Night's Reckoning

by Elizabeth Hunter

  What was in your mind, Johari?

  Cheng’s brow furrowed. “None of this makes any sense. She is Saba’s daughter. Saba and Arosh are consorts. Why would Saba—?”

  “What does it benefit Saba if Arosh and Zhang are allies?” She wiped an errant tear from her nose. “What does she care if one human gets in the way?” Two humans. Johari had killed Meili also. “For that matter, Johari may not be loyal to Saba. She may be working for someone else entirely. She abandoned her element, Cheng. She gave up her amnis to live a few more years. She. Has. No. Loyalty.”

  Cheng appeared to be surprised by her outburst.

  “I need you to send men to find her,” Tenzin continued. “She’s an earth vampire, not wind. Not water anymore. She won’t be able to get far without help.”

  “Saba has connections in Asia.”

  “Not as many as you do.” She lifted her eyes. “Send a message to Sina in New Zealand. Tell her I am calling in a favor and offering one in return if she finds her for me.”

  “Just finding her?”

  “Find and hold only.”

  Cheng nodded. “You’re going to Penglai.”

  “At first dusk before he wakes.”

  Cheng took a deep breath. “Are you sure you want to be there?”

  “I have to be.”

  “Cricket—”

  “Wǒ péngyǒu.” Tenzin held up a hand. “No matter what happens, I need to be there. He deserves that.”

  “I understand. Call me if you need me.” Cheng’s eyes turned calculating. “So after thousands of years, Zhang Guolao has sired a son.”

  “Don’t get that look on your face.” She reached to turn off the screen. “This has nothing to do with him.”

  “I think you’re wrong, Cricket. This has everything to do with Zhang.”

  The sun rose.

  Tenzin rested. She meditated. She read books he had left at her house. She took shelter in the stone garden house where her father usually rested during the day. Its austerity calmed her riotous mind.

  The sun reached its zenith.

  She knew her father had already sent word to Penglai. There would be celebration on the island and preparations to feed and welcome the new immortal. The elder had chosen a son. The court would celebrate such an auspicious event. She looked at the calendar and noted the position of the moon. Predictions would be made based on the hour of his turning. There would be speculation. Gossip.

  She steeled herself for the field of curious faces that would meet them.

  When she felt the sun go down, she left the stone house and gathered Ben’s clothes, stuffing them into the spare backpack he’d left in his room. She walked out to the garden to see Zhang with Ben wrapped in a white sheet to protect his sleeping body from the wind and rain.

  “I’ll be flying high and fast,” Zhang said. “Can you keep up?”

  “Haven’t I always?”

  Without another word, her father soared into the sky and out of sight.

  27

  His body hovered a foot over the bed with a single silk sheet draped over him. It was the lightest silk they could find, nearly transparent. His skin would ache. His throat would burn. He was in Tenzin’s rooms, surrounded by luxury and protected by a cadre of her father’s servants, but Tenzin would not leave him.

  The first night of immortality was traumatic whether you were waking in a dirty tent or a palace.

  She waited with fresh blood. Waited for Ben to open his eyes.

  She would not apologize.

  Tenzin saw the sheet begin to move first. His amnis was waking. It was confused. Chaotic. He drifted higher, and Tenzin gently tugged the sheet to keep him in place. His power was a tangible thing. She reached out and brushed against it, trying to bring him calm.

  Tenzin sensed it a split second before it happened.

  His back arched and he drew in a ragged breath—the first instinct of humanity—before his eyes flew open.

  Tenzin darted toward him, holding his shoulders as he opened his mouth to scream.

  “No!”

  Her heart froze, but she held him.

  His body bent in half; she knew the hunger was overwhelming. His stomach would cramp and burn until he fed it. She turned him on his side and pushed him as gently as she could down to the soft mattress. “You need to drink.”

  His eyes flew to hers and she saw them for the first time; her breath caught.

  My Benjamin.

  She swallowed the knot in her throat and forced her face to remain calm.

  His eyes, which had once been a warm, rich brown, had altered in immortality. They were a silvery-grey shade with dark flecks of gold.

  “Tenzin?” His voice cracked. “It hurts.”

  “I know,” she whispered. “You need to drink.”

  She lifted a bag of blood and held it to him. The guttural snarl he let out should have been expected, but it still surprised her.

  He grabbed her wrist to hold the bag in place as he bit, and she saw his fangs for the first time. They were long, thick, and lightly curved. She pushed back her instinctual reaction to seeing them and held steady as Ben tore into the plastic bag of blood.

  Zhang had suggested a goblet, but Tenzin knew better. Ben would need to bite. Need to sink his fangs into something that gave way to quench the insatiable thirst.

  And he would be insatiable the first night. He would drink roughly ten pints of blood through his first night and slightly less every night for the first month. Eventually, his body would regulate. His amnis wouldn’t be quite so voracious.

  But this night, he needed to feed.

  He finished one pint of blood, and she quickly reached for another. He saw it from the corner of his eye and whipped around to grab her other wrist.

  She couldn’t touch him if she tried. He gripped both her wrists with hands so strong she wondered if he could actually break her.

  He was anchoring himself, holding on to something familiar, but she took nothing for granted. She knew him—despite his new body—and she knew he was furious.

  When she’d been human, she’d been a thin woman recovering from her second pregnancy in four years. She’d been strong but spare. Lean.

  Ben was a human in prime physical condition. He fought. He trained in weapons. He’d forced himself to climb and jump in ways normal human beings couldn’t, simply so he could keep up with the predators with whom he spent his nights.

  After the second pint, his initial thirst was assuaged.

  He dropped his legs over the side of the bed, still gripping her wrists, and put his feet on the ground, flexing his body and rolling his shoulders.

  His immortal body was perfect and primed by amnis. He looked at his feet. Flexed his toes. He looked at his knees. His naked manhood, which was standing erect, like every hair on his body. Finally he looked up at her.

  Their eyes met, and she saw the rims of his eyes were red.

  “You did this,” he whispered.

  She swallowed. “Zhang sired you.”

  He shook her wrists, still gripped in his hands. “You. Did this.”

  She blinked hard. “I did this.”

  He roared in rage and shoved her away. He stood and paced. The sheet slipped from his body and she felt him flinch. “It hurts.”

  “Your senses are heightened,” she said, keeping her voice to a whisper.

  He rolled his shoulders again. “What am I feeling? In my back, there’s—”

  “Your back was injured. Your spine. The nerves are still knitting together.”

  He reached his hands up to tug his hair—a blessedly familiar gesture—but quickly dropped them. “It hurts. Everything hurts.”

  “I know.”

  He started to laugh. It was a low, bitter sound that turned into a harsh groan. “You promised. You promised. You fucking promised, Tenzin.”

  She’d promised not to turn him, and she hadn’t. But she said nothing.

  He marched over to her, his silver-and-gold eyes furious,
and backed her against the silk-paneled wall, slamming both hands against it. “You promised!”

  As soon as he shouted, he covered his ears. Then he covered his eyes. Tenzin could see the red seeping from under his fingers where his tears now mixed with blood.

  She put her hand on his shoulder, touching as gently as she could, and drew amnis around him to soothe his skin.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to make it hurt less.” She kept her voice at a whisper. “Until you can control your amnis—”

  “Kill me.”

  She froze. Felt her fangs lengthen. “No.”

  He bent down and stared her straight in the face. “You didn’t want me. But you didn’t want to let me go. So you fucking did this.”

  Tenzin shook her head, but Ben could see the guilt in her eyes.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she whispered.

  “Don’t I?” He put his hand on her cheek, and it didn’t feel cool anymore. She felt warm. How did she feel more human when she was such a monster? And why couldn’t he stop wanting her?

  Ben wanted her so much, every cell in his aching, hungry body cried out for her.

  He wasn’t an animal. He wasn’t a monster. He refused. He refused.

  But he couldn’t back away. He felt like every sense was on fire. He smelled everything. The smoke from the single candle in the room. The scent of blood on his lips. The scent of jasmine blooming out in the garden. The pine forests and the sea.

  Ben bent down and pushed his face into Tenzin’s neck, inhaling the familiar smell of cardamom and honey. He leaned his temple against her cheek, and she tilted her head to the side, giving him room to smell her skin, her hair.

  He heard a single low thump. “What was that?”

  “My heart.” She swallowed. “Ben—”

  “My heart.” He put a hand to his chest.

  Silent.

  You are not human. You aren’t human anymore. Your heart isn’t beating. Your body is fueled by blood and amnis now. He felt dizzy, but the air licked along his skin, soothing him and igniting him.

  “You did this,” he said again, “so I couldn’t leave you. So I could never be free of you.”

  She didn’t answer for a long moment. Finally she simply said, “Yes.”

  He slammed his hand against the wall again, and she flinched.

  “What gave you the right?” He bared his teeth. Why did he do that? “Tell me, what gave you that right, Tenzin?”

  Something in her eyes flared, and he recognized anger. In a split second, she rose up and bit his lip, exactly where she had before.

  This time Ben bit back.

  He reached for her and lifted her by the waist as if she weighed nothing, bringing her mouth to his and slamming their bodies together. It hurt. And it didn’t. The ache of contact was soothed by his intense hunger.

  She hooked her arm around his neck and molded her lips to his. He tasted blood on her tongue and he drank it. He bit her lower lip, and Tenzin let out a soft moan. She wrapped her legs around his waist, and he pressed his body into hers.

  His erection was nearly painful. His body lay in the curve of hers, and she wasn’t pushing him away. She wasn’t draining him. She was holding his shoulders so tightly Ben thought he might bruise. Her lips ran over his skin and her tongue licked the blood from the scrapes her nails left in his shoulders.

  His blood only seemed to stoke her hunger. Ben could smell the arousal rising from her body, and he ran a hand up her thigh, sliding his fingers under the robe she wore.

  He brushed his thumb between her thighs and it came away wet. Ben put his finger in his mouth, tasting her as she lapped at his blood. Driven by both hungers, he tore the clothing from her body and threw it across the room.

  He wanted to feel her. Wanted her bare skin and hard angles. Her nails moved to his neck and she scraped him again. Ben roared and threw his head back, only to have Tenzin bare her teeth and put her mouth to his neck.

  Ben didn’t think. He couldn’t. He only knew hunger and the means to sate it. He spread her legs and angled his neck to the side, entering her body as she pierced his throat.

  It was so fucking good he couldn’t even describe it.

  Take me.

  Take me.

  Take everything.

  He thrust her against the wall, and his body was on fire. Whatever he’d thought sex was, he’d been wrong. This was the only pleasure.

  She drank from him, and he felt his newly woken amnis enter her blood. The sensation was so disorienting he nearly stumbled. He braced himself against the wall, pinning her body as he drove into her over and over again.

  Air swirled around them, but Ben couldn’t concentrate. He heard things falling. Something ripped through the air.

  She surged and moved with him, her breath the only music he wanted. He could smell the blood in her veins and he hungered for it. He put his hand on the back of her head, gripped her thick hair, and pulled her mouth away from his neck.

  Tenzin released him, licking his blood from her lips as her cheeks flushed with color.

  You did this.

  Ben couldn’t stop moving. He didn’t think about rhythm. He didn’t think about bringing her pleasure. His mind had distilled to emotions. Desire. Anger. Hunger.

  The room crashed around them, the air whipped into a frenzy.

  His fangs fell, and his throat burned.

  She lifted a hand to his mouth, stroked them, and it was as if she’d run a finger along the length of his cock. He bit down on her finger and tasted blood.

  A satisfied moan left her throat, and Ben bit harder.

  “Yes.” She put her hand on the back of his head and caressed his neck, her body rocking as he drove back and forth. Her hair clung to the red silk walls. Her eyes were dilated, her mouth was open, and her breath came in sharp, panting pulses.

  Something cracked and glass broke. A loud banging noise came again and again.

  She leaned forward, taking his mouth with hers. She didn’t bite him this time; she moved her lips with aching, thorough languor, and the sigh she breathed into him nearly made him come. The air crept up his body, licking in soft whispers like feathers against his skin.

  No.

  It was too soft. Too gentle. His hand went to her nape and he pushed her hair to the side, baring her pale neck to his fangs. Her breath caught.

  Ben froze.

  The air around them whirled and kissed them, teasing his skin and warming it. It was as if a thousand tongues licked up his body. Ben was poised on the edge of climax, Tenzin’s vein under his lips.

  She whispered, “Do it.”

  He bit, and she exploded around him. Her amnis blew his hair back from his face and her body convulsed as Ben drank her in.

  Tenzin’s blood was the perfect wine. It was heat and life and tears and the salty sea. It was blood, the essence of her. Her life in his. He felt her body shaking as he climaxed, but Ben couldn’t understand where or why or how he knew, he knew, he knew she wanted him and hated him and feared him and needed him. She wanted more and she would take everything. Her blood was his and his was hers.

  You did this.

  You did this.

  You did this.

  He was crying inside, but it was her voice in his mind. Her anger in his heart. Her blood on his tongue.

  I did this.

  They came together, blood binding them as the wind caressed their bare skin, and Ben realized he wasn’t even touching the ground.

  Ben licked her blood from his lips and pushed away from the ceiling, floating to the ground with only a faint wobble. Tenzin watched him as he walked to the table and reached for another bag of blood. He bit into it as he’d bitten into her.

  Tenzin watched silently, unable to speak.

  He had destroyed her, and he didn’t even realize what he’d done.

  She felt shattered. It was not unlike the moment her blood mate, Stephen, had died. She and Stephen had exchanged b
lood, but he had never taken it from her vein. Tenzin hadn’t let anyone drink from her vein in thousands of years.

  You don’t know him anymore.

  He made no move to cover himself. Why would he? He was a perfect specimen of masculine beauty. His body was lean and perfectly formed. His legs were long and his body well proportioned. He had an innate grace and athleticism he had honed over fifteen years of careful study and practice.

  He hated her.

  Ben caught his reflection in the mirror and stared. He was seeing his eyes for the first time. Seeing the reflection of the creature she had made him. She hadn’t forced her blood into his body to make him immortal, but she had taken him to her father, demanded his blood, and issued the direst of threats to make it happen.

  She could have taken him to the human healers. He would have lived. He might have walked with enough human science. He could have had a full mortal life.

  She hadn’t done that.

  Ben bit into another bag of blood and drank as Tenzin floated to the ground and retrieved the robe she’d been wearing. She’d worn deep plum, but he wouldn’t have noticed. She wrapped the robe around herself and waited silently.

  He tossed the empty bag to the side and swallowed, wiping all traces of it from his lips. “My eyes?”

  “Will stay mostly as they are now.”

  “Did your eyes change?”

  “I assume so.”

  “You assume a lot,” he said quietly.

  “I know.”

  Ben reached for the silk sheet and gingerly wrapped it around his waist. “We’re in Penglai?”

  “Yes.”

  “Am I in your father’s quarters or in yours?”

  “Mine.”

  “I’d like to move to Zhang’s tonight.” He walked to the bathroom and paused at the door. “Please leave.”

  28

  Ben held his breath under the bathwater until he realized he didn’t have to breathe. He’d been subconsciously waiting for the burning in his lungs, but it never came. He sat up and wiped the water from his face.

  The pressure from his own hands hurt.

  His body—everything about this strange shell—felt wrong.