Crawling, I make it across the hall and run my hand up the wooden surface until my fingers close over the antique doorknob. Exultant, I pull myself up and turn the knob, stumbling forward into the space beyond. A fire flares and I see the rich hangings of my quarters on the walls, the satin bedding I’d slept in, the two deep burgundy velvet chairs by the fire, even my phone and purse on the table between them.
“Oh my God, no.” I turn to escape, but the door is closed. The handle barely budges in my hand, and I sink to the floor. What the hell just happened?
“You’re lucky I keep close tabs on you, Sasha. What if one of my people had got to you before I did?” Nikolai stepped out of the shadows near the wall of bookshelves I’d perused when I was alone.
“I thought you were their master, Niko.” His face twitches when I call him Niko, so I do it again. “I mean, Niko, Niky boy, are you the boss here, or aren’t you?”
Instant regret pours through me at the anger flashing in his eyes, but I stand up and push my shoulders back, meeting his glare with one of my own. “Lovely Sasha, do your human leaders force you to obey the laws they make?”
“Well, there are at least consequences if humans break the law.”
His laugh isn’t scary at all, it’s warm and alive and I hate myself for the heat that builds low in my stomach at the sight of the sexy smirk that accompanies it. “There are consequences if my people break my laws, too. But they are sick, and you hold the cure. Temptation exists in every tribe, even mine.”
The warning sends a shudder down my spine and I drop my bravado. “I was almost out, I know it. What happened to me?” He motions me to a chair to sit down. “I can’t, Nikolai. I just want to go home.”
He takes off his jacket and sets it across the table, then sits by the fire, waiting for me. I stand there as long as I can, but he’s got patience born of a hundred years of knowing he has all the time in the world and all the power too.
I don’t want to come to you, you bloody egomaniac.
“Then why didn’t you take the exit at the end of that corridor, Sasha, instead of the door that led you back in here?”
I stumble backward into the foot of the bed. “I didn’t say that aloud, Nikolai. What the hell are you doing in my head?”
“I drank your blood, Sasha. Haven’t you watched any vampire movies? Once I taste you, I can find you anywhere, enter your dreams, even make you see things that aren’t there.”
Like a door appearing in the middle of a wall. He chuckles, and I cast about for something to throw at him. “Get the hell out of my head, Niko. Why the hell would I expect you to behave like a movie? They’re movies. Fiction. Entertainment. You aren’t supposed to be real.”
He leans forward to warm his hands in the glow of the fire. “But I am real, aren’t I?” Fuck it, even my internal voice admits I’ve lost. I join him, sitting in the other chair with my feet tucked up under me. I don’t know why, but the aura of danger he puts off makes me want to tuck my whole body into a ball like an armadillo, so there aren’t any pieces that can be snatched off.
Then again, when I don’t concentrate on the natural terror he exudes, I can barely find the strength of focus not to crawl into his lap. He chuckles, the gravelly laugh stoking the small fire at my core
“I told you to get out of my head, Niko.” I hate knowing he’s in my head again, enjoying my desire as much as he does my fear.
His sigh is an unexpected, almost human response to me and I forget I’m avoiding him, glancing at him in surprise. “What would be so wrong with giving in to my charm?”
“Mind control is not charm, Niko. Not even you can be that arrogant.”
This time his laugh was full and rich, and pure joy hummed in my veins in response to his pleasure. “Are you certain?”
I gasped and hugged myself. “No, I’m not. In fact,” I sighed, irritated with myself as a smile I couldn’t prevent turned into a chuckle, “that was a silly thing for me to say.”
“But you haven’t answered my question. “Do you really want to avoid me, or do you want to follow your desire and see where it leads?”
The hardest thing I’ve done since I found myself in this place, is to look him in the eyes, but I must face him. I meet his gaze and fall into his eyes, such a dark brown they look black in the firelight, reflecting everything but me.
“Why? I mean,” I curse under my breath and blink fast to clear my head. “I didn’t realize I was more than food, I guess medicine, to you.”
“You’re beautiful, and you haven’t made it easy to control you, which I respect.”
I scoff and turn back to the fire, the connection broken more by his ego than I had strength to do on my own. “You really know how to turn a girl’s head, Niko.”
He’s out of his seat so fast my hands wrap around my neck to cover me, but he just paces behind me, his steps so silent that only turning in my seat and following his route convinces me he’s moving at all.
Back and forth, ten steps into my line of sight, then behind me again, until I wonder if I really did push him too far, until he finally speaks again, his voice careful, measured. If he was human, I’d think he was nervous, but of course, that’s ridiculous.
“You can choose your own mate, if you wish, from among us.”
“Well, since everyone else I’ve met here has tried to kill me, that doesn’t seem like much of a choice, does it?” I hug myself again. It doesn’t matter if he’s self-conscious or just baiting me, either way I know it’s a manipulation.
“My clan has been together a long time, Sasha. Would you be entertained by us while you’re here?” Niko is kneeling in front of me before I realize he wasn’t pacing anymore. My heart leaps into my throat and I clutch the arms of the chair until I’m sure my nails are breaking through the velvet upholstery.
“While I’m here, as in, forever?” I choke out the weak joke and he shakes his head.
“You want to leave, I’ll get you out of here, I told you, you’re my guest. But leaving without an escort is suicide, and there are, quite frankly, less painful ways to die than having your throat torn out by a revenant vampire.”
I force my white-knuckled grip loose and place my hands in my lap, trying to appear calm even though I know he can hear my heart slamming against my ribcage. “So, I can stay and be entertained, which apparently includes sex with the vampire of my choice, or I can leave and go home?”
“I would prefer if you leave, that you do go home, Sasha. Whatever is in your blood, I need to be able to reach you quickly when I need more.” He smiles at me, and it’s almost human, no mind-control tricks, no intimidation. For the blink of an eye, he’s just a really hot guy kneeling at my feet in front of a fire, the picture of a perfect boyfriend.
But I blink, and the image is gone, replaced by the feral caution I’m used to seeing in his eyes, the kind of look you get from a wolf when you stare at each other through the chain link of a zoo enclosure. He wasn’t threatening, just measuring me, waiting with that utterly supernatural stillness for an answer.
“I need to go, Nikolai. I have responsibilities at the lab, finals to take.” I lick my lips, feeling crazy for what I’m going to say. “But at the lab, I can do some tests, figure out what’s different about me.”
With dizzying speed his face is inches from mine and I gasp, choking on a shriek of fear. “If you find anything, you bring it to me. No one else.”
“Your clan aren’t the only ones with the virus, Niko,” I shoved him in the chest and he waits a beat before giving me a few more inches of space, as if to remind me that I have no power here.
“We’ve taken care of our people that were showing signs of the sickness, but there may be more that start falling ill,” he reminds me, like the still healing puncture-marks in my wrists and neck aren’t enough to ensure I remember. “You will return to me if I summon you, and you will not give yourself to anyone else.”
I push back, hard enough that even though he doesn’t move, the chair
does, and it gives me room to walk away from him. I survey the room as I search for the words that will get me out of the richly decorated prison and not into a coffin of my own, but all I can see is the flicker of the firelight on the leather bindings of the hundreds of books I’d only begun to work my way through.
“I don’t belong to you, Nikolai, but I don’t want revenant vampires roaming my city or my campus.” I grab a book off the shelf and flipped through it, wondering what language it’s written in. “So, if I look for a way to manufacture a real cure that doesn’t include bleeding me dry, will you let me come and go as I please?”
A dark, knowing smile slips across his face as he leans against the mantel, obviously satisfied with himself. “Of course, Sasha, you may come and go as you please. I will keep this room available for you.”
With a sinking feeling, I realize his misunderstanding. I feel the hot creep of my embarrassment climb up my neck to my face, suddenly grateful I hadn’t demanded the lights be turned on.
“Don’t put anyone else out just for my benefit, Nikolai, I simply want to be able to return and give you my findings, and if I’m really lucky, maybe a vaccine or at least a cure…” My voice tapers off and his predatory smile widens.
“Nevertheless, you have a place here, and whatever need or curiosity brings you back, I wish for you to be comfortable.”
I don’t respond, but my mind is whirling with the stupidity of making promises of a cure to the one vampire who won’t let me use it on anyone else, if I can find it at all.
Never mind the cure, stupid, the rational voice in my head chastises me as Niko escorts me out into a clean, bright hallway that looks nothing like the ancient stone corridors I thought I was navigating in my failed escape attempt. You just put your sanity and your life on the line because a vampire give’s you the creeps.
Well, I’m in it now, and I know Nikolai won’t let me out of my agreement until he’s gotten everything he wants from me, including the very blood that runs through my veins. I just want a chance to keep some of it for myself.
Chapter 10
The shades are drawn on the beachside mansion, but now that I know who’s inside, it feels much more forbidding than times we passed by imagining celebrity parties. I’ve never felt so exposed as I do with my back to the old highway, staring blankly at a door that might have an enemy on the other side, instead of a friend.
Yeah, you have so many friends among the undead, Sasha. “You know,” I mutter under my breath, “I’m getting really tired of having such a mouthy conscience.”
I couldn’t even blame Nicolai for the rash of internal conversations I’d had lately. I’d always talked to myself, even as a child. That voice had helped me argue through scientific equations and difficult choices. Lately, it’s just a pain in my ass, and unfortunately, I’d started letting it know.
The first sign of insanity… it started to remind me. “I know, is talking to oneself.” Or hanging out with vampires…on purpose. I even smile, though it shouldn’t be funny. It is funny though, in a suicidal, adrenaline junky, sky-diving without a parachute, not-at-all humorous kind of way.
The door opens a crack and I see one silver eye glaring back at me. Wonderful. For the first time in a while, I’m not at all conflicted. Claudette glares out at me for an eternity without speaking and belatedly, I realize I should’ve just left after the first ten seconds.
“I need to speak to Arsen, Claudette. Either go get him, or let me in, please.” Just go get him, just go get him, just go get him. “Now, Claudette, this is important.”
“You said leave was an option, so leave. Arsen wouldn’t want you even if you weren’t trying to push Nikolai’s dirty leftovers on him.” She glances up at the ridge above us, as though measuring how much sunlight is left to protect me. “I should kill you now, but I’m feeling generous.”
“Generous about what, Claudette?” A gruff voice behind her makes her eyes fly open wide. I stifle the smile, because I already know that the devil I haven’t seen yet might be worse, but I hope not, because I want to kiss him for catching her like that. “Sasha? Please, come in, I will retrieve the master for you.”
Claudette disappears from the crack in the door and opens it, letting me and the what little sunlight still creeps over the northwest corner of the compound wall into the house. The male vampire bows at the neck from the top of the stairs leading to the subterranean level and I return it as I try to remember his name.
“Jacob, right?” He nods, and I grin. “Thank you, Jacob. I appreciate the assistance.”
The door slams behind me, and I silently curse at myself for jumping. I know what to expect with this vampire. She’s angry, cruel, and a door slam is the smallest insult I can think of, coming from her. But Jacob has disappeared down below, and I’m trapped with Claudette until Arsen comes.
“Look, Claudette, I just got done with school and the lab. I need to talk to Arsen about the illness. Where is he?”
She scoffs and rolls her eyes at me before striding towards the mansion library “Come on, you can wait in here.” The library is almost as big as the town library back home, full of books in more languages than I knew existed, from ancient texts, to trashy modern romance novels.
It’s my favorite room in the mansion, and one reason I risk showing up to Arsen’s compound after being expressly forbid to by Nikolai. Anyone who loves books enough to collect them like this, not just the old ones for value, but every kind of book, for reading can’t be all bad.
The room is dim, the only light coming from a table lamp near the quartet of reading chairs on the far side of the massive room. I follow her to the chairs and she turns and walks back the way we came, not even glancing in my direction.
“God damnit, Claudette, is Arsen even here? Has he left the country and I just didn’t know? Why do I believe you’d just tell him I left and never let on I’m in here?” She whirls and is in my face before I can even think about running.
“Do not test me, girl. I could rip your head off as easily as breaking a matchstick.”
I scoff and stick out my chin a little. “Big talk, so why don’t you?” I don’t
Claudette glowers at me, her body that terrifying level of stillness that only the dead can achieve. “It never ceases to amaze me how ignorant humans are to their own weakness.”
“Says the chick who has to hide from sunlight.” I’m pushing her, and my internal voice is screaming in my head to stop, but I’ve had enough of her threats. I know that survival of the vampire race is too important for Arsen or Nikolai to let her kill me without getting killed herself, and she does too.
She doesn’t attack, but rocks back on her heels and folds her arms across her chest. “How long have you been waiting to use that line on a vampire?”
I cough and manage a chuckle at my own expense, grateful she seems calmer. “Too long, frankly. I’m tired of being constantly reminded that I am weak,” I say, ticking them off on my fingers, “unimportant, and only as valuable as a McDonald’s cheeseburger.” I tap my wrist with two fingers. “This blood saved you, saved Nikolai and his clan. I can’t believe I have to beg for my life from someone who, despite being hundreds of years old, still wears her makeup like it’s the eighties.”
“Why are you insulting Claudette, Sasha?” Arsen is just… there, right over Claudette’s shoulder, and her smirk tells me she heard him coming, because of course she did.
“I refuse to have my life threatened every time I try to help you, Arsen. If I’m not safe here, then why should I keep working on the virus for you, instead of obeying Nikolai and staying away?” I stare over Claudette’s shoulder and she shifts her posture to block my view.
Suddenly, she tumbles out of the way and when she jumps up, hissing, Arsen bares his fangs at her, sending her zipping for the doorway so fast she’s a pale blur to me. He offers me a seat and realizing my legs have turned to noodles I accept, sinking into the leather with a sigh I hope he doesn’t notice.
“Why
are you here, Sasha? You know you aren’t safe here, why would you come, and alone? Do you wish for an early death?”
I chew my lip, hurt that he’s angry with me for being brave enough to come, instead of proud of me. “Wow. You and Nikolai have a lot more in common than you think, you know. Maybe I can bring the two of you together, you can sit, drink my blood, share stories about how stupid you both think I am…”
“I do not think you’re stupid. I think you’re…naïve, to think vampires will not harm you because it is better for them. They were once human you know, self-destruction is as much a temptation here as it is on your campus.”
I twist my fingers in a knot in my lap, unsure now of why I did come. I haven’t found anything conclusive yet, surely it would’ve been smarter for me to wait until I did to risk Nikolai’s wrath.”
“Niko doesn’t want me sharing the cure with your clan. I honestly thought I would never get out of that place. I woke up this morning not sure I had, even as I walked across the campus to my classes.”
Arsen takes my hand and smooths his thumb over the backs of my knuckles. “I know you have had a terrible time and I’m glad you came to me, Sasha. What was it like, being captive inside his home. How did you escape?”
“I didn’t, actually. He let me go.”
“But, you did attempt an escape, he simply let you walk out the door?” Arsen presses me for details of my escape, but I’m still not sure I was ever outside the room, or if the escape was an elaborate joke Niko played on me. I suspect the latter, and I tell Arsen so.
“I ran through a maze of stone tunnels, and never reached the surface. But, when I thought I was close to freedom, I found myself back in my room again.”
“These stone tunnels, were there many doors along them? Like a prison maybe, with viewing holes, or plain?”
“I don’t remember there being doors, Arsen,” I reply, my anxiety growing. “I felt like I was in a labyrinth.”
Girl, Bitten Page 7