“Then who are you worried about?” I shifted a little, the wooden point still too close for comfort.
March’s eyes narrowed. She leaned forward on the stake, worming it into my sternum. I could take her, I realized. She was older than me, and therefore should have been stronger. But she hadn’t been at a prime age when she’d been turned. Plus her stance, kneeling on the edge of the bed beside me, wouldn’t support her if I kicked her away.
But then I would have a fight on my hands, and something in her expression told me she didn’t want that, either. “Who sent you?”
“Byron.” I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed it would be the right answer. When the pressure on my chest abated, I felt a little hope.
March stood and lit a cigarette with shaking hands. She held it out to me, balancing the stake in her other hand. I thought briefly about grabbing it and using it against her, but chances were I was still locked in the room, and she probably had a great security system. I wouldn’t make it out of the building.
“No, I’ve quit.” I couldn’t remember when. It hadn’t exactly been a conscious decision. Funny, the thoughts that come to you when you’re about to die.
“Evan was there when you collapsed. He said you were babbling about a simultaneous bloodtie.” She paused to suck in a lungful of smoke, and continued to speak on the exhale. “Wanna tell me about that?”
I sat up, rubbing my chest. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re so afraid of?”
She scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Why don’t you tell me who your old sire was?”
“Oh, this is fun. I think I would have preferred to be staked rather than argue like thirteen year olds.” I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed. If she attacked me again, I wanted to meet her on level ground.
“Fine.” March held up a hand as if to stop me coming any closer. “I know, anyway.”
“You do?” I couldn’t keep the surprise from my voice. “How?”
“A lot of forged art. The first person I thought of was Cyrus Seymour.” She cracked a shark’s grin. “That, and you apparently yelled his named when you collapsed. I put two and two together.”
“Very good.” I eyed the stake with new terror. I’d been persecuted before for simply being Cyrus’s fledgling. I’d thought those days were behind me. “How do you know him?”
In a flash, March was on her feet. Way faster than I would have anticipated. She lunged at me with the stake.
I dodged her easily—one very important thing Nathan had taught me was that being calm in a fight gave you the advantage over an opponent who had completely flipped out—and spun around, ready for her next attack. My bag still rested on the floor beside the armchair. I backed slowly toward it. “March, I’m not working for anyone. I was just on a road trip and Byron told me to look you up.”
I was two steps from the bag, but March pursued me slowly, stake raised high over her head like the psycho mom at the end of Carrie. “And do you think I don’t know what he’s up to? Following the Fangs all over the desert, doing whatever they ask of him?”
Byron! Had the little rat sold me out? I should have known not to reveal my intentions for the trip. I should have known not to trust him. How often had men with trendy haircuts and an affinity for overwrought poetry screwed me over?
I bent and scooped up my bag. It was lighter than I remembered it. I didn’t even have to look to realize my stakes were gone. I tried to dodge her next lunge, and ended up flat on my back, my head colliding with the floor in a way that made me appreciate the phrase “seeing stars.” When my vision cleared, March leaned over me, the stake still in her hand. She took a long drag off the cigarette between her fingers and cracked a sarcastic smile. “From what I understand, we have a connection. At least, your sire and my sire do.”
My head was still muzzy. “What?”
She flicked ashes directly onto the floor. A few stinging embers touched my face. “Jacob Seymour. The Soul Eater?”
13
Surrender
T hey came down the stairs at sunset.
Cyrus’s first thought was that he should have locked the door. Then he remembered he had locked the door. Then the door, some of the molding still attached to its hinges, flew down the stairway. It landed on the cheap dinette table, which overturned with a crash.
Mouse screamed and sat up beside him, scrambling backward and clutching the sheets to her chest.
There were only three of them, but Cyrus was human. Weak and human. When one grabbed him, he couldn’t break free. He could do no more than watch as the other two pinned Mouse to the bed. She screamed his name, begged him to help.
He thought of the reason she hadn’t resisted when the nun had been killed, why she hadn’t prayed or pleaded with God for help. Because no one was listening.
She hadn’t made it fun for them. Cyrus knew firsthand the joy of the kill came from breaking the victim. Now, because she had hope, she would be a sweeter plum.
You have to treat her callously. Pretend she is nothing to you, and she will stop struggling. But he couldn’t. His arsenal of cruel words, always at the ready, vanished. If they hadn’t, he wasn’t sure he could have used them, anyway.
He’d promised her safety. He’d lied. He was nothing but an ineffectual boy, playing hero. He could not save this damsel.
The beast on top of her wrenched her head back, baring her throat. At the sight of the healing teeth marks there, the vampire laughed. For a perverse second, Cyrus was relieved her blood was the only prize the monster was after. Then he admonished himself for valuing her chastity above her life. You are truly your father’s son.
The acknowledgment weighed like lead in his chest. He closed his eyes and prayed it would be quick, that she would not suffer more than she already had.
The pitch of her screams changed to startled disbelief, and the rough hands holding him released their grip. He opened his eyes to see Mouse cowering as the vampire above her burst into flame. He burned quickly, a skeleton of ash hanging suspended for a moment, his ribs disintegrating around the blue, flaming ball of his heart. Then the blazing organ extinguished and the beast fell as a cloud of black dust to the bed. The stake that had pierced his heart dropped with a thud onto the sheets beside Mouse.
The two others scrambled for the stairs. Stakes pierced them in quick succession and they met similar fates.
At the top of the staircase, Angie ground out her cigarette. “Sorry about your door.”
Cyrus wanted to rush her with a piece of the broken molding and drive it into her heart. But Mouse was silent, pale and shaking, covered in the remains of a dead vampire. His instincts demanded he go to her more than they urged him to kill Angie.
He helped Mouse stand, and carefully brushed the ashes from her hair, pushing the strands back to examine her neck. There was no fresh puncture. Nevertheless, he asked, “Did he hurt you?”
Mouse shook her head, though if it was a denial or merely the consequence of the tremors racking her body, he wasn’t sure.
Angie came down the stairs slowly, surveying the scene in the apartment with cold eyes. Mouse’s screams started again when she saw the vampire’s face.
Cyrus put himself between Angie and Mouse. “You’re terrifying her! For God’s sake, take that thing off!”
With a shrug, the vampire shook her head and transformed her features. “They hurt her?”
He turned and pulled Mouse into his arms. Her hysterical tears stung the bare skin of his chest where she buried her face against him.
“We had an agreement,” he snarled at Angie. For a moment he heard something of the old Cyrus in his voice. It gave him strength to face her. “What the hell was that?”
“That wasn’t my doing. Those morons came down here on their own.” She lit another cigarette. “Besides, I took care of it, didn’t I?”
She had. But it didn’t make him any less angry. They could have killed Mouse. It would have been akin to killing him. What reason did he have to live if
she were dead?
No.
Cold, numbing fear shot through his heart.
But there was no denying it. The stealthy way his eyes sought her out during the day. The way his sinful body hardened against her innocent form as he lay awake, watching her, at night. This wasn’t only lust. He was achingly familiar with lust, and it was easy to distinguish from what he felt now.
He swallowed, and glared at Angie. “What about the door? How will we keep them out now?”
She laughed, a rough sound around the cigarette she held in her lips. “Didn’t keep ’em out before, did it? But it’ll be fixed tonight.”
“See that it is.” His voice shook as he spoke. Looking down, he saw his hands shook, as well. He willed his body to still. The vampire bitch would assume he feared her, when what he really feared stood clinging to him, her sobs finally dying away.
Angie was halfway up the stairs when she stopped. “Your father’s messenger will be here tomorrow night.”
Mouse’s fingers, sharp in desperation, dug into Cyrus’s shoulders as her body tensed in fear.
The vampire didn’t pay any heed to her reaction. “I’ll have him pick up a spare in town, if you don’t want to do her when you’ve turned.”
“Thank you.” It was an odd thing to say, but he was truly grateful he wouldn’t be tempted to kill Mouse.
At least, not tomorrow.
He led her to the bed, a sick feeling in his gut. Once they turned him, would he be able to see her as something more than food? When he’d been human before, he hadn’t held the regard for life the way he did now. Would he be a different vampire, or would the sadist lurking in his worthless soul prove itself stronger than this suspicious humanity?
She stood by, quietly crying as he shook the ashes from the sheets and remade the bed. He looked up from tucking a corner of the blanket in, to see she stood with a dustpan and a broom at the foot of the stairs.
“Let me,” he said more gruffly than he’d intended as he took the broom from her hand. He thought it would calm his nerves to focus on the task of cleaning up the monsters’ remains, but he only grew more agitated.
They’d been so much stronger than him. If Angie hadn’t shown up, he would have had to watch helplessly as Mouse died. The memory of her screams was salt in the wounds to his pride, and he threw aside the broom with a curse.
Mouse jumped, startled out of her lingering terror.
He never shared thoughts of inadequacy with others. Once they knew he doubted himself, they would begin to doubt him, as well. But he couldn’t keep these concerns secret from her. Compelled to talk, either from years of bearing his fears alone, or from the fearful emotion tearing at his guts, he muttered, “I couldn’t protect you. I can’t protect you like this.”
“Like what?” Her gaze moved up from his feet. “Naked?”
He would have laughed at that, if he’d been in a better mood. Feeling suddenly vulnerable, exposed, he grabbed his pants from the end of the bed and pulled them on. “I’m not joking. I’m worthless like this.”
She wrapped her arms around herself. “You’re not worthless.”
“I’m human!” He raked a hand through his hair, pulling it away from his forehead. “As long as I’m like this, I can’t protect you. And once they turn me, I won’t be able to protect you from myself.”
“You’re scaring me.” She climbed backward up a stair, then looked over her shoulder at the looming, open doorway and scrambled back down.
He didn’t want to scare her. He liked it so much better when she gave shy smiles and fell into stilted conversation with him. But he wanted more. He wanted her at his side willingly. He wanted to know she was safe, and wanted her to know it.
“I don’t want you to die.” He went to the bed and dropped down, covering his face in his hands. The words, once he began to speak, were surprisingly easy and terrifying. “I want you to be alive, with me. I want to leave this place, and I want you to follow me. For once, I want someone to follow me. Because I want you. I love you, and…”
She knelt at his side and laid her hand on his knee, but she didn’t speak.
God, what had he said? What would he say when he opened his mouth next?
Words he couldn’t stop poured from him like the hot tears that welled in the corners of his eyes. He lifted his head to look at her. Her expression was kind and concerned, as though he were a child who’d scraped his knees.
Her kindness was a high ledge on a tall building, one he couldn’t help but test by stepping onto it. “Could you ever love me?”
She didn’t answer right away. What fearful iron door would slam closed to him if she said no? Would he bury his hurt in cruelty, the way he’d always done when someone rejected him? That wasn’t the kind of person he wanted to be. His tongue felt thick in his mouth as he tried to repeat himself. “Could you—”
“You can’t love me,” she interrupted quietly. Her palm was warm against his face, but not as shockingly hot as it would have been if he were a vampire. No, now human touch wasn’t severe. Her eyes sad, she stroked his cheek. “You’ve only known me for three days.”
He laughed at his own stupidity. “It feels…”
“Real,” she finished for him. After a moment’s hesitation, she took his hand and laced their fingers together. “I know. And I know it can’t be real. But I’ve always prayed for something to happen. Something to make me happy. I know I’m going to die. Maybe you’re…Maybe this is all the happiness I’m going to get.”
Her reasoning pierced his heart, but he wasn’t fool enough to believe he could really love her. The same disgusting desperation he’d seen in hundreds of frightened, cast-off girls, he recognized in her. And in himself. He opened his mouth to disagree with her, to insist she would live to find better, but her mouth crushed his and she wound her arms around his neck. He lost his balance and they fell across the bed, her hands tangling in his hair to hold his face to hers.
As if he would let her go.
He was conscious of raising his arms, but had no control over the way they curved around her back and tightened, pulling her so hard to his chest he could barely breathe. She squirmed in his grip and he loosened his hold. He didn’t want to scare her. In a crazy way, he felt if she pulled away now he would lose her forever.
Her hands splayed on his chest. Their touch burned him, but he shuddered as if she were made of ice. He moved his lips from her hungry mouth to the delicate curve of her jaw—how could he have ever thought her plain?—then to her ear. She moaned, a sound at once endearingly innocent and painfully arousing. Thrusting his fingers into the gentle waves of her hair, he gathered the softness to his face.
The feel and smell of her dredged up all the nights he’d spent in the arms of lovers, wives, wishing they would return his affection, and pretending all he desired was their bodies. They never returned his love, even when he demanded it.
Perhaps she didn’t either, but he had not asked her to say the words. He’d asked her to love him. In her kiss, Cyrus had found Mouse’s answer. She could, and did, love him. For whatever reason, she trusted and loved him.
Reaching for the hem of her T-shirt, he skimmed his hands up her bare legs, over the curve of her buttocks as he bunched the garment around her waist. He rolled her onto her back, covering her with his body as he did so, and her eyes flew open in shock. For a moment he imagined she would end it, but longing glazed her eyes again. He captured her mouth with his before she could have another moment of doubt. She believed he was her last chance at happiness, so he couldn’t help but wonder if she was his, as well. If that was true, then he needed this.
She lifted her hips against his awkwardly, her brow creasing in frustration above her closed eyes. He leaned back, concentrating his gaze on the seam in the hem of the T-shirt. If he looked anywhere else, at the questioning on her flushed face, at the dark hair shadowing the junction of her thighs, he might think, might talk himself out of this.
Cyrus glanced across the dark
ened room to the stairs, but he knew no one would be watching. None of them would dare come down after the fate that had befallen their comrades.
Mouse rose on her elbows and helped him pull the shirt over her head. That moment of bravery was short-lived, fleeing once she was exposed before him. She folded her arms across her breasts. With shaking hands, he guided them away, leaving her bare to his gaze. Her chest jerked with her harsh breathing. Though the room was not cold, her skin puckered with gooseflesh and the rosy peaks of her nipples hardened.
Cyrus covered one breast with the palm of his hand and Mouse moaned, arching into his touch. He fought the temptation to compare her to the others, the ones he’d seduced into giving up their bodies and their lives. This was different. When this night was over, she would still be at his side. It was a frightening, comforting thought.
He dipped his head to her neck and kissed the hollow of her throat. When his lips strayed to the yellowing bruise where he’d bitten her that first night, she didn’t tense, but he stopped cold.
She touched his back, dragging her fingertips across the skin of his shoulders. “It’s okay. You didn’t mean to.”
“I did.” He rolled off of her. “I meant to hurt you. I enjoyed it.”
The gentle understanding in her eyes sent a spear of self-loathing through his heart.
She reached for her discarded shirt and held it to her chest. “I forgive you.”
He closed his eyes against the tears that threatened him. Could something as simple as her absolution save him from himself? He doubted it. Maybe he would always doubt his ability to be good.
But that was, apparently, what she was there to stop him from doing. While he was content to doubt the goodness in his soul, she seemed determined to draw him back to more earthly matters. Sliding toward him, she tentatively pressed her mouth to his chest. When he didn’t object, she continued to kiss him, stroking her palms in a maddening path from his ribs to the waistband of his trousers. She lay back again, and he lay beside her, bracketing her body with his hands as he slid down to rest his face against her thigh. As a vampire, he would have cut the tender, white flesh at the bend of her knee to drink her blood. It had always been his favorite moment, looking up at their faces when they’d gotten their first taste of the pain he would inflict on them. As a human, making love to a human, he had no desire to cause her pain. He bent his head and licked the warm crease there. She jerked on the bed, her eyes wide. He couldn’t help his smile as he moved his mouth farther up her leg, with his hand on her firm, warm calf. The closer he drew to her sex, the faster her breathing became. When he knelt on the floor and pulled her to the edge of the bed—a little roughly, for it couldn’t be all gentle—and traced the seam between her legs with the pointed tip of his tongue, she arched off the mattress and clawed at his shoulders, gasping.
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