“Mom!”
“Not now,” he says. “We pushed her too far. This is it. Trust me, Sarah.”
I cry her name again but she pulls the doors shut. Mike surges across the room and takes me by the shoulders, stopping me from throwing myself through the door.
“What’s happening to me?” I moan. “What did you do?”
“Chris, baby, it’s me. Look at me. Look at me.”
I look him in the eye.
“Can I keep you?” he whispers.
I remember.
Behind him, I see her. Andi stands in the library, in her t-shirt and short shorts, thick black blood oozing from the ruins of her throat, a dull look of hate etched on her beautiful face, now pale and swollen. Trash clings to her- an old banana peel, candy wrappers, dirt smeared on her pale skin. She hisses and I draw back.
“Chris, listen to me,” he says, shaking me by the arms. “You have to fight it.”
“You killed me,” Andi moans, shambling forward, reaching for me with graveyard fingers. “You tore out my throat. You were my best friend.”
“She’s here,” I wail, clutching him.
She reaches for me with sharp shards of bone for fingers, ready to claw and tear.
Mike stands to his full height, clutching my head to his chest, and vibrates.
“Get out,” he roars, and the words flood out of him like a physical force.
Andi staggers. For a second she’s just Andi.
“Chris? Chris? I don’t know where I am. Help me!”
Then she’s gone, snuffed out. She fades away like light from a candle guttering out.
“What’s happening to me?” I plead, pulling at him.
My head is pounding harder and harder, like a fist battering my skull from the inside.
Then I feel it, scratching at me from the inside. Moving, flailing, sharp points dragging down the inside of my throat. My gorge rises and the scratchy thing crawls back down, forcing its way into my body. I’m clutching him so hard it must be breaking his ribs but he just holds me back.
“Mike, Mike, help me.”
“I am,” he says, pulling me to the floor. “I’ve got you, baby. Listen to my voice.”
Something is pulling at me. It feels like there’s invisible claws sunk in my chest, sliding between my ribs, trying to pull them out.
“He’s trying to take you back. I’m not going to let him.”
I didn’t even realize he was pulling me into the circle. He brings his palm to his mouth and bites the palm of his hand, hard. He pulls it away bloody and, cradling me in one arm, slaps his other palm down and the circle blazes with green fire, and the pulling lessens. The fire sputters and fades, and the grip inside me tightens, invisible claws tearing at me from the inside.
“No,” Mike roars, “She’s mine and you can’t have her.”
My lips move. Air rushes in my throat. My tongue gives voice to words I’m not saying in a voice that isn’t mine.
“No. My thrall. My property. Mine.”
I know that voice. Vincent. Oh God, he’s inside me.
“No,” Mike whispers, touching my cheek as he gazes into my eyes.
“She’s mine.”
He takes my hand. The ring glitters in his fingers. The cold metal glides over my skin and settles into the little cleft in my finger. Where it belongs.
“Don’t you remember?”
I remember.
I was nervous as hell. I knew something was happening. Something big. We’d both graduated and Mike had already earned a spot in the medical program at Temple. We were spending less and less time together as he made connections and networked and he was starting to spend time with other aspiring medical students. When he went to the bathroom and left me at the table I gripped the tablecloth in my hands until my knuckles went white. He was nervous as hell, he wouldn’t look at me all night. We’d been to this restaurant a hundred times and it was never like this. Even the waiters gave me looks.
So wrapped up in my fear, I was too nervous to even notice him circle around behind me. My breath caught when he leaned over me from behind, and my head brushed his chest. He leaned down until his chin rested on top of my head and reached around to set the box on the table, sliding his arms around me as I stared at it and swallowed. Everyone in the room stopped what they were doing and waited, patrons and servers both.
I swallowed, and he whispered in a voice so small only I could hear it.
“So. Can I keep you?”
I opened the box and slipped my engagement ring on my finger. A real emerald flanked by two diamonds. He must have worked himself to death to afford this.
“Yes,” I said, loud enough for everyone to hear, and cheer.
He’d planned this. My mother was there, my uncle and his family, everybody we knew. They poured out of the back of the restaurant, and I couldn’t hold back the tears.
I look at Mike and I remember.
He dropped us off at the airport. Andi was dressed conservatively, for her. My best friend, who’d arranged all of this. We got her stuff out of the trunk first, then mine. Andi waited on the sidewalk, and I could see the cops eyeing us. The white zone was for loading and unloading only. We ignored all that and kissed. Hell, we made out. I wanted it to be Saturday so desperately I couldn’t stand it. It was Wednesday afternoon. Friday we’d be back, and then the rush to get ready. I’d just tried on my wedding dress.
“Hey,” he said, pulling back from the kiss. “Be careful.”
“I will.”
“If you don’t hurry up, they’re gonna arrest us,” said Andi, grinning.
“I know, I know.”
I kissed him, lightly, on the lips.
“I’ll be right back,” I said.
Chapter Fourteen
No. No more.
A wail bursts out of me and I arch under him as he presses me to the floor. The shredding feeling in my guts has faded but it’s still there. Something tears at me. Something thick and oily and it doesn’t belong here, and it wants me back.
My eyes flutter open as Mike presses his lips to mine. Warm, soft lips. His kiss is a memory of all that came before, and it awakens something inside me that I’d forgotten was there. My hands roam, find his bare skin, and every time I feel his heart beat in his chest the pull of the thing trying to tear me away from him lessens. I taste salt and pull back. There’s blood in my mouth.
“The blood is the life.”
“It was yours,” I managed to choke out.
“Yes. Now you have to drink more. It’s the only way. Bite me, Christine.”
I shake my head, my eyes stinging with tears. “No, please. Don’t make me do that. I can’t.”
“It’s the only way. Do it. Do it!”
I’ve never hated what I’ve become more than this moment. He turns his head, showing me his throat as he lies on top of me. I reach up and he leans down, tucking my head into the crook of his neck. My teeth scrape over his flesh and he lets out a choked cry as I press them to his skin, ready to tear open his throat. I can’t do it. I can’t hurt him. His scent fills my nostrils, his heat my body. I remember what it feels like to be alive. I want him inside me. I want to be in the back seat of that car again. In my bed when he snuck in. Before any of this horror happened.
“It’s alright,” he murmurs, and I feel it in his throat like I feel his pulse.
I wrap my arms around him and close my teeth.
Something happens. It’s that kind of itchy feeling you get from a loose tooth. I pull back and run my tongue over my teeth and feel two sharp points where my incisors should be, so sharp they slice into my tongue and turn my mouth salty again. I lurch upwards and clamp down on his neck and the sharp points slide home, opening his flesh to me. Warm blood floods my mouth in an ecstatic flood. It’s sweet, intoxicating.
I don’t let go even as he curls his fingers under the neck of my sweater. Nor do I let go as he yanks, hard, and the fabric gives way with a loud rip, exposing my shoulder to the air. I fe
el fangs on my neck. When they pierce my flesh an electric shudder runs through my body. The sting and the pleasure remind me of the first time he entered me. I can feel him sucking on my neck until it stings the skin, drawing out the blood from my body as I do the same, writhing under him.
Can’t help it. My hands find his waist, slid around and tear at his clothes. His belt comes apart, the buckle ripping loose under my grasp, and I split his trousers open, ripping out the zipper with my bare hands, and then his cock is in my hand, hard and hot and raging. I let go of his neck and clamp down on his shoulder, biting harder this time. He returns the favor as I rake his back, shredding his clothes. His hands dance over my body, finding weak spots in my attire. He doesn’t bother with undressing me. He shreds my clothes, opening me to the cool air.
The thing inside me is terrified, scratching at me, like it’s trapped.
Mike rolls, tearing the last shreds of my clothing from my body as he pulls me on top of him. I rear up, arching my back. He runs his hands up my stomach and over my breasts, caressing the sensitive skin along the outer curve with his fingers. I repay him by seizing his hand and sinking my teeth into his palm, and it only arouses him more. He pumps up under me, and I have to grab his shaft. I’m so wet I can feel it on my thighs.
That feeling, as he enters me. It feels good, yes, but I feel whole again. Something that was ripped out of me has been put back.
He rolls on top. I lock my legs around him and rake his back with my nails. It draws blood. I taste it from my fingers. He licks and sucks at my bleeding shoulder and I feel the hateful cold thing inside me getting smaller and smaller, pushed up into a tiny corner by the warmth flooding my body as I arch under him. It’s been too long.
He’s mine, mine. I remember now.
Where he was frantic he grows slow, savoring me. His lips and fingers roam over my throat and chest, teasing lightly at my nipples. He runs his tongue down the middle of my chest, and lightly tongues the underside of my breasts until I’m glowing, filled with fire. He moves to face me, pinning my hands down, our fingers laced together, and fills me with slow, rhythmic thrusts, his grin widening with every one. For a moment I forget everything but him. I lock my legs around him, ankles pressed together. I want him to finish inside. I want him.
I want.
My eyes roll back. A peak like I’ve never experience before in my life rips through my body with shuddering, almost painful intensity. He plunges deep as he reaches his climax, holds himself tight against me. When it’s over I just want more.
Good thing he’s still hard, and it starts again with only a moment to catch his breath. I lie back under him, relax. He cups my head in his hand to keep it from touching the floor. Everything we need to say is spoken in kisses and looks, a deep gaze into his eyes. I loop my hands around his neck and pull him to me, squeeze his hips with my thighs and urge him on to finish inside me again. I don’t care anymore, I just want to be one flesh, one body.
His.
No one else’s.
He draws back, rolls off of me. I quiver when he draws out of my body, grab him and lay on my side with him, soaking up his heat. I want a blanket now, I’m freezing, lying on cold stone. The fires blaze around us in a circle, in a riot of colors that are somehow all green, flickering up the ceiling, and I go limp as my mind fills. Images come without order or context, flooding into my mind at random as my memory pulls itself back together. I remember the time Andi got me to eat a mud pie. The time she came crying to me because her first boyfriend dumped her and I resented her for having a first boyfriend at all. All of Andi came back, and all of my mother, and all of Mike.
I just stared at him.
“I can’t believe you’re real.”
I cough.
He looks at me, eyes wide.
“Chris-“
Again a cough tears out of my throat, a deep hack, and when I breathe in the air, I can’t draw enough in and my lungs burn. There’s something moving. I can feel it. I claw at my throat until he stops me, grabbing my wrists. Mike pulls me to him and bends me forward and I shudder with a full body dry heave, hack and cough and sputter again, and I can feel it moving.
Out. Out. Have to get it out.
He’s got me, his arms around my waist. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. Every time I try to fill my lungs a burning, surging panic rips through my body.
“Chris, honey,” he says, his voice choked with anguish, “this is gonna hurt.”
He pulls me against him, reaches out, and extends his fingers. My vision is blurring and my eyes are burning but I can see the nails in the wooden panels covering the windows moving on their own, sliding out of the wood like grass springing from the Earth. The panels shift and the morning light cuts blazing through the gloom and a scream chokes out of my throat as it washes over me.
“Stop,” I beg, but it comes out as a choked gurgle.
It hurts, oh God it hurts, I’m burning. Smoke curls from my fingers, puffs out of my nostrils, and the thing in my throat screams. I can hear it, a high pitched wail of agony as something else moves inside me. Uncoils. He turns me and pulls me against his body, sliding-sweat-slick against me, and I straddle him. He enters me as naturally as he takes me in his arms, his cock filling me as I arch back, the ecstasy of our union mingling with the agony of the fire as the wood falls away and the light blazes.
A light shines in the darkness.
He presses his warm lips to mine and I taste love and ash, and roll my hips. Every motion of my body as I ride him chases the taste of the flames from my flesh. The candles flare with green flames, licking high into the air. He breaks from the kiss and I kiss him, feeling our bodies intertwine. I open my eyes and he’s full of light, burning light, stinging my eyes. His body is an illusion, seen through a brighter world as his hands rake down my back and his chest presses against my breasts and he sinks sharp teeth into my shoulder and drinks deep. I ride him harder, egged on by the stinging pain in my shoulder, the heat ripping through my body.
I feel a cold spot form in my chest, a lump of ice. He falls back and pulls me on top. I rear up, arch my back, and ride, hammering him with my hips, pounding his cock inside me. As the pleasure builds I keel forward, leaning on his chest, and switch from a fast hard pump to a slow grind, rolling my hips, gripping him with my body. A surge of pleasure flies through me and I roll back, and the cold knot in my chest drives up, up, pushed away by the rolling tide of heat.
He’s made of liquid gold and I see it curling him inside him, a serpent made of jade and onyx, and there’s one in me now, too. They slide together, intertwine like a caduceus. I feel two bodies at once, the warm flesh mingled with his and his fingers sliding over my breast as he flicks my nipples and the thick scaly body of spirit crushed in his coils. The cold thing in my throat claws, pull its way back in.
I can’t hold it back anymore. I arch back, crushing his hands in mine as a tremendous peak rips through me. As I cry out, a stream of ash rockets out of my mouth, like cigarette smoke held too long, thick and black and oily. It curls overhead and makes a shape, a hint of something twisted and unreal. It has too many legs, too many eyes. It does not belong here.
As Michael fills me with his seed, I scream.
“Get out!”
The thing holds it shape, takes form, no longer smoke, now oily. Legs, shiny button eyes.
He surges up, pulls me to him, and his kiss is full of my blood. My fangs slice open his tongue and our lifeblood mingles in our mouths. We roll, still locked together at the hips, in a rolling, hammering, ecstatic surge that redefines fucking. It feels like it goes on for hours, starting again as soon as it stops.
The dark thing loses its shape. The room is full of light. There is something past it, something huge, and its tiny too-many eyes quiver with terror before its shape breaks completely into a puff of smoke, then dust, and then nothing at all.
Somehow I got on my hands and knees, and Mike has one hand on my neck, squeezing, the other knotted in my hair.
I throw myself back, rising on my knees and he pulls me against him.
Andi stands in the library, outside the circle. She’s fading out, like an old photo.
“Help me,” she pleads through the ruins of her throat, and then she’s gone.
I go boneless, like a puppet with my strings cut, and fall. Mike catches me and guides me to the floor. I spread out, exhausted.
The sun is shining, kissing my skin with its heat.
“Don’t move, honey,” he whispers.
I have to. I have to. I get up on my hands and knees, wobbly to my feet. I step over the edge of the circle, limping to the desk and fall on it, resting my palms on the edge, and stare out the windows.
“Outside,” I whisper, “Take me outside. Please. I have to see it.”
“You’re still weak. You don’t understand what you just went through.”
“Please,” I choke out, “Please.”
“Alright.”
He gets up, leaves me leaning on the desk. He comes back wrapped up in a robe, and swaddles me in a blanket, lifting me bodily from the floor. I’m too weak to do more than curl against him and wrap my arms around his neck, but he carries me like I weigh nothing at all, out through the door and outside. The air is frigid, crisp. He lowers me to the ground and my toes curl from the freezing pavers as they sting my bare skin, but I don’t care.
The sun blazes in the sky, a disk of gold burning through a haze of thin clouds, but the first snow falls anyway. I shrug out of the blanket and step out into the air, shivering, teeth chattering, back arched as the light soaks into my skin. I close my eyes and grin stupidly, but have to open my eyes again and stare until a purple disk burns into my vision. The sun. I’m alive and awake in the sun.
He throws the blanket around me again and picks me up before I fall, rushes back inside. The world is drifty, insubstantial. I’m back in the bedroom, so tired I have to strain my face in an expression of mock surprise to keep them open. It’s dark and warm in here. Mike sheds his robes and gets in the bed with me, both of us naked. He shudders when he touches my skin. I’m cold as ice. He pulls me against him and touches something to my lips.
Thrall (A Vampire Romance) Page 13
