Love At First Bite

by Sherrilyn Kenyon

  “They’ll come…” A weary baritone she recognized. She had stood up at his wedding to Beth Rochewell. Ian Rufford was here with Davie?

  “Fedeyah, sit down. Drink this.” Davie in his most commanding Major’s voice.

  “Enough! There is so little.” An Arab accent. “Save some for Rufford and yourself.”

  She slid quietly toward an open doorway from which the voices came.

  “I’ll find more.” This from Davie, but he wasn’t sure. She could hear it in his voice.

  “You can’t go out in daylight.” Mr. Rufford gasped for breath. “You’ll fry.”

  “The city is deserted, except for them,” the Arab muttered. “Unless Allah provides, we must do without.”

  Emma peered around the door frame. At first she couldn’t quite take in what she was seeing. Davie stood over Mr. Rufford, who was laid out on one of the long wooden tables in the center of the kitchen. He cradled Mr. Rufford’s head in one arm and was helping him to drink from a cup. Mr. Rufford’s mouth was stained red, along with everything else. Blood was everywhere. Terrible wounds were revealed by the shredded clothing still clinging to Mr. Rufford. On the hearth of the great fireplace filled with spits and pots sat an Arab man with sad eyes, also wounded. The whole place smelled of blood. Shock and revulsion cascaded over her.

  “I should never have left you to face them,” Davie said, his voice soaked in guilt.

  Mr. Rufford put up a hand and looked around. How was he still breathing? “Come in, my dear Miss Fairfield,” he said hoarsely.

  Davie swung round. The Arab looked up. She sighed and stepped out into the doorway.

  “Miss Fairfield! Get back to your room!” Davie cried, laying Rufford back onto the table. He strode across to her and took her shoulders.

  “Miss Fairfield”? “Get back to your room”? “As you recall, Major Ware, as soon as you can find a minister, it will be Emma Ware. And I told you when I accepted your proposal to share your life last night that I share it all, whether you like it or not.” She looked to the other men. She was about to ask how she could help when a cut across Mr. Rufford’s forehead sealed itself before her very eyes. She gasped. What is going on here ? Davie tried to turn her about and hustle her from the room, but she pulled out of his grasp. She glanced across to the Arab. The pink weal of a scar slowly disappeared from his cheek.

  “What are you?” she whispered to Mr. Rufford, ignoring Davie’s sputtering protests.

  “Don’t tell her,” Davie warned.

  “We are not like you, Miss Fairfield,” Mr. Rufford said, getting up to one elbow. “Not anymore.” A sword wound on his chest began to close.

  She swallowed and tried to breathe. “I see that.” She turned to Davie. “You might as well tell me.”

  He looked away, ashamed.

  “Perhaps it would be easier if I tell you, Miss Fairfield. I’ll be stronger in a bit.” Mr. Rufford lay back, obviously exhausted.

  She wanted to know now. Davie was leaning against the window frame as though defeated. She turned to the Arab. “You tell me.”

  The Arab glanced to Davie. “We have a thing in our blood, miss. It changes us.”

  “How?” She crossed the room to him, slowly. “How does it change you?”

  “We are strong. We heal and live long. Sunlight is painful. We can move unseen.”

  Davie turned from the window, his expression fierce. “I don’t think you’re doing it justice, Fedeyah. It’s a disease, Emma. We’re vampire. We’re immortal unless we’re decapitated, and we drink human blood. No way around that. And Fedeyah forgot to mention the fact that we can compel weaker minds. We can make people do things they don’t want to do.”

  They were vampire? The word echoed in her mind with horrible reverberations.

  “God in heaven,” Davie continued, rolling his head, “we can’t even commit suicide! Rufford knows; he tried often enough. We’re monsters, Emma, once we’re infected. Monsters.” This last was said on a note of such despair, her heart went out to him.

  She stood, blinking stupidly, wondering what to do, what to think. Vampire, human blood, immortality. And Davie, her Davie, was condemned to this? She glanced to Rufford, who seemed only half-sensible, his wounds slowly resolving themselves. The red trickling from the corner of his mouth was human blood. How could she think that so calmly?

  “Who did you kill tonight?” It was as though someone else asked the question.

  “Others of our kind, made by an evil woman. Not pretty.” Davie’s mouth was grim.

  Decapitation. She would wager it wasn’t pretty.

  “They want to rule the world,” the Arab said. His voice grew incredibly sad. “They make more vampires. It would destroy the balance. We make jihad against them.”

  “Balance? What balance?”

  “We do not kill humans for our blood,” Fedeyah explained. “We don’t make others of our kind. There are Rules. Rules they do not obey.”

  “And these Rules wouldn’t condone marriage to a woman who isn’t like you, would they?” She turned to Davie. Anger boiled up out of her belly uncontrolled. Davie drank human blood and was going to live forever unless he was killed in some horrible way fighting a war against monsters like him. “You knew that last night. And you let me think we could be happy together.” Tears sprang from nowhere.

  “Go back to your room, Miss Fairfield,” Davie said. His voice was distant. He turned back to the window.

  She whirled and ran down the corridor and up to her room. The damned door was locked, so she went into her original room and pushed the door back into its frame, no matter how silly that was. She couldn’t lock out the creatures downstairs. With their strength they would just push through an unlocked door or a locked one. She remembered how Davie had burst into the room. She threw herself on the bed, sobbing, because all her innocence was lost and all her future, and the world held monsters and one of them was Davie.

  She came out of a sleep feeling drugged and groggy. It was twilight. The sky outside the window was purple, edging into indigo. Someone was knocking at the door.

  “Miss Fairfield?”

  One of the monsters, she thought dully. Mr. Rufford. “Come in.” What did it matter?

  He pushed the door in gingerly. He was clean, shaved, no blood in sight. He wore a shirt open at the neck, black trousers, and riding boots to the knee. His brown, curling hair was tied back in a ribbon, just as it had been in St. James’s Church when he had married Miss Rochewell. Hmmm. Emma thought about that.

  He made a small bow. “Are you well? I thought you might be hungry.” She got up on one elbow. He carried a plate: cold roast beef, horseradish, some radishes and small tomatoes, a chunk of bread. She was famished. How could her body betray her emotions so? Without waiting for an answer, he set the plate down on the table beside the bed. She sat up and touched her hair. “You look fine.” He hesitated, looking as though he thought he should go but wanted to stay.

  She didn’t want him to go, she decided. In the shock of the moment in the kitchen, she hadn’t realized what to ask. Now she did. “Won’t you sit down?” she asked, gesturing to a chair.

  He hesitated, then sat.

  Emma’s mind churned. She thought back to the wedding. “Miss Rochewell, I mean Mrs. Rufford…” She frowned. “Where is she now?”

  “She serves the cause in Tripoli.” The grimace around his mouth said he didn’t like it. That was interesting, though. Beth Rufford was allowed to help the cause.

  “Did she know?”

  His blue eyes looked up sharply. “When she married me? Yes. A tribute to her courage.”

  Miss Rochewell had accepted that Mr. Rufford was vampire? How could she? Still… Emma sorted through what she knew. Drinking human blood—bad, but as long as they didn’t kill… How could she be thinking that? Strong—that was fine. Compelling people against their will—bad again, but a good man could refrain, couldn’t he? It occurred to her that compulsion might be one way a woman could hurt a man du
ring sex. She wondered how Davie had been “infected” and whether it had anything to do with the evil woman who made vampires. And yet the most important thing Emma wanted to know might only be answered by this vampire sitting across from her who had married a mortal woman. “How… how does she bear the fact that she is mortal and you are not?” In some ways it came down to that.

  Mr. Rufford took a breath. “She doesn’t have to. She isn’t mortal anymore.”

  Emma felt her eyes get big.

  “As I said, she has courage.” He looked fond and… proud. He shot her another sharp glance. “Beth and I accept who we are. More than accept. I can’t explain. Major Ware may accept someday. I hope so. I promised to kill him if he demanded it. I hope I won’t have to keep that promise.” Mr. Rufford rose. “Eat. Keep up your strength. We must go soon. The jihad calls.”

  “Wait! How… how is one infected? How was Davie infected?”

  “The blood from one of us must be ingested, or introduced through a cut. Major Ware came to serve our cause here in Casablanca as a human. It was an incredible thing to ask of him, but we needed someone who could go about in daylight. He was infected while he defended Fedeyah and me.”

  “How… did he get the scars I saw on his body?” She felt herself flush.

  “Asharti.” Mr. Rufford set his mouth. “She made the army we fight. We have all suffered at her hands.” He nodded curtly, his confidences at an end. “Stay in tonight. The streets will not be safe.” He slid out quietly.

  Emma took up the plate and absently crunched a radish. Davie thought he was a monster. But Rufford didn’t. He loved his wife. They had accepted… more than accepted that they were vampire. What did that mean?

  Emma rolled up a slice of beef and dipped it in horseradish. Where else could one get beef and horseradish but in an English hotel, even on the other side of the world? English people always took who they were along with them. A fault perhaps. But therein lay a truth. Didn’t one always take oneself along no matter how strange the destination? Were she and Davie any different at heart than they were yesterday? Mrs. Rufford joined her husband even when she knew the truth about him. Mr. Rufford must have made her vampire in spite of these Rules or whatever, they were, and he loved her, and…

  And what?

  And that changed everything.

  Emma stared at the whitewashed walls of the room, painted crimson with the last of the dying sun. She was strangely aware of her lungs pushing air in and out of her chest, her heart thudding. The decision that rattled in her brain demanding to be made frightened her.

  She had thought she was a rebel because she refused to marry someone she didn’t love. True rebellion was deeper than that. She thought she was bold chasing after Davie to Casablanca. She didn’t know then what “bold” meant. Now she would find out what she was made of. She was at the extreme edge of experience, and yet there was one more step to take. She had wanted to cross some line that would cut off all retreat to her humdrum life in England by giving up her virginity. Now she knew that wasn’t a bold enough line.

  The sky was lightening out the window of the hotel kitchen. Emma was ready for the return of the warriors. Could she face the kind of wounds she had seen yesterday morning? Could she bear to see Davie hurt? No time for those thoughts now. She had hot food prepared, a hearty lamb stew. She had ripped up some hotel sheets for bandages, though she wasn’t certain they would be useful. One thing she knew they’d need she didn’t have. Blood.

  Or maybe she did.

  Crashing sounded from the front lobby. Looters? The hotel had been deserted all day. Or maybe it was Davie coming back. She picked up a butcher’s knife and ran to the front.

  A ragged man knelt before two others, sobbing, pleading in Arabic. She might not understand the words, but she understood his horrified expression. He knew his life hung in the balance. The scent of cinnamon filled the air. He had obviously tried to take refuge in the hotel. Unsuccessfully. At her appearance his two persecutors swung around. A wicked grin stole over the face of the taller one. He saluted her. Both intruders had an avaricious gleam in their eyes. The stouter one turned back to the sobbing man. The one before her stalked forward two steps. His eyes turned red. There was no other word for it. And the grin on his face now included canines elongating into fangs. Panic soaked her. She had to run!

  But she didn’t. She walked forward though she knew she shouldn’t, even though she was afraid. She struggled against the impulse, but still she took step after step, her chest heaving with useless resistance until she could feel his reeking breath, hot on her face. Behind her nemesis she heard a very human shriek, then a horrible burbling sound. She thought she might be going to pass out, because there was a whirling blackness just at the edge of her vision. The creature held her close. Red eyes filled her vision. She prayed to faint. The creature wrenched away from her and she fell to the floor. Above her, Davie shouted like a berserker as he slashed at her attacker.

  Still dazed, she saw that Davie was already wounded in a dozen places. And there was Mr. Rufford. How was he still standing? But they were, fighting the two attackers. On the floor near the door was the ragged man, his throat ripped out The scene taking place around her seemed unreal, it was so horrific. Emma heard Davie’s grunt as a blade found him, a shriek of anguish as Rufford felled one. She felt the splatter of warm liquid and blinked when a head rolled past her.

  It was over. The lobby seemed strewn with body parts. Davie sank to his knees in the gore. Mr. Rufford wavered on his feet but went to help him. A whirling darkness dissipated in the corner and Fedeyah stepped out of it. She was beyond surprise.

  Fedeyah came to help her up. “We have rats in the house,” he observed. “That makes forty.” She saw that she was still gripping the silly butcher’s knife. She let it clatter to the floor.

  This? This was what they had been facing every night?

  Mr. Rufford pulled Davie’s arm over his shoulder. “To the kitchens.”

  Emma trailed in their wake, still blinking. They staggered into a kitchen, filled with the smell of spiced lamb stew and her neat rows of rolled bandages. Fedeyah sank on the raised hearth. Mr. Rufford heaved Davie up on the huge wooden table and then simply sank to the floor, his back against a table leg. Davie didn’t move.

  “What, what can I do for you?” she asked faintly. Her rolled bandages seemed ludicrous.

  “Blood,” Mr. Rufford breathed.

  She felt her own blood rush from her face.

  “No, no.” Rufford shook his head wearily. “Not from you. From the dead man by the door. It must be from the human.”

  She swallowed. Very well. She grabbed an intricately painted terra-cotta bowl and turned to face the lobby. She kept her mind tight, small. Step. Step. Step. Survey the room. Find the ragged man. Did the ragged tear in his throat still bleed? Yes. Step. Step. Kneel. Hold the bowl. Keep your mind a blank. Don’t look at his opaque eyes. Keep your stomach clenched. The flow slowed to a drip. Look at the bowl. Not full. Survey the room. Blood everywhere. But not human. This is all the human blood. Is it enough? Stand. Wait for the room to steady. Step. Step. Step. Careful with the bowl.

  She fell to her knees in the hallway and vomited onto the tiles. But she didn’t spill the precious bowl. Then she staggered up. Push into the kitchen. Kneel in front of Mr. Rufford. “Is it enough?”

  She saw the answer in his look. “Give it to Fedeyah and Ware. I’ll do.”

  Now was the moment. “I’ll take care of Major Ware,” she whispered, and offered the bowl to Mr. Rufford.

  He peered at her through exhausted eyes. A small smile curved his lips. He nodded, took the bowl, and gulped his half. The gray in his complexion faded. “I told him he was a lucky dog.”

  She chewed her lips and glanced to Davie. “This doesn’t seem lucky.”

  “It will, if we can prevail against the tide.”

  “I hope you’re right.” She took the bowl to Fedeyah, who drank the balance. Both he and Mr. Rufford were hea
ling faster. Only Davie remained still and bleeding. She glanced to Rufford. “How… how do I do this? Must I cut myself?” She hoped she had the courage.

  To her surprise, Rufford pushed himself up and looked around. Then he pulled Davie from the table, hefted his limp form across his shoulders, and staggered to a little storeroom off the main kitchen. There he laid Davie down across some sacks of flour. “Gently,” Mr. Rufford said. “Lie by his side. He will know what to do.” He stumbled from the room.

  Emma looked around and saw a flint and candle. She lit the candle and shut the door. The smell of flour and dried beans was overwhelmed by the cinnamon scent of Davie and the smell of blood. She swallowed. No time to lose the courage of your convictions. Davie needed her. And if what he needed wasn’t just in the ordinary line of mending handkerchiefs and hosting his dinner parties, well, that was just what she had escaped London to avoid.

  She tried not to look at his wounds as she lay down. She was dimly aware that he had cuts and gouges over much of his body. His clothes were in tatters. He’ll heal, she told herself. Just like Rufford and Fedeyah. She pressed herself to his side and felt the warmth there. She brushed the hair back from his forehead. There was a gash on his cheek that didn’t seem to be healing at all and one on his shoulder, peeking through his torn shirt. “Davie,” she whispered. His eyelids fluttered. “Davie, wake up and take what you need.”

  The blue eyes opened, struggled to focus. Then he turned to her. “You shouldn’t be here, Emma,” he whispered. “You shouldn’t have seen—”

  “This is exactly where I should be,” she corrected. She tried to keep fear from knocking against her ribs as she saw his eyes flicker red.

  “No,” he gasped in a strangled sob. His eyes faded to blue. He wrenched his head to the side. “I’m a beast, Emma.”

  She reached to his jaw and gently turned him back to face her. “You’re my Davie. I’m your Emma. Nothing has changed. I want you, Vernon Davis Ware. And I’m not going to give you up just because you’re immortal and strong. Or over the blood. Miss Rochewell didn’t give up Rufford.”