by M. J. Scott
That had to be an understatement. The Blood feel pain. So he’d made his way through the dark with his face half burned off, unable to see, having to rely on his other senses and hide himself at the same time. Terrifying. My spine chilled at the very idea.
“I wanted to seek Haven. And wanted to be out of the Night World boroughs. But by the time I got near to St. Giles, it was almost dawn and I was weak. I heard someone coming from the direction of the hospital, and I decided I could either risk asking for help or likely die from sunlight or Lucius’ people finding me once dawn came. I asked for help. It was—”
“Simon,” I breathed. I couldn’t think of anyone else likely to help a wounded Blood reach a Haven rather than treat him only if he reached safety himself. “It was Simon DuCaine, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, how did you know that?” His voice was puzzled.
In his place I would be confused too, but I ignored the question. “That explains how you got to the hospital. It doesn’t explain how you came to be hidden away down here. Or what else is hidden down here with you.” I looked past him to the final door. Something else lay behind that door. And if a blind vampire hidden away was only part of Simon’s secret, then I had no idea what it might be.
“I’m not going to tell you that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know if I can trust you.”
“I haven’t tried to kill you yet.”
I moved closer to him, my steps deliberately heavy, to ensure that he heard. It was hard. A lifetime’s habit of not putting myself within arm’s length of the Blood when I didn’t have to is difficult to break.
“Three nights ago, Lucius sent me to kill Simon,” I said slowly. “I didn’t succeed. Last night, Simon took me from Halcyon during a Beast riot. I’m fairly sure Lucius now wants me dead. I have nothing to gain by going to him.”
There was silence in the room. I could hear Atherton’s heart beating, the slow, steady rhythm of the Blood that wouldn’t be enough to sustain a human life. A familiar background sound to my life. One I’d really hoped not to hear again.
“I would like to believe you,” he said finally.
“What’s stopping you from doing just that?”
His nostrils flared a little. “I am blind but I am not otherwise disabled. I can smell you perfectly clearly. Which means, shadow, that I can also smell the taint of Lucius in you.”
Chapter Twelve
I thought for a moment that I’d accidentally shadowed and sunk through the floor. The room pressed in on me, suddenly airless. Of all the things he could have said, I hadn’t expected that. It took an effort to make my mouth work. “You can smell . . . what?”
“His scent is part of yours. You have . . . tasted,” he said, anger licking through his voice. “You’re locked to him.”
“I am not blood-locked,” I said, in automatic denial, as my thoughts reeled. Atherton knew. He knew my secret. “I’d hardly have left Lucius if I was.” I prayed he would believe me.
His head tilted, considering. “True. But I can smell him in you. The blood of our kind is addictive.” His hand shot out, grabbed my arm, long white fingers circling my wrist with inescapable strength. “I can feel it in you. Feel the need you feel. Like a fire beneath your skin. The wanting. You are locked to him.” He drew in a breath, then pushed me away, hard enough to make me stumble back a few steps. “You should not come so close to me when you burn so.”
I didn’t know which of us he thought was at risk. Did I smell more tempting because Lucius had fed me or did Atherton think I would hunger for his own blood? The need felt no different standing close to him and presumably he would control himself, so I decided to ignore the issue. I was more interested in the part where he said he could tell I was addicted. Had the Blood always known? Or was this too a result of the amount of blood Lucius had fed me that last time? “I am not locked,” I repeated.
“Maybe,” he said shortly. “Maybe it is different for you than a human. But you feel the need, don’t you?” He paused for a moment. “Why did I never sense it before?” he said almost to himself. “Why did none of us know? It makes sense for him to leash her so.” He turned to me, head tilted. “How long has he been feeding you?”
“Why should I tell you that?”
“Answer me if you wish to have any hope of gaining my trust.” His tone was heavy with anger.
I stared at him in frustration. I should just shadow, walk into the hell-cursed room beyond and find out what the secret was. But Atherton . . . Atherton knew secrets of his own. Blood secrets. He might know how to help me. How to free me from Lucius. Which was the only thing that could make a difference to me now. If he trusted me.
He needed to trust me if I had any hope of convincing him not to tell Simon my secret.
“I was fifteen when he first did it. The same year he started sending me out to kill.” The worst year of my life. I’d been clumsy those first few times, ending up blood drenched and shaken more often than not. More than one of my targets had woken, babbling and pleading for mercy, my ears ringing with their voices for days afterward, haunting my sleep. And then, of course, there’d been the time Lucius had made me tear out a heart in front of the whole Court.
My fingers tightened at the memory. I’d learned to detach myself from the kills over time. Learned to be swift and unseen in the darkness. But I’d never learned to forget that particular kill.
“And now you are how old?” Atherton asked.
I had to stop and count. The Blood don’t celebrate birthdays. “Thirty, or near enough.” If I’d been pure Fae, they would still consider me a child. But I wasn’t. I had matured faster than a Fae would, grown breasts and sprouted hair. I didn’t bleed like a human, but I’d looked like an adult at fifteen.
Had felt adult when Lucius had sent me a red dress one night and commanded me to attend him. Until then, he’d never paid too much attention to me other than seeing to it that I was trained.
But I’d been young. Young and foolishly unsuspecting. The recollection dried my mouth, even now. The way he’d taken pleasure in hurting me, beating me. Then forced me to my knees before him. Before he’d tilted my head back oh so carefully and drawn a dagger. The way the terror flooded through me, making me shiver and sweat. I’d thought he’d been going to cut my throat. Instead he’d merely sliced his finger and, when the blood welled, placed it in my mouth, made me suck the blood.
Watched me as the pleasure took me.
When I’d come back to myself, lying on the floor, with ecstasy still running through me, he’d given me both the name of my first victim and the dagger he’d used. The one lying on the floor a few feet from me now. My fingers closed over the empty space at my hip and I shivered.
“So long,” Atherton said after too long a silence. “Then he did not feed you often.”
“No. Not often.” Just often enough to keep me chained to him.
“Or very much, I would imagine. Or we would all have known. Which doesn’t explain—” He closed the gap between us, reached for my wrist again. “So strong.” His fingers tightened for a moment. Then he stepped back with a blown-out breath. “He fed you more recently. A lot more.”
“Yes,” I admitted. “After I failed to do something he asked. He wanted to humiliate me.”
“He fed you in front of the Court,” Atherton guessed. “How like him. Unfortunately for you, it means that he has only bound you more tightly.”
My stomach tightened. “What do you mean?” Lords of hell, was it going to get worse? Would I turn mindless and useless like the blood-locked humans? Knowing nothing but the need, not caring about clothing or food or anything beyond the blood? Generally the Blood kill the locked before they get too far into that stage—they don’t care for too much inconvenience—but some of them sometimes keep them. I’d seen them in the warrens, tangled hair, clothes in rags, huddled in corners, writhing with need, stinking of fear and longing.
Would that happen to me? No. I’d kill myself before—
“The larger the dose, the greater the need. The need grows and must be fed and—” He broke off. “You said you thought he wanted you dead. Why?”
“Since Simon took me, there have been several attempts to . . . retrieve me.”
“That means only that he wants you returned to him, not necessarily dead,” Atherton said reasonably.
“You know what he does to those who betray him.” I said. “What do you think he’ll do to me?”
“That rather depends,” he said. “Has he ever drunk from you?”
I had to swallow several times before I could answer him. “Yes. Once. The night Simon took me.”
“Ah.”
His tone wasn’t reassuring. I suddenly felt very naked without my weapons, but I made no move toward them. Atherton would only misinterpret my motives. “Is that important ?”
“It may be. Do you know why the blood-locked tend to die?”
“They stop functioning,” I said impatiently. “All they want is the blood.”
“That is true. But a large number of them are killed by the ones who lock them. They drink too much.”
“Why? Because the human will not stop them?” The Blood fed from the Trusted and other willing victims too, but there were rules and limits and safe words that donors who still had some semblance of rationality could employ. The blood-locked would not do anything to protect themselves. Hells, was that why they died before they got to the worst stages?
“No,” Atherton said, shaking his head slowly. The candlelight flickered strangely over his scarred face, making the skin seem to shudder. “Or rather, not only that. When you drink the blood of one who is locked to you, it . . . it can be addictive too. Something changes in their blood and it can become irresistible if one is not careful.”
“You mean the Blood become addicted to the locked?” I had never heard such a thing. Though, I had to admit, if it were true, it would be a secret the Blood guarded closely. “So that’s why you become obsessed? And why you hide it, making it out to be fascination or desire,” I said as the implications became clear. “It’s an addiction for you too.”
Atherton was moving now, pacing slowly. Four steps right, then a smooth gliding turn and four steps back to where he’d started. Keeping an even distance from me the entire time. Was I really a temptation to him?
His movement made the light waver even more, turning him into a shadowy thing in the darkened room. But I knew he was less of a monster than most of the Blood.
“It doesn’t always happen and when it does it is a temporary thing. When the locked one dies, the hunger passes,” he said eventually.
No wonder so many of them died, then. A frenzy for blood coupled with a desire for secrecy was a perfect reason to kill. I shivered. “So you think Lucius wants me back because he wants to feed from me again?”
His head tilted, considering. “It’s possible. And you would be wise to avoid giving him such an opportunity. Lucius is careful to avoid any weakness. I never knew him to create even a single blood-locked when I was in the Court. If he did, he did so in secret. No one knew who they were. He would’ve killed them quickly. He would likely wish to kill you. After all, a weapon who rebels is hardly a weapon any longer. And if the Court knows now that you have fed from him . . . well, some would want to exploit a potential weakness.”
The words hit home like dull blows. Lucius did not tolerate weakness. Atherton was right. If I had turned from useful to threat, even being a wraith would not spare me. “No one knows he fed from me. He did that in private.”
“Are you trying to convince me now that he isn’t trying to kill you?” His mouth turned up for a moment, then he resumed his pacing.
“No.” I bit my lip. But was I? Having Atherton believe that I was under a death sentence was probably the fastest way of getting him on my side. But it might be myself I had to convince. Admitting that Lucius wanted me dead was harder than I thought. Fear crawled my spine and send icy shards through my stomach at the thought of him turning on me. I tried to push it away but it tightened my throat and sped my heart. Deep down, I wondered if there was part of me that wanted to go back to him, insane as that might be.
Disgust chased away the fear. Could I really want that? Maybe Bryony was right and I was just a trained dog after all, willing to lick the hand that hit me in the vague hope of some sliver of affection.
No.
No. I was more than that. I turned away from Atherton, trying to think. Was he right? Was I doomed to have an even stronger need for Lucius because he’d fed me so much blood? Certainly my body was reacting in a way that supported that theory, but would it continue to? There had to be a way—
Wait. I backtracked, remembering what he had said. “You said that the vampire is freed from the need if the one they locked dies. Is the reverse true?”
He stilled between one stride and the next, mouth open. “I do not know.”
“No one has ever tried it?”
“Killing a vampire to set the blood-locked free? I’ve never heard any talk that such a thing has been attempted or that it works. Why, are you willing to try?” His voice dipped to a lower register, suddenly thrumming with that edge of temptation the Blood use when they want something. Or someone.
“Try to kill Lucius?” It seemed ridiculous even saying it. Lucius was a fact of life. As unchangeable as air or gravity. He’d ruled the Night World in the City for a very long time. Others had tried to kill him before. He always survived. They always died.
“Who better than his own weapon? You could get to him when no one else could.”
My skin prickled as though a storm were brewing nearby. “And why should I take that risk?”
“For freedom?” His entire focus was on me now, in that intent way the Blood have. Like a cat watching a small furry thing. Poised to react to whatever came next. Poised to strike.
I resisted the urge to retreat, to retrieve my weapons. “You said yourself you don’t know if it would work.”
“With him dead, you would have to be more free regardless of your other problem.”
I stared at him for a long moment, skin still pebbled and tingling. Fear? Excitement? I didn’t know. “I would have to think about it.”
He shrugged and the tension in the air dissipated. “That seems reasonable.” He eased himself down into the chair where I’d first found him, finding it unerringly.
He was Blood, I reminded myself. If he was interested, there was a benefit to him. “What do you get out of it? If I kill Lucius?”
The scars on his face wrinkled faintly, perhaps as close as he could get to frowning. “Maybe like you, I want freedom. To be amongst my kind again. To live without fear.”
“How badly?”
“What do you mean?”
“If I do this, you would owe me.”
“I would consider an obligation,” he said slowly. The Blood, like the Fae, take debts seriously. So here was a measure of how much Atherton liked the idea of Lucius dead.
“What I want is simple.”
“Oh?” Skepticism crept into his tone.
“If I do this, and during the time I take to decide, you don’t tell Simon about me. About the blood, I mean.”
“And if you decide against killing Lucius?”
“If it gets to that point, I imagine he’ll find out soon enough,” I said with a shrug. “But until then, I’d rather he didn’t.”
“Why?”
“He wouldn’t understand.”
“And that matters to you?”
Yes. It did. Simon had spoken of wanting me. Of needing me. I doubt he’d still feel the same way if he knew I was just another addict, someone who got her pleasures from a vampire’s blood. How could he? The humans abandoned their own kind when they succumbed to the blood. And I wasn’t even human.
The truth would kill anything he might feel. I couldn’t afford that. His wanting was buying me time. And, if I was honest, I wanted too. Not just wanting what his kiss had awakened bu
t wanting his world. I wanted to spend some more time with someone who saw me so differently to everyone else in the world. To be a person rather than a weapon.
Which was foolish when he too wanted to use me. But just for a little while, I wanted to pretend that whatever he felt for me had a chance. But I didn’t have to say that aloud yet. I doubted I could. “Do we have a deal?”
Behind me there was a sudden hum from the wards. “Someone’s coming,” I said. I turned and scooped up my daggers, ready to shadow if I needed to. I touched Atherton’s sleeve. “Quickly, tell me, do we have an agreement?”
“An agreement about what?”
I turned slowly. Simon stood silhouetted in the door, holding a lamp in one hand. The light touched me—not sunlight; that would burn Atherton—so I could disappear if I wished. But it was too late. Simon had seen me. Even if I shadowed, there was no way to hide now.
I looked at Atherton, holding my breath. His move. He could tell Simon the truth about me and change everything.
“An agreement about what, Lily?” Simon said again, moving into the room. I didn’t like the edge in his voice.
Atherton smiled slightly when Simon spoke my name. “Miss Lily wanted me to stay silent about the fact that she had been here.”
“In return for what?”
“I do believe it was something along the lines of her not returning one night and slitting my throat.” Atherton’s voice was calm but I heard the thread of underlying amusement. He might not be intending to expose me, but he was going to have his fun at my expense. I wondered if Simon knew Atherton well enough to decipher it too.
“You threatened him?” Simon said.
“I wasn’t going to actually kill him,” I said, trying to conjure a defensive tone. Better Simon think me sadistic than know the truth.
“Is that supposed to be any better?” Simon’s eyes were hard to see in the dimly lit room, but if I’d had to guess, they were likely as icy as Guy’s right now.
“He took me by surprise. I hardly expected to find you had a tame vampire down here.”
“What did you expect to find?” He put the lamp down on a table. His hand came to rest on the pistol at his hip. Apparently Simon wasn’t taking chances with me right now.