Diana closed her eyes. Tears burned as they welled behind her lids. “Oh, God. He’s been carrying on this ritual behind my back!”
“Diana, he’s your soul mate.”
“What the hell does that have to do with it? Does that make it all right for him to trick me?” Drawing the sweater tighter around her chest, she bent over as a painful stab of hunger pierced her stomach. “Go on, Nana. You might as well tell me about this ritual I’ve been tricked into.”
“Last night he had to drain you. They believe that his love will stop him just before you die.”
Diana recalled the terror she’d seen in Sebastian’s eyes when she’d opened her eyes and found him cradling her in his arms. “Sebastian wasn’t so sure,” she said sarcastically.
“I guess it’s natural to panic. Tonight, you will have to do the same to him.”
“Drink all his blood?”
“Almost all of it.”
Blanching, Diana shook her head. “Oh I couldn’t.”
Nana Lina grasped her chin and stared into her eyes. “Diana, you love him.”
“It’s only been a month.”
“Yet, you do.”
Diana hung her head and stared at her hands. “To a certain extent, yes, but definitely not enough to trust myself to drink almost all his blood without either throwing up or killing him. And definitely not enough to become a damn vampire.” Her head shot up. “Am I already one? Oh no, did he turn me into a vampire?”
“No, not completely. You’re soul mates, Diana. That’s all that matters.” Her grandmother frowned. “For some reason he somehow started the bonding ritual without your knowledge. Trust him. I saw him not only as your soul mate, but also as your protector. And I know your heart will guide you tonight.”
“How will I know when to stop? I’m not a vampire. I have no idea how to tell the difference between most of his blood and all of it.” She closed her eyes. A wave of nausea swept over her. She remembered how Sebastian had bitten down onto his lip, how his blood had covered her breasts. “I’m gonna puke.”
“You’ll do fine.”
“No, Nana, I’m gonna puke now.”
Nana Lina rushed from the room and returned a moment later with a waste basket. She shoved it into Diana’s hands just in time.
As soon as her hands closed around the rim, Diana started throwing up all the food she’d ingested over the course of the day to appease the gnawing hunger that had hit her on her way to work and had yet to abate.
“Diana,” she smiled, handing her a wet wash rag. “I know you’ll do fine. I’ve never been wrong before, have I?”
“You’ve known about the vampires. Am I the only one who didn’t believe in them?” After she swiped the cloth across her mouth, Diana folded it and pressed the clean side to her cheeks. Although she still felt the chill deep in her bones, the wet cloth cooled her burning skin. She dropped her head onto the back of the couch and closed her eyes. “I just want to cry. I want…I want to break something. I want…” Shoving her knuckles against her eyes, she sobbed, “He’s been lying all along.”
Why hadn’t Sebastian told her all this? How could he begin this strange ritual without asking her if she even wanted to bond with him?
And what the hell did it mean to be bonded?
“Are you still weak from last night?” Nana Lina lifted her hand and pressed two fingers to her wrist.
Yanking her hand free, Diana scowled. “God, Nana, I’m not dead.” She took off her shoes and tucked her feet under her legs, then sent her grandmother a smile of gratitude when she draped a thick throw over her lap. “You couldn’t have given me a better hint about him being a vampire, Nana. But I always told myself that Dad was a little loony in that department. Believing in them and telling me he destroyed them.”
“Dia—”
“But he did, didn’t he?” Diana swatted at the wave of fresh tears that flowed down her cheeks. “He killed a little girl’s father. Did you know that?”
“Let’s talk about you, dear. Last night, when you gave yourself to—”
“Sebastian.” She groaned. “At least that’s the name he gave me.”
“As I was saying, when you gave yourself to Sebastian after seeing that he was a vampire, you offered your life to him. He, in turn, had a decision to make.”
“Oh? Poor guy. Had to decide to screw or not to screw?”
“No, Diana. He had to decide whether to accept it—your life—and you as his bonded mate, to refuse and leave or to end it if he chose.”
“Back up! Did you just say he could have killed me?” Diana jumped up on her knees. “It would have been nice if someone had informed me about that!”
“Diana, we’ll never finish before dusk if you don’t stop interrupting.”
“He never said I could die. He never even said it was a damn, what did you call it, bonding ritual? I trusted him.” Diana started to tremble.
“In your heart, you knew exactly what you were doing.”
“No! I thought I was deciding whether or not to screw. Not turn into a vampire. I’m so cold.” Her eyes widened and filled with a fresh wave of tears. “And I’m so hungry, Nana. What has he done to me?”
Leaning over, her grandmother lifted a panel on the massive coffee table and revealed a hidden compartment.
“Hey, I never knew that was there!” Diana leaned over, nearly toppling off the couch.
“Diana, listen. You’re acting this way—”
Standing up and pacing before the fire, Diana laughed nervously. “I’m just a little tired. And completely freaked out. What with finding out a vampire’s been drinking my blood and I,” she squeezed her eyes shut, recalling how sweet his kisses were, how she’d suckled his lip, “I’ve been drinking his. Oh God. I have vampire blood in my veins.”
“Sit down. Now, Diana.” She held out her hand, revealing a round wafer. “Take this.”
Diana glanced down at the pink wafer. “A Necco? I never liked those things.” She began to turn away and gasped when her grandmother firmly pushed her back down onto the couch.
“It’s not candy, Diana. It’s…it’s medicine. Now take it.”
Within moments of biting down on the hard disk she felt calmer, the edginess she’d felt all afternoon abated and the hunger, while still there, no longer hurt. Her chills slowly ebbed.
She turned wide eyes on her grandmother. “How is it you know all about their rituals? How did you know I’d need one of those?”
“Because I’ve been through it.” Her grandmother sighed. “Sometimes you lose, Diana. Sometimes love doesn’t conquer all. You find your soul mate, but it’s too late. You have a husband, a child. Sometimes you think you can lie down with a man and walk away unscathed. But you don’t.”
Tears welled in Diana’s eyes. “You got pregnant and had to get married. That’s why you were always so adamant that I stay a virgin. But you must have gone through the ritual if you knew how I’d need that wafer.”
Nana Lina rose and walked over to the fireplace, gathering the thick sweater she always wore across her chest. “We nearly completed it. We spent our month in each other’s arms, fighting our desires, our hunger. It was torture, but our love was so strong.” She swiped at a tear, and whispered, “We nearly made it to the final night. It’s magical, Diana.”
Diana couldn’t imagine being wrapped in Sebastian’s arms and not giving in to her desires. It seemed the moment he so much as touched her, she had no control over her body.
She should be angry, should want nothing more of him and his secrets. But she knew that the moment she saw him, her passion would overpower all else. And seeing the look on her grandmother’s face as she recalled her final night, Diana could barely stop herself from running out in search of Sebastian. “Tell me about it, Nana.”
“Well, I’ve already told you what will happen tonight. But there’s one more. You make love, equally exchanging passion for passion, blood for blood. You each completely drain each other at the same time u
ntil your blood has completely merged and become one. And then, just a few hours before dawn, you go before the elders, their oldest, and declare yourselves bonded mates. I hear they all turn out to celebrate.”
Her voice broke, tearing at Diana’s heart even though the words bonded mates trapped the air in her lungs. She rose and, walking up to stand behind her grandmother, wrapped her arms around her. She rested her chin on her grandmother’s shoulder.
“What happened, Nana? I can tell by the way you described it that you experienced the last night.”
“No, I didn’t. Your father was just nine years old. He saw us that last night. By the lake. We thought we were alone. When I’d left the house, Frank had been fast asleep and I felt secure since he never had been one to awake during the night.”
Diana nodded. “Once Dad’s out for the night, war could break out right in front of the house and he wouldn’t know about it until the next day.”
“Well, something or someone woke him that night.”
“Maybe Grandpa?”
“Your grandfather, bless his soul, knew I had fallen in love. Accepted it. He would have stopped Frank if he’d seen him leaving the house. Anyway, Damien and I were discussing our declaration and how I must let the elders know that I accepted him as a vampire and wished to bind myself to him for eternity. Frank ran up and started pelting Damien with rocks, calling him a monster and begging me not to leave him. What could I do?”
Her grandmother turned, wiping tears from her face. “How could I leave my child? I thought Damien and I could see each other in secret until Frank grew up, but their most revered elder discovered that I already had a husband and child. They are one of the few of their kind able to bear children and consider it a crime to take a human mother from her offspring. As punishment, Damien was forced to bond with another.” Her voice broke on a sob.
It struck Diana that wherever her grandmother’s tears had streamed down her face, the fine lines that told her age vanished. She raised her hand and touched the crow’s feet on the outer corners of Nana’s eyes. “Your wrinkles aren’t real, are they?”
“My life is longer than it should be because his blood runs through my veins.”
“Oh, Nana.” She knew she would do anything to experience the love that shone in her grandmother’s eyes when she spoke of Damien. Even continue this bonding ritual with Sebastian. Just the thought of losing Sebastian, of never seeing him again, broke her heart. “I’m so scared. What if I take too much blood and lose Sebastian? How will I go on? What would become of me?”
“They believe humans go mad from uncompleted bondings, become what they call Slashers.”
Shuddering, Diana slid her arms around her grandmother. The scent of fresh baked bread and Dove soap soothed her. “Slashers. I’ve heard about them.”
“They’re bloodthirsty creatures capable of draining a vampire in seconds. If they can’t find vampire blood, they drain each other and humans.”
“If they’re killing humans, why isn’t it all over the news?”
“Because the vampires have been protecting themselves and us. By law, any human who tastes a vampire’s blood and doesn’t complete the ritual must be brought to Fentmore, a secret island, and abandoned there.”
Diana shook her head. “But you didn’t—”
“Oh for weeks I imagined every shadow, every noise was Damien coming to take me there.”
“So they’re wrong about humans going mad?”
“Most do. In a way, we all do, Diana. We’re never warm and a hunger we can never appease consumes us. Your grandfather, bless his soul, invested all our money and eventually found a scientist who claimed to have found a cure for vampirism.”
“A cure?”
“Well, not like he claimed. But it does help.” Nana Lina walked over to the table and lifted another wafer, then popped it into her mouth. “These help maintain my sanity, satisfy the hunger and control the need to do something, anything, to get what I’d lost. But they do nothing for my heart. Sometimes I think that’s what drives us mad, not the bloodlust.”
Diana sat with her grandmother on the couch and leaned her head on her shoulder. “What became of Damien?”
“I never saw him again. I call to him, but he never answers.” She sighed. “I think he’s afraid to open his mind to me, afraid he’ll discover I’m mad and be forced, by law, to bring me to Fentmore.”
“That’s why Dad hates them and hunts them down?” Even knowing how many he claimed to have destroyed, her heart still broke for the young boy her father once was. “Because he thought one had almost taken you from him?”
Drawing in a shaky breath, Nana Lina kissed the top of Diana’s head. “I feel responsible for everyone he’s killed. But, Diana, he’s gone over the line this time and I fear you’ll pay for his crimes.”
* * * * *
“He’ll pay for this!” Olympia shrieked, tearing her raven hair from her head. “Betrayed by my own son!” She flung back her head and let out a bloodcurdling scream, but it did little to relieve her rage.
Tomas pressed his back against the wall. “Aunt Olympia, wait until he can explain before you freak out.”
“What could he say? What could he say?” She threw an ancient bowl at the plasma television on the wall above Tomas.
Before the shattering glass had a chance to land on his head, the coward sped to the other side of the den.
Olympia flung the couch between them across the room with one hand. “He’s bonding with her. I can feel it. Will that family ever stop tormenting me?”
Tomas merely nodded, her spittle dripping down his cheeks. He let out a ragged breath when she spun around.
She turned her wrath on Damien. Sitting on the only furniture she hadn’t upturned, he looked just as handsome as the day she’d first seen him walking beside her father and Dracula. Her heart ached. “And you. How could you allow him to bond with the daughter of the man responsible for Marek’s death? You swore he was only trying to find out how her father overpowered his victims. You swore he didn’t even know she was his soul mate.”
Damien merely shrugged his shoulders. “I lied. You had no right to plot the demise of your own son’s soul mate. Stop dwelling on Marek and embrace the son of your loins and his chosen mate.”
She glanced at an overturned end table and sent it hurtling toward his face.
Damien scowled. The table veered away from him and slammed into a wall. He was upon her immediately, claws and fangs ready for battle. Pinning her to the wall, he brought his face close to hers.
She inwardly cursed her body when it reacted the way it always did in his presence. One look from him, one touch, and she melted. But he never gave her the look she craved, never touched the way she needed. “Damien…”
“Do not tempt me, Olympia.” His voice shook. “I could rip you to shreds and young Tomas here would be my witness that you dared assault your mate and elder!”
“I could just see you and the elders watching my son and that spawn of the devil mating.” Glaring at him, she pushed him away. “How could you stand by and let this happen? Why protect Sebastian? He’s not even yours,” she hissed.
“As Marek was not yours. You might have convinced everyone else at that meeting that you mourn for Marek and only want vengeance for his death, but I know it’s jealousy that drives you. You want to destroy anyone related to Angelina.”
“You dare say her name in my house?”
“You know as well as I that she’s mad. What more do you hope to accomplish by going after her granddaughter?”
Olympia knew Angelina had not gone mad. Unlike Damien, she had wanted to see Angelina writhing in agony and calling out incessantly for his return. She’d waited a week after their ritual had been brought to a halt. Nothing could have shocked her more than finding Damien’s human whore functioning as if she didn’t carry vampire blood in her veins, as if the hunger wasn’t gnawing at her insides.
Damien had believed her when she had told him that
his lover was already beyond help. And when she vowed to keep Angelina’s madness a secret for him only if he promised never to seek her out, he’d stayed away from the whore all these years.
“Sebastian has the right to bond with someone he could love. Someone who loves him,” Damien said in a weary voice. “At least she will never spread her legs for every male that reaches maturity.”
“I wouldn’t have had to if you’d satisfied me!” Olympia sank down to her knees as Damien and Tomas left. She glanced at the portrait of her son and stepson on the wall over the fireplace.
Marek had been a necessary sacrifice, Sebastian an unavoidable victim. But she would miss their company. At least with them around, she had always known someone loved her.
Angelina would pay for saddling her with a mate whose heart she’d stolen. Somehow she would take Angelina’s granddaughter from her and leave her with no one but the son who had kept her from bonding with Damien.
Just as she now hated Sebastian for putting an end to her plans, she felt Angelina must surely hate Frank.
“You’ll pay for this, Sebastian. From this day on, I have no son.” She hugged her knees to her chest. “And all because of that damn family. Oh but they will pay. Now they all will pay.”
Sebastian stood in the hallway, listening to his mother rant. Although Olympia had never been an overtly loving mother, his heart broke at her words. She’d disowned him. And if that wasn’t enough, he would now have to spend every waking moment protecting Diana from her.
Leaving the house he’d grown up in, he stared up at the stars. He’d already wasted too much time. Tonight he and Diana would mate again. Diana would drain him, bring him right up to death’s door and hopefully stop before he died. Then he would be so weak, he’d have no choice but to trust her to protect him from her father through the rest of the night and the next day.
But who would protect Diana?
As if he’d heard his thought, Damien appeared.
“I’m coming with you tonight. I have a place where you’ll be safe from Olympia and Frank. They’ll never find you.”
Sebastian felt his fangs stir in anticipation of being with Diana again. “And if Olympia does? If she finds us while I’m too weak to help Diana?”
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