by SK Ryder
A total stranger who even now crawled out of his bed. She heard him down the hall, unlocking the door, a soft sound that slashed through her brain. She regretted not having gone up to her room. It had been so hot up there, impossible conditions in her fragile state. So she collapsed in the living room, the coolest, darkest spot in the house. By now she was certain she wanted to die. The headache had hold of her entire body, turning her limbs to rubber and churning her guts.
“What is the matter with you?”
She cringed, her skull creaking with his harsh words. “Shhh. Migraine.” She felt rather than saw him stand over her. The fan whirred, bathing her in a muggy breeze and sounding a bit like a wobbly jet engine to her ears. “I can’t deal with you tonight,” she whispered. “Go away and let me die in peace.”
But he didn’t go away. “Do you have medicine?”
“Shhhhh. Yes, I do. But it’s not working this time.” Not one iota. She wanted to sob with helpless fury. No doctor had yet been able to tell her with certainty what caused these headaches, though extremes in temperature and humidity where prominent suspects. Surprise, surprise.
The act of speaking heaved her stomach. “Oh, God.” She moaned, curled over the side of the sofa, and let it happen. The late lunch reappeared. She shivered, cold suddenly, heard her own pitiful retching, felt tears wet on her face. An arm wrapped around her shoulder and a gentle hand held back her hair. She opened her eyes. Was that a bucket? Where had that come from? She heaved again.
She became aware of Dominic’s solid body next to her, his hands on her, supporting. She dropped her head against his thigh and was vaguely thankful that her cheek met material and not bare skin. “Just kill me now.”
“Not tonight, chérie,” he whispered and pressed his palm against her clammy forehead. His touch felt deliciously cool. She must be running a fever, too. The mother of all headaches.
“Feels nice.”
“I know.”
Of course. If it wouldn’t hurt so much, she might have rolled her eyes.
“Are you done?”
Cassidy queried her stomach, then hazarded a small nod.
He pushed her back into the sofa cushions as though she were a rag doll being placed in a drawer. “Stay still.”
She listened to him carry away the bucket and flush the contents down the toilet. Then the fridge opened. Plastic rustled and glass bottles clinked. He opened one and poured. Then he crouched by her side, pressing a cold glass into her hand. “Drink.”
The command tone left much to be desired as bedside manners went, but she was too weary to argue. The cold water sparkled across her tongue, taking the sour taste of vomit with it. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“Being sick.”
He said nothing, and she was sure that come morning she would be mortified. But right now, here in the dark with her head threatening to split open like an over-ripe melon, it didn’t matter.
Something cold and squishy settled on her forehead. “What’s that?”
“A bag of frozen peas. I wrapped it in a towel for you.”
“Nice.” She sighed. “Thank you.”
“Does this happen much?” She could barely make out the words, his voice was so soft.
“Never this bad. I think it’s the heat. And humidity.” The silence stretched. “Too bad we don’t have air.”
“Too bad you eat shit, too.”
Her indignation rose through the haze of pain. “I had salad for lunch.”
“And something deep fried.”
Just remembering made her feel green, even more so when she realized how he knew this. “Yeah, that’s it. Blame the victim. I’ll keep a bucket nearby next time. You won’t have to put yourself out on my account again. I promise.”
He sighed and she felt his breath brush against her cheek. Damn, he was close. And she was too sick to care. A peculiar clean scent wafted over her. Pure somehow, like snow.
“I have a sister who suffers like this,” he said after a while. “I used to watch over her. Before.”
Sorrow skirted the edges of his indifference and she held her breath, waiting. In the stifling quiet, she felt weightless, adrift in empty space. With him.
“What happened?”
The silence folded around them like a blanket. Only the fan whirled. “She married and moved away.”
“You don’t sound happy about that.”
“On the contrary. I am very happy for Genevie.”
“But not for yourself.”
“Is it that obvious?”
“Written all over your face. When I can see your face. When you’re not skulking around in the shadows.” She adjusted the makeshift ice pack on her temple. The cold numbed the pain, but only temporarily. It would be a long night.
“Then we have that in common as well, chère.”
Her sluggish brain turned this over. “Is it that obvious?”
“Oui.” The word caressed her ear. “I have to go. Will you be all right?”
Her body was a quagmire of sensations—pain and relief, fire and ice, longing and dread. No, she was nowhere near all right. But she waved him away with a limp hand. “I guess I’ll live.”
“You will,” he confirmed, flippant, and she relaxed. The cockiness she could deal with. But whatever had just passed between them . . . that she couldn’t even comprehend in her present state.
“A kingdom for some air conditioning.”
It took her a full minute to realize she was alone in the dark.
Dominic leaned on the splintered porch railing and waited for his world to stop tilting. She had taken him by surprise. Every other evening, she met him with either verbal assaults or cool indifference, but never like this, never vulnerable and weak. Her plight carried him back in time in a whirlwind of emotion he didn’t know how to contain. Human impulses led him to comfort her.
That and needing to save the rug that carried so many precious memories. How easily it all came back. How powerfully.
Genevie.
Dominic’s elder sister hated being ill with the migraine, and hated it even more when anyone saw her laid low by it. Anyone but him. Nursing her was a natural reflection of his love for her, and he had done it gladly until she married. Her husband was a good man, even if, in Dominic’s opinion, far from good enough for one of his sisters. The protective streak he felt for both of them ran deep. For Ana he had even killed . . .
He gasped as the memories swerved into far darker territory with horrific clarity. Shedding his clothes, he bolted for the beach and the ocean, letting the waves swallow him.
He hurried along the sandy bottom, battling the water’s warm drag on his limbs. His frustrations mounted. Without thought, he moved toward a skiff anchored on the shallow reef hugging the shore. The sole occupant, engrossed in meditative contemplation of the night sky and mirror-calm sea, startled when he flowed over the side like some mythical merman.
“What the fuck—”
A deep, inhuman growl rumbled in Dominic’s chest, and the long canines extended with sweet anticipation. The prey’s eyes widened to a comical size, the jaw going slack with disbelief. Fear exploded out of the human, making the air between them pungent and rousing the beast fully. The intended meal bolted from its seat and sailed over the bow. Dominic had him by the scruff before he hit the water.
“The sharks will have you soon enough,” he rasped, hauling back his catch. “I promise to be quick.”
“What do you want with me?” the man wailed, voice high with hysteria. “What the fuck are you?”
The beast replied by tearing into the throat. The poison in his bite surged into the human’s brain, raping the mind even as the blood and the life surged through the vampire, nourishing him.
His name wa
s Matt, he was no derelict, and beyond smoking the occasional joint, he never broke the law. He had spent the afternoon fishing, seeking the meaning of life with a hero sandwich and a six-pack of beer, and decided that when the new job came through, he really would ask Christine to marry him. She was mellow like him and her warm smile always soothed him. And she put up with his fishing addiction. She understood him and accepted him. He was content just now, just before the weird, naked guy got into his boat—
Dominic slumped on the cooler, blood and seawater funneling down his chest, the beast quiet in his heart. He stared at the slash in the dead man’s throat, and stupidly thought of Christine and how she would never know how important she had been to Matt. Christine, the woman who accepted this man in spite of his need for solitary communion with his boat and fishing tackle.
Dominic chuckled and pushed the hair out of his eyes, ignoring the tears mixing with the saltwater on his face. Trivial human nonsense. What he wouldn’t give to have his life be so simple again.
He pulled up the anchor and started the engine, heading into deep water. After leaving the body to the sea, he went north, moving with the prevailing current. By dawn, the skiff would be miles away, its owner presumed lost to a rogue wave or clumsy accident.
Morbid curiosity drove Dominic to wonder if Matt had caught anything at all. In the ice chest, five silver bodies stared back at him with blank, glassy eyes. What a waste to let them rot in there, their small fish lives given in vain. Then an even stranger thought occurred to him. His forehead pinched into a frown. An insane thought.
Before he could consider the reasons too closely, he bundled the fish into a plastic bag and slipped over the edge and down to the sandy sea floor, leaving the skiff to motor on by itself. Bag in hand, he plodded back to shore, his mood growing buoyant. It was a ludicrous idea that was bound to complicate everything. Then why did it feel so right? Because it was another echo of his human past—warm, familiar, and utterly beyond his capacity to deny. So be it. If he was to lose his reason in her presence, it might as well be this.
When he reached the beach behind the cottage, his disposition turned ugly.
“You are most entertaining, young one,” Serge greeted. He sat cross-legged in the sand.
Dominic realized that the old blood-drinker must have witnessed him feeding, a profound violation of privacy.
“Did I not tell you never to come near me again?”
“Will you club me with your catch?” Serge wondered with a glance at the reeking bag of fish Dominic clutched. The silly grin faded into uncertainty. “Poor feeding, those. Not much blood, you see.”
“What? Does your vision fail you? Don’t you know their purpose?”
Serge looked Dominic’s nude body up and down, his head cocked. At length he nodded, gently at first, then with vigor. “I see the ember of her light in you, blood-child.”
“Speak sense,” Dominic snapped, crushing the unease quivering up his spine. Whatever else this lunatic may be, he was perceptive. Or were the nerves his ramblings struck mere coincidence? “I have no patience for your riddles.”
“I told you. She is the key, the light that casts the shadows,” Serge said as though explaining a simple lesson to a slow child. “She is everything. But you need my help, or—”
“None of our kind ever helps anyone but themselves.”
Serge’s shoulders twitched in the ragged flannel shirt. “Sadly true, that. Mostly.”
“Why are you hounding me? Because you tasted her once, and you want more?”
Serge unfolded his legs beneath him, rising to his feet in the same motion. “Well . . . no. Yes. But . . .”
Dominic had heard enough. This filthy old beast had enjoyed what he denied himself so ruthlessly—Cassidy’s blood, her life, her spirit, her mind. Serge knew them as Dominic never would. In a flash of anger, he seized one of Serge’s arms, eliciting a surprised yelp. An instant later, the nuisance blood-drinker landed on his back with such force sand clouds puffed up around him. But by the time Dominic would have stomped his bare foot against his throat, Serge had already slithered off. Wary, he crouched a short distance away, a sandy, bedraggled mess not unlike an old stray dog watching for the next savage kick to come its way.
“Go anywhere near her again, I will end you,” Dominic promised. Or sooner. This lowlife would have to die before Dominic did if Cassidy was to remain safe.
“You believe I threaten her?” Serge chortled. “What do you imagine you will do to her?”
The words were a hard slap to Dominic’s raw nerves. He knew well what he, a youngling with tenuous control over the beast, would do to the girl if he gave in to any of his lurid lusts for her.
“She will live,” he declared for his own benefit as well as Serge’s. “She has to.”
Serge rolled his eyes. “Silly child. You see it. I know you do. You need me to stop you destroying her. Accept what must be.”
“You intend to keep me . . . from harming Cassidy?”
“See? You understand.”
“I understand you take me for a fool. She is nothing to you but a tool with which to confound me. She does not need your protection. She has mine. And I need nothing from you.”
The disappointment in Serge’s drooping expression was nothing short of heart-wrenching. Dominic groaned, already regretting what he was about to say. “Stay if you like, and watch. From a distance,” he added quickly when Serge’s face lit with eagerness. “She must never see you, never know you exist. And one foot inside my house . . .”
Serge mimed a blade cutting his throat and nodded. “And if you bring one sharp tooth anywhere near her, none of that will matter. You understand, yes?” he said with giddy good cheer.
Dominic understood. Though the idea of an outside force keeping the beast in check was not entirely unwelcome, he had no idea why Serge would do this. Older and stronger, he didn’t need an excuse to destroy a youngling without a sire’s protection. If Serge caught him off guard and without weapons, odds would not be in Dominic’s favor. He could have done so half a dozen times tonight alone. As for his so-called gifts of premonition and visions of a meaningful future . . . giving this any credit at all was the way of madness.
Inside, Cassidy still lingered on the sofa, the makeshift ice pack limp on her forehead, her breathing indicating that she was awake and suffering. One small light cast the room in soft shadows. An open bottle of Perrier sat on the floor next to her.
“Back already?” she mumbled.
“Passing through.”
“Great. Have fun.”
He crouched down beside her, removed the bag of soggy peas, and put his hand on her forehead. “Not much better, is it.”
“A little.” She didn’t open her eyes, but her head pressed against his fingers in a gesture of unconscious trust that tied a knot in his throat.
“You should be in bed.”
“I should have air conditioning, too.”
Dominic’s jaw tightened. He had no need of climate control and was leery of strangers in the house during the day. Then again, what was more foolish than letting an unsuspecting human live with him? Not much.
He touched her chin with one finger. “Look at me, chérie.”
She turned her head, exhausted from her battle with the headache, too exhausted to maintain her defenses or her temper. She blinked, trying to focus on him, her eyes dilated and glassy like those of the fish in his bag. “Out skinny dipping?”
“Oui.”
Her nose rumpled. “You stink.”
“I caught dinner,” he explained, unable to keep the amusement out of his voice. In her presence, he seemed almost absurd to himself.
“How nice for you. Hope it was good.”
“You will have to be the judge of that.”
“Me?”
“You’re kidding.”
“I intend to prove my culinary skills to you.”
“You . . . cook?”
“Surprised?”
She studied him for a long moment. “I just don’t know what to make of you, Nick.”
“Sometimes neither do I,” he admitted only half in jest. “You should get some sleep now.”
“I can’t. Everything hurts.”
“Nothing hurts,” he told her, pitching his voice with care to drive the compulsion past what remained of her resistance. She didn’t resist. She welcomed the relief. “Sleep now.” As her eyes drifted shut and her breathing deepened, he couldn’t resist one last whisper. “Dream of me.”
Chapter 9
A Matter of Trust
Dominic cocked a brow at the figure hovering in the shadows on the front porch. “Not a foot.”
Serge glanced at his bare feet then around the porch. He backed down the stairs, slow with reluctance. Getting tripped up by the broken step, he tumbled off into a sprawling heap.
Dominic sighed. “I do not trust you.”
“Mutual, blood-child.” Serge sat up, making no attempt to brush off the sand and dry weeds clinging to his rags. “Dream of you? Devious.”
Without comment, Dominic went to the shed and prepared to go out. Serge followed. “You can’t . . . must not influence her. You’ll ruin everything.”
“Truly? What am I ruining?” He had rolled out the bike and put on his gloves.
“I told you. Everything.”
Dominic straddled the bike and pulled the helmet over his head. “Do you even hear yourself?”
