by K D Grace
Annie meant nothing to Him, He had promised me, but He would do what He had to, whatever it took, for us to be together. Perhaps He took those memories from me because He knew I couldn’t have endured the jealousy. I would have driven myself insane thinking about her taking my place with Him, her naked on her mattress next to the altar, inviting Him in again and again, and Him taking her over and over, instead of me. It should have been me. I should have stayed. I remember thinking that just before He took my memories.
And when He took them, in the taking, He had touched me, and His touch had been like a promise, one so sweet and so ecstatic that the very anticipation of its fulfillment was only a step away from orgasm, only a heartbeat away from pleasure I could barely imagine.
Then shame rushed back on me like a tidal wave followed in short order by denial. How could I have done this—any of this—to my best friend? Surely it couldn’t have been me. Surely it had only been a bad dream, just as I had been hoping all this time. She was the one with the demon lover after all, not me. She was the one who had come after me with a butcher knife. She was the one who caused all this pain and horror… surely she was.
Carefully, as though I feared waking her, or perhaps that my touch would hurt her, I settled onto the edge of the bed next to her, still holding her hand, lightly stroking the back of it with my thumb. “Annie, I don’t know what to do,” I whispered. “I’m so, so sorry that I dragged you into this mess. I… You have to believe me, I’d never hurt you deliberately. I didn’t know. I swear to you, didn’t know. Perhaps I should go back to Chapel House.”
The words were out of my mouth almost of their own volition and, to my horror, I found myself rationalizing my need to return to the place, and to Him. After all, it was the only way I could save Annie, right? I could convince Him to let her go, to guarantee her safety in exchange for me. “If I go back, Annie, and you stay here with Magda and Michael and… well, there’s just so much magic in this house. I think if anyone can make you better, Magda can. There’s something about her. I don’t know what it is, but she can make you better. I know she can.”
It seemed the most logical thing in the world to me, as I spoke. I would go back. I would be the sacrifice to save Annie. And Michael too, right? He still had a hold on Michael, but it was me He wanted. I knew that it was. I had always known that, hadn’t I? I was the only one who could be to Him what He needed. All the others He’d ever been with down through the ages, all the lovers He had ever taken, all of them had only been His deep longing, His timeless search to find me.
The more I thought about it, the more certain I was of the truth of it. The excitement at the thought of returning to Him grew tight and full beneath my breastbone, and in the dark places at the back of my mind, I was already planning my escape from High View. It wouldn’t be easy sneaking away at night, not from a vampire’s lair, but I felt certain in myself that He would help me, whether I fled to Him in broad daylight or in the darkness of night. He would protect me from them and aid my escape. And then once I was safely away, safely back with Him, I would send word of my sacrifice and all would be well. I knew it would. He would free Annie and Michael and we would be together, just like He’d always wanted, like we’d both always wanted.
“Oh, Annie,” I said, squeezing her hand. “It’s the right thing to do. It just has to be. I mean, what else can I do?” I raised her hand to my lips and kissed it fervently. “I just… I just want you to be okay, Annie. That’s all I ever wanted.”
“It’s not all you want.”
I nearly jumped out of my skin as I turned to find Michael leaning against the doorframe, hair sparkling with droplets of the light rain that had started outside during the reading of the account of my little encounter. I had no idea how long he’d been standing there, but as I shook myself back to reality, I knew it had probably been long enough for him to understand exactly what was going on. Long enough to realize the dangerous precipice upon which I now teetered.
Chapter Twenty-one
“It’s not all you want, just for Annie to be okay. You’re bargaining, Susan. In your head, you’re bargaining.” As Michael came and settled beside me on the bed, I smelled the cold fell air on his skin, and the hard muscles of his forearm were cool as he brushed against me.
He took Annie’s hand and gently tucked it back under the duvet, then he took mine in his own. “You want to go back to be with Him. You think if you go back to Him, He’ll make everything all better because you’re certain that you’re the one He’s been waiting for all these centuries.”
When I tried to pull away, tried to be offended, he held me tight. “I know that’s what you want, Susan, because it’s what I want, too. It’s what anyone who’s ever been the center of His attention would want. But they’re all dead.”
His words were like an ice bath, waking me from a deep sleep with a cold that went clear to the core of me.
He continued. “They’re all dead because of Him. It’s just the three of us now. And Annie, well, no matter what happens, just like you and me, she’ll want that same thing. She’ll want with all of her being to go to Him. Until her dying day, that’s what she’ll want, and that day won’t be long in coming if we can’t figure out what to do to imprison the Guardian again.”
I bit my lip and looked down at his large hand folded over mine, his thumb stroking my knuckles in much the way I had Annie’s. “Is that why you left the study while Magda was reading? Because you wanted to go to Him?”
He took a deep breath and looked up at me from beneath thick lashes. “Partly. Your… account of what happened to you in the crypt, your first encounter with Him, made me think of my first time being in His presence, made me think about what it had cost to be free of Him.” He suddenly seemed to have trouble breathing. “And it made me realize once again that I’m not free of Him. I want to go to Him so badly that it feels like fire burning me up inside, and I’m not likely to ever be free of Him unless Magda can figure something out.”
For a moment we sat in silence.
“I’m sorry,” I said at last. “I didn’t know when I wrote those things.” I bit back a sob. “I didn’t even remember writing them until Magda started reading, and even then it’s sketchy in places. But I never meant to hurt you. I didn’t even know you.”
“I didn’t think that you meant to hurt me,” he said. “I wasn’t offended, believe me, I wasn’t. It was just, well, I remembered all over again His way… His way of never letting go of anyone He’s ever touched, and I felt it more strongly in your words than I had since I was the object of His affection, that’s all. Well, that and I was jealous. I’m always jealous when someone else has His attention. Just like you are. Just like Annie is.”
“Christ, I’ve made such a mess of things!” I shoved my way off the bed and paced the perimeter of the room, which was small, almost dungeon-like in comparison to my own. “I can’t just sit here and do nothing.”
“You’re not doing nothing,” he said, watching me pace. “You’re working with people who can help. Magda has a plan and you have to trust her.”
“How can I trust her when she left me in the crypt? And what kind of magic is she working on Annie? How do I know that her solution is not to just kill Annie and be done with it?”
Michael’s jaw tightened beneath the stubble that had grown enough to make him look even more dangerous than he usually did. “If she wanted your friend dead, she’d already be dead, not lying here in a clean bed in a safe house.”
“A safe house? With a vampire and a succubus, and who knows what else? A werewolf or two? Maybe an army of zombies? Fuck, I’m open to anything these days. Good thing the beasties and ghouls are all on our side, isn’t it, Michael?”
“It is, actually,” he said in a voice so calm that you’d think I’d just made some benign comment about the weather. Then he added, “They all work for Magda. Well, Alonso does, the others work for him. Talia and Reese are his familiars.”
“Jesus, I’m livin
g a Bram-fucking-Stoker novel!”
The unexpected chuckle of a response was laced with a hint of bitterness. “Oh, nothing so simple as that.” Then, before I could question further, he said, “Look, Magda does what’s necessary, and she seems to be able to see and understand just what that may be without all the squeamish gray areas of conscience most of the world has.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better, Michael. What? We’re all just collateral damage if she decides it’s best to throw the baby out with the bath water? Is that it? Who the hell is she, anyway, and why does she always wear those Men In Black glasses?”
His lips thinned to a tight, straight line, as though they were suddenly sealed. “Her story’s not mine to tell. You’ll have to ask her yourself.”
“I bloody well will,” I said, turning toward the door.
“Wait!” He grabbed my hand and guided me out into the silent corridor, pulling the door shut behind him. “She’s not here at the moment. You can talk to her when she gets back.”
“Where is she?”
“On business that’s none of mine, or yours,” he said, tightening his grip on my hand. “She keeps her own counsel, and for the most part, the less I know about it, the happier I am. I wager Alonso feels the same.”
“She’s a scary bitch, that’s what she is,” I said, wishing the instant I’d said it that I hadn’t, wondering if maybe she was listening, just waiting to catch me out, to catch me saying or doing something I shouldn’t, so she could lock me back down in the crypt. Maybe I was the bait; maybe I was the collateral damage necessary to imprison the Guardian again.
“No one who knows her would argue that point,” Michael said. “But she’s the only one here who has a clue how to deal with the Guardian, the only one I know to ever imprison Him. And He was there, safely out of commission for a long time, a very long time, thanks to her.”
“Until I released Him.”
“I have no doubt He deceived you into it. No one was supposed to be able to hear him or be aware of him in any way, and no one has been before you. Magda says it’s to do with you being a scribe. I don’t understand it all. She’ll have to explain.”
“I’ll add that to my list of topics for conversation at our next girls’ night out.”
“Despite the woman being a scary bitch, or possibly because she’s a scary bitch, she’s our best chance of locking Him away again,” Michael said.
“You believe that?”
He nodded. “If we do as she says, I think she’ll get us out of this situation without that collateral damage you mentioned. If we do as she says.” At the passage that led down into the basement to Alonso’s study, he turned aside and led me up a winding set of stone steps, circling what had to be the inside of a tower.
“Where are we going? What’s going on?” I asked, struggling on the uneven steps.
The words were barely out of my mouth when halfway up the stairs, he pulled me through an arched doorway we both had to stoop to enter, and into a round stone room not much bigger than a janitor’s closet. It contained nothing but a twin bed and a nightstand; the only light coming from a small slit of a window at the back of the curved wall.
Nothing else caught my attention as he slammed a heavy wooden door shut behind us and took my mouth in a scorching kiss, pressing me up tight against the wall until I could feel the hard geography of his body shifting and undulating against mine which, before I knew what was happening, was returning the favor.
“Where are we? What the fuck are you doing?”
I honestly didn’t care what the answer to the first question was, and the second was just plain stupid, really. I knew the answer, and I knew what I was doing too, as I tugged at his belt. There might have been a small part of me wondering how I could jump from the rollercoaster of concern for my friend and plotting to get back to the Guardian to wanting to shag Michael’s brains out, but I shoved the thought aside as he went to work on the buttons of my shirt.
“The mark, my mark,” he emphasized. “It burns because it’s not been reinforced properly. I had intended to take care of it. Believe me, I was looking forward to it, but between the Guardian and Magda, I didn’t get the chance. It needs to be made stronger if it’s going to help protect you. Or me.” He shoved the shirt off my shoulders and all but ripped the hooks of my bra open before he scooped my breast free, bent and began a delicious, tetchy suckle and bite, suckle and bite of the mark he’d left just above my nipple during our earlier lovemaking.
If the Guardian’s touch had brought me excruciating pain through that mark, the feel of Michael’s tongue, his teeth, his lips brought me exquisite pleasure—far more pleasure than even his skilled fondling of my breasts should have been able to manage.
As I ripped at his fly, he returned the favor, shoving my jeans and knickers down over my arse with a sleight of hand that felt like magic… probably was magic, come to think of it. I wriggled and squirmed them down around my ankles and kicked one leg free, sending a shoe skittering across the stone floor. All the while he sucked and nipped, cupped and explored, and the mark sent heat waves of pleasure through every nerve ending in my body.
“Get ‘em off!” I gasped. “Get ‘em off, get ‘em off!” It had suddenly become my mindless mantra. I was much less graceful in my efforts than Michael was in his, my hands made awkward, fingers unsteady by my own need. He responded to my uncomfortable tugging and shoving with a harsh, humid grunt against my breast. While wriggling and shifting as best he could in order to aid my efforts, he brought a jean-clad knee in between my thighs to open my legs, then teased me by bringing it up to rub and stroke until I was all but squatting onto it, rocking against it. Then he lost patience, gave a guttural curse, and shoved my hands away to deal with his uncooperative jeans himself. All the while his mouth remained hard at work on my breast, on his mark.
With that same sleight of hand movement that had freed me from my clothing, he managed his jeans—commando beneath, I noticed—though I barely had time to notice anything before he cupped my buttocks in large, calloused hands and lifted me. In one effortless thrusting of his hips, he pushed up inside me, gasping as though someone had knocked the breath out of him.
I arched my back against the wall to get closer to his efforts, my legs circling his waist, one foot still trailing jeans and knickers, frantic to get a grip, frantic to have him where I needed him.
He bit my breast, and this time I did feel pain, delicious ecstatic pain that radiated in waves down over my belly to throb like a heartbeat deep in my core each time he thrust. Then he raised his head, taking my mouth savagely before pulling away, bathing me in the hot coffee scent of his breath and the hotter, darker, scent of his lust. “I won’t share you with Him, Susan. You belong to me now, and I might have been forgettable in your little account that Magda so kindly read, but I’m not now, nor will I ever be again.”
I grabbed him by the hair with a white-knuckled fist and forced his mouth back to my breast. “Then you bloody well better make sure I don’t forget, Michael; do you understand me?”
In response he bit again. I cried out, but this time in orgasm, my head thump-thumping against the wall with each convulsive tremor as Michael clamped down hard and suckled as though he were a vampire and I was the main course. In all honesty, I wasn’t sure that he hadn’t drawn blood. Whether he had or not, the delicious result of the act was his own release, with each brutal pounding of his hips filling me with his fire, burning me, biting me, suckling me until the world disappeared, until I couldn’t recall my own name if my life depended upon it; until I could recall only one name, the only name on my lips over and over again, “Michael! Michael! Michael!”
Chapter Twenty-two
“I really need to go.” Michael kissed my ear and cupped my breast, thumbing the nipple that was just peeking from the cloud of geranium scented bubbles. After we’d made love, we slipped down the stone staircase to my room, which, I discovered to my delight, was just below his. He’d requeste
d it that way. For my protection, he said, so he could get to me quickly if the need arose. And since High View was in the process of renovations, this was the best Alonso could do.
Once we were back in my room, Michael had filled up the big bathtub and undressed me at his leisure, pausing to kiss and caress as necessary. Then he guided me down into the warm sudsy water and crawled in with me, to bathe me, he said—an act that was accomplished after another, less frantic, reinforcement of his mark. Warm, clean and sated, I leaned back against the humid rise and fall of his chest, half dozing, trying hard to pretend that we were simply two lovers enjoying a little wet afternoon delight.
“I may be borrowing trouble,” he said, “but something doesn’t feel right. It shouldn’t have taken Magda so long to reconvene our little… reading group.” I felt his shrug against my back. “Though she’s not the kind who thinks to inform anyone of a change of plans. Still. I don’t like it. I suppose a delay could be a good sign, but I’m not an optimist when it comes to working with Magda, and certainly not where the Guardian is concerned.”
Over my mild protests he stood, causing a mini tsunami of scented water, and offered me his hand.
When we were both dried and dressed, I reeled him in for a lingering kiss. “You don’t have to sleep all alone up there in that cold little tower, you know.”
He caught my hand and pulled it to his lips. “Are you inviting me to share your bed, Ms. Innes?”
“Well, I was just thinking that the mark could probably use a bit more reinforcing. Just to be sure. And, just in case you might need to get to me in a hurry or something. You understand.”
“You have a good point.” He nodded in mock seriousness.
“You have a better one.” I rubbed against him.
He groaned into my mouth in a deep lazy kiss. “As much as I’d love to discuss my point with you and give you another demonstration, I really need to find out what’s going on.” He kissed me again, giving my arse a good kneading as he shifted up tight against me, then he nipped my lower lip. “I promise we’ll continue this discussion later.”