“Sorry.” A slight shake of his head, as the fangs retracted, morphing into regular, very white human teeth. “My control is not quite what it could be, and your attempt at aggressiveness is adorable. Or, no, they say cute now, don’t they? Cute.”
“Yeah, well, your Ivy League accent sucks and you’re too young to dress the way you do.” What the fuck am I really saying? It was both exhilarating and unnerving to have all her brain-mouth filters removed. Why had she ever watered down what she thought? What was the goddamn point?
If she’d been more aggressive, as the monster called it, she might have saved Jare. Bullied him out of that house, off that stinking mountain, and back into the sane, rational world she wished very badly she had never left.
“I know.” Gravely, as if in serious agreement. “Fortunately, you will teach me better.”
“What the fuck?” For a moment Bea was unsure if she’d said or just thought the words, but yes, it was official, she was past caring and everything was spilling right out of her mouth, willy-nilly. “Look, either kill me or let me go. I’m really tired of all this.”
“Ah. Well, neither of those choices are acceptable, little leman.”
What the fuck do lemons have to do with anything? “This is the part where you tell me how you’re going to torture me, right? Fine, if it gets you excited. Go ahead and talk.”
“This is extremely interesting, but your knee is bleeding.”
Bea froze. Was it true? She couldn’t tell, she was literally numb from the neck down, and who knew the cliché had a core of absolute truth? All the same, it was not the sort of thing you wanted to hear a bloodsucking fangmonster say. “God, ohGod,” she whispered, unable to even glance at her own body because if she looked away he might wriggle under the bed and get her. The sudden mental images were hi-def Technicolor, and she knew, with miserable certainty, that she was about to start screaming and never stop.
The monster moved.
Things went blank for a moment—like a glitch while streaming music, a sudden cessation. The next thing Bea knew she was flat on her back, propped on a mound of blue pillows, blankets tucked tight as mummy bandages. The sense of constriction forced her into panicked motion; she scrambled into a crouch, the mattress giving a faint whisper as it shifted. The bed was a soft cavern, the wall of windows bright with orangeish citylight.
Nighttime. And she was...oh, Christ, she was in the Everly building.
Wrapped around the knee she’d scraped in the elevator was a bright white bandage, gauze packed solicitously against something that hurt like rugburn. It was a nice job, but looking at the pale blot caused a rush of nausea so intense she choked.
So the level beyond ‘crying scared’ is ‘vomit scared’. Good to know.
A soft warm breeze ruffled her hair, thrilled along the slip’s hem. Something loomed next to her in the darkness.
CHAPTER 6
He had moved slowly, yet mortal night-vision was poor indeed. His leman screamed, a rending sound of utter terror, and scrambled away with surprising speed, falling off the bed in her haste. A flurry of tender, delectable limbs, and she was on her feet.
Lukas had often witnessed mortal bodies knowing they could not fight, therefore choosing flight. The trouble was, she headed straight for the windows. She could not break the glass even with hysterical strength, but might well snap a bone or two battering against it. A small, colorful bird, driven to panic.
Another dismal beginning. He was in motion almost before realizing it, his arms closing around her once more. Her legs kept going, thrashing blindly.
If not for the soft broken sounds of distress, it would have been extremely pleasant. She sounded lost, miserable, and truly hopeless; a strange sensation filled his chest, as if she had sought to stab him again.
Heartbreak. Oh, that’s lovely. Also uncomfortable, yet the sheer gorgeousness of emotion again after so long was perilously akin to a drug’s swimming disorientation. Some substances could affect the claret, of course, but by and large any fledgling surviving past their first century was proof against any toxin. How much more an elder, then, and by the time one reached daywalker status, all fear of poison was long gone.
The effects were marvelous, jolts of sensation where only the slow creeping numbness of age had rested, new context and interest filling the world. Many of the old traditions around leman had become starkly clear to him in the past day or so; the protective instincts outstripped even mating urges, and both paled beside sheer wonder.
But what did you do with a mortal in such terror? Normal methods—a cervical snap, draining them with a few quick gulps while the quietus squeezed, or panic-herding them into a river—did not apply. The back of her head bumped his chin, and she could very well cause herself injury against his greater durability as well.
Nothing for it, then. He had tried, but as so often, ruthlessness was best. His true teeth were already out, throb-aching, a burst of change agents filling his mouth with hot liquid sugar.
He had to wait for a breath as she wriggled, but the moment she flung her head back again he struck, burying primary, secondary, and lower fangs deep. She froze, sucking in a shocked gasp, and the tiny sound fused a deep, heretofore unknown circuit inside his ageless skull.
His mouth was full of nectar. The first swallow erased any previous vintage; now even the most vital of mortals held only silty sludge in their veins—nutritious enough, to be sure, and he would be hunting for two. Without a leman, the only temporary relief from calcification was an old-fashioned feast, with all the danger that implied. Yet now the risk of bloodcraze was gone, the glut-urge with it, and though the control necessary to drink without killing was a reflex burned below conscious thought, he would never be tempted again.
Not in that direction, at least. Now the only thing he craved shuddered in his arms, attempting to fight the quietus with surprising strength. He was also tempted to bite a little harder, but there was a line between lesson and cruelty. The first was necessary for fledglings or dogsbodies; the second unthinkable for a leman.
Sweet. So sweet. They were to be prized, these succulent bulwarks against calcification. Pampered, indulged—and held, with any and every strength a sanguinant could muster. He also found he lacked even the passing, reflexive desire for savagery.
So he took a last shallow, lingering swallow, enjoying the deep honeyed burn, and let his teeth shift back to bluntness. Licked along the punctures, cleaning throughly, and the healing substances from different glands turned his lips numb for a moment. Traces of her spread through his veins, a maze of firefly lights.
Now her fragrance held a hint of burning. No doubt the largest component was pure surpassing fear, but another note was his own scent, spreading in thin tendrils from the bite until the message was unmistakable.
