Breathless (23 page)

Balin grabbed three pewter mugs and set them on the table. “I don’t have any small glasses,” he laughed. “Only partially filled big ones.” He deftly filled two mugs from one of the handmade bottles, then poured about a third as much into the last mug, which he gave to Leesa before sitting down beside her.

She could feel the heat emanating from his body. It wasn’t as strong as Rave’s, but noticeable if you were looking for it. With Rave and Balin flanking her and the fire in front of her, Leesa felt pleasantly warm. She wondered why volkaanes bothered with fireplaces. She guessed it was more for the light than the heat, and maybe for cooking.

The bubbling gold liquid in her mug looked a little like beer, but with a much thinner, almost nonexistent head, more like champagne. As she lifted it to her lips, she smelled a faint, sweet fragrance that somehow seemed familiar, yet different. She tried to place the scent, but the answer eluded her. Here’s to another new experience, she thought as she took a small sip. The brew tasted sweet and refreshing. She followed the sip with a much bigger swallow. “This stuff is pretty good,” she said, smiling. “What’s it made of?”

“Honey,” Balin replied.

“
Fermented
honey,” Rave warned. “Be careful. Balin’s mead is stronger than it tastes.”

Leesa rested the mug on the wooden arm of her chair. Honey. That was the scent she’d sensed but couldn’t name. She could already feel a slight buzz from the mead. Rave was right. The stuff was way stronger than it tasted.

“This cabin is amazing,” she said. “How long have you lived here, Mr. Balin?”

“Just Balin, please,” he said, smiling. “I’ve lived here since I built it.”

A puzzled expression lined Leesa’s face “You built this place?”

“Well, a couple of friends helped me, but I did most of the work.”

“But it seems so old. How could you possibly have built it?”

Balin looked at Rave. “You haven’t told her?”

Rave shook his head. “It hasn’t come up.”

Leesa turned toward Rave. She thought he looked a bit uncomfortable. She was thoroughly perplexed now. “What hasn’t come up?”

“Young Rave’s a bit older than you,” Balin said, grinning now at Rave’s discomfort.

Leesa studied Rave’s face. His skin was smooth and tight, his eyes bright and alive—though they looked a bit sheepish at the moment. She had assumed he was older, maybe in his early twenties. Nothing she saw altered her opinion. And Balin kept ca
lling him “young Rave,” so how
old could he be?

“How much older than me?” she asked Rave.

“Oh, not much,” he said quietly. “A hundred and fifty years or so. Give or take a decade.”

It took a few seconds for the words to register in her brain. A hundred and fifty years? How could that be? He looked like he could be a senior at Weston, or a recent graduate at worst. “You’re teasing me, right?”

“My kind are very long-lived,” Rave explained. “Not immortal, like vampires, but most of us reach five hundred, at least. Barring an accident or coming out on the short end of a fight with a vampire, of course.”

Leesa took another sip of mead while she digested what Rave had told her. She turned to Balin. “I guess that explains how it is that you built this place,” she said, looking more closely at the aged walls. “How long ago?”

“A couple hundred years, more or less,” Balin said. “And I was older than Rave is now when I built it.”

Leesa shook her head. This is just what she needed—another incomprehensible thing to wrap her already overflowing brain around. She took a bigger swallow of mead. Maybe she should have asked for a full mug after all.

“How is it that you’ve suddenly taken interest in a human—in me—after all these years?” she asked Rave. “I know I must be the first, or we wouldn’t be going through everything we are.”

“I’m not sure,” Rave said. “But I was drawn to you the first time I saw you.” He grinned. “Maybe it’s the vampire blood in you. That always gets my attention.”

Vampire blood? What the heck was he talking about? Her brain did another few flip-flops. If this kept up, she was going to end up in a padded cell somewhere. If she did, she hoped they served mead.

Rave recognized the confusion on her face. “Didn’t you say your mother was pregnant when she was bitten by the
grafhym
?”

“Yes, but…” Leesa’s mouth opened wider as the pieces clicked into place. Her mother’s blood was her blood. But if that were true, why didn’t she have any of her mom’s symptoms? “But I’m not sensitive to sunlight or anything like that,” she said. “Heck, I don’t even like tomato juice. How come?”

Rave shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Maybe the placenta filtered your mother’s blood enough to keep you from being affected in the same way she was,” Balin said. “I think young Rave was kidding when he said he was drawn by your vampire blood, but perhaps he’s right. Maybe you ended up with just a hint of vampire in your blood. Enough to trip Rave’s volkaane senses, but not enough to affect you.”

She looked at Rave, her lips pursed into a playful pout. “So, you only love me for my blood, huh?”

Rave wrapped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close to him. “I love everything about you, Leesa. Maybe your blood drew me to you, but it’s not what keeps me there, I promise.”

Leesa rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. “I know. I was teasing. And I love you for more than your ability to toast my hamburger buns.”

Rave laughed. “Well, that’s a relief.” He gave the top of Leesa’s head a quick kiss. As always, she thrilled to the touch of his lips, no matter how brief. She wondered if it would ever be safe to do more.

“This brings us to why I asked you two here in the first place,” Balin said. He edged his chair forward and twisted it slightly, to more easily see both Leesa and Rave. His face was very serious now.

“You said it had something to do with our being together,” Rave said.

“Yes, it does. I found something in the histories I had long forgotten. That’s one of the prices of longevity, I’m afraid. One sees and hears so many things, some of them just seem to fade from the memory.”

“Is it about volkaanes and humans getting together?” Leesa asked hopefully. She didn’t like that Balin’s face remained so serious. Good news should have produced a happier expression.

“Not directly,” Balin said. “But it could have a bearing on you two.”

Rave finished his mead with a big swallow and set the mug down on the floor. “I know you, Balin. Something about what you found is bothering you. Tell us.”

“You’re right. There is something. But let me start at the beginning.” He set his mug down on the chair beside him, then steepled his fingertips in front of his lips, deciding how to begin.

“There’s an ancient technique, rarely practiced among our people, called
Rammugul
. I witnessed it when I was very young, younger even than you are now, young Rave. So long ago, I’d forgotten it existed. It hasn’t been used since, at least not here. Searching the histories brought it back to me.” His eyes moved from Rave to Leesa and back to Rave. “
Rammugul
is a way to turn off our inner fire. To extinguish it.”

Rave’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Is that possible?” he asked.

“I witnessed it myself,” Balin replied.

Leesa’s heart was racing. This could be the answer they needed, the answer to her prayers. If Rave could turn off his fire, they could kiss for as long as they wanted, without risk. For the first time since he’d shared his secret with her, she could picture kissing him as long and deeply as she wanted. She could imagine kissing him for hours.

“Why was it used?” Rave asked. “Why does such a thing even exist?” That a volkaane would want to extinguish his fire would have been incomprehensible to him before he met Leesa.

“Who first developed
Rammugul
, and why, is lost to history. I saw it used during a childbirth. The birth was going badly. There was danger of losing the baby.”

Balin closed his eyes, remembering. He heard the screams, saw the look of anguish twisting the mother’s face, saw the blue flames flickering from her fingertips, which should not have happened during the birthing process. Such a thing was rare among the volkaanes, and because they reproduced so seldom, losing even one child was a major loss. Old Kerchak, wisest among them and chieftain at the time, said her fire was killing the baby. He grabbed the mother’s hands and guided her through a series of movements and special breathing. Balin could still remember watching the heat fade from the mother. First the flames disappeared from her fingers, and then her skin seemed to darken. Finally, he saw in her eyes that her fire was gone. It was not at all a pleasant look, but he kept that to himself.

He repeated the details to Leesa and Rave. “The baby was born strong and healthy,” he finished.

Leesa had been following Balin’s story closely, trying to make sense of things she didn’t understand. But the fire going out and the healthy baby sounded hopeful. Her fingers closed around Rave’s hand.

“Are you saying if Rave learned to do this, we could be together without danger?”

“Theoretically, yes.”

“Hold on a moment,” Rave said, squeezing Leesa’s hand but looking at Balin. “I can see in your face that this story didn’t have a happy ending. What happened?”

Balin picked up his mug and drained the remaining mead in one long swallow. “The mother never got her fire back,” he said solemnly, resting the empty mug on his thigh. “Kerchak didn’t know why. He said it should have come back, but it never did.”

It took a moment for Leesa to fully comprehend what Balin was saying. “You mean, if Rave did this…?” She stopped, unable to voice the words.

Balin nodded. “Yes. If Rave extinguishes his fire, he risks never getting it back.”

Rave jumped in before Leesa could reply. “But Kerchak said she should have gotten her fire back, right?”

“Yes.”

“So maybe it was something about the situation, the emergency, the birth. Or that she’d never practiced the technique, never learned to control it.”

Balin shrugged. “Perhaps. You are certainly more powerful than she was, young Rave, and so perhaps more able to master the skill. But the risk remains.”

“Wait a minute,” Leesa said, getting to her feet and facing them both. “This is crazy. I’m not letting Rave risk his fire.” She stared at Rave, thinking she had never seen the heat inside him so clearly. “Your fire is who you are, what you are. I’d never ask you to give that up.”

Rave stood and kissed her forehead. “I told you there’s very little I wouldn’t do for you, Leesa. That includes risking my fire.”

Leesa took both his hands in hers, reveling in the warmth of his skin. “And I love that you would even consider it. Believe me, I do. But I will
not
let you do it. No way.” She grinned and tilted her head coquettishly. “Besides, I might not like kissing you without your fire.”

Rave laughed and drew her into his arms, hugging her tightly.

“Fortunately, you two are a long way from having to make that decision,” Balin said. “I need to do more research, and Rave will need to spend much time practicing it.” He stood up and smiled. “But for right now, I have a suggestion I think you’ll both like.”

Leesa and Rave broke their embrace and looked expectantly at Balin.

“I told young Rave he should kiss you only with someone there to intervene if something went wrong, and that even then he must keep it brief.” He put a wrinkled hand on each of their shoulders. “No one can judge young Rave’s heat better than me. So if you two don’t mind an old volkaane watching, I don’t think there’s too much danger in risking a longer kiss here.”

No danger
—that was all Leesa needed to hear. She looked at Rave and raised her chin expectantly. “Well, volkaane, what are you waiting for?”

Rave grinned. Leesa’s heart fluttered as he laid his hands softly on her shoulders and leaned his head toward her with tantalizing slowness, his beautiful eyes locked onto hers. She could smell his warm breath as his mouth inched closer. Just before their lips met, she closed her eyes and parted her lips.

He kissed her gently, in no hurry now that Balin was watching, keeping them safe. When the tips of their tongues met, Leesa felt the familiar current surge through her. It was all she could do to keep from pressing her mouth tightly against his, but there was no rush here, no need to get as much of him as she could in a few brief seconds, so she forced herself to hold back, to enjoy the building passion, the growing heat. When he pushed his tongue more firmly against hers, she pushed back, matching his intensity as the heat inside her climbed another notch. His soft tongue began to dance inside her mouth, and she let hers dance with it. The heat continued to build, filling every inch of her body. She was floating, flying, falling, spinning, tumbling, twirling…. She felt his hands move into her hair, pulling her head against his, locking their mouths together, melting, molding, binding, joining. The fire exploded inside her, claiming her completely, body, mind and soul.

How long it lasted, she had no idea—minutes, hours, days perhaps—but when Rave finally pulled his mouth away she felt drained yet energized, lost but found, sated but wanting. And desperately, irrevocably, and joyously in love.