4. Novak
Chapter 4
Novak
A knock came to the ajar door of my office. “Yes, come in,” I said, not looking up from the handwritten notes I was poring over.
“The guest room is ready, sir.”
I looked up to see Lourna, my human housekeeper in the doorway. “Thank you, Lourna. Did you check in on Amy?”
“I did, sir. She drank her fill of your blood and appears to be in a healing sleep.”
My eyebrows shot up at that. The little brusang obviously hadn’t been in good shape when I found her, but to fall into a healing sleep she must have been worse off than I thought.
“Should I try to wake her and take her to the guest room?” Lourna asked.
“No, that’s all right. I’ll take her myself. You go ahead and take the rest of the day off.”
Lourna hesitated by the door. “Jo said to tell you she’s prepared a whole board of bites to eat if Amy wants solid food. We don’t know what she likes, so there’s a variety. It’s wrapped up in the fridge.”
I smiled at that. I was older than my human staff by a good two hundred years. And yet these two women in their forties were more motherly than any vampire matriarch I’d ever known. “I appreciate it, thank you.”
Lourna took her leave, and I spent a few minutes organizing the papers on my desk before heading down after her. After closing the study door behind me, I paused at the wall mirror on the landing to make sure my clothes weren’t rumpled.
Old habits never truly died, especially when vampires didn’t reach adulthood until the age of one hundred. My mother hadn’t fussed at the invisible creases in my shirt, hadn’t threatened to drain the human staff dry for their incompetence at pressing clothes in well over a century. And still, I couldn’t stop checking myself over before going downstairs.
That was all it was, a habit that refused to die. It had nothing to do with wanting to look presentable to the strange little brusang in my sitting room.
It wasn’t like Amy tried to make herself presentable. The poor thing had been trying to end her own life, most likely. Incidents of self-harm and suicide were higher in brusang than other populations. Many of them didn’t adapt well to their new vampiric traits and considered themselves monstrous.
That showed how highly they regarded us full-blood vampires, which was not at all.
I wondered what Amy’s story was, if she was someone’s human blood pet who begged to be turned in order to match the lifespan of her verakt , her protector. A lot of naive humans did that, fell in love with the vampires who fed on them and proposed being turned so they would have centuries together.
Of course, any vampire who agreed to such a thing was a massive piece of shit, because a human had to be near death for the turning process to work. And then, it only worked about half the time.
Amy was one of the lucky ones to be alive.
Once down the stairs and on the first floor, I smiled at the sound of Jo’s whistling as she tidied up the massive open-concept kitchen. Happy humans always expressed themselves in the most amusing ways.
At the entrance to the front sitting room, I paused to take in a passed-out Amy splayed out on the settee. A blanket covered her legs, probably Lourna’s doing. The empty glass of blood sat on a side table.
She already looked healthier, with color in her cheeks and more softness to her face. Everything about her had been brittle and sharp out in the courtyard, from her limbs to her tongue. She had been defensive but fragile, like a cornered animal caught in a trap.
“What happened to you, little one?” I wondered aloud.
She had been clearly starving, but there was a fierceness to her. A clear will to live. And yet she seemed put off at the idea of taking blood from a wrist, the most benign of all places. At least the glass idea seemed to work.
I clicked my tongue in self-chastisement as I entered the room. It was disquieting to watch her sleep from the doorway while creating a narrative in my head, and I intended to keep my word to her about not being a creep.
Scooping under her back and knees, I lifted her limp form off the sofa and secured her against my chest. She was still light in my arms but there was more heft to her than before, which was a good thing. A sign that my blood was doing its job of replenishing much-needed nutrients.
Amy’s head rested on my shoulder, her cheek nuzzling my shirt. Her hand even curled into the fabric from where it rested on her stomach. Despite her stirring, she didn’t wake from the healing sleep. Her eyes were shut and moving behind her eyelids.
She wasn’t likely to hear me, but I spoke to her in a low voice anyway. “I’m taking you to the guest room. Rest as long as you need, no one will disturb you.”
A soft sigh escaped Amy’s lips and her head fell back slowly. If she’d been awake, I’d assume she was trying to look up at me. I looked down just as her head came forward, and felt her lips brush my neck just above my shirt collar. And like the strike of a match, my body reacted.
“Fuck.” I groaned at the lengthening of my fangs, the pulsing ache in my upper jaw, and my own heartbeat elevating in a sudden rush.
“Hmm… ” Amy mumbled in her sleep, her lips gently mouthing over the blood vessel in my neck over and over. Not quite kissing or biting, but just… lazily tasting. She was still hungry, her instincts taking over as she slept and seeking more sustenance.
There was no fear in her motions now, no hint of the pinched look of disgust from earlier. But she was also unconscious, with no idea of what she was doing. If she did know, she would probably be horrified and press herself against a far wall like she did in my courtyard.
Her lips were soft, and it had been a long, long time since a woman nuzzled my neck before helping herself to my blood. I’d forgotten how sensitive the area was, how the warm contact made me crave physical connection.
But I was not about to take liberties with an unconscious brusang, no matter how good her mouth felt.
The prepared guest room was open, smelling like fresh linens and cut flowers. Lourna had even set an arrangement of red roses, poppies, and dahlias on the nightstand.
Fighting to ignore the soft mouthing at my neck, I hurried across the threshold and toward the bed, where I placed Amy down as gingerly as I could.
Breaking the contact between her lips and my skin was far more difficult than it ever should have been.
Lourna had the foresight to pull back the blanket and duvet, so Amy lay on the crisp, freshly washed sheet. After a few moments’ hesitation, I picked at the battered laces on her shoes, sneakers of some kind, and removed them from her feet. Her socks were worn thin and the left one had a hole just beneath her big toe. I made a mental note to ask Lourna if she had any extra pairs she wouldn’t mind donating.
I placed the shoes on the floor next to the bed, then pulled the blanket and duvet up to Amy’s shoulders. Humans were more sensitive to cold temperatures and vampires tended to keep their homes cool. I didn’t know if brusang had that same sensitivity, but figured she’d push the covers down if she got too hot.
I left the room before I started to think and wonder too much. It would do no good to stare at the sleeping woman’s lips and reimagine them on my neck.
A few hours later, I sensed Amy’s movements from her room. My study was only two doors down the hall, but I’d been too distracted and bleary-eyed to focus on the data in front of me. I had no problem sending my focus out of the room though, hyper-alert to any stirring or weight on floorboards in the guest room.
The moment those sounds came, it was like a shot of adrenaline. I stood from the desk, alert and poised. She needs more blood, my instincts screamed at me.
As if I could forget the soft brush of her lips on my jugular. But I knew that once she was awake, Amy would not be receptive to feeding from my neck. With that in mind, I went to the liquor cabinet in search of a clean glass. With a quick slice of a letter opener against my forearm, I prepared her next blood meal.
Once the glass was filled and my wound closed, I made my way down the hall and knocked at the closed guest room door. My pulse spiked, almost to a frenzied level as I waited for a response. I didn’t have female guests often but this level of nerves was unusual, even for me.
“Uh, come in?” Amy called hesitantly from the other side.
I turned the knob and stepped inside to find her sitting up against the headboard, her knees bent toward her chest and the comforter pulled to her chin. She was wide-eyed, apprehensive, but also looked much more alert and healthy.
“Hi.” I hesitated near the foot of the bed. “Did you sleep well? Are you cold?”
“No. I, um… ” She relaxed, stretching her legs out in front of her. “I mean, I did sleep well. I’m not cold. I just didn’t know where I was.”
“One of my guest rooms. Seems you needed the rest.”
Amy’s eyes darted all over, from the ceiling to the rugs to the antique furniture. “ This is a guest room?”
“One of the more spacious ones, but yes.” I approached the side of the bed slowly and set the glass down on the nightstand. “Some more blood, if you would like it.”
Her dark blue eyes immediately went to the healing cut on the inside of my forearm. “Doesn’t it hurt when you do that?”
“Not really. I don’t know, maybe a little.” I closed my fist to make my forearm flex. The wound was slightly sore, but hardly anything noticeable. “Vampires are so used to biting each other in various places, I don’t think we have many pain receptors when it comes to surface cuts and bleeding.”
“What time is it?” Amy scooted to the edge of the bed and carefully picked up the glass of blood.
“About six in the evening. In another hour or so, I’ll be able to escort you home.”
Amy’s shoulders drooped, her spine curling into a slouch. It hit me then that she might not have a home, that as a human she might have been killed, revived as a brusang and then abandoned. That certainly explained her gaunt appearance from before.
It didn’t happen often. Most humans were respected as equals these days, but some vampires held onto outdated beliefs that they were nothing but livestock for us to feed on.
“Do you have somewhere to stay?” I tried to ask the question as delicately as possible.
“Yes, I do.” Amy straightened, then took a long deep drink of my blood.
A satisfied warmth filled my chest and abdomen as I watched her drink. She may not have been at my neck or wrist, but my instincts were pleased that she found nourishment from my blood.
“I have somewhere to go, it’s just not the best living situation right now,” she went on.
I felt a flare of protectiveness that I didn’t know was in me. “Are you safe there?”
“Yes, it’s nothing like that. Just a difficult situation with my best friend.” Amy finished the glass, leaning back to take every last drop.
“I’m sorry to hear that. Is that why you were out by yourself last night?” There was so much more I wanted to know, like why she had been nearly starving. Surely this friend's situation couldn’t be good if she wasn’t even feeding properly.
“Yeah, I needed some space. My friend has always been like a mom to me. I love that she’s always had my back, but she can be kind of overbearing, you know?”
“Sure. My mother was like that too.” I swallowed the next words on the tip of my tongue, which was offering to let her stay here if she ever wanted space from this “friend.” That was probably overstepping into creepy territory. And besides, this woman was a stranger to me.
“Can I ask a potentially weird question?” Amy chewed her lip, her small fang poking out.
“Sure.” Having a stranger in my home was already weird enough as it was. How bad could a question be?
“Why does your blood taste so good?” Amy looked at the empty glass in her lap. “It’s so much better than the blood I tried at the blood bank. I want to lick the whole damn glass, but that would definitely be rude.” She glanced up shyly. “I am really new to all this, in case it wasn’t obvious.”
Keeping my expression neutral was difficult while I fucking glowed on the inside. No one had ever paid such compliments to my blood before, and I was more pleased than ever. Inviting her to stay didn’t seem like such an outrageous idea anymore.
“It’s probably because you were on the brink of starvation,” I reasoned. “You were so deprived of essential nutrients that almost any blood would have tasted like the fountain of youth. When was the last time you fed, anyway?”
Amy set the crystal glass on the side table, spinning it slowly to watch the dim lamplight catch the intricate cuts and etching of the design. She was stalling.
“Well?” I pressed.
She returned her hands to her lap, again looking shy, if even embarrassed.
“Technically, that initial glass of your blood was my first feeding. The first successful one, anyway.”
My mouth dropped open in shock. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I was raised to not say foul words in front of women, but I couldn’t stop myself. “You never had blood before mine? How long have you been a brusang?”
“Two weeks.” She gnawed her lip again, her small fangs like kitten teeth. “I had gone to the blood bank right before I ran into you. My friends took me there to receive blood and I just… couldn’t do it.”
“They waited two weeks after your turning to get blood in you?” I scoffed. “Some friends.”
“It wasn’t their faults,” Amy protested. “It was mine. I had a… a really difficult time after I woke up. I felt betrayed. I was depressed. They tried to help, but I did nothing for two weeks but melt into a couch and eat a few slices of jerky. I kind of hoped I would… ” She trailed off, waving a hand through the air. “You know. Die again.”
“But you didn’t actually want to,” I filled in.
“No.” Amy sighed wearily. “It’s still hard to accept that I’m… this. Not really human anymore, drinking blood to survive. But I want to live. My best friend wanted me to live. So that’s something, I guess.”
“It’s more than something. Choosing to live is everything.”
Amy frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Being alive isn’t the same as living. Braindead people are alive. They have inflating lungs and a beating heart, the two necessary functions that determine the difference between being alive and being dead. But they are not living. They don’t have lives. See the difference?”
A smile tugged at Amy’s lips, her nose wrinkling. “What are you, some kind of vampire doctor?”
I laughed dryly. “I’m a scientist, of sorts. But you get what I’m saying, right?”
“I think so,” she mused. “I might not have been braindead, but I definitely wasn’t living those first two weeks.”
“Right. Some people are just alive. They exist. They go through the motions. But living is a choice. It has to be something you want more than just being alive. You’re more than a functioning heart and lungs.” I picked up the glass from the side table, noticing the residual warmth from her fingers. “I’m glad you’ve decided to live, Amy. That you want to live a life, even if it’s different from what you imagined for yourself.”
Her lips twitched with a smile, her gaze lowering to the blankets over her legs. “Thanks, Novak. I think you’re the first person who’s put it that way for me.”
“Sure.”
An awkward silence followed, and it dawned on me that I should probably get the hell out of her bedroom. “Well, I’ll let you rest until sundown.”
“Wait.” On my retreat to the door, Amy gripped the covers like she wanted to throw them back. “Is it okay if I get up and I dunno, stretch my legs? I feel wide awake now, like a crazy amount of energy compared to before.”
“Oh, yes. Of course. I can show you to the kitchen if you’re still hungry. My chef prepared some solid bites. Or I can provide more blood, whichever you prefer.”
Amy curled in on herself, drawing her legs and shoulders up, hiding a smile behind her knees. “Your house is so nice and I just realized how filthy I am. Any chance I could have a shower?”
“Absolutely. Through there.” I swept my arm toward the attached bath. “I believe my housekeeper left a change of clothes too. Take as long as you need. I’ll be two doors down when you’re ready for the tour.”
“Thank you.” She sighed, tilting her head to rest her cheek on her knee. “Thank you so much, Novak.”
I nodded curtly before turning to leave the room. As I let the door shut behind me, I wondered when I suddenly became Mr. Hospitality.