“You have to admit, though, that there is a chance that even if you don’t visit the vampire social circles that often, they may come looking for you once they learn there’s a dhunphyr on your farm,” my companion pointed out.
“But why worry about something like that when you cannot be certain it will happen?” I countered. “Remember what I told you the other night: a life spent looking over your shoulder is no life at all. The thing to do is live our lives as we normally would, and deal with the obstacles if and when they arise. You’ll enjoy your life so much more that way.”
She sighed. “I know. You’re right, Saphrona, I know that. It’s just… I almost feel like a mother who is sending her kid off to school for the first time. I know Mark is a grown man, and he’s military trained so I know he can take care of himself. But letting go is so damn hard.”
I gave her a sympathetic smile and reached over to place a comforting hand on her shoulder. I then looked around again for Mark and Lochlan.
“Where the heck are they?” I mused aloud. “Usually men complain about us taking too long in the bathroom.”
“No kidding,” Juliette agreed, also looking left and right for any sign of her brother or mine. “You don’t think they’d have gone out to the car already, do you?”
I shook my head. “No. It may be early evening, but it’s still daylight outside. Lochlan wouldn’t spend any more time than necessary out in the sun, direct or not.”
Just as I was about to go into the men’s room to see if they were still in there, Mark and Lochlan came out. Mark immediately put his arm around me and Lochlan placed his around Juliette’s shoulders, whispering in her ear as she started to pull away, “Please do not make a scene. Let us leave casually with all due haste.”
Alarm shot through me at his words—and at the scent pouring off of both men. They’d encountered the vampire in the men’s room and their desire to make a quick getaway meant the encounter had not gone well.
Juliette nodded stiffly and the four of us walked outside, heading straight for the Escalade. Lochlan used his keychain remote to unlock the doors, and to my surprise, Juliette continued the charade by climbing into the front seat next to him. When Mark and I were in the back seat and we had all four of us shut our doors, Lochlan turned the key in the ignition and pulled out of the parking space.
“What the hell happened in there?” Juliette demanded, turning in her seat. “I can smell vampire stink all over both of you—no offense,” she added with a nod in my brother’s direction.
“None taken,” Lochlan muttered.
“The vampire ambushed me at the urinal,” Mark told us. “How fuckin’ messed up is that—to come at a guy when he’s taking a piss?!”
“Did he say anything at all?” I asked.
“No. He was standing at one of the urinals when we went in, but since I can’t smell him like you guys can, I didn’t know it was him at first. Just walked to one a few feet down to do my thing,” Mark said. “I’d barely gotten my dick in my hand when he flew at me. Didn’t even seem to fuckin’ care that Lochlan was there.”
I’d never heard Mark curse so much, so I figured it was a sign that he was royally ticked off. I couldn’t blame him of course, and I gave the hand I held what I hoped was a comforting squeeze.
“He didn’t bite you, did he?” Juliette asked, and at her words I found myself inspecting Mark for signs of injury.
“He didnae have time t’ bite ‘im,” Lochlan said, his own voice conveying his annoyance by the thickening of his accent. “The moment the bugger moved, I was on ‘im and snappin’ ‘is neck like a twig.”
Juliette looked at him with wide eyes. “You killed him?”
Lochlan shook his head. “Unfortunately, no. At least not permanently. The sodding git will live—‘is spine is probably re-fusing even as we speak, and because his spinal cord wasn’t severed, he may well recover in just a few hours instead of taking three days to do so. He’ll be in a right foul mood when he does, too.”
“How did you conceal the body in the meantime?” I asked.
“The reason you smell so much vampire stink on us, as Jules so aptly put it, is because we hauled the fucker into one of the stalls and yanked his pants down so people would think he was taking a shit,” Mark replied tersely.
“Eeww,” his sister remarked with a wrinkling of her nose.
“It’s really too bad you couldn’t have killed him,” I said slowly, surprising Mark. “Obviously I don’t like the thought of killing anyone, or I wouldn’t have been able to give up people as a food source. But allowing him to survive means allowing him the chance to attack you again, because he knows what you smell like.”
For the first time, Mark looked more alarmed than angry. “He’s not going to be able to follow us home, is he?”
I shook my head as Lochlan replied from the front seat. “No, our scent trail will have ended in the parking lot. He won’t be able to follow us unless he’s adept at tracking vehicle exhaust, and the chances of that with the countless petrol vapor trails in that area are nil. However, Saphrona is right about one thing: if you encounter him again, he will not hesitate to attack. Not only does he want your blood to feed on, he’ll be wanting you dead for getting the best of him.”
“Won’t he want you dead, too?”
Lochlan nodded. “Aye, most likely,” he said, “which is why I intend to see that he’s taken care of as soon as possible.”
“Oh, so it’s not because he tried to kill Mark, but because he’s gonna want to kill you too,” Juliette said with a sneer, crossing her arms as her eyes shot daggers at our driver.
My brother glanced sidelong at her as he maneuvered us through traffic. “On the contrary, madam—the threat against me is, although very real, a mere annoyance at best. And while I admit to wanting to remove said annoyance permanently so I am no longer thus annoyed, I’m far more concerned with the fact that a threat against Mark means a threat against my sister. And that I will not tolerate.”
“How is a threat to Mark’s life a threat to Saphrona?”
I cleared my throat and she looked back at me. “Because now that our bond is complete, if Mark dies, so will I.”
Back to Top
Ten
Mark turned to me with an alarmed expression. “Are you for real?”
I nodded. “I’m afraid so. As a friend who has bonded once explained to me, our experiencing pure physical and emotional intimacy in the same moment completes the bond,” I told him. “So if something ever happened to you, I would be so heartbroken as to eventually be consumed by my grief.”
“But what if, God forbid, something happened to you? Would I die as well?”
“You would.”
“Of course,” Juliette mused softly. “I’d forgotten that vampire pair-bonding is virtually the same as imprinting among shapeshifters. In that first moment of dual intimacy, you exchanged a small part of your life force with one another, making it impossible for either of you to live without the other.”
Mark looked understandably ashen, and even though we both wore seat belts, he reached over and wrapped his arms around me, holding me for a moment before he said, “You told me you thought I would be human, that vampires almost always bond to humans. Doesn’t that kind of give you guys the short end of the stick, to dangle immortality in your faces only to have it cut off by the relatively short lifespan of a human being?”
“Very observant of you, brother,” Lochlan put in, “but what may surprise you is that when one of us bonds to a human, the metaphysical connection delays the aging process for that human. It doubles their life expectancy. But because it does not grant true immortality, most human bondmates are eventually turned.”
“So if it turns out that I’m not truly immortal, I can expect to live to anywhere between a hundred sixty and two hundred years old?”
Lochlan nodded. “Give or take a decade.”
Mark looked at me for a long moment. “Well then,” he said slowly, “if
it becomes apparent that I’m not going to live forever, I want to be turned.”
“Absolutely not!” Juliette exclaimed. “Mark, think about what you’re saying, about what you’ll be giving up: No more sunrises, no more sunshine. You’ll only want to sleep during the day.”
“Lochlan is up right now,” Mark pointed out.
My brother cleared his throat. “The only reason I am wide awake right now is because I consumed the entire blood supply of a 400-pound porcine in order to spare your life and my sister grief,” Lochlan reminded him.
Juliette looked at him, again with widened eyes. “Saphrona said you fed on one of the pigs—you actually killed it?”
Loch nodded. “Aye. Meeting your brother awakened a bloodlust the likes of which I have not felt since I was newly turned,” he told her. “It was by no small effort that I was able to maintain my self-discipline and deny the urge to take his life right in front of Saphrona’s eyes. I may not share blood with her as you do with Mark, my lady, but she is my sister nonetheless, and I have no desire to cause her harm. I do not think I could live with myself if such a thing were to occur.”
The shapeshifter’s expression changed to one that I could not decipher, but before she could formulate a response, my brother continued. “Something else you’ll have to give up, Mark, is food, because the only thing you will be able to digest as a vampire is blood. It is the only thing you’ll want, and I for one dearly miss the taste of steak, pork, potatoes… I miss wine and water and tea, and I’ll never know what soda tastes like. Although you’d still be able to consume them, they’d be tasteless and do absolutely nothing for you, so all the things you enjoy eating and drinking now you may as well give up for good. Whoever Vivian Drake got her information from is right about one thing: this is not a life I would wish on anyone.”
“But what if it’s the life I’m meant to lead? I’ve known Saphrona only two days and already I can’t stand the thought of losing her, or leaving her alone in this world,” said Mark imploringly.
I reached one hand up to cup his cheek. “Mark, I don’t think I could put into words how much it means to me to hear you say that. Yet as much as I would like to keep you with me forever, as pleased as I am that you would want to be turned to stay with me, I suddenly find I can’t stand the thought of you giving up your life as you know it to become a vampire, just so I don’t have to give you up.”
“Look, how about this,” Juliette put in. “Put the thought of turning out of your mind. Don’t make any kind of decision about it now, when you’ve just met—wait until you know for sure whether you’re already immortal or not.”
“But how do we find out?” Mark asked. “If so many dhunphyr are killed outright, how will we ever know?”
“I know what we do,” I said. “We’ll just have to find another dhunphyr. If your stepmother and her pack managed to keep you hidden from us for thirty years, there’s bound to be another dhunphyr somewhere in the world.”
“You may well be right, Saphrona,” agreed Lochlan, “but supposing there is, do you not also think it possible that he or she is also hiding or being hidden for their own safety? Wouldn’t our finding this person put him or her in jeopardy?”
“I know, and I don’t relish the thought of endangering someone just to satisfy our curiosity,” I replied, then looked at Mark. “But at the same time, what other choice do we have?”
*****
Obviously, none of us had a clue as to where to start our search for other dhunphyr. Juliette said she would call her mother and ask her about getting the word out to other shifter communities, to see if they could provide any help or information. Lochlan and I both said we would speak to our various vampire contacts to see what information they could or would give us. Mark wondered whether our asking other vampires about immortal humans would arouse suspicions, but I said that I could easily say it was all related to my search for Vivian Drake’s source.
After we reached the farm, Lochlan bid Mark, Juliette, and I farewell and left. Mark took my hand and turned toward the back door, though I hesitated as I noticed Juliette still staring contemplatively down the driveway.
“Juliette, what is it?” I asked her.
“How is it that he’s not burning?” she mused. “I get why he’s awake—it’s because of how much blood he ingested, and now he’s juiced up like he had a keg’s worth of Red Bull. But how is it he’s not burning when his windshield is clear glass?”
I turned to her. “Juliette, do you recall that I said most of what I wrote in the Everland books was true?” I asked. When she nodded, I went on, saying, “Well, the whole bit about burning is just something I culled from popular vampire lore. Vampires don’t actually burn in the sun at all—it’s just a ridiculous myth.”
“Then what’s the real reason vampires—well, most vampires—don’t go out during the day?”
I glanced up at Mark, then back at his sister. “You know that human beings operate on a diurnal cycle, right? They’re inclined to be up during the day as a result of their biology. When they become vampires, their internal chemistry reverses, and their cycle becomes nocturnal. Not only that, the hormone that puts us all to sleep—melatonin—it’s produced in exponential amounts in a vampire during the day, making them practically comatose if they don’t consume blood regularly. I’m not affected that way because I got a normal pineal gland from my mother.”
Juliette nodded silently. I turned back for the house, where Mark was waiting for me on the stoop.
“Why didn’t you react to Mark the same way he did? Lochlan said he was hard-pressed not to kill him, yet even when you smelled his blood it didn’t faze you, unless it did and you’re just not telling me.”
I cast another glance at Mark and then turned once again to face his sister. “When Mark first came here the other day, the first thing I noticed about him was that he smelled human,” I said with a shrug. “That didn’t bother me because I’ve developed a resistance to the scent of humans. It wasn’t until we were within thirty feet of one another that my supe-sense told me he wasn’t human after all, and although there is still room for doubt based on what we know versus what some of us were led to believe, Lochlan thinks that means he is immortal.”
“Because otherwise, why would her spidey-sense have tingled, right, if all that was different about me was my advanced healing factor?” Mark added. “Plus, it occurred to me that I’m not just Wolverine, but Connor MacLeod, too.”
His sister raised an eyebrow. “What the deuce are you talking about?” she queried, crossing her arms and staring at him expectantly.
He stepped back down the stoop to stand next to me. “Remember me saying I was gonna consider myself that guy from Highlander until there was proof otherwise that I’m not immortal? Do you recall that he dies and comes back to life?”
Juliette nodded, but said, “You’ve never died, though, Mark. You’ve never woken in a cold box in the morgue.”
Mark pointed to the scar on his neck, which was just visible over the collar of his t-shirt. “This could have—should have—killed me. I know it as sure as I’m standing here, sis. Don’t you think that means something?”
I put a hand on his arm. “Maybe it does, honey, but I wrote the dhunphyr character in my books based on what I thought I knew about them. And if you really have read the books, you’d recall that immortal humans can still be killed.”
“By decapitation or destroying the heart, I remember,” he said. “Neither of which has happened or will happen to me.”
Mark reached out and put an arm around my shoulders, offering first me and then Juliette a reassuring smile. “Knowing what I do about what I am, I think there’s more to my survival of that explosion than my healing factor. There has to be, when I was so close to dying.”
“I sure hope you’re right, big brother.”
“Of course I am,” Mark said with a chuckle. “Big brothers are always right, don’t you know that?”
“And the blood?” Juliette
said, looking at me and ignoring her brother’s quip.
“Juliette, when I saw the horse at the side of the driveway I knew that Mark had to have been hurt, and all I could think about was getting to him and making sure he was all right,” I told her. “Amazingly, the smell of his blood didn’t register, probably because I was so consumed with worry about him.”
“And because you hadn’t tasted it yet,” she pointed out. “What about now that you have? What assurances can you give us that you’re not just going to attack him?”
“Jules, don’t you remember the conversation we had in the car after we left the movie theater?” Mark reminded her.
“He’s right, Juliette,” I said. “If I killed him I’d be signing my own death warrant as well. I believe the fact that Mark is my bondmate is what will keep me from doing him any irreparable harm—it may be why the scent of his blood has never made me want to attack him outright. Not to mention the fact that I have more than a hundred eighty years of abstinence from drinking human blood.”
“You drank his.”
I nodded. “I did. Maybe because it’s a part of my vampire nature, maybe not. If you’ve ever been with a man, I’m sure you know that intense moments of passion can make a person do things he or she wouldn’t normally do. Could be that the wild emotions are what triggered the instinct, I don’t know. But I do know that I cannot and will not kill him.”
Though I had berated myself all night long because I had feared just that, I realized as I said those words that I absolutely believed them. There was simply no way I would allow myself to destroy the greatest thing that had ever happened to me, and as I accepted that as truth I was overcome by a feeling of peace and love, which I knew shown in my eyes when I looked up at the man that had made it all possible. I read his acceptance of my devotion in his own gaze and saw him return it in full measure, saw his want and his need of me, and then I watched, mesmerized, as those fathomless eyes seemed to shift.
Chasing Shadows (A Shadow Chronicles Novel) Page 15
