Jake hissed as he entered him, barely pausing for Jake to adjust around him. He pushed back with his hips, encouraging him. “Just remember I don’t heal like you do,” he breathed and groaned as Nyanther thrust again.
Nyanther grabbed his hips and ground into him, using all his weight and his muscle to drive himself in. He closed his eyes, concentrating on the sensations and listening to Jake’s breathing, reading his movements, the little shifts and twitches that were the equivalent of Braille to a blind man, speaking of his building pleasure. He was enjoying this.
Nyanther grabbed his shoulder, holding him down. He rode him even harder. His movements quickened. His climax clawed its way to life, burning nerve ends and straining his tendons as he flexed and held, the pleasure coursing through him.
Then the coldness came. It filled the now-empty places inside him.
Nyanther moved away, his limbs stiff and retrieved his jeans.
Jake straightened up and thrust his legs into his trousers in silence. He fastened them, watching Nyanther.
“Did that help?” he asked quietly.
The coldness gripped him. “No,” Nyanther said. It hurt to say it.
Jake pulled him into his arms and held him. “It’s okay,” he whispered.
Nyanther closed his eyes, his wretchedness complete.
Chapter Sixteen
The next day was January 6th, a date burned in Nyanther’s memory, deep and channeled.
Riley crept around the apartment, taking care of Chloe, not disturbing Nick and Damian, who sat staring out the windows as the snow fell.
Nyanther joined them there, taking the other corner of the sofa. Memories were crowding in, demanding and vivid. He let the memories take him, let them flow through him and away. It hurt, all the same.
* * * * *
Jake came into the kitchen a little after seven p.m., loosening his tie. He was carrying a brown paper shopping bag he set carefully on the table behind Sabrina’s laptop. “Surprise.”
“The test model?”
“Have a look.”
She pulled out the felt-wrapped bundle and undid it. The device inside looked exactly like a mini tablet. It even had the logo.
“You’re kidding, right?” She studied the thing, wondering if she had been ripped off.
Jake shook his head. “I may have mentioned that having something that looked exactly like a device millions of other people had in their carry-on would be a good thing. They took it to heart. Turn it on.”
She turned it on. The same familiar logos popped up.
“Tap the weather icon on the second page,” he told her.
She did. A weather radar screen came up, showing a superimposed map of the United States. She looked at Jake expectantly.
“Pull up the settings.”
She gasped as the drop-down screen scrolled…and scrolled. All the keys were there, the exhaustive list Nick had given her. Scent, flight patterns, size, shape, calls…. “Ohmigod,” she whispered. She lowered the tracker. “What’s the range?”
“It’s an inverse relationship, depending on the key you use. If it’s something simple, like heat traces, then you can see farther, with less certainty that what you’re looking at isn’t a herd of migrating polar bears.”
“Polar bears don’t migrate,” Sabrina said absently, tapping through the settings. “Not very far, anyway.”
“The only way we’ll be able to calibrate the useful tracking distance of this thing is to use it,” Jake pointed out. He got the milk out of the fridge and drank straight from the carton. Still holding the carton, he pointed upstairs with his long forefinger. “By the way, what is going on up there? Riley shushed me when I came in. The three of them all look like statues, sitting in the dark. It felt like a funeral.”
Sabrina’s heart squeezed. “It is, in a way.” She shifted on the chair, suddenly uncomfortable. So she got to her feet and started cleaning the coffee machine and setting it up for another pot, to give her hands something to do. “Riley’s mother, Tally…it’s the anniversary of her death. All three of them were there.”
“Shit. Damn. Really?”
“She killed the last gargoyle. Lirgon, the leader. He killed her, too. Probably it was the only way she could get close enough to him to do it.” Sabrina drew in a breath and let it out. “Damian wrote it all out for Riley for her birthday, a couple of years ago. You should ask Riley if you can read it. Damian talks about how they found Nyanther in the cave in Scotland.”
Jake looked up at the ceiling. “Riley killed Lirgon already, this time around.”
“That still leaves Andurag,” Sabrina reminded him. “And Valdeg, the little mean one. He’s the one that got Carson Connors killed. He coerced one of their friends.”
“Listen to you,” Jake said, his tone admiring. “No one would know you hate all this shit.”
“I don’t hate it,” Sabrina said. The denial was automatic.
“Just everyone who’s in it?”
“Not even that.” She shook her head. “I might have, a while ago. Anyone can get used to anything, after a while.”
Jake put the carton on the counter beside him. Later, she would have to put it back in the fridge. He was hopeless at picking up after himself.
“Did things start changing around the time we met?” he asked. His very blue eyes were almost incandescent in the low light.
Sabrina drew in a breath as the memory stung for a moment. Then she nodded. “That day, actually. I found out I could no longer have children. Then I hurried to get to the restaurant to meet the company’s biggest clients for dinner.”
Jake’s mouth opened. Then his sagging jaw flexed. “Damn, Sabrina. I’m sorry.”
She switched on the coffee machine. It was next to the fridge cabinet and right next to his hip, so all she had to do was look up at him. “It’s no one’s fault except mine. I ignored the symptoms because there was stuff I wanted to get done at work.” She shrugged.
He considered her for a long moment. Then he rolled his eyes. “That’s why you came home with me.”
“No, I went home with you because you were right, I was very drunk and I had to sober up. And you were kind.”
“I mean…after,” he amended.
She picked up the milk carton, intending to put it away, except that Jake was in front of the fridge. “I didn’t go to bed with you because I was drunk or because I’d just gotten the worst news of my life,” she said calmly, squeezing the carton. “They just gave me good excuses to do what I wanted to do.”
Jake didn’t speak. His throat worked.
“I don’t get to do what I really want to do, very often,” she explained. “I keep putting it off, waiting for Someday.” She shrugged. “I put off having kids then found out it was too late. It seemed like a good reason to do something else I wanted to do, instead.”
He reached up and picked up a lock of her hair that was brushing the corner of her eye. He tucked it behind her ear. It was an incredibly gentle movement. “I thought I had you all figured out that night. I wasn’t within a million miles of close.”
Warm pleasure touched her. “Thank you.”
“Although you probably did have me all worked out, right? Rich kid cliché on speed.”
Sabrina realized she was smiling. “It’s a good daytime disguise. Very Batman-like.”
Jake grinned. Then his grin faded. “It’s also a million miles away from who I am.”
“So I’ve learned.”
He stepped out of the way and let her put the milk back in the fridge, then caught the edge of the door as she tried to close it and shut it for her, keeping his hand there, so she was between him and the door.
Her heart leapt. She didn’t dare look at him.
“If only, huh?” Jake murmured in her ear.
Her heart was frantically throwing itself against her ribcage, almost hurting with the speed it was working at. “If only,” she whispered.
His lips pressed against her neck, close by her jaw
.
Then he was gone, the heat at her back replaced by the normal air in the room. The air felt cold.
* * * * *
Nyanther stirred when he heard Sabrina and Jake talking downstairs. Between the two floors he couldn’t hear what they were saying. He did hear surprise in her voice and that roused him enough to blink in the dark and look around. Riley was not in the room.
Nick and Damian hadn’t moved. Grief radiated from them like heat from his forge.
The impulse to find someone he could hold grew powerful enough to push him onto his feet. He moved silently across the floor, unwilling to disturb the other two. He climbed down the spiral stairs to the next floor.
The bottom of the stairs faced the passage, so there was a view into the kitchen that included the fridge and a section of the apartment door next to it.
Jake was standing there. His hand was in her hair, stroking it. It might have been an innocent gesture except for the taut lines in both their bodies, the hushed stillness around them. The longing….
Nyanther squeezed his hands into fists, holding back the first murderous reaction with honed will-power. He was an old creature, driven by older instincts. He knew that fact from various painful lessons this new, modern world had dished out. If the three of them had been standing upon the Selgovae plains, the tribe would have understood if he’d killed them both.
This was not those times.
So he rode out the flash of fury, the need for violence, containing it and holding it inside himself. Think, he commanded. This is about you, not them.
Then he understood. Shock, actual physical shock, struck him in the chest like a blow and he staggered. With shaking legs, he moved over to the dining table in the far corner and leaned upon it, propping himself up, trying to breathe and wait for the shaking to subside.
All this time he had been fooling himself that Jake was nothing. A passing thing. A mere human to play with until his time here was done. How blind he had been! How utterly selfish.
How could he have allowed this to happen?
“Ny? Is everything okay?” Jake’s voice, rich with concern.
Nyanther shook his head. He wasn’t sure he could speak yet. The adrenaline that had flooded him was making him feel sick. Vampires weren’t used to the yo-yo physical reactions that emotions delivered to humans on a daily basis. On the rare occasions when the emotions were so strong they delivered physical reactions, it was that much worse to bear.
Jake gripped his arm. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
Nyanther shook his head again. His eyes were aching. Stinging. His vision blurred.
“You’re scaring the crap out of me.”
Nyanther got his hand up. He squeezed Jake’s where he was holding his arm.
“You’re shaking!”
Nyanther closed his eyes. It was easier that way. “I kept her at a safe distance, right from the start.” His voice was as uneven as his insides.
“Sabrina?” Somehow, Jake had intuited what he had meant. Or perhaps she was at the top of his mind, still.
“I knew she would be dangerous, you see.”
“What you saw…it was nothing.”
“It was everything to me. It pulled the scales from my eyes. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
“You want Sabrina? I know that,” Jake said patiently. “Everyone wants her to one degree or another.”
Nyanther stood up and faced him. Jake dropped his hand and waited. There was a shadow of fear in his eyes, behind the puzzlement. His gut knew already, then. It was just his mind resisting what he already had intuited.
“Since I woke up in the cave, I’ve spent most of my days trying to understand humans and their complicated relationships and the huge expectations they have for themselves and their lives. I saw Sabrina wanted no part of this world and that included me, so I stayed away.”
Jake looked over his shoulder, back toward the kitchen. He was checking to see if she was there, listening.
“It doesn’t matter if she does hear,” Nyanther told him. “She already knows.”
Jake flinched. “You told her?”
“She just knows. She understood far more than I thought I did. I thought I had everything under control. I didn’t. I kept her away and I should have been watching you, instead.”
Jake grew still. Very still.
“You weren’t supposed to creep in like that,” Nyanther added.
He thought Jake might laugh. Or not. He didn’t expect him to lift his hand and brush his thumb over Nyanther’s cheek. “I didn’t think you could do that,” he breathed and looked at his thumb. It was damp, the moisture a pale pink. Then he dropped his hand and looked at him. “I know you sheer away from the hard words, Ny. For once, say them. Lay it on the table. Then we both will understand and you won’t have to say it again.”
Nyanther rolled his hands into fists once more. “I love you.” His voice was strained. “I didn’t expect to. Now I know I do. And that…can’t happen.”
Jake let out an unsteady breath. “Love is so terrible?” He moved closer, reaching for him.
Nyanther stepped back, out of reach. “No.”
Jake halted. Hurt showed in his eyes. His confusion was greater. “Why not?” he demanded.
Nyanther turned away, toward the frost-starred window. It was easier that way. Easier to speak the hard words he was expecting. Jake was right. This had to be said. He might still spare Jake. Sabrina, at least, was safe from it all. He had preserved that much at least. He made himself say it. “There is no future for us.”
Jake didn’t answer at once. His silence stretched and Nyanther wanted to turn to look at him, to see what he was thinking. He didn’t have the courage to and railed at his weakness.
“You are immortal,” Jake said slowly. His voice was strained. “So why is there no future, if you…if you love me?”
Nyanther sighed. “Vampires are not immortal. There are ways we can die, most of them messy and difficult…we don’t die easily and that is why we linger on, century after century. We can die, though.”
Jake made a harsh sound. It might have been a sigh. “You have the one crystal ball in the world that actually works, Ny?” There was impatience in his voice. “You saw your end in it?”
“Yes,” Nyanther breathed.
Silence again.
Nyanther had to look. He made himself turn.
Jake was standing with his hands by his sides and his fists were tight, too. There was a sheen in his eyes that Nyanther had put there. The sight of it made his gut clench. He hurried to try to ease Jake’s pain. To explain. “This is not my time, anymore. By rights, I should have died when the gargoyle bit me, two thousand years ago. I don’t know why I didn’t. Instead, I found myself in a world and a time as alien and unfriendly as you find the surface of Venus.”
“So?” Jake demanded. “You adapted. You survived. Thirty years and you’re already one of the richest men on the planet. My uncle thinks you’re a hero and he has no idea you’re not human.”
“I’ve…got by,” Nyanther admitted. “I’ve had no choice but to adjust and live in the world I’ve found myself in. There’s one choice I can make and I did make it. Two years ago, when Nick told me the gargoyles had risen again and now they could be destroyed for all time, it came to me as clear as a text message. When the gargoyles are gone, there will no longer be any reason for me to linger, either.”
Jake’s chest was rising and falling quickly. His heart was loud, moving far too fast. “Suicide. The cowards’ way.” The derision in his voice was rich.
“I’m already dead,” Nyanther replied. “I died before the Romans were kicked out of Rome. This body you see is a coda, an aberration that has no place in this world.”
Jake swallowed. “Despite how you feel about me, you still intend to do this?”
“Where would I go, if I did not? What would I do?”
“You’re asking what the meaning of life is,” Jake shot back. “No one knows that.
We all muddle through, trying to figure out what to make of our time. Welcome to the club.”
Nyanther shook his head. “I’ve had my time.”
Jake threw out his hand. “And now you’re the one lucky bastard in existence who gets a second chance! Jesus wept, Nyanther! Every middle-aged human with creaking joints and graying hair would trade places with you in a heartbeat.”
“They’re welcome to it.”
Jake hissed, venting his fury. He walked away, back to the kitchen.
Nyanther didn’t follow him. Anger was good. Rage would keep the barrier up. If Jake could learn to hate him, that would be even better.
He picked up his coat from the back of the chair and headed upstairs. He would go and sit out on the stoop again and breathe the night air. At this time of year, with fresh snow making it crisp and sharp, it reminded him just a little of the highlands. Except for the smog. And car exhaust. Traffic noises. Screams from far away. Horns. Sirens.
He sighed. It wasn’t home. It never would be. The stoop was as far away from Jake and from her as he could get for now. He sat on the cold, dark step and put his head in his hands.
Was he wrong? Was he just being a coward?
Or were they like everyone else, unable to understand what it was like to wake to this new world with its noise and complicated layers and niches?
He sat on the stoop as lost and alone as he had been since 1983.
Chapter Seventeen
The table in the kitchen was a tiny thing, squeezed in between the passage entrance and the tall cupboard that served as a pantry. It barely had room for Sabrina’s laptop, but she used the table there more than she used the formal dining table in the living room, because it was right where she prepared her solo snacks, when she cooked at all.
Since Jake had become an almost permanent fixture in the apartment, a second fold-up chair had appeared. It started off being kept folded flat and leaning up against the wall, out of the way. Gradually, Jake’s inability to tidy up had made the chair transition from a fold-away convenience, to a seat that remained perpetually tucked under the front of the table. Everyone tripped over the back feet. No one folded it and put it away, though, not even her.
Sabrina's Clan Page 17
