Chapter Nineteen
“How long do you plan to keep me here?” Her voice was stronger now that she’d eaten enough sugary food to feel safe in her powers once more. Dragons thrived on carbohydrates. Actually, humans did too. Apes were literally designed to live on carbs. But humans could deny themselves for a while. If a dragon tried to do so, people would die, and the dragon would eat the sugary foods anyway.
Then again, that sometimes happened with humans too.
Eva had left the couch and made her way to the fire place, where she gazed steadily into it, thinking of her young red dragon friend – and the man who was anything but the red dragon he’d been pretending to be. Being taken into another dimension by the dragon outlaw would have been reminder enough of her situation, but there was also the fact that he’d watched her the entire time she was eating. He was watching her still.
He hadn’t taken his eyes off her except to cook since they’d arrived in the parallel world of beaches and sea glass. She could feel his gaze on her, never ending. There was a weight and a heat to it, searing through her. But most disconcerting of all to Eva was that unlike Arach’s gaze… it wasn’t unwelcome.
Stockholm syndrome, she reminded herself forcefully. But when she did, she closed her eyes and hugged herself, because the words were laced with the worst kind of doubt.
“I can’t keep you anywhere you decide you don’t want to be,” said Calidum.
As always, his deep voice, melodic and calm, was like a kind of music that thrummed along the nerve endings of anyone listening. But it was the words themselves that caught Eva off guard this time. Her eyes flew open and she turned to face him.
Cal was leaning against the dark marble of the adjoining kitchen, his muscled arms crossed over his broad chest, his long, sculpted legs crossed at his ankles. He was dressed in the usual dark clothing from head to boots, lending to his tall, dark, and devastatingly handsome image. His charcoal gray eyes shone with a luminescence that almost gave off its own light.
Eva swallowed hard. Had she heard him right? She was free to go?
Sure, said her sarcastic inner thoughts. If you want to die at Arach’s hand.
And that was the power of Calidum right there. He knew that she knew that she had no choice but to stay with him. So rather than argue the fact with him, Eva lifted her chin and narrowed her gaze. “My personal feelings for you aside, we have to stop Arach,” she said simply.
Calidum said nothing for a moment, his beautiful eyes simply boring into her. And then, quite calmly, he said, “I couldn’t agree more, Eva. Do you have a plan?”
Eva blinked. What? The Great Gray was actually asking her for ideas?
“I….” She faltered, realizing that since this had all begun, she’d been far more concerned with her safety or the safety of others in each immediate situation than with fixing the overarching problems. She closed her eyes and ran a hand through her long hair. When she did, she realized it had reverted to its natural bright white color. “Shit,” she said softly. She really had been completely drained by the healings at the pier, Arach’s strange vampiric attack, and her even more unexpected retaliation. “Honestly, no,” she admitted.
She pinched the bridge of her nose and tried to think. Suddenly, Calidum was speaking next to her ear. “What did he do to you, Eva?”
Eva jumped and spun, trying to step back. But Cal grabbed her arm and held it in a tight grip, using it to yank her closer. At once, she was pulling desperately to escape his grasp, but not for the right reasons. His nearness did not fill her with the loathing it should have. Quite the opposite.
Her head felt too light, too full, and her insides were heating up. Cal gazed steadily down at her as he lifted her caught wrist, and her sleeve fell back, exposing the twin bite marks Arach had so callously left there.
“Tell me something Eva,” he said intimately. “Did he do this?” He hadn’t even glanced at the marks; his eyes were focused on hers, which told her he had already noticed the dual wounds. He’d probably seen them when she was eating. Maybe sooner. She had forgotten who she was dealing with. The man before her was observant. Smart. Dangerous.
She didn’t bother confirming it; Cal obviously already knew that Arach had bitten her. So instead, she straightened in his tight grip and lifted her chin, feigning a defiance that was all too quickly giving way to something else. “I told you he had changed,” she said.
“Yes, you did.” He now broke eye contact and glanced down at the bruised wound along the vein on the inside of her arm. “And he seems to have developed a taste for you.”
Eva’s teeth clenched tight. She yanked her arm free of his grip, and he let her go. “I’m afraid one bite is all he gets,” she hissed.
Calidum smiled wryly. “Eva, everyone knows one bite is never enough.”
Evangeline glared at him. “What is your game, Korridum?” she demanded, using his real name because he kept using hers. “What the hell do you want from me?”
There was something tearing her up inside. Fear was there, yes. Fear of Amunet, the Entity, and Arach. But there was a second emotion growing solidly around that fear, something more powerful, something darker, warmer and unfamiliar. She found much to her displeasure, that she was shaking again. She hugged herself and flexed her muscles, willing him not to notice.
The Great Gray watched her in silence for a long time, his smile fading. “No games, Eva,” he said at last, speaking as if he were weary of the truth. “Arach will find you the moment you step past the walls of this dimension. I think we both know what he’s become.”
“What?” she asked. “A vampire? I can handle a vampire.” That latter bit was true. She’d dealt with her fair share of rogue blood suckers. She was a magnet for supernaturals of the opposite sex.
But what wasn’t true was the former bit, and she damned well knew it. She might be able to handle a vampire, but she’d thrown magic at Arach that she hadn’t even known she possessed, and he’d come away from it unscathed. He wasn’t just a vampire, and he was no longer simply a dragon. He was something else entirely.
“I won’t bother correcting you,” Calidum told her in a weary tone. “You’ve already figured out the error in your assumptions.” He turned his back to her and moved to the fireplace, where he braced his strong arms against the mantle and leaned in, closing his eyes.
Eva watched the muscles flex in his forearms, and she felt strange. That dark warmth inside her grew a little darker, and a little warmer.
Suddenly – she needed to know. She had waited for thousands of years. She’d kept it inside and she’d questioned it and she’d cried a million times. And now, here in this moment, with the very man before her, she simply needed the answer that time hadn’t supplied.
She licked her lips, steadied herself, and closed her eyes.
“Why did you kill him?”
The question came out less shaky than she’d expected it to. Conviction wrought by generations gave it force and power. The words filled the space of the luxury living room, and the lights in the chandelier dimmed. The fire in the hearth darkened, its flames taking on a blood red hue. The world stopped moving, and every living thing upon it waited in tense silence for an answer.