Authors: Celeste Anwar
Carnal Thirst (2 page)
"I did, twice in fact. It did not paralyze her. I think if not for her blood loss, she would be fighting even now. She will not succumb to mind tricks, my lord. There would be no disguising this attack."
Danior nodded. It was true. Only through telepathy had they controlled what humans knew of them so far. It was how they'd escaped destruction for hundreds of years.
"Her blood is strong, sweeter than any I've tasted before. She can't be allowed to turn. Will you finish her or should I?"
The council had forbidden the creation of more vampires, as well. The city was overrun with them, and no vampire would leave for fear of showing weakness. Weakness was deadly in these strained times.
“Leave. I'll take care of this mess."
"Yes, my lord.” Zane bowed and took to the sky, leaving Danior alone with the woman.
Without the anti-coagulant of vampire saliva, the blood flow from the wound at her shoulder and neck slowed to a dribble.
She was a large woman, heavy and sturdily built. He puzzled over why she could resist the venom and why two bites along with the blood drain had not killed her almost immediately.
Her eyelids fluttered as he brushed her hair back, the corner of her mouth twitching as if she would speak. She seemed caught in some unspeakable nightmare, as horrific as reality, he surmised.
If the blood loss did not kill her, the venom coursing through her vitals could possibly turn her. She had an equal chance of either, perhaps better than most, for he'd never once seen a human resist the paralyzing effects of a vampire bite.
It was rare to turn a human. A small bite for normal feeding would result in no more than the feeling of a hangover afterward. Three bites over three days could chain a human to a vampire, leaving them addicted to the bite like a drug, but with some of the benefits of vampirism and none of the worst side effects.
Anything more than small increments was almost inevitably fatal. Those that managed to survive were forever infected with the virus that humankind knew as vampirism.
Some indefinable emotion swarmed Danior. He searched his memory but could not recall its name. Lust and hunger he knew. Anger. Rage. Desire. But this?
He shook his head and scooped the woman effortlessly into his arms.
He was curious to see the limits of her resiliency. The others would tear her apart in this state, though, so he could not take her beneath his club, nor to any other haunt of his kind.
There was only one place they feared to go—a place even he hesitated to go.
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Maggie woke from deep sleep completely disoriented. Her face pressed into the pillow, and she turned her head, wincing at the stiffness in her shoulders and neck. Something had awakened her—she'd heard a sound, something alien and unfamiliar. She held her breath, listening for the noise that had roused her, lying still as she tried to remember where she was.
This pillow wasn't hers. It smelled old, musty with age.
Of course, that wasn't much different from her own ancient pillows, but these were made of feathers instead of polyfiber filling. This definitely wasn't her house, which meant she definitely wasn't alone.
She rolled onto her back, biting her lip as her sore back connected with the bed. She touched the crook of her neck and found a small, square bandage.
It was all real. It had really happened. Had the bastard kidnapped her? Since she wasn't home, it was as good an assumption as any.
After listening for several minutes, she decided she was alone in the room. She felt like if she hadn't been there would have been a reaction anyway when she rolled over. Still, she thought it was better to err on the side of caution, and she scanned the room as far as she could see before she finally sat up.
To her relief, she saw that she really was alone.
The room was devoid of furniture save for the wrought iron bed. Directly opposite it stood two windows with heavy brocaded drapes. On the wall that housed the headboard of the bed were two doors. The right bedroom wall held another door, and on the wall opposite to that was a fireplace with a built-in mantel. The fire within it was the only light in the room.
It was an old room, evidenced by the hardwood floors and authentic plaster walls and ceiling. She had to be inside a Victorian era house, perhaps one even older.
From the twelve foot ceiling, a bare bulb hung from a chain in the center of the room, dangling a pull cord.
Old wiring too.
Maggie got up and pulled the cord. Light spilled down, weak, leaving the edges of the room still dim.
Seeing that her assessment of the room was accurate, Maggie decided to check the door closest to her.
It wasn't locked. She wasn't certain whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. It might mean nothing threatening at all. It could mean that whoever had brought her had only done so to help her.
On the other hand, it seemed to her that most anyone who might have found her would've taken her to a hospital. But how likely was it that her attacker would have taken her anywhere, much less patched her up?
After several minutes of indecision, she finally decided to err once again on the side of caution. Turning away from the door, she moved as quietly as possible to the first window. When she pulled the drapes
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back, she discovered that the window had been boarded over tighter than a nun's butt. Light squeezed through the minute cracks where putty had separated from the wood.
Maggie squinted painfully at the bright pinpricks, her heart skipping several beats as she let the curtains fall back in place. As much as she would've liked to believe that there was an unthreatening explanation for it, it seemed that she had to accept that she'd been imprisoned in the room. Unwilling to accept that assessment when she had already tested the door and found it unlocked, she decided to check the other window. It too was boarded up.
The unlocked door was either a trap, or the person who had left it unlocked had made certain that the rest of the building was secure. Regardless, she wasn't about to just sit and wait for whoever had taken her prisoner to come in and do whatever he wanted to her.
Maggie searched the room for anything she could use as a weapon. To her surprise, she found several objects that would make surprisingly good weapons. There were a pair of brass candlesticks on top of the mantel and near the fire, a poker leaned against the wall. Deciding she liked the looks of the poker best, because she really didn't want to have to get close enough to hit him with the candlestick, she took the poker and moved toward the door again.
Pressing her ear against the panel, she held her rasping breath, trying to listen above the rampaging rhythm of her heart. After listening intently for some time, she finally decided to open the door and have a look.
Turning the knob very slowly, she peered into the room—and discovered it was a bathroom.
"Shit! Shit, shit, shit!” she whispered. She looked around the bedroom. There were two other doors.
She was betting one of them was a god damned closet.
The narrow one
had
to be the closet.
Tiptoeing across the room, she pressed her ear to the other door. Still tremendously unsettled by her first wrong guess, Maggie only listened at that door for a few moments. Slowly, she turned the knob.
It was locked.
"Shit!"
"If you'll tell me what you're looking for, perhaps I can help."
The deep male voice directly behind her nearly gave Maggie heart failure. Acting purely on instinct, she whirled, swinging the poker for all she was worth—and buried it into the wall on her other side. Plaster burst from the impact like snow.
Stunned, she merely stared at the poker for several moments, wondering how she could have possibly missed him. That thought made her look around quickly.
He was lounging very casually against the bedpost.
Maggie gaped at him.
Even if she'd been blind, she would've sensed the danger surrounding him. Lethal practically oozed from
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his pores. It was hard to explain with certainty why she felt it, but he looked like the last person in the world to play good Samaritan.
He wore a black, peasant-style shirt open to the middle of his chest—the opening revealing a pale olive expanse of sculpted pectorals free of hair except for the thin beginnings of a happy trail that disappeared beneath the fabric before she could follow it. Leather pants hugged every inch of his legs and groin, showing off his package like prime rib in the meat department. He wore ass kicking boots, laced up to the knee with overlay buckles meant for tearing the hide off anyone dumb enough to brush against them.
He had an odd ensemble going on. Part tortured poet, part bad ass biker—all succulent man.
Leather tended to lend itself to a “bad” image, but this guy went way beyond that. Inky black hair framed his face, falling around his shoulders in thick tendrils almost indistinguishable from his clothing. His face was the most arresting part of him, however, and what set her heart to pounding uncontrollably.
It wasn't the square jaw or high cheekbones that were testament to high testosterone. It wasn't the wickedly black eyebrows arched sardonically as she continued to stare at him. It was his eyes. They were the eyes of a predator—so dark a gray they could easily be mistaken for black, and with the smallest tilt to them, making them appear as exotic as an Egyptian painting. They were intensely scrutinizing without seeming to be, lazy and hooded, like a cat just before striking.
Calling him dangerous would be an understatement.
"How did you do that?” she gasped when her brain finally seized on the warning and began functioning again.
"Which ‘that’ are you referring to?” he asked, throwing her off balance. He didn't act in the least threatened by her weapon.
She stared at him. She'd been thinking about the fact that he'd managed to move so quickly out of the way when she'd swung at his head. The remark, however, reminded her that she'd thoroughly checked the room.
"How did you get in the room?"
"I walked."
Maggie gritted her teeth and jerked the poker out of the wall. “Look, I don't know who you are, and I don't know
what
you had in mind when you brought me here, but I'd like to leave now."
He shrugged. “Unfortunately, I can't allow that. You've been bitten."
Her eyes widened. “You son of a bitch! You're the one that attacked me, aren't you?"
He smiled faintly. “Not I."
She wanted to wipe that smug look off his face with the poker, but she didn't want to get that close to him. If he was the one who had attacked her, he had thrown her around as if she was some shrimpy ninety pound weakling. “Why is it that I don't believe you?"
Again, he shrugged, as if it was a matter of indifference to him one way or the other.
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She studied him for several moments when he didn't respond. “You can't keep me a prisoner here."
He looked at her with interest. “Why not?"
She gaped at him. What the hell kind of conversation was this to be having with a maybe/maybe not killer? “What do you mean, why not? Because you can't, that's why not! People will be looking for me. I have friends! They'll have the cops down on your ass so fast you won't know what hit you."
He looked at her intently for several moments. “You have no close friends and no relatives. Even if you did, it would be of no consequence to me. Nor, might I add, does the thought of having cops on my ass particularly distress me."
"How do you know I don't have any friends or family?” she demanded indignantly.
He pushed away from the bed abruptly. Before she could even blink, he was standing practically nose to nose with her. She felt her jaw sag in disbelief. He lifted a hand and very lightly traced it along her temple.
"Because it is here."
Maggie swallowed with an effort. “What are you, a fucking mind reader or something?"
"No, I'm a fucking vampire,” he said, smiling thinly.
* * * *
He'd tended to her for three days while she struggled to stay alive. Bathed the feverish sweat from her brow, changed the dressing on her wound, and cleaned the blood from her skin. He'd seen every inch of her body in repose.
It had almost been like tending a child, except she resembled no youth, and her appearance was such that he had no trouble distinguishing her from one so unsuitable for his carnal appetites.
She was buxom and tall, leggy. Her bare legs had entranced him while she writhed in bed. He'd had to sponge bathe her, touching every inch of skin, and he was surprised at how smooth she was, how hairless and fine her flesh. She was strong and muscled, but the hard edges of an average weighted woman did not exist on her. Softness appealed to him immensely. Women should be soft, malleable to a man's rough body.
It had taken a supreme effort of will not to explore her body as she lay helpless, but he found it distasteful to take advantage of a woman recovering from death and going through the change.
It amused him to know that he was not so much a monster as he'd supposed he was. Had he been, he could have fucked her as much as he pleased and left her to die when he was through. He'd known of others who had, and the act disgusted him more so now than it had before.
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