“We must see to your injuries,” she said, turning toward the ramp leading down to street level. “There is a human medical center—”
“No doctors, Isis.”
“Then I shall do my best to help you myself.”
* * *
Isis’s best proved to be good enough. Once they reached her apartment in the administratve district, Daniel expected her to do the obvious and offer to use the chemicals in her own saliva to help heal him. But she obviously remembered his reaction to the prospect of her bite, and set to work with a needle instead.
Working quickly, she stitched up the lacerations Daniel’s opponent’s teeth had left on his arm. She offered him wine before the makeshift surgery, but he refused, grateful to be reminded that he could bear pain without flinching, even though his brief time in the tower had nearly broken all his defenses.
At least Isis knew only what she had observed. She hadn’t felt the worst of it. She didn’t know how he had frozen inside when he’d been among Anu’s company, how he’d snapped back to the old days as if those years of freedom had never happened. She didn’t realize that his rage had almost overcome his promises to her, how close he had come to turning on Anu when he had been asked to fight.
There had been such fights in Erebus, before Ares. It had amused Palemon to pit his serfs against each other, and when Daniel had refused to kill, he had paid for it.
Since then Daniel had become adept at every kind of combat against humans, half-bloods and Opiri. But only when it was necessary, and never for the amusement of an audience.
No, Isis could only guess what had driven him. And she didn’t know that Hannibal could easily refute many of Daniel’s claims about his past. He would have to decide whether or not to tell Isis that he’d never been to Vikos in his life, and why he’d lied to her.
Deep in thought, he hardly noticed when Isis peeled back his collar and examined his neck, gently touching the bruises, shallow punctures and smaller cuts.
“He never got a firm grip,” she said, dabbing at the wounds with a herb-infused cloth.
“If he had,” Daniel said, “I wouldn’t be here.”
Her teeth pressed into her lower lip, and he knew she still felt guilt that he had no power to assuage.
An Opir who could feel real guilt was rare enough. A woman like Isis was one in a million. She claimed responsibility for him, but he felt the same for her.
He had no right to keep her in ignorance.
Isis leaned over him, her lightly covered breasts brushing his bare chest. Daniel came to full arousal, but Isis seemed unaware..
Still, she clearly wasn’t indifferent to their intimate situation. She seemed to be trying to avoid touching any part of him that she wasn’t stitching or bandaging, twisting her body into positions that would have been awkward if not impossible for a human.
Self-disgust formed a knot in Daniel’s chest. Isis was afraid to start anything, and he couldn’t blame her after the way he’d acted the previous times.
“Isis,” he said, gently pushing her away. “I’ll heal.”
Her dark eyes reproached him. “You bear enough scars already,” she said.
Daniel reached up to touch his neck, the ridges of old bite marks that striped his skin. “They don’t bother me,” he said.
“The vicious Opiri who did this to you...why would they not heal you after they took your blood?”
“Some of them did,” he said lightly. “There’d be nothing left of my throat if they hadn’t.”
He regretted his words immediately; Isis gazed at him, appalled, and placed a herbal plaster over his neck. He caught her wrist gently and kissed the underside.
“There’s another way you can heal me,” he said.
She pulled free and rose from the chair beside the bed. “You should take food and drink,” she said. “You cannot recover if you do not—”
“Come here,” Daniel said.
“I will send for—”
He grabbed the trailing end of her robes. “Isis,” he said. “I’m asking for your help.”
Spinning around, she jerked the robes from his hands, pulling the wide straps of her gown halfway off her shoulders. “Do not tempt me!” she cried. “I will not do to you what those others did.”
“You won’t.” He sat up, willing her to look at him. “I know what I said before. I regret it, Isis. I’m sorry.”
“Daniel—” She looked at him with exasperated bewilderment and sat down again. “I do not blame you for your reluctance to give your blood. You may tell yourself that those scars don’t matter anymore, as it doesn’t matter that you had to fight for your life at Anu’s bidding. But you can never convince me that the past is gone, Daniel. Not for you.”
Taking her hands in his, he said, “You have no part of that past, Isis. Maybe you don’t want any complications between us. But if it’s because you think you’ll remind me of bad times, I can set your mind at rest. You can never do to me what the others did, because you’re nothing like them. You could never be.”
Her eyes were like deep twilight, complex and beautiful. “I want it too much,” she said.
Daniel’s pulse rose. “I’ve done this willingly before, Isis. But I would never give my blood out of obligation. It’s what I want, too.”
“You trust me so much?”
He let go of her hands and lay back on the bed, pulling her down across his chest.
“Are you certain?” she whispered.
“Take only what you want from me, Isis. I won’t demand more of you.”
Closing her eyes, she bent over him, her breath warm and soft on his torn skin, her lips brushing old scars. She tasted his neck with the tip of her tongue. He stiffened and then quickly relaxed before she could register his instinctive response.
When her teeth grazed him, not yet breaking the skin, he cupped his hand behind her neck and gently urged her on. Her teeth pierced his flesh, and he expelled his breath slowly. A moment later she was drinking, lapping at his blood with her tongue, sucking so lightly that he barely felt it.
He let himself drift, keeping his mind blank, and so he wasn’t fully prepared when her fingers found his fly and released him. She stroked his length with the very tips of her nails, sending wild shivers through his body. She continued to drink as she pushed her robes apart and straddled him, eased her wet heat over him and took him inside her.
Moving in a steady, firm rhythm, he filled her up, holding her in place with his hands on her hips. Her breasts, nipples erect, pressed into his chest. She moaned as he moved his hands to her bottom and caressed it, massaging the firm, rounded shapes with his fingers.
Abruptly she stopped drinking and reared up over him, her breasts swaying. He pulled her down and took one nipple into his mouth, rolling his tongue around the firm bud and withdrawing slowly to flick the tip with his tongue. Isis gasped as he did the same with the other breast, welcoming the way she slowed her movements to make the most of his ministrations. He wanted it to last, to give her all the pleasure he could. And to fully realize for himself just how much he had rejected because of his pride.
After he had given full attention to each delectable breast, he lifted her off him, to her faint protests, and laid her on her back. He stretched out just below her parted thighs and dipped between them, putting his tongue to work again. Her breath came fast as he ran the tip of his tongue between the delicate folds, tasting the honeyed nectar that emerged from her glistening lips. He pushed deeper, seeking the center, and found it. He pushed his tongue inside her and withdrew quickly, giving her a preview of what he had denied her a few moments before.
Isis began to squirm, clearly unwilling to let herself come. When she made another low protest, he worked his way up her body, licking and kissing her belly and just beneath her ribs, lingering over her brea
sts again as he moved into position. Her thighs came up around his hips, welcoming him. She gave a little cry as he entered her, urgently, pushed to the edge of his own endurance by her honeyed warmth and her moisture on his lips.
She arched to meet him just as urgently, and after a moment her teeth closed on his neck again. A kind of ecstasy came over him, and some faraway part of him wondered if she was using her body’s natural aphrodisiacs to enhance his experience.
At the moment, he didn’t care if she was manipulating him. He reveled in the feel of her body gripping his, the smooth glide of flesh in flesh, the rhythm growing faster and faster.
Isis reached her completion before he did, but he wasn’t long behind her. He moved hard for a few seconds and then slowed and stopped, letting her cradle him within her as the urgency passed into glorious lassitude. He sought her lips and kissed her gently, moving his mouth against hers and skimming the inside of her lips with his tongue. He tasted a little blood, and something else that filled him with quiet joy.
Slowly he rolled over, carrying her with him so that her body was half-sprawled across his. Isis kissed his chest and his throat and his mouth. She kissed the wound on his neck again...but there was no wound. She had healed his flesh. And, for a moment, she had healed something else.
“Will you tell me now?” she murmured.
“Tell you what?” he said, stroking her damp hair away from her face.
“What it is about Hannibal that you hide from me.”
Daniel slid into a sitting position, moving the pillows so that he and Isis could remain as close as possible.
“I have to ask you something first,” he said, kissing the corner of her mouth. “What I say has to stay between us. Can you agree to that?”
Gazing into his eyes, she ran her delicate forefinger over his lips. “I promise you that I will keep any secret you share with me. I will never betray you.”
Daniel sighed and pulled her closer. “I didn’t come from Vikos,” he said, “but from a place much farther west, in California. A place called Avalon.”
CHAPTER 12
Isis’s warm breath spilled out of her mouth as if she’d been holding it back, anticipating the worst. Daniel knew what she was about to ask.
“What is this place you call Avalon?” she asked.
“I told you that I had come across peaceful but separate human and Opir colonies after I escaped from Vikos,” he said. “But I traveled here from a colony where humans and Opiri live in cooperation and to their mutual benefit.”
Isis sat up, the sheets bunching around her waist. “Such colonies do exist?”
“Yes. In several places along the Pacific seaboard. Some have been more successful than others. But we have learned that it is possible to have peaceful coexistence.”
“We?”
“The humans and Opiri who founded the colony.” He shifted to look into her eyes. “I did serve in a Citadel, Isis. But it was Erebus, not Vikos. And I was not the only one to escape. With the help of other Opiri and humans, we founded our own mixed colony, and fought for its survival.”
She moved sideways, putting a clear space between herself and Daniel. “You lied to me,” she said, “claiming that you needed to find out if such a thing was possible by observing Tanis. You already knew it was.”
“Yes.”
“How many other lies have you told me?”
He caught her wrist as she rolled away from him and began to climb out of bed. “Listen to me, Isis. I was sent here to gather information without revealing myself, in case Tanis proved to be hostile.”
“Hostile?”
“We had little information to go on. I needed to learn if Tanis was a potential threat to us in the west.”
“How could we be a danger to you?”
“If you were not what you were rumored to be—if Tanis was run by ambitious Opiri—you might send raiders west to attack the colonies as some of the Citadels do.”
“Do you now think that is possible, Daniel?”
Daniel sighed. “When I talked about cooperation within Opir and human colonies I found on the way from Avalon, I told you that I wondered if that kind of life could be maintained on a larger scale.”
“I remember. You thought a city such as ours would relapse to the old ways,” she accused.
“That’s not all,” he said. He released her wrist. “Our colonies in the west cannot stay small forever. Tanis is an experiment that, to our knowledge, had never been tried before.”
“So you worry about the future of your own colony.”
“Yes.” He met her gaze, willing her to understand. “Our people are divided on how to deal with a growing population of free humans and Opiri who want to live in such colonies. Some believe we can continue to expand into cities like this one.”
“But you disagree.”
“I believe it’s wiser to divide the larger colonies rather than lose the intimacy and personal knowledge of fellow colonists.”
“And of course you do not believe we have that here.”
“I see the distance between most Opiri and humans in Tanis. I fought Opiri whose only desire was to cause trouble for humans. I observed the way Hera and Anu and Ishtar behaved, and I know—”
He broke off, unsure about Isis’s ability to accept what Hugh and the other humans had told him.
Isis slumped back on the bed. “Your judgment will determine your colony’s attitude toward us,” she said, “and even affect the future of Avalon? If you were so badly treated as a serf, how could you be objective?”
“I wasn’t the first observer to be sent here, Isis. Ares and his wife came first. They never returned to Avalon.”
Her eyes widened as she realized what he meant. “Then Ares was not a Bloodmaster you knew in Vikos.”
“I knew him in Erebus.” The memories pushed their way into his mind, and he shut them out. “When I was younger, it was every bit as bad as Vikos is rumored to be. Ares joined our colony when he saw that his work in Erebus could not be successful.”
“His work?”
“To convince the ruling Council and the Bloodmasters that the way of the Citadels was not sustainable. He began by trying to get better treatment for the serfs. But he was badly outnumbered, and he had to leave to protect his wife.”
“Trinity.”
“A dhampir originally sent to Erebus as a spy from the San Francisco Enclave. She posed as a serf and was claimed by Ares, but she found the good in him and stayed by his side to help him.”
“And now you—” Isis inhaled sharply. “You think something happened to him here.”
He threaded his fingers through hers. “I have no proof, no clear reason to believe it. But I can’t discount it, either. Anu still thinks of himself as a god. Ares was...is powerful, possibly a rival to Anu.”
“You think Anu would have—”
“I didn’t say that. But I have to know what happened.”
“But not only out of duty or gratitude. You care for him.”
“Yes,” he said, swallowing the tightness in his throat. “He did save my life.”
“And Hannibal?”
“Just what I said he was, a close ally of my owner. He and Ares were always enemies. He was exiled from Erebus when—” He stopped at the look of sympathy in Isis’s eyes, rolled away from her and swung his legs over the side of the bed.
“Daniel,” she said, rising behind him. She touched his shoulder, tracing a scar with utmost gentleness. “How long were you a serf?”
He couldn’t look at her. “All my life, until I escaped from Erebus.”
Her hand stilled on his shoulder. “But Opiri never take infants or young children.”
“They took my mother when she was pregnant,” he said. “I was born in Erebus. I stayed with
her for six years before I was separated from her.”
“I am sorry,” Isis whispered.
“Don’t feel sorry for me. I survived.”
“And how did Ares save your life?” she asked softly.
“He bought me from Palemon when I was a very young man.”
Firm, slim arms wrapped around his waist from behind. “Now I understand,” she said. “None of these scars came from him, did they? Ares treated you well, as you had never been treated before.”
Daniel gently detached her hands, turned and held her back. “Now you know the truth,” he said roughly. “Most serfs in the Citadels are sent as convicts from the human Enclaves. I was never free until Ares came to understand that keeping serfs was wrong, and his allies got dozens of serfs out of Erebus. Once I was away from the Citadel, I had to learn to be what I am now. Do you understand?” He lowered his voice. “I had to learn how not to be a slave. And you’re a goddess. Do you regret becoming my caretaker now?”
She freed her arms and took his hands in hers. “You have given me more than the truth I asked for. You did not lie to me about your primary purpose here, or your desire to find Ares or Hannibal’s identity. You merely changed the details and concealed your origin because you didn’t know how much you could trust me. Now I know how much you do.”
“Then let me tell you the rest, Isis,” he said with brutal directness. “When you slept with me, you shared a bed with a man who was used as breeding stock.”
“Daniel,” she gasped.
“It was illegal in Erebus, as a condition of the Armistice, but some Bloodlords did it anyway. Palemon and those like him, including Hannibal, used...extreme measures to get our cooperation. We always tried to refuse, but—” He turned away. “I don’t know what happened to the children, if there were any.”
Isis gathered her robes, rose, and left the bed, moving with uncharacteristic awkwardness, and he closed his eyes. Had he told her so much in order to push her away, when only a short while ago he had reveled in their joining and given her his blood? Had he said it to protect himself from making the mistake of growing closer to her, when he still had no idea what drove the Nine and the Opiri in the towers...or where her ultimate loyalty lay?
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