Chicagoland Vampires - Some Girls Bite Part 27

Under the House, beneath a small parking structure I was clearly too low in the chain to have a spot in, were access points to underground tunnels that ran parallel to the city's extensive sewer system. From the tunnels, we could scramble to our a.s.signed safe houses. Cheerily, we were only given the address of one house so the locations of the slate of them couldn't be tortured out of us. I was working on managing my panic about the fact that I was now part of an organization that had a need for secret evacuation tunnels and safe houses, an organization that had to plan around the possibility of group torture.

I also learned, after nearly a week of watching Luc and Lindsey interact, that he was seriously hung up on her. The vitriol and sarcasm he dished out on a daily basis-and there was a lot of it-was clearly a plea for her attention. A dismally unsuccessful plea. Luc may have had it bad, but Lindsey wasn't buying.

Ever curious, and that was going to burn my a.s.s one of these days, I decided to ask her about it. We were in line, trays in hand in the first-floor cafeteria, picking from a selection of almost irritatingly healthy menu choices, when I asked her, "Do you want to tell me about you and everyone's favorite cowboy?"

Lindsey pulled three cartons of milk onto her tray, taking so long to answer me that I wondered if she'd heard the question in the first place. Eventually, she shrugged. "He's okay."

That was all I got until we were seated around a wooden table in ladder-back chairs, dark with age. "Okay, but not okay enough?"

Lindsey folded open a milk carton and took a long drink, then shrugged with more neutrality than I knew she actually felt. "Luc's great. But he's my boss. I don't think that's a good idea."

"You were goading me a few days ago about having a fling with Ethan." I lifted my sandwich and took a bite that was heavy on sprouts and light on flavor. Wrong kind of crunch, I concluded.

"Luc's great. He's just not for me."

"You get along well."

I pushed, and she broke. "And wouldn't that be lovely," she said, dropping her fork with obvious irritation, "until we broke up and then had to work together? No, thanks." Without looking up at me, she started picking absently through a pile of Cheetos.

"Okay," I said, in my most soothing voice (and wondering where she'd found the Cheetos), "so you like him." Her cheeks flushed pink. "But-what?-you're afraid to lose him, so you won't date him in the first place?"

She didn't answer, so I took her silence as implicit confirmation and let her off the hook. "Fine. We won't talk about it anymore."

Lindsey and I didn't talk about it anymore, but that didn't stop Luc from sliding in comments here and there, or her from baiting him with suggestions of rebellion. And while I really liked Lindsey, and I was glad we were on the same team, I sympathized with Luc.

The girl had a sharp-edged wit, and it couldn't have been easy for him to be constantly on the receiving end of it. Sarcasm between friends is all well and good, but she risked tipping the balance toward meanness.

On the other hand, that biting sarcasm came in handy, since Amber and Gabrielle had teamed up to flaunt Amber's relationship with Ethan in my face. This time, we'd finished up our meal and were on our way back through the first floor to the stairs when they stopped in front of us.

"Hon," Gabrielle asked Amber, inspecting her nails while blocking the stairway. "You wanna grab a drink tonight?"

Amber, dressed in a black velour tracksuit with BITE ME written across the front in red letters, glanced up at me. "Can't. I have plans with Ethan tonight, and you know, darling"-she lifted an auburn brow-"how demanding he can be."

I wanted to gag, right after raking my nails through that tacky velour, but was fl.u.s.tered enough by the message-and the fact that I'd seen Ethan take her up on the offer, s.l.u.tty as it was-not to think of a quick retort.

Luckily, Captain Sa.s.sy Pants was nearby. With her usual aplomb, she plucked a Cheeto from a to-go bag and flicked it at Amber.

"Scurry off, little woman."

Amber made a sound of disgust, but took Gabrielle by the hand, and they retreated down the hallway.

"And I've made the world safe for one more day," Lindsey said as we headed down the stairs.

"You're a real pal."

"I'm taking Connor out for a drink after shift. If I'm such a good pal, I think you need to join us."

I shook my head. "Training tonight. Can't." That was but the first of the good reasons not to take her up on that offer.

Lindsey stopped on the stairs and grinned over at me. "Nice. I'd pick a little quality Catcher Bell time over me, too. Has he let you hold his sword yet?"

"I think Mallory's got his sword well under control."

We reached the Ops Room door. Lindsey stopped, nodded with approval. "Good for her."

"For her, less so for me."

"Why's that?"

"Because he's constantly at the house, and it's beginning to feel a little small for the three of us."

"Ah. You know the obvious solution to that-move in here." She pulled open the door, and we walked inside the Ops Room and moved to the conference table while guards already at their stations tapped keys, watched screens, and talked into their headsets.

"Same answers as last time," I whispered as we took seats at the table. "No, no, and no. I can't live in the same house as Ethan.

We'd kill each other."

Lindsey crossed her legs and swiveled her chair to face me. "Not if you just avoid him. And look how well you've managed to avoid him for the last week."

I gave her a look, but nodded when she lifted dubious brows. She was right-I'd avoided him, he'd avoided me, we'd avoided each other. And despite the vague sense of unease I had whenever I stepped across the threshold and into Cadogan, the fact that we had managed to avoid each other made living here at least possible.

"So," she said, "your continuing to avoid him shouldn't be a problem. And just think," Lindsey whispered, "it's practically the O.C.

in here. You're missing out on a lot of excitement by heading back to Wicker Park every morning."

"Yeah, that's really the selling point you need to focus on. 'Cause these last few weeks have been dullsville otherwise."

To be fair, it was kind of a selling point. I did enjoy other folks' drama. I just didn't need any more of my own.

Catcher, Mallory, and Jeff were at the gym when I arrived. I wasn't sure why Jeff was there, but since he and Mal were the closest thing I had to cheerleaders, I didn't so much mind the extra bodies.

Or wouldn't have minded, had I arrived seconds later, and missed Catcher pawing my roommate next to the water fountain.

I cleared my throat loudly as I strode past, which did nothing to prompt a disentangling of their bodies.

"Cats in heat," I said to Jeff, who sat sprawled in a chair in the gym, his arms folded across his chest, his eyes closed.

"Are they still at it? It's been twenty minutes."

I caught the tiny bit of wistfulness in his voice.

"They're at it," I confirmed, realizing it was the second time in a week I'd walked in on a union of pink parts I had no desire to see.

Jeff opened blue eyes, grinned at me. "If you're feeling left out . . ."

I almost threw out an instinctive no, but I decided to throw him a bone. "Oh, Jeff. It'd be too good-you and me. Too powerful, too much emotion, too much heat. We'd come together and boom"-I clapped my hands together-"like a moth to a flame, there'd be nothing left."

His eyes glazed over. "Combustion?"

"Totally."

He was quiet for a moment, his index finger tracing a pattern on the knee of his jeans. Then he nodded. "Too powerful. It'd destroy us both."

I nodded solemnly. "Probably so." But I leaned over, pressed my lips to his forehead. "We'll always have Chicago."

"Chicago," he dreamily repeated. "Yeah. Definitely." He cleared his throat, seemed to regain a little composure. "When I tell this story later, you kissed me on the mouth. With tongue. And you were handsy."

I chuckled. "Fair enough."

Catcher and Mallory walked in, Catcher in the lead, Mallory behind, one hand in his, the fingers of her free hand against her lips, her cheeks flushed.

"Sword," Catcher said, before dropping her hand and continuing through the gym to the door on the other side of the room.

"Was that an instruction or an agenda, do you think?" I asked Mallory, who stopped in front of me.

She blinked, her gaze on Catcher's jeans-clad a.s.s as he pa.s.sed. "Hmm?"

I c.o.c.ked an eyebrow at her. "I'm in love with Ethan Sullivan and we're going to have teethy vampire babies and buy a house in Naperville and live happily ever after."

She looked over at me, her gaze as vacant as Jeff's had been. "It's just-he does this thing with his tongue." She trailed off, lifted an index finger, crooked it back and forth. "It's kind of a flicking?"

Before I knew what I was saying, but finally at the end of my Mallory-and-Catcher rope, I spilled out a plan in a quick tumble of sound. "I love you, but I'm moving into Cadogan House."

That got her attention. Her expression cleared, her brow furrowing. "What?"

Instantly deciding it was probably for the best, I nodded. "You two need your s.p.a.ce, and I need to be there to do my job effectively." Left unspoken: I did not need to hear or see anything else regarding Catcher's s.e.xual prowess.

"Oh." Mallory looked down at the floor. "Oh." When she looked back up again, there was sadness in her eyes. "Jesus, Merit.

Everything's changing."

I squeezed her into a hug. "We're not changing. We're just living in different places."

"We'll be living in different ZIP codes."

"And, as I've said before, you have s.e.xy Bell to keep you company. You'll be fine." I'd probably be fine, too, a.s.suming I could convince myself and the other Cadogan vamps that I could live under the same roof as Ethan without impaling him on the business end of an aspen stake. That was going to require some Mallory-worthy creative thinking.

Mal squeezed me back. "You're right. You're right. I'm being ridiculous. You need to get in there, do that vampire thang, mix it up." Then she quirked up an eyebrow. "Did you say you were in love with Ethan?"

"Just to get your attention."

Probably.

s.h.i.t.

"Gotta say, Mer, I'm not loving that idea."

I nodded ruefully and began the walk toward the locker room. "Just be glad you're not me."

Minutes later, I emerged barefoot and ponytailed, ready for another night of training to protect, among others, a man I apparently had conflicting feelings about. Mallory and Jeff sat in chairs on the other side of the room. Catcher hadn't yet emerged from the back, so I moved toward the body bag that hung in one corner of the gym, curled my hands into fists, and began to wail.

In the couple of sessions I'd had with Catcher since Commendation, we'd trained with pads, practicing jabs and front kicks, guards and uppercuts. The practice was designed to increase my stamina, to give me a vocabulary of vampire fighting basics, and to ensure that I could pa.s.s the tests required of Cadogan guards. But I'd usually been too worried about learning the moves, the forms, to find therapy, solace, in the movements.With Catcher in the back, there was no such distraction.

I aimed a bare-handed jab at the logo in the middle of the bag, thwack, loving the flat thud of contact and the flight of the bag in the other direction. Loving the fact that I'd made it move. Enjoying the fact that I'd imagined green eyes peering out through the logo, and had nailed the spot just between those eyes.

Thwack. Thwack. A satisfying double punch, the bag standing in for the man I'd become honor-bound to serve, whom I was becoming a little too interested in.

I stepped back, pivoted on a heel, and swiveled my hip for a side kick. It probably seemed, to the casual observer, that I was warming up, taking a few well-aimed kicks at an inanimate object.

But in my mind, thwack, I was kicking, thwack, a certain Master vampire, thwack, in the face.

Finally smiling, I stood straight again, planting hands on my hips as I watched the bag swing on its chain. "Therapeutic," I concluded.

The door at the back of the gym opened, and Catcher walked through, the katana, sheathed in gleaming black lacquer, in his right hand. In his left was a wooden bar in the shape of a katana-a long slice of gently curving, gleaming wood-but without the hilt or any other physical distinction between the handle and blade. This, I'd learned, was a bokken, a practice weapon, a tool for learning swordsmanship sans the risk of an amateur slicing through things not intended for slicing.

Catcher moved to the center of the mats, laid the bokken down, and with a slow, careful movement, the blade angled just so, unsheathed his katana. The naked steel caught the light, glinted and made a metallic whistle as he pulled it through the air. Then he motioned at me, and I joined him in the center of the mats. He turned the katana, and one hand near the hilt, offered it to me.

I took it, tested the weight in my hand. It felt lighter than I'd imagined it would given the complicated combination of materials- wood, steel, b.u.mpy ray skin, corded silk. I gripped the sword in my right hand beneath the hilt and wrapped the fingers of my left hand below it, four finger s.p.a.ces between my hands. It wasn't that I'd studied up. I just mimicked the hand positions he'd demonstrated with the sword he usually didn't let me hold, the sword he treated with careful reverence.

I'd asked him earlier in the week about that reverence, why he stilled when the blade was revealed, why his gaze went a little unfocused when he unsheathed it. His answer-"It's a good blade"-was less than satisfying, and, I guessed, barely the tip of that iceberg.

Sword in hand, I held it before me, waited for Catcher's direction.

He had plenty.

For all his lack of loquaciousness in discussing why he liked the sword, he had plenty to offer in how I should relate to it-the position of my hands on the handle (which wasn't quite right, despite my careful mimicry), the position of the blade relative to the rest of my body, the stance of my feet, and the carriage of body weight as I prepared to strike.

Catcher explained that this, my first time with the sword, was only to accustom me to the feel of it, the weight of it. I'd learn the actual moves with the bokken because, although Catcher was pleased with what I'd learned so far, he had no confidence in my ability to manage the katana. At least not to his nitpicky expectations.

When he said that, I paused in the middle of a stance he'd been teaching me, looked over at him. "Then why do I have this katana in my hands?"

His expression went immediately serious. "Because you're a vampire, and a Cadogan vamp at that. Until you know the moves, until you're ready to wield the sword as an expert"-the tone in his voice made it obvious that he'd settle for nothing less-"you're going to need to bluff." He raised a hand, pointed at the blade of the katana. "She is, among other things, your bluff."

Then he slid a glance to Mallory, and gave her a wicked look. "If you aren't ready to truly handle the sword, at least learn how to hold it."

There was a sardonic grunt from her side of the gym.

Catcher laughed with obvious satisfaction. "It only hurts the first time."

"Where have I heard that before?" Mallory drily responded, one crossed leg swinging as she flipped through a magazine. "And if I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times-magic does not belong in the bedroom." But while her eyes were on the magazine in her lap, she was grinning when she said it.

Cadogan House, here I come, I thought, and adjusted my grip on the katana. I centered my weight, rolled my shoulders, and attacked.