by Atha, DL
But these were not the calm blue skies that ushered in a dry, dusty July day. These were the temperamental skies of late May that kept you looking over your shoulder for the coming storm, afraid to get too far from shelter, that I was staring into now. Darker clouds gathered and stormed his expression as I knelt down and pushed between his knees, accepting the offered forearm he extended.
“Tonight, I guess you’ll have to do,” I said.
I was hungry, thirsty. But there was something else, and we could both sense the difference. The earlier hunt had produced an excitement that lingered within me, and the race through the woods had brought all my senses to the surface. The energy bounced along my nerve endings until I thought I’d explode with the power. And I was powerful but equally unsettled, which was so different from the human I’d been. Tonight, I was as unpredictable as summer lightning, and Levi was the only rod that could contain me.
His muscles were taut as I pulled his arm towards me. “Do you trust me?” I asked, remembering what he’d told me of makers and their children. His back was rigid; his belly taut as he spun me suddenly around to face away from him. I landed hard against his chest, one arm slung around for me to drink from, the other held me pinned against him. His hand gathered in the thick layers of my hair. Leverage, I knew—the better to pull me away.
“Trust you?” He laughed quietly. “Not in the slightest.”
Cradling his arm in my hands, I felt his body go still as I sliced down through to the artery, and I felt more than heard the sharp intake of his breath as I drank from his body. I drank without thought, taking more than I’d ever taken from anyone besides Asa, and I might have continued drinking without care if the plunge of Levi’s fangs into the tender skin below the angle of my jaw hadn’t taken me by surprise.
Wrapping his arms tightly around me, he pulled me up into his lap. His hand dug hard into my head as he forced my neck back. If I was unprepared for his bite, I was even more unprepared for the effect of his pheromones. The previous night’s taste of his teeth had been small, short-lived, compared to what jetted through my neck now. I could nearly feel the heat of the chemical reaction as it split into a larger vessel of my neck, coursed farther down into the deeper veins of my chest before dumping into my abdomen and pelvis. The sensation was nothing short of an electric charge being plugged into each and every nerve ending. Even my toes curled as the waves translated down my legs. I’ve never shot heroin or cocaine, but I’m pretty sure I could have described the experience in vivid detail.
His legs cupped mine as his chest conformed to my back, the hand in my hair migrating down the back of my neck and around my shoulders to cup one breast. In the small of my back, I could feel the pressure of his other hunger, and I pressed back, grinding against him. He drank briefly before offering his other arm to me.
“Drink,” he urged, and I cut through unbroken skin again, feeling the layers of skin and taut muscle give way as my fangs slipped through. He caught his breath when I hit his bloodstream. I made five more bites along the length of his arm, laughing against his skin at the sharp intake of air each time I did. He shook in my hands, and the power was intoxicating. And I wanted more. I wanted everything these new sensations had to offer.
Twisting in his arms, I went for his throat. The downed tree rocked as I turned, forcing Levi back into the hammock the branches had created. I bit him multiple times, drinking deeply, and then shallow nips that trailed my poison along his internal carotid artery. With my every bite, he grew wilder and more insistent until the cradle made from the tree couldn’t hold us any longer and we crashed to the ground, breaking the hold of his arms.
I slipped from his grasp as he reached for me and dove headfirst into the grotto of the falls, flinging the remainders of my clothes away as I did so. The Febuary water hit me, icy and knife-like, but I dove farther down until my hands glided across the smooth rocks of the river bottom. I waited there for the cold to put out my fires, to take away the burn of his teeth, but even the falls couldn’t extinguish my flames, and I shot back up, my head breaching the surface of the water and spraying the mist into the air.
Levi stood above me on the heights of the falls, the water cascading around him, a silver cloak rippling black in the midnight air. I had him at a disadvantage; his blood was little more than a stream of my pheromones, where as I had taken most of what he’d drunk tonight, and he’d done little more than give me a taste of his hungers. Still, he remained in control. He looked every part the beautiful monster that could command an army of women if he wanted to, but he didn’t command me to come to him. He waited while I decided. He was my maker. Apparently, he owned me, but unlike Asa, he wouldn’t make me come to him. I realized as I watched him, my own personal river god, that I wanted to be completely lost in him tonight. I craved the lack of reason and the rush of desire that only he could give me.
He met me by the shore as I walked from the river, water streaming from my black hair and across my breasts. I offered up my wrists to him, and he took them in his hands as he pressed his lips onto the smooth skin of my inner wrists softly before he broke the skin. His mouth was warm, his lips full and insistent as he traced the arteries up my arm. I was burning alive before he offered his neck to me again.
The thirst had subsided since Levi had allowed me to take so much, and this time, without the rush and the urgency, I tasted so much more than the mere lust I’d recognized earlier. His emotions had a complexity I hadn’t appreciated before tonight. There was more to him than just blood. I could truly taste him, all of him.
He was like a fine red wine made from grapes that had absorbed the yellow sunrays of summer, bathed in the blue-green of spring rains, and matured among the reds and yellows of fall. There was fire in his blood and excitement. I would swear I could taste the snow of the Rockies and the snowcapped peaks of France in his blood and everywhere else he’d traveled. He was rich with time and decadence, and I could taste his lust for everything of this world, including me. I knew he wanted me in more than a maker-made kind of way as I straddled him. And I wanted him too. At this point, I wanted everything. And more than anything, I wanted the wanting to never end.
We spent the rest of the night in each other’s arms on the shores of the river. I lost track of how many times we melted into each other so completely that I couldn’t have given my name if asked. I lost my sense of self, blending so thoroughly into him that I wasn’t sure which were my thoughts and which were his. I couldn’t have cared less about the future or about my family. In those moments, there was only Levi. Nothing else existed.
Chapter 25
Somehow, we made it back to the cabin and its forgotten basement before dawn. I remember nothing of the trip back except the times that I forced Levi back to the ground and resumed our lovemaking, begging him to make me not care again. If not for his self-control, I wouldn’t have made it to safety from the sun. I’d have been like the vampires he mentioned that were caught unawares at the first light.
The fires that had burned in me during the night were only embers as I awoke wrapped in a blanket on the floor of the basement. Levi and I had made it into the shelter just as the sun was cresting the mountains to the east, and I’d lost myself to the dawn. My last sight had been the ceiling of the cabin as I fell backwards into the room. Levi must have gotten us to the basement during the extra time afforded him by his age.
I lay on the cool floor, my hands caressing the smooth dirt, remembering the night before. Parts of it were still little more than a drug haze, and I sifted through these memories trying to make heads or tails of the pieces coming back to me. Rational thinking had replaced the wild longings from last night, and thankfully, I could think clearly again. And for the first time, I began to understand why the week with Asa had been so tumultuous. It was more than just a home invasion, more than a mere kidnapping. I’d been drugged, in all respects, by his saliva. He was the drug, and I was the addict. Not intentionally. But each time he’d bitten me, I was b
een injected with something I couldn’t fight. It had clouded my thinking and impaired my judgment. I’d done things I would never have thought possible.
Last night, I’d been deeply intoxicated with Levi. It’d been a repeat of those nights with Asa. Except Levi wasn’t a psychopath, and maybe that made him even more dangerous. Losing myself in him would be incredibly easy, and loving him was a risk I couldn’t take. I could look into the future and see Ellie becoming less and less of a priority. I could see me becoming more vampire than human in my mind. At least after last night, I understood the power of our blood, and I wouldn’t underestimate it again.
I found Levi outside, lying on his back under the branches of a moss‐covered oak tree. He was paler than usual this evening. I guess I’d ended up with most of the blood, which made it even more amazing that he’d managed to get us safely back to the cabin. Clearly, I had a lot to learn about control.
I dreaded the confrontation that I knew had to happen, but my newfound knowledge of what our blood could do had left me with an open can of worms that I couldn’t ignore. I had to know.
I knelt down beside him on the grass that was beginning to shoot up; I’d almost forgotten it was coming spring. I broke a blade off, twisting it around my finger. “What happened last night, that’s what you meant when you said it would be a shame to destroy me, wasn’t it? It’s an addiction. You’re a drug addict, and I’m the drug.”
Levi was tracing the constellations with one finger. He finished Orion before looking at me. “We’re all drug addicts to some extent. Humans, vampires. We each crave something. It’s just that vampire cravings are a thousand‐fold stronger. And once you’ve had that drug, you just keep wanting it.”
I searched his face for secrets that I hoped he didn’t have. He stared at me levelly.
“Is that the true reason you didn’t put me to the sun?” I asked. I wasn’t guilty of any betrayal towards Asa, and it mattered to me that he believed me. I needed to know that I was truly safe—even if he got tired of me.
Levi’s eyes narrowed as he lifted up onto his elbows. “Is that what you think I am? A glutton incapable of controlling myself?” The blade of grass broke when I flexed my hand, staining my skin with the color of spring. “You must understand why I’m asking.”
“I can handle your bite, woman, and walk away without looking back, but I could never betray my bloodline. If you were guilty, I’d have burned you into oblivion.”
His angry gaze was heated, but I refused to look away. “You can’t blame me for asking. I can see how this could be a problem for some.”
Finally, he nodded, his expression turning softer. “For some, the pull is too strong.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s pretty self‐explanatory.”
I rolled my eyes. “Self‐explanatory? Nothing about being a vampire is self‐explanatory.”
“It makes some crazy. They lose the natural vampire tendency. Blood becomes less important than the fix, which they can’t go without for more than an hour or so. It makes them insane. They lose rational thought. But you can’t get the fix without the blood, so they spill a lot of it. Those kind of vampires don’t last long.”
I walked back into the cabin, picking up cast‐off clothes from the floor. I hadn’t worn any back last night I’d been so intoxicated, I’m ashamed to say. Luckily, I had enough to assemble something decent to wear. Levi followed me in. I wasn’t sure if he’d made it back dressed or not, but tonight he was wearing only a pair of blue jeans. I brushed the leaves off his back. “By a fix, I assume you mean a bite. When you say they don’t last long, what happens to them? I thought we were immortal?”
“Was Asa immortal?” he asked.
I slid a pair of jeans halfway up, slipping on my boots as I went. “I guess you have a point there. But surely they aren’t staking themselves. So what happens?”
“Every vampire reacts differently. Each bite is an injection. For a few, this causes some type of insanity. I’d say it’s similar to schizophrenia in a human. But for most, it’s simply an intoxication, and they get addicted like any human meth head.
And like all addicts, they can get so stoned they don’t know where they are or what they’re doing. They can get intoxicated to the point they forget to seek protection from the sun, things like that. But generally, it’s the vampire hunters that get them. They create such a bloodbath wherever they go that they lead the hunters straight to them. Or we kill them ourselves.”
I jerked hard on my bootlaces. “You kill them yourselves? Because there’s a code of conduct or something?”
Now it was Levi that rolled his eyes. “Quit looking for the good in us. We don’t need the attention, and that’s why we kill those vampires. No other reason.”
“But for those who aren’t addicts …”
He finished the sentence for me. “For those who don’t become addicts, the relationship between two vampires is as close to physical paradise as you can get on this earth.”
I was beginning to see why he was willing to put the time into me. “And you’ve never created a vampire for this reason?”
He wasn’t in a hurry to answer. “No, but I’m in the minority.”
I’d been holding my breath without meaning to. Relieved at his answer, I shook my tensed muscles out and slipped my shirt on.
“Is that jealousy I’m sensing?”
What? Does he think I’m ten? “Whatever. Just curious.” “There are usually enough females willing to swap spit with me,” he said, cutting his blue eyes my way. “So I’ve never felt the need to create my own. I couldn’t tell you an exact number, of course. I’ve lost track over time.” He picked up his shirt and smiled at me.
I forced my expression to go blank. But seriously, how many women does it take to lose count?
“I’m surprised that Asa never did though. He had to have known. It was him who explained the effects of his bite to me. I couldn’t understand why I was responding to him the way I did after everything he’d done to me. But I just couldn’t seem to help myself.”
Levi shrugged into his T‐shirt. “He probably never realized the effect went both ways. Asa was a loner. He avoided the rest of us no matter what it cost him.”
“Thank God for small favors,” I whispered. “But why was he such a loner? No. Wait, that’s the wrong question. Why did your maker abandon him?”
Levi looked at me sharply. “Don’t judge him. You don’t know my maker at all, and everything you’ve heard about him is nothing but hearsay.”
“Well, the hearsay says he’s a major asshole. How many humans have died because of him? Because he abandoned the monster that he made.”
“Let him that is innocent cast the first stone.”
I shoved a finger in his direction. “That’s not the same thing.” “Really? Because I thought ‘Thou shalt not murder’ didn’t specify a number. Like killing one human is okay but a thousand isn’t. And if you want to get technical about it, any vampire hearing about you would think you were the lowest of the low, killing your maker and all. So I wouldn’t be too quick to judge a man you’ve never met based on second‐hand information.” Throwing my hands up in the air, I stalked towards him. “Asa was not second‐hand. He was the one who died at that animal’s hands.”
“And Detective Rumsfield nearly died at your hands. How would someone listening to his story judge you? Would it be fair or a little one‐sided?”
The anger bled out quickly at the sound of his name. I’d all but forgotten the detective over the last few days, and whatever guilt I should have struggled with over his near death I’d brushed aside like a bad dream. Who was the psychopath now?
“I have to go and check on him.”
I had a head start on him, not to mention that most of the blood he’d drank at the bar was in me. Levi couldn’t catch me, and I was walking into the hospital before I felt him at my back.
Chapter 26
He looks awful, I thought to myself when I
first peeked into the hospital room at Detective Rumsfield, who was arguing with some very good points, I might add, that I was a sociopath. But then upon closer inspection, I’d decided that, in fact, Rumsfield looked pretty good with a two-day-old beard. Instead of making him look scruffy, the five o’clock shadow chiseled his jaw and framed his full lips, which he was, right now, using to bad-mouth me. But even that fact didn’t detract from the beauty of those lips.
Irritated that I’d noticed, I reminded myself that he did look pale. Very pale. Because he’s a busybody and a sneak, I said internally. I didn’t want to think any good thoughts about Rumsfield at all. He’d practically ruined my post‐human life. But he does pull off pale well. In truth, there was just something about the man, and my mind wouldn’t allow me to feel complete disdain for him.
Beside me, looking both lethal and beautiful while leaned up against the nurse’s station, was yet another man badmouthing me. Levi was giving me the what for under his breath. “I still don’t understand why we’re here. This human is of no concern to us.” He said “human” as if his throat might constrict on the word it was so harrowing to utter.
“Sshh. They’re going to hear you,” I whispered to Levi. Behind me, I could feel a bevy of eyes on my back. I looked over my shoulder to check the status of the nurses. I knew them well and wasn’t the least surprised when I heard two of them whispering to each other about the god‐like creature beside me.
“Must be the money,” I heard one of them say. “’Cause she sure ain’t that pretty.”
Catty, that one. Always catty, I thought.
“These nurses have impeccable taste,” Levi laughed beside me. I narrowed my eyes at the lot of them and went back to studying Rumsfield through the thin rectangular window in the door.
“Of course he’s important,” I said, nodding towards Rumsfield. “I figured they’d believe him in a heartbeat. But I guess they can’t make his crazy story stick. So I might be able to go home after all.” My mood had improved, and the future was looking up with every word I heard through the door of Rumsfield’s hospital room.
