by Evie Byrne
“You bitch!” he cried, his voice breaking with fear. “I’ll kill you for this.”
“Stupid child. I eat boys like you for breakfast. You’re going to tell your people what happened here. You’re going to tell them to live clean and stay quiet or I will come to the fucking North Woods and paint them red. And believe me, I will start with you.”
She pitched him to an adjacent rooftop some eighty feet below. Young vamps had some bounce to them. Usually.
“Gunnar!”
She turned to see Halverson running at her with a fire axe.
Mikhail knew he wasn’t in heaven. Black smoke billowed around him in smothering clouds, stinging his eyes. A terrible stench filled his nostrils, a noxious combination of burning plastic and flesh. He’d killed too many people in his life to go to heaven. Thou shalt not kill was a basic commandment, after all.
A man screamed, agonized, but his cry was ominously short. After that he couldn’t hear anything else except the roar of the inferno. And then, out of a fountain of glowing embers, walked Alya—or some demon goddess that looked like Alya. She was naked, her skin shining black. Ash whitened her hair. Her face was contorted with blood lust. Her eyes, red. In one hand she carried a battle axe. In the other, a club.
No, not a club. A dismembered arm.
“I’m getting you out of here,” she said.
Chapter Ten
Night. Home. Bed. Uninjured. The window is open.
Before she opened her eyes, Alya went through her checklist. If it were daytime she’d be lethargic and cold. She was warm. She knew her sheets down to the thread count. The jasmine outside her window scented the room with heavy perfume.
And then she felt him. Inside her, his blood colonizing her body. And physically close. Within reach. Watching her sleep.
Oh my God. What have I done?
She scrambled to protect her mind from him, throwing up crude barricades and no trespassing signs. It wasn’t enough. He was there. Right there. Reading her. Well aware she was awake.
She opened her eyes.
And freaked out even more.
He looked like the Angel of Judgment, come to claim her. Clean and composed, dressed in a black shirt and trousers, he sat in a chair by her bed, his hands spread on his knees, his feet bare. He met her gaze with absolute confidence. He’d won. They were bonded.
She sat up warily. Her skin felt too tight. She glanced down and realized her body was glazed with dried blood. Her face, too, by the feel of it. She rubbed her temple and a shower of brown flakes fell on her sheets.
“The blood of our enemies.” Mikhail’s voice rang inside her, his eyes glowed with approval.
No. No. No. Get out of my head. Her head was no place to be. She clutched the sheet to her chest as the memories of battle came flooding in. Black memories. Red memories. She’d fought and killed before, but never like that. Never like a bloodthirsty djinn. Nothing stood in her way that awful dawn. They’d fallen before her like lambs.
Even Halverson. She’d thrown him to the ground and ex’d him while he struggled. She’d enjoyed it. Afterward, she dismembered him. She’d enjoyed that, too.
Somehow, during all that madness, she’d managed to box up his essence and store him away with the other dead princes inside her. As carefully as she’d touch a wound, she probed this fresh tenant. How could she ever bear to access his memories?
How could she when she’d almost popped his wife’s head off her shoulders?
The blood would never come off.
Mikhail put one hand on the bed, and then the other. Then a knee. The bed sank under his weight. Trapped in her thoughts, she could not stop him.
He took her head between his hands. “You did what had to be done.”
When she finished her slaughter in the hallway, the bodies had lain so thick that she had to walk across their broken backs and tangled limbs to return to the roof. She could remember how their hair felt between her toes.
Mikhail shook her. “Stop it. Leave it alone.”
Her lips parted but no words came out. All she could see was Halverson’s face.
“You know how to compartmentalize.”
Yeah, so why can’t I compartmentalize you? She whispered it to herself, not knowing what he could hear or see inside her. She knew she could see more of him if she wished, but didn’t go there.
Strangely enough, his question worked. It focused her attention on him, instead of the Minnesotans. And Frank. Oh yes, she’d caught up with Frank.
Mikhail probed her mind, grabbing at anything she let slip. Unlike her, he’d use this connection between them any way he could. She fought back, making her mind slick as glass, as reflective as a mirror.
“Why are you locking me out?” he said.
Alya would have laughed, but feared if she laughed, she’d start to cry. Why would he want in? What if she was carrying his child? Could this be any more fucked up? When she rescued him, she’d stepped in a cell of her own making and tossed away the key.
Mikhail spoke slowly, as if she were brain damaged. “You’re safe with me.”
That wasn’t true. She was safest alone. Like a gun in a box.
He looked hungry. Beat to hell and hungry. That was her fault.
“Alya, don’t. Don’t.”
He pushed back her hair, searching her face. He lowered his head and sniffed her, skimming his nose over her forehead and nuzzling her hair. She couldn’t help but sniff too. The skin on the underside of his jaw smelled good beyond belief.
“You’ve changed.” Mikhail’s eyes shut in ecstasy as his nostrils flared again. “Your blood. Your scent. My God.”
Yes. His scent had changed, too. It had become an airborne drug. She clenched her jaw to stop her teeth from chattering. She wanted to rub her face against his skin. She wanted to cut him open and climb inside.
Mikhail pressed her to the sheets. His mouth slanted over hers. Primal masculine satisfaction radiated from him, body and brain. It flooded her mind. It flavored his kiss. It said, Mine.
She turned her face aside, gasping for air. He was too heavy. She couldn’t breathe. She needed to get out. Couldn’t he tell? Was the bond a one-way street? Maybe he was too far gone to notice her panic. The intensity of his desire paralyzed her.
She read the plans he had for her, the images as clear as her own thoughts. He wanted to twist her body into a sigil of perfect submission. He wanted her on hands and knees, ass up, face ground into the carpet...
“Mikhail! Stop!” The weakness of her voice appalled her. She squirmed beneath him, trying to push him off.
Another series of visions arrowed through her. While he had her on her knees, he’d wrench her head back, exposing her throat. Still fucking her, he’d tear into it. Tear into it like a mad dog, to drink and drink and drink…
Mikhail’s teeth sharpened. He buried his face in her neck. Hydrated on sugar water alone, his body was consuming itself by the minute. He needed her, in every possible way.
Spurred on by her heady fragrance, dark erotic fantasies spun out in his imagination. He’d take her soon enough, but he needed to feed from her first.
His mouth stretched wide.
Her fist smashed into his left ear. A millisecond later the heel of her hand slammed into the bridge of his nose. White stars filled his eyes.
With a roar he slapped her back down to the bed. The anger was primal, the reaction instinctive. No one—not even the bride—interrupted a claiming.
She bared her teeth, her eyes murderous and wild. He pinned her by the throat, growling his disapproval. The blood pouring from his nose dripped across her face. She drove her knee into his balls.
Paralyzed with pain, he fell over on his side. He thought she’d kill him, but instead she sprang into the air and landed on top of her armoire. She crouched up there, blood stained and feral and shaking like a junkie.
“Alya.” Wiping his nose, he sat up, his head considerably clearer for having been emasculated. He sent out feelers, sooth
ing thoughts, silent reassurances. “It’s okay.”
She produced a heavy pistol that she had stashed up there and pointed it at him, her arms outstretched between her knees. She reminded him of a gun-toting gargoyle.
“Get the hell out.”
He put his hands up. “Why?”
“You were about to bite me, you son of a bitch.” She pointed to a pair of scratches on her neck. “Again.”
Blood ran warm down his chin. Moving slowly, so as not to panic her, he pinched his nose to slow the bleeding. “And that’s wrong? You gorged on me.”
It sounded like “Yoob gorbed on muh.” He sighed and squinted up the barrel of the gun. His brothers would pay good money to see him right now.
“That was different.”
“I’m your mate.” That he knew with absolute clarity. That was non-negotiable. “It’s your duty to feed me.”
“My duty?”
Livid, she leapt down from her perch and advanced on him with the gun outstretched. He didn’t move, and she didn’t stop until she pressed the barrel between his eyes. He let his hands fall to his sides. The blood started to flow again. He licked it from his upper lip. He couldn’t afford to waste it.
“Give me one good reason why you want me. Besides the fact you’re hungry. Besides my territory.”
Mikhail couldn’t see past her finger on the trigger. “At this moment I have to say I’m drawing a blank.”
That hurt her. He heard echoes of confusion and disappointment, faint and fleeting, passing through her defenses. She took three steps backward and lowered the gun.
“There you are. You don’t like it, and neither do I. We don’t have to submit to this curse. There’s got to be a loophole.”
“There’s no way out.”
Was marrying him really worse than starvation, insanity and death? She glared at him, as if confirming this was, in fact, the case.
He tried again. “I can’t hunt anymore. Neither can you. Believe me, I tried, and couldn’t get past the first swallow. We’re like Roland now. We can’t feed unless we feed on each other. And the more we feed on each other, the more tightly we’re bound. There is no escape.”
“There is always a loophole. There is always a work around.”
Mikhail laughed. Let her shoot him. He couldn’t be worse off. He dug a handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it to his nose.
Alya lowered the gun and paced in a circle, her face tight with concentration. Only she could look regal barefoot and crusted with blood. She didn’t even seem to be aware that she was naked.
He glanced at the bathroom door and back at her, a fantasy forming. He wanted to pull her into the shower and soap her from her ears to her toes and then take her––wet, warm and slippery––against the tile.
Her head whipped his direction. He shoved the fantasy aside. She had her mind locked down so tight, he couldn’t tell if she could listen in on him or not.
She sat on the bed, placing the pistol next to her. Crossing her legs, she leaned back on her hands and cocked her head at him. “I know your family sets a lot of store by this bonded bride thing, but even you will have to admit that ultimately it is an outdated, unnecessary and rather distasteful tradition—even among the hopelessly retrograde vampyr. There must be a cure nowadays. An unbinding of some sort.”
“An unbinding?” The woman was insane. “Good luck with that. If you find this spell, please bring me back a pet unicorn, because they must be kept in the same place.”
One corner of her mouth curled up. “You want the virgin who comes with it, too?”
He wadded the handkerchief in his fist, trying to keep hold of his temper. Knowing that she was pushing his buttons on purpose didn’t make it any easier to take.
“Have you ever considered that submitting to our destiny is the right path? The only path?”
She picked up the gun again. “If you think that the word submit is in my vocabulary, Mikhail Faustin, you don’t know me very well at all. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to take a shower. And then I’m going to get us a divorce.”
He closed with her. “We all submit to hunger, Alya. Even you.”
Unblinking, she stared back at him, her eyes hard and gold, like a hawk’s.
Dominick and four of his men burst into the room. When had she triggered an alarm? All the men except Dominick reeled backward at first sight of her.
“Ah, Dominick!” Alya smiled pleasantly, casually raising her pistol again. “You see Mikhail is in need of an ice pack. Could you help him with that?”
Turning so Alya couldn’t see him, Dominick gave Mikhail an apologetic look and gestured to the door. His men parted into two neat columns and let Mikhail pass.
Alya’s cat waited for him in his room, purring. He scratched its ears absentmindedly. Alya was scared to death of him, and he didn’t know why.
Chapter Eleven
Alya wondered why she should bother with clothes at all anymore now that Dominick, her guards, and half of Minnesota had seen her nude. But clothes did offer a measure of moral support, and she needed all the help she could get. In the shower, the dried blood reawakened, turned bright red and swirled thick around her feet. It streaked down the shower walls, just as it had in that narrow hallway.
Are you a sissy girl, Alya? Her father’s voice was always right there, ready to shoot her down when she felt the worst. She wasn’t a sissy girl. But between defending her thoughts from Mikhail, and avoiding reading him in turn, compartmentalizing Halverson and dealing with blowback from the fight, it was a wonder she was sane at all.
She put on a crisp white blouse with wide sleeves and deep cuffs, close fitting trousers and riding boots. The more structure, the more cover, the better. If she could have worn armor, she would have. She twisted her hair into a tight knot and went in search of Dominick. And her cat. She hadn’t seen hide nor hair of the beast.
Good lieutenant that he was, Dom had cleaned up the living room and transformed it into a temporary command center. The transformation he’d wrought in such a short time was amazing. No trace remained of the bullet holes that had riddled the walls. The broken glass and fallen plaster were gone, not to mention the bodies and buckets of blood. The only difference was that the ruined settee had vanished, leaving a gap in her furniture arrangement. Four guards sat with him, cleaning their weapons. Two of them blushed to see her. She dismissed them.
Rising, Dominick kissed her cheek. “What a charming outfit. What are you riding today?”
“Ass, darling. Nothing but ass. Where’s Mikhail?”
“In his room. I gave him that guest room at the end of the hall the night we came home. With him so weak and the possibility of retaliation high—”
Alya waved her hand. “That’s fine. Have you seen Lulu by chance?”
“She might be with Faustin. He…er...inquired if he might borrow a cat brush.”
The traitorous creature. Dominick scratched the side of his nose, trying to hide a smile. Make that two traitorous creatures.
“Dominick, you’re enjoying this too much. It’s not seemly.”
“Forgive me, sir. Cats are peculiar, without a doubt.”
Evie Byrne
“She’s welcome to adopt him as her new scratching post, if that’s what she wants.” Alya shrugged. “I don’t care. Not at all. She’s a poor excuse for a cat anyway.”
He nodded in sympathy. “Indeed. No more need be said on the matter.”
“Of course not.” Alya checked her phone and put it away. “And just when has Mikhail had time to be making himself cozy with my cat anyway?”
“Last night, it was.” His puzzled expression cleared. “Ah, he didn’t tell you? You’ve been out a while. You slept through a day, a night and a day. It’s Wednesday.”
“Wednesday?” Mikhail had been fasting longer than she thought. She had to find a way out of this, fast. She put all other business aside. “Tell me everything you learned about blood bonds with Master Wilhelm.”
; They sat on the long leather sofa. Where Mikhail had told her the story of Roland and Illysia.
Dominick stared into the middle distance as he downloaded his report. “It takes only one taste to initiate the process. The intensity of the early bond is directly related to quantity of blood consumed. Onesided consumption leads to obsession, and eventually death. Two-sided consumption forms the bond. The bond is strengthened and completed by feeding so continuously from one another that the two parties permanently alter one another’s chemistry. After bonding, they are not individuals anymore, not in any true sense.”
Alya shuddered at the idea. “That doesn’t make any sense. How do we—they—feed off one another exclusively without starving?”
“It’s a lean time, to be sure, but that bit only goes on a few days, then they can feed normally again. Apparently in the old days the bride and groom were fattened before marriage to prepare for the bonding.”
“Like calves. How romantic.”
“There’s a spiritual component too, which I couldn’t make head nor tails of. But as you know, I’m a practical sort.”
“Physical is enough for me. How do you break the bond?”
He shook his head. “You can’t. It’s called' The Unbreakable Tie’ by all the historic sources. Master Wilhelm confirmed this. He says it can’t be undone once initiated.”
“He’s wrong. I know of at least one way. One of us can ex the other.”
“Roland’s Choice. There’s that, but I didn’t exactly categorize that as a solution.” Dominick leaned back against the cushions, solemn. “I take it this means you’ve fed from him?”
“I fought out of that place on the strength of his blood.”
“Escape at a price?”
The idea that Mikhail might have trapped her shook her for a moment, but she dismissed it. She hadn’t tasted any deception in his blood. In that moment, all he’d wanted was for her to live. He’d been ready to give his life for her. Now the question had changed. Would she give up her whole life for him?