by M. J. Scott
Please, God, let it not be exciting. But I knew it was. I knew from Jase that feeding from live victims was intimately bound with sex for most vampires. Why should Tate be any different? And if he didn’t use sex, then the other options for him channeling the energy he derived from blood were unlikely to be things I’d enjoyed.
Still, Tate was in charge of this little scenario. I didn’t want to end up on the receiving end of the sort of treatment Pavel had endured by pushing him too far. “What do you want?” I said.
“You’ve never done this before?” He pressed his thumb to the pulse on the other side of my neck, so his hand circled my throat.
For a moment I thought he was going to choke me then he loosened his grip a little.
“You’ve never been a vessel?” he asked again.
I shook my head, puzzled by his use of very old-fashioned vampire terminology. Tate was a young vamp, only fifty or so. It was the older ones who spoke of vessels and the dark gift—the ones who remembered the days when draining a victim completely was commonplace. Was that what Tate intended?
I flinched away from him and his arm tightened until the pressure against my ribs and stomach was almost painful.
“You’re not going anywhere, Ashley. Cooperation, remember?”
My brain remembered. My body wanted to get the hell out of there. Full points to animal instincts but I had to stay calm if I didn’t want to end up like a vessel. I licked my lips. “I remember. I’m just. . . .”
“Scared? I know.” His voice grew lower, more pleased sounding.
For some reason it made me mad and I latched onto the anger, using it to fight the terror. “So let’s get this over with.”
His hand released my neck abruptly. “But I haven’t decided what to do with you.”
I frowned. “Neck. Fangs. Isn’t that how it works?”
Tate laughed, I felt it rumble through his chest.
“Believe me, there are many ways to make the gift.” A hand closed over my right breast and his thumb brushed my nipple. “Some women like it here. My teeth piercing their skin. It can be exquisitely painful.” His fingers tightened and I gasped in pain. Then he released me, hand dropping to my thigh, sliding under the slit in my skirt so he brushed bare flesh. “Or here, perhaps?” His fingers brushed against me, delicately and I was horrified to feel myself shudder in response.
“Fear is an aphrodisiac . . . perhaps I should teach you that after all.”
“No!” I grabbed his arm, pushing at it. It didn’t move an inch and his fingers continued to play, sliding lower and probing into me as he laughed at my dismay.
“What’s the matter, Ashley? Has your wolf never introduced you to the rougher pleasures? They like to play too.”
No. Not Dan. Dan would never hurt a woman. “I don’t have a wolf,” I said, still pushing at his arm. “And I’m not interested in learning to play.”
He snarled. “Careful. Remember your agreement.” He plunged his fingers into me, hard. It hurt and I bit my lip trying not to give him the satisfaction of hearing me scream.
“Please.” Tears welled up in my eyes as he pressed deeper. “Don’t.”
Abruptly he withdrew. “Don’t push me,” he warned. “You won’t like it. I was going to make this easy on you but I’ve changed my mind. I could thrall you and you’d do anything I want. You’d enjoy anything I did to you.”
Fingers twined in my hair, yanking my head back so my throat was exposed. He licked up the skin and I did scream, I couldn’t help it. His fingers tightened until it felt like he was going to rip off my entire scalp. He held his mouth near my ear and whispered, “Now we do things the hard way,” and plunged his fangs into my neck.
Chapter Twelve
It felt like someone plunging two red-hot ice picks into my neck. Pain seared up my throat and exploded in my brain. I clutched convulsively at Tate’s shoulders, dug my fingers in and fought to push him away but he was immovable. Moving made it hurt more.
My heartbeat roared in my ears as he sucked and my vision wavered and darkened.
Pain.
Every time he pressed his lips harder or drew harder, renewed waves of fire flowed through me. I was vaguely aware I was crying, sobbing, but mostly I knew pain.
Pain and a growing realization there was a terrible kind of intimacy to this act. That, as much as my body was shrieking and my head was spinning with every beat of my heart, there was an insidious sort of communion between us. Tate’s pulse echoed down his neck, I could feel it thumping in time with mine like we were linked in some weird way.
Like this was right or meant to be.
And that hurt almost as much as the physical act.
As Tate drank on, I fought to keep my eyes open as my head spun and the room whirled around me. How much was he taking? There was a limit to what I could give and survive. What if he crossed that line?
Part of me didn’t care. Part of me fought to live. And part of me just went away somewhere completely different, taking me to a world of pure sensation, riding the pain like a wave to distract me from reality.
In that place I cried out for help again only to have silence echo around me like waves of despair. Please. Help me. Nothing. Except a faint breath of something that might have been . . . Ash? Or might just have been my imagination.
Pain spiked again as Tate moved his head, burying his fangs a second time. I came back to myself in a nauseating rush. I gasped and choked, close to fainting. I beat at Tate’s shoulders. “Stop. Stop.”
In response he just lifted his head. The pain of his fangs withdrawing was worse than the actual bite. He stared at me, my blood staining his lips, then smiled and struck at my neck again. This time, as his fangs pierced me, the darkness engulfed me completely.
***
I came half-awake when I heard someone say “Sorry, Robert.” Robert. My mind floated. The only Robert I knew was my Dad. I had to be dreaming. Then something brushed my hair and I jerked to full consciousness. I was back in my room, Doctor Smith standing by my bed, staring down at me. Dreaming. I must’ve been dreaming. Why would Smith use my father’s name? I squinted up at him, trying to make my mind work through a fog of pain and confusion
“Don’t try to get up,” he said. “Tate got a little carried away.”
I lifted my head slightly so I could see him better and fire raced up my neck.
Carried away. Right.
My neck felt raw and burnt, like something had been chewing on it. Which, I guess, they had. It throbbed each time I breathed, the bandage around my throat feeling a rough as burlap against the damaged skin. I swallowed and even that hurt. “Can I have something to drink?” My voice rasped.
Smith nodded and handed me a glass filled with the now familiar Gatorade. It was cold and wet and that was all that mattered, even though I was getting heartily sick of Gatorade. I never liked it much in the first place. When I finished the glass, Smith helped me sit up, shoving an extra pillow behind me. Then he peeled back the bandages around my throat, none too gently.
“You’re healing fine,” he said. “You just need to rest and eat.”
“I’m sure that’s exactly what Tate has planned for me,” I said sarcastically.
“You’re alive,” he said curtly. “Be thankful.”
“I’ll put it in my gratitude journal.” I figured Smith might hit me again but after last night, that didn’t seem so scary a prospect.
Smith glared but luckily he didn’t do anything else. “You’d do better to focus on recovering. I’m sure Tate will be asking for you again, this evening.”
I cringed. Again? Just thinking about the feeling of teeth in my neck made my skin go cold. I hadn’t seen what lay under the bandages but it didn’t feel like there’d be much skin left. “Why me? Don’t you have any other guests for him to torture?”
And that was a stupid thing to say.
A malicious smile spread across Smith’s face. “Well, there’s always your aunt.”
I sat up—too fast. “No!”
My head swam and I was forced to lie back, cursing Tate and Smith and everyone else I could think of in my head.
Smith laughed. “Then you’d better stop complaining. Two more times won’t kill you.” He paused. “Or maybe it will if you keep up with the attitude.”
Two more times? What the hell did that mean? Tate was going to feed from me twice more? Then what? I died? “What do you mean two more times?”
My confusion must have shown on my face because Smith frowned as he reached into his pocket. He didn’t look at me as he pulled out one of the now familiar vials and a syringe. “Ask Tate. If you dare.” He filled the syringe, flicking it a couple of times with his fingernail.
Ask Tate? I didn’t even want to see Tate. So I needed to work out what was going on for myself. I took advantage of Smith’s distraction to study the vial.
Yep. The logo was definitely the navy blue horse’s head that Synotech used. I was familiar with it. My father worked for them for a few years before he joined Genasys, one of their competitors. Synotech was a major supplier of the vamp vaccines in the US. Color me confused. It made no sense for Tate to be vaccinating me. Not every day. What could that possibly achieve?
Wondering distracted me as Smith jabbed the needle into my bicep. I was beginning to feel like a human pincushion. Not least because of the wounds on my neck.
“Get some rest,” Smith said as he walked to the door, leaving me alone to contemplate the thought of going a second round with Tate.
Eventually I slept again, only to wake screaming from a nightmare of blood and pale faces looming at me in the dark. I staggered into the bathroom and splashed water on my face, staring at my haggard reflection in the mirror. I looked almost ghostly, pale even for me with my Irish heritage skin. In addition to the black eye and bruised cheek, I had huge dark circles under my good eye, and a cut in my lip I didn’t remember getting.
I wondered whether I’d bitten it while Tate had been feeding. Then of course, there was the bandage around my throat. I touched it gingerly and winced at the answering sting.
Then I peeled the bandage free. I wanted to know what lay beneath. Whether I’d be scarred by what he’d done to me. Jase had told me once that if a vamp licked the wounds clean, they usually healed fine. There was some sort of healing agent in their saliva.
I had no idea if Tate had done that for me—and quite frankly the thought that he might have made me feel queasy enough that I had to rest my head against the mirror and breathe deeply for a few minutes before I straightened again.
To my surprise, my throat was relatively untouched. I’d expected much more damage. It hurt like a son of a bitch and looked red and sore, but apart from the bruising around the three sets of fang marks, I was mostly intact.
So far, my brain added. Until tonight.
The thought of going through it again sent another rush of nausea through me and I sank to my knees. So I wasn’t a hero. I didn’t like pain. But there was no alternative.
No acceptable alternative at least. I could ask Tate to thrall me but then I’d be in his power completely. And I’d rather suffer pain than have him rummaging through my mind.
Anything was better than that.
***
Turns out the second time hurt more than the first. I don’t know whether Tate did it deliberately but by the time he’d stripped me of the red dress he’d sent for me to wear, chained me to the bed and lain beside me, I was beyond caring.
There was no pretending I wasn’t terrified. I started shaking uncontrollably before he even touched me. He liked that. Liked the terror. He bit me slowly, pressing those fangs through my skin with a delicate touch that somehow made the pain even worse. Chains or no chains, I tried desperately to get away. Which only served to bruise my wrists and amuse Tate.
He pulled back from me. “If you ask nicely, I’ll thrall you. You’d like it much better that way.” His hand rested on my bare stomach and my muscles tensed beneath the touch. I had no idea if feeding was all he had in mind if he didn’t thrall me but I was pretty sure he’d do other things to me just to prove he could if he did.
“Go to hell,” I spat, twisting away from him despite the protests of my shoulders and wrists as the metal cuffs bit.
“Now, is that any way to speak to me?” he said calmly. He swung one of his legs over mine and pressed them down so I couldn’t move. “I was trying to be nice.”
“You—” I stopped as something flared in his eyes. Provoking him wouldn’t help me. And it might just make things worse. I rested my head back down on the pillow tilting it back. “Just do it.”
He laughed. “Maybe you’re getting a taste for it, after all.” Then he resumed his agonizing assault.
This time I didn’t faint. Whether he took less or whether it was less of a shock because I’d been through it once already, I don’t know. I certainly didn’t walk out of there under my own power though; Tate called Kyra and Rio in to carry me back to my cell.
I felt like I’d won a small victory. That I’d been stronger.
“Just remember, Ashley,” Tate called just as we reached the door. “Third time’s the charm.”
***
Third time, then what, I wondered the next morning after Smith had injected me again and I’d gobbled down a breakfast big enough for three people. Apparently blood loss makes you hungry.
I wracked my brain trying to remember what I knew about vampires. There was nothing I could think of that made three a special number.
Maybe the Old Ones fed three times before turning a victim or something but it wasn’t necessary. Technically, it only took one feeding and then the victim drinking the vamp’s blood afterwards. That’s how Jase had done it. That’s how most people who chose to turn did it.
But I was vaccinated. If Tate wanted to try and turn me, he had to know he was running a risk that it wouldn’t work.
So it had to be something else. Something that made the risk of holding me so long—of taking me at all—worthwhile. After all, they had to figure that Dan and the FBI were trying to trace me. I’d be writing a very nasty letter to my local congressman about the efficiency of the Taskforce and the FBI in general if I ever made it out of here. I had been here at least four days. Where on earth had Tate taken me that they couldn’t find me in four days? Unless he’d had a plane. . . .
That thought sent chills through me. No planes. I wasn’t going to think about planes. I was going to believe I was still in the US at worst and still in Washington at best. If Tate was indeed playing some long drawn out scenario then I couldn’t imagine he’d want the second act to take place too far away from the first. It lessened the impact.
And he was big on impact. The whole way he staged each of our interactions had made that clear. Everything was about power and fear. His power and the fear he inflicted on others. So why risk losing me if the FBI discovered where he was?
The only thing I could come up with was that it had to have something to do with whatever they were shooting me full of. Though I couldn’t imagine what that might be.
But I was going to ask before it was too late. Tonight. The third time. I didn’t know what happened after that but on the off chance I’d still be alive, I wanted to know what the hell was going on.
***
Tate was all solicitousness when Kyra delivered me to his room that evening. Two elegant chairs and a table covered in white linen were set up by the end of the bed. He ushered me to a seat then took the other chair.
“What’s this?” I surveyed the food arrayed on the table with suspicion. I’d already eaten dinner when Smith had arrived to give me yet another injection.
“I thought you might be hungry.”
Yes, because waiting for a vampire to suck my blood was guaranteed to give me an appetite. “I already ate.” His expression darkened and I knew I was once again skirting shaky ground. I swallowed, trying to summon a semblance of enthusiasm. “But I would like some wine.”
Anything that took the edge off had
to be good. But not too much. I needed to be able to think. Tate lifted the decanter of wine and poured. It was some heavy red that that looked almost black in the light of the candles. I sipped it slowly. Despite my meal, the alcohol hit my stomach like a firework exploding, spreading waves of warmth through my body. Okay, so blood loss and alcohol didn’t mix well.
I put the glass down. “May I ask a question?”
Tate nodded, looking almost relaxed. Something had put him in a good mood tonight. I didn’t want to speculate about what.
“What did you mean last night when you said the third time was the charm?”
He shrugged, playing with his own glass. “You will find out soon enough.”
My jaw clenched in frustration. “Then why not tell me now?”
“Because I don’t choose to.”
Well, that was plain enough. I didn’t know how to wheedle a serial killer into telling me what I wanted to know so I just picked up my glass again. “Will you tell me why you’ve chosen me?”
He blinked. “I told you. Round two.”
Which told me nothing. Round one was Caldwell, I got that. But I had no idea why he’d come back. Or why round one had been Caldwell in the first place. “What—”
“Enough questions.” His voice was sharp. “Unless,” he added, straightening in his chair, “you wish to make another bargain with me?”
My spine prickled. A bargain? In exchange for information? That couldn’t be good. But I couldn’t just let the offer slide. If I got out of this, any information could be vital. “What sort of bargain?”
He considered this. The white silk of his shirt gleamed as the candles flickered. I hoped the white wasn’t significant, he’d worn black almost every time I’d seen him. “There is information you want. The question then becomes what are you prepared to give in exchange?”
The wine suddenly soured on my tongue. “What did you have in mind?”
“Your aunt—”
I jerked in denial and my hand hit the wine glass. The liquid spread across the tablecloth looking very much like blood. “No! You don’t touch her.”
