B Positive by Jewel Killian

Twenty-Six

Why wouldSunny lie to me?

I sat at the work table long after she’d left and replayed her last few moments with me.

Sunny’s heart rate had fluttered in her chest like a trapped bird, while only the smallest ring of green showed around her blown pupils as she excused herself from the table.

Almost like a human fear response.

But Sunny wasn’t human—not entirely, anyway.

And I’d never heard her heartbeat before.

In fact, that was how BDD caught me trying to swipe the diamond. I’d listened, but I couldn’t detect his heartbeat just outside the door. I hadn’t even heard his approach.

I sent a quick text to Sunny asking for BDD’s number and she immediately responded with his contact card. I called and left a message since BDD was normal and didn’t answer calls from numbers he didn’t recognize.

He called back less than ten seconds later.

“Eden?”

“Hey, B, I was hoping you and I could have a chat soon.”

Mild cursing in the background from male voices I didn’t recognize came through the line.

“Everything good, B?”

“Uh, yeah. I need to finish up here, but I’ll have some time later this afternoon. How’s that?”

“Perfect. Just find me in the basement when you’re ready.”

I ended the call and headed back to the safes. If anyone could explain what I didn’t know about being a vamp and teach me what a perceptibly increased heart rate from Sunny actually meant, it was BDD.

I hunkered down next to Ricardo once more to figure out the last of his traps and soon enough, I’d moved on to the Lester model. Then Caroline. Then Stacey—she was a real asshole and it took me forever to get my head around her redundancies, but we got there eventually.

It wasn’t until I heard a soft “ahem” from the bottom of the metal stairs that I came back to reality once again.

“I have some time now, if you’re ready to—”

“Oh, yeah, great!” I stood from my crouched position inside Cornelius, and weaved my way through the rows of safes to meet B at the work table. I gave his all-black uniform, complete with shit-kicking boots and earpiece, a once-over. “You look like the guy in the movie who has special ops training.”

He didn’t reply, only smiled in a way that said I was dead-on but he’d never tell.

I moved on. “I’ve got a bunch of questions.”

BDD stiffened, just as Sunny had.

I swallowed the urge to curse under my breath. Julian must have given them both instructions to only give me certain information.

Julian had an earful coming.

“Don’t worry, I’m not trying to get you in trouble, B. I just want to know how you managed to stand outside the safe room door without me hearing your heartbeat. Or your approach, for that matter.”

The man relaxed and sank into the chair across from me. I sat as well.

“We have control over those things.”

“Over your heart rate?” I glanced down at his enormous work boots. “You’re telling me you can control how loudly your size Sasquatch boots hit the floor?”

The large vampire shrugged. “Well, yeah. If we want to be stealthy we turn all that off.”

Turn it off?“How do you turn off your feet, Rory?”

BDD’s lips pulled into a small frown but he answered all the same. “It’s kind of like covering every part of your physicality in compulsion. I don’t just mean your outsides either. You flow it around everything, your heartbeat, breathing, even your digestive noises.”

It was my turn to pull a face at him. “Gotta say, I don’t like the sound of compelling my internal organs, B.”

“Well, you’re not. Not really. You’re just masking them with vamp magic.”

I gnawed on a bit of skin inside my cheek. “And could you teach me to do that?”

BDD mulled it over for a few seconds. “Yeah, probably.”

I asked my next question more delicately, trying to project idle curiosity instead of the intense suspicion at the root of my question. “And how many vamp abilities does a living vampire have before they’re a full vamp?”

“Eh, all of them. They just aren’t as strong or developed in a living vamp before they’ve become a full vampire. Your best bet would be talking to Sunny, though. She can tell you all about the things she can do.”

I nodded slowly, letting the information settle in me.

I’d assumed as much. I’d seen her flip through pages on her tablet at more than human but not quite vamp speed. And given that I’d never heard her heartbeat before, I knew she could control that as well.

The only question was: had she let that control slip on purpose? Or was it that she was hiding something so big and terrible, she couldn’t help letting it slip?

“Something bothering you, Eden?” BDD asked earnestly, gray gaze locked on mine.

“Yeah, but I don’t know what yet.”

B stared at me a long time before speaking again. “I have some time before I have to get back to the incursion team. I can run through the basics of cloaking if you like.”

“Yeah, thanks. That’d be great.”

He nodded and stood, so I did too.

“First, how do you imagine your vamp powers?”

“Um, they’re kind of balled up in my middle somewhere. Magnetism, compulsion, and dominance all smooshed together with my emotions in a big knot.”

B’s eyes widened, mouth falling open. “You keep all your powers together with your emotions?”

“Yeah, why?”

He pulled a hand roughly through his hair. “Eden, it’s a wonder you haven’t compelled the whole compound yet, or blown out all the windows with a sudden burst of dominance. You gotta get your emotions out of there.”

“I don’t know if that’s going to work for me. That’s how they’ve always been.”

B stepped forward, leveling a serious gaze on me. “Eden, you have to listen to me. If you don’t separate your emotions from your vamp abilities, you will hurt someone.”

He nodded at my stricken expression and doubled down. “Eden, It’s only a matter of time. They’re only supposed to mingle when they’re being used. The emotions charge the abilities. Having them all together, all the time, you’re a literal ticking time bomb.”

“Ya, okay. I’ll work on it.”

“Uh-uh. You will separate them or our lessons won’t continue.”

I scoffed. “Continue? They haven’t even started.”

B shook his head, hardening his gaze on me.

“I’ll do whatever it takes, B. I’m not trying to blow us up.”

He finally nodded, his coiled stance relaxing. “It’s a wonder you made it as far as you have, knowing absolutely nothing about anything.”

If that wasn’t the fucking truth. “Thanks for pointing it out, Rory.”

And there it was, that little frown again.

“Eden, you can’t give me a nickname and take it away when you don’t like what I have to say.”

My gaze shot to his. “I did no such thing.” Okay, that’s exactly what I was doing, but I hadn’t meant to. I didn’t even realize I was doing it.

“You did. It’s like getting middle-named by my mother. Gives me the willies.”

I smiled at him. “Okay, I promise I’ll only call you by your extremely derogatory nickname and not your perfectly acceptable given name from now on.”

He grinned ear to ear. “Good. Work on defusing that bomb of power and I’ll check back with you tomorrow, same time, okay?”

I nodded, and BDD headed back up the stairs.

It wasn’t long before I fell into the groove of cracking. All the while, in the back of my mind, I concentrated on sifting through the Pandora’s box of powers in my middle.

It couldn’t be that hard, right?

I mean, if it was, B would have stayed to show me how.

Unless…

Unless it was dangerous and he wasn’t interested in getting blown up along with me.

I had to get it together.

I couldn’t keep letting myself play “worst case scenario.” That never led to anything good.

Plus, even if it was that dangerous, I still had to figure it out. I had to have control over my shit before the incursion. No exceptions.

I took a deep breath and imagined teasing out the emotions from the messy nest.

Except it was all so intertwined, and B had so thoroughly scared me, that I really was worried I’d blow myself up.

I ended up letting it go and only focusing on the safes.

It wasn’t until two safes later, with three separate gearboxes for three different lock mechanisms, that I thought about changing my approach.

I made a little safe in my mind. A tiny Lola to put compulsion inside of.

Then I thought of a miniature Wesley, and locked away magnetism.

I saved the biggest power for Ricardo, and conjured a perfected replica inside my head, setting all those booby traps and fail-safes to hold the dominance in check.

There, that should do it.

And once that was done, I returned my full attention to the job in front of me.

Hours later, a buzz in my pocket pulled me from my reverie. I wiped the gear grease off my hands and retrieved my phone from my back pocket to find a text, not from Sunny, but from Julian.

Since when did he have my number?

Sunny said you wanted to be called up for meals and we’re almost done with the witches. Get yourself cleaned up and ready for a formal dinner in an hour.

“How presumptuous,” I said to myself as I angry-stabbed a reply.

If that was an invitation to dinner, it blows more chunks than a drunk middle-management dude who just got downsized.

The party people—frat boys, bachelorette parties, or celebrating types—were one thing. Seeing someone at the bar trying to drown their sadness took a whole different skill set to handle. The guys who lost their jobs and the ones who were getting cheated on were the worst.

Strangely, women, generally speaking, didn’t seem to drown their sorrows in public. At least not in my bar.

And they definitely didn’t stare at their phones waiting for those three little dots to appear. But that’s what I was doing. One text from Julian and I was pretty much done. Head was out of the game. I stared at my phone for a few more seconds before shoving it back in my pocket and kneeling beside Xavier’s open chassis. This fancy boy had a lot of extra gear assemblies and far too many housings to be as straightforward as he appeared.

The manual made no mention of any special features, but I had a feeling Xavier was keeping secrets.

Like everyone else in this place. Julian, Sunny, everyone except BDD had intentionally withheld information.

Though, I hadn’t really pushed B too far on that front.

Ooh! That vampire! King or not, really knew how to get under my skin!

My pocket buzzed and I was tempted not to look at it at all.

I held out for all of five seconds. Who was I kidding? I couldn’t not check.

My sincerest apologies, mate of mine. Would you kindly join me for a formal dinner this evening at seven p.m.?

I checked the time; a few minutes after six.

Certainly. Though in the future I’d appreciate more notice. I have a life, you know.

Noted.

I made a few notes in the diagram I’d sketched out for Xavier, cleaned up my work space enough that I’d know where I’d left off in the morning, and headed upstairs.

But not before grabbing my note from the worktable.

The note with all my questions for Julian that I was definitely not forgetting to ask this time.