Blood And Budgets |16+

Chapter 6: Beatrice Aldridge Has Questions

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The deer farm at dawn was a different creature than the deer farm at night.

I'd been here once before, in the dark, with Vex tense-gripping the wheel and Beatrice the doe licking the side mirror. That version had been ominous, misty, vaguely threatening. This version was worse. It was beautiful. Golden light poured over rolling fields, turned the dew into diamonds, made the barn look like something from a pastoral painting instead of a soundproof extraction room.

And in the middle of it all, sitting on a porch swing with a cup of tea and the posture of a woman who had never once in four centuries doubted her right to occupy space, was Beatrice Aldridge.

She looked like Vex. Or Vex looked like her—the same sharp cheekbones, the same dark hair, the same amber eyes that caught light and held it hostage. But where Vex's eyes were exhausted, Beatrice's were sharp. Assessing. Hungry in a way that had nothing to do with blood and everything to do with power.

She wore a silk robe the color of dried roses and pearls that had probably been stolen from someone who died screaming. She looked like she'd stepped out of a Renaissance portrait and then decided the Renaissance hadn't been ambitious enough.

"Eleanor Vance," she said, and my name in her mouth sounded like a diagnosis. "You're smaller than I expected. Vex described you as 'alarmingly unflappable.' I see now he meant 'short.'"

"I'm five-four," I said. "That's average."

"For a peasant, perhaps." She sipped her tea, and I noticed her fangs were longer than Vex's. Permanent. Not the retractable kind. "Sit. You brought the granola bar?"

I sat. I handed over the granola bar. She examined it like it was evidence in a murder trial.

"Oats. Honey. Some kind of... chocolate chip?"

"Yes."

"Pedestrian." She took a bite. Chewed. Swallowed. "Acceptable. You may live."

I glanced at Vex, who was standing by the car like he expected to be called to the principal's office. He hadn't moved since we arrived. Hadn't spoken. Hadn't looked at his mother with anything except the hollow-eyed resignation of someone who had been disappointing her for two centuries and had finally stopped trying.

"Vex," Beatrice said, not looking at him. "Go feed your deer. Eleanor and I are having a conversation."

"Mother—"

"Now."

The word landed like a blade. Vex moved. Not fast, not wrong, just... obedient. The kind of obedience that had been beaten into muscle memory over centuries. He walked toward the barn without looking back, and I felt his absence like a cold front moving through.

"Alone at last," Beatrice said, and smiled. Her fangs caught the morning light. "Tell me, Eleanor. What are your intentions toward my son?"

"My intentions?"

"Don't be dull. It's unattractive. Are you using him for money? Security? The thrill of f*****g something that could kill you?" She tilted her head, birdlike, predatory. "Or are you one of those tedious modern girls who thinks she can 'fix' him? Because I assure you, he is not broken. He is simply incomplete. I made him that way on purpose."

I gripped the armrests of the porch swing. The wood was weathered, rough against my palms. "I'm not trying to fix him. I'm not using him. I'm just—"

"Just what?"

"Just staying," I said, and the word came out steadier than I felt. "Everyone else runs. Marco ran. Bethany plays him. His father is in a basement in Romania. I'm just the person who didn't leave."

Beatrice's expression didn't change. But something in her eyes shifted. A flicker. Interest, maybe. Or hunger.

"Didn't leave," she repeated. "Yet. You haven't left yet. There's a difference, Eleanor. Vex doesn't know the difference. He's never had anyone stay long enough to learn." She leaned forward, and I smelled her perfume—lilies and something darker, something that reminded me of the cemetery, of the mausoleum, of hunger that had forgotten its own name. "Do you know what he is? Truly?"

"A hybrid. Half vampire, half human."

"A mistake," she corrected, gently, like she was correcting a child's arithmetic. "His father was a poet. Weak, sentimental, obsessed with mortality. I thought a child would anchor him to life. Instead, I got Vex. Too human to be a proper predator, too vampire to be a proper man. A creature of edges. Of almosts." She waved a hand, dismissing two centuries of her son's existence. "I've waited for him to grow into his potential. To accept what he is and stop apologizing for it. Instead, he buys a deer farm and hires a girl who smells like discount shampoo."

"She's not a discount," Vex said, and his voice came from behind us, sharp and sudden. I hadn't heard him return. "And she's not a girl. She's Eleanor. And she's mine."

The word landed like a thunderclap. Mine. Not romantic. Territorial. Ancient. The kind of claim that had started wars and ended bloodlines.

Beatrice turned, slow and deliberate, and looked at her son with something I couldn't read. "Yours?"

"Mine," Vex repeated, and he was trembling. Not with fear. With rage. With the effort of holding himself back, of not crossing the porch in three strides and putting his body between me and the woman who had made him. "You don't get to test her. You don't get to judge her. You don't get to decide if she's worthy. That's not your right. It was never your right."

"And what is your right, Vex? To love her? To keep her? To pretend you're human enough for something as fragile as that?" Beatrice stood, and her silk robe flowed like water, and she was taller than I expected, taller than Vex, and her presence filled the porch like a storm front. "You're hungry, darling. I can smell it on you. The wanting. The denial. It's making you weak. It's making you loud. Bethany's coven can hear you across the city." She reached out, touched his cheek with fingers that were cold and perfect and utterly without warmth. "Eat her. Or leave her. But stop this... pining. It's embarrassing."

Vex flinched. Not from the touch. From the word. Pining.

"I won't eat her," he said, and his voice was quiet now, stripped of the ancient register, just... human. Just hurt. "I won't leave her. And I won't be what you want me to be. Not anymore."

Beatrice's hand dropped. She looked at him for a long moment, and I saw something pass behind her eyes. Something that might have been pride, or disappointment, or the exhausted recognition that a project had finally failed beyond repair.

"Then you're a fool," she said. "And fools don't inherit."

She turned to me, and her smile was all fangs, all threat, all the centuries of cruelty that Vex had somehow survived without becoming.

"Enjoy him while he lasts, Eleanor. My son has a habit of breaking the things he loves. And when he breaks you—" She stepped off the porch, silk robe trailing in the dew, pearls catching the light like tears that had never fallen. "—I'll be here to pick up the pieces."

She walked toward the tree line, and the fog swallowed her, and she was gone before Vex could say another word.

He stood on the porch, shaking, his hands curled into fists at his sides. I reached out, took one of those fists, uncurled it finger by finger until his palm was open and empty and holding mine.

"Well," I said, because the silence was too heavy and my mouth had never learned when to stop. "That went better than expected. She didn't actually eat me."

Vex laughed. It was broken. It was wet. It was real.

"She will," he said. "Eventually. When she gets bored. When she decides I'm not worth the trouble." He turned to me, and his eyes were amber and exhausted and absolutely, terrifyingly human. "I'm sorry, Eleanor. I'm sorry I brought you here. I'm sorry she's—I'm sorry I'm—"

"Stop." I squeezed his hand. "Don't apologize for her. Don't apologize for existing. Just..." I pulled him down onto the porch swing, and he came, heavy and cold and trembling against my side. "Just be here. Be weird. Be the disaster I signed up for."

He leaned his head against my shoulder, and I felt the tremor in his breath, the centuries of loneliness pressing against my skin like a physical weight.

"She's right about one thing," he whispered.

"What's that?"

"I'm hungry." He lifted his head, and his eyes were black now, pupils blown wide, and his fangs were extended, sharp and white and absolutely present. "For you. All the time. Not just blood. Everything. Your voice. Your warmth. The way you look at me like I'm not a monster." He reached up, touched my face with fingers that were cold and careful and shaking. "And I'm terrified that one day I'll be too hungry to stop. That I'll be my mother's son after all, and I'll break you, and I'll hate myself, and it won't matter because you'll be gone."

I looked at him. At the fangs. At the hunger. At the terror underneath it, the two centuries of being told he was a mistake, a disappointment, a thing that should have been more.

"Then don't stop," I said. "Don't break me. Choose not to. Every day. Every minute. That's what being human is, Vex. It's not about not wanting. It's about wanting and not taking."

His thumb brushed my cheekbone. His breath was cold against my lips. The fangs were there, always there, the reminder and the promise and the threat.

"Choose," he repeated, like a prayer.

"Choose," I agreed.

He kissed me. Not desperate, not hungry, not like the cemetery. Slow. Deliberate. A choice made visible, made physical, made real. His lips were cold, his fangs brushed my lower lip without breaking skin, and he held himself back with a tension I could feel in every line of his body, every restrained breath, every heartbeat that wasn't there but somehow was.

When we broke apart, the sun was higher, the dew was drying, and Beatrice was gone, and Vex was looking at me like I was the first warm thing he'd ever touched that hadn't burned him.

"Eleanor Vance," he said, and his voice was steady now, almost human, almost whole.

"Vex Aldridge," I replied.

"You're still fired."

"I am?"

"Effective immediately. I can't be your employer anymore. It's..." He smiled, small and terrified and real. "It's a conflict of interest. Also, Bethany's paperwork. Also, my mother might literally murder you if you're on my payroll. So. Fired."

"And then?"

"And then..." He stood, offered me his hand, and I took it, and he pulled me up, and we stood on the porch of his deer farm in the morning light that he couldn't walk in, and he looked at me like I was worth the burn. "And then I figure out how to date you. Properly. With utensils. And no blood bags. And probably a lot of therapy."

"Good," I said. "Your life was too professional anyway."

He laughed, and it was the first time I'd heard him laugh without an edge, without the brittle thing underneath, without the fear that it would be the last time.

And somewhere in the barn, Beatrice the doe kicked the soundproofing again, because even deer knew that some things were too good to last, and some things were too good not to try.

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[End of Chapter 6]

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