The Last Vampire Box Set

by R. A. Steffan

  I scrubbed a shaky hand through my rat’s nest of hair, and gave my surroundings a quick sweep. The structure Albigard had called the millhouse was clearly older than the country I’d been born in by a significant margin. It was set on the side of a verdant green hill, surrounded by rustic fences made of split wood and piled stone.

  I remembered the little cottage in County Meath, with its rolling fields and fluffy white sheep. ‘It reminds me of home a bit, this place,’ he’d said.

  He was watching me take in the surroundings. Meeting his eyes again was difficult, but I managed it. Suddenly, I felt as exhausted as though I’d run a marathon. Was it because I was drained after my escape from Hell, or because of what I now needed to do? Somehow, I needed to deliver the worst kind of bad news to this man I cared about so much, without letting my pathetic infatuation rear its head.

  “Aren’t you going to invite me in?” I asked, hoping my voice didn’t reflect too much of what I was feeling.

  Rans tilted his head, his dark brows drawing together. “That rather depends on why you’re really here, Zorah,” he said slowly.

  “I already told you,” I said. “I need to pass on something important that I’ve just learned.”

  “About Nigellus, and the tithelings. Yes, I heard you the first time.”

  I stared at him. “Then, what…?”

  “Why are you here?” he asked again, putting emphasis on the last word.

  Without warning, my knees gave out, and I crumpled to the soft earth. “Because everything is still falling apart, even worse than before,” I said. “Dad’s still in danger, I can’t trust any of the people I thought I could trust, and—”

  I clacked my teeth together sharply, cutting off the flow of words before the next ones could tumble out.

  “And?” he pressed.

  A sharp ache radiated out from my heart, wrapping around my lungs and trying to choke me. All of my good intentions shattered beneath a crashing wave of long-denied emotion.

  “And I’ve missed you so much,” I whispered.

  His chest rose and fell convulsively, as though he’d sucked in a sharp breath despite the fact that he hadn’t needed to breathe for centuries. Then he dropped down to kneel in front of me, heedless of the damp grass.

  “Say that again,” he murmured.

  My lower lip started to tremble, and there was a suspicious burning feeling behind my eyes. “I’ve missed you,” I repeated in a wavering voice.

  I was in his arms before the final word faded, clinging to him and breathing in the scent of soap and freshly laundered cotton and Rans.

  “Zorah,” he whispered against my temple, as my fingers clenched convulsively in his shirt.

  “I don’t know what to do,” I confessed.

  One of his arms stayed wrapped around me, anchoring me in place against him, while his other hand slid up my spine to cradle the nape of my neck.

  “For now,” he murmured against my skin, “I think this will do just fine, don’t you?”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  PERHAPS AN HOUR later, I sat at a worn wooden table in Rans’ kitchen, cradling a cup of milky tea with one hand. The fingers of my other hand tangled with his cool ones. He sat across from me at the narrow table, our hands outstretched to meet in the middle of the dark wood. I kept my gaze turned down, examining the swirls in the teacup as though they might hold answers.

  “I’m told that works better if you drink the tea first, and try reading the leaves afterward,” Rans said mildly.

  I swallowed. “I’m so sorry for this.”

  His fingers squeezed mine lightly. “Which part?”

  I still didn’t look up. “All of it.”

  He let silence stretch between us for a few moments. When he finally spoke again, his tone was musing.

  “This would be so much easier if I could simply scoff, and claim that I don’t understand you at all. But I do. Understand you, that is.”

  I dragged my eyes up. “What do you mean?”

  He examined my features like someone evaluating a painting, or a statue.

  “Are you aware that until now, you’ve never once in our acquaintance expressed any sort of fondness or affection for me?” he asked, still watching me closely. “You’ve expressed gratitude. Appreciation. Sexual enjoyment. Concern for my physical wellbeing. But never any hint of an emotional connection.”

  I blinked in surprise. Because that… couldn’t be right. My mouth opened, ready to list all the reasons why he was wrong—and drew a blank.

  His eyebrows went up. “In fact, I’d say you’ve practically bent over backward to avoid it. And I believe I understand now why that is.”

  My mouth was still hanging open, and I strove to find words.

  “You never said anything either!” was all I could come up with. And that was fair, wasn’t it? That was the reason I’d hidden and denied my feelings all this time.

  “Zorah, I’m seven hundred years old—and you’re twenty-six,” he said, rubbing his thumb over my knuckles to take the sting out of the words. “Twenty-six, and caught in a never-ending series of crises that threaten not only your life, but the lives of those you care most about.”

  I caught my lip between my teeth, not sure that my voice would stay steady if I tried to say anything.

  “It’s a rather significant power imbalance,” Rans went on gently. “Whatever this is going to be, it will have to be because you want it. There are creatures in this world who will claim anything they please, simply because they wish to.” He paused, a dark look sliding across his face. “I am not one of those creatures.”

  “But,” I began, hearing the rasp in my voice, “I still don’t understand why you even care. Why would you feel anything for me? I’m no one. The only thing remotely interesting about me is my parentage. Take that away, and I’m a broke waitress with a fucked-up, dysfunctional family life and a history of being dumped by my boyfriends!”

  Rans closed his eyes as though something about my words had pained him. “When I was turned, my vampire sire abandoned me,” he said, confusing me with the seeming non sequitur. “I’ve no idea why. But he left me alone among the corpses of my dead family, with no clue about what had happened to me or what I had become.”

  I squeezed his hand hard and drew breath to speak, but he shook his head.

  “No, let me finish. It was four months before I stumbled across another vampire who could explain everything and help me get myself together. Four months, and I barely survived it. You survived for twenty-six years—twenty of those without even the most basic kind of emotional support, from what I can gather.”

  My head moved slowly from side to side in negation. “But… that’s…” I tried to marshal my scattered thoughts. “That’s hardly the same thing! I thought I was human.”

  Blue eyes bored into mine. “Yes. You weren’t, though. You were a succubus hybrid constantly teetering on the verge of starvation. But did you let that beat you? No. You didn’t. Instead, you dragged yourself to a demanding job every day, then dragged yourself home so you could volunteer at a second one to honor your dead mother’s memory.”

  “Rans,” I said, bewildered, “lots of people do these things. People who have it way worse than I ever did.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, “and they’re extraordinary, as well. But you still haven’t let me finish. You sacrificed yourself in an attempt to save a man who’d emotionally abandoned you years before, and railed against me for saving you from your fate merely because to do so, I’d shortened a life for which I barely care anymore in the process. You refuse to resort to the simplest and most straightforward method of feeding from other people out of some sort of… misplaced loyalty—”

  “Stop!” I pulled my hand away and stood up abruptly, the chair legs screeching across the flagstone floor. The tea sloshed dangerously as the cup wobbled in its saucer. I was breathing hard.

  “No,” he said, “I won’t stop. I saw all of these things, but I didn’t understand until it was
too late that the very events which had shaped you into the woman you are would also prevent you from ever reaching for what you want.” He gestured between us. “Look at us. I’ve finally managed to pry an admission out of you that you have some sort of positive regard for me. But I still have absolutely no clue about your real feelings.”

  “I’m in love with you, damn it!” I yelled, my fingernails pressing gouges into the table’s ancient varnish. “I wanted you safe because I’m in love with you! I don’t want to have sex with other people because I’m in love with you!”

  My voice rose until the last few words were delivered in a shrill screech. I was shaking all over, convinced that I’d just delivered the most appallingly terrible declaration of love in the history of ever. But Rans rose from his chair and came around to my side, wrapping me in his arms from behind.

  “Good,” he said. “Because I feel that way as well—bloody woman.”

  My trembling muscles sagged as I replayed the statement in my head a couple of times to make sure I’d heard right.

  “You might have said something sooner,” I said weakly, once I was convinced I hadn’t hallucinated the words.

  He huffed. “I’ve been telling you that for weeks now.” His lips drifted lower until they were brushing the shell of my ear. “You just haven’t been listening... love.”

  I shivered all over, gooseflesh rising on my arms, neck, and chest as every casual endearment he’d ever graced me with shifted, taking on a deeper meaning.

  “Rans,” I whispered. “Bite me.”

  I felt another puff of amusement tickle the side of my neck.

  “Please tell me that was a request, and not an insult,” he said.

  “Neither,” I replied breathlessly. “It was a demand. Bite me.”

  “Good answer.” His lips touched the sensitive juncture of my neck and shoulder, pressing a kiss there. I rolled my head, baring the side of my throat, but he made a regretful noise and backed off. “First, though—much as it pains me to have to ask—is anyone coming to try and kill us in the next few hours?”

  A groan slipped past my lips, but I did my best to drag my mind back to the practical. It wouldn’t take a genius to realize that I would run straight back to Rans after escaping Hell, and if Albigard knew about this place of his, others probably would, too. That being said, I suspected the demons would assume I’d had to take the slow route of cars and planes to get from California to the UK. No one who knew what had happened to me in Dhuinne would expect me to voluntarily hitch a ride with a Fae.

  “Erm... probably not?” I offered. That exhaustion from earlier returned with a vengeance, this time with a hefty side order of don’t-give-a-fuck. “And this is going to sound like a serious mental health red flag, but right now—if someone did show up to kill us while we were in bed together? Well… I can think of worse ways to go.”

  “Fair enough. Just remember—you said it. I didn’t,” Rans murmured against my skin… and bit me.

  The sharp spike of pleasure-pain drew a gasp from me. Moments later, warmth began to spread through me, unknotting tense muscles one at a time until I felt like I was melting from the inside out. Rans drew on the twin wounds, pulling my blood into him with deep swallows.

  A new heat bloomed from within and without, my animus and his swirling against opposite sides of the permeable barrier of my magic, seeking union. I let a trickle of his life-energy pass through—wanting it, but not wanting to drain him the way he was draining me. Not yet, anyway.

  His fangs pulled out, though his lips remained sealed over the holes. I moaned shamelessly when his tongue laved the bite with slow strokes to heal it, the sensation spiraling down the length of my spine to settle in my sex. The barrier I was maintaining to keep from sucking him dry of energy wavered, but held.

  “Good girl,” he said against my neck. “Leave me enough so I can take care of you for the next little bit, eh?”

  I made a wordless noise, suddenly aware of just how heavily I was leaning on him. An instant later, the floor disappeared from beneath me as he scooped me into his arms. Vertigo swept over me for the space of a few heartbeats, and then I burrowed into him, hiding my face against the charcoal Henley he was wearing.

  The cottage was small, but not cramped or tiny. The interior had been meticulously renovated in such a way that it maintained its rustic air while still offering all the modern conveniences. The bathroom was no exception—the exterior wall was the same irregular, unfinished stone as the outside of the building, while the other walls were gleaming white.

  In addition to a deep copper tub, there was a clear glass shower stall taking up one entire corner of the room. It was easily big enough for two, with a tall stool and a short stool sitting inside as though they were permanent fixtures there.

  “Shower’s quicker,” he said, before setting me down on the closed toilet lid and peeling off my clothing a piece at a time. Once I was naked, he stripped as well, baring pale skin and smooth muscle. After turning on the water and testing the temperature, he returned and swept me up again.

  “I can walk,” I protested, though it might have been more convincing if I weren’t clinging to him.

  He kissed the top of my head. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, depositing me on the tall stool and positioning me so the warm droplets raining down from above flowed over my body without spraying me directly in the face.

  I let him wash me, marveling at the feeling of someone looking after me like this because he wanted to. Not because he felt he had to, or because it was an act to seduce me, but because he… cared for me. I still couldn’t quite bring myself to say the other word, even inside the privacy of my own head.

  When I was clean and warm and drifting, he turned off the taps and dried us off with a huge, fluffy towel that smelled like lavender. He clearly had no clue about maintaining hair as kinky as mine, and I’d pay for that when it came time to pick it out later. Somehow, though, I couldn’t raise a single care about that. Instead, fresh warmth rose inside me at the idea of showing him how to condition and care for it someday soon.

  It was such a… domestic idea.

  The parts of the cottage I’d seen so far were darkly masculine—full of copper and brass, old wood and leather. By contrast, the upstairs bedroom was surprisingly airy, with light fabrics and a large window looking over the verdant hill beyond. He deposited my naked body on the buttercup yellow coverlet of a queen-sized bed, and took a moment to look down at me as though drinking in the sight.

  “Two months,” he observed with a faint smile tugging at one corner of his lips, “and I finally got you into my bed.”

  An answering smile crinkled the corners of my eyes. “As opposed to someone else’s bed, you mean?”

  “Exactly,” he agreed.

  Then my smile melted away beneath the intensity of his gaze—not so much predatory as possessive. Every square inch of my skin felt like it tightened, yearning for touch.

  “I need you.” The words were wrenched from somewhere deep inside, giving voice to a feeling I’d never dared admit aloud.

  He rested a hand on either side of my head, his presence blocking out everything else as he leaned over me. “Zorah. You already have me, love. You only ever needed to reach out and take what was offered.”

  Since the only alternative to kissing him would be bursting into tears, I pulled his head down to mine, surrendering to his mouth. This must be what it’s like not to be afraid, I thought, letting everything else fall away beneath the weight of those softly demanding lips.

  We kissed for ages, hands roaming to feel skin against skin, rather than to seduce. Rans’ animus was a low hum of warmth flowing into me. I let it come, enjoying its sweetness, but did not pull more from him. Eventually, with the darkening sky outside the window ceding its light to the small lamp next to the bed, I pushed Rans to lie on his back so I could straddle him.

  We were still kissing, but I pulled back so I could watch his face as I positioned his hard length
at the entrance to my passage. His eyes flared as I angled my hips and he slid inside. But I was looking too deeply, and what I saw in those depths burned like a hot brand. That, combined with the delicious stretch as he filled me, was too much.

  I closed my eyes, rolling my lower lip between my teeth as I focused on the physical rather than the emotional aspect of our joining. But gentle fingers stroked along the line of my jaw, lifting my chin.

  “No, Zorah,” Rans said softly. “I want you to watch. See what you do to me.”

  I kept my eyes squeezed shut, assaulted on all sides by feelings, but those fingers continued to cup my chin in silent command. Eventually, with a deep breath, I opened them and looked at the man beneath me. Really looked.

  “That’s it, love,” he said, rewarding me with a slow roll of his hips. His eyes flared brighter, and his voice gained a deeper resonance. “Pretend I’m compelling you if it helps, but you will see me while I’m making love to you.”

  My chest hitched. We both knew that I was immune to his gaze, but I could still feel its effects. And he was right—damn him. It helped. I gave myself over to his command, staring deeply into his eyes as our bodies moved together with sinuous, unhurried movements. It was completely different than any sex we’d had with each other before, and at times, I wasn’t sure I would survive it with my soul intact.

  But perhaps that was the point.

  Rans had fed from me, and I fed from him in return, but mostly, we just existed with each other. Every so often, one or the other of us would shiver beneath the force of an orgasm, but I was part succubus, and Rans had drunk my blood, and just because our bodies climaxed, that wasn’t a pressing reason to stop what we were doing.

  I think I must have spent hours just draped over Rans’ body with his arms wrapped around me and his cock nestled hard and heavy inside me, soaking in the way his skin felt against mine and tracing the wispy curls of his animus brushing against my magical core.

  We fell asleep at about the same time, still joined together. When I woke up hours later from blessedly dreamless blankness, the sun was high in the sky outside. I was tucked against Rans’ side, his fingers tracing the knobs along the back of my neck with soothing pressure.