“Adversaries”

The bar was dark but not quiet; not a good place to think. Robert Browning—named for a poet but hardly a poet himself—grabbed a booth in the middle of the crowd and pretended to study the drinks list while keeping an eye on the door. Nerves had brought him early to his appointment, nerves that steadily worsened as time ticked on and Joey did not appear. Shots of iced vodka helped, supplemented by a handful of bridge mix that he pulled from his jacket pocket. One by one, he popped the candies and downed the shots, trying not to think as he waited.

A bottle-blonde with hard-bitten features watched him watching the door. She could have been but wasn’t pretty. She wasn’t alone, either, though the beefy guy at her side was more interested in arguing with his buddy than he was in entertaining his girlfriend. Rob went for the last of the bridge mix and motioned to the bartender for another shot.

It was good to be numb. It wouldn’t be smart to drive like this, but the coke would wake him up once it arrived. It was good to be stoned in front of the TV, as well. So little was worth watching, but the night ahead was a long one. Between Cassie and the cocaine, he was able to stay distracted from his problems with both.

Not that cocaine was a problem. It was more of a placebo to get him through the dark hours when she couldn’t be with him. When she was with him, there was no drug more powerful than her presence. He had sensed it in her three years ago. He had tried to ignore it, deny it, deflect it, but in the end, he had wanted it too badly to let her go. Now that he had her, he feared that too tight a grip would see her slip from his grasp … and yet she was slipping. Their on-again/off-again romance had been seriously on for two months now, and every day he saw new changes coming over her. She had begun as an awkward teenager, torn from her sheltered life as Daddy’s darling and thrust into an alien world where love and trust meant nothing. She had needed him then, had relied on him to protect her from the bad guys and he, trapped in the same world but desperate for something more, had failed her. She would never fully be his, and as each day passed, he had less and less of her.

Still, she let him stay. She came home at dawn to wake him with a kiss. She made him cups of tea and spoon-fed him ice cream from the carton. She rubbed his aching shoulders and whispered I love you in the silence of settling twilight. She shared his love of classic cars and Chinese food; she chose action/adventure over romantic comedy every time. She made him feel like the centre of her universe—only he wasn’t the centre of her universe and they both knew it. Pretending otherwise was a lie, and Rob was tired of lies. He was tired of sharing, tired of loneliness; he was tired, tired, tired. He would be thirty-five in June and time was running out on him.

Where the hell was Joey? The blonde was making moves to leave her place at the bar. Getting up to dissuade her would cost him the booth, and he couldn’t risk missing his meet. As she slithered off her stool and straightened her short skirt over her thighs, he shrugged out of his jacket. She passed too close on her way to the ladies’ room; when she paused on her way back, he had pushed up his sleeves and turned his right hand palm-up on the tabletop. The scars on his forearm ranged in age from ancient to as recent as a few days ago. None was serious and not all were self-inflicted, but they warned of a man obsessed with blades and deeply into pain. She stopped anyway.

“Can I trouble you for a cigarette?”

“Sorry. I don’t smoke.”

She smiled. Her lipstick had been touched up in the ladies’ room and was too orange for her ash blonde hair. “Then I guess there’s no point is asking for a light, either.”

He managed a smile in return. “Guess not.”

“How ’bout a drink? You can’t tell me you don’t drink. I’ve been watching you since you came in.”

“Is that so?”

She nodded, probably more drunk than he was. “No one should drink alone.”

“I’m not alone. I’m waiting for someone.”

“Your girlfriend?”

He smiled again. “Sorry, none of your business.”

She took exception. “I was just being polite.”

“You were being intrusive.”

Already offended, she misinterpreted his meaning and uttered an indignant squawk that rose above the noise from the jukebox. Her boyfriend spun from the bar. “Hey, you hassling my girl?”

Rob’s hackles rose. “She’s hassling me.”

“I am not! I asked him for a cigarette, that’s all.”

The boyfriend eased his feet to the floor. He stood maybe eight inches taller and outweighed Rob by half. Looking for trouble, he wasn’t likely to let the insult to his girl go unavenged. “Have you got one or don’t you?”

“Even if I did, I wouldn’t hand it over.” As the words left his mouth, he wondered what he was trying to accomplish by provoking a guy who looked like he bench-pressed major appliances for fun. Maybe he really was suicidal. It wasn’t a frightening thought—and that frightened him.

He had no time to be frightened. He was hauled to his feet and punched in the face before fear registered. Just as quickly, his training kicked in and he became steel and sinew, a moving target landing blow after blow on a befuddled and totally unprepared opponent. It took three heroic patrons to pull him off before he pounded the man unconscious, and even then, adrenaline made it impossible to contain him. He would not remember the next few minutes; when he returned to something near sanity, the cops had arrived and the blonde was babbling that he had tried to kill her boyfriend. He could not say that he hadn’t; while hardly out cold, the guy was sprawled on the floor and blood seemed to be everywhere. Panic threatened. Had he gone for his knife?

They hustled him from the bar. An ambulance was parked by the curb, lights strobing frantically in the wet winter night. His left eye was swelling shut. One of the cops sat him in the back seat of a squad car and motioned for a paramedic. The medic swabbed him with alcohol while the cops ran a check on his record. His beefy opponent was escorted, not carried, to the ambulance. Rob took a particularly fierce glare from the blonde anyway.

The cops conferred on the sidewalk. “He’s got no priors,” one said, nodding at Rob, “but big boy Jake over there has a rap sheet as long as my arm. What do you think?”

His partner shrugged. “She says the pretty one assaulted the big guy, so we take ’em both in.”

Rob heaved a sigh. Great; just great.

His stint at the precinct was a short one. They didn’t bother to process him; they asked him some questions, brought him a styrofoam cup of weak tea, and left him to drink it in isolation.

Boy, his head hurt. His face throbbed, his knuckles ached. He wanted to go home. He no longer cared about meeting Joey; all he wanted was smooth cotton sheets and the ghost of Cassie’s vanilla perfume on the pillow beneath his cheek. He sat with his elbows propped on the table and dropped his head into his hands. When the door opened, he didn’t look up. When someone sat down across from him, he didn’t look up. Only when the silence went unbroken for more than a dozen heartbeats did he finally lift his head.

He came face to face with Darius Wolfe.

Tiger eyes held cougar eyes over the width of the table, mortal enemies locked in silent combat for possession of the one woman neither could live without. Booze and adrenaline had left Rob too sick to react; he stared rather than started and couldn’t muster the wits to speak. He wished for his switchblade—not that he could have used it here, with cops watching from the far side of the two-way mirror. His gaze slid anyway, unbidden, to the fragile hollow of Darius’s throat. He imagined lunging toward it, driving the tainted blade deep into the gullet and twisting with all his strength. Would it kill Darius outright? Probably not. But it would hurt him, and that would be enough for Rob. It had to be. He had promised Cassie that Darius would not die by his hand unless she asked him to do it. She had extracted the same promise from Darius regarding Rob. Neither of them liked it, but for her, they would do—or not do—anything.

The silence stretched taut between them. Darius was placid, almost indifferent as he produced Rob’s suede jacket and laid it on the table. “They are not pressing charges.”

“Thanks,” Rob said sourly.

“It’s not my doing,” Darius assured him. “There are witnesses to verify that you were struck first.”

Rob rubbed his aching forehead. “Are you one of them?”

Darius smiled faintly. “I’ve been told that you are free to go. Shall we?”

“What are you doing here? Are you following me?”

“For what purpose?”

“You tell me.”

Darius stood up. “We can’t talk here. My car is outside. I’ll take you home, if you like.”

“Since you’re going that way anyway,” Rob added. He didn’t try to curb the bitterness in his tone.

“On the contrary, Cassandra is meeting me elsewhere this evening. When she gets home at dawn, most of the damage to your face will have healed and you’ll be spared the explanation she would naturally demand.”

Rob gingerly fingered the swelling around his left eye. Branded by the vampires, his body was able to recover from injuries more serious than this in record time. If he was lucky, Darius would be right and Cassie need never know that he had been in a fight, let alone hauled to the local precinct and damn near charged with assault. But the matter of meeting Joey remained. He needed that coke.

“I can get back on my own.”

“Robert, you are drunk. If I let you take the wheel in this condition, Cassandra will never forgive me. Draco has already collected your car.”

“But he would need my—” Rob glanced in alarm at his jacket, then at Darius. The vampire’s face revealed nothing. He simply turned and walked to the door.

Rob picked up his jacket. His keys and his switchblade were missing from the left pocket. The keys he could understand, but the knife—?

“If you don’t come now, you’ll spend the night in dryout.”

He saw no choice, not before hitting the street at any rate. He walked with Darius down the hall and through the squad room, where he reclaimed his wallet from the officer at the front desk. She smiled pleasantly at him, but her eyes were on Darius. Taller, broader and more darkly handsome, Darius stole the spotlight for women who weren’t attracted to pretty men even if Rob had been in the condition to challenge.

The January night air felt good on his flushed skin. He paused at the corner to put on his jacket. “I mean it,” he told Darius. “I’ll get back on my own.”

“Feigned independence in one so needy doesn’t impress me,” Darius said, “but, since you insist, I can’t be bothered to force you. Find your way then, but you’ll want this—” he pulled Rob’s pearl-handled switchblade from an inside pocket “—and this.”

Rob’s heart took a crazy leap sideways when he saw the plastic bag. Suspecting a trap, he made his hands stay still at his sides. He felt the vampire’s eyes on him as he fought the screaming urge to snatch it. The white powder looked as pure and innocent as Cassie did when she was sleeping, yet its hold on him was just as deadly.

“This is what you were waiting for at the bar, is it not?”

He looked at Darius, at the warm touch of colour in glacial skin, at the jeans and leather jacket that would be exchanged for a suit later in the evening, and felt his skin go clammy under his clothes. “Joey,” he said.

“Yes,” Darius said, mildly. “Joey.”

“Oh, fuck.”

“Don’t worry, Robert. I saved this for you, and there is plenty more when you’re done.”

“Why?”

Darius was more coldly ferocious than Rob had ever seen him. “I promised not to destroy you. I never promised to stop you from destroying yourself.”

Rob glanced again at the bag of coke snuggled in Darius’s palm. Take it take it take it. “Why now?” he ground through clenched teeth.

“You cannot hold her, Robert. You know it, I know it. This fragile bond between the two of you won’t last much longer. Why not do us all a favour and speed the process?”

Sweat broke on Rob’s brow. “You son of a bitch bastard,” he growled, knowing there was more to it. “Why now?”

“Do you want it or don’t you?” Darius asked. The cocaine danced, caught by a corner between his thumb and forefinger. He suddenly let it go, and the bag arced skyward against the winter night. When Rob sprang to catch it before it burst on the sidewalk, Darius had his answer. He smiled his typically icy smile. “I am unaware of current rates, but I imagine that you and Joey had agreed on a sum?”

Something was wildly wrong with this picture. Darius wanted him out of Cassie’s life badly enough to start dealing drugs. Something had happened—or was going to happen—that Darius didn’t want him to know about. It was a safe bet that Cassie didn’t know about it either, and that she had no idea that Darius had stepped from the sidelines to interfere in her personal life.

“You can tell her if you like,” the vampire said, reading the threat behind Rob’s eyes, “and then I will tell her a few things about you. A childish ploy, but a fight is only fair if one is on the same level as one’s adversary.”

“Since when have you been interested in a fair fight?” Rob asked.

“Cassandra would not have me win any other way. And I will win, Robert. As long as I have help from that little bag of powder, I cannot lose.”

Rob glanced at the cocaine, wondering what was fair about Darius resorting to the role of supplier. If he did have a problem with coke—and he wasn’t sure that he did—Darius had no business pushing it on him. If Darius intended to stand by and let him kill himself, he should have let Rob drive home. Something was definitely wrong here. He sensed but couldn’t see it, felt but couldn’t find it, lurking at his shoulder.

“I don’t have all night, Robert. Pay up and we can go our separate ways.”

Rob reached for his wallet, then paused. Cassie had ducked out before sundown, leaving him with a kiss and a grin to hold him until dawn. Don’t go, he had said, clasping her wrist in his hand.

I’ll be home early, she had promised. Can you stay out of trouble until then?

He had laughed to keep from lying. I think so.

I think so.

He shoved his wallet into his back pocket and handed the coke to Darius. “Get in my face again and all bets are off.”

Surprise flickered like flame behind the ice green eyes. “You’re certain of this?”

He damn well was not, but he nodded anyway. “Next time I see you, I kill you.”

Darius closed his hand over the bag and contemplated his fist in silence. “Fair enough,” he said at last. He cocked his head and offered a sly smile that Rob didn’t like at all. Then he turned and walked away.

Rob stayed rooted to the pavement for a long, chilly moment after Darius had driven off in a vintage black Volvo. He wasn’t drunk anymore—another bonus of the vampire blood tainting his own—but he sure wished he was. He crossed the street against the light and stopped at the payphone on the corner. Cassie had given him her cell phone number some months ago, but he could never remember it. He tucked the receiver against his neck and dug through his wallet until he found the scrap of paper where she had written the number in big bold digits. She answered on the second ring, sounding rushed.

“Yes?”

“It’s me.”

Her tone mellowed as if she had begun to smile. “Hey, you. What’s up?”

“Nothing. I just … wanted to hear your voice.”

“You okay?”

“I am, now. Did I catch you in the middle of something?”

“Yeah—getting dressed. I’ve got a meeting in half an hour. Where are you?”

“In town. I’ll be waiting for you when you come in, though. Are you still planning to get away early?”

“You bet I am. Do you want me to come pick you up?”

“You’ll be late for your meeting.”

“So?”

He almost laughed. “I don’t want to cause trouble.”

She went silent. When she spoke again, her tone had changed a third time. “It’ll be okay,” she said.

He didn’t know how to answer, or if he should. So he said nothing; he just hung on the line, listening to her breathe and reluctant to let her go.

“Rob?”

“Yeah?”

“Is that it?”

He ran a trembling hand through his hair. “Yeah. No. Cassie …”

“Yes?”

“I love you.”

She hesitated; not much, but enough for him to notice. “I love you, too.”

He should have taken the coke.