Blood Rights (11 page)

She slammed the door shut. The varcolai couldn’t be out there all night. Could he? She took her frustration out on the porthole.

Finally, she turned off the light and lay down. The cot’s thin, itchy blanket stank of unwashed wool. Doing her best to ignore it, she closed her eyes and listened as hard as she could for any sign her guard might leave.

Nothing.

Then nothing turned into sleep.

At this late hour, the nearly depleted solar meant only the faint running lights along the corridor floor remained, and they weakened even as Mal passed. Not that he needed the light. These passageways were imprinted into his memory, and with the fresh blood in his system his eyesight was crystalline, lights or no.

Before he made the turn into the hall where Anna was being kept, he registered Doc’s slowed heartbeat and relaxed breathing. Mal padded around the bend and stopped. Despite snoozing, Doc’s feline balance kept him upright. A deep, throaty rumble purred out of him. Maintaining human form took the same effort in varcolai as it did vampires. Asleep, Doc had shifted to an in between state, the closest he could get to his true form under the witch’s curse he lived with.

His flattened nose and split lip disappeared as he shook himself awake, apparently sensing Mal’s presence. With a few blinks, his pupils rounded and his fangs receded. ‘S’up?’

Mal nodded.

Doc yawned and arched his back with remarkable flexibility, then rubbed the back of his neck. He stared at the floor. ‘About earlier—’

‘Forgotten.’ Mal tipped his head toward the locked door. ‘Anything?’

‘Stuck her head out once. But she’s been in sand land now for’ – Doc checked his watch – ‘almost three hours.’

‘I’ll take over.’

‘I’m cool.’ Doc eyed Mal as though his beast was about to rip through his skin and devour the city.

‘I’m fine.’ He forced his human face into place. ‘Go check on Fi.’

Doc ran his tongue over his teeth and, after another hard look at Mal, shrugged. ‘Later.’ With a quick wave over his shoulder, he jogged down the corridor, his stride long and quiet.

As Doc disappeared, Mal opened himself to the woman on the other side of the steel door. The blood made everything easier. His senses slid over her like a wisp of satin. Her breathing and heart rate mimicked what Doc’s had just been. She slept.

He splayed his hands on the door and inhaled, testing himself. Her perfume sang through his veins, and suddenly the blood he’d consumed seemed inadequate.
Need
. The golden haze was back, hugging his bones, making him ache for her.
More.

How could her scent affect him this much after he’d just fed? The realization that he still wanted her chilled him, then he relaxed and accepted it. She was comarré. No vampire could be near her and not hunger. Not want to claim her.

Her patron was dead. Her blood rights were her own. Unless she chose to sell them again. Or give them away.
Take them. Drain her.

A needy flame ignited in his belly. He doused it in reality.
Imbecile.
For once, he agreed with the voices. He was anathema. She was as close to vampire nobility as a human could get. The chance she’d share her blood with him was … nonexistent.

He inhaled again, drugging himself with her scent, pressing his cheek to the door. If anything, her scent seemed stronger,
sweeter, more forceful. He tipped his head back and opened his mouth. She tasted of power and promise and blood as hot and sugary as a summer plum. The voices went dead silent.

He shook himself. Took his hands off the door and backed away. Where was this coming from? He wasn’t hungry. He was sated. Complete. He needed to snap out of it.
Get away, get away, get away …

Maybe he should. Talking to her when he felt like this was a very bad idea. She was sleeping anyway. He should skip the talking. His hand strayed to the handle, surprised when it turned. She’d left the door unlocked even after he’d warned her. If she wasn’t afraid of him, she was a fool.

A little push and the door swung open. The paint had been scraped off the porthole in thin lines. Moonlight sifted through the scratches, suffusing the room with an underwater glow. She sprawled on the bunk, gleaming softly, her face toward the far wall, one arm in his direction, palm up, her fingers half-curled. Like she was beckoning him.

He stepped through. There would be plenty of time for talking in the morning.

He stood beside the cot and watched her sleep. Had her patron ever stood at her bed like this? Some old fanged creature with Lucifer’s bank account and a false idea of his importance. Had he been kind to her? Or treated her like one more possession? Used her? Mal hoped to hell not.

‘She’s not yours anymore,’ he whispered, hating the image in his head of some noble prat floundering on top of her. Rough when he should be gentle because he owned her and it was his due. Mal’s fists tightened with the need to shatter something. That was what he did best anyway. Not protecting. Not comforting. Destroying. Killing. That’s what he knew.
What he’d always known. Mortal or immortal, death was his legacy.

She’d leave when she found out. He couldn’t blame her.

He needed to go. He shouldn’t be this close to her. Couldn’t be trusted. He’d told her that and yet she’d left the door unlocked. Pretty little fool.

Something glistened on her cheek. He leaned in and brushed her hair out of the way, the strands like cool water. The makeup covering her marks had worn off. The moonlight caught her signum and brought them to life in a subtle dance of gold across her cheekbone that turned into vines and flowers scrolling up her temple and arching over her brow.

Beautiful. Wrenching. Like he’d been privileged to see something both intimate and sacred. He should go.

He couldn’t.

Not until he saw the others. From what he knew about the comarré there should be more signum on her hands and feet. He desperately wanted to see them. Needed to. He kneeled beside the bed and slid his hand beneath her upturned palm. The veins at her wrist throbbed. Not delicate like he’d expected, but thick. Lush with blood. He should go.

He lifted her hand to his face, closed his eyes, and took her scent into his body. It plunged into his gut. His fangs dropped as his face revealed his true nature. He rested her smooth palm against the hard plane of his cheek and pressed his closed mouth to the soft, warm flesh of her wrist. His gums ached. His body throbbed. His brain found a hundred reasons to sink his teeth into her.

A moment longer and he would go.

A whispery moan opened his eyes. She shifted half an inch, then lay still. He froze. Her palm flexed against his cheek,
molding to the ridges of his face. Her fingers twined in his hair. He leaned into her caress, not caring what dream made her touch him like this. Pretending not to care she might be dreaming of her lost patron.

It didn’t matter. Not at this moment. Not when she was touching him in a way no one had since his turning. The contact made his eyes sting and his muscles taut. It felt so good and hurt so bad. The kind of hurt that razored away all pretense and left him bare and unworthy. The kind of pleasure that weighed him and found him wanting. The names burned like brands on his body, reminding him.

He was the desiccated creature in the pit again. Stripped back to base urges and animal instincts. Humiliated. Wounded. Broken.
Worthless.

He should drain her.
Do it.
Take away the possibility that she could make him feel like this again.
Yes.
He was anathema.

Death was his legacy.

No one would expect different.

T
he second time Doc knocked and got no answer, he stopped waiting for an invitation and just opened the door to Fi’s room. She was there, as he’d known she would be.

His heart dropped. She wore the jeans and sweatshirt her body had been found in.

‘Fi?’ His breath spun out in curls of vapor. The room had to be ten degrees below freezing.

Still no answer. She hovered, back to him, near a portion of the wall she’d covered with newspaper clippings. Her body was flimsy enough that he could read the yellowing scraps through her. Not that he needed to read them again. He knew the headlines by heart. Knew the dreams that her death had put an end to.

Graduate Student Missing After Research Trip. Search Covers Northern England. Body Recovered in Ruins. Parents Mourn Student’s Death.

‘He killed me,’ she whispered.

‘I know he did.’ He ached seeing her like this. Not just faint and wispy, but lost in the past. She sounded far away. Like she was … down in a hole.

‘It hurt.’ Her voice wavered. Like it might disappear altogether.

‘I know, baby.’ He reached a hand out to her. ‘C’mon, now. You should rest.’

She didn’t move. ‘Maddoc?’

‘Right here, Fiona.’

‘It still hurts.’ She turned toward him, eyes blank and staring. A gash opened her throat from ear to collarbone. Blood stained the right side of her university sweatshirt.

He did his best not to wince. It was a manifestation of her pain. He’d seen it once before when he’d happened upon her top-side studying herself in the water’s reflection. She’d flashed it away instantly, but he knew. This was what she’d looked like when the search party had found her in the pit. How that blood-sucking monster had left her.

Doc forced the anger out of his voice. Fi didn’t need that right now. Times like this, the witch’s curse he was under served as a mixed blessing. If he were able to shift into his true form, he might go leopard and tear Mal to shreds. Or die trying.

‘You should rest. That will make the hurt go away.’ He hoped. He went to her bed and pulled her covers back. Not that she could get under them. Maybe he should try to get her into the room they usually shared and away from all these memories.

‘I can’t find my backpack.’ Her bottom lip wavered. ‘My parents gave it to me for the trip.’

‘I’ll find it while you snooze, I promise. You want to go into our room? Hang in there?’

‘No.’ She whirled, her face distorted with anger.

‘You’re right, bad idea. Let’s stay here.’ He patted the mattress and tried to ignore that maybe Mal was right. Fi’s current condition was Doc’s fault. He’d known that she’d intended to drain
blood for Mal and he’d let her do it anyway. Now she was so weak from the blood loss, she couldn’t escape her own nightmare.

‘I need my passport.’ She floated toward him. ‘I have to have it to get home.’

He nodded, swallowing. ‘I’ll make sure you have it.’

‘Promise?’

‘Cross my heart.’ He patted the bed again. ‘Just a little nap.’

She glided to the bed and lay down as best as a spirit could.

‘That’s my girl.’ He backed toward the door. ‘I’ll turn the light off for you.’

‘No.’ She started to weep softly. ‘No more dark.’

‘Okay, lights on. No worries.’ Except when the solar ran out in the next half an hour or so. Screw it. He’d get candles.

A tear rolled off her cheek and hit the pillow, leaving a wet spot. He looked at her more closely. She was flickering between her spirit and corporeal forms. If he could keep her whole, she could rest. Forget the torment of her spirit form.

‘Fi? You cool?’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m scared.’

‘I’m right here. I won’t let anything happen to you. I got you.’ Whatever that meant. What could he really do? He hated that she’d helped Mal, but he also understood it. Without Mal, Fi would cease to exist, but when his voices got wound up, she had to hear them too. No wonder she wanted to shut them down as much as Mal did.

‘Stay with me.’

‘I ain’t never gonna leave you.’ He folded his six-foot five-inch frame cross-legged on the floor. She’d saved his life in a way. If Mal hadn’t brought the torn up alley cat he’d found back to Fi, thinking a pet would mellow her out, Doc would’ve been kibble by now.

‘Here,’ she said, longing in her liquid eyes. ‘With me.’ She rested her hand on the curve of space near her stomach. ‘Please.’

He knew what she wanted. Inwardly, he clenched his teeth and buried his pride. The things a man did for a woman. But only this woman.