Blood Curse (Pulse #8) (5 page)

          “The Blood-Womb,” Kalina sniffed. “Sounds a bit creepy.” She looked up. “This place...the repository of vampire sexuality.”

          “It's meant to have...certain powers.”

          “And what just happened with us?” Kalina remembered the wild, uncontrollable hunger that had taken over her body and mind for a few hours, that which had caused her to forget the plan, forget the mission, rush straight into a hotel room, into Jaegar's arms, into Jaegar's bed.

          “You mean...”

          “Was that...supernatural?”

          Jaegar laughed softly. “It
felt
supernatural.”

          “No, I mean – was that
us
?”

          “It was amazing, wasn't it? That passion? That desire, seeping through us, overcoming us, making us wild...”

          “No!” Kalina heard herself cry. “No!” Had she been glamour into desire – no less than Octavius had? Was love, was desire, so easily won, that magic could control her body and mind? A few seconds ago she'd been freaking out about Octavius’ glamouring – now, she realized, she had come far closer to glamouring than she might once have believed.

          “You enjoyed it, didn't you?”

          “Yes...” Kalina admitted. “But...we weren't in control.”

          “We were
out of control
.”

          “Something – some
force –
took over us!” She tried to explain how she felt – how strangely violated the knowledge made her feel. “Made us want to – even when we had something more important to worry about. Just like Nereti and Octavius!”

          “It's not like that, Kal...”

          He leaned over to touch her, but she pulled away. As much as she wanted him, wanted his hands on her, wanted his flesh so close and strong against hers, she couldn't let it happen again. Not when she wasn't sure whether it was she who was doing the wanting, or the mysterious magic of the caves.

          “I want you, Jaegar,” her voice was husky with desire. “I want you so badly. But I don't trust myself. So much power is all around us. Even without the vials, the Blood-Womb has exerted a powerful force over us. And I don't want to do something because I'm drunk with lust for you, drunk with hunger. I want to do something when I'm sure I'm in my own mind.”

          “I'm never in my own mind when I'm around you,” whispered Jaegar hoarsely.

          “I don't know who controls my mind anymore,” Kalina whispered, her voice shaking. The Blood-Womb, Nereti, her telepathic connections with those she loved – her mind was not her own. It was a whirlpool of voices, images, needs, desires – things she could not control. How was she meant to bear it – any of it? How was she meant to separate herself from the echoes of so many others who were connected to her by blood?

          “All I know is, Jaegar, I'm scared. For the first time, I'm really scared. And I don't know what to do next.”

Chapter 5

         
J
aegar furrowed his brow. Kalina could see the pain in his eyes, a pain that gave a dark cast to his entire countenance. She ached that she had hurt him so. She knew as well as he did his love for her. She knew as well as he did how much he loved her, how much he wanted her, how much he wished – hope against hope – that he might be the only one she loved. Sometimes she wished she could feel that way, too – that the impossibility of her desire might flame itself into true and certain love. But her lusts, her desires, the heat of her blood, were too powerful for her to control. Ever since she had awakened into her status as a Life's Blood Carrier, she had known deep down that she would not be satisfied with one man, one love, a single devotion. Her blood, so full of longing, was meant for something more passionate – it could not be sated by a single kiss, a single adoration. And so too it could not be sated by Jaegar, Jaegar
alone
, however much she might want him. She desired Octavius, too, and Stuart – desired them all with a desire so great she could not bear it.

          Oh, it may have been the Blood-Womb that stoked her senses for her, whetting her appetites into something she could neither control nor bear – but Kalina knew that it was something else, too – another force serving to boil her blood. Her connection with Nereti had only made the Life's Blood stronger. It had only increased her lusts, the animal hunger that made her
need
Jaegar's body, Octavius’ body, even Stuart's body, the way vampires needed blood. Her enforced virginity – a technicality, she thought bitterly, at this point – felt like a prison. How she wanted to give herself over completely to the longing that subsumed her! How she wanted to feel the purity of her desires fulfilled! She wondered if that would cure her.

          After all, she knew, Life's Blood was no longer effective in the same way once the Carrier was no longer a virgin – a
technical
virgin. Would that also cool her longings? Would the desire become manageable again? If she had sex with Jaegar – or Octavius – or Stuart – would she get it out of her system and become....

          ...what? Normal? Kalina could have scoffed at the words. She was hardly normal, animal desires or no. A Life's Blood Carrier, a vampire in so many ways, human in others – belonging to neither of those two worlds. An eternal wanderer with a price upon her head. And now...linked psychically to a woman she despised. No, Kalina decided mournfully, she would never be normal, whatever else she was. And yet...she couldn't stop thinking about what it would mean to lose her virginity. Would she be free, at last, from the distractions all around her, the desires that thundered in her head and threatened to drive her mad? Would she at last be able to look at Jaegar without becoming overwhelmed by her need to jump him, pressing plan or no pressing plan?

          Would she be able to love
someone –
one person – not many? Would she be able to stop breaking the hearts of so many handsome, kind men that deserved better than being her second- or third choice? Would her Life’s Blood finally choose someone for her?

          “You're so good to me, Jaegar,” she whispered. “I don't deserve you.”

          “You deserve everything,” Jaegar pressed her hands to his lips. “You deserve to be happy, and to be with somebody who makes you happy.”

          “You're so loyal, so good...”

          “Funny,” Jaegar laughed. “There were centuries when nobody would agree with you there. I was a bad boy, Kalina –
really
bad news. The ones I didn't kill, I still ravished. I seduced country girls, milkmaids, princesses, countesses – with my cock between their legs and my fangs deep in their necks. I was hardly the doting puppy then. But with you...it's out of control. I've met my match. My equal. And perhaps the devotion I feel now is a kind of punishment. I know what it feels like now to be one of my conquests, one of the hearts I've broken. And maybe....” his voice cracked. “Maybe one day someone will break your heart, really break it, and then you'll know too...”

          But Kalina's heart
had
been broken. The sight, the smell, the
taste
of Octavius on Nereti's body – all this had already shattered her so deeply she could not bear it. She knew, in the darkness without herself, that her heart existed only in pieces, now. She loved Octavius – how strongly she had not realized – and Octavius had broken her heart.

          “Listen to me, Kalina,” Jaegar kissed her lightly. “You have to go back.”

          “Go back where?”

          “The dream. The vision. You have a connection with Nereti. You can use it. You can use it to our advantage. If you can gain insight into where she is, what she's thinking, what she's planning, you can use it to stop what she's got up her sleeve...”

          “You want me to...relive that?” The idea of it repulsed her. To live once more in Nereti's head, to experience once more the heartbreak of watching the man she loved lick and suck upon and kiss the body of another woman – how could she bear that?

          “I know it hurts, Kal. I know how hard it must be. But it's the only way. It's the only way for us to do this. You have a connection none of the rest of us has – and you need to use it.”

          “Jaegar, I can't!” she wanted to scream. “I can't go back there...”

          “You can,” a familiar-sounding voice echoed from the doorway. “Honey, I heard everything.” Max sauntered in. “Super-strength hearing, remember?”

          Jaegar flushed scarlet.

          “Listen, I know you don't want to do this. I know it's tough. But you have to be stronger than this. There is much that is more pressing than love in this world. Like children not getting slaughtered. Like a world free from vampire domination. You don't have the luxury of deciding you can't bear this.”

          “But, Mom...”

          “Don't
but Mom
me,” Max was stern now. “You know what you have to do. And my heart breaks for you, really it does. But no daughter of mine will let her feelings get in the way of her mission. You know what you have to do. Be strong.”

          “But what if I can't?”

          “Do it anyway.”

          Max's voice was firm and harsh. But deep down, Kalina knew that she was right. She would have to suffer, have to bear her suffering, have to get through this on her own. Max had survived the world of vampires for so long by putting her own feelings aside. It was the way of the Carrier. Especially one chosen to be the Queen’s equal.

          That night, in bed, alone, Kalina began to dream of Nereti again. Images flitted before her, flickering like old silent films, images of death and destruction, of slaughter and misery, images of the horrors of the past. Kalina could see it all – the birth of Nereti's empire of destruction, the vampiric hordes that would come to swallow them all up...slaughtering their way to world domination. Kalina knew that she was remembering all that Nereti remembered – the
good old days,
as she called them -when she had slaughtered whole regions of vampires, whole cities of humans, provinces laid to waste and transformed into dust and ash…and blood. That was what she wanted now, Kalina knew. To relive those days, to regain those hours, to rebirth anew that empire of chaos which she had so adored. With Octavius as her consort, Octavius as her prince, Octavius by her side, every bit as wicked as she.

          Kalina's stomach lurched. She was sickened by the thoughts. How could she bear to watch such horrors – watch such atrocities? Children killed and drained dry before their parent's eyes, their screams choking out from the bloody gurgles in their throat. Mothers sobbing as their husbands and family were slaughtered, one by one, their blood dripping from vampire fangs. She wanted to vomit, to wake up from this nightmare and scream, scream, scream aloud. But she knew that she could not. She had to bear this – hope that in the depths of this nightmare she might find the key to Nereti's weakness. She knew that Nereti was indestructible – that she had already drank several Life's Blood Carriers to death, draining their power. She knew that Nereti had nearly drained Kal herself. The effects of Life's Blood on her were even stronger than that which Mal had, or the worst Life's Blood vampire had ever experienced.

          She had to face this.

          But what was worse, still, than the atrocity was the pleasure. As Nereti, she
felt
Octavius’ body hard against her own, she felt the pleasure Nereti felt when he buried his tongue between her legs, when he licked and nipped at and bit down upon her inner thigh, making her scream with a mix of ecstasy and pain.  She felt the strange satisfaction Nereti felt when she pressed her lips against Octavius’ gleaming manhood, felt the power that lay in making him come violently. And she felt, too, what it felt like to have Octavius thrust deep within her, the intimacy that she could never really experience, transmitted to her through the body of another. She felt herself so full, so violently full, of him; felt every inch of her body screaming with pleasure as Octavius drove himself deep within Nereti's body.

          It was this experience that was the most confusing of all. She felt disgust, anger, rage that Octavius was doing this – servicing another woman, making love to her. And yet she felt such bizarre pleasure, as if it were
she
experiencing his lips, his hands, his tongue, his cock. In Nereti's body, feeling with Nereti's own nerve endings, she could feel that which she had always longed to feel – feel the force so powerful within her.

          And she had to admit – it felt so unbelievably good.

Chapter 6

         
K
alina found that she could not stop. At first, the idea of entering Nereti's headspace, of becoming Nereti, of reliving her world, had been anathema to her – the very idea had made her sick, made her gorge rise with impossible nausea. At first, she'd wanted to run away and throw up into the desert sands at the very idea. But things were different now. Kalina found herself aching, longing, to return to the dream; she found herself anxiously wanting to go back to that world. A world where she could at last know the pleasure that she so eagerly sought, the pleasure that had for so long eluded her. She craved Octavius; she craved his flesh, she craved his body; she craved his manhood inside her. And at last, inside the body of another, she had known that incredible feeling: that feeling of fullness, of completion, of hunger sated, of thirst slaked, of desire fulfilled and yet made new again. She had felt that which for so long she had longed to feel – the hunger that had been denied her. Until now.

          She didn't admit it to Max or to Justin or to Jaegar. She didn't admit it to anybody. How could she? How could she admit that she was not only surviving, she was
enjoying
her dreams of Nereti and Nereti's life? The very thing seemed impossible. She hated Nereti; she despised her world; the very sight of Octavius, his eyes blazing, his lips pressed between Nereti's legs as she arched her back and howled with pleasure, broke her heart in two. And yet the pleasure kept her coming back – the pleasure of feeling Octavius’ hands, fingers, lips, tongue, mouth, his hard body against and around her. That pleasure kept her addicted to the world of her dreams. Even when awake, Kalina found, her body still shuddered and shivered with aftershock, with the glow of pleasure sustained even after the moment of orgasm. Even when awake, she could smell Octavius on her; she could smell that heady mix of must and perfume that marked the moment of their union. It felt good – too good. She was addicted to such a pleasure, such a feeling. All she wanted was for it to last forever.