Gifts of the Blood

by Vicki Keire

  My fingers tightened their hold on his shirt without any further directions from me. “With. Me.” I realized I was shaking again. It shocked me, how frightened I still was. I wondered if it was because of Asheroth, or because Ethan might get up and walk away. “Just until I fall asleep.” I lowered my voice to a hoarse whisper, trying to disguise the desperation I couldn’t keep out.

  Blue green lightening flashed before he closed his eyes. “Just let me get the lights.”

  My fingers were claws in his t-shirt. “That’s what blankets are for.” He pulled more up around us, but they did little to stop my shaking.

  ***

  In his arms, darkness seemed sheltering instead of sinister, and my shaking gradually stopped. The two of us lay swallowed by fleece and down, the worn cotton of his borrowed t-shirt gathering against my fists like a lifeline.

  “Why is your skin so rough?” I whispered, my teeth resting lightly around an earlobe. I ran a hand underneath his t-shirt, up the plane of his abdomen, and found that the skin there matched his warm abrasive face and hands.

  He did not touch me. Instead, he pillowed his head on his crossed arms and watched me as if memorizing every detail. He smiled, considering my question. My palms traveled slowly up his stomach and chest. I breathed him as I felt the delicious friction that came from dragging my damp flesh across a rough surface. He smelled of an impossible mix of crushed pine needles and citrus.

  He touched me then. His thumb across my lower lip, one palm cupping the nape of my neck softly, so softly. Fingertips brushed against my eyelids. “I don’t know,” he whispered back, amused. We whispered everything, almost, in our blanket sanctuary. “It’s just how I was made. I’ve never questioned it.” Warm fingertips traced the v-neck of my shirt, skimming the soft skin there.

  I pushed up his t-shirt. “You didn’t answer my question.” I raked my fingers down his rough stomach.

  “What… was the question?” Slitted eyes, like a cat about to strike. His thumbs made soothing circular motions against my thighs.

  “Skin…” I murmured. His t-shirt was scrunched up right around his neck, his entire chest bare to me. Every muscle, every hollow, was perfectly shaped, but not with fleshy softness. Ethan was a statue, perfect in a frozen kind of way; his skin was almost monochromatic, except for faint shadows cast by bone and muscle. And warm. I kissed a line of firm, possessive wet marks from his belly button to the hollow of his throat, where I still held his t-shirt in a death grip. “Something about skin,” I said between kisses, my lips burning from the twin sensations of heat and rough contact.

  “Why are you so soft?” he asked. “So vulnerable?” He sounded as if he were choking.

  “’Mm not,” I mumbled, unwilling to stop my kisses. When I finally found his mouth, my lips were as sensitive as if I had lost a layer of skin. “I’m not going to break. I promise.” Carefully, carefully, as if he was the shiny new human and I, the indestructible one, my fingers inched up my t-shirt. “See?” I asked, pushing his roughened palm across my stomach. He tried to draw his hand away, afraid of my bruises, but I wouldn’t let him. “The heat helps,” I reassured him, and he relaxed. “You won’t hurt me.” I delicately wrapped my teeth around his lower lip. “Not here. Not you.”

  Blue green fire snapped and flared. In that instant way his kind move, he lay suddenly above me, his hand in the curve of my spine. I held his face to mine, burning my lips with his, urging him closer as my hands roamed his back, finding not a hint of wings or planes of light, only more warm rough Ethan. His touch on me was light, still hesitant, brushing my hip, the soft flesh of my belly. I pressed myself against him, wanting to burn brighter, faster, to lose layer after layer of skin against him. Yes, this, I thought, and I wanted so badly to pull him out of whatever made him so careful with me.

  “We can do this.” Ethan held me tight against him. I felt the tension in him, the taut way he held himself; I saw fear and wonder and fettered joy. “Whatever lays between us now, Light or Dark, human or… not… we can face it.” He had not asked a question, but it was more than a statement. A declaration, a pledge; I wasn’t sure.

  “We can,” I echoed, and saw, for the first time, silver in his eyes. I recognized it for what it was: my own eyes, my Nephilim eyes, glowing with the same impossible fierceness as his own, reflected back at me. In his eyes, among the desire and want and fear and certainty, there was an echo of my own blood.

  A stirring of the blood, a calling and an answer: “Yes,” I said, shirring my fingers through that space where Ethan carried Light on his back, “we can do this.”

  ***

  “I want to see your wings,” I said idly, tracing one finger down Ethan’s spine. He arched against my touch and turned his head to smile at me.

  “Hmm.” He only opened one eye. “It seems a bit much, even for you, to ask me to open the Realms right here in your bedroom.” He rolled on his side, openly laughing at me now. “It would be… dangerous. Trust me.”

  I grabbed a fuzzy fleece blanket for protection. “Realms? You mean, like Heaven and Hell?”

  “Some call them so.”

  “So when I saw them as…” I frowned in the dark, flat on my back now, thinking. “Planes of Light and Dark? And not as wings, with feathers? That’s what you carry on your back, then? Heaven or Hell?”

  “Light and Dark is perhaps more apt,” he corrected. He rolled me on my side and tucked me into the curve of him, my head just under his chin.

  “But how do you fly?” I demanded.

  The entire bed shook for several silent minutes until I realized he had buried his head deep within the comforter to silence his laughter. I wormed an elbow backwards and tried to jab him in the stomach, but, impossibly, annoyingly fast, he caught it. “You’ll hurt yourself, doing that,” he admonished.

  “I’m serious,” I hissed in the darkness.

  “I know,” he said. The shaking started again, but he managed to choke out an answer. “Caspia, we’re not birds. We don’t fly. What most people see as wings are more like doors.”

  “To the Realms?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Is that how you move so fast?”

  “Mmm. It’s like stepping in and out of a door through which space and time are relative. Most humans perceive it as flight, just as they see the Light we carry as wings.”

  “Or Darkness,” I said in a low voice, remembering.

  “Or Darkness,” he seconded, and then flipped the edge of the down comforter over me, pulling me right up against him. His warm rough hand rested flat against my stomach as I wiggled backwards into the curve of his body. “We only open planes to the Realms when we need them, for movement, perhaps, or if we need to draw strength or call for help. You and Logan saw us as few can, no doubt because of your… heritage.” The pause floated between us, expectant and full. “I wish I knew more about it. About whatever long-ago Nephilim ancestor left you mercurial silver eyes and the gift of prophecy, but I do not. I would tell you if I knew. You must trust your instincts when it comes to our kind.”

  I curled my fingers over his as they rested against my stomach. “Ethan?”

  “Hmm?”

  I took a deep breath. “Just how much Nephilim blood do I have?”

  He stiffened, then relaxed and locked his lips against the nape of my neck. “I truly don’t know. Enough to make you noticeable to others of my kind. Enough to let you do things other humans cannot.”

  I sighed. “Just enough to make me troublesome, then.”

  He laughed. I felt the shape of his smile against my neck. “Sleep, Caspia. It’s been a long day.”

  “A long, sucky day,” I agreed. “From Hell. Literally. But I have…” I felt a heavy, unnatural but not unpleasant tiredness, descend suddenly on me. “Questions. Hey! Are you making me…” My brain felt foggy and slow. “Tired?”

  Light kisses sent shivers down my spine. Ethan held me tighter. “Sleep, Caspia. You and yours are safe tonight, and in the morning, I�
�ll bring you coffee.”

  “You fight dirty,” I murmured.

  As sleep claimed me, soft and peaceful, I thought I heard Ethan whisper, “You have no idea.”

  Chapter Eleven:

  Missing Time

  “You are heartless, terrible, and cruel,” I said from underneath my mound of mismatched but perfectly comfortable blankets.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that,” said a serenely cheerful voice. “You’re mumbling underneath a pile of blankets.”

  “Give. Me. The. Coffee.” I threw the blankets off my head and glared for emphasis. Even Ethan, who could punch through walls without blinking, looked startled at my feral pre-coffee snarl. “Now,” I added, as the aroma of The Coffee Shop’s fifty percent Costa Rican blend wreathed its way around my room.

  “No,” he told me firmly when I ducked back under my blankets. “No fewer than three people in the space of fifteen minutes told me this was the only way to get you out of bed.”

  “Then they, too, will die.” I lifted just enough blanket to watch him out of one eye. He must have showered while I slept; his brown hair was wet and messier than usual. He wore more of my brother’s clothes, dark brown cords this time, and a black t-shirt that fit him much more snugly than it ever had Logan. I bit my lip. No matter how attractive he was, he was holding my coffee prisoner. I wasn’t giving in. Yet.

  He scanned the blankets for my face. The sunlight hit glints of gold in his hair and lit his eyes, and, even though I’d done nothing but grouch at him, he looked genuinely happy. I almost, almost, relented. But then he slipped two insulated mega cups of my third favorite coffee in the world onto my dresser, miles from my reach, and said sternly, “It’s for your own good, Caspia. You’re already late for class. Now, get up, please.”

  Class.

  The word registered dimly, like an alarm going of in a distant part of the house that I didn’t quite want to pay attention to yet. My bed was so comfortable, so warm. If only I could convince Ethan to bring me the coffee. I could forget all about getting up and going to class…

  I exploded out of my nest of blankets like I’d been shot. “Holy crap!” I yelled, startling Ethan for the second time that morning. “I’m late for class!”

  “Yes, I told you…” he began.

  I vaulted over the side of the bed and lunged for one of the coffees. Ethan dodged out of my way with Nephilim quickness. He stood watching me from behind my reading chair with narrowed eyes and gradually tightening fists.

  “It’s Drawing II,” I tried to explain, gulping coffee down so fast I barely even tasted it, let alone registered the searing burn down my throat. Halfway through the cup, I came up for air, gasping. “Dr. Christian,” I added, as if this explained everything, which, to me and any other student at Andreas Academy, it did. Dr. Christian was the most acclaimed faculty member at Andreas. He’d taught at several prestigious colleges before settling in Whitfield some years back. He was still partial owner of a prestigious New York gallery, and he was responsible for an impressive, groundbreaking body of work in his own right. I had no idea what possessed him to come to a school like Andreas, but he was a major reason for my attendance there. Unfortunately, his brilliance was matched only by his temperamental outbursts and strict classroom policies. I was late, my last assignment had been stolen before being assaulted by insane Nephilim, and I was going to have to draw left-handed. I was toast, and muttered as much. Ethan only stood there, his eyes getting narrower and his body language fiercer as he crossed his arms and leaned back against my bookshelf.

  “You seem upset,” Ethan observed quietly.

  “Understatement of the century,” I fired back. “But you wanted me out of bed, right? Take this cup. And can you get me the other one? I need more caffeine. This is very, very bad. I’m already late; he’s going to crucify me. Bad enough I won’t be able to draw.” In the darkened depths of my closet, I pulled on mismatched underwear. I grabbed the first shirt my fingers touched and slipped it over my head. I grabbed jeans, socks, and ankle boots. I didn’t even have time to deal with lacing up my shoes. I went to dump everything on my bed and ran smack into Ethan’s solid chest. The collision knocked all the breath out of me, tripping me and sending my armload of clothing flying. “Bloody hell!” I yelled, frustration peaking.

  I should have known by now. I should have expected it. But his hand on the curve of my spine, steadying me, still surprised me even as it stilled time and righted my world. Anchored now, snug in the carved curve of his arm, I felt the heat and steadiness of him as he watched me with a kind of confused, animal wariness that made me forget, for a moment, to breathe.

  “Coffee?” he asked, pressing the second of the cups he’d brought into my dangling hand.

  “Thank you.” My words came out a little breathy, like I’d just learned to breathe. I risked a quick glance at the bed; just as I’d thought, my haphazard pile of clothes lay gathered at the bottom, folded into a neat stack by the man presently keeping me from falling. Fast, so fast. For the first time that morning, the full impact of who and what he was hit me, taking me low and cold beneath my ribs. “Ethan.” I closed my mouth and felt it curve, all on its own, into a tiny promise of a smile. “I… oh, God. I forgot to say good morning.”

  He looked steadily back at me and I found I could not name all the emotions I saw in his unguarded blue green eyes. I wondered if he could, either. Vulnerable and wary, amused and… something else. Fierce? Possessive? No one else had ever looked at me that way, not ever in my whole life. And this was his first morning in our apartment, and he had brought me not one coffee but two, and I had responded to his gentle reminder about school by totally freaking out on him.

  “Well, then.” Ethan did not loosen his hold on the curve of my spine. “It seems a rather dangerous event, this waking up business. Perhaps it’s just as well that you forgot the good morning bit,” he teased, but with an edge.

  “Not so much,” I tried again, inching the cup of coffee out from between us. “It doesn’t have to be.” Suddenly, unaccountably shy, I found myself unable to look anywhere but at the hollow of his throat. I kissed it impulsively. He went perfectly, preternaturally still, his hand still warm in the curve of my spine. “I’m very new at this.” I admitted. I swear his body temperature rose when he smiled; I couldn’t see his face, but he absolutely radiated warmth at my words. “Let me try again.” I kissed him again on the throat, longer, this time, and let my lips linger there. “Good morning, Ethan,” I said against his skin. “Thank you for the coffee.”

  He didn’t say anything. He scooped my chin up in the palm of his hand and kissed me, firmly and without hesitation, as if he sensed the veil of shyness between us and wanted to rip it away. It was all I could do not to drop the coffee; Ethan was, as always, an assault on the senses. Raw skin abraded of its uppermost protective layer; impossible scents that mingled seasons and plants and even places; the lowest light humming, so faint I could hear it or not, as I willed; and everywhere, warmth, even inside, where my lips broke from his tasting faintly sweet and spicy all at once. I pressed back against him, snaking my fingers through his hair, seeking kisses, but his lips were moving, making sounds. “School. Dressed in no time, and I can take you.”

  “I could just not go,” I offered, pressing myself against him. I felt his low rumbling laugh travel across the front of my body.

  “You were frantic, earlier,” he reminded me.

  “I’ll take her,” Logan said from my bedroom doorway. I froze, grateful Ethan’s back was to the door that connected my room to the living room. Hopefully, Logan wouldn’t see I was wearing nothing but a Horse to Water t-shirt and underwear.

  “Ethan can get me there really, really fast,” I countered, risking a peek at my brother from around Ethan’s shoulder.

  Logan wore one of my favorite sweat suits. The dark green Adidas hoodie and baggy pants were a good color for him. He even had a matching ball cap, pulled down low to shield his eyes, as always. For m
y brother, this was his version of dress clothes. He didn’t quite smile at me, his eyes fixed on the tip of his sneaker instead. But he twirled the car keys easily in his hands and he seemed relaxed. “Come on, Cas,” he coaxed. “You’re so late now another ten or fifteen minutes won’t matter much. Plus I’ve got breakfast to go for you.” He did smile at me then, his shadowed brown eyes seeking mine over Ethan’s sheltering shoulder. If he didn’t like what he saw, he didn’t show it. Instead, he seemed kind of pleased. “Leftover microwave cheese pizza.”

  Oooh, a definite peace offering. Logan always tried to get me to eat healthy breakfasts like oatmeal and cereal bars. My eyes widened in shock, but I didn’t move from Ethan’s sheltering form. I was wearing one of Logan's favorite band's t-shirts and little else. There were limits to any big brother’s level of tolerance, and I didn’t want to test his, not when he seemed so friendly. “Five minutes,” I promised. I wanted to spend some time with him, too. I had some things I needed to say to him. It seemed as if today was my morning for apologies. As he turned to leave, I shouted after him. “Hey! I don’t have to work tonight. Are you up for the Winter Festival on the Square? I promised to show Ethan downtown Whitfield last night, but...well, you know.”

  He paused for longer than I thought he would, both hands tight against the doorframe. He nodded slowly before turning to smile at us. “Sure thing. I’d love to go. I think it’s important that Ethan feels at home here. As much as possible.” His voice was husky as he looked at the two of us, me obviously hiding, and at the pile of clothes on my bed. He fixed me with a mock glare. “God knows you need looking after, Caspia. The least you can do for Ethan is take him out.”