by Joey W. Hill
Gideon studied her a long minute. Ella was ninety-nine percent sure of it, but when he inclined his head at last, she felt a surge of wonder, seeing it confirmed.
“Thank you. I’m not asking just out of curiosity.”
“I figured that.” His firm mouth quirked. “So now that you’re part of the secret club, what’s on your mind?”
She wanted to hug him, but she held back, staying on target. “I wanted to ask you about some things, if you’re okay with that. If there’s no rule against it.”
“None that I’ve been told,” he said.
“Which means maybe Wolf hasn’t thought to tell you not to tell me anything, because he didn’t anticipate me thinking to ask you.”
“That’s a mouthful.” Gideon’s blue eyes sparked with dry humor. “And you’re smart enough to have figured out that coming here at the height of the day is the best time for your Dom not to be listening in.”
She had the grace to blush and focus on opening the snack pack. “So, am I out of line?”
Gideon nudged her with his shoulder. “Do I look like a Dom to you?”
“Well, sometimes.” She gave him a crooked grin. “But more alpha than anything else.”
“Smart girl. Yeah, that’s what I’ve been told. It’s cool, Ella. Sometimes you work around them a bit, to figure out how best to take care of them.”
That was a relief to hear. “Are you okay with me asking you questions that might get…personal?”
He pursed his lips. “Maybe. If you flash your tits at me.”
She punched him in the arm and he chuckled. “Had to get you to loosen up. You looked too serious. Go ahead and ask your questions. Let’s go down the rabbit hole.”
She brought both her feet up, bending her knees against her chest, and rocked on the point of her buttocks. As she popped her soda top and took a sip, she jumped right in. “I’ve heard him and Anwyn say things like first mark, second mark, third mark, full servant. What does all that mean?”
“Easy, academic stuff first. They can bind a human to them with three different marks. The first is a geographical locator. It tells them where you are, within a certain range, and some of the older vamps can tell if you’re in distress or danger, but it doesn’t give them any other access to the marked human’s mind.”
Her brow furrowed. “Can they skip one? Do they have to do them in order?”
“Nope and yes.” He nudged her. “My understanding from Anwyn is that he gave you the first mark a while back, to help us keep track of you. You tend to wander like one of Anwyn’s stray cats.”
She suddenly recalled, with great clarity, the several times he’d bitten her, but she remembered the time in the massage room the most, because it had felt…more tingly. She was willing to bet that was when he’d done it. She’d ask him.
“Second mark.” Gideon continued. “They can read your mind and you can read theirs, if they let you. They can close down that link pretty easily, except when they’re under attack or great physical distress.”
“Like when Wolf was blown up.”
“Yep. Again, a lot of this stuff can vary, depending on the age or maturity of the vampire. Some can see things through your eyes with the second mark, some can only hear your thoughts and put together the visuals through that.”
“Do you know how old Wolf is?”
“Born 1946.”
“Oh.” She hadn’t expected such a direct answer. “So his military experience…”
“Vietnam.”
Amazing. And terrible. She thought of the scar tissue she’d felt during his massage, still existing beneath the skin, despite being a vampire.
“Anwyn became one after the alley thing, didn’t she?”
He nodded, a shadow crossing his gaze. “She’s what they call a fledgling. Wolf is still considered pretty young, but no longer a fledgling, mostly because he’s a made vampire. It’s a weird thing. Made vampires who are stable, they mature faster than born vampires in some ways, in the sense they gain control over their bloodlust faster. A born vampire is pretty much considered a ‘teenager,’ until they hit the first century mark, and then they’re like a twenty-something until two hundred. But a big percentage of made vampires don’t stabilize, which is why they’re considered inferior stock next to born ones. Though some of that has less to do with reality than your typical elitism, same as humans who think their bloodlines make them better.”
“Okay.” She digested that. “That’s two marks. Will you tell me about the third? I get the feeling it’s really important.”
“It is.” He gave her a steady look. “It’s the point of no return. A third mark is a full servant. That’s when you’re bound to that vampire in every conceivable way. Head, heart and soul. Supposedly you’re even bound to him or her through eternity. That idea got started because if your vampire dies, you die, within minutes or even instantly.”
“Whoa.” She blinked. “Yeah, that would make you wonder about the afterlife, wouldn’t it?”
Gideon lifted a shoulder. “Or it might be the result of some kind of chemical binding that happens during the third mark, reinforced by years of blood sharing. Lord Brian, he’s the science guy for the vampires, is always quick to point out there are plenty of things which have been called the will of the gods, that eventually turned out to be simple science.”
“So if either dies, they both die,” she said thoughtfully.
“No,” Gideon said. “The vampire doesn’t die if the servant dies, but supposedly it feels like having a limb cut off, especially if the bond has been there awhile. But as extreme as that sounds, that’s not the biggest thing about being a third mark that you need to understand.”
He paused, as if looking for the right words. “They can be in your head like the second mark, but even deeper.”
“Okay. I get it. I think.”
He shook his head. “I’m not sure anyone really does, until they feel it. There’s no way to keep them out, Ella. They can know whatever they want, even things you don’t know about yourself, or want anyone else in the world to know.”
His jaw flexed, his eyes hardening on hers. “If you resist it, it can be as invasive as rape. A vampire who third marks you could strip your mind, your soul. Hollow you out if he or she wanted to do so. Leave you nothing but a drooling vegetable. You are giving another being, a much more powerful one, total control over everything you are.”
“You’re trying to scare me.”
“No trying about it. You’re second marked now. Servants watch out for one another. We’re kind of like an unspoken trade union, and us keeping each other informed sometimes prevents really bad things from happening.” He tugged her hair, not teasingly, but to emphasize their bond, his care for her. “Vampires are a distinct species, with traits unique to them. Some are born, some are made. Even with a made vampire, the biology of being a vampire pretty quickly starts to override the human perspective. They’re top of the world food chain when it comes to basic predator rules. They can’t go out in daylight and they depend on human blood to live, and those two absolutes provide the only advantages we have over them.”
On topics that mattered, Gideon was as serious and stern as Wolf. So when he paused to gather his thoughts, Ella stayed silent, waiting for more.
“At Atlantis, some people enjoy the whole Master/slave thing, or the idea that they totally belong to their Dom. A vampire-full servant relationship is the real deal. When you’re deciding to become a vampire’s full servant, you are making the ultimate leap of faith, believing in that vampire’s regard for you, but you’re also accepting that they will see you as their property. No matter how cherished, you’re theirs. All vampires are sexual Dominants, Ella. Sexual Dominants on freaking steroids and then some.”
He shook his head. “The only choice a human has is whether or not they want to be a full servant. After that, all choices belong to the vampire. I don’t care how much a made vampire like Wolf, or even Anwyn, claims otherwise, that sense of t
he servant as fully owned property of that vampire is something a vampire can’t unwrite from their DNA. Even the rewriting that happens to the made ones.”
He pinned her with a flat stare. “In the vampire world, servants have zero rights. I mean zero. There are some moves happening away from that, and some instances where exceptions have been made due to the relationship a specific vamp has with their servant, but that’s at the whim of the Council or the ruling vampire over the situation. What they do today can be changed tomorrow. Right now, if your vampire wants to torture you for three years running, he can. If he wants to kill you and get a new servant, he can. Up until recently, that’s been the preferred way of handling a servant you don’t want, because you can’t let them go back to a regular human life with the knowledge he or she has. Can’t even do that with a second mark.”
“So if Wolf leaves and doesn’t want me to go with him…”
“Then a case would have to be made to the Council that you’re under Anwyn’s direct supervision and therefore safe from being a danger of exposure to the human world. Fortunately, that’s a pretty strong argument, so you don’t have to worry about it.”
“They don’t have to kill me. Comforting”
He slanted her a grim smile. “Isn’t it?”
“You’re telling me all the bad stuff, and I get why you’re doing that. But tell me something not so bad.”
He paused, considering, then nodded. “As a third mark, there’s nothing or no one you’ll ever feel more connected to than your vampire. You’ll live up to three hundred years as a third mark. You’ll be their primary food source, the one who can do daylight things for them, watch over their sleeping spot. There are really so many things it is, and isn’t, that it can’t be fully described unless you know it firsthand.”
“You made that choice with Anwyn. And maybe not just Anwyn?”
At his look, she proceeded hesitantly. “The other one, Scary Guy. The night Anwyn came back onto the floor fulltime, I saw him. I also saw the way he looked at her. But he looked at you the same way. So I figured he and Anwyn…share.”
“Scary Guy.” A flicker of humor and something else passed through his gaze. “Yeah. They’ve both marked me. Ella, do you know what Wolf’s intentions are?”
She bit her lip. “He’s made it pretty clear we’re right now, and that’s it. I can feel how much he wants me, but he didn’t intend to second mark me. And he hasn’t explained any of this to me. So that’s pretty clear proof he doesn’t intend us to go down this road, right?”
A few minutes ago, saying that aloud might have hurt worse, but now, thinking about what Gideon had described, she wondered if Wolf had been trying to protect her. Not wanting to draw her into such a brutal world. Odd how that didn’t make her feel lots better, when it should. Twisted idiot that she was, it just focused her on how he didn’t want to share everything about who he was with her.
“Intentions don’t always pan out in any world, let alone the vampire ones.” A sudden discomfort gripped Gideon’s expression, as if he were trying to determine how much more to say. Then he spoke flatly, decision obviously made.
“How do you feel about murdering a schoolteacher, Ella? A Greenpeace worker? Some nine to five person who takes care of his family, does a lot of little good things that would add up to a great, valuable life, if he or she wasn’t struck down at the peak of it?”
“What?” Her brow furrowed. “That would be awful, of course. I’d never do that. Are you saying…”
Gideon gave her a look that swept her with unease. “Yes. To maintain their full strength, vampires have to kill at least one human every year. They call it the annual kill. It can’t be a serial killer or a pedophile. It has to be a good person, a person with the type of blood energy Wolf would want to ingest. If he doesn’t do that once a year, he will start weakening, lose his mental faculties. Eventually another vampire would take advantage of that, kill him off, but before that, he would essentially start starving. Maybe even lose the will to live, walk into the sun.”
“So…it’s a survival thing.” But her voice sounded weak, even to herself. Her heart had accelerated, and her palms felt damp.
“That kill, yes. But according to current Council law, a vampire can kill thirteen humans a year, including their annual, without repercussions. That limit isn’t set because of compassion toward the human race. It's because the Council is hyperaware that too many human deaths draw attention, and keeping the vampire world from general human knowledge is their prime directive. A lot of other stuff revolves around that protection, including their treatment of their servants, and why they mark them fully to bind them. Human servants know about the existence of vampires. Being in their heads so deep ensures the servants have a slim-to-no-chance of betraying vampire kind.”
Ella couldn’t imagine Wolf harming anyone that way. Or Goddess…Anwyn. She wanted Gideon to stop talking. Instead, he reached out and touched her face, said what she didn’t want to think in her own head. “How would you ever be okay with Wolf needing to kill a worthy human being while you stood on the sidelines, letting it happen? Ella, you're vegan. You don't like to harm an animal for food. My guess is, if he did third mark you, he would do his annual kill by himself, to spare you having a front row seat on it. But shit happens, and sometimes in this world you find yourself a part of things you'd never expect.”
“How did you deal with it?” she asked, before she could pull back the question. She couldn’t imagine it was an easy thing for Gideon to talk about, and it went beyond personal and need-to-know. But he gave her an answer.
“I don't,” he said flatly. “I have that ‘luxury’ because of ‘Scary Guy.’” A humorless smile crossed his lips. “He handles Anwyn’s with her, and he…he doesn’t need my help with his. He’s been around and doing this vampire thing a whole lot longer. But just because I’m not involved, doesn’t mean I don't wrestle with it. The night it happens, I’m somewhere they’re not, maybe watching cable, or sleeping, or doing some shit, but I know a good person is out there dying while I…let it happen.”
She swallowed hard. When she spoke, her voice was weaker than she’d intended. “I guess it’s good I won’t have to make a decision. That Wolf doesn’t want me that way.”
Gideon touched her knee, drawing her attention back to his serious expression. “What he says he wants and what he does may not be the same, Ella. Just like you said, you can feel that he really wants more than he’s saying. That’s why I’m telling you all this. I’m asking you to think it through, a lot, from every angle. That way, if things go in a deeper direction, you’ll be able to make as informed a decision as is possible for this stuff.”
They sat silently for a few moments, him finishing his Coke, her gazing pensively at her knees, not seeing them. There was nothing more to say on that. But she still had a few questions. She wasn’t sure she wanted any more answers, but this one felt safe.
“You said he was born in 1946. How long has he been a vampire?”
“Since around the seventies.”
So for decades. That many people killed... She closed her eyes. And yet, if that was a condition of her survival, what would she do? What would any of them do? Maybe that was why a made vampire started thinking differently from a human. Even more than the biology of it, if they didn’t, they wouldn’t survive. How else could a decent human, made into a vampire, handle killing an innocent person every year to survive?
She needed to get going. But before she moved to leave the dock, she pulled out of her own head enough to detect his tension. Gideon was very self-contained. He’d opened up to share a lot of information with her. He cared deeply for her, protected her. His relationship with her had always been like a big brother, with an intriguing sexual undercurrent. Not because he would ever do anything with another female other than Anwyn—unless she’d ordered it. Gideon’s protectiveness toward women simply contained an overpowering sexual awareness.
She didn’t want him to worry, especiall
y about this. “Thank you, Gideon. You’re a good friend.”
He grimaced. “Ella, don’t hesitate to come to me if ever you need to ask anything about this. All right?”
“Okay.” And then, since she didn’t want to leave him broody and concerned, she nudged him with her knee. “You know, if I tell Lars you have ever batted for the other team, even as a one-guy-only, gay-for-you thing, he will spontaneously orgasm.”
“Which is why you won’t tell him. Otherwise you will spontaneously be buried in the new concrete foundation over there.”
The wry look he sent to her said he knew she was trying to make him feel better, but he accepted it. And gave her the same, since she was sure she still looked shell-shocked by his information. He shot her a mock frown.
“Why would you assume that Anwyn shares me with Scary Guy? Maybe it’s only Anwyn who gets the benefit of my awesome sexual prowess.”
She grinned. “I’ve only experienced a vampire through a second mark, but one thing I figured out without being told is they don’t get close to anyone without sex being part of it. Anwyn always had this amazing sensual goddess energy, but afterward…she carries that low-level hum that tells anyone with a pulse if she turns up the volume, she’d take them down, with barely a whisper. Wolf has the same thing. I just didn’t realize that it wasn’t a human quality, but I should have figured it out. No human is that…overwhelming. They’re living, breathing sex magnets, Gideon.”
He chuckled dryly. “Tell me about it. There’s a reason they have third mark, full servants. A regular human can’t survive the things they want.”
Though they were playing with one another now, the look he shot her with that statement told her he wasn’t kidding.
She thought of Wolf and the belt, of how far he’d taken her past the edge she’d ever gone before. If she told Gideon about that and asked if that was what he meant, she suspected he’d give her a terrifying answer.
That’s the kiddie end of the pool for them, Ella.
“Can I ask one more question?”