Chapter 12
Twelve
Tai was a bloodfiend.
She couldn’t process it. Too many implications hurtled full-speed at her brain, and some of them made her want to scream or cry, and now wasn’t the time for indulging either of those impulses. Right now, Tai needed help.
“Can you switch places with me?” she asked again.
He seemed not to have heard her the first time, but that was only a guess.
She had no idea what happened in a vampire’s brain when the thirst attacked like this.
Tai was clearly in physical pain, clearly fighting a battle with himself.
He clung to the steering wheel as though this point of contact was the only thing preventing him from tearing off into the night to…
To hunt humans. To slake from humans.
She tried to imagine what Peter would tell her to do, but if Peter struggled the way Tai was struggling right now, he’d never told her. She nudged Tai’s rigid shoulder.
“Tai, I’m going to help you, but—”
“Help,” he whispered, and her heart gave a hard beat that hurt for him.
“I will help. I promise. But for me to drive, to help, you have to move. Can you do that?”
He nodded. He lifted his head for the first time in what felt like a year, and his eyes… They were past dilation, solid black to the cornea.
“If I try to get away,” he rasped quietly, his beautiful baritone in raw tatters, “you have to stop me.”
“I will.”
“Whatever it takes. If you have to hurt me to stop me, then do it, Claire. Never let me hurt a human.”
She took his face between her hands and stared into his black eyes, and Tai stared straight back at her, all of him, letting her into his anguish and his fear. “I promise I will not let you hurt anyone. Whatever it takes.”
His hands curved around hers. She wanted to let him hold onto her, though she didn’t know how she understood in this moment that he needed to hold on, needed to hold her. Then Tai released her hands, and Claire lowered them to her sides.
Simultaneously they got out of the car and walked around the hood.
When they passed each other, she took his hand and squeezed, and he squeezed back.
She watched, coiled for action, as he slid into the passenger seat and shut the door.
He made no attempt to escape. Instead he curled into a ball on the seat, arms wrapped around his bent knees, face hidden against his thighs.
This was the man who had held the banquet room in thrall a few hours ago.
The man who spoke with such ease to a room full of people, who admired art, enjoyed food, composed original music, and made a tuxedo look scandalously hot.
This same man experienced vampire thirst as an agonizing drive and need.
Tai was a bloodfiend. And Claire hadn’t known.
She slid behind the wheel, tucked the folds of her dirty gown away from the door, shut it maybe a little too hard, and began driving.
Illegally, on the shoulder. Not far from a whole line of police cars, one of which had deliberate line of sight to the shoulder and the exit ahead.
Maybe they’d all be too preoccupied with the wreck to stop her.
No such luck. The nearest squad car popped its siren and pulled onto the shoulder to block her. Instantly Tai sat up, his feet on the floor, his arms at his sides. As the officer got out of his car and approached Claire’s window, Tai looked out the passenger side.
How much control did he have left? Would she have to fight him to protect the human officer?
She rolled her window down, then set both hands on the wheel at ten and two.
“Ma’am, we’re going to route y’all off here as soon as we can, but—” He peered closer at her, then into the car at the back of Tai’s head. “Hey, you’re the vampires who helped out.”
“Yes, sir,” Claire said. “And I’m sorry to cut the line, but after that degree of physical exertion, we need to slake.”
“I’ve heard of that.” The officer pursed his lips in thought, then nodded.
“Guess it wouldn’t be fair to leave y’all hangry for another hour.
You really were a big help to us. All right, I’m going to back up and let you out.
Then I’ll park across the shoulder again so a hundred cars don’t follow you before we can get directions set up. ”
“Thank you so much.” She gave him an easy smile that betrayed none of the thoughts zipping through her head and none of the anxiety that any moment, Tai would dart out of the car to grab the man and break the most sacred vampire code in existence.
“No problem. Y’all have a good night, and thanks again.”
She rolled the window back up. Tai had gone into statue mode. “Tai?”
No response, not even a twitch.
“Just tell me you’re still okay.”
The cop car backed up, and Claire continued forward on the shoulder, squinting as her rearview mirror caught his lights.
In a few minutes, she exited the highway.
She made it to Slake It Off about fifteen minutes later, just after midnight.
Tai still hadn’t said a word or moved a muscle.
Claire parked in the employee lot and shut off the car, then turned in her seat to face him.
“We’re here. Ready to go inside?”
His left hand, resting at his side, tightened to a fist. Then, as she got out of the car, he did the same.
She kept her arm around his waist as she unlocked the entrance behind the building and disarmed the security alarm.
She guided him through barely lit corridors, past the break room to the front.
At the bar, she walked him all the way to one of the stools. Then she slipped behind the counter.
Tai watched her every move with the attention of a cobra waiting to strike.
He was still there somewhere, behind his eyes, but she couldn’t see the things that made him Tai.
He stared at her as coldly as if she were a stranger, even an enemy.
When she opened one of the fridges, Tai’s lips drew back from his teeth to reveal his fangs.
When she pulled a blood bag and offered it to him, he snatched it from her hand with a loud hiss.
Then his face changed. His eyes focused on her, saw her. He stared down at the bag in his hand.
“Tai, it’s okay. You need to slake. Go ahead and slake.”
He let out a sound she’d never heard from a vampire before, a garbled blend of hiss and groan. He squeezed his eyes shut for about twenty seconds. Then he opened them, tore the seal on the bag, and drank.
He drained every last drop as fast as she’d ever seen a vampire drain a bag. It dropped to the floor as he folded over onto the bar, forehead resting on his arms. He began to shake.
When Ryker forgot to slake, his hands trembled for about a minute after he finally remembered and did. This was different. Tai’s whole body was wracked. Claire slid from behind the bar to stand beside him.
“Shh, it’s okay, Tai. You’re okay.”
And then she did the thing she’d been yearning to do. It wasn’t so much a decision as an instinct. She perched on the stool beside him, drew Tai into her arms, and let him rest there. He clung to her. His head fell to her shoulder. His hands pressed her back as if he needed her closer.
“I’m sorry,” he said. His voice was back, rich and smoky, thick with emotion but no longer rasping. His fangs made a hiss of every s. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“Hey, shh, it’s okay. Tai, listen to me. It’s okay.”
“It was too much. I tried to fight it, but it was too much.”
“Of course it was. Blood in the air, human pain and fear, sensory overload, immense physical exertion—you couldn’t have planned a worse combination for a bloodfiend. This isn’t your fault.”
“I wasn’t strong enough.”
“No. Listen to me.” She drew back and brushed his hair away with gentle fingers, and he shivered at her touch. “I don’t know how you didn’t lose control. The strength you showed tonight was incredible.”
He held eye contact this time, didn’t turn away or shut his eyes. A thin ring of silver now showed around his pupils. “It’s weakness. It’s the worst possible weakness a vampire can have.”
“You told me you’ve never hurt a human. That proves you’re not weak at all, Tai. Based on tonight alone, you’re the strongest vampire I know, and I wish I…”
Puzzle pieces that she’d shoved aside while she prioritized getting them here suddenly clicked together. She no longer wanted to hold him; she wanted to yell. But he wasn’t ready for the next discussion.
“Are you okay to sit for a minute?”
Tai nodded. “You said you needed to slake. Please go ahead. I’m fine.”
That he thought fine was an accurate word to describe him right now made her want to yank her hair out in addition to yelling at him.
“And thank you,” he said.
She couldn’t respond to gratitude either. She didn’t want to fight while his pain was so freshly exposed, but he’d kept this from her for no good reason, and… “When I’m done, we need to talk.”
Another nod.
Claire poured herself a glass of her favorite, type A.
She sipped and closed her eyes as her fangs descended, as renewed energy poured into her body, stopped the sting of a few scrapes on her right arm she hadn’t noticed until now.
She drew a deep, cleansing breath, a trick she’d learned from humans in general and Ember in particular.
She finished the glass, and her body settled into a refreshed sense of vitality.
Now to have it out with the most frustrating man on the planet.
“Come on,” she said. “There’s a little break room in the back, with a couch and stuff.”