Chapter 6
He had moved slowly, yet mortal night-vision was poor indeed. His leman screamed, a rending sound of utter terror, and scrambled away with surprising speed, falling off the bed in her haste. A flurry of tender, delectable limbs, and she was on her feet.
Lukas had often witnessed mortal bodies knowing they could not fight, therefore choosing flight.
The trouble was, she headed straight for the windows.
She could not break the glass even with hysterical strength, but might well snap a bone or two battering against it.
A small, colorful bird, driven to panic.
Another dismal beginning. He was in motion almost before realizing it, his arms closing around her once more. Her legs kept going, thrashing blindly.
If not for the soft broken sounds of distress, it would have been extremely pleasant. She sounded lost, miserable, and truly hopeless; a strange sensation filled his chest, as if she had sought to stab him again.
Heartbreak. Oh, that’s lovely. Also uncomfortable, yet the sheer gorgeousness of emotion again after so long was perilously akin to a drug’s swimming disorientation.
Some substances could affect the claret, of course, but by and large any fledgling surviving past their first century was proof against any toxin.
How much more an elder, then, and by the time one reached daywalker status, all fear of poison was long gone.
The effects were marvelous, jolts of sensation where only the slow creeping numbness of age had rested, new context and interest filling the world.
Many of the old traditions around leman had become starkly clear to him in the past day or so; the protective instincts outstripped even mating urges, and both paled beside sheer wonder.
But what did you do with a mortal in such terror?
Normal methods—a cervical snap, draining them with a few quick gulps while the quietus squeezed, or panic-herding them into a river—did not apply.
The back of her head bumped his chin, and she could very well cause herself injury against his greater durability as well.
Nothing for it, then. He had tried, but as so often, ruthlessness was best. His true teeth were already out, throb-aching, a burst of change agents filling his mouth with hot liquid sugar.
He had to wait for a breath as she wriggled, but the moment she flung her head back again he struck, burying primary, secondary, and lower fangs deep. She froze, sucking in a shocked gasp, and the tiny sound fused a deep, heretofore unknown circuit inside his ageless skull.
His mouth was full of nectar. The first swallow erased any previous vintage; now even the most vital of mortals held only silty sludge in their veins—nutritious enough, to be sure, and he would be hunting for two.
Without a leman, the only temporary relief from calcification was an old-fashioned feast, with all the danger that implied.
Yet now the risk of bloodcraze was gone, the glut-urge with it, and though the control necessary to drink without killing was a reflex burned below conscious thought, he would never be tempted again.
Not in that direction, at least. Now the only thing he craved shuddered in his arms, attempting to fight the quietus with surprising strength.
He was also tempted to bite a little harder, but there was a line between lesson and cruelty.
The first was necessary for fledglings or dogsbodies; the second unthinkable for a leman.
Sweet. So sweet. They were to be prized, these succulent bulwarks against calcification. Pampered, indulged—and held, with any and every strength a sanguinant could muster. He also found he lacked even the passing, reflexive desire for savagery.
So he took a last shallow, lingering swallow, enjoying the deep honeyed burn, and let his teeth shift back to bluntness.
Licked along the punctures, cleaning throughly, and the healing substances from different glands turned his lips numb for a moment.
Traces of her spread through his veins, a maze of firefly lights.
Now her fragrance held a hint of burning. No doubt the largest component was pure surpassing fear, but another note was his own scent, spreading in thin tendrils from the bite until the message was unmistakable.
Do not touch. Or, even more starkly, Mine.
“Be still,” he murmured in her ear. Her blood lingered on his tongue, and with it a rush of chaotic emotion.
Raw, untinctured terror, defiance, a concentrated sorrow too large for words, all bursting like a pierced artery.
“It is done. A little sting, and all is well. Everything else will be much more pleasant, I promise.”
She coughed weakly, hanging in his grasp. Had he taken too much? Barely a taste...but she was so thin, and mortal besides.
“At least tell me your name,” he continued, soft, so softly.
Sooner or later, she would—or the searches already deployed, electronic and otherwise, would turn something up.
She had covered her tracks rather thoroughly, though he was keeping in reserve the questioning of a certain petty criminal she had apparently purchased services from.
Tracking her from the fellow’s warehouse-hideout had been enjoyable but not, in the end, very complex.
Still, if she kept to the fiction of Sarah Monroe, unraveling the lie would be an interesting game. Lukas allowed his arms to loosen, bent to place her gingerly upon dainty feet. The night-dress was far too long, though its clinging—like the towel—left very little to be imagined.
He did not straighten, did not let go entirely. A delicate situation, requiring concentration and care; it was a joy to have something so deliciously complicated to absorb.
“You...bit me?” Dazed, slightly slurred, the words blurring together beautifully. She did have a lovely voice, even roughened from terrified cries. “Oh my fucking god you bit me.”
“I will do much more than that.” A heady promise, indeed. “Be reasonable, little leman. I can and will explain whatever you like, but you must help me.”
“Help you? Help you?” At least she was hissing instead of screaming; she sounded positively incensed. If this were her anger, he could not wait to see other states of excitement. “You murdering vampire fuck, you think I’m going to help you do anything, I swear to God—”
“Do not,” he interrupted sharply, “make an oath you do not intend to keep.” For a dogsbody, the command would be more than enough; it was an effort to think of what else to add, what a leman might require. “Please.”
The single taste of her did not entirely satisfy. As distracting as her physical closeness now was the mounting, blurring buzz of desire, and her shivering infected him as well.
She had slept in this room; the bed was saturated with that intoxicating fragrance. He was in the thrall very badly now, and hoped she would not move.
At least, some fading restraint in him hoped that. The rest was longing for her to take a single step, attempt escape. Any move would break the stasis, and he would give in.
“If you’re going to kill me, do it now.” Brittle defiance, at what had to be the extreme edge of her courage. Were all leman so determined? “Because I’m going to avenge my brother, even if you do turn me into a bloodbag slave.”
I never did that, not even in Venizia. There was no need, and besides, at that point he had already been rather jaded. “I have no desire to break you, little leman.”
She was silent for a few ragged breaths, shaking, safely caged. “So, what?” A forlorn question, expecting nothing good. “What are you going to do?”
“Take you to bed,” he heard himself say, in a soft, musing tone. “Unless you would prefer to discuss matters without moving, so I may regain some control. Whatever you choose.”
“Oh, now the monster wants to discuss. Why not pop my head off like a Pez dispenser? Did I not stake you hard enough?”
“The blow would not have entered without help.” He was doing rather well, Lukas thought.
His shaking was nearly imperceptible, and though the end was assured he could postpone true fulfillment some short while.
“I thought it polite to let you try, in order to discern what precisely you desired.” The blur-buzzing intensified pleasantly, a hum settled in reinforced, thicker sanguinant bones.
The Gift would render her far stronger and more robust, but she would never match an elder’s strength or speed, let alone his. An edge to be thankful for, since he suspected this leman would swiftly learn how to use his absolute craving to gain anything she wished.
Another wonderful prospect.
“I want you dead.” Fierce and clear. “You murdered my brother, you bastard, and I want you dead.”
And of course, since it was clearly not in her nature to be reasonable, she attempted to elbow him rather viciously, twisting in his arms and scraping her bare heel down his shin as well. She had trained in some manner of self-defense; had he been mortal she might have had a chance.
Finally. The leash snapped, and Lukas found himself momentarily free.