Gray scoffs. “Admit it, you’ve missed the drama.”
“Too true. Your timing is impeccable.” Tannis’s cheek twitches before a smile floods their face. “So, what is it you want from me?”
“I want you to teach Millie how to fight,” Gray says, his voice even.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I shout, cutting Gray off mid-sentence. “What?”
Gray tilts his head back and gazes down at me. “Didn’t you say the other night at the diner you wanted to learn how to fight?”
“Yeah, I meant a self-defense class at the local rec club or something,” I pause, thinking back to what I said to him at the diner. At least he took me seriously. “Not one-on-one training with another vampire!”
“You’re a natural,” Gray says with a knowing smile. “You fended off a man twice your height.”
“That was dumb luck,” I argue.
“But youdiddo it,” he says, as if that will convince me. I guess I could admire his confidence in me, but I mean it. Fending off my attacker from the church was dumb luck. I acted on instinct. Vampires are so much faster and stronger than me. Hell, I could feel it in the way Dante held back. His best was still pretty brutal, but at least he didn’t use his strength to rip me apart. I shiver at the thought. It would be easy for him, too. I’d never see it coming.
“Okay, say I do this…” I surge to my feet and pace the floor between the couch and the fireplace. “I commit to the training montage, I learn how to fight off a vampire, and then what? I carry an arsenal of stakes, holy water, and silver with me?”
“Maybe not the holy water.” Tannis snickers humorously.
I shoot them a hard look, red eyes trailing me. They flatten their lips and avert their gaze.
“You know,” I begin, straightening in an attempt to compose myself, “just the other day one of the girls grabbed my bag and emptied it all out just so she could find the lip gloss I was wearing that night. And before that? Another girl did the same thing for afuckingtampon.”
To his credit, Gray looks both confused and alarmed. At least I have his attention.
“What I’m trying to say is, having an arsenal of wooden stakes wouldn’t really go over very well.” I can already hear the questions they’d ask me if someone happened to go through my bag again for a tampon. Not to mention the heat I’d catch from Dax. Not exactly sure how to navigate that conversation yet, but I definitely don’t want it to happen for that reason.
“First of all, no stakes.” Gray shifts to sit on the edge of the couch; his focus on me. “What better way to learn than to find it at the source?”
My mouth hangs open, but no words come out. He’s taking what I said to heart and following through. I told him I wanted to fight, or learn how to just in case, but really I just wanted to avoid that sense of helplessness I felt at Dante’s hands. My luck will run out eventually, and when it does, I don’t want to be a weak, sobbing mess.
“You’d have an easier time if you just enthralled her,” Tannis says boredly from the chaise.
Both Gray and I snap our attention to them.
“Do what?” I ask.
“Out of the question,” says Gray.
Tannis ignores their cousin and addresses me. “Enthrall you, Millie. It’s a blood bond between a vampire and a human. You would, for all intents and purposes, dip into the wealth of his immortality and claim some of it for yourself.”
“Tannis, stop,” Gray warns.
“You would be tied to him,” Tannis goes on, still ignoring Gray, “but you would have his strength, his senses, all of it. You would be everythingbuta vampire.”
Everything but a vampire, my mind repeats. I’ll admit, the thought of being on the same level as Gray or Dante is attractive in its own right. Who wouldn’t want all the benefits of vampirism without the undead part? I could walk in the sun, for example, and carry all of my groceries in one trip. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t already considering it as an option.
Gray snarls so loudly it tears through the air in the room. It’s the only warning Tannis has before they’re attacked. With lightning speed, Gray tackles Tannis from the chaise to the floor. They flip around the room, slamming into the walls and other furniture, fighting each other. My eyes can’t keep up withthem, they move so fast. Clearly Gray doesn’t like the idea of enthralling me, despite it having some credibility. If I had his strength, I would be way better off in both cases if I did learn how to fight a vampire from Tannis.
It isn’t hard to see why Gray would want to come here first before teaching me anything himself. What little of their fight I can see, proves just how outmatched Gray is versus his cousin. If Tannis is the strongest of the two of them, I shudder to think about Dante.
“Enough!” Tannis snarls as they slam Gray against the wall beside the fireplace with one solid arm. “It was merely an idea.”
“Probably the worst one you’ve ever had.” Gray’s expression is severe, and he looks more pissed off than I’ve ever seen before. The craziest part, though? I can see the sharpened point of his ears and the way the whites of his eyes have become black pools. The effect it has on his red pupils is like two blood moons, side by side, sparkling in the night sky.
That’s been happening a lot,I think.
