Blood Winter

by S. J. Coles

  I reached out a hand. It shook slightly. He didn’t move, smile or frown. He didn’t react at all. I touched him. I ran my thumb down his face, over his lips. His skin, warmed by the fire, was softer than I’d thought. There was a slight rasp along his jaw from stubble so fine it couldn’t be seen. He watched me as I traced my fingertips down the smooth curve of his neck to brush over his exposed collar bone.

  “You don’t want this.”

  He didn’t speak loudly, but the words filled and overlapped inside me. The richness of his voice that I’d never fully noticed before—heavy with something ageless and alien—swelled and swept through me like an ocean tide. It made me shudder with a potent mix of fear and lust. I shifted closer, my hand still on his neck. He didn’t move but something slammed down, closing off his eyes.

  “This is the Blood, Alec. It’s not real.”

  I leaned over him. He could have pushed me away but didn’t. I hesitated, my mouth an inch from his. The dream tried to return, the smell and taste of clotting blood heavy in the back of my throat. It battled at the wall of my thumping desire but couldn’t break through.

  I leaned in and captured his mouth. He tasted like campfires and pinot noir, like the smell of heather in the foothills when warmed by the early autumn sun, like the whiskies from the islands, heavy with peat and history. He wasn’t responsive, but he didn’t resist. He let me taste and explore. He allowed his head to be tilted back and opened his mouth so I could deepen the contact. The feel, taste and smell of him blazed through my skin and bones. The sharpness of his teeth was like the bite of winter wind through a late-summer day. I pressed myself against the couch, desperate for friction, feeling my body pulse and tremble on the edge of release.

  He made a low noise, like someone letting something go, then he was easing me onto the faded cushions. He ran his hands down my chest and I gasped. He pressed his face into my hair and breathed in my smell. I sensed him holding back the strength in his hands as he trailed his lips down my face. He opened his mouth at the joint of my neck and shoulder. A hot tongue flicked over my sensitive skin. Something sharp grazed against my flesh and a cold spike of fear thrust through me, but he just breathed me in, tasted me with his tongue then continued down. Heat swamped the cold like an icicle held to a flame.

  He pulled back my underwear and took me into his mouth, right to the hilt. I gasped. His mouth was hot, hotter than a human’s. My breath caught and my chest felt like it was about to burst. I dug my hands into the coarse fabric of the sofa. Everything around me—the heat from the fire, the smell from the wine, the scent of his skin and hair, the feel of his mouth on me, his strong hands on my thighs—poured a sensory deluge down on me so strong I thought I might drown.

  In that instant I knew why people drank Blood. Killed for it. Died for it.

  He only had to move slightly to bring me crashing into an orgasm like a wooden raft plunging over a waterfall. Light and fire danced over my skin. My life and soul poured through my limbs, out of my cock and into him. It would have knocked me to the ground had I not been sitting.

  Even if it killed me—and for a moment it felt like it would—it would have been worth it.

  Slowly, the mist cleared. The feelings ebbed. Instead of the stupefying dullness that usually descended on me after sex, I knew a feeling of warmth and completion. Invigoration. I felt I could go climb a mountain or swim a river, storm or no storm. But the drafty room caused me to shiver. I was suddenly very aware that I was naked in Glenroe’s drawing room with a stranger—and not a human stranger.

  I blinked until my focus came back. Terje was sitting on the end of the sofa watching me.

  “I…” I started, stumbling, couldn’t bring to mind any words that felt right. “Thank you?”

  “The least I could do under the circumstances.”

  I manhandled my underwear back up, blushing furiously. I would have slunk straight back to the kitchen but I didn’t trust my legs to hold me.

  “I’m sorry. Did I ruin the moment?”

  I stared into the fire, the afterglow dulling to a warm ember somewhere in the center of my core. My hands and feet began to feel cold. “Didn’t you feel anything?” I heard the words like they were from far away, in an unfamiliar, slightly high voice. It took me a moment to realize that the voice was my own.

  He let out a soft sigh. “Let’s not go down this road.”

  “Tell me.”

  He hesitated. “We’re…different.”

  “But…the way the Blood made that feel…the way this feels,” I ran my fingers up and down my arms, reigniting flickers of feeling. “Is it always like that? For you?”

  “For us?” He raised one eyebrow. “It can be. Yes. And more. Though…not the same as it is for you.”

  “How?” The word hung in the air between us. I was aware of the huskiness of my voice, the barely contained intensity. His eyes searched my face and the low fire in my gut gathered heat again.

  “We’re…slow burners,” he said.

  A shiver rippled through my skin. I made myself stand to stop visualizing what he might mean. I padded back to my room, dressed in some warm trousers and a jersey, debated for a long minute then grabbed another bottle of wine and a glass and returned to the drawing room. He sat staring into the fire. The book was in his hand again but he hadn’t opened it.

  I held out the bottle. His eyes went from me to the bottle, then he lifted his glass. I filled it then filled my own and sat by his feet.

  “I was dying, wasn’t I?” I said quietly after a long time of drinking in the heavy silence. “Hypothermia. But the Blood saved me. You saved me.”

  “You saved me too. Now we’re even.” I sipped at the wine, reveling in the new depths I could taste. “You ran.” He said it so softly that I barely heard it. The dream fogged again at the edges of my mind. I found I couldn’t look at him, especially not now, with the hot feel of his hands still on my skin.

  “I…” The words didn’t come. “How long will this last?” I murmured instead, my skin goose-pimpling against the soft fabric of my clothing.

  He shrugged a shoulder. “Not long. You were asleep for the most intense part.”

  “It gets more intense than…than that?”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  The low burn in my gut flared, my sated groin stirring yet again. I drank more wine hurriedly. “But not for you?” I managed to keep it neutral…almost.

  “Why do you ask?”

  I tried to decide if there was something in his eyes or if I just wanted there to be. “Do you even like men?”

  He tapped a fingernail on his glass. “Human men?”

  “Any…men,” I fumbled. I tried to decide if amusement was back in his eyes.

  “You’re overthinking this.”

  “I just want to know. Did you…?”

  “Did I want to?” he finished for me after a pause. His eyes were on me. His glass was resting on his knee. He looked so beautiful that I ached. I managed a nod. He dropped his eyes. “I wanted to, Alec. It was a thank you…and an apology.”

  I hated the fact that I’d wanted a different answer. I leaned my elbows on knees and glared into the fire.

  “Being horny and angry and scared all at once? It’s, well…” He smiled. Actually smiled. It wasn’t like in the dream. If anything, it made his face seem more unearthly. I wasn’t sure I liked it. “It’s human, Alec. And Blood just intensifies what’s already there.”

  “Okay,” I replied flatly.

  “I won’t be offended if you want to go back to the kitchen.”

  I tried to unpick his tone. “What if I don’t want to go back to the kitchen?”

  “That’s okay too.”

  The tide started to rise again, urging me to get closer to him, bend over him, press him into the couch and see if I could coax a reaction out of him—any reaction. I swallowed wine, ignoring the more unpleasant note of sourness that I could now sense lurking just beyond the taste of fruit and oak.

&
nbsp; “The storm is easing,” he said a short time later, his head tilted like he was listening.

  “That means you’ll be able to leave soon.”

  “It does.”

  “What will happen then?”

  “To what?”

  To me. I stared at the fire. “To the Ogdells. To Karlsson.” His eyes went a shade blacker and I had to fight the urge to move away. “You’re not going to answer?”

  “Do you really care about what happens to them?”

  “No.”

  “Then that’s all the answer you need.”

  I finished my drink. It burned in my belly. I was ravenously hungry but I still didn’t want to move. Terje opened his book again. We sat in silence. I watched the fire dance in the wind. The Blood pulsed in my veins, warming the very fibers of my being in a way even the best whiskies and wines in my dad’s collection never had. I cautiously marveled at how different this room felt when I wasn’t thinking about what it was like when Dad had been alive. How different it felt with Terje in it.

  * * * *

  I woke to the ashy smell of the dead fire and a crick in my neck. The blankets from my bed had been thrown over me, but with the fire gone, it was still very cold. I blinked into the dull light of early morning. I was alone in the shadowy drawing room. It was quiet. The wind had finally dropped.

  My eyes were grainy. My mouth tasted sour. My head pounded like I’d spent the night on hard liquor.

  The evening came back in a rush. The memory of Terje’s hands, the taste of him and the feel of his mouth on me caused hot blood to rush around my body. I clenched my eyes shut. I tasted his Blood on my tongue. I pushed the covers away angrily. My limbs ached and it took an alarming amount of effort to sit up. My hands were white. I pulled myself upright with a hand on the arm of the sofa.

  A noise cut through the silence…a distant throb, getting louder and louder.

  I stood dumb, trying to make my muzzy head process what I was hearing. Then there was the groan of something heavy being dragged across stone. I hurried to the side corridor. The armoire was back against the wall and Terje had opened the broken door, spilling mounds of snow and weak sunlight into the passageway. He was bundled in more clothing from the cellar—scarves, gloves, a peaked cap and tinted ski-goggles, his skin completely hidden. The storm was over, but the thunder of the landing helicopter drowned out any attempt either of us made to speak. It touched down on the other side of the outbuildings, looking very black against the blanket of snow. The wind from the blades scattered flakes in every direction and I lifted my arm to shield my face.

  I tried to think of something to say, but I couldn’t untangle what I wanted to feel, let alone what words would make sense of it. I felt his eyes on me through the darkness of the ski-goggles. A door in the side of the helicopter opened and a figure in a balaclava and a dark visor leaned out, calling out in another language. Terje laid a hand on my arm briefly, then turned and waded out into the drifted snow. He climbed into the helicopter and the blades sped up. With a roar and a whine, it lifted into the iron-colored sky.

  I stood shivering in the doorway for much longer than was wise. Only when the trembling started to set in again, reminding me of the close call I’d had the day before, did I retreat back to the relative warmth of the kitchen.

  I found my mobile phone, the landline handset and emergency radio laid out on the table. I tried them but the batteries were dead, of course. I plugged the landline into the wall. No dial tone. I stared at the blank screen of the mobile like it was an object from another lifetime, another planet.

  I ate mechanically, tinned soup heated on the stove with some stale bread. It tasted dull, like I’d lost the ability to experience flavor. But I must have needed it, because after finishing, I felt revitalized enough to get dressed in proper snow gear and face the prospect of going outside. I fought my way around the house and down to the workshop, trying to stay focused on the state of the estate rather than the spot over the mountains where Terje’s helicopter had disappeared.

  I couldn’t see any significant damage to the buildings, besides a few new holes in the roof of the house. The snow had stopped falling but was frozen solid and still too deep to get any vehicle out of the garages, even the Jeep. The glen was deathly silent and surreally unfamiliar under its meters-deep shroud of white. It must have been the worst storm to hit the Cairngorms in years, certainly the worst I’d ever known. The house perched on its rocky outcrop above it all, looking for all the world like it didn’t recognize where it was either.

  I tried to decide if the house, too, appeared different because of the snow or because something had changed in me. When I stood still, I could feel the faint frisson under my skin, a heightened awareness of the blood pulsing in my veins. It made things stir in my gut and a thirst dry my mouth. I remembered the taste of autumn fruit and bonfires, and my fingers curled with craving.

  I shook my head. Too much had happened in too short a space of time. That was all. I suddenly loathed this frozen limbo. My fingers itched for the steering wheel of my Jeep. I visualized racing toward Auchallater Keep, confronting Jon Ogdell and making him answer—answer for Brody, answer for my nearly dying, twice. He needed to answer for me being unable to blame Terje, unable to hate Terje, unable to stop thinking about Terje.

  I brought myself off that night with just the memory of him and the thrum of his Blood rushing through my own. The darkness that crashed in in the wake of the retreating orgasm filled me with thoughts that stopped me from falling asleep until the kitchen fire had burned out.

  I found myself standing in the drawing room staring at the sofa and the table next to it, on which still stood Terje’s wineglass and the book he’d been reading. I picked it up and opened it to the title page.

  Paradise Lost.

  Of course.

  I was using a torch to try to find where in the library to return it so I wouldn’t have to look at it, when there was a flicker and a buzz and all the lights came on. I hurried to the kitchen, the strip light now showing up the increased level of dirt and clutter with startling clarity. I tried the landline, but the phone lines were still down, so I plugged in all my devices and paced impatiently whilst they charged.

  My mobile finally flickered to life. I resisted the urge to grab it and immediately run down to the spot by the workshop where it received signal, knowing the battery wouldn’t last the time it would take me to get there until it had more power, and instead fired up the transistor radio.

  I managed to get Clem, the only other person I knew with a receiver, on the second try. The signal was crackly and muffled, but he gruffly informed me that he was fine and that power had just been restored to his cottage. He confirmed the roads were still impassable.

  “Two more days, tops,” he said. “We’re due a thaw, radio news said.”

  I agreed to open the workshop again as soon as possible, dodged questions about the last few days then commenced my pacing until my mobile had enough charge to cope with the slog to the workshop.

  I reached the signal spot by the front door and my screen was flooded with notifications of emails, texts and voicemails. My heart began to thud. Most were from Meg.

  Ring me when you can.

  I’m back in Glasgow. Ring me.

  Are you alive?

  Alec this isn’t funny. Ring me.

  The phone rang only twice before Meg answered. “Alec?”

  “Hey.”

  “Thank God. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” I managed to sound normal. “I’ve only just got power back. I’m still snowed in.”

  “But you’re okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said, tightly.

  “Has something happened? You sound strange.”

  “I’m fine,” I insisted. “What about you? You’re home? How did you get away?”

  “As soon as the storm blew out, Ogdell sent one of his staff out on a snowmobile. They managed to find somewhere to rent a plow. Once a way was cleared to
the A9, he threw everyone out.”

  “But your car?”

  “One of the guys gave me a lift. That actor guy, don’t ask me his name. I don’t remember. I just wanted to get away.”

  “What happened after you left me?”

  She took a shuddering breath. “Nothing. Nothing’s happened, Alec. They didn’t find the haemophile and Brody is dead and nothing has happened. I don’t even know what they did with the body.” I clenched my jaw. “They’re going to get away with it.”

  I stared into the sky, looking heavy and white and far too low. “I’ll do it.”

  “You’ll do what?”

  “I’ll go to the police.”

  “Alec, no—”

  “This can’t be allowed to happen.”

  “No,” Meg said again, firmer this time. “I told you what they said.”

  “I don’t care,” I said bitterly. “Jon Ogdell can’t be allowed—”

  “It won’t be just you, Alec,” Meg cut in. “It’ll be all of us. Me included.”

  “We didn’t do anything,” I argued.

  “Ogdell will find a way to make it look like we did.”

  “Meg, we can’t let them get away with this.”

  “I’m working on it,” she insisted. “Please, Alec.” I chewed on the inside of my cheek. My pulse beat in my temples. “Promise me you won’t do anything yet.”

  I made an impatient noise. “Okay.”

  “Thank you. I’ll think of something. Trust me. In the meantime, we must play it cool. No messages about it, no emails, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Come through and see me when you can,” she said, sounding defeated. “We’ll talk more. And be careful. Please.”

  I stared at the mobile screen for a long time after she’d hung up. I stood staring at the workshop forecourt, the road, the entire glen lost under its coating of white, the suffocating silence filling the frigid air, until the cold drove me back to the kitchen.