He literallykissed her hand.
“An honor and a pleasure to know your name, my lady Simone.” A faint brush of breath branded the words to her skin before he let go; she retreated to her side of the car, suddenly aware of blushing—again—in the darkness.
Given vamp senses, he could probably see. Which was embarrassing as fuck.
Her tough-girl image might never recover. “Wow, you really are old.”Oh, hell. That sounded way better inside my head. “I mean…”
“I am.” Quiet agreement, no hint of anger or wounded ego. “Yet I’m learnin’, and I have the most beautiful of teachers.”
Maybe he’s just practicing his small talk.And he hadn’t asked where they were going, either. Which was entirely for the best, sure, but also concerning. Darkness stretched to either side, waves of grassland lit up to vampire eyes, breathing in billows under the night wind.
“Can I ask you something, Jonathan?” She might as well try. “Without all the lee-mun stuff—why do they call it that, anyway? No, never mind. Can I?”
“Lemanis an old, old word; to the sanguinant, it meansbeloved one. Ask me anything, darlin’.”
Nobody had ever called herdarlingbefore, and certainly not this frequently. Curt’s deepest endearment wasbabeand sometimeshoney—neither were bad, but didn’t have quite the same ring. “If you could be cured, would you?”
“Cured?” For once, the old vampire sounded honestly baffled.
“Of the infection. Vampirism. Of being… sanguinant.” Where didthatword come from? It sounded vaguely French, but accented weirdly. Did vampires have a secret language? She had the whole time to Denver for getting information; he couldn’t very well attempt any canoodling while she was driving—or so Simone hoped.
She really wouldn’t put it past this guy.
“A curious way to put it.” His stillness had returned, almost as if he forgot to move while concentrating on her questions. The shoulder rolled by outside his window, reflectors popping up atprecisely measured intervals. “There is no return to mortality, ever. It is endurance or true-death. That’s all.”
“But what if it’s possible?” she persisted—carefully, quietly, knowing how much men hated to be challenged or disagreed with. “Would you?”
“Give up the Gift?” Now he sounded faintly shocked, though she couldn’t peek over to tell for sure, and a thread of unease invaded the warm haze. “No. Of course not.”
Well, that’s pretty definitive. If Barry’s billionaire had a line on a possible cure, she might have to do some quick thinking, not to mention fancy footwork, and hope she could keep this vampire away from all the humans involved. “I was just asking.”
Lights arched over the road, each patch of glow merging companionably with the next. It used to be gaslights, Simone thought, and before that, torches, lamps, and candles. Darkness was ancient, and a few recent, puny bulbs wouldn’t drive it back completely, or for good.
It lurked between stars, too. Ever ready, endless bleak black emptiness.
“Would you?” He was watching her; she felt the gaze of the vampire she had just named, a heavy weight against her right side, pressing against her cheek, sinking into her hair. “If it were possible?”
Yes. In a heartbeat. The words got caught up in her throat, dammed behind the grimy, stuck-rock feeling of a possible lie.Why can’t I say so?
That was far more frightening than a vampire appearing from thin air in her RV, than waking up naked and vulnerable, than being spread out and nailed under a creature who probably had more anniversaries under his belt than quite a few modern nation-states. The vast impersonal glitter of Cheyenne receded into the rearview mirror, even its suburbs becoming an orangesmear on the night horizon, and the plains spread to either side of a thin concrete stream.
Were there vampires still alive from before Rome was built? Before Babylon? Before humans crossed the land bridge from Siberia? If they could walk around in sunlight, what else could they do? Simone prided herself on being relatively blasé nowadays when it came to the world’s hidden, carnivorous weirdness, but…
So much for conversation. The silence thickened, the car rumbled unhappily, and Simone suspected it would be an uncomfortable ride to Denver.
She was right.
CHAPTER 16
His leman withdrew,sharply and totally, all that glorious interest and animation gone. Still, he could not help but feel some small progress had been made.
Simone. A lilting, lovely sound, all the more charming because it washers, vouchsafed to her protector. AndJonathan—the word held no ring of recognition, yet was not wholly unfamiliar. He could even be relieved, for it was an ancient truth that to name something was to claim it. To belong—finally, at last—was a comfort.
On some level, she must realize her own power. Sanguinant would tear each other to pieces merely to approach her, to inhale a single fragment of that dizzying, drunkening scent—and he would do much worse, destroying any who sought to even catch sight of her shadow. He was ill-acquainted with this era, true, but in a short while every luxury it possessed would be laid at her feet.
Did she wish for wealth? Power over mortals? To build an empire, or to destroy one?
He would provide;Jonathanwould make it so. He stared out a dust-shrouded window at the plains rising and falling like theback of a slumbering creature. Listened to her breathing, the soft thunder of her pulse, the hum of the rattletrap vehicle.
