16. Amy
Chapter 16
Amy
“ G od, I love this view.” I leaned against the doorway of Novak’s office balcony, looking out at the city below and the mountains in the distance. “If I were you, I’d be looking out at this all the time.”
Novak glanced up from the mess of notes on his desk, his gaze softening as he smiled. “I never noticed its beauty until you mentioned it. But maybe I’ll start appreciating it more.”
From my vantage point, he seemed to be looking at me, not at the landscape beyond the balcony railing. I looked toward the mountains again to hide the fact that I was blushing. He was doing that more often, saying things that sounded like he might be flirting, but I could never be sure.
We’d been in his office together for a couple of hours in mostly companionable silence. Before getting up to stretch, I had been working on a knitting project, a throw blanket, in one of Novak’s armchairs while he worked at his desk. The silence between us was just as easy as our conversations. I loved that he didn’t feel the need to fill quiet moments with the noise of his own voice. The scrapes of his pen, shuffling of papers, and the clicking of my knitting needles were the perfect ambiance to a relaxing evening.
“Take a break, you’ve been poring over those papers for hours.” I went to his drink cabinet and started rummaging around.
“Sorry, am I boring you?” Again, he sounded playful.
“Massively.” I closed my eyes halfway and made a long snoring sound.
He laughed, and I drank in the sound like water to a parched woman. “You’re the one who showed up and wanted to hang out while I worked.”
“And aren’t you lucky I’m the most interesting thing in your life?” I pulled out two glasses and a corkscrew. “Want to try Tavia’s wine?”
“Sure.” Novak leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms above his head with a groan.
I might have let my eyes linger on him for a second too long before focusing on opening the wine bottle. Everything he did seemed to have inherent sex appeal lately. His smirks when he joked and teased me sent my heart racing a little faster. I found myself sneaking glances at his forearms and shoulders so often, you’d think I was raised to believe arms were pornographic.
And it wasn’t just his arms, but his hands too. His throat, the crease between his brows. Even the way he walked, full of understated confidence. My crush on Novak was growing out of control and I was helpless to its whims.
After pouring two glasses of wine, I re-corked the bottle and noticed an end table covered in small objects against the far wall. One of the objects was a framed miniature painting of a figure in a barren, red landscape. My curiosity piqued, I went for a closer look, aware of Novak’s approaching steps behind me.
The figure in the painting was feminine with long black hair spilling out from a masked headdress of feathers and some kind of animal skull. She was posed in a way that seemed to indicate dancing, wearing a long necklace of skulls, black and white striped paint, and nothing else.
Recognition hit me the moment Novak spoke up. “That’s Temkra, our goddess.”
“I saw her,” I said, recalling the dancing, fanged figure that pulled me back from death. “Before I woke up as a brusang. She spoke to me.”
“Did she?” Novak handed me one of the wine glasses as he lowered into a loveseat nearby.
This end of the office was cozier, with couches and ottomans, the drink cabinet, a few messy shelves, and a large window facing the same direction as the balcony. And of course, the end table with the Temkra painting, and a few scattered objects including a small bird skull and an incense tray.
As Novak placed his feet on the ottoman, he didn’t look skeptical, but genuinely intrigued that I had seen his goddess, the mother of all vampires.
“What did she say to you?”
I took a sip of wine as I recalled it, thankful that Tavia didn’t add any blood to this one. “She said I wasn’t dead yet. That her blood was in my veins and I wasn’t finished.”
Novak’s eyebrows went up. “Wow. That had to be a strange experience. Temkra doesn’t speak to our kind very often. The recorded instances of it are few and far between.”
I stared at him. “You mean, you believe me?”
“Of course I believe you. Why wouldn’t I?”
“I dunno, it’s just… ” I went to sit next to him, propping my feet up on the same ottoman. “Human deities are a lot more intangible, I guess. There are a lot of non-believers because so much rests on having faith. When someone claims to have a special connection to God, the first thing people suspect are delusions. Maybe even a mental illness.”
Novak chuckled. “It’s not like that with us. Temkra and Rathka are very real, tangible presences in our lives. There’s enough proof of their existence that pretty much all vampires believe in them to some degree.” He looked at the miniature painting with a pensive sip of wine. “Temkra shows herself to those who pray and ask for guidance. As you can probably tell by the lack of burned incense, I haven’t tried to communicate with her in years.”
“Any reason for that?”
He shrugged with a small shake of his head. “I don’t know. Maybe I feel like she turned her back on me. Rathka did after all, why not her? In any case, there’s just nothing I have to say. Mainly I just keep the altar objects because they were my mother’s. They’re her only possessions I have.”
I pulled my legs off the ottoman, sliding my shoes off to curl my feet underneath me on the couch. The position had me leaning closer to Novak.
“Do you remember much of her?”
He sighed, slouching into the couch cushion. “Not what she looked like. Mostly her voice. She sang lullabies to me in Vampiric. And her voice was very soft as she spoke, not just to me but everyone. I get the sense that she was a very gentle person, and that made her an outcast in a very bloodthirsty, aggressive clan.”
“That’s too bad. I wonder if she was lonely.”
“I think she was.” Novak nodded. “My father kept a few blood pets. He had his favorite, my half-brother’s mother. And my mother just happened to get pregnant, so she became secondary in the ranking, you could say.”
I let my disgust show on my face. “That sounds like a very cold way to think of the mothers of your children.”
“It was. There was no relationship between them. Just sex and blood and heirs to continue our lineage.” He scoffed. “A whole lot of good that did.”
“Well your dad sounds like an ass, but your mother sounds lovely.” I rested my elbow on the back of the couch, facing Novak. “It’s a shame you didn’t have her longer.”
“Yeah.” He took a long sip of wine. “She was one of the first to succumb to Rathka’s Curse, actually. Some of my earliest memories are of her acting strange. Staring at nothing for hours. A craving for meat, and really intense mood swings. Those behaviors were so far off from her normal personality, they had to be early symptoms.”
“And the Curse never touched you?” I asked. “It wasn’t like you caught the illness and got better, you just never had it?”
“No.” Novak let out a dry laugh. “That’s the one thing that’s baffled me my entire life. The Curse spread like wildfire; it seemed so contagious. I came into contact with so many of those afflicted, and yet it never affected me.”
I paused to sip more wine and think. “I’m jealous of you.”
“Jealous?” His incredulous expression made me laugh. “Of what?”
“One,” I held up an index finger, “you had a mom, for however brief it was. Two, you must have been born with an iron-wall immune system, while I, as a preemie, had to live in an incubator for the first month of my life because my immune system was shit. And even after that, I had defects.”
“There is absolutely nothing defective about you.” The way he said it left no room for doubt, and his words warmed me all over.
“I guess that’s subjective now. But as a human, I definitely did.”
“All right, fine. Are you done humbling me?”
“Never, pretty boy.” I pressed my foot against his leg and curled my toes to grip his pant leg.
Novak made an exaggerated show of looking down his nose at my foot. “Remove your toes at once, peasant.”
“Peasant!” I cackled, waving my foot in his face. “How dare you!”
He set aside his wine and grabbed my foot, using his opposite hand to deliver a relentless tickle attack to my sole.
I screamed with laughter, kicking and flailing. “No, stop!”
Novak pulled my leg across his lap to more effectively trap my poor foot. His arm wrapped around my whole leg, bicep squeezing my thigh to hold me in place while he continued to ravage light, tickling touches across the bottom of my foot.
“I can’t breathe!” Tears squeezed out of my eyes from the force of my laughter. “Stop, I’m gonna die.”
At that, he released me, still wearing that haughty expression. “That’ll teach you.”
“Teach me what?” I struggled to catch my breath, still laughing too hard.
Finally he broke, his face stretching out into a laughing grin. “I don’t even remember what I was punishing you for.”
“Bravo.” I clapped mockingly. “You play a rich asshole very well.”
“I learned from the best.”
Only when his thumb gently stroked my ankle did I remember that my leg was still in his lap. My body must have tensed when I felt it, because the movement instantly stopped.
“Do you want me to move?” I asked.
“Only if you want to,” he answered.
My leg stayed in his lap. After a few long seconds of silence, his gentle massage of my ankle resumed.
It felt nice. Novak’s touch was so light, I knew there were no ulterior motives or expectations. It was sweet and affectionate just for the sake of it.
He switched hands, reaching for his wine nearby. I followed suit and took an indulgent sip of mine.
The silence began to feel heavy. Neither of us were blind to the fact that things were becoming more physical between us. At the same time, neither of us seemed willing to be the one to address it directly. We were friends, yes. But ever since the ceremony, we were dancing around a line that crossed from platonic to romantic.
Novak’s thumb circled my ankle bone, his touch moving slightly up my shin. He looked straight ahead at the window with the mountain view. His face looked relaxed, content. Was he happy like this, sitting here with my foot in his lap? Did he like having me around to pester him while he worked?
Or was he thinking of having these moments with someone else? Did he keep me around because I was convenient and available to him? Novak didn’t seem like that kind of guy, but that was how guys had treated me back in Sapien. And it wasn’t like I had a lot of experience with men.
“So.” I took my leg from his lap, curling them underneath me again. “I’m going back to Sapien tomorrow night.” I said the first thing to pop into my head to break the silence.
“You are?” Novak looked surprised. “Permanently?”
“Oh no, just to help Blood ‘til Dawn with rebuilding from the attack.”
“Oh.” It might have been wishful thinking, but he looked relieved. “So you’re getting more involved in clan activities, then?”
“I wouldn’t call it that. Cyan tried to talk me out of going.” I leaned my head against the back of the couch. “Be honest with me. Is it a stupid idea?”
“I can’t give a definitive answer because that’s completely subjective.”
“Stop being such a scientist, ” I whined.
Novak chuckled. “Whatever I say doesn’t matter because it would just be my opinion. You’re the one going, so what do you think?”
“I don’t know. I want to see the settlement and everyone, but I’m nervous.”
“I think it’s completely reasonable to feel that way.” Novak held up his empty wine glass. “This is good. Do you want more?”
“Yes, please.” I handed him my glass. “Told you Tavia was a winemaster.”
“Is she going with you?” Novak stood and carried our empties to the cabinet to refill them.
“No. I think she’d be perfectly content to never go back,” I admitted. “She never liked how they ran things there. Even if she never ended up with Cyan, I think she would have left to live among the vampires eventually.”
“And you felt differently?”
Novak’s back was to me as he poured our refills, looking even taller than normal from my vantage point. His legs were long and hugged by the dark gray slacks he wore. The shape of his ass was no mystery, leading up to a trim waist and broad shoulders. He turned around with an expectant look on his face, and only then did I remember he asked me a question.
“Sorry, what?”
He smirked, like he knew I was checking out his backside. “You felt differently than Tavia, about Sapien?”
“Oh, yeah I think so. Thank you.” I accepted the wine from him, watching as he sat next to me. Was he a few inches closer than before? “I felt more… loyalty to them, I guess? It’s pretty significant to be the only human settlement in Sanguine, even if everything wasn’t perfect. I wanted to help keep that going, do my part to keep human traditions alive.” I sipped from my glass, letting the wine linger on my tongue before I swallowed. “Although lately, I’ve been wondering if those traditions are even worth keeping.”
“You sound like me with my family,” Novak said. “It’s a tangled mix of feelings, isn’t it? To feel that sense of loyalty while also knowing they didn’t treat you well.”
“Yes, exactly. It’s a headfuck.”
Novak touched his glass to mine. “To loyalties that headfuck us.”
I laughed and accepted his toast. “Cheers.” After taking another sip, I added, “Thanks. You get it. I think you’re the only one that does.”
With a small smile, Novak lowered his arm from the back of the couch. It almost looked like he was going to put his hand on my leg, but he placed it in the space between us instead.
“I just hope your visit goes well, and that you get what you’re looking for out of it.”
“Me too. I still don’t entirely know what that is. Closure? Clarity? No idea, but I just know I need to see it again.”
“They better treat you with respect and decency, and not a whiff of fucking bullying. That goes for the humans and the Blood ‘til Dawn members you’ll be traveling with.”
The intensity with which he said that almost made me snicker. “Or else what?”
Novak smiled coldly and I realized he was dead serious.
“Or else they’ll contend with me.”