A Darker Crimson

by Carolyn Jewel

  “You’re tolerable,” he said. “For a human.”

  She squeezed his hand. “Gee, thanks.”

  “You’re safe from me,” he replied softly. “For now.”

  Funny thing was, she believed him. She wondered if he was beginning to care for her. A vamp. Was the feeling due to sincerity on his part, or vamp voodoo? Whatever the reason, she believed him. He hadn’t done anything to make her think she shouldn’t. “Thanks,” she said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  She slid her fingers free of his hand, and a moment later pulled out one of several rectangles she’d taken for stale bread. Most of the food she’d found at the demon house was too strange to meddle with. She’d grabbed some bread, something that looked enough like cheese to take a risk and some apple-looking fruit. The rectangle was a bit mushed, but not much worse for wear, all things considered. “Not too many places to go shopping around here. Is food going to be a problem?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer right away. “I’ll manage.”

  She sniffed the rectangles. Didn’t smell like much. She bit off a corner. Not bread, but sort of cracker-ish. When she’d eaten half, she remembered her manners and said, “Sawdust flavor. Yum. Want some?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Vamps eat all the time.” She didn’t know why, but she’d seen it. Talking to him sure felt strange, especially in the dark. Normal people made sounds. They breathed, for example. She couldn’t quite shake the feeling there wasn’t anybody there, and that she was just talking to herself, which made her a real loony-toon. Except, she felt him. “I see vamps eat regular food, I mean.”

  “It helps us to pass, Officer.” His voice had a husky edge to it that appealed to her far more than felt safe. “It’s fashionable for us to eat. Very retro.” He sounded bitter.

  “Oh.” Well. Still, if it was crazy to trust him, so be it. It wasn’t like she had much choice. It was just too bad he was a vamp. She felt a connection, a sadness in him. And it wasn’t the weird fuck-me connection she’d had with Lath. She shivered. Better not to think about that.

  “Human food has no nutritional value for us,” he said.

  She took a bite and another mouthful of sawdust went down her throat. “So, how do you get by, if you don’t eat and you don’t drink illegally?”

  He made an odd noise. “You should know this, Officer. There are blood banks in the Upper.”

  “I know. Just seems kind of…boring.”

  “It is.” She heard his amusement and that made her feel good, making him laugh a little. “However, for the old-fashioned among us, there are plenty willing in our fair city.”

  She ate the last of the rectangle and forced it down. “Well, I’m not willing. Not anymore. No offense, Korzha, I want to be perfectly clear.”

  “Duly noted.”

  In the pack, searching for more rectangles, her fingers bumped against something cold and metallic. She grabbed it; a mini Mag-light that must have fallen out of one of the pockets of her uniform pants. “Ah-hah!”

  “What?” Korzha’s voice rose from ground level, which Claudia presumed meant he’d laid down. Damn. She hadn’t heard him do that.

  “My sister used to call me a pack rat. She always complained I carried around too much stuff.” Her heart shrank in her chest. “She had no idea what you have to do when you’re a mom. Extra everything, emergency everything. I swear, Korzha, if you’re ever going to be lost in the boonies with someone, make sure it’s with some kid’s mother.”

  “My lucky day,” he said.

  “I’ll take care of you. Never fear. If your face gets dirty, I’ll bet there’s a moist towelette in here somewhere.”

  “Who takes care of you? In Crimson City.”

  She laughed. “Me, that’s who. I do everything. The cooking, the cleaning and the laundry. I see homework gets done, I play crazy eights ’til I’m crazy myself, and I pay the bills. Just call me super mom. Well,” she whispered, when the lump in her throat was gone. “Well, anyway, I’ve saved the day, Korzha. Fiat lux.” She pushed the Mag-light switch. Nothing happened. “Rats.”

  She yelped when Korzha snatched the Mag-light from her hands. The whole thing was pretty unexpected, because she hadn’t heard him move. For a petrifying moment she thought he was attacking her, and it was too late to get to her knife. He threw the Mag-light hard against the cave wall, which she knew because she heard the swish of his arm moving and then the metallic clunk and tinkle of the device smashing. “Hey!” she cried.

  Halfway through the exclamation, the flashlight exploded. Or, more accurately, the batteries imploded. The air where the light had been blazed with a bluish glow bright enough for Claudia to see their blankets, packs and Korzha staring at her with glittering green eyes. In that flash of light he looked more handsome than any man had a right to be. She looked away. The metal barrel of the mag-lite dripped down the black wall.

  “Idiot,” Korzha said. “You could have been killed. Overworld technology won’t work here. Did you pay no attention to what happened back at the portal? Nothing from the Overworld works here.”

  “Not really,” she said, more sharply than she should have. What the hell was she thinking? Falling for a vampire defined suicidal. “I was too busy trying to figure out how to make Jaise give back my daughter.”

  Korzha went silent for a count of ten. “My apologies. That moment must have been terrible.” His voice sounded strangled.

  The rhino continued its rampage in her chest. Korzha lay back, hands beneath his head. Blue light flickered on the walls, showing his face. Despite his voice, he looked calm. Claudia’s control crumbled.

  “Take a deep breath,” the vampire said.

  “You don’t get it, do you Korzha? When you have a kid nothing’s ever the same. You’re never safe again.”

  In the still flickering blue light, the vampire’s teeth flashed. “Lie down,” he said. “You need to sleep.”

  “Go to hell,” she whispered.

  In a tired voice, he said, “What happened to your sister?”

  “She died.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Except for Holly, everyone I’ve ever loved is dead. It’s not that big a deal. No one who stays in the Lower lives very long,” she said acidly.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s just the way it is.”

  “Why didn’t you die?” he asked after a moment.

  “I didn’t want Holly growing up like me.” Claudia sat, arms wrapped around her upraised knees. “I was fifteen when she was born. Yeah, I know, but it’s none of your damn business. I thought I was in love.” She shook her head. “He wasn’t. Obviously, I guess. He was a fucking demon. But I don’t care. Holly saved my life. She really did. Turned me around. I made them let me stay in school, and I worked like hell, and I got into college. You have no idea what it’s like when you want something everyone says you can’t have and can’t do, so, hey, why try? It was a waste of time and money, right? But I did it. And after that, they couldn’t tell me I didn’t belong. And they can’t say Holly doesn’t belong, because she does. I’m a regular person now.” She felt a moment of embarrassment for her outburst. He didn’t seem to mind.

  “Why a cop?” he asked.

  “In the Lower,” she said, stretching out on the blanket, “mean life expectancy of a human female is twenty years, six months. I’m twenty-five now, so, to be honest, I figure I chose pretty well.” But the last few words came out as a choked sob. An ocean pooled in her eyes. She wasn’t going to live to twenty-six, and what would Holly do without her? Korzha’s arms slid around her, beneath her arms, enfolding her, and she didn’t even think how crazy it was to have a vamp so close. “I just want her back,” she said.

  One of his hands stroked her back. “I know.”

  “I want my daughter back,” she repeated. She put her arms around him. Tears poured down her face. “I just want her safe. I don’t even care what happens to me, as long as she can live and have
a good life.”

  “We’ll get her.” The burning wall flickered and dimmed. After a bit, as the pace of her tears slowed, his fingertip touched her cheek. She turned her face toward him. First came one finger, a light brush beneath her eye, then the sides of three. She wanted him to kiss her. He had a gorgeous mouth. A to-die-for mouth. He was probably a great kisser. He tenderly licked away the damp of her tears. It was an odd and peaceful moment. Her last glimpse of Korzha before the battery light on the wall disappeared was his tongue slipping along his fingers, tasting her sorrow.

  Then, the dark was unrelenting, the silence fathoms deep. Exhaustion pulled at Claudia’s eyelids, but her nerves felt too jacked up to give in and sleep. When she got bored staring into the blackness, she curled against Korzha and lay staring upward into inky black.

  Very faintly, she could feel a bizarre one-off sensation in base of her skull. It was familiar. Not the kinky, sexy mind thing with Korzha. That might have been a relief, if it were him, because she could tell him to stop. What the hell had the demons done to her? And what had they done to Holly? The thought numbed her. She slept with nothing but nightmares for company.

  A touch, feather-light along her cheek; a tender stroke woke her, or seemed to. She stirred under the caress. Someone whispered her name. In her head, she saw the Bak-Faru demon as he’d looked standing naked in her cell. Her first thought, her very first unwilling thought was that she’d never seen a more beautiful man in her life. His black hair gleamed blue along the two braids and in the shadows of his ponytail. Black as a crow. Black as pitch. And his eyes were such a pale, pale lilac. A mouth a woman would die to kiss. Oh, but it was Korzha she wanted to kiss. Her body softened for him. Lath cupped her cheek in his hand. In the back of her head, the tiny part that was still herself thought, He isn’t really here. He can’t be.

  “Tes,” he said, in a low, soft voice. “Claudia-tes. Come back to me. Mate with me again.”

  Fear chilled her insides. She wanted to, she wanted him with such fierceness she could feel tears welling up in her eyes. And Korzha wasn’t here this time to help her remember that she and the demon didn’t belong together. His darkness thrust inside her, filling her, threatening to take everything until there wasn’t anything left of her soul. Where was Korzha to save her?

  “I miss you,” Lath said in her dream. His body was muscled, unforgiving in its strength. He’d given her sunlight again. Far back in their depths, lilac and a winter’s noon sky, she caught the reflection of a pale crimson moon. “I’m nothing without you.” In her sleep, she frowned. “Come back to me. You are my vishtau mate, tes. I will give you anything you want.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  All sense of time left her when she opened her eyes. She might have been asleep ten minutes or ten hours. She felt different, though. Not Claudia. Not Officer Donovan. Not exhausted, either, so she must have gotten some sleep. Her hand, she realized, rested on the mark Aslet had cut on her hip. Odd that it wasn’t a bloody sore or scabbing over or doing any of the unpleasant things a healing wound generally did. She traced the raised twists and turns of the mark.

  Korzha lay beside her, unmoving. Not just beside her, next to her. One of his arms was draped over her waist. While she slept, he’d turned his body toward her as if seeking warmth. She shifted away. In the dark, she retied her thigh sheath which had come undone. Her arms hurt, an intramuscular ache. There was no appreciable change in the darkness. Her chest felt constricted, and she had to pee. If she stared into the black for even one more minute she’d go insane. Freaking insane. She sat up. Her body shrieked with soreness from overexertion.

  Stealthy as she could with her muscles full of lactic acid, she moved forward until she found the rock wall. When she hit the spot where her Mag-light had melted, she continued right and retraced their path into the cave. A bat winged past her head, heading home. She fought back a shriek. Around the corner, she could see a shift in light coming from the opening.

  It was still daylight. From the mouth of the cave, a fading blue sky had started its slow transition into dark. The moon hung above, a pale bittersweet-orange, not so red as last night, a sliver less full than before. She took a deep breath. The first order of business was to take care of her pressing biological needs and the second was to work out her muscle aches. First things first.

  She spent ten minutes pacing, getting the blood circulating through her body. Then, just outside the cave, she started a series of slow stretches while she faced the foreign moon.

  What happened to your sister?

  She died.

  Yeah. Tears welled up, but Claudia was years past crying.

  What wouldn’t she give to feel her mother touch her cheek? Claudia, you worry so. Go to sleep. The dark won’t hurt you. I won’t let monsters under your bed. Claudia had said those very same words to Holly. And it had been a lie. The dark was dangerous, and there were monsters. And she was so far from home that she might never get back. She worked out the worst of the kinks in her body.

  She moved through the poomse forms that got her mind off everything except her breathing and the sky darkened and the moon turned a fat golden red. She didn’t need anything right now. Nothing at all.

  She finished the last form and realized that for several minutes the back of her head had been tingling. Now the sensation took on insistence, a demand that she pay attention. Lath was looking for her. A plethora of emotions from him reverberated in her body; faint, though. He wasn’t near. Her body remembered his, longed for him. He longed for her, too. Vishtau. The word echoed in her head but slipped away without meaning, without true definition. The word made her long to see Lath and his lilac eyes. Even though she fought the reaction, the longing blossomed. Her body ached with the tension of want.

  Behind her closed eyes, she was back in Crimson City watching Aslet’s hand disappear into the other demon’s chest, watching the crimson mist of blood. That ritual had put her under a sentence of death. She saw Lath. Felt him. Felt his need for her. She wanted to go back to him, the monster, the killer. She wanted to belong to him. To be in his arms. She hurt with physical longing.

  Behind her, she heard movement, but she felt the vampire first, heard his deliberate sound, a shoe kicking a pebble. She craned her neck to see. Korzha stood within arm’s reach. If he’d wanted to, he could have immobilized her, held her down while he fed. But he wouldn’t do that to her. Not without an invitation. His eyes were green. Not pale, but a deep and mossy green. No one had ever accused any Korzha of making an unattractive vampire. Physical beauty must be on the list of requirements for the family.

  “What the hell is with you?” he asked.

  She wasn’t sure if he’d spoken or not. She shook her head because she didn’t have breath.

  “I can feel you.” His mouth went taut, lips pressed together. “You might as well have a sign over your head that says, I need to get laid.” He hesitated, his eyes looking into her soul. “I never felt that from you in Crimson City. Not like this. Why here? Why now?”

  Claudia stared at him. At the moment, there wasn’t any mistaking what he was. “I want…” What did she want? A tear slid down her cheek. She didn’t want to be alone with the ghost of Lath’s hands on her, the thrust of his sex in her. “He…did something to me. He’s doing it now, and I don’t know how to make it stop.”

  Korzha’s hard expression melted away. “Oh, dear heart.” He dropped to his knees behind her, put his arms around her and drew her against his chest. His body wasn’t warm, and there wasn’t any smell of sweat. “What did he do?” he whispered.

  “He had sex with me.” She trembled and shut away the feeling in darkness. “One of the Bak-Faru.” Inside her, desire whirled. She was losing control. “The one with black hair. His name is Lath.”

  The vampire pressed his chin to her shoulder. She felt his cheek brush hers. His presence enfolded her, made her feel safe, took the edge off her shivering lust. She hung her head, and Korzha pressed his lips to the side of
her neck. She felt no teeth, just his soft mouth.

  “He’s in my head, Korzha. Right now. I must be sick or something. I want him again. Right now, and I don’t know how to make it stop.”

  Korzha’s mouth slid off her neck and traced a slow, desultory line along her shoulder, then the back of her neck. It traversed her sensitive nape beneath her hair. Her breath caught in her throat. His fingers delved to her stomach then along the ridge of her pelvis to the line of her underwear; then they stopped. “Officer Donovan.” His hips pressed against her backside, a slow, slow press of his erection against her. “I know you want to have sex with him, I can feel that. But you do not want him.”

  Claudia shook her head.

  “Since he is not here, he cannot have you. And perhaps I can help.”

  She knew, just knew from the tone of his voice that he felt what raged inside her. He was drawn to her, to the heat she couldn’t control. Maybe to more. She was aroused. But for whom?

  “He kept touching me and…and I—I felt like this. Like I do right now. I didn’t want to, but I had to. I had to let him.” She drew in a breath, but still couldn’t breathe. The air was heavy, and when Korzha’s cheek brushed hers again, the contact aroused her more than it shocked her. She pushed back against him.

  Korzha slid his hands underneath her shirt, cool palms sliding along the burning skin of her back. She waited, holding her breath to see what he’d do next. His palms slid around and up, across her stomach. How strange that his hands weren’t warm. They weren’t cold, but they weren’t warm either. Not damp with lust. Not dry, but cool. Assured. The tips of his fingers brushed the bottom swell of one breast. He did something with his other hand, and with a soft snap, her bra came loose. Claudia sucked in a breath. Her body became a tumult of perceptions as his fingers slid upward and both hands cupped her naked breasts. She strained against his palms, seeking his touch, begging for more. She wanted him; he drove away thoughts of Lath.