by Morgan Hawke
Yaroslav tilted his head and lifted his brow. “Werewolves and vampires are also fairy tales and make-believe, no?”
Thorn closed her mouth, and her ears folded back. He had a point.
Yaroslav waved a hand. “So, as I am one of the very few with such knowledge, it is only natural that I am, of course, under profound suspicion.”
The anger bled out of Thorn in a cold rush. But that’s stupid. You wouldn’t do something like that.
Yaroslav smiled sadly. “I am so glad someone believes so.” He folded his hands behind him and looked up from under his hood. “Now, will you allow me to examine your making?”
Fine, all right. Thorn dropped her head and leveled a glare at him. But you have to let me go first.
Yaroslav frowned. “Let you…go?”
Thorn trembled with hunger. I need to eat. I need to hunt. And she needed to do it fast, or she was going to lose her wolf shape. For some reason, hunger drove her into her half-and-half form rather than her human body.
Yaroslav’s brows lifted. “Ah, this I can provide. Come.” He turned and strode for the farthest vault.
Thorn’s ears lifted, and she trotted after him. You have food?
Yaroslav glanced over his shoulder and smiled. “I have that which will assuage your hunger.” He opened the ironwork gate leading into the vault.
Thorn stepped passed him, and her claws clicked on the stone floor with a slight hollow echo. Her eyes took only moments to adjust to the darkness. The interior of the grave vault was raw-hewn stone, with a curved ceiling, and not very large. It was little more than a middle-sized room. The back wall held nothing but bronze plaques covering the interred, some marked with writing, some not. The side walls each featured a long bench carved directly from the stone wall. A good-sized carpet bag flopped across an arm of the bench on the right wall near the very back. Other than that, the shadow-filled stone room was empty.
Yaroslav followed her in and strode past her to the bench against the right wall. He pulled his gun from his sash and set it on the bench.
Thorn looked back at Yaroslav with curiosity. Why were they in here?
“Here is better than out in the snow.” He unbuckled and removed his sword belt, setting it by the pistol. “The cold is not good for your human body.”
Huh? My human body? Thorn strode toward him, one ear forward, one ear tilted back. What was he planning?
“I am planning to feed your hunger.” Yaroslav unbuttoned his heavy fur-lined, hooded coat and shrugged out of it, revealing a deep blue, high-collared tunic that draped very nearly to the floor. The tunic was buttoned from his heavily embroidered collar down to his broad black sash and then parted, showing his plain black trousers and knee-high, pitch-black, pointed-toe boots. “However, to drink my blood you will need a human mouth.”
Thorn stopped cold. She didn’t want to drink any more of his blood. It tasted…wrong. I can feed myself. If he’d just let her go, she could raid a shed.
Yaroslav draped the coat over the bench and sat down. “Thorn, there is no time for the raiding of sheds.” He shoved the tunic’s full sleeve up past his elbow, baring his left arm. “My blood will give you what your body needs.” He held out his hand. “Come.”
Thorn braced her feet. No, thanks.
His brows lowered, and his mouth tightened. “This stubbornness…” Staring hard at her, he raised his wrist to his mouth and bit down. He turned his arm over and held it down, exposing two somewhat ragged tears and two small holes, marks from his upper and lower fangs. Scarlet slid down his arm. The warm scent of blood perfumed the air.
Thorn’s nose twitched. His blood smelled savory, rich, and delicious. Hunger burned in her belly, and her mouth watered. A whimper slid from her throat. Thorn knew damned well that his blood would taste nasty, but it smelled so good, and she was so very hungry.
Head low, she went to him. Before she could even think about hesitating, her long tongue was out, and the flavor of his blood burned on her tongue, as potent and heady as whiskey. It was not a pleasant taste, but it wasn’t as bad as she remembered. She lapped the blood running down his arm. Warm spilled into her belly and spread.
“Good.” His hand settled on her head and swept down the thick fur of her neck. “Such a stubborn heart.”
Her eyes drifted closed, and a shiver moved down her spine. Without thought, she eased into her half-human muscular, furred, and fanged form. She normally didn’t like people to see this shape, but at that moment with the warmth curling through her, it didn’t matter quite so much. Crouched at the vampire’s feet, she grasped his arm with both clawed hands and sucked. Her thoughts drifted very far away.
Yaroslav used his free hand to push the straps to her backpack down her arms. “This is an annoyance….”
Distracted by the drugging warmth spreading through her, she let her pack fall to the floor.
“Very much better.” He leaned over her to wrap his arm around her and lifted her onto his lap, settling her against his chest like a child. He eased slightly to the side and dragged his coat over them both. He pressed a kiss to her brow.
Thorn barely noticed.
9
Held in the vampire’s embrace, wrapped in his fur coat with her tail tucked up against her thigh, Thorn opened her eyes to look up into his face. The burning need in her belly had eased into the oddest feeling of warm satisfaction. She licked her lips. Though it had only been a small amount of blood, she actually felt full and strangely content, almost sleepy.
He smiled, carefully hiding his long teeth, and pressed his hand to her cheek. “We are feeling better, yes?”
She blinked at him and then nodded. She couldn’t quite get up the energy actually to speak.
“Very good.” He nodded and slid his fingers into her long silvery hair and let it spill past his knees to the floor. “Now, to look upon your aspect.” He gently eased her onto her back across his lap and parted the coat draped around her. He spoke a single incomprehensible word and touched her brow.
A strong shudder took her.
He smiled. “Be at ease.” His fingers trailed down her throat. A trail of warm tingling followed, tightening her nipples. He pressed his palm over her heart briefly, and then his hand glided lower to settle on her belly. Misty pale gold light seethed under his palm.
What the hell…? Her eyes widened, and she grabbed on to his arm.
He frowned and tightened his arm under her. “Calm, be calm. I will not hurt you.”
Warmth curled within her belly. It didn’t hurt at all. It actually felt kind of good and a little…exciting. She arched under his palm and groaned.
He smiled. “Such a welcoming response….”
Warmth bloomed in Thorn’s cheeks. She bit down on her lip and looked away. Jagged stripes of blue were glowing on her arms. She raised her arm and rubbed her rough-padded palm against the stripes. She couldn’t feel anything but her fur. The blue glow was coming from under her skin. “What is this?”
Yaroslav trailed his fingers along the marks blooming on her arm. “This is that which binds you into a creature of two natures.”
Thorn turned her arms over and then noticed the blue stripes surfacing across her belly and spilling upward to frame her breasts. “This is…magic?”
Yaroslav frowned. “Indeed.”
She watched them trail downward, appearing on her hips and then down her legs, too. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
The vampire’s frown deepened, and his fingers traced an intricate snarl of lines forming on her belly. “If you would stand for me?”
“Yeah, sure….” She pushed to sit up and then turned to slip off his lap. She wavered on unsteady feet and shivered slightly. It was cold in just her light fur. However, the chill cleared some of the fog from her thoughts. “Maybe I better put on my clothes?”
“In a moment.” He leaned forward and urged her to turn her back to him and then brushed her hair away from her back, pushing it over her shoulder. He tsked.
“This making could not have been…pleasant.”
Thorn clenched her jaw. “It wasn’t.” She looked over her shoulder at him. “Did you find what you were looking for?”
“Oh, yes.” He sat back on the stone bench and rubbed his jaw. “What I am trying to discover is why it is functioning.” He threw out his hand, his frown deepening. “This pattern is incorrect.”
Thorn turned around to look at him. “Huh?”
He crossed his arms. “According to what is written here, you possess two distinct and fully aware souls.”
“Well, yeah.” Thorn crossed her arms against the chill and gave him a tight smile. “I do.”
The vampire shook his head. “This is not as it should be. You should have but one soul comprised of two elements. You were improperly made.” He looked up at her. “You should be…embattled within.” He tapped his heart with a long, elegant finger. “But you do not appear so.” He lifted his long fur coat and stood to drape it over her shoulders.
“Embattled?” Thorn gripped the edges of the warm coat. “The wolf and I get along just fine.”
Yaroslav’s brows rose. “Get along…?”
“We’re friends; we like each other.” Thorn shrugged. “We argue on occasion, but usually over the human stuff. A lot of it doesn’t make sense to her.” Thorn smiled. “If it doesn’t make sense, she doesn’t see why she should bother with it.”
“I…see.” A slight smile tilted the corner of his mouth. “This…friendship is good.” He stepped past her to pace, rubbing his brow with his hand.
Thorn frowned, her hands tightening on his coat. “Having two souls is bad?”
Yaroslav folded his hands behind him and frowned at the floor. “Those with such a division tend to be malformed, flawed in body and heart.” He peered at her from under a fall of black hair. “You are not so.”
“Oh….” Thorn frowned. Flawed in body and heart…? That sounded familiar. It sounded like Max.
He lifted his head to stare hard at her, his entire body stiff. “Who is this…Max?”
Thorn flinched but only a hair. He was still paying attention to her thoughts. She lifted one shoulder in a half shrug and glanced away. “He’s another werewolf.”
Yaroslav stilled. “There is another?”
“Yeah, but…” she shook her head, “he’s all wrong. He looks wrong, and he does…” She looked at the floor. “He does bad things.”
Yaroslav moved to stand before her. “Bad…things?”
She looked up from under the fall of her silver hair and swallowed. “He eats people.”
Yaroslav’s brows lifted. “And you do not?”
Thorn’s mouth fell open in shock; then white-hot rage seared up her spine, straight from her wolf’s soul. “Fuck, no, I don’t eat people!” She curled her lips back from her teeth. “That’s…disgusting!”
Yaroslav blinked. “Not at all?”
“Hell, no!” Thorn stomped her foot. “Wolves don’t eat people any more than they eat other wolves!”
Yaroslav tilted his head to one side and folded his arms before him. “In this country, wolves do indeed eat people, especially in winter.”
“Then your wolves are more dog than wolf.” Thorn sneered. “Dogs are scavengers; they’ll eat anything, including people.” She lifted her chin. “True wolves are hunters; they won’t eat garbage unless they’re forced to.”
Yaroslav snorted, a smile tilting the corner of his mouth. “Humans are garbage?”
Thorn curled her lip. “Animals and people taste like what they eat, and people eat mostly garbage.” She made a sour face. “I hate biting people because the taste makes me gag.”
“Ah….” Yaroslav raised a hand over his mouth, his brows lifting. “So this is why you do not like to drink my blood?”
“Well, yeah.” Thorn raised a brow at him. “And it tastes strange, stranger than normal people blood.” She looked away. “It does things to my head, too.”
Yaroslav snorted and then rubbed his jaw. “I should like to see this other werewolf.”
Thorn shook her head. “Oh, no, you wouldn’t.”
Yaroslav’s brows rose. “No?”
“He looks…bad. He’s all twisted and blown out of proportion.” She curled her lip. “He doesn’t even have a tail.” She lifted her chin. “And he eats people, remember? He might try to eat you.”
Yaroslav’s mouth tilted up into a half smile. “But not you?”
“Oh, I’m sure he would, if he could catch me.” Thorn rolled her eyes. “He doesn’t have a whole lot of control over that big body of his.”
Yaroslav frowned. “Clearly a malformed soul. Perhaps made by the one who made you?”
“God, I hope not.” She shuddered. “The Doctor was a nasty, nasty man.”
“Ah, but most important…” Yaroslav strode to her and set his hands on her shoulders, “this Doctor is a heretic sorcerer.” He smiled in vicious triumph.
“Count Feodor Yaroslav Iziaslavich….” The voice that came from the door of the small vault was soft with a Mediterranean lilt. A shadow wearing hooded dark robes eased into the stone room. “So, this is where you’ve been hiding.”
Yaroslav stiffened, his fingers digging into Thorn’s shoulders. “I have been waiting for you, Antonius.” Yaroslav glanced to the side but did not turn. “I have something here you might find interesting.” The vampire smiled down at Thorn. “I know my prince will.”
The shadow became a smallish man, with impossibly broad shoulders, holding the naked blade of a short sword. “Is that so?”
Thorn leaned to the side to look past the vampire. Her fur lifted down her spine. She didn’t want to be seen between forms. She grabbed for her soul and sought to bury her wolf under her skin.
It wouldn’t go.
What the hell…? She closed her eyes and pushed the other way to bury her human nature.
Nothing.
She opened her eyes to stare at her clawed hands. Damnit! She couldn’t make herself change either way. She bared her long teeth and whispered, “Vampire, what did you do to me?”
Yaroslav lifted his chin a hair. “Remain calm; it is not permanent.”
The shadow-draped man, Antonius, silently eased closer. He was a full head shorter than Yaroslav but still taller than she and far broader in the shoulders. “You’re looking positively youthful, count.” From under his hood, a sky-blue gaze focused on Thorn. “You must be keeping excellent company.”
Thorn met his gaze levelly, but her palms were slick with sweat. She did not like people seeing her this way. They had a nasty habit of screaming and then shooting.
The man shoved the hood back from his head, revealing coal-black curls tumbling across the pale brow of a youthful angel. His lips parted, showing overlong incisors. “Yellow eyes….” His straight black brows lifted. “Good god, is this a…werewolf?”
Thorn’s fur lifted down her spine. He had fangs. Was he another vampire?
Yaroslav swept his hands down to her arms. “Thorn, this is Master Antonius Aralias, a Tribuni Angusticlavii, and, yes, he is upir.”
Antonius rolled his eyes. “Nobody uses that title anymore.” He winked at Thorn. “It’s an old-fashioned name for a knight. These days, I’m just a cavalry officer.”
Yaroslav nodded toward her. “Master Antonius, may I present Miss Thorn Ferrell, an American.”
Antonius sheathed his short sword and grinned, showing his fangs. “Ah, so that is why we’re using English.” He nodded. “Good evening, Miss Ferrell. I spent quite some time in your America; beautiful country, big mountains.”
Thorn focused on his long teeth, her hand fisting at her sides, but she nodded and smiled without showing her fangs. “Master Antonius.”
Antonius tilted his head to the side and gazed up at Yaroslav. “She is a very finely made…companion.” He frowned, and his voice softened to barely a whisper. “But shouldn’t she be…bigger?”
Bigger? Thorn frowned. Just what was Antonius trying to say?
<
br /> Yaroslav smiled briefly. “Thorn has indeed become my companion.” Yaroslav turned to look at the smaller man but kept his hands on her shoulders. “But she is not of my making.”
Become his companion? Thorn’s frown deepened. Since when?
Antonius crossed his arms. “Not…yours?”
Yaroslav’s smile chilled. “Alas, Thorn proves that I am not the only sorcerer capable of committing criminal acts.”
“Criminal acts…?” Antonius curled his lip. “No one thinks you are a criminal, Count Yaroslav. We are not here to arrest you. The prince merely wants to talk to you.”
Yaroslav turned to scowl at the smaller man. “Would not a letter have sufficed for such an invitation, rather than the fully armed battalion that came to my mountain?”
Antonius groaned and rolled his eyes a little dramatically. “We were told you were under attack, and we were sent as support.” He set his hands on his hips. “Imagine my surprise when we found your entire mountain smoking ash and you nowhere to be found.”
Yaroslav’s brows dropped low, and his jaw tightened. “I am unaccustomed to uninvited…support.”
Antonius snorted. “Apparently so.”
Yaroslav looked away. “I left to discover the source of this…plague.”
“I thought that might be why we couldn’t find you.” Antonius looked down. “I’m sorry for your personal losses. I do know how you feel.”
“Of course.” Yaroslav looked away. “I thank you.”
Antonius sighed. “I would just let you go on about your business, but Prince Rafael wants to see you.” He folded his hands behind him. “In fact, he insists.”
Yaroslav took a deep breath and closed his eyes briefly. “I am ready.”
“Good.” Antonius nodded. “We don’t have a lot of time. The Russians were a little more enthusiastic here than usual.”
Thorn looked up at Yaroslav. “Does this mean I can get dressed now?”
Antonius tilted his head and delivered a cupid’s-bow smile that exposed a dimple in his cheek. “No need to dress on my account.”
