Her back arched while those shudders continued within her. He moved faster, kissing her throat, her lips, and her jaw while he let his control slip away. That throbbing in him grew until it felt like his skin would split from the pleasure frothing inside him. It overtook him, drowning him in sensations that intensified until they exploded in a climax that left him clutching Kira hard enough to bruise her.
For several long moments, he stared at her while the last ripples slowly faded from his body. Her eyes were greener than he’d ever seen, and her fingernails still dug into his shoulders.
“I can’t believe you bit me there,” she finally said. “But what I really can’t believe is how it felt. ”
A smile curved his lips. “There are perks to being a vampire. That is one of them. I’ll enjoy showing you the others.”
“I can’t wait,” she murmured. Then her expression changed, losing its sultry lethargy to become serious. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
He pulled away, leaving the bliss of her embrace to lean back against the headboard. Kira sat up as well, pulling the outer blanket around her either out of chill or an attempt to put another barrier between them aside from the space that now separated them.
“I’m listening,” he replied. Dozens of centuries spent concealing his emotions made his face blank and his voice neutral while his walls went up, keeping Kira from feeling any of his inner turmoil.
Her gaze was steady. “I’m in love with you. Yes, it’s very soon. Yes, there’s still so much I don’t know about you, but this isn’t infatuation or lust. It’s real, and it’s something that’s been growing in me since before you left me on that roof.”
Mencheres was stunned. He felt his mouth open, but he could not seem to make it form words. Reason at once rejected her statement. She couldn’t love him. Kira had a clean heart. Not a spotless one—no one’s heart was—but if she’d seen all the darkness in his life over the course of the years, she would run away from him.
Her gaze remained level. “Say something. I don’t care what, just speak.”
“I am a murderer.”
The words came out without thought, but they were true. She deserved to know what he was, even though it would probably drive her away.
Her full, lovely mouth twitched. “I know that. I saw you knock the heads off those ghouls the day we met, remember?”
“Not just then.” Mencheres met her gaze, waiting for it to cloud with revulsion at his next words. “Many times. More than I can remember.”
“How many of those times had to do with protecting yourself or your people?” she asked, no change in her expression.
His brows drew together. She’d surprised him yet again. “Does it matter?”
“Yes,” she replied with emphasis. “Your world operates by very different rules. I might not have seen much of it, but that part’s clear. You’re calling yourself a hardened killer, Mencheres, but I’ve seen you protect or save lives that shouldn’t matter to you if you were such a cold person. I should know. Mine was one of those lives you saved, and at the time, you didn’t even know me.”
“I set my wife up to be killed. I watched her die and did nothing to stop it.” His voice was flat.
Kira touched his face. “Cat told me she tried to kill you and everyone else close to you. So you had no choice. Neither did I when I turned Pete in.”
He set her hands from him. It was too difficult to say this next part with her touching him, but she needed to know exactly who it was she thought she loved.
“I killed Patra long before that day. You asked me if I ever took a life outside of protecting myself or my people. The answer is yes. Before Patra married me, she loved someone else. I slew her lover, and it was not in defense. I was a vampire, and he was merely human.”
The memory of that murder rose within him, as it had done so often in the past several years while Patra edged ever closer to her fate. Intef’s broken body on the floor, his blood soaking into the pale clay, and the stunned faces of Mencheres’s guards as they looked at him.
“I told Patra her lover was murdered by Romans. We married a few years later, but eventually, one of the witnesses spilled my secret. I tried to explain the circumstances behind his death, but she didn’t care. What I did caused Patra to hate me, and that hatred is what led her to attempt to destroy me and my people. All her actions can be laid at my feet.”
“You killed him out of jealousy?” Kira asked, her voice raspier.
His eyes closed. “That day, the humans were warring. Soldiers injured Patra enough that I had to change her over instead of merely healing her. Then I went to fetch her lover as I’d promised. I felt no real jealousy toward Intef. He was one of many amusements Patra had indulged in during her unpleasant marriage, though he had a stronger hold over her because she did want him changed into a vampire, too.”
“Weren’t you worried that changing him over would ruin things for you? You must have cared for her by then, or were you two not, ah, involved yet?”
Mencheres opened his eyes to give Kira a pointed look. “We weren’t lovers yet. Patient I would be, share I would not. I cared for Patra then, but I wasn’t blind to her nature. She was attracted to power and riches. I had both, Intef had neither. I knew she would soon choose me over him.”
“So if it wasn’t jealousy . . . ?” Her voice trailed off.
“The power to move things with my mind can be influenced by my emotions. That is why it requires absolute control, which is also why my sire knew Radje would have been a poor choice for it. I hadn’t met Intef before that day, but when I went to fetch him, I heard his thoughts. He’d been using Patra to curry power, selling her secrets to her enemies. He was the one who’d sent the Roman soldiers to kill her, the same ones who’d injured her so badly I had to turn her. I heard all that, and my rage let loose my power.” Mencheres’s mouth tightened into a grim line. “He was dead before any of my people could speak to stop me.”
Pink glistened in Kira’s eyes. “You were wrong to kill him,” she said softy. “But you know that, and you’ve served a nine-hundred-year sentence of guilt under it. I think that’s punishment enough—and you are not responsible for what Patra did. If that’s the excuse she used for all the misery she caused, especially considering he tried to have her killed, then I call bullshit. That man’s death is on your hands, but everything she did is on hers.”
Once again, Mencheres found himself in the rare position of being speechless. People just did not love him if they knew him. They respected him, were loyal to him, feared him, hated him, envied him, lusted for him, needed things from him, or felt a combination of several of those things. But no one simply loved him—most especially, no one like Kira.
She slid her hands along his arms, moving closer to him.
“For all your experience, I’m guessing this is one thing you’re not very familiar with, so let me help you out,” she murmured. “For starters, it doesn’t require weeks or months to know what you feel is love. For another, this is something that even with all your power, you can’t control. You don’t have to echo my feelings, Mencheres, but you can’t talk me out of them, either. I love you.” Her smile was wry. “Deal with it.”
She pulled his head down to her then, her mouth moving over his with such gentleness, he could have been a human she was trying not to bruise. He still couldn’t summon the words to respond to her incredible statements, but this . . . this required no words.
He kissed her with everything in him that he could not form into speech, pulling down the barrier that prevented Kira from sensing his emotions. Her arms tightened, her fangs lengthened, and her body molded to his. A powerful need rose in him, stronger than lust, deeper than possessiveness. He let Kira feel all of it as he rolled on top of her, pulling away the blanket that was the only barrier between them.
Chapter 25
The black limousine waited ahead of them at the street Mencheres said it would be. Kira heaved a mental sigh of relief. They we
re late. Thank God his friend had waited for them.
She smoothed down the front of her makeshift toga, imagining that she looked as confident as Mencheres did in his matching outfit. However, while he seemed able to wear anything, even a bedsheet, while affecting an elegant air, Kira was pretty certain she looked like a frat-party reject.
If they’d thought to put their sea-soaked clothes through the washer and dryer, they would’ve had something else to wear. But Mencheres had proven to be insatiable, and so, to Kira’s mild astonishment, had she. She wasn’t sure if this was due to her new stamina as a vampire, or because Mencheres made love like he’d invented the act. If she wasn’t already dead, the number of climaxes he’d brought her to might have killed her. And feeling his pleasure at the same time? She shivered. Good thing Mencheres finally remembered about the meeting. She wouldn’t have.
Of course, that meant they’d had to rush out the door and the house, while furnished, didn’t have any additional clothes in it. Kira was about to put on her wet, seaweed-stained clothes when Mencheres yanked a clean sheet from another bed and fashioned a sarong for her out of it, making one for himself out of another sheet. Thankfully, there were few people out on the streets now, less than an hour before dawn.
The window to the limousine rolled down when they approached, a handsome man with long brown hair and a closely cropped beard on the other side of it.
“Mencheres,” the stranger said. “If anyone other than you had me fly halfway around the world just to keep me waiting while you were obviously lingering in bed, I’d have my driver run them over. Twice.”
“Long flight?” Mencheres asked in reply, opening the door to let Kira in. She minded the edge of her toga as she sat down in the opposite seat from the brunet stranger, whose gaze flicked over her in a measuring way.
“Very long,” he answered. “I was stopped twice at the airport for ‘random’ security checks, too. Just because I have long dark hair and a beard, I’m constantly mistaken for a potential terrorist. I suppose it’s worse when you fly commercial. They must attempt a cavity search every time.”
Mencheres’s mouth curled as he climbed into the limo. “Those private body-search rooms do provide an easy opportunity to feed.” Then he sat next to Kira, placing his hand on her shoulder. “This is Kira Graceling. Kira, Vlad Tepesh.”
“Quite an honor,” Vlad drawled, holding out a hand crisscrossed with what looked like old scars.
Her brow furrowed even as she shook the hand offered to her. That name sounded familiar. Where had she heard it before . . . ?
“Oh!” Kira exclaimed. Her eyes widened. “You’re not the real Dracula, are you?”
“Does no one think to warn people before they meet me?” Vlad muttered, shooting an irritable look at Mencheres. “Though I suspect what made that detail slip your mind was the same thing that also made you late.”
“You’re being discourteous,” Mencheres said in a reproving tone even as Kira shifted in her seat. It was true that showing up late wearing nothing but sheets wouldn’t require much imagination to figure out what had kept them.
“It’s fine, Mencheres. Though if you’d told me I was about to meet such a legendary vampire, I would have grabbed the nicer silk drapery to wear instead,” she replied, meeting Vlad’s coppery green gaze with an arched brow.
Vlad flashed her an instant’s worth of a smile. “I can see why he likes you. Although, to listen to Radje, Mencheres doesn’t just like you. He’s fallen so in love that he’s slaughtering vampires over you, defying the Guardian’s attempts to bring him in, and generally acting even more crazed than he was at the beginning of his relationship with Patra, may she burn in peace.”
Kira cast a glance at Mencheres. This was a discomfiting topic for more than one reason—and was no one sensitive about throwing up Mencheres’s dead wife in front of him?
“You know I would not have been as foolish as to let myself get caught on tape at a place I later went back to and supposedly torched,” Mencheres said. Please, his tone implied with heavy irony.
Vlad’s lip curled. “No, you’re very careful about video. Heard all the cameras at Disneyland were blown out yesterday after a reported Muslim extremist knocked out the lights, then detonated a small bomb before escaping.”
“Muslim extremist?” Kira repeated, her jaw dropping. Of all the racial-profiling bullshit . . .
“No one was hurt,” Vlad went on. “Though the families who were shaken up did get a refund of their admission tickets.”
“Bones was followed by Enforcers,” Mencheres said, shrugging. “It was an unfortunate incident.”
Vlad grunted in a way that made Kira think he and Bones weren’t close, but that was hardly her concern. A wave of lethargy crested over her. Dawn must be getting closer. She’d wanted to call Tina before she fell asleep, but now there wasn’t time. It wouldn’t reassure her poor sister that she was okay if Kira passed out in midsentence while talking with her.
“We’ll need a safe place to stay for the next few days,” Mencheres said. “Obviously, all of my residences would be the first place the Guardians looked for me, my people’s homes and hotels being the next. But you’re not of my line, and your people would fear your wrath more than the Guardians’, if any of them revealed you were assisting me.”
“I already have a place picked out for you.” Vlad’s gaze turned knowing. “But you must want more than that from me, to have me come all the way out here. Secret accommodations can be arranged over the phone.”
“I will set up a safe, neutral place to meet with Veritas,” Mencheres replied. “One that we can easily escape from if she’s not inclined to come alone. I want you there as witness to what’s said between us.”
Vlad’s eyes seemed to get a shade greener. “Veritas? Why, out of all the Law Guardians, would you assume she’d be the most sympathetic to your cause? I know you share the same sire, but Veritas almost had Cat killed for interfering in a duel just last fall.”
“I’ve known her for most of my life,” Mencheres replied.
Vlad grunted. “You could say the same about Radjedef.”
“Who is the vampire who sired you, Mencheres?” Kira asked. “Will I ever meet him or her?”
“Not this side of the grave,” Vlad muttered.
Mencheres gave Vlad a mildly reproving glance before turning to her. “Tenoch was my sire. He was an extremely powerful, respected vampire, and he died almost six hundred years ago.”
“How did he die?” Kira asked before remembering that natural causes wasn’t a possibility. “Oh, ah, never mind,” she stammered.
“Tenoch died from the same thing that kills most extremely old, very powerful vampires,” Vlad said. “Suicide.”
“That has never been proved,” Mencheres shot back in a hard tone.
“Tenoch had even more power than you do, yet I’m supposed to believe he was brought down by merely a quartet of Master vampires?” Vlad asked in an equally inflexible tone. “Those who don’t know the details might believe that fable, but you and I know it was only four vampires against him, not fifty as reported. Tenoch set himself up. If he’d truly wanted to live, he could have killed them. Yet Tenoch was tired. He’d lost his most treasured anchors to this world, and the majority of his people didn’t need him. He wanted to die. He only made it look like murder so his people didn’t suffer guilt over it.”
Mencheres’s face was back in that impassive mask again, the walls around him closing up like a force field.
“I’m sorry I asked, let’s just drop the subject,” Kira said, thinking it was cruel of Vlad to press the issue. If Vlad was right in his description of the circumstances, then it did sound like Tenoch had committed suicide. Some depressed humans did similar things, like pointing an unloaded gun at police in a form of suicide known as Death by Cop. Death was bad enough, but suicide added an additional pain to those left behind. One Tenoch apparently tried to prevent by making his demise look like an ambush by enemies . . .
Her gaze swung back to Mencheres as horror slid up her spine. His expression was impenetrable, his dark gaze fathomless as he met hers.
The warehouse. The ghouls. They’d been butchering him, but Mencheres hadn’t even moved to defend himself before she’d arrived, even though he could have killed them at any time—
“No!”
Kira launched herself at Mencheres. He caught her, holding her very close, keeping his arms tight around her.
At the same time, she could feel the sun rise, sucking all her strength out of her. She tried to fight the pull of those rays, to stay awake long enough to demand to know why he’d done it, but even before she could speak, the darkness came for her.
Chapter 26
“She seemed quite upset.”
Mencheres looked up from Kira’s newly sleeping form to meet Vlad’s level gaze. “I have some explaining to do once she wakes,” he replied dryly.
“You, explaining yourself to a vampire not yet two weeks old.” Vlad shook his head. “From where I sit, Radjedef is correct in his claims that you’ve fallen recklessly in love.”
“Does that make you wonder if his other claims about me are true as well?” Mencheres challenged.
Vlad’s smile was wintry. “No. But I’m wondering why all of a sudden Radje decided to come after you this ruthlessly? Your animosity toward each other has long existed, but neither of you has openly acted on it. He didn’t even back Patra during her war against you. That’s what your other allies are wondering as well. Why would a Guardian suddenly risk everything for an eons-old feud?”
“Radje did not back Patra because she meant to kill me, and he wants me alive,” Mencheres replied, shifting Kira more comfortably in his arms. “Why now is because he fears if he tarries, I might forever slip his grasp, taking with me the one thing no one else can give him for a thousand years.”
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