by Erin Hayes
"Wait," he hissed in my ear. "Watch."
The woman had paused mid-charge, her arms and weapon still on the ready, seeming to realize that her comrades had fallen and that she was alone. Since Magnus wasn't moving, it gave her a millisecond to consider whether she should charge or retreat. I had a feeling I knew what she'd pick.
"Come on, bitch," I yelled at her and Magnus shook me like he would happily throttle me.
I felt more liberated than I had in weeks.
"What are you waiting for, sister? Bring it."
She cracked a brief half-grin, but her left foot took a step backward, then she spun and ran toward the entry so gracefully, I knew she had a dancer's training.
"Yeah, bitch," I said to her retreating back, half sobbing. "Yeah."
I sagged against Magnus.
"So wild, my little mambo."
That reignited my rage, although it was, admittedly, a tiny fizzle of sputtering flame. "Don't fucking call me that."
I fought for freedom, and with a sigh, he gave it to me.
I stood, trembling, but on my own will.
I stared down at myself, trying to take in the reality of what met my eye. Blood from head to toe. Knees that just sort of locked against each other in a subconscious attempt to keep me upright.
"I think he wanted to kill me." I looked up at Magnus, dumbstruck. "I think he really wanted to kill me."
I kicked at the man's hand where the gun still lay clutched. It sailed across the floor on a stream of congealing fluid.
"It's not possible. I'm human."
I took in Magnus's entire frame then, every six foot four, broad-shouldered, blond, and blood-covered inch.
"It's your fault." Without thinking, I punched him as hard as I could in the stomach. Mad as I was, I knew from experience that I didn't want to add cracked knuckles to my injury list. When he didn't flinch, I struck him again.
"Your fault. If I wasn't here doing your dirty business, they wouldn't think I was something besides human. They would have just known."
His response was to lift me from my feet and throw me over his shoulder. His stride was purposeful and brisk. Taking out the trash, I supposed. Well, I was not having any of it.
I let go a flurry of enraged and shock-induced adrenaline bursts through any physical means I could: punching, kicking. I think I even bit his back.
I was still spluttering, calling him every nasty name I could bring to my tongue when I realized we were going up stairs.
"No way," I yelled. "I want to go home. I want out of this shitty arrangement. I don't care if Gio is up there right now, waiting to suck the rest of the life out of me. I want to go home."
I aimed a knee toward his stomach as the words came out in a torrent that wet my cheeks. "I want to go home."
I was still trying to suck the tears back in when he eased me onto my unsteady feet.
I took a great snort from the back of my throat to haul in the misery, then I sent one more strike his way. He gripped my wrist before my arm fully uncoiled.
Like steel. That's the only thought that parted the fuzz of my stressed out brain. I realized he could break me in two as easily as he'd torn through the ribcage out of my would-be murderer. I couldn't stop myself from raising my eyes to his, meeting that calm stare. He said nothing, but the way he regarded me made me swallow convulsively.
"I almost died," I said by way of explanation. I couldn't understand why it was a mere squeak when I'd just been shouting.
"Almost," he emphasized, pulling on my wrist so that I stumbled against him.
It was then that the realization that I was covered in blood fully alerted the danger areas of my brain. Even as they lit the flashing red lights, I felt the blood cooling on my skin, coagulating on the bare flesh of my cheek and neck, dripping from my hands where I'd had to fight off my assailant. A real live not-out-of-a-horror story vampire stood in front of me, his entire body, soaked in sweat and blood, heaving from the exertion of battle. Blood. Vampire. Me still so weak I'd never be able to fight him off should he attack, weaker now that I'd spent my energy. My nerves jangled together as they tried to scramble through the fight or flight response. Just looking at him, the way his cobalt eyes grew red rimmed and hungry, the way the cords stood out on his neck as though he were struggling against his own instinct to grab and consume, I knew I was in deep doodoo.
With nothing else coming to mind as rescue, I lifted my blood-coated hand toward him in offering. "Um. Want some?"
He stepped closer, his gaze drilling into mine, making me swallow nervously.
I tittered like an idiot and broke my stare from his long enough to gape down at my arms, twisting them to and fro in the lamplight. I wished he'd say something.
"Really," I said. "There does seem to be an awful lot."
His silence was deafening me. I didn't want to admit that the sound of my own heartbeat might be drowning out everything except the sound of my blood racing through my veins.
It took everything I had to look up at him. He was so close then that I could see a tremor in the hollow of his throat like the wings of a trapped bat beating its way to freedom. I told myself I would not lose my knees. He was so deliriously close, so dangerously within scent of all the blood that covered me from head to toe. And yet, the electricity I felt was more than that.
I stumbled backward, and felt the backs of my thighs connect the edge of the bed. Bed. So we were in his bedroom. I staggered, but managed to catch myself before I collapsed. Triumphant that I'd managed to keep my knees, I tilted my chin at him.
"That wasn't Gio down there," I said, my brain unable to grip onto anything but the obvious.
He shook his head, mute, his gaze on the tiny spot in my neck where I knew my pulse was pounding out a staccato tempo. So much for the triumph.
I tried to swallow down the tension that clotted in my throat.
"I have the chain," I said, slipping my finger beneath several links and pulling it into view. A small threat, but a threat nonetheless.
"Take it off," he said. His fingers curled and uncurled into his palms.
"I will not."
He cocked his head, taking me in with a scrutinous glance.
"You feel it," he said. "Don't you?"
"Feel what?"
"The lust for survival."
I did feel it. Some deep primitive part of me felt it and understood it even before he'd entered the bedroom with me. Perhaps had even counted on it. It was ridiculous that I could so badly want to feel a man inside me after what I had just witnessed, after what I'd just survived, but there it was just the same. Again, my brain took hold of the only thing it could in the moment: something obvious.
"You're not even alive."
Merely a quirked brow.
"I told you to take it off."
"With all this blood on me?" I skirted the bed, trying to find an escape route because I most definitely did not trust myself to stay still. "I'd be a fool."
"You're smarter than that," he said. "That blood is about as enticing right now as you spitting in your hand and licking it back up."
He reached for me so slowly he might have been a snake charmer weaving toward a cobra.
"Now," he said, circling my throat with his broad hand just out of reach of the silver. "Take it off."
I was already trembling from excitement and adrenaline. I didn't want him to see how my fingers shook as I reached behind my neck for the clasp. I closed my eyes, telling myself I was not some sick Goth chick in love with the idea of death. I was not suicidal. I'd proven my amount of willpower already with Gio. I didn't need another vampire draining me on a regular basis. Yet, I sensed the pounding of my heart in my ears was not the same as the sense of enthrallment Gio had forced on me. This was different. I wanted this. I wanted it because he was right. There was no better way to thumb your nose at death than to do the dance of life.
The clasp was no more than unhinged when his hand moved to the back of my neck. His fingers wrapped a
round my nape then tangling up into my hair. He tugged my head backward, forcing me to meet his burning gaze. For the first time, I noticed how incredible his lashes were, how the smoke of them made the eyes look framed in storm clouds. I felt my as though my stomach had hollowed out a place just for the taste of him. My fingers clenched around the silver, fisting it against my side.
Sinking into him was like taking the first burning breath after being underwater too long. I leaned my head sideways as I enjoyed the feel of his mouth on my neck, the way his hands buried themselves into the waist of my jeans to cup my backside. He pulled me hard against him, grinding my hips into his so that his erection dug into me. I let go a moan, thinking to encourage him, to rouse him on, to inform him through my inarticulate growlings that I was ready. More ready than I'd been even under the thrall of Gio and his oppressively urgent lust.
"It won't be like that, little mambo," he murmured against the skin of my throat. "It will be quick and painful and delightful all at the same time."
I knew it was a warning, that Gio's assaults, though unwanted, had each been a succulent sort of ravishment. This would not be.
"Bring it," I said, all the time wondering why my voice shook while his remained composed and steady. "I don't care."
He grunted in response as though he'd been waiting for me to give him permission but expected not to receive it. He squeezed my ass, using the massive size of his palms as support when he slid me upwards along his hips. I rode high on him, tracking his erection with my pubis, my feet leaving the floor for the briefest of moments then touching down once more as he ground me back down. I knew how hard he was, how thick and throbbing. I let the waves of lust swell each time he pulled me against him and released me again, and I gasped with relief when the blunt ends of a finger of each hand finally drove in between my legs.
I thought he might have sworn when he broke through, but by then my hearing had gone all foggy. Even though my eyes were open, my vision misted over. I had the vague sense of tightening my fingers around the silver chain, of a voice inside my head shrieking until the sound came through my mouth.
I wanted to stop the noise but I had no control. I wanted to drop the silver chain to the floor, but my hand would not obey me.
Instead, it flew to his neck, pressing the silver against his skin, causing him to roar out in pain as his skin sizzled. He wrenched away from me just enough that my knee that was even then jerking upwards, connected heavily with his groin.
She was awake, by Jesus. The priestess's lover, the one that dark bitch Bacalou had bound me to with her magic. She was awake and aware and boy was that lesbian spirit most mightily pissed.
Chapter Twelve
WILD AT HEART
I was aware that I was running--she was running, this lesbian demi-zombie--flying past Magnus as he sagged over in surprise. A thought pushed through, that she had the floor, by damn, and she would pant her way, streaking, out the door and down the steps. I knew she'd been a dull passenger for too long as she'd had to gain strength within me, the stupid bitch as she called me. She'd seethed, thinking I'd practically thrown myself at the beast. Predisposed to the wild attraction, she supposed, from the depths of my tormented soul. And what the hell was that supposed to mean, I had no idea. The ghost--Ismé--gave me nothing more than broken thoughts in her full flight to escape from Magnus. I almost pitied her: a thought also echoed within Ismé. I got the sense that if she wasn't so fierce to get to Bacalou, Ismé might have taken the time to lull me, to ease her way to the front, companion me rather than just take straight over.
Except I'd gone and done something unpardonable. I--the bitch--had been about to give myself to that beast, and how could a woman pity an idiot like that. It might have had been a decade since she'd been able to indulge in such carnal delights, but her first time back on the pony would not be with the violent and aggressive brutishness of a vampire.
I struggled to find my limbs. I'd had such unconscious control over them for so many years, I couldn't imagine what it took to will the synapses to my command. Each attempt failed and the spirit in control chuckled as she ran down the stairs and for the foyer.
"Struggle, bitch," she whispered. "I have the power of Bacalou to aid me."
She made it as far as the fireplace before Magnus appeared in front of her. His face was a mask of fury. The canines were completely extended and once more I realized the body I was in--the one Ismé had control of--wore blood spatters from head to toe. It might not appeal as a delectable temptation to the vampire, but I was sure the Viking beneath now enjoyed a full-blown murderous rage the likes of which would only be heightened by the sight of blood.
Some part of me whimpered.
"What in the hell, Jade?" He gripped her shoulders so hard even beneath the veil I could feel it. "A simple no would have done."
"Get out of my way, vampire."
Storm clouds passed over the blue of his eyes as she spit the words out. The blood spatters on his face were smeared where he'd pressed into my neck, the wheat-colored hair tangled in dried blood. He looked both terrifying and magnificent. If I'd had control of my knees, I'd have lost it.
His left brow quirked, and then he stepped aside with such grace he put me in mind of an old world gentleman, not a pillaging Viking. I'd forgotten the piles of bodies he'd left in the room when he'd stripped me from danger and carried me to the bedroom; I'd pushed thoughts of them deep into a dark drawer of my psyche. Now as he moved aside, they confronted me in grisly detail. They lay at odd angles to each other, pools of blackening fluid seeping from beneath them.
Ismé retched.
"You think they came here for me?" he said quietly, without a hint of emotion.
She looked at him, confused, shocked. I cringed behind the veil. If not him, then who?
"Go then, you foolish wench," he said, waving toward the door. "Go."
She hissed at him, the idiot, actually hissed. I managed to clamp my teeth down on her tongue and she yelped.
His laughter would have sounded sweet if I didn't know he was laughing at me. Me. Not the lesbian ghost that had control of my body, because he didn't even know a ghost had control of my body. He was laughing at the foolish Jade, who'd just blown a chance for sanctuary in the safest place in the city. Nice.
"Not the safest," Ismé said with a slight lisp, testament to exactly how well I had managed to regain control over that particular muscle.
The look on his face told me he thought she was answering his taunt, but I knew she was speaking to me. To his credit, he showed no confusion. To my suddenly fearful dawning realization, neither did he show any sense of caring.
"If you can find a safer spot, then seek it out. I'm done with you."
He turned his back on her, casually bending over to lift first one and then another body onto each shoulder. As if summoned by some magical bond, the nurse who had cared for me the night of the party sauntered into the room with a basket of tools and bottles. She began inspecting the men who lay strewn about, and once, before Ismé turned away, I caught sight of her injecting something into one of their arms.
Ismé didn't bother waiting for more; she simply dodged her way through the bodies as though they were hidden landmines until she found the door. I knew where she was going, I knew and I was more afraid of what would happen when she got there than I'd been here with Magnus. I thought it was oddly telling.
Ismé was at the door and staring out into the dark when I heard his voice from behind her. I could tell by the tightness in his voice that he was in the midst of the bloody mess, either sickened by the cold and congealing blood or fighting off the desire to drain me of my mine in a rage.
"Forget about the priestess. I have no use for her now."
She stiffened at that, and for a long moment, she didn't move. I thought for sure she'd reveal herself, unable to hold back the insufferable ego I sensed within her. I begged her from behind the veil to let him know she had control. In those few moments, I almost thought she
would. But somehow he'd managed to come up next to her without us knowing it. I felt him next to her, not looking down at her, just staring out into the dark like she did. I felt her response to him and her confusion at the trembling of electricity that shuddered through her, that residual reaction that was leaking out from my core. She was confused, already swaying toward him like she was drunk on his energy.
"You're fired," he said.
She gripped the doorframe at that, and I was glad of it; it gave me a moment to process the coldness in his tone.
She fled out into the night to carry both of us to her Haitian Bacalou bitch without so much as a hint that I was no longer truly myself.
"Stop your snotting and snarling," Ismé said to me three blocks away when she finally hailed a cab.
I refused to let her sense my reaction. I was fuming and I was terrified, but I had my pride, dammit, if that was all that was left to me. I retreated into the veil to regain my strength. Each moment I spent fighting to break through made me feel more sluggish. I thought veil was a ridiculous term for the tar I had to move through.
I recognized the shop even in the dark and I felt Ismé's shudder when Aisha opened the door. The Haitian knew instantly that I was not in control; maybe that prescience that long-time lovers share aided her, but she instantly softened and joy lit her face as though she'd been stewing in a darkened dungeon and only just saw a piss bucket. I almost envied her pleasure.
"Ismé," she purred. "You're full of blood."
"Not mine, Aisha. Don't worry."
Aisha chuckled darkly, but her face displayed no humor. "I worry about very little these days."
It was a revealing statement, but more so was the flat tone she said it in. She was guarding something from Ismé, something that struggled inside her, fighting for the surface. I watched with interest the tension that enveloped between the two. I got the sense that Aisha suffered a moment of uncertainty, that she doubted herself, the passion that had made her take the steps necessary to plunk her lover into my body.