by Irina Argo
The pain was finally receding a little—being consumed, she thought, by the grey fog that was also taking over the edges of her vision. But then a new, unfamiliar pain rose from deep within her, taking over her entire body. It grew stronger and stronger, dwarfing the pain from her wounds, until her back arched and she began convulsing uncontrollably.
“Am I dying?” she gasped, clenching the warrior’s hand.
“No, dear love; just try to relax. You’ll be fine. You just need blood.”
He pressed the underside of his wrist to Theores’s mouth. The pulse throbbing there called to her, and she knew that if she did not feed from this vein, she would die. A strange, almost painful tingling assaulted her eyeteeth, and without another thought, she sank them into his vein.
What she was doing was beyond weird, but it felt amazing, and as natural to her as breathing. She drank voraciously, as if she’d never be able to satisfy her thirst.
Finally the warrior placed a cool palm on her forehead and gently removed his wrist from her mouth. “That’s enough for now.”
She protested weakly.
“What is your name?” he asked, ignoring her disappointment.
“Theores.”
“Ah, a name befitting the beauty of its owner. Tell me how you feel, Theores.”
“I don’t know where to start. I don’t know what happened to me. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you; I just lost control.”
“You didn’t harm me, dear love. But we’re not finished yet. You’ve a great deal of healing still to do. Your wounds have stopped bleeding, but I’m afraid you’re too young to heal yourself properly. We must take care of you now so you do not have any scars. Your features and your body are exquisite; let’s ensure that you remain that way.”
Without asking, the stranger lay down next to her and cradled her in his arms. Theores wanted to object and push him away, but she was overcome by a rush of warm, loving energy filling her body. The sensation defied description; it was magical. She had never experienced such nurturing from anyone; she hadn’t even known it was possible to feel that way. Her anxiety evaporated and she melted into him, as though she’d finally come home after a long, exhausting journey.
As she lay there with him, her pain subsided and her body seemed to pulse with vitality and strength. It was as though she had never experienced the attack on the deck. Based on her experience in male-female relationships, Theores knew what was coming next; the stranger would take advantage of her. But to her surprise he made no attempt to kiss or undress her. He simply continued holding her, gently pressing her head to his chest.
“Why are you hugging me?” she murmured, listening to his steady breath.
“I am healing you.”
“Healing me?” She pulled her head away from his chest to look at him suspiciously. “How can you heal me by just hugging?”
“Are you feeling better?”
“Yes.”
“So you see, it works.”
“Who are you?” She raised up on her elbow to study his face, but her eyes were immediately drawn to the large vein pulsing in his throat. What was wrong with her? She had never paid attention to that kind of thing before. She tried to shift her gaze, but her eyes kept returning to the pulsing vein. She stared at it, recalling how delicious his blood had tasted and how wonderful it had made her feel.
He traced her gaze. “You may bite me.”
“What?” She recoiled. Was he crazy? At the same time she felt a rush of joy for the opportunity to feed again. She wanted more of him.
He folded his hands behind his head and leaned back, tantalizing her with his exposed throat. She felt that tingling in her teeth again.
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anybody.”
“Tell what?”
“That you like to bite. Go ahead.”
Theores didn’t want to talk anymore. She’d figure out what was wrong with her later. As she lowered her mouth to his neck, once again her canine teeth protruded and sharpened, drawn like a magnet to his throat.
It was Theores who, aroused by drinking blood, ended up making the first move. They stayed in bed for four days. For the first time in her life Theores enjoyed sex; especially when it was paired with feeding. Her savior allowed her to feed on him as often as she wanted—and she wanted to all the time. Licking the drops of blood from his chest, she realized that she had only one goal: to keep this male with her for the rest of her life.
“What’s your name?” she finally asked him, catching her breath after a particularly exhilarating bout of lovemaking.
“I’m Oberon,” he laughed.
“I want you to know, my precious Oberon, if you try to leave me, I’ll kill you. Oops.” She covered her mouth, ashamed of her wild thought, but the desire to own him felt natural.
A few days later, they returned to Constantinople for Leon and then the three of them went to live in Oberon’s house in Hedeby, a Viking trading settlement located in the Danish-German borderland. Theores spent three fabulous years there.
Neither she nor Leon would ever have to wonder where their next meal was coming from. Oberon was wealthy and showered her with gifts—and more importantly, with letting her feed on him whenever she wished, which was often. Theores always paired her feedings with sexual play, and Oberon responded to her passionately. As Theores experimented sexually, she found that the more erotic the act, the more he seemed to enjoy it.
What surprised her most was that he never questioned her bizarre addiction to blood—or if he knew what it was, he never explained it to her. Also strange was that his blood supply never seemed to diminish, regardless of the frequency of her demands. In fact, it seemed as if after each feeding, he too felt stronger and more vital.
It ended even more suddenly than it had begun. Theores woke up one morning to find herself in a strange place. Oberon hadn’t even said goodbye to her. He’d drugged her and Leon just like that damned ship’s captain had, and moved them while they slept.
She soon learned what had happened: Oberon had negotiated with the vampire King, Tor, to exchange her and Leon for three Amiti bloodstock. Oberon had taken advantage of Tor’s affection for immortal youngsters, threatening to kill her and Leon if Tor refused the bargain.
The pain of abandonment was unbearable. How could Oberon do this to her when they’d been so perfect together? How dare he use her like that? It was painful enough that he’d gotten rid of her; to make matters worse, he’d also opened the old wounds of her mother’s abandonment and father’s death, making them bleed all over again.
She’d never forgive his betrayal. She’d hunt him down and kill him, just as she’d told him she would. From that moment on, Oberon had become her worst enemy. She would not rest until his gorgeous, lying head was separated from his magnificent, deceitful body.
At Tor’s, Theores met Istara, the Queen of the Amiti and Tor’s blood-bond. She was the one who finally taught Theores what it was to be a vampire. Istara also educated Theores about the Amiti and the longstanding war between vampires and Amiti. Theores learned that not only was Oberon an Amiti; he was the Keeper of the Hidden, one of the strongest of the five Amiti Keepers. By feeding on Oberon, Theores had blood-bonded with him, and now Oberon was capable of killing her whenever he wanted. The Queen offered to break Theores’s blood-bond with Oberon by creating a new blood-bond with her—an offer that Theores eagerly accepted.
Through the blood-bond Istara discovered that Theores was a Nightwalker. Unlike Sekhmi, Nightwalkers could not tolerate sunlight—but that intolerance was suppressed if they were blood-bonded with an Amiti. No one had ever been able to tell that Theores was a Nightwalker, because for all her adult life she’d been protected by her blood-bonds, first with Oberon, and then with Istara.
But sunlight wasn’t the only issue. Because of the scarcity of Amiti to feed from, the two castes of vampires had become enemies, with the more powerful Sekhmi making it a capital crime for Nightwalkers to feed on Amit
i. So if her status as a Nightwalker was discovered, so would her ongoing crime.
As long as Theores was blood-bonded with an Amiti, she’d be indistinguishable from a Sekhmi—she’d effectively be a Sekhmi. Istara turned out to be a loyal friend to Theores, keeping the secret of Theores’s origin for centuries and supporting her with her blood. Even now, over twenty years after Istara’s death, Theores retained most of her ability to walk in the sun; the Queen’s blood had been that strong.
But even the most powerful Amiti’s blood couldn’t last much longer than two decades, and Theores was reaching a critical point. With each passing day her ability to endure the sun deteriorated. That was terrible in and of itself, but the real threat was the growing risk that her Nightwalker status would be discovered. She faced the possibility of losing everything she’d worked for all her life. She’d be cast out of the pride and reduced to being a Nightwalker. She might even lose her life for violating Sekhmi law.
Theores urgently needed a new blood-bond, which was a virtually impossible task to accomplish. No Amiti in the world would offer her their vein, knowing her reputation. She’d projected her hatred for Oberon to other Amiti and become a vocal advocate of the practice of keeping bloodstock.
That made the young Amiti Queen her best—and maybe only—hope for establishing a new blood-bond. Arianna knew nothing about her and Theores would make sure to keep it that way. Theores had said that they’d make the Queen fall in love with Tor; she hadn’t said that she’d be embarking on a similar project, becoming Arianna’s best friend and manipulating her affections until Arianna finally offered Theores her vein.
The two-month wait for the plan to run its course had been bad enough; now everything was going straight to hell. But it could all be resolved—and soon—if only Simone would give up this childish, sullen refusal to disclose where Arianna was being kept.
Theores smiled as she took another sip of her Malbec. Simone might be stubborn, but so was Theores. She knew just what she needed to do. Very soon, Simone would be begging the pride to save Arianna.
Chapter 31
The Project research station, Lake Baikal, Russia
Sunrise on Lake Baikal was breathtaking, an array of purple, gold, and orange blending together, outlining the magnificent horizon of a dark forest. Pine trees covered with crystal white snow reflected the colors of the sunlight in brilliant contrast. It was early November, and the weather was perfect, just below freezing. The snow was heavy on the branches of the trees, and their boughs reaching to the earth recreated a vision from a fairytale.
Oberon loved this time of year. He thrived on the beauty and solitude of Baikal. There was no one to disturb him—unless you counted annoying researchers getting overexcited about their latest findings.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century the humans knew Oberon as Doctor of Biology and Medicine Vlad Orlov, and his sister, Desiree, as Doctor of Medicine Olga Pavlova. “Vlad” and “Olga” were colleagues who lived and conducted research on the small ecological research station on Lake Baikal. Adopting these human identities had been an enormous accomplishment. It made their situation as stable as Amitis’ lives could be, and it also enabled them to gather important scientific information about immortals.
When the vampires had begun hunting Amiti as bloodstock, Amiti had been forced to go underground, living dispersed across the world disguised as humans. Although it made for a lonely existence, it had been a workable solution to the problem of basic survival. It presented two major logistical problems, though.
The first—which had been a problem from the beginning—was literally one of maintaining appearances. Amiti could shield their presence from vampires, so they could theoretically live among humans in their natural form. But they could only live in one place for at most fifteen years before the humans began to wonder why they never seemed to age. It also turned out to be impractical because the dazzling beauty Hathor had endowed them with, hoping that they’d attract vampires, earned them too much human attention—and it made them more visible to bloodstock hunters, who could target exceptionally attractive individuals first and figure out if they were Amiti later.
The alternative was to use their shapeshifting ability to take on a more ordinary human form. This worked well for those who could pull it off, and it enabled them to stay in one place for a more extended period of time—up to a regular human lifespan—because they could create the illusion of aging. But shapeshifting was impossible for Amiti youth who hadn’t come into their powers yet, and sustaining another form was exhausting for younger Amiti over the longer term.
The second logistical problem was that over time, fabricating human identities had grown more and more difficult. No longer could an Amiti individual or family simply show up in a new town and assimilate into the population without arousing suspicion. More and more, they needed legitimate identity documents just to get by, and it was growing harder to get away with using forged documents. As a result, the problem of Amiti being “outed” because of legal issues was becoming disturbingly common. Between that problem and the Hunters’ tracking skills, Amiti had to stay on the run constantly.
Like all Amiti elders, Oberon and Desiree had overcome the first of these logistical difficulties. They had developed remarkable masking skills and could easily shift into and maintain human forms. But the second problem wouldn’t go away.
Taking a cue from human con artists, Amiti had also begun looking for existing human identities to assume. If a human disappeared or died and the body was not identified, they could assume that person’s identity. The Amiti leadership had even started targeting certain professions—in medicine, research, and other fields that could provide benefits for their people—and tracking the humans in those fields, looking for “unoccupied” human identities. Of course, this approach presented a whole new set of logistical difficulties related to infiltrating a real person’s existence, particularly faking shared history with loved ones and coworkers, but it was sometimes worth the risk, especially given the alternatives.
That was how Oberon and Desiree had gotten their current positions. Vlad and Olga had been colleagues, returning to the research station at Lake Baikal after a research conference, when they’d been killed in a train accident. They’d been ideal candidates for Amiti to impersonate—fairly young and living in relative isolation—but the real benefit was what they researched. It was always a bonus when Amiti found situations where they could have fulfilling professional lives, but the Project was truly the best setup Oberon had ever had.
Vlad and Olga had both held degrees from top-rated universities. Vlad was the grandson of Nicolai Orlov, a millionaire geneticist descended from Russian immigrants. Nicolai Orlov had returned to Russia to fund and establish the Project’s research station on Lake Baikal. He’d done an amazing job of setting up the Project, hiding it deep within the Siberian forest and giving it a name so complicated yet unremarkable that no one could remember it and it had become known simply as the Project.
Ostensibly engaged in DNA research on human longevity, the Projects’ researchers actually studied immortal species. Initially, the Projects’ researchers had studied children with enhanced psychic and other paranormal abilities, obtaining research subjects from a nearby school for “gifted” children. By the time Oberon and Desiree had become Vlad and Olga, those children, called Shadows, had grown up and were working for the Project, abducting young immortals as research subjects. The Project had grown to include thirteen research stations tucked into isolated, ordinary-looking buildings throughout the world, each with a modest single-story decoy lab above ground and vast, secure underground facilities.
“Vlad, what are you doing up so early? Come inside; you’ll freeze to death. I’m making pancakes!” Desiree’s voice filtered into Oberon’s musings from where she stood on the doorstep of her modest cottage.
He turned to look at her, a petite blonde with eyes hidden by unflattering tinted glasses. Desiree in
Olga’s form would have been considered attractive, but nothing special. Not that Vlad was beefcake calendar material, either. But it was better this way, a relief to look ordinary among the humans.
Oberon smiled at her and gestured toward the horizon. “Look how sensational the sunrise is!”
He was blessed to have his sister. With her at his side, he never felt lonely. Eternal loneliness was hard on immortals—but other immortals had their prides, tribes, and packs to fend off the loneliness. Only Amiti were doomed to live scattered around the world, being hunted and hiding like mice from cats, afraid of being discovered.
Oberon was soon going to put an end to that situation.
The death of the Amiti Queen, Istara, and the ascendancy of a new one, Marcus’s daughter Arianna, had made a millennia-long dream of the Keepers of the Key possible. Finally they would be able to come together and turn the Key to wipe the damn vampires from the surface of the earth once and for all. The war would end, and Amiti would be free from the vampires’ persecution—free to live in peace instead of constant terror.
Right now, the main obstacle in their way was the half-blood vampire princess. But Oberon had his radar engaged, and as soon as she registered so much as a blip on it, he’d find her and kill her. Problem solved.
Meanwhile, things were good. He was so grateful for this setup and the chance to be with his sister. Desiree was always so down to earth. Oberon could think about how to free the Amiti because he could count on Desiree to think about how to feed him breakfast.
Yes, Oberon was really blessed.
* * *
Desiree was at the counter refilling their coffee mugs when it happened. He made a sound so small she wouldn’t have been able to identify it—a hitch in his breath, maybe—and whatever it was made her wheel around, coffee sloshing in the mugs.
Oberon was completely still, frozen with his fork halfway to his mouth. It only lasted a second, and then his head cocked abruptly at her like a bird’s.
“It’s Simone. I found her,” he whispered.
