Chapter 6: Onyx
The little vampire stole my client’s sponsorship. She thought I didn’t know she had hacked into my emails. Sometimes it was insulting how little credit she gave me. Of course, I knew that she snooped, which is why for everything I actually wanted to remain confidential, I used a different laptop and email address. I wasn’t ignorant of how to use a computer or how to hide my tracks. No one was clean, and I sure as hell wasn’t.
The fact that she thought she was being clever was amusing. The fact that she thought she was subtle was hilarious. There was nothing subtle about Angel. In college, she may have kept to herself, but she was no wallflower. She was confident in her studies, and she was intelligent. She just didn’t bring attention to herself. The fact that she took the sponsorship deal just emphasized she had more balls than most, and I had to admire the fact that she was never intimidated by me.
I really should never have slept with her. I should have known she would turn up later in my life and piss me off; she had that vibe.
The night that she first came to all of our attention was the night we lay in wait for Dave Watkins. Finally, the girls had come to us. Campus security had investigated the accusations but had done nothing. Not good enough. Owen had heard the rumor, and since he was a decent guy and his little sister was starting at Cardinal in the fall, he was a man on a mission to find out if the rumors were true.
When we finally got some details, we made a point of finding out everyone who was involved. And we hunted them down. Some had unfortunate accidents, like Dave. His car accident was an unfortunate lack of control on a rainy night, and it was equally unfortunate that he broke both his legs in the accident. A true tragedy.
With some . . . persuasion . . . I got him to confess it all. He also managed to point the finger at his regular partygoers. Because that’s what it was to them, a party.
Sick bastards.
When Owen took Angel out of the car, I’d never seen her before. When she tried to run, she caught and held my interest. I could see the appeal as to why Dave had targeted her, but it wasn’t because she was his usual type. She was attractive, but she was not a typical party girl. She was high risk, and we wondered afterward if that was the attraction he saw in her — the challenge.
Challenge? Snorting with disgust, I got to my feet and got another bottle of beer from the fridge. Looking at the containers on the counter, I opened the freezer and looked in. I was already sick of takeout, and my housekeeper had only been on vacation for three days. She had told me she would leave me meals, and as I opened the drawers in the freezer, I saw the perfectly packaged meals and heating instructions.
Picking out a lasagna, I noted I was to put it in the fridge overnight and let it defrost. After following instructions, I went back to the counter for tonight’s dinner, happier in the knowledge that I was getting homemade cooking tomorrow.
Dinner organized, I packed up my trash and dumped it. As I unbuttoned my shirt and finished my beer, I thought about Angel.
It had been several weeks after the night of Mayhem with Dave that I had run into her again, and it was quite obvious she had no idea who I was or that I was there the night of her abrupt crash course into the Devils.
She was a junior, and I was a sophomore at the time, taking an advanced class that she was in. I recognized her from the night beside the road, but she was completely oblivious. She’d been sniffing around Jer, and he had invited her to thefootball house party, and because of that, we had almost forgone Mayhem that night. A fact which pissed us all off, but she was still an unknown, and unknown meant risk. Mayhem meant chaos, which usually involved fights and arguments, but it also meant sex. Willing sex, of course. If a girl ran during Mayhem, she was fair game to be caught, and once she was caught, well . . . the night was yours to do what you wanted together. But, given Angel’s recent experience with Dave the Cunt, she’d possibly panic and think the girls were being forced.
Cooper had been asking about her, and at that point, we knew her grandparents were Romanian, and her mom was born in the States and met and married Angel’s dad, who was a military man based near Nashville. Angel was born in Music City and had vacationed far and wide, but never ventured too far from home. She had few friends, and even though her dad moved around a lot, they had a permanent house in Nashville. Mom and Dad were now happy retirees in Florida, and Angel stuck to Nashville.
She was utterly and completely normal. There was no dirt on her family; she herself was practically nun-like, and the most exciting thing Cooper had found out about her was that she once bungee jumped out of a helicopter over the Grand Canyon.
Yawn.
She hadn’t held my interest then, and she barely held it now. I would have quite happily never thought about her again until Charlie threw the gauntlet down one evening as Owen was confirming that she had only told her roommate what had happened, and then the two of them had made inquiries at one party, as Jer had directed. Other than that, she acted like nothing had happened. Which is what we wanted. However, like me, my friends had no idea why Dave had targeted her.
Owen speculated she still had her v-card, but she was twenty-two — no way she was a virgin. Possibly inexperienced,but she was attractive. Her long hair was kept in good condition, she had some curve to her ass, but her tits were modest-looking. She was so pale she looked translucent, and Jer had joked he had never seen her in sunlight. She became known as thevampirefrom then on.
The party was in full swing, and we were ready to start Mayhem when she came through the door, and she went from pasty vampire tored hot. She was with her roommate and the roommate’s boyfriend, and they had to have been somewhere else beforehand, because all three were glammed up. He was in a button-down shirt and dress pants, and Angel was in a sequin cocktail dress that was suddenly bringing everyone’s attention to the curve of her ass and the fact that she’d been previously hiding her figure under loose, ill-fitting clothes. The vampire scrubbed up well; there was no denying it.
“Now I see what the scumbag saw,” Jer said to me with appreciation.
“Hmm,” I agreed as I watched her self-consciously smooth her dress down. Her legs were toned and shapely, and the low heel she wore showed them off nicely.
Owen joined us and searched the room to see what we were talking about. “Fuck, is that the vampire?”
“Yup,” Jer said as he took a drink. “Wouldn’t mind catching her during Mayhem,” he said with a wink to Owen.
I laughed as I watched her. “She’s a catch and release. Her type is never up for fun, never mind a one-nighter,” I told them both.
“You saying you couldn’t even get her to kiss you, Onyx?” Owen teased me.
Tilting my head, I considered her. Her cheeks were pink from makeup and I assumed alcohol, but she didn’t appear to be drunk. She held her bottle of water tightly, and even though her hips swayed slightly to the music, she was steady on herfeet. “I’m sure I could,” I told my friends as I looked away from her, which was annoying because I had no problem looking at her tonight.
“I don’t think you can,” Charlie said over my shoulder. “Mayhem scared the hell out of her at the car; she’s going to run and not stop.”
“Yeah, I think she’s a runner,” Owen agreed. “And we all know you hate chasing.”
I smiled as they laughed, and I continued to watch Angel across the room. She was looking around all the time, her hand clutching the water bottle, and I was impressed that she was so vigilant with what she was drinking. Would she run? Probably. Everyone knew if you ran when the lights went out during mayhem, you were fair game to be caught.
