In the Blood

by Abigail Barnette

  “All of what? What’s going on?” The elevator door slid open and Maya stood aside so that Cassie could enter first.

  Her first instinct was to snap, “Shouldn’t you know that already?” but Cassie controlled herself. “I just have some questions, is all.”

  “Questions that can only be answered by past life regression therapy?” Maya hit the button for the eighth floor. “You’ve come to the right place.”

  They reached Maya’s floor and finally the door to her apartment. The place was small, but impeccably decorated and welcoming. Maya took her coat. “Have a seat on the couch.”

  “Honestly, I don’t know what I’m doing here,” Cassie began, her fear taking her over once more. “I think I’ve officially lost my mind.”

  “I hear that a lot.” Maya seated herself in a chair beside the couch and settled in as though she spent many hours in that pose.

  “Maybe I’m just wasting my time.” Cassie waited for the woman to agree with her, or disagree, or say something that would make her decision for her.

  “You owe it to him to find out.” Maya’s words stopped Cassie’s desire to flee in its tracks. Calmly, she continued. “I don’t know the entire situation, but I feel that you are very strongly conflicted. Wouldn’t it be better to have a clear picture of things before you closed the door on him forever?”

  Cassie’s hands shook. “I guess I didn’t really buy that you were…psychic.”

  “It doesn’t take a psychic to recognize a woman who’s having a hard time deciding what to do about a guy.” Maya snorted. “I see one in the mirror almost every day. You came here because you thought this might actually help you. I think you owe it to both of you to see if it does.”

  She made a lot of sense, and Cassie couldn’t argue with her reasoning. “What do I do?”

  “Well, you close your eyes, and I put you into a light hypnotic state.” Maya gestured to the sofa. “You might want to lie down, unless you feel you’re going to fall asleep.”

  There was no way Cassie would fall asleep. Not when she was as keyed up as she was. Without giving doubt any more time, Cassie arranged herself on the couch and willed her body to relax according to Maya’s softly spoken instructions. The woman was truly talented. She painted a picture with words, of a room in Cassie’s mind. “In this room, there is a door…”

  Closing her eyes, she let Maya’s calm, sure voice weave a spell around her mind. Weave a spell? She’d started taking this stuff way too seriously. She’d met one vampire, and now she was believing all sorts of stuff she would have laughed at last week. Part of her really wanted to stand and run out again, but some indefinable urge kept her rooted to her couch.

  “Continue taking slow, deep breaths,” Maya instructed. “As you walk through the door, concentrate on your breathing. I’m going to begin to count backwards from ten. Let yourself go, deeper and deeper, as I count. Ten…”

  This isn’t going to work.

  “Nine…”

  You’re crazy, Cassie. You should be in your therapist’s office, not some psychic’s apartment.

  “Eight…going deeper and deeper…”

  You should have just put up with your crazy rich vampire delusions. At least you’d have a place to live.

  “Seven…six…deeper and deeper, into a state of total relaxation…”

  You might have just quit your job over some crazy thing you made up. You might be certifiable. She opened her mouth to speak, to tell Maya that, nice as she was, all of this was hocus pocus and she wasn’t going to waste any more of either of their time when a cold draft hit her.

  “Your veil! It’ll get caught in the door!” The voice that spoke wasn’t hers. It wasn’t Maya’s either. When had the woman stopped counting?

  “Don’t just stand there, watch out for your veil!” Furthermore, why could Cassie understand the words in her ears? They weren’t in any language she’d ever heard.

  Maya’s voice broke through the fog of confusion. “I want you to go now to the happiest day of this lifetime. See the people around you. Do you recognize them?”

  At the word “see”, Cassie’s vision cleared, though she hadn’t realized she’d been staring into total blackness. If she had, maybe she would have been afraid. She didn’t feel afraid. She felt excited, happy, and…perhaps just a bit afraid. She looked around her. The woman who fussed with the lace hanging past Cassie’s shoulder didn’t look like anyone she knew, but something about her was so familiar…

  “Look at what you’re wearing,” Maya’s voice urged.

  “This is a mistake,” the woman, middle-aged and wearing a shabby but clean black wool dress and a heavy gold cross on a chain around her neck, frowned at her. “You couldn’t wait until after Lent? Give it some more time?”

  “No, Mama,” she said, the words coming to her effortlessly, as though she read words from a script. She looked down at her dress. A wedding dress. It didn’t look like a wedding dress she would expect to see in the twenty-first century, but something inside of her knew what it was.

  “People will think you’re in a bad way,” the woman warned her.

  “I don’t care!” Never in her life had she raised her voice to her mother, and her own action shocked her so thoroughly that she immediately shut her mouth. It took only a moment of courage to open it again. “Viktor loves me, and I love him. We need to arrive in Prague before the spring, if he is to take the job his cousin has offered him.”

  “Let him go! He chases a fantasy, Melina! The city is no place for you,” Mama admonished, crossing herself dramatically.

  Just the thought of Viktor leaving without her brought tears to her eyes and an aching loneliness to her heart. They could not be separated. They would wilt in their despair like flowers in a drought.

  “I must go with him,” she said, steel behind her words. “Everyone waits at the church. Will you make this day a sorrowful one? This is my wedding, not a funeral.”

  The scene jumped ahead in a dizzying rush. Perhaps it was not the mental journey, but the oppressive heat that suddenly surrounded her skin and invaded her lungs with every breath. Though it was winter outside, the atmosphere in the church was stifling, with the candles and incense and the crush of bodies pressed around them. She told herself it was a mark of Viktor’s popularity that the entire village had turned out to see them married, and not because they had all come for the gossip.

  She looked at the man standing beside her. Though his hair was dark and he wore a suit much less refined than the ones he wore now, she would recognize Viktor anywhere. His posture was a bit stiffer than usual, his expression serious above the starched collar of his best shirt. Church-serious, she had called it, ever since she had noticed the somber cast to his features one Sunday during services. He’d cut his hair for the wedding; it no longer brushed his shoulders in a stick-straight curtain of chestnut brown. She had always thought him handsome, but today, on their wedding day, she felt he must be the most handsome man in the entire world.

  As if he could feel her gaze upon him, he lifted one eyebrow, almost imperceptibly, and looked at her from the corner of his eye. He winked and turned his attention back to the priest before them, and she could not contain her giggles. Let them think what they will think. I love him, and he loves me. Soon, we will be away from here forever, and free.

  The oppressive heat in the air encouraged her to give in to the sleepy sway of her knees, and it took her a moment to realize she had closed her eyes. Why did everyone gasp? Had something terrible happened? Something closed around her, hard and reassuringly stable. Viktor’s arms, supporting her as she swooned.

  “Open the doors, she needs air,” he barked, and her heart swelled at the concern he showed for her. She did not recover as quickly as she could have, too delighted in the feeling of Viktor holding her close and the tender words he whispered in her ear.

  The dizzying rush overcame her again, for a wholly different reason. The church was long gone now, the traditional and lengthy cer
emony completed. Now, she stood alone with Viktor—her husband!—her body thrumming with the excitement of discovery, her cheeks flushed. They stood in a small attic room with a sloped ceiling and a chimney that provided little warmth. A lamp banished the dark to the corners, but still she shivered. All the long hours they’d spent together, walking by the lake or talking by the fire, keeping their voices low so that her family wouldn’t overhear, those held little indication of what he would be like now that they were together, alone, on their wedding night.

  It was not that she feared him. Rather, she feared she would disappoint him. Nothing Mama had told her had adequately prepared her for what her part would be. Oh, she knew the mechanics, but not how to act, other than to “endure” as her mother had instructed. Endure, and Viktor would be happy. Endure, and she would have many children. But this did not feel like something that was to be endured, standing so close to Viktor that the crisp hair on his chest brushed her bare breasts.

  Viktor’s fingers, long and elegant, rough from the hard work he did for his family’s farm, came to rest beneath her chin. The light in his eyes had not changed when he looked at her now. She was his wife, yes, but still his ptáček, his “little bird”, and he looked at her with the same tenderness as he had the day he had asked her to marry him. Looking into his eyes, she saw he did not share her worries that something had changed between them. He kissed her, as gently and slowly as he had the very first time.

  He looped one arm under her knees and lifted her effortlessly to carry her to the bed.

  “Do not be afraid,” he pleaded in that strange language Cassie could somehow understand. His voice was beautiful and dark with desire for her, and she reached for him as he leaned back to look at her. “You are perfect.”

  “I am skinny,” she said, covering her small breasts and sunken stomach with her hands.

  “You are perfect,” he repeated, brushing her hand aside, and leaned down to take her nipple into his mouth. The room was cold, but his mouth was hot and wet, and she squeezed her thighs together, the place between them becoming hot and wet, as well. He moved to the other breast, and for the moment she did not feel they were so insignificant as she had before. She placed her hands on his shoulders, marveling at why they never seemed so broad before. She tentatively ran her fingers down his back, feeling her way along the ridges of hard muscle, free to explore him in a way she had not been just hours before. How strange, that they loved each other so completely without truly knowing each other this way.

  “You’re holding your breath,” he whispered, raising his head to look up at her, and he smiled that same, teasing smile she had seen so many times before.

  She gulped in breath, self-conscious at the sound, and he laughed before returning to place kisses on her ribs, her stomach, lower, until she stopped him. He met her pleading look with a kiss to reassure her and parted her thighs with his hand. One finger stroked her soft petals, and she cried out in shock, then bit back her voice at the fear someone would hear her.

  “No, please,” he murmured against her lips. “I want to hear you. I want to know all the sounds you make. I want to know if you like to be touched like this…” He slipped that questing finger over the hot, hard little bud she’d stroked beneath the blankets while her sisters all slept, and she sat up in surprise.

  “And like this,” he continued, rolling his fingertip over and over it, in tight circles that brought another moan to her throat.

  “Yes,” she managed with a shaking voice. “Yes, I like that.”

  He bent his head to her breast again, all the while worrying the little nub with his finger. Her body arched and tensed. She panted, her fingers clutching at the bedding, his arms, anything she could reach. His mouth moved, lower and lower, until it rested where his finger had been, and she screamed, clamping her knees to his head as her body spasmed in joy.

  Her legs fell open, and Viktor pulled himself up to lie between them. He fumbled with his trousers, cursing, then settled his weight against her. Her breath caught, he pushed forward, and her body opened around him with a stinging burst. He groaned, buried his head against her neck, then mumbled, “Forgive me.”

  She shuddered, gritting her teeth against the intrusion of his body. She took a deep breath and willed her body to relax, and it helped some, but it felt so strange. He moved inside of her, only for a moment, and then it was over, so quickly she could barely put her thoughts and feelings together. He withdrew from her body on another tide of wetness, slippery and silky between her thighs, and fell to the bed beside her.

  “I am sorry,” he rasped, swallowing hard against his rapid breaths. “I wanted to…ah, I’m a fool.”

  She leaned up on one elbow and stared down at him. “You are not a fool.”

  “I have never…” His flush was visible even in the dim lamplight. “I didn’t realize how it would feel.”

  “How did it feel?” she asked, amazed that he had been as inexperienced as she. A smile slowly widened the corners of his mouth, and she leaned down, tentatively brushing her mouth across his. Then, she laughed. “You’re mine now.”

  “As you are mine,” he agreed, reaching up to pull her lips to his once more.

  “Go forward now, to the moment of your death,” Maya’s voice intruded. Cassie startled at the realization that she was not Melina in the attic room Viktor’s parents had allowed them to move into. She was Cassandra, on the couch in a psychic’s studio apartment, and she was about to see herself die.

  Panic clawed at her, and those metaphorical claws turned into real ones, gripping her skin, clutching at her hair. She tried to brush them away, but they were so real, so painful.

  “Viktor!” she screamed for him, saw him, fallen under the hands of those creatures, and thought, This is my fault.

  If she hadn’t been so angry, if she hadn’t stormed out of the café…if she hadn’t insisted they leave the flat and venture into the forbidding winter night…if they had never come to Prague at all, but stayed in the safety of their little village…

  He stretched out his hand, seeking her touch even as another of the creatures landed on his back and tore long gouges across his coat. The snow beneath Viktor’s body turned pink, then scarlet.

  She could not reach his hand. She wanted to. She prayed to, but no strength came to her. Her vision darkened. Oh God! Not like this! There was so much they had not done. She cried out for him with the last of her ability, but it made no difference, and the darkness sealed her in, though she could still hear his screams.

  Covering her ears, Cassie abruptly sat up. The screaming was long gone, she knew the moment she saw Maya’s surprised face and the interior of the small apartment, but she didn’t trust herself enough to take her hands away. He’d been in so much pain. How had he survived? Not just the attack, but the years, the decades that had followed.

  They had loved each other. She had loved him. Their long separation pierced her heart now, a curious echo of a loneliness she’d always felt but never questioned.

  “May I get you some water?” Maya asked, reaching a solicitous hand to Cassie’s knee.

  Feeling like a fool, Cassie lowered her hands. She swiped at her eyes and scrambled for her purse. “I have to go. You have my credit card information, right? From over the phone?”

  “Please don’t leave. You’re very upset. There has to be someone I can call for you.” Maya reached for her phone.

  Cassie shook her head. “I just have to get out of here.”

  “Wait, please,” Maya called behind her, but Cassie didn’t stop to explain. She wouldn’t have been able to. No words would have adequately described her experience. She pushed her lungs to keep up with her as she burst from the door and onto the street. She’d forgotten her coat. There wasn’t any time or a good enough reason to go back for it. She had to find Viktor.

  That alone shook her to the very core of her being. The old Cassie would have turned back, used any excuse to keep from confronting the possibility before her. Th
at wasn’t an option anymore, not after what she had seen. When Viktor had looked at Melina, it had been with the same tenderness as Cassie had seen in his face as he’d held her. He loved her then. He could love her now. Maybe he already did.

  As she ran, she ignored the feeling she was being watched, and wrote off the shapes in the corners of her vision as figments of her imagination.

  Chapter Nine

  “When did they say they would call?” Viktor tilted his head to try to catch a glimpse of the rooftops as they passed, but the windows of the car limited his vision.

  “When they had more information on the movement patterns of the Minions.” Anthony swerved, deftly avoiding a car parallel parking on the street. “I shouldn’t be doing this for you, you know that, right?”

  “I know.” Viktor knew all too well that Anthony should be hunting and destroying Minions with the other Conclave members who had descended upon New York. The highest concentration of Minions in an urban area in almost a hundred years was considered a full-blown emergency by Conclave standards. Though Viktor didn’t care for the Conclave on most days, he didn’t mind them wiping the scum from the city. He shrank from the sunlight that pierced the clouds and grazed his skin. “You should have warned me. At the first sign that things were getting out of hand, you should have let me know. I could have helped you.”

  “Helped me how?” Anthony blared the horn and zoomed through a red light. “Every time you kill, you get worse. Your days are numbered, buddy. Look in a mirror.”

  Viktor didn’t need the reminder. “How far are we?”

  “About five minutes.” Anthony steered the car down a narrow alley. “No matter what we find, you need to stay in control. Don’t make yourself a part of the problem.”

  “Just make sure Cassandra is safe.” If there was a fight, Viktor wouldn’t walk away and leave her vulnerable. He wouldn’t be able to. Even if he lost the battle for his humanity in the process, he would not abandon Cassandra to the same fate Melina had suffered.

  When they pulled up in front of the building, something seemed…odd. Viktor had expected to see signs of Minions everywhere, but there were none.