Page 37 of Overexposed

“By all means,” Auris said, and me and the rum left him with his six-pack of bad guys.

Chapter Ten

I didn’t really drink all that much of the rum because I wasn’t a shots person and because the rum wasn’t all that good. There was an upholstered bench in the café, close to the dino skeleton, and when I returned with my gift shop haul, which I informed Auris he should make the damn priests pay for, I flopped down on the bench to rest my eyes.

I simply could not shake my anger, and I didn’t want to, because it was better than the damned panic this all had started with. Maybe if I could teach myself to translate every new panic attack that came for me to anger, that would work. I might even be happier, especially if there was a good target for my anger.

For what was left of the night, Auris once more reverted to his well-organized planner self. The five priests, he released back into the wild, and I didn’t doubt they were entranced to end their lives at some point very soon. If he had given them other tasks to perform, I’d missed that.

I didn’t like one particular decision of Auris’s. He decided to keep Christian, and I frowned when he told me so. Still, when Jan arrived to pick us up in the small hours, I was too exhausted to care or ask about whether that was a good idea. I wanted to get out of my clothes, go to sleep in our bed, and know that Auris watched over me.

That was what happened, although I was sent up to the apartment by myself first while Auris deposited Christian wherever the trash was kept in the building. There were simply no fucks left in my arsenal to give at that point.

I made it to our bedroom and under the covers, and I was still awake when I heard Auris announce himself. “I’ll build you a fire, my sweet,” he said, and I drifted off not long after he’d started with that.

The next morning, I woke to the sound of someone typing away on a keyboard nearby, and once I summoned the energy to turn onto my back, I saw that Auris had decided to occupy the other side of the bed. He was in black slacks, but to my irritation, his socks stuck out from the black and grays he normally favored.

Before I even yawned, I pointed. “You stole my museum socks,” I said. I had picked a bunch at the shop last night, maybe more than one person needed.

He lifted one long leg. “They are Gustav Klimt. I like them. And I told you I was a thief, remember?” He put his laptop away. “Any side effects from the rum?”

“Nah, but maybe I’d feel better if there were. I could tell myself that thing last night was a hallucination. Where’s Charlie -- Brother fucking Christian? No, wait. I don’t want to know. Don’t tell me. He’s a freaky little fucker, and I really don’t like him. Did you consider that he cried on fucking command?”

“I did,” Auris said. “It is a new thing, this level of… determination. I cannot say whether I was lucky enough to avoid it until now, or whether it is something that grew in Europe and is just about at the point where it crosses the Atlantic.”

I rolled on top of him, pushing his laptop aside. “You said you were scared about Owain telling people, though, right? Even back then. What I mean is, what if there was always demon hunting, and the church just took over at some point? Like they took over Christmas from the pagans?”

He nodded. “Maybe. But at the time, with Owain, it would have been groups of regular people that might have posed a danger. I don’t know of a group specifically dedicated to eradicating vampires. This idea of hunting so-called demons, it’s something that rode in after the Black Death and the Inquisition took its toll.”

I let myself relax into his warmth before I dared my next question. “Hey, are we okay to stay here? Are you safe?”

Auris wrapped me in his arms. “We are, for now. But… I will have to think about things. I do not like seeing you under this kind of stress, and I don’t want you to be afraid to leave the house without me.Idon’t want to have to be afraid when you leave the house without me.” He looked at me. “No more of this talk today.”

“Can’t agree more,” I said and pulled him close for a kiss.

The morning was slow, delicious. Auris knew that I was pliable after the night I’d had, and he made a slow game of it, pushing his hand down my pajama pants, and touching me until my body surrendered and jerked as I came. It was yet another lewd experience, him dressed and barely a strand of hair out of place, me gasping. He pulled my pajamas back in place after I’d come, teasing me with the mess underneath the fabric he smoothed out over my body. I felt spoiled.

We did exactly nothing productive all day. We managed to sit through a whole documentary on the British monarchy, and Auris forced me to help him decide where to hang the last few of my prints he’d bought.

I was going to do a little work in the evening, because I couldn’t spend all day being lazy and getting spoiled any more. When Auris’s eyes had turned black, I decided to download all the photos I had taken in the city the day before, and that was when I spotted Brother Christian in the crowd in one of the photos that looked like I’d accidentally taken it because of my icy fingers.

“Auris!” I called, sounding somewhat panicky.

Auris flashed into my room almost instantaneously, throwing the door open without his usual knock. “What?” he asked.

I pointed to my screen. “Have a look at these.”

He walked around my desk and looked. “I never saw him,” Auris said, leaning over my chair.

“He was hiding in the crowd.” I zoomed out of the photo, which made Christian’s presence far less obvious. “See? And he was keeping his distance.”

Auris didn’t say anything, but he brushed my hand off the mouse, carefully pushed my chair out of the way, and went through all the photos himself. “They were there. Not just Christian. I failed to see them. Here.” He pointed at a head in profile, one of the priests, though I didn’t recognize the man.

“Don’t beat yourself up. That was before sunset.”

“You are right, and you are also wrong. I gave you my word that I would protect you, and yet here we are.”

I turned in my desk chair. “Yeah, both safe. Me pissed that date night was ruined, but safe.”

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