Are you certain you wish to know? He had to think carefully, parsing modern slang; how stilted and foreign had his speech become? Had his underlings—other than Wrenfeldt—noticed? Business associates would paper over a great deal of strangeness so long as profit was assured, but the risk was still unacceptable.
And he had not even suspected. Lukas reached for the champagne bottle, ignoring the corresponding movement pressing her back into the chair. He poured for two; if she changed her mind, the small pleasure would be ready. “The stronger among greiben often consume the weaker. If one does so enough, it becomes an elder—bigger, capable of calling a greater amount of hunting-mist, acquiring far more opportunities to feed and breed. When an elder challenges and consumes another elder, sometimes the core of the eaten condenses in the gut, and a greisoul is formed. It eventually kills the eater, with blockage or internal bleeding. The greiben consider such created stones holy, and the worship rituals…” Lukas trailed off, for she was distractingly thrilling even while displaying unmitigated disgust. Her collarbones were sweet curves, the fresh glaring fangmarks an unmistakable sign of possession, and that lush, soft mouth begged once more to be kissed as it twisted.
“Oh, my God.” She replaced the grape carefully among its brethren and immediately lowered her head, hair swaying as hands flew to her nape. “Oh, ew. No. Nope, nope, nope.”
Lukas at first couldn’t identify the urge rising from his midsection. It turned into a disbelieving laugh—rusty, hoarse, but the first time he had evinced real amusement instead of a controlled simulation in at least two centuries. Another exquisite jolt, burning through him just as the honeyed zap of her blood.
He would have enjoyed rendering assistance, but she had the necklace’s catch open in a trice. The chain slithershimmered, loosening to brush her shirt before she held the greisoul at arm’s length, in one fine-boned, trembling hand. “No way.” Her lip curled, she looked about near-wildly as if tempted to throw a rarity into the nearest bin.
Many in the demimonde would hunger to acquire such a thing, despite its obvious dangers.
“It bears no curse for you,” Lukas found himself saying. “It was given in love; keep it in remembrance. Of Jared.” An old name, pronounced differently not so long ago—but a good one. The boy had clearly been worthy of it.
“Don’t.” A hard shake of her head. Tiny flakes of black dye already loosening, unnoticed as they scattered, yet another sign of the Gift. “Don’t say his name, please.”
Four years could be a long mortal while; she had spent it working toward vengeance—and Lukas’s presumed demise. Were he tempted to superstition of his own, he could consider her pursuit of him the result of a divine intervention.
To have missed her so narrowly, then been given another chance just before calcification took him...if mere coincidence, he had won the equivalent of several hundred consecutive mortal lotteries. “Where were you, that night? How did I miss you?”
“Outside. A window.” She stared at the greisoul’s viridian gleam, the chain dripping from her palm. “I was paying bills, I asked him to take Snowball out. Lost track of time. Then I went looking for...the light in the stable was on.” She swallowed convulsively, the shiver of a fragile butterfly.
Lukas’s mouth turned down slightly; he sought to dredge the exact memory of that particular night. “Ah. On the west side. If I hadn’t exited through the roof, I would have passed and scented you.”
Now Beatrice regarded him narrowly. “Why would you go out the roof?”
“Following the greiben—there was a hole in the hayloft, pointing quite neatly in the direction of their closest warren-entrance. Mile and a half from the house, I should say, almost due east.” If not for the need to halt the annoyance of their pursuit, Lukas might cleanse the warrens simply because they had robbed him of discovering her that night, though it was childish to blame half-sentient excrescences for his own inattention. “Were you wearing the necklace, then?”
“Christ, no.” Surprised, as if the very thought were outlandish. “I think it was in my dresser? I’d just moved back from…”
His leman stopped, still holding the greisoul stiffly away. Her gaze leapt from the gem to him, and Lukas could not even begin to guess what she was thinking.
He suspected even another few millennia would not help him unravel the barest fraction of that magnificent mystery. Whether the fascination hinged upon an innate quality of leman or was simply the bonding pressing inexorably upon lingering mating instincts—for all sanguinant had been mortal once—did not matter.
He was alive again, and more than old enough to appreciate the fact properly.
Beatrice gingerly set the greisoul next to the silver tray. She bit her lower lip as she rubbed her hands together, scrubbing away imaginary foulness, and her eyes shone with gathering tears.
Yet she refused to weep again, simply set her chin and glared at Lukas. Sorrow turned aside with anger, a response both mortal and sanguinant. How many times had he seen the shift in others, across shoals and gulfs of empty time?
“I can’t believe a word you say,” she said, quietly. “I won’t believe it.”
She would not be so imperious had not doubt entered her pretty, rumpled head. Lukas thought she could hold out against blunt cruelty for some while, but her only real defense against him was sarcastic goading and stubborn refusal to admit she might have mistaken the cause of her brother’s death.
He had been strictly, scrupulously truthful with his leman since the moment he caught that heady fragrance at the party, strings of red beads alive with movement, her soft bare arms glowing.
He could have missed her twice, Wrenfeldt’s mention of an assumed journalist surveilling ‘Chris Everly’ a not-quite-uncommon occurrence. The thought turned him cold, briefly, a freshly honed emotion-knife, welcome even as it sliced.
Not a single grain of mistruth would she receive from him; yet though her reaction was quite natural, it stung. Even that pain was a sweet hedge against calcification.
Eventually she would learn better. Or not, and he would forever pursue a reluctant nymph.
Champagne was an acquired taste, complex sourness and a short bubbling frisson. Alcohol simply burned away from sanguinant, though some claimed to feel intoxication. It was nothing compared to mortal claret, of course, and even less to a single droplet of his prize. He sipped slowly, considering the next few moves.
“How long do I have?” Another challenge, soft but utterly defiant. “Before you bite me again, I mean. Do I get to know?”
“I could bite you now.” And more. Indeed he was tempted, especially since she froze, staring deerlike at the nearest wolf. “But you need rest, and I must hunt. When you have finished your meal I will take you to the saferoom; you will rest there. Alone, sadly.”
“You mean that big empty creepy place?” Her hands tangled together, knuckles turning pale. “Come on, don’t lock me up in there. There’s not even a toothbrush.”
