Beer relaxed you, but tequila made you brave. Nothing in the world had been wrong that night, she’d been bulletproof.
Until the hangover hit, that was.
No. Please, God, no.
As usual, praying changed nothing.
CHAPTER 18
The thirst always won. Easier to give it no chance to gain influence, even if too-frequent gorging risked bloodsickness and the craze. Taking without death was a skill requiring a few centuries’ practice, beyond the reach of many even ancient sanguinant, but those elders would likely never reach daywalker status.
He closed the cut, whispering in her unheeding ear. Two lines of a poem in the ancestor of the Argive tongue, a phrase popular in London before a great conflagration, a fragment of song from a riverside raider’s camp just before the Rus began to know themselves, a line from a black-and-white film popular during the second half of what mortals called a ‘world war’. Even, at last, a misty remnant of his mortal tongue, the language of those who followed the Great Antlered God in order to hunt and feast upon him.
When a woman chose among the warriors for a mate the man could refuse, though that cost more than one fur robe since proposals were generally negotiated well beforehand. The acceptance was a single word, meaning follow-you-home.
Her hands clasped his arm, the inside of his wrist pressed to her mouth. It was the first time she had willingly touched him, other than to attempt driving a stake through his heart. Her fangs would not arrive until full transition, but even if she were tempted by his radial pulse afterward, his hide was tough enough to withstand a fledgling nip or two.
That game sounded incredibly enticing as well.
Her scent was yet more deeply dyed with his now, and the mix was powerfully seductive. Thrall dozed pleasantly molten in his bones; he was ready as ever, crushed against her taut little bottom. Yet she was so still, so relaxed.
The first taste was a marvelous occasion. Best to mark it with a traditional gift.
“I was a hunter,” he said, searching for the modern tongue, a way to express a universe she would never comprehend, the world before his mortal death. “Still am, of course. But this was long ago, before a certain goddess came from the East.” Ah, his leman would not understand the saying, but never mind.
“Something preyed upon our tribe,” he continued. “Old and young it took, some few who strayed from the campfires. Every few winters a warrior was chosen to attempt a hunt, and those never returned. Thus we paid our toll to the Night Spirit. One year I drew the white stone—it was a fossil, I think—and it was my turn. The funeral songs were sung, my family wailed, and I went.”
Her hands loosened, her mouth leaving his pulse. Yet she only moved a fraction, her breath touching his skin instead. The small caress made memory sharper; he could almost smell the fat dripping in the fire, resins burned for the ceremony, the fragrance of those long-ago rolling hills.
“The sanguinant must have been reasonably old, though no daywalker. I thought him difficult to kill, but now I suspect him mostly calcified, for there is no other reason I should have been able to do what I did. I lured him to a pit, though he dragged me down with him, and my spear was capable of entering his throat. Perhaps in some way he did not wish to live, and allowed his own demise as the Antlered God did to feed our people. I do not know, I knew only the taste of his blood. I lay soaked and broken as the sun rose, and that dusk I died.”
Her stillness was neither terror nor tension. The burn of her first true feeding would induce deep languor, masking any discomfort from the first deep physiological changes, altering bodily chemistry, and providing endless intoxication. Any fledgling knew the powerful narcotic effect of their maker’s claret, though most were only graced with the honor until the Gift’s full bloom made the true teeth break loose.
Drinking only once was a painful way to become sanguinant. Those most inclined to make progeny selected carefully, and repeated feedings ensured survival of the investment.
Still, accidents happened.
The remainder of the tale was unnecessary; he had become a scourge upon his people, erasing them with a lone fledgling’s unrestrained appetite before setting out in search of more. Those first gluts had not killed him; afterward, as he gravitated toward more populous mortal settlements, animal ichor sufficed when better could not be had—though only barely, making him weak and stupid. Still, he survived.
He endured.
Now she knew a secret even the long-forgotten dead could not whisper. And soon he would feed her again.
A few hours later she moved restlessly, already displaying fledgling sensitivity to dawn. With the Gift’s maturation the usual torpor until dusk would set in, and full sunlight deeply injure if not kill outright, first inducing anaphylactic shock before igniting tissues wholesale.
Repeated infusions of a daywalker’s strength would help, but she would still be so very fragile. All the better, though he must be wary of travel, always accounting for her needs.
One small, graceful hand twitched, rose softly. Her fingers moved, and a soft amused sound made his entire body tighten—her first laugh since the costume fête, though lacking the bright edge of that forced gaiety.
He could not remember a single thing he’d said, only the determination to keep her attention a few moments longer. Spout any nonsense, perform any capering dance to interest the leman who had walked into the gathering with head held high, meeting his gaze with a silent challenge, lifting her just-acquired wineglass.
Assessing how best to whisk her away from the party and into the elevator had been sheer, wonderful torture, the fact of a leman shattering successive layers of numbness with every breath, every small comment, every measuring, mysterious glance.
“Trippy,” she murmured. “Spiked the punch bowl.”
“How do you feel?” Is it pleasant? Do you like what I harvested? He had fed nearly to gorging, spreading his attentions among several different mortals unlucky enough to be wandering at that hour; they were left alive, though in some cases so dazed any attempt to reach home or other destinations a matter of chance.
“High as a kite.” The last word nearly disappeared in a yawn.
