‘No!’
Zack’s words weren’t quiet. His great shout seemed to bounce off the furniture.
Teresa was smiling at him, the beautiful colour of her eyes ringed with crimson. Her neat white teeth were made uneven by delicately pointed canines.
‘But you didn’t feed from me.’
He cradled her jaw, running his thumb lightly over the points of her fangs. They were rudimentary, only slightly pointed, not true vampire teeth.
Yet.
‘I tasted a little of your blood on my fingertips. From where I scratched your back.’
Zack quickly wracked his memory, sifting through all the lore he’d studied when he’d first been changed himself. If she’d only taken a few drops, she could still revert. She could still be normal and live a human life. If she got away from him now, and took no more blood.
‘Please, Teresa, you’ve got to go. If you stay around me the compulsion will only grow … and I won’t be able to resist you.’
‘Whose compulsion? A/line or yours?’
‘Does it matter? Please, my love, just go!’
But her eyes were clear, despite the crimson. He sensed her intelligence. Her will. Her full knowledge of what lay ahead. And her desire for it.
Most of all, he read love in her expression.
‘I can’t go, Zack.’ Her arms slid around him. ‘I love you. I need to be with you.’
A sudden last urge to free her welled up.
‘What if I don’t love you?’ he demanded, trying without success to shake her off him. But she was already far stronger than she’d been before, and she laughed softly, pressing her face, and her body, against him.
‘You might be a vampire, Zack, but you’re a poor liar.’ She pulled open his shirt, kissing his skin. ‘And I’ve already got … well … powers.’
She kissed him again, her tongue stroking against his collar bone.
‘It’s no use telling me you don’t love me because I know you do!’
Oh, but you feel so good!
Teresa smiled against Zack’s cool skin as she waited for him to admit what she knew was true. He didn’t speak, but his arms closed around her. The sense of being enclosed, and of being cherished made her feel like swooning. It was an old-fashioned word, one she’d never have used before she met him, but it was the only one that fitted.
‘I do love you.’ His voice was low and clear, but she could tell that the confession cost him. ‘I love you … and I want to be with you forever.’ His arms tightened, and he tilted his head back, as if looking to heaven for knowledge.
‘So what’s the problem, Zack?’ She rubbed her face against his cold-as-marble skin, loving it smooth silky texture, loving the fact that it would never go slack, or sag, or grow sallow with age. Loving the simple joy of the contact.
His hand settled over her hair, gently stroking.
‘But forever means just that, my love. Forever. And ever.’ A deep shudder passed through him. ‘And if you choose it, you’ll never walk in the sunshine again. And in a few years, your friends, your family … well, even if they wonder why they never see you much in the daytime again, they’ll certainly start to notice that you’re not ageing.’
He put her from him, looking into her eyes. Teresa saw that his eyes were reddened, and with her already-sharpened senses, she could taste his desire. Despite the stress of the moment, he couldn’t stop himself wanting her.
‘You are my friend, Zack. I love you and I want you, but you’re my buddy too. You always will be.’ She reached out, took his face in hers, made him look at her. ‘My parents are dead … my sister and I aren’t close. And I’ll deal with everything else when the time comes.’
‘Are you sure?’ His eyes were crimson now, burning – happy.
‘Completely! Now come on, finish the job. I want to be like you, not just half and half.’
‘With pleasure … with pleasure, my love,’ murmured Zack, his voice gruff with emotion as his arm swept around her again and with his free hand he cradled her face.
Tenderly, he kissed her, his soft lips sweeping over her mouth, then her jaw and on down her neck to the tenderest, most vulnerable spot. She felt his tongue caressing her skin, over the vein, as if soothing the place in readiness.
And then – ah, the pain of the bite! Sharp, blade-like fangs plunged in and immediately the blood began to flow and with it the pleasure. He was supporting her in his arms, his hold on her almost chaste, but it felt to her as if he were caressing and stimulating every nerve-end in her body, most of all her sex.
The sensation was sweet, mind-bending and exquisite, like tumbling and soaring at the same time. She felt both weak and strong, and the very quick of her body was shimmering and rippling with an intense sublime glow. As he drew on her powerfully, she spiralled to a peak, crying out and coming.
As she floated, still in that impossible state of ecstasy, he lifted his mouth from her neck and kissed her on the lips. She tasted her own blood like a sacrament – and hunger surged in her to drink from a different source.
Still supporting her, Zack leant back, ripped open his shirt and, in the classic romantic vampire’s gesture, he drew a nail across his chest, over his heart.
Dark-red blood oozed from the little wound, the ultimate temptation.
And the final step.
After this there would be no going back, no further chance to retain her humanity.
But as she looked up into her lover’s red eyes, she embraced her choice.
Inclining forwards, she began to drink – and to change as Zack cried out in his own ecstasy.
Afterwards, they made long, slow, simple human love. Sliding and rocking against each other they kissed gently and stroked each other in leisurely exploration. There was no biting or exchange of blood, just pure sensual pleasure, sublimely heightened by supernatural senses.
Eventually, Zack lifted himself free of her, lay back against the pillows, and pulled her to him again. Teresa smiled. He no longer felt cold to her. Their body temperatures had equalized.
‘So we don’t bite each other any more then?’ she observed, touching her fingertip to his chest where the little cut that she’d fed on was already as good as healed. ‘Presumably I can’t feed on you and you can’t feed on me.’
‘Oh we can, but only for mutual pleasure.’ Zack’s fingers slid down her back teasingly, and to her delight, Teresa felt lust begin to stir again. Before tonight, she would have been too exhausted to go again so soon after such a prolonged dance of love. But now she had strength and energy to spare and she could feel that Zack was ready again just as soon as she was.
‘Ooh, I like the sound of that.’ Her sex rippled spontaneously at the thought of Zack at her neck again.
‘But for nutrition purposes, I’m afraid we’re confined to animal blood from now on. Not quite as tasty, but still perfectly acceptable.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ve tried it. It’s not bad.’ She kissed his chest.
‘I’m glad of that,’ observed Zack wryly, his voice teasing, then immediately, she sensed him become more serious. She no longer had to look at his face to perceive his emotions, she simply knew them. ‘It’s a huge transition, my love. Your life has changed utterly now. Everything’s different.’ He paused, his strong arms tightening around her. ‘But I’m here – I’ll always be here. And I’ll do everything I can to make things easier for you.’
And he would. She knew that. She had no doubts.
There was an adventure ahead, a different life and an unimaginably long one.
But as they began to make love again, her still heart glowed with perfect happiness.
Zack was her best friend as well as her lover – and everything was possible with him at her side.
Forever.
Under her Skin
Mathilde Madden
Day 1
She’s running down the corridor. She hasn’t stopped running since the letter came this morning. Running, running, running, running on adrenal
ine.
She tried to go to the library. The one here and the one at her parents’ house, but she was so damn jumpy that the words wouldn’t lie still on the pages of each book she tried to read.
But that doesn’t matter. She doesn’t need to read up on vampires now. She’s known about such monsters since before she could talk.
She has to be at the castle by six. Time is getting short. She practically crashes though the door of the private hospital room at Cobalt.
Her mother looks up blearily, as though she might have been asleep in her chair – uncharacteristically crumpled. Her usually tight precise up-do is all skew-whiff and shedding tendrils of grey-brown hair around her face. Her eyes are red. She’s been crying. Did she cry herself to sleep?
‘Merle!’ her mother says as she gets to her feet, the upper-crust bark of her voice shadowed with fatigue.
‘How is he?’
‘He’s … He’s …’ Her mother trails away a couple of heartbreaking times and in the end she has to steady herself to stop the falter in her voice. ‘He’s the same. Comfortable. Critical.’
This is it. Merle just wishes she felt numb right now – blank. She doesn’t. She feels like she’s going to be sick. She looks at her father in the bed which – along with the machinery that surrounds it – takes up much of the room. He seems to be nothing more than a mass of pipes and tubes and skin and sheet. Not really a person. Just a body. The beeping, flashing machines that are doing the work of his traumatised internal organs seem more alive than he does.
She crosses the room until she is close enough to touch the pale skin on the back of her father’s limp hand. Her fingertips look so pink next to his. Thrumming with life. With blood. But she doesn’t want to start thinking about things like that. About blood. Her blood. Her blood and who might want it. ‘There’s no chance of us finding an antidote ourselves?’ she says, knowing there isn’t, not knowing what else to say.
Her mother shakes her head. ‘I’m not even sure what’s in the poison. A cocktail of magic and science. Classic vampire work. Black Emerald Clan written all over it. He must have got it from their vaults. I’ve managed to identify some of the components but I’m nowhere near.’ She indicates the bottles of failed potions on the window still. Each one contains a sparkling liquid. Some are rusty or red in colour. Most are golden – glittering with their broken promises.
Merle looks back at her father. ‘Right.’
Merle’s mother has this face. This this-is-my-final-word face. That’s the face that is looking at Merle right now. ‘I’m still not going to let you take up Cole’s offer. This isn’t your fight.’ Merle has never defied that ‘final’ face before. She’s also never got such a strong sense her mother wanted her to defy it before. She’s telling Merle not to take up Cole’s offer – of course she is, she’s her mother. What else can she say?
Doesn’t mean that’s what she wants.
‘But it is my fight,’ Merle says. ‘It is now.’
Merle’s mother turns away and picks up Darius Cole’s letter which is lying on the table by the bed. It’s so typical vamp. Thick vellum, sealing wax and words designed to devastate. Merle’s mother peers at it like she’s looking for a loophole.
Merle knows she isn’t finding one. ‘It’s the only way,’ she says, coming up close behind her mother and touching her shoulder.
‘Look, Merle.’ Merle’s mother turns and she’s really close. Merle can smell her expensive old-fashioned heavy perfume lying over the scent of her grief. ‘Your father and I … We never meant to involve you in anything like this. In our work. And the thing about Darius Cole, well, the thing about vampires in general, is they play games. They can out think humans. They find it fun to trick them. What it says in this letter, well, it just won’t be as simple as that.’
‘What it says in that letter is that if I don’t go and spend 25 days with Cole dad will die.’
Merle’s mother just looks at her. And Merle sees it sudden and sickening. Her mother is being asked to choose. Being made to choose between her daughter and her husband, and of course her mother knows she should choose Merle, but it hurts. While Merle is thinking this, her mother shakes her head and turns away.
‘You want me to go, don’t you?’ Merle says to her back. ‘Part of you does. Deep down.’
In a very quiet voice Merle’s mother says. ‘He’s dying. We have to do something.’ But when she turns back to Merle her face is severe and familiar. ‘But not that. Charles would never forgive me if I let you anywhere near that vicious undead creature.’
Almost before her mother finishes speaking, Merle’s father bucks up and begins to convulse in the bed. He screams loudly in real agony and starts to thrash around. The sheet slips and Merle sees his half-naked body, pale-grey and sheened with sweat. It hits her so hard it’s like being winded. My father. My dad. Daddy. Broken and suffering. Dying. Merle takes a shocked step backwards.
Merle’s mother has already grabbed a syringe of something from a trolley of medical ephemera. She dashes around the bed, shouting at Merle to get back and sticks the needle into the IV line. Merle’s father stills quickly.
Merle’s mother turns away from the bed. She’s out of breath, her shoulders heaving. ‘He’s already so full of morphine I keep thinking the next dose’ll kill him. And maybe that’d be kinder.’ She looks like she’s going to cry.
‘Well, then,’ Merle says. ‘Look at him. You can’t tell me not to go. How can I not?’
Merle’s mother doesn’t say anything.
‘I have to be at the castle by six,’ she says, knowing for sure now she has to do it. If she ever had any doubts they’re gone now. If part of her hoped her mother was going to expressly forbid it.
Merle stiffens and takes a step towards the door. Then stops and look back at her mother who seems to be frozen by the bed. What is there for her to say?
Merle holds her eye. ‘And when I get that antidote I’ll do what you should have done years ago and put a stake through that bastard’s silent heart.’
It takes a tube, a train, a taxi and a little more than an hour to get to Cole’s castle. Merle takes the time to give herself a pep talk. Now this is really happening. After the distinct lack of any kind of eleventh-hour reprieve.
As the daughter of two of the most famous vampire hunters in the world – as the daughter of the founders of Cobalt – Merle knows more about the undead than most. She knows that they exist, for a start. She also knows that they are disgusting, rotting things and that the only good thing they ever did was decide to keep themselves completely separate from human society centuries ago. Darius Cole was a vampire who didn’t agree with the Clan Council’s ideas about segregation. He wanted to overthrow humanity. Enslave them for food. Taking down Cole was the reason Cobalt was set up in the first place. It represented human and vampire working together for the first time in hundreds of years – probably for the first time ever – all because of Darius Cole. And they’d succeeded. Thirty years ago Cole had been captured and Cobalt had handed him over to the Black Emerald Clan to be dealt with under their laws.
Merle grew up with Darius Cole as her personal bogeyman. She has always hated him more than anything. And that was before he escaped, killed or enslaved the Black Emeralds and started poisoning Merle’s family.
One of the most dangerous things about Cole is that he has super highly developed psych-powers, even for a vamp. Cole can control minds like no other vamp recorded: telepathy, suggestion, persuasion, hypnosis. Merle knew that in 25 days he could potentially do anything to her. Twist her mind.
But she also knows that vamp psych-powers aren’t irresistible. It’s just a matter of keeping her emotions in check.
A lot of what is said about vampires isn’t really true according to Merle’s mother. But one of the legends definitely is. You have to invite them in.
Like all vamp places, the Black Emerald Clan’s castle is heavily warded. Invisible and undetectable. Merle has the taxi driver drop her off
in what looks like the middle of nowhere and throws the little iron ball that came with the letter into the trees. Reality fractures like broken glass, and suddenly the huge stately castle in front of her is so real it is impossible to imagine how this view looked without it a moment ago.
She crunches up the drive and pauses outside the castle door, waiting for the exact dot of six. When her watch says 5.59 she reaches up, poised to grasp the enormous door knocker, but before her hand touches it the door creaks open.
The woman who peers around the doorframe, taking care to keep out of the last shards of sunlight, is clearly a vampire – she is also an image of pure decadence. She has a bird’s nest tangle of blonde hair wound lopsidedly on top of her head. Her breasts, hips and lips are all lusciously plump. She is wearing a white froth of a dress that seems to reveal more of her luscious body than complete nudity would. She looks like Marilyn Monroe cast in some pornographic version of the life of Marie Antoinette. Except she looks like she’d been the one eating all the cake.
There are fangs in her mouth and some dried blood on her bottom lip.
She makes Merle feel totally sexless with her short straightish hair, and short straightish body. She’s wearing plain blue jeans and dark-blue T-shirt with a muddy brown cord jacket. She hadn’t wanted to look like she’d got dressed up. But the woman at the door makes her wish she’d found something a little more exhilarating to wear.
The woman not only exudes sex, she makes Merle feel like exuding sex is the only acceptable way to be. She feels herself starting to hunch her shoulders in the hope that the woman won’t notice her comparative lack of breasts or hips. She takes a deep breath. ‘I’m Merle Cobalt.’
‘I know who you are, dear,’ says the woman, before turning away and stalking into the castle. She looks like a ship at sail, rolling, swirling and billowing with every silky step.
Merle trots after her. The space beyond the imposing front door is an enormous entrance hall, five times the size of the reception at Cobalt. It’s magnificent, totally old school vamp – circular and cold with echoey flagstones.
Lust Bites Page 17