by Joey W. Hill
“Yeah. Except you don’t.” Rand’s attention remained on him, too close, too personal. “You could have gone into town to get a good fuck anytime. You didn’t have to hang onto me. You could say it’s the freak factor, getting the chance to fuck or feed from something like me, but I’m not buying that, either. You can’t connect to humans, you can’t connect to vampires. But I’m something else, and you connect with me.”
Cai turned away again, but the wolf wasn’t finished. He continued, in that matter-of-fact deep timbre that stroked his nerves in the right way, while disturbing him at the bottom of the muddy, nasty bog that was his soul.
“Can’t really say I like you much yet,” the wolf mused, “but we’re still hanging out together. Maybe because we’re both pissed at what the world’s taken from us and we haven’t figured out how to work that out. Waiting together for that knowledge to come is a hell of a lot less lonely than doing it alone. So, in the meantime, here’s this do-or-die situation that’s fallen into our laps. Maybe someone’s trying to throw us a bone.”
Cai sighed and tossed him a look. “You really didn’t just use a canine metaphor.”
Rand’s mouth quirked. “It happens. Those lamb chops smelled really good. I was wondering if they kept any bones.”
“Well, before you get yelled at for going through the trash, let me ask you this.” Cai pivoted and crossed his arms over his chest. “Have you lost your fucking mind? Fate doesn’t throw anything at anyone. Life just sucks for some, doesn’t for others, and the wind changes direction for fuck-knows-why. That’s life. You start reading signs and meaning into things and—”
“Life might just start to have more meaning again.”
“Ugh.” Cai spat in disgust. “Fine, okay, I get it. You lost your family and you’re trying to deal with that pain. But sorry, getting me killed isn’t going to make me feel better.”
“What about having the vampire queen owe you a favor?” Rand suggested shrewdly. “The whole Council? She knew how to aim that arrow.”
“Yeah, she did. Doesn’t mean I have to prove her right. I prefer to be contrary even if it’s against my own best interests.”
“You don’t say,” Rand said dryly. He glanced at the bench next to him. “Why don’t you come sit next to me again? I want to show you something.”
“Saw that earlier. Wouldn’t mind seeing it again, but timing’s a little off, wolf.”
“Bite me. That’s one that works for wolves or vampires. Come sit down.”
“Careful. That almost sounded like an order. I’m the only one who gives those around here.”
“In your dreams.” Rand’s gaze had stilled, become steadier. Cai sighed and grimaced.
“Fine.” He sat down next to the wolf. He couldn’t deny that the press of the broad shoulder and hip against his own was welcome, but he stilled as Rand ran a caressing hand along his back to his waist, hooking his thumb in the waistband of the jeans to tug.
Affection. Wolves were into physical affection. With no other motive than that, Cai could relax into it, even though most of his body felt rigid as a tent pole. Rand kept his gaze on the flowers, rather than looking at the vampire. But after a moment, he bumped Cai with his elbow.
“Tell you what. If you do this, I’ll keep having all the sex with you that you could want. And provide you meals.”
“You’re a terrific lay, wolf, and your blood’s incomparable. But getting my appetites met doesn’t balance with happily walking back into the bowels of hell.”
“What would? Killing this Lord Graham asshole? Taking out the Trad that took you from your family?”
“Yeah to the first, no to the second.”
He felt Rand’s puzzlement. “Why are you dead set to take out Graham, but not the Trad that took you?”
Cai shifted his attention back to the gazing pool. “Goddard was too powerful. I didn’t stand a chance against him. Maybe one day.”
It was more than that. It was a deep-seated feeling of revulsion, a terribly strong and overwhelming need to avoid the world that had held him for so long. That compulsion was far stronger than needing to take out Goddard. So Cai had told himself, for years and years and years. But Graham…Graham had hurt his mother.
“Besides, none of it would change anything.”
“Exactly.” Rand’s tone of satisfaction suggested Cai had made his point. Rand’s gold-flecked blue ones met his. “Nothing will change any of it. Because nothing can give you back what you really wanted. Your life, before it all happened. The only thing you can do is try to help her.”
Rand dug into the back pocket of the jeans. “I snagged this from a small stack of them on the hallway table. Leona was holding one. She’s way messed up. If Sheba had lived, she would have been the same. No way she would have survived losing two litters like she did.”
He handed the small portrait to Cai. Vampires couldn’t be photographed or reflect in a mirror, so those who wished to have their image captured did it the way that it was done prior to the invention of the camera. A painting. Only modern technology could now turn the portrait into prints, so proud vampire-servant parents like Georg and Leona could be just as annoying as the family who went to the mall portrait studio. Provide the picture to all friends, family members and Christmas card recipients in handy-dandy wallet size. Christ.
Cai guessed the stack of them was to spread hardcopies to other vampires and servants in the area, in case they’d seen something helpful. Vampires watched crime shows too, apparently.
Yet when Rand placed the picture in his hand, and Cai looked upon it, his iron-clad hold on his cynicism slipped a notch. He’d have to be heartless not to feel something as he looked at the young female. Dovia had red hair, a soft smile and the glowing beauty of a young vampire. But her eyes were what caught Cai’s attention. Direct and intelligent, with a hint of laughter in them, as if the portrait painter had said something to amuse her.
The smile possessed that genuine quality that occurred when laughter and smiles didn’t have to be manufactured by cynical bullshit and one-liner comebacks designed specifically to keep actual emotion at bay. Her expression also reflected a trace of poignancy. Since this was a recent picture, Cai guessed that had taken root while watching her father’s illness advance.
He handed the photo back to Rand. “How strong do you think she is?”
Kudos to the shifter, he picked up on what Cai was asking immediately. “I see what you see in that picture. I also got some further hints from Leona. She talked to herself while I was with her.”
Or she talked to the wolf, Cai surmised. An animal who required nothing from her and was a nonjudgmental, listening ear.
“Growing up, Dovia wouldn’t play with female servants or vampires. She always wanted to play with the boys. Even now, she competes with them in sparring, running, strength. A bit of a tomboy, in vampire terms. But one who still likes all the perks of being a girl.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?” Rand raised a brow. “Meaning?”
Cai leaned forward, clasping his hands loosely between his knees. “Do that thing to my back again. What you were doing before.”
“Petting you?”
“Not if you’re going to call it that. Fucking asshole.” But as Cai rubbed his hand hard over his face and the back of his neck, fighting a hundred different things inside him, Rand complied. His strong hand swept over the curve of his spine, palm pressed firmly against Cai, so he felt the warmth through his shirt. Rand hooked his fingers in Cai’s waistband again, stroking and teasing the top of Cai’s buttocks, thumb sweeping over the dip in his spine just above.
Maybe if Rand hadn’t been here to ask the questions that unlocked that memory box, Cai could have kept it closed and moved on, just as he’d described. But he had a full list in his head of the despicable things he was and wasn’t, and coward wasn’t one of them. He’d put aside personal vengeance for the same reason anyone stayed away from the most horrible nightmare of their life; to try and k
eep their head above it, not be sucked into who and what they’d been in that nightmare. As long as he could keep Goddard a figment of his past, he could move along in his life without going back there.
But now Dovia was in that nightmare. Cai had no reflection in a mirror, but he wasn’t sure he’d be able to look someone like Rand or Lyssa, or even the earnest Giles, in the face and see the reflection of what he’d be if he didn’t do something. Something he had no chance of surviving.
Well, fuck. Two hundred years was a good run, right? Way more than he would have had as a human.
“I have a condition,” he said abruptly. “You become my third mark servant.”
When he turned his head toward Rand, the male’s blue eyes were puzzled, wary. “You want to link our souls.”
“I don’t believe that shit. The only verifiable thing about the third mark is that it links your life to mine. They kill me, you die.”
Rand blinked. “That’s kind of you.”
“Yeah. It is.” Cai set his jaw. “I won’t go in there knowing if they kill me, which is a pretty damn certainty, that you’ll be left to their mercy. A fucking shifter? Might as well call it Christmas. There are legends about your blood, and what it can do for a vampire’s strength and mental acuity. It’s probably just mythical bullshit, but I don’t deny it’s like a high-octane energy drink next to human blood. However, the guy that leads this little sect of Trads has pursued every damn wives’ tale, no matter how unlikely, to figure out how to conceive upon vampire females.”
Cai put his hand on Rand’s thigh, gripped. “Apart from being staked through the heart with steel or the obvious stuff, like decapitation, you’re also pretty indestructible. My blood and our bond can bring you back from almost anything.”
Rand considered that. “So we succeed or fail together.”
“Pretty much.”
Rand still had his thumb hooked in Cai’s waistband, and his fingers curled over the denim on the outside, an absent caress. Cai’s shoulder was pressed to his chest, and he realized they’d somehow eased into a fairly intimate position with one another. If that was a wolf thing, he didn’t mind it so much. But vampires had a little edgier way of showing affection.
Rand was thinking, so Cai slid his hair back from his shoulder and put his mouth to his throat, taking a nip and then holding it there, letting the fangs press inward. Not breaking skin, just a clamp, his tongue lazily tasting the caught flesh. Rand’s fingers tightened and his deep voice came out satisfyingly more throaty. “What are you doing?”
“You did say whenever, and however much I liked. Just enjoying the flavor of you, wolf.” But Cai lifted his head so their faces were close. “So, do we do something stupid, or do we go to Syria?”
“You’re letting me make the call?”
“No,” Cai said decisively. “But if you prefer Syria, it’s going to be way easier for me to talk myself out of the stupidity you just talked me into.”
“So I am making the call.”
“No. Aren’t you listening? I’m the vampire, you’re the servant. I’m always in charge.”
Rand’s lips curved. “Sounds like you’ve decided we’re going to do something stupid.”
“And you’re good with that.”
Rand shrugged. “It’s a chance to go out doing something worth doing.”
Cai shook his head. “Just like that. ‘Hey, let’s do a third mark soul-binding, hike into the Appalachians, and find a bunch of psychotic fuckheads. They’ll probably torture us to death in ways so creative, Lucifer will award said fuckheads an Exceeds Expectations trophy. Whaddya say?’”
“Anything that turns out better than that will be gravy.” Rand shrugged again.
Cai grimaced. “Forgot to add the worst part of it. Being saddled with a cheery optimist with dog breath. Kill me now and spare me undue suffering.”
Rand snorted, but he became serious once more. “Why do you kill them?”
Despite the jump in topics, Cai didn’t have to ask what he meant, but he thought he’d covered the ground back when they’d had their last argument about it. Rand didn’t seem to agree, though, since he pressed onward.
“You were human. You were taken from your family. You remember what it is to be human. You know who Harry Potter is, so you spend enough time in their company to connect with them.”
“I like to read,” Cai argued. Rand pressed on, ignoring him.
“You abhor Trads, but your feeding habits are theirs. You kill humans rather than take what you need and leave them alive. I need to understand why.”
“Why?” Cai could feel himself locking up, and told himself not to do it. For one thing, the wolf could sense it, and if it didn’t matter much to Cai as he claimed, he wouldn’t get defensive about it, would he? “If I give you the wrong answer for your comfort zone, will you let me off the hook for this whole save-the-girl shit?”
“You made the choice yourself, remember?” Rand arched a brow. “You’re the vampire, I’m the servant. All choices and decisions are yours.” His expression softened. “I’m just trying to understand.”
“Well don’t,” Cai said shortly. “Don’t try to figure me out like you’re going to get to the bottom of it, and find out I’m a nice guy who got permanently mindfucked somewhere along the way. I mean, yeah, that’s the story, but who the fuck cares? Not my prey, right? Rabbits don’t sit around and try to understand why a wolf decides to chow down on them instead of a rat or a deer.”
“It’s a little different. If you can survive without taking a life, but you choose to do so…”
“It started out as survival, proving I was as much of a psycho as those around me,” Cai snapped. “Like smoking to be cool with your so-called friends and then getting hooked. Simple enough.”
Rand’s brow furrowed. “I’m pretty sure that’s a stupid analogy for what we’re discussing.”
“Doesn’t make it less true. Just makes it more appalling. Go back to square one. I’m a fucked-up asshole. It’s easier.” Cai sighed, and turned his gaze to the forest. “Somewhere along the way, Rand, I lost whatever compass guides someone like you. No, not lost it. I smashed it myself. It was a desensitizing thing. They treated me like I was nothing because I was human. Then, when I became a vampire and finally had a measure of power, that was how Lodell, my sire, taught me to feed. He told me I was no longer human, and that was the best way to remember it. He was right. I couldn't go back and, in some weird way, I wanted to make sure of that. Make sure I didn’t even look, didn’t think of what kind of human I'd be, if things had been different.
“So I fed the way he fed. Unlike some of them, he was never cruel about it. Said we were actually more honest about it than people who sit down to a hamburger but could never in a million years handle killing the animal themselves.”
Cai shook his head. “One-on-one, sure, there are humans I’ve connected with, but when it comes to food, going on the hunt, something else entirely happens. Maybe because we don’t shift to fur, your kind doesn’t see it in a vampire, but it’s no different. When you were sitting out on your porch as a human with Dylef or Sheba, how many times did you see a deer come out of the woods and get tickled by it, that I’m-all-connected-to-nature-harmony shit?”
Cai locked gazes with Rand. The dangerous hardness in his eyes raised the small hairs on Rand’s neck. “But later, when you’re a wolf, and you’re hungry, that deer crosses your path again. When she runs, something else rises in you. Something real and undeniable, and linked to the deeper, darker pulse of nature. The Trads made me a vampire, and there’s no going back from that. I don’t spend a lot of time bullshitting myself about it, and taking my prey the way I was taught is part of that.”
Rand’s thumb slipped over the valley of his spine, a caress of flesh. “Would it hurt too much to try to change?”
“Change for what? And for who? The only one I have is the one in the mirror and oh, hey, I have no reflection.”
Cai rose, moving away from that dist
racting touch, and repeated his earlier mantra.
“Don’t make the mistake of thinking there’s something better here than what you see, Rand. Some vestiges of that fifteen-year-old kid. I learned a long time ago that soul is long dead.”
Cai left Rand after that. In his usual smartass way, he told Rand to occupy himself for an hour, maybe by begging the kitchen help for those bones. He said he’d rejoin Rand shortly.
As Rand watched him stride off, he suspected the vampire would leave the grounds entirely. Walk the quiet roads and trails amid horse country, until he could work out in his head whatever he was thinking. Maybe strategy. Maybe trying to talk himself out of this. Maybe taking off entirely. Rand wouldn’t realize he’d gone until hours had passed, but he didn’t expect that.
The vampire was a solitary creature. Rand had been surprised the male had responded to physical affection earlier. It had moved him, twisted something in his heart, remembering how easily he and Dylef gave that to one another. He was in no danger of thinking Cai was like Dylef, but it had been welcome, that response to touch that didn’t have an immediate sexual drive behind it. But Cai putting his mouth to his throat had reminded Rand vividly of the differences between his relationship with his former mate and…whatever he and the vampire were.
Even Cai shied from calling Rand his servant, except to goad or tease. Their bond at this juncture was unclassifiable, but if they did this, they would be brothers-in-arms, relying on one another in a situation where having each other’s back was necessary. Vital.
Rand didn’t know if Cai could be trusted for that, though his death wish took care of making it a top concern. But there was more at stake here than Cai’s trustworthiness or Rand’s careless attitude toward his own life. Dovia. It was one thing to go on a suicide mission to exorcise one’s demons once and for all; another, when an innocent’s life hung in the balance. He and Rand might be her best hope of survival, slim though Cai seemed to think that was.
It was only about an hour from dawn when Cai reached out to Rand in his mind and told him that he’d given Lyssa his decision. The queen had instructed everyone to go to ground and rise at dusk, with the intent of finishing up the planning phase, getting Cai and Rand on their way as soon as possible.