The Vampire and Her Human Mate

8| An ode

Beau was sitting at his desk a few days later. He had an assignment to complete, but he couldn’t concentrate. He kept glancing at his phone and then getting annoyed that he hadn’t heard anything back. He was sure the Cordon guy had been interested in what he was promising.

With a huff, he pulled out his sketch pad and looked at the water colour image he had done. He had designed his next tattoo. It was a white fox with red eyes, sitting and looking back over its shoulder. He had done it as an ode to traditional Japanese art. Thinking of where to get it done though, he had a spark of inspiration thinking about Bianca.

All too soon the love bite from his vixen had faded. It had been the most wild one he’d ever seen. It looked like she had almost punctured the skin, causing two small blood blisters. The flushed red bruise that surrounded it faded after only a few days, but those two little spots were showing as tiny white scars. Barely noticeable but he knew where to look for them. He could get the tattoo up on his inner thigh.

His sister and brother-in-law ran a piercing and tattoo parlour, so he got a massive discount, and they also let him pay off in installments - even sometimes letting it be a birthday or Christmas present for him. He’d already given them a heads up he wanted to come in on Saturday, the next day, to get it done. His sister had done most of his ink, with her husband doing his more intimate piercings and tatts - Beau wasn’t about to get his sister to do that.

He thought back to his decision to get them in the first place. He’d started small with his tongue and some ear piercings when he was sixteen and ramping to the n*****s when he was eighteen. The apadravya had been a bit of a spur of the moment thing a couple of years earlier. He’d been chatting with another customer who was getting some more piercings in his junk while Beau was getting his tree of life tatt. The guy had explained that it was the best one he’d had. Beau had always found s*x fine, but really just fine. He got it- there was a big hype and people expected it to be mind blowing every time, and sometimes it just wasn’t. So, he’d thought, why not? And while it definitely helped him, and from what he’d experienced, his partners as well, it still hadn’t been like what he had experienced with her.

Toby said he was just p***y struck. Maybe that was all. You couldn’t fall in love with someone you didn’t know anything about after just one encounter. He knew this on a conscious level but here he was about to get a tattoo for her.

He checked his phone again. Nothing. Maybe he could get the tatt tonight…

~*~

“Hey little bro.” Stacy smiled at her brother. They had said he could come by after closing to get his tattoo early. Her son was at her in-laws overnight, so they didn't have to get home. She didn’t understand why he wanted it so urgently- usually they booked it weeks in advance.

Her and her husband hadn’t spoken about who was going to do it yet - it depended where he wanted it. He had gotten more extreme over the last couple of years, so it was good that her husband could take care of those ones.

Stacy noted he was a little agitated. “Everything all good?”

He flashed a smile across his beautiful face. “Of course. Just a bit busy.”

“Always burning the candle at both ends?” Travis asked.

Beau shrugged. “That’s just how we do.”

Stacy gave him a quick hug. It had actually been a while since they had seen him, and he’d been radio silent the last couple of weeks.

“Show me,” she ordered, reaching out to the book in his hand.

He gave it to her slowly.

Stacy reviewed the image. It was beautiful - he’d shaded around the fox so that the white of the fox stood out starkly.

“Wow, Beau. We really should just hire you.”

Travis came round and appreciated the painting. He exhaled, “I think Stacy needs to do this no matter where you want it.”

Beau shifted. “I think we can cover stuff so we can still have meals together.”

Stacy looked at him, feeling that it was going to be one of those ones. “Where?”

~*~

Bianca sat across from the tattoo parlour. She was in a car this time. Beau had entered hours earlier. She had seen through the glass storefront- him greeting a woman and a man. She had not felt jealous when Beau embraced the woman. Apart from the embrace seeming very familial, she knew this business was owned by his sister and her husband.

There wasn’t much that had a paper trail that she didn’t know about him. Like how much he had wracked up in student loans- which she had already set up a trustee account to pay for once he had finished his social work degree. She knew he was actively employed by four different companies, a catering business- where she met him, a library, an online tutoring service and a landscape gardener, where he seemed to only work sporadically and during school breaks.

She knew he was an orphan - his parents dying when he was ten and his sister was eighteen. He had been placed in foster homes until she was able to get, foster only, custody of him when she was twenty-five and married, and he was almost seventeen.

He had had a three month stint in a juvenile detention at fifteen and then a series of mental health ward commitments from the age of sixteen until seventeen, when he was placed in the care of his sister. The records were sealed as he was a minor and later expunged - she would need Raven to break them open, so she had let it be. Nothing else was noted since then on that front.

From rental data she knew he had moved into that god awful house- presumably having moved out of his sister's home- at twenty, after he had completed two years of university.

Apart from the student loans, he had no other debt, though he had absolutely no money. She had seen his bank statements.

For good measure, she had done the same level of investigation on his two flatmates, their family and close friends and Beaus' sister and husband. She had spent a great deal of time the last couple of days going over it, between stalking him whenever he left his house.

She just hoped she had cleared all the search history correctly, so Raven wouldn’t stumble onto it. She felt no guilt about finding this information about Beau. She wasn’t that type of being.

She had asked Raven to monitor any and all searches from Cordon's people since Beau’s meeting - she hadn't given any boundaries, not wanting to give Raven any more info than they needed. Bianca's only thought was that if Cordon had had a tail on Beau then he would be using his resources to find him.

She wondered what Beau was getting done tonight. A piercing or a tattoo? She had seen them walk in a back room which had no windows - she had checked the building specs the day before - just out of habit - when she had pulled up the business details.

Her eyes were starting to get dry and itchy from her contacts and staring unblinkingly across the street, waiting for him to leave the building. She had forgotten to bring her eye drops. Very not like her. “f**k it.” She quickly pinched them out, letting them fall to the floor of her car.

It was another two hours when he emerged, his sister and him chatting as they walked to the door. She read their lips.

“Come round for tea this Sunday?” Stacy asked.

Beau smiled, “Sure.”

Stacy grabbed his arm as he was leaving, “You're all good, yeah?”

Beau turned his back to the street so Bianca could no longer read what he was saying - the glass was too thick to hear through properly. She could hear only muffled voices.

Stacy responded to whatever he said. “Toby messaged me.”

Bianca saw his shoulders tense. The volume of his voice raised, but Bianca still couldn’t make out the words.

“Okay. Okay.” Stacy put her hands up.

Travis walked up to them from further back in the store. “You know it’s all from love, little man.”

She could see Beau's posture changed. His shoulder slumped. Bianca could tell he was contrite.

A few seconds. Stacy responded, “I know. You take on too much. Just… don’t let it bottle up.”

Beau nodded and pulled his sister into a hug. It was wholesome. Travis smiled sadly and joined the hug. She saw them laugh and finish making their plans for two nights time.

~*~