by Michele Hauf
“Oh my God, the vampires.” When she tried to move, her hand slipped on the edge of the porcelain tub and she fell back into the water. “What the hell?”
Now she realized Severo sat on the toilet lid, not reacting to her distress, but waiting patiently. He wore only jeans. Watery blood pooled at his bare feet. His face was dirty and his shoulder had blood on it.
“Why am I in here?” she asked. “Why am I all wet?”
She followed his gaze over the floor. A pile of bloody towels sat heaped before the vanity.
“I had to clean the wound,” he offered in a raw, quiet voice. “It’s still bleeding. It was left unsealed. I…couldn’t take it away. I’m sorry.”
She shoved herself up but the slick tub kept her sliding to a reclined position. “Wound? Your shoulder?”
“No, sweet. You.”
“Was I cut? None of them had weapons. I ran from them. Took a few out with those wooden bullets and a stake. They got Heloise. Oh, Severo, Heloise.”
She slapped a palm to her forehead, and when she thought the tears would come, she realized she had gone beyond them. Her chest heaved. Sorrow for the fallen housekeeper prodded her sympathy, but she had abandoned tears sometime after that first vampire had been staked.
Among her thoughts she remembered what Severo had said.
“What do you mean, ‘left unsealed’?” she asked him.
Why didn’t he just hug her? More than anything she wanted him to hold her and make her know everything was all right. That the vamps were all gone. They were alive. That meant they had won, right?
“Saliva is necessary to seal the wound and prevent the vampire taint from rushing into the bloodstream,” he explained. “You don’t remember?”
Standing, he loomed over her. He had blood all over him—at the corner of his eye, on his shoulder and at his abdomen. Blood had dripped onto his jeans. Not from fresh wounds. Streaks of dried blood from earlier wounds that had rapidly healed.
“Bella…”
He sucked in a breath. His eyes shifted up and along the shower curtain rod, searching for something. The pulse of his jaw, which she had once thought so sexy, now disturbed her.
“You’ve been bitten. And there’s nothing I can do to reverse the imminent change,” he blurted.
She gripped her neck and flinched at the pain. Slippery blood coated her fingers. “A vampire bit me?”
She met her lover’s tired gaze and he nodded. “I’m going to tend to Heloise. She should not be left as she is. You’ll be fine until I return?”
Fine? What was fine? She’d been bitten by a vampire. Was she going to change? Would she die? Would she want to drink blood?
Severo awaited her reply. Why wasn’t he holding her?
If she closed her eyes and opened them again, would this crazy nightmare go away?
“Bella?”
She nodded, though she couldn’t meet his tired eyes. “Sure. Fine.”
And he walked from the room without bowing to kiss her or offering to help her out of the tub.
Was he horrified by her?
“He hates vampires,” she murmured. Sliding a finger along her neck to feel at the gaping tooth marks, she now found tears. “Will he hate me?”
* * *
Severo jogged downstairs. A sense that he had been here recently—as the werewolf—put up his hackles.
As suspected, he did not find Heloise’s body in the laundry room. The ichor pool glittered brilliantly, and he knew that, by some strange and magical means, her body had returned to Faerie, whence it had come.
He knelt before the devastation.
Sheets were shredded, some spattered with red. It could only be vampire blood. So Heloise had put up a fight? Good girl.
Closing his eyes and bringing his joined palms up to his face, he wondered what he could say, then knew it would be better to say nothing. Thanks for all she had done for him would be inappropriate. It was a bittersweet moment.
He slammed the laundry room door closed behind him and made a hasty retreat to the kitchen. Piles of vamp ash sat among the debris of broken furniture, of his life.
How many vampires had gone after Bella? There must have been as many inside the house as outside.
How had they breached the wards? And the locks?
Looking around, he realized he did not know where to begin. How did one make things right when they were so wrong?
She is wrong now.
Catching his balance against the kitchen counter, he gasped in a breath. Wrong? No, not his Bella.
“Please, let her be right.”
He placed a call to the cleaners, who promised they’d arrive within the hour.
Well and fine. He should probably tend his own wounds. Not that it mattered. They’d all healed—save the gaping gash through his heart.
“Bella,” he whispered. “Bella.”
Not wrong. Never wrong.
The wards and locks would have to wait before he could figure out why they had failed. He wouldn’t need them now. He sensed Elvira had gotten exactly what she’d wanted, and would not return.
And what had she won from this round of battle? She would turn the one thing Severo most loved into the one thing he most hated.
“Masterful revenge,” he muttered, then kicked aside a bloodied couch cushion.
The patio-door glass clinked beneath his boot toe. Sunshine tickled across the shards of safety glass as if they were large pieces of faerie dust. Poor Heloise. She was an innocent.
As was Bella.
He snapped a finger against a shard stuck in the door frame. Soaring through the air, it landed and slid across the pool tarp.
“I should go to her.”
She would want him to hold her, to reassure and kiss her, to give her proof of his love.
For a long time he’d sat in the bathroom after scrubbing furiously at the wound on her neck. If only he could have washed away any trace of damage, taken the bite from her with the cleansing water.
What now would he feel when he again looked upon her?
“I love her,” he growled at his insensitive thoughts.
Could he love a vampire?
A minute possibility remained that she would not change. To do that, she had to survive till the next full moon. Elvira had planned this so well. The moon had been waning but a day. There were four long weeks till the next full moon.
“She’ll never survive without going mad.”
* * *
Exhausted, and knowing that Severo was busy with the cleaning and security crews, Bella slept through the day. After she’d showered, the wound had stopped bleeding. She crawled naked into bed and fell instantly asleep.
A fitful sleep. She’d been aware when the water in the shower again beat against the tiles, and then when Severo had carefully tiptoed about the bedroom, selecting clean clothes and leaving her alone.
All she craved was spooning against his body and knowing that everything was going to be all right. But the dread that their relationship would never be the same kept her in bed, even when her stomach growled for food.
When the noise from the cleaners ceased and the sun had again set, she decided to sneak out for a morsel. At least now she wouldn’t have to see piles of ash or signs of the struggle she’d been through.
Pulling on a black silk robe, Bella combed her hair and leaned toward the mirror. The bite mark was swollen and red. She couldn’t conceal it with makeup. It didn’t hurt, only ached.
“How did you do it, Seth? This is not my idea of a good time.”
Of course, when the wound healed, she could get on with her life. She suspected Severo was avoiding her for the very reason that she bore the mark of the vampire on her neck. It couldn’t heal fast enough.
Answering her hunger pangs, she headed to the kitchen. It was spotless, with no sign of broken dishes or the wooden stool she’d thrown at a vampire and had broken across his shoulder. She opened the fridge and grabbed the plastic bottle of pomegranate juice.
When she closed the door, she dropped the juice. Tall and strong, Severo posed as if ready for a challenge, head lowered and fingers coiled, ready to fist. She thought she could smell the fury on him, and his eyes appeared even darker.
The vampire’s eyes had been so beguiling. Blue, deep and seductive. She couldn’t remember anything after looking into them.
“I’m sorry. I was hungry.” She picked up the plastic bottle. To run into his arms felt wrong but she so desired it.
“How are you feeling?”
“Better. Much. I think this stupid bite mark will heal in a few days. I know how it must make you feel. I understand you haven’t had time for me. You’ve been busy all day, I’m sure. Can I make you something to eat?”
His inhale stabbed her in the heart. Bella closed her eyes. Please, touch me. Hold me.
“We need to talk, Bella.”
Call me sweet. I am yours. You won’t abandon me after you realize this bite means nothing.
“Sure.” She screwed off the bottle cap and took a slug. She didn’t realize how achy her jaw was until she swallowed. “Let’s sit over there.”
Drawn to their favorite chair, she waited for him to sit and pull her onto his lap. “Severo?”
He nodded as if jerking himself out of busy thoughts. “Yes.”
He sat, and when she wanted to climb onto his lap, he allowed it, but he didn’t cradle her as he usually did, only sat stiffly, as if he wouldn’t push her away but would like to if he could.
“Are you angry with me?” she asked.
“Never. No. I’m sorry, Bella.”
“It’s the bite, isn’t it? It reminds you of them. It’ll soon be gone—”
“It’s going to change everything, Bella.”
“No, it won’t. When it’s healed, you’ll forget all about this stupid incident.”
“It will heal. But you will not. You will be transformed.”
She pushed against his chest and leaned back to study his face. He couldn’t meet her eyes. How dare he not look at her, to make her feel as if she were contagious. Now she wished she would have found a scarf to tie around her neck.
“Transformed? You mean…? But Seth didn’t change when he was dating Elvira. Not until she wanted him to.”
“Because a vampire usually licks the wound after it takes blood from a mortal. The infusion of vamp saliva seals the wound and keeps back the vampire taint. A bite that isn’t sealed introduces the taint to the mortal’s system. It will stir up the blood hunger in you, Bella, and you will change with your first taste of human blood.”
“No.” She shoved off from his lap and paced toward the opposite wall.
The now glassless picture of Aby and Severo had been rehung there. In the ten years they’d been together, why hadn’t Elvira gone after Aby? Was it because he’d never made love to her?
“I don’t want to be a vampire. I don’t want—” To be the one thing her lover despised. The thing that would always remind him of his family’s tragic suffering. “There must be some way to stop it.”
“There is.”
The warm weight of his hand on her shoulder made her flinch. Bella did not turn to him. Aby’s bright smile taunted her. She had had Severo for an entire decade. Would Bella lose him after but a few months?
“You can wait for the full moon.” His voice hurt her heart. So calm. Yet not affectionate, as it had been. More removed, clinical. “If you don’t drink human blood before then, you’ll be in the clear. But you’ll be mad from resisting the intense hunger. Damn it, Elvira planned this well. It’ll be another month before the full moon comes again.”
“But you said if I drink human blood. Maybe I could…drink yours?” She winced at the thought of doing something so reprehensible.
“Bella, listen. There are three options for a mortal bitten by a vampire when the wound has not been sealed. You can answer the blood hunger—which should emerge within days—and complete the transformation, thus becoming a vamp.”
“What are the other two?”
“You could kill yourself.”
She gasped.
Severo punched a fist into his palm.
“Door number three, please?” she asked softly.
“You could try to wait out the full moon. If the victim can go without drinking blood until the next full moon is over and the moon begins to wane, then the vampire taint will pass from their system, leaving them completely mortal.”
“Well, that’s my pick. See, this won’t be so bad.”
“One problem.”
“There’s always a but.”
“Bella, I don’t know of anyone who has been able to resist the insistent blood hunger. If they did resist the insatiable need, madness would generally take hold before they made it to the full moon.
“There is a legend of one man who survived until the full moon—at the expense of his mind. His family, after committing him, decided to attempt to have him bitten again, in hopes of curing the madness. He’d changed to a vampire and yet remained mad.
“Bella, what’s been done to you is irreversible. You are destined to become a bloody long—” He stopped.
“Longtooth,” she whispered. Then she spun about and insisted boldly, “Say it. I know you hate them. And now you will hate me.”
“No, I love you.” But she heard so little conviction in his tired tone. “I could never…”
“Never look me in the eyes again? You won’t. You can’t. My God, that bitch really did know what she was doing.”
She paced the floor. Wanting him to wrap her in his arms wouldn’t earn her the reprieve from the horror she could never shake.
The patio door had been boarded up, and the smell of fresh paint made her wonder which wall she had seen her own blood splattered on last night, as the vampire had bent to bite into her neck.
A bite she recalled wanting.
She shivered as she recalled a memory. “It was the same ones who originally chased me.” Severo had been there that night to rescue her. Why hadn’t he been there for her last night? “Where were you?”
He leaned forward, hanging his head.
“Severo?”
“I was out back. Elvira and a dozen vampires detained me with some kind of silver whip. I had no idea they had infiltrated the house, or that you were even home, until it was too late.”
“A silver whip? Are you hurt?”
“No more than my pride.”
His pride. And while he’d been suffering a pride-busting tête-à-tête with the mistress of the night, Bella had been getting her throat chewed on.
“I’m sorry, Bella. This would have never happened if I had not pursued you after that night in the warehouse. If I had not kept you in my life.”
“Don’t say that. Seth was already dating Elvira then. It would have happened much sooner, is all. I’m glad you followed me home and seduced me into loving you, Severo. Do you…”
She wanted to ask.
She could not.
He could not love her now. It would be cruel to ask it of him after all she had learned of his past.
“So what are we going to do?” she asked instead. “Do you want me to pack my bags?”
He narrowed his gaze but still did not meet hers. Did he look at Aby’s picture?
“That’s ridiculous. This is your home. I swore you would be my mate—” He fisted his fingers and the air in the room shifted as if a ghost had just breezed through. Bella felt the chill. “We’ll get through this.”
“I want that. But I’d feel much better if you’d hold me and…and kiss me.” She waited for his eyes to find hers. They did not.
“The security crew is still outside working at the terminal. I need to go out and check on their progress. I’ll return soon, I promise.”
“You don’t want to touch me now, do you?” Tears slid down her cheeks. Bella resisted the shivers that threatened to shake her body uncontrollably. “Will you touch me when the bite has healed?”
“I
t’s not like that, Bella.”
“Yes, it is! Don’t lie to me. Everything has changed between us now, hasn’t it?”
He didn’t answer. And that was answer enough.
Chapter 19
He was being a bastard. Two days had passed since the attack and Severo had used the excuses of installing new windows and rechecking the grounds and restocking the arsenal as means to limit his time with Bella.
Hell, he wanted to go to her. To hold and kiss her, to make love to her, and find his place inside her again.
But the vampire’s scent lingered on her, and he didn’t want Bella to know that. To sense that he was repulsed by her. He was, and he wasn’t. Yet he was stupid to think she didn’t already sense his reluctance.
Rationally, he knew nothing had changed between them. She was the same woman he had fallen in love with and had wanted to mate with for as long as their days would allow.
Illogically, his brain found her offensive. He cringed every time the fading red bite mark on her neck was revealed as her hair swept over a shoulder.
Vampires had viciously murdered his parents and enslaved him. They had gone to war with the witches with little respect for human life. Vampires were filthy, nasty creatures.
And soon Bella would become one.
He couldn’t push her away. And yet he knew ignoring her was far worse. She needed him as much as he wanted her. She wasn’t yet a vampire.
If he could not accept her now, how could he possibly do so after she changed?
Because it was starting. Last night she had moaned in her sleep, a deep, wanting whine that wasn’t sexual. The blood hunger had begun to infiltrate her system.
Each night, after she drowsed off to sleep, he’d sleep on the chair in the bedroom, or rather, sit there with one eye open. He hadn’t slept for days, and though exhausted, he would continue to keep watch on her. For any changes. For her needs.
Kiss me.
She said it every night before slipping between the sheets. But she wouldn’t look at him, as if she knew he could not meet her gaze.
“Idiot!”
He would not fall victim to mere thoughts. Mind games. His brain had convinced him of something irrational. He would make the best of this. He must. The longer he separated himself from her, the further they would disconnect.