by R. B. Fields
“The evil are the sweetest,” Markula says, so low it’s almost a whisper. “I like to think it’s an evolved trait — a way to encourage us to eat the bastards. A symbiotic relationship with your kind.” Markula meets my gaze, his crimson eyes horrifying but earnest. “But some like the rush of harming the innocent more than the taste of the guilty. And those vampires do not care who they take, so long as they feed.”
“But you care?” My voice is strained.
Markula does not answer, but Silas nods, and it feels genuine. Silas, Draynor, Kain … they aren’t monsters. If I have to be a vampire, I should be thankful it’s here.
Yeah, duh, because any other vampire would have killed me on that pier.
Markula stands so abruptly that I startle. “Let me know when it’s over.”
21
Dawn
I’m still shaking after Markula stalks out, so all that teeth chattering wasn’t fear of him and his humungous shadow. This somehow makes me feel better; more in control.
I’m not in control, though — my body is dying. I’m still fighting that, in my head at least, but I know the fight will not last. If humans could just decide not to be vampires, I wouldn’t be strapped to a bed.
Silas has moved to the mattress at my feet, his hand on my shackled ankle. Kain dabs at my elbow with something that might be iodine, but it smells like skunk, and I shrink back against Draynor who’s still sitting on my other side — the shackles tighten. My flesh screams. Fuck this shit. Draynor whispers something I cannot hear, but the stinging in the wound eases … a little. My body from the chest down is covered in a white sheet and duvet, a terrible choice for a woman with a set of weeping bloody gashes, but perhaps a good color choice if you want to see exactly which injuries were still leaking. I close my eyes against the lights — too bright, everything so damn bright.
“I can’t leave her like this,” Draynor mutters. “I have to — ”
“She might hurt you,” Kain says, worried.
I don’t know what Draynor is planning, but I feel the hair on his chest as he climbs into the bed beside me, easing himself beneath the covers so he doesn’t jostle my injuries — unlike Markula, his flesh is warm against the side of my body. Is he naked? I sigh as my hip heats against him, but I’m still hurting. I’m still … angry.
Vampires got me into this. They can’t get me out. My life will never be what it was before.
“You have to let go, my love,” Draynor whispers in my ear. “Let me help you.”
“Fuck you,” I snap, my throat burning. The cuffs go rigid.
“Will that help?” He sounds so sincere, it almost makes me laugh, but I’m in no mood for jokes — it feels like someone is stabbing a hot poker into my elbow, raking broken glass across my rib cage. What the fuck am I doing? It’s like turning down painkillers for a toothache. Like turning down a Xanax in the middle of a panic attack. What more do I have to lose except the pain?
Fine, you win. Just for a minute.
I relax against Draynor, tricky as it is while spread-eagled and tethered to a bed, but the pain in my arm eases — the stinging in my ribs is almost gone. But my throat still hurts. I wriggle, trying to edge closer to him, but the leather cuffs around my wrists and ankles allow only so much movement. Tiny drops of water — or maybe sweat — slip down the nape of my neck.
“It’s okay, my love.”
“Why do you keep calling me that?”
Draynor shrugs. “It feels … right. You smell like love. Like the sweetest fruit in existence — like flowers.” He shifts, propping himself on his elbow, looking down at Silas. “For you too, yes?”
“Inamorata,” Kain whispers, so low I almost don’t hear him, and I’m still not positive that’s a word — maybe I misunderstood. Draynor stills, but Silas nods. “I’ve never experienced it before, but … it makes sense.”
“What am I missing?” I ask, but as I say it, a band of pain rips through my lower arm, sending spikes of agonizing electricity up through my shoulder. I groan, and Draynor settles back down, stroking my uninjured shoulder with his fingertips.
“It’s vampire lore,” Kain says, dabbing again at my elbow. “Beloved; betrothed. A fated match.”
Like Cinderella? Yeah, right. I’ve never been one for fairy tales. “Well, it’d be nice if that were true, seeing as how you’re stuck with me now.” Because I’m dying. Tears prick at the corners of my eyes. I breathe deeply, trying to match my inhales to the stroking of Draynor’s fingers, from clavicle to my uninjured shoulder and back again. Steady. Calming. Tingly. This is my last night as a human, maybe my last moments, and as impossible as it seems, a little piece deep inside me is awakening at Draynor’s touch — I want to be distracted from all of this. I don’t want to hurt. I don’t want to suffer anymore.
Touch me, I think at him, but it’s Silas who smiles from the footboard. You hear me, don’t you?
Silas nods. “I know the pain is great,” he says. “We can help.” He grabs hold of the sheet and slips beneath it from the bottom of the bed, crawling up my tethered legs. I know my knee is injured, but all I feel is the soft prickle of his hair between my thighs. Draynor shifts his hand from my clavicle and strokes my bare breast beneath the covers. My nipples harden at his touch, and the ache between my legs is greater, hotter than that in my throat or in my wounded flesh.
Kain’s dabbing at my elbow again, but I can’t seem to care, can’t even feel my arm as Silas’s tongue parts my lower lips, immersing itself in my wetness. Draynor shifts onto his elbow again and brings his lips to mine, one chaste kiss before he lowers his mouth to lap at my nipple. Silas pushes his fingers deep inside me. I moan, the cuffs tightening around my arms as I pull against the restraints, but I flinch as Kain attacks my elbow again, releasing a new flurry of electric pain. I meet his eyes — amber and warm. The pain eases.
“Sorry,” he says. He sets the cloth aside, perhaps preparing to leave, but Draynor grabs his hand. Kain’s eyes widen as Draynor pulls Kain’s fingers beneath the sheet. Kain keeps his eyes on my face, eyebrows raised — is this okay? I nod.
Silas removes his fingers and thrusts his tongue inside me instead.
Kain’s fingertips brush my clit, tentative, but I’m on fire, Draynor nipping at my breasts, Silas’s tongue buried deep in my pussy. I arch off the bed, the pain in my arm a memory, every inch of my body on fire — there is only this, nothing but this. Silas and Draynor move in perfect harmony, their gentle strokes a dance of give and take, sending pleasure through my body in deep, heavy pulses from my head to the tips of my toes, a steady push and pull that forces any other thoughts from my brain. I’m not even sure what my own name is anymore. I’m trapped, I’m prone, laid bare and dying, and I’ve never felt more alive. And when Kain pinches my clit, the world vanishes into a burst of white-hot heat. I can’t scream. I can’t think. My body is arching, my wrists and ankles straining against the cuffs so hard I think I might break them, but Draynor holds me with his strong arm, pinning me to the bed, tethering me to this world.
Kain releases me and rights himself, and the electricity in my blood goes with him. Silas laps at me until I begin breathing regularly once more, and only then does he draw himself from beneath the sheet. I’m crying, tears wet on my cheeks, or maybe it’s sweat. But I’m cold. I’m shaking again. I feel … sick.
I look to Draynor and pant, “Is this it?”
He shakes his head, his dark eyes pools of night. “Not yet. Soon.”
I pause, my insides still pulsing in time to Draynor’s steady massage — my teeth are chattering again. “Will I hurt you if you stay with me?”
Draynor pauses, running his fingers over my quaking abdomen. He nods. “Probably. But I’ll risk it for you. I’ll do anything for you.”
And heaven help me, I believe him.
22
Dawn
Hours pass. The night edges into a brilliant dawn. I stare through the glass, thinking it might be the last sunrise I see with human eyes, but I can’t keep l
ooking — the sunlight burns. Is it starting? But no, human or vampire, it’s always ill-advised to stare straight into the fucking sun.
“Will the sunrises look different?” I ask.
They nod, but they don’t explain. Perhaps they can’t. It seems there is much about becoming a vampire that’s on the unpredictable side. What I really want to know is whether I’ll be like Mikael. Whether I’ll kill for sport.
But no one can answer that.
Silas and Draynor take turns lying in the bed with me, though Draynor’s always nearby, ready in case it begins to hurt again. But the pain has steadied. There’s a soreness wrapped around my rib cage, tightness where the slashes in my flesh have begun to stitch themselves together, but there is no new pain, and all of it is nowhere near as terrible as I expected. Silas lifts the sheet often, carefully cleaning my flesh, pain and pleasure in equal measure as his fingertips brush first the wounds and then the soft skin surrounding. Eventually, he covers the injuries in a thick gauze — I barely feel it.
“It’s taking too long,” Kain says from the doorway. “I’ve been researching for hours, and I can’t find a single case that took this long.”
“The wounds are still weeping, too,” Silas says, lifting the bandage on my elbow. The chill air raises gooseflesh on my chest despite Draynor’s warmth. “The bite isn’t healing. It’s still swollen, but … ”
“What should it look like?” I ask.
“I’m not … sure.” Silas frowns. “When you start to turn, it goes away. All of it goes away.”
“And she has your blood in her system, and that of the other vamp,” Kain says. “If one of you didn’t turn her, the other should have.”
Silas replaces the bandage and stands. “We can’t turn you.”
Why not? What does this even mean? “Am I going to die? Like … actually die?”
“I don’t … know.”
Fuck. It was one thing to know my body was dying when I’d get to wake up on the other side, an immortal. But the thought of being blinked out of existence … “What’s wrong with me?” The air is too thin; the world is hot. There is no darkness in my veins, only a bright and vibrant panic.
Draynor presses his forehead to my cheek, but my heart does not slow. I’m trapped, I’m fucking trapped in this bed, in these chains, and all for nothing. “Let me out,” I whisper, my throat too tight to allow me to scream, but I try. “Let me the fuck out of this bullshit!” I strain against the restraints, the metal clanking against the posts, the leather chafing against my flesh.
Silas and Draynor look at one another, but it’s Kain who nods. “If she isn’t turning, there’s no point in keeping her tied up.”
Draynor is already undoing the leather cuff on the wrist nearest him. Silas tugs my other hand free. I didn’t see them unhooking my feet, but they did; my ankles lay on the bed, free of their restraints, and I heave myself to standing. But the world wavers. One of them snakes a robe around my shoulders.
“How’s your throat?” Draynor cups my jaw in his big hands and stares into my eyes.
I swallow — the tension’s gone. “Fine. Better.”
Draynor drops his palms to my bandaged rib cage, and the pressure of his touch is a sweet agony — a stinging sizzle mixed with a heady softness like the touch of a sun-warmed rose petal. “Your stomach?”
“I was a little nauseous yesterday right after the bite, but I’m not anymore. I’m hungry, actually.”
Silas and Kain exchange a loaded glance. Draynor’s thick brows meet in the middle, and it’s so stereotypical “broody vampire” that I might have laughed if I wasn’t so freaked out. The vampires can’t turn me. But they can hurt me. The wounds along my side and covering my arm are proof enough of that.
Draynor pulls me to him, my cheek against his chest as he strokes my hair, but I can’t shake my unease.
Where does this leave me? I don’t belong with the human world — I can never go back, not with vampires after me.
But I can never be one of them.
I’m stuck between two worlds, neither of which will ever accept me. The normal human world was never really my jam, but dear god.
“All of you, downstairs. Now.” Markula’s voice vibrates my bones from somewhere in the hallway.
I’m cold again — Draynor is no longer holding me. And the room is quiet.
I blink. Aside from me, it’s utterly empty.
Assholes. Maybe Markula’s a better fuck.
23
Kain
“She’s immune to us,” I say, leaning my weight on the granite counter. “To all vampires.”
The kitchen feels smaller than it did just yesterday, perhaps because of the way Markula is stalking the tiles. Perhaps because of the shattered cabinets, one edged in vampire blood. At least we cleaned up his head — the coy pond is coming in quite handy this week. Fish can’t become vampires either, and Markula’s instructions to them were clear: eat.
Silas rises from the chair in the living room. Stuffing is visible along the side of one cushion, protruding from a pair of evenly spaced claw marks. The vampire responsible for that had gone into the pond too.
“She’s immune, but she’s not a vampire,” Silas says. “Those wounds on her body are proof enough of that. She’d be healed.”
I nod. On this, we agree. “It’s … impossible. I’ve never read about anything like this before.”
“Maybe you forgot.” Draynor leans against the living room wall beneath a cock-eyed painting of wildflowers.
I glower at him. “I would never forget.” I’ve had an eidetic memory since I was a child, which is especially useful now, when we’re so far away from our library. “And we would all remember stories of people who are immune to vampire venom. I can’t figure out why she won’t turn. It’s like she’s stronger than us.”
“If she’s stronger than us, she isn’t human,” Markula growls at Silas. “So what is she? What kind of monster did you bring into this house?”
Silas shrinks back from him, Draynor too, but I square my shoulders — this is my area. The logical. The rational. The scientific, at least as scientific as the paranormal can be. “There are only certain beings that are immune to vampire venom, and she doesn’t meet criteria for a single one of them. A half-vamp, a dhampir, would be healed by now, and they have a distinct smell — she definitely doesn’t have that. A witch is more concerning, but there’s no way.” Witches use vampire blood for hexes, but they’d never knowingly ingest it. And they would turn — witch blood can’t fend off vampire blood.
A witch is still a human.
“So what is she?” Markula’s question echos in my brain. “She can manipulate you, all of you,” Markula says. “Your abilities don’t work on her.”
“Yours don’t,” Draynor says, pushing himself off the wall. “Ours do.”
Silas nods. “He’s right. At first, I couldn’t hear her, as if she were blocking me out somehow. But as soon as she … submitted to me, we were bonded. Now my powers work better than ever, which is how I know she doesn’t have malicious intent.”
“If she can hide her thoughts from you, she can manipulate you,” Markula fires back. “You can’t be certain she’s showing you the truth — perhaps she is only projecting what she wants you to believe.”
“I’d know if she was a vampire,” Silas snaps. “Or a witch. Hexes, spells, they all have a place in the mind — they have to be revisited. She has no knowledge of any of it.”
“She could have witchcraft in her blood. And witches almost always live in a female-centered group — they’re the powerful ones, the only ones that maintain the bloodline. She’s spoken of her mother, yes?” Markula directs his blood-red gaze at me.
I swallow hard. “Yes, she has. The woman was killed when she was sixteen.”
“And what of the blade she carries?” His eyes are full of rage. Silas and Draynor tense — it’s clear they know about the weapon, maybe more than they’ve told us.
Silas looks o
ver. “Wait … could it be the blade that’s doing this? That’s keeping her from turning? Perhaps her mother, or someone else, hexed the knife to protect whoever carries it.”
“And why would her mother need to protect her from vampires?” Markula says, whirling on Silas. “Her family being lifelong enemies with our kind isn’t less suspicious.”
“I don’t think it’s witchcraft, anyway. I studied that blade all night, or as well as I could without touching it.” I shake my head, carefully avoiding everyone’s eyes. “It has power, but I can’t identify the source. I do know it’s an old magic, but not something I’d associate with witches — it’s well older than their race.”
Draynor leans against the wall once more. Silas collapses onto the torn cushion.
“I also can’t find an explanation for our reaction to her,” I say softly. “Any story of love among our people is a reckless thing, an intense bond between one female, one male, but never more than one. Even the stories of inamorata — ”
“This is not about inamorata. She’s human.” Markula’s voice bellows through the kitchen and echoes against the splintered cabinetry. “It has to be a hex, a trick.”
“I don’t care,” Silas says suddenly, his voice strained. “I don’t care what she is or why she’s here. I’ll do anything to be close to her. It’s like I’m alive again, but more intensely so — I’m more connected to the world, even to you.”
Draynor nods. “The shuddering pulse of the blood in her veins when I touch her … it almost feels as if my own blood is throbbing through me once more. She’s not a witch, but she has a powerful magic about her. We may never understand it. But I need to be near it for as long as I can.”
This I understand. I’ve been trying to deny it since last night, but hearing their words, I no longer can. Every time I cleaned her wounds, every time I brushed her flesh, I felt the same. I felt alive.
