by HELEN HARDT
As she sucked the blood from my body, she sucked the life from my soul.
Or so it felt, anyway.
As determined as I was to retain my strength, to escape someday, sometimes I nearly gave up.
Sometimes, I wished the unthinkable.
I wished for death.
It never lasted long, and I erased the thought as quickly as I could, but sometimes…
Mostly during torture. I refused to cry out, and I kept the promise to myself. But inside the deepest recesses of my brain, I sometimes let go.
I wished to cease existing.
What might death feel like? The process could be painful, but I’d endured horrific pain already.
And once the process was complete?
No pain.
Only peace.
How do you know that? Death might be eternal hellfire.
Her again. In my head. I’d begun noticing it during her feedings. Somehow, she got into my head.
Unless it was my imagination.
Not your imagination, Dante. I’m part of you now. As you are part of me.
I winced, though I was not in pain at the moment. I’d long since gotten used to her feedings, but while they were not exactly painful, they were far from enjoyable.
She took.
She took without my consent.
Then she forced me to take from her.
Those were the worst times. I needed blood. Without it, I would die. Hers was my only choice.
She detached her teeth from my body, licking the puncture wounds closed.
Then—
What? She stood and began removing my leather bindings. I held back a gasp. Would she let me go?
No. Of course not. She had an ulterior motive.
I soon found out what it was.
Chapter Seventeen
Erin
“Dante?” Julian’s voice dripped with concern.
Dante had stood immobile for several seconds after his tirade about figuring everything out. I tentatively touched his arm.
He broke from whatever kind of trance he was in and met my gaze. “I’m all right.”
“You seemed a million miles away, son.”
“Sometimes I just…remember. Does that happen to you, Dad?”
“Not anymore. But I’m not bound by the limitations of a physical brain. You still are. Memories are created in the brain, and they sometimes come when you don’t want them.”
Dante let out a sarcastic laugh. “You make it sound like it’s better to be dead.”
“In some ways, I suppose it is,” Julian said. “But I can never again enjoy the crisp tannins of a glass of Bordeaux or the softness of a Pinot Noir. I can no longer let a piece of salmon sashimi melt on my tongue. I can never stroke the soft fur of a pet or smell the sweet fragrance of flowers in the spring. I can no longer run until my legs ache and feel the endorphins afterward. I can never again caress the warm skin of someone I love, Dante. I can’t hug you or your sister.” He shook his head. “In many more ways, it’s so much better to be alive.”
“But you can no longer feel pain.”
“Part of the upside, though I guarantee you life is better. Embrace it while you have it. It’s fleeting.”
“Yet you chose death.” Dante rubbed the back of his neck.
“I chose death for you. I’ve said this before, but you’ll understand when you have a child of your own. I’d do it again a thousand times.”
Dante seemed far off again for an instant. Then he sighed. “I know, Dad. I don’t know how I’ll be able to thank you enough.”
“Together, we’ll figure out what’s going on. I’m sorry I suggested otherwise. I shouldn’t have. Your life means so much to me that I allowed myself to be overprotective for an instant.” He turned to me. “We’ll find your friend too. We won’t stop until all these mysteries are solved.”
“What about Bill?” Dante asked.
“I will deal with my father. He may be the most powerful vampire in the world right now, but I’m no longer bound by the confines of the physical plane. I have a few tricks up my sleeve.”
“It’s nice to have a ghost on our side.” I couldn’t help smiling. “I can’t believe those words just came out of my mouth.”
That got a laugh out of Dante. “You rock, Dad.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment. But know this. My father might be the most powerful vampire in existence, but I have a feeling that will change very soon.”
“How?” Dante gasped. “You don’t mean…”
“No. No. Bill is in excellent health. But from what you and River described today, I think your power, once you learn to harness and control it, will blow your grandfather’s away.”
“That’s impossible. I’m not even thirty. Bill is a hundred and two years old.”
“Nothing is impossible, Dante. I’ll admit it’s improbable, but there is no explanation that I know of for what you were able to accomplish this morning. We’ll look into it together. For now, though, I need to go. I want to peek in on Emilia at the doctor’s.”
“Let us know what’s going on,” Dante said.
“Absolutely.” He disappeared.
I shook my head. “I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to that. He’s here, and then he’s gone. No poof of smoke or fading out or anything.”
Dante chuckled. “This is reality, Erin.”
I burst into laughter. “Do you realize what you just said? Both of our realities have recently been turned upside down.”
“True that. In fact, I don’t know how I’d be getting through all this without you, baby.”
I cupped his cheek, letting his dark stubble run roughly under my fingertips. “I know exactly what you mean.” I stood on my toes and brushed my lips lightly over his. “You don’t happen to have your rope, do you?”
He smiled against my lips. “I’ve moved what little I own here, love. I’m sure it’s around somewhere.”
I winked at him. “Let’s find it.”
As I pulled on the rope binding my wrists to the rungs of the headboard, Dante tantalized my pussy with his tongue. His strokes were soft and teasing, not raw and untamed. That would come another time, when we both needed it.
For now, I was good with sweet and sultry, lounging on my bed, bound for his pleasure.
For my pleasure.
I writhed beneath him, grinding into his face as best I could without the benefit of my arms and hands. He continued to suck on my clit and then nipped my inner thigh, teasing me almost to climax.
“Dante! God!”
“Easy, baby. You’ll get what you want when I decide it’s time.”
Tingles ran through me. The command in his voice always made me hot, made me want him all the more. As he tongued my pussy, I closed my eyes and let myself whirl inside the deepest recesses of my soul, where only Dante and I existed.
Only Dante and I…
He thrust two fingers into my wet channel, and the climax surged through me like a lightning bolt, hurling me further into my imaginary plane.
Images swirled in my mind… Dante, pounding into me. Dante, at my side as we exchanged rings and vows. Dante, as I struggled giving birth and then holding a beautiful black-haired newborn.
Our baby.
We’d have a baby someday.
A baby that…
My eyes popped open.
My body was still shaking, my pussy still pulsing, Dante’s fingers still thrusting.
But the baby.
The baby.
Something was different.
Something was different yet wonderful.
Our baby—Dante’s and mine—was a vampire.
Chapter Eighteen
Dante
Erin’s body tensed.
She had clearly climaxed, and was enjoying it.
Now she was tense, her pussy walls no longer pulsing but gripping my fingers.
I withdrew them and looked up at her. “Baby?”
“Untie me, Dante. Untie me.�
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I was hard as a rock, ready to jam my cock into her heat, but the tone of her voice made me hesitate.
“Please,” she said again. “Untie me.”
I quickly released her from the headboard. “What’s wrong, love?”
“Nothing. Nothing. I just saw something… I mean, it’s okay, really. You’re one. You’re sister’s one. River’s one. Lucy’s…well, not one, but something else. So what if we make another one? What’s the big deal?”
“Erin, love”—I caressed her cheek—“what are you talking about?”
“Our baby, Dante.” She closed her mouth quickly. “Shit. I mean…I don’t presume that you…that you and I…”
“Erin, it’s okay. I know you’re not presuming anything. What has you freaked out?”
“I was so happy, feeling so good, floating on a cloud, and then I climaxed, and it was perfect, and I saw us in my mind. I saw us”—she reddened—“getting married. And then…”
“What?”
“I saw our baby. He was beautiful, Dante.”
“Any baby that comes out of you would have to be. It was a boy?”
“Yeah. It was. I think. But he…” She shook her head. “It can’t be, according to what you’ve told me, but it was clear as day. I don’t know how I knew it, but I did. He was a vampire, Dante.”
The image I’d seen a few times landed back in my mind.
Erin handing me a bundle. The baby crying…and the tiny white nubs where his canines would grow in.
“I’m sorry,” she continued. “I know it was just a fantasy. I was coming, and my mind was just going to beautiful stuff. Please don’t think I expect—”
I placed two fingers over her lips. “Shh. It’s okay. I know you don’t expect anything. And for what it’s worth, if I ever get married, it will be to you. I’ve always known that.”
She smiled, sighing. “Me too. To you, I mean.”
“Now tell me. Was there something about the baby?”
“No. I just knew. He was beautiful. Perfect red lips in the shape of a pout. A big tuft of black hair on his head. He was tiny and beautiful. And he couldn’t be a vampire. You said a human and a vampire mating always results in a human baby.”
“Yes. That’s why there are so few of us left.”
“So how…?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. It could be just your imagination playing tricks on you. Or it could be…”
“What?”
“I don’t know. But I’ve seen the same thing, Erin. I’ve seen our baby, and he is vampire.”
Once Erin had fallen asleep, I called out to my father. He appeared instantly.
“I need a good way to summon you,” I said.
“Summon me?” He laughed.
“I didn’t mean that to sound condescending, but I do need to know how to get in touch with you. Sometimes you come when I call, and sometimes you don’t.”
“I don’t always hear you. And sometimes I do hear you, but I can’t come.”
“Okay, then. We need to figure out a communication system. You need to be able to let me know if you hear me, and if you can’t come.”
“I can’t exactly carry a cell phone, Dante.”
“I don’t get that. You’re wearing clothes, aren’t you? Put it in your pocket.”
“These clothes don’t exist. You’re seeing me the way it makes sense to you. There are no pockets because there are no clothes.”
I sighed. “Great. All right. What do you suggest, then?”
“You’re not a medium, so I can’t speak to your mind.”
“You did before I could see you. Remember?”
“I was speaking directly to you. It only felt like it was in your mind because you couldn’t see or hear me yet. You weren’t letting yourself.”
“That is such a crock! Emilia and River saw you right away. Why the hell couldn’t I?”
“We’ve been through this. I don’t know.”
“Fuck. That doesn’t help, Dad.”
“I know it doesn’t. But you see and hear me now. Why does it matter?”
“It just does. It just fucking does.” But why did it?
He was right. I could see and hear him now.
“You have something your sister and your cousin don’t have. There’s something inside you, something that gave you the power to reverse your grandfather’s glamour and get what you wanted. I’ve never seen or heard of anything like that before. All the more reason why we need to decipher the Texts.”
“Bill took our only copy.”
“Then we’ll find another.”
I regarded my father. He looked as real as he ever had when he was alive. “How did you get so optimistic?”
“How can I not be? Anything is possible now. I’d always thought that death meant the end of uniqueness. Now I know it doesn’t. The body may perish, but the spirit lives on, Dante. The unique spirit lives on.”
I smiled. “It is pretty amazing. But that’s not what has you so enamored with life, no pun intended, right now.”
“True. We got some good news for your sister. I got to Jack’s right at the end of her appointment. Her illness is severe, but still in the range of normal for our kind, and both she and the baby are progressing well.”
“That’s great news.”
“River gave Jack the list of herbs Erin recalled from her dream. Jack’s going to look into it. He said it’s possible they could give Em some relief.”
“More great news, if it pans out.”
“Let’s be optimistic, son. It can’t hurt. Positivity is a powerful tool.”
I sighed. He was right, of course. “It’s difficult to be positive when with every step forward, we seem to take two steps backward. We finally got the money to take the time and figure out what’s going on, but now we don’t have the book.”
“We find another copy. And we try the website you found. They may have the translation, as they claim.”
I rubbed my forehead to keep an ache from springing up. It vibrated just on the surface. If I could ease the tension just a bit…
Climaxing would have helped, but I could hardly do that at the moment.
“Do you believe Bill?” I asked. “I mean, do you believe that a man can be led to darkness by a book?”
“I believe in the inherent virtue of all men. Can some be led astray? Of course. We have positive proof of that with the many criminals among us. But I feel very strongly that you will not be. You have an internal strength that most only hope to have, Dante. You survived your captivity, and you survived it intact, both physically and mentally.”
“I don’t always feel mentally intact, Dad.”
“No one does. But your inner strength, your good heart, got you through. You knew you were meant for something better, and you were determined not to let yourself be broken.”
My father had ingested rattlesnake venom for me. No one was more determined than the ghost before me. “I think I got that from you.”
He smiled. “Maybe you did. But I had a reason more powerful than you can yet imagine to get me through. You and your sister.”
“That’s not true. I wanted to get back for Em, for you, for River and Bill.”
“I’m sure you did, but one day you’ll know a much fiercer love. Think about how you feel for Erin, and then multiply that by the idea that you brought an individual into the world who is not yet self-aware—an individual who, but for you, would not exist. The bond a parent feels for a child is indescribable. It’s as intense as a love for your partner, yet in a wholly different way.”
“I’m trying to understand.”
“You will someday. I feel very strongly that you and Erin will have children.”
Children.
A son.
A vampire son.
“Dad?”
“Hmm?”
“I had a… I’m not sure what it was. I wouldn’t call it a vision. Just a picture in my mind. Of Erin handing me a baby. A vampire baby, Dad.”
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“That would be wonderful, but it’s not possible.”
“I know. And the weird thing is that she had the same vision earlier today.”
“In a dream?”
“No, not really.” I didn’t want to tell my father that she had it during an orgasm. TMI.
“It could mean absolutely nothing.”
“I know that. But what seems significant, to me at least, is that we both saw the same thing.”
“It’s puzzling. I won’t deny that. But physiology is physiology. A vampire and human always produce a human baby.”
“Why is that?”
“I don’t know. Some kind of genetic dominance on the human’s part, obviously.”
“But hasn’t anyone ever studied it?”
“I’m sure they have. We could ask Jack.”
Jack. My blood. My B positive blood.
“There’s something else,” I said.
“What?”
“I had some blood work done, to find out my blood type. I’m B positive.”
“And?”
“I’m your son, right? I look like you. And you watched me come out of Mom, right?”
“I did.”
“Jack says he did some genetic testing when I was born, and you two are definitely my parents. The problem is, both of you are Rh negative, and it’s genetically impossible for two Rh negative parents to produce an Rh positive child. Something happened to me while I was in captivity, Dad. Someone changed my physiology.”
“I’m no scientist, but that doesn’t seem likely.”
“I know. Jack couldn’t explain it, beyond calling it a spontaneous mutation.”
“I suppose that’s possible.”
“Yeah, but unlikely.” I shoved my fingers through my hair. “I remember some things about my time in captivity. I remember some of the torture, the pain. I remember her feeding from me, and then forcing me to feed from her. We always learned that drinking vampire blood could cause unwanted side effects. Could spontaneous Rh factor change be one of them?”
“That’s hardly an unwanted side effect. It has no effect on your life at all.”
“I know, but— What about this strange ability I have for glamouring? I out-glamoured Bill, for God’s sake, and I have no idea how. I just knew what had to happen, and I made it happen. Could that be a side effect?”