Laws of the Blood 1: The Hunt

by Susan Sizemore

He didn’t remember.

  We’ve known each other for a long time.

  An image formed behind his closed eyes, of himself soaking tired muscles in a chest-deep pool of steaming water. There were eunuchs moving about, and a female slave approached, holding a cool sherbet he’d ordered. She had an extraordinarily beautiful mouth and a sharp, secretive smile. Other images formed and faded.

  He knew the woman holding him prisoner in his own bed, though he’d never noticed her before. Known her for years. All his life. She’d been in the nursery when he was a babe. Among the women when he was brought to the Cage. She never changed or aged a day. Never spoke or caught anyone’s attention. She was always just—there.

  But never in the daylight.

  No. He couldn’t recall seeing her in the daylight.

  I waited a long time for you to grow up, she told him. It’s been a long, sweet Hunt. Now you will be my companion.

  What a beautiful word. He wanted her to let him touch her. To bury himself in her. That was all that mattered.

  My pleasure?

  Yes.

  He cried out in sudden terror. There was no stopping the scream, though it had no chance to escape his throat.

  What are you?

  Another image was thrust into his mind. He remembered the thick, syrupy mockery of a brother’s laughter pouring over him. “They are all the same in the dark; soft, skilled mouths and wet heat between their thighs. Close your eyes as they pleasure you, and you can’t tell them apart.” He had tried that game more than once. His brother was right in some things. The palace women were all expertly trained in the same arts, all equally beautiful, all smiled or laughed or kept silent as the moment dictated. Their names did not matter, their lovely faces were interchangeable.

  But they were not the same in the dark of his bedroom, or when his eyes were closed as he thrust into sleek, silky, surrounding flesh. It was then, when he was inside them, that he knew a woman best, when she was open and real, her mind as vulnerable for a moment as her body. It was only the ones who actually felt something toward him that he brought back to his bed more than once, even if what they felt was hate or contempt. Greed, ambition, those were familiar emotions, as well. He’d absorbed all of them in one mix or another, been aroused by them. Lived on them.

  That was what she was. An emotional vampire.

  Clever child.

  This—vampire—lived on what he felt.

  You’re a skinny, underfed thing, but you’ll do. Her amusement was silent, and terrifying.

  Then she was lying with him. Small as she was, she filled the bed, the world. He felt the weight of her very real body, all lush, exciting curves, bare satin skin stretched out on top of him. The tips of her breasts were hot, hard points against his chest. His cock pressed against her belly. He had never been more aroused, even knowing she fed on what he was feeling.

  “Not just emotions,” she said, voice husky with her own need. Then she bit him.

  • • •

  She tasted hot, sweet blood and moaned in her sleep. Turkish delight. The thought rose to the surface like a champagne bubble, so bright and happy that she giggled out loud. It was the surprise of joy that brought her as close to awake as was possible in the middle of the day. Yevgeny wasn’t beside her to account for the moistness between her thighs, the delicious ache deep inside her, or the languorous heaviness in her breasts. She felt the brush of cooled air across her hard nipples and actually heard herself moan. There was no blood in her mouth, but she tasted it there. Good Goddess but she was horny! That wasn’t something that happened often, and certainly not in the dead of day when she ought to be still as a statue with every sense turned inward, walking the invisible paths of the old ones.

  Or something like that.

  Lady of Snakes, but she could fall into archaic language patterns with the best of them. Language evolved. It looked like vampires did, too, or she wouldn’t be having trouble sleeping lately. Of course, if she was going to develop insomnia, it would be better if she was up writing instead of too aroused to think straight and too frozen to do anything about it. Was this some new punishment? Thou shalt not masturbate—because you can’t. Nyah, nyah!

  Valentine laughed again. She could actually hear herself laugh! Amazing. The first thing she could do in the daylight was laugh. And be turned on. She was having way too much fun lately. Wasn’t she supposed to be old and wise and deep and decadent? A creature of spirit? A force of evil? To think deep thoughts well beyond the puny concepts that could be imagined by the minds of men? Well, screw that. She’d always been pretty shallow, come to think of it. She felt like a teenager. Giddy. She hadn’t felt this good since—

  Ah. That was it.

  Valentine made a conscious effort to be unconscious, to sink back down to the level of awareness where she belonged, where the dreams lived. She had never resented anything so much in her long life, but the daylight world was not where she dwelled. It was not where her life was taking place. Down below the conscious level, someone she knew very well was walking in her dreams. Turnabout’s fair play. She’d been walking in his for weeks.

  Hello, little boy, she thought as she plunged through layers of swirling darkness. Miss me?

  He strained toward her, hard and needy. Her light mood fled as she found herself rolled onto her back on a bed two hundred and fifty years in the past. Pillows scattered. Moonlight filtered gently from the latticework windows high overhead. The reflection of sunlight blinded her. She screamed and clawed at the light, until Selim pinned her hands with his, forced her to stare at the full, blazing moon. It was like being trapped in the center of a bright spotlight while sharply cut diamonds rained down, slashing her naked skin. For an instant the legend about vampires being burned by the sun became reality. Somehow the myth was part of Selim’s dream about being with her. She adjusted her reality accordingly, and the light became normal, beautiful, without pain, once again.

  She slipped out of his frenzied grasp. Touched him softly. Deft fingers smoothed over his face, through his hair, along the taut muscles of his back and down his flanks, while he panted and moaned. Sweat beaded on his skin. He glittered bronze in the moonlight. Pain radiated from him. And longing, loneliness worse than anything she’d ever felt from the lost boy raised in a luxurious prison.

  “What are you on, sweetheart?” she asked him. “What hurts so bad?” She took his face in her hands. He was blind. Gone. Crying. “Tell Mama all about it.” She put one arm around him, rocked him, stroked the pulsing length of his erection, and lifted her head when he nuzzled at her neck. His teeth found her pulse. Fire trailed clean, sweet pain down her throat. She threw her leg over his and guided them together. She buried her claws in his shoulder blades, felt the pop of skin and blood sticky on the palms of her hands as he filled her. She raked stinging trails swiftly down his back. His spine arched, head coming up with a sharp cry. She grabbed his buttocks as her inner muscles tightened around his shaft, wrapped her legs around his waist. When he tried to buck, she forced him to be still, and let him bleed. She kissed him while she tortured him, her mouth hot on his, their tongues dancing and twining through the barrier of primary fangs.

  Fangs. She licked at them, ran her tongue slowly across them. The tip of his tongue touched first one and then the other deadly point of her extended canines. Electric shudders shot through her burning blood. Sweet Goddess! She thought, and returned the favor. It had never been like this before. Never, in thousands and thousands of years.

  It was never supposed to be like this.

  Forbidden! Forbidden! Forbidden!

  Whether the thought was his or hers didn’t matter. It was the shock of surprise that sent both of them over the edge. Vampires kissing. Impossible. Forbidden.

  Selim screamed into her mouth and jerked frantically. The caged animal escaped her trap, pushed her thighs up against her chest, and drove into her with a mingled cry of terror and lust. She rose frantically to his thrusts in the same horrified fever, mon
ster fucking monster. A scream of need escaped her torn throat, answered by a soul-deep bellow as he possessed her with pounding strokes, unleashing all his strength and force and need. Sun flares of orgasms burned up through her belly and blood and brain.

  This is just a dream, she told herself when she could think again. One he unknowingly pulled her into. Neither of them were responsible for the shape of the dream. They might not even remember it come nightfall. The collapsed weight on top of her didn’t feel like a dream. It felt like a warm, sweat-slick, sated, slack-muscled male. She didn’t have to wonder if it had been good for him, too. This did not happen, she reminded herself again. She wasn’t going to just lie there with a satisfied smile on her face and hold him in her arms until they both woke in their separate beds hours from now.

  With great reluctance she made herself drift up out of the dream and walk into the mind that was doing the dreaming. Selim slept on in two different places: his body in Pasadena, and most of the rest of him created a dream that he was on a bed in Istanbul. Where the sheets haven’t been changed in over two centuries, Valentine thought at the sleeping prince. I’ve stayed in some motels like that.

  A part of Selim that wasn’t in California or Turkey but somewhere much more distant, farther and deeper inside him, stirred, stretched, yawned. So have I.

  This dreamer was blind, deaf, not really there. It had a voice, but not one Selim would hear when he was awake. This dreamer lived in the memories that couldn’t quite be caught, within the vague fears, the most absent part of the mind. It came in very handy for those who knew how to talk to it. She had never been able to reach this part of him for more than a few moments at a time in all the weeks she’d been riding him.

  She wanted to ask him what they’d just—dreamed—had been all about, but some things were better left unexplored. She did say, Honey, you need to get back together with your companion.

  Siri.

  It was a word, a name, and a prayer. It held all the love in the world. The boy had it bad, but then, she knew that. She admired his resolve, if not his methods, even if they were her own. She wanted to tell him to do what she said, not what she did, but this wasn’t a part of him that could listen to her. Besides, she wanted to know about his life, not interfere with it.

  Keeping that in mind, she probed gently deeper into his store of knowledge. She figured she might as well get some work done as long as she was here. Tell me about the child, she urged. Tell me all the details—and I’ll make you both famous.

  • • •

  The ringing phone woke Selim up.

  “Oh, boy,” he said, staring blankly at the ceiling.

  The discordant, jarring sound came again, and again. Staring didn’t change anything. Blinking didn’t help. There was no daylight coming in through the carved latticework of the roof. There was nothing but a blank white ceiling over his head. What had happened to the blue and white tiles on the walls? He stretched his hands across the width of the mattress, but no body shared this bed with him. Where was she?

  “Siri?” he asked.

  Who?

  A vision of another face floated across his mind, blotting out the dull white ceiling. Black curls half obscured her big, dark eyes. His hands grasped with aching longing to hold the slenderest waist in all the world. The cursed noise kept calling to him. He reached out toward the big-eyed phantom even as she faded. Her rich, warm mouth was the last thing to fade, curved in a teasing smile, fangs pressed seductively against her full lower lip.

  “Damn,” he muttered. Selim sat up, scrubbed sleep and the dead past out of his eyes. His soul weighed a ton. He felt like he’d been outside his skin but hadn’t put it back on right. The merciless telephone kept ringing. He grabbed the receiver. “What?” He was barely aware that he asked the question in Turkish.

  “You left a message to meet you at Dar Maghreb.” The sound of Middle Eastern music underlay the harsh tone of Don Tomas’s voice. “Where are you?”

  Not where he was supposed to be. Selim looked at the clock on the table beside the telephone. “Overslept. Rough day,” he answered. Bad dreams. Good dreams? He wasn’t sure. “Tom, do you ever—? Do you and Cassandra—?”

  “What?” It was more of an annoyed growl than a word. Spoken in Spanish.

  Selim shook away the last of sleep, the last of memory. Some things were better not to think about or to know. Especially when the answers could bring death. “Nothing.”

  “Why did you want to see me?”

  The hard voice, the tautly strung together words, reminded Selim of this week’s reality. He told Don Tomas about the rising tension from the shooting. “What do you think?”

  After a considerable silence, he received only a single-word answer. “When?”

  Selim stretched and scratched his chest. The bedclothes were not rumpled. The room did not smell of sex. There was no sticky dryness of sweat and semen or blood on his body. There were no visible marks. No proof. But he was empty, physically, psychically, all the way to his soul. He needed—

  What he hadn’t gotten last night. Needed those strong, sharp emotions that speared into him and kept him going. We live on emotion, was the first lesson he’d learned. Blood is just for sex. He didn’t want blood—liar!—he wanted to not be alone. That was what last day’s dream had been telling him. She’d risen up out of his subconscious to deliver the message he wanted to hear.

  “I’ll get back to you, Tomas.” He stood up, looked wildly around. He checked the clock again. There was still time. “I have somewhere I have to be.”

  “You wanted to meet with me.”

  “I’ve changed my mind.” Don Tomas was not used to being put off or hung up on. Selim did both.

  He hurried to get dressed and get out of the house. He could make it, running hard all the way to the Forum. Maybe afterward he could get Siri to give him a ride to his late-night appointment. Maybe she’d be there. If she wasn’t out with her blond. Maybe she wouldn’t show up, but he had a strong feeling she would. Sometimes he had to go with his feelings where Siri was concerned. Besides, Hunt or no Hunt, he hated missing a home game.

  Chapter 15

  HE DIDN’T HAVE time for domestic drama. He didn’t have time to indulge his hobbies. He should be working right now. Time was short. The world around him was howlingly tense and short-tempered. He should be out patrolling the streets, keeping death-starved strigs and nesters in line. Where’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer when I need to take a night off? Selim wondered as he glanced at the empty seat beside him.

  Where was Siri when he wanted to see her? He always wanted to, damn it! That was the whole point of having a companion: companionship. Plus sex. Damn, he missed the sex. A bit from last day’s dream floated to the surface, sending a shock wave of lust and remembered lust through him. Whatever he’d dreamed wasn’t quite clear. It had been intense, off, wrong. Not Siri.

  What was he going to do if she showed up, drag her under the seating area? Why not just make love to her right here in the third row center court seats? Because he wasn’t going to make love to her. He just wanted to see her, be with her. That was all. He bunched his fists tightly as a reminder against sprouting claws. He kept his mouth firmly closed, didn’t run his tongue over his teeth. He kept his temper under control and tried not to contemplate how much he had enjoyed killing Jager and how much he was going to enjoy running down the next one who got out of line. It wasn’t sex, but it was something.

  “Please,” he murmured. “Let the next one be blond.”

  She wasn’t going to come. Why should she? He’d started this. She was doing what he wanted. Who said he wanted it? What made him think he could live alone? He was a selfish bastard. He was sick of worrying about her. He could call her. He would. No he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t break his vow of abstinence. He gave her free will, as much as possible. Free mind. Free choice in everything but when and how they made love.

  It was still early, he reminded himself. The game was only in the first quarter. T
he crowd energy hadn’t gotten going yet. He’d lose himself in the energy soon. It would ease the lonely ache a little. It was Siri who brought him to his first game. He’d caught her addiction immediately. There was a psychic art as well as athletic skill to this sport, like chess in motion, like war as ballet. And when the teams’ and the audience’s excitement took off—delicious!

  Basketball, the sport of vampires, he thought and sank glumly down in his seat. Siri was off somewhere enjoying the freedom he’d pushed on her. Who cared about some stupid game?

  You do, she answered, and sat down beside him. “You missed me,” she stated as Selim sat up straight with more than human speed. Heads turned their way, but no one could look away from the playing for long. She put a warning hand on his arm. He stared at it. She wore a black pearl ring he’d given her on their first anniversary. Did she always wear it? He couldn’t remember. Females noticed jewelry. Males noticed . . . women.

  “You’re beautiful,” he told her, but the sudden roaring of the crowd blew the words away. “It’s only been a couple of nights,” he reminded himself, as much as her. “But I missed you more than I thought.”

  Her smile was slight but fierce. Her tone smug. “Good.”

  Selim caught himself and considered biting his tongue. Biting her breasts would be better. The insides of her thighs. The tiny scar on her back where her waist began to flare into the lovely round curve of her ass—the scar she’d had the clasped hands and heart of a clad-dagh tattooed around. The Irish marriage symbol was a memento of the first time he’d tasted her, though neither of them were Irish. The scar would remain, there was magic in that, called a witchmark by ancient witch hunters who knew what they were talking about. Pity the tattoo was beginning to fade as her immune system strengthened. There was something sexy about a woman having a tattoo in a spot where only her lover could see it.

  The crowd’s excitement was getting through his shields, rattling him, making it easy to let his own emotions out. A year of restraint had just blown out the window, and here he and Siri were, grinning at each other like a pair of newlyweds. He noticed that they were holding hands. He reminded himself why there’d been a year of restraint, though the reminder didn’t help much.