Chapter Three
Briar
Hudson’s shirt clung to him, the muscles he usually hid under button-up shirts and suit jackets, starkly outlined. Sylvain and Valen wore their strength with every movement, every flex or reach. But Hudson’s was less obvious.
Not now. She’d noticed it since they’d frightened her all those weeks ago in Hudson’s lab. His jaw was harder, shoulders straighter, and he wore a calculating look. Sometimes he looked at her, and she wondered if he even saw her or only her weakness.
Time and again, his gaze lingered on her scars, and she knew what he was seeing.
Asher.
They thought she didn’t know what they were doing. But Briar was far from stupid. Someone was always with her, and today, Marcus took the entire day from work, cancelled his lectures, to tag along to her classes and then to Hudson’s lab. He helped her plot data points.
Upstairs, the shower turned on and then off a few minutes later. His footsteps were quiet thumps over the old floorboards above her head.
Briar had to give him credit. Even though they were about to have a difficult conversation, he didn’t avoid her, taking longer than he needed to clean up. “Tell me,” she said as soon as Hudson sat across from her.
At once, he deflated, shoulders curving inward as he dropped his face into his hands. He rubbed them down his smooth cheeks and then back into his hair, slicking the dark strands from his face. When he finally met her eyes, she could see his vampire, right beneath the surface.
Sliding forward to the edge of the cushions, she took his hands. “You’re watching out for me. Protecting me. Did you go searching for Asher today? Is that what you don’t want me to know?”
He stared down then, at her hands covering his, but didn’t answer.
“I know what you’ve been doing,” she whispered. “All of you. You never leave me alone. Each one of you stays an arm’s length away.” She peered at Marcus and then back at him. “Even when I sleep.”
She glanced toward the windows and wondered what time it was. Her head throbbed, and she rubbed her temples, but the thought of going to sleep built a knot of worry in her stomach.
“Yes,” Hudson answered quietly, propping his elbows on his knees. “Yes, we expect him to come after you again. So yes, we’ve been watching, and waiting. And now, we’re preparing.”
“Preparing to catch him?” she asked.
“No,” Sylvain answered. He leaned, arms crossed, against the wood molding separating the living room from the dining room. “No, we’re not going to catch him. We’re going to kill him.”
If they thought she’d be surprised, she wasn’t. “Okay.”
Sylvain rocked back and bumped his head into the wall. He turned to glare at it, like it had jumped out of nowhere and knocked his head on purpose. Briar hid her face behind her hand before he caught her grinning.
“Okay?” Hudson said. He glanced at Valen and Marcus before her. “Okay. Good.”
“So how can I help?”
“Help?” Hudson asked, and she nearly rolled her eyes.
“Yes,” she replied. “I want to help you. What can I do?”
Sylvain snorted and dropped his arms. “Briar. This is war. There’s no place for you in it.”
She inhaled before answering, reminding herself that Sylvain had views about human women that were… outdated… to say the least.
Valen cleared his throat and offered an olive branch. “If we think of something, little one, we’ll let you know.”
Briar nodded. They didn’t think she could help, but they were wrong. If she was smart enough to recognize chromosomes, she was smart enough to strategize.
Like any new subject, she’d need to study to fully grasp the concept of war. But she could do it. War would be like a chemistry experiment. Mix a little history with a little philosophy, maybe throw in some psychology, and there she’d have it.
For now, though, it wasn’t worth a fight. She’d take the same tactic with the guys that she had with her mother when she’d decided she’d be moving to Boston.
Briar had made a plan and then set to work seeing that plan through to fruition. It started with getting her undergraduate degree online and ended with financial aid received and a deposit on the tiny little apartment she still missed. That apartment had been her first taste of independence and freedom. So while, if given a choice, she’d pick her life with the guys in their fancy digs, part of her missed that momentary triumph. She sighed.
Making the guys understand that she could help them would take a similar strategy. But she was patient; she could do it.
“Don’t worry,” Marcus said quickly, misinterpreting her melancholy. “We’re going to be careful.”
“I was thinking about my old apartment.” Briar stood. Marcus observed her from a seat near the window, and she went to him, dropping a kiss on his head. “I know you’ll be careful,” she whispered.
Her backpack sat near the door, and she went to get it. Just the thought of dinner turned her stomach. She’d grab cereal later on, but for now, she might as well get some studying in before her headache grew too big to ignore.
Hudson continued to study her as she slung her bag over her shoulder. She probably hadn’t fooled him as well as she thought, but she hadn’t given him enough to argue with. She hadn’t demanded to be included, nor had she demanded they stop tracking Asher.
“I’m going to study,” she said and smiled. From the frowns on their faces, they were probably all suspicious of her. “Promise. I’ll just be upstairs.” She pointed to the ceiling. “All are welcome.”
“Go on, little one.” Valen crossed to her and kissed her cheek. “I’ll be up in a little while.”
She gave a two fingered wave from where she held her bag in place before trekking upstairs. Her room was dark and cool. Quiet. Instead of turning on the overhead light, she felt her way to her desk and turned on the small lamp there.
What was she going to do about these guys?
Not to minimize her role in the whole thing, but Asher didn’t want her. He wanted the guys. In addition to keeping her alive, they should really be planning how to protect each other from Asher’s machinations.
Briar sat in her chair with a thump. Ha. Machinations. That was a very war-like word. She was already making strides.
Tonight, chemistry and biology held no appeal for her. If she was going to be any help, she needed to start her research now. Mind whirring, she made a mental lists of things, authors, and topics to investigate.
Briar found her laptop. As it fired up, she drummed her fingers on the desk.
As far as she was concerned, the past only mattered as much as Hudson, Sylvain, Marcus, and Valen wanted it to. Briar’s feelings for them had slid easily from like to love, even though she hadn’t told them that. Marcus had said something to her this morning. You feel important.
Well, they felt important to her, too. They felt vital. So while she suspected they had fallen as fast and as deep as she had, she hadn’t pushed them.
The screen on her computer glowed, and she quickly typed in her password before calling up a search engine and typing, “Roman generals.”
Briar had only scratched the surface of the guys’ pasts. If she touched on something that seemed to bother them, something they weren’t quite ready to share, she let it go, figuring they had time for revelations. It did no one any good if she picked at injuries that had barely healed.
And she had a sense there were things in their past that weren’t healed yet.
Like—why had they spent so much time apart? When she’d first met Marcus, it seemed as if he and Hudson, Valen, and Sylvain were on the outs. Now, they worked as a unit where in the beginning, they were suns in their own solar systems.
Another question for another day.
A page full of results appeared, and Briar began to read down the lists. Hudson and Marcus were old. They probably didn’t even know they did it, but they often referred to their age and experiences in passing. Just last week, when doing her art history homework in the kitchen, Briar had asked what indago meant. Valen had attempted to explain, but Hudson had jumped in with, “Leave it to someone who actually spoke Latin.”
Which put Hudson’s age anywhere between two thousand and sixteen hundred years old.
And then there was Marcus’s remark tonight. “You moved up the timetable.” It sounded to Briar like Hudson was the one who’d put together a plan. She was no detective, but all signs pointed to Hudson having been a leader. Add to it the Latin remark, and she was pretty sure she had him pegged.
All she had to do was find him.
Briar scanned the pages of names, switching every now and again to a page with images. She studied busts, sculptures, Italian Renaissance paintings of Roman battles, but none of them, and all of them, looked like Hudson.
Eventually, she gave up and started searching for books about war. She started with Sun Tzu, because what better place to start than The Art of War? She downloaded the book to her e-reader and got to work.
The first chapter was about making plans, and she couldn’t help but smile. It appeared that Hudson was following the same strategy Sun Tzu had laid out fifteen hundred years prior. Though it was likely, if Hudson was as old as she thought he was, Sun Tzu may have been following Hudson’s advice and not the other way around.
By the end of the first page, however, any feeling of amusement she had was gone. She stopped on one line, “All warfare is based on deception.” She thrust her reader away from her and rubbed her eyes. Was this what she was doing? Deceiving them?
Or was she, as Sun Tzu had stated earlier, “Making many calculations to lead to victory?”
The knot in her stomach grew until it was hard for her to take a deep breath. If this was war, like Sylvain claimed, there would be casualties.
And she couldn’t fathom a world without the four of them. She’d do anything to keep that from happening.
So she’d keep at this. She’d read this book, and then she’d look up other authors and other experts. For crying out loud, she was surrounded by Ivy League colleges here in Boston. If she had to, she’d hire someone to explain these books to her.
She rested her cheek against her hand and bit her lip. They wanted to protect her, but she wanted to protect them, too. Briar closed her eyes for a moment. The glare of the computer and the text on the e-reader had combined to turn her headache from painful to nuclear. If she rested her eyes for a moment, she’d be fine, and then she could get back to work.
✽✽✽
“Sun Tzu isn’t going to help you.”
Briar opened her eyes to chaos. She stood on a hill, could smell pine and mud and something else, something sour and rotting. Covering her face with her hand, she turned in a slow circle, only to meet Asher’s amused gaze.
“This—” He took her shoulders and held her steady before gesturing with an upturned palm to the scene in front of them. “This is war. What do you hear, Briar?”
She wanted to cover her ears, but like he expected as much, Asher held her hands at her sides. “Answer me. What do you hear?”
Screams. Cries of pain. The panicked whinny of horses and dogs howling. She heard women and children scream. She heard men make sounds she’d never imagined a human could make before.
“I brought you somewhere special tonight,” Asher said, stepping away from her. “My sons are making it harder than I’d like for me to get close to you, but here, nothing can keep us apart. I can show you anything. I can show you them.” He pointed. There, tall and more muscled than she’d seen him before, was Hudson. He sat atop a horse, and was so close Briar could reach out and touch him.
“What is this?” she asked.
“A memory. One of the best we have,” Asher answered. The screams reached a crescendo, and he closed his eyes, swaying from side to side as if he was listening to a symphony. “My sons at war. This wasn’t so long ago. Can you see down the hill? See the fighting?”
She didn’t want to see it, but she did. She saw men fighting with swords and clubs. They smashed each other, stabbed and cut. In the center of the fray were two familiar figures, tall and broad, one light and one dark. Valen. Sylvain.
They moved like dancers. Sylvain held an ax, swung it over his head, and cut a man’s head from his shoulders. Valen stayed at his back, a sword as big as Briar whistling through the air as he finished off those Sylvain hadn’t.
Asher had released her hands, and though she wanted to unsee everything—cover her face and run away—she couldn’t move. In her worst nightmare, Briar couldn’t have imagined this. And then worse, when an ax or sword wouldn’t do, Valen and Sylvain used their teeth. They fought, drank, and then fought some more. And all the while, Hudson watched impassively as if the scene didn’t affect him.
“It doesn’t,” Asher told her. “By then, he’d watched a million of these battles. You think they are so good. So honest. So kind. But look at them. Look.”
Another figure emerged from the smoke of battle. Mud splattered his clothes and covered most of his face, but Briar could see his eyes, glowing like emerald suns in his dark face. Marcus.
If it hadn’t been for his eyes, she wouldn’t have known him. This Marcus looked nothing like her Marcus. There was no sign of the sunny, easy-going man who held her hand through Boston traffic and promised to take her to baseball games. No sign of the man who bought her a Harvard bumper sticker even though she didn’t have a car.
He didn’t have a sword or an ax. This Marcus used his hands to kill. I don’t want to see. Like a child, she shut her eyes and slapped her hands over her face. Asher wrapped cool fingers around her wrists once more. “No,” he whispered in her ear before giving her a quick kiss on her cheek. “It’s the best part.”
Slowly, he pulled her hands from her face in time for her to see Marcus wrench a man’s head from his body and toss it over his shoulder. Like it was nothing. And then he licked the blood from his hand.
Briar gagged, heaving, and fell to her knees. Asher patted her back and gathered her hair at the base of her neck. “Wasn’t he incredible? All of them. It took years to make them into this. War machines. Soldiers beyond compare. Now they think they will fight me? You, Briar, you think you’re going to fight me?”
She had to. She couldn’t do this forever. Live oblivious during the day, no idea what awaited her when her eyes closed. And all the while, Asher was waiting for her, planning whatever horrors amused him at that moment.
“They aren’t like this anymore,” she got out, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “They are smarter. Stronger. And I—”
Asher scoffed and lifted her into his arms. “You’re what?” He held her away from him, glaring down at her. His pale skin glowed, reflecting the fires from the battle. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to fight you, too,” she said. “I’m going to kill you.”
With a jerk, he pulled her into the cradle of his arms and ran his lips from her ear down to her throat. Right before he sank his teeth into her neck, he kissed her with cool lips. “Yes. Fight me, Briar. It’s so much more fun that way.”
Frozen, Briar stared in Hudson’s direction. For a brief, glorious moment, he seemed to see her. His gaze crashed into hers, eyes narrowed and head tilted, watching Asher suck the life from her body. His blue eyes studied her, raking down her body before they returned to her face.
“Hudson,” she pleaded, voice barely above a whisper, before she was lost to the pain.
✽✽✽
“Sleepyhead. Are you going to have dinner?” Marcus kissed her temple, and Briar startled awake. Something nagged at the back of her mind, but the more she tried to figure out what it was, what she was forgetting, the more it seemed to slip away. By the time she gave up, the only thing she knew for sure was she had a giant headache.
“Hey.” Marcus knelt next to the desk and touched her forehead. “What’s going on? Are you sick?”
Was she sick? Headaches, falling asleep in the middle of studying? This wasn’t like her. “I don’t know,” she answered. “I don’t feel like myself.”
He frowned. Outside her door, someone thumped up the stairs. The door opened, slamming into the wall, and Marcus winced. “I told you,” Sylvain said as he strode into the room. “Are we going to the ER? Who’s driving?”
Briar stood. The entire room spun, and she gripped Marcus’s shoulder, digging into his skin and fisting his shirt in her hand. “Urgent care,” she said. “Maybe it’s mono or something. A whole bunch of kids from art history have it.”
Hudson appeared at the door. “Mono,” he said and shook his head. “Fatigue. Headaches. It could very well be mono. Let’s go. I’ll drive.”
Three hours later, two hours and forty-five of which were spent waiting, Briar had a doctor’s note with list of vitamins to take, a prescription for extra strength Tylenol, and a print out of iron rich food. She did not, however, have mononucleosis.
Hudson and Sylvain had gone with her and hovered over the doctor as he checked her lymph nodes, spleen, and tonsils. They’d done a blood test, but the results wouldn’t be in until the following day. The doctor hadn’t believed it would come back positive. “You’re just run-down,” he’d told her. “Drink fluids. Go to bed early. Make sure you’re eating well. That’s all you can do at this point.”
“Look at her,” Sylvain had ground out, pointing to her face. “She looks like she hasn’t slept in a month. And she’s as pale as a ghost. Fix her.” He’d uttered the last part with arms crossed and a look on his face like try me. Lucky for the doctor, Hudson had been there to intervene and keep Sylvain in line.
Hudson’s car stopped, and Briar glanced out the window. They were back. “Sorry, guys,” she said. “I guess I need more red meat. And sleep.” Though the thought of eating still made her nauseated, and she shuddered. “Thanks for taking me.”
“You’re welcome,” Hudson said, getting out of the car.
Sylvain didn’t answer but slid out and slammed his door. He stood next to the passenger door for a moment, as if he was gathering himself, before he opened her door. Briar took his hand, lacing her fingers with his. She had the strangest urge to apologize, but she hadn’t done anything wrong. He was wound up, and she couldn’t help but lay the blame for his state squarely on her shoulders.
The three of them were silent as they came into the house.
“Well?” Valen asked as soon as the door opened.
“I’m just out of shape. Tired. And I need to eat better,” she said, giving him a tired smile. “They took blood but don’t think I have anything.”
“You must be studying too hard,” Marcus said. “Have you thought about dropping some classes? Maybe take a break from Hudson’s lab?”
“That’s a good idea,” Hudson agreed. “Let’s get some responsibilities off your plate.”
Briar shook her head. It wasn’t school. She was doing fine. She didn’t feel overwhelmed by the work she had to do, but invigorated by it. Her brain was taxed but in the best possible way. And Hudson’s lab was something she looked forward to as soon as she woke up. The last thing she wanted was to take a break from it.
“I don’t think that’s the solution,” she said. “Maybe it’s food though. I haven’t been great about eating at the right times. Perhaps if I make a schedule and stick to it, force myself to eat even if I don’t feel hungry, I’ll start to feel better.”
“We should start now,” Valen said, already striding toward the kitchen. “I’ll cook. You get your books and come downstairs while I make you something. Keep me company.” He winked over his shoulder at her. Leave it to Valen to dispel her tension.
Before she could put a foot on the step, Marcus had gone and come back from upstairs. He held her laptop and backpack in his arms along with her e-reader. Zoinks. “Thanks,” she said as she took it. The screen glowed, the page where she’d left off clear.
“Sun Tzu?” he asked, waiting for her to follow him into the kitchen.
“Yes,” she answered. “I’m studying.”
“What class is it for?” Hudson asked from behind, causing her to screech. Valen stood at the stove, frying a piece of steak in a pan. His shoulders went up to his ears as if he was trying to protect his hearing.
“It’s not for a class. It’s for personal growth,” she replied, haughtily.
In one corner of the kitchen, Marcus had a bay window. He called it a breakfast nook. There was a little, round table, not big enough for more than four people. He set her books there, situating her computer with her back to the window so she could see the guys and the kitchen. Briar sat, but chills blasted up the back of her neck. She didn’t like having her back to the world, and so she scooted her chair around the table.
Valen watched her, lifted an eyebrow, and went back to cooking. “You do well listening to your instincts,” he told her. His voice was deep and serious, but a glow of pride warmed her. “Sometimes, you might not know why you feel a certain way. You may even feel stupid for listening to your instincts. But you should. It’s the part of yourself focused on survival.”
Briar booted up her laptop and leaned her chin on her hand. “I’m not great at listening to them,” she admitted. “If I was, I’d never have met that crawler in the woods near BC.”
Valen shrugged and flipped the steak. It sizzled in the pan, and he shook it gently to keep the steak from burning. The smell filled the kitchen, and Briar’s stomach growled. Now that she was presented with food, she was ravenous. “One more minute,” Valen told her, as if he’d heard her stomach. Which he probably had.
Sylvain pulled out a chair, sat, and dragged her e-reader toward him. He scanned it, face transforming from curious to a storm cloud. “What is this?” he asked.
“It’s a book,” she hedged, and then, when he held her gaze, she sighed. “By a fifteenth-century Chinese general.”
“She’s studying war,” Marcus said from the door, and Valen nodded. “She’s a smart girl. We told her she couldn’t help, so she’s studying until she has something to add.”
Boy. These guys had her number. Briar’s face heated, and she couldn’t hold Sylvain’s gaze any longer.
“Is that true?” he asked.
She peered up at him and then back at her laptop. “Yes,” she answered. “I don’t know if I’ll be any help, but right now, I know nothing. I’ll read and study.”
“Reading and studying isn’t going to help you in this,” Sylvain replied bluntly.
“Sylvain,” Valen said warningly. “She isn’t asking to fight him.”
“Not yet!” Sylvain retorted. Oooh. They really did get her. She’d been waiting until she felt better before she asked them to teach her to fight, but it was definitely on her radar. Maybe they could teach her some moves. She imagined kicking the soldier who’d held her in the woods near the museum. Getting out of holds would be a good skill to have. “Look at her,” Sylvain interrupted her fantasy. “Valen. Look at her. She’s making plans right now.”
Valen turned the burner off on the stove and slid the meat onto a plate. Silently, he collected utensils and a napkin before walking her dinner toward her and placing it on the table. “What do you want to learn?” he asked.
She was surrounded. Valen, Marcus, and Sylvain loomed over her while Hudson hovered nearby, perched on a stool. They waited for her to answer, but she wasn’t sure exactly what to say.
“I don’t know,” she finally decided on. “I want to help, but I don’t even know where to begin. I know, physically, I can’t fight a vampire. But, I want to be able to understand what you’re talking about. And if one of them were to grab me again, try to hurt me, I want to be able to get away.” There. That seemed simple enough.
Sylvain nodded but crossed his arms. “Okay. Well. We’re not going to leave you alone, so you don’t need to do those things.”
Everything was so black and white with him. Briar opened her mouth to argue, but Valen pressed the plate closer to her. “Eat,” he said. “Please.”
Briar took up her knife and fork and sliced into the steak. For a man who didn’t eat, Valen could cook like a professional. One bite, and she was nearly moaning in bliss. It was delicious and went a long way to dull her annoyance at Sylvain. Huh. Perhaps she’d just been hungry the whole time.
The kitchen was silent. Sylvain continued to read the book on her device. Hudson and Marcus checked their email on their phones, and Valen watched her. Briar glanced at him and gave him a smile she hoped didn’t include pieces of food stuck in her teeth. “Valen this is the best. You’re an amazing cook.”
“Thank you,” he replied. He glanced at her plate. She’d eaten nearly half of what he made, and he smiled. “You were hungry.”
“I was,” she answered after she swallowed another bite. “But I’ve been busy, and I haven’t been eating what I should.”
“She had chicken nuggets at the dining hall today,” Marcus said and held up two fingers. “Only two.”
“Briar.” Sylvain sighed and shook his head.
“I know!” she answered. “Valen said I had good instincts, but I don’t think I do. Sometimes I forget to do things. I make mistakes that are ridiculous.” Embarrassed, she placed her fork and knife on the table and traced the grain in the wood with her fingers.
“It was right before we went to Hudson’s lab,” Marcus said quietly. “And you wanted to go right there, remember.”
She did. It had been all she could think about, but Marcus made her promise to eat something before they went. Her excitement had made her stomach all jumbly. It had taken all of her concentration to eat even those two nuggets.
“You shouldn’t have to take care of me like this. I wanted to come here and prove to myself I could be independent. Now look at me. You’re making me meals.” She glanced at Valen. “You’re making me go to the doctor.” Sylvain leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “Hudson’s given me a job and Marcus a place to live.” Briar’s appetite was completely gone now, but she forced herself to take another bite of food. “I’m not off to a great start.”
No one answered, and she couldn’t make herself look at the guys. What would she see there? Pity? Annoyance? Even though she wasn’t hungry at all by this point, she made herself eat what was left on her plate. By the time she finished, her stomach was so full it ached. Valen reached for her plate, but she stopped him. “I’ve got it,” she told him, bringing it to the sink. He’d left the pan on the stove, so she got that and placed it under the tap.
“You don’t have to prove to us you can take care of yourself,” Hudson said from his place at the island. “We know you can, Briar. You got here. To Boston. All on your own.”
Briar nodded, scrubbing a place on the pan before she rinsed it and put it in the dish drainer. “I think I just need to remind myself,” she said. “I’ve gotten too comfortable with all this care.”
“Why shouldn’t you?” Valen asked. Opening a drawer, he examined it before removing a dish towel. “Hand me that plate.” He gestured with his chin to the dish rack. Briar handed it to him. He dried it and then placed it in a cabinet before gesturing to the pan. “Look. We like you here.”
“Love it,” Marcus interrupted. “We love you here.”
“Love you here,” Valen repeated. “It’s the way we’re made. To protect you. To take care of you. You say you’re hungry, and I want to feed you. You have a headache, and Sylvain wants to bring you to the hospital to rule out a tumor.”
“Do you think it’s a tumor?” Sylvain asked, his voice a little wild.
“No,” Marcus and Hudson answered at the same time.
“This is new,” Hudson went on. “We have Asher we’re dealing with. Before that, your injury. We haven’t really had a chance to settle into being in a relationship.”
What he said was true, but Briar was having a bit of an existential crisis. She wanted to be tough and an equal partner, but just by way of being human, she was weaker. For some reason, and for the first time in her life, she’d begun to think of herself in terms of her strength.
“You’re right,” she answered. “I don’t know why I’m getting like this. Why I’m in a funk. It’s not like me. I appreciate what you do for me. I really do. It doesn’t make me incompetent because Valen makes me dinner. Right?”
Hudson shook his head.
“No.” Valen wrapped damp hands around her waist and kissed her neck. Briar leaned back against him, her entire body relaxing. “It doesn’t.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, embarrassed by her freak-out.
“Don’t apologize,” Marcus said. “We’re dealing with big stuff. Talk to us. We’ll figure it out.”
Briar turned her head to kiss Valen’s arm. He squeezed her and rested his chin on her head. Closing her eyes, she breathed in his scent.
These men.
These vampires.
They were magic.