Chapter Twenty
Seb didn’t like sending a youngster into battle with the Soul Stealer, but he had to admit the logic in Elias’s plan—and it had the huge advantage of leaving him free to keep Brie safe himself. “I’m in.” They set the hour of the ceremony for sunset of the next day.
Seb and Brie were assigned a basement bedroom suite. He stood mid-room, listening to Brie wash out their underwear. Hers—and his. He’d been surprised by a bubble of domestic pleasure when she’d offered. Quickly suppressed, lest it distract him.
He was considering whether to use the hours to prepare Blackthorne for fighting the Soul Stealer or to bed Brie until they both couldn’t walk, when his phone rang.
Brie stuck her head out of the bathroom. “Who is it?”
“Just seeing now.” He extracted the phone and grimaced at the ID. “It’s my contact in the New York Cadre. Hello, Klaus.”
“The police found another drained body,” the other male ripped out. “Phone tip. Same MO.”
“Shit.” Seb glanced at Brie and mouthed, Body. “Fresh?” If it was, that eliminated Owun as his prime suspect.
“I don’t know. I didn’t get a chance to see it before the techs got to it, and now it’s locked away in the morgue. I’m waiting for the reports. But Rikare—the officials have the incriminating details, and you’re not here to scrub them away. That means Lorenzo will find out, soon. Have you made any progress there?”
“Some. I have a suspect.” He explained about Owun. “But I think Cleomenes is giving the orders behind the scene.”
“Do you have proof?”
“Yeah, Cleomenes said—”
“Hearsay? Lorenzo’s going be screaming mad we kept this from him. The only thing that’ll get through is hard proof.”
“Fuck.”
Seb thumbed the end call button and dragged talons through his hair. Vampire war, the very thing he’d come here to avert, loomed closer.
…
I’d wanted to return to our room at Otto’s but Julian said we were safer in the fortified townhouses until Cleomenes was defeated. Nixie had loaned me an extra-large T-shirt to use as a sleep shirt, and Elias had a shirt that fit Seb, but our underwear needed freshening. I washed, rinsed, and draped the delicates over the towel rack to dry then joined Seb in the bedroom, where my gaze hit the bed. The thing was as big as our mattress in Otto’s honeymoon suite.
I turned abruptly away. I’d opened my heart to Seb and he’d pushed me away like Duh-wreck.
Well, not completely like Derek. Seb hadn’t made it seem like my fault. But I didn’t want to revisit any of that right now.
“So, Cleomenes. What is wrong with that asshat, anyway?” I grabbed my sketchpad and pencils and threw myself into the nearest chair. Eventually I wanted to sketch Rikare, but first I needed to work something else out.
“Soul Stealer?” Seb said. “Asshat by definition.”
“Yes, but there’s more.” Seeing the old vampire in action, he struck me as indefinably wrong. But I couldn’t put my finger on what, so I did what I normally did to clear my mind.
A quick sketch.
I flipped pages to find a fresh sheet, flipping past the sketch of Owun. For the first time, I noticed how uneven I’d drawn the young vampire’s small fangs. Had that been from Seb’s explanation of his investigator’s eye making me exaggerate a small difference?
Once the idea was planted, it seemed to take over. Finding a fresh sheet, I laid down the outline of Cleo’s head, then shaded in his beak of a nose and thin mouth, penciling two exact needles framing the apple of his chin, but the eyes…somehow I ended up drawing him with one like a marble and one like a basketball, all out of proportion. I crossed out the sketch with two disgusted Xs and tried again.
This time I framed in his body first, big but lithely muscled, wide shoulders but slightly hunched…with clawed fingers like Edward Scissorhands.
Damn it, what was going on? None of my drawings were working. Instead of smooth sketch portraits these were almost caricatures, with one feature exaggerated.
My investigator’s eye, with a disproportional attention to things that were off or odd. It was interfering with my artist’s eye.
I stuffed away pad and pencils. “So, this Transfiguration ceremony. What’s that?” Blackthorne drinking Seb’s heart’s blood—even if it was a euphemism, that didn’t sound like a good thing. I clenched my fingers, found them icy cold.
Seb’s gaze was sympathetic. “It’s no big deal. Vampires are big into ritual.”
“It’s like a wedding?”
“Something like.”
Voices approached outside the door, then stopped. Julian said, “We should set up for the ceremony here, in the safety of the secured room.”
Elias said, “No. The space is too small. While I believe Blackthorne will be able to control the blood, I am concerned such an enclosed space might trigger an episode in him.”
“Perhaps outdoors?” Camille offered. “There are many recreational areas in the city.”
“Not a neighborhood park,” Julian vetoed.
“Yeah,” Nixie said. “If Blackthorne does go apeshit crazy, we don’t want him flinging it all over the local citizenry.”
I swallowed, hard.
“There’s really only one large, enclosed, empty place,” Julian continued. “Roller-Blayd Hall. There was a polka-dancing contest last night, and there’ll be a beer and pretzel sampling tomorrow, but nothing is scheduled for tomorrow night.”
“Now tonight,” Nixie said. “It just ticked over midnight.”
Elias said, “Either way, you’ll need to make sure there are no witnesses.”
Camille said, “Free pitchers at Nieman’s will draw away any humans with prying eyes.”
A knock came at the door. “Seb.” Elias’s coal-dark voice. “Do you have a moment for us to discuss Cleomenes? Blackthorne wants to know what to expect.”
I rose. “Go ahead. They need to know what you discovered.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll have a chat with Nixie.” What the heck. I wanted more information about this ceremony, and Seb wasn’t going to tell me because he obviously didn’t want to worry me.
I opened the door to let the others enter, then left quietly. Nixie must’ve caught some of my mood because she dragged me to her and Julian’s suite. As I left, Seb was saying, “The Soul Stealer has some advanced techniques. He tried to infiltrate my mist with hooks.”
In her living room, Nixie sat me on a big stuffed couch, covered my lap with a crocheted afghan, and handed me a cup of steaming tea. “Drink this.”
“Why?”
“Dunno. Julian makes me drink the stuff whenever I’m in a mood.” She shrugged.
I sighed and sipped. It was hot and laced with honey, and a few of my muscles unknotted. Julian was a wise mate. “So, this ceremony. Is Seb in any danger?”
“Well…” Nixie grimaced. “Let’s just say each vampire has mojo in their blood, the older the vamp, the more the mojo. Share the blood with a younger vamp or a human, lose the mojo.”
“So, you’re saying Seb will just lose some of his mojo…his power?”
She nodded, then looked away.
“You’re not telling me something.” I sipped again, savoring the tea’s warmth and sweetness. “What?”
Her gaze snapped back to me, eyes opened wide. “Did you hear that in my voice? Usually only musicians can hear me lie. You sure you’re not a musician?”
I gave her a tired smile. “I didn’t hear it. I’d just draw you kind of jaggy right now.”
“Oh. Well, it’s really super secret.”
“What isn’t, with vampires?”
“No, this is the kind of secret that could get them all…” She drew a finger across her throat. “What they call the final death.”
“I can keep a secret.”
She cocked her head then nodded as if she heard the truth in my voice. “Vamp power includes their healing. Let’s say Seb shared his blood with you, body to body—poured it directly into your bloodstream. It would heal you.”
“What, like wounds?”
“Wounds, sickness…aging.”
“Aging?”
“Do I look like I’m in my thirties?”
“Well…no.” And come to think, in the last couple years, she’d seemed to be getting younger. I shook my head. “Wow.”
“But it has to be pumped directly into you from his beating heart. You, as a human, can’t drink it—then your stomach would just digest it. And he can’t bleed into a bottle or something to be used later. Oh, and in humans, it’s only good for a few minutes. But even in those few minutes, it can reverse terrible damage or years of aging.”
“Why only a few minutes?”
“There’s something in the systems of healthy humans that kills off vampire mojo. Eh, Doc Alexis has done some work on it. She calls the mojo the vampire ‘factor.’ She thinks our immune system kills the vampire factor. But before it does, it can do some amazing things in a human body.”
“And in another vampire?”
“No digestive system, so the other vampire can drink the blood direct. And a vampire body has no immune system to set a time limit on the mojo—vampire factor.”
“Meaning when Seb puts some of his vampire factor into Aiden Blackthorne, it will make Aiden more like Seb. Bigger. Stronger. Faster.” I frowned. “Will it also make Seb more like Aiden?”
“Yeah. The amount he’ll probably have to give Aiden, he’ll be smaller, slower, weaker—and his healing will nosedive.”
“He’ll age?”
She didn’t answer, which was answer enough.
“When Seb and Elias donate their blood to Blackthorne, he may be stronger than Cleomenes, but they’ll be slower, weaker, and older.” I shook my head. “Cleo isn’t the type to show mercy.”
“True dat. Worse, if Blackthorne loses, his heart won’t be beating. Without a beating heart, he can never give back Seb’s and Elias’s blood.”
Even with the hot tea, that chilled me. I set the cup aside. “They’d be aged and weakened permanently?”
“Time would replenish the v-factor. But it took them a hella long time to get as strong as they are.”
She left unsaid that it would take thousands of years for Seb to get back to full strength. “Then Blackthorne had better not lose.”
I picked up the tea and finished it. Nixie took the cup, and I laid my head against the cushions. Closed my eyes, just for a moment.
Seb’s lips pressed to my forehead woke me.
“What time is it?” My voice emerged hoarse from my throat.
“About three a.m. Everyone else has gone to bed.”
I tried to lever myself from the couch, but it was deep and soft.
Seb picked me up, afghan and all, and carried me back to our bedroom.
He slid me into bed, slipping in behind me, and curved his body around mine. I snuggled back against him. His arms, secure around me, lulled me back to sleep.
I woke in a panic, my eyes opening to a glow of red numerals, six-oh-nine, and a certainty that Seb was leaving.
But his heavy arm was still wrapped around my ribs, his breathing gentle and regular. My hammering heart slowed. I’d dreamed.
In my dream, I’d taken the final leap, opening myself fully to loving him, and I didn’t care about the consequences.
Maybe my dream self was smarter than my waking self. Maybe it was simply reckless.
I peeled off his borrowed T-shirt, the feel of him, skin like silk over muscles harder than marble. I slid my palms along his arms onto his chest, kneading his pectorals, teasing his small nipples until he groaned. He rolled on top of me, and I threaded fingers into his hair and kissed him until I was dizzy.
Then his fangs peeked from between his lips. Playing human, he’d given me an orgasm that sent me to the moon. Using his vampire, he could destroy me.
I had a sudden, insane urge to destroy him in return.
I licked one fang.
I don’t know why I did that. Maybe some half-overheard comment by Sera swimming in my subconscious. But in my dream, Seb reacted as if I’d deep-throated his cock.
He howled. Grabbed me and reversed us, my back slamming into the mattress.
I kicked back my head. “Bite.”
“Not yet.” His red eyes, full of emotion, were glued to mine. “I want to see your beautiful face as I pleasure you.”
He slid into my slick pussy like cream. I shuddered when he hit bottom. Then he pulled out…and thrust home again.
Home. He began to thrust, hard, regular, like he was coming home.
Real Seb would probably deny it as emotional claptrap. But in my dream, the bliss on his face was the reality. And as he rocked into me, his eyes opened and our gazes met. Connecting.
Love for me gleaming, honest and open, in his red eyes.
This time when I exposed the long curve of my throat, I offered, not just my blood, but my heart. It whoosh-whooshed frantically in my ears, my pulse calling to him, shouting. Here. Now.
“Destroy me, Seb. Bite. Destroy us both.” Grabbing the back of his head, I yanked him to my throat.
His fangs pierced my skin. It was like a thrown switch. Climax blew through my body like a fuse detonating each cell with pleasure, pow, pow.
Shouting my name, he arched into me, and we came in unison, filling me with heat. With strength.
With love.
As the contractions ebbed, he turned us so my head rested on his chest. I relaxed into him, the orgasm cleansing me of all the tensions I’d been carrying. Sleepily, I decided I liked this position, listening to the beat of his heart slow…
…
I opened my eyes to see it was after six p.m.
And Seb was really leaving.
“Oh no you’re not.” The dream had muddled my feelings about our relationship, or lack thereof, but I was clear on one thing: he wasn’t going this alone. I threw off the blanket and leaped to my feet to follow him. Naked.
He twisted toward me, wincing. “Brie…it’s better if you stay here. Safer.”
Yeah, not happening. “This is do or die, right? I’m coming.” I snagged my undies from the bathroom and dressed as fast as if I was late for work. “If bad things happen, I won’t be any safer here. At least if I’m there, it’ll be over quickly. I’m coming. And if you leave me here, I know where you’ll be. I’ll just go on my own.”
He blew a disgruntled breath. “Has anyone told you that you’re stubborn?”
“Nope, but if that’s your idea of an endearment, you need to work on it. I prefer sweetie.” I slipped past him into the hallway.
“Sweetie. Please.” He scowled but seized my hand as I headed for the exit.
“Thanks. I like that. Okay, you were right, I’m stubborn.”
Brave words. My stomach was churning and my hand was tight around his as we hit the pavement.
The strange thing? Seb’s hand was as tight around mine.
“Where’s everyone else?” I tried to take his mind off whatever made him clutch my fist so tightly.
“Emerson, Elias, and Blackthorne are already there, setting up. Everyone else is battening down the hatches. I stayed to let you sleep a little longer.”
That was nice. I glanced up at him, at his stony jaw and Punisher eyes, glittering in the last rays of the setting sun. How could he be distant one minute yet kind and caring the next? “Nixie told me a little about this Transfiguration ceremony. That you’re injecting blood from your still-beating heart into Blackthorne.”
Seb’s shoulder twitched. “Nixie talks too much. Not injecting, he drinks it.”
“Not from your beating heart?”
“It’s called heart’s blood, but it only means Elias and I will be donating our most potent blood directly to Blackthorne.”
“You can separate your blood?”
“I don’t divide it like a mental centrifuge. It’s more like pushing hard from the deepest part of me. Think bearing down, like a woman in childbirth.”
“Why is drinking heart’s blood taboo?”
“Donating blood…it gives the drinking vampire power over you. Older drinking younger isn’t so bad—age already confers dominion. But younger drinking older? It’s an invitation to death.”
“Ominous. What about the… What did Blackthorne call it? The Challenge Fight?”
He twitched again. “Two vampires strip naked, to show no hidden weapons. They fight until one is dead. Winner takes all. Ah. There it is.”
Roller-Blayd Hall came into view as complete darkness set in. Sitting on Fifth and Grant, the old building had been a factory and warehouse in the heyday of roller blades. It had been abandoned for many years until a benefactor bought it and turned it into a money-making venue, the large, empty space perfect for everything from DJ-hosted dance parties to Viennese balls to wedding receptions. It was usually hopping Friday and Saturday night.
But right now, if Emerson had done his due diligence, it’d be empty. We went in.
The space hadn’t changed much from its cavernous warehouse days, except for the stage at the far end. Midfloor, the spiral staircase still led to a platform, but the old factory office atop it had been spiffed up as a security hub. The concrete slab floor, concrete and metal walls, and cast concrete support columns were all the same, and would amplify music naturally.
The advance team had set up near this end. They’d gotten candles from somewhere. Dozens flickered around the edges of the vast space, with twelve of the tallest forming a precise circle.
A single shaft of moonlight speared through the upper windows, hitting the circle dead center, like a spotlight.
Apparently, Elias had a sense of the dramatic.
The giant ancient vampire stood at the edge of the moonlit circle. “An enemy has risen among us. Not from the rich, life-giving earth or the clean soil of the grave, but from the fetid stink of the dunghill. He threatens night’s good creatures.” He stepped into the circle and turned to face us. “We need a champion. A male strong of body, disciplined of mind, and pure of heart. We call for such a champion.” He raised his voice. “We call for our champion.”
Around me, shadows danced in the flickering light and voices echoed in the dim hall, intoning, “We call for our champion.”
Elias extended one hand toward Blackthorne. “Aiden Blackthorne. If you accept this call, stand with me.”
Without hesitation, Blackthorne strode into the circle of flames.
“We have selected our champion. Now we will anoint him. We anoint him with our energy, we dedicate him with our words, and we ordain him with our blood. I commit to giving my blood to this champion, my heart’s blood to anoint him, though it be my death.” Elias paused, letting that sink in.
I got the feeling that he meant it, literally. If things went terribly wrong right now, and he was the only one to give Blackthorne blood, he’d actually do it. He’d let the younger male suck all the blood out of him until he was dead.
I glanced at Seb. He was frowning. As if Elias was doing something totally out of character.
After we were all sufficiently creeped out by his declaration, Elias continued. “Are there any who will share this task with me? Any brave souls to spare me the agony of the final death, by contributing equally of his life’s blood?”
I knew what was coming, but it still made me break out in a cold sweat.
Seb gave my hand a squeeze. He was going to do this. I gave his a quick squeeze back. I’d support him in his decision.
A crap decision, but I’d support him.
Truth smacked me in the face. Despite everything, despite him pushing me away after soul-shattering sex, after everything I’d gone through with Derek, even knowing Seb could be cold and distant, enough little moments of kindness and caring had come through—
I was falling for him.
“I will share in this task.” Seb’s voice was quiet but firm. In that moment, despite the crap factor, I was so very proud of him.
“Seb Rikare.” Elias gave a decisive nod. “I call you to join me, to ordain our champion Aiden Blackthorne to his task with our blood, yours and mine. If you accept this call, stand with me.”
Seb released my hand and went to stand beside Blackthorne.
I couldn’t help seeing the scene as an artist, imagining the circle of candles and tall figures inside it in terms of light and dark, in crosshatch and layers and shading.
Despite the candles, Blackthorne was bathed in shadows, as if he’d been smudged into the scene. But his eyes, black and brilliant, stood out. He was committed to this.
Seb was all crosshatches and scribbles, blurring to my eyes. Or maybe that was the shimmering buildup of tears. I dashed them away.
Elias was the most sharply defined as he drew a long, wickedly pointed dagger. Holding it in two fingers, he ripped open his shirt with both hands, deep black shadows cutting the twin slabs of his concrete chest muscles from the dark.
“I, Kai Elias, consecrate Aiden Blackthorne to his task with my heart’s blood.”
He plunged the dagger below his breastbone to the hilt.
Red blood welled then ran from the wound. My knees weakened and my head spun. Slumping over, hands to knees, I desperately tried to keep my stomach from heaving.
Blackthorne bent his head to Elias’s chest, and thankfully I could no longer see. Gasping air, I managed to raise my eyes.
Seb, a distressed expression wrinkling his forehead, mouthed “tradition” then “for show.” I straightened a bit. He gave me a small, relieved smile.
At some point, Blackthorne offered his wrist to Elias, and the ancient bent to take it. An exchange of blood, then. Probably to equalize blood pressure, but the quality of the blood traded was not equal. Because above Blackthorne’s shadowy form, Elias’s black hair frosted, then silvered.
He finally straightened with a pained groan. Creases of age marred his once-perfect face.
“It is done,” Seb cried sharply. When still the sucking went on, he grabbed the youngster’s shoulder. “Blackthorne, enough.”
The other male straightened with a growl. His gaze burned, meeting Seb’s.
Their eyes, the same level.
The younger vampire had been at least a foot shorter than Seb. Now he was his equal.
And his fangs had grown twice as thick.
I shuddered.
Both males were breathing like locomotives.
“Aiden Blackthorne, our chosen champion.” Seb’s eyes narrowed at the other male. “I commit my blood to help thee in thy fight. Willst thou have it?”
When Blackthorne continued to stare, Seb repeated sharply, “Will you have it, Champion?”
Slowly Blackthorne’s fangs receded, and his red eyes cooled. He relaxed his stance with an obvious flex of willpower. “I will.”
“Very well.”
While Elias spat on his hand, wiped his wound closed, and began to button his shirt, my lover produced a long dagger of his own.
My blood iced and my heart went into overdrive, knowing what happened next. My whole world narrowed to Seb’s elegant, dark fingers, wrapped around that dagger.
“Well, well,” a male voice boomed. “What have we here?”
From the shadows of the entrance, Cleomenes strode into the hall.