Sleight of Hand

by Mark Henwick

  It seemed to take forever to get clear of the people and cars and I alternated between banging on my steering wheel and calling his numbers, until the marshals eventually got the traffic flowing freely.

  David had given me his key and he had trusted me to watch his back. I headed for his house in Wash Park as quickly as I could and hoped I hadn’t failed him already.

  Washington Park was my favorite area in Denver, if only because it was where we had lived as a family before Dad died. It’s a peaceful area, with tree-lined roads and well-kept yards, neat houses and tended gardens.

  I had never been to David’s house before. It was small, set back in a well-cut lawn, bordered with hip-high hedges. The front had a stepped, A-frame roof providing a sunlit porch with cover and space for colorful pot plants. I ran right up and hammered on the white door, calling out his name.

  I was about to use the key when he opened the door. My first feeling was a huge rush of relief and I hugged him to me, ignoring his appearance.

  “David, I was so worried. I couldn’t get through. Are you all right?” I grabbed his shoulders and took a good look at him. He was pale and unshaven, and wearing a bathrobe as if he had come to the door straight from bed.

  He managed a wan smile. “Just peachy,” he said. “A bit late to ask you to come in. Close the door and help me make some coffee.” He turned and walked slowly into an open plan kitchen and breakfast area.

  I realized I had launched myself through his door at him. What if he’d had a friend staying? I guess I would have improvised. As it was, I got him to sit down and direct me to the right places for coffee and breakfast things. He sat, looking tired but amused, as I fixed him a very late brunch and quizzed him. I was bursting to tell him about my visit to House Altau, but I held back. I really needed to be reassured he was okay first.

  “So what’s up? This isn’t flu or hangover, is it?”

  “No. No, just another step on the path.”

  “Explain to me! Come on.” I put his coffee in front of him and went back to the pan.

  He rubbed his face and scratched his head, sending his curly hair springing up all over the place. “I need to practice using my Ath…my skills for healing myself and replenishment.”

  “So much clearer,” I said. “And you can use the word Athanate if you want to.”

  He jerked upright, spilling his coffee. “How do you know that?”

  “When I understand what’s going on with you, I’ll tell you.” I smiled sweetly at him, waving the spatula. “Sunny side up?”

  He looked annoyed, but at least there was some color coming back into his cheeks, and he started to speak, haltingly at first, but more freely as he went on.

  By the time he had his food in front of him, I had learned that his main Mentor, an Athanate called Pia, was responsible for this stage of his development. He had to learn to heal himself, and Pia was forcing this by drinking his blood, leaving him weak and shocked. His body healed itself, replenishing his blood far quicker than an ordinary person. But at the moment, that was just in time for her to come around again. So far he was okay, even if I had caught him at a bad time. She’d come around early in the day and there was no way he would have been able to make the run.

  All of which led us to a fuller description of replenishment and the second part of the test.

  Accompanying Pia on her visits was another girl. Not an Athanate, a girl who was a normal human. The legends of the vampire had at least gotten part of the truth right: Athanate required human blood. The girl was there of her own free will, but bound to Pia in a way that David did not yet understand. She was there to provide blood for David.

  David looked down at his food. “I have to make her come to me. It’s not that she’s unwilling,” he added. “But I have to call her to me across the room just using a sort of mesmerism that I’m supposed to have.”

  I sat back and thought about it. I guess I had been aware of the need to drink blood, but actually thinking it through with David’s need to drink from some girl’s neck, that was plain icky. The mesmerism I assumed was some form of what Skylur had done to me. Bastard, I said to myself, but without much heat any more. He hadn’t made me offer my neck to him, but on the other hand, I hadn’t been in any state to stop him if he’d pushed the point.

  “Supposed to have?” I asked, picking up on what he’d said.

  David looked uncomfortable. “I did some tests before and they said I was developing okay. But it’s not working.”

  I stole some ham off the side of his plate and chewed it for a second. “Tell me a couple of things—what happens if an Athanate can’t get human blood at all, and what happens to you if you can’t manage this mesmerism?”

  David looked somber. “An Athanate without human blood will go into a coma after about a week and eventually die. For me, they won’t let me die, but I’d be a cripple, I guess you would say.”

  “They being House Altau?” I said casually.

  “Amber! What the hell?” His eyes were huge.

  I went around and gave him a hug, laughing all the while, as he teetered on his stool. “Sorry, couldn’t resist teasing you a little. I had an invitation I couldn’t refuse this time.”

  “What happened? You’re okay? You weren’t bitten? Tell me. Please?” His words stumbled over each other to get out, making me laugh again.

  He was looking much better after the food and I hauled him off his stool and into his living room to take him through the night’s events while we drank the coffee. As it wasn’t strictly governed by my no-tell agreement with the army, I also gave him a rundown on prions.

  David was quiet and thoughtful at the end.

  “Refill?” I offered, picking up the cups, and he nodded.

  “I know the names of the people you’re talking about—Skylur, of course, and Diana, but I haven’t met anyone except my Mentors.” He laughed. “I get exactly the same blindfold treatment as you, so I have no idea where we go. It’s just a room with no windows. I assume it’s the same place you went, but I’ve never heard of or seen the dungeon part of the house.”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that I knew where House Altau was, but I left it for another time.

  I handed him his fresh coffee and sat back down.

  Taking a steadying breath, I said, “Okay, David. Homework.”

  He looked around, his eyebrows raised.

  “Practice on me, little bro. Call me on your headphone.” I waggled my fingers next to my head. “Beam your commands to me.” I wanted this like I wanted root canal treatment at the dentist, but David needed to be able to do it.

  He cleared his throat. “I don’t think we should. It could be dangerous, Amber. That’s why we learn with an experienced Mentor. It can get out of hand.”

  “You are so not going to be able to bite my neck while I’m kicking your ass around the house.”

  “Did I mention, you’re so arrogant?”

  I laughed. “Well, teach me a lesson.” I reached out and touched his arm. “I trust you, David.” I had a feeling he wasn’t able to focus because he didn’t know Pia’s friend. There was a shyness about David. It told me a lot that he hadn’t even found out her name.

  “Okay. I’ll try.” He smiled nervously and sat back, looking at me, a little frown mark appearing. I felt something, but I wasn’t even sure whether it was my imagination or not. Certainly, there was nothing like the claustrophobic attack that Skylur had been able to do, not that I’d expected that.

  I was relieved and disappointed. Relieved, because I really didn’t want anyone else messing with my head, but disappointed too. Surely this type of communication must be easier between friends.

  “I don’t think you need to look at me,” I said after a few minutes. “And relax. Try thinking through an exercise—say, the crane form. Then tell me to move my hands to it.”

  He settled back and closed his eyes. I had taught him several of the Kung Fu forms that I practiced with Master Liu. The crane
wasn’t the simplest, but it had very specific hand movements.

  “I’m having difficulty thinking through the whole crane,” he said after a minute.

  “Okay, let’s try something completely different.” I cast around for a question to distract him. “Tell me why you wanted to become Athanate.” The question popped into my head and I asked it before thinking. I held my breath. This was one of the very personal areas we had avoided before.

  There was a flicker of pain across his face and I regretted asking it. He was silent so long, I thought he wasn’t going to answer me. Finally, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “My sister, Rachel, was a couple of years older than me. She was very good to me, from when I was a child, especially when our parents died. She was always there. You know, the one I could rely on, the one who could help me when things went bad.” He stopped and a sigh passed through him. “She died from a disease called Metzl-Duncan Syndrome. It’s hereditary, and I’ve got it too. The doctors said it was possible I would die in a couple of years. They didn’t know for sure.”

  I sat silently. He’d stopped trying to mesmerize me, but I wanted to listen to him.

  “About a month after Rachel died, I was at the gym and some of us got talking. I told the others the story. There was a guy there called Paul. He’s an Athanate, though I didn’t know it at the time, of course. He talked to me a lot of times, and then just turned around one day when we were alone and said that there was a cure. You know, I would have gone through a lot for a cure that just left me alive, but instead there was this change that would remake me. Is remaking me.” He took a sip of his cooling coffee and turned to me, his eyes intent. “I’m on the brink of something wonderful, Amber. If only I could show you.”

  He did. I could see the sun rising over cold mountain peaks, the promise of a glorious new day. Mists lifted from sleepy valleys and my blood rose to meet the sun. I felt I could soar into the dawn skies.

  “David!” I whispered, dizzy with the sensation, and it vanished.

  We looked open-mouthed at each other.

  I cleared my throat. “I don’t think you’ll have any trouble if you can do that again,” I said.

  I was shivering and sweaty. I didn’t know how strong it could get. David’s vision was pleasant, even uplifting, but it was the same thing that Skylur had done and I didn’t want the kind of mental beating that he had given me. But this was David, and I had to trust him.

  Trust and jump, Farrell.

  “Try it again, just for a second, just the feeling,” I said and steeled myself. “Stop if I look hurt, or raise my hand.”

  He looked as scared as I felt, but settled down and I could see him repeating the words to himself as he turned to look at me. It took a couple of attempts before the vision of the dawn burst into my head again.

  “Wow!” I raised my hand and he stopped immediately. “Well, I guess that’s the first part. You can make the connection well enough.”

  We tried it different ways and found he couldn’t connect unless he could see me and was actually looking at me. The sensation for me was vivid, but not disturbing and I found I could somehow push it down, make it less vivid.

  The confidence that gave me led to the mistake.

  “Okay, try making me offer you my neck,” I said.

  “Amber, no, this is getting dangerous. It’s all mixed up—”

  “Skylur couldn’t do it.” I smirked. “What makes you think you’re—”

  He looked sideways at me as if he didn’t really want to, and his silent shout in my head stopped me in my tracks.

  What followed was a blur. From sitting a couple of feet away from each other, we were standing face to face in less time than it took either of us to draw a surprised gasp. My hands were on his shoulders and his grasped my hips. Our faces were almost touching. I could feel his breath on my face and his body quivering with excitement and hunger. His eyes went from baffled to glittering in a heartbeat.

  I had been right, it was easier between friends—much, much easier. I could feel his hunger in a way I couldn’t feel Skylur’s. There were no words that he was whispering in my ear or in my mind and my own inner voice was quiet. Instead of these, there were emotions, raw and uncontrolled. It didn’t hurt like Skylur’s had, and it wasn’t just David’s hunger. There was my own in there as well. This wasn’t a one-way connection.

  “No,” I gasped. This was wrong.

  “No,” he replied, but we were so close, his lips touched mine as he said it, and the feather brush of lips became a fierce kiss. My mouth opened to his and a heart-stopping shock of desire crashed through me.

  We weren’t looking at each other anymore, but the connection was still there, ragged and flickering, as if electric charges were jumping between our bodies. For a moment, I was lost. It didn’t matter that this was David. Frustrated desire raged through my body. The thought came to me that he was one person I couldn’t infect with prions. What the hell if he drank my blood as well. I could feel the freaking fangs in his mouth and I didn’t care.

  There was a last moment of clarity, a last realization that this was a path we could not walk back up and it would change us forever. It felt like something we had been driven to, not something we truly wanted. And because of the connection, that was a thought that we shared. The sharing gave us the strength to break the embrace. We fell apart and collapsed.

  “Shit! Amber, I’m sorry.” David was the first to get his voice back as we sat sprawled on the floor.

  “My fault,” I said, my head in my hands. “I pushed you. I pushed you.”

  I crawled back to my chair and lay back against it, too weak to lift myself up, my breath still coming hard and my whole body trembling.

  “Damn.” I managed a shaky laugh. “You did say that new Athanate are highly charged. If that’s an example…”

  “How can you laugh? I nearly—” he shook his head.

  “We nearly, David. But we didn’t.”

  “It’s all mixed up,” he said, still shaking his head as if that would clear it. “Sex and blood.”

  “Must be difficult sometimes,” I said, and he blushed.

  “Yes. You need to understand this now, Amber, how it works all the way around. Most times with an Athanate, sex will lead to blood, and blood will lead to sex. But it’s not just that. Being bitten can make you excited or scared, and in the same way, being excited or scared around Athanate can lead to you getting bitten. They—we—trigger on emotion. Feed on it.”

  I levered myself back into my chair slowly. “When we kissed, there was something else, not just the mind thing? Like the hottest feeling ever. Quite a shock.”

  David nodded tiredly. “We can make the experience good. Pheromones and chemical agents released in saliva or through the fangs. An exchange for the blood, making it pleasurable to be bitten. Or kissed. Or whatever.” He managed a slight laugh. “I’m not controlling it at all at the moment, but with more experience, I should be able to create feelings of desire and euphoria. I’ll learn to create healing agents and local anesthetic, so you wouldn’t even feel the fangs and the wound will heal quickly.”

  “Hmm. Okay, well, I think I got the desire dosage full on.” I smiled at him. I was nearly back to normal and I wanted to bring David back from the self-doubt that our loss of control had caused.

  “Sorry,” he said. He lifted himself into his chair and slumped bonelessly.

  “No harm, no foul.” I cast around for something to lighten the mood. “I’m surprised my smell didn’t turn you off. I still haven’t had the chance to shower after the run.”

  David’s head was cradled in his hand. One eye opened and looked up at me. “You’re wrong about that,” he muttered. “That was part of the problem. Yeah, I can smell the sweat, but underneath it, Amber, since the third bite, I find your smell…” He didn’t know how to finish.

  “Tasty? Bian seemed to think so, although I’m not sure if she was jerking my chain.”

  David snorted. “Yeah. Tas
ty. Exactly. Must meet this girl.” He paused and rubbed his mouth. “You gave me something back as well in that kiss.”

  “I gave you the lust cattle-prod thingy? I can do that?”

  “No.” He laughed. “No, you were a bit subtler than that. For once.” He ran his tongue around his mouth thoughtfully and I noted his fangs were back to being normal canines. “I’ll tell you when I figure out what it was.”

  His laughter was an improvement, the joke even more so, but I still felt the need to show that I trusted him. “Can I use your shower, then?”

  David smiled and waved over at the right door. I went out and got my stuff from the car. Once out of his sight, I took a deep calming breath and willed all the shakes to stop. Yes, we’d had a scare, but we were fine. I was sure he wouldn’t flunk his mesmerism test now. If the cost was the fright we’d given each other, I was happy with the price.

  I got some fresh clothes and my laptop. After the shower, I was going to quiz David about the financial figures from Jen’s spreadsheets, without revealing whose they were. David was an actuary, and a clever guy. I was sure he would have some useful insights.

  He did. And by the time I left, David and I were chatting and joking easily again. He looked completely restored as he leaned against my car.

  “One last question, David, how long does the test last—the one where Pia keeps draining you?”

  He became more serious for a second. “Until I can stop her using my mind,” he replied.

  I nodded. “Okay. You can do it. I’ll look in on you when I can. And turn your frigging cell on, bro.”

  He laughed and I drove away with that image in my mind, rather than the kiss I could still feel burning on my lips.

  Chapter 28

  Late in the afternoon, I walked out onto Jen’s tiled courtyard to find her catching the last of the sun. A central fountain bubbled into a dark pool of carp, and terracotta-potted lavender and lemon trees lined the Italian stone patio. At the bottom of the ornamental gardens, past the helipad and through the larch and cypress border, I could make out the empty fairways of the golf club. One of Vic’s guards moved discreetly beneath the trees, their foliage so dark a green they seemed to have leached the blackness from the deep shadows below them.