Garden of Thorns Read online

  Ian shakes his head. “Because Charles Allaway has been making threats. He’s been acting erratically, more so than normal. He hates the Bitten, a hundred times more so after what happened to his sister. I’m worried he might know something about Henry’s cure. He’s been talking shit to the other Royals about Liv, about the entire Conrath House. You’re in danger because of this family, Elle.”

  “Charles Allaway,” I say, the name sticking on my tongue. It’s one I haven’t thought about in years. “Why is he suddenly popping up?”

  Ian shakes his head. “He’s hated us ever since his sister was murdered six years ago, but he’s been fairly docile until recently. There has to be a reason he’s jumping to action now.”

  Six years ago, Charles and his twin sister Chelsea came to Silent Bend, invited by King Cyrus to Alivia’s introduction party. Cyrus had his fun, tortured both the Houses by making them trade members, causing quite the stir. When the Allaways left that night, almost all of their members were slaughtered just down the road from Alivia’s house. Including Chelsea.

  They were killed by an army of Bitten, led by my own mother, Cora Ward.

  “Ian, I can’t just pack up and leave,” I say, studying him. He’s looking everywhere but at me. “I have a life here in Boston. I have my shop, I own this house. I love it here.”

  His eyes finally snap to me and I can see the familiar brotherly pleading in them. “Elle,” he crosses the room to sit at the foot of the bed, sinking down on it. “You live in Allaway territory. Liv and I have no rights here, no power. If he finds out about you, he could come after you. I highly doubt that mountain of muscle can protect you against the entire House of Allaway.”

  “I’ve been careful, Ian,” I say. The defenses are rising up inside of me. Once again, I feel like I’m sixteen years old, being bossed around by my big brother, who took guardianship over me for two years, but really raised me my entire life. But I’m twenty-two now, about to turn twenty-three. I take care of myself. “The Bitten never come to my house. When they come to see me it’s through a back entrance, away from my shop. I don’t even go by my real name here. To everyone except Kai, my name is Penny Jones.”

  “You don’t understand how intense these people are who work for the King,” Ian says with the shake of his head. “Most of them have hundreds of years of training. They’re so invisible it might be months before you suspect they’re there.”

  He turns to face me, begging me to agree to head back toward home. “I can’t protect you here, Elle.”

  I reach out, taking one of his hands in mine. Looking into his eyes, I marvel how the eight and a half year age gap between us has almost been eliminated. To a stranger, we would probably look just about the same age. Though it is unlikely they would mistake us for siblings. We don’t look much alike. We do have different fathers, after all.

  “My work here is too important,” I say quietly. “I’ve begun to establish a presence here, a reputation.”

  “And that puts you at risk,” he interrupts me. “If any Bitten can find you now, so can Charles. So could Cyrus.”

  “And think how many innocent lives will be lost if I just pick up and leave?” I reason, begging him to really hear what I’m saying. “There are too many of them out there that need help, Ian.”

  “How long has it been since the last one came to you?” he asks.

  “About two hours ago.” I hold back the tiny satisfied smile that wants to break onto my lips.

  And I see the defeat fall in his eyes. He lets them slide closed and falls onto his back on my bed. “I never should have let you and Henry talk me into letting you be the one to do this.”

  “You know there wasn’t anyone else,” I say, pushing his hair off of his forehead. He may be immortal now, Resurrected, and hasn’t aged in six years, but the worry lines there had been carving their way into his forehead since he was ten years old.

  Ian only lets out a sigh and reaches over to take my hand in his. He holds it over his heart, grasping on to me tightly.

  After the insurgence my mother caused with her Army of Bitten, after the battle that claimed the life of some of Alivia’s closest friends, the King of the vampires issued a decree.

  The creation of any new Bitten was punishable by death. And he made it pretty clear that hunting them down and killing them would find anyone favor.

  I was sixteen when that shift in the paranormal world happened.

  So for two years, Alivia’s father, Henry Conrath, who was once thought dead, came and went, taking with him the Bitten cure he’d developed for his best friend, Rath, who he’d turned once upon a time in order to save his life.

  But the legend of Henry, the legend of the Conrath name was far too widespread and recent.

  Henry was drawing too much attention. It put him, Alivia, Ian, the entire House in danger.

  Henry came to me one night, just two weeks before I was to go to Northwestern University in Illinois. We had a long talk, one of the most fascinating and fulfilling in my eighteen years of life.

  I’d been enthralled by botany and chemistry for as long as I could remember. I’d been creating my own concoctions for years; good enough the man himself had stolen several vials of my vampire toxin to study in his hidden lab.

  I’d never considered Henry Conrath and I to have much in common until that night.

  “You understand the science,” he’d told me that night as we talked down by the Hanging Tree so as to not be overheard by my brother or Henry’s daughter. “To everyone else in this House, it’s essentially magic.”

  I smiled at that, because it was an entirely accurate description. Well, to those who actually knew about the Bitten cure.

  “And there are very, very few of those in our world that even know of your existence,” he continued, folding his hands behind his back as we stared out over the Mississippi River. “Your brother and my daughter have been very careful about that. You’ll be nearly a thousand miles away from the House of Conrath. And me.”

  “You want me to help the Bitten?” I clarify.

  “I want you to consider letting us, and others sympathetic to the cause, send deserving Bitten to you. And you administering the cure.” He looked over at me, studying my reaction to his weighty request.

  “Ian would never let me,” I say with the shake of my head. “It would be dangerous for me, and you know how he is.”

  “I do,” Henry said. “But he wouldn’t have to know. At least not at first.”

  Henry Conrath always did things his own way, with his own skewed version of right and wrong.

  Ian found out, a year later.

  He very, very nearly killed Henry when everything came to light.

  But he couldn’t force me to stop—not when I’d already cured sixty-one innocent Bitten.

  While other students at school were going to parties, getting drunk, and having sex, I was meeting vampires at seedy hotels, playing magician doctor, curing them of multi-millennia old science and a curse.

  But there is a reason my body is covered in circular, white scars. A reason I always keep a second vial around my neck now, alongside my toxin, just in case one of them ever sinks it’s fangs into me and doesn’t stop in time.

  I’m constantly in danger, but how am I supposed to be selfish and stop when to date I’ve saved over five hundred Bitten, not to mention the lives of their future possible victims when they couldn’t control their thirst?

  I never had a normal college experience, but I’m proud of how I still laid claim on my own life.

  I completed my degree in botany with a minor in chemistry from Northwestern in just over two years, thanks to two brutal summer semesters in the mix. A spur of the moment graduation trip, the first travel I’d ever really done in my entire life, led me through Boston two years ago. I fell in love with the city. And never left.

  “We could have found someone,” Ian says, pulling me back to the present. “Trained someone else.”

  I shake my head, se
arching his hazel eyes while he studies the ceiling. “I like what I do, Ian. I love my life.”

  He finally looks back at me, and I see it in his eyes, he knows I do.

  “We’ll talk again after we see how things go tomorrow night,” he says as he rolls forward. His phone dings in his pocket and he pulls it out to study the screen. I see Liv’s name but don’t catch what she says.

  “What’s happening tomorrow night?” I ask as he stands. He quickly responds before sliding his phone back into his pocket.

  “We’re going to talk to Charles Allaway and see if we can reason with him,” Ian says, folding his arms over his chest. “Their numbers are still small. We’ll get ugly if we have to. They’ve never had to fight for anything. We have.”

  “You’re possibly going to war with the Allaways tomorrow night?” I ask in disbelief. “Ian, you guys have finally been able to live in relative peace for the past five years. Are you really going to blow that all up?”

  “This is a world of politics and power, Elle, you know that,” he says. His voice grows tired though, sinking into the center of the Earth. “He’s threatening us. The House of Conrath is still so new, we can’t afford to let some ginger bully make us look weak for at least another few decades.”

  A little chuckle actually puffs from my nose. I shake my head.

  “Your world is so unbelievable,” I say, shaking my head as I rub my eyes. “How…how is this even your real life?”

  “I’ve been asking myself that question since I was ten,” he half laughs, half scoffs.

  “Did you at least bring enough bodies to make this a proper fight if it comes to that?”

  Ian nods. “We left Nial in charge back home, and two others, just to hold the fort down. But everyone else is with us. They’re all headed to Vermont right now.”

  Everyone else. I try to total the numbers up in my head, but I don’t know how many members Alivia has gained and lost in the four and a half years since I lived in the House. It has to be at least twenty though.

  “Any idea how many members the Allaways are back up to?” I ask. They’d had thirty at one point, until my mother’s army slaughtered more than half of them.

  Ian shakes his head. “Rumor has it they lost several members after the massacre to the House in Vegas, and he’s having a hard time rebuilding. I don’t think it will be that many.”

  I nod. My mind is racing, going over the implications to so many things my brother is planning.

  I’ve been so removed for so long now. I was so engrained in that world for two years while I lived among them, the only human in a House full of twenty vampires. But I’ve been gone, detached. It’s disorienting getting caught back up to speed.

  “We’re going to show up at his mansion tomorrow night,” Ian explains. “He doesn’t know we’re coming. We’ll talk. Figure this crap out. If everything goes well and he agrees to back off, I’m hoping to get word to you the day after tomorrow.”

  I nod, even as my resolve hardens. Ian may have plans to drag me back down South, but no matter the outcome, I’m staying.

  But he doesn’t need that on his mind right now.

  “I hope it goes well,” I say. I stand and head to the bathroom where I begin brushing my teeth. I feel my brother’s eyes on me the whole time, always watching, always studying.

  “It’s been a long day, and it’s nearly midnight,” I say as I walk into the closet, half shutting the door, and changing into pajamas behind it. “I’m beat. And as much as I really would love to stay up half the night catching up, I don’t think my eyes are going to stay open.”

  “Yeah,” he says, going into guardian mode just like that. “You get some sleep. I can stay until morning.”

  Which translates to mean he’s going to spend all night standing guard over me, just in case Charles Allaway suddenly gets wind of my location tonight and decides to come after me.

  I smile as I climb under the covers and turn off the lamp. “Goodnight, Ian. I’m really glad you’re here.”

  He smiles back, barely visible through the dark as he heads to the door. “Night, Elle.”

  Ian left around seven the next morning. As I said goodbye to him on the front porch, I found Kai sitting on the curb across the street, wearing the same clothes he wore yesterday.

  Ian gave me a look before heading to his rental car, one I wasn’t quite sure said, watch him like a hawk, or I’m glad at least someone is keeping an eye on you.

  Kai makes breakfast while I get dressed and ready for the day. Fall is quickly bringing a chill to the air, and having grown up in the South, I’m always freezing here, so I settle for black slacks and a long sleeved black and white turtleneck. I leave my platinum blonde hair hanging. My blue eyes practically glow as I look in the mirror.

  “You have a nice reunion with your brother last night?” Kai asks as he sets a plate of panikeke, eggs, and bacon in front of me, way more food than I could ever finish off.

  “I did,” I respond, scooping a forkful of eggs. “Did you have a nice night out in the cold?”

  “I did,” he responds sarcastically.

  “I bet your mother was worried sick when you didn’t come home last night,” I say as I eat quickly. I’m running late and I need to be to the shop in twenty minutes to open.

  I’ve never actually met Kai’s family. Meeting new people sometimes gives me anxiety. My world is so far removed from theirs, it’s sometimes hard to relate. But Kai talks about his family members so much that I feel as if I know them.

  “She called several times,” he says as he sets the pans in the sink and fills it to soak them. He turns to his own food and starts eating. Or more like inhaling. “She’s worried about you.”

  “Everyone needs to stop worrying about me,” I sigh. It feels like that is the sum of my entire life. Everyone protecting and worrying about me. I’ve certainly felt loved, but you have to let a woman grow up eventually.

  “She worries about everyone.”

  Kai’s family moved to Boston from Samoa when Kai was only two. Kai’s dad owns a landscape company and his two older brothers help him run it. Kai works with him when he isn’t helping me. He and his two younger sisters still live with their parents.

  They have no idea their son is a vampire. He keeps his cool and hunger under control so his eyes never flash yellow, and he only feeds on donated blood. With the aid of the contacts Henry continues to send me every other week, he’s been able to go out during the day most of the time.

  “We should get going,” I say as I stuff the last bit of food I can possibly fit into my stomach. I scrape my plate clear and set it in the sink. Kai clears the rest away as I dart upstairs to collect the plants I need for the day.

  I bought this place, not for the house, but for the rooftop. Real estate in Boston comes at a premium and there’s not a whole lot of extra space, so the second the little brownstone condo with the private rooftop came on the market, I made an offer the same day, full price. While in college, I’d invested the money I inherited from Lula, as well as the money Ian gave me from the sale of her house. Business had been good in the first six months I’d opened Oleander Apothecary, and I was fortunate to buy my own place in Boston’s prestigious and pricey Back Bay neighborhood.

  I spent weeks constructing the garden boxes that sit stacked in neat rows, a dozen deep, a set on each side with an aisle running down the middle.

  They’re generally classified into two sections, one on each side: medicinal and poisonous.

  I stoop at the gardening cart just to the side of the stairs and grab an oversized glass jar, gloves, and pruning sheers, and lastly a plastic baggie.

  The morning air is thick with fog, cold and sticky. I’m going to have to put up the greenhouse covers before too long. I cut through the aisle, toward the back. Opening my bag, I snip some Evening Primrose, tuck them into my bag, and then move to the middle section of the other side of the yard.

  I carefully pull on the gloves, making sure my wrists are c
overed up. Even brushing up against stinging nettle will cause fiery pain to shoot through my limbs. I snip just one branch off of the bush and slip it into the glass jar, screwing the lid on tight.

  Ready to take off, I lock the apartment up behind me, and Kai and I head toward the shop.

  A narrow park cuts through the center of Back Bay, plaques and sculptures scattered throughout it here and there, commemorating Boston’s deep history. Beautiful Victorian brownstones line the street, one of the parts about the city that I love the most. You don’t get buildings like this in the South.

  We cut through the Boston Public Garden, and turn up the street into Beacon Hill. The streets are busy and packed the closer I get to the shop. No one meets each other’s eye with a smile. Not a word of hello or how you doing like in Mississippi. People don’t really talk to each other, and I wouldn’t call New Englanders friendly. And I like it that way. I’m the kind of person who keeps to herself, and so is everyone else around me.

  This neighborhood is a historical one, and attracts a lot of tourists. The business street runs right up the middle, and tightly packed Federal-style row houses are crammed in as tight as they can fit. I’m not sure which neighborhood, this one, or mine, is more enchanting.

  Teresa Beck already stands anxiously outside the doors to Oleander Apothecary. She bounces on the balls of her feet, peering impatiently into the windows.

  “Miss Beck,” I say as I walk up, causing her to jump. “I open at eight AM, Monday through Friday. I promise you that isn’t going to change.”

  “Hi, Penny. I was just hoping maybe you might be in a little early,” she says, looking embarrassed, stepping aside so I can open the door. I barely get the lights on before she steps inside, hustling up to the counter. “I’m already out, and James was acting really annoyed with me, and I just started panicking I guess.”

  I hang my purse on its hook, not even noticing Kai as he takes a walk around the shop, stepping into the back room lab.

  I walk to the shelf that lines the very back wall, the one that holds the custom orders. I grab a glass perfume bottle from the middle row and set it on the counter. I hold a light up to it, observing the milky pale pink contents.