She leapt upon the man who smelled of Old Spice and cigarettes with a growl of delight, as the woman on the other side of the car took in a gasping breath, then fell silent.
* * * * *
The wild rapture that seemed to bubble through her veins after feeding, the warmth and glow of contentment, apparently also affected Rick. After they had fed and carefully quartered the site, removing signs of their presence, they had headed back into the disguising bush land, moving silently and swiftly. But after two miles of running, Rick caught at her arm, bringing her to a halt.
“What is it?” she asked, wanting to keep running, to keep bounding across the face of the earth forever. The night was hers.
“There are better ways to use up your excess energy,” he said and pulled her up against him. His mouth pressed against the nape of her neck, his dark hair tickling her cheek. His tongue, hot with fresh blood, swiped against her neck, right over the carotid. He was tasting her.
Here? She thought. Then as pleasure gripped her, mixing with the heady elation of a successful feed, she mentally nodded. Here was perfect. Among the trees and the air, with no humans around….
Rick took her fast and rough, just the way her body was aching for. With the smell of eucalyptus and walnut bushes surrounding them and the sound of night creatures calling, this time he did not make love. Instead he fucked her in raw, animal overdrive.
It was glorious.
Afterwards, they moved through the dark, back to his apartment. The air inside the apartment was warm, still and used. Ilaria pulled off her moto jacket and thought about simply removing all her clothes. It felt stifling inside.
She plucked at her shirt restlessly, moving around the front room, circling the coffee table in loose loops.
“Something’s wrong,” Rick said, standing with his hips resting against the kitchen counter, his arms crossed, watching her. There was blood on the front of his shirt, but the smell of it didn’t rouse her anymore.
She rubbed at her neck. “Why do you say that?”
“You’re not relaxed and you should be.”
She halted as she realized that he was right. “He’s scanning me. He’s looking for me.” She closed her eyes. “No, not yet,” she whispered, feeling the painful mental prickle that meant Heru was reaching out for her. He was about to communicate. This was him opening up the channel between them.
Rick stayed where he was, but his jaw flexed. “Shall I leave?” he asked.
She shook her head, misery welling up inside her. “Not yet.” She could barely bring herself to speak above a whisper.
Then Heru spoke.
It wasn’t speaking in the normal sense of the word. Concepts, images and feelings occurred to her, much like recalling a memory of some older time or place or person. The images were rough, barely filled in. Faces were almost blank. There was only just enough detail there for her to understand who he was referring to, or which place he meant. It had been hard for her to follow, at first, for Danich’s communications had always been crisp, crystal clear and filled with illuminating detail. But Danich had lived and moved amongst humans for centuries, while Heru kept himself apart.
Heru’s thoughts were alien – there was no mistaking who was speaking to her. His mind worked a very different way from Danich’s. If what she had heard about the unspoken ones was true, then it explained the difference: Heru could barely encompass modern concepts. They didn’t make sense to him. Therefore, passing them on to her was an act of transfer, with little understanding involved. He didn’t bother with the details because he didn’t grasp their significance.
But this time, there was no mistaking his meaning. She closed her eyes again, sickness and sadness swirling uneasily within. Heru’s presence left her mind.
“Ilaria.” Rick’s hand gripped hers and pulled it away from her chest. She realized she had curled her hand into a fist and had been beating at her chest. “Shhh….” he crooned, and pressed her against him.
Ilaria threw her arms around his neck and turned her face against his throat, cutting out the light. “I have to go,” she said, speaking with her lips brushing his flesh.
His hands tightened against her back for a second. Then they relaxed. “Do you want to tell me what he said, mia bella? Do you want to talk about it?”
The need to spill it all, to spread it out on display so that she wasn’t holding this anger and misery inside her, was almost overwhelming. But she finally shook her head, her cheek rubbing against his shoulder. “I don’t want you to think badly of me.”
He lifted her chin, making her look at him. “You forget. I have stood on the spot upon which you now stand. I know how wretched it is to be told to do something that leaves you cold and sick, yet know you have no choice but to obey. You and I, Ilaria, are the only two people in the world that truly understand each other.”
She was trembling. “I’m afraid,” she whispered.
“Why?”
“I don’t know if I can do that anymore. Before, I would use my anger to push me through it. But you’ve taken that away.”
His lips touched hers. “You have hope, instead,” he reminded her. “This isn’t over, Ilaria. You must do what you’ve been told, but there is an end to your purgatory in sight now. Remember that. Remember I have promised you I will find your way out, then do what you must to survive until I do.”
Ilaria reached up on her toes to kiss him, a silent wail starting up inside her. She couldn’t do this, could she? But the punishment for disobedience…. Yet to leave him and go do what she had been told….
“I can’t,” she said, stepping away from Rick, tearing her lips from his. She pressed her hands over her galloping heart. She couldn’t seem to rein it in, now. “I can’t leave. It hurts too much.”
Rick closed his eyes for a moment, his chin dropping. Then he drew in a deep breath. “You must leave before he becomes suspicious. You must do what he tells you, whatever it is. I don’t care what it is. I only care that you do anything you must to thrive until I have remembered what I need to remember.”
“You’re speaking of your own inscription, aren’t you?” she asked softly.
“My inscription and the breaking of it, and most of what lay in between those two moments. I can’t remember, for there is a scar there, where the memory resides.”
She touched his left arm, high up on the biceps where his brand was. “Like this one?” she asked.
His eyes widened a little. “Perhaps,” he said slowly. He caught her face in his hands, and they were still warm against her skin. “Be safe, Ilaria. Whatever it takes. And when the time comes, I’ll find you again.”
“You promise, yes?”
He nodded. “I promise.”
A knot inside her loosened. The tightness in her chest relaxed a little. “Alright,” she said listlessly.
His last kiss was hot and deep enough to sear the memory of it on her soul.
Chapter Nineteen
Ilaria slid around the side of the house, to the wooden steps that led up to the big deck outside the multiple French doors that made up most of the living room walls in Marcus’ house. She moved silently, but it wasn’t deliberate. She was simply better at not betraying her presence than most humans.
The sound of the ocean pounding the sand, a hundred meters away, was heavenly. There was a stiff breeze blowing in from the sea that lifted her hair and bathed her face. She liked the briny smell underneath the slightly stronger stench of seaweed. It reminded her of Napoli and the harbor there.
In two days, memories of her human life had been unlocked from their dormant hiding places, where fear and anger had kept them. Perhaps that was why she failed to detect him. She was distracted by all the memories as they played.
She climbed the wooden steps onto the deck itself and the cold barrel of a small handgun pressed against her neck. She held up her hands. “I carry nothing,” she promised him. Not even the blade she sometimes wore in one of her boots.
Marcus move
d out of the dark shadow at the corner of the house where the spotlights that bathed the deck did not reach. He had been so still! Normally, humans were unable to freeze the way animals did when a predator was in the area. But he was trained.
“Why are you here, Ilaria?” His voice was flat. Hard.
She deserved his contempt, and his anger. Both. She would have to work past them. Lowering her hands, she turned to face him. The words were on her lips. I missed you. I wanted to see you. I wanted to kiss you one more time. They were the practiced words she had used many times in the past. Said just the right way, with just the right touch of emotion, they swayed almost everyone.
They were the words that would put her on the path that Heru wanted her to take. She looked at Marcus, putting the sentences together, taking in his unkempt, shaggy blond hair, the touch of growth about his chin, and the shadows under his eyes. He had not been sleeping well. Again.
She had spent three nights soothing him gently from his nightmares into peaceful sleep, while he had tossed and muttered. The pain and fear in his voice as he had dreamed and whispered had been disturbing. Had he turned back to those dark dreams once more?
Then there was the lovemaking. Now she had a bench mark to compare it with, she knew that Marcus had been no closer to simply fucking her than Rick had. The knowledge made her guilt swirl, as she remembered how she had left him.
All these thoughts slipped through her mind like playing cards being rifled through a dealer’s hands. Blink, blink, blink.
She opened her mouth again, to speak the words she had composed, but they would not emerge. But she must say something, or Marcus would grow even more impatient and less likely to listen to her sympathetically.
She took a breath. “He sent me back, Marcus. He wants me to seduce you again, to ensure you trust me, then I’m to give you a message.” Shock made her clap her hand over her mouth. She had really said that aloud?
Marcus lowered the gun. It seemed like he dropped his arm, as surprised as she. Then he stirred himself, and glanced around for witnesses. He took her arm. “Come inside,” he said bruskly, tucking the gun into his jacket pocket.
He pulled her into the house, then moved around the room shutting the doors and closing the billowing curtains. He kept hold of her arm the whole time, as if he were afraid she would bolt if he let go.
Then, finally, he pushed her onto the sofa. Gently. He sat on the coffee table, his hands linked loosely between his knees. The denim of his jeans stretched over the powerful thighs.
Ilaria swallowed, averting her gaze as she realized where her thoughts were leading. She lifted her gaze to his face, instead, and studied it. This was the man who had defied the codes of his profession to give her time and space to relax, just because she had asked for it. He had made love in a way that had made her happy, even while she had been working to please him.
She was glad to see him. The thought was an oddity. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been pleased to see someone after an absence. But she was pleased and happy. She let her gaze drift over his face, with the stubble, down to the wide shoulders. She remembered them naked, the soft suntan making them glow while the muscles had rippled under the skin. He had lots of muscle and was very strong for a human. He had lean hips, too, and a tight ass.
Just like that, she was becoming aroused, thinking about him. I want him, she thought, with growing wonder and confusion. As much as I wanted Rick. How can this be?
She bit her lip, unsure how to proceed.
“Where have you been, since Tuesday?” he asked. “Your...boss – clearly, he believed your story.”
Ilaria swallowed. The cover story was an old one that she was so practiced at delivering, it rose to her lips without conscious effort. But she held it back and thought, instead, of the relief that had touched her when she had blurted out the truth. The relief had eased her guilt, just a little. Would more truth do the same?
“He believed me,” she told Marcus. “Then he sent me on another assignment.”
“You’ve shot someone?” he asked cautiously.
“No, not that sort of assignment.”
“What, then?”
She hesitated again. Would a truthful answer to this question really help? Marcus may be hurt by it. She knew she had hurt him by leaving the first time around. It hadn’t been her choice, though she didn’t know if he would believe that.
But her hesitation gave Marcus the truth anyway. His face hardened. “You seduced someone else, didn’t you?” He pushed himself to his feet and strode three paces away, then whirled to face her. “Tell me, when you laid that trail for me to find – when you shot at me to make me search for you – was that at his orders? Or were you honestly trying to contact me to come in, like you said?”
Ilaria jumped to her feet, too. “It wasn’t either-or, Marcus. You don’t understand how it is for me.”
“Then you did find me under orders,” he said, his tone withering.
“Yes! He told me to find you. But I researched you, Marcus – I found out about you and I thought that with you, for the first time ever, I might have found my way out. I thought you might be able to help me.”
His expression was stony. He had crossed his arms again. Marcus didn’t believe her.
Ilaria threw out her hands. “I have no choice! Do you not understand that much? If he tells me to do something, I must do it.”
“No one has that sort of control over another person,” Marcus said slowly. His arms dropped to his sides. “Unless...is it....?”
“Magic?” she asked, dryly.
He grimaced. “Something to do with vampires?”
She nodded. “Yes, it’s something to do with vampires.”
He didn’t recoil. He didn’t wince, or look angry or uncomfortable. Amazingly, he seemed to be thinking. Hard. “You had no choice but to find me,” he said softly, voicing his thoughts aloud. “So you used the opportunity to further your own search for freedom.”
Ilaria took a deep breath, feeling almost giddy with relief. He had understood.
“And now he has sent you back here again. With a message.” Marcus finished. He focused on her face once more. “Why are you here?”
“He wants me—”
“I don’t care what he wants,” Marcus interrupted. “Nial can sort that out. I want to know why you are here.”
The mention of Nial’s name made her jump. “You know Nathaniel Aquila?” she asked.
“Indirectly. I’ve never met him, but I’ve met his...associates.”
“I thought you couldn’t bear the company of vampires?” she asked softly.
Marcus’ gaze was direct and steady. “That was a long week ago and a whole other world away from now.”
Of course, he would not have sat idly at home, waiting for possible contact from her. His reputation had warned her that he was a man who went after what he wanted with a degree of ruthlessness that had got him into trouble with his own people and earned him an international reputation for roughshod effectiveness – particularly in Europe, where everyone seemed to know a little something about him.
“That was my message. That was what I was supposed to tell you,” Ilaria said. “He wanted me to let it slip accidentally, once I felt I had your empathy or trust. I was to let you know that my next assignment was Nathanial.”
“To seduce him?”
“No,” she said flatly.
“And is he your next target?” he asked bluntly.
“I don’t know. I never know ahead of time what I am to do next. I am told what to do at the moment I must do it.”
“What, he just appears magically wherever you are, and hands over a sheet with your orders?”
She smiled. Marcus’ indignation was mildly amusing. “He tells me in my head,” she said.
Marcus drew in a long breath, considering her. “He can speak in your head?”
“Yes.”
“Can he read your thoughts? Does he know you are betraying him right now?�
�
“No. He can sense emotion and he knows where I am, physically. He will know that I have obeyed his orders and come to see you. Soon, he will want to feel...” She swallowed. “He expects me to seduce you. He will know if I do not.”
Marcus’ eyes grew a little larger. “He can sense your arousal?” He rubbed the back of his neck with his big hand. “Fuck!” he muttered. “What the hell happened to your right to liberty, freedom and personal choice?”
“That is a political construct that modern humans enjoy,” she replied stiffly. “I have been looking for my liberty for nearly a century. You were my first hope in all that time.”
Marcus shot a glance at her. “I was, past tense. Has something else happened?”
Ilaria’s heart was beating frantically, beyond her control. Truth-telling was a raw, rough exercise that was taking most of her courage to continue. Fear was settling around her shoulders. Rick had done all the strategizing up until now. Without him, she was not sure how to navigate past Marcus’ anger.
“Ilaria?” Marcus demanded, his frustration starting to show in the tight, hard quality of his voice.
“I may have found another way to escape,” she said.
His eyes narrowed and his shoulders stiffened. “This other guy you fucked. He’s your patsy now?”
“No! Madre Maria aiutami!” She lifted her hands to the sky, her own frustration building. “It was an assignment. One I could not refuse.”
“But you told him the truth, too, didn’t you? And he is helping you.”
She crossed her arms. “Yes,” she said flatly.
“What made you think he could be trusted?” Marcus asked tightly. “Fuck, Ilaria, you have no idea who he is. He’s just some joker your boss thinks will help him promote his agenda, once he’s made pliable with sex and sympathy.”
“No, it’s not like that,” she countered weakly. This truth-telling was getting her into deeper and deeper waters. “Why do you even care?”
Blood Unleashed (Blood Stone) Page 21
