by Larissa Ione
“Interesting,” Eidolon murmured. “So dhampires are basically turned werewolves who drink blood. Guess that explains why you ended up with a form of the virus, but there’s something else to consider.”
Con didn’t like his tone. Not at all. “What else?”
Eidolon paused as though searching his brain for the right words, and Con’s gut hollowed out. “The virus inside you isn’t likely to want to only attack you. It wants out.”
“So what you’re saying,” Con ground out, “is that I’m a carrier. I could have infected people.”
“Unfortunately, yes. The disease seems to be transmitted via both direct and indirect contact, as well as by air, but as an asymptomatic carrier, you might transmit it differently. I tested your saliva, and it’s definitely present. We need to run tests to be sure, but since Luc hasn’t come down with the virus, you probably aren’t breathing it out or passing it on by casual touch. But you need to avoid intimate contact with werewolves and other dhampires.”
Oh, bloody hell. How many females had Con fed from and slept with in the last month? His mind raced as he counted and eliminated those who weren’t werewolves. Only one had been a warg… a turned warg. And ironically, a female who he’d avoided sleeping with for years because he cared about her, and she deserved better than a one-off with him.
Shit. “Hold on, Doc.” Con dug his cell from his pocket, dialed, and Yasashiku, a member of the Warg Council, answered on the second ring.
“Con. You’re missing the meeting. Valko’s about to have a freaking puppy. Where are you?”
“I’m at work. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” Moving toward a corner, he lowered his voice. “Have you heard from Nashiki lately?”
Yasashiku’s silence made Con suddenly, achingly, aware of the pounding sound of his heartbeat in his ears. “You didn’t hear?”
“Hear what?” Don’t say it. Don’t. Fucking. Say it.
“She caught the virus,” Yas said, his faint Japanese accent thickening with emotion. “She died last night.”
Con didn’t even reply. Numbly, he closed the phone. He’d done his share of killing in his thousand years of life, some of it justified, some not. But there was something truly obscene about killing someone with pleasure. Especially because, years ago, he’d saved Nashiki’s life after she’d been attacked by a pride of lion-shifters, and though he didn’t normally keep in contact with his patients, she’d been special, bubbly and bright, one of the few people he’d met in his life who never let anything get them down.
So he’d saved her… only to kill her.
Sure, there was no proof that he had given the virus to the gorgeous, honey-skinned warg, who hadn’t deserved how he’d screwed her while fantasizing about Sin, let alone how he’d given her a disease that had turned her organs to mush. No proof at all, but the timing was right, given the time frame from onset to death.
Crimson washed over his vision as both nausea that he’d killed an innocent female and anger that the person ultimately responsible was right there in the room with him collided. This had to end, and at this point, the risks of repeated feedings from Sin were the least of his concerns.
Especially since all of the risk would be Sin’s.
“Con?” Wraith’s deep voice was a mere buzz among the other noise in Con’s head. “Dude. You okay? You look like you’re about to take a header.”
“Then I’d better feed.” Conall’s voice was cold as he swung around to Sin. “And it looks like you’re lunch.”
Two
This was such bullshit.
Sin got that this might be the answer to the epidemic, but Con didn’t have to look at her like she was a juicy steak. He could at least try to be as repulsed as she was.
“Sit.” Con’s voice had deepened to a compelling, husky rasp that nearly had her complying with his demand like a well-trained dog.
“We’re going to do it here?”
He cocked a sandy eyebrow. “You’d rather do it in a patient room? Or maybe a supply closet would be more to your liking?”
Oh, the bastard. They were not going to a patient room, where a bed would make it way too easy to do more than the blood thing, and the supply closet remark was a jab at the first—and last—place they’d been together.
She sank down into a chair. “Fine. Get it over with.”
“How sweet,” Wraith said. “You sound like an old married couple.”
She flipped him off as Con turned to her brothers. “Could we get some privacy?”
“No.” Sin jabbed a finger at Eidolon. “You. Stay.” Mainly, she was being a bitch, but also, the little flutter in her belly at the thought of being alone again with Con was a dangerous sign that she shouldn’t be alone with him.
Lore stepped forward. “I’ll stay.”
“It’s okay, bro,” she said. The last thing she needed was Lore’s hovering. He’d been doing it for thirty years, and he seemed to be having a hard time breaking the habit. “This will be strictly a clinical procedure. Eidolon can oversee it.” Clinical? That was a joke and a half, because she knew having Con’s fangs slide into her flesh would be pleasurable no matter how much she wanted to deny it.
For a long moment, Sin was sure Lore would argue. Fists clenched, he stood there glowering, his dermoire writhing angrily. Like hers, it was a faded imitation of their purebred brothers’ markings, but it still behaved the same way, appearing to move during periods of high emotion. He finally nodded and, after shooting Con a look of scathing brotherly warning, took off.
She made a shooing motion at Wraith. “You, too. Scram.”
“Smurfy.” Wraith took off, whistling the theme to The Smurfs as he went.
“We don’t need Eidolon,” Con said. “I’ve been doing this for a thousand years. I know when to stop.”
Sin wasn’t worried about being drained, but she wasn’t about to admit that her real fear was that without a chaperone, she’d end up doing a lot more than playing Happy Meal. Fortunately, she didn’t have to say anything, because Eidolon got that stern expression on his face, closed the door, and propped a shoulder against it, long legs crossed casually at the ankles. He wasn’t about to budge, and Con must have come to the same conclusion because he muttered something under his breath and sank to his knees beside her.
With him kneeling, they were at eye level, and she gulped dryly when he locked gazes with her.
“Give me your wrist,” he said, and when she hesitated, his cold smile was at odds with the heat roaring off his body. “You’d prefer the throat? Or groin? Sure, it’d go faster that way, but I didn’t think you’d want that much intimacy.” His eyes sparked with amusement, mocking her.
She thrust her left arm at him. “Damn skippy, I don’t.”
He took her wrist gingerly, as if the mere thought of touching her disgusted him. And maybe it did on some level. But she’d never met a vampire who didn’t admit to getting at least a little revved while feeding.
A whisper of pain came with the penetration of his fangs, followed by sparks of pleasure so intense she had to bite back a moan.
“Sin,” Eidolon said softly, “you’ll need to monitor the virus levels in his blood now and then. You should get a baseline now.”
Yes, a baseline. Anything to wrench her attention away from how good it felt to have Con’s lips on her, his teeth in her. Concentrating, she fired up her gift until the dermoire on her arm began to glow, and then she gripped Con’s shoulder. Beneath her fingers, his muscles bunched as though in protest, but her succubus senses picked up signs of increased arousal: the sound of his heart rate jacking up, the rapid rise and fall of his chest, the rise in the temperature of his skin.
Her own body answered with a rush of liquid heat, but she clenched her teeth and concentrated on reading his blood. Her power entered him in a focused beam and threaded through his veins and arteries. When she used her gift to create a disease, her victims didn’t feel a thing, but she’d never probed around like this before.
“You okay?” she asked, and when Con’s shimmering eyes flashed up at her, she regretted asking. Who cared if he was okay? She was the one getting sucked on. The one who was starting to see spots.
He gave a slow nod and went back to taking long pulls on her wrist. Closing her eyes, partly because the room had begun to spin, she focused on feeling around inside Con’s veins. Shadowy black-and-white pictures formed in her head. She could see individual blood cells rushing through the narrow vessels, and with them, the virus. New cells joined the rush; hers, she was sure. Almost as though the presence of the fresh cells prodded Con’s, his cells attacked the virus like a pack of wolves taking down an injured deer.
“It’s working,” she whispered, hoping the boys didn’t notice the way her speech was a little slurred.
Con’s draws began to ease off.
“Keep going. You need more of my blood to join the fight.”
He grunted, a sound of refusal, and his fangs began to slide from her flesh. She grabbed his head and forced him to stay, though it took a lot more effort than it should have. “Almost, Con. We can kill it off—”
“Sin!” Eidolon’s strong fingers pried hers from Con’s scalp. And maybe she shouldn’t have noticed how silky his blond hair was, but for some reason, she did. “He has to stop.”
“Just a little longer…”
Rearing back, Con tore away from her. His eyes were swirling pools of molten metal, the carnal hunger there giving away both his fear that he’d gone too far and his desire to go further. Eidolon clapped a palm over her bleeding wrist even as she lunged forward, desperate to get Con to take more blood. She needed more time to study how the virus survived, how it died…
“We can’t stop now!”
Con swore, grabbed her hand, and for a moment she thought he was going to continue, but instead, he peeled her brother’s hand away even as Eidolon fired up his own gift to heal her and swiped his tongue over the punctures. Before her eyes, they sealed up, and an irrational fury grabbed her.
“You idiots!” More spots gathered in her vision and her head spun as she lurched to her feet. “The virus is going to rally in him. It’s going to…”
“Shit!” Con’s voice and arms closed around her as the floor fell out from beneath her.
* * *
“So, you’ve been feeding for a thousand years, huh?” Eidolon’s sarcastic drawl grated on every one of Conall’s nerves as he carried Sin to the nearest exam room and laid her gently on the bed.
Thing was, Con had no excuse. Sure, Sin kept encouraging him, telling him they were almost there, but worse than that—terrifyingly worse—was that hunger for her had overridden common sense, and he’d fed for longer than he should have.
He was just glad he hadn’t wrestled her to the floor and tried to take a lot more than blood.
“Heal her,” he snapped, his anger at himself putting a caustic note in his voice that Eidolon didn’t deserve. Still, the doctor merely shrugged as he gathered IV supplies from the cabinet next to the bed.
“My power knits tissue and bone together. It doesn’t make blood.” He lined up the supplies on a tray and wheeled it toward Sin. “We’d need Shade for this. He can use his gift to force the marrow to produce blood faster.”
Con brushed her glossy hair away from her face, which was far too pale.
“Then get Shade,” he pressed. Sin wasn’t in danger, but he didn’t like how her vibrance had been literally sucked out of her. But this was the first time she’d ever been quiet. He should be grateful.
“He’s off for a few days.” E gestured to the cabinets behind Con. “Toss me a Ringer’s.”
Con fetched a bag of IV saline solution and lobbed it to the doctor. “So call him in.”
“Runa’s sick, and he can’t leave the triplets.”
Con’s breath lodged in his throat. Shade’s mate was a turned werewolf. “It isn’t SF, right?”
Eidolon inserted a needle into a vein in Sin’s left hand. “Thank gods, no. It’s a mild stomach virus.”
“Good.” Con would hate to see anything happen to the female who had made Shade a lot more agreeable to work for. And speaking of work… “You going to call Bastien back in, now that you know the virus isn’t affecting the pricolici?” Bastien, a born warg who had been run off by his pack decades ago because he’d been born with a club foot, had devoted his life to UG, and Con knew the forced “vacation” had to be killing him as much as it was Luc.
“Hell, yeah.” Eidolon gestured to gauze wrappers on the floor. “The janitorial department is falling apart without him.”
As Eidolon hooked the bag of saline onto a stand, Sin moaned, and her eyes opened. “What… what are you doing?”
“Hold still,” Eidolon said. “Our boy here got a little carried away with his meal.”
She smiled weakly. “That’s ’cuz I’m so sweet and irresistible.”
Con snorted. “Not the words I would use for you.” Well, irresistible, maybe, but there were a lot of less complimentary words that fit her, too.
“Ass,” she muttered. She lifted her hand and frowned at the line connected to it. “Hey, knock it off. I don’t need this—”
Con gripped her wrist and pushed it back down to the mattress. “Yeah, you do. I took too much blood.”
Eidolon shot her a stern look. “If you had banked more of your blood like I asked you to do, I could be putting it instead of saline back into your veins.”
“Yeah, yeah. Whatever. I heal fast.”
“One benefit of being a Seminus demon,” Eidolon said as he jacked up the head of the bed so she could sit.
“There are more?” Sarcasm dripped from Sin’s voice, but Eidolon ignored her to check his beeper.
“I have an incoming trauma. Con, stay with her until the bag is empty. When you’re done, hit the lab. I’d like a blood sample from you. I want to see if you have any antibodies in your system now. And you”—he pointed his finger at Sin—“be good.”
Sin rolled her eyes, but at least she didn’t snark back at him. Instead, she waited until the doctor left, and then she turned on Con, a little bundle of ebony-eyed fury. “You idiot!”
She was sexy when she got worked up. “I said I was sorry for taking too much blood.” Actually, he hadn’t, but he felt a little bad about it, so he figured that counted.
“You should have taken more. You could still be contagious.”
“It’s not worth killing you over.” Not that killing her wasn’t tempting.
“Well, duh. But chugging another pint of blood wouldn’t have killed me.”
“Yeah, it would have.” He dug through one of the drawers for a phlebotomy kit. “Why haven’t you banked your blood like E wanted?”
“Who are you? My dad? It’s none of your business.” She shifted on the bed, the seductive rasp of her tight leather pants against the sheets making his cock twitch. Con might not like her, but his dick wasn’t so judgmental.
“If you’d done it, I could be drinking it now instead of waiting for you to produce more blood.” He pulled up a chair with a frustrated yank, sat, and rolled up his shirt sleeve.
“I’ll see if I can speed things up just for you,” she said wryly. “And in the meantime, be careful that you don’t run around spreading disease.”
“Ironic thing to say, coming from you, don’t you think?” He snorted. “I think I can manage to not bite or fuck a warg for a few days. And do you really care?”
Crimson splotched her cheeks, and he caught the scent of irritation coming from her. “Yeah. You’re right. I’m thrilled that the virus is killing people. Yay, me.”
“Why did you start it, then?”
“I was bored. There hasn’t been a good pandemic since the Spanish flu in, what, 1918?”
“Son of a—” He wrapped a rubber tourniquet around his biceps. “Just once, can you give me a straight answer?” Working with angry, jerky movements, he clamped one end of the tube in his teeth and tugged it tight.
Si
n squeezed her eyes shut, and for a heartbeat, a startling shadow of vulnerability darkened her expression. But so quickly Con doubted what he saw, she opened her eyes and locked on him with that death ray of hers. “Killing is what I do. Do you really think I need a reason to start an epidemic?”
Jesus effing Christ. He had never met a female—or male, for that matter—with such a thick wall around them. Swearing to himself, he inserted a needle into the median cubital vein in the crook of his elbow. “I actually do think you need a reason. You might be an assassin, but I haven’t met an assassin yet who didn’t plan every kill very carefully.”
Surprise flickered in her cool black eyes at his assessment. “Most people think we run around killing all willy-nilly.”
“Most people are morons.” He reached for a vacutainer, a tube for gathering blood. “Most hunters, whether animal, human, or demon, are selective and careful about their prey. You get caught or injured, and you’re dead. Hunting is a matter of life or death if you need to eat.”
“Like you.”
“Like me.” He eyed her, wished she’d stop squirming and making obscene rubbing sounds on the sheets. “Even in warg form, I’m careful about what I catch.”
“I thought werewolves do kill all willy-nilly.” The way one corner of her mouth turned up in an impish smile told him she wasn’t completely serious.
“Pricolici wargs and dhampires maintain control. It’s the turned werewolves you have to watch out for, but usually only the newer ones. The older that wargs are, the more they can control themselves during the moon phase. Younger wargs do tend to kill without a lot of skill or forethought.”
Young wargs were the ones who tended to get nailed by The Aegis, and the ones who had given all werewolves a reputation for being monsters. On the other paw, the older any warg was, the less “human” he became. There was definitely a trade-off. Control while in beast form came with a loss of connection with humans while in the human body.
He pushed the vacutainer into the holder, and blood began to fill the tube. Sin frowned. “Uh… do you need help with that?”
“Nah. I’m good with one hand.”