by Jen Colly
“Yeah.” He cleared this throat, hiding something. Relief? “I’ll take care of it.”
She shut the door behind her, desperately trying to stomp down her emotions. The very last conversation she might well have with Rollin was over groceries. It was enough to make her cry—that is, if she did that sort of thing.
For the slim possibility of being allowed to stay in this city, she would do anything. Cat had never had a home, and now that she’d fallen in love with these five beautiful souls, she wanted to stay. Needed to stay.
Chapter 5
Cat wrapped her fingers around the handle to the clinic door, but went no further. Elin waited inside. Cat knew very little about Elin, except that the woman was a walking paradox, her exterior delicate and genteel, but the way she spoke was often brusque and to the point. The odd woman was not the reason Cat hadn’t gone inside.
Taking in the significant amount of blood she would need to feed another required a donor, possibly two. If she had to touch someone, relive the terrors of her past in the presence of another, she’d lose her mind before she had a chance to feed Lord Casteel.
The door swung open, the handle pulled from her fingers. Cat clamped her mouth shut, refused to let a startled gasp escape her lips.
“You’re late,” Elin said, her sweet face unable to pull off a convincing scowl.
Cat squared her shoulders and entered the clinic. She scanned the small area, expecting multiple people. There was no room to hide, so unless Elin was keeping the blood donor elsewhere, there wasn’t one.
Tipping her head to the side, Cat turned, studied the young girl. Elin ignored the direct attention, headed straight for her counter, and retrieved a cloth sack.
“You know where the captain’s home is, right?” Elin asked.
Cat nodded, took the sack, and peered inside. It was full of blood bags. “How did you…?”
Elin waived dismissively. “Several patients came through today and I drew from each. No big deal. Savard said this would be easier for the sake of time.”
“Oh. Right.” Cat just stood there, numb, thankful for one less trauma.
“You look a little glazed over,” Elin said, leaning close and studying her pupils. “You okay?”
Cat shut down her thoughts and put on her game face. “Why wouldn’t I be? Everyone feeds.”
“You have no idea what this is, do you? The importance of the traditional white?” Elin must have expected a reaction because she paused, but Cat had nothing to react to, nothing for comparison. “It’s a sacrifice. He could kill you.”
“Not likely,” Cat said.
Elin rolled her eyes, then took a deep breath and said, “Okay, let me start over. You’ll be blood-drunk when you walk into an enclosed room to feed a man who will be starved to the point of hallucination. Neither one of you will be in your right mind. History has many accounts of people being drained and killed to strengthen their lord.”
Not helping. She had to get out of here. Every word coming from this woman’s mouth was making this entire situation worse. “I’m not that easy to kill.” Cat lifted the sack over her shoulder and walked out the door, leaving the clinic and the gaping woman behind.
She moved fast, her only goal in this moment to avoid people. It shouldn’t be a problem, not at this hour, and not on this side of the city, but it was something she’d rather not deal with right now.
Within moments she was at Savard’s door. She’d been sent here because of a proximity issue. Savard’s was the only home in this corridor, and one hall away from the lord’s home. Cat ducked inside and flipped on the light switch.
Savard’s home was nothing like Cat had expected. Not the plush extravagance his wealth could afford, but more of a pristine extension of the man’s love for order. Only necessary furniture occupied space on his white carpet. A table hugged the wall, and a white chair had been wedged into the corner of the room. Nothing else. She checked the bedroom. The only furniture here was a bed, and again the white walls met a white carpet.
The whole place was bright and barren, the white theme screaming avoidance of blood.
Cat didn’t own any white clothing, and had no time to meet that particular requirement for feeding a lord. The closest she could manage was a pair of dark brown leather pants and a cream-colored leather corset. The leather wasn’t thick enough for battle, making the corset more decorative than functional, which meant it was something she didn’t wear.
She sat in Savard’s cushy white chair, the supply of blood waiting in a cloth sack between her feet. Her supreme confidence had taken a heavy hit today, and with so many vulnerabilities yet to face, she wasn’t sure how she would make it through. She had very little hope of this turning out in her favor, no secondary plan, and she couldn’t avoid this any longer. She was out of time.
Deep breath. She opened the first blood bag, drank it down quickly. Scooping up the second bag, she flipped it over, running her thumb over the smooth plastic holding in the precious life-giving fluid. She popped open the top and downed the second bag.
She hadn’t told Elin, and wouldn’t tell Savard, but gorging was not exactly an unfamiliar activity. Before coming to Balinese, she’d wandered the countryside for years, hunting demons. Sustenance had been hard to come by between towns. If she wanted to survive, she gorged. Easy math.
The act wasn’t without side effects, though. Most of them she’d mastered. She’d learned to walk fairly steady, and retained a keen sense of those around her. One night after gorging she’d rounded the corner and walked right into a small group of demons. She’d rendered them all unconscious, her only injuries a couple scrapes and a jammed finger. The impaired motor skill issues that came from gorging she considered conquered.
There were other problems, however, that she had little control over. Her characteristic short temper became even shorter. No thought, no remorse. What came to mind, she said. What she wanted to do, she did. No filter, no self-control.
But the worst of it? Memories from the past popped up for a nasty surprise, and she never knew which ones would show. It happened every damn time, and would happen again any minute.
If she let it hit her hard and fast, the hallucinogenic memories would leave just as quickly as they arrived. Lifting the third bag to her lips, she sucked it down. Whatever her mind decided to conjure up would be vivid, but short. Blessedly short.
She set the empty bag back inside the sack with the others, and as she leaned forward, her hair fell across her face. She caught a piece and let it slip through her fingers over and over. That red. Always haunting her. Cat shut her eyes. Red blood. Opened her eyes. Red hair. Closed them again. Red…eyes.
Cat let out a short breath, her eyes snapping open. The red eyes remained in her line of vision. Her body shuddered violently. Always demons. The eyes weren’t real, just a catalyst for the blood-drunk flashbacks yet to come.
She’d witnessed countless evils beneath the starlit blanket of night, and had lived through several, leaving a wide array of memories for her mind to pluck one out at random. She prayed the hallucinations didn’t take her too far back. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath and allowed her mind to go where it would.
The image was clear. She stood there in the grass, the predawn wind on her face. Demons ran from a quiet countryside château, eyes flaring red. Each carried a child. Cat had been like those children once, helpless and struggling against a demon’s hold. These little ones wouldn’t live without her help.
With the sword she’d stolen years ago, she surged forward, tore into the startled group of demons. Instinct and skill took over, fueled by her rage. She saw only their red eyes, their black blood. When the shouts of battle had faded, she’d pulled her sword from a demon and took a step back. The demons were dead.
Cat’s eyes snapped open, a useless attempt to derail the hallucination. She knew what was coming, didn’t want to see it, but the scene wouldn’t stop playing in her head, and before he
r eyes.
The children cried. They might have cried before, but she hadn’t heard them until the last demon fell to the ground. Not all of the blood on the children belonged to the demons. Some was red. A little girl had been badly injured well before Cat had arrived. She was already gone. A younger boy held her hand, sobbing as he desperately called her name.
Ivette.
He needed to be left alone, to grieve for his lost sister, but if Cat allowed him to stay at her side, he would die in the approaching dawn. The older two children sat in the dew-covered grass, a boy and a girl. Each cradled a wailing girl in their arms. So young.
She ordered them to take shelter, to go back home, but they didn’t move.
To her right growled, low and menacing, her large black panther, blending into the night. Barro looked up from the demon he’d taken down, black blood and sinew in his teeth as his whiskered lips twitched in a snarl. The panther saw what Cat couldn’t, his eerie luminous eyes staring into the darkness. Someone approached.
She raised her sword, ready to take down another demon. It came closer. A young man stumbled toward her, a vampire, badly injured and bleeding out from his side.
“Help me get them below,” he’d begged her. Even his voice sounded weak. “Help me.”
Help me echoed through her mind.
Suddenly she was back in the present, sitting in the captain’s home, gasping for air. She looked down at the last full blood bag in her hand. If that was the worst of it, she’d be fine. That night she’d ambled into the attack on Balinese it had been bad, but it could have been much worse. One lost, but five lived.
It seemed so long ago. Back when Captain Savard was not yet lord, and she didn’t have a name.
Cat drank down the last blood bag. She had to get it into her system, let her body work out whatever it needed to before she walked into the room with a stranger who had complete control over her future.
Feet beneath her, she crouched on the chair, eyes fixed on the door. Any minute now Captain Savard would come for her, leading her to a fate worse than death. Death she’d welcome, but this?
A vampire had never bitten her. Just the thought of teeth touching the delicate skin of her neck… She shook her head hard in a wasted attempt to shut out the images of fangs breaking her flesh. He’d hurt her. Shred her neck. Leave her helpless, bleeding out and dying on the floor.
“I can’t,” she whispered through clenched teeth.
When the images of her own lifeless body wouldn’t stop assaulting her, she bolted off the chair only to trip over her own damn feet. Catching her balance, she swayed slightly for a moment until the disorientation passed, then made her way to the wall and leaned her back flush against the white and powder-blue wallpaper. Her knees gave out and she sank to the floor, her head falling into her hands.
She was fully blood drunk, her coordination on temporary leave, and she would soon face a monster in this condition. Cat snapped her head up, her body perfectly still and wretchedly cold. No. No images of monsters. No red-eyed demons. Those thoughts would unravel her sanity in seconds. This lord was not a demon. She had to stop imagining the ways he would hurt her, and instead remember why she must let him break her skin and take her blood.
A sharp knock at the door scattered her thoughts. From the other side, Savard said, “Cat?”
She had to answer, had to confirm she was still willing to do this. Releasing the breath she held, she called out, “I’m here.”
“Time to go,” he said.
Then all was silent. Savard could have come in, hauled her bodily to the lord’s door. He didn’t. This had to be her choice. Cat had to stand on her own, make her way down the hall, and follow through.
“I survive because I fight.” She spoke to herself, needing to hear the words aloud. Tears gathered, threatening to spill. “I can fight through this. I can fight for them.”
She stood, and once steady, made her way to the door and opened it, peered down the empty hallway. Captain Savard had left. She was alone. A hand on the wall for support, she moved cautiously to the end. Her steps became steadier as she turned down the next corridor, her body adjusting to the extra blood coursing through her system.
Suddenly she paused in the middle of the hall, and gasped. Her hand shot out to the wall, barely keeping her upright as her body sizzled and thrummed, riding the delicious high that came from feeding in general. Gorging amplified these sensations.
When she’d passed the peak, she stretched her restless muscles, arched her back, and rolled her shoulders. Several deep breaths later, and she was able to move again. It was easy to understand why some became addicted to the act, but she never had. The delicious burst of pleasure was not worth the vulnerability, or the horrible visions.
Cat gripped the doorknob to the lord’s home, pressed her forehead against the sturdy door, and gazed down the hall. Her own home was one door down, the children sleeping. Her only goal here was to ensure they never felt the uncertainty and fear of abandonment again.
One deep breath, then two. She opened the door to Lord Navarre’s home, stepped inside, and closed it behind her quickly. The room was quiet, and she leaned back against the door, brought a shaking hand to her mouth. Cat didn’t scare easily, but what she had to do now terrified her.
She didn’t know the man waiting for her, or his temperament. People claimed Navarre was a good man, but what a man is in the public eye and what he is in the privacy of his home are often two different things.
The steady silence unnerved her, and she instinctively reached for her short swords, but they weren’t there. She clenched her empty fist. Cat felt so naked without her weapons, her guarantee of survival.
Then again, her life had come with a short expiration date. She combed her fingers through her hair, shoved it off her face. For once her survival depended on the good graces of another, rather than her honed skills.
Cautiously, Cat moved through the entry, tiptoeing over the cold marble floor with bare feet. The home was dark, and she sensed the emptiness of the entry. She slipped farther inside.
Two pillars, floor to ceiling, marked the entrance to a cozy, carpeted study on her left. Books spanned the wall, tucked into rows of inset shelving and closed in with diamond-shaped, golden doors. The flickering light from the fireplace illuminated the pattern, but did little to brighten the room.
The shadow at the edge of the fireplace moved. A man reached out to grip the mantel, arms braced. Staring into the fire, he spoke, his mumbled words not making sense. He didn’t seem well.
With a shout of surprise, he stumbled back and grabbed at his chest with one hand, searching for what had startled him. When nothing came of it, he muttered again. The words were incoherent, but she recognized the tone. Determined. She watched in stunned fascination as he drew himself to his full height.
He’d shifted too quickly and thrown his balance, stumbling back to bookshelves beside the fireplace. He held tight to the gold cages, pulled himself upright, and then with a roar he lurched forward, passed the fireplace, and headed straight for her.
Instincts rooted her in place.
Several feet from her, he stopped sharply. His long and black unbound hair fell just beyond the edge of his unbuttoned white shirt, and both rode the forward momentum before settling back against his body.
His chest moved with uneven, labored breaths that seemed to throw his balance, and he leaned forward slightly to compensate.
This was Navarre Casteel, the great lord of Balinese.
Navarre seemed to sense she was there, but didn’t look her in the eye. It helped, gave her a chance to look at him. He towered over her by at least a full foot. His upper body curled inward slightly, his shoulders tight as if he protected an injury.
Cat expected that familiar sense of leery unease to creep in and take over, the nagging urge to pull a weapon, track his movements. Prepare to attack and know her exits. It didn’t happen in this moment, with this man
. She was unexpectedly calm.
Navarre’s long face matched the rest of him. Lean. He didn’t carry the bulk muscle or wiry build of a Guardian, nor did he have any facial hair, a current trend among the vampire males. Even so, he was classically handsome.
Navarre’s balance faltered and he reached to the side, gripped the pillar separating the rooms. Cat didn’t take a step back, hadn’t even flinched. Why?
She didn’t feel guarded, even standing this close to Navarre. In fact, she was extremely curious about him. Her blood-drunk state couldn’t create such a drastic change in her. This was something different. Navarre was different, and that warranted exploration.
Slowly, half dazed, Cat eased nearer to him. He drew in a deep breath and turned his head toward her, his hand still on the pillar supporting his weight. He sensed her, she was sure of it, but his eyes remained unfocused, even as she closed the distance between them.
She lowered her eyes, avoiding his unseeing gaze. Big mistake. Her gaze settled on his exposed flesh peeking out from beneath his unbuttoned shirt. He was gorgeous. She wanted to touch him, to skim her fingers down that exposed gap between his open shirt. She curled her fingers into her palm.
An angry red scar marred his chest, just off center. The vertical shape left as a permanent reminder of the blade that had nearly taken his life. The scarred skin was thin, rippled, not completely healed. She stepped closer, ensnared by the severity of the injury. How had the blade missed his heart? It seemed impossible.
Cat reached out, brushed open one side of his shirt, then the other. His hushed gasp only spurred her inquisitive drive to explore him. A flash of silver beneath his shirt stole her attention, the metal glinting in the dim light with each erratic rise and fall of his chest.
He was pierced. Each nipple held a small, silver ring. Incredible. Gently, she lifted one little ring with her finger. His sharp intake of breath startled her and she stepped back, not knowing what to expect from him.
He only shuddered. Navarre took an unsteady step toward her, and dropped to his knees. Shock rippled through her, and for one split second she thought he’d lost his strength, fallen to the floor, but then he held out his hand to her.