“And he’s so strong,” Miranda added. “If we were already at our normal strength, blood like that could last us for days.”
The Prime lifted the Elf up himself, and Miranda followed them into the suite, where he laid Nico out on the bed and they sat down to wait. They could have returned him to his guest room, but since no one knew how bringing an Elf across would work, they’d agreed to keep him here where one of them could be with him at all times.
Miranda joined David, leaning against him. She kissed his neck, then bit lightly. David held back a groan.
“Do you really want to have sex in front of a dead Elf?” he asked.
She looked chagrined. Mildly. “I suppose not. How long will he be gone?”
“It’s hard to say. With humans it’s a matter of minutes, but when I turned you into a Thirdborn you didn’t breathe for ten. The blood has to wake up and prevail against death.”
He barely had the sentence out when a violent tremor ran through Nico’s body and he sucked in a breath, eyes flying open, panicked.
“It’s all right,” he said, he and Miranda each taking a side and holding him down so he wouldn’t injure himself or them. “You’re safe and cared for. We’re going to send you to sleep for a while so you won’t feel anything.”
Nico didn’t seem to understand him, but the comforting tone of his voice worked where the words themselves did not. Nico took a deep breath, and David felt him grounding himself. The fact that he could ground at all in this state was impressive.
But when David tried to push the Elf down into unconsciousness, he met with a problem.
It didn’t work.
“What the hell . . .” David concentrated, summoning some of the extra energy Nico’s blood had given him, and tried again. Nico fell asleep . . . but came out of it in less than a minute.
“Let me try,” Miranda said. Her brow furrowed. “Why isn’t it working?”
“I don’t know. He’s not consciously resisting. It must be his Elven blood meeting the vampire blood—it’s going to be a fight, no matter what. We assumed that it’s possible to turn an Elf, but . . . what do we really know for sure?”
Miranda didn’t have a chance to answer. Nico jerked away from their grasp to turn on his side, and the first swell of pain hit him, hard—he cried out, clawing at the bed, and David felt him go cold, then hot.
David saw tears in Miranda’s eyes and knew their source. She remembered what this felt like. It was one of the worst experiences of her life—just thinking back to that day in Kat’s bathroom was enough to make her rock back and forth and tremble.
There was nothing they could do; they tried again and again to knock Nico out, but to no avail. Instead, Nico writhed in agony for hours that turned into days, without relief, and they could only watch helplessly as tormented moans built steadily into screams.
• • •
During the Burning Times, Elves were dragged into the dungeons of the Inquisition and had to endure torture of the cruelest kind; every depraved method men had ever concocted from white-hot brands to sexual sadism was visited upon them. Many of the Elves who had survived that era and now knew peace in Avilon bore scars that even magic could not erase. But since then, the newer generations had lived in safety, and as they could never know disease, they rarely experienced significant physical pain.
Those first few hours of misery scrolled out into one day, then two, then three. The pain came in waves, pounding against the shore of his body over and over again. He felt every moment of the transformation—his entire digestive system realigning, parts seeming eaten by acid; his jaw changing shape, actual bone breaking itself and healing, breaking itself and healing. His eyes felt like they had been stabbed with a thousand needles, and the sensory changes that started in his brain made his head hurt so badly he went into seizures.
The worst part was that he couldn’t sleep. No matter how horrible the pain was he couldn’t pass out; so on top of being ripped apart from the inside, he was so exhausted he wanted to give up and die.
Still, he held on, finally clinging to the one thing that would persuade him to fight: Deven. He couldn’t wrap his mind around a war right now, couldn’t stay alive for something so lofty as the notion of saving the world. He needed something immediate, something he could imagine the touch and taste of. It took no effort to call forth the memory of that one stolen kiss—in his mind he invented a time in the future when Deven was healed and might look to him, if not for love, at least for comfort. Even that possibility was worth the fight.
At last, the pain seemed to lessen its hold, but in its wake came fever. His body was fighting the change with all its strength, and though it was losing, it would not go gentle into the night. He burned, his skin raw as if he’d been in the glaring sun for a full day; even the lightest touch made him scream. The skin blistered and bled before it finally healed, but at some point an infection of some kind took over.
Nico knew he was dying even as he lost hold of his thoughts about Deven and tumbled into delirium. He had been a fool to think he knew the mind of the Goddess; the prophecy had predicted his death would save three worlds, but what did that really mean? As soon as he realized Jonathan was dead he knew it meant he would become a vampire . . . but what if he was wrong? Perhaps death simply meant death. In the state he was in, he couldn’t ponder philosophy. All he could do was keep breathing, and that much was getting harder. He was so tired . . . all his strength, and he wasn’t strong enough for this.
“Nico?” he heard through the fog of pain in his head. It took a moment to recognize the voice. It also took a moment to recognize his own, as torn and hoarse as it was.
“Stella . . .”
He felt the weight of her body on the bed next to him. “It’s just you and me,” she said. “It’s really still too soon for this, but everyone agreed you need all the strength you can get.”
He heard her gasp, and the smell immediately leapt up over him: blood. The smell was so strong he was nauseated.
“Here,” she said, holding her arm over his mouth. A single cut ran across her wrist. “Come on, sweetie, you need to drink.”
Nico stared at the wound, which hadn’t started dripping just yet. The drops of blood were so bright, so intensely red they made his eyes hurt. And even though the smell still sickened him, his stomach lurched and he felt . . .
Oh Goddess . . . my teeth.
Tentatively, he wrapped his hands around Stella’s arm and drew the wound to his mouth, licking very lightly for a taste.
A part of him wanted so badly for it to be disgusting—to prove to himself and affirm what the Enclave had said, that he had no business here, that he couldn’t possibly be the chosen one for this. If he couldn’t be a vampire, his role here was ended.
His stomach twisted around itself trying to make him understand that yes, this was what he needed, now. He took another careful lick, and another, before pressing his lips to the wound and actually trying to suck.
He heard Stella moan. He lifted her arm enough to say, “Am I hurting you?”
“No . . . God, no.”
Hot, thick blood filled his mouth, and as he swallowed it coated the raw inside of his throat, sending strength to all parts of his body and soothing that fire that kept trying to burn him alive. He could feel her heartbeat in the blood, felt it beginning to slow down almost imperceptibly, until it fell into sync with his own.
He knew that signal by instinct. He pulled his mouth away and turned his head, breathing hard.
She was so close to him, the comfort of her presence so real and caring. He laid his face against her shoulder, expecting her to object, but instead she grew warm—flushing—and held tighter. Her voice was a little unsteady. “There . . . that wasn’t so bad.”
At her words, he began to tremble, and she kissed the top of his head and took his hand. After a moment, as he calmed, he realized he was drenched in sweat and suddenly freezing. The blood had broken his fever.
Another voic
e piped up at the door: “Good evening, Miss Stella—how is our patient?”
Nico didn’t recognize the voice, but Stella seemed familiar with their visitor. “Hey, Mo . . . I think he might be doing better.”
A shadow fell over him, and he looked up blearily into a cheerful brown-skinned face with lively dark eyes and a beard. Nico didn’t really know what to make of beards, and the vampire’s face and demeanor were novel enough to distract him, for a moment, from his own misery.
“Here everyone calls me Mo,” he said. He had an accent different from any other Nico had heard. “I am the Haven medic—odd, I know. You would be surprised how much work I have to do with the Elite getting themselves injured and our Prime and Queen being poisoned, shot, staked, murdered, blown up, and knocked into various comas. I cannot say I know much about Elf anatomy, but I’ll do my best.”
Mo examined him quickly and efficiently, still talking, probably to help with the distraction. His voice and accent were very soothing. “I have seen many crossings, but never one this rough. Human nature is usually ready to give itself up to vampire nature. Apparently Elven nature is another thing altogether.”
A third voice: Miranda. “What do you think, Mo?”
“I think perhaps the worst is over. The important thing now is that he sleeps. If he doesn’t drop off on his own in the next hour, give him this—aim the needle for a vein if you can.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
“How are you feeling, my Lady?”
A sigh. “Terrible, to be honest. He’s not actively draining us anymore, but the emotional drain is wearing me out. But hopefully it’s just for another couple of days.”
“And you, Miss Stella? Feeling weak or dizzy?”
“No,” Stella replied. “I feel fine, actually.”
“Good, good. Now go and eat—you may feel fine but we cannot have you passing out in an hour and bashing your head on the furniture.”
Nico felt Stella’s presence, and then Mo’s, retreat from the room, leaving him alone with the Queen.
She sat down next to him. “You look like hell,” she said, kindness in her words. “I was really worried we were going to lose you there for a while.”
“So . . . was I. Still not sure.”
He felt something cool on his forehead; she’d brought a wet rag and used it to sponge the sweat from his face. He could feel her need to do something, anything to help. Guilt, he realized, for doing this to him.
He tried to ask where the Prime was, but weakness was overcoming him quickly. Goddess, let me sleep. Just let me sleep.
After the hell of the last few days, just lying there feeling his temperature slowly dropping and the gentleness of the Queen’s touch was a relief too profound to describe. He even managed a tiny smile, in the midst of sliding gratefully into the dark, when he heard her voice again and felt the velvet-soft nudge of her empathic power helping him down as she sang him to sleep:
Don’t you dare look out your window, darlin’, everything’s on fire
The war outside our door keeps raging on . . .
• • •
“Rise, child. Have no fear. You belong to me now.”
His eyes opened reluctantly, blurry at first, then sharpening to a knife’s edge. His vision took in the entire room in a single glance, noting every detail. Except for the area before the fireplace, everything had a faint blue or gray cast to it, and it was as if the shadows had a light of their own, for as he looked into them everything was visible.
It took a moment to understand he could see in the dark.
Nico sat up slowly, fascinated. Where was this? Yes . . . the Pair’s room. He had been in this absurdly soft bed for four days, most of it in agony. Now, though, his body felt strong, and as he lifted his hands and looked at them, they seemed somehow more real, more than three-dimensional.
And while there was a sleepy quality to how he felt, at the same time paradoxically he felt more awake than he ever had in his life. A continuous stream of new sensory information was flowing into him: sight, scent, sound, touch, all intensified.
Touch . . . his skin was on fire again, but this time not from pain. He wanted nothing more in that moment than to feel another’s flesh against his, to taste sweat, to lose himself in someone’s body.
And he was hungry.
He climbed out of the bed with care, expecting to feel weak from so long lying down, but the second his feet hit the floor he felt he could run a thousand miles without pause.
He’d been stripped of most of his clothes—or had pulled them off with the mad need to relieve his fever. They were folded on a chair nearby. The fabric felt different, softer but with so much more texture than he remembered.
There were guards flanking the suite door, but he leveled a look on them—the same one that had always made the Elite in California clear their throats and look away—and they didn’t comment on his passage.
Once out into the hallway, though, he really had no idea where to go. After turning the corner to get out of the guards’ line of sight, he stopped and shut his eyes, listening . . . for what, he wasn’t sure, but he knew it was there somewhere.
Hundreds of lives surrounded him; he could feel them, hear them moving around. They all had a certain family resemblance, of a sort; an undertone in their energy that he found comforting . . . except one.
He was drawn to that one for an entirely different reason.
He followed it along another corridor toward a door that stood partway open. The smell of old books wafted from the doorway, and as he got closer, so did a faintly sweet scent, something like vanilla and brown sugar. Peering carefully around the door frame, his eyes confirmed what he’d already known: It was a library, rows and rows of books in all descriptions with cushioned nooks for reading spaced between shelves.
He caught movement—a shadow under the nearest row.
Bright red hair caught up in a bobbing ponytail; a sleeveless shirt showing off a spiderweb tattoo; and clunky black boots under wide-legged pants with a variety of pockets. She was softly shaped, with a pale and slightly pink complexion. He could hear her pulse all the way from the door.
The Witch stood on tiptoe to put away a slim blue volume and ran her finger along the shelf, looking for a specific title. She was humming and had no idea anyone was there until he had moved up behind her and was no more than a foot away. The warmth and sweet scent from the back of her neck made his upper jaw ache.
She turned around.
Before the scream could pierce the library’s contemplative quiet, he had his hand over her mouth and gripped her arm with his other to keep her from bolting.
When she saw who he was, she sighed, relieved . . . until she got a good look at him. Her eyes grew wide, and she stepped back; he let her go, as there was nowhere for her to run, and sure enough she backed into the shelf.
“God, Nico . . . you look . . . different.”
He tipped his head slightly to the side inquisitively. “Do I?”
He moved in closer, almost touching. Her hands reached back and sought something to hold on to, but all she met were books, her nails scraping over the spines. “I was just in here doing some research for Miranda,” she said. “They’ve got this book with some weird runes in it that I thought . . . um, thought they looked familiar.” She swallowed hard, staring up into his face with a strange mix of emotions that were both innocent and decidedly not.
“Everyone here has strange eyes,” he observed quietly. “I only ever saw violet until I came here.”
“I don’t know if you knew this, but . . . right now . . . yours are silver.” Stella gave him a weak smile. “I guess that means you’re hungry.”
“I am indeed.” He leaned down until their lips were nearly touching, and on her breath he could taste the cinnamon candy she’d been sucking on before he found her.
She stiffened slightly when she felt his hands move around her waist, but once she realized that was all he was doing, she relaxed visibly—so trusti
ng, even knowing what he could do to her. “Well, I . . . I offered you my blood, and you can still have it, just . . .” In the second before their lips met, she breathed, “Please don’t hurt me.”
Stella’s hands shot forward from the shelves and took hold of his shoulders, perhaps with the thought of pushing him away, a thought that morphed rapidly into its own opposite.
Considering how young she appeared, the way her nails dug into his upper arms and her breasts pressed against him was somewhat surprising . . . but then, he knew the others underestimated her, thought of her as little more than a girl. He knew better, and when she pulled back and leaned her head over to expose her throat, one hand wrapping around the back of his neck to pull him in, she was anything but a child.
He was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to operate his own teeth, but it turned out his instincts had no intention of waiting another minute. His canines slid down and curved, the motion painful in a delicious and almost sexual way, and he whispered into her neck, “This will hurt . . . forgive me.”
Her entire body tightened as he bit down, and she struggled for just a second—that fear was far older than logic. Teeth withdrawn, he lowered his mouth to the wound.
He knew he was giving off some kind of aura that was affecting her strongly, but right now he didn’t really have any control over it; that would come later, he supposed, when he was used to this. She moaned softly and rocked her hips against him, and he got a better idea of what it was doing to her.
Her heartbeat began to slow . . . slower . . . slower . . . he knew he should stop, but taste and power both fought against reason.
Suddenly, a hand seized his shoulder and tore him off Stella, who sagged against the shelves, panting.
“That’s enough!”
He turned on his assailant and hissed.
Miranda’s face went paler with shock when she saw his face. “Jesus.”
Again, instinct took hold. He could sense her strength, and the glowing red stone she wore whispered of authority older even than he. Power mantled around her like great dark wings—not quite threatening, but suffering no disobedience.
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