Oksana’s stomach churned with disgust, but she forced herself to stay calm and in control. “And when you can no longer make the payments your masters require? What then?”
He laughed, short and harsh. “I will ensure that day never comes. The world’s appetite for corrupted innocence is endless. As long as human sheep continue to breed, there will always be children. And there are powerful men in the world who will always pay well for compliant slaves.”
Bile rose, hot and sharp. “Bastian Kovac,” she spit.
The bokor’s brows drew together as if she had surprised him, but she was distracted at the same moment by twin flashes of horror flaring through the telepathic link.
Christ! Xander’s mental voice was equal parts revulsion and dismay. Oksana—some of these kids are okay, but a bunch of them have been turned. He’s armed them, and—damn it! Look out, Duchess! There was a moment of confusion across the bond. —And they’re fighting back.
Oksana nearly clutched at her chest as she felt the sharp stab of Duchess’s distress over whatever they were seeing.
Ma petite, her friend said, this won’t be as quick or simple as we’d hoped. Please be careful!
“Problem?” the bokor asked solicitously, that slow shark’s smile spreading across his features again.
Fangs lengthened into lethal points behind Oksana’s lips, and she felt her eyes burning with a predatory light. “Oh, yes. You and I have a definite problem. Don’t worry, though. If I have anything to say about it, it will only be a temporary one,” she said, and sprang at him.
He met her in a clash of bodies, his movements faster than a human’s. Shockingly fast, in fact. She dodged and ducked, gauging his strength—also inhuman. She only needed to get in the quickest slash, the tiniest cut, but he was larger, and had a longer reach than she did. Every move she made, he blocked.
She swirled into mist, trying to get behind him, but in the instant it took her to rematerialize, he was always ready and waiting to meet her next feint. The fight became a brutal dance, whirling ever faster as they angled for advantage.
The mental link, which had been quiet as the three vampires focused on their individual fights, flared with agony, the unexpected pain bursting through her shields.
Son of a bitch! Xander cursed, before he tamped down on the unintentional broadcast.
Oksana spun away, staggering back a few steps to gain distance as she recovered from the distraction. In the space of a heartbeat, the bokor pulled a small wooden tube from his belt and raised it to his lips.
A sharp sting embedded itself in the base of Oksana’s neck, cold numbness spreading outward from the tip of the poisoned dart. Her eyes went wide, panic clawing at her mind as the past rose up. She stumbled sideways, her muscles growing weak and unresponsive. The view of the village square faded, replaced by the echo of darkness and the memory of wet earth trickling down onto her face through the gap in a coffin lid.
Oksana screamed.
*
Mason made his way cautiously through the silent village, knowing that he’d help no one by running headfirst into the bokor, or anyone he might have here assisting him. The village was small enough that once he was clear of the peristil, he’d been able to see a faint, flickering glow emanating from the direction in which Anel had indicated the central square lay.
He kept to the shadows of the burned and damaged buildings, wincing whenever his feet accidentally kicked against bits of debris. The sounds he made seemed far louder than they probably were, but he couldn’t help pausing each time—waiting to see if he’d been detected by anyone, human or inhuman.
With his own hearing strained to the utmost, he could make out indistinct voices coming from the lit space ahead, though not what they were saying. He tried to move faster, but still without drawing attention to himself.
Then, the scream came.
Every nerve in his body jolted into shrieking life, straining toward the sound of Oksana in danger. He sprinted forward, all thoughts of stealth forgotten between one heartbeat and the next. Teeth gritted, arms and legs pumping, he rounded the last building blocking his view.
In the center of the open space, Oksana was down, bracing herself on one hand and one knee, the fingers of her other hand scrabbling feebly at something in the side of her neck. The spelled dagger lay forgotten on the ground at her feet. Her eyes were open, wide and unseeing.
A tall, muscular man circled her, grinning down at her with gleaming teeth, his dark face set in lines of cruel glee. Mason didn’t stop, didn’t think. He just charged—his years as a rugby fullback propelling him toward his target. Dark eyes looked up, flashing with inhuman power, but the bokor had registered his approach an instant too late. Energy crackled around the man’s body, but Mason hunched, slamming into him low, under his opponent’s center of balance.
It felt like hitting a goddamned brick wall, but at least it was a brick wall that toppled under the onslaught. Mason’s lungs seized, the breath knocked out of him, but he knew he couldn’t afford time to recover. He rolled free and lunged toward Oksana, whose eyes had snapped back to the present, blazing violet in the torchlight.
Mason dove for the dagger, his hand closing on the scorched hilt at the same moment Oksana shouted, “No!” The word was hoarse and choked with agony, and she scrabbled forward clumsily toward him, her movements slow and uncoordinated.
He’d meant to grab the knife and immediately lunge toward the bokor, who was already rolling smoothly to his feet a couple of meters away. All it needed was a cut, supposedly—he just had to break the man’s skin anywhere he could.
But as the knife settled in his hand, a strange, terrifying sensation flooded his body. The blade was pulling at something inside him, drawing the energy from his muscles and the will from his mind. He staggered upright by virtue of sheer stubbornness, but made it only a couple of steps before he crashed back to his knees, the impact jarring his teeth.
“Mason!” Oksana cried, “Let it go; let it go!”
She tried to reach him, but fell flat on her belly, her fingers tangling in the fabric of his loose trousers. His mind was reeling from the sudden weakness. Let what go? Did she mean the knife? Was it still in his hand? He couldn’t tell… dizziness was clawing at his awareness, trying to drag him down.
“It’s draining your life force,” Oksana whispered, “trying to add it to mine and fight the poison. But you’re human—you’re not strong enough! Please let it go!”
Mason toppled onto his side. If he was still clutching the blade, he couldn’t feel it… couldn’t unclench the muscles of his fingers to release it. Gray fog swirled around the edges of his vision.
A cold laugh came from above them. He rolled his head in the direction of the noise, his heart laboring as it tried to pound faster, while at the same time, all the energy drained out of his body.
“Oh,” said the bokor, “this is priceless. Do I have that crusty old bitch Esther Lovelie to thank for this entertainment? It positively reeks of her pathetic powers.”
He kicked a booted foot into Mason’s side, rolling him onto his back and ignoring Oksana’s feral snarl of rage. In his peripheral vision, Mason saw her try to claw at the man’s leg, but her movement was slow and he merely stepped out of the way, still laughing.
“Touch him again and I’ll torture you until you beg for death,” Oksana grated, but Mason could hear the undercurrent of fear behind the threat.
The bokor snorted. “Will you now, nightcrawler? Or will you lie there, helpless, watching while I slit this one’s throat before I drive a stake through your rotting heart?”
He strode away, wavering in and out of focus as Mason’s vision swam. Drawing breath was becoming a struggle—he had to concentrate very carefully to make his diaphragm pull air into his lungs and push it back out.
Mason saw the bastard walk over to a half-collapsed porch and grasp a thin length of broken board that had once been part of the railing. He jerked at it sharply, and a piece of the wood s
napped off in his hand. It was about the length of his forearm and ended in a jagged point where the thin board had cracked and split. He turned and approached again, his other hand pulling a curved blade from a sheath at his waist.
“No,” Oksana moaned, her fingers still clenching at Mason’s clothing as she tried and failed to rise. “No, no, no…”
Fear had drained away along with everything else inside Mason, but now a single thought crystallized with diamond-edged clarity.
Oksana was a vampire. She was practically helpless—poisoned—and this fucker was coming at her with a sharpened wooden stake in his hand.
The bokor walked casually up to them, his lips twisted in a sadistic smirk. Mason hated that smirk with more passion than he’d ever hated any goddamned thing in his entire life. The fucker used the pointed end of the stake to shove Oksana onto her back and placed the tip casually between her breasts.
“What does it feel like to watch someone with whom you share a soul-bond bleed out onto the dirt, nightcrawler?” he asked, examining the gleaming blade of the hunting knife held in his other hand with casual interest.
Oksana growled and tried to push upright, as though she would impale herself without thought if that was what it took to get to the man standing over them. At the prospect of seeing that stake slide into Oksana’s chest and pierce her heart, a massive adrenaline dump flooded through Mason, his body’s last-ditch effort to combat the effects of whatever was happening to him.
Was he still holding the dagger? Fuck, he couldn’t even tell. This was his only chance, though—their only chance. Using the last terror-fueled bit of strength in his body, Mason half-rolled, using the resulting momentum to help swing his heavy, unresponsive arm in an arc toward the outside of the bokor’s knee.
His vision clouded over with gray fog, but the bokor cursed and cried out, staggering backward. For an instant, everything went silent… or perhaps Mason’s hearing had gone now, as well as his vision. But, no. That theory was shot down a moment later, when the bokor began to howl with agony.
Oh, good, Mason thought, right before the drain on his energy accelerated into a whirling, sucking maelstrom, dragging him toward darkness. The last thing he heard before his senses shut down was Oksana’s piercing shriek of rage and denial joining the bokor’s.
*
Oksana screamed for help with the desperation of the freshly damned. Her cries echoed through the abandoned village, and also along the mental connection with her fellow vampires.
A few steps away, the bokor’s shouts of pain faded into choking noises as his strength failed under the combined essence of her life force and Mason’s. His body crumpled to the ground, collapsing into itself until only a pile of dust remained. And still Oksana screamed.
Any satisfaction she might have hoped to gain from the defeat of their enemy was as nothing compared to the sight of Mason’s body sagging, the muscles of his chest going soft and lax with a single, slow exhalation. The poison spreading through her bloodstream was the same thrice-damned poison that had paralyzed her on the night she was turned. She could feel it combining with the drain of having Mason’s essence siphoned through hers by the knife’s spell, the dual forces trying to freeze her limbs into immobility.
But she was no longer a newly turned vampire, weakened from shock and terrible injury. She had been growing in strength for more than two hundred fucking years since then, and she would not lie here, powerless, while the man she loved breathed his last a mere arm’s length away.
Oksana moved, dragging herself forward, forcing her body to comply. Her hands fell on Mason’s unresponsive form, her senses questing outward, seeking the spark, the tiny, precious flame that glowed at the heart of every living being.
No, no, no… she chanted, feeling that tiny light flickering like a candle in a hurricane. Feeling the sluggish way Mason’s heart stuttered and paused, stuttered and paused.
Desperation lengthened Oksana’s fangs and made her eyes glow with inner light. There was only one way Mason could survive the next few minutes. Or rather, there was only one way he could fail to survive—but still come back afterward. Even as she plunged razor sharp teeth into his defenseless jugular, the knowledge that her poisoned blood would ultimately be his death sentence burned through her like acid.
She could take from him, rending his soul as hers had been rent, but the willing sacrifice of her poisoned blood afterward would not save him, as Augustin’s sacrifice two hundred years ago had saved her.
No. It would only doom him.
And, yet, what else could she do? Turning him was their only chance—even if it was, in reality, no chance at all.
Bloody tears streamed down her face as she pulled his sweetly intoxicating blood into herself, wrapping her decimated strength around the flickering remnants of his life force while praying ceaselessly to spirits who had abandoned her centuries ago.
Please, she beseeched. Please, help me save him! Somebody… anybody—
Oksana felt Mason’s soul rip free from its moorings, torn by the force of her assault on his blood. But she could not give him back the blood she’d taken—now mingled with hers—without poisoning his weakened body. Instead, she used the remaining strength she had stolen from him to gather up his fractured spirit, trying to keep it from leaking away into the night like water held in cupped hands.
She cradled him close and prayed for a miracle from the only source left to her. Long moments later, the sound of potential salvation reached her ears.
“Oksana!” Xander’s voice was hoarse with pain. He staggered into the circle of torchlight, covered in blood and clutching one hand against a horrific slash in his side, as if worried about what might fall out if he didn’t hold everything in. He stumbled to his knees beside her. “Dear Christ—”
Oksana knew how she must look, crouched over Mason’s deathly still form with his blood staining her lips and running down her chin. Wild-eyed and tear-streaked.
“Help me!” she begged, frantic. “Xander, oh, god, please! I have to turn him, but I’m poisoned—my blood will kill him!”
In all the decades she’d known him, Oksana had never seen Xander look as shell-shocked as he did now, like he’d been peering into hell and seen things too awful to live with. Some small and distant part of her quailed at the thought of what could have caused that dull, haunted flatness now hiding behind his normally sharp green eyes.
That paled before her terror for Mason, however. Xander blinked, as if trying to recall himself from whatever abyss threatened to claim him. Without hesitation, he tore his fangs into the wrist that wasn’t pressed against the open gash in his side. Blood only dripped from the fresh wound rather than spurting, but he pressed it to Mason’s slack mouth.
“Make him swallow,” he croaked, swaying a bit as he clenched and released his fist, trying to squeeze more blood through his depleted veins.
Oksana forced numb fingers to work, panic lending her strength as she massaged Mason’s throat muscles, willing him to swallow even as she strove to keep his shattered spirit from floating away.
“Mason,” she whispered, “please don’t leave me… please, I’m so sorry… I’m so sorry.”
“Duchess is with the unturned children,” Xander whispered, sounding frighteningly weak. “The turned ones collapsed into dust as we were trying to subdue them.”
“Mason killed the bokor,” Oksana said in a faint voice. “The undeads’ existence must have been tied to his life force in some way.” She felt the soul cradled by hers flutter weakly. “Xander, I can barely feel him. It’s not working!”
Xander swayed again and shook his head as if to clear it. He lifted his wrist to his teeth and tore the wound open wider before lowering it back to Mason’s lips. “Keep trying. Don’t give up on him, Oksana. You mustn’t—you’re all that’s keeping him here.”
FOURTEEN
“MON DIEU—” CAME A NEW voice from the edge of the square.
That heartfelt curse was quite possibly
the sweetest sound Oksana had ever heard. Duchess slid to her knees next to Xander, blood streaking down her upper body from a bullet graze in the side of her neck, and a thicker trail dripping from a hole blown through her hip.
“Oksana’s blood is poisoned, and I’m running on empty,” Xander grated. “How much do you have?”
Duchess’s china blue eyes hardened. “Whatever it takes, that’s how much I have,” she said grimly. She eased Xander aside, and he flopped onto his back nearby, grunting.
“Bloody, buggering shite,” he groaned, still clamping a hand over his side. After a moment, he seemed to get a handle on the pain. “Duchess… the children?”
“With Anel,” Duchess replied shortly. She spared only an instant to cup Oksana’s tear-stained face in one palm before she set to work, opening her wrist and letting the blood drip into Mason’s mouth.
“We should have waited,” Oksana whispered. “We should have called the others.”
“Doctor Hero here should’ve stayed the hell back and followed the damned plan,” Xander retorted in a tight voice, not moving from his spot on his back.
“If he had, the bokor would have staked me while I was weakened by the poison, and then gone after the rest of you,” Oksana said, new tears threatening.
“Jesus fuck,” Xander growled, and Duchess’s expression hardened into granite.
“We were shielding our minds,” Duchess said. “Trying not to distract you with what was happening on our end. We didn’t know, petite soeur.”
Her friend’s complexion had been porcelain and cream to begin with, but it was already paling to chalk as she drained the contents of her veins into Mason’s mouth. Even weakened by gunshots and blood loss, though, Oksana could feel Duchess’s power bolstering hers, helping her contain Mason’s spirit between them. Xander reached out clumsily, a hand grasping Oksana’s right ankle. His younger, badly depleted life force twined with theirs, as well.
Lovers Sacrifice Page 18
