12. Chapter 12
Bastien
I hear the ward door open two floors down, and I’m standing beside the fire before I notice I’ve stood. I never stand for anyone. Tonight a lock turns in a basement, and I’m on my feet, facing the door, waiting, ignoring the fact that my hand is shaking.
It unsettles me. I stay standing anyway.
Her footsteps come up the corridor with the guard’s. Too slow. She usually hurries the last stretch, every visit, feet quickening on the carpet before she catches them and makes them behave. I’ve listened to her fight that small fight and lose it every time.
Tonight there’s no fight in the sound at all. Short, even steps.
Her heart is wrong.
Fast—it’s always fast—but high and thin tonight, no weight under it.
The door opens. She comes in and stops three steps inside the room.
“Come to the fire,” I say. “You’re cold.”
“I’m fine here.”
Flat. Aimed past me. Something in me pulls tight at the sound of it.
“I said come here.” Firmer now.
She moves toward the chair and the firelight reaches her throat.
The glass snaps in my hand.
I look down. The stem is in my fingers. The bowl is on the carpet, wine soaking dark into the wool. I never felt it break.
My gums are burning. The fangs push through on their own, wanting out. I work my jaw to hold them seated. Cold climbs my spine. Spreads through my shoulders. Down my arms. Into my hands.
Her heartbeat comes up loud. The fire comes up loud. The whole room goes too bright, too sharp. Every sense tearing open at once.
The way they open for a hunt.
I stand there with a broken stem in my fist. There’s a word for what I’m feeling, but it’s been so long that I can barely remember it.
Rage. That’s what it is. Blinding rage.
I set the stem on the mantel with exaggerated care. The alternative is throwing it through the wall.
I cross to her.
Her heart spikes in fear. She can’t hide it, though she tries.
I stop out of arm’s reach because the fear tells me to.
This close, I can smell the wound. I catch a glimpse through the curtain of her hair.
Two torn punctures in a bruise gone green at the edges.
Two days old. Unclosed. Ragged. Whoever made it ripped at the vein while he drank.
“Who?”
“Does it matter?”
“Who?!”
“I didn’t get a name.” She’s looking at the floor, and I hate that. She’s never done that before. The silent defiance has never left her. Until someone tore a hole in her throat. I narrow my eyes on it.
Under her dried blood, there’s the scent of something else. Stale cologne. Young and undead.
Sterling.
I sat beside that bastard and told him to go sit with the people who fund his existence.
Instead, he did this.
I go to the door and open it. The guard comes off the wall before I’ve spoken. Whatever is in my face makes him snap to attention.
“Bring me Vasile.”
“Sir, the manager’s downstairs with—”
“Now!”
He runs. I close the door. I put my palm on the mantel stone and hold on to it.
The stone is solid, or it would probably crumble.
My jaw aches from keeping the fangs down.
My mouth goes wet the way it does before a kill.
I swallow it back and listen to Vasile being found somewhere below: a door, voices, his footsteps starting up quick and light.
She’s watching me now. The first direct look she’s given me tonight.
“Are you all right?” I ask her.
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“Why does it matter?”
She crosses to the far chair at last and sits on the edge of it, hands on her knees, and gives her eyes to the fire instead of me.
Any other night, with anyone else, I’d let silence be silence. It has never cost me anything. I open my mouth to ask her a third time. Vasile’s footsteps reach the stairs. I let it go, because now my rage has a valid target to aim at.
He comes in talking. “My lord, what an unexpected pleasure, the house had no word you’d be—”
“Look at her.”
He stops. His eyes go where I’ve pointed them and find her throat, and his heart climbs until it’s the loudest thing in the room.
“Ah.” His hands find each other in front of his jacket. “My lord. There was a… scheduling matter. You’ll recall the reservation as drafted covers first call. The language is quite—”
“I don’t pay for shop-soiled goods.” My voice stays where I put it, low and even. Against the mantel, my hand tightens, and something gives in the stone with a small dry crack. His face loses its color. “Look at her, Vasile. Look at what your house did to my merchandise.”
Her head turns. I feel her stare on the side of my face. I keep my eyes on Vasile.
“The client was vetted, my lord. Fully vetted. A gentleman of considerable—”
“A gentleman?”
The word does it. My hold slips, and this time I let it.
It comes from the spine out. My jaw drops a degree past anything human.
The fangs run out full length, cold against my own lip.
My fingers stretch. The nails draw to points.
Sound floods in from the whole building.
Every heartbeat in it, arriving at once.
The nearest one hammering itself ragged against Vasile’s ribs.
His throat clicking, clicking, unable to swallow.
Salt comes off his skin. I can smell his sweat starting to prickle.
I take one step toward him. He goes back into the wall hard enough to rattle a picture frame. His legs quit. The wall is all that’s holding him up.
When I speak, the voice comes out of the changed mouth low and wrong, and I go slowly, because he needs to keep every word.
“Here is the new arrangement, Vasile.” His name hisses out past my fangs. “Her exclusivity is absolute. Not first call. Only call. No client touches her. No handler touches her. If the roof falls in, the rubble had better miss her.”
“Yes, yes, of course, of course.” He’s babbling. “Absolutely exclusive. Absolutely.”
I step closer. My shadow goes up the wall behind him, and the shape of it isn’t human. “Break it, and your house learns what my displeasure costs it. You personally will pay me in your own blood. A drop at a time. Ask anyone old enough to remember me. They will tell you it will not be pleasant.”
He nods. He can’t stop nodding.
“She comes out of that ward tonight. A warm room. A bed. A door that locks from her side. Proper food, and anything else she asks for. If she is anything but comfortable—if she sleeps cold one single night—your head goes on the gate. Have you understood me?”
“Yes. Yes, my lord. Tonight. Personally, I’ll see to it person—”
“Get out.”
He runs. A man his age, in a suit that cost that much. He runs.
I pull it back in. The fangs seat. The jaw closes. It takes longer than it should. I want to follow him out and finish the lesson. I stand where I am. Wait for the rage to go down. The building’s noise thins away, one heartbeat at a time, until one is left in my ears.
Hers.
She’s on her feet, staring at me. Her face is open for the first time tonight, eyes wide, one hand pressed over the wound.
“You—” She stops.
“Sit down. Please.”
She sits. Slowly, on the edge of the cushion, her hand at her neck.
“The bite,” I say. “I can close it. I will need to put my mouth on it. No more than that.”
Her fingers tighten over the punctures. Her heart is going hard. She stares at me with eyes that are as close to the sky as I’ve ever seen. I let her look for as long as she needs. Then her hand comes down. Her chin lifts. She turns her head and gives me her throat.
“Trust me.” I bend to her. She’s rigid under my hand—one hand, at her shoulder, only to steady her—and her pulse pounds up against the torn skin.
I put my mouth over the wound. Her taste rises through the scabbing, faint and warm.
Under it sits the sour trace of the other one.
My free hand closes on the arm of her chair.
The wood creaks. I ease my grip before it gives.
My tongue moves slow over the punctures until the skin draws itself shut beneath it. She goes through one long shudder, shoulders to feet. Not the kind she usually gives me.
Make it quick.
Her blood is right under my mouth the whole time. I leave it.
I straighten. The skin at her throat is smooth. The bruise pales while I watch, the green washing out until her skin holds one clear color again.
“That will never happen again,” I say. And then: “I’m sorry.”
She’s staring at me again. “You’re sorry,” she says, and waits for the catch.
“Yes.”
“You bought me. You feed on me. And you’re sorry.”
“It appears so.”
I came here to feed. It’s two steps away now, healed, warm, mine by contract, and everything about this feels wrong. I look at her throat, and my appetite stands down without being told.
That has never happened.
“We’re done for tonight,” I say, and take my coat from the chair.
“You didn’t—” She stops. Her hand goes back to the smooth new skin. “You paid to feed.”
“I know what I paid for.” I pull the coat on. “The house will bill me in full. Tell them I said so.”
The guard straightens as I pass him. Down the stairs, out through the doors, and the cold outside means little to me. Yves has the car open. He looks at my face once and gets in without a word.
Floodlights drop away behind us. The road turns to forest.
The insult.
That’s what tonight was. A man in my position doesn’t let a slight like that stand. The contract violated, renting her out the moment my back was turned. Any Seigneur would have done the same. It was the insult.