Bite Back Box Set 2

by Mark Henwick

  “That’s not going to happen,” I growled.

  Mine.

  Even before I’d spoken about it to her, my Athanate and Were had raced ahead. Dominé was my House, my pack. No jumped-up Californian alpha was going to touch her.

  I had to laugh at myself, which was completely inappropriate in front of someone who’d just told me her life had been threatened.

  She was looking at me quizzically.

  Get back on track.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Who else knows anything about your dealings with the Were, here or in Albuquerque?”

  She frowned. “No one. This is not safe to know. Rita was very clear. As were you, Amber, when we first met in Denver.”

  “Good,” I said, and let my breath whisper slowly out.

  Start with the positives. Calmly.

  “You are safe from them, and you’ll never have to deal with the Were for protection again.”

  She was still looking puzzled. “Good, I think. Why is this?”

  “Because you will now be part of the Athanate.”

  “This is the name you use for vampire, is it not?”

  “The vampire is a myth. The Athanate is the reality.”

  “Very well, so I am part of this Athanate community now,” she said carefully. “Why? And what does being part entail?”

  I sighed. She’d gotten quickly to the point.

  “The why: the same reason as the Pasadena alpha wants to kill you. We protect ourselves from humanity by remaining secret. Weres sometimes kill to achieve that. We usually offer alternatives.”

  “But I have known about you others for a long time. I have never spoken of it. Why am I suddenly a risk?”

  “The Pasadena alpha doesn’t know you. He’s having a knee-jerk reaction,” I said. “For the Athanate, it’s much more complex. I’m afraid that you’re a victim of Athanate politics. On my own, I was satisfied that you were not a risk.” I took a deep breath. “But I’ve been ordered to ensure it. I must make you part of my House. My kin.”

  The shock in her face was quickly hidden and there was barely a rattle of the coffee cup as she replaced it on the saucer.

  “Kin? You used that name down in Albuquerque. You came, into great danger, looking for kin because of an obligation on you.” Her face went calm and thoughtful. “It is rather pleasant to contemplate being that important to someone.”

  Despite the implication of what she said, I was sure that most of her staff thought she was that important to them.

  I had to tell her what kin was. At least the Carpathian version—katikia.

  My mouth was dry.

  Take control of the conversation. Talk about the positives.

  “There are other benefits to being kin,” I said brightly. “Health and long life.”

  “Oh! That sounds like a drinking toast.” She smiled to take the sting from it.

  Dominé was a very clever and sensitive woman. I could see she knew how I was trying to make my case, and no doubt she guessed some of what I was avoiding as well.

  And she hadn’t run screaming.

  I felt myself beginning to relax for the first time since Yelena and I had set out on this task.

  Is this going to be easier than I thought?

  “Oww!” There was a yelp of pain outside the closed door.

  I leaped out of my chair, hand instinctively closing on the gun in my shoulder holster. Before I reached the door, it had opened.

  Yelena was standing there, looking grim and holding Dante’s arm behind her back. “Look who’s been getting an earful,” she said.

  Chapter 15

  “Shit!” I yelled at Dante. “You have no idea what you’ve done.”

  A quick check of the corridor showed there was no one else there.

  We hauled her inside and let her go.

  Dominé had gotten up to comfort her, but the look on Dante’s face wasn’t much about needing comfort. She’d heard every word—about the Athanate, and about me having to make Dominé kin.

  “I haven’t heard anything that’s changed my mind,” she said defiantly.

  “Because you don’t understand!”

  “Explain please, Amber. Explain about kin. Be clear.” Dominé got us sitting down on the sofa with Dante between us and her arm around Dante’s shoulders. Yelena stood behind us, leaning against the back of the sofa.

  “To make you kin, I have to bite you,” I said.

  “Cool,” Dante said.

  “It’s not biting that makes you kin.” I ground my teeth in frustration. This wasn’t how I wanted to present it, all rushed and ugly. “It’s binding. Affecting your brain. You stop being a security threat to the Athanate because we take that option away from you by changing the way you think. By forcing you to be part of us.”

  Dante looked a little less sure for the first time.

  Dominé frowned. “But if I would not have told anyone else about you anyway, what is it that you have taken away from me?”

  “A bit of your free will,” I said.

  There. Said it.

  “In return for which, we have your protection, which is uppermost in my mind at the moment, and health and longer life.” Dominé sat back. “This is not such a bad thing, at least not for me.”

  Dante tossed her head. “I bet there are other benefits, too. Y’know, like friends,” she made quotes in the air, “with benefits. Vampire orgies and stuff.”

  “There aren’t…” I started, but Yelena shook her head fractionally.

  What? Orgies? Crap, I still had too much to learn.

  “Vamp guys are hot too, aren’t they?” Dante hadn’t noticed my verbal stumble.

  “The stories are exaggerated,” I said lamely.

  Athanate had to put effort into staying Athanate—constant exercise and training to keep the body in peak condition. Disfiguring injuries would disappear. Features tended to become more regular, more attractive, and being Athanate gave you pheromones and confidence and, yes, Athanate were ‘hot’, but I wasn’t going to tell Dante that. She was already getting the wrong idea. I glared at her.

  “Are there any other options for Dante?” Dominé asked.

  “Yeah, Yelena could scrub her head out so she remembered nothing from today. Too difficult for you—you’ve been dealing with paranormals for too long, in too many ways. But it’d work with her.”

  “No!” Dante said. “You think I don’t know about the deal in New Mexico with the pack? Anyway, not relevant. Don’t you understand? I want what you’re offering. It’s so cool. I mean, why else am I in this kind of club if I don’t dig it on the edge? And I’m sorry, Dominé, the club’s great, but it’s like make believe. These guys are the real deal.”

  I gave up on Dante and concentrated on Dominé.

  “I don’t think either of you appreciate what—”

  She put up a hand to stop me.

  “When we first met…” Dominé stopped and closed her eyes. We’d met while I was still in the police and she ran just the one club in Denver. Her staff had been attacked by Basilikos Athanate. I’d killed the Basilikos, but too late for some of her staff.

  When she spoke again, her voice had a tiny quaver in it. “My poor Valerie. And my poor sweet, sweet Marcus.” She sighed, looking much older than she had back then. “The Athanate who attacked them—they did not discuss. They compelled. They damaged Marcus’ memory before they killed him. And you say you could do that. You could make us forget or simply compel us to obey, is it not so? And yet you chose not to.”

  She let out a breath. “That is what makes a difference for me. I do not do this because I am forced to, even though my options seem few.”

  “You could run and hide,” I said. “I could say you were gone when I got here.”

  Yelena stirred unhappily.

  “And what of my staff?” She didn’t wait for my response. “I cannot abandon them. Absolutely not. That is unthinkable. Being kin wouldn’t make me do that, would it?”

  “No,” I said. Kin
were encouraged to remain within human communities.

  “Then we proceed. I am afraid, naturellement. Who would not be?” Her voice firmed. “But enfin, there are great benefits and it seems we are all on this path because of choices we are all making. We must respect everyone’s decisions.”

  With a glance at me to check first, Yelena rested her hands lightly on Dominé’s shoulders, making her twitch.

  “It will not hurt, will it?” Dominé gave a short nervous laugh. “A strange question from a woman like me.”

  Yelena bent over the back of the sofa and slipped her arms around Dominé, as a friend might have hugged her.

  “It will not hurt. I promise,” she said and kissed her neck.

  Dominé closed her eyes and laid her head back, patting Yelena’s arm.

  Yelena nodded to me. She’d bite Dominé. I’d get Dante. It threw me, but I understood why. Dominé and I already had a connection. Dante was an unknown quantity—it was important for her to feel a strong bond with me. But I’d psyched myself up by thinking of making Dominé part of my House. I liked her. I loved her instinctive refusal to run away and abandon her staff, and her sorrow for Marcus and Valerie.

  Dante?

  Pretty, sassy. Somehow unformed or unfinished.

  Was I going to be able to do this?

  Shit!

  I’d bitten Jen and Alex. I’d bound them, somehow. I’d never gone out and done it intentionally, let alone with someone who was almost a complete stranger.

  “Slow. Calm,” Yelena said. “Trust yourself.”

  More easily said than done.

  I was screwing this up. I was nervous; I was radiating anxiety and Dante was picking it up. I could see her eyes were wide. A shiver rippled down her arms, quickly hidden. Where had all the brassy arrogance gone?

  Dominé removed her arm from Dante’s shoulders, and Dante showed me she was braver than I’d given her credit for: she slid over and looped my arm over her.

  “Your first time, huh?” she whispered.

  Yeah. Not only braver, more observant as well.

  “Yup.”

  “Wow. Mine too.”

  We both laughed, the sound chopped off, a sort of embarrassed bark.

  I pulled her into an Athanate embrace, struggling to make it feel smooth and natural. The theory was that she’d breathe in my Athanate pacific pheromones and would be calm when I bit.

  The trouble was, I needed to be calm for the Athanate glands to start working.

  Pressed up against her neck, thinking about how I was going to bind her, calm was the last thing I was. Instead, the Athanate in me was noticing the pulse in her neck, the fear coming off her like a perfumed mist.

  Bite now. Feed.

  No. I took a deep breath. I was not going to go down the Basilikos path.

  She had a mild lemony scent. Pleasant, but it wasn’t my marque. My jaw throbbed with the need to change it.

  Concentrate on the mechanics of it.

  I licked her neck. It made her twitch and she had to stifle another embarrassed laugh.

  That was fine. Her heartrate was coming down, and meanwhile, the bio-agents would sink into her skin, ready to turn pain into pleasure and make her body quick to repair the damage I was about to do.

  “Rest against me and relax,” I said. “No tension.”

  I felt Yelena’s eukori, like a gentle breeze passing through me and flowing down into Dante.

  “Oh!” she said.

  “Relax,” I murmured again, and my fangs manifested, flooding my jaw with anticipation.

  Mine. Mine.

  I could feel Dominé give a little gasp through the link with Yelena, but I couldn’t spare attention for her.

  My fangs sank into Dante’s throat.

  She tensed up again and I eased off, waiting until the calmness I was trying to project took effect, but then my fangs seemed to find her carotid on their own, and the taryma, the whole network of Athanate channels in my jaw and throat, pulled. I groaned as her blood flowed into me, lighting me up.

  I’m not supposed to be enjoying this!

  I could almost hear Yelena laughing at me.

  And now, through the channel of Yelena’s eukori, the pleasure I was feeling flowed back down into Dante.

  “Oh, gods, yes,” she hissed.

  She gripped my arm tightly, but the rest of her body stayed obediently limp.

  I heard Dominé sigh and I sensed myself flowing through Yelena into her as well.

  All four of us linked through eukori. All four of us pulsing with pleasure.

  Dante’s hand reached and hesitantly stroked the back of my head, pressing lightly, eager for me to pull her Blood again.

  But the Blood was a side issue this time, no more really than a diversion.

  In English, it was binding. In Athanate, the word was a composite; soul-braiding, Yelena had said. The more complex the weave, the deeper and more complete the binding. Alex and Jen and I were utterly woven around each other, however badly the pair of them were acting toward each other. I could see that ever more clearly, as Yelena and I tangled Dominé and Dante into the same web that was House Farrell.

  A sip more Blood. Dante groaned and the last resistance in her body melted away.

  It’s not creating a binding from nothing, Diana had described it to me. It’s finding something well-founded, and making a copy. A template. Let the binding grow. Earn the binding.

  That was the Panethus theory.

  It took only a hint from Yelena through the eukori, and my inexperience seemed to matter less and less as we progressed. My knowledge of eukori had improved while I’d been in therapy with Diana. She’d reached like this and done this.

  And suddenly, I was deeper inside Dante’s mind than I had intended.

  She wasn’t unformed at all. That sassy, rude exterior covered something that had been broken and never repaired.

  And all the bullshit about vampire orgies and the club being what she was looking for—the truth was, she was here to support Dominé. Binding her was as simple as adding me and House Farrell into an existing structure between her and her boss.

  It wasn’t the right time to explore any of that. With a nudge from Yelena, I withdrew. We’d done enough for the moment.

  I licked Dante’s neck some more, the bio-agents sealing the wounds.

  Now my Athanate pheromones were working—the ones that Jen called happy time.

  “Wow,” Dante said. “Just wow.”

  I pulled her around until she was draped over me. I didn’t want her getting the wrong idea; she was katikia and not kin, but the embrace seemed to fit with the slowly fading sensations of biting and binding. Her heart thumped comfortably against my ribs.

  Time to think about what had just happened. Of course, I knew binding was a reciprocal process—I was bound to my kin as much as they were to me. I hadn’t expected to feel something similar with katikia.

  And as I thought about it, I could see, for all my anxiety and hesitation, that I had subconsciously prepared to bind Dominé the moment I had walked into the room. My Athanate needs had seeped into my whole mind, however unsure my human side was.

  Acknowledging that to myself was a strange echo of something Diana had also said during my therapy. She’d said I couldn’t be returned to a state of innocence before anything bad had happened to me without destroying what I had become. In the same way, I couldn’t deny my need to bind without denying everything else that made me Athanate.

  However well I could visualize it, I couldn’t step back into the river that was me before I was bitten.

  Even if I could go back in time and not have been bitten, what would have happened to me? Something else would have triggered my strongbox to fail, and then I would have had no one capable of helping me.

  The river flowed on.

  This was what I was like now. And I was starting to like it.

  Chapter 16

  “So, am I supposed to feel all different?”

  Dante
definitely hadn’t changed on the outside.

  Yelena teased her with trailing fingers down her back. “Don’t you?”

  Dante gave her a sidelong look.

  “You guys do that sort of thing with sex as well, don’t you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “See? I knew it. I knew it. Orgies.”

  Dominé smiled at the byplay. She had draped a silk scarf around her neck and sat there looking thoughtful, as if she were probing her own thoughts to see what had changed.

  Binding wasn’t like throwing a switch. We’d started the process, but it needed time to settle. We needed time to earn that binding.

  I suggested Dominé and Dante come to live with us and commute down to the club from there; that seemed to be the LA style anyway. And with Jen’s choice of house, we had plenty of space.

  “I should like that,” Dominé said.

  The tail end of merged eukori shared a sense of pleasure and anticipation from that.

  And Dante could claim not to be feeling different, but I couldn’t.

  Not just the binding, but getting out and doing things again seemed to have cleared my head.

  The club itself, and Dominé’s staff, had become part of my responsibility as House Farrell. And until we got the matter with the Pasadena alpha cleared up, there was danger to my House.

  I called the Altau guards on duty back at the house. I got lucky and connected to Tom Sherman, Bian’s second in command.

  “I need one of you over here for a day on the door,” I said to him.

  “A day on the door at a sex club? I guess someone’s got to do it.”

  “Not a joke, Tom. One of the local packs is threatening my kin. There’s a possibility they’ll show up today. I’ll be getting a message to them, but if that’s too late, I want them to smell Athanate as soon as they get to the door. It should discourage them.”