But the only reason she had snared his interest was because Sakarbaal had genetically modified her to do so. How had he managed it? What was worse was the knowledge he no longer cared that none of it was real. Rowan was a dhampir and this was her natural state. But he wanted the illusion back.
No matter what the price.
“Beracid.” The word was slurred, and her fingers clawed as though she wanted to rip open his face. He had no idea what beracid was but now he understood the reason for the dead creature he’d found.
All the times he and Rowan had eaten together had been a façade. It wasn’t food that sustained her. It was blood. But, by the state of her, not just any blood.
She needed human blood.
His gut clenched in revulsion. She isn’t a vampire. She was half human and yet she fed from Sakarbaal, the most ancient vampire of all. Whatever trace of humanity she’d been born with would have been drained from her years ago. He might not like it, but the evidence was in his arms. A travesty of a woman who reeked of fetid blood and internal decay.
How long would a dhampir survive if deprived of fresh blood? By the state of her, not as long as a human could last without food. Another day and she might be dead.
The unnatural hold she maintained over him would die with her. It had to.
But suppose it doesn’t?
He’d live with it. But he couldn’t live with the knowledge he’d left her here, alone and on a foreign planet, to die. She didn’t deserve his compassion, but she had it anyway. For the sake of a few hollow memories, he’d keep her alive, and she would serve as a constant reminder of how he had underestimated Sakarbaal’s cunning.
After his goddess’ betrayal, he’d sworn to never again be blinded by the truth. Through all the centuries, he’d never lost sight that the vampire was his enemy. But in the end, he’d still been oblivious to the signs.
Still holding her wrists, he forced her to the ground and crouched before her. He wasn’t human but his blood was powerful. She would regenerate and when she recovered, he’d work something out. Create a blood bank. One thing was for sure. He wouldn’t allow her to feed on him for years without number.
But tonight, there was no other choice. I won’t allow you to die.
He needed her alive to interrogate her. To discover all she knew of Sakarbaal’s plans. It was the primary reason why he’d brought her to this planet.
Keep telling yourself that.
“Take my blood.” It was a command as he thrust his wrist against her mouth. His muscles clenched as he waited for her to sink her fangs into his flesh. Fangs he’d never once suspected she might possess.
But all she did was pant erratically, her breath shallow, as if she couldn’t draw enough oxygen into her lungs.
“Rowan.” He released his grip and wound his arm around her shoulders, pulling her against his body for additional support. It was fucking surreal, went against everything he believed in, but desperation tainted each word. “For gods’ sakes take my blood. You’re dying.”
The tip of her tongue licked feebly over his pulse. He gripped her jaw and forced her to look up at him, but this close all he saw was how the whites of her eyes were a sickly yellow.
She was a liar, a spy and an accessory to his attempted murder. She looked exactly like the dhampirs he had slain in Romania. But despite the filth, and the unforgiving flashbacks to that blood-soaked night, he wrapped one wing around her, protecting her from the outside world.
“Blood.” Her broken whisper stabbed through his chest, as visceral as though she’d taken the dagger at her waist and thrust it between his ribs. “Azrael.” She dragged out each agony-drenched syllable of his name. But she still didn’t sink her fangs into him.
He cursed under his breath before sliding his forefinger between her dry lips. Her teeth were perfectly even. Realization dawned.
How could a vampire’s offspring, which required blood to survive, not have fangs?
Rowan was in no state to answer questions. And the question was irrelevant. Without a second’s hesitation he took the dagger from her waist, slit open his wrist and offered his archangelic blood to the dying dhampir in his arms.
Chapter 26
Azrael
Azrael steeled his nerves as Rowan’s lips fastened against his wrist. Reminded himself who—what—was sucking the blood from his veins.
It made no difference. Because no matter what she was or how she looked, she was still Rowan. The oddly gentle tug at his wrist was nothing like he’d imagined a vampire’s feeding would be. It wasn’t a despicable parasite gorging itself. She was Rowan, and she was lapping at his blood with the strength of a newborn kitten.
Pain knotted deep in his chest, but he didn’t have time to question it. Because she wasn’t feeding fast enough. Already his wound was healing. Carefully he pulled free, intending to reopen his vein. But her head lolled back, her eyes closed, his blood smeared across her parted lips. She hadn’t even been able to swallow the little she’d taken.
Panic coiled through him, cold and alien. He’d been so sure this would work. He tightened his grip on her and teleported back to his villa. In his bedroom, he ripped back the covers and gently lowered her onto his bed, before piling up pillows behind her. She lay against them like a broken creature, a jaundiced tinge to her skin. It was starkly obvious her condition had deteriorated in the short time since he’d discovered her.
He was an archangel and possessed healing powers. If she had broken her bones, shredded her flesh or torn her muscles he’d know exactly what to do. But she was dying from the inside because she needed blood, and the only blood available was his.
And she didn’t have the strength to take it.
Viciously, he once again opened his wrist. Then tilted her head back, prised open her mouth, and forced his blood down her throat.
Again. And again. Times without number through the hellish night. Dawn broke, and Rowan didn’t open her eyes, didn’t acknowledge him. Just lay against his pillows looking more dead than alive and the truth he’d refused to face for hours thundered through his head.
It isn’t working.
She stirred, and desperate hope burned through him. It had taken her body a while to process, but finally his blood was cleansing whatever poison consumed her.
She heaved violently and a noxious black substance, like liquid tar, splattered across his bed. Ice crawled along his spine as she convulsed in obvious agony, the foul emissions still steaming from between her cracked lips.
His blood hadn’t helped her. My blood made her worse.
All his power, all his immortality, didn’t mean a thing.
There was nothing he could do for her.
The hell there wasn’t. Just because his blood was poison to her didn’t mean he couldn’t find her a supply of humans to feed her need. They’d never know. He’d keep them unconscious for the duration. It was only an emergency modification of the blood bank he’d intended to set up for her.
What the fuck am I thinking?
But he knew. He’d known from the moment he’d found her in the forest.
He would sink to any depths to save her.
But what if human blood gave her the same violent reaction? The revolting image of her drinking Sakarbaal’s blood flashed through his brain and he recoiled.
No.
But the image refused to fade. Because the answer was Sakarbaal. He was Rowan’s Master and without his blood she couldn’t survive.
There had to be another way. He cradled her face in his palms, her skin dry and burning with a fever he couldn’t control. He had no power over Sakarbaal, no way of contacting any of his elevated brethren in order to extract information from them. Information that could save Rowan’s life.
Nico.
He brushed his thumbs across the yellow shadows beneath her eyes. Sakarbaal and Nico had once been like father and son. Was it because, through vampiric blood connection, they were father and son?
If Nico had been Made b
y Sakarbaal then surely his blood could save Rowan.
Was he really considering this outrageous plan? Begging a favor from a fucking vampire?
But there was nothing to consider. He was out of options, and Rowan’s life was on the line. He contacted Nate.
I need to meet with Nico. Now.
I’m busy. But interest threaded Nate’s impatient response as though he’d caught the urgency that thundered through every beat of Azrael’s heart.
He didn’t give a fuck what Nate or Nico thought. But gods, it was going to crucify him to beg the arrogant vampire for help.
Rowan’s dying. She needs the blood of an ancient.
The silence stretched into infinity. Rowan’s breath became ever shallower. He pressed his forehead against hers, willing her to hang on. Not give up. To give him some clue as to how he could help pull her through.
The dhampir’s still alive? He heard the question in Nate’s tone. The question Nate hadn’t asked. Because it wasn’t a case of her still being alive. It was that he hadn’t eliminated her four days ago.
Contact Nico. I’ll meet him anywhere. He knew it would take more than that to persuade the vampire. He had to reveal just how deep in Rowan’s thrall he had fallen. His terms.
Don’t hold your breath. I got the impression he thinks as little of the dhampir as he does of you.
It had taken Nico two hundred years to answer his last request. He doubted Rowan had two hours left. He could find a vampire easily enough. But his gut instinct told him a common bloodsucker would harm her as much as he had. He couldn’t risk it. Nico was their only chance and if he failed to come through…
She would die. And I’ll be free of her fatal allure.
“Yo. Az.” Nate’s voice echoed through the villa and he swung around, a maelstrom of fury and dread colliding in his chest. By the sound of it Nate was at the kitchen door, and then he heard the other archangel’s boots stomping across the floor. “Where the fuck are you?”
As Nate entered the room, Azrael pushed himself from the bed and stood in front of Rowan, an instinctive gesture of protection. “What the hell are you doing here? I told you to contact that fucking vampire.”
“That fucking vampire agreed to meet with you.” Nate offered him a ghoulish grin. It was obvious Nico’s swift cooperation had astonished him as much as it did Azrael. “His terms are these. You shut down and let me teleport you and the dhampir to the place of his choosing.”
Those were his terms? At the very least, he’d expected a contract written in blood, binding him to the vampire for untold centuries. “He trusts me not to track where you take us?”
Nate strolled closer, ignoring the glare he shot his way, and stared down at Rowan. His expression might have been carved from granite. “I might have given the impression that I could negate your ability to track the teleportation, so no. He doesn’t trust you. But I do.”
When Nate removed the blindfold from around Azrael’s eyes—the blindfold being a totally unnecessary precaution purely for the sake of appearances—they were in a spacious living area complete with the latest media technology. Anything less like a vampire’s lair he couldn’t imagine.
And that was half his problem.
Despite the dozens of vampires he’d hunted throughout Andromeda, his ingrained prejudice against the entire race was based solely on his interaction with Sakarbaal.
“This is something I thought I’d never witness.” Nico prowled towards him and instinctively Azrael tightened his hold on Rowan. She weighed next to nothing in his arms, and he smothered the overpowering urge to demand the vampire quit with the score-taking and get the hell on with saving her life. “The Archangel Azrael, slayer of innocents, willing to risk everything in order to save a filthy dhampir.”
She’s not a filthy dhampir. He wouldn’t give the vampire the satisfaction of showing his barbs hit too close for comfort.
“Cut the crap, Nic,” Nate said. “Can you neutralize the dhampir’s hold over Az or not?”
What the fuck?
He rounded on Nate. “That’s not the reason we’re here. Mind your own fucking business.”
“You told me you’d dealt with her. The fact you didn’t means only one thing. Sakarbaal’s got you well and truly by the balls.”
The condemning look from his fellow archangel burned his soul. Because Nate was right. Sakarbaal did have him by the balls. But he couldn’t stomach the thought of letting Rowan die in this horrible, degrading way.
He knew what she was. But even so, she deserved more than this.
“I can fill her arteries with my blood,” Nico said, never taking his gaze from Azrael. “And then she would forever be my creature. Just so we’re clear on that, archangel.”
He’d already guessed as much, but having the fact flung in his face was like acid eating through his soul. “She’s already Sakarbaal’s creature.” He spat the last word at the vampire. “But I don’t have access to that bastard.”
Nico gave a derisive smile. “Sakarbaal doesn’t give a shit about his half-breed offspring. He’d sooner decapitate them himself than offer any of them his blood. They’re nothing but anomalies of nature, remember?”
It just kept on getting better. Not only had Rowan fed from the ancient vampire, she was his biological daughter as well.
His gut clenched with distaste but he still couldn’t drop her to the floor and abandon her to this ignoble fate.
“Are you going to help or not?” Tact be fucked. Nico knew why he was here.
Nico swept an expressionless glance from the tips of Rowan’s boots to the top of her tangled hair. It was impersonal yet at the same time deeply invasive and Azrael stiffened with barely repressed offense.
“How swiftly they revert to their most primitive state.” Nico looked him directly in the eyes. “Yet still you hold her as if you desire her. How… fitting.”
“Fitting?” Despite his best intentions his wings unfurled, each feather vibrating with suppressed rage. There was more to this confrontation than a mutual hatred based on their differing species. At least, there was from Nico. It was like the loathing originated from a personal level.
Nico bared his teeth in a feral mockery of a smile. “Why do you think I told you Sakarbaal had set his assassin on you? Because I gave a shit about your existence?” He flicked Rowan a derisive glance. “No. It was because I sensed your attraction to the dhampir. I wanted you to know what manner of creature you had fallen for. Wanted you to face the choice of allowing her to live—or killing her in cold blood.”
Ice prickled along his arms. It is personal. And if he couldn’t find a way to get through to the vampire, Rowan would die.
Rowan
An acidic burn ate through Rowan’s gut and scorched her blood as her body disintegrated from the inside out. But buried deep in a hidden corner of her psyche, a tiny core of sanity glowed, and she clung to it, relentlessly.
“Beracid.” She heard the words in what remained of her sane mind, felt a disconnected movement of what could have once been her lips as they formed the desperate plea. But had he heard her? Had anyone heard her? Did the vampire who sounded so cold and condemning know of the medication she needed to survive?
“Rowan.” Azrael’s voice penetrated the fog that threatened to suck her down into eternal oblivion. “It’s going to be okay. Don’t give up.”
He sounded like he really cared. As if everything that had happened in the Tudor inn had been nothing more than a nightmarish fantasy. Had that really happened? Or was it another twisted memory corrupted by her feverish mind?
“Give her to me.” The commanding voice of the vampire tore through her unraveling thoughts. Azrael’s arms tightened around her but she was disconnected from him, floating beside her physical body, and his touch was oddly insubstantial.
“Do what you have to do here.” He no longer sounded as if he cared. He sounded feral.
“If you want her to live, give her to me. And know that you’ll be forever in my debt
.”
This was wrong. She couldn’t let Azrael, her beautiful archangel, sink into the vampire’s clutches because of her. But even as she struggled to reclaim the use of her limbs her body was handed over, and unfamiliar arms wrapped around her.
A distant sense of panic washed through her, recognizable but not wholly understood. With Azrael she felt safe, even if she was dying. But with this vampire there was no guarantee of anything, and she wanted to be back in her archangel’s arms.
“Be still.” It was an autocratic demand, yet there was no derision in the vampire’s tone or undercurrent of the loathing she’d subconsciously absorbed earlier. “I won’t harm you.”
How easy it would be to sink into the crimson oblivion that beckoned. Finally, she’d be free of the pain that wracked her body. But still she fought against the encroaching abyss, the way she’d fought it from the moment the withdrawal had kicked in.
There was no way of knowing what he intended to do with her. But she’d rather be conscious, if incapable, than comatose and unaware of her fate.
She heard another door kick open and he carried her through.
“Mon dieu,” a familiar voice exclaimed.
Meg? Where am I?
“All it took was three days.” Suppressed fury heated the vampire’s voice as he lowered her onto what felt like a bed. “Four at most. And you have the nerve to call us barbarians.”
“What did the demon do to her?” Meg’s unique scent drifted through her senses and she struggled to open her eyes and shove the vampire away. But instead she lay there, immobile, while Meg examined her as if she were nothing but a piece of meat. Dimly she was aware of another pair of feminine hands taking blood from her veins, hair from her head and swabbing the inside of her mouth.
“Damned his pride to bring her to me.” There was no satisfaction in the vampire’s voice. “He is entirely in this dhampir’s thrall. It’s as well Sakarbaal thinks she’s dead. If he knew how utterly his methods had brought an archangel to his knees, then none of us would be safe.”
Nemesis: Paranormal Angel Romance (Realm of Flame and Shadow Book 2) Page 18