Compel Me: A Reverse Harem Vampire Romance (The Last Vocari Book 1) Page 2

  And then I would leave again. Back on the road. More pavement to chew. More vampires to kill.

  Once I had dreams of going back to school. Getting a degree. But I knew it wasn’t me. Would never be me. This was what I was meant for. The rest of humanity lived in ignorant bliss of the monsters who thrived right under our noses. Someone had to do this—to beat them back into the shadows. Or else what would happen if we let them keep growing in number?

  Would their population one day overtake our own?

  What would become of us then?

  I pulled into the cul-de-sac, my headlights passing over the brick exterior of the house, and the houses to either side, bumping when I hit the pothole that’d been there for years. Yet somehow, I always forgot to avoid the damned thing. “Sorry, Bets,” I said to the truck, turning back the key and bringing her to rest on the street in front of the house.

  My heart twinged at the memories trying to claw their way to the surface. I ignored them—shoved them safely away where they wouldn’t hurt. I didn’t dare look at the other houses—the three I knew inside and out—the ones that once held familiar faces but were not inhabited by strangers. My hands tightened on the wheel and I drew in a long, calming breath that came back out as more of a sigh.

  Getting out, I pulled on my sling purse and gave my legs a good long stretch, lifting my hands above my head and bending in either direction. I’d have to do a bit less driving for a while, I didn’t think my back could take much more of it. Betty’s seats were unforgiving leather, the cushion beneath beat to shit so it felt more like you were sitting on wooden planks than car seats.

  Careful to close the door quietly, I approached the house, feeling the hair on the back of my neck prickle even though there was no breeze. There was a wrongness to the place. I knew this feeling.

  A vampire was nearby.

  Godfuckingdamnit.

  Really?

  Couldn’t a girl sleep?

  The houses around mine were all dark and silent. Their curtains drawn for the night. Not even the early risers would be up yet. Good. No witnesses. But I supposed I should try to find some form of cover before the vamp decided to come and attack me. The cul-de-sac was always quiet traffic-wise, but the road outside tended to get busier in the daylight.

  Moving into the shadow of the wide apple tree in the front yard, I waited, unsheathing a stake from my thigh. Ready to get the killing over with so I could sleep. I’d toss the body into the shed for now. Bury the leech in the backyard tomorrow night when the town went back to sleep. I wouldn’t have enough time to do it tonight.

  I stepped around the rotted apples in the overgrown lawn. Their sweet, rotten smell cloying at my nose, and took a fighting stance in the shadows.

  “Well if it isn’t little Rosie Ward,” the deep baritone shattered the stillness. Broke through the barriers of my mind and went straight for my heart.

  The hand holding the stake shook, just for a second.

  I knew that voice. And there was only one asshole with balls enough to call me Rosie. He’d been calling me that since we were eleven years old.

  No fucking way.

  I stepped out from the tree’s shadow and into the narrow driveway of the house, my feet nearly tripping over bits of loose concrete. “Frost?”

  “The one any only,” he replied, and I saw that he was alone—leaning against the post of the lean-to covering part of the drive. “You look so different,” he added offhandedly.

  Different good or different bad? I wondered, my pulse thrumming from a different sort of rush.

  Camden Frost lived in the house next door to me growing up. Him and me—and Ethan and Blake, the other boys in the neighborhood—had been completely inseparable. I hadn’t seen him, or any of them, since…

  Since the day my mother died, I realized, my chest squeezing painfully.

  “I—” I wasn’t sure what I was going to say, but the sentence died in my throat. I missed you? It was true. I did. After they took me away, I hadn’t been able to contact them. And years later, when I returned, they had all gone. Moved away. I thought they’d forgotten about me.

  What the hell was he doing back here after all these years? Am I dead?

  Hallucinating?

  I had to be imagining this. I’d pictured exactly this happening too many times to count. I’d hoped for it. Dreamed it. If I was being honest it was part of the reason I still came back to this place—why I never sold the house, even when I got offers double asking price.

  Frost’s eyes grazed over the scar on my neck and I saw something in his eyes darken, a profound sadness settling over his immaculate features.

  “We’ve been looking for you.”

  We? My stomach did a little flip. Were the others here, too, then? Ethan and Blake. The desire to see them had me shifting my eyes in all directions, hunting for them among the trees, parked cars, and other houses.

  I froze as that same hair-raising feeling swept over me again. I remembered suddenly why I still clutched a metal stake in my hand. A flood of adrenaline crashed into my bloodstream.

  They weren’t safe here.

  I dug the house keys out of my sling bag and tossed them to Frost. “Get inside,” I hollered at him, sheathing my stake, hoping he hadn’t seen it. I didn’t want to freak him out.

  They probably heard the rumors. That Rose Ward had gone psycho. How she claimed her mother was killed by a vampire. That the same vampire almost took her life, too. Once the slit in my throat had healed to the point I could speak, it was the first thing I said, tearing up from the pain of trying to talk.

  They told me I imagined it. That I was under stress. Grieving. In shock. They labeled me with all kinds of words I didn’t understand. But still I screamed It was a vampire. I saw him. I saw him! I know what I saw!

  Until the threat of permanent institutionalization shut me up.

  If I told Frost I needed him to get inside because there’s a vampire out here that needed killing and I’d just be a few minutes while I staked the bastard—well, he would think the rumors were true.

  And he would leave me again. Just like everyone left me.

  Call me raving mad and tell Ethan and Blake I was crazy. That they shouldn’t have come to find me at all.

  The dark thoughts made it difficult to breathe.

  “Why?” Frost asked, catching the keys in one hand, his brow quirked.

  His shock of white-blond hair gleamed in the moonlight, almost seeming to glow from within.

  “There’s something I need to take care of real quick and then we can talk. I…I missed you. It’s—well, it’s good to see you, Frost.” I offered him a tired smile and stepped a bit closer, ready to corral him inside if I had to. I looked left and right, trying not to draw too much attention to the fact that I was checking the rooftops for attackers. “Are Ethan and Blake here, too?”

  “No,” he replied, not making any movements to go inside like I asked him. Stubborn as always. But I relaxed a little knowing he was the only one out here when there was a vampire lurking somewhere in the shadows. Probably watching us. Listening.

  He twirled the keys around his pinkie finger, a look of amusement crossing his ruggedly handsome features. Fuck, he aged even better than I thought he would.

  I licked my lips, feeling a burn somewhere low in my belly. An ache spreading as I took in the wide expanse of his shoulders and the hard planes of his chest and stomach beneath the too-tight black tee he wore. The way the leather jacket he had over top strained against the swell of his biceps as he continued to fiddle with my keys.

  Later, I told myself. I could ogle him all I wanted once he was safe inside and the vamp was dead.

  “Who are you looking for?” he asked, catching me glance behind him. “Expecting company?”

  I shook my head. “No, I—um—”

  There was the grating sound of metal on metal and then the flap of a tarp lifting. Faster than I could blink the vampire had climbed out of my truck bed and cleared the
twenty-five paces to me.

  How?

  But I didn’t have time to wonder. I barely had time to grab the stake from between my legs. I’d just gotten it out when the vampire stopped dead no more than three feet away from me, his face stuck in a horrified wide-eyed, slack-jawed silent scream—just out of reach of my stake.

  His body buckled. Blood trickled in a stream from his lips. His eyes, a deep blue, were filled with shock. Fear.

  The fuck?

  It took my mind a second to catch up to what my eyes were seeing. The hand clamped tightly on the vamp’s shoulder. My keys still hooked onto the pinkie finger. And when the vampire fell lifeless to the pavement—there was Frost…standing behind him, his fangs bared, the stowaway vampire’s bloody heart clutched in his fist.

  3

  “Oh god,” I gasped, dropping the stake to the ground, my hand moving to cover my mouth—to try and stifle the horror making my eyes well with hot tears.

  Frost dropped the mangled heart to the ground and bent low to wipe his hand off in the grass by the side of the driveway. “Sorry, Rosie. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  Didn’t mean to…what?

  I couldn’t speak. Didn’t know what to say. I wanted to pick up my stake. Or draw the other one. But I couldn’t defend myself against Frost…could I? I couldn’t hurt him, not after what he did for me all those years ago—what they all did.

  “Don’t look so surprised,” he said after a few more beats of silence that stretched on like years between us. “By the look of that stake there,” he said, his fangs retracting as he glanced down to where the chunk of metal rested in the grass. “I’d guess the rumors are true,” he trailed off.

  “What?” I managed, still trying to rectify what I was seeing with the Frost I remembered. The thirteen-year-old who had a reputation as a bad boy, but who I knew had one of the biggest hearts of anyone I’d ever met.

  And now that heart no longer beat.

  No.

  “The Black Rose?” he asked. “Did you come up with that yourself or did they come up with it for you?”

  My spine straightened and my adrenaline kicked back in, bringing heat back to my tingling extremities. “So, you’re here to kill me, then?” I said, deadpan, my fingers itching to draw my stake.

  It was true after all. They were coming for me like the vampire warned.

  Frost tilted his head this way and that, gave a small shrug. “There’s a bounty on your head, Rose. Half a mil.”

  He must’ve seen my eyes widen because he barked a rough laugh and ran a hand over his hair, shoving the bit that was longer in the front back into place. “I’d be lying if I said the money wasn’t tempting, Rosie,” he said, and this time my nickname leaving his lips was a lash across my heart. “But that’s not why I’m here.”

  Frost moved in a blur, faster than even the fastest vamps I’d seen. Of course, he’d make a magnificent vampire. He was good at everything he did back when I knew him, too. I drew the stake, holding it low at my side, a warning I hoped he didn’t realize was a bluff.

  Even if he lunged, could I strike him? My childhood friend. My savior.

  I can’t.

  “They say you’re good,” he said, his voice like warm honey. “So good that you’ve never left a single one who’s seen you alive. They don’t even know if you’re a woman or a man. Or that you’re human. Only that you leave a rose behind.”

  My throat went dry. I wanted to say something to make him stop moving closer—to stop making me back slowly away from him. To make him go away and never come back. I couldn’t stand to see him like this, and I wanted to tell him that, but I couldn’t. My throat was full of razorblades and my head full of cotton. I could do nothing more than soak up each and every one of his words.

  “But we knew,” he continued. “The Black Rose,” he repeated. “It had to be you. You dropped off the face of the earth. No record of your death. No record of where you were. And the trail of bodies always lead to within driving distance of Silverton. You always come back here—and that was your mistake. Maybe no one else would’ve noticed, but when Ethan noticed we figured it out.”

  He was so close now I could reach out and touch him. Stake him. But my hand trembled with the cool metal in it. My teeth clenched tight.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  He reached out and I flinched, his hand covered my hand on the stake, pushing it away. “We knew it had to be you. When you were in the hospital—we came to see you. They wouldn’t let us in—we weren’t family.”

  The smell of him washed over me. Cloves and leather mixed with the spicy tang of aftershave.

  “But we heard you,” he said. “Screaming. You said it was a vampire. They thought you were crazy, but we didn’t. We saw him, too. Just for a second, but we knew you weren’t lying.”

  Oh god. This was my fault. Frost went looking for answers. I imagined how it all played out after I’d been taken away. The three of them enraged that no one believed me. Resolute on finding proof to vindicate me—to prove that I wasn’t lying. It would be the sort of thing they would do. For me.

  Because we were one, the four of us. If someone fucked with one of us, they faced the wrath of all four. And they’d gone looking for proof and found it. Now Frost was going to be paying for it for the rest of his immortal life.

  “I’m so sorry,” I murmured, my heart breaking. “The other’s, are they…?” I couldn’t bring myself to say it.

  Were they vampires, too?

  Frost nodded once and it was like someone was strangling me. I hunched forward, trying to catch my breath. My stomach heaved, but I managed to keep the bile at bay.

  Could this be?

  It wasn’t fair. Not them. Not my boys.

  The tears were flowing in earnest now and Frost set a hand on my back. I staggered away, lifting the stake again—a reflex.

  “I’m not going to hurt you—” he started, his hand up in a gesture of peace, hurt crossing his features.

  In an instant I went from heartbroken to seething mad. This was their fault. They should have let it be. Why did they have to be such idiots? So goddamned stubborn! “Fuck you,” I hissed at him, but the words came out broken instead of strong like I intended.

  “Fuck you, Frost,” I tried again and swallowed, trying to relieve the burn at the back of my throat.

  “There’s the Rosie I remember,” he said in a jubilant voice. “Full of piss ‘n vinegar, just how I like you.”

  I shoved him hard in the chest, and he recoiled, stumbling a step back. “Stronger than I remember, though,” he added with an even wider grin. The bastard was enjoying this.

  Could I believe him? Was he really not going to hurt me?

  I kill vampires for a living, my mind whispered. And he knows it. We’re basically mortal enemies now. I grimaced at the thought.

  “What do you want then? Why the hell are you here, Frost?”

  The adrenaline that spiked only moments before began to wane, replaced with a heavy exhaustion that made my body wilt under the pressure of it. My body sagged and I dropped the other stake, knowing full well I wasn’t going to use it.

  He narrowed his gaze at me, his river-green eyes confused. His mouth puckering in distaste or maybe confusion. “I’m here for you, Rose. To help you.”

  My mouth fell open. He was…what?

  “Now come on,” he said, rolling his shoulders as he changed the subject, as though what he’d just said made any sense at all. He gestured to the heart and corpse still leaking blackish-red fluids all over my mom’s lawn. “Help me get him to the shed. We’ll have to bury him tomorrow.”

  4

  Despite how tired I’d been less than hour before, by the time Frost and I finished hosing off the grass and pavement and lugging the dead vamp into the shed, I was wide awake.

  Filled with anger and sadness. About Frost and Ethan and Blake. But also angry with myself for being so stupid, and for not listening to my gut. That whole damned ride from middle-of-nowhere-vill
e to Silverton I’d felt that charge in the air. I’d chalked it up to what’d happened earlier still irking me when really there was a fucking vampire in my truck bed.

  He must’ve snuck in while the manager of that nasty motel was distracting me. I was smarter than that.

  If Frost hadn’t jumped in when he did, would I have been fast enough to stop the vampire? Or had Frost just saved my life for the second time.

  Godfuckingdamnit.

  As if I didn’t already owe him enough.

  “This place hasn’t changed much,” Frost said, taking a look around the main floor of the house.

  It really hadn’t changed at all, but I wasn’t about to correct him. I could barely look at him. Holding a conversation without screaming would be impossible.

  “Mhmm,” I mumbled, following him at a distance as he turned the corner from the kitchen into the living room and made to go upstairs. My face heated as he pushed open the door to my room, the hinges creaking and groaning. I’d have to remember to grab the greaser from the truck and fix that.

  My room was the only one I’d bothered to change at all. I’d swapped the power rangers bedsheets for simple black ones with a matching comforter. I’d also taken down most of the band posters but left the ones that were still favorites. My closet was emptied and filled with a few of my extra leathers and some regular street clothes that fit my new adult curves.

  But Frost wasn’t looking at any of that, he was focused on the corkboard over my old white desk. I hadn’t touched that. I couldn’t, no matter how much I missed them—or how angry I’d been when they never came for me…

  I couldn’t erase them. The burning started in my throat again as I moved to stand next to my best friend, trying to forget that he wasn’t the same as I remembered him. That the Frost I knew was dead, and the thing standing next to me was not him.

  We looked at the messy collage of photos together. My lips quirked at one of the four of us at the lake. I’d taken the photo, but I saw Frost and Ethan in the water, and next to them, midair with eyes wide and teeth bared was Blake after he’d jumped off the thirty-foot cliff.