I staved it off for a few more minutes by brushing and flossing my teeth. Then I repeated the faintly ridiculous ritual of checking that the car hadn’t moved, because seriously—did I think the oatmeal had cooked itself? It was still parked in the same place.
The morning was beautiful. So was the landscape around the cottage. Yesterday’s gray clouds had given way to brilliant sunshine, turning the blue of the sky and the green of the fields to jewel tones.
For the lack of anything better to do, I pulled on some shorts under the oversized button-down shirt and padded outside barefoot. It was pleasantly cool here. Much cooler than it would have been in St. Louis or Chicago in late June.
That gave me pause. It was the end of June, though I couldn’t honestly have said what the exact date was. But I knew it was almost July. It was almost the twentieth anniversary of my mother’s death. A thick feeling clogged my throat, and I swallowed hard to clear it.
I couldn’t face all the things that came along with that realization just now, so I started walking instead of thinking.
It wasn’t obvious whether this place was a farmhouse attached to the surrounding lands, or just someone’s private getaway retreat. There were indeed sheep wandering in some of the fields in the distance, but I didn’t see any outbuildings nearby for keeping animals or equipment. That probably meant it wasn’t a farm.
The area around the cottage was landscaped, with stone paths and hedges and a few carefully placed shade trees. Flowers dotted the meticulously maintained beds at the bases of the trees. My mind flickered back to the choking plant life of Dhuinne, and I shook my head sharply to dislodge the image.
Someone—okay, Rans, since no one else was here—had closed the passenger-side door of the car properly, after I’d left it unlatched. I wandered around the side of the cottage, noting that the kitchen door led onto a little stoop. Beyond lay a modest herb garden. The smell of lavender and basil wafted through the air, carried on the light breeze.
The land behind the house was just grass. No effort had been made here with landscaping, although there was a weathered wood-and-wrought-iron bench set facing toward the rolling green hills beyond.
A figure sat halfway up the nearest hill, picked out in black and white. Rans.
I swallowed hard and walked toward him, the soft grass tickling my bare toes. He was dressed similarly to the first time I’d ever seen him, minus the gruesome bloodstains—dark jeans, white shirt, black leather vest, combat boots. His knees were drawn up, forearms resting on them limply as he gazed out across the valley. He didn’t look at me as I approached—not even when I sat down next to him, separated by an arm’s length, my joints creaking in protest.
“So,” I said, when the silence grew too stifling. “Are we still doing the not-talking-about-it thing?”
He was quiet for a long moment. Then he finally glanced over at me, and his gaze dropped from my face to the shirt I was wearing. After a beat, he looked away again, staring into the distance instead.
“Still experiencing incandescent rage whenever I try to think about the last three days,” he said eventually, “so continued silence on the subject would probably be the best plan, yes.”
I pondered that for a minute. “Okay,” I said, not sure how else to really answer.
The silence stretched again, even longer than before.
“It reminds me of home a bit, this place,” he said at length.
I didn’t know what to say to that, either.
We sat, separated by three feet and the unspoken gulf of my betrayal. When it became obvious that neither of us had anything else to contribute to the conversation, I climbed inelegantly to my feet and walked back down the hill to the cottage.
Once inside, I nosed around the place, poking into closets and drawers. I was getting more and more of a ‘vacation home’ vibe from the little house, with the way it was furnished just enough for someone to be able to stay here comfortably, without so much as a hint of anything personal.
There was also precious little in the way of entertainment to be had. No TV, no radio, no computer, no bookshelves. Who normally stayed here, I wondered? I could maybe picture it as a writer’s retreat—a place with distractions so few and far between that someone might pound out an entire novel through sheer desperation to keep the boredom at bay.
That made me think about the copy of Sherlock Holmes I’d bought in Atlantic City. Was it still in my bag?
To my relief, it was. I grabbed a bottle of water and retreated to the worn couch in the living area, angling myself so sunlight from the open window fell across the yellowed pages. I read for a couple of hours, only stopping when I felt the burn of angry tears as I read about Charles Augustus Milverton’s downfall and found myself picturing Caspian in the villain’s place.
I set the book aside listlessly, staring instead at the pattern of bumps on the plaster ceiling until it all started to blur together. I must have fallen into a doze, because I woke to find the sun no longer illuminating the room through the east-facing window. Rans was seated in the chair set at right angles to the couch, watching me over steepled fingers.
I blinked several times in rapid succession and straightened self-consciously from my casual sprawl, feeling my muscles and joints howl in protest. Blue eyes tracked the movement, but I couldn’t read the expression behind them.
“This is stupid,” I said, my voice raspy. “And you’re being a bit of a creeper right now with the whole watching me sleep while you’re angry at me thing. I got enough of that kind of creepy shit from the faeries.”
His face darkened, and that expression was easy enough to read. Fury. Ah, well. We might as well have it out now rather than later, I supposed.
“Tell me what you did back there with the crystal,” I ordered, before he could open his mouth and remind me again how pissed off he was at me. “What the hell is a life-bond?”
His hands fell to rest on his knees, and those icy eyes narrowed. “It’s the thing that’s keeping your head attached to your shoulders. Now—your turn. Tell me why you went behind my back in an attempt to commit suicide. Or maybe suttee would be a better term?”
I frowned at him. “I don’t know what that means.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Suttee—the outdated Hindu practice of immolating oneself on a loved one’s funeral pyre as some ill-conceived act of solidarity.” The words were bitten off in that precise English accent, sharp as knives.
“That’s not what I was doing,” I said.
“Wasn’t it?” he asked.
Now I was angry. “No! Why the hell would you think that?”
The furrow between his brows deepened. “Why would I think that? Possibly because you disappeared while I was sleeping in order to go to a place where you knew your life would be in immediate and mortal danger, in pursuit of someone who is most likely incapable of giving a tinker’s damn about you or your wellbeing.”
I surged to my feet, ignoring the sharp pains in my knees and hips at the sudden movement.
“Fuck you, Rans!” I snarled. “I left to try and keep you safe—not just to find out what happened to Dad!”
He was on his feet and in my face so fast I barely registered the movement. “To keep me safe… can you even hear yourself?”
His voice was a cold growl as he loomed over me, using his height to advantage.
I shoved at his chest, suddenly enraged. Of course, I grew even more enraged when my shove failed to move him an inch. Instead, I was the one who stumbled back half a step.
“And how did that grand gesture work out for you?” he continued relentlessly.
I shoved at him again, with exactly the same result.
“I had it under control!” I practically yelled. “Albigard was going to try to get Dad out for me, and you were supposed to stay away!”
His eyes flared with inner light at the mention of Albigard’s name, and he caught my wrist when I pulled my fist back to punch him in the chest.
His tone was low a
nd rough when he said, “I did not rescue you from Caspian in St. Louis just so you could seduce one of my few allies into betraying me, Zorah.”
Guilt and fury warred in my stomach. I hauled off and slapped him as hard as I could with my free hand. An instant later, I grunted as my back impacted the front door with a thump. Rans had swung me around in the blink of an eye and now held me pinned against the worn wood, my wrists held in an unbreakable grip above my head, our bodies pressed together from chest to knee.
“Fucker,” I whispered, right before his mouth crashed into mine.
SEVENTEEN
I GROWLED AND KISSED him back, feeling the sudden uncontrollable desire to… just… burn everything between us to the ground. His body was hard against mine. Unforgiving. I bit his lip with enough force to draw blood, and his dick twitched against my stomach. He wrenched away, pulling me with him, whirling me around to face away from him and pushing me against the back of the couch.
I gasped, my body folding in half at the hips over the back of the sofa—ass in the air, upper body splayed over the cushions so that my hair brushed against the worn fabric. I braced my hands on the seat cushions as fingers grasped the waistband of my loose shorts and yanked them down. The sound of a zipper behind me followed.
Jesus Christ. I was wet… so wet. I keened when Rans’ hard cock slammed into me, clawing at the upholstery beneath my fingers as the gaping pit of my need opened up and threatened to swallow us both whole.
I cursed and cried out at the brutal thrusts pounding into me, wanting to reach out with my succubus nature and rip Rans’ desire out of his body by the roots so I could drag it into mine. I wanted to draw and draw on it, until the pit of emptiness inside me was full of something besides my own fear and failure. His hands gripped my hips with bruising strength, holding me in place as my bare toes scrabbled against the slick hardwood floor.
It was hard to breathe… but I didn’t need to breathe. I just needed him to keep fucking me like this. When his movements slowed, then stopped, I groaned in protest, writhing against him as his upper body leaned forward to drape over mine. He was trembling faintly.
“Damn you, Zorah Bright.” The words were a low rumble against the back of my neck.
But if I was part demon, it meant I was already damned, didn’t it?
One of his arms wrapped around my chest. He used that grip around me as leverage to pull my upper body nearly upright while his lower body continued to pin my hips in place against the back of the couch. The angle of his cock inside me shifted, drawing a hard shudder from me.
He drew my arms backward, looping a forearm through the crook of my left elbow and across my back to grasp my right bicep in an unbreakable hold. My breasts jutted out as the position forced my shoulders back, but I forgot all about the strain when he rolled his hips, thrusting deep. The movement punched a breathless sound from my throat.
I’d wanted something to fight against. I’d needed it. So I struggled and panted against the hold restraining me, and the cock filling me up. The hand that had been wrapped around my chest grabbed one edge of the stolen shirt I was wearing and jerked. Buttons popped, some hitting the couch cushions, others falling to the wood floor with a scattering of tiny noises as they bounced and skittered in every direction.
A cool palm—rough with calluses—ran possessively over my breasts and stomach, claiming my body even as I squirmed and writhed. A hard shaft rocked into me, pressing my pelvis against the lightly padded frame of the sofa back. I could feel my body drawing on his—taking… taking… making me feel drunk with the heady mixture of anger, lust, and pain swirling between us.
Rans continued to run his free hand over my body, squeezing and kneading my tits, then sliding up to encircle my throat—daring me not to trust him with this. I swallowed, my head falling back, feeling the movement push against the cool weight of his palm. My pulse throbbed beneath the light pressure of his fingers and thumb.
Using the grip he had on my arms, he pulled my back flush against his front. Now every sharp thrust of his cock rolled my clit against the back of the couch, which was starting to scoot against the floor with a series of harsh squeaks.
I was floating, falling, dizzy with the need to tear both of us down until nothing was left. Rans’ cock pounded against my G-spot, combining with the pressure against my clit to drive me inexorably toward something ugly and devastating… and painfully, inescapably necessary. I could feel him rushing toward the same cliff, desperate and self-destructive.
He groaned—an animal noise. His hand around my throat dragged my head to the left. An instant later, his fangs sank into the juncture of my neck and shoulder with the unexpected abruptness of a striking snake.
I shrieked and struggled and came; fought and sobbed and came even harder, my pussy clamping around his dick while his jaws clamped around my flesh. Every muscle in my body went taught as I felt him follow me into release, pouring his animus into me as he growled against my bitten flesh.
We ended up in a sweaty heap, still draped over the back of the couch. Tears traced rivulets down my face, while two dribbles of blood trailed down my right breast from the twin punctures in my shoulder.
“I’m afraid I’ll get you killed if you stay,” I rasped eventually, my voice completely wrecked.
Rans rested his forehead against my back for a long moment. I felt cool breath sigh out against my skin, chasing shivers down my spine.
“Yes… well. It does seem rather unavoidable now,” he said. “Though it hardly matters if I stay or leave at this point.”
And then he was lifting me upright, steadying me on my feet, still holding me facing away from him, his arms wrapped around me from behind. I stood there, very still, with bruises on my hips, blood on my chest and my sex aching from the abuse it had just received. How fucked up was it that I now felt about a hundred times better than I had before?
It was really, really fucked up, I decided. But that didn’t make it any less true. Fresh strength flooded my limbs, the pain and creakiness in my joints a fast-fading memory. My mind felt clearer, my head no longer ached, and the insatiable pit lurking in my chest and belly no longer threatened to consume me from the inside out.
“Please talk to me properly now,” I whispered.
I felt the softening of his stance at my back—felt him giving in.
“I will, Zorah,” he promised quietly.
* * *
The shower in the little cottage might have been fairly lackluster, but the water coming from the tap was hot, and the old claw-foot tub was big enough for two. I lay back between Rans’ legs, resting against his chest and letting the water lap against my chin. With luck, the warm bathwater would help to soak away the chill of what I suspected I was about to learn.
Rans’ voice was low and even. “A life-bond is an unbreakable connection between two individuals. It’s forged through the exchange of blood, and sealed using a certain kind of crystal imbued with demon magic. It becomes permanent upon the destruction of that crystal.”
I swallowed. “So… when you talked about my death causing your death, you were being literal?”
“Very.” His hands didn’t move from where they rested across my belly.
“Where did you get the crystal?” I asked, as a way to avoid the question that I really needed answered.
“I stole it. From Nigellus. I stopped in Atlantic City on my way from Chicago to Dublin.” He paused for a beat. “Of course, I expect he’ll be quite cross once he notices it’s missing. Especially since I had the unmitigated cheek to ask for the use of this cottage right after I’d nicked it.”
Great. So I’d managed to drive a wedge not only between Rans and Albigard, but him and Nigellus as well.
I steeled myself. “I’m human, Rans. Well, mostly. Even if I don’t get killed before then, I’ll die of old age in fifty or sixty years. If we’re… magically tied together somehow, what happens to you then?”
His voice was level. “About what you’d expect.�
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Denial suffused me, and I twisted in his grip. “Why would you do that?”
He met my gaze and held it. “Why would you sneak away behind my back and go to Dhuinne?”
I pushed away from his body, scooting around to sit at the other end of the tub, facing him—our legs tangled together under the water. Unfortunately, if I’d wanted space, a bathtub had probably been an unwise venue for the discussion, but oh, well.
“I told you,” I said. “I needed to find Dad, and I wanted to make sure you wouldn’t get killed trying to protect me when and if Caspian and his goons found us and descended in force.”
So instead, he’s going to get killed whenever I end up getting killed… whether that’s tomorrow or decades from now. Good one, Zorah.
My throat grew tight.
“You should have talked to me instead of running,” he said in a low tone. Then he sighed, and eased back, consciously relaxing his frame. “How did you manage it, anyway? You didn’t take money, or even Guthrie’s credit card.”
There was no point in trying to hide the details from him. Not now.
“When you gave me your phone after we left the newspaper office in Chicago and sent me ahead to the car, I thought it would be a good idea to transfer some of the important phone numbers to my burner phones for emergencies,” I explained. “You told me to call A.C. if you didn’t come back. That was obviously Nigellus. Guthrie was in there, too, and it wasn’t hard to figure out who Tink was supposed to be.”
“Ah.”
“It was pretty obvious that Nigellus and the other people you talked to that night weren’t going to be able to help us. Not without taking forever, anyway. You knew it. I knew it,” I continued. “My dad had already been in Fae custody for days. I went outside and called Albigard while you were asleep. It was sheer luck that he actually picked up his phone. I asked him if he could get me into Dhuinne and try to arrange some kind of exchange—me for my father. He said he’d try.”
“I will rip the points off his fucking Fae ears and pin them to his skull with rusty iron nails.” Rans’ voice was still even and low.
The Last Vampire: Book Two Page 15