**Theo**
Lydia was well on her way to “forgiving” me. Her torso was draped across my lap, her feet over Daniel’s, and her arm around Anna’s shoulders as my little sister sat leaning back against the couch, covered in her various animal companions.
“You know what I think is bullshit about this movie?” Lydia asked.
I knew. She’s told me.
“Brad Pitt doesn’t look good enough shirtless to fuck your bestie over for, intentional or not. There’s no way you’re so blinded by his abs that you just leave a self-professed robber alone in your room.”
Anna chuckled. Daniel barely reacted. He’d been distracted all evening. He’d been at the office all day, and stayed late. I wanted to believe he was just tired, but I was getting the feeling there was something on his mind.
Lydia nodded. “Pretty faces come and go, but bitches who will drive into a canyon with you are forever.”
I pinched her and gestured to Daniel with my chin. Her eyebrows knitted together.
“Oh god, remember the time we drove that car into that ravine, Teodoro?”
I burst out laughing and Anna turned to us in surprise, sending her cat skittering away and earning her an annoyed look from the dog.
“I thought I’d heard every Thydia story!”
Daniel turned his head to look at Anna. “Thydia? Really?”
We’ve never driven into a ravine. Lydia has threatened to drive me into a canyon. Specifically, she has threatened to lock me into the trunk of a car and send it off a cliff. But we have not had that particular adventure together.
I looked very seriously at Anna. “No one has heard all the Thydia stories. Sometimes we do things we don’t remember until decades later. Sometimes we scrub shit from our memories. Things like… Alaska.”
Lydia had been giggling, but as I spoke she went stiff and silent. After a moment, she whispered “Alaska,” her eyes distant. She gave an exaggerated shudder and climbed all the way into my lap, pulling her feet off of Daniel and curling into a ball, burying her head in the crook of my neck as I pretended to soothe her.
“The fuck happened in Alaska?” Daniel asked.
Lydia unfolded herself and pulled her face away from me. “Nothing. I mean, Theo pissed off half of Anchorage, but I’m not really cut out for living that far north, so it was whatever.” She casually assumed her previous position, stretching her long body across both me and my fiance.
Anna grabbed a pillow and tried to beat us senseless with it, laughing. Daniel chuckled and shook his head, but went back to brooding. I was pretty sure by now that’s what he was doing. I’d talk to him once we left. If he wanted to talk, he would. I wasn’t going to force him to do it in front of our sisters.
Lydia grabbed the remote from the end table and turned off the end credits. It didn’t take her too long to surf through the channels and land on something that had us all sitting up a little straighter (those of us that were sitting, anyhow. Lydia just stiffened and stopped breathing).
An aerial shot of squad cars and black vans, and what looked a helluva lot like a SWAT team cornering one man. There was something off though. SWAT for one guy who was out in the open? And since when was their gear so bulky?
Daniel leaned forward, suddenly paying much more attention than he had to anything else all night. “Shit. It’s true.”
I was about to question him when the voice of a reporter carried through the TV speakers and bold text splashed across the bottom of the screen.
“After what I’m told was a chase that lasted the better part of a day, and several encounters that left an undisclosed number of officers injured, it appears the specialized task force has finally cornered the suspect. At this point, all we know for sure is that he is a vampire, and he is wanted in connection with several attacks, and though it’s purely speculation right now, there are those that believe he may be responsible for at least one of the exsanguinations that occurred late last year.”
“Horseshit,” Anna blurted.
I wasn’t concerned about false accusations though. Not at the moment.
“Special task force?”
Daniel rubbed his hands over his face and Lydia had that deep crease between her brows as she watched the TV.
“They have a way to take us down,” my fiance said gravely. “They fucking figured it out; and things are about to get really complicated.”
**Daniel**
It was like I'd swallowed a stone. One I'd been force-fed.
I looked up at my family, all of whom were staring at me expectantly.
“Please tell me that doesn't mean what I think it does, Danny,” Lydia implored.
I pushed my hands through my hair and scrubbed at my face. Ever since Anna had hauled that guy out to the street in front of the antique shop and he hollered about a way to take us down, I'd been searching. And everything I’d found told me he was right. They had a way. The rumored weapon was real, only-
“It isn't a weapon that they found. They didn't develop some magic bullet. They just caught on that we get stronger or weaker depending on how much blood we’ve had, and they trained themselves an army.”
Theo threw his arms in the air and then ruffled his own hair in frustration. “You knew about this?”
“I didn't know, but I suspected. Calm down. Jesus, baby, we've been hearing rumors about it for the better part of the last year. Then the other night when that guy was harassing Anna, it started me researching-”
He interrupted me. “I'm sorry, did you just tell me to calm down about a specialized anti-vamp task force and then, in the same breath, remind me somebody was harassing our Anna?”
“Seems like a whole lot not to be calm about, Daniel,” Lydia said, backing up my fiance.
Anna hushed us all, her eyes still on the TV. “They really must have chased him all day. They’re trying to wear him down. He’s even acting tired, but I don’t believe it. It’s like he’s toying with them. He just hit a guy and sent him sailing. The armor is sort of a joke. The people who signed up for this are insane.”
Not so long ago, Vampire Vice, the division of the police tasked with handling vampire-related crime, had been under investigation for over-spending. Recently, more and more resources had been poured into it. This would explain some of that. But this couldn't be just at the city level. This smacked of the state or higher, and I hadn't had all that much time to look into things. There were rumors about a crack-down on feeding fresh, too, but nothing that went into a lot of detail.
It didn't matter. I had a feeling everything was going to be spelled out for us very clearly, and very soon. And none of us were going to like it. More funds for V.V., armored task forces, speculation being flung around on the news- none of that pointed to good things for our nest and others of our kind.
“You guys have all been careful after that thing at Be+, yeah?” I asked, almost afraid of the answer.
Lydia groaned, slinking down so she was as flat as she could be while still laying across Theo and I.
Anna took a deep breath and appraised our big sister (weird to say, but that's what she is, despite her being physically stuck at twenty five and my appearance being eternally twenty eight). Her chin raised just slightly and she looked to Theo, who looked far too innocent.
“Lydia Aribella, what have you done?” she demanded.
The red-headed Amazon with her legs on my lap rubbed the heels of her hands against her eyes before she spoke. “I hunted. A lot. Close to busy places. Touristy places. I ate until they were almost dry. Maybe they made it, maybe they didn't. I don't know. I didn't get anyone help, and I stayed with them until I was nearly caught. Three times last week. A few more before that…”
Theo shifted uncomfortably. I turned my attention from Lydia. What she had done was bad. Careless. Stupid. But after our big fight last year I knew better than to call her that. I knew to hold my tongue until I could react calmly. I also knew my fiance's behavior. He was shifting because he knew what she had been up to. He had probably encouraged it.
Anna knows Theo too.
“Then what, Theo? What else? I know you two and I know you went hunting. So spill it. Now.”
Lydia sat up and leaned forward, hiding her face with her hair. Lydia doesn't hide often, and when she does it’s frustration. Very rarely it’s shame. She wasn't ashamed though; that's not what this meant. She was afraid she was pulling us into more trouble. She’ll also hide when she thinks she’s let us down.
Theo hooked her hair over one of her ears so he could see her face. “Five each. But that was smart hunting. Hiding the evidence- no fang marks left. In most cases, not a lot of corpse left, or at least not where anyone will easily find a body. And you both know we need to get it out of our systems once in awhile.”
So they'd told me. And I understand it. I do. I was still frustrated. They'd managed to go a few years without a kill between them right after they'd come out and registered, but in the last year- more specifically, since I'd been turned- the body counts were rising. We aren't all Anna. I wondered how long it was possible to suppress the instinct to kill and how many of our kind were giving into that every day. What that was going to mean now that they could and would come after us.
Anna was still on the floor but she wasn't looking at the TV anymore. She pressed her forehead against my knee. “Lydia. Fang marks?”
“Closed most of them,” Lydia responded.
Most. Great.
My head was spinning. Task forces, police chases, smart hunting, careless hunting, the still very open case of the exsanguination behind Be+, whether or not Lydia had closed wounds... It was a lot to process. But first things first.
“What's done is done, even if what's done wasn't well thought out,” I said carefully, hoping Lydia wouldn't jump to the defensive. When she didn't, I continued.
“Somebody is still likely to show up wanting to question Lydia and Theo about Be+. Vamp Vice is bound to be out in force, showing off that they're keeping a closer eye on things. I'm willing to bet that even feeding with consent is going to be questioned.”
There it was.
Anna's forehead lifted from my knee and she looked up at me. “So from here on out, bottled only?” She didn’t sound happy at all.
I nodded. It wasn't going to be easy.
“Fuck!” Theo exclaimed. “Unacceptable.”
Lydia had been silent. I wasn’t even sure she’d heard me. Certainly if she had I would have gotten some reaction from her. Not a good one either.
Her eyes were glued to the TV screen again. The vampire was on the run, having gotten past the line of officers that had been backing him against the wall. He wasn’t as tired as he wanted them to believe. Anna was right; he was messing with them.
The reporter's voice was giving a play by play. “As you can see, he did break through the line of armored officers that had been poised to take him down. A number of officers appear to have been hurt when he broke through. Still, Vampire Vice has sent word that they are confident this will all end soon.”
“Overconfident bastards. He’s not going to get caught,” I observed. None of us wanted to see him go down, I could tell; we knew he wasn’t responsible for the exsanguinations. That had been all Henrik. But we needed to know how this would play out.
None of us breathed or blinked. More armored officers joined the ranks, replacing those who’d just been taken out of the fight; if you could even call it that. Despite their numbers, the situation was still grossly one-sided. I wondered why they persisted. Something must be making them think they had a chance of catching him, despite obvious evidence to the contrary. Though I supposed they could hardly show their hand and then back down.
The vamp was most definitely taunting them now, running backwards, watching them. His lips were moving- I wondered what he was saying. His speed was just enough that the officers were still after him on foot, but not quite able to keep up.
“This is a massive waste of resources,” I said, lawyer brain breaking through for a moment.
Theo scoffed. “Who the fuck cares?”
“That’s just it, though,” Anna observed. “He could get out of there. But he’s let them stay right on his tail all day. I think he’s drawn them out, made them go public with this task-force. Wasting resources? Absolutely. I’ll bet he loves that.”
Smart girl, my Angel. I could use her around for some of my cases. She sees so many things that other people don’t.
“He’s running like he’s still full of blood, even though they’ve been chasing him all day,” Lydia finally piped up. “He must have seriously topped off just before they came after him. If he’d been hungry, he’d be slowing down after leading them around the city all day. He’s not this energetic off a day’s worth of bottled. This cat drained somebody, or near enough.”
She pulled her attention away from the news. “You’re right, Danny. They’re not going to let us feed. They’re going to police it. Or they’re going to try. We’re not going for it. Not this nest.” Her grey eyes looked like stone. They were cold and immovable. She’d made up her mind.
Anna rubbed at her temples.
Theo smirked.
We had to be smart about this, and I didn't know what to say.
I finally settled for “We don’t know for sure what they’re going to do, Lyds.”
“We know they’re not gonna catch that guy!” Theo exclaimed, fist in the air.
He was right. Officers were scrambling for squad cars and loading hurriedly into vans. The vampire was grinning up at the news helicopter. He flipped the camera the bird, and faster than any humans watching would be able to see, he leapt over a car and took off out of frame. There was no way they were getting him. He was a ghost.
Anna hollered victoriously, and then laughed.
Lydia relaxed against the back of the couch again, smiling like some evil queen who’d just watch her minion piss off the hero.
I know I should have been at least sort of been rooting for the law to come out on top. Maybe it was because I was leaving humanity farther and farther behind me, but I was definitely happy to see our vampire “brother” shake off his pursuers. Besides, if this was going the way I was afraid it was, the law and I weren’t exactly going to be seeing eye to eye. Something told me that even though the chase had ended, it was just the start of something much bigger.
****
Lydia cornered me in her kitchen when I went to rinse out my mug.
“There's more to this,” she stated simply.
I set my mug down in the sink and turned to face her. Theo and Anna would hear every word we said to one another if they wanted to, but there was something unspoken between all of us. If one of us follows another out of the room to talk, depending on the overall mood, it generally meant they wanted a private chat.
“Of course there is, Lyds,” I responded, lifting myself up to sit on the counter.
“A task force alone won't bring us down. We all saw how easy it was for that guy to get away. So what don't we know?”
“If I knew, I would tell you, I promise.”
She approached me with her arms out and I pulled her against me, resting my chin on her head.
“If I get caught, just...how much trouble do you think I'd be in, my love?”
Vamps that went to prison for breaking the law, whether as it applied to the general populace, or specifically vampires, went simply because they were willing. Once they were there, it was hard for them to get out, being fed just would sustain them, and kept behind layers of brick and steel. But it wasn't impossible. But with a task force put together to bring down vampires and lock them up no matter how much of a fight they put up…
I squeezed my sister tight. “I can't say, Lydia. But I think--”
She pulled away from me a little and looked up at me. “You think what?”
“I think it would be bad.”
Her shoulders dropped and she leaned into me again. “Oh.”
I kissed the top of her head. “I'll look into it, alright?”
She shook her head. “No, no. They'll tell us soon enough. Don't be worrying about me right now. If you're gonna be looking into anything, it'll be how likely they are to pass the vampire-marriage law. I need to know how soon you can make an honest man out of my oldest and dearest in there,” she said jerking her head in the direction of her living room.
“Not a man, Lyds,” came Theo's voice from the other room. Guess private conversation time was over.
“All man, baby,” I hollered back at him.
I was glad for a bit of levity, and tried to stop brooding long enough to enjoy the rest of the evening with my nest. Still, conversation turned legal again, even if only briefly, as I crawled into bed with Theo later.
“Is all this going to affect the vote about our marriage?” Theo asked as he slid between the sheets next to me.
“It's not our marriage they're voting on. It's not the Teodoro Talbot and Daniel Porter right to marry campaign people have been pushing.”
I was just teasing him, but he wasn't in the mood.
He swung himself up and over me, hands on either side of my head, staring down at me. His eyes were intense.
“It is though. Of course it's bigger than us, but my world? My world is you, and me, and our right to be legally recognized. Our right to be together, our right to be bound to one another. My right to be yours in the eyes of...well, everyone. It is our marriage they're voting on.”
I ran my hands up and down his arms, feeling the contours of flesh and bone beneath my fingers. What made us any different? Why shouldn't we marry? Was it our immortality? Humans divorce all the time. If anything, knowing I'd live forever made the decision to marry one that I took even more seriously.
“You know that no matter what, legal or otherwise, the bond between us is real, and strong, and eternal, right? My world is you, and me, and our love. The rest is just icing.”
He bit his lip as he looked down on my face, his gaze no longer boring into mine, but sort of far off. I knew he was still occasionally shaken by the intensity of our relationship; his first monogamous relationship, to hear him tell the tale.
As suddenly as his mind wandered, though, it returned. My lover’s teeth were on my neck and I shivered, ready. Instead of the onslaught of teeth and hands and bodies I’d expected, though, his lips followed his fangs, pressing light kisses. His body dropped next to mine and he rested his head on my chest, running his hand across my side. “I love you, Dan,” he whispered.
No one calls me Dan. It's Daniel or Danny (by a select few. My sister from birth and Lydia by force). But my Theo… he’s different. He’s always different. What started out as him stuttering over his words and my name during an admittedly hyper-skilled blow-job he received from me, had turned into a name only he called me.
There was something vulnerable about his voice. He was giving himself to me, even though he knew I’d have the ability to ruin him for it. I could never do that; I can’t even imagine spending another day without him. The thought of it alone was complete agony. This man owned me. He owned all of me.
“I love you, too, Teo. I can’t wait to make you my husband.”
“Mmmm,” he grunted, burying his face in the skin of my chest, and placing wet kisses there. “Daniel Talbot has a nice ring to it.”
“Not as nice as Teodoro Porter.”
He laughed at me, “Talbot-Porter?”
“Porter-Talbot.”
“Deal,” he breathed over the the moist patches of skin he left. I shuddered, my right hand momentarily stilling on its journey up and down my fiance’s spine.
It seemed Theo was done with words. I found myself pulled tighter against him, remembering the times he’d done this to my human body and I’d squeaked in pain. Now I took comfort in his strong embrace. It was a very solid reminder that he was still here with me, no matter how desolate my nightmares got.