by Maria Arnt
Would she want to?
Deep down, she knew she was being stupid. But she had never killed a human being, and she didn’t want to change that. A nasty voice in the back of her head reminded her that if she would just sleep with the gorgeous man, she wouldn’t have this problem. That seemed even less appealing, not that he wasn’t attractive, or that he hadn’t been good in bed.... she reigned in her train of thought. He already had too much power over her, she didn’t want to give him that, too.
You can’t have your cake and eat it too, little Tatiana, the memory of Nana reminded her. She always hated that expression—what was the point of a cake if you couldn’t eat it?
She opened her eyes once more to see that Seth was still crouched next to her, waiting. She could tell that he had the patience of a rock. So it was going to be that kind of battle—the immovable object versus the unstoppable force.
“I’m going to meditate,” she announced.
His forehead furrowed. “What?”
“You told me that the meditation you taught me helps gather and preserve energy. I’m going to do that instead of feeding.” It was worth a try anyway.
Seth let out a long sigh and stood up. He stared down at her as she sat up, rearranging her limbs into the lotus position. “Do you never learn except the hard way?” he asked, exasperated.
She snapped one eye open to glare at him. “Meditating here,” she reminded him, and returned to the task at hand.
There was silence for a moment, then he muttered some foreign curse, and she heard him storm out of the room. The tiniest smile tugged at the corner of her lips. It was a small victory, but it was hers.
Seth swirled the amber liquid in the bottom of his glass, thinking. The noise of his favorite club helped, the chaos and flashing lights were like a familiar lullaby by now. Why must she be so difficult? he wondered for the hundredth time.
Three nights she had been at it, dragging herself down the stairs to meditate in the training room, playing soothing music, and crawling back up in the morning. It was no way to live, and it couldn’t last much longer.
The infuriating thing was she wasn’t all wrong. A life spent in quiet meditation could greatly lengthen the time between feedings, he knew vampires who chose that path, but not newly-made vampires. She wanted too much, too quickly, and not at all the things he wanted for her. He had known she was strong and tenacious, but these virtues were quickly becoming vices the way she wielded them.
“You all right there, Casanova?” the waitress, Isabel, asked as she stopped near his table. He had watched her work up the nerve to do so for the last half hour.
“Yes, Izzy, thank you for asking,” he smiled, making an effort not to pour too much charm into it.
“Would you like a top-off?” she lifted the pitcher of beer she carried.
Before he could answer, there was a shout at the bar as a woman shoved at a smarmy-faced man.
“Oh no,” Izzy sighed.
“Troublemaker?” Seth asked.
“Creep is more like it. He keeps offering to pay them when they say no. Watch,” she instructed, leaning against the table.
As they looked on, the man said something that caused the young woman he was accosting to throw her drink in his face.
“Right on cue,” she shook her head.
“Do you want me to take care of him?” he asked, watching as the man quickly lost his temper. He could tell it was about to get ugly.
Izzy shot him a frightened look. Whatever she told herself he was, on a certain level she must know he was more than he appeared. “I don’t...” she stuttered.
He put a hand over hers. “I’m not going to kill him,” he said jokingly, but judging by her relaxed expression, she caught the truth behind it. And it was true, strictly speaking, he had no intention to kill him personally, but a plan was quickly forming in his mind. “I’ll just make sure he never comes back here,” he promised.
She frowned, glancing between him and the quickly escalating situation. “Well someone ought to do something,” she sighed.
He slid out of the booth, suggesting that she mark up the night’s drinks on his tab. He didn’t catch her response, as he saw the man raise his arm. It never lowered, although he did pull against Seth’s hand with considerable force.
“Is there a problem here?” he asked when the brute figured out what happened and glared at him.
“Back off, asshole,” he growled.
“It’s pretty clear the young lady doesn’t like you,” he pointed out. Said young lady threw him a grateful glance and high-tailed it to the restrooms.
“It’s none of your fucking business,” he argued, pulling his hand away, and then shoved at him. Seth sold it a little, stumbling back half a step.
“Hey!” the bartender shouted. “No fights in here, or I call the cops.”
“Shall we take this outside?” Seth challenged him. He may have put a little too much threat into his voice, as the man hesitated a moment, looking him over. “Unless you don’t think you’re up to it,” he sneered, spreading his arms. He was not, he knew, a very imposing figure in the purely physical sense, his opponent had a good ten stone on him.
Right on cue, the man’s rage returned. He blundered past Seth for the door, shoving his shoulder into him as he passed. Seth shot a smile towards the bartender and then followed after.
Outside, the man turned to face Seth, checking to see that the street was empty. It was late, or rather early, and the line at the door had long since vanished. He spat noisily, and actually put up his fists, like a boxer. Clearly, the man had little to no actual fighting experience.
“The man two stools down was an undercover cop,” Seth lied bluntly.
“What?” his hands dropped a few inches.
“Vice department,” he elaborated, since he knew he had heard him the first time.
“Oh, shit,” he muttered, dropping his arms completely. “How do you know?”
He gave him a sly smile. “Because it’s my business to know,” he closed the distance between them, lowering his voice. “If you’re looking for paid companionship you are looking in all the wrong places.”
The man gave him a disgusted look. “You’re not my type.”
He rolled his eyes. “Don’t confuse the merchant with his wares.” He pulled out his phone, opening a file and flipping through the images. “Is this more your type?” he asked, turning it so he could see the screen. It wasn’t the best picture of Tatiana he had ever taken, but it was the only one he’d had the opportunity to snap since he had turned her.
Stepping closer to get a better look, the man raised an interested eyebrow. “How much?”
Oh, damn. He thought quickly. How much was a man expected to pay for a night’s pleasure these days? It wasn’t the sort of thing he usually needed to know. Influencing humans was difficult, but this cretin wasn’t much of a challenge. He listed a figure, and whatever it was he heard, he liked.
“Where to, then?” he asked cheerfully.
“You parked out back?” Seth asked.
“Nah, suspended license. Took an uber,” he complained.
Excellent, one less mess to clean up. “Then allow me to be your chauffeur as well,” he smiled and gestured towards the parking lot.
“Wow, swanky place,” Chuck said as they entered by the kitchen door. They had talked on the way over, and Seth had managed to extract his name and the fact that he had few connections. Not surprising as his personality was remarkably off-putting.
“Thank you,” he said graciously.
“So, uh, do I pay you now, or after...?” he made a rude gesture.
He clenched his teeth a moment and gave him a deadly smile. “After shall be just fine,” he ground out. “Oh, and one more thing.”
“What?” he sighed impatiently.
“Hold still,” he said, his voice weighty with the power behind it.
Chuck froze, his eyes going wide in fear. Seth pulled a small knife from his pocket, opened it
, and cut a line along his cheek slowly, listening to the ragged sound of Chuck’s breath. Once done, he wiped the blade on the paralyzed man’s shirt, put it away, and released him.
“What the fuck?!” he demanded, clutching his face. “Are you fucking crazy?”
He just smiled. “If I were you, I would find a place to hide,” he suggested.
He stared at Seth a moment, and then glanced at the door behind him. Seth could almost see his pathetic mind trying to choose between fight and flight. Unsurprisingly, he chose the latter and dashed out of the kitchen and into the apartment proper.
It was too bad the apartment was so small, he mused. Not big enough for a really good hunt. But at least all this nonsense would soon be over....
17
Tanya felt the nights began to run together. Wake up. Go downstairs. Meditate. Go upstairs. Sleep. Rinse, lather, repeat. Giggle.
On the upside, she had gotten way better at meditating. She felt so weak and dizzy, it wasn’t difficult to slide into a kind of trance where she forgot she even had a body. She remembered some story she’d heard about Buddha meditating for a month without eating and wondered if this was how he felt.
She was aware of Seth, though distantly. He came and went. Sometimes he tried to talk to her, but even when she opened her eyes it was like he was on the other side of thick glass, his voice muffled and his figure blurry.
The only thing she couldn’t ignore was the thirst. Her throat burned with it, and sometimes she imagined she was stumbling through the Sahara towards some oasis mirage. It was so real in her head that she could feel the hot wind, the sand shifting under her feet. It worried her distantly that she was starting to hallucinate, but it was too welcome a distraction.
Sometimes she would imagine she was talking to someone. She didn’t know who, or what they talked about.... but it felt nice to have someone to shoot the shit with. Made her feel more human. It was during one of these imaginary conversations that she was startled to hear a voice respond.
It was not a familiar voice, and she couldn’t understand what it was saying, and she wasn’t entirely sure she hadn’t imagined it. Then she heard Seth’s deep tenor and thought she must have just heard him and not recognized it. She went back to meditating, breathing deeply in through her nose and out through her mouth. In through the nose, out through the mouth. In through the—
What is that smell? She took another deep breath, racking her brain for all the scents Seth had made her study. She couldn’t put a name to it, and yet it seemed very familiar. And it made her mouth water.
Before she realized it, she was on her feet and wobbling towards the training room door. Halfway there, she sort of forgot what she was doing, but her feet kept moving anyway. She felt like she was swimming through jello, moving in slow motion. She made it to the door and leaned against it heavily. The smell was stronger in the living room, and as her gaze slid across the familiar furnishings, she noticed the door to the outside, the one she had never gone through. Trudging towards it, she could see there was something smeared on the handle, and on the keypad next to it.
Crouching down, she sniffed. Whatever it was, it smelled really damn good. She touched it, finding it thick and a little sticky, like wet paint. Without thinking, she stuck her fingers in her mouth.
Blood.
All of a sudden, her mind cleared a little, and she wondered why she hadn’t thought of it before. Of course it was blood, but whose? Seth was the only other person she had ever seen in the apartment, and she knew instinctively this was not his blood. She could not quite recall the exact flavor, but this was far too mundane. No, this was the blood of a human.
Tanya turned around, scanning the room. Closing her eyes, she tried to follow the scent alone. She giggled as the old fairy tale rhyme popped into her head: fee, fi, fo, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman. She tamped down on the laughter, reminding herself that since it was not Seth’s blood, it wasn’t likely to be that of an Englishman.
By this time she had followed the smell to the staircase, where she found more blood on the handrail. Looking up, she could see several of the bedroom doors were ajar. Excited, she hurried up the stairs, absentmindedly trailing her hand over the blood-smeared railing.
The first two rooms were empty. Before she even entered the third, the one right next to the stairs, she could hear the rapid heartbeat of someone within. They weren’t exactly being quiet, either, thumping their hands on the wall and ranting about something to do with windows. Pushing the door the rest of the way open, she saw a heavy-set man, middle-aged, running his hands along the wall. One of them had left a smear of blood on the neutral paint.
He must have heard her come in, because he whirled around, looking frightened and then relieved. He started jabbering at her, but she was too distracted by the enormous gash down the side of his face to pay any attention to what he was saying. So that’s where all the blood came from... she thought distantly.
She reached out to him, and he came right to her, which made her smile. He took a tight hold of her hand and continued blabbing, and she could feel his pulse through his thick, meaty fingers. This close, she could hear his heart laboring to keep its frantic pace. He was frightened, she realized. He’d stopped talking and was looking at her strangely.
All she could think was, I wonder what his blood tastes like when it didn’t come off a doorknob.
So she leaned forward to lick his face and find out. If the girl at the bar had been like gourmet tomato soup, this guy was cheap, store-brand spaghetti sauce. But I like spaghetti sauce, she reminded herself, and decided it was worth another taste.
She didn’t know how much time passed, but when she once again became aware of her surroundings, it was to awaken into a nightmare.
Blood pervaded her every sense, she could taste it in her mouth and smell it thick in her nose, and feel it, oh god, she could feel it everywhere.... On her hands, and face, and soaking her T-shirt all down her front. Looking down had been a mistake, she realized, when she saw the man—the body of the man—who she—that she....
“Come away darling,” Seth’s voice said softly. She glanced up to see him standing in the doorway, looking relaxed and pleased. “No need to concern yourself with the mess, I’ll clean it up.”
“Wha...” she could hardly find her voice for a moment, like a terrible dream where you try to scream and nothing comes out. “What have you done?!” she screamed.
He raised his eyebrows. “What have I done?” he asked sarcastically. “I think it’s quite clear what, or rather who, the cause of death was,” he gestured to her scarlet-spattered self.
“And how did he get in here?!” she demanded, suddenly realizing what must have happened, why the man’s face had been cut. She looked down, but there wasn’t much left of his face anymore. She wanted to be sick again, but she didn’t feel the slightest twinge of nausea.
“I did, yes, but you were the one who put yourself in the condition that led to this,” he said condescendingly. “You were going to feed eventually, and you had put it off so long that you could not help but kill your next victim. So I went out and found an appropriate sacrifice to your pride and stubbornness.”
Tanya gaped at him, horrified. “How could you...” she stammered.
“Easily. If it helps you, he wasn’t a very good person. I convinced him to come here under the pretense of paying for your company,” he elaborated.
Ugh. That was enough to make her push the man’s body away in distaste. But she was still angry at Seth. “You don’t get to choose who lives and who dies like you’re God or something! Who the fuck do you think you are?!” she shouted.
“A god, yes!” he shouted back, stopping her rant in its tracks. “And I assure you, punishment of the wicked is well within my purview.”
She stared up at him for what felt like a full minute. “You’re bat-shit crazy,” she realized aloud.
“Am I?” he seemed offended. “Tatiana, you know so very little about me. How
old do you suppose I am?”
She frowned, he was changing the subject. “I dunno, over a thousand? That doesn’t change the fact that—”
“Five thousand, four hundred and thirty-six, give or take a few centuries,” he interrupted. “The dating systems are difficult to track.”
Her mouth opened and closed, trying to find the words. She grasped desperately at the remnants of her high-school history class. “But that’s like... the stone age,” she argued.
“The bronze age,” he corrected snidely, “and well into it, too. Egypt was the paradigm of civilization, and had been for centuries when I came to inhabit this form.”
Egypt? Her mind raced, remembering all the mythology he had spouted at her, about the goddess of death and her priests who became gods. “So you... you think you’re that guy in the book...” she laughed, overwhelmed by the unreality of this conversation, over the mangled body between them.
“That appears to be how I was trapped in this body, but who I was before that is far more important.” He seemed pleased that she was following along.
She wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer to her next question. “And who was that...?”
Seth smiled, and the way he carried himself changed dramatically, and she could feel his power lifting the hairs on her arms.
“Set,” he said, and the word seemed too big for the small room.
Right. Of course.
And that was when she passed out.
It wouldn’t have been possible to wake up to something worse, but sitting in the tub naked while Seth scrubbed her face was damn near close. She shoved him away, trying to cover herself with her arms, before snatching the washcloth from his hands. The small scrap of fabric didn’t help much.
He just sighed heavily, perched on the edge of the first stair into the tub, his slacks hiked up to his knees, and his shirtsleeves rolled past the elbows. “Tatiana, it’s nothing I haven’t already seen,” he said exasperatedly.