A Darker Crimson

by Carolyn Jewel

  Korzha touched the rogue’s mind. There was nothing recognizable, nothing at all. A hiss slithered from the rogue’s mouth and beneath that, a low rumble. The vampire had been so long in Orcus that his mimicry of a demon’s growl was pitch perfect. His eyes skittered around the room, and his upper body twitched, a clonic tic of the shoulder that rolled down first one arm and then the other. His focus darted to Donovan and back, Donovan and back.

  Korzha lifted his hands. “Vasile,” he said.

  The rumbling hiss increased. “Vasile,” it echoed in an imitation of Korzha’s voice, pitch and timbre without flaw. The rogue’s arms twitched, one then the other. Then, in a different voice, in perfect Romanian, it said a word, venomous and low: “Vampyr.”

  The rogue leapt, intending to go past Korzha, in a frenzy to get to Donovan. Korzha blocked him. His injured arm took the brunt of the collision. A sharp fingernail raked his cheek, deep and tearing. His elbow dug into Vasile’s ribs and the rogue caromed off, flying across the room with unexpected speed because his body weighed practically nothing. Korzha went after him, attacking, keeping himself between Vasile and Donovan. Korzha was prepared to die in the battle.

  Vasile fought him with the madness caused by his isolation and unending hunger. He wanted Donovan. Blood. Hunger. Vampire. Woman. The stream of thought came in Romanian, the language of their nativity, of their human lives. Sânge. Foame. Vampyr. Femeie. Another attack, arms and legs swinging, fingernails deadly sharp. Korzha ducked, and Vasile screeched and twisted midair. He flew at Korzha in a rage, arms twitching.

  Korzha had no choice. None. Vasile could not be permitted to live. He should never have been made. It was a mistake that had defined their lives for eternity. Korzha waited for Vasile to dive at Donovan, and when he did, he moved in and up. He delivered a slash to the throat, deep as forever. Vasile dropped to the ground at Claudia’s feet, body twitching. His head didn’t move and the eyes stared upward. Animation seeped away. Gone, his fire of insanity had come to an end. Easily, finally.

  Korzha didn’t give himself time to think. If he didn’t act now, all would be lost. The boy was lost forever. Forever. Long ago he’d been lost forever. He plunged his hand inward, through Vasile’s paper-thin skin, past the gap in the rib cage and to the left. He took the heart that should have beaten its last long ago and perhaps been buried, his body ancient and white-haired in a grave beside a beloved wife. He ought to have had children mourning their father. Instead, Vasile had had only a slow and inexorable descent into madness. To be sure this death was final, Korzha severed Vasile’s head with a slash through bone and cartilage that separated vertebra and spinal cord.

  Korzha dropped to his knees and bowed his head. Vasile’s body quivered once. The process of disintegration to ash rippled through the corpse so quickly there wasn’t time to say goodbye. The thought that only madness held Vasile together crashed over him and refused to leave. Now that his madness was ended, so did the body. Nothing was left of his son. Blood, a single drop, dripped from Korzha’s gashed cheek and fell on the ashes. A hiss, a wisp of smoke rose and with it the acrid scent of destruction.

  He felt Donovan move, knew every motion she made, but only as he was aware of the room, the background. He didn’t allow the sensations to move beyond that. She joined him, crouching at his side with a cobalt blue jar about the size of her two fists. A rose-like scent came from it. She’d emptied it and done a hasty clean-out of the inside. Without saying a word, she scooped the ashes into the jar. It was a human gesture and for all that, remarkably touching.

  When she was done and the jar was stoppered, her hand slipped over his uninjured cheek. “Korzha,” she said.

  He turned his head to her. There was no horror in her eyes. She knew. And his heart was lost to her right then. Forever.

  “Tiber.” She took his hand and tugged. “Come on.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The first thing Claudia did after she started the water in the shower was help Korzha remove his clothes. She did her best not to look, or maybe it was fairer to say she did her best not to admire what she saw. They peeled off his tunic and tossed it to the floor, and he stood motionless while she unlaced his pants. Oh, my. He went commando style. When his pants dropped and he stepped free, she reached up and pulled the scrunchie from his hair. She let it drop to the floor too. With a gentle push, she got him in the stream of water.

  His fingers curled around her wrist. “Come with me,” he said.

  She stared right into his beautiful but desolate green eyes. She couldn’t. She wanted to, but what would inevitably follow didn’t bear thinking. Yet, how could she leave him alone in such grief?

  “Please,” he said in a soft voice. His forefinger circled on the inside of her wrist.

  Curls fell to his shoulders. Sparkling drops of water covered his body. He dragged the fingers of his other hand through his hair, slicking away the moisture. A few drops clung to his eyelashes. His espresso-bean curls stayed back from his face. Beads of water clung to the gaping edge of his slashed cheek and at the worst spot, a red-tinged rivulet coursed down his skin.

  The look in his eyes broke her heart. Before she could change her mind, she slipped out of her clothes. He made room for her. She faced him and words just spilled from her mouth. “I didn’t know. Korzha, I didn’t know. You should have told me. I’m sorry.”

  “Hush, dear-heart,” he said. “Draga. Draga inima.”

  Tears streamed down her face, and the vampire reached for her, embraced her, comforted her when their roles ought to be reversed. She rested her cheek against his chest. Her breath hitched. His son. Mad. Ruined. “I’m so sorry.”

  “This was tragedy of my own devise,” he said, in a voice pitched low but at her ear so that she heard him perfectly. “My daughter married at sixteen, quite usual in my country at that time. She died in childbirth soon after. The child, too. My wife died the year after. Vasile hadn’t yet married. I thought…” He rested his chin on her head. “I waited until he was your age. Twenty-five. And then I made him. He was not ready. He did not want it.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Today I have undone my mistake.” He stroked her hair. “There is no more to say of it.”

  He shifted until the water beat down on them both. The hot stream felt good. Perfect. There seemed no need to worry about an auto shut off. She could stand here forever if she wanted to. She closed off everything except the heat and warmth but, the truth was, the skin on the nape of her neck prickled with awareness of Korzha. Eventually, she pushed away from him and bent to the jars at the edge of the shower. She opened each one until she found what she figured was probably soap. Sometimes it was best to pretend everything was fine even when it wasn’t.

  When she faced him, he cocked his head. The guy wasn’t human, she reminded herself. Korzha was taller than she was, so when she reached for his hair, she had to rise on her toes. He set his hands around her waist, helping her keep her balance. He looked gaunt, she thought. And his wounds weren’t anywhere near healed, though he gave no sign of being in pain. How could he not be? His upper arm was a mass of angry crimson punctures, deep wounds, probably to the bone. If it wasn’t for him, she’d be dead several times over.

  Taking care to avoid the injuries, she soaped his arm, first one then the other, his face, his upper body. It was nice, touching him like this. Arousal trickled through her and the defined, specific and sensual task of washing him kept her focus on the physical and away from emotion. His skin was clean and clear, pale over the kind of lean body she’d always liked in men. But there wasn’t any lack of muscle. His wasn’t the kind of body you built in the gym; it came from the kind of specific activity that made a fencer’s body different from a sprinter’s different from dancer’s different from anything else.

  She used the soap and shampoo and the oil, too, because it smelled so good. He stretched, keeping his body in the hot spray, keeping close to her. Offering her whatever part of him needed washi
ng next. A flowery scent drifted with the shower mist: not roses, but similar, with a drier, sweeter scent than the roses back home. Water and steam warmed his skin, she could feel the difference in his surface temperature. His erection strained upward from a tangle of dark hair. Thick and turgid. She wanted to touch it. She put the pads of her fingers on his stomach, just above the tip of his sex.

  “Do you think we should?” she asked.

  He laughed. “Should what?” He looked wary, too, despite the laughter.

  “Do it.”

  “Fucking is nice,” he said with a wicked smile. “But I’d like to make love.” More than anything she wanted that, for him to hold her in his arms. “Okay.” Her mind felt gloriously free of any push. This was what she desired.

  His hand went around her waist, fingers splaying. Water sprayed down, heating them both. Korzha touched her body. Yes. She stared into his green eyes. Not lilac. She wanted to drown in those green eyes that would never, ever lie to her and never compel her. Heedless of the water hitting his face, he said, “Are you sure?”

  Korzha’s eyes held hers, dark green and at the moment, glittering. His fingers pressed into the skin of her back, slipping along the wet.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Fucking or making love?”

  Water beat down on them both, and in her belly, desire rippled through her in concentric waves. “Korzha…” she said, helpless.

  “Fucking or making love?” he asked softly. “Which would you prefer?”

  “A little meaningless sex wouldn’t be so bad.” She didn’t feel in any position to promise her heart to this man, but the longing to have him in her arms, to kiss him and stroke him welled up, overwhelming her. And then there was the errant thought that sex with Tiberiu Korzha couldn’t possibly be meaningless. She fisted her hands and rested them against his chest.

  He searched among the bottles and jars for the soap, and dipped his fingers in the container. A whiff of the rose-like scent floated on the steam. He washed her hair. His fingers massaged her scalp, scrubbing. Eyes closed, she let him turn her around to rinse away the lather. He used a little of the oil to untangle her hair. Every now and then their bodies came into contact, his swollen sex touched her hip or her back, or his leg brushed against hers. Each contact sent a fresh gout of desire shivering through her. Claudia put her palms against the wall of the shower and let her head hang down, willing the water to wash away all coherence.

  The scent of flowers came to her again as Korzha made more lather. His hands slipped on the hot skin of her upper shoulders, pushing her wet hair off her neck. She drew in a breath as his palms moved along the curve of her back and down to her hips. Like water to a parched man, cool to a burning body; every inch of her quivered in the wake of his touch. His fingers slid up the inside of her thighs and to her nether hair, soaping, rinsing. Eventually, he put his head by her ear and said, “Time to dry off, Officer Donovan.”

  He stepped out of the shower. Claudia watched the flex of muscle along his flanks, the taut sinews as he reached for one of the towels on the bench. With his good arm, he took her hand and helped her out. She was naked, and he was looking at her. His free hand came up and drew damp hair from her face.

  But his attention focused lower. He looked for a long time. He traced the interlocking lines carved into her hip, and Claudia felt a spark from him to her flowing through it. It was interest, blunt male interest. With a short grunt, he took a step forward. Underlying his interest, threatening to overwhelm, lurked a stark hunger, viciously suppressed. Despite having fed on the wolflike creature the previous night, despite a day’s sleep, his face was ashen, the skin tighter then ever against his cheeks, clinging to his skull.

  “That thing’s blood wasn’t enough for you, was it?” she asked. “It wasn’t good.”

  He wrapped a towel around her, shoulders and all. “You smell of flowers.”

  Since her arms were trapped underneath the towel, she nodded toward the soldierly line of jars. Hunger gleamed in his eyes, but she said, “Answer me, Korzha.”

  “No. It was not good for me.” He grinned, but his mouth stretched tight. He didn’t seem to care that he was naked. Or that water dripped off his body. Or that she was looking at him. Trying not to look at him, but looking, definitely looking.

  “You’re beautiful.” And wasn’t that the truth? “Really beautiful.”

  “Tasted like crap,” he said at the same time.

  Claudia hurried to talk over her previous words. “What about demons?” she asked.

  “What about them?” He was naked. And he was going to make love to her. He was, wasn’t he?

  “Do they taste like crap, too?” Her clothes lay in a neat pile on a stone bench. Her sheathed knife lay on top, holding down the pile. He smiled, but underneath his hunger still burned; she could feel it.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never eaten one.”

  “You know what I mean. Is demon blood good?”

  His smile disappeared. “Not particularly.”

  “How ‘not particularly?’”

  He stared at the towel around her. “Particularly bad.”

  “And…how long can you go without?”

  “Without sex? Indefinitely, I’m afraid.”

  Claudia went to her clothes and adjusted her towel to more safely cover her. She picked up her knife, and facing him, slid the black blade free of its sheath. A drop of water from her wet hair fell on it.

  “If you try to use that on me,” Korzha said, “it’s only fair to warn you I’ve never been much for your strict anti-vampire self-defense statutes.”

  “How long, Korzha?” She faced him. “In your condition. How long can you starve before you’re compromised?” They weren’t far apart physically. Three or four feet at most. She held the blade point down over her extended arm and then did what Aslet had done, sliding the point into the swell of a vein. She grimaced. A well of blood appeared in the fold of her elbow. She watched it flow, then looked up.

  Tiber stood motionless. His eyes glittered and she watched the green disappear as his pupils dilated. He lifted his head, catching the scent of her blood. His mouth thinned, drew back, exposed the white of his teeth. His hunger was a palpable thing. It gleamed in his eyes, drew his body taut. The air turned thick as mud.

  “Fuck you, Donovan,” he whispered. “If you don’t mean that, fuck you.”

  “Don’t waste it,” she whispered, stepping toward him.

  “That’s not enough.” His eyes glittered with fever. “Not nearly enough.”

  “It’s a start.”

  He was there in a blink to cup her elbow. He lifted her arm and, at the same time, lowered his head. She braced herself for pain, but his tongue lapped at the nick. A shudder rolled through him. His fingers tightened around her arm.

  She closed her eyes. “Do it, Korzha.”

  He laughed and stepped closer, snaking an arm around her waist. “Even when I don’t intend for my hapless victim to die, I prefer the carotid.” He drew a finger down her throat. “But this will do. Thank you.”

  She felt his lips brush her skin, his tongue tracing a whorl in the bend of her elbow. She recognized his mental touch. His hunger pulsed through her. “Korzha,” she said.

  He looked up at her in awe. “You are a thing of beauty, Claudia. Have I failed to tell you that?”

  “Would you just bite me, already?”

  “Dear-heart, of course.” He gripped her arm, making a tourniquet of his fingers. A moment later, she felt his other hand at the back of the towel, pulling it away from her body. It fell to the floor. Cool air flowed over her, raising gooseflesh. Her breath hitched. The spell of their contact swept her along in a current of warmth. When he lifted his head, the gash on his cheek had thinned and faded from angry red to a heated pink.

  He seemed not to notice any change. His tongue appeared between his lips to lick a drop of blood away. The motion revealed a flash of sharp white canine. He pulled her close. The hunge
r in him surged, and she felt him edging away from his habitual control. Wildness twitched in his eyes; around the corners of his mouth, and sent a ripple of fear through her. His hand on the nape of her neck kept her close, kept her on her feet. He put his mouth by her ear. “I can taste the demon in you.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Officer,” he murmured. She heard a growl in his voice, the beast in him pacing at the bars to its cage. “You’re forgiven.” He laughed and brought his head to her face and just when she expected him to speak, his head dipped and his lips touched her throat. “In you, it’s spice.” He still held her nape, but one finger followed a line from her navel to between her breasts. Claudia could hardly breathe from wondering at his intention. “Delicious spice.”

  His mouth opened over her throat, a soft kiss, butterfly delicate. His fingers spread over her breast, and his tongue flicked over the pulse of her throat. Gently, very, gently, he nipped at her, but with his front teeth only. “May I?”

  She nodded. He had to. He couldn’t help her save Holly if she didn’t let him feed. That was what she told herself.

  He held her tight, so tight she couldn’t move her head. Her body thrummed. She felt his tongue on her skin. Warmth coursed through her, between them, catching her up. His upper teeth pressed into her flesh. She bucked because the sting was a thousand times worse than what she’d felt in her elbow. His body went rigid. He held her close, tight against him. His lower mouth pressed upward, moving against her. It hurt. It hurt, it hurt, and then—it didn’t anymore.