Page 68 of Wounded Soul
“Tired?” Jesse asked.
“Knackered.” Ian frowned. “Which is really weird because I assumed vampires didn’t need sleep.” His gaze met Jesse’s. “Do they?”
Jesse opened his mouth to speak, but Peter got there first.
“We don’t need as much as humans.” He smiled, and Jesse recognised that tone of voice. Peter had used it on him once, and no fucking way was he using it on Ian. “But yes, we need to rest for at least a few hours a day.” He shrugged. “Most of us tend to do it around midday, when the sun is at its strongest, but there’s no set time.” He reached out as though to take Ian’s hand, but Jesse’s warning hiss stopped him in his tracks. His eyes flashed with something dangerous, but he merely folded his hands in his lap. “You’ll need more than that for the first few days, if not weeks, as your body adjusts.” He shot a dirty look at Jesse. “When Jesse first turned, he used to spend hours in bed.” He didn’t addwith me,but Jesse heard it all the same.
Doing his best to ignore the memories that stirred up, Jesse raised a thought that had been going around in his head for a while. They weren’t going to like it, but it wouldn’t go away. “I think we should tell Raph as soon as he gets back.” Which would hopefully be very fucking soon.
Three sets of eyes glared at him.
“Are you insane?” Peter asked, eyes wide.
“Fuck, Jesse, you’ve made me agree with Peter. I may never forgive you.” Lys pulled a face. “Seriously though, why would you want to do that?”
Someone had to say it. “Eventually Ian is going to need a coven. He can’t stay locked in my room forever, and whether he wants to stay with us”—which Jesse very much doubted after this was all over—“or join a different one elsewhere, Raph is going to need to know.” That was assuming he didn’t find out before then.
Peter scoffed. “Well, I vote for telling him at the last possible moment. You know how he feels about theagreement.He’ll report us both to the VLCD in a heartbeat.”
“You don’t know that,” Jesse protested, even though he wasn’t sure himself. “If we tell him, maybe he can help us find a way out of this mess, because at some point Ian will be declared as missing, and with his best fucking friend being VLCD, the boys in black are going to get involved. And then what?”
He watched Peter mull over their various options and knew what he was thinking the moment his gaze drifted to Ian. “We could stage his death.”
Okay, maybe not what Jesse had thought but still... “What?”
Peter gestured to him. “Well for all intents and purposes, he is dead. No breath, no pulse. We just need to get someone to pronounce him dead and job’s a good’un.” His gaze drifted to Lys. “If only we knew someone who could do that. Oh wait...”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. I can say that he’s dead, but you need a doctor or, in this case, probably a forensic medical examiner to record the cause of death. This is a sudden death we’re talking about. These things need to be investigated. And last time I checked, we don’t have any coven members who are Medical Examiners.”
“There goes that idea then.” Peter frowned, clearly put out by Lys’s quick dismissal.
“I don’t want Cate and Blake to think I’m dead.” Ian barely got the words out before another yawn gripped him. “They already know about vampires. Can’t I just tell them?”
“Blake Jones might be your best friend, Ian, but he’s also a VLCD officer. He’d be duty bound to inform them.”
“What about just Cate?” Ian drew his bottom lip into his mouth, the tip of his fang drawing blood and he quickly let it go with a gasp. “Fuck, keep forgetting about those.”
Lys laughed. “You’ll be able to control them better soon, let them down atyourwill instead of at your body’s.”
Jesse couldn’t look away from the drop of blood on Ian’s lip. Wanted to lean over him and lick it off, then kiss him until both of them were desperate for more—
“Jesse?”
He looked away from Ian to find Lys staring at him, one eyebrow raised. “Sorry, what?”
She glanced from Jesse to Ian, then back, slight smirk in place. “I asked what you thought about telling Cate?”
“Oh.”
She might have already known about vampires, but it was still a big risk. One Raph would never approve of, but then again, he wouldn’t approve of anything they were doing right then. “Would she be able to keep a secret like that from Blake?”
Ian thought about it for a moment. “Not forever, but for a while she could.”
“What’s our plan then?” Peter sat at the opposite end of the bed to Lys and looked at the other three. “Because I’m not getting locked in a VLCD cell for this.” He pointed a long, thin finger at Jesse. “You’re as much to blame for this as I am, so if you try and report me, I’m taking you down with me. And remember, all evidence points to you, not me.”
Apart from Ian, Jesse didn’t add, but he didn’t need to.
Peter’s gaze shifted to Ian. “And if you think you can sway them because Blake’s your BFF, think again. He’s their newest recruit. He has no say in what goes on yet. And they won’t trust you anymore, you’re not one of them, not some poor human who needs their protection. You’re a vampire. The enemy as far as they’re concerned. So you need to start thinking in terms of them and us.”
