Page 74 of Surface Scratch
Ophelia was a psychopath.
“Why do you think I spent the night at Tariq’s?”
He sighed. “I don’t know how I feel about you spending so much time with him.”
Ophelia set her drink down on the coffee table. Loudly. “Dad, first of all: gross. No, absolutely not. And second: Tariq is gayer than a rainbow fucking a unicorn.”
“Language,” he said. He knew he was terrible at practicing what he preached, but Ophelia had spent much of her short time in middle school in detention for her foul mouth. Teaching her to at least pretend to be normal had been exhausting at times. Though, it still brought a smile to his face when he thought about her middle school principal recommending she skip seventh and eighth grade. That woman had looked like she was going to cry tears of joy when she realized she wouldn’t have Ophelia in her school anymore.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Anyway, he’s got it bad for some little goth queen he ran into at fuckingWalmart.” She rolled her eyes.
Marcus grinned. “Really? I’ll have to ask him about that.”
“So annoying,” she muttered. “If screenwriters knew what a sappy bunch of freaks you are, there would never be another scary vampire movie on the planet. Even Uncle Vinny is getting soft.”
“Vincent is like… well, like a blackberry tree. He’s all thorns and sharp bits just to hide that he’s actually quite sweet,” Marcus said.
Ophelia laughed. It was one of her real laughs, light and almost like a giggle. “Blackberry tree? No, Dad,shigemi. Bush. They’re blackberrybushes.”
“They grow on trees in Japan.” He frowned. Even after all this time, he still messed up the occasional English phrase. He glanced down at his phone again as it buzzed in his hand, a pang of disappointment hitting him as Vincent’s name popped up on the screen.
He was beginning to worry. Well, no, he had been worried the moment he woke up and saw that Caleb wasn’t still in bed with him. He really hadn’t meant to make such a… mess. It had just been such a long time since he’d been with anyone, let alone felt that kind of intimacy. Of all his attempts at relationships in the past, not one had made his beast quiet. There was always that tension, that fear that he could lose control and destroy the person he felt affection for.
Thankfully, it had been nearly a century since he had done that.
The beast had been egging him on even after Caleb fell asleep in his arms, urging Marcus to touch him and lick him, but not to harm him. Maybe it was because Caleb brought out a protective instinct that he hadn’t really had before. He had seen it in others like him, particularly with Vincent. He’d been ready to burn down the whole city after their first run-in with the Society.
That had been the first time in decades he had felt bad for humans. Even when the Society had taken his lovers over the years, he’d been upset, but the profound sadness that had rippled through their unconventional family had been unlike anything he ever felt. It had rattled loose some vestige of his humanity that had been buried under years of fucking and fighting and debauchery. He hadn’t intended on setting up a community of like-minded vampires in a city that was surrounded by cornfields, but that was how things had shaken out.
And then Ophelia came along during Vincent’s yearlong rampage, dirty and doe-eyed as she stabbed her own mother to death in front of them. Caring for her stretched his barely beating heart to its limits, and then Caleb showed up outside his club.
He’d known he was fucked as soon as Ophelia went to talk to him.
“You have that look on your face like you’re about to tell me some boring story from when you were a kid,” Ophelia said, interrupting his train of thought. “You get that look a lot these days when Pinky isn’t around.”
“I have never once, not once, told a boring story about my childhood,” Marcus said as seriously as could before he broke and grinned at her.
“Okay, sure. Where’s Pinky at, anyway? I’m bored, and he’s really easy to rile up,” she said with that mischievous twinkle in her eyes.
“Ophelia—”
She held up her hand. “I’m just kidding. I like him. He’s not as annoying as I thought he would be, and I like seeing you happy.”
“He’s going to be staying here a while longer while we figure out what to do with our unwanted guests,” Marcus said. Ophelia rolled her eyes. “I know your opinion on this, but we are not going in and killing everyone again. Caleb’s brother is with them.”
She clicked her tongue against her teeth. “I guess it is a bad look to kill your boyfriend’s brother, even if he’s a royal cunt.”
“Language, child.It’s like you’ve never heard a single word I’ve said,” he lamented.
His phone buzzed again as Ophelia’s phone dinged. He felt a strange flutter in his chest, making his heart ache in a way he hadn’t felt in a long time. Marcus rubbed a knuckle against his sternum, trying to force the feeling away. He breathed a sigh of relief as he saw Caleb’s name pop up on his phone.
“Um… Dad?” Marcus looked up from his phone as he clicked on the message. Ophelia’s brows were pinched together, her phone impossibly close to her face. “Did you just get the same message?”
He looked down at the message.
Caleb: 607 West Seminary Ave.
Marcus tried to think of where that was. It was a weird part of town, sort of low income, sort of trapped in time, with decaying older houses and roads that had seen better days. What the hell would he be doing all the way over there? It would have been an hour-long walk.
