Chapter Nine
I awoke consumed by hunger—so much hunger that I couldn’t think at all. I lunged to my feet and stumbled toward the door, focused entirely on finding sustenance. But something moved rapidly to intercept me, and it bore me to the floor and kept me pinned there, no matter how viciously I fought.
“Feed,” commanded a familiar voice. An arm appeared in front of my mouth and I sank my fangs into it, then swallowed and swallowed the delicious fluid.
I wasn’t sated when the arm was taken away, but at least I was coherent enough to become aware of my surroundings. Marek knelt on my chest, licking delicately at his torn wrist, his expression a mixture of excitement and apprehension.
“The Chinese restaurant,” I said. Because that’s where we were, in the small office Marek had used as a sleeping space. The room where I’d been captured.
He nodded. “It’s secure and there are no windows.”
“Buckley?” I asked when my sluggish mind made a shift.
“Dead. While he was busily murdering you, Grimes was able to stab him in the eye.” I couldn’t blame Marek for looking pleased about that. “We hacked his corpse to pieces and scattered them, just in case. I think Grimes burned the head. Buckley’s gone for good.”
“And…. Fuck. Tenrael?” I remembered him in a heap on Buckley’s floor. “Is he dead too?”
“It’s very difficult to kill a demon. His wings will take a few weeks to mend, but he’ll be fine.”
“How did they find me?”
We both knew I was dancing around the elephant in the room, but Marek humored me. “Tenrael did it. You didn’t meet them when you were supposed to, and he…. Something about tracking you through your dreams. You’ll have to ask him about it. They’re at a motel. Giving you some space until you’re ready to… face the world.”
I didn’t take the obvious opportunity to discuss the obvious. “And you? You’re all right?”
Still atop me, Marek spread his arms. “I am in excellent condition. Although right now I’m hungry. And I imagine you still are as well.” He looked at me. Waiting.
I couldn’t ignore the inevitable any longer. “Vampire,” I whispered. I explored my mouth with my tongue, which caught on my fangs. I liked the taste of my blood, but it wasn’t as good as Marek’s.
He climbed off, but only so he could kneel beside me. When I sat up, our faces were close. “You were fading. It was either this or I’d lose you forever.” His expression was so solemn, his strange eyes burning with emotion. “I’m stronger than you. But if you wish to destroy me, I won’t resist.”
I didn’t answer. I stood instead and looked down at myself. I was naked, my skin clean and whole, my frame as substantial as it had been before Buckley caught me. No sign of bruises or other souvenirs from my captivity. But when I laid my palm against my chest, my heart was still, and my lungs didn’t work unless I willed them to. I was cool to my own touch. I guessed I’d no longer be able to see my reflection in a mirror, but my fingers told me that someone had cleaned and combed my hair, and that I had a couple of days’ worth of stubble on my face. I wondered if I’d carry that unshaven look for the remainder of my existence.
I flexed my muscles. Strong—very strong. As if I could move a mountain. I saw every detail of the room sharply despite the darkness, heard the rustle of rodents and insects in the walls, smelled soy sauce and hot oil and steaming rice. I smelled Marek too, an intoxicating aroma of blood and sorrow and strength that made me want to tear off his clothing and sink into his body.
Assessing my internal self took more courage. Yes, I was ravenous, longing to chase something and feed on the hot essence of life. Yet I still felt like me, Clayton White. A person with many regrets and more than a few old grudges, a person who possessed more than his share of flaws. Also a person who wanted to protect the blameless, not harm them. Who wanted love and companionship and respect, and who wanted to give those things to another. Funny. I’d always assumed those were purely human needs.
While I was evaluating myself, Marek had crossed the little room and taken something out of a desk drawer. Now he stood in front of me, offering me the object. My gun.
“It’s loaded,” he said. “With your special Bureau bullets.”
I took the weapon and weighed it in my hand. It had always felt like such a powerful thing, but now it was only a small metal object of little importance.
“Why am I… calm?” I’d seen newly risen vampires before, and they’d seemed like nothing more than mindless fiends. No more humanity to them than a rabid beast possessed.
“Your first waking meal was from your maker. That helps a great deal, especially when your maker is quite old. Few of us are granted that when we are new.”
I nodded slowly. “Your blood.” I could still taste it, but even better, I could feel it within me, granting me strength and a comforting solidity. I imagined that this is how a junkie must feel after a long-awaited hit, except I was clearheaded.
Marek granted me a tiny smile. “It helps that you are who you are. This change you’ve undergone, it alters a great many things but not your essence. Your core self remains. When someone with a faulty core is suddenly given immense power and a hearty appetite, he will use that power to hurt humans. But when the core is sound….” He shrugged. “Then so is the vampire.”
“I’ve become the ethical monster? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“What you are is still within your own control, just as it’s always been. You simply have different parameters on what you can do.”
“Parameters.” The room was too small for pacing, especially with the bedding taking up most of the floor space, so I opened the door and walked into the kitchen. That room had a few small, high windows, much like the ones in Buckley’s basement, but even in the office, I’d sensed that it was night. Still holding the gun, I padded around, catching the scents of every long-ago meal prepared here. Marek watched me from the office doorway.
Eventually I paused to lean back against a counter, its metal the same cool temperature as my skin. Looking down at the gun, I wondered how it felt when a bullet entered a vampire’s heart. Not as painful as what Buckley had done to me, I was sure of that. But the vamps I’d shot in the past certainly hadn’t enjoyed the experience. They’d reacted much the same way as humans would—shock and terror—before the bits of wood did their job and the vamps were destroyed.
I glanced at Marek. “What if I decide I enjoy murdering humans?”
“Because it’s inevitable a monster will make that decision.”
Using my newfound speed, I rushed to him, but he didn’t even flinch. “Don’t you think I’ve learned my lesson by now?” I growled. “Humanity—or lack thereof—doesn’t define whether someone’s a monster. Buckley was human.”
He hesitated a moment before reaching to stroke my jaw. “Then why are you afraid you’ll become a murderer?”
It was hard to find the right words, especially with him so close, touching me. Apparently becoming undead hadn’t loosened my tongue. “I’m afraid because of that core self you were talking about. It’s flawed.”
“They all are. Otherwise we’d be gods.”
“But there’s darkness there. A lot. What if I act on it?”
Another light pass of his fingertips over my skin, making me shiver, but not with fear or cold. My entire body had become an erogenous zone. “Every sentient being on Earth has that darkness,” Marek said, “and we all have the potential to act on it. I think there’s not much likelihood of you doing so.”
So Marek had faith in me. This was an interesting thing to know.
But I stepped away from him nonetheless. “How will I eat?”
“There are a dozen packets of blood in that cooler,” he answered, pointing. “Enough to keep even the newly risen satiated for a few days.”
“And when it’s gone?”
“Your appetite will ebb soon to more reasonable levels. There are ways to obtain more packaged blood, but ultimately you won’t find it satisfying. The same is true of animal blood. They will sustain you without truly filling you.”
“So then?”
His response was quiet. “You could hunt. This city houses a great many homeless people, and those so far at the fringes nobody notices their absence. You could feed off them for a long time before the Bureau came after you.”
“No.”
“Good,” he replied, smiling. “Then I can teach you to hunt the way I do. Nobody dies. No more harm done to them than if they’d donated to the Red Cross—and the rewards are better than cookies and orange juice. Or….”
“What?”
A slight hesitation before he spoke. “Or I hunt for us both, and you feed from me. If you’re willing to remain with me, that is.”
I realized I was licking my lips. “You want that?”
“Desperately,” he whispered.
“Why?”
“I honestly don’t know. I’ve been drawn to you since the moment I saw you in the club. I don’t know why. It’s never happened to me before. But I wanted you, and nothing since has diminished that.”
There are enchantments that can cause instant attraction. They’re illegal, and the Bureau arrests anyone who provides or procures them, but people use them anyway. It was possible someone had cast an enchantment like that on Marek and me. But I couldn’t imagine who would do that, or why, or how. And in any case, that kind of false love always evaporates quickly. My desire for Marek hadn’t abated even when I thought he’d betrayed me, and it hadn’t faded away when I died. In fact, now that we were tied by blood, I never wanted to leave his side.
I set the gun on a counter. Perhaps someday I’d want it, but not now. “Yes,” I said—to being drawn to him, to staying with him, to feeding from him. Yes to it all.
As if in a goth version of a corny romance, Marek and I flew into each other’s arms.
Kissing when we both had fangs was… interesting. Erotic. Our blood mingled in our mouths, increasing our passion exponentially. When I imagined what it would be like to feed from Marek while he fed from me, while we fucked, I almost came then and there.
“I should probably eat first,” I gasped after pulling back a bit.
Chuckling knowingly, Marek took my hand and led me to the cooler, lifting the lid and then handing me a packet. I used my fangs to tear it open and then chugged the contents. Cold and plasticky. It reminded me of those prepackaged sandwiches sold at airports and convenience stores—soggy bread, limp lettuce, the meat and cheese hardly more than tasteless paste. Those sandwiches had filled my stomach when I’d been hungry and without other options, and now the packaged blood would do the same.
I polished off six of them and Marek had two. My stomach was full and the need within me had faded. Well, one need. Because when I looked at Marek, an entirely different hunger consumed me.
This time I tore his clothes right off, and although he could have stopped me, he didn’t try. He was too busy running his hands over my skin as if claiming my body as his own. I didn’t try to stop him.
We didn’t make it back to the bedding in the office but instead ended up rolling together on the hard tile of the kitchen floor. We kissed and caressed, nipped and scratched. My newly enhanced senses made everything so much more, but so did the knowledge that this wasn’t just a quick fuck with a stranger. This beautiful, enigmatic, astonishing creature was mine if I wanted him—which I did—and I was irrefutably his.
Vampires need not worry about safer-sex practices, and I discovered that bits of fleeting pain made the pleasure even sweeter. He entered me using nothing but spit for lube, and I clutched his ass and bit the tender juncture of his neck and shoulder. We climaxed together, screaming our bliss so loudly that I believe the building trembled.
Then we looked at each other. Smeared with blood and semen and dirt from the not-especially-clean floor. Our skin dotted with bite marks. Our hair snarled into knots. And we laughed together. That felt as good as the sex. Better, even.
Afterward we cleaned each other at the kitchen sink, using the spray attachment like a shower head. We got water everywhere, and it was playful and silly and altogether wonderful. Still slightly damp, we retired to the office for a second round, this one slower and softer.
Cradled against Marek in our nest of blankets, I found myself believing in happy endings.
“What are you laughing about?” he asked, cool breath a whisper on my skin.
“The universe. I had to die in order to find what I’d been wanting all my life.”
“If there’s a God, she surely has a sense of humor.”
I brushed my lips against his temple. “Do you have a plan for us, or do we play it by ear?”
“I have… an idea. It’s not a plan yet, but we could make it that if you wish.”
The idea of a shared scheme made me smile. “Yes?”
“Charles and Tenrael do private investigating. We could do something similar. Cooperate with them at times. They’ve mentioned the possibility, and they think we’d make good partners. But also….”
“Yes?”
“There are other situations like Buckley. Occasions when people are endangered and the Bureau can’t or won’t act. And there are occasions when those in danger are not human.” Marek sighed.
“Are you saying we could be bodyguards to the supernatural?”
“Something like that.”
I turned the concept over in my head and couldn’t find a single fault with it. And then I thought of all the stories Marek must have about his long existence and how if luck was with us, we’d have many years for him to share them. I thought about how I’d never stand in the sunshine again. But then, I’d mostly been a creature of the night even when I was alive. And now, day or night, I need never be alone again.
I squeezed Marek tightly.
I’d spent years flirting with death. Now, wonder of wonders, I embraced the undead. And I wanted to do it forever.