His intention might have been to reassure her, but his words appeared to have the opposite effect. Her expression grew devastated.
“The vortex,” she whispered. “It’s already forming around you.”
Mason shook his head, trying to stay on top of the conversation.
“Look,” he said. “Maybe you’re right, and this isn’t the best time to try and have this talk. Like I told you, I’m knackered. I’m guessing you can’t be much better off. Why don’t you let me bandage your hand, and then we can both get some rest and tackle this subject later today.”
Her brows drew together in confusion. “Bandage my hand?”
He gestured at her left palm, which hung loosely by her side. “Yes, that’s what I said. I’m a doctor, after all, and that looked like a wicked slice on your palm earlier when you offered up your little unplanned blood donation to Mama Lovelie.” A noise of irritation escaped him. “I think our hostess must be the real vampire here.”
After the barest hesitation, she pushed away from the post and crossed to stand in front of him, moving like she was caught between the desire to come closer and the desire to flee. She stretched out her hand, palm up, to reveal smooth, unbroken skin.
He stared at her unblemished palm stupidly, forcing his groggy brain to confirm that it had definitely been the left one she cut with Mama Lovelie’s sharp little blade.
It was; he was certain of it.
“But… that’s…” The words emerged slowly, and with no plan as to how the sentence would end.
He reached out and grasped her hand in his, intending to turn it more fully toward the light. Instead, he sucked in a sharp breath as the same shock he’d felt when he helped her up from the rubble of the clinic ricocheted up his arm and down the length of his spine like lightning.
His jaw hung open. The sane thing would have been to let go. To jerk back, breaking contact. Instead, his fingers tightened on hers. His eyes lifted to her face. She looked as though she wanted to weep—her expression one of the most exquisite pain.
The initial jolt would have been enough to put him straight on his arse if he hadn’t already been sitting down. Now, though, the buzz of inexplicable power seemed to settle along his nerves like a comforting cloak, banishing his exhaustion… energizing him.
“What… is that?” he asked breathlessly, still not releasing her. There were no exposed wires here. Hell, he’d seen no indication that the village had electricity at all—no lines, no generators.
Oksana was still staring at him as though she were grieving for him, even though he was sitting right in front of her.
“It’s the outward manifestation of a bond that draws the two of us together,” she said. “A bond that has drawn you into danger—the likes of which you can’t even begin to imagine.”
After a few more moments, she drew her hand back. He fought a brief, confusing impulse not to let her go before rationality returned and he allowed her fingers to slip from his. As soon as the contact broke, a feeling of emptiness washed over him, exhaustion close on its heels. He blinked rapidly, trying to marshal his fragmented thoughts into some semblance of coherence.
“Your hand. The cut. It’s completely healed,” he said blankly. “Or am I hallucinating again?”
She shook her head. “It was only a small injury. It healed almost instantly.”
“But… how?” he asked.
“Because I am a vampire,” she said simply.
“No. Vampires don’t exist.” Even in his sleep-deprived state, he could hear the undertone of desperation behind his words.
Rather than answer directly, Oksana turned away. She walked across the porch and down the rickety steps. Pausing at the edge of the shadow cast by the porch roof, she stretched one hand out in front of her, the movement slow and cautious. Seconds later, she pulled it back and retraced her steps, tension coiling in her shoulders.
A teasing whiff of something unpleasant reached Mason’s nose—the acrid scent of burned flesh. When she held her hand out for inspection—the same hand he had held only moments ago—his stomach churned. Skin that had been smooth and uninjured was now mottled red, with ugly blisters rising as he watched.
“Good god,” he breathed, and rose from the chair to grasp her forearm. “Oksana, those are second-and third-degree burns! Come inside, I brought a medical kit—”
“Wait,” she said, cutting him off. “Watch.”
Her voice was tight with pain, but no less commanding for it. The words snapped him back from instinct to logic. She’d never left his line of sight. He’d seen her stretch her uninjured hand into the sunlight, and pull it back mere moments later, burned and blistered. This wasn’t some easily explained medical condition, like porphyria.
Human skin simply did not react to the sun like that.
As he watched, the blisters gradually subsided. The mottled red burns turned shiny, pale new skin covering them like accelerated time-lapse photography. The skin smoothed and changed shade to her natural mocha tone. He blinked, and when his eyes open, her hand was once again completely normal and unblemished.
His knees gave out, and he fell back into the chair.
“Tell me what you wanted to tell me,” he said. “I’m listening.”
The lines of tension in her shoulders eased. She pulled the second chair around to face him and sat in it, leaning forward intently.
“There’s a war, Mason,” she said. “A terrible, unimaginable war… and you’re part of it now. You’re part of it, because of me.”
She sounded so sad—so full of regret.
“There have always been wars, Oksana,” he argued. “And I came here because I wanted to help pick up the pieces, not because I was somehow drawn here against my will.”
She shook her head. “I don’t mean this war. Though I suppose this war is part of it, given what we’ve learned. But it’s not just Haiti. Not just Damascus.”
“Damascus? The suitcase bomb? That was a terrorist attack,” Mason pointed out. “A terrible one, certainly. Perhaps the worst in history, but—”
“No,” she interrupted. “It was an opening salvo in the war that will make or break humanity. Only luck and a desperate last-minute ploy kept six nukes from going off in cities around the Mediterranean and Middle East, rather than just one. Can you imagine what would have happened if that had occurred?”
There had been no mention on the news of other nukes, or a broader plot. “That’s the first I’ve heard of other bombs,” he said cautiously. “What source did you hear that story from?”
She snorted. “I don’t need a source. I was there, along with Duchess and Xander. Our other friends are still in the region, trying to track the movements of the man who orchestrated the attack—and the movements of the forces he unleashed in its aftermath.”
He blinked stupidly at her. “You… were in… Damascus? When the bomb went off?”
Her eyes grew far away. “Yes. We were—close enough to for the shockwave to drop part of a ceiling on our heads. Close enough to see the mushroom cloud rise… and to sense the screams of the dying victims.”
Thinking of how close the sad-eyed woman before him had come to annihilation made something cold and heavy settle in Mason’s chest.
“You told me to say what I needed to say to you,” she continued. “There are forces in the universe, Mason. Powerful forces arrayed in opposition to each other. Good and evil. Light and dark. When they are balanced, they drive the patterns of nature. Of life and death. But the balance has shifted. My friends and I are victims of that power shift. So are the kidnapped children whose souls are being destroyed. And so, now, are you.”
He wasn’t ready to tackle all of that, with his thoughts muddled by exhaustion. Instead, he took a different tack.
“You called yourself a vampire,” he said. “Help me understand that. The idea of vampires is a human construct, with roots in societal and religious history. It’s a reflection of human insecurities and fears about life and death, not a
description of a real condition. So… when you say vampire, tell me exactly what you mean.”
“You’ve seen some of it,” she pointed out.
He thought of glowing eyes, gleaming white fangs, and fresh skin growing over burns as he watched. “Tell me the rest.”
Oksana regarded him for a long moment. “I don’t know that you’re ready to hear what I have to say quite yet,” she said eventually. “I could tell you that I was born only a few kilometers from here, in the year 1769. I could tell you that I can change form—even prove it by vanishing into mist and reappearing behind you an instant later.
“I could even tell you that you just tipped over that little side table next to you because I planted the suggestion in your mind, and then told you to forget that I’d given you the command. But you won’t believe a word of it.”
Mason’s eyebrows drew together in confusion. She looked pointedly to his left, and he followed her gaze to see the little table that had stood between the two chairs lying on its side. His hand rested on the edge. He stared down at the upended piece of furniture stupidly.
“I… don’t—” he began.
“Yeah,” she sighed, sounding suddenly tired. “I know you don’t. It’s all right. You should get some sleep. We can talk again later.”
He was still eyeing the table. As she spoke, he righted it. He wanted to dispute her claims, but his brain felt like a saturated sponge that couldn’t take on another drop of water.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said in a blank tone. He looked up at her. “Tell me one more thing, though. You keep talking about a bond—saying that you and I are being drawn together somehow. What makes you say that? How do you know?”
The slender hand that he had seen healing from second-degree burns lifted to smooth over his cheekbone and cup his jaw. He gasped, a jolt of raw power zapping from the point of contact straight down to the base of his spine where it coiled restlessly, sending heat pulsing through him.
He couldn’t look away from the violet glow behind her burning eyes. The look of veiled torment was back on her face, and in that instant, he would have done anything to make it disappear.
“This is how I know,” she whispered. Her hand slid away, leaving him shaking with reaction. Before he could recover himself enough to speak, she was gone, disappearing into the house.
EIGHT
IT WAS A TESTAMENT to the depths of his exhaustion that Mason was eventually able to fall asleep, fully clothed, on the mattress in the corner of the covered porch. The arrival of the rain pattering on the metal roof above him was oddly soothing—a natural lullaby.
He dreamed… shadowy, half-formed visions of Haiti as a lush paradise rather than a desolate wasteland of war, deforestation and over-farming. A faceless woman with mocha skin stood by his side, and even though he could not seem to glimpse her features, he knew that she was beautiful.
Beautiful, and his.
No one disturbed his rest, and he awoke many hours later to find that he’d nearly slept the day away.
As was often the case after recovering from an all-nighter, Mason almost felt worse after waking than he had before he’d gone to sleep. Still, he knew intellectually that he was better off now than he had been earlier. His thoughts were sharper, lending his conversation with Oksana that morning an almost fantastical, dreamlike quality by comparison.
He needed food, something with caffeine, and—with luck—a basin of water to wash up in. As it turned out, the former and latter items were readily available. Coffee, on the other hand, was apparently in short supply in the village, with the fighting so close around them. He settled for more of the goat milk akasan, a pitcher of which had been laid out next to a crock of pumpkin soup and a bowl of rice with black mushrooms.
Xander wandered in as Mason was sitting down with his simple meal. The collar of his spotless white button-down was open, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His hands were thrust casually into the pockets of his khakis. Tousle-haired and with a day’s worth of stubble shadowing his chin, he looked for all the world like a stereotypical well-to-do British tourist abroad.
“Evening, Ozzie,” he greeted. “I see you found the nosh. Our charming hostess had to leave to get ready for the ceremony. We’re to follow her once the sun is all the way down.”
Mason swallowed his mouthful of soup, and gestured Xander over.
“Let me see your hand,” he said. When Xander raised a bemused eyebrow, he clarified, “The one you sliced open last night. I want to see the cut.”
Xander sighed. “Ugh, scientists. Tiresome sods, the lot of you. But… where would the world be without you, I suppose?” He extended his right hand, palm up, to reveal skin marred only by old calluses. No wound.
Right. Mason lifted his eyes, meeting the other man’s quizzical green gaze. “Tell me where you were before coming here to Haiti.”
“Damascus,” Xander said without hesitation. “Pulling survivors out of radioactive rubble.” He raised a pointed index finger. “And, for the record, there are two things about your question that piss me right off. First, it implies that you believe Oksana to be a liar, since you’re checking up on her story behind her back. Second, it implies that you think we’re too stupid to coordinate our stories amongst ourselves, if we were going to lie to you about something.”
Mason shrugged, not backing down. “Well, if you get too brassed off at me, I suppose you can always grow fangs and drink me to death. Assuming that’s a real thing? I’m afraid Oksana and I didn’t quite get that far into the subject.”
“You didn’t? Funny,” Xander said. “That’s usually one of the first questions.”
“The answer to which, is…?” Mason pressed.
“Short answer? Yes. I most certainly could grow fangs and drink you to death. Longer answer? Doing so would upset a very good friend of mine, so you’re probably safe.”
Mason nodded. “You do drink blood, then? From humans?”
“Cheerfully, and at frequent intervals.” Xander tilted his head. “And to answer the question you’re pointedly not asking—no, we don’t kill humans to feed. A hint of mental suggestion, a modest blood donation, and off they pop afterwards, none the wiser.”
“They’re not alerted to something being wrong by the presence of fang marks the next morning?” Mason asked dryly, still caught up in a strange mental give and take—half of his mind sliding into this bizarre new reality, while the other half screamed at him to get a fucking grip and stop encouraging the delusional lunatics around him.
“Vampire blood and saliva have healing properties,” Xander said.
Healing properties. Of course they did. Buggering fuck. Mason glanced around until he saw the knife Mama Lovelie had thrust on them that morning, to exact her payment for the lodgings. He reached over and picked it up, using it to open a shallow cut across the meat of his forearm—where it wouldn’t be too much of a hindrance if he had to wait for it to heal naturally.
“Show me,” he challenged, placing the injured arm flat on the table in front of him.
“We’re not your lab rats,” Xander observed mildly, making no move toward him. “And besides—what do you expect me to do? Come over there and drool on you?”
An irritable sigh sounded from the room’s entrance. Duchess came in, brushing past Xander.
“Don’t be more of a prick than usual, mon chou,” she chided. Her blue eyes glowed in the room’s dim light, and she curled her full lips back to reveal razor-sharp canines curving down. She scored her thumb on one fang and squeezed a couple of drops of crimson onto Mason’s sluggishly bleeding cut.
The same part of him silently screaming for rationality knew exactly how stupid it was to let a virtual stranger’s blood near an open wound like this. The rest of him was oddly unsurprised at the intense itching sensation which ensued almost immediately, his flesh knitting back together before his eyes. He licked his thumb and used it to swipe their mingled blood away, revealing a pink line that faded to nothing as he watched
.
“Impressive,” he said, meaning it.
“Impressive, he says,” Xander muttered, tossing a sour look in his companion’s direction. “When he has us stuffed into glass tubes with needles stuck in our veins, pumping the blood out of us for research purposes, I’ll know exactly who to blame, Duchess.”
“Why so worried?” Mason said blandly. “You could always hypnotize me and make me forget what I just saw, right?”
Xander only made a disgruntled noise and turned to leave the room. When he was gone, Duchess’s china blue eyes pinned Mason with a speculative look.
“I wasn’t sure about you, Docteur,” she said, “but I believe you’re starting to grow on me.”
“Er… thanks?” Mason hazarded in response to the backhanded compliment. “Where’s Oksana, anyway?”
“In one of the other rooms, pretending to sleep,” Duchess said. “Your presence has her… decidedly rattled. I’ve never really seen her like this before—and I’ve known her for almost two hundred years.”
Mason was getting better at letting the parts of a conversation that were batshit insane slide across the surface of his consciousness to be dealt with later. Practice made perfect, he supposed—even when it came to insanity.
“It was never my intention to upset her,” he said truthfully. “In fact, I still haven’t managed to pry the reason for her discomfort around me out of her. I mean, I get that she thinks we’re linked together somehow—and to be fair, I’ve got no explanation to offer for that crazy electric jolt when our skin touches. But unless she’s just really narked about being mysteriously bonded to some Aussie transplant she doesn’t know from Adam—”
“I can’t tell you that part of the story, Docteur,” Duchess cut in. “It’s not mine to tell.”
He subsided with a sigh. “No. I suppose that’s fair.” His eyes wandered to the small window in the wall across from him. “Looks like it’s almost dark out. I gather we need to leave for this ceremony we’re supposed to attend?”
“Yes,” Duchess agreed. “It’s almost time.”
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