The touch of his hand on her elbow as he ushered her toward his front door was delicate, his attitude civilized, even slightly embarrassed. She felt his thoughts that it was rather silly and odd for a man his age to be indulging in a one-night stand. But he wanted her all right. His thoughts were civilized, but his emotions were a storm of lust. It wasn’t anything she’d done to him. Chemistry rather than telepathy was involved here. It pleased her to know that his desire came from within himself. He wanted her. It pleased her, flattered her, disarmed her, even.
And she certainly wanted him. His aura, his touch, even the sound of his voice, sizzled through her. It was a pleasantly refreshing sensation for a jaded old bird like her. It was a mortal kind of desire, this wanting of his flesh for purposes other than feasting. She missed mortal sensation. All this living at an acutely psychic level wore one down sometimes.
“This is fun,” she said and kissed him again. They’d been making out pretty heavily at every stoplight on the way over, and she and the soldier boy were as disheveled as they were hot and bothered. She’d taken him outside for a little tête-à-tête for Lora’s sake. She meant to mind-rape the poor bastard and go about her business. Instead he’d touched her, a simple brush of his fingers against her cheek and throat, their gazes had met—and they’d ended up here.
“This is no way for grown-ups to act,” he answered when she stopped kissing him long enough to let him catch his breath. His hands made more of a mess of her dress while he added, “Maybe we better get in off the street before the neighbors notice.”
“They won’t notice,” she assured him as he turned away long enough to unlock the door. “But let’s get horizontal somewhere comfortable.” Simple passion this might be, but she’d never done it in doorways. Queens and vampires learned to watch their backs. Never do anything distracting in a place where you might be vulnerable.
His picking her up and spinning them into the front hall like a pair of newlyweds crossing a threshold caught her totally by surprise. The gesture caught her even more off guard than his almost immortal speed. She was surprised by the house as well when he put her down in the front hall. The only light he turned on lit the staircase at the end of the narrow hallway. Her colonel had called the place home. His presence permeated it, soul, spirit, and dreams, and had for a long time. This was not some place he’d leased for the duration of a tour of duty. “You were born here.”
He didn’t seem surprised by what she’d said. “I’ve lived here on and off my whole life,” he answered.
Interesting.
“Maybe this would be a good time for introductions,” he added, putting his arm around her shoulders and urging her toward the stairs.
“You know who I am,” she said. “Mike—”
“Falconer.”
Even more interesting.
“Really?”
“It’s not an uncommon name.”
“I have heard it a couple of times recently.”
“Really? Where?”
She almost stopped this little escapade right then, but he touched her cheek with the back of his hand, all the while giving her a sweet, curious smile that sent a fresh jolt of heat through her jaded senses. Instead she gave a throaty, sexy chuckle, and said, “Never mind.”
She slipped her arm around his waist and pulled him up the stairs.
“I shouldn’t be saying this, but—your blood smells really great, you know?”
“Uh—thanks.” Sara did not know what to think of Andrew’s words. On the one hand no one had ever said that to her before. On the other hand, no vampire should pay her such a compliment, and not only because it wasn’t true. If she had a third hand, she might consider the ramifications of someone on the not exactly empty Georgetown street overhearing them. There were lights on in most of the townhouses they passed, lots of traffic in the street, but she supposed they were private enough. Being overheard was fine for him—Andrew was planning on exiting this mortal and immortal coil.
“I know you have an arrangement with the Hunter,” he went on. “But I wanted you to know. Sorry.”
He was being far too gentlemanly in calling what she had with Olympias an arrangement. She wasn’t sure what she resented more at this moment, the truth, or Andrew’s kindness in disguising it. He did not look deathly pale when they stopped to stand beneath the glow of a streetlamp. He was such an attractive young man, even with his unfashionably long hair and brooding expression. His eyes were large and dark, quite thickly fringed with long lashes. She felt magic when she looked into them. There didn’t seem to be anything particularly otherworldly about him. He seemed like such a nice man, though he talked about blood, her blood, as though it were a sweet perfume.
“That’s all right,” she said. “I—”
“The world is very strange, I know,” he interrupted, catching her thoughts.
“Our world—”
“Your world.” His expression turned harsh, bitter. “I’m out of here as soon as it can be arranged.”
“I—”
“You can’t imagine why anyone would want to die, can you?”
“Will you let me get a word in?” She should have fear, or at least cautious respect for him, he was a vampire, but Sara found herself wanting to stomp her foot in frustration, preferably on top of one of his grimy athletic shoes.
He looked like he was about to say something, then he smiled and put a finger over his lips instead.
Fine. Good. He was going to let her get in a few words. But what did she want to say, and why was it important that she talk to this suicidal vampire?
Why do you want to know why, you mean?
Telepathy is cheating. It’s still talking. Out of my head! she ordered. Frankly, there was nothing deep and dark and tortured about his touch in her mind. She felt gentleness, amusement—fondness? For who? Her? He didn’t feel insane. She grabbed Andrew by the arm and tugged him deeper into the darkness. He could pull shadows around him. She needed to rely on the tall bushes in front of one of the houses to provide them with more cover from the lights of passing traffic.
She pulled him closer, grabbing him by the front of his shirt this time. “First off, bub, I’m not a vampire, never going to be one—so stop referring to our world when you talk to me. I work for a vampire, and believe me, from the outside I am painfully aware of all the advantages your kind have over my kind. You have amazing powers. You have immortality. You have the power of life and death over us measly little mortal creatures. You could rule the world if you bloody well wanted to. You can have all the wealth and power and slaves and worshipers you—”
“You called me ‘bub.’ ”
“Did I? Who cares? Don’t interrupt me in mid—”
“Diatribe,” Andrew finished, annoyingly.
“Tirade,” she corrected.
“Whatever you say, sister.”
“Sister?”
Andrew smiled. She knew the sight of mating fangs even when she only caught a faint glimpse of them in the night.
“Well!” she said, and tried to back away. His hands were on her waist, and his eyes looked compellingly into hers. He wasn’t letting her go anywhere, and she didn’t really want to.
She knew this was getting them nowhere, but she hadn’t felt so alive in years. She realized how close they were to each other, and how close they were to something happening between them. She’d never felt her blood race like this, never felt the air sizzle and crackle in a way that made her hair stand on end and sensitized her skin in a way that intimately caressed her even though she knew she wasn’t being touched. She’d never felt this flare of insatiable hunger, not even the one time Olympias had—
“You don’t belong to her,” Andrew said.
She did. “I do.” What difference did it make to him anyway? “You’re the one who wants to die,” she added. “Do you want to take me with you?”
“Of course not. I—want to take you.”
His last words came out slowly, full of diffidence and embarrassment.
She absorbed his emotions, keeping herself from blurting out that she wanted him as well.
Andrew sighed, said, “Come on,” and then he pulled her deeper into the shadows. They ended up on a bench deep in a mansion’s back garden. His hands and mouth were all over her. It was wonderful and frightening at once. Sara only barely managed to keep her hands off of him. She couldn’t help but respond to a long, deep kiss, but she didn’t move. His weight covered her and the heat of his body permeated her; his touch roused even more heat, but Sara dug her nails into her palms and didn’t move. She didn’t realize she’d drawn blood until he slowly opened her fists and touched his tongue to the crescent cuts in her palms.
“Perfume,” he whispered as he tasted each droplet of blood. “Like roses.”
An orgasm shivered through her, along with an image of blood red roses. She felt him absorbing her emotions, and didn’t care, knowing he took only what she’d let him arouse in her. Was this anywhere near what it was like to be a companion?
The thought hit her so hard she started to cry. Andrew knew her pain as well, and took it, sucked it up with as much fervor as he had her pleasure.
“Parasite,” she heard herself whisper. “Monster.”
“Yes,” he whispered back. He kept caressing her. “Do you want it to stop?”
No. Of course she didn’t. “I don’t make personal choices.” Because she was having trouble controlling her breathing, the words didn’t come out as coherently as she’d have liked, but she knew Andrew understood her anyway.
He moved away from her, helped her to sit up, then sat with his head lowered and his hands clasped tightly on his knees. “Stupid,” he said. “It’s all so stupid.” Sara didn’t say anything, and after the silence dragged out for a long time, he finally looked at her. “The world I’ve lived in for the last fifty years is so utterly stupid—useless, farcically ridiculous. There is nothing right about this world. Nothing sane. I don’t even think we rate as well-adapted parasites. Are we allowed to invent, to create? No. What has any vampire ever done for the world we live off of? There’s a rumor that says we invented all-night convenience stores. What sort of legacy is that?”
“You can’t draw attention yourselves. It isn’t s—”
“Safe? Who cares? Why must we live a life without risk or challenge?”
“Because your—species—would be destroyed if—”
“Who cares? We serve no purpose.” He sighed. “I serve no purpose.”
The bitterness in his voice twisted her heart. She put a hand tentatively on his arm; his muscles were as tense as steel. “You obey the Laws.” She felt like a fool parroting such words. What sort of comfort was that?
He stared into the night. She didn’t think he was aware she was there. “I’d be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by now if Rose hadn’t wanted me. I’d have accomplished something. My wife wouldn’t have died thinking her husband abandoned her. My son would have had something to remember. I would have had a life.”
That stung. “You have immortality,” Sara snapped.
“Never asked for it. Don’t want it.”
“Well, you’ve got it, so you might as well enjoy it!”
“Enjoy—” His hands suddenly gripped her shoulders. The pain was excruciating. His angry face was suddenly too close to hers. “My immortality should have been the son I never got to know, didn’t help raise, couldn’t love but from a distance. I think he’s dead now. Don’t know if seeing him is driving me crazy, or if I’m seeing him because I’m already crazy.”
He pushed her away and was up off the bench pacing before she saw him move. She crossed her arms over her breasts to massage her aching shoulders. Part of her wanted to get up and run, but he’d tasted her blood, which could make her prey in several different ways. More than fear of how this natural hunter would respond should she try to escape held her in place. A thread of sympathy bound her to the restless vampire in front of her. She couldn’t deny that the strong curiosity to know him, know about him, know what drove him that had formed at their first meeting grew stronger with every passing moment they were together.
“How can you see your son if he’s dead? How can you even have a son?”
He swung around sharply to face her. “I wasn’t always a vampire, you know.”
“I know you were Rose Shilling’s companion back in—what?—the fifties?”
“And sixties. Rose took her time draining the mortality out of me. She’s—” He glanced up at the night sky. “I used to think of her as sweet. Even after the devotion we infuse into our companions wore off I thought she was the nicest person I ever met.” He laughed bitterly. “I went Hunting with the woman, watched her change into a creature that kills and consumes mortal beings. She took me Hunting to change me, and I’ve killed since. I want to do it all the time. It’s not the killing of mortals that I mind so much. There are plenty of mortals that need killing. It’s the wanting to Hunt that eats away at you. Until you’ve fought this constant hunger—Rose put that hunger in me.”
“You control the hunger. So does Rose.”
“At least she doesn’t Hunt often. She’s not a woman of strong appetites. She’s not all that interested in sex, either. She didn’t want me in her bed every night—at least she let me have a little bit of a life. I think she only makes companions because she sees it as her duty under the Law. Not every vampire takes companions, you know?”
“Olympias isn’t interested,” she heard herself admit easily, when her duty was to keep silent on any information about her mistress. Somehow, she couldn’t manage to feel any guilt for this minor bit of treason.
“Good for her,” Andrew answered. “I’ve heard that there’s this irresistible urge to make other vampires but—some do it every few decades, some every few centuries, some never reproduce. No matter how few there are of us, there’s still too many.”
“How can you say that?”
“Cause I am one, darlin’.”
“That doesn’t give you the right to—”
“If I had it in me to be an Enforcer, I’d go that route rather than trying to get an Enforcer to rip my heart out.”
“It’s a biological change, isn’t it? Some kind of genetic mutation?”
“More like a magical mutation, I think. The rest of us are helpless against what we are. We can’t kill each other or ourselves. I did try—at least I tried to think about thinking about doing it. Made me sick—helped make me crazy. So I turned to the Laws . . . like a good little strigoi. I figure the best I can do is contribute a few meals to somebody who can destroy us. We should die. It’s a good thing the population’s so small. I’m glad that the mortality rate among fledglings is so high—bet you didn’t know that, did you?”
She did, she was the one conducting the vampire census. One reason nests existed was to nurse newborn vampires through the crucial months or years it took them to regain their senses. Not all nest leaders were as careful and concerned about this difficult task as they should be. Even in the caring nests, not every fledgling adapted to the difficult physical and mental changes required to become a full-fledged vampire. Despite her knowledge, this time Sara only shrugged.
“I’ve made a vampire, back when I was still living in California. I performed the spells while he made his first kill. That makes me a bloodsire, I guess, but I’ve never had a companion,” he went on. “He probably lived. The nest that took him in was strong. It was a nest I had to leave, even though this man and I had never been lovers. I’ve had nightmares ever since. That’s what started this downhill slide. That’s when the loneliness started eating away at me. And I did it as a favor, thinking I was doing a good thing for a man who deserved a second chance.” He gestured toward the sky. “As if vampires can do good. All I did was create another vampire.”
Sara figured this was no time to say that she didn’t see anything wrong with that. She’d certainly lost control—of her emotions, of the situation, of the conversation—if she’d ever had control of any
of it. “Sit down,” she told him.
She patted the spot beside her on the bench. She figured they were both surprised when he sat down. She was certainly surprised at the shared comfort that came when he put his arm around her and she relaxed automatically against him. Silence reigned for a few minutes, but the tension drained out of it quickly enough. She tried to sort out just where the conversation had veered off and how to bring it back on track.
“Your son,” she said finally. “Tell me about your son.”
“Maybe it’s painful to talk about.”
“Maybe you need to talk about it.”
“Maybe I do. I can’t seem to shut up when I’m around you. Why is it I trust you, Sara?”
Maybe because I am nothing and no one.
“I don’t think so.”
“Stop reading my mind.”
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself. That’s my gig this evening.”
“At least you know it. Your son?” she inquired, before he could answer that he was willing to give her a turn—because she knew that was exactly what he was going to say.
“I was already Rose’s companion when my son was conceived.”
Her skepticism meter went nearly off the scales. “Oh, really?”
He ignored her tone. “I told you Rose was a little—lax. She let me fool around on her.”
“You shouldn’t have been able to.”
He shrugged, and she felt it all along her body. “I’m a musician. Rose knew what musicians are like. She’s not the jealous type.”
Vampires were always the jealous type—or so Sara had been led to believe. “This sounds very—blasphemous.”
“It happened, sweetheart. I was there.”
“Fooling around on your mistress?”
“With my wife.”
This statement curtailed Sara’s outrage somewhat, or if it didn’t curtail it, at least her outrage was smothered by consternation. “Weird,” she said.
“Tell me about it.”
“Tell me.”
“I met my wife in college. I didn’t want to go to college, but my diplomat father insisted. I was glad I went, when I met her. She was from right here in Georgetown. That’s why I’m always drawn back here, I think. One of the reasons I applied directly to Olympias was to get a chance to come home to die.”
Laws of the Blood 4: Deceptions: Deceptions Page 11