Sweat drips down my face in rivers. One fat glob after another, racing along my cheeks, down my neck, and streaking along the curves of my back. My borrowed athletic gear went from damp to soak cycle in thirty minutes, and we’ve been at this for an hour. It started out easy. A little light stretching, some basic self-defense, added explanation and instruction from Tannis—easy peasy. Except it’s not.
I’m about to puke up my dinner,I think, feeling my stomach turn. I should have turned down the chicken and baked potato waiting for me after work, but Tannis insisted. They said I would need ‘plenty to burn’ and now I understand why.
“Take a break,” Tannis commands. “I’ll be right back.”
I collapse almost instantly, grateful for the reprieve. Spinning around a pole for eight hours in heels to throwing hands at a vampire twice my size deserves some sort of reward.
Waiting dutifully on the sidelines, Gray brings me water and sits down.
“How do you feel?”
I crack open the bottle and take a sip. “Like I could vomit.”
Gray gives a short laugh. It should annoy me, but it doesn’t. This is my fault.
I didn’t take him or Tannis seriously about this ‘training’ when I should have. After I ate, Tannis had one of his live-in mortals bring me a change of clothes and lead me to the basement once I changed. Not only was there a wine cellar and a wine bar down here, there was a fully stocked personal gym with its own area code.
“Tannis was a soldier,” Gray says simply. “They were on the battlefield, dying, when I turned them.”
“You what?” I sputter, water dribbling down my chin.He turned Tannis?
“I turned Tannis. Is that so hard to believe?”
“Are you two even related?” I ask. If I remember correctly, he also turned Dante. Someone isn’t shy about making new vampires.
“We are, yes.” Gray nods.
“How is that possible? Weren’t you a vampire before him?”
“For about ten years before they turned, yes. Like I said, I enjoyed court intrigue far more than any battles.” Gray stretches his long legs out in front of him and leans back on his elbows against the padded floor. “Our families were part of the surrounding nobility, and so we often saw each other, regardless. See, Tannis was the only living son and child left to their parents. When word reached me that Tannis had been mortally wounded, I went to the front lines and saved their life.”
I’m sure my face is making some dumb expression when I say, “That’s actually kind of heroic.”
“It isn’t. I had ulterior motives.”
“What were they?” I ask, bringing my knees to my chest. Everything aches in a hard to get comfortable kind of way.
“Tannis is older than me, and was meant to succeed the family. It would have gone to me if they had died,” Gray explains. “I didn’t want that responsibility. I wanted to fuck, hunt, and do whatever I pleased. My reclusive behaviors excused any question of my mortality at the time. Most assumed I drank all night and slept it off during the day.”
“Makes total sense.” I can’t help the sarcasm that coats my reply.
“It did at the time.” Gray sighs.
“What does that mean?” I ask.
Behind us, Tannis interjects. “This idiot didn’t account for the fact that whatever duties I inherited as the head of our family would have to be carried out in the daylight, too. It made things somewhat difficult at first.”
Both of us turn around at the sound of their voice. I feel a little guilty for talking about them when they weren’t around, but their expression borders on amusement over annoyance. It makes me wonder if they were tuned in from the start. They step forward and offer me a fresh towel, which I take gratefully.
“I was young,” Gray deflects.
“Young andstupid,” Tannis adds. They circle around us and squat to eye-level. “Thankfully, I was in good enough standing that many believed my wounds from the battlefield were so great that I suffered a long-term illness as a result of my miraculous recovery. I evaded the daytime without question. Everyone simply thought I was too weak and sickly to get out of bed.”
“See? It all worked out in the end,” Gray says with a grin so wide it makes him look boyish.
“Only because it was easy to convince people in those days that God worked miracles.” Tannis rolls their red eyes and then turns to me. “He’s a troublemaker.”
Gray tilts his head in my direction and smiles. “Reformed.”
