Cake (23 page)

“
Marcus, your lover needs your help or you are going to lose him,” Claudius called out.

“
Xavier?” Marcus’s voice was weak, but it
was
his voice. I turned my head back towards him as he called my name. His concern for me was clear through the haze of pain I was locked in. “Xavier, come here. Be with me.”

My Marcus.

I reached out a hand towards him, and just making that simple movement made it feel like healing scabs were being torn off where the wings were attached to my body, and blood began running down the sides of my chest in hot waves like heated molasses. I stared at Marcus and saw that his brown eyes were dark with pain too. He was covered in blood, his blood. He’d gotten that way protecting me, saving me from harm. That was love for you. He lifted his arm to me. He was so fucking far away.

“
Xavier…”

I gritted my teeth, and tucking my tongue back in my mouth to make sure I didn’t bite it off, I pushed myself up onto all fours. I thought I was going to vomit as my shoulders and arms shook with the effort of keeping my face off the carpet. I think a newborn could have crossed the divide between us faster than I, but I’d like to see a baby drag bloody red feathers behind him as he did so.

My wings had folded up on their own to rest off my shoulders and hips by the time I finally got to Marcus, and I lay down beside him, placing my head in his lap. I was done. My whole body was shaking with the effort I’d just made. It had taken all of my energy to simply get that far.

Marcus held a blood pack to my mouth. “Drink every drop, my Little One, or I will have Chesterton start sending up cranberry juice for you.” I grimaced as he stuck the bag on my teeth, but I did my best to please him. I really didn’t want to be force-fed the other option.

His hands stroked along my hairline as I supped. “That’s right; swallow it all down, my little Xavier. I have no intention of losing you now,” he said as he stuck a fresh plastic bag onto his own teeth.

Claudius knelt beside us, touching his son on the shoulder and doing the same to me, being careful not to budge these bloody things sticking out of me. “Marcus, Xavier is going to need more. I am going hunting for him. I will be back as soon as possible,” he said before disappearing, leaving the councilor alone in the room with us. Was that wise? We were fucked-up because of her to begin with.

“
Do not stop drinking, Xavier.” The touch of Marcus’s hand was calming on my chilled, sweat-soaked flesh, and I did my best to comply.

There was silence in the room, the only sound being that of two desperate vampires draining blood bags of their tasteless essence. I stopped sucking on my empty bag and Armanita handed Marcus another one to feed me. He was starting to feel better. How could I tell? He was back to his normal mode of operation, taking the blood pack in the palm of his massive hand and drilling it into my face and onto my fangs, leaving no room for me to complain. My options were to drink or suffocate.

Finding the silence unbearable, Armanita spoke. “I must apologize, Marcus. Claudius insisted that you should be informed of our test, but I thought it best that you not know. There is a bond between master and fledgling. Sometimes it is strong, and I assumed it would be very strong between you two, mainly because you’d kept him as a human with you for the one-year period.” The blonde cheerleader knelt down and stared at me for a moment before turning her attention back to Marcus.

“
There has not been a true Blue Flame in four hundred years and for someone to have even a hint of violet…I had to know if your Xavier was of the Blue Line. I was only trying to get him into a rage. I never expected that he would be of Royal Blood. I did not know he would be a Von Drachenfeld—that your fledgling would have wings. I would have been better prepared if I had.”

I finished draining another bag of blood, and I went from feeling like crap to feeling as weak as a newborn kitten. I could barely lift my head as I heard the dumbwaiter motoring up again. More bags of blood were being sent up. Marcus’s voice was getting stronger, and from the tone, I knew too well that he was pissed. I was just glad that for once it wasn’t at me.

“
He is still bleeding from his back. Xavier, keep awake. Little One, you still have a couple more packs to drain.”

Another bag got drilled to my fangs, and I began to think that maybe they were just as bad as those cranberry-lime things after all. They served a purpose, but they sure as hell didn’t taste good.

“
I did not expect you to be injured, Marcus,” Armanita continued. “Your master was to keep you occupied.”

“
Xavier needed me.” I felt his hand trail from my face to my nape and then lightly down my back. I grabbed his arm as he touched one of the appendages hanging off my shoulder blades, as just that slight touch from his fingers was pure agony. His brown eyes looked down at me, and he moved his hand back to my head, and I felt him begin to stroke my temple.

“
Thank you.” My voice was barely above a whisper.

“
You should not have fed me, Little One. You have lost too much blood now. We should get your shirt off. It would not be good to get it stuck to your wounds.” His voice dropped down low. “You looked good in that color, Xavier. I will have to get you another one just like it.”

“
No more fuck-me clothes,” I muttered into his thigh. Then a stupid thought jumped into my mind. What the hell could I wear with wings sticking out of my back? “I’d liked the tux, too.”

A short chuckle broke from him, and he smiled. “That is not something I thought you would say, Little One, considering you were willing to fight me to keep an old ratty bowling shirt.”

The intercom crackled to life, interrupting us. “Master Marcus?”

“
Answer that, please, Councilor,” Marcus instructed.

Armanita got up, holding onto her still-bleeding shoulder. Seeing that, I smiled triumphantly, watching her without moving my body as she stood.

She paused to look at me. “I
am
sorry, Lord Emperor. I did not mean you great harm.”

“
Fuck off.” I have never meant those words so much as right then.

“
Xavier!” Marcus’s hold tightened, and he shifted my body. I hissed out loud to let him know he was hurting me.

“
Master Marcus?” Chesterton’s voice rang out again.

“
Councilor, please.”

My blood pack was empty, and since I wasn’t being smacked in the fangs with another one, I took it we were out. I lay there and closed my eyes, listening to the conversation going on above me.

“
Marcus cannot come to the intercom right now. What is it?”

“
Master Claudius has called back. He will be returning with some transfusions for Master Xavier. He has asked that if Master Xavier can be moved that he be brought into the lower hall. Do you require assistance?”

Marcus shook his head at me. “You are starved for blood right now, Little One. Actually, I think you are beyond blood starvation. If you were not in so much pain, you would be ripping out both our throats. The blood packs may have taken the edge off your hunger, but it is still there and at a high level. You sacrificed too much of your blood for me, Little One.” Marcus shifted, and groaned as he wearily climbed to his knees.

“
Are you strong enough to…” the councilor began.

“
Xavier needs me,” Marcus answered, paling as he put his weight on one leg.

Armanita called back through the intercom. “We will bring him down. You should make yourself scarce—for your own safety. He has lost a lot of blood, and he is a newborn. He has no control over his blood lust. He would kill you in a second.”

“
He is that injured, Lady Armanita?”

“
More than a fledgling should ever be.”

“
Then, as you wish, I will alert the staff and clear a path to the garage for you.”

Marcus, crouching before me, patted my head encouragingly, and then he did his usual trick of grabbing me by the neck and yanking me to my hands and knees. I think I fainted.

“
Xavier…Xavier…”

I blinked back to awareness, and when Marcus saw this, he rolled backwards on his heels and climbed unsteadily to his feet again. He swayed for a bit and then seemed to get his bearings.

“
Give me your hand, Xavier. We need to go downstairs. You can do this, Little One. Give me your hand.”

I reached up with my good hand and almost threw up as I felt something tearing at my back again. Hot blood streamed down my sides, dripping off my stomach. I bit my lip and tried to sit upright, feeling dizzy as the bottom of my wings hit the floor and jerked on my shoulders, and I suffered another searing wave of agony. I gasped, and my face screwed up with the pain. I couldn’t get up, so Marcus caught me around the waist and hauled me off my feet. I got a head-rush as he did so and had to fight against blacking out again.

“
Hang onto me, Little One.”

Picking me up, Marcus hooked one arm behind my knees, the other across the top of my shoulders, and he held me, trying to avoid hitting my wings, even though he knew he shouldn’t be doing this. He had a spike go through his chest. He should have been resting.

His first couple of steps were faltering ones, but then he began to walk with his regular stride, carrying me off to the playroom in the bridal lift yet again, and I was in no condition to make any protests.

I’m sure we must have looked like one of the Old Masters paintings from Italy; a fallen angel, helpless in the arms of man. Though I doubt Michelangelo would ever have thought to stain the entire scene vampire-blood red.

Marcus reached for the Blood mark that opened the door to the hidden stairs, and then paused for a moment, looking at the bloody handprint he had left there. “Hang on, my Little One,” he said softly to me.

As the bed rolled back and we descended the stairs, I tried to keep my yelps down but couldn’t stop my cries as Marcus jarred me on the first step, and the bottom edge of my wings hit and dragged on each step thereafter, ripping into my back and spilling even more blood onto Marcus. I was getting slippery, and he had to keep shifting his hold on me.

I hissed when he accidentally stepped on a couple of feathers and ripped them right out of one of my wings, and I tried to lift them up to keep them safely out of the way, but of their own accord, they spread wide and caught on either side of the narrow corridor of the stairwell, causing Marcus to stagger. He dropped heavily to his knees, pitching forward, and I fell from his arms, slamming and falling down the last few stairs, hitting the bottom hard. I lay there on my stomach, one wing crushed underneath me, the other one extended upwards. I was reminded of a bird I’d seen once, lying on the pavement after getting killed by a taxi. Bad imagery. And then Marcus’s tumbling body slammed into me as he did a Jill to my Jack, and I threw up the blood packs I had just swallowed.

“
Xavier!” Armanita’s voice sounded so far away.

My crystal vision crashed down, and I felt an energy prickling along my skin. The pain that had engulfed me was being devoured by this energy. I could still feel blood seeping out of my back where the wings had sprouted, but they didn’t hurt now. The pain sort of tingled, in the same way your mouth did after getting novocaine at the dentist. It was numb, but not sore.

I shoved my palms onto the floor and lifted myself to my hands and knees, allowing the trapped wing to snap out and fold back. The other wing shivered, shook, and flexed before it too folded back against my body.

Rolling back on my heels, I pushed myself up off the floor, where I stood, my legs quivering for a little while. But eventually that stopped, and I turned and looked down at Marcus. He was all bloody, and out like a light, and I noticed he had a bump the size of a goose egg forming on his forehead.

The air was scented with apples. I inhaled deeply and smelt sweet vanilla in the mix. Reaching down to Marcus I dragged him toward me with my good hand, grimacing as I hauled him upright. He was coated with my blood, and I thought that this was how my vampire should always look; dressed in my blood. I had marked him as mine, and I felt possessive of him.