“In – influence me? Val.” She breathed a nervy laugh. “You’re asking if I want to become a vampire. What other reason would I decide that if not for you?”
He recoiled physically, as if she’d struck him, expression wounded. “Mia…for yourself. Don’t you want to live?”
“You’re asking me to live forever,” she said, as gently as she could manage, though her heart was pounding. “There’s a big difference.”
“I…” Slowly, he shut his mouth, and turned away, facing the horse. The sponge dripped, forgotten, in his right hand. He let out a little breath. “Yes.” Voice distant now. “Forever is a long time. I’ve been held captive for most of it.”
Her heart cracked. “Val–”
“We should get the horses put away.”
So that’s what they did. Got them all sponged off, cleaned up, and tucked into their stalls with generous flakes of hay. The sort of busy quiet that forced a person into her own head – forced her to think about the things she’d been pushing onto the back burner.
She had to face it: Val was offering her…immortality. A cure, yes, but also forever. The thing about it was, she was a human, and forever carried weight. It wasn’t something you tossed out on a whim. Not something you shrugged and said “whatever” to. Forever was a big damn deal.
She didn’t want to die. But did she want to live to be two-hundred? Three-hundred?
Val had been born in 1435…
She turned away from the laundry sink in the tack room and he was blocking the doorway, slim-hipped, and long-haired, and gorgeous. He had his arms folded, but it wasn’t the overtly masculine pose that so many men made it; it was something almost sultry, and completely unselfconscious.
A wave of dizziness moved through her, and she steadied herself with a hand on the edge of the sink.
His brow furrowed. Concerned. “What’s wrong?”
She smiled at him, and it felt like a stripped-bare expression. Too vulnerable, like her heart must show, pathetic and pounding, through her eyes. “You’re beautiful.”
He studied her a moment, and then, slowly, his expression melted into something warm and a touch self-satisfied. And then further, into surprise. Awe. “So are you.”
They moved at the same time; he pushed off the door, and she started forward, and they met in the center of the floor, reaching. She pressed her hands to his chest. He was underweight, and still shaky, but her impression was of the warmth of his skin bleeding through the thin material of his shirt, his pectorals lightly muscled against her palms. Vampire, she thought, half-dazed. Healthier and more resilient than any human could have been in his circumstances.
He curled one hand loosely around the side of her throat, cupped her cheek with the other. Gentle, like she was made of glass.
His thumb moved feather-light beneath her eye, his gaze flicking back and forth across her face. Drinking her in – there was no other way to interpret it. But he hesitated. She read the tension in his face; felt the tremor in his fingertips. Holding back.
“Val,” she whispered. “It’s okay.”
He exhaled in a rush, breath warm across her face, ducked down and kissed her.
Her eyes fluttered shut at the last moment, and it narrowed her world down to sensation. The racing of his heart under her hand. The softness of his lips against hers, slightly damp from his tongue. The flicker of his long lashes on her cheeks, press of his nose.
It felt like a very first kiss. Like something out of a storybook.
But unlike her first kiss, she wasn’t a sweaty-palmed kid, and she knew what to do. What she wanted from this. From him.
She leaned into him with her whole body, and opened her mouth under his.
He hesitated just a moment longer, trying to be so gentle, the pads of his fingers warm and soft on her face. And then he groaned and slipped his tongue into her mouth.
She’d read somewhere before that the quality of a kiss didn’t have anything to do with lips and teeth and tongues; it was who you were kissing that made it electrifying. And oh, did she ever understand that now. Because this? This was exquisite.
In a graceful stumble, they ended up on the closed lid of a tack trunk, Val sitting down and Mia straddling his lap.
He clutched at her hair, at the sleeves of her shirt. Pressed a line of wet, decadent kisses along her jaw to the soft patch of skin beneath her ear. Breathing raggedly, chest heaving under her hands. “Mia. God. I…” He opened his mouth against her throat and breathed. She felt the faintest scrape of teeth.
Fear. That’s what she should have felt. He was a vampire, and he drank blood to live, and she felt the barest edge of a fang gliding along her pulse point.
Call it love, call it madness, but she wasn’t afraid. She slid her hands up his neck and cupped the back of his head, held him to her.
“I want you,” he murmured, and his voice was a big cat purr. “I want…God, I want everything.”
Her neck felt weak, like she might swoon. Her sports bra was too tight, suddenly, all of her clothes itchy and stifling. Everything. Yes, she wanted that too.
He shifted upward again, bit gently at the hinge of her jaw and then recaptured her mouth. A kiss that devoured.
She rocked against him, slight, rhythmic little movements of her hips. She wanted to slide down to the concrete floor and pull him on top of her. Wanted to–
Footfalls echoed off the stall fronts, several sets.
Mia pulled back and saw that Val looked halfway to debauched: cheeks flushed, mouth red and damp, gaze heavy-lidded. She’d pulled hair loose at his nape, thick strands that had come free from his braid.
He sighed, and smiled faintly, and squeezed her waist. “We’re lucky we had that long, darling.”
She wanted to punch whoever was about to walk in on them.
He chuckled at her expression. “I know. Me too.”
They disentangled and stood, and straightened their clothes. There was nothing to do about their heated faces and racing pulses. Maybe whoever this was wouldn’t notice.
A moment later, two guards in black appeared in the threshold, shoulder-to-shoulder, not managing to pull off the intimidating looks they were going for. They glanced between Mia and Val. One, the younger of the two, lifted his brows a degree beneath the brim of his hat, and Mia knew they’d been busted.
The older guard cleared his throat. “Miss Talbot, we’ve been asked to escort you back to the manor.”
She reached over and caught Val’s hand in hers. “What about Val?”
The man’s eyes darted to their linked fingers and then skittered away, as if frightened by the sight. He swallowed. “The prisoner is to return to his cell.”
She opened her mouth –
And Val squeezed her hand. “Lead the way, gentlemen,” he said, all politeness. “I’ll go quietly.”
54
FIXES AND MIRACLES
One thing Vlad would grant this century was its medical capabilities. The killing, crippling wounds of his time were no match for modern doctors.
Adela – Treadwell had called her that, hovering back with a stricken look before he was elbowed aside by a nurse – lay unmoving on the table, IV lines snaking from her arms. Someone had put a contraption over her nose and mouth – anesthesia. The doctors had stopped the bleeding; she was “stable,” they said. They were worried about infection, which they shouldn’t have been – the blood Vlad had given her, living blood, would kill anything. The real worry, Vlad knew, was the damage to the tissues of her leg. It smelled faint to him – like it was dying.
“We set the break,” one of the doctors said, sighing behind his paper mask. He held his arms up, gloves slick with blood. “But the leg…” He doubted, just like Vlad.
Then the doctor looked right at Vlad, eyes wide behind his glasses. “The blood. Will it–”
“It might.”
The man cursed under his breath and looked back at the offending limb. “We’ll just have to medicate and see–”
<
br /> “No,” someone said, and Vlad looked up to find that it was Treadwell, red-faced and blowing like a horse that had just run a race. “I’m – I’m blind!”
He shook his head, clearly frustrated. “No, I mean…shit.” He squeezed his eyes shut. Anguish of a kind Vlad didn’t understand; he and Adela didn’t smell of one another beyond the most cursory of ways. Co-workers, friends. They weren’t mates.
Warrior obligation, perhaps. Women could go to war in this age.
When Treadwell opened his eyes again, he looked surer, more in control. “I’m blind. I am. I came home from Iraq, and I couldn’t see a damn thing. And now I’m working again. I can see. This whole facility is dedicated to miracle cures,” he said. “So why can’t you guarantee that you can fix her?”
“There are fixes, and then there are miracles, Major,” the doctor said. “She can survive without her leg. And if she’s able, once she’s healed, we can try the procedure again. I’m sure by that point that Dr. Talbot’s work with the serum will have been further refined, and–”
“I could save the leg,” Vlad said, and all eyes swept toward him. “I could turn her.”
The doctor resumed his work, dismissive.
But Treadwell stared at him, slack-jawed. “You – you mean – make her like you?”
“Yes.”
His jaw firmed, mouth finally closing. “Why would you do that?”
“Does it matter?”
The doctor had stopped again, head turning back and forth as he looked between them. “Are you serious? Damn, you’re serious. Look, that isn’t approved. Doctor Talbot will never go for–”
Vlad spoke over him. “Major Treadwell, you know her best. Will she be able to stand living without this leg? Or will the disability slowly kill her?”
“I…” He faltered, looking down at her still face. “I don’t know her that well.”
“It makes no difference to me,” Vlad said.
But it did. His plan would take place regardless of the surrounding circumstances, but it would be more likely to succeed if he had others on his side. Price’s revenant had been a gift dropped into his lap. And here now, this woman, was another. At least, she had the potential to be.
The doctor straightened with a disapproving sigh. “This is ridiculous. A missing limb is not a death sentence. Amputees lead fulfilling lives every day.”
“No one said otherwise, Doctor,” Vlad said, scrutinizing Treadwell. “Decide, Major.”
Treadwell bit his lip, and shook his head…but Vlad could already smell it in the man’s stress sweat. He’d won.
~*~
Fulk found his wife in the conservatory. Alone, sitting on a low stone wall beside a thriving green plant. Her sister had been here, he could smell – the plant was her work. Annabel hummed quietly to herself when he sat down beside her, but didn’t move, still staring into the middle distance.
Fulk whined quietly in the back of his throat, inquiring.
She didn’t answer; instead climbed into his lap and looped her arms around his neck, tucked her face into his throat.
Fulk put his arms around her. “What is it, darling?” Words this time, and gentle fingers through her long hair.
“Just me being selfish.”
Not for the first time, he wished he’d been able to convince her to leave with Baskin and his allies. But he pushed aside her hair and cupped the vulnerable curve of her throat with one hand because if she was selfish, he was doubly so, and he was glad she was here with him. “No you’re not.”
She sighed. “Please stop trying to see the best in me. Lily told me about the war – about what’s coming. And I know what they want you to do here, and I’m just…being selfish. Because I want you all to myself. And I want us to go home, and pretend none of this is happening.” When she blinked, he felt dampness on her lashes, tickling over his pulse. “And I just needed five minutes to get my head on straight so I could be strong for you.”
Oh, Anna. He tightened his grip, bundling her in closer. He put his face against her neck in turn, scenting her, wanting that pack comfort. “You’re always strong. You don’t have to hide anything from me.”
She chuckled hollowly. “What did I just say about seeing the best in me?” She pulled back, hands braced on his shoulders, so she could see his face. Fulk knew his smile was half-assed, but didn’t have the energy to make it any better.
“Baby.” She framed his face with her small, cool hands. “I want you to know, in case you go getting any other stupid ideas about me leaving, that I’m with you all the way. Even once–” Her voice hitched. “Even once Vlad binds you to him, and we go to war. I will never abandon you.”
A low, sad sound rumbled in his chest, and he rested his forehead against hers, until her face became a blur. “I know, love. I know.” He swallowed down a sudden flickering surge of hope, not wanting to give it any credence, not yet. “But I don’t know if I’m meant for Vlad. I think…I think he’s planning something.”
~*~
Mia was tired. Part of it was the good kind of tired: riding, exerting herself…making out feverishly in a tack room. But also the bad kind: panic, fear, dread…and illness.
The massive house was eerily still – everyone down in the basement working on Ramirez, she supposed. She shuddered every time she thought of the gleaming white bone protruding from skin gone pale with shock.
The guards had taken Val back down, and left her alone. Without an escort, with no one watching, she rode up in the elevator and trudged down to her room, fatigue dragging a little more insistently with every step. Someone, hopefully Annabel and not a random staff member, had left a small pile of neatly folded clothes on the dresser in her room, all of it stiff and new; she picked a pair of jeans, a fresh t-shirt, and went to shower.
After, clean, but even sleepier, she flopped down across the bed to stretch out her back – and to think.
Decide. Did she want to become immortal? A vampire? A creature that needed to drink blood to live? Did she deserve to be turned? Was she more deserving than anyone else with a terminal disease? How could she think that she was so special that…
No. It wasn’t about deserving. It was a gift, freely offered. Because Val cared for her. Wanted her.
She closed her eyes and the bed seemed to tilt beneath her; another dizzy spell. Why save her? He’d been alive almost six-hundred years. Was she just a convenience? Was…
She drifted off on a tide of worry and self-doubt.
When she woke, it was to the sound of a knock at her door, and to the churning of her empty stomach. Evening light slanted, hazy and heavy, across the rug, and the room spun around her. She was going to be sick.
She flailed upright and just barely made it into the bathroom in time to curl over the toilet and bring up a few mouthfuls of watery bile. Her stomach cramped and clenched on nothing, and she dry-heaved, tears stinging her eyes.
“Mia?” her father called from the bedroom, and she wished she’d been able to shut and lock the door.
She flushed, rinsed her mouth, and shuffled back out to find her dad standing awkwardly at the foot of the bed, wringing his hands. Seeing him there compounded her exhaustion. She wanted to sink back down onto the bed and sleep for a full twenty-four hours.
“Your condition is deteriorating,” he said gravely.
“Yeah.”
“Let me show you my lab. Let me walk you through the process. Please, Mia.”
She steadied herself with a hand against the bedpost. “What happened to Sergeant Ramirez?”
He let out a long breath, shoulders slumping. “She’ll make a full recovery.” His voice came out heavy, unhappy.
“She’ll keep her leg?”
“Yes.”
Another wave of nausea struck, and she closed her eyes, waited it out. Decide. When she opened them again, she said, “Alright. Show me.”
~*~
After a quick stop-off in the kitchen so she could choke down a handful of saltines and sip a litt
le ginger ale, they headed for the basement and its assorted horrors. The massive lab wasn’t the kicked-anthill of activity it must have been earlier, when Vlad brought Ramirez in. Mia was glad she hadn’t witnessed that.
They walked past the tables and tables of quietly-working techs toward one of several medieval-looking wooden doors set in the far wall. Dad said, “We have a full OR here, with trauma center level equipment,” he said, proudly. “As well as exam and patient rooms. We’ve managed to fit all the function of a hospital into one basement.” He cast a proud eye over the work stations.
A dungeon, too, she thought.
The door, which Dad almost wasn’t strong enough to open by himself, revealed a stone hallway lit by flickering wall sconces. It struck her as very Frankenstein and surreal, the juxtaposition of the modern equipment with the antique background. This place might have all the trappings of a hospital, but there was no mistaking it for one.
This hallway was lined with more studded wooden doors, and Mia had the sense that this basement wormed its way far deeper into the earth than she’d first imagined. It was a vast house, but the basement, she thought with an uneasy prickling at the back of her neck, was monstrous.
At one door, a completely out of place brass plaque with Edwin’s name on it awaited them. He pushed it open with a flourish, beaming. “My personal lab.”
It was dark in there, darker than the hallway at least, and Mia hesitated on the threshold. I don’t want to. But she swallowed the now-perpetual lump in her throat and followed him in.
The door shutting had an air of finality to it – and well it should. Decide. She had to.
A long, low white table occupied the center of the room, lights on apertures angled over its surface at intervals. She spotted several microscopes, two laptops, a scattering of notebooks, and pens and petri dishes. Tidy chaos. Computer screens dominated the back wall, their blue glow the major light source for the room.
Windowless, stuffy, unnatural, and no doubt her father’s favorite place on earth.
Dragon Slayer (Sons of Rome Book 3) Page 72
