Voss fed, drawing deep and hard. He breathed in her heated scent, felt the tremors in her torso and her weight suddenly sag between him and the wall. He knew when to stop, and he pulled away. Reluctantly. His cock raged, needing to finish things off.
In response to the cessation, Voss felt the familiar warning twinge on the back of his shoulder, where his Mark lived.
The girl looked up at him with vacant eyes and he kissed her parted lips in a brief thank you. Then he bent back to the four little wounds on her neck and licked them delicately, slipping his tongue into and around the little indentations to ensure the spread of his healing saliva. After all, he’d just saved her life. It would be a bit of a kick in the face to let her die so soon after.
Just as he was finishing and setting her weak-kneed body up against the wall, Voss heard a noise behind him.
“What in the bloody hell?”
Eddersley.
Then he saw the scene. “Hell, Dewhurst. Can’t keep ’em sheathed for more than a few hours, can you?” his friendtsked. Of course, if it were a handsome, muscled young man in the alley, Eddersley would have been unsheathing his own incisors without delay. He’d even looked Voss’s way more than once—but that had been decades ago, when they’d first met at one of Giordan Cale’s parties in Paris.
Voss smiled, still feeling the pleasure. “When the opportunity presents itself, why not? She enjoyed it as much as I. Or at least, that’s how she’ll remember it.” As she tensed, he curled his fingers around her arm so the girl couldn’t run off before he was through with her. “You can still join me.”
Eddersley didn’t look the least bit tempted. “I just visited Rubey’s. I’ll wait and see what I can find at the Lundhames’ tonight. Blue blood’s my preference.”
Blue blood in a stiff cock, to be precise.
“This was nothing more than a bit of foreplay. I’ve room for more, later, of course.” Voss grinned and dabbed at the corners of his mouth with the handkerchief in case of any errant streaks of blood. The girl was making little gasping noises and he looked down at her. “Now, there, m’dear. It’s all over for now and soon you won’t recall a thing about it. More’s the pity for you.”
He turned on his gentle thrall, his eyes glowing full and golden-red, and he stared into the girl’s gaze. He felt the moment she released the memory of him and what had just occurred: she gave a little sigh and a jolt and then fear blazed into her face.
Good; she’d remember the attack from the man, but wouldn’t have the memory of a handsome, tawny-haired vampire to share.
“Go,” he commanded. “And stay out of the bloody alleys.” He released her and watched as the girl pushed past him, dashingtoward the street end of the alley where a lamp provided the relative safety of illumination.
“I thought you were hellbent on getting to the Lundhames’,” Eddersley said. “Didn’t think you had time for such a diversion.”
Voss straightened up and brushed the sleeve of his coat. “Indeed. But if I hadn’t stopped to intervene, she’d have suffered more than a bit of pleasure and four small puncture wounds. ’Twas only a bit of a delay. The Woodmore chits will still be there, I’m certain.”
“Never can pass up a bit of the tip-slip, can you, Dewhurst?” said Brickbank as Voss and Eddersley climbed back into the coach.
“Why should I?” he replied, settling into his seat. He was aware of the sharper ache on the back of his right shoulder as he settled into place.
The discomfort was Lucifer’s way of annoying him, of course. Reminding him to whom he belonged. The ache from Lucifer’s Mark wouldn’t be nagging at him if he’d gouged his fangs roughly into that little chit’s chest, tearing the virgin flesh and sucking until she collapsed—and then left her.
Or if he’d savaged her assailant, draining him of his blood or even simply pulling him apart.
Or even if he’d driven on by without stopping to interfere.
Lucifer did not like it when his immortals misbehaved.
Voss adjusted his arm and tried to ignore the dull throb emanating through his Mark. He knew what it would look like at this moment: the slender, jagged line that started beneath the hair at his nape and spread like roots over the back of his right shoulder would be raised like tiny, dark, veinlike welts. Normally the mark remained nearly flat and simply looked like the tattoo of a shattered piece of glass. But at times like this—when Luce was displeased—it filled and swelled and became an annoyance.
It was the physical manifestation of the crack in his soul, the one that had occurred when Voss accepted Lucifer’s offer of immortality. Voss now bore the Mark—the sign of his family’s liaison with the devil, the indication of Voss’s immortality and power.
A cracked or damaged soul meant that he could live forever and never face the judgment of God.
He could do what he wanted, when he wanted. He had access to resources beyond imagination: power, wealth, even knowledge. He had no one to answer to but Lucifer, and only if the devil ever called him to true service.
Unless, of course, he met a stake through his heart or someone sliced off his head.
He would never again be the scrawny fifteen-year-old kid who’d spent more than two hours in the depths of the privy his first week at Eton—on three different occasions—because his upper classmates thought he was too pretty and spoiled.
Regardless of the fact that it was true. He’d always been pretty and spoiled.
Perhaps that was why Lucifer had chosen him to be Dracule.
