He secured it. “Stop it...I can’t play with you tonight,” he said patiently.
“Why? Because of her?” she asked in her plaintive little girl’s voice.
He tried to find something to say, some wisdom or reason, but Debra pouted and simply faded from the glass. He was just wondering what that meant when he heard light footfalls from the hallway. He turned and found himself staring at the subject of their controversy. Robyn--her face was pale and makeupless, her eyes big and demure. She must have misinterpreted his interest because she plucked at the oversized robe she wore and said, “Do you mind? I didn’t have any clothes...”
“No,” he said. “I don’t mind.”
“Danny’s asleep,” she said. Then she stepped into the study, looking around. “I didn’t have a chance to thank you for what you did.” She watched him for some moments from beneath her long blonde lashes. “You wear glasses?”
He closed the book and took off the wire rims.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just didn’t expect...someone like you would.”
“Someone like me?”
She toyed with the ties of the robe, eyes downcast. “Edward told me what you are. He said you’re just like Kage.”
“Not exactly.”
She looked up at that and something alighted in her eyes. Something suspiciously like hope. When she approached the divan and picked up his glasses, he was mystified. Then she placed them back on his face. “They become you,” she said as she sat down beside him.
He had never examined her this closely before. Her skin had a particular scent to it. He had noticed that about all the women in his life; every one had her own individual scent. Debra had the subtle, cloying scent of a carnivore. Kat had always reminded him of lavender and rain. Robyn was different from all that. She made him think of vanilla, something soft and fragile and infinitely feminine.
He touched her face, fascinated, almost expecting her flesh to give like silk beneath his touch. Soft. When her lips sought his, he did not immediately kiss back. Instead, he put out his tongue and licked the petal-soft pinkness there. Ah yes, here too was the scent. He licked some more. He heard a barely audible moan rise up in Robyn’s throat. Then he accepted the gift of her mouth. To his senses she tasted like cream, but because it was not in his nature to kiss with the lips alone, he soon found himself dipping his tongue into all that honeyed sweetness, running it along the rim of the silken lips and then the chin and throat, all of it as delicious as if she had been daubed with the sweetest nectar known to mankind.
She whispered something in his ear, something sweet and obscene, and touched his bare chest with her fingertips. His whole being responded to her invitation. After a moment she slid her hands across his ribs and used her weight to pull him over her on the divan, the book caught between them. She kissed him again, bumping her nose on the glasses that had fallen to the end of his nose. Instead of removing them, she turned her head, slanting her mouth against his, her hands in his hair, on him, everywhere suddenly, her ministrations so aggressive and complete he felt compelled to return the tasks one for another. It was like a dance or a war. A delicious confrontation.
Finally, emboldened by his response, she touched his teeth with her tongue and kissed and explored his mouth, exciting him all the more. He was afraid he tasted of blood, but if he did so, it no longer frightened her. Good. The heart-pounding desire within was almost more than he could bear. Almost more than he could control. Almost more than he wanted to control. As the moon came out in all its powerful white brilliance and touched off his black hair with a spell of silver-blue light, he lowered his head and nipped playfully at her chin, then wetted a path from her throat to the cleave in the robe and nuzzled against the comforting clocking of her heartbeat. She was so sweet...as sweet as tea or coffee…her soft, warm woman flesh so intoxicating he was scarcely aware of the change in his face until it was almost too late.
He stopped. With his face down he could hide it at least, until it passed.
“Alek?”
He hid his face in her lap, his reams of long hair falling like a curtain between them. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this.”
“It’s all right.” She tried to hold him and smooth his hair but now there was little comfort to be had in the feel of a woman’s touch. She was so human, so alien to what he knew. She wasn’t Debra. There would be no blood sport. He couldn’t do the things he wanted to do. The things he dreamt of. “I’m not afraid of you,” she said.
“I am like Kage,” he whispered.
“No, you’re not,” she insisted. “Kage was a killer.”
A killer. A slayer.
“Jesus.”
“What? What is it?” Robyn asked.
He shook his head. The burn in his face had passed so he chanced looking up at her. She didn’t flinch so he took that as a good sign that he was over the craving. She touched his cheek with the palm of her hand and tried to kiss him but he drew back away from her and stood up, moving discreetly away from the divan.
“What’s the matter?”
He went to the empty mirror, trying to decide what to do. He wanted to think about something other than the craving. Needed to. “Why did you lie to me?” he asked.
The reflected Robyn looked surprised. “I didn’t lie to you.”
“Edward Ashikawa is your husband, not your pimp. Danny is his son.”
Robyn closed her eyes. For a moment he almost thought she would continue in the lie. Then she said, “How long have you known?”
“A while. There are no tapes. It’s Danny he wants, just Danny.”
“Edward told you...?”
“Danny’s dreams. He has premonitions because Edward Ashikawa and Kage shared each others’ blood.” Alek looked aside. “Vampire blood sometimes creates such bonds...and such abilities.”
Robyn stood up. “What I told you about my past was true, most of it. I did run away. And my father...my mother died when I was born and that son of a bitch held me responsible.” There was a terrible lilt in her voice. The sound of raw anguish. Then it was gone, just like that, replaced by raw anger. “But there are no tapes, no.” She looked away. “I just wanted you to help me get free of Edward. You looked like someone who would help me.”
Alek turned around and considered the girl. “Ask him for a divorce.”
Robyn made a short, derisive laugh. “The Ryuujin of the Yakuza? Do you honestly think he’ll give me one? And even so, I would still lose Danny.”
“Stealing Danny away from his father isn’t the way--“
“He’s my son!” she spat vehemently. “I don’t want him growing up to be some criminal like Edward! You’ve seen what he does...what he nearly did to you!” She stopped short, looking about the library as if she were not quite sure where she was or how she had gotten here. Her eyes flickered everywhere, and then seemed to travel to other places, other times. She folded her arms about herself like a cocoon and said, her eyes downcast, “My daddy hurt me, Alek.”
He was numb. “So did mine. You live past it.”
“You son of a bitch.” She looked up. There were tears in her eyes but he would not be moved by them.
He said, “You live past things and you live on. You have to become your own person or your past will own you forever. That’s the only way.”
Her eyes still held unshed tears, but she seemed to understand something of what he said. “Look,” she said, sniffing, “I’m sorry I lied to you, but I didn’t have a choice. Everything I did, I did for Danny. I know you can’t understand what it’s like to be responsible for someone, but there are things you just do sometimes.”
The glass shivered at Alek’s back and he was glad he was blocking its view from Robyn. He said, “I do know. But running isn’t the answer, Robyn. Believe me. All you are going to do is wind up hurting yourself in the end. You can’t run away. It isn’t that easy.”
“I’m not going back to Edward,” Robyn stated. “And neither is Danny. He’ll have to kill
me first.”
And what could he say to that? Edward would kill her if she ran, if she didn’t run. Circles in circles. Wheels turning, but taking their victim nowhere.
She held his eyes a moment, and then she said: “I’d better go. You’ve done enough already and I’ve fucked up your life enough.”
“It’s nightfall.”
“Kage is dead.”
“Maybe. It depends on how he fell, how badly he was injured, and how powerful he is.”
“You mean he could still be alive?” She sounded incredulous. Worse-convinced and frightened.
“I don’t know,” Alek answered truthfully. “But if he is, he won’t rest until he has Danny, you can be assured of that.”
Robyn sank down onto the cushions of the divan. Her face white, hands wringing, she said, “Come away with me?”
“What?”
“Let’s get out of this city, Alek. Please. Come with me.”
Alek shook his head. “That’s impossible.”
“Why?” Again she stood up, but smoothly this time, like a graceful little animal. “There’s nothing here for you, is there?” she asked in a lilting voice. And then, quite suddenly, she undid the tie of her robe. “You’re right. We both live in the past, Alek…and we both need each other.” When the robe was open she approached him, eyes seeking an answer in his face. He tried not to notice her generous charms, the full, inviting breasts, the pale, kissable skin and the treasure further down, all of her as silken and aromatic as vanilla cream. He concentrated on her eyes instead, the storm there. “I love you...and I know you care for me,” she said. “You wouldn’t have kissed me if you didn’t.” She trailed her finger from her lips down to the places still damp from his kisses.
He looked away, his face flushed with shame.
“Why do you have to turn away?” she asked. “Do you hate me so much? Do you hate yourself?”
And then she was there, and he turned to look at her as she began to slide the robe off her shoulders. He reached for the fabric, to cover her again, but instead his hands fell lightly upon her shoulders and traced the smooth skin of her arms down to the crooks of her elbows, wondering at her, at how such a beautiful animal could be put together with such perfection and grace. She shifted slightly so that his hands fell instead upon her breasts. He cupped them, the calloused pads of his thumbs brushing lightly against the pert pink nipples, wondering about her, wondering if she had nourished Danny with her precious mother’s milk. The thought sent an erotic shiver all throughout his body.
He stared at her as if his rampant thoughts could really touch her, wondering what Edward must feel--having her and then losing her. Her and Danny both. His family. He wondered what it felt like, to have a mate. To have a child born from that mating. She and Danny seemed to fill the empty space in this dead old house with life and humming energy, vanquishing the void that forever lived here, the past that never let go. And the fantasy entertained him for some moments--he and Robyn and Danny together, a family--before reality gradually began to bleed in through the many cracks along with the futility of Robyn’s generous offer. Finally, he moved his hands to the edges of the robe and drew them up, covering Robyn completely.
She stared at him a long hard moment, mystified.
“You don’t know me,” Alek whispered. “If I was with you, you would be no happier than you were with Edward.”
“I was afraid of Edward. I’m not afraid of you,” she said, her hands alighting on his chest.
“You should be. I’ve done things I can never talk about. Things I can barely live with…” And then he groaned as her hands dropped further down and found his most sensitive place, stroked him. The flush of heat and animal was back in his face and eyes and this time he could not help himself. He twisted in her hold, his glasses lost, shivering with the horrific lust shooting like lightning through every nerve and starved vein in his body. He made a sound too much like an animal-snarl in his throat. And with the onrush of the lust came also the rage-rage against her and the moon and nature and all the darkness and wanting he could hold back no longer. But more than that--rage against himself, because he was reaching for her and it seemed perfectly normal that he should have her in any way he wanted. He could have her and make her whimper, and he knew he could enjoy making her enjoy it.
And he hit her, a smart smack against the cheek, not hard but as sharp as a blade, not cutting her but separating her nonetheless from him. It was a necessary evil, a barrier between herself and the monster that would crush her if let off its leash even a moment. And having struck her, he simultaneously backed away until his shoulders hit the mirror on the wall and he could go no farther.
For a moment the mystery remained on Robyn’s face like the slight red mark of his hand. Then it changed as if someone had hit a switch, and she went from absolute wonder to absolute understanding. She touched her face and frowned like a little girl being punished for a transgression she was entirely unaware of. She shook her head but there was no denying what had happened. For a moment Alek felt a powerful desire to apologize…then realized he could not. He was not sorry. He had hit her to save her life.
She didn’t understand. Still clutching her cheek, she took a step back, the painful, hateful fear burning in her eyes. And it was a shivering natural human fear--a woman fear--and that at last was too much. Alek closed his eyes and said nothing in the end and only listened to the terrible sound of her retreating footsteps.
26
For a moment, after locking the bedroom door behind her, Robyn could do nothing but stand in silence in the middle of this vast Victorian suite and look around, lost, bewildered. Danny lay asleep on the duvet that seemed from another century, his thumb in his mouth. Danny was four and he had not done that in months...but now things were going backwards, it seemed.
How had this happened? She had run from Edward and Kage, had run so far, and yet she had not gone far at all. She loved Alek, loved him with the same fierce wanting she had once felt for Edward, sitting so proud and fierce among his warriors--they both had such a presence, such barely-restrained power--but he did not love her. Or at least, did not want her, which was worse in its way. He could love her if he chose to, but he had chosen otherwise. His heart was strong but his will was stronger.
And why? Wasn’t she pretty enough? Desirable enough? Robyn will be a model and her face will be her power, her Aunt Claire used to say when she was a little girl and would pose in the pretty dresses Daddy bought for her. But it would seem all that was a lie. None of it was meant to be. And Alek was wrong. He may not be exactly like Kage but he was just like Edward. Both of them wanted her but wanted to not want her. Like it was their weakness. Like it was her fault. Like Daddy, who had wanted her but did not want to want her and had punished her with the closet when he could no longer control the wanting. Like that.
Robyn began to shake with sobs, feeling like a fool, to shake and sob until she felt wrung out and finished and too tired to stand up anymore. Then she climbed into bed next to Danny. Danny did not stir. If only she could be like that--to not dream, to not have to remember. Alek said you got past things, that you got over them. But what would he know? He’d never been hurt so badly he couldn’t live with the pain. He wasn’t human. He couldn’t feel human pain.
He was a thing. An It. Like Kage.
The sheets were black satin under the duvet. Somehow Robyn wasn’t surprised by that. But they also smelled like Alek--leather and musk with the cloying, undercutting taste of metal--which made her feel as if she had somehow fallen into him with no escape in sight. She touched her face and then closed her eyes. She did not sleep, only dozed and tossed as night began to come down. Finally, after an hour or so, she climbed out of bed and went to the bundle of clothes lying on the floor, filthy and bloodstained from the sub tunnel, and dug through them until she found the brass knuckles. Useless. What defense were they against an enemy who could invade your mind? She threw them aside and continued to dig until she found the
iron railroad spike she had used to send Kage to hell where Daddy was. Clutching it like a crucifix to her heart, she returned to bed and lay down on the black sheets and closed her eyes.
In time she slept and dreamt her father came into the room, spewing Scripture and curses, and started pounding a large iron cross into her heart. She tried to move but her body just lay there like the immoveable curse it was. But because she was human and not a vampire, she would not die for Daddy’s pleasure and he started to get angry with her and slap her and the sting in her teeth was horrible and she awoke some time later, grinding her teeth until her jaw hurt. She sat up, afraid suddenly. Of the dark. Of the night lurking beyond the window. Danny was still asleep and so angelic she felt her heart break inside her. He was so innocent and she could not protect him. She wept but found she had no more tears to spill. Daddy, Edward, and now Alek had taken them all from her. Taken even that. Even her sorrow.
The last of the departed dream, the pounding and the anger, was as cloying as the scent of Alek--no, no the dhampir--in the bedclothes and she got up and moved away from them. She stood at the window for some time, watching the sky and the scuttle of the night-clouds. There was blood on the moon tonight and that meant something. She frowned and again she touched her face. It didn’t hurt. It hadn’t, really, even from the start. Rather, the wounding was in her soul.
She held the spike against her heart, feeling its coolness burn against her skin. And then suddenly she knew what she had to do. She knew what escape was. At last. And sliding the spike into the waistband of her underwear under the robe, the spike that was her only savior, her only hope, she crept to the door and began to open it.
27
It was a blood red Hunter’s Moon tonight and he knew that that meant. The rules would bend, the rules that governed his world. Tonight thralls would turn on their masters. Females would turn on their blood-bound mates. There might even be a war, two hives invading each other’s sacred ground and soiling it with blood. Alek stood at the great bay window of the Parlour--not the parlor, but the Parlour, the cozy turn-of-the-century sitting room that faced east over the city--and tried to feel the change in the environment. But the city was silent. Not the city the humans saw--that bustled and pushed and lived and breathed as usual--but the city beneath the city. The society under Society. So silent it was. Maybe because the vampires had lost interest. Maybe because his feelings were too complex right now to pick up on anything. He didn’t know.
Slayer: Black Miracles Page 13