“Bathroom, I need to go to the bathroom. I... I’m under control now. Mostly.”
I levitated to the bathroom without bothering to fake walk, and looked at myself in the mirror. My face was already a little better, but I looked different. My eyes were more blue than I’d ever seen them — almost glow-in-the-dark electric blue. I turned the light off to see if they glowed.
They didn’t, but I could see as well in the dark as I could in the light. The teeny bit of light coming in around the door was enough to illuminate even the smallest detail. I left the light off and decided to make use of the toilet again. My stomach felt full and I wondered how much blood I’d drunk.
My knee only gave a small twinge as I sat, and I wondered at how fast Bran’s blood was working this time. I took several long minutes to analyze how I felt in that moment, and put a trigger in my head so if I ever felt this way again I should get away from the people I cared about and lock myself in a room until the feeling was gone.
I was mortified at the memory of wanting to blow Abbott’s head up to get free. Nothing had mattered except getting more blood — it felt like I’d been possessed by some horrible blood-drinking monster. If it’d taken another handful of seconds for me to remember who I am, I could’ve easily killed Abbott, and anyone else who’d gotten in my way.
The memory terrified me. I was too powerful to be out of control. New vampires have no power and can be easily commanded by their sire until the baby vamp learns control.
How many of my friends would I kill if the bloodlust took over and they tried to keep me from hurting anyone?
And how much blood had I taken from Bran?
It’d been Abbott holding me — had Bran been too weak? I wasn’t ready to return to them and find out because the bloodlust was still too strong.
I found a washcloth in a small closet, wet it, and held it to my face. Nothing helped — I still craved more of Bran’s blood. I finally gave up, stripped down, and stepped into the shower with the water completely cold. I don’t know how long I stood under the steady stream of cold water until I no longer wanted to drink anyone’s blood.
I wasn’t as cold as I should’ve been, but I still turned the water to warm until my skin no longer felt icy cold.
As I put my clothes back on I heard the conversation in the other room, as well as several conversations happening upstairs.
And I was overwhelmed by scents I couldn’t name. My nose was suddenly giving me a whole new world of sensory input, and I needed a map for this new terrain — or at least a starting point.
I reached into my jeans pocket, hoping to find something to pull my towel-dried hair back with, but no such luck.
Abbott, can you see if Kendra has something I can use to put my hair in a ponytail, please?
Of course Carena. Are you feeling better?
Yes, I’m fine. How long have I been in here?
Over an hour.
Damn. I needed to get back out there and see what had happened.
Is Bran okay?
He’s fine. We stay well-stocked here so he’s good as new.
I took more than I should’ve. If you hadn’t stopped me, I could’ve hurt him.
He wouldn’t have let you hurt him. He could’ve removed you without help, but it was easier for me since I had the use of both hands. Until you get yourself under control he’ll likely want you to drink from a glass if you need more, though.
Is this the only time I’ll feel out of control? Or could I lose control again? Do I have to drink from him again for it to hit?
Kendra’s on her way downstairs to bring you a ponytail holder and a fresh shirt. The two of you can talk about it while she helps you with your hair.
Okay. Thank you.
About that time I heard someone walking towards the door and somehow knew it was Kendra. I unlocked the door and opened it to let her in, and she grinned at me, “Hearing and smell are better now. You knew it was me.”
“I guess. I’m not really sure how I knew — I just did.”
“Once you learn which smells are which and get an idea of how to separate them, you’ll know exactly who’s coming and what they are. Well, mostly. I still don’t know what Marco is.”
“I’d wondered about Marco. His energy is... different.”
“Your hair’s a disaster. I think there’s some spray-on conditioner in here.” She looked through the cabinet under the sink and stood with a spray bottle. “Yes, it’s still here. Close your eyes.”
I did, and she sprayed it on my hair and got it to settle down a little and behave. I ran my fingers through it before trying to comb it out with the big toothed comb she handed me, and finally pulled it into a ponytail with no pain because my wrist and shoulder were perfectly healed.
I easily levitated myself onto the vanity surface and asked, “Okay, what do I need to know about bloodlust?”
She handed me the v-neck tee, and I changed while she talked.
“You did exactly the right thing — getting away from everyone until you had yourself under control. The cold shower was probably the wrong thing to do though. Since you’re warm blooded, a warm shower should help more than the cold. The idea is to distance yourself from everyone, and try to make your body as comfortable as possible so the bloodlust is the only thing you’re dealing with. If you’re hungry then eat food, if you’re thirsty then drink, if you’re cold get warm, and if you’re hot then try to cool yourself off. The exception would be if you’ve already conditioned yourself to get something else under control with the cold shower, in which case the conditioning would bleed over into this and the cold shower would help.”
She stopped and looked at me, saw I wasn’t going to respond, and kept going. “For now, if you feel bloodlust coming on then immediately get yourself away from everyone. The sooner you remove yourself from the temptation, the better — you want to control it before it ramps up to something you can’t manage. Eventually you’ll want to stay around the temptation to test yourself, but for now it’ll be best to get away at the first sign.” She sighed. “I doubt you’ll be allowed to be alone for a while, not until Bran and Abbott are sure you have it under control.”
“But, I’m not a vampire. I’m still human.”
“Yes, but you’ve had enough Lugat blood to gain more of the benefits of it. There’s almost always a price for extra abilities you don’t have to work for, and in this case, the price is bloodlust.”
“How long will I need to worry about it?”
“With as much as you’ve had? Likely not longer than a week, possibly less.”
I could deal with it for a week. I wasn’t going to be alone for a while anyway, with the need for bodyguards. I sighed and asked, “They sent you in to make sure I was under control before I go out there and make a fool of myself again, right?”
“Everyone succumbs to the bloodlust for a while. It takes time to learn to control it.”
I lifted my brows to hopefully point out she hadn’t answered the question, and she shrugged. “The ponytail holder was a nice ruse, but yes.”
“Am I under control?”
“You seem to be, but the only way to know for sure is to let you smell a shapeshifter, a human, or another Lugat. Abbott and I won’t trigger it.”
I took a deep breath, centered myself, and told her, “Let’s go. No time like the present.”
She stayed close as we walked out, and I realized it was so she could grab me if I lunged toward someone. The plethora of smells was overwhelming, but nothing triggered the bloodlust again, thank goodness.
Nathan was closest to me, and I sniffed his essence as I neared him. Kendra touched my arm as we approached and said, “No hugging just yet, give it a bit.”
Randall and a few of his wolves had sat behind the main seating area and been mostly quiet. He gave me a wary look as I neared, so I didn’t get as close to them as I had Nathan. All the wolves had the same underlying smell, with their own scent overlaying the wolf.
I wondere
d what part of Nathan was lion and what part was Nathan — I’d have to smell another lion to figure it out.
With both Abbott and Kendra present, I could figure out which layer was Strigorii and which was their individual smell.
I wanted to compare their scent with a human, and I realized Ryan wasn’t in the room.
“Where’s Ryan?”
“Guarding the outside perimeter.”
“I need a human to smell.”
“No humans just yet,” said Abbott. “We’ll keep you with the supernaturals for now.”
Ah, so they’d sent Ryan away to keep him safe. I wondered what he’d think of my being overcome by bloodlust, and I chuckled to myself as I realized he’d likely stop trying to convince me of a vampire’s true nature now.
I sniffed in Bran’s direction, but without another Lugat in the room I wasn’t sure what part of his smell signaled Lugat.
I smelled Mordecai from ten feet away and he wasn’t like anyone else in the room. I could practically taste him on my tongue. He was pure and... original. Like otherworldly honeysuckles. Celestial honeysuckles? If an angel planted and nurtured them, it’s what they’d smell like. Not sickly sweet, but pure and — my breath caught as my mind filled in the final word — divine. Oh, god. He smelled divine. No, not with a little d, but with a capital D.
He smelled Divine.
I walked to him as if in a trance, dropped to one knee, and bowed my head.
The next thing I knew, he was sitting on the floor holding me in his lap like a child, and we were both crying. Out of nowhere, I remembered him from some long-ago place and time. I wasn’t sure of the details because the memory was just beyond my grasp, but kneeling before him had felt right and it was something I absolutely had to do. Not because he wanted me to, but because I wanted to show him respect, or adoration, or... something.
Mordecai held me tighter and quietly said, “Mon petit chat.... oh, my kitten.”
And that brought it back. I remembered what it felt like to shift out of my human skin and into the skin of a cat. A black panther, to be exact. I’d been a shapeshifter in a past life, and Mordecai and I had known each other.
“Did you know?” I asked. Had he known all along?
“No, I did not. With the addition of Bran’s blood tonight, I can smell much about you I could not before.”
“Adonis won’t wait much longer,” Abbott said.
“Get him on the phone and I will speak with him,” Mordecai answered without breaking eye contact with me.
Someone did and Mordecai said, “Adonis, my friend. I know you’ve come a long way to meet her, but we have a bit of a situation and Kirsten is not fit to meet anyone new tonight. She’s in the process of another metaphysical breakthrough and I need to keep her away from people right now. Especially away from new people with great power she doesn’t already know.”
I heard the other side of the conversation as if the phone were to my ear. “Only coming from you would I believe this right now. I understand she was attacked by agents of the Celrau tonight?”
“Yes, and she received blood from a powerful Lugat to heal her wounds. You can probably guess the rest.”
“I see. Keep me updated. I will meet her before I return home.”
“I know, my friend. We aren’t trying to keep you from her.”
“Some of you are, but I believe you aren’t at this moment. Take care of her.”
“We will.”
He disconnected and pulled me to him again, and his strong arms around me brought even more memories and emotions until my senses were flooded. “Amiens... we knew each other in Amiens. In France.”
A bubble formed around us, blocking out the sounds and smells of the room.
“Yes Kitten, there are still sightings of large black cats in Amiens. Every ten or twenty years it makes the news, and it always makes me think of you. My precious little Kitten.”
“There were... the Merovingians... they were real.”
His expression turned grim. “We need to speak with more privacy than the bubble, Kitten.”
Without warning the world turned grey and we were floating in... nothingness. No, not floating, we were still and the nothingness moved and swirled around us. But, how can nothing be moving? Just as suddenly, the world solidified around us again and my heart sped as I looked up to see the carved and gilded ceiling of a huge cathedral. Ancient and beautiful, it was a piece of living history.
“Where are we?” I whispered.
“The Cathedral of Amiens, in France.”
“I guess you don’t spend much on airfare.”
We’d arrived sitting on the floor, and he extricated himself from me and stood me up beside him as he took to his feet. “I try to keep my abilities secret — there are few who are now alive who know of that ability and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t speak of it. They’ll know I vanished with you, but they don’t need to know we left the room.”
He let me go as I found my equilibrium, but I got another lungful of him before I lost his warmth. “You smell so much different than everyone else. You smell divine.” I bent to his bare arm and inhaled the sweet, pure scent. “I can smell your divinity.”
“Not everyone smells it, and I wasn’t aware Bran did. I’m not sure if this is a borrowed skill, or if you’ll still pick up on it when his blood wears off.”
“Was I part of the Merovingian line?”
“I can’t talk to you about the Merovingians or their descendants.”
“Orleans?” The word came out before I knew it would, and my eyes grew big I realized the ramifications.
“Please,” he said, “and I beg of you in this — please try not to remember too much in that direction.”
“The very fact you can’t talk about it means there’s something to it.”
“I can smell more on you than just Lugat now. I didn’t smell it at Abbott’s, but you now also smell of divinity. If anyone else smells it....”
I waited for him to finish, but he only stared at a stained-glass window. Finally, he looked at me, his eyes grave. “Kitten, it’s possible you smelled the divine in me because it’s also in you.”
“So, I’m descended from... a god?”
“Not quite.” He sighed. “The things I’m telling you aren’t completely my secrets to tell, but it can be argued I’m telling you your own secrets. It’s a loophole, but one I think I can safely take.”
I nodded.
“You know Faerie is real, but the inhabitants aren’t much like Tinkerbell — they’re almost always beings humans want to avoid if at all possible. Some races in Faerie are closely related to the gods of old. In fact, a few gods of old are now royalty in the various courts of the Fae.” He rubbed my back and inhaled my essence again. “This is what I smell in your blood — one of these gods of old who made Faerie his home must’ve produced a child with a human female at some point a long, long time ago.”
“And that’s what gives me my abilities?”
He shook his head. “I scent two oddities in your blood now. You also have another powerful ancestor in your line — a shapeshifter. I can sense the energy of the shifter, but I can’t distinguish the flavor, which animal.” He shrugged. “I’ve sensed similar dual ancestors in other humans though, and they had no special talents beyond exceptional intuition, strength, or intelligence. It’s your years of meditation and focus that’s given you the abilities you’ve mastered. If your supernatural abilities were biological, they’d have shown up at puberty.”
“My grandfather’s side of the family has a lot of outstanding talent. Out of the fourteen kids there were four lawyers, a judge, a talented architectural engineer, and four or five college professors. My uncle remembers poker games out on the lawn when he was little, where the aunts and uncles were talking about things like infinity.”
“On the lawn?”
“He says my great grandmother didn’t allow demon alcohol in the house, so they moved the parlor table out to the lawn for their p
oker games.”
“How many past lives do you remember?” he asked.
“I’ve probably remembered a dozen or so at one time or another, and then promptly forgotten them once I learned whatever lesson I needed to grasp. The purpose of being here now is to be here now, not to look back on past lives and try to live them again. However, there’ve been times where remembering a past life helped me understand how various circumstances were part of a lesson I should’ve figured out in a past life, and was being given another opportunity. Or, it explained why I had the type of relationship I had with a particular person and helped me deal with them better. Like with my mom — understanding our relationship in a few past lives helped me heal our current relationship. She thinks I’m nicer since I went and found myself, but in reality I just have a different perspective on why she’s the way she is.”
“We should go back. Do you have more questions?”
“Why didn’t you want me talking about the Merovingians at Abbott’s?”
“I think it best no one figures out...” He stopped abruptly and gave a small shake of his head. “I’m sorry, but the loophole won’t let me talk to you about this.”
I believed him, so I didn’t push. “If you figure out a way to tell me — or nudge me in the right direction to figure it out for myself — I trust you’ll do so.”
“I can’t make any promises.”
I appreciated his honesty, so I didn’t argue. “Thanks in advance if you can pull it off. Do you have an idea of which god-of-old-who-is-now-fae might be my ancestor?”
He looked thoughtful before shaking his head again. “I’m not going to even guess. You’re in danger if...” He looked away again, and I let him work out how to tell me whatever I needed to know. “If anyone were to figure out your ancestor, then whatever court he belongs to could claim you as theirs. If he’s still alive, his claim would be nearly impossible to fight.”
“I’m guessing that would be bad?”
“Oh, that would be very, very, very, bad.”
“Is anyone besides you going to smell anything weird on me? Will the scent go away as the effects of Bran’s blood fade?”
Of Humans and Monsters Page 12