The Possession

by Jennifer Armintrout

  He couldn’t escape her moans of pleasure, though, or the hot, wet grip of her surrounding him. He sought out her swollen bud and rubbed her with the pad of his thumb until her loud breaths and frantic, senseless pleas for release signaled the approaching culmination of her pleasure. He braced himself against the mattress and abandoned all thought of gentleness or care, driving into her so hard her breath exploded from her with every pump of his hips.

  She did scream then, her nails biting into his arms where she gripped him. He let himself go, shuddering over her and inside of her. When he regained his senses, he withdrew, wincing at the friction of her grasping muscles against his painfully sensitized skin.

  They lay in silence for a long time, their legs hanging off the side of the bed. Cyrus studied her with detached interest. The moonlight from the small window above them dusted her skin with silver as he watched it grow rough with gooseflesh. How she could be chilled when his heart hammered as though he’d run a marathon, and sweat still poured from him, was a mystery.

  “I’m cold,” she whispered sleepily, and he sat up to help her right herself on the bed. When he pulled the sheets over her, he saw her blood there, and closed his eyes. How had he ever been able to revel in the pain of others like her? How had he taken pleasure from taking life, when now he felt so guilty over a smear of virgin blood?

  Those days of callous disregard were over. All that mattered now was the woman at his side, who was real and solid, and who loved him, even if she was afraid of him. Like a fool who repeatedly stuck his hand in the fire and was surprised by the burn, Cyrus once again trusted the feeble hope for happiness that grew in his soul.

  This time will be different, he assured himself. It would be different, because it had to be. In his weak, human state, he wouldn’t survive if it weren’t.

  But he was kidding himself. If he had the strength of a god, he wouldn’t survive losing her.

  Though sunrise loomed pink on the horizon, Max gave Dahlia the benefit of the doubt and decided to check one last cemetery. The first two had turned up only sleeping homeless people and thrill-seeking teenagers. This close to dawn, both types would have moved on.

  He pulled the car to a stop at the closed iron gate and ignored the scheduled visiting hours posted beside it as he climbed the stone wall. The early morning dew made the ascent slippery and wet. When he landed, his T-shirt stuck to him and his jeans were uncomfortably chilled against his thighs. “Nathan, if you are here, I’m going to kill you.”

  Not that he wanted to see Nathan.

  Since the day they’d spared his life, Max had made it a rule never to cross the Movement. Sure, he’d been less than diligent when tracking quarry sometimes, but there was a big difference between missing the opportunity and coming face-to-face with it, only to let it run off scot-free.

  No pun intended.

  Two paths curved in opposite directions around a hill dotted with leaning, broken monuments. Elaborate mausoleums lined the outside edges of the paths, marble houses that reeked of death so strongly Max couldn’t believe a human couldn’t smell it.

  He started up one path, determined to get his patrol over with before he wound up with a terminal case of sunburn. Then he caught the whiff of something sinister on the air.

  At first, he’d thought it was merely the smell of another body, probably another of Nathan’s victims. Then he realized the copper scent had a warm, living edge to it, and he tore off in the direction of the blood.

  The first thing he saw was her leg stretching past the end of one ivy-covered crypt. The black leather boot on her foot was muddy and torn, as though the fight had been long and rough. A rip in her pant leg showed a bloody gash from knee to ankle, laid open so wide the shocking white of bone showed through.

  The sight was enough to make bile rise in his throat. When she’d attacked him outside the coffee shop, she’d seemed invincible. Now, Bella had been reduced to a broken heap of ruined parts.

  Whoever had done it was still there, breathing heavily, just out of sight. Max tore around the corner of the crypt and stopped dead in his tracks.

  It took him a moment to recognize the monster looming over her was Nathan. When the sick comprehension dawned, Max couldn’t move to draw his weapon. The creature that used to be his best friend turned, face bloody from feeding, and snarled at him. Instead of charging, though, it looked at the lightening sky and took off, leaping to the top of a mausoleum, then disappearing behind it.

  Max put his hands on the lip of the stone, preparing to chase after the beast, then heard Bella moan. If he left her where she was, someone might find her. The caretaker would probably be in to open the gate and would likely have a look around to make sure there hadn’t been any shenanigans overnight. But Max didn’t know anything about werewolves, and couldn’t be sure she would survive that long without help.

  Fuck her. She tried to kill you, he reminded himself. If she’s dead, she’s one less thing to worry about.

  But he didn’t work that way. He wished he did.

  With sunrise just minutes away, he had no time to hunt for Nathan. To do so would probably only get them both killed. And werewolf or not, Bella was a fellow Movement assassin. He couldn’t let her die.

  Cursing her stupidity good and loud so she could hear it even if she’d already shrugged her mortal coil, he bent and lifted her limp body in his arms. “You better pray Nathan’s got a primo fucking first aid kit back at the apartment, or you’re in real trouble, lady.”

  It took some maneuvering to get her over the wall without breaking her neck, but the classic fireman’s carry came through in the pinch. Max wrestled her into the car and positioned her head against the window so she would appear to be sleeping and not mortally wounded. “If you bleed on the seat, you’re off my Christmas card list.”

  Somewhere in the cemetery, his assignment was escaping. He looked from the jagged stones at the top of the hill to the dying woman in the seat beside him and swore. With a final, vehement curse, he pounded the steering wheel and sped away.

  Chapter 14

  The Past Comes

  Back To Haunt You

  March’s private rooms were at the back of the house. She led me to a huge conservatory, a glass bubble filled with verdant plant life and flowering trees. The floor, an intricate mosaic of tiny tiles, wound in paths around beds of soil. The snaking trails converged in the center of the room, where water trickled down the face of a craggy boulder that nearly reached the ceiling. In front of the impressive fixture, a striking red Shinto gate stood watch over an elaborately set tea service.

  March indicated I should sit at the delicate, wrought-iron table, and despite my simmering anger, I did so. “That’s an aggressively spiritual symbol you have there, considering what you are.”

  “What, a vampire can’t be spiritual?” She looked astonished in a worldly way, a contradiction that didn’t surprise me. The woman was as hard to read as a book written backward. “The Shinto tradition is concerned mainly with the spiritual affairs of the living. As I am eternally living, I don’t see the harm in believing something.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” I explained as she poured blood from a Victorian-style teapot. “I thought it was an overtly spiritual thing for you to have, considering you’re a vampire pimp who sneaks up on people to murder them in their sleep.”

  She grimaced, a smoke-roughened laugh escaping her bared teeth. “Now, why did you have to use that word? It’s such a nasty label for what I do.”

  “What about ‘kidnapping’ or ‘false imprisonment’? How do those suit you?” I made no attempt to hide my suspicion as I refused the blood she offered me. She’d held me hostage—granted, I couldn’t have gone anywhere during the daylight, anyway—and tried to kill me. Just because she’d decided to offer me breakfast instead didn’t mean I’d roll over and we’d become bestest friends.

  As crazy and paranoid as it seemed—and it did seem that way to me, after I’d applied said paranoia to every person
I’d seen on this trip, from tollbooth operators to truck stop waitresses—I couldn’t help but suspect she knew what I was up to in the desert.

  I couldn’t tell from her Cheshire Cat smile if she really did know or if she’d just picked up on my discomfort. “Well, we can just put all that behind us. Your sire is the fledgling of my sire, after all. That makes us practically family.”

  I glared at her. “Practically. Except Cyrus isn’t my sire anymore.” I hesitated. “He’s…dead.”

  “Is he now?” She poured some blood for herself and sipped it, her eyes never leaving my face. When she finished, she dabbed her lips with her linen napkin, leaving dainty spots of blood on it. “Isn’t that sad? You’re an orphan.”

  I thought of Nathan, and the word orphan imprinted on my brain like a searing brand. “I’m not. Even if I was, I wouldn’t count the Soul Eater as my next of kin.”

  “You know, I’ve never liked that name. It’s so confrontational. And it makes it sound like he’s doing something wrong.”

  She lit up a cigarette, every movement as casual as if we were discussing the weather.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” I was reaching the frayed edges of my patience. “He kills vampires for food!”

  “You kill people for food. What’s the difference?” The practiced naiveté with which she posed the question made me stumble over my answer.

  And that hesitation told her everything she needed to know: I didn’t kill for blood. In her eyes, that labeled me weak. Prey.

  “No matter how I feed, I still have ties to the Soul Eater,” I said quickly.

  “So do I.” She took a long draw off her cigarette and smiled. “And I know he can’t stomach your kind. Sniveling cowards who deny their true nature.”

  I couldn’t argue with her. If the Soul Eater had his way, vampires would be more far more aggressive about their status as top of the food chain.

  “Did you know who I was when I came here?” It seemed too fortuitous that Byron had led me to this place, knowing my destination.

  She shrugged and flicked the ashes off her cigarette into her saucer. “A friend called and mentioned that a person of interest was going to show up.”

  “So, if I’m a person of interest, then you must know something of what’s going on with the Soul Eater.” I waved her smoke away with feigned annoyance.

  “I know he’s up to something. But you probably know more than I do, considering you’ve come all the way out here.” March leaned back in her chair. “I suppose you thought I’d have all the answers? And that I’d just give them to you?”

  Helplessly, I nodded. “Stupid me, I guess. I just thought your vampire daddy might be keeping you in the loop.”

  She chewed her lip, regarding me indecisively. Then she took a deep breath and exhaled noisily. “You’re looking for the guy in the desert?”

  I reached for my bag, only to remember it was still in the foyer. “I have money. I’ll pay.”

  “Don’t bring the vulgarity of money into this.” She pondered a moment, a look akin to pride on her face. “I wonder what kind of kickback I’ll get if I hand you over to Jacob.”

  “You’ll get killed.” I racked my brain for any detail I could use to sway her, any warning. The truth seemed the best way to go. “He’s trying to become a god. I admit, I don’t know the guy real well, but with a name like Soul Eater, I don’t want him having cosmic power. Fledgling or not, you have to admit, if he manages to go through with this, everyone is fucked.”

  “It will be the end of the human race and eventually the vampire race, blah blah blah.” She sighed, making a jabbering duck mouth with one hand as she rang a silver bell with the other. “He’s talked about doing something like this for years. Worked on it a bit with his son, actually. But he’s never going to pull it off.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I snapped. “Guess who’s been raised from the dead?”

  To her credit, her surprise didn’t show as much as it could have. She ground out her cigarette with a muffled curse. After a long moment squinting at me with barely veiled resentment, she conceded defeat. “I love Jacob with all my heart. But loving isn’t the same as trusting, by a long shot. What do you need from me to get your part of this done?”

  “I don’t have any connections here. I need a road map, at least. And old newspapers, if you have them.” Where the Fangs went, chaos followed. There was no chance a sleepy area like Death Valley was going to miss marauding hordes of vampires. Something was going to end up in print.

  With a long-suffering sigh, she lifted the silver bell that rested at her right hand and rang it again. The butler appeared and bent stiffly in deference to his mistress. March handed off the saucer she’d turned into an ashtray, then massaged the bridge of her nose with her fingers. “Have you taken the recycling to be done?”

  Recycling? At least, March had an environmental conscience, if no other kind.

  Eyeing me with distaste, the servant cleared his throat. “I believe that takes place every other Thursday.”

  “Load the newspapers in the back of her van. Just the local ones.” She turned to me again and arched a brow. “Unless you think scouring the New York Times would help?”

  “Was there anything out of the ordinary in them? Anything at all you can remember that seemed…more sensational than usual?” Of course, I supposed sensational was relative to a man who worked in a vampire whorehouse.

  “I am sorry, miss, I do not read them.” Turning back to March, he asked, “Will that be all, ma’am?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, I think so.”

  With another stiff bow, he left us.

  “Sorry I couldn’t be of more help. We’ll make sure you get the proper supplies for your trip.” She grinned, looking pleased with herself.

  I was still convinced she hid something. “Thanks for the hospitality.” I hoped she felt the sarcasm of my words as a bite.

  “Well, sweetness, I got a whole bunch of human business coming in tonight. Episcopal Women’s Altar Society bus trip. Told their husbands they’re going to a Bible summit on gay marriage.” She stood, indicating I should do the same.

  I could take a hint. She was done supplying me with information that would lead to the death of her sire. “Just one last question?”

  After a moment’s hesitation, she nodded. “Why not?”

  “How come he didn’t take your soul?” We began to walk down the path. I thought perhaps she’d decided not to answer.

  Then, without a hint of deception or theatrics, she said simply, “He took someone else’s.”

  A chill went through me at the memory of how he’d taken Cyrus’s wife, Elsbeth, without a thought for his son’s happiness.

  March shrugged, as though the fact her soul was spared by the death of another’s was par for the course. “I’m not going to say it was right. But I’m glad it wasn’t me who died.”

  I believe there is a defining moment in everyone’s life where they seal their own fate through words or actions. My parents did it when they got in their car to visit me in college and, six hours later, wound up bleeding to death on the side of the road. I’d done it when I’d gone to the morgue to view Cyrus’s body, and he’d gone from being another John Doe to the creature who haunted my nightmares.

  A creeping wave of icy foreboding seized me. I couldn’t tell when, I couldn’t know how, but I knew March had already set in motion the events that would lead to her death.

  “You’re not dead yet,” I reminded her, my throat suddenly dry. “But you will be.”

  My warning didn’t alarm her as much as I imagined it should have. “Well, we’ll all be gone someday. No sense in fearing it.”

  “I’ve died. Fear it.”

  We sized each other up for a grueling minute. I would have paid several thousand dollars to know what she thought, but her mask of emotional obscurity was firmly in place. “Last town before the true desert is Louden. Drive like hell and you can get there before sunup.”

  I didn’t
see March again after she left me in the foyer. She didn’t say goodbye, so much as “pleasure doing business with you,” and even then I didn’t truly believe it.

  The supplies that had been removed from my bag were returned to me, along with some I doubted I’d have any use for: sleeping pills, chloroform, bungee cords and gauze bandages. I looked them over and raised my eyebrows at the butler.

  “For ‘human wrangling.’ The madam’s idea.” He didn’t sound enthused to be supporting me.

  From an inside jacket pocket, he produced a map. “You’ll find the most efficient route to Death Valley is highlighted.”

  “Why is she helping me, when she wouldn’t bother giving me a straight answer before?” I took my bag, heavy with its new cargo, and tucked the map into my jeans pocket. As I trudged wearily to the door, grateful to be out of this place, the butler’s voice stopped me.

  “Perhaps she does not think you’ll succeed. Did it occur to you she might be helping you to your death?” His imperious tone was beginning to get on my nerves. “But I believe it is more a case of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend.’”

  I didn’t turn to face him, and resumed walking, pausing only to open the door. “I won’t fail. This is a cakewalk compared to what I’ve been through.”

  “The madam also wishes you to know that if she sees you again, she will kill you on sight.”

  I stepped out into the cool Nevada evening. The stars seemed to shine brighter here, and hung so close I almost felt I could touch them. The sight grounded me in the gravity and reality of what lay ahead of me.

  I had most of the puzzle pieces. Now it was just a matter of fitting them together.

  “She won’t see me again.” I took a deep breath of the fresh desert air. “But tell her I said ditto.”

  When I left, I didn’t look back. I think I expected to see the place had been a mirage, evaporated into heat waves in the air.