by Evie Byrne
When all the Faustins were in baby blue clown suits, funny hats and purple nitrate gloves, and all the OR team sufficiently clean and harangued, Felix let Gregor go to Maddy. He’d worried about her the whole time they were separated; he didn’t like her being alone with strangers.
They had her laid out on the table, tubes and wires encrusting her like coral. A whole array of very serious looking machines was gathered in a semi-circle to one side of her. Two empty gurneys stood nearby, ready to accommodate the blood donors. Three technicians stood by one of the bigger machines, fiddling with buttons and arguing about something.
This was exactly how he’d always imagined he would take a bride.
Maddy rolled her head toward him, like she knew he was coming. She looked terrified. He’d never seen her scared.
“Hey, babe,” he said, fingering the edge of the sheet that covered her chest. For now. “You naked under this?”
She couldn’t see his wolfish smile under his mask, and that ruined the joke. Worse, tears started welling in her eyes.
“Gregor, I hate this.” Her voice was high and thin under her mask. “They treat you like meat, like a problem, like you don’t know what’s going on. I hate going under. I don’t want to be cracked open again. I hate the drugs. I hate the dreams. I hate the pain—”
“Shh.” He stroked the little bit of cheek that was available outside her mask. “It’s going to be okay. I’m with you now.”
“What if I don’t wake up?”
“You will wake up.” He threw compulsion into this statement, all he had, without guilt. “There is no doubt about that.”
Felix and Alex came up to them. Alex had volunteered to donate first.
“The first blood you taste should be Gregor’s.” Alex told Maddy, resting his hand on her shoulder. Gregor watched Maddy forget her own fears as she listened to his brother. All that inherent charm of his found its highest use in that moment. “But I hope mine will help. For what it’s worth, I’ve never given my blood to anyone else. This is an honor for me.”
“Blood brother.” Maddy’s voice was barely audible.
“Forever,” Alex said, and then Felix told him to go get on the donor table. A nurse started to fit him with an IV.
“Okay, you two.” Felix clapped his hands together. “It’s time to do this. Madelena, Gregor is going to draw your blood, taking as much as he can. He can sense where to stop, but we’ll be watching your vitals, and will be advising him. Your job is to hold firm. You might want to just let go, but what you need to do is fight him when you hit bottom. When you are as low as we can take you, we’ll start a live transfusion of Alex’s blood, then Mikhail’s, and then Gregor’s. If you need more blood, Mr. and Mrs. Faustin are standing by for you. Or they will give blood to you during surgery. We are trying to keep your transfusions in the family as much as possible.”
“So you’ll be a Faustin,” Gregor said.
“That’s right. You could not have better donors, Madelena. The blood you’re getting, it’s the real stuff. A-1 quality, you know? It will make you strong.”
Maddy nodded, a furrow between her brows.
“After we’ve got as much vamp blood in you as we can, we’ll start the anesthesia, and you’ll go to sleep for a while. You’ll go on the bypass machine, we’ll chill your heart with cold saline to keep it fresh, I’ll pop in the Jarvik, and next thing you know, you’ll be in the recovery room.”
Maddy said nothing, only cast an imploring look toward Gregor. Let’s get it over with.
“I think we’re ready to start, Felix. Can I lift her?”
“Yes, just be careful. No biting below the neck. I want to keep her as clean as possible. And don’t take off her mask, not even for a second. She’s going to need all the O2 she can get.”
Then Felix stepped away, and his team circled around him. Alex was on his back a few feet away, ready to bleed. The rest of the family was watching through the observation window. Mikhail would come out soon, and take his place on the second table. He and Maddy had no privacy whatsoever. Gregor lowered his mask and kissed her brow.
“Madelena López de Victoria, you are the bride of my flesh, sanctified by dream. Our union is blessed under the Old Ways.” If there was ever a time to invoke the Old Ways, this was it. He was speaking the parts of the union oaths that he remembered. It steadied him, and he hoped it would reassure her. “Do you accept me as your Only One?”
She was all eyes now, and he could see the whole universe in their bottomless black depths, stars in the glittering reflections of the bank of lights over them. Never had she been so beautiful to him. A slow blink from her said Yes.
“Then walk with me into a new life.” He slid one arm under her back and lifted her up. With the other hand he cradled the back of her head. She was trembling. With a few slow kisses he mapped her jugular, choosing the best point of entry. They’d wiped her skin down with something bitter. Feeling more like a monster than he ever had in his life, he broke her flesh.
It hurt her. She cried out, voice sharp with pain, and went rigid in his arms. If they’d been in a frenzy of passion, that pain would have enflamed her, but now she had to take it straight, and know what it was like to hang in a predator’s mouth. He caressed the back of her head with his fingers as he sucked, but knew it would be of little comfort. Her blood should have leapt into his mouth, but he had to pull at it hard from the beginning. This made the taking all the more brutal.
Ah, but she was still Madelena, and her blood was sweet beyond imagining, each swallow quenching a thirst he’d carried for weeks. And this time, instead of stale bruise blood, he was drinking her heart’s blood, and it was singing him the story of her life. When he fed on other people, he blocked these stories, but for her, he opened up, and let her memories, her thoughts, her dreams flow into him on the long tide of her blood.
In the background he was aware of Felix and his team reading off numbers, Maddy’s blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen levels, temperature. These numbers were absurd, weak abstractions compared to what was running through him. Her life, all that made her unique, all that added up to Maddy. He heard her sister practicing violin, an awful noise. He tasted her first swig of beer. He saw her abuelita carrying a pink birthday cake. Thirsty, bottomless, he drank it all in. Through it all ran the story of her heart. Her first memories were of being in the hospital. Her earliest sensations were of pain.
These will not be your last memories, Madelena.
Maddy expected it would be primal, physical, a blood sacrifice, and it was, but it was more. He was eating her memories, sucking up everything she was, and reflecting it back to her with love. He loved her
memories, he loved her. He was in her, speaking to her, mind to mind, even as he inscribed his words on her flesh. You are mine, I am yours.
After a while, it didn’t even hurt. She hung like a rag doll in his arms, unable to so much as lift a hand, but her mind—her mind was on fire, roiling with images, memories long forgotten.
Gregor shifted her weight in his arms, and made a fresh bite. By that time she was too far gone to feel it as anything other than pressure. She was deflating, getting smaller and smaller, until there wasn’t much left to give him—of anything.
“Stay with me, Maddy.”
But the memories stopped flowing because something else was tugging at her. The bright light was back, pulsing and spinning, not white, but all colors. God’s kaleidoscope. She stood in its glare, her hand up to her eyes. It invited her in. It was tempting, so tempting that she began to drift toward it, but she didn’t go far, because Gregor, her ball and chain, tethered her. She remembered what she was supposed to do.
“Later is good for me,” she told the light.
And then there was a commotion on the outside, lots of noise. People getting all worked up over her body, as if it mattered.
Then there was silence, and she was floating in a black void. No, not floating, being carried. A golden crucifix spun and flashed in front
of her eyes.
Save and Protect.
And then she met Alex. His blood ran through her like springtime, waking her up and calling her out to play. Then came Mikhail, stalking into her slowly, strong and purposeful. His blood began to rebuild her from the ground up. And then there was Gregor, a line of fire coursing her veins, igniting her.
Gregor! She was thirsty for him, thirsty like she’d never been, she could not get enough. He opened to her, his memories started to flood in, and she embraced them, but it didn’t last long, not nearly long enough.
They cut him off, took him away, and she met his father. She remembered him from when they all had crowded around her, an angular, white haired man with icy blue eyes. Ivan Mikhailovich Faustin. She had the strangest sensation that he was too big to be inside her. Instead she sank into him, and it was like swimming in the ocean on a moonless night. The last thing she remembered was a whisper of Mrs. Faustin. A cool touch and a prayer.
Chapter Eleven
One month later
Opening night of Elixir
Gregor was doing his best to ditch the interviewer from Vanity Fair, but having little success. The guy was a human lamprey, hanging on him as Gregor worked the crowd, shaking hands and spreading euro-kisses around. They’d wanted to write a home lifestyle piece, until Gregor made it clear he had no home lifestyle. One glance at the two rooms in the back of Tangiers settled that question, and they decided to do a fashion shoot instead, which meant stuffing him in an Alexander McQueen suit and piling models slathered in white makeup at his feet. The piece was going to be called “The Vampire King of New York”. It was so easy to hide in plain sight. Some critics complained that vampire motif was passé, but Gregor knew that he’d laugh his way to the bank.
That shoot was appalling, but a small price to pay to keep them out of his personal life and away from Maddy.
It was true he had no home of his own yet, but he and Maddy had a temporary one at Alex’s place in Tribeca. Alex put great stock in amenities like throw pillows and area rugs, so it was the perfect place for Maddy to convalesce—safe, comfortable, and respectable enough for her family to visit. Which they invariably did first thing in the evening, before he’d even managed to make coffee. In the meantime, Alex lived at Tangiers, which he enjoyed all too much.
Gregor had a hard time hiding the smile that crept across his face whenever he thought about Maddy. He pictured her curled up on Alex’s couch in her pink velour sweat suit and fuzzy slippers, wan and brave. The last month had not been easy. The first week of her transition was terrifying for him and painful for her, but she never complained. Lately she was well enough to be restless, and of course she wanted to come tonight, so she was going to make a brief appearance. He hoped she wouldn’t overexert herself. Honey had volunteered to “style” her for the evening, which he supposed meant she would help her find something to wear to hide the battery belt.
“Gregor!” A Very Famous Personage, drunk as usual, flailed her way up to him and grabbed his arm. “You have to tell me the truth, the absolute truth. Are vampires real?”
“Of course, darling. Why would I create a club for them if they didn’t exist?”
“But where are they? I don’t see them.” She gestured at the crowd around them, dismissing five vamps without knowing it. “Introduce me!”
Inspired, he leaned forward and whispered a confidence in her ear. She turned to the Vanity Fair guy, amazed, and shocked into silence at the sight of her first vampire. The Vanity Fair guy, knowing only that he had her attention, turned on the charm. It was a match made in heaven.
Gregor made his getaway, and just in time, because moments later all the hair stood up on the back of his neck. The blood bond told him his mate was in the building.
He began to weave his way toward the entrance, hampered at every step by congratulations and introductions. Like an automaton, he smiled and shook hands and kept moving. He had to get to her. She was looking for him.
His brothers found her first. From the top of the grand staircase, meant for seeing and being seen, Gregor saw Mikhail bending over her hand.
Madelena. The sight of her took the knees out from under him. It always did, to some extent, but tonight—what had Honey done to her?
Maddy did not come incognito, she came in black leather. He took one step down the stairs and stopped again. Was that a corset she was wearing?
While he gaped, unable to believe what he was seeing, Alex ran up and kissed her, then picked her up by the waist and spun her in a circle. Maddy was laughing. Maddy was gorgeous. And it was about time Alex friggin’ let go of her waist.
The next thing he knew he was in front of her. Her black eyes, bright with gold dust and eyeliner, snapped at him—greeting him, but warning him, too. “Don’t you dare laugh at me, Faustin.”
“How can I laugh when I can’t breathe?”
Her hair was piled up high on her head, exposing her delectable neck, which Honey had wrapped with a suggestive choker of raw garnets. Honey was an evil genius. Now every vampyr in the place would want her, he was sure of it. He began to pick them out in his peripheral vision, marking them for death if they moved on her.
Maddy was, in fact, wearing a corset—a long, leather one that molded her tits into two perfect half globes, almost as tempting as her neck. The intersecting lines of several white scars rose out of her cleavage. He wondered if she had noticed that the scars were fading by the day. His eyes wandered downward, admiring how the corset enhanced her hourglass shape, and then he saw the plug. It emerged from a shining steel grommet built into the corset and snaked its short way from her belly to the battery pack and controller. Ordinarily these things were housed in an ugly blue nylon and Velcro fanny pack, but it had all been transferred into a black leather belt that she wore low on her hips, like an ammo belt. It was insanely sexy. Below the belt, she was dipped in leather. When he realized she was wearing high-heeled boots, he went lightheaded.
“Gregor?” she said, her voice hesitant, but unmistakably husky. “Do you like it? Honey’s friend designed this just for me.” She slid two fingers along her power cable. The gesture was provocative, almost obscene. He lunged for her.
And she met him, her mouth as hungry as his, her rough little tongue darting and teasing. He ran his hands over the soft, yielding flesh of her back and shoulders, and then down, over the cool architecture of the corset, down to cup her divine, leather-clad ass.
Thank God.
Maddy had begun to fear that Gregor would never touch her like this again. In the last week or so she’d felt good, better than good, but he still saw her as an invalid. In their bed she would initiate a caress, but he would find some way to turn it into a hug. Gregor Faustin converted to a snuggle bunny. It was just wrong.
But she didn’t blame him. Sure, he said they couldn’t fool around yet because of doctor’s orders, but was that the whole truth? Having a gouge as deep as the Grand Canyon down the middle of her chest didn’t boost a girl’s self-esteem. So she decided it was time to take off her sweat suit and get her mojo on. She’d put in a call to Honey for help. Tonight, Gregor Faustin was going down.
Gregor broke the kiss abruptly and touched her cheek in concern. “Sorry,” he said, shaking his head as if to clear it. “That was… Are you okay? This thing isn’t restricting your breathing, is it?”
“I’m fine.” If anyone needed coddling, it was him. He was too thin and jangled with nervous energy. “Did you feed tonight?”
“No time. It’s okay.”
Yet he’d fed her before he left home. Without thinking she raised her hand to caress the spot under his jaw where she’d drawn his blood. How strange it was still to want him that way. But she did. Every evening she woke curled up in the curve of his arm, sleepy but ravenous, and every night he gave himself to her without hesitation. With each warm swallow she took he offered her his power, his memories, and his dreams. This is me, his blood said every time, see how I love you?
Just remem
bering that powerful intimacy made her throat tighten, but Gregor’s mind was not in the same place. He could not even look at her for long without his eyes darting around. He was as wound up as he was closed down, and would not let her in his head.
“What are you looking for?”
“Lots of things. Where’d my brothers go?”
“You scared them off, coming down the stairs with that scowl on your face.” She sighed as he continued to scan the room. “Don’t worry. Mikhail will keep everything safe and Alex will keep everyone happy. Why don’t you show me your club?”
She’d only been inside Elixir once before that night, though she’d seen many pictures of progress on his laptop. It was an amazing place. She was so proud of him for making it a reality. Elixir wasn’t like any club she’d ever seen. He’d built a grand Belle Époque mansion inside a warehouse, or the framework of that mansion, at least. The club was made up of many lavish, interconnecting rooms decorated with mirrors, period furniture and tall potted palms. It was smaller than Tangiers, made for intimate encounters, not big scenes. There was no bar, just patrolling staff dressed as servants. But if you wanted something close to a big scene, you went up the grand staircase and into the crystal ballroom.
It was a fantasy of an age past, the last great age of vampires. “I wanted to make a space where even Mikhail would feel at home,” he had explained to her. “It’s not a kid’s club.”
Gregor held her hand hard as he led her away. All of his tension was in that grip. Elixir was already a success, and he knew it. She didn’t think he was worried about Elixir. It was worry for her that made up half his tension, and sexual deprivation and hunger accounted for the rest. It was time to beat some sense into his thick skull.
“Show me the train cars,” she said. “I want to see them finished.”
