Sandor's derisive smile vanished. “I had good reasons. One of which was to get your attention. I don't stand for any young cub screwing around with me.”
“After living over a century, you haven't learned any more refined language than that?” said Roger. Why didn't Sandor attack? If he was stalling in hopes of getting Roger to lower his guard, two could practice that strategy.
“Why, Doctor, you sound downright hostile. You're expecting me to start a fight, aren't you? That's not what I want.”
“Oh? What do you want?”
“To give you one more chance.” Sandor, bold as always, made no attempt to shield his emotions. He radiated no anger, yet below the surface simmered impatience—and something else? Hunger?
Yes. As far as they knew, he'd gone weeks without a violent kill, which he seemed to require for satisfaction. Britt, also sensing the vampire's need, projected hope. Could they use that urgency against him, Roger speculated? Unlikely that Sandor would fall for another mock seduction, nor would Roger allow Britt to risk herself that way.
“Allow, hell!” she silently retorted. “I guess you're right, though. Still, he's hungry and you're well-fed; that should give you some advantage.”
The outlaw, watching them and apparently encouraged by their silent attention, continued, “Join me, Doctor—oh, hell, let's dispense with the titles and surnames. They're human conventions, anyway. I'm Neil, you're Roger. Help me hit back at the Council. You don't owe any more to Volnar's pack than I do.”
An unwilling surge of sympathy rippled through Roger. “Rejecting them was your own choice.”
Neil assumed a relaxed stance, his hands stretched out, palms up, in a parody of appeal. “Do you mean to say youlike rolling over and playing dead for the elders, bowing your neck to those stupid rules?” Every word evoked an answering spark in Roger. “They accommodate the ephemerals’ culture too much. They expect us to act human, instead of claiming our rightful heritage.”
The last sentence shredded the tenuous web of sympathy he'd begun to weave. “You forget, Iam human,” Roger said.
“No, you're not!” Neil's voice dripped contempt. “You just happen to look like one. But you're not a real vampire yet, either. Volnar won't let you be one. Face it, how much has he actually taught you?”
Roger's resentment of Volnar boiled to the surface. He struggled to recall the positive dimensions of their telepathic exchange. “There wasn't time. He transmitted as much as he could. I recognize his motives, even if I have—problems—with his methods.”
Neil shook his head in disgust. “Roger, you're so bloody naive. Did Volnar give you one solid reason to trust him? Didn't he keep that mental shield of his locked and barred every second, except when it suitedhis purposes?”
Roger couldn't deny that argument. Young and inexperienced as he was, Volnar could have deceived him with impunity.
Britt's thoughts entwined with his, like a firm handclasp. “Careful, Roger, don't let him confuse you. To him you're just a weapon against the others. He wants to warp their prize genetic experiment.”
“Let me teach you.” Neil's coaxing tone would have fooled anyone who couldn't sense the cynical manipulation beneath it. “Let me show you what our life should really be like.”
“Oh, like yours? Lurking in the shadows, lairing in holes like a wild animal?”
“Freedom, Roger.” Neil grinned, running his tongue over his lips. “Do you enjoy being domesticated all that much? You had a taste of the real thing recently, didn't you? You killed that boy.”
“You influenced him, didn't you?”
“Sure, I've been watching him. Who do you think convinced him Alice was right about you being a vampire? I tried to make him forget our conversation, think it was his own idea to scrag you and the lady doc.”
“You should have tried harder,” Roger said. “He remembered enough to betray your presence here.”
Neil waved away that fact as irrelevant. “So how did you like it—the kill?”
The image of Peter's lifeless body twisted Roger's guts. He kept his voice even. “Not at all.”
“Because you aren't used to it. Come on, admit you got high on it. For a few seconds, didn't you feel that ultimate thrill?”
A rush of heat suffused Roger. The taste of that instant when he had cast aside his human veneer, let his darker self possess him, flooded his senses. For a moment he yielded to the delirium, a crimson mist gathering before his eyes.
Britt's hand on his shoulder cleared his brain. Neil's pleasure in that momentary weakness struck him like a poisoned arrow. “I reject that,” said Roger. “That is not what I choose to be.”
Neil edged closer. “Get thee behind me, Satan?” he mocked. “Have you considered that maybe you can't transform because you've never let go, never immersed yourself in your true nature? Come with me, Roger—let me teach you to shed those human limitations and glory in feeding the way you were meant to feed—and you can learn to fly.”
Ambushed by the memory of Sylvia soaring over the tree-tops, Roger felt a pang of yearning as sharp as blood-thirst.No, it's impossible; Volnar said I had no trace of that talent . But why assume Volnar told the truth?Even if he didn't, would I change myself into a rabid wolf, exiled from human and vampire society both, just for the power to fly? Such considerations felt arid in contrast to the promised reward. Neil's eyes scorched him like live coals.
For an instant Roger had actually forgotten Britt. Now she edged around him to stand at his side, facing the renegade. “My, how altruistic you're becoming, all of a sudden.” Her voice sounded unnaturally loud in the snow-muffled darkness. “So you just want to help Roger claim his true heritage? You want to help him grow into a proud, wild animal, roaming free under the moon, a lord of the night?” The melodramatic words rang with scorn. “Horse feathers! You're running scared. You don't like having to sleep with both ears pricked, waiting for someone to sever your head from your body. You want a companion to share the risk.”
The shot hit home. Neil bared his teeth in a snarl.
Unafraid, Britt pulled the cross out of her coat and clutched it. “Not only that, you're getting lonely. Your recent behavior pattern makes that obvious. You need somebody you can dominate, so you don't have to admit to yourself how badly you need companionship. First you tried Sylvia, a young woman barely mature. And now you're trying to suck in Roger. You think he's a pushover because he's not only young, he's half human. Well, if you think that—”
In the midst of this speech, the outlaw's aura deepened to a lurid violet-red. Rage emanated from him like hard radiation. His face shed its human facade, dark velvet fuzz sprouting on the cheeks, the ears elongating to points, the teeth sharpening. “Shut up!” he cut her off in a thick growl. He swayed toward Britt, then rocked back on his heels. “Can't you see what she's done to you?” he said to Roger, the words barely comprehensible. “She's weakened you. She's prey, damn it—share her with me—”
Neil's involuntary transformation shook Roger to the depths. A vampire out of control, submerged in madness, posed a more frightful threat than one simply driven by lust and malice.
Britt held up her cross, which seemed to shine from within. “Think again, Neil. You can't touch me while I have this, can you?”
Fury overwhelmed the vampire's fear of the cross. Emitting a howl devoid of any trace of rationality, he lunged at Britt. Roger blocked him.
The renegade's claws dug into his shoulders, shredding his jacket. Neil panted in his face, sickening him with a stench like decayed meat. Roger threw his weight against the other vampire. They slipped on the light coating of snow and rolled together on the gravel of the driveway.
Roger shifted his grip to claw at Neil's throat. His opponent fended him off. Roger heard the grinding of the other's teeth. Flipping Roger onto his back, Neil snapped at his throat. Roger flinched away, rammed a knee into his adversary's groin. With the whiplike dart of a striking snake, Neil scored a gash on Roger's neck. Only Roger's instinct
ive recoil kept the wound superficial.
Taking advantage of Neil's instant of complacency at this achievement, he raked his nails across Neil's cheek, then shoved the other vampire off him. Roger sprang to his feet. The scent of blood, his own and the other's, made his head reel. He felt drunk. With a roar he charged at Neil.
In a blur of flailing limbs, the enemy grappled with him. Somehow they kept their footing as they struggled. Again and again Neil's teeth scraped Roger's neck and collarbone. In a second of clarity, Roger thought,I taste almost human—and he likes it! He let his arms go limp, throwing Neil off guard. When the purebred vampire closed with him once more, he dodged, then bit into Neil's throat.
The chilled-metal flavor scalded Roger's mouth like acid. Gagging, he didn't anticipate the blow that rammed into the pit of his stomach. Neil followed up with a swipe of his talons down Roger's chest.
Staggering, Roger glanced down at his ripped shirt, the red slashes across his ribcage. Neil drove a fist into his jaw. Roger fell to the ground, pain screaming through his nerves.As if his claws were tipped with poison!
No, that searing pain wasn't wholly physical. He was feeling the other vampire's agony, too, amplified by the berserker rage. Roger slammed down his mental barrier.Damn bloody monster, stay out of my head!
Neil landed on him with crushing force. Roger's skull hit the ground so hard he almost blacked out. The grip of Neil's hands around his neck jolted him to full awareness.He's going to kill me, like Sylvia. In some corner of his mind Roger knew he should be able to control the pain that left him writhing helplessly, the blood flow that drained his strength. But he couldn't summon up that power. He needed all his energy to bar Neil's sensations from his consciousness.
Blackness thickened before his eyes.God! Is this death? Through a crack in his barrier he felt a gentle probe.Get out! Then a fragment of awareness returned. It was Britt whose touch he felt.
“Roger, don't let him do this to you. If you fight the contact, you're playing his game. He's more terrified of the bond than you are! Use that!”
Britt's strength flowed into him. Though he knew she stood several yards away, through some doubled vision he saw her kneeling beside him, pressing the luminous cross into his hands.Yes! Neil enjoys pain—let him experience what real pain is!
Roger grabbed tightly onto the burning agony in his chest and channeled it into the renegade vampire's clutching fingers. The cross Britt held, which Roger mentally grasped in union with her, blazed with their shared love and pain. He drove that energy up Neil's nerves and veins to the vampire's heart. Momentarily their three hearts throbbed in unison, racked by the same torture. Then Neil, his limbs twitching with convulsions, collapsed on Roger.
Roger heaved the quivering body off him. Rolling Neil on his back, Roger knelt on the vampire's chest. Out of the corner of his eye Roger glimpsed Britt crouched on the ground, hugging the cross to her breast. To his heightened senses the symbol radiated a green glow that bathed all three of them in a halo of palpable light.
Roger charged into Neil's mind, smashing the remnants of the other vampire's shield like a house of cards. “So you like to feed on pain? You don't know what you're talking about! You're a coward; you've never opened yourself to the full range of your victims’ emotions. You picked and chose what you wanted, as if humanity were a buffet. Well, you're about to find out what you've been missing!”
Whatever fragment of rationality Neil still possessed cringed in terror. Roger ignored it. Instead he laid himself wide open to memories he'd tried to annihilate. First he embraced the image of Sylvia begging him to merge with her. He flung at Neil the panic of her mind invading his, the anguish she'd felt when he'd cast her out. Like a raw wound, worse than the gash in his chest, Roger relived her sorrow for Rico, her sadness at leaving her home, wandering as a fugitive. He opened himself to her yearning to mate with him and her distress when he'd refused, abandoning her to Neil's violation. Roger then disgorged his own sick horror at discovering her mangled corpse.
Whimpering like a maimed animal, the vestigial scrap of Neil's consciousness curled into a ball in the center of his skull. The feedback of the pain tormented Roger almost beyond endurance. An electric current of renewed energy flowed into him. Britt. He resumed the attack.
“Neil Sandor, you're the one who doesn't know what it's like to be a fully functioning vampire. Our relationship with our donors is meant to be symbiotic. You've cut yourself off from half of what you were created for—crippled yourself!”
A gasp of resistance: “So you think you do know?”
Do I? Didn't I trap myself in a stereotype of vampirism as rigid as his? God, what a fool I've been!
“Yes. Brought up as human, I can look at our existence from a fresh viewpoint. I can see what it ought to be.” Roger cast himself back to the night when Alice had collapsed at his door, on the verge of death. He drowned Neil in the terror she'd felt that night. “Did you drink deep of this? Or just taste it and run away?”
He then force-fed Neil those hours he and Britt had spent as captives in Peter's house. Roger enveloped the other vampire in the miasma of hate, fear, and grief that had hovered around Peter like a fog over a swamp. The vision of Peter's fixed stare, eyes red-rimmed from weeping for his sister, his hair and skin clammy with sweat, his hand squeezing the revolver, sprang to life. And then the moment of his death, his head crashing into the window.
“I didn't kill him for pleasure,” Roger told Neil. “I knew how he felt. I know what it is to face losing a person who means everything to me.” He revived the terror of the void that threatened to engulf him when Peter aimed the gun at Britt.
Neil shriveled like an undersea creature washed up on the sand at high noon. A ratlike screech: “Get away from me!”
Roger shrugged off the feeble spasm of resistance. “Hardly. I have the strength now. You are weaker because you're alone. I have an ally.”
“Your pet!”
“No. She provides for me out of love. Something you'll never know.”
Unless you choose to reach out.Roger didn't bother projecting that thought. He knew the renegade would never take that risk. “You've seen too many sensational movies, picked up distorted ideas of what we should be. You believe that nonsense about satanic autonomy. The fact that we're solitary predators is only part of the truth. The blood-bond sustains us. Without it, we wither away.”
Roger visualized the emerald cross, refulgent with light that pulsed like a heartbeat, in his grasp. He extended it toward the other vampire. “Take it. Let it heal you.” The radiance burned Neil like sunlight.
With a last despairing wail, what was left of Neil Sandor fled into the darkness.
The world heaved as if racked by an earthquake. When Roger's vision cleared, he was lying on the ground next to Neil. Probing, he touched no sentience. He heard no hiss of air in the lungs, saw no expansion of the chest. A few seconds of concentrated listening, however, brought the stutter of a feeble pulse to his ears. Before second thoughts could rise up to sap his resolution, Roger clamped his hands around the renegade vampire's neck. With a single twist he broke the spine.
Panting as if he had run across town on foot and battled for hours instead of a few minutes, he staggered to Britt and leaned over her. She lay face up, her eyes closed, still holding the jeweled cross to her breast.
He touched her, both physically and mentally. He felt nothing.
Heaving a sob, he gathered her into his arms. He felt himself falling into blackness. For a timeless interval it deafened and blinded him.
What drew him back was the flutter of her heart against his chest. She was only unconscious, not—not gone. He carried her to the car and laid her on the back seat. Crouched beside her in the cramped space, he rested both hands on her head. “Britt— wake up.” He whispered to her and simultaneously spoke inside her mind. Nothing. He hadn't realized how deeply he'd drained her life-force to fuel the attack.
“Dear God, Britt, why didn't you stop me?”
He plunged into her mind.
Again the void swallowed him. He had never seen darkness before, only the luminous gray other people called “dark.” But this time he would not yield to the emptiness. He clung to the certainty that Britt lived—somewhere. His eyes strained through the blackness until he glimpsed a tendril of light. He floated toward it. He grasped it like a golden thread to guide him through this labyrinth.
For the place had now become a maze, no longer a featureless darkness. He traced the thread through tunnels like the corridors of a dungeon in a Gothic tale, their stone walls coated with frost. At the center of the labyrinth he found Britt lying on a bed of stone; around her hung icicles glimmering with an internal blue light of their own.
One segment of his mind knew this was not a real place, only an imaginary construct to help him lure Britt out of her retreat. He thought,How archetypal can you get? She would love this!
He stepped through a veil of cold that resonated in his bones like a musical note pitched too high for mortal ears. Britt looked and felt like a statue of ice. He pressed his lips to hers.
At first he felt no response. With a dim idea of restoring the life-force he had taken, he bit his lip to warm her cold mouth with his blood. He poured his soul into a plea for her to waken. An echo of her normal vitality answered him. He fed it, lavishing his energy upon her, nourishing her as she always nourished him. He felt his heart beat with hers, his life flowing into her as if they shared a single bloodstream.
Abruptly he found himself in the car, holding Britt and kissing her. He discovered he actually had bitten his lip, and somehow his teeth had scratched Britt, too, for he tasted her blood mingled with his like a sacrament. Except for the abysmal fatigue that weighed upon her, she felt normal to his psychic touch.
“Beloved, can you forgive me—”
“Don't!” She placed a finger on his lips. “I did what I wanted to do—what we had to do.”
He strapped the seat belt around her and got out his car keys. “You're so cold—I have to get you home.”
Dark Changeling Page 35
