to proceed.

  The only one I have though is Alivia. But I’m not supposed to communicate with her right now. And honestly I don’t know that I want advice from her. She and my brother may be happy now, but they went through a million ugly words and months of fighting and turning to other people for comfort to get there.

  I can’t say that what’s going on between Lexington and I looks anything like what Ian and Liv went through.

  I think I’m grateful for that.

  The bell above the door rings, and an older woman steps inside.

  “Welcome to Oleander Apothecary,” I say, flashing her what I hope is a warm smile. “What can I help you with today?”

  She looks around the shop nervously, her eyes studying the different labels, the old shelves. She fidgets with the purse she carries.

  “I hope I’m in the right place,” she says. She turns in a little circle before continuing her walk to the counter. When she finally reaches it, she looks at me straight for the first time. “I’m a little unsure. You look far too young to be the one I heard about.”

  Once upon a time I might have gotten offended by her comment. But it’s one that comes frequently. “I have a feeling I am in fact who you’re looking for, actually.”

  She looks me up and down, studying me hard. I look her over similarly.

  Her straight gray hair is cropped short, her skin wrinkled but tanned. She’s thin, but not frail. There’s something still very solid and lively about her.

  “I heard you have products to ward off…night-loving problems,” she says quietly, looking over her shoulder as if to make sure we are alone.

  I straighten, my blood pressure spiking.

  I get all kinds of strange requests here. But never anyone asking for things to ward off vampires.

  “Where did you hear that?” I ask as the alarm bells start going off in my brain.

  I don’t sell my toxins.

  Never have.

  The only ones who know about them are my family, the House of Conrath, Kai, and King Cyrus.

  “A rather unpleasant woman who took out my very suspicious neighbor,” the woman says, looking around. “Young. Wore these wretched boots.”

  Aleah.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, anger raising my pulse all the more. “I can’t say I know what you’re talking about.”

  “You are Elle Ward, aren’t you?” she asks, narrowing her eyes at me.

  I nearly jump out of my skin, hearing my real name. My heart just about explodes and pin prickles break out onto my palms. My breath hitches. I swallow once, but to my credit, I’ve always had a good poker face. “Can’t say I’ve ever heard of her. My name is Penny Jones.”

  The woman stares at me hard, confusion starting to settle into her expression. “I thought for sure…”

  “I have an immobilizing spray,” I cut her off, stepping out from behind the counter, pulling the stake out of my back pocket a bit, exposing the tip. “It’s a bit like pepper spray, but ten times stronger.”

  I grab a bottle of it off the shelf and turn. The woman’s eyes rise from the stake, to my eyes. She’s trying to arrange her own poker face, but she’s not as good.

  “Yes,” she says, pasting on a pleasant smile. “I think that will help.”

  I pleasantly smile at her and walk back to the register. “That’ll be nineteen-seventy-five.”

  She pays cash and I put it in a bag for her. As she walks out, she looks back at me, narrowing her eyes in uncertainty once more.

  The second she’s gone, I duck into the lab and arm myself with stakes and toxins. I even slip a handgun into the waistband of my jeans.

  I stand stiff behind the counter while I wait for Lexington to return, biting my thumbnail down to the quick. It feels like an eternity, and—how long could it possibly tak
e for him to run down the street and get lunch?

  When he finally rounds into view of the window, I step forward around the counter, catching my hip in my haste.

  “What’s wrong?” he immediately asks when he sees my face.

  “There was this woman here just a few minutes ago,” I say quietly as he sets the food on the counter. He stands close to me as I explain, looking around, checking to be sure we’re alone.

  “That doesn’t seem right,” he says. “I mean, it wouldn’t be impossible for Aleah to figure your name out, but I don’t think she’d tell anyone. She’s a spitfire, but I don’t think she’d turn against us like that.”

  “Lexington,” I say and his eyes finally come back to mine. “What if she just made it all up? What if she works for Charles Allaway?”

  It clicks in his head. “She could have been a spy,” he breathes. “It’s entirely possible she saw Aleah out doing her job. She could have followed us at any point from the House of Martials.”

  His breathing picks up speed, his nostrils flaring slightly. He stands on the balls of his feet, ready to spring into action at any moment.

  He’s two seconds away from something forceful, I can feel it as a tangible thing.

  I reach up, placing my hands on either side of his face, forcing his eyes back to mine, even as my nerve endings explode at the physical contact. Everything in him stills, intensity burning in his eyes as he stares back at me.

  “I’m not going to run,” I say firmly. The resolve in my stomach hardens. “I’ve been bossed around by my brother my entire life, having to bend to the will and circumstances of the Born and the Bitten for longer than I can remember.”

  Lexington brings his hands up to my wrists, hanging on to me as I ground myself.

  “I will fight. I can fight,” I say, holding his eyes. “I have Kai. I have Duncan. I think you’re right, Aleah wouldn’t rat me out like that. And I have you.”

  Lexington nods, the intensity building in his eyes. He takes half a step forward, bringing his body closer to mine.

  “I’m not running,” I repeat, forcing every ounce of determination I can into my eyes.

  He studies me, a look of awe in his eyes. “Fearless,” he breathes.

  And the next moment, he disappears. The bell on the door dinging loudly with the force he swings the door open with.

  I’m slightly breathless. I blink fast, looking around the space, but he’s disappeared.

  I walk to the window, looking out to the busy street. There’s no sign of him.

  The speed of a vampire, especially a Born, is an incredible thing. But there are over seven hundred thousand people in this city.

  Five minutes rolls by. Then ten. And Lexington doesn’t immediately return.

  I walk into the lab and pop open a cabinet. Inside is a shelf of stakes. Another with vials and needles. Another holds three dart guns. Another holds a portable solar light.

  And the last holds incredibly thin glass orbs. A red liquid fills them.

  Acid. Something I designed six years ago, just before I moved into the Conrath Estate, created specifically to burn the skin of a vampire.

  I pull my jacket on, stocking up on even more weapons.

  I may not be a hunter like Ian was before he Resurrected. I might not have training in martial arts, and I may not spend hours at the gym building physical muscle. But I am not helpless.

  A sister for a sister.

  But Charles isn’t one to do his own dirty work. If he’s really going to come after me, he’ll send one of his few remaining followers.

  The woman who came into the shop walked in during the brightness of day without any trouble. She’s not a vampire, Born or Bitten.

  If she was sent here on his behalf, he’s using human spies.

  It makes sense. In the past, the Born often used the Bitten to do their dirty work. But Charles hates the Bitten because of what they did to his sister, and he well knows it’s illegal to create them now. He’s limited on House members to do his bidding. But the one thing he does still have is money. And humans, if they need it badly enough, will do anything for money.

  It’s an hour before Lexington returns. His hair is wild, windblown. He’s been running at vampire speed the entire time.

  He shakes his head, anger rising in his eyes. “I didn’t find her,” he says. “The scent died off just down the road. Too many bodies to keep the trail.”

  I nod, going back to the window, crossing my arms over my chest. “We’re going to have to be more careful from now on.”

  Lexington walks up to stand beside me. He places a hand on my shoulder, his arm wrapping around me. “Get ready to have me glued to your side from now on.”

  I bite my lower lip, nodding.

  This is about to get very interesting.

  “And what about this one?” Lexington asks.

  I look up from where I harvest the very last of the wormwood, with its fuzzy leaves, beginning to crystalize in the winter air.

  “White snakeroot,” I say, looking back at what I’m doing. I clip the plant at the ground, clearing it to grow back next spring. “It normally has these tiny white flowers.”

  “And just how toxic is it?” Lexington asks, backing away from it half a step.

  “Toxic enough you can be killed by drinking the milk from a cow who grazed on the plant. It’s actually called ‘milk poisoning.’”

  “For real?” he asks, his eyebrows raising.

  A little chuckle comes from my lips. “For real. It’s how Abraham Lincoln’s mother died.”

  “You scare me, poison sorceress,” he says with a crooked smile. “More than just a little.”

  I finish up, stuffing the last of the wormwood into the wooden crate. Dusting the dirt off my gloves, I nod my head back toward the stairs.

  “I bet you know about seven different ways to kill me right now,” he says as he follows me down into the laundry room. “Don’t you?”

  “More like nine,” I say casually as I set the crate on a shelf where I will leave it to dry over the weekend.

  He laughs, shaking his head at me as he takes his boots off and hangs his coat up. I hang mine, blowing hot air into my even more frozen than normal hands. I walk down the stairs into the living room, heading to the fireplace, when the boxes that occupy the space stop me.

  I’d almost forgotten.

  “Are you ready to do this?” Lexington asks, rubbing his hands together. I look back at him to see a ridiculous smile growing on his face.

  “You realize how ludicrous you look right now?” I tease him.

  “It’s Christmas, baby,” he says exuberantly. “Tis the season for feeling jolly.”

  I laugh, shaking my head and turn back to the boxes.

  “You’re a vampire,” I say as he cuts open the first box. “Doesn’t celebrating Christmas feel a little…sacrilegious?”

  “What are you talking about?” he demands as he pulls the artificial tree from the box. With invisibly fast hands, he has the tree pieces stacked and the branches fluffed out in no time at all, positioning it right in front of the window. “Christmas is for everyone. That’s like, the one complaint I had about Liv’s House. None of them cared that much about the holidays.”

  “And apparently you do,” I say, remembering the huge shopping spree he dragged me along for last night.

  “Yes, I do,” he says, raising an eyebrow at me. With a smile, he plugs the lights in, colorful dots lighting up the room. “Now get over here and help me put this crap up.”

  I laugh, shaking my head at him. Lexington’s enthusiasm isn’t something I can deny. I stoop and pick up a bag of tinsel. Together, we wind it around the tree.

  “You realize you’re going to have to let me out alone sometime in the next three days so I can get you a present, right?” I ask as we start hanging the ornaments on the tree.

  “You mean you’ve waited this long to get me something?” he teases, a look of mock hurt on his face.

  “Hey,”
I say in defense. “You’re literally with me every moment I’m not using the restroom or showering, and have been for the last how long now? Cut me some slack.”

  “Getting sick of me yet?” he asks, looking over and giving me a wink. But there’s something genuine there that tells me he really is concerned about it.

  The answer of no screams in my chest, and I feel my face flush slightly. I look away, paying attention to the little bells I hang from the branches. “No, not yet.”

  I can feel his eyes on me, watching far too closely.

  I know there is something here, something building and growing, and it’s becoming quite apparent that it isn’t one-sided.

  But I’ve never done this before. I don’t know how to make the first move, don’t have the words to initiate something.

  And I think there’s something holding him back too. Because the way my heart is racing from the way he’s staring at me, and the way I know he can hear it, he’s feeling this too. But he’s not making a move either.

  It’s killing me.

  “Tell me what you were doing in the sixties,” I suddenly say as I move around the tree, trying to put a little distance between us so my body can cool down.

  “The sixties,” he says with a smile, turning his eyes back to the task at hand. “Oh man, you wouldn’t have liked me in the sixties.”

  “Why is that?”

  He chuckles, shaking his head at himself. “You know the phrase ‘sex, drugs, rock and roll’ came from that time period, right?”

  I feel my expression fall. A cold stone sinks in my stomach.

  “Well, maybe not the sex part,” he says, oblivious to the grief it immediately brought me. “I mean, it’s a little…dangerous, getting that close to someone if they aren’t a Born as well. But the rock and roll, and the experimentation…”

  My brows furrow. “That doesn’t really sound like you.”

  He bends, grabbing another box of ornaments. “Well, I was feeling pretty lonely during that decade. My family was long, long gone. The few friends I had were moving on to other Houses, most back to Europe. Another was killed in some feud. Suddenly it was kind of just me and I guess it just ate me up for a while.”