When Kristina reappears from Oberon’s cell – Merle elected to wait outside – she looks a little breathless. She’s been a long time.
Merle raises her eyebrows at her, but she just says, ‘OK, now follow me,’ and begins to lead the way up the steps out of the dungeon.
‘What? Where are we going now?’
Kristina smirks back over her shoulder. ‘Come on.’
They emerge into the entrance hall. Merle blinks and sways. Kristina leads the way to a huge sweeping flight of red-carpeted stairs. Merle pauses at the bottom. ‘Kristina? Where are we going?’
Kristina turns. She was already halfway up the first red-carpeted flight. ‘Your bedroom.’
‘My bedroom?’
‘Yeah. You’re going up in the world. Darius has decided you can have a room with a window. Although you won’t be able to open up the curtains, of course.’
Merle is still at the bottom of the stairs. ‘This is an actual room. With a bed.’
‘Yeah.’
‘And it’s not, like, in Darius’s own bedroom or next to it or anything.’
‘No,’ says Kristina, with teasing chastisement in her voice. ‘You’re on the first floor, same as me. Darius is on the second. But don’t be disappointed. The rooms are nicer on the first floor. And Darius can walk down a flight of stairs if he wants to bother you in the night.’
Merle feels that damn blush start and she puts her head down as she follows Kristina up the stairs.
The rooms on the first floor are indeed nice. Very nice. Merle’s is turquoise and gold, with frills and fantasia dripping from every lacy surface. She has a real bed, too. A four poster. She drops onto it gratefully. The softness of the mattress – after nine days and eight achy nights on a wooden bench – is almost orgasmic.
Kristina laughs as Merle sighs out loud. ‘I’ll tell him you’re pleased then.’
Merle rolls over onto her stomach, remembering something, and says, ‘What were you doing all that time? In that cell with Oberon?’
‘What?’
‘In the dungeons. You were a long time and there were noises.’
Kristina smirks. ‘Nothing really. Just giving him his blood.’
‘You were just feeding him?’
‘Kind of?’ Kristina tips her head on one side. ‘Look, a girl with your lineage has got to know about Blood Rites, right?’
‘My lineage? You mean because of who my parents are? The stuff they taught me about vampires was more about how they’re a stinking abhoration.’ Merle bites her lip. ‘Sorry.’
‘S’OK. I know what Cobalt think about vampires. I know you’re a Cobalt.’ She shrugs. ‘So you don’t know about the two sorts of blood?’
‘Er, no.’
‘You don’t know about … OK, well, there are two types of blood to a vampire. It’s like food-blood and sex-blood. Feeding, that’s drinking human blood, that’s, like, food. Then there’s tasting, that’s completely different. That’s when you take a little of another vampire’s blood. It’s like sex. Just like sex. When you taste the blood of another vampire that’s like the orgasmic part of sex.’
‘That’s, uh, weird.’
Kristina shrugs again. She’s the shruggy sort, really. ‘Seems normal enough to me.’
‘And it can’t be with a human. Between a vampire and a human?’
Kristina almost spits her response to this. ‘No. It can’t. Not ever. Vampires do not perform the Blood Rites on humans. Never.’ She looks almost angry to be asked. She jabs a vicious finger at Merle. ‘You could have sex with a vampire, with Oberon, say, and he could fuck you, make you come and everything. That could happen. But he wouldn’t feel anything much. He’d stay hard no matter what you did. Vampires don’t get off on doing it with humans. It’s the biggest myth out there. Vampires don’t get turned on by humans anymore than you get turned on by looking at a plate of spaghetti Bolognese. Humans are food, other vampires are for sex.’ Kristina is shaking. Enraged. Not so shruggy now.
Merle actually shrinks back a little across the bed. A moment ago she was feeling so friendly toward Kristina that she felt guilty telling her how her parents had taught her to think of vampires. Now she’s suddenly terrified of her. After all, she is a vampire. A monster. ‘Humans are food? Isn’t that like a Righteous Power thing?’
Kristina shrugs. ‘Righteous Power is illegal now.’
‘Even in Darius Cole’s house?’
‘This isn’t Darius Cole’s house. This is actually Oberon’s house. You should hear him on that subject right now.’ She even cracks a smile then but Merle can still see her bristling anger.
Day 10
The next day Kristina brings Merle her breakfast in her new bedroom and asks if she wants to come and torment Oberon again. ‘You could find out more about Blood Rites.’
But Merle gives her a firm negative.
Later, when Kristina returns, wantonly dishevelled and flushed, Merle says, almost thoughtlessly, ‘So who does Cole perform his Blood Rites with?’
Kristina picks up an apple left over from breakfast. ‘Me. Or Oberon sometimes, but mostly me. There’s only three of us left here.’ Shrug. She brings the apple up to her mouth and sinks her fangs into it.
‘So, are you Cole’s lover?’
Kristina pulls the punctured apple out of her mouth with an expression of distaste. ‘Ew. I really don’t know how you can eat these things. Darius doesn’t take lovers.’
‘But you said yesterday about the Blood Rites. About how vampires need another vampire …’
‘He does that with me. Like I just said. God, does he ever. Fuck, you know. With the psych-powers. Woah. You ever had sex with someone who could read your mind? Like nothing I’ve ever … In fact, what with him and Oberon I’m having to double up on my plasma packs to keep my strength up. But I’m not Darius’s lover.’ Kristina stops and smiles. A smile that’s more resigned than happy. ‘Vampires usually bond. Completely. Like a life-mate type of thing. To a vampire a lover means someone exclusive. Someone forever. And, like I just said, Darius doesn’t take lovers.’
‘Why not?’
‘Probably because it would ruin his smouldering locked-in-a-dungeon-for-twenty-five-years-lonely-freak image.’
That night Merle dreams about Darius again. It isn’t like the dream she had before – all hyper-real with him appearing to be right there in the room. This dream is far more wispy and loose. She’s lying next to him, with him propped up on his elbow looking down at her. She doesn’t know where they are, some nameless dream-scape. All she knows, all she is sure of, is that she’s in love. In the dream, she is utterly in love with Darius Cole.
Dream Darius runs the backs of his fingers against her cheek. They are deliriously cool against her heated skin. She’s blushing. Her face is hot. Darius smiles down at her.
‘I love to see your blood under your skin,’ he says. His voice sounds like it had the first time she dreamt about him. Like it’s coming from somewhere else.
Darius is wearing the same dark clothes as ever. Merle is wearing a revealing froth of a white dress – rather like the one Kristina wears. Darius says, ‘I know another way to make your blood rise to the surface.’ His voice is soft, muffled and cracking with desire.
His hands are on the hem of her slutty dress. He pushes it up almost to the top of her thighs. She squirms a little at the exposure, but lets him do as he wishes. With her skirts out of the way, Darius strokes the pale flesh where her thighs give way to the planes of her slim boy-hips. She’s so aroused. Wet under the lace. Wet inches from his fingertips.
She hears the noise first. Then sees it. Then feels the sting. Then realises that he has just slapped her. Very hard. Looking down her body, she sees a pink mark appear high on her thigh.
But there’s someone else in the bedroom.
‘Oh,’ Darius says, his voice full of weakness and desire, ‘you are too beautiful.’ And he bends his head and runs his cool tongue over the heated place he has made.
&nb
sp; There is someone else right on Merle’s bed. But she can’t open her eyes. She can’t leave the dream. She knows that Darius is going to make love to her.
She sighs under the touch of Darius’s tongue.
Someone else. Not someone in the dream. Someone in reality. A weight next to her on the mattress. Someone kneeling there.
Merle opens her eyes. The dream splinters. ‘Darius?’ she says, still half sleep-headed.
It’s very dark in the room, no moonlight with the curtains so tightly closed. Merle can just make out the bed canopy floating above her before someone is on top of her. Holding her down, pain in her neck.
She cries out, but the sound is trapped by a hand on her mouth. She writhes and fights, but whoever is holding her is too strong …
Day 11
She opens her eyes. The bedroom is dark. Someone is in the room with her.
She feels something – a pin prick – on her arm and a soft dark voice says, ‘You need to sleep, Merle.’
Day 12
She wakes again still in her bed. She tries to sit up, but feels so dizzy she almost immediately collapses back into her pillows. With a grunt she drags herself upright again to sees Darius, sitting across the room in a wing-chair and looking at her.
‘Where am I? What happened?’
Darius doesn’t say anything. He gets up and walks over to the bed. He takes her chin in his hand and moves her head from side to side. He looks into her eyes one after another. He’s never been this close to her before. Her heart is racing. His face is less than an inch from hers. She stares at that wanton bottom lip as he opens her mouth – pulling on her lower jaw with his thumb hooked over her bottom teeth – and looks in there too.
‘Darius!’ she says, suddenly coming to her senses and pulling away from him.
‘Do you feel well?’ he says, standing up.
‘Yes. I think so. A little dizzy. What happened?’
‘Kristina. She nearly snuffed you out. I came by just in time. Luckily you were not at the point where you would have had to drink my blood to survive. So do not fear, you are still human. We didn’t have to break the laws against conversions.’
Merle’s fingers touch her neck. But there’s nothing there although it feels tender.
Darius watches her and says, ‘The puncture heals fast. There is a little bruising. That’ll go soon. You were very shocked and weakened. I gave you sedatives. You’ve been sleeping for more than twenty-four hours. It’s day twelve now, I expect you’re counting.’
‘Kristina? Why would she …?’
‘She is jealous of you,’ Darius says in a very plain matter-of-fact way. ‘I am sorry. I thought she was fully controlled. She is fearful of me and I didn’t think she could tell when I was in her mind watching her. Perhaps she is getting better at controlling her own psych-powers. Or perhaps she was lucky.’
Jealous? She finds it hard to believe that Kristina, who looks like a debauched angel and regularly performs the divine-sounding ‘Blood Rites’ with Darius, could be jealous of her – the girl who spends her time locked up, red-eyed and dowdy. ‘Where, where is she?’
‘Kristina? In the dungeon. Now Oberon’s the one playing jailer. I expect he’s having some fun with that.’ Darius turns and gestures to the table where Kristina usually puts Merle’s food. It’s laden with fruit and cheese and bread. ‘I have to go now, but there are some things for you. It is important that you eat now. I’ll lock you in again. For safety.’
As he turns to leave, Merle says, ‘If you weren’t in Kristina’s mind just then how did you know to come to my room and save me?’
Darius stops and turns a little so he’s angled half towards her, half away. ‘Because I was in your mind. You remember.’
Day 13
Merle is lying on her bed, reading a magazine, when the door bursts open.
Darius stalks in, looking so stern and haughty that she finds herself drawing away from him across the bed. He’s dressed a little differently. In a long black frock-coat and black knee boots. He looked much more like a vampire ought to look. Formal, even. Formal for him.
Darius stands aside and Oberon strides into the room next. He’s towing Kristina, leading her by a rope that is tied around her wrists.
‘Anywhere,’ Darius says.
Oberon flicks the rope in a way that sort of flings Kristina onto the floor in one corner. Merle flinches, but Kristina doesn’t even glance at her.
Darius says, ‘You can go.’ He’s looking at Oberon.
‘I’d like to stay,’ Oberon says. ‘I’d like to see what that bitch gets.’
‘You can go,’ Darius says.
Oberon says quietly, ‘Don’t I get to witness the dispensation of justice in my own house?’
Darius turns away from him. ‘What do you think, Merle?’
‘What?’ Merle says, trying to sound cool rather than completely confused and intimidated.
‘This is your retribution. Does Oberon get to stay and witness it or should he leave?’
‘Actually, Cole, to her, that’s Lord Oberon of the Black Emerald Clan.’ Oberon’s voice begins sounding hard and firm but starts to waver as Darius turns to look at him.
‘Sometimes I really think it was a big mistake to keep you alive,’ Darius whispers.
Oberon smiles. ‘Really? You won’t do me the mercy of killing me though, will you, Cole? Not after I made you beg for it and refused you so many times. You just don’t know how to deal with me.’
The two men face each other off for several heavy moments, then Darius glances at Merle. ‘Sorry,’ he says, ‘change of plan. I’ve made the decision.’ He turns back to Oberon, but not before Merle sees his eyes start glowing, black. ‘Get. Out. Now.’
Under Darius’s gaze, Oberon weakens visibly. He doesn’t even attempt to disobey.
Darius turns his attention to the snivelling Kristina, still cowering in a corner. He starts to walk towards her. She’s shaking with fear and staring up at him as he moves closer and reaches out, his palm forwards, his fingers spread.
His hand is inches from her head when Kristina begins to sob, ‘No, no, please, Darius. Don’t.’
Darius pauses. ‘Now, Kristina,’ he says, smoothly, ‘I need to deep read you to know how to punish you, don’t I? I thought you people liked this traditional stuff.’
‘No, please, it hurts …’ Kristina sobs again, shaking her head and trying to guard herself with her bound hands.
Darius ignores her, swatting her hands aside as he presses his palm firmly against her forehead, his spread fingers cupping her scalp. Kristina stops sobbing and screams in pain. Darius doesn’t appear to react to her new distress at all.
He holds Kristina long after her scream has died away. There’s a long frozen moment and then Merle sees Darius smile. ‘Well, of course,’ he says to himself, ‘I should have known.’
Darius lets go of Kristina and turns to Merle. Kristina crumples onto the floor like a rag, moaning, ‘No, don’t, please. Not her.’ Darius starts to advance on Merle, his face set.
Merle is terrified but she tries really hard not to humiliate herself by cowering like Kristina. She’s still sitting on the bed, her legs stretched out and her back against the wooden headboard. She just sits there as he climbs up onto the bed and draws his body towards her with a cat’s sinuous moves. He straddles her legs and reaches out, but he doesn’t grab her forehead like with Kristina. Instead he puts one hand on either side of her face, moves in and kisses her.
She holds her breath beneath the touch of his lips. A vampire is kissing her. Darius Cole is kissing her.
And it’s amazing.
Darius’s cool mouth is familiar somehow. Familiar and arousing. He begins using his tongue and his hands to coax her mouth into opening for him. Very slowly. Savouring each new sensation, each new piece of her lips and the flesh inside her mouth as it is revealed to him. There is no hurry. It’s all so controlled. The coldness of his tongue feels a little strange, but not unpleasant. He d
oesn’t smell or taste sour or like rotting flesh. He tastes just like a man. An aroused man.
As he keeps on kissing her, achingly slowly, almost worshipfully, she feels her whole body tauten. Her nipples go hard and super-sensitised. Every hair on her body is up on end. She feels the skin on her face get hot and tight under Darius’s hands.
Darius moans softly into her mouth. He loosens his grip on her face and strokes her hot cheeks gently, turning his hands over to use the cool backs of his fingers on her heated skin.
And he’s hard. The moment she feels it – the distinct pressure of his hard cock pushing against her thigh – she knows what it is, yet can’t really believe it.
Eventually Darius pulls away and she slumps back against the headboard, breathing hard. Darius is still crouched over her on the bed. He turns to speak to Kristina over his shoulder. ‘Well, I hope that’s taught you a lesson,’ he says, his cold voice sounding, for a moment, a little wry and amused. But only for a moment. ‘Cross me again, and you can watch me fucking her.’
Kristina – still a whimpering bundle in the corner of the room – wails into her frothy skirts.
Darius turns back to Merle. She’s panting. She can’t help it. She knows she’s wet with arousal – her face isn’t the only place that’s burning, flushed with blood.
He can read minds. He knows what he’s done to me.
Darius gives her a long look of barely contained lust, then slides off the bed and grabs Kristina’s rope as he strides out of the room. ‘I’ll be needing a little of you to finish me now, girl.’
They are both gone before Merle has swallowed the last taste of Darius from her mouth.
Day 14
When Kristina comes in the next morning and plonks down the breakfast tray, Merle is a little surprised. Didn’t she try and kill her the other day?
Kristina isn’t really her usual chatty self. Her dress seems even more wanton than usual, the neckline sliding off her shoulders which are ringed with bruises and bitemarks. The way she looks at Merle, she seems almost proud of the marks Darius has left all over her. Like she’s displaying them.
‘He wants to see you in his study,’ she says sulkily, as Merle starts to eat. ‘Next floor up, third door on the left.’
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