Blood Destiny (39 page)

Jocelyn wondered if this wasn't how his ancestors, the Celestial Beings, had lived: embracing the sights, sounds, and textures of nature in everything they did.

The curtains were still drawn back from the windows, and the night sky was radiant with stars, the luminescent moon peaceful as if it were smiling down upon them. The atmosphere could not have been more perfect. The man could not have been more handsome. The night could not have seemed more surreal.

Yet, somehow she knew....

What she was about to embark upon would be in grave contrast to their peaceful surroundings. An emergence into light? Yes. But only after a slow and painful journey through darkness.

Drawing in a deep breath, Jocelyn approached the bed and sat on the edge, looking up into Nathaniel's spectacular eyes.

He held out his hand as an offering and she took it.

"Come here, my love," he whispered, his voice steady and reassuring.

Jocelyn nodded. Was one ever truly ready for something of this magnitude?

Nathaniel propped up several large down pillows against the headboard—the blue satin slips crisply laundered and brusquely fluffed behind him. As he leaned back against the comfortable piling, he opened his arms, smiled a heart-stopping smile, and gestured for her to join him.

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Hesitantly, Jocelyn crawled onto the bed; she stopped to bury herself in the warmth of his arms, burrowing in for a long, languorous hug before she turned around. He didn't say a word. He simply held her as long and as close as she needed...until she finally pulled away, ready to take the next step.

As she leaned back against him, sinking deep into the comfort of his chest, she could hear his heart beating steadily behind her. His legs were bent and slightly spread apart to encompass the full width of her body, his powerful arms gathered tightly around her.

She lay her head on his shoulder, just below the crook of his neck, and took several deep breaths while he gently massaged her arms, kissing her lightly from her ear to her throat...from her throat to her shoulder...as he waited for her to settle in.

"Are you ready, my angel?" he asked. His voice was raspy, thick with love.

Jocelyn nodded. "Yes," she whispered. "I think so."

Nathaniel gathered her even closer then and whispered something beautiful in her ears in the ancient language of his people. The words sounded strange and old worldly, thick with an accent from a time gone by. Yet they seemed to flow off of his tongue with a modern grace, like water trickling over a river rock: polished by the hands of time, sculpted through centuries of use.

"You are my blood destiny," he repeated, interpreting the words in English, "the other half of my soul. You are the love I have waited a lifetime to find. The gift I will spend a lifetime 369

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trying to become worthy of. Your heart was revealed to me beneath the blood moon, your spirit chosen by the goddess Cassiopeia to be honored, cherished, and favored by me—

above and beyond all others—for all eternity. Do you accept this as your true destiny?"

Jocelyn smiled. "Yes, I do...if you do...."

He chuckled softly. "Jocelyn Levi, do you come to me now of your own free will?"

Jocelyn nodded. "Yes, Nathaniel; I do."

"Will you relinquish your heart, your life, and your body into my care? To be transformed, remade, and reborn? This night, unto forever, to be made immortal?"

Jocelyn weighed his question carefully: She couldn't find the words to answer. Turning to face him, she kissed him gently on the mouth and nodded her head. "Will you always take care of me like you do now?"

Nathaniel's smile lit up his eyes, a beauty to rival the heavens. "Oh yes, iubito mea, always."

She turned back around. "I will."

He nuzzled her cheek, slowly exhaled, and then resituated her in his arms. "I want you to relax into me, baby." He gently stroked her hair, then tenderly pulled it away from her neck, tucking it behind her. "I need you to try and let go; do not fight me, if you can help it."

Jocelyn nodded as he gently stroked her neck, the pads of his fingers brushing over her artery again and again in a hypnotic rhythm.

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And then he gently tipped her head to the side, urging her ear down to her shoulder. His arms tightened in a vise-like grip, the muscles of his legs tensing around her.

"Breathe for me, angel," he whispered, and then he lowered his mouth to her pulse.

He licked the artery with a soft swirl of his tongue, gently scraping his teeth back and forth against her skin. A soft purr escaped his lips. When she was finally, completely, relaxed—

like a child who had fallen under a spell—she felt a tiny pin-prick, two sharp stings, at the surface of her skin.

And then his teeth sank deep.

The piercing pain jolted her out of her trance, and her body went stiff, her muscles clenching as she waited for the intense sensation of his entry to end.

It felt as if it would go on forever....

The simple act of Nathaniel inserting two razor-sharp fangs into her flesh, piercing through muscle, spearing past tendons, sinking deeper and deeper...until she caught at his arms and tried to pull away.

He didn't let up. He didn't relent. He didn't retreat.

He simply continued to apply steady pressure until his incisors were deeply nestled into her throat, leaving her utterly stunned by the severity of the pain.

Jocelyn struggled for breath, unable to speak. She felt his hands massaging her arms, his thumbs rubbing in soft, caressing circles, a gentle purr rumbling from his throat. And she tried to relax into it, but that was a bit like asking someone to lie down on a razor blade without resistance. It went against her every instinct.

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"Shhh," he managed to whisper, even with his teeth lodged deeply in her throat.

And then the real pain began....

Poison. Venom. A burning sensation began to swell as toxic fluid poured into her veins...slowly seeping through the artery with tremendous pressure as it invaded her blood stream.

Jocelyn cried out in misery: What had she expected? A mosquito bite? A bee sting? A flu shot?

The amount of toxin being injected into her vein was like that of a thousand wasps stinging at once, a rattlesnake that wouldn't let go...a two-hundred-twenty-pound scorpion, shooting enough fatal venom into her blood to reshape her entire physiology.

What had he said? Transformed, remade, reborn. He was killing her. He was slowly...insufferably...destroying what she was so that he could remake her as something else.

Panic began to set in.

It was one thing to hold one's breath through a rabies vaccination—or even the insertion of an IV—something one expected to hurt but knew would end soon. It was quite another to try to endure such a thing indefinitely...the initial pain of injection going on and on until every muscle, organ, and tissue in her body was consumed by the searing toxin.

She tried desperately to hold her breath. She shut her eyes. She clutched at his arms. She dug her nails into his flesh, but nothing stopped the torture. It was simply, utterly—

and absolutely—unbearable.

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There was nothing Nathaniel could have said or done to prepare Jocelyn for the agony she was enduring: Her blood vessels felt as if they were about to burst—the very veins themselves resisting—as if her body were not only rejecting, but downright refusing the foreign inoculation.

And there was nothing left in her constitution that was strong enough to endure such an assault a moment longer.

Jocelyn felt like a failure.

A desperate, suffering, helpless failure. She had wanted this so badly. She had wanted Nathaniel...so very badly. And the stakes were so extremely high, but—

"No more."

Her voice was an anguished whimper. And then she cried out as a fresh burst of pain racked her body. The blistering venom was really starting to spread out now, flowing downward toward the trunk of her body, approaching her chest and her heart. And it burned like acid.

Tears welled up in her eyes as she began to struggle with much more ferocity. She tried to sit up, to wrench her body free of Nathaniel's iron grip. Her legs kicked and her arms flailed, but he only tightened his hold, his powerful thighs like cords of iron clamping down over hers.

"No, Nathaniel!" she screamed, pleading for mercy. "Stop!

You have to stop. I can't do this."

He didn't budge. He didn't panic or even react. He simply continued to inject the painful venom into her veins.

And then the vampire's toxin reached her heart.

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A brutal cry of terror ripped from her throat as her body began to shake violently, convulsing in waves of agony until she finally began to seize.

Jocelyn fought wildly.

She clutched at his arms. She scratched and pulled at his hard muscles in a frenzied attempt to break free. She thrashed her head from side to side, trying to dislodge his fangs. She even clawed at his eyes and kicked back at his groin—anything, everything—just to break free, to stop the unbearable pain.

When nothing moved him—when no act of desperation brought her freedom—she at last began to beg and cajole:

"Nathaniel, you have to stop. Oh God, please...I know...I know what it means for you, and I'm sorry...I'm so sorry."

Her tears fell like rain. "But if you love me...if you care at all...you will stop."

The seizing continued, and the pain grew worse...as if that were even possible. "Please," she pleaded, her voice hoarse with desperation. "Just let me die. I can die with you; we can still be together. Please, Nathaniel...don't do this."

She struggled against him with all of her might then, pouring every ounce of energy she had into freeing herself.

"Stop it!" she demanded. "Do you hear me? I want you to stop!"

When all of her energy had been spent, she sobbed. "How can you do this to me? Why, Nathaniel? Oh, God, please...please...make it stop."

* * * *

Blood Destiny

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Nathaniel wanted to speak to Jocelyn so badly. He wanted to soothe her, to tell her she was halfway there, to convince her to hold on just a little while longer, but her anguish was so great...her pain so intolerable...he could hardly bear it. He couldn't console her telepathically yet, because his full concentration was required to initiate the conversion.

He knew she felt betrayed, abandoned, and deceived—and it was breaking his heart. But he also knew what stopping would mean...for both of them: not only his death, but hers.

Her human body could not survive such a lethal injection of vampire venom, and without completing the transfusion, her vampire body would not be strong enough to accept the conversion.

He wanted so desperately to end her pain.

He would have gladly accepted his own death, allowed her to live on without him just to stop her agony, but he couldn't.

It just wasn't possible. This was an all or nothing proposition that would take life from—or give life to—both of them.

Nathaniel couldn't speak. He couldn't console. He couldn't do anything but restrain the beautiful woman in his arms as she suffered so terribly at his hands. And he didn't dare risk withdrawing his fangs, not even for a moment, because he knew he could never pierce her again.

Nathaniel shut his mind off to the sound of her cries, afraid that she might actually convince him to allow them both to enter the Valley of Spirit and Light together.

He had heard tales of conversion....

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physically, how long it might take, the proper way to administer the venom, how to restrain the recipient....

But nothing in all his long centuries of living had prepared him for what he was witnessing now.

The woman he loved, the destiny he had promised to honor, cherish, and favor above all others, was in indescribably agony: because of him.

Tears began to well up in his eyes and he struggled to hold them back. Jocelyn was pleading with him now, like a helpless child, begging him for mercy.

She actually used the word mercy.

Nathaniel gently merged with her mind, trying to make sense of what she was going through—to share it, even if he couldn't end it. And what he found was a red cauldron of pain, panic, and confusion, a fear so great it had taken the place of reason. Jocelyn was experiencing nothing less than...torture...and it had robbed her of her will to live.

Nathaniel could feel the sensation of his own venom pumping into her body as it violently attacked her internal organs, destroying them from the inside out. The assault was merciless on her blood, and the pain was like nothing he had ever witnessed before. No one—male or female, human or vampire—should ever be asked to endure such torment.

Nathaniel held her closer. His hands massaged her arms where he gripped her, even though he knew it was a worthless comfort. As tears streamed down his face, he felt as if his heart might shatter into a million pieces. In all of his centuries of living, he had never felt more helpless.

And so he prayed.

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As he beseeched the grace of the Celestial Deities, for the first time in decades, Nathaniel pleaded for an end to Jocelyn's suffering.

Yet time continued to pass. Slowly. Painfully. Until prayers became curses and sorrow gave way to rage. Still, Nathaniel fought to hold it together. For both of them. To keep his fangs securely lodged in her neck...

As he forced the venom to continue flowing.

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