Helaine Fairgrieve wasn't sure what to do when her rent was raised suddenly, until her long time acquaintance, Evan DuRosier, offered her a solution that would benefit the both of them. Helaine travels to his apartment in the less than reputable art district of the city to indulge his less than conventional desires, only to learn that he's keeping a dark secret. She's has never been in handcuffs before, much less bound and suspended from a man's ceiling while he pours hot wax on her sensitive skin. She isn't sure what's more frightening, the knife gliding across her skin, or the fact that she loves every pulse-pounding second of it. BDSM is normally based on a foundation of trust; lacking that, Evan and Helaine's relationship begins as something of a transactional nature, until she discovers that his lust for blood is more than just a fetish. What will she do when she discovers the truth about his Vampirism?
View MoreHelaine
I couldn’t help feeling nervous as I stood at the top of the steps leading down into his basement apartment.
We had been friends for some time—maybe acquaintances was a better term—but the point is that we’d known each other for a while now, at least through moving in similar circles.
He should have been my type. I had always had a problem with the pretentious wannabe rockstar types, but there was always something about him that put me ill at ease, and if I was honest, neither this street nor the hour was helping.
His apartment sat below the corner of Cardinal and South Main, and the street signs stood ominously above me like a guillotine.
Cardinal was a lovely little street, with its artist alley, street food, and live music . . . if you weren’t privy to the area’s reputation, and ignored the missing persons posters.
Speaking of music, I could already hear the haunting melody emanating from the bottom of the stairs. If I could say nothing else for him, he was an excellent guitarist, and he knew that I thought that.
I couldn’t help wondering if he knew that I was standing up here at the top of his steps, or if he was only warming up because he knew I’d be here sooner rather than later—or at least, this was the time we’d scheduled.
See, the thing about him is that however uncomfortable he had made me, I had the opposite effect on him.
It had been no secret since the day we met that he had his eyes set on me, but I had always had a very convenient reason, or excuse really, to avoid being left alone with him.
It’s not that he ever pushed, or that I felt I needed a reason not to hang out with him—I had never in my life been the kind of woman who couldn’t look at a man and tell him no, but there was something about him that made me feel like I couldn’t trust myself.
I could feel it in my bones that the second he and I were alone together, I would lose all sense of self control. I couldn’t place why, but there was something about him that made the idea all too enticing, which screamed of red flags to me.
Especially given my history.
Even now, my entire body was screaming at me to run, to turn around and go home—or anywhere else, really.
But I didn’t really have a better option.
Earlier this week, my landlord had told me that my rent was going up by a whole two hundred dollars—that was an insane amount, especially for an already broke college student. Not only could I not afford that, but I most certainly couldn’t afford to look for somewhere else to live while paying nearly every goddamn cent I made to the leech who owned my apartment.
That’s where he came in.
He happened to be hanging out with us when I complained about my situation to our mutual friends, and for some god unknown reason I had allowed him to hold me back from the others when we all tried to go our separate ways.
As it happened, he was a lot more well off financially than he looked, and he could make my problem disappear . . . for a price.
Quid pro quo, he’d called it.
He’d make sure my rent got paid, so long as I kept him happy one night a month.
I should have slapped him, and I knew it, but something about the sincerity in the mahogany brown of his eyes, and the tension in my chest, compelled me to say yes.
After all, if it wasn’t for the bad gut feeling I’d had about him, I would have wound up in his bed years ago . . . and I did need to find some way to pay my rent, fast.
At the very least, I knew that taking him up on his offer would buy me some time to make other living arrangements—it’s not like I’d have to whore myself out to him forever.
And it would sate my burning curiosity.
Church bells tolled as I descended the stairs, harmonizing strangely nicely with the guitar music that I was sure came from his apartment—especially when it stopped the second I knocked on the door.
I’d never seen a door that strange—it was heavy concrete, painted with all sorts of gruesome imagery of blood, bones, and gore. Black feathers and bits of what I imagined were chicken bones were matted into the paint—I wondered if he had done the artwork himself, or if the differing art styles pointed to this being a community work. It wouldn’t surprise me on Cardinal Street.
I had become so invested in his door that I practically jumped out of my skin when he answered it.
“Hello Helaine.” His smile was calm, but there was a sharpness to his eyes that I couldn’t leave unnoticed. “You’re a little early.”
“I-I didn’t want to walk here in the dark,” I confessed, a bit sheepishly, more embarrassed over having been caught off guard than anything. “I mean, come on Evan, you live here, you ought to know how dangerous this place gets.”
“I do.” His eyes lingered on me a little longer than I thought was necessary, but I supposed that he was paying for that privilege . . . and paying quite a bit at that. “Would you like to come inside?”
No.
“Yeah, that’d be great.” Suddenly, I was very aware of the chill in the air that always came with nightfall around here.
It would be winter soon, and I wasn’t looking forward to the walk, but at least winter was a little safer since fewer people wanted to be out at all.
At least, with this arrangement, I’d have a roof over my head this winter.
Evan’s apartment was . . . interesting.
It looked like the gutted remains of an old tattoo parlor, and knowing the area, it probably was. I hated to admit that that was pretty cool.
I didn’t know why I was trying to find some reason to pick apart his place—other than the lack of natural light, I really loved the layout, and the art he kept on display, but I supposed I was looking for something shitty to justify the weird vibe I got from him.
I didn’t want to be one of those girls who was just rude to a guy for no reason based on vibes . . . but I had to admit, it was starting to look that way.
Though, he was about to pay me for sex, so that might speak to his character a little.
Not that I was in any position to judge.
A particular piece grabbed my attention. On one of the walls was a stylistic floor to ceiling mural of a man painted in crimson, his hands shackled to the ceiling, and the striking white silhouette of a woman’s hands snaking around his torso.
“Would you like to sit?” He asked, gesturing to a plush red couch that looked about fifty years out of date.
“Thank you.” At least I remembered my manners as I ripped my eyes away from the painting.
He followed my gaze and smiled, that same strange predatory glint in his eyes. “Oh, you hadn’t seen any of my art, have you?”
I shook my head. “Nope. I figured you were an artist since we move in similar circles, but I didn’t know what kind.”
I felt awkward, sinking into the overstuffed couch all by myself while he stood there looking at me like I was fresh meat.
Actually, thinking about it, I wasn’t entirely convinced that he wasn’t a serial killer as I looked around at his paintings and murals, both finished and not.
It made me very glad that we had a whole lot of mutual friends who would make a fuss if I went missing. I hoped that was enough to keep him from trying to kill me.
“I actually work in . . . a variety of mediums.” He grinned, and I knew I was going to die there—kidding, I hoped. “Painting is just one of the many ways an artist can express himself.”
“Did you do the uh . . . paintings on the door?” I asked, thinking of the black feathers and bits of bone matted against the concrete.
He laughed a little too long, and pushed his soft ash brown hair out of his face, smiling a little too wide at me. “Oh, no, no. That’s the work of several neighborhood artists, I believe.”
“Why would they do that?” I asked, fidgeting on the cushions, trying to find a stable way to sit. “It looks a little . . . ”
“Grotesque?” He leaned in closer to me, before laughing again. “They’re artists, Helaine—who knows why artists do any of the things we do.”
“That’s a fair point.” I shrugged. I couldn’t exactly judge him there.
HelaineThe world felt different, up in the sky.Over the past few days I’d been doing what Valek said—training. I learned to use the wings that erupted from my back, learned to feel them and control them just the same as my arms and legs.But it wasn’t enough.How could it be?“You’re getting better at that,” Valek called from the ground, her cold black eyes following me as my wings beat the air. “It’s an amazing freedom, isn’t it?”“I did what you said.” My lips curved into a grimace as I landed in front of her. Logically, I knew I should still be afraid of her, but the more time I was forced to spend with this ancient monster the harder it was not to see her as a person. “I connected with my wings, but I still can’t hide them.”She let out a laugh, her eyes falling shut as she shook her head. “Your wings, yes. But you’re still fighting where they came from.” Her fingertips hovered over my heart as she leaned in, too close, but I was quickly learning that social boundaries weren’t s
EvanOne more fucking night of not finding Helaine.Snarling, I threw open the el camino’s bed cover, squinting under the light of the full moon. It was the closest I could get to the sun without burning to a crisp, and it was still a little too bright for my sensitive eyes.But it was just one more reason to be pissed off tonight.When I looked around, I could see that we were on a very rural stretch of the highway, moving west according to the rusty old road signs. There wasn’t another car around for miles as far as I could hear. Not even the kind of old truck I’d expect to hear out in these parts.Helaine wasn’t here either.My boots crunched against the abandoned gas station parking lot’s gravel as I stalked toward the driver’s side door, I slammed my hand down on the hood in a fit of frustration as Frank stepped out of my ride, lighting up a cigarette.I snatched it from his fingers, taking a long drag, hoping it would do something to take off the edge . . . but it didn’t. One of
HelaineSitting naked on the wooden chair felt awkward, and I wrapped my wings around my body as I shivered in the air’s chill.Valek had no such issue, confidently striding naked through the room to stir the cauldron that emanated a delicious aroma that reminded me just how hungry I was. I couldn’t help feeling exposed, but there was something about the way that Valek wore her own skin that gave away just how ancient she was.Unbound by societal convention for the simple fact that she predated it. By a long shot.Her body was gorgeous, as though she was a work of art carved from pure snow, but I didn’t get the feeling that she was in any way trying to seduce me. Being naked was just natural to her—the leather scraps she wore as clothes before hastily thrown together almost as an afterthought.It probably helped that she was an undead creature, and most likely didn’t feel the chill in the air.The whole atmosphere held an eerie air of domesticity as she ladled stew into a wooden bowl
EvanThe moon was beginning to descend, and that meant that soon the sun would rise. Too soon for my liking as I followed Frank through the cemetery.“The Knights really had a cache here?” My brow arched in doubt, but he didn’t so much as look back as he blazed on ahead. “In a public cemetery?”“A mausoleum,” he specified. “Knights coming and going would’ve just seemed like family members of the departed, and no one but those with authorization would have access. Seemed pretty perfect at the time.”He gestured ahead, and sure enough there was an old mausoleum, overgrown with vines and half covered in moss.“So why do you think they abandoned it, if it was so perfect?” I watched him warily as he pulled a key from the chain around his neck and used it to unlock the tomb.It seemed . . . convenient, and I had to wonder if it was really abandoned, or if the Knights of Testament had their suspicions that Frank was hiding nearby, and they hoped they could draw him out.They had apparently t
HelaineA groan of protest left my body before my eyes deigned to flutter open. My head was pounding, and my mouth felt impossibly dry.A black spider with spindly legs skittered across my field of vision, but I was too exhausted to scramble away from it like I might’ve otherwise done if I were coherent enough to be afraid.My body felt unreasonably heavy when I tried to adjust myself into a sitting position, and it became clear exactly why when I looked over my shoulder to see the whitish feathers, sticky and flecked red, matted together with dried blood.Choking out a ragged sigh, I rolled my head back as I tried to rub the pain out of my aching throat. If the wings were real, then everything that happened to me last night was real.And Evan . . . well, I had no idea where he was, which meant that he probably had no idea where I was.Hell, I didn’t even know where I was.Getting to my feet was a struggle with the added weight of the extra limbs now protruding from my back, but it wa
Evan“I’m coming Helaine,” I whispered as I made my way down the porch steps. “I promise I’ll find you.”It was a promise I intended to keep. Valek didn’t strike me as one to keep a low profile—there’d probably be a trail of corpses once I got close enough to whatever den of horrors she was calling home these days.Only . . . I didn’t have a clue where to start looking, and there wasn’t time for me to go chasing my tail without any direction trying to find her.Whatever was happening to Helaine after she used her powers, it was obviously some kind of transformation. I didn’t know what I was going to find when I did finally catch up with her.But she was out there somewhere. I could feel it in what remained of my soul that she was still alive, but with her in Valek’s custody it was impossible to say for certain what to expect.What I didn’t expect was for Frank’s door to open behind me, creaking in protest when he followed me outside. “Kid,” he called after me, a desperate edge to his
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