Bound by Blood

by Evie Byrne

  “So what exit am I going to take once I’m out of the tunnel?” he asked when he put away his phone.

  “Queen’s Boulevard. Are you going to tell me your name?”

  “Faustin,” he said. “Gregor Faustin.”

  He sounded very Russian when he said his name. Another point in the Russian mafia column. But he was not as skeezy as those guys. No gold chains. No fancy watch. And judging by the smell of his car, he didn’t smoke. That was two points off the Russian mafia column.

  “I’m Maddy.”

  “So glad to have run into you, Maddy.”

  He said it so deadpan, his eyes fixed on the road, his mouth fixed into a scowl, that she almost missed it. Mr. Grim had made a joke.

  “Wish I could say the same,” she said, looking at him sidewise. She caught a hint of a smile, and in that instant he became very sexy. It amazed her that she could even think sexy thoughts, because she felt like a sewer rat that had been flattened by the bus and picked over by pigeons. But there it was. Sexy.

  His hand caressed the stick shift lovingly as he threw the car into a higher gear and they picked up speed. Her knee, so close to his hand, tingled with jealousy. Pathetic knee.

  Soon they were in the Queens-Midtown tunnel and flying toward home. They drove in silence, leaving Maddy to contemplate his essential sexiness for far too long. Don’t even think it, Maddy girl, not even for pretend. Men like him had an asshole streak a mile wide. He wasn’t her type, and she was one hundred percent positive she was not his type.

  He waited until they reached her exit before he spoke again. “I really am sorry that I hit you. I thought I was watching the road, but there you were. I’ve never…” He raised his hand off the gearshift in a helpless gesture. “Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?”

  “Go left here.”

  “Do you know how to take care of your ankle?”

  “I’ll figure it out. Right at the next light.”

  “What do you have against hospitals?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Fair enough.” Faustin deigned to look at her out of the corner of his eye. “But do you know you’re bleeding?”

  “I’m not—”

  “There’s blood on you. Do you have bandages and whatever at your place, or should I stop somewhere?”

  “I’m all right,” Maddy said, now preoccupied by looking for blood. For the first time, she dared to roll up her pant leg and look at her injured leg. The ankle was swelling and covered in street dirt, but she saw no blood. But the other leg was coated in blood, more than she would have ever expected. It soaked the top of her socks. An involuntary gasp escaped her, and Faustin matched it with a strange hiss of his own.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s not arterial blood.”

  Maddy could not take her eyes off her oozing red leg, illuminated only by the glow of the dash and the passing streetlights. “How would you know whether it’s arterial or not?”

  “It’s just not.”

  “Left here, Dr. Know-It-All. It’s the third building on the left. With the awning. Pull over by the fire plug.”

  Before she could figure out how the door handle worked, Faustin came around to her side and opened the door for her. She began to pull herself out.

  He put a heavy hand on her shoulder and pushed her back into her seat. “What in the hell are you doing?”

  Maddy glared up at him. Did he really just push her? “What in the hell do you think I’m doing, Faustin? I’m getting out of your car.”

  “You can’t walk.”

  “I can hop.”

  He turned toward the building and back again. “It’s a walk up, isn’t it?” That was a rhetorical question. “I’m carrying you.”

  “You can’t carry me up three whole flights of stairs. I’ll manage.”

  His face went all twitchy, and she realized she’d just injured his male pride.

  “You’ll manage? Are you nuts? Do you have a brain injury? You can’t walk.”

  “Yeah, and what happens when you throw your back out and drop me down the stairs?”

  With a roll of his eyes he said, “As if that’s going to happen.”

  “Faustin, you’ve already run over me today. What don’t I think you capable of?”

  “Shut the fuck up, Maddy.”

  In one fast motion he lifted her in his arms and kicked the car door shut.

  Maddy put her arms around his neck because she had no choice and hung there, wet and stupid and heavy. Meanwhile he was dry and strong and smelled good. Really good. Woodsy. Some subtle, hellishly expensive cologne. Another point off the Russian mafia column.

  Sliding from annoyance into plain embarrassment, she closed her eyes and hoped he really could make it up all those stairs. The sooner this was over, the better.

  Gregor was careful not to smack her injured foot into the wall or stair rail on the way up. The stairwell smelled of bug spray, but it wasn’t a bad building judging by the carpet and paint. Her ridiculous parka was slick and squishy under his fingers, and it still dribbled gutter water with every step.

  Maddy was short, but by the heft of her she had some meat on her bones somewhere beneath all that parka fluff. Once in his arms, she went strangely quiet for someone as mouthy as she was and kept her head down. Her black hair hung around her face like a tangled mass of snakes.

  Gregor wanted to see her inside safely, and wanted to be sure she was okay before he left her alone, but the smell of her blood was affecting him more than it should have.

  He wasn’t hungry, and more than that, general decency should have kept him from lusting after the wounds he had inflicted on her himself. True, he inflicted wounds on humans whenever he ate, but those were clean, intentional wounds. He’d messed this woman up bad, and he felt terrible, and he did not need to complicate these feelings by feeding on her on top of everything else. The problem was that less decent parts of him—and they nearly outweighed the good parts—really wanted to bite her.

  The scent of her skin, tinged as it was with the scents of asphalt and oil and fear, was intriguing. Something about it made him want to run his tongue over her naked body very, very slowly. And it did not help to know that if he just turned his head he could put his mouth to her throat. It took every ounce of will not to do just that on the way up the stairs, so by the time they reached her door, he was shaking with tension.

  “You’re tired, I’m sorry,” she said as she searched through some bottomless sack of a handbag for her key. “I mean…I’m really impressed you could carry me so far.”

  “I’m not tired,” he said through clenched teeth.

  She opened her mouth, then shut it. Twisting at an awkward angle, she unlocked the door from his arms and pushed it open.

  “Where do you want to go?” he asked.

  By this time he was struggling against a bloodlust he had not felt since he was a teenager. Hunger and desire combined. Indistinguishable. It pissed him off. It didn’t even make sense. So he clamped down on the wanting with an iron fist. Everything was going to be just fine.

  Fine until she announced, “I need to take my clothes off.”

  He stumbled over her throw rug.

  “I mean, I’m wet.” As soon as she said it she let out a little squeak of dismay.

  Gregor bit his lip and cast his eyes to the ceiling. Why did he want this woman? He didn’t even know what she looked like, not really, not with the glasses, not with the hair in her face.

  “I mean, my clothes are wet and cold. I want to change.”

  He wanted to strip her down to her skin and find out what she really looked like. He could feel her lush curves under his hands, her round ass, and the very feminine contour of her thigh.

  “You wanna call a friend or something to help you out with that?” With luck she wouldn’t notice the squeak in his voice.

  “Yes, I will.” She spoke clearly and slowly, as if trying to gain control of the situation herself. “All I need is for
you to help me with my coat, and then get me to the sofa. After that, I’m good.”

  Done and done. Underneath the beach ball coat she wore an equally awful cardigan sweater. The kind grandfathers wore. The smell of damp, musty wool put him off more effectively than a string of garlic.

  Common sense restored, he settled her onto the sofa in a few efficient moves, propping up her leg and covering her with an itchy throw knit in all the colors of the 70s. Escape was on the horizon. Just a few formalities and he’d be free.

  “You know, if you can’t afford to go to the doctor, I’ll pay for it.”

  She shook her head. The snake hair bounced. “I’m insured.”

  He took a deep breath. This was the dangerous question. “Do you need help cleaning up your leg?”

  “Nope. I’ll call my sister.”

  Thank God. Still, this was fucked up—hitting her and then just dumping her off. He took a couple of turns around the room, thinking. “What about work? Will you lose work on account of this?”

  She sank into the cushions with a sigh, a damp, damaged bundle in an ugly cardigan, covered by an even worse throw. “Don’t worry. I’ve got sick days.”

  Now he was getting annoyed. She had to let him help somehow. If she didn’t, the guilt would drive him crazy. “Well, what about your coat? It’s ruined.”

  “I hate that coat.” She said this with surprising vehemence, like it had done her injury.

  Gregor laughed. “Good, so do I.”

  For the first time, Maddy smiled at him, revealing a dimple in each round cheek. She had great lips.

  Don’t even look. Just leave. He moved a little away from her, so her scent did not go straight up his nose.

  “You’ve really got the guilts, don’t you?” she said.

  “I ran you down, Maddy. You should sue my ass.” He gave her his card. “This is how to find me if you change your mind. Call me if you need anything at all.” Did that sound like a come on? “Doctor bills, lawyers, whatever.”

  She straightened her glasses with one hand and studied the card. “Tangiers? You work there?”

  “I own it. You know it?”

  Again she smiled, and peeked up at him over the heavy rims of her glasses. For the first time he got a look at her eyes. They were black, and they twinkled a little. “Everyone knows about Tangiers—even reclusive librarians.”

  Gregor shivered with a cold premonition.

  No. There were lots of librarians in New York. Millions of them. He took a long breath through his nose and fought back his paranoia.

  “You’re a librarian, huh? You work in the city?”

  She nodded, and he chickened out on asking more. Instead he flailed around for something else to do. Something which would get him out of there. “Let me get the phone for you, so you can call your sister.”

  He went to the kitchen for the phone, steadfastly ignoring the fascinating scent of her that permeated every inch of the air in her apartment. An army of plastic toys seemed to have invaded her kitchen counter. Magnets crusted her fridge. A life-sized cardboard cutout of a virile-looking bald guy in a cheesy uniform leaned in one corner. How could she get anything done with all this junk everywhere? He finally found the phone hunkering among the plastic figurines in deep camouflage. It had stickers all over it. Sparkly stickers. Cute space aliens and valentine hearts. He wanted to pick it up with tongs.

  When Gregor returned from his kitchen odyssey, he found her probing her temple with her fingertips, frowning. Seeing him, she lifted a heavy shock of hair up and out of the way. Underneath, her skin was scraped up, scabbing, yes, but still glistening with tiny, ruby beads of blood. “Is this bad?”

  The wound called him. He dropped to his knees by her side. He could not stop what happened next, no more than he could hold back the ocean. Moving slowly, aware that as much as he fought it, every gesture he made in that moment was inevitable and pre-ordained, he kissed her temple. His lips lingered on the roughened skin, his nostrils flaring to take in every nuance of her scent. Lapping her skin, he captured those ruby beads. What they told him made him fall backward.

  “It’s not bad at all,” he gasped as he struggled to his feet and reeled toward the door, clutching his chest like a movie villain who’d just been shot and intended to drag out his death scene.

  No one—no one—tasted like that. He could eat her down to the bone. He could roll in her scent like a dog. Like a sophisticated drug, those few blood cells on the tip of his tongue were rushing through his bloodstream and altering his chemistry.

  Maddy gaped at him, open mouthed.

  The cool doorknob was his lifeline to reality. To sanity. It would lead him out of this place. “So—you’re good now?”

  It amazed him that he could still talk, but his voice was not his own.

  She nodded, mouth still open.

  “Okay, then. Uh, goodbye.”

  Gregor did not walk down the stairs, he leapt them, one flight at a time. At the entry he paused at the line of mailboxes and forced himself to look at the names. And there it was, the cold proof that you could not escape fate: “Apt. F: M. López de Victoria”.

  He’d always suspected his mother was a witch.

  “What the…?”

  Maddy stared at the closed door for a while, trying to figure out what had just happened, then gave up.

  Why had he kissed her? His hands had cradled her head, and he held her head to his mouth for a moment that seemed to stretch on and on. It felt like a blessing. And then, as abruptly as it had started, it ended, and Faustin was running for the door. She’d never seen a man look more horrified.

  It wasn’t as if she had kissed him. She hadn’t done anything at all.

  What a wacko. He’d been twitchy ever since they got out of the car.

  What a night.

  Maddy realized she was still clutching the phone. She’d lied to Faustin; she wouldn’t call her sister. Lena would want her to go to the hospital, and if the doctors heard her heart they’d have kittens.

  It was not so easy getting off the sofa, but once up, she clawed and hopped her way to the coat rack by the door. Her big umbrella made a fine walking stick. With its help she headed to the bathroom, cursing all the way. Once there she took two Tylenol and a long, hot shower. Only afterward did she sit down on the closed toilet and investigate the damage.

  Because she did not like doctors, Maddy was pretty well versed in first aid, and not at all squeamish. The blood on her left leg came from a long cut, no doubt from dragging across broken glass. The shower had made it bleed again, but she didn’t think it needed stitches. Well, maybe a couple. She’d wait and see. Worse in its way was the road burn along her calf. With a washcloth and tweezers she removed all the imbedded gravel, and then doused it all with hydrogen peroxide, which fizzled and foamed. Die, germs, die.

  Her upper arm and shoulder were sore and bruised, but not cut up—her coat had protected her upper body. Her injuries told the story of how she had fallen and skidded along on her left side. The scrape on her left temple was part of that same skid. She dabbed it with hydrogen peroxide too. It would probably bruise under the scrape, but it didn’t hurt at all. It hadn’t since he kissed it.

  For the ankle—which now looked like her Aunt Tiny’s ankle, minus the coffee-colored support hose—there was RICE: rest, ice, compression and what was E? Elevation. She was sure she had an ace bandage somewhere.

  Mustering up what was left of her energy, Maddy got into her nightgown, hobbled with her umbrella into the kitchen to make an ice bag, and then hobbled back to her bedroom. Too tired to deal with looking for the ace bandage, she opted for bed and television. RIE was enough for tonight.

  Aiming for maximum brain soothing, she chose to watch her well-worn DVD of the original Star Trek series, Season One. With her foot up on pillows, the covers up around her chin, and the sonorous tones of Leonard Nimoy in her ears, she was feeling no pain. If only someone would bring her a vodka tonic, she’d be perfect.

 
It didn’t take long for her to doze off. She fought it, meaning to watch the episode to the end, but her eyes kept closing. Her half-dreams and the Star Trek episode started to meld in strange ways. Dr. McCoy gave her a sympathetic look and one of those cure-all shots to the neck. Her bed was on the transporter platform and she knew she really needed to get off it, but she was too tired to move. Gregor Faustin was on the transporter platform, too, barefoot. He turned off the TV and made a strange gesture with his hand, as if drawing something in the air.

  “This is a dream, Madelena.”

  “Well, duh.”

  He came to sit on the side of her bed, down by her feet, a heavy, brooding presence. His shirt sleeves were rolled to his elbows, his hands were clasped together. A shock of hair hung over his eyes. “Why aren’t you more angry at me for hitting you?”

  Maddy shrugged. “What good would that do? Nothing can change what happened. All I can control is how I feel about it.” She never intended to be the Dalai Lama of Queens, but this was a pragmatic philosophy. If she got upset about every little thing she’d be pushing up daisies.

  Faustin shook his head. “That’s very Zen of you, but it’s not enough for me.”

  With clinical precision, he lifted the blanket that covered her legs, folding it back to her knee and putting aside the ice bag. His fingers gently traced over the bandage on her scraped-up calf. His touch was so soothing, so inherently pleasurable, that Maddy sank backward, falling deep, deep into her pillows.

  His voice came to her through a thickening fog. “I’m going to heal your wounds.”

  “Okay.” She watched him under heavy eyelids. How strange that he could be there and not be there at the same time.

  Like a big, dark cat he curled himself over her left calf. His back blocked her view, but she felt a sharp sting as he ripped off her bandage, followed by soothing warmth and wetness of his tongue lapping the wound. Verrrrrry unsanitary. Oh, but it was nice.

  It felt real.

  It had to be a dream. Gregor Faustin would not be licking her wounds otherwise.