Mia took a deep breath that did nothing to soothe her nerves.
“…and the potential applications…” Dad continued.
“Why you?”
Vlad’s voice wasn’t loud, or even especially deep, but it resonated. He had the voice of someone used to getting exactly what he wanted. It cut through the tension, and in a way, it was a relief.
“What?” Mia asked, turning to look at him.
There was nothing human about the way he regarded her, and so she could ascribe no human emotion to his gaze. Not judgement, or disappointment, or disapproval. Just an animal assessment that made her want to squirm in her chair.
“My brother can dream-walk almost anywhere, and talk to almost anyone. Why did he choose you?”
Someone on the other side of the table, Annabel probably, made a quiet noise of shock.
Mia lowered her fork, salad untouched. “I don’t know,” she said, truthfully. “The first time, I don’t think he meant to. He asked where he was, and who I was.” She remembered him peering at her bookshelf, golden and lovely, and her chest ached. “I guess when I told him my name, he knew who I was right off. I don’t know why he kept coming back. You’d have to ask him.”
His expression shifted, lips pressing together. “Hm. You smelled like horses when you came in.”
That was right: vampire, after all. She swallowed. “I work at a training facility in Colorado. I ride every day.”
A hand reached over her shoulder and lifted away her untouched salad, replacing it with a steak and steamed broccoli.
Vlad turned his attention to his own steak, reaching for his utensils. “Val is an excellent horseman.”
“Yes, he told me.”
“You don’t agree with your father’s experiments here.”
“I…” The only sound besides their voices was the scrape of silver on china as he carved off a large bite of steak. She looked at the two werewolves across from her, but they were of no help. Annabel had leaned into her husband, so their shoulders touched. “No,” Mia said, back to Vlad. “I don’t. I get that he’s working toward some breakthroughs, but this is completely unethical in all aspects.”
“Mia,” Dad said, and she whirled on him.
“You’re keeping a man prisoner in the basement.”
Levelly, he said, “He’s not a man, dear. He’s a vampire.”
The words hit her like a slap.
A quiet huff of agitated breath across from her proved that Fulk felt the same way. “That’s how he justifies his ethics problem, you see,” Fulk said, his accent giving the words an extra bite. “He chooses not to see us as humans. As people. And no one cares what you do to an animal, do they?”
“That’s – that’s not at all what I meant!” her dad protested. “It’s just – I only meant that – Prince Valerian is a criminal!” His voice went shrill, trying to convince them all.
Vlad reached for his wine and said, “My brother was locked up for killing me. But I’m not dead, am I?”
“Well…” Dad said, helpless.
“When we are finished eating,” Vlad said with finality, “I will take you to see him.”
Mia’s stomach flipped, and she reached for her silverware.
~*~
Mia couldn’t decide if her father was frightened of Vlad, or merely trying to butter him up to encourage his cooperation. Probably both.
For her own part, she settled on thoroughly intimidated, but unwilling to show it. (Or, okay, unwilling to show too much of it.) But she wasn’t afraid. Not really. Maybe she should have been. But she’d spent her life studying animals, and nothing about Vlad’s tone, or posture, or hard to read glances suggested that he intended to harm her.
After dinner, he led her through a stunning library and into a sleek, modern elevator. When the doors slid shut, closing them in together, their reflections stared back at them: strange at best. Her, tired and wilting, and him, implacable and steely.
It was silent a long, tense moment, as the car started its descent. Then Vlad said, “My brother’s life has been…difficult.”
“That seems like a massive understatement.”
He snorted and it sounded like agreement. “Your father–” he started.
“Is an asshole,” she finished. “I’m not here for Dad, or for me. I’m here for Val.” She turned to face him, rather than the reflected image of him, and thought he might be holding back a smile.
He took his time in returning her glance. “He cares for you,” he said. “That much I gleaned the last time I spoke with him. And that means he trusts you.”
A fluttering in her chest.
“I neither know you, nor care for you. And I don’t trust you,” he said, flatly, and the fluttering died down. “But you don’t smell like a liar.”
She swallowed. “That’s something you can smell?”
“Sometimes.” He faced forward again with an air of dismissal, but said, “If you love my brother, you’ll do as I say when I say it.”
She bristled.
“Hush, child. You don’t know what I know. Or what I’m planning. If you love him, you won’t hurt him.”
She forced a deep, slow breath. “I would never hurt him.”
The elevator arrived with a quiet ding. Just before the doors slid open, he said, “Good.”
~*~
Vlad had put him back in the cell, but he’d left off the cuffs, and collar, and chains. The bars were silver, but there were gaps, and through those, Val could feel it when she arrived.
He was lounging back on his cot, one leg drawn up, arm resting along his knee, contemplating his freshly clean fingernails, when the faintest vibration shivered down the walls. A helicopter landing all the way up on the roof.
He sat bolt upright, that shiver moving under his skin. People came and went – soldiers, staff, scientists flown down from the New York location. An arrival wasn’t unusual.
But Vlad had said Mia was coming.
He waited like that, even when his back grew sore from holding the position. He inhaled deeply, testing the air, searching for the tiniest scent, the smallest sound. Straining, really, his heart beating butterfly-fast in his throat.
It could have been minutes, or hours. He convinced himself that he could sense her presence, though he had no idea what she smelled like; didn’t know the unique rhythm of her heartbeat. So he only imagined he could hear her footfalls through all those layers of steel, and stone, and floorboards.
But then.
Then…
Unmistakable thrum of the elevator. It went up and down dozens of times a day, maybe even hundreds. But this time, drawn tight with inspiration, Val let the sound draw a quiet gasp from him.
He waited, barely breathing.
And then footfalls moved overhead, through subbasement one. Two sets. One heavy and purposeful, the other light and uncertain.
God. God, could it…
The outer door opened with a hiss of the lock. And then…
Then he caught her scent.
An unfamiliar female, lavender from the bath soap upstairs, clean underneath. Ripe. Warm. But also nervous. And also sick.
“Oh,” he said aloud, when he detected the tumor, that awful festering thing that didn’t belong in her beautiful head. His eyes burned, and his heart hammered, and he swayed on his cot. “Oh, Mia.”
He tried to stand as the barred door creaked open, but his knees gave out. Still weak, but also shivering with a kind of excitement too acute to name. He was terrified. He wanted to cry. He wanted to touch her.
The only thing louder than the thump of her pulse was his own. He gripped the edge of the cot hard, until his knuckles cracked, and then Vlad stepped into view.
And then…there she was.
He closed his eyes a moment, wanting to stamp the sight of her into his mind, in case this was a hallucination. If she wasn’t really here, he wanted to tuck her away between the pages of his sweetest fantasies, and pretend this was really happening.
&
nbsp; Someone had given her black workout gear to wear, clinging black pants and a zippered jacket with a high collar. The dark washed her out a little, highlighted the shadows under her eyes. Her hair, normally pulled back under her helmet, fell in dark gold waves over both shoulders; it looked soft.
He opened his mouth, breathing through it, trying to taste her presence. She burrowed up into his sinuses and set his head to spinning.
He wet his lips and felt that his fangs had extended. “Vlad.” His voice was a cracked, shaky semblance of calm. “Am I dreaming?”
Vlad made an impatient sound. “Open your eyes, stupid.”
He smiled – because that was his big brother alright – and he did open his eyes, and Mia was still there, staring at him with wide eyes and parted lips. She couldn’t believe it either.
Vlad, face set in a way that suggested he thought they were both idiots, unlocked the cell door with the key and held it open. “You have half an hour,” he told Mia, “and then I’ll return. Otherwise, your father will become problematic.”
“Okay,” she said faintly, but didn’t move.
Vlad gave a sweeping gesture of invitation. “You’re not frightened, are you?”
“No–”
“No,” Val said, because she wasn’t. She smelled the way he felt: completely overwhelmed.
Vlad looked between them, unimpressed, then turned and walked away, cell door left open.
They were alone. And they were only ten feet apart. No bars, no cuffs, no thousands of miles and incorporeal forms. They…
They started moving at the same time. Val lurched up from his cot and Mia staggered forward. He saw tears fill her eyes, bright like crystal, and then they crashed together.
There were so many things he wanted to do, ways in which he wanted to touch her – brush her with careful, worshipful fingertips like the priceless piece of art she was. But that would have to come later, when he was less desperate, when he wasn’t choking on her scent for the very first time. He wrapped both arms around her and crushed her to his chest; felt her arms slip around his waist, vise-tight, hands digging into the back of his shirt. She pressed her face, hot, soft skin, into his throat with a gasp.
Val dropped his face into hair, panting, and an embarrassing sound like a groan built in his throat, worked its way past his lips.
He hunched his shoulders, shielding her, hiding her away. They weren’t close enough; he wasn’t sure they could be. “You’re here,” he murmured into the top of her head. Clutched her shoulders, pressed his fingers to her neck to feel the heat there, to know that she was real, her pulse flying under his touch. “You’re here, you’re here.”
“Val,” she said, like a sigh, breath hot across his collarbone.
He wanted to say so much. Everything. An abundance of gratitude, disbelief, and regret that she was here at all. The words gathered in his throat, too many, too fast, a logjam.
They could wait, he decided. He kissed her crown, and breathed her in, and basked in the pressure of her heart pounding against his.
49
THE NECROMANCER
He’d shown her, briefly, through his projection, what he really looked like. Not the graceful, gleaming prince who’d lounged around her apartment, but his true body, trapped in a cell. Filthy, bedraggled, painfully thin. This version of him, the one holding her, the one whose shirt collar she pressed her nose into, was a few pounds heavier than that wraith she’d seen back at the barn, and he was clean; he smelled of the same lavender soap she’d used. But she could feel the press of his ribs through his shirt; the tiny tremors that wracked his frame.
Her arms tightened around him when she felt his knees try to give out for the third time. He should have felt lithe, and strong – impossibly strong, he was a vampire. But instead, he felt fragile; nothing but brittle bones held together by sheer force of will. As the initial shock and joy faded, as her pulse slowed to something only quietly frantic, she realized they couldn’t keep standing here like this – Val couldn’t, anyway.
“Hey,” she said, pulling back far enough to look up into his face. He was slower to retreat, his eyes still closed, lashes long and dark on his sunken cheeks. He breathed through his mouth, slow and shaky. “Let’s sit down, okay?”
His eyes opened, and they were so blue in person. Full of an emotion she didn’t dare name. “You’re here,” he said again. It was all he’d said. And then: “Oh, darling, you’re here.”
It had seemed too good to be true on her end, an achingly sweet fiction.
She hadn’t stopped to consider that it had been the same for him.
“I am.” She reached up to touch his face, the sharp plane of his cheek cool beneath her hand. “Let’s sit down before you fall.”
He blinked a few times. “There’s only the cot.” Then he grinned, and his fangs were long and sharp. “Trying to get me into bed already?”
She laughed, but it wasn’t for the joke. Joy filled her, swelling impossibly bigger on each breath. “Sure, we’ll go with that. Come on, easy does it.”
She managed to walk him backward the few steps to the cot and get him eased down onto it, his back to the wall. She ended up going, too, though, because he hooked an arm around her waist and, even thin though he was, there was no shaking him off. Not that she wanted to – no, all she wanted in that moment was to fold her legs up and settle in against his side, one hand on his chest, the other at the back of his neck, on the warm skin up under his hair.
He tipped his head back, and the harsh light from the caged overhead bulbs slid down the sharp line of his nose, his lips, his chin; carved shadows in the hollow of his throat.
He was beautiful. Even like this. Maybe especially – because he was real, and his chest rose and fell under her hand, and if she leaned in closer, she could…
He tipped his head a little to the side, so he could look at her. “A hot bath, and a visit from a beautiful lady,” he said, voice rough. “It has been a remarkable day.” He attempted to smile…but it crumbled. His breath caught, and his lashes flickered. He whispered something low and pained in another language.
Mia bundled him in close as best she could; cupped the back of his head and drew him down so they were cheek-to-cheek, close enough that his quiet, hiccupping little sobs were buried against her neck.
All she could say was, “I’m here.” Over and over, a mantra. She held him, and shushed him, and hoped it was enough.
~*~
Fulk threw down his entire glass of port in one go and then poured another as he was trying not to choke. Of all the things that could be effectively chugged, port wasn’t one of them.
Behind him, Dr. Talbot paced back and forth across the Aubusson carpet, no doubt wringing his hands. Fulk’s skin prickled, hackles raised, in response to the doctor’s fretting. The energy in the room made him want to growl. He just barely restrained himself.
“You can’t really think he’d hurt her, doc,” Annabel said. She had that charming Southern way of calling a person an idiot while making it sound consoling. “Val’s crazy about her.”
“And what, Lady Strange,” he snapped, uncharacteristically severe, “would be at all relieving about that?”
Fulk turned around and leaned back against the ornate sideboard, wineglass held in one hand, aiming a finger toward the man with the other. “I don’t like your tone.”
Talbot’s already flushed face colored further. “My daughter is alone with a madman! My tone is understandable.”
“Not alone. Vlad’s with them,” Annabel pointed out.
Fulk sent her a look.
She shrugged.
“Two madmen!” Talbot threw up his hands. “Wonderful!”
“So I’m a madman?” Vlad asked, tone mild. Fulk had heard and scented that he was approaching, and it was worth holding his tongue to watch Talbot yelp and spin to face him.
“You, uh, no, I–” Talbot sputtered.
Vlad paced slowly into the room, hands clasped behind his back. Relaxe
d, unconcerned. Every blink and every step was a threat. “No, it’s true,” he said mildly, coming to the sideboard beside Fulk and picking up a clean glass. He poured himself a Scotch, and the normal, comfortable way he handled the decanter was one of those strange moments that kept sucker-punching Fulk: those Vlad-the-Impaler-is-just-a-man moments.
Not just a man. A vampire. A vicious one, at that. But one who slept, and ate, and who liked Scotch, apparently.
Vlad took a sip and lifted his brows at Fulk over the rim of the glass.
Fulk shrugged and looked away, back toward Talbot – who was starting to turn purple with a combination of fear and anger.
“It’s true,” Vlad continued, mirroring Fulk’s pose against the table. “I’ve been called a madman by many.” He didn’t seem bothered by it. “A monster. A murderer. Warlord. Blood-drinker. Eater of the dead. What do you think, Doctor? Did you wake up a madman to fight your war for you?”
Fulk paused with his glass pressed to his lip, watching.
Talbot’s face went slowly blank. “I – of course I don’t think that.”
This was the problem, and had been since his birth: People underestimated Vlad’s intelligence. No one could reconcile the idea of a person accused of such cruelty as being razor-sharp, but he was. Fulk didn’t think he’d met anyone as calculating in his life. But the difference between Vlad and every scheming Cassius that had ever lived was that Vlad always took the most direct route. Because he could, morals and obstacles be damned.
Staring unblinking at Talbot, Vlad said, “You seem frightened.”
“Do I? I’m only worried for my daughter’s safety.”
“Hmm.” Another sip of Scotch, and then Vlad set the glass aside. “Do you want to know what I think?”
Fulk did. A quick glance at Anna proved she did, too.
But.
Fulk felt it as a low pulse deep in the center of himself. The tolling of a bell. He’d felt it recently, only a few weeks before, the day they’d brought the redheaded girl into the manor. Anna liked to joke that it was their internal alarm system, but it wasn’t much of a joke if it was true – and it was. Whenever a mage got close enough to sense, something went off inside him like a depth charge. Danger, his wolf growled, and raised its hackles.
Dragon Slayer (Sons of Rome Book 3) Page 66
