by Raven Hart
I thought about that a moment. Would I have? Would I have followed Diana knowing she had chosen another man? “No. I think not,” I said. “I would have let her go.”
Eleanor’s stricken look said she believed me. She strangled a sob and hung her head, realizing the error of her choice. “He beats me,” she said.
“I can see that.” While Eleanor was often a facilitator for those with more violent fetishes and could play the dominatrix as well as anyone, she derived no pleasure from being victimized. She had entered into a game over which she had no control. I felt sorry for her for the first time. It was true I could have been more responsive to her needs when Diana had first arrived and proved to be a threat. I should have reassured Eleanor. I thought that she would trust me. But she didn’t and the result had shaken my world. I created her to be a helpmate to me, not an encumbrance, and certainly not a traitor.
“He tricked me,” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me that I couldn’t leave you for two hundred years without starting to…die?”
“Because I had no idea that you would be so foolish as to leave me,” I said.
“You wanted to keep me in the dark like you always did with Jack. It’s your way of controlling us.”
“Nonsense. I thought I had an eternity to teach you the ways of the blood drinker. How did I know you would abandon me so soon after we started our life together?”
She screamed in frustration. “Because she came. And when she did, everything between you and me was different.”
I could not deny the truth of that. “That still does not excuse your part in Renee’s kidnapping.”
“They figured out Renee’s connection to the blood on their own. They knew that Gerard had used her blood to experiment with and they put two and two together. I couldn’t have stopped them.”
My mind reached out to hers for any sign that she was lying, but she blocked my psychic intrusion. An impressive trick for a fledgeling. Jack had taught her well.
She broke down in sobs and sagged against her restraints, and I felt nothing. It was as if what little compassion I had as a vampire was bleeding away as Renee’s blood was being let in whatever hovel they had her hidden.
“You saw me in the shells, didn’t you? You saw me the first time he—he raped me.” For the first time in our acquaintance, I saw shame on the face of my madam mistress.
“Yes, I saw. I was treated to the sight of another man ravishing you and boasting that he now owned everything I called dear. I also saw the moment when you realized you had made a grave mistake by trusting Hugo instead of me. I saw the horror of that knowledge in your face.”
Eleanor sobbed again. “Diana couldn’t wait to tell me, you know. We were still on the plane when she told me why I was beginning to feel sick. I thought they were giving me tainted blood at first. Then she came to me and said that I had signed my own death warrant by leaving you without being released from our bond. She laughed at me. Even as I first began to die, she laughed.”
Eleanor’s narrative chilled my blood even further. It was more confirmation that the Diana of my heart and of my memory—the human Diana—was well and truly gone. In her place masqueraded a beautiful demon capable of the most vile of betrayals and the most monstrous acts of cruelty. I realized that my inability to reconcile the sweet and loving Diana of my past to the fiend occupying her body was at the root of my disorientation and disillusion.
“Are they feeding you now?” I asked, noticing under the naked lightbulb her thinness along with the mottled grayness of her decomposing skin.
She shook her head. “I need blood. Please.”
I rolled up my left shirtsleeve and offered her my wrist. She bit daintily but hard enough to open a vein. I thought once again what an elegant vampire she made. It was a shame her survival instincts were so poor—when given a choice of whom she should trust, she’d chosen badly. The next few days would tell if that error would prove fatal.
She put her cupid’s bow lips to the wound. Her sucking was greedy, and I saw her cheeks grow rosier in moments. She broke the seal between her lips and my flesh well before I could feel the effects of blood loss.
“Take me with you,” she said. “Help me out of these chains. Release me from my offspring bond.”
“I cannot. Not yet. If they come back and find you gone, or if you begin to miraculously come back into your undeath, they will be alerted to my presence. That might put Renee at even greater risk. You must stay here a little longer.”
“Stay here and rot, you mean,” she said wildly.
“When I find Renee, I will come back and release you from your bonds, both mystical and physical. In the meantime you must not tell them that you saw me tonight.”
She started to protest, but held herself in check with visible effort, knowing she needed what was left of my goodwill to survive. She straightened and tossed her head to clear the unkempt hair from her eyes. “Come closer,” she said.
I did as she asked, coming to stand near her. She pressed herself as close to me as the chains would allow and bent one knee, rubbing her leg along the outside of mine. “Is there anything I can say or do to make you want to take me with you now?” she said.
Though her state of decomposition repulsed me, my body began to respond to her as it always had, becoming hard and hot. She reached up, grabbed the chains above her and pulled her body off the floor. She wrapped her legs around my waist and rubbed her sex against me. “I can’t believe you’re going to leave me here with them,” she mewled. “I need all the power I can get, William. You know what you have to do.”
What she was referring to was plain. In addition to letting her drink my blood, I could in fact give her a measure of my strength without freeing her. In the world of the undead, a female can draw power from a male through sex.
I unfastened my belt and freed my swollen cock. I grasped her thighs and jammed her against me, entering her with such force she screamed loud and long, whether from pleasure or pain I didn’t know. She’d been ill-used by her captor in ways I didn’t want to think about. But her legs clung to me as I worked in and out of her. I bent her torso backward so I could suck her breasts, laving her nipples with my tongue, tugging hard until they were plump and stiff.
As I tasted her I recognized the stench of Hugo on her skin and I remembered the vision of her and Hugo on the plane. He’d taken her roughly from behind, pinned her to the bed with his massive frame, and rammed himself into her again and again as she whimpered in pain and begged him to stop. When he was finally finished, he’d collapsed onto his back and draped his leg across her body to hold her there until he was ready to use her again.
Revulsion made me decide to end things more quickly than was my habit.
I grasped Eleanor’s waist and pressed her to me, entering her fully, and quickened my pace. Soon I came and felt her response as her muscles gripped my shaft in rhythmic waves that made her buck and writhe.
As my demon seed filled her, her body hitched and she arched her back as far as she could against her restraints, her eyes rolling back like those of a doll dropped on its head.
When her body stilled, I slipped out of her and re-clothed myself. Spent, she sagged limply against her chains, but I could feel the power transference. She would be stronger for a while. Still, the fix was only temporary. She would begin to rot again, and soon.
“I’m begging you, William. Take me with you now. I can help you find Renee.”
“How can you do that?”
“I’ll help you search. I’ll do anything you say.”
“I can think of only one way you might be able to help. Stay here and try to seduce Hugo into disclosing where they’re keeping her.”
“Seduce?” Eleanor said with a bitter, near-hysterical laugh. “He’s done whatever he wanted with me since the moment we took off from Savannah, no matter what I said or did.”
“Isn’t that what you volunteered for? I’m surprised that your talents haven’t allowed you to wrap Hugo a
round your finger—much like I once was. I imagine you’re quite surprised as well.”
Tears coursed down her cheeks, but I found I could not pity her. “It’s that damned Diana,” she said. “She bewitched both of you. I can’t believe that you don’t still love me, at least a little.”
“Believe what you wish.”
Faced with my stern facade, she changed tactics. “I can still bring you to your knees,” she said. “Now that I know you’re in London, I can call out to you as my sire. I’ll remind you day and night what we once were to each other. What we still can be.”
“You can’t invade my mind unless I let you,” I said.
“You’ll let me.”
My recent gifts of blood and power had allowed her to look like the old Eleanor, elegant and seductive. She lowered her head and locked gazes with me. My head swam with erotic images from the first time we’d made love. She had discovered how I thrilled at the sight of expensive, white Egyptian cotton sheets, pristine except for a few drops of my own blood. I blocked her thoughts before she could persuade me to change my mind and free her.
It occurred to me that—because a female vampire draws power from a male—she can eventually grow stronger than her mate.
Thus it is common for male vampires to kill the females before this happens. That is why so few females survive more than a human lifetime. Those who do survive have learned to make themselves indispensable in some way to the male on whom they depend for protection. That usually means an exquisite sexual relationship. But the male protector, having been weakened through the years by the woman, often becomes the weaker vessel. That is the point at which it is common for the female to kill him.
I had planned to stay with Eleanor for the rest of my existence. If she eventually destroyed me, so be it. My death wish would be satisfied and at least the intervening years would be anything but boring. But I didn’t think she would kill me…because I had actually trusted her.
In five hundred years I had met only two women who could tempt me so sorely that I might let my guard down enough to suffer my own demise. Those two were Diana and Eleanor. Perhaps one day I would see my death wish to fruition by allowing myself to be drawn off my guard by the siren song of some other particularly seductive female. Even let her kill me during sex if she were clever enough. But it wouldn’t be either of the two who so recently betrayed me.
“If I can’t find Renee on my own, I’ll come back to learn what you’ve been able to discover. Do not disappoint me.” I started to walk away but paused at her voice.
“When will you be back?” she demanded. “Will it be before I start to rot again? Before I die and go to hell for all eternity?”
“That remains to be seen. In the meantime, you will not reveal that I was here. If you do, I’ll kill you myself.” I turned again to leave but thought of one more thing I wished her to know. “I couldn’t help but notice that you didn’t think to inquire after Deylaud’s health. When I left Savannah he was clinging to life—no thanks to you, who left him for dead. He loved you more than life.”
She gave a cry of anguish. “They wouldn’t let me see to him. I couldn’t help it. I swear!”
“Save it,” I said.
I left and made my way upstairs. I quickly searched the sparsely furnished rooms, finding no signs of Renee and no clues as to where she might be. The refrigerator held no stores of blood. That meant they were most likely hunting for live prey.
Once back out on the street, I walked in the direction Hugo and his little family had gone. I lost their scent on the next block so I walked the shadowy streets, lost in my own dark thoughts, until I found myself near King’s Cross.
The area had become somewhat gentrified since my last visit to London, what with properties being snapped up for redevelopment near the international Eurostar train station. Still, the odd prostitute and drug dealer were about. A young woman stepped out of the shadows in front of me, blocking my way. “Fancy a bit of a party?” she offered, looking for all the world as if she wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“My, but you’re a bold one,” I observed. Her hair was dyed jet black and her makeup looked as if it had been applied with a spade. On her chin was painted what I believe used to be called a beauty spot. A tattoo on her bare right shoulder said SID V. FOREVER.
“Are you buying or what?” she asked.
“Romantic too,” I said.
She made a face. “What you want, then?”
“Like I told you. Romance. Starting w’ a bit of a snog,” I said, mimicking her accent. I wrapped an arm around her waist and the other around her shoulders and kissed her on the neck while dragging her back into the shadows. Before she could protest, I bit down, covering her mouth with my gloved hand to silence her scream.
I felt her blood flow past my fangs and fill my throat, the sensory delights of feeding on a living, breathing human. Her heartbeat sounded in my ears as if it were my own. I sucked and swallowed, quenching my thirst. As her heart’s rhythm began to slow, I sealed the wound in her throat with my lips. She would regain consciousness in a matter of hours with no memory of me.
I picked her up and carried her to a phone booth a few feet away—the picturesque red kind one can see depicted on London postcards alongside double-decker buses. They were largely decorative now that everyone had their own cell phone. I pushed open the door, set her down on the floor of the booth, and closed the door again. If a bobby happened by, he’d assume she was sleeping off a high.
“Don’t talk to strangers, little girl,” I offered in parting.
When I arrived back at Olivia’s house, I found her in the sitting room with a number of her vampires. “What did Donovan find out?” I asked.
Olivia stood. “He’s not with you?”
“We split up. Hugo and the others came out of the house and walked down the street. Donovan followed and I searched the house.”
Bree appeared at Olivia’s side. “You mean he went after those vampires by himself? How could you allow—”
Olivia put a warning hand on Bree’s shoulder, went past me to the door, and looked out. He’s not back yet.”
Jack
Right after sundown the next night I woke up in my coffin with Reyha snuggled against my side. She was accustomed to sleeping in William’s coffin, but since he’d been gone, she had insisted on sleeping with me.
I’d taken up residence at William’s place to protect Melaphia and the Rin Tin Twins. The twins were Egyptian sighthounds by day and humans by night. They were a gift to William from the King of Prussia. Anyway, they’re ancient, immortal, and used to guard the tombs of the pharaohs. Now they nibble their kibble at William’s house and guard him while he sleeps.
When he broke his mystical oath to serve William, Deylaud had come within a hair’s breadth of giving up his immortality and his ability to assume animal form.
In the last few weeks, after Eleanor moved in with William, Deylaud had developed a strong bond with her. When Eleanor thought William was turning his back on her, she left and moved to her new house, still under construction. Deylaud went with her, and when we found him there after Eleanor left, he was nearly dead. Melaphia did some incantations to restore Deylaud’s oath and repair the mystical bonds that he broke, and he’d been recovering slowly.
“Good morning, Jack,” Reyha said as she waited for me to crawl from my black coffin. I could tell that she woke up a little disoriented when she realized that I was there with her instead of William. She and Deylaud missed him something fierce.
“Morning, sunshine,” I said. When I had my feet on solid ground, I scooped the lanky, leggy blonde up into my arms and out of the coffin. I carefully set her down on the ottoman in front of William’s easy chair and handed her the crutches she’d been using since Hugo had broken both her legs.
Thankfully, her healing powers were about as miraculous as a vampire’s. She would probably be as good as new in a week or so, but I didn’t think I would ever get over the shock of fi
rst seeing her or Melaphia after Hugo had beaten them so badly. It had made me sick nearly unto death.
Each and every time I saw Reyha hobbling around, or every time I looked at poor Mel or Deylaud, I vowed that I would kill that sonofabitch Hugo if it was the last thing I did on this earth—that is, if William didn’t kill him first.
“Why don’t you check on Deylaud?” I said.
Reyha brightened at the thought of her brother and hobbled off while I jumped in the shower. I let water as hot as I could stand beat down on me. I loved the fancy showerhead in William’s vault. The pulsating made me feel like I had a pulse and the hot water made me feel warm-blooded. I did some of my best thinking in the shower.
Right now I was thinking about how to handle the situation with Connie. She could tell I was spooked about what she’d asked me the night before, so she had suggested that I sleep on it. Now I knew I had to discourage her from the notion of going into the underworld. William had managed to go there and come back safely, but it wasn’t something I was keen to try. Something could go wrong and you could get stuck, like poor Shari had when I tried—and failed—to vampirize her. If Connie wound up there for eternity because I screwed up, I don’t know what I’d do.
Maybe Melaphia would come out of the funk she was in long enough to give me some sound advice. Could I possibly get that lucky? I turned off the shower, dried myself, and pulled on jeans, boots, and a black pullover.
I stopped in the doorway to the kitchen, saddened by the scene inside. Reyha knelt beside her brother as best as she could on her hurt legs. Deylaud was still in dog form. He had been so desperately sick when we’d gotten him back to the house that night, he’d morphed into mutthood and stayed that way. William had said it was a good sign, that being a canine would help him heal faster. But it creeped me out to see Reyha in one state and Deylaud in the other. If it was disorienting for me, I couldn’t even imagine what it was like for them. They’d been in lockstep for two thousand years.
I bent down beside Reyha to stroke her brother’s sleek, pale head as he lay on a pallet by the hearth. When he weakly licked my hand it made me want to cry. He laid his head back down on his paws and sighed as if the effort of holding it up had cost him.