by Mindy Klasky
Okay.
I had suspected that he would be on edge when he woke up, unhappy about his biologically imperative sleepover. I’d known that he would be able to smell Chris on me, that he would know I had met with the reporter. I’d been pretty sure that the aftermath of the Level Five alert would leave James anxious and on edge.
I just hadn’t expected quite so blatant a show of control.
Well, he hadn’t phoned to find out where I was. He’d been willing to let me sleep until I woke under my own power. That had to be a good sign. I hoped. I decided that I had a few minutes to delay—to brush my teeth, grab an apple from the fridge.
Out of habit, I switched on my laptop as I ate my lousy excuse for a breakfast. The computer was set to take me to the Washington Banner homepage automatically, to display the day’s lead news so that I could pretend to stay up to date on what was happening in the world around me.
“Four Fires Connected,” shouted a headline. “Arsonist At Large.”
Suddenly uninterested in my apple, I skimmed through the article. Four fires had been set in D.C., in broad daylight. Each blaze was in a different neighborhood—a deserted warehouse on the Anacostia River, a mausoleum in the Rock Creek Cemetery, an abandoned bus garage up in North East, a boarded-up nineteenth-century rowhouse north of the Capitol. Each fire had been started between one and two in the afternoon. Firefighters were certain the crimes were connected; an accelerant was used at each site and there were “other suspicious similarities.” Although each location was destroyed, there was no evidence of victims. The fire chief was asking anyone with possible leads to contact the fire department immediately.
Richardson.
It made perfect sense. There were four regulars for the Night Court—Judge DuBois, Eleanor, Alex, and James. Four sanctums to burn. Richardson had humans under his control, humans who could be enlisted to commit multiple simultaneous felonies in broad daylight.
I glanced back to my bedroom, suddenly grateful that James had run out of time, that he’d been safe and secure with me. If he and I hadn’t argued until dawn, he might have been tempted to hurry to his sanctum, to chance escaping detection for a single day.
Nauseated, I tossed my half-eaten apple into the trash and hurried into my bedroom. It took me less than a minute to grab a skirt and matching sweater set. I folded them automatically, shoving them into a gym bag, adding pantyhose and pumps.
I wasn’t going to waste time changing into my work clothes here. Not when James was waiting for me in the Old Library. Not when I had to confirm for myself that he was safe, that everyone else from the Night Court truly had escaped Richardson’s henchmen. I barely acknowledged the policeman outside my home as I rushed up the steps and out to the main street.
Ten minutes, one cab, and an annoying security check later, I skidded to a stop in front of the Clerk’s Office. A piece of paper was taped to the door, an official-looking notice that said that due to an unexpected office closure, all filings would have to wait for the court to open at nine o’clock the following morning. My name was typed at the bottom. I’d taken the time to apologize for any inconvenience.
James’s handiwork, I assumed.
I wanted to stop in Judge DuBois’s courtroom, to make sure that everyone was there, that everyone was safe. I didn’t dare waste any more time, though. James’s note on my mirror made it clear that he was downstairs. Nothing that I did in the courtroom would change what had happened during the daylight hours. If Richardson’s men had trapped one or more of our imperials, had created charred victims whose remains could not be recognized by the D.C. Fire Department, there was nothing I could do about it now. Not without seeing James first.
The five flights of stairs seemed longer than ever before. The door at the bottom was closed, but when I put my hand on the knob, I found it was unlocked. I threw it open without hesitation.
James was waiting in the center of the room, standing in a sea of blue mats.
He had used his ample time to change into a pair of black training pants from the armoire, matching them with another one of those practically-painted-on T-shirts. He glared at me as I closed the door. As I crossed the room. As I came to a stop in front of him.
“You’re late,” he said.
“The fires,” I answered, not bothering to explain my oversleeping. I was a little out of breath from the stairs. Or for some other reason. “Is everyone all right? The judge, and Eleanor, and Alex?”
“They’re fine,” he said.
There wasn’t a flicker of emotion behind his response. I couldn’t tell if the home he had lost meant anything to him at all, if he had sacrificed treasured personal possessions or merely forfeited the sterile equivalent of a hotel room. I didn’t even know which site was his, where he had made his sanctum until the night before.
I wanted to commiserate with him. I wanted to tell him that I was happy he was safe. I wanted to celebrate the good news that the rest of the Night Court had escaped unscathed.
I wanted to thank him for bringing in the D.C. police to protect me.
Under James’s dead gaze, though, I shrugged uncomfortably. “Let me change, then, and we can start.”
He flicked a glance at my mismatched T-shirt and sweatpants. “Those will do.”
They would? I’d been under the impression that workout clothes were mandatory in this strange gym, that I was required to wear the black pants and jacket. I wasn’t about to argue with him, though. Not when he was in this dangerous mood. Not when the court that he was sworn to protect had just survived a direct attack from a criminal mastermind who had been active for centuries.
I dropped my gym bag to the floor and said, “All right.”
With one swift motion, he kicked the bag to the edge of the mats. I wanted to protest, to explain that I had work clothes in there, that I didn’t want them wrinkled. But I swallowed my complaint and forced myself to ask, “What are we covering today?”
“Wristlocks.”
Great. That told me a lot.
Before I could ask for clarification, his leg flashed out. He swept my feet out from under me, sending me toppling to the mats without any warning. At least I’d learned how to fall in our previous sessions. I landed softly and pushed back immediately, fully aware that James would maneuver to trap me between his legs. I had one split second to enjoy my success before I realized that my escape had pinned my elbow between his knees. As he held my arm immobile, both of his hands closed around my wrist. He applied sudden, sharp pressure, and involuntary tears leaped to my eyes before I could use my free hand to tap the mat three times.
Wristlocks. I was beginning to understand.
“Again,” he said. I had just enough time to shift my balance, to avoid the scissor-kick that I knew would lead to his knees clamping down on my waist. This time, though, he immobilized my arm between his elbow and side. His hands closed around my wrist at a different angle, catching on my pinky and sending new arrows of pain up my arm before I could tap out.
After the first few demonstrations, James talked as he put me through my paces. He defined each lock, explaining that I could be caught in any of them by humans or vampires intent on doing me harm, by anyone lying in wait in my home, in an alley. Wristlocks were superb weapons; they almost always resulted in intense pain and unqualified submission.
Submission, he repeated, as if I might have missed the idea the first few times around. Then, he went on to use terms that any chiropractor would love. There was the rotational wristlock. The supinating and the pronating. The hyperflexing and the hyperextending. The adductive.
Each involved anchoring my arm in a new and highly embarrassing way. Each involved torquing my wrist, pressuring that complicated joint to move in directions that nature never intended. Each involved darts of pain, jangling nerves that only stopped aching when I tapped the mat.
I understood that James was angry. I knew that he felt cornered, trapped by Richardson’s men. I was aware that he thought he was protecting
me, teaching me to defend myself against an enemy who was brazen enough to attack in broad daylight.
And I suspected that he was embarrassed, ashamed by the weakness that he’d let me see, by the near-complete physical and emotional collapse I’d witnessed as the sun rose that morning.
Nevertheless, his grim instruction only served to heighten my own anger. I hadn’t done anything wrong. He had no right to attack me like this. I was more than willing to admit that he was physically stronger than I was, that he could subdue me with a few choice tricks.
Just when I was ready to back away, to accept whatever punishment he wanted to administer for quitting my training outright, he showed me how to escape the series of holds. His words were terse as he explained that I could sometimes turn toward the pressure, rotate my arm so that the torque was absorbed by the two bones in my forearm. I could sometimes turn my entire body, leveraging my shoulder to relieve the pressure.
The more examples that James showed me, the better I became at eluding the lock, at slipping free before he anchored my arm in the first place. He fell into a brooding silence as he attacked repeatedly, as I escaped. I went from tapping out on every round to breaking free once, twice, three times in a row. James’s silence melted into something almost peaceful, almost meditative. Our sparring slowed, became stylized, like a formal dance.
We were standing, facing each other. I was measuring his stance, looking for a hint of what his next maneuver would be. His hands shot out, both of them closing around my right hand. He twisted my thumb away from him, and I knew that I needed to roll, needed to absorb the motion with my arm, with my shoulder, dropping to the ground and working free.
Before I could move, though, before I could complete the smooth arc that I saw in my mind, James said, “What the hell were you doing with Gardner this morning?”
The question shocked me to immobility. In one flash, I realized that James’s anger wasn’t reserved for the murderous criminal who was stalking the members of the Night Court that he was sworn to protect.
No. James was furious with me—on a deeply personal level, on a purely emotional plane that had nothing to do with vampires, with sanctums, with arcane threats. James was jealous.
Jealous enough that his fangs leaped out as he asked his question.
I was so astonished that I forgot to move. I forgot to turn, as I had a half dozen times before. I forgot to release the strain on my wrist, to twist my arm, to free myself from the now-familiar lock.
I cried out as my humerus broke.
James dropped my hand immediately. The sudden release of tension sent new agony racing up and down my arm. I gripped my wrist with my good hand, trying to stabilize the injury. My belly twisted, and I was suddenly grateful that I’d had nothing more than two bites of apple before I arrived at the courthouse.
Sucking in air through my teeth, I staggered away from James, moving off the mats to the base of the giant table at the front of the room. Each step lit a new fire above my elbow. I braced myself against the table’s wooden surface, trying to catch my breath, trying to clear my mind.
I was whimpering, biting off a tiny cry each time I exhaled. The sound was lost in the Old Library, though, swallowed up by the constant stream of profanity that poured out of James. I realized that he was cursing himself, calling down all sorts of imprecations, and the absurdity of the situation threw a disbelieving laugh into my gasping for breath.
My knees started to tremble, and it was easier to give in to my body, to kneel rather than to try to stay upright. I crashed to the floor with more force than I’d expected; my momentum drove a cry past my set jaws. I might have fainted, if not for the solid table leg against my back.
“Sarah!” James finally said, cutting short his string of oaths. I hadn’t seen him move, but he was suddenly kneeling in front of me. As I stared, he raised his right forearm to his lips. His incisors glinted against his flesh like milk-washed quartz. He rotated his right hand and made a fist, raising the vein. Keeping his gaze on me, he lowered his head to his wrist, ripping into his own arm with all the precision of a surgeon testing a new scalpel.
Blood welled up from the wound immediately, ruby red against his pale skin. He moved toward me, bracing his elbow to steady the offering.
I was appalled. I started to back away but the motion jarred my arm, sent fresh waves of white-hot heat through my shoulder, down my spine.
“Sarah,” James said, lunging toward me, pulling back as he saw me cringe. His voice was melting. His command had pooled into undiluted remorse, into shame. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I never meant…” He trailed off, never taking his eyes from mine, only raising his bleeding arm higher, bringing it closer to me.
To my horror, I realized that my mouth was watering. My body remembered the first time it had drunk from James. It remembered the heat, the healing. It remembered the completeness that he had offered me, the fullness that I had taken.
I felt like I was controlled by another person as I ducked my head to his wrist. Someone else opened my mouth. Someone else let my tongue dip into the shallow pool of blood. Someone else swallowed.
Wholeness. Healing perfection. Heat, carried through every corpuscle of my body to the jagged ache in my arm.
James shifted his arm, turned it so that I had an easier angle. I used my good hand to guide his wrist to my mouth. His skin was warm beneath mine, growing hotter with every second that he bled. I took another taste, another swallow, felt new energy surge within me. I could feel my arm knitting, even as I licked my lips. I could feel my body heal itself, drawing on James’s perfect power.
He eased himself to sit beside me, leaning his shoulders against the heavy wooden table leg. I moved without thinking, letting his arms fold around me, letting him pull me onto his lap.
The intimacy, though, brought me back to my normal human awareness. Suddenly, I felt absurd, shy. I closed my eyes, and I could see us sparring, I could hear his accusing question, feel my own shock as he challenged me about Chris. Embarrassed, confused, I turned my face away from his still-bleeding wrist.
“Drink,” he whispered, and the fingers of his left hand were infinitely gentle as he brushed them against my cheek.
I could smell his blood. No, not smell, I realized. I wasn’t reacting to the scent of copper, to the salty protein that science and logic said was right before me.
I could sense his blood.
Because I’d drunk from him before, I was attuned to him. Every inch of my skin knew exactly where he was, exactly what he was doing. I felt the muscles of his thighs as he shifted beneath me. I absorbed the heat radiating from his limbs to mine. I measured every minute shift in his throat as he swallowed, as he ran his tongue over the twin daggers of his fangs.
My body responded to his, like iron filings drawn to a magnet. The roof of my mouth tingled. My lips buzzed, as if I had drunk too much champagne.
But I hadn’t been drinking champagne. Not champagne at all.
I gripped his wrist with both of my hands. I realized that the motion barely caused me pain, that my arm was already nearly healed. I started to laugh, astonished by the magic of it all. I lowered my mouth to James’s arm and drank one last time, letting the energy course through me, sparking new life within my veins. He threw back his head, surrendering his blood to me, encouraging me to drink more, to take all that I needed.
This wasn’t the frantic gulping that I’d done in his office, a desperate attempt to restore life when my body had been drained almost dry. This was something different, something more. This was a conscious bonding. James offered the strange elixir of his blood, and I accepted, knowing what I was doing, making a definitive choice.
And because I was making a choice, I took one last sip. I softened my lips as I swallowed. I traced my tongue along the wound, relishing the fire, the final burst of power I absorbed.
I closed my eyes and leaned back against his chest. As I exhaled, my head became too heavy for me to hold up. My body felt weighted d
own with sand, newly solid with a perfect sort of relaxation, of release. I barely had the strength to move my lips, to murmur, “Thank you.”
Even through the haze of my sated weariness, I expected him to stiffen as I said the forbidden words. I wasn’t disappointed. I used the motion, though, to shift within the circle of his arms, to curl against his chest. He pulled me close and cupped the small of my back with his palm. Impossibly, I relaxed a little more.
I was almost asleep when I heard a soft sucking sound. I knew that if I could open my eyes and look up at his face, I’d see that his fangs were retracted. “I shouldn’t have pushed you so hard,” he said.
I murmured something that might have been agreement. It was too hard to shape actual words.
“I was furious with Richardson, with the destruction of our sanctums.”
“I know,” I managed to say.
“I felt guilty, like I should have known exactly what he would do. I should have done more to help the others after Schmidt admitted the contact in open court.”
“You couldn’t,” I said.
“I had no business letting myself get trapped at your apartment. I shouldn’t have lost track of time like that. I was a danger to you and to myself.”
“It worked out fine,” I protested.
“I had no right to startle you the way I did. To use Gardner against you like that.”
There. That was the crux of the matter.
I couldn’t agree more with what James had confessed. And it wasn’t enough for him to say so. I had to put an end to his jealousy now, to his stupid, masculine chest-thumping.
Hmm… Thumping of chests.
I almost let myself get distracted by the notion, by the broad expanse of muscle beneath my cheek. I didn’t, though. I found the will power to push myself into a seated position.
“Chris Gardner isn’t a threat to you, James.” I forced myself to meet his eyes, to hold him close even when he started to pull away from me. “He’s not a threat to you, or to any of the other imperials. He’s just a reporter, James. A reporter that you agreed I should speak to.”
