Blood Possession

by Tessa Dawn

  “Thank you…I think,” he said. He took her hand in his, lifted it to his mouth, and bent to gently kiss the top of her knuckles. When his lips brushed her skin, she drew her hand away in a nervous, reflexive gesture, like a schoolgirl who had suddenly become shy, and Napolean’s chest swelled with emotion. He could hear the pitter-patter of her heartbeat, the quickening of her breath, the slight rise in her blood pressure that made it obvious she was attracted to him. Very attracted to him. Despite everything that had happened, their growing, innate connection had not been damaged. Brooke still reacted to the closeness of his body…to the feel of his touch.

  When she looked back at him, there was an unmistakable tenderness in her eyes. “How did you do it?” she asked.

  “Excuse me?” he said. “How did I get my head wedged between two stones?”

  She shook her head and laughed. “No. This.” She gestured toward him…toward the room…toward the land outside the window. “How did you keep me from…experiencing…what happened in that cabin?”

  Napolean shifted his weight and sighed. “I willed it with everything I had.”

  Brooke held his gaze with growing intensity. “I don’t understand that kind of power—the kind that vampires have. The kind you have.”

  Napolean kept her hand sheathed in his, and when she tugged—as if to pull away—he tightened his grip—not enough to hurt, just enough to heal. “You have them, too, Brooke. You are as I am…now.”

  Her eyes grew wide, but she didn’t panic—not like she might have a week ago. “Unfortunately, I remember that part.”

  Napolean felt his shoulders tense. Although he wanted to look away with shame, he owed her more accountability than that. “The conversion.” He brought her hand to his mouth and breathed warm air into the center of her palm before holding it to his own cheek. “I will not ask you this day to forgive me for so much suffering, but I will promise to spend the rest of my life making it up to you, earning your trust.”

  Brooke blinked. “No, Napolean. I don’t blame you.”

  He hesitated, considered her words, and then frowned. “How is that possible?”

  She shook her head and shrugged. And then she ran her thumb against his cheek in a slow, natural caress. It was the first time she had ever initiated such innocent affection with him. “I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “I should resent you. I should be scared to death of you. I should want to run away from you…as fast and as far as I can.” She sighed. “For all intents and purposes, I should hate you for dragging me into this insane world of demons and magic…and blood…and so much violence. But when I look at you, I just…don’t.”

  He leaned back and cocked his head to the side. “Tell me why, Brooke—if you can.”

  She took a very slow, deep breath and bit her lip. “When that man started shooting at us in the meadow…when I crawled behind you to take cover…” She paused as if carefully considering her words, and then she cleared her throat and continued: “For just a split second—for the first time in my life, really—I felt protected. Safe. Like the world might explode around me, but I had something…someone…invincible to protect me. And it felt…right. In the middle of all that danger, it felt right.”

  Napolean closed his eyes and rested his head against the warmth of her hand. He tried to disguise his regret. “But you weren’t safe…Brooke.” He opened his eyes because he needed to face her. “Apparently, I wasn’t as invincible as either one of us thought. By all the gods, I am so sorry…if I had known the man was possessed—”

  Brooke withdrew her hand from his, placed her forefinger over his lips, and shushed him. “No, you weren’t invincible. For the second time since I met you, you were vulnerable—real—like me. And in that split second, when that thing shot out of the man’s body and possessed you, I felt like I was watching a nuclear bomb go off. Like life as I knew it would never be the same.” She struggled to sit up, and Napolean quickly propped several stiff pillows behind her back, helping her get comfortable in a new position. She shook her head, frowned nonsensically, and fingered a lock of her hair. “I don’t get it. It doesn’t make any sense, but that’s when I knew this Curse was real—that I am who you say I am—because when I thought you had died, I almost… I felt…like a part of me wanted to die with you.”

  He tried to take her hand in his once again to reassure her, but this time, she withdrew from his touch. It didn’t appear to be out of anger or revulsion; it was more like the contact was just too much at that moment…as if her words had simply made her too vulnerable.

  Looking away, she continued, “I survived the conversion because I knew you were out there somewhere, maybe needing me.” She forced her gaze to his. “This whole thing has terrified me, and the last seventy-two hours have been a living hell, but I realize that I do know you, Napolean. I feel you”—she placed her hand over her heart—“in here.”

  Napolean released the unconscious breath he had been holding. Leaning forward, he braced one arm on the left side of Brooke’s body, one on the right, and tensed his muscles to keep his weight off her stomach. “Ingerul meu. Destinul meu. Regina mea,” he whispered breathlessly. “My angel. My destiny. My queen,” he repeated. “Let me love you, Brooke. I have waited millennia to love you.”

  With that, he dipped his head and allowed his lips to meet hers. They were soft and receptive, and he felt a hunger like nothing he had ever known well up inside of him. A deep, throaty growl vibrated in his throat—he couldn’t stop it—as he gently swept his tongue inside her mouth and tasted her total willingness for the first time. She tasted like a spring breeze after a long, barren winter, and he moaned into her. “Gods, I want you,” he murmured, cupping her cheek in his hand and gently massaging her skin with his thumb.

  He drew back and kissed her chin, her nose, the sides of her jaw up to her ear, where he gently nipped the lobes with a fang and swirled his tongue over the blood. “Forgive me, Draga mea; I had to taste you.” Exercising incredible restraint, he pulled away. He smiled when he saw that she looked lost…like someone in a dream. He bent to her belly and gently kissed the protruding mound. “It is almost time, Brooke, and there is much we need to talk about.”

  She brought her hand up to her mouth and lightly touched her lips as if testing to make sure he had really been there, and then she slowly nodded her head. “Tell me what’s going to happen.” Her voice betrayed her fear.

  Napolean sat upright and took both of Brooke’s hands firmly in his. “Do not be afraid, my love. I will not allow you even the slightest discomfort. As you know, vampires can dematerialize—expand their molecular structures to the point where they dissipate into a million detached particles, then transfer them, together, as a whole, and redistribute them someplace else. I will call our sons from your womb when the time is right, and they will dematerialize from inside of you and rematerialize here in my arms.”

  Brooke nodded like a soldier receiving battle orders, scared to death of what was to come, yet determined to face it with courage and obedience. “Okay.” The word was shaky.

  Napolean became deathly serious then.

  He sent his power flowing into her with his eyes, and then he held her in a gentle stream of warmth…and compulsion. It was necessary. “You read about the Curse when you went through the annals of our people. You know what comes next—and why.”

  Brooke swallowed and tucked her hair behind her ear with a nervous hand. “I—I—I’m not sure I’m going to be able to handle that part, Napolean.”

  Napolean nodded, understanding.

  How could she?

  How could she understand the breadth of the original crime committed so many years ago: the slow, systematic slaughter of female after female until an entire civilization had been at the brink of extinction? How could she possibly imagine the suffering the women had endured at the sacrificial stone, kneeling like broken slaves with their hands tied taut around the rock, their heads forced down against the cold slab, bleeding out from their thr
oats as the males stood silently and watched. Then drank.

  The Curse had been severe, to be sure.

  But the punishment had been deserved.

  If Prince Jadon had not pleaded for mercy, there would have been no souls left to save. But he had—and this was the price—returning the Dark One to the Curse as atonement. Right or wrong, just or evil, it didn’t matter. The blood sought and took its vengeance. If it couldn’t have the child, it would take—and torture—the father.

  There was simply no other way.

  Still, over the centuries, several males had perished trying to get around it: They had traded their lives to save both firstborn sons, only to leave grieving widows who later died of broken hearts, mourning their eternal mates. Or worse—they left widows who survived only to raise dark sons who, ultimately, had to be hunted down and destroyed as they grew older. Napolean had since passed a law forbidding the practice.

  The dark twins were evil to their core.

  Predatory abominations without conscience or soul that preyed upon the weak—the strong, the young, and the old…both vampire and human alike.

  “You cannot feel remorse for the dark twin,” Napolean explained. “He is not what he seems.”

  Her eyes held doubt, but she remained silent…listening.

  Napolean searched for a way to explain: “In the human protestant religion, there is the concept of god’s enemy—an evil being who seeks to destroy, who wears many faces. Sometimes he appears as an angel of light, other times as the malevolence he is; but always, he is a deceiver. So it is with the dark twin attaching himself to his brother of light. It is part of the Curse—the punishment—a cruel twist of illusion meant to shock, hurt, and horrify each one of us as further retribution for the original sin. The dark lord who possessed my body, who took you so cruelly, who waged such violence…that is the kind of spirit I will take from this room this night. Do you understand?”

  Brooke took her hands from his and folded them in her lap, at least what was left of it. When she finally spoke, her tone of voice said everything…

  She got it.

  “I do understand; and because I understand, I want you to do something for me.”

  Napolean brushed his fingertips gently along the line of her jaw and smiled. “Anything, Brooke. Anything.”

  She steadied herself. “I want you to use the power of your mind—however you have to—to protect me: stop time, erase my memory, put me in a trance, whatever it takes. I don’t want to see the Dark One, and I don’t want to watch you take him away, either. Is it possible for me to…be asleep? Can you…call our sons…alone…and then wake me up when…the bad stuff is over?”

  Napolean smiled. Truly, this woman had been chosen for him by the gods, for clearly their minds and hearts were as one. “Consider it done,” he said.

  With that, he placed his hands over her belly and began to chant a series of incantations in Romanian—the sacred words that would call his infant sons from his destiny’s womb. As the energy around him began to swirl and congeal into a brilliant vortex of color, light, and wind, without hesitation, he spoke a firm command in Brooke’s ear: “Dute la culcare.”

  Sleep.

  twenty-two

  Brooke turned off the water and stepped out of the dreamy marble shower in Napolean’s master bathroom. She wiped some steam off a large oval mirror that hung over an elegant, English chestnut vanity, slipped into the pink cotton pajamas she had packed for her trip to the valley, and began to gingerly towel-dry her hair. As she rubbed the soft towel through her thick, dark tresses, she tiptoed to the open door and peered into the room. She gawked—in total awe—at the small, ornate bassinette by the window…and the tiny bundle sleeping soundly inside.

  A sense of wonderment swept through her as she glided across the floor to the edge of the cradle and peeked at the child...for the umpteenth time. The perfect baby slept soundly on his back. His arms were bent at the elbows, resting to his sides, and his little knees were curled around his diaper so that the heels of both feet touched one another. She sighed and shook her head. It was simply—and utterly—unbelievable. The fact that this beautiful, living being was hers.

  Her son.

  When just weeks ago, she had been single—and definitely not pregnant.

  The reality was almost too much to grasp.

  When the babe drew in a soft, carefree breath and cooed on the exhale—still fast asleep—Brooke almost giggled like a child herself. For the past several hours, her emotions could only be described as giddy. She had never given much thought to marriage and a family. In fact, building her career had been the only goal in her foreseeable future, yet now, every time she stared at her son’s soft, pliant skin, allowed herself to gape at those perfect, heart-shaped lips, or found herself awestruck by that silky head of raven hair, she felt like someone who had just fallen in love: Her heart fluttered; her palms began to sweat; and a feeling of such powerful yearning swept over her.

  Perhaps God—the celestial gods?—had programmed the response into her DNA. Who knows? She only knew that she couldn’t stop staring at the child she and Napolean had created together just over forty-eight hours ago. She shook her head as if to dismiss the thought: The awareness of the horrors that took place in that small cabin, the way her son had actually been conceived, was not something she cared to think about. But even as she fought to insulate herself from the memory, she already felt completely divorced from it. Napolean had plucked her soul from Ademordna’s grip and held her far away—safe and untouched, as it were—using nothing more than his sheer will to do it. And he had somehow absorbed every bruise, every injury—every memory of the event—at a cellular level.

  There was simply nothing there to recall.

  It was like telling someone with amnesia that they had been in a terrible car accident. While they could still see the evidence of the mangled vehicle, in the absence of any memory or remaining physical injuries, the depth of trauma just wasn’t there. On a gut level, she knew that she should be broken inside—shattered—and probably in need of many years of therapy, but the feeling-place of the event had been completely removed from her consciousness at the most rudimentary level: Her mind would never replay the terror or torment her incessantly. She would never be haunted by visceral nightmares…or fear. She would never remember the incredible suffering.

  For all intents and purposes, it was as if the horror had never happened.

  And her baby—the evidence of that horrific circumstance—could not possibly be compared to a mangled car. Looking at him now, she felt oddly thankful—not for the past several days, the disgusting Blood Curse, or the way she had been taken from her previous life—but for the gift of something so incredibly precious and innocent.

  She smiled.

  She wanted to just sit for hours and listen to him breathe. In fact, she craved the touch of his little hands and fingers so much that she was almost tempted to wake him. Good Lord, what would Tiffany think? What would she say? She could hardly wait to tell her, but she knew that they needed to wait just a little bit longer—she actually agreed with Napolean on that fact: Until Brooke understood her new powers…her body…the world she was now immersed in, she wouldn’t be able to merge it with her former life. And she did want to reconcile the two as best she could. She needed to know how to answer Tiffany’s questions before she exposed her innocent human companion to too much at once. Whether or not her best friend could ever know the full extent of the truth—whether Tiffany would be trusted by the Vampyr to keep such a critical secret—still remained to be seen.

  In deference to her better judgment, Brooke stepped away from the bassinette. The child had only been in the world for four hours—since 6:30 p.m. on Friday, October sixteenth: her son’s birthday—surely his miraculous body knew what it needed. If he was sleeping, he probably needed to sleep. Besides, Brooke really didn’t have a clue what to do with a newborn baby, let alone a vampire. Of course, Napolean had promised to provide her with h
elp, and Jocelyn and Ciopori had been downright generous with a myriad of their own offers, promising everything from baby clothes and furniture for the nursery to hands-on tutorials on what they had learned in their short time as new Vampyr mothers. And Brooke fully intended to take them up on it…once she had settled in.

  She wandered back into the bathroom and stared at herself in the mirror. She held her breath, leaned forward, and bared her teeth, half expecting to see a set of fangs gleaming back at her. When nothing but her traditional pearly-whites sparkled in the reflection, she tried growling low in her throat.

  Okay, now that just sounded ridiculous.

  Not to mention embarrassing.

  She ran her tongue along her upper front teeth and tried her hand at the best Transylvanian accent she could muster: “I vant to drink yer blood.” She quickly glanced around the room, nervous. Although she knew no one was there—no one could possibly have seen or heard her idiocy—she still needed to be sure. She peeked into the bedroom and sighed, vowing inwardly to never, ever do that again—what if Napolean had caught her? God, she would have to curl up and die.

  She took a step back from the mirror then and brought her hand in front of her face—no claws at the ends of her fingers. Thank God. She steadied herself, remembering what Jocelyn had told her: The males of the species were the more aggressive ones. They were far more likely to display primal characteristics such as glowing eyes, fangs extended in anger or lust, and the emergence of claws and wings. In fact, the female destinies did not get wings—although no one knew why. While they had gained the same perfect health, the same tremendous power, and the same need for blood—as well as immortality—the females’ instincts were softer, and their hunger could be sated by their mates. Unless truly angered or provoked, they weren’t nearly as combative or primitive. Perhaps something of their human nature survived the transition after all.

  Brooke closed her eyes and thought about the way vampires traveled when they weren’t using their wings—and where did those glorious feathers come from, anyway?—their backs looked as smooth as anyone else’s through their clothes. In fact, when Napolean had held her that day in the meadow, she hadn’t felt anything rough or unusual. She sighed: just another question to add to her list.