There was that word again. Did it mean he wasn’t going to kill her? But of course, there was something worse. If this thing touched her, if it tore her clothes off and threw her on the bed… she might have thought nothing could be worse, but now she suspected her ever-acctive imagination was failing her, for once.
Why didn’t it bite me?Something important about that, lingering just at the tip of her overworked, overheating brain.Max bit me first thing, why didn’t?—
“Aha!” The biter now sounded pleased. Its eerie calm persisted; this sudden attack of almost-reasonableness was far more horrifying than the screeching and throwing her around. “Here we are.”
A glitter, a golden gleaming. Thin strands and intricate metal knotwork dripped between long, strong coppery fingers; both he and Max had really good tans even after all the time away from sunlight.
He shook the shining thing out, held it up.
“Do you like, do you find it, ah, acceptable? Gold, of course; silver burns the poor sweet fledglings. But you’ll never need worry about that, no.” The biter leaned down, arms extending, and the expression he now wore was truly obscene. Eyebrows anxiously raised, a tentative smile with no hint of fangs—except for the robe and those falling-apart sandals, he looked like a boy offering flowers on a first date.
Except for the way he twitched at the end, as if he couldn’t stay still. The juxtaposition of human nervousness with powerful, crazy ancientthingwas nauseating, terrible,wrong. Had he been cuckoo-crackers before the vampirism, or had living so long driven him irredeemably ’round the bend? Was he trying to stay sane,flexible, like Max said?
She almost pitied him.
Almost.
“It’s a collar,” he continued. “Very, very old, made in the East with arts now lost. Cost a big shiny penny, a demimonde thing. You’re just right for it.”
He’s offering jewelry?Another desire to bray with heebie-jeebie giggles rose in Layla’s throat, dark and terrible. If she started laughing now, she might find out what was even worse than dreading the big pink bed lurking behind her.
The biter darted forward, too swiftly for her to dodge or even flinch. Fabric tore, a terrific yank against her shoulders, sweater-sleeves parting like water. Cool metal touched her throat; the openings in complex metal knots were designed to leave bare spaces to either side of her larynx, while the band to the back of her neck was solid.
Oh, it’s so they can bite,she thought. Then the necklace squirmed against her skin, warming rapidly, and the biter’s loose dark curls brushed her smoke-tarnished hair as he fiddled with something near her nape—it had to be the catch.
A flash like lightning, an electric white blur filling the world. His cheek rested against hers, cool and hard.
“Yesssss.” A long, satisfied hiss. He inhaled again, filling his lungs, then straightened. “You’re all right now, little leman, peerless Psyche. Nemesis will be killed by his siblings, then I will destroy whatever remains. Or he will finish them all and come to meet his end upon my claws.” A bright, young, careless laugh, all the more chilling for the note of ancient, sadistic glee. “I will let you watch, perhaps. Then we will be alone.”
That’s what you think, motherfucker. Layla’s body would not obey. She sat, staring straight ahead, humid summer air caressing her bare arms below the T-shirt’s sleeves.
Her sweater—Max’ssweater—hung from the ancient vampire’s left hand, a dead pelt. Her breath came softly, regularly; her pulse settled. The lassitude wasn’t like the warm forgiving syrup of a monster-blood high; it was simple, sheer inability to move. She could feel the padded bench under her thighs, her hands now loosely draped instead of clutching.
“First the bite,” the young-faced monster chanted, brushing at her hair with his free fingers. He smoothed the strands almost like Max had, sudden gentleness far more nerve-wracking than the roaring, the shaking, the screams. “Then the claiming.You’ll keep me from true-death, dear Psyche. And I will see that you want for nothing. Isn’t that nice? Nod for me,kardoula mou.”
Her chin dipped without her brain telling it to. Frantic internal signals wouldn’t reach her arms, her legs; shecouldn’t move.
Not of her own volition, at least. Her traitorous body performed a slow, dreamy nod.
The creature smiled, rising to his full height, and looked down at her with a nearly avuncular expression. “Now be good, and do not wander. I must attend to some business, but I’ll return very soon. It’s rather nice to feel again; I will enjoy manyyears of discovering the limits of… Oh, yes. We shall havesomany experiences, dear Psyche. So very many.”
Warm air puffed, redolent of dust, neglect, and corpses stacked higgledy-piggledy in hallways. The creature’s scent faded; she heard creaks and shifting as the house settled, a rumble of what might be distant thunder.
Layla strained to get up, to scream, to lift her arms. Could only manage a tiny rocking motion on the bench. It was the necklace, it was somehow locking her in place.
Oh, God. Oh god oh god oh god…
Her heart, her lungs paid no attention. A breathing statue, she stared at the door to the hallway, her eyelids drifting down at regular intervals to blink, then back up.
And shecould not move.
CHAPTER 26
The last combatantswere a pair of sanguinant elder so far enraged they tore each other nearly to pieces before he descended to render both into clouds of swirling, pattering dust. Nemesis stood panting, attention briefly focused upon sealing a few rips and gashes in his own hide.
Strips of clothing hung from limbs turned scarecrow-gaunt from fueling the demands of battle. He had lost a measure or two of blood, managing regain some few iotas from unwary fledglings drunk with the faint rose-musk breath clinging in storm-heavy night air. The killing numbness was rising to enclose him, and the flaring, fading trail whisperingLeila, Leilainto the night could no longer hold back the tide of ossification.
He needed his leman.
