Conroy gave Kit a condescending smile that Kit wanted to punch off his moustachioed face. “You can always move into the nest if you’re feeling threatened.”
Tati narrowed her eyes at Kit, as if sensing competition, but Kit held no desire to be another of Conroy’s countless lovers. The vampire had tried it on with him when Kit first came to town and, as per law, declared his presence to the closest authority. Conroy, for all his sleaze, was somewhat handsome, moustache notwithstanding.
But Kit wanted to have the sole affection of whoever he was with. It had even been apparent with Lawrence. When you’d been the sole target of someone’s attention for twenty years, it rankled when they picked out a shiny new toy. Kit had not only watched Lawrence gear up to take Shaun, but had been forced to participate in finding his own replacement.
And then Kit had faced a final choice: run…or die.
“I’ll be fine, Conroy,” he said.
“Kit, you should stay. Eat with us. We have a midnight tour coming in soon. Plenty on offer.” Conroy gestured to the surrounding area. “Lots of entertainment.”
Conroy’s idea of fun was the opposite of Kit’s. For easy pickings, the St Andrews nest ran something akin to the ghost tours of Edinburgh, but instead of ghosts, they claimed to be acoven of vampires. It was bold and undeniably risky, but they’d been getting away with it for decades, with no humans becoming any the wiser.
“No, thanks,” Kit demurred.
“Maybe youshouldstay—you look positively underfed,” Tati said, flashing her fangs.
Kit ground his teeth together to stop his fangs from dropping. “I’m good,” he said, shooting her a glare. “I suppose I’ll have to deal with the werewolf myself.”
Without waiting for a further response, Kit stormed out of the church. He heard their laughter following him, but he ignored it. All the territory leaders were the same: narcissistic arseholes who surrounded themselves with fawning sycophants.
The territories had been established as a way of maintaining population control back at the advent of the Industrial Revolution, with lines drawn on a map and land given to the most influential vampires of the day. As technology ushered in a new era of humanity, one that questioned and innovated and grew at a scale unseen by generations beforehand, it became more difficult for vampires to hide in the shadows.
The future territory leaders then banded together to get rid of the old guard. They’d taken down the ancient vampires who’d roamed the earth for hundreds and thousands of years, determined to wipe the slate clean. So many lifetimes had passed for the ancients that they’d lost any trace of the humans they’d once been. They existed only to take what they wanted from whomever they liked. It had been a necessary culling.
If only the territory leaders had culled Lawrence, too.
Kit seethed for the entire drive back. Conroy was useless, just like every other territory leader. A couple of centuries in charge only worked to inflate their egos. Back when Lawrence had dragged him from place to place, they’d had to present themselves to the leader in each new location. Kit had played the role of enamoured creation every time.
It wasn’t a role he fit well, but there was little point in fighting when Lawrence could rely on compulsions to keep him in line when the threats didn’t work.
When Kit had been human, he hadn’t recalled what happened when under compulsion. But after Lawrence recreated him, he became cognisant of every time Lawrence forced his will upon him.
He sometimes envied his human self for being able to forget.
Kit’s performance had always fooled the territory leaders. One of them had cooed about how devoted Kit was to his creator, how sweet it was that he stuck so close, how lovely the two of them looked together. Kit had wanted to rip her tongue from her mouth to stop her from speaking. Instead, he’d played up the coquettish persona he wore and flirted with Lawrence in front of her for the rest of the night. Lawrence hadn’t even rewarded him. Not that Kit expected him to, but perhapssomeacknowledgement would have been nice.
Kit’s thoughts bounced between those awful days and Conroy’s sneer as he drove—a tad over the speed limit—through the quiet night. The road from St Andrews was dark, passing between endless fields with just the odd distant house lit against the night. As he passed a copse of trees, Kit spotted a tiny something walking across the road and pressed on the brakes, hard. Given the late hour, the road was empty of other vehicles. Kit waited for the little hedgehog to move, but it froze in the headlights. He sighed, undid his seatbelt, and got out of the car.
“I’m a bleeding heart,” he muttered to himself.
The hedgehog looked up at Kit with its black beady eyes and made a small snuffling sound. Kit tried to shoo it along with his foot, but it didn’t move. Resigned, Kit scooped the animal up, wincing as its spines dug into his hands. He rushed over and dropped it in the ditch near the side of the road, and then sped back to his car, shaking out his hand.
In the grand scheme of things, the pinpricks from the spines were nothing. But Kit felt phantom pain in his palms as he gripped the car’s steering wheel so firmly that it bent. By the time he found a parking space—almost impossible at that time of night—he was even angrier than he’d been after speaking to Conroy.
Instead of going into his lonely flat, Kit walked down to the sea. He found a suitable spot to sit and plonked himself down. The gentle waves ebbed and flowed, predictable as a metronome. White foam covered the shore, and Kit spotted pale sea glass nestled between the pebbles.
It took the sea decades to smooth the glass’s edges. Kit could smash a bottle now and return in a hundred years to retrieve the broken pieces.
Before he slipped too far into an existential crisis at the prospect of his own longevity, he got up and shuffled around the beach, taking the prime pieces of glass for himself.
He continued his little treasure hunt until he’d calmed, though it was no easy feat when his mind kept straying to Quin. Maybe Kit had been too quick to go to Conroy. He supposed it didn’t matter, given Conroy’s less-than-useful offer of protection.
Hunger gnawed at Kit as the hour drew later, but he didn’t feel up to hunting. Plentiful prey wouldn’t be available at this time of night anyway. Alone but for his pocketfuls of sea glass, he traipsed back up to his flat, intent on finding something todistract himself from further thoughts of a certain infuriatingly handsome and stalkerish werewolf.
A big distraction. He was going to need averybig distraction.
Kit couldn’t move. His face was pressed into the pillow, suffocating any scream he might let out.
