“You haven’t seen him.” Dante rushed after Beck. “He’s worse than ever. I don’t know if you can bring him back.”
Meg followed the small procession, trying to take in her new home as she hurried to keep up. It looked like a farm out of the shire from Lord of the Rings, if the inhabitants had averaged six and a half feet and let everything fall down around them.
The front yard was badly in need of attention. There was a small flower garden, but whatever had grown there lost the battle against invading weeds. There was also an odd-looking motorcycle leaning against a fence. Meg noted the bike proudly boasted a Harley Davidson logo.
Beck sighed as he looked at the garden, completely ignoring the bike. There was an air of unsurprised disappointment about him. “I suppose the vegetable garden is the same.”
“Worse.” Dante’s boot kicked the dirt where there should have been flowers growing. “Flanna and some girls from the village came and saved what they could. She said she would preserve the vegetables and make jelly from the strawberries, but that was all she could promise.”
Beck nodded. “I’ll be sure to thank Flanna in the morning. Her family is good to us. We’ll need every bit we can salvage if we’re going to make it through the winter.”
“Damn it, Beck, I can help.”
Whatever the vampire was about to say was cut off by Beck’s low growl. “I’ll provide for my wife.”
Meg slipped her hand into Beck’s. It was a good time to continue his training. “I’m sure we’ll be fine.”
She wasn’t. She was slightly terrified. The house, or brugh as Beck called it, was small, and though solidly built, it had an air of neglect about it. Meg had more work to do than she could have imagined. She tried to let none of that slip through. She focused on giving off an air of trust and love.
“I promise you won’t go hungry,” Beck said, stroking her hair. He did it unconsciously now, Meg noticed. He hadn’t started reaching for her yet, but when she touched him, he pulled her close and seemed to revel in the contact.
Dante watched the byplay. For the first time since she’d woken up, there was a hint of a smile playing on Dante’s lips. Meg realized she had gotten used to the vampire smiling. It was funny how comfortable she could get with someone in so short a time.
Beck sighed and squeezed her shoulders. “I’m going in, love. You stay out here for a moment with Dante. Let me get Cian ready. He’d kill me if I let you see him at his worst.”
The door opened and closed behind him. Meg was left alone with a grinning Dante.
“The human learns,” Dante snarked.
Meg rolled her eyes and punched him on the arm. She had never had an obnoxious brother, but that was what Dante felt like. “I’ll have you know I am highly educated, asshole. I have two degrees. How many do you have?”
“Only the one,” Dante allowed. His chest puffed with pride. “I graduated from the most respected business college in America.”
“You mean Vampire America.” Meg really wanted to see what America looked like with vamps in control. “What did you major in? Boozing? Partying? Falling asleep in class?”
Dante looked thrilled with her new attitude. “The real Meggie Finn comes to life, thank the gods. I thought you were a little boring there for a while, but I caught the faintest hint of bitch, so I had hope. I merely minored in boozing, though I was excellent at it, thank you. I have a degree in management systems. How about you?”
“English and history,” Meg replied, looking out at the barn. It needed a coat of paint, but it looked solid. There was a pen with what looked like sheep in the far field.
Dante looked highly amused. “You studied English? Seriously? You got a degree in a language you already spoke?”
“There’s more to it than that.” It wasn’t the first time she’d had to defend her choice of degrees. “There are novels, and the study of how to write.”
“The schools must be different there. I knew how to write in first grade. I guess you’re slower. All I know is my parents would never have paid for me to lounge around for four years studying a language I already knew how to speak and reading DLs. Maybe you should have taken a course in how to avoid getting eaten by deadly forest creatures.”
Meg planted her feet and scowled. “It wasn’t like there was a sign saying ‘watch out for woman-eating horses.’ How was I supposed to know?”
“You weren’t supposed to run,” Dante said with a sad shake of his head. “You were supposed to listen to my advice and stick it out with Beck. They didn’t teach common sense at your school, did they?”
“I’m not running anymore. I am done with running away. It just gets me into trouble. For your information, I’ve decided to take your advice and work on Beck.”
Leaning against the side of the house, Dante’s smile became slightly lascivious. “Have you got him to top you yet, sweetheart?”
Meg returned the smile without a hint of self-consciousness. She was also through with feeling ashamed of the things she wanted. Nearly dying in an icy cold river trapped by a horse with Super Glue for skin had cured her of that. “Not yet, but I’m working on the problem. So you know something about the type of relationship I want with Beck?”
The vampire shrugged. “Sure. It’s very common where I come from. You’ve got to understand, he has his reasons for being afraid of what he needs. You’ll have to pull it out of him.”
Meg let a little of her anxiety show. “That might be hard. I have no idea what I’m doing. It’s not like I’ve had a Dom before. The truth is, I was just sort of reading about it before I met Beckett. Now I know what I want, but I’m not sure how to get it.”
“I can help you with that, sweetheart.” He pulled out that ever-present tablet. It apparently had a home inside his jacket. He typed something on the keyboard and flipped it around. The LCD screen flowed as an enormous list of downloadable material on the subject came up.
“Have a problem? We’ve got a DL to solve it.” He let his lanky body slide down to sit in the dirt by the front door. “Sit with me, Meg. We’ll look at some porn. This could take a while.”
Meg took a deep breath and stared at the vampire. She decided it was time to make a deal. “I will, but only on one condition.”
“I’ll bite,” Dante said with an ironic grin.
“Later, you have to take me for a ride on that motorcycle.” The bike looked really cool.
“You got it, sister,” Dante agreed.
Meg was satisfied and sank down beside Dante to see what they considered porn in the good old Vampire US of A.
Beck walked into the house and swore silently. His twin was a pig. How he’d managed to live with that slob brother of his for thirty years without killing him was a mystery to Beck. The small living room and kitchen area was cluttered, and it looked like no one had done a single dish since he’d been gone.
“You were supposed to be fading, Ci,” he muttered to himself. “Not wrecking the kitchen.”
He quickly went around, straightening up what he could, so Meg wouldn’t take one look at her new home and walk out. She might think the woods would be cleaner.
“Beck?” Cian’s voice was weak and barely carried out of the bedroom.
“I’m here, Ci.” Beck walked through the door and stared at the room. It looked like someone had cleaned up in here. There were neat piles of papers and books stacked around the room. More than likely it had been Dante. Vampires tended to be a bit fastidious. If his cousin had spent the night and this morning sitting at Cian’s bedside, he had probably felt compelled to straighten up a bit.
The room was dim. All the shutters were closed. Beck walked to the two small windows and tossed them open, letting the afternoon light in. It illuminated his twin’s self-proclaimed deathbed.