Lovers Sacrifice

by R. A. Steffan

  “To deal with her issues in private,” Duchess said.

  While Duchess had never been warm with him during their short acquaintance, Mason was struck by her flat tone and her flat eyes, their usual brilliant blue now looking more like the color of ice.

  “Something’s happened,” he forced out through gritted teeth, clutching at the ravenous pit that was his stomach. The desire to rend tear consume rose again. Images from his nightmares flashed through his memory, and a horrible, heart-stopping thought assailed him. “Oh, god—I didn’t…” He swallowed bile. “Duchess, did I hurt anyone?”

  The children? The unspoken words hung in the air.

  She tilted her head, as if assessing him. “No, Docteur. You didn’t hurt anyone except the bokor.” There was a faint pause. “Well, to be accurate, you did actually get a decent strike in on Xander while he was helping to restrain you this morning. But the rest of us generally work on the assumption that Xander deserves it whenever someone punches him. Even if he hasn’t done anything recently, it’s a fair bet that someone, somewhere owes him one.”

  Mason winced, but his combined relief and mortification disappeared under a new onslaught of hunger.

  “Drink,” Duchess commanded, thrusting her wrist at him. “And now that you’re past the worst of the blood frenzy, concentrate on not doing more damage than necessary. Also, you should try stopping before you’re completely full.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you—” he managed, between rounds of painful cramping. To his horror, he felt his canines lengthening into points, prodding at the inside of his lips.

  Duchess snorted. “I’m a four-hundred-year-old vampire, Docteur. While I may not be quite up to full strength yet, I assure you that nothing you can do to me with your little baby fangs will result in any serious damage.”

  She might have been several inches shorter than him, with dark circles under her hollow blue eyes and a half-healed furrow the side of her neck that looked like nothing so much as a bullet graze, but something deep in the same part of him that longed for blood recognized the aura of power that surrounded her. Nothing human in him controlled his instinctive grab for that proffered arm, or the way his razor-sharp canines sank into the cool flesh of her wrist. Yet the part of him that sensed her power kept a veneer of control for the first time, drinking without turning it into an attack.

  “Better,” she approved, when he dragged himself away, feeling deeply discomfited by what he’d just done… yet undeniably sated, at the same time.

  He sat back, running a shaking hand over his face.

  “I can’t… do this,” he said, overcome by a sense of wrongness that he couldn’t escape. “For god’s sake, I’m a doctor.”

  “You are doing this,” Duchess said, still in a flat tone. “It will be better for you, once one of us can knock some sense into Oksana.”

  Longing filled him upon hearing Oksana’s name, rising with a strength that he didn’t understand. He tried to call on logic… to focus on learning more facts about what had happened. About what was happening around him.

  “You’re injured,” he said, examining the furrow in her neck more closely. “Why are you the one feeding me when you’ve got a half-healed bullet wound and you look like hell?”

  “Two half-healed bullet wounds, to be precise,” she corrected. “They’ll disappear eventually. In the normal course of things, I would feed from one of the others to heal my injuries more quickly. But Oksana was poisoned during the fight. Do you remember that?”

  He remembered hearing her scream, finding her on the ground, nearly unable to move. “I saw the symptoms, but I could only guess at the cause. She’s all right now, though?” She’d seemed all right—if very upset—when he woke up earlier. “And what about Xander?”

  “Oksana is largely recovered from the effects, but it still lingers in her bloodstream. Xander was badly injured, and he fed from her even though she was poisoned. It was the only way the two of them could recover enough strength to move us under shelter and defend against possible threats. I did not drink from her, to ensure there would be someone untainted left to feed you.”

  He remembered Duchess squeezing a few drops of her blood over the cut he’d carved into his arm as a test, mere days ago. “So vampire blood heals other vampires as well as humans?”

  “Our blood and saliva do, yes,” she said, and then seemed to hesitate. “By rights, Oksana should have been the one to feed you, but we weren’t sure how the poison might affect a newly fledged vampire. None of us were willing to take the chance.”

  His new instincts rose up, as if to cry, damn right I should have had Oksana’s blood, but he still asked, “Why should she have been the one to feed me?”

  “Because you are her mate,” Duchess said.

  He resisted the urge to tell her that someone might want to inform Oksana of that fact, since she seemed more interested in running away from him than talking to him. Instead, he focused once more on Duchess’s words, trying to piece everything together.

  “How were you and Xander injured? Did the bokor have guards watching the children?”

  Duchess’s body went very, very still.

  “In a manner of speaking, he did,” she said in a flat, deliberate tone. “Ten of the children had already been turned. They were armed with firearms and blades. Xander and I foolishly tried to overpower them without… damaging them any more than necessary. In doing so, we nearly left Oksana to her death—and you, as well.”

  Mason closed his eyes against the mental image of the two vampires trying to rescue the living without injuring the already dead. “Your opponents looked like kids, even if they weren’t, any more,” he said. “Of course you’d try not to hurt them.”

  Her expression didn’t waver. “An ill-advised waste of energy and effort. As soon as the force controlling them was destroyed, they crumbled to ash in front of our eyes.” She looked at the small window, but he didn’t think she really saw the late-evening dusk beyond.

  “If you’ve had your fill of blood,” she continued, “then I will leave you now. The humans know to stay out of this building until you gain better control over your impulses. Feel free to move around, but remain inside. When the hunger pangs return, tell one of us immediately.”

  She left without a sound. Mason sat on the edge of the bed, staring at nothing and feeling his life slowly unravel around him. He was a doctor whose veins apparently ran with a miracle drug, but he couldn’t go out during daylight. And at the moment, he couldn’t get near a human being without risking descent into a frenzy of bloodlust.

  With a fresh pang, he thought about Jackson.

  His brother. What in god’s name would he tell Jackson? What would he tell Gita?

  And why did Oksana continue to flee from his presence, when every newly raised instinct he possessed screamed that they should be by each other’s sides? Yet, the touch of his lips on hers—the very sight of him, it seemed—sent her into an emotional breakdown. She’d been trying to get away from him since practically the very first moment they’d met.

  The idea of facing this new reality, even with her standing steadfast at his side, was daunting. The idea of doing it alone was…

  He hurled himself off the bed and started pacing before he could finish the thought. He needed distraction. After casting his mind about for a few moments, he settled on the only one of the three vampires he hadn’t seen since he’d regained his senses.

  Apparently, he’d slugged Xander a good one at some point while he was out of his skull—and done so while the other man was already injured and poisoned. Plus, he’d sent Oksana running off in tears on not one, but two occasions since being on the receiving end of Xander’s less-than-subtle shovel talk.

  However you looked at it, Mason almost certainly owed him an apology. Of course, he had no way of knowing whether Xander was more likely to punch him in the face in retaliation, or start quietly searching for likely places to stash a dismembered body. But either way, he supposed
it would be an effective distraction from the clusterfuck that was apparently his life now.

  He found the other vampire at the back of the building, sitting on the sill of a large window with one foot propped up against its side. The glass—if the window ever had any in the first place—was missing, and Xander stared out across the desolate area that might have housed a garden, once. A bottle of something alcoholic looking hung loosely from his right hand.

  “Feeling better now, Ozzie?” he asked, without looking away from the darkness beyond the window.

  Mason wasn’t sure which he was coming to dislike more—Oksana’s open anguish, or the others’ flat, exhausted monotones.

  “Yes,” he said cautiously, approaching until he could look out past Xander and into the night. “And no.”

  The vampire grunted, the sound offering neither encouragement nor censure.

  “Do you mind, mate?” Mason asked, taking the bottle of cheap vodka from Xander’s slack grip. “God knows, I could use a drink right now that doesn’t contain platelets.”

  He opened it, and Xander finally turned from his study of the barren ground outside to fix Mason with dull green eyes. The smell coming from the bottle was foul, but alcohol was alcohol, and right now he wasn’t in a mood to be picky. Xander watched him throw it back… only to collapse into choking and coughing after the very first swallow. He glared at the bottle, hurling it away as if it was a snake that might bite him if he kept touching it.

  “Yeah,” Xander said. “I could’ve warned you about that.”

  “What the—” Mason managed to wheeze. “What the fuck is that shit?”

  “Vodka, just like the label says.” Xander quirked a sardonic eyebrow. “Apparently, something about being on this island makes people want to dump it on the ground. I still haven’t really figured that whole thing out.”

  Mason stared at him. “That. Was not. Vodka.”

  He swiped a hand across his mouth in disgust, the smell nearly overpowering him. The tiny bit that had made it down his esophagus settled in his gut like a hot brand, curling and twisting angrily.

  Xander shrugged and went back to looking out the window. “You’re a vampire now, Ozzie. If you want vodka, you’re going to need to convince a human to drink it for you first. Either that or follow Oksana’s example and learn to live with your body throwing a fit over it.”

  Mason digested this for a few moments.

  “Look,” he said, when the silence threatened to stretch too long, “I, uh, just came to apologize for slugging you earlier. I was completely off my head the first few times I woke up… but I gather I’ve got you and the others to thank for keeping me from turning some poor, random sod from the village into an all-you-can-drink buffet while I was troppo.”

  Xander lifted a shoulder again, and let it drop. “Don’t mention it. It’s been a decade or twelve since it happened to me, but I remember how it is… right afterward.”

  Mason regarded him. “How did it happen to you?”

  “How was I turned, you mean?” Xander didn’t move to look at him as he spoke. “The same way as Duchess and Oksana. I attracted the wrong kind of attention from the wrong kind of evil power, and someone close to me was stupid enough to sacrifice their life in exchange for my worthless arse.”

  The words were delivered in the same flat monotone Mason was growing to hate, though the bitterness behind them was clear.

  “Was it this… demon, then? Bael?” he asked.

  Xander snorted, no humor in the sound. “It still twists you up inside to even say things like that, doesn’t it, Ozzie? Yes, it was Bael.” He paused, and then continued in a quieter tone, as if musing over the words. “It’s starting to frighten me, the level of hatred I feel for that filthy stain on the universe. All day, every day, I’m filled with it. It’s in the air around me… I breathe it in; it flows through my veins. I spend half my time plotting new ways to hold it at bay for an hour or two. Sex. Drugs. Alcohol. But it always comes right back afterward. Seeing those undead children yesterday…”

  He trailed off and shook his head.

  “This war you’ve all talked about,” Mason said, just as quietly. “Can we win it?”

  “Win it?” Xander’s eyes flicked back to meet his. “Mate, I have absolutely no idea.”

  SIXTEEN

  TWO DAYS LATER, THE others apparently decided that Mason was no longer a danger to anything warm-blooded that came within his reach. Mama Lovelie entered the building where they’d been sheltering, and plans for returning to the village they’d come from got underway.

  Duchess had tasted a few drops of Xander’s blood and declared it clear of the poison, before drinking from him to heal the remains of her wounds. Oksana was like a ghost, hovering on the edges of conversations, and disappearing the moment Mason started trying to think of a way to talk to her privately. The cloud of guilt surrounding her was a nearly palpable thing.

  In some ways, it was a relief to get back to the comfortable house where Mama Lovelie had first sat them down, fed them sweet akasan, and calmly demanded payment in vampire blood for their room and board. In other ways, being here was decidedly uncomfortable since it brought Mason one step closer to the inevitable task of dealing with the toppled ruins of his former life.

  The satellite phone on the table next to him had been taunting him for hours now. It sat there, as if daring him to pick it up and dial Jackson’s number.

  He was on the sleeping porch, where Oksana had kissed him four days ago and turned his life upside down. Odd, he supposed, that he marked the upheaval as starting on that day, and not the day when he’d been turned into a vampire.

  Steeling himself, he reached for the damned phone. With a sigh, he pulled out the satellite antenna and checked the battery levels—low, but enough for a call. A flick of the power button called up the menu, and he chose the +65 country code for Singapore before entering Jackson’s number from memory. Nerves made his foot jitter against the rough boards of the porch, and he stilled it, irritated.

  The cheerful GlobalCom tone let him know the call was being connected. It rang twice, three times, four times… and on the fifth ring, a familiar, gruff voice answered.

  “Yes? Who is this?”

  “Hello, Jack,” Mason said quietly.

  “Mason! Sorry—I didn’t recognize the number. Are you all right, little brother? I was starting to worry, after what we talked about last time, and then not hearing from you for several days.”

  Mason opened his mouth, but his brain was stuck fast. Why the hell hadn’t he figured out ahead of time what to say?

  “Mace?” Jackson prompted, real worry entering his voice. “You still there? Hello?”

  He shook himself free of the momentary vocal paralysis. “Yeah. Sorry. I’m here, Jack. It’s just… it’s been a rough few days.”

  “Yeah.” His brother’s heavy tone seemed out of place, but he continued before Mason could question it. “So, uh, did you find any new information about those missing kids?”

  “We did. And then we found the kids themselves.”

  “No shit!” Jackson exclaimed. “Were they okay? Did you get them back?”

  Mason swallowed. “We got… some of them back.”

  There was a pause, before his brother said, “Oh, Mason.”

  “No. It’s good though,” Mason said. “There are twenty-two children who can get the help they need now, and hopefully go back to their families if they have any. Only…”

  Another pause.

  “Little brother—the way you sound right now, you are seriously scaring the ever-loving shit out of me. Something else happened. Talk to me. Please.”

  He couldn’t tell Jackson about what he’d become over a tinny satellite connection. He just… couldn’t. But if he didn’t unburden some of the weight that was pressing down on him like a boulder, he’d go mad.

  “I don’t really know where to start, Jack,” he said. “The children who didn’t make it back… what had been done to them… it
was so much worse than what I’d imagined. They weren’t… human… anymore. This man who took them—he stole everything that they were.”

  “Jesus. You don’t mean—”

  “What?” Mason prompted.

  “You make them sound like those reports coming out of Syria,” Jackson said, and even over the poor connection, Mason could hear the same heavy, shell-shocked tone he’d noted earlier.

  “What reports out of Syria?” he asked cautiously.

  The beat of silence was enough for Mason’s stomach to sink.

  “Mason… haven’t you seen a news broadcast in the past few days?”

  The sinking feeling grew worse. “Jack, I’m in the middle of nowhere, in a war torn, third world country that just had its infrastructure shaken by an earthquake.”

  “Oh, my god. You really haven’t heard.”

  “Heard what?” Dread sharpened his tone. “Jackson—”

  “They’re trying to pass it off as some kind of disease; maybe something to do with radiation exposure after that terrorist nuke went off,” Jackson said. “People acting crazy—just mindless and violent, and they keep coming even when the police or military shoot them. Like what they used to say about PCP users going into a berserker rage.”

  “Oh, dear god… no,” Mason whispered.

  “I mean, it’s obvious the news outlets are trying to downplay it,” Jackson continued, “but, Mason, no matter how they spin it, people are starting to freak out, and I can’t exactly blame them. This is some serious next-level, horror movie sounding shit.”

  It could be nothing, Mason tried to tell himself. Bad reporting, or news organizations looking for ratings. But every fiber in his being told him that this was real, and he’d just been plunged into it, headfirst.

  “Jackson,” he said, “I can’t prove it, of course, but… I think what we ran into with these kids may be connected somehow with what you’re describing. Tell me—have there been any reports like this in Singapore, or elsewhere in your region?”