Page 11 of Flock Around and Find Out (Flocking It Up #3)

“Rituals?” Kelvin gave me the exact response I expected from him. Good to know he wouldn’t disappoint me, even if I didn’t like it. The word came out on a laugh, as though I were asking him about Santa.

“Yes, rituals. Do you know of any?”

“Graves aren’t the superstitious type.”

“You are literally brought back from the dead—let’s not act like you’re somehow immune to crazy beliefs.”

“Be that as it may, no, I’m not aware of any vampire rituals.”

“What about other Graves?”

“Necromancers might, mediums might, but anything else? I don’t know.”

I blew out a disappointed breath before adding, “Maybe not now, but can you think of hearing about anyone ever doing such a thing?”

He tapped his finger against the top of his knee as he stared out of the large window.

He’d moved into the penthouse—and boy fuck did I not feel comfortable there. I couldn’t quite get the memory of the last leader of the Grave Clan, William, whose body I’d seen in here.

And whose murder I was framed for.

Sort of framed by Kelvin, no less, even if not on purpose.

Sure, Kelvin had gutted the place, redone every wall, all the flooring, moved in furniture that was more fitting to his style, but the layout remained the same. It was why I preferred to meet at hotels for our time, but sometimes coming here was my only choice.

I had access to the penthouse now, not just for deliveries. The records showed me as his thrall, even if there were some questions about how the bond worked. It gave me the ability to come and go as I pleased, and vampires tended to give me a pretty large margin of space now.

Even after all that mess, however, after knowing that Kelvin was involved in some shady shit, in the vampire extremist group Blackstone, we’d never really addressed it. I had a feeling that anything I asked wouldn’t get a straight answer anyway.

“There are stories of things vampires used to do, yes. I don’t know if I’d call them rituals.”

“What things?”

“Human sacrifice, for one. Blood sacrifices. Who doesn’t love to sacrifice a virgin?”

“Well thank fuck for my promiscuity, because that hasn’t been a risk with me for a long time.”

“Are you certain?” He tugged me over until I moved into his lap, my knees parted around his hips. “I feel as though we could be extra careful, that I could ensure there’s no chance of such a fate befalling you.” He leaned in and whispered the words into my ear, his tongue flicking against my lobe in a blatant tease.

I shoved his chest as I sat up straight. “It’s good to know a man whore like yourself is safe as well. Now, back to the rituals.”

He let his head fall back to the couch, his arms flopping down beside him as though I were just far too exhausting for his liking. “Are you that concerned about the Weres?”

“You should be, too. Didn’t you threaten Galen over this?”

“I threaten everyone over everything. It’s not personal. Besides, if the Weres continue to go mad, it just means we’ll get the okay to hunt them down and…” He paused, as though rethinking his word choice. “ Handle the situation. If anything, any attempts by you might make the problem worse. You are known for that sort of thing.”

“That isn’t true.” I thought back and fought the desire to frown as I considered the many times I’d made things significantly worse.

Like when instead of just looking for drugs I’d started selling them to kids, or the time I hid from the vampires by staying in their stronghold.

Okay, so maybe I had a slight history of escalating situations beyond where they started, but that didn’t mean I did it every time. Plus, even when it happened, I typically solved them at the end, didn’t I?

It felt slanted to only remember the hiccups along the way.

“Besides,” I said, so perhaps he didn’t think back on my many fuckups, “for all we know, what’s happening to them could happen to you.”

“We don’t turn into strays.”

“No, but it sounds as though other clans have gotten sick from this, died off from many different causes. Isn’t it better to find a cure while there are more people searching for it?”

He lifted his head again to look at me. “You really push my buttons, you know that? I would never even think about doing something to help another clan, not without a direct benefit to my own, yet you bat those lashes and spread those legs of yours and I act entirely unlike myself.”

“I haven’t spread my legs.”

He glanced down at my position and lifted his eyebrow.

“Tell me about the sacrifices.”

“Then I can feed?”

We were a few days early from our normal schedule, but it seemed a fair trade. Besides, it wasn’t like I didn’t enjoy it, even if I’d never directly admit that.

“Fine. Deal.”

He smiled, as though finally interested in our conversation. It amused me how quickly he went from bored and sullen to a boy reciting a book report he’d worked really hard on. “The sacrifices were done in the past to appease the royal blood. It was believed that we were vampire because we held sparks of royal blood, from a queen, and that she had to be fed and appeased or she would come to reclaim the blood we had taken from her.”

“How did you do that?”

“They haven’t done this in centuries, at least not that I’m aware of. There could still be small cults in places that practice it, but I don’t know of any. I believe I heard it that the elders would draw lines in the sand beneath the bound victim, then slice them open and allow the blood to soak into the ground. They were not allowed to feast on these sacrifices, as it was a gift to the queen.”

I shivered hard as I thought about such a terrible fate for a person. To be helpless, to lose their life in such a way just to old superstition? It was truly terrible.

I didn’t blame the vampires, not entirely, since countless human faiths had committed similar atrocities. It seemed people of any type enjoyed the suffering of others, would do horrible things just because they imagined some being told them to.

I didn’t know if I believed in some old queen, but perhaps there was something to be said about that ritual, something that let that energy flow freshly when they did it. It was hard to believe it mattered, that it would make a difference, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t.

Before I knew about this world, about the vampires, the idea that a being could be dead, that they could feed off the blood of the living as their only source of sustenance, that made no sense to me. I would have disregarded it as a pipe dream, as a nightmare from someone who had too much time on their hands.

It meant I didn’t write off stories as quickly as I used to. Besides, just because they used to do it that way didn’t mean they had to do it that way. It was like when I thought that getting into fist fights made me skinny, and it turned out it was the fact it hurt too much to eat afterward that I skipped meals.

So the ritual might have given them something, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t change it to something that didn’t require slicing people open and allowing them to bleed out.

Maybe some sort of vegan option?

Lips found mine, pulling me from my thoughts. Kelvin sure was good at doing that, though, at forcing me to think only about him, about what was going on, to wipe away everything else. I had to admit, it was one of the things I enjoyed about him.

He held the rest of the world at bay, letting me live in just one blissful moment when I got to experience just a little bit of pleasure.

Plus, he might be a sneaky asshole, he might lie to me about most things, but I never doubted his devotion to me. He proved that time and time again. Sure, if a body showed up, there was a good ninety percent chance that he had something to do with it, but that didn’t change that I could trust how he felt about me.

So when he kissed me, when he pulled me tighter against his body, I lost myself. I stopped worrying about the Weres, about the meetings, about the book, about it all. I existed only in this moment.

He paused and stared at me, a question there, the same one he always asked me at this point.

Now?

Was I going to ask him to go further, to cross that line? If I didn’t tell him yes now, before he bit me, before I lost my mind and begged him, then he wouldn’t actually fuck me.

And boy, did I beg when we got to that point. The cloudy memories of it, of the times I almost cried pleading with him to take me, to fill me up, to fuck me, they woke me from sleep at times from filthy dreams that repeated over and over again in my head.

Yeah, I knew I wanted that, but I still held back.

It felt like the last bit of control I had, the last bit of self-respect, of safety. I could blame this all on the bond, on us needing each other, but if told him yes before the bite?

I had to admit, this was real. I had to accept whatever it was, to take personal responsibility for it, and I just wasn’t ready for that. Wasn’t sure I ever would be, really. It was too scary, too large, too real.

So I didn’t answer. I didn’t say no, but neither did I say yes.

Kelvin, despite this all, had never made me feel bad about the choice. In fact, he smiled, no anger or frustration in the expression. “That’s the nice thing about being immortal—I can wait.”

He tilted my head, pressed a kiss to my pulse, then struck with a familiar pain.

Yeah, this isn’t so bad a way to ignore the rest of the world.

* * * *

Kelvin

Grey cuddled beneath my black silk sheets, her shoulder bare, her neck showing the marks I’d left on her.

I would have sworn my heart had stopped long ago but fuck if it didn’t seem to pound at the sight of her.

Mine.

I knew it. Sure, she was my thrall, connected to me, bound to me in a way that was instinctual and primal and unbreakable. That was a part of it, but I suspected it went far deeper. She was something new, something unexpected in a long and hard life.

Even if I had never bound her to me, even if I had never attempted that, I would feel exactly the same way. Something about her shocked me to my core, made me uneasy and certain and confused all at the same time. She was perhaps the only thing in me that caused such conflicting feelings.

And yet she’d denied me again.

I never wanted her to know how deeply it wounded each time it happened. I deserved to carry that pain—not her. And I would keep taking blow after blow until she finally accepted my feelings, until we rebuilt whatever we had between us, until she learned to trust me again.

She frowned, her lips moving as though she were talking. Judging from the pinched expression, whatever dream she experienced wasn’t good.

I leaned in closer, hoping to catch this tiny piece of her inner life, the part of her she hid from everyone, the part I desperately wanted to own. Was she having a nightmare? I knew little about her in many ways, but what I’d gleaned from both her words and background checks said many parts of her past hadn’t been great.

She had a loving family now—I’d spent time with them at this point, gotten to know them—but that hadn’t always been the case. No one gained the dark sense of humor she had if they lived a perfect life, after all.

I listened intently, hoping to catch something from her, to understand what she dreamed of as though that would unlock everything from her.

She whispered, her voice so low I had to strain to pick up the words.

“No.”

No?

The stress in that word put me on edge, as though I could fight shadows for her.

I was fairly certain I would try, that I would find a way to enter her dreams, her memories, and rid her of whatever plagued her. I knew better than most that life was hard, that it hurt no matter how blessed a person seemed, that it didn’t exist without pain, yet knowing that, I still felt determined to do away with what I could for her.

I wanted her to have the perfect life without strife.

“I want to pet the snake. Don’t care if it rattles. It’ll like me.” She whispered those pleading words, taking away the unease inside me, making me smile.

Of course, she dreamed of being told she shouldn’t pet a rattlesnake, and no doubt she’d still attempt to pet it—dream or not. It was so on brand for the chaotic woman that I had to restrain myself from reaching out and gathering her in my arms, to kiss her for the perfectly ridiculous person she was.

I held back. One of the benefits of our bond being I could tell how run down she was, how much she needed this sleep. I wouldn’t dare disrupt it, no matter how adorable I found her.

Instead, I moved to the office to complete work while she slept. I didn’t like to leave before she woke, mostly because the opposite would bother me. Rising to find she’d left never sat well, and I didn’t want her to ever feel that same nagging doubt.

I threw myself into my work, sighing at the problems that constantly sprang up. I had hoped that I would take over and resolve it all. Perhaps that was the ignorance that always came with ambition, the confidence that one would gain power and make things better.

If people knew how little they could truly affect things, how much would still go wrong, they would never choose to still try to climb the ladder.

Blackstone had turned more unruly as well. I’d used them to my benefit when I’d needed them, riding them to my place here, figuring that our ideals were aligned, at least well enough to use to my advantage.

Now I wondered if they weren’t like alligators in a moat. Yes, they had benefited me, but they would turn on me just as quickly if given the ability.

I certainly didn’t want to lose a hand—or anything else—to those snapping teeth.

I moved one file away, choosing to consider dealing with that later.

The truth was that ignoring Blackstone had done little good. They’d chirped in my ear, then lifted their voices when they failed to get what they wanted.

If I didn’t find a way to put them down soon, I had a feeling they would pose a larger issue. They had helped take down one head of clan—I was not so foolish as to think myself immune from them taking another swing at that nonsense.

My gaze found the wall, where Grey slept on the other side.

For the first time since becoming a vampire, I had others to worry about as well. I couldn’t simply keep clawing on my own, couldn’t cut and run and try to come back later. Instead, I had a weakness, a person for Blackstone to target if they felt I wouldn’t play ball.

Which meant, for now, I had to placate them.

I signed an order that I never expected to, one they had presented, an antithesis to anything I thought would better the clan’s future. I moved my hand faster than usual, as though that would make me not have to think about what it was I signed. The faster getting this done, the better.

I could deal with the problems later, could try to rein in this beast, but it was more important not to get bitten, first.

I was the sort of man to always play the long game.

Soft steps drew my attention, making me realize I’d worked for hours. Time often got away from me, since there were never enough hours in the day. Grey peeked around the corner, wearing her clothes from before.

I missed her naked, to be honest. Not just because it was nice to see her bare form, but because she somehow felt more mine when nothing obscured my sight of her.

“Sleep well?” I asked.

She pressed her lips together as though searching for an answer. “I had a weird dream.”

“Oh yeah? Do tell.”

She came in and sat in one of the chairs across the desk from me, bringing her knees up so her heels pressed into the edge of the chair, curling into the side of it. “You were in it,” she said.

“Dreaming about me, hmm? How scandalous.”

“You were snake,” she snapped.

And just like that, even though she’d said it like an insult, I thought back to those whispered words and smiled.

There were worse things than her seeing me as a snake.