Garden of Thorns

  “Our puppet?” he asks, sounding incredibly unsure.

  “Sort of,” I say. My mind is flipping through all of the different Born I’ve met over the years, searching for the right solution. “They’ll dole out punishment to those who get out of line, put the fear back in them. And maybe…”

  “Maybe we can start up a mock House,” Lexington suddenly says, excitement building in his voice. I meet his eyes, nodding. “Sort of like Jasmine did before you came to town, Liv. You’ve got to admit, she did set the ground roots for you building your House.”

  Alivia nods. “She may have hated me from the moment I stepped foot into town, but she did make it easier to start my House. I still have almost every member she recruited.”

  “I’ve got to admit, it’s a good plan,” Ian says, looking over at Alivia, who nods in agreement. “Never thought mimicking Jasmine Voltera would be something we’d resort to. Though it might take some time to take effect. I worry we don’t have that kind of time before we all get exposed.”

  “We’ll keep doing what we’ve been doing,” Lexington says, looking at me for confirmation. I’m tired. I want to go back to my shop and my semi-normal life I’ve carved out for myself.

  But this is too big. Too important for me to walk away from.

  “Yeah,” I agree.

  “So,” Alivia says. “Anybody got someone like Jasmine in mind?”

  “Actually, yeah,” Lexington says, realization dawning in his eyes. “I think I do.”

  “And what’s in it for us?” the woman says, leaning forward and stirring the straw in her black coffee.

  Lexington leans forward, rubbing his hands together in his lap. “You get to boss people around, kick some ass.”

  “I like the sound of that,” she says, a lopsided smile pulling at one side of her face.

  “And you may end up with some company other than that of this fine ray of sunshine,” Lexington says to the man sitting beside her.

  Lexington and I sit in a coffee shop in Brooklyn at a table, across from Aleah and Duncan Steele. I can faintly tell they are cousins, but so far, their personalities are vastly different.

  Aleah: who wears dark, heavy eye make up and always a bitter expression on her face looks to be around twenty, maybe twenty-one. She’s fairly tall, taller than me, but she’s rail thin. A wide mouth and a narrow nose make for a beautiful face. But her countenance and appearance are very off-putting. She wears a gray jacket, the hood pulled up, and black pants which tuck into thick black boots.

  She does in fact look ready to kick some ass.

  But her cousin sits there in his black and white striped shirt with his black sweater. He wears neat jeans and a pair of very clean and fresh looking white sneakers. Duncan very much looks the academic type. He’s barely said more than five words this entire time. I’d guess he’s around twenty, as well.

  “Besides the power, the House of Conrath is willing to front rent on a place closer to us, some place big enough to house whoever might want to join in the cause,” Lexington continues on. “We’ve already found a nice place in Cambridge.”

  “Cambridge,” Aleah chuckles with a sneer. “It’s a far cry from Brooklyn.”

  “Well, you might miss the nightly shootings, the drug deals, and the smell,” Lexington says, giving her a look. “But hey, Harvard isn’t too shabby.”

  “You really mean it that you have something that will let us walk around during the day again?” Duncan asks, leaning forward, brushing away the banter.

  “We’ll see how things go first,” Lexington says. Everything about his body language says he doesn’t trust these two yet, and I’m still trying to figure out why he reached out to them. “Help us out. If things go as hoped, we’ll make an upgrade to your status. That includes more than just the ability to walk out in the day.”

  He means money. Financial support from the House of Conrath.

  Duncan’s eyes widen slightly and he looks over to Aleah. It’s pretty clear. She’s the one in charge.

  “It seems too good to be true,” she says. “Why aren’t you the one doing this? You’re the one with all the experience with the Houses. You know I don’t play well with others.”

  “I’ve got other responsibilities at the moment,” Lexington says, and I feel him shift just slightly closer to me. “And that’s why I’m proposing this to the two of you. You can deal with those who don’t want to cooperate and obey the rules, and you’re persuasive when you want to be in getting others to do what you want them to.”

  She smiles at that.

  “And your cousin here knows how to deal with people.” Lexington looks from her to him. “I’ll always be available to help where needed.”

  Aleah’s eyes slide from Lexington to me. “She hasn’t said more than two words this whole time, but she’s obviously someone important. She’s the reason you’re not setting us up right in the city with you, isn’t she?”

  “Maybe,” Lexington says, his eyes darkening. “But I highly suggest you don’t look too closely at her.”

  But Aleah does look me over, sizing me up, trying to peel away my layers and discover what’s underneath. “Yeah, she’s someone important. You won’t even tell us her name. She must be connected to one of the families.”

  “Just, leave it, Aleah,” Duncan says, annoyance in his voice. “Lexington is offering us a good deal here. We’re never going to get a chance like this again. Take it.”

  Aleah stares Lexington down, mulling everything over. Her gaze is so penetrating and intimidating. “Fine,” she says. “I’ll do it on a trial basis. If I don’t like it, I walk without a word. We’ll be there tomorrow night.”

  Without a word, she stands and walks to the door.

  “Thank you,” Duncan says, scrambling to gather his things and follow his cousin out the door. “We’ll get in touch tomorrow.”

  Lexington nods, a thin-lipped smile on his face as he watches them go.

  “They’re an interesting pair,” I say as I watch the door swing closed.

  “They’re about as good as we’re going to get on such short notice,” Lexington says as we rise and head outside. The cousins are nowhere to be seen.

  “So what’s their story?” I ask as we head to the car Lexington bought over the weekend. He holds the passenger door open for me and I climb in. The second he starts the engine I blast the heat.

  A three-inch deep layer of snow lines the ground from the storm that blew through three days ago.

  “So, the Steele family was a big one, from New York for forever and ever,” Lexington says as he pulls out on to the road and with the guidance of the GPS on his phone, points us in the direction of home. “Not sure which of the five exiled brothers their family stemmed from, but a long time ago they ended up here in the States.”

  I look outside, at the huge city that surrounds us. I took a train through New York on my trip back east, but was too intimidated to get off and explore.

  “I think there were something like four original Steele brothers, and they each had a bunch of kids,” he continues. “I think there were something like thirty-five cousins as of twenty years ago.”

  “That’s basically a House,” I say in shock. “Do they all live in Brooklyn?”

  Lexington shakes his head. “Aleah and Duncan are the only ones left. One night, one of the four brothers went crazy. He went all around the city and killed every one of them. Except Aleah. She realized what was going on, and she put a stop to it.”

  “She killed her uncle,” I fill in the blanks.

  Lexington nods. “She has no idea why he murdered the entire family, put a stake through every one of their hearts. The only reason Duncan is still alive is because he was actually going to night university, he was away at school. But as soon as he found out what had happened to his family, he came back to be with the last family member he had left. His cousin.”

  “That’s awful,” I say, shaking my head. “I can only imagine what they went through.”

>   Lexington nods once more. “There’s a reason Aleah is so unpleasant. She was never the nicest before the massacre, but after…”

  It’s understandable. Anyone would be angry. And she may never get any answers as to why he killed them all.

  “So the Steele family has no ties to Charles?” I ask.

  “No need, really,” Lexington says. “They had such a large family they didn’t need to join a House. Like I said, you join a House for companionship or protection, or both. They didn’t need either with a family that big.”

  It’s perfect. They have nothing against Charles, and Aleah’s not going to be afraid of someone coming after her if she ever decides to join his House. She’s already survived a horrific attack and was the one to put an end to it.

  “How did you meet them?” I ask.

  “Duncan is a pretty smart guy,” Lexington says as he rubs two fingers over his lips. “He’d been trying to do some research on his family roots about nine years ago. He reached out to the Allaways to see if they knew anything, and they sent him to me. I helped him do some research and wherever one cousin goes, the other does too, now.”

  “Were you able to help him find what he was looking for?”

  Lexington shakes his head. “We got back as far as 1581, but the trail went cold there.”

  I nod. There are so many deep roots in this world, so many hidden paths and family ties. Such a complex world.

  “Do you think this is going to work?” I say quietly as I rest my forehead against the cold glass.

  “It has to,” Lexington says as he reaches over and takes my hand in his.

  Blood coats my feet, staining my white shoes as I walk across an open field. Body after body blocks my way, so many innocent, so many dead. Screams and shouts are a chorus that electrifies the air.

  Cold metal sucks all the warmth from my fingers. The scent of gunpowder and steel stings my nose.

  Words echo across the field. Words that cut me to the core. Words that tear me into pieces and leave me a shredded mess on the ground.

  I level the rifle to my eye. I take aim.

  I pull the trigger.

  Blood explodes from my mother’s chest, and she sags forward.

  Dead.

  With a gasp, I startle from sleep, sitting up in my bed, expecting to find bodies littering the ground around me.

  But there’s only a dark room, and Cora is nowhere to be seen.

  I lay back in my bed, staring at the ceiling as my heart rate settles back down, ever so slowly.

  It’s a nightmare that visits me frequently. Replaying the one and only memory I have of the woman who gave birth to me, over and over.

  Without giving it permission, my mind immediately goes back to that day. To the bodies and the deaths and all the blood. So many innocent. So many that I had known, losing their lives.

  My mind races through every detail, recalling every horrifying minute.

  I swing my legs off the side of the bed and climb out.

  Once my brain goes to that night, it’s hard to escape, and there’s already enough darkness in my heart, I can’t have more tonight.

  I quietly pad down the stairs, hoping to not wake Lexington if he’s sleeping. I round into the kitchen, opening the fridge to get some milk.

  “You okay?”

  I startle slightly, turning to faintly make out Lexington’s face at the dining table, illuminated by the glow of his computer screen.

  “Yeah,” I say, pulling out the carton and filling a glass. “Just…a nightmare.” For some reason, I always confess the truth to him, when I’ve hardly ever done that with anyone else.

  “Thankfully we usually wake up from those,” he says quietly as he watches me cross the kitchen and sit in the chair beside him.

  “Usually,” I say as I tuck my knees up to my chest and hold the glass between my hands on the table. “What are you working on?”

  Lexington shrugs, looking back to his screen. “Just the usual maintenance stuff.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I study his face in the dim light, noticing the stubble that’s growing back from when he shaved yesterday.

  He chuckles, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. “I wouldn’t say I have a job, but I do have investments I’ve made over the years that I still have to keep an eye on.”

  I nod. I guess I should have thought Lexington would have a way to provide for himself financially, but I didn’t. “You really enjoy doing stuff on the computer, don’t you?”

  He looks over at me and smiles. “I guess they seemed like magic, back when I first started hearing about them. The possibilities just seemed so endless. I uh…I bought stock in this one company, early on. Let’s just say it was a wise move, but looked real risky at the time.”

  “Are you trying to tell me you’re rich or something?” I say with a little smile.

  Lexington shrugs. “I wouldn’t call it rich, but I promise I’m not just mooching a free place to live off of you.”

  I chuckle, shaking my head. “So is this what you do every night when I’m sleeping?”

  Lexington leans back, his eyes going back to his computer screen. “Pretty much. I mean, I’ve been digging around Charles, but there’s not much to find. He’s been real quiet these days. But yeah, the computer keeps me occupied while you’re snoozing away.” He smiles. “Though I will say that I think I sleep more than your average vampire.”

  Of course he does. It’s so fitting that the relaxed, casual vampire is the one who can take it easy enough to sleep.

  “You should tell me about your time living with Charles,” I say, taking a sip from my cup. “Did you like living with the Allaways?”

  Lexington shrugs. “At the time, I thought I did. I mean, I’d been alone for a long time before that, so mostly it was nice to have company all the time. And the parties…”

  “Charles liked parties?”

  Lexington smiles and shakes his head. “It was mostly Chelsea. Anything that brought her attention, put her in the spotlight. She and Charles would always come up with the most ridiculous outfits, and they always matched. I don’t think they realized how weird that was.”

  I smile, watching Lexington light up as he recounts his past. I realize now how little I know about his very long history.

  “It was easy to kind of forget who you were as a person in that House,” he continues, looking off into nothing. “I mean, it was a party every other weekend, but during the week, it was all about acting the part of a Royal too. See, everyone is still productive at Liv’s House, but in the Allaways…we sat around and let others do the dirty work for us.”

  “So Charles has never really had to work for anything,” I say.

  Lexington nods. “He cared about his friends, his dog, and his sister. Not much else ever bothered him.”

  “Sounds like you were a different person back then,” I say quietly, looking at him.

  His eyes slide over to me and there’s a little bit of shame in them maybe. “I was. I guess I just got caught up in their way of thinking, I got kind of entitled and lazy. I wasn’t like that before I joined their House, and I haven’t been like that since they gave me away.”

  “People can always change,” I say, holding his gaze. “If they want to.”

  “Yeah,” he says quietly. “I just hope it continues to be for the better.”

  I pace in the front room of the house Alivia rented for our plan. The clock ticks toward one o’clock.

  “It’s been dark for five hours,” I say. “It only takes four and a half to drive here.”

  “They’re from Brooklyn,” Lexington says. “Trust me, they don’t have their own car. They’re taking the bus.”

  I nod. Having to make use of public transportation is something I’m still getting used to, even though I haven’t had my own car in two years now.

  Finally, I perch on the edge of the couch, staring at the front door.

  Lexington tries to distract me by telling me stories about him
self from the twenties. About prohibition, traveling to the wild west of Arizona. How he tried Chinese food for the first time in Chicago.

  I’m genuinely interested, but when anticipation and anxiety work their way into my system, I have a really hard time focusing on anything else.

  An hour later, I hear noises out on the front porch. A second later, Aleah shoves her way through the front door, three large bags over her shoulders.

  “You just going to sit there uselessly?” she snaps at me the second our eyes meet. I scramble to my feet, taking two of the bags from her. A moment after she steps inside, Duncan follows her in, carrying five bags.

  Aleah drops her stuff on the ground and looks around the space.

  High ceilings, wood trim, and white accents are splashed around the house. The large living room cuts off the hall of the entryway, leading back into a grand kitchen, spacious dining room, and an even bigger great room. Upstairs there are five bedrooms and an office.

  I can only imagine the fortune it’s costing the House of Conrath, when this shouldn’t be their problem.

  “Fancy place,” Aleah says, stalking through the hall, leaving a trail of slightly muddy boot prints behind her. Duncan shakes his head at her, but follows behind.

  She immediately goes to the fridge, which I stocked with a few basics. She takes out a blood bag from the top shelf. “You know I don’t drink this stuff, right?” she says, giving Lexington a look.

  “I do now,” he says, giving her a somewhat annoyed smile. “But you remember your entire purpose here is to keep the secret from coming to light, right?”

  “Please,” she says with a smile as she tosses the bag to Duncan, who does pop it open for a drink. “My very large family managed to live in New York undetected for over two hundred years. I know how to take my dinner without being noticed.”