A Dark Heart (18 page)

“Elijah,” she gasped.

He didn’t seem to hear her. He backed her up, clutching one of her
shoulders as if afraid she’d run away from him. Her legs hit the side of the
bed, and he shoved her down on top of the mattress. She scrambled back, and he
caught her ankle, holding her in place with frightening ease.

“Scream now, Christiana,” he said. “Scream now and stop this … I can’t. I
won’t …”

If she screamed, she knew Matthews would be there in a heartbeat. But she
couldn’t make her lungs work – didn’t want to make them work. She didn’t
want
Elijah to stop. She searched his wild eyes, found a glimmer of recognition deep
inside of them, and relaxed. Some part of him saw her still.

She shook her head resolutely and parted her legs.

He drew in a ragged breath, releasing her ankle. His unearthly eyes seemed
to bore into her, making her burn and throb as if he had touched her.

His fingers began to fumble at the buttons on the front of his linen
drawers, but he shook too severely to undo them. He cursed wildly, ripping the
fabric.

“Help me,” he cried. “Help me…”

She sat up and reached towards him, pushing his hands away. She
unfastened the buttons, brushing the hard length of him involuntarily, making
him shudder. The thin material fell away, revealing his erection. It rose from
a thatch of dark curls in all of its startling and terrifying glory, dark and
engorged.

 “I want to feel … something …
something
. Make me feel, Ana,”
he breathed, clutching her wrist, guiding it down to his sex. He showed her how
to grip it, stroke it. She tried to follow his instructions, feeling the hot,
satin hardness pulse against her palm.

Good Lord
. This was
not
how she’d imagined their first time
together.

After only a few seconds, he whispered something unintelligible and
pushed her hand away. “Ana, Ana,” he murmured, tangling his hand in her hair,
wrenching her head back and kissing her wildly. He pressed her down into the
mattress, his body following, covering hers, molding her against his stark
angles and curves. He sank against her until it was hard to breathe, and slid a
hand down her stomach, between her legs, cupping her. She gasped in shock as
she felt his finger stroking the folds of her sex, then delving deeper, deeper,
until it was inside of her. Swells of sensation shot through her body.

She’d never thought…

His hand left her abruptly, his knee shoving her legs wider, his weight
settling even more heavily upon her. She felt something hard and slick probing
her entrance, nudging her open. She tensed and gasped, her fingers digging into
the skin of his back. He caught her mouth with his own, and with one swift shove
of his hips, he was deep inside of her, thick and hard and scalding. She cried
out, and so did he. The pain was shocking, overshadowing everything else. He
held himself there, buried deep, as her body adjusted, the pain subsiding
enough so that she could at least breathe again.

She glanced up at him. He hovered above her, a look of ecstasy
transfixing his harsh features. “So good. I want you so much, Ana,” he
whispered hoarsely.

“I know,” she said, tears pricking her eyes. She wrapped her arms around
him pulling him closer, moving her hips to take in more of him, despite the tearing
pain.

He groaned, pulled out of her, and thrust back inside of her so violently
it took away her breath again. She felt split in two and strangely aroused all
at once. With aching, brutal slowness, he withdrew and thrust again, and again.
He clutched the bedclothes beside her head with one hand, lifting himself,
urging her legs around his hips. The movement of his body increased, and he
plunged harder, faster.

Her pain gradually ebbed until only a vague awareness of the sliding
friction between their bodies remained. She felt on the verge of something … wonderful,
but she was too detached from it, too disoriented by the vehemence of the act
– too determined to hold him and console him – to give into it.

She watched him instead through her tears as he possessed her, so broken
and beautiful as he moved above her, his need overwhelming, his eyes shut tight
as if in meditation. His body was glazed in sweat, moving at an increasingly
frantic pace, every movement he made wrenching a strangled sob from deep within
him, as if he were as torn in two with pain and pleasure as she was.

Then something seemed to shift inside of him, and his eyes shot open,
blazing with yellow amber heat. His head descended, metallic fangs flashing in
the moonlight before he buried them deep in her throat. The sting was nothing
compared to the pain from before, an almost welcome counterpoint to the daunting
tide of sensation rolling over her from the friction of their joined bodies. And
when he began drawing her blood into his body in long, pulling draughts, it
felt … better than good.

But then, after only a few moments, he ripped his fangs free of her neck
and arched his entire upper body towards the ceiling, crying out her name in
helpless abandon. He thrust a final time inside of her, his body shuddering in
long ecstatic release, something hot and wet warming her deep inside.

Watching him was enough to make her burn even hotter, but not enough to
push her over the edge. His body slumped against her, and they lay tangled
together, panting, still joined. He nuzzled his head against her neck where
he’d bitten her, brushed his fingers through her unbound hair, now tangled
around the both of them. All she could do for a long time was lie frozen beneath
him, regaining her equilibrium, fighting back her own frustrated desire.

Definitely
not how she’d imagined things.

Then she noticed a warm wetness trickling down her shoulder, and she tensed,
fearing the wound at her neck had failed to heal as she’d expected it to. It
took her a moment to realize it wasn’t her blood at all.

Elijah was crying.

At some point his gasps had transformed into sobs. She could not tell if
they were from relief or despair – perhaps a mixture of both. But they
shook her.

He’d never cried, not even when he’d been a boy.

Gathering herself once more, setting aside the confusing blend of shock
and frustration swirling through her mind, she curled her arms and legs around
him as tightly as they would go, trying to absorb his desperate sobs into her
own body.

“Don’t hate me, Ana. Don’t leave…”

“Never,” she murmured, clutching him even closer.

“So sorry…”

A long time later, his movements stilled, his breathing slowed. She
realized he had fallen asleep, but she didn’t dare move. For the first time in
their acquaintance, there was no tension left in his body. He lay against her,
lax, spent. Peaceful.

A warm, bittersweet tenderness grew inside of her, despite her aches and
pains and bone-deep confusion, and she held onto him, keeping his nightmares at
bay.

MUCH later,
she heard a knock on the door and Matthews’ voice inquiring after her. She
started out of a shallow slumber, for a moment forgetting where she was, what
had happened.

Elijah still lay in a deep, impenetrable slumber on top of her. With slow
care, she rolled him on his back and rose unsteadily to her feet. She was
aching and wet between her legs, but she ignored this and reached over him,
putting a pillow beneath his head. Then she checked his wounds in the
moonlight, stripping away the bandages around his middle and scrubbing away the
drying blood that had leaked from the broken stitches. When he was clean, she
sighed in relief at the sight that greeted her eyes. Her blood had nearly mended
him already. The wounds on his face had healed, and the deep gashes across his
torso had disappeared as if they’d never existed.

The scarring on his arms had only slightly lessened, however, and she
knew it would take a few more infusions of her blood to heal the drug’s
insidious marks completely. It was a testament to the morphine’s power over
him, and the long road they had yet to travel. Giving him her blood – and
her body – tonight was only the first step, not the miraculous panacea
she wished it could have been.

As she dared to glance lower, she found more traces of blood lingering on
his sex and thighs –
her
blood. Flushing with dismay, she wiped
her blood off his body, then pulled the linen drawers back over his legs,
buttoning them at the crotch with trembling fingers. She drew up the twisted covers
to his waist. He slept throughout the process, lost to the world, and for that
she was grateful. She was not ready to face him yet.

“Milady!” Matthews whispered urgently at the door. “Milady, are you all
right in there?”

She pulled her robe over her shoulders and cinched it, then stuffed the last
evidence of the night’s events – her ruined gown – in a pocket and
went to the door.

She fumbled with the lock with shaking fingers and opened the door.
Matthews stared down at her with concern.

“Is everything all right?”

“Yes,” she said, mustering every last thread of her badly shaken
composure.

Matthews glanced towards a slumbering Elijah. His eyes narrowed on the
destruction throughout the room.

Matthews’ lips drew together. “He didn’t hurt you, milady?”

“Certainly not,” she said, her hands reaching instinctively to the edge
of her robe, pulling it close around her neck, hiding any remaining evidence that
might remain of Elijah’s imprint.

Matthews’ eyes seemed to narrow more as he studied her disheveled state,
but he said nothing.

She drew herself up. “He chose me after all. Just as you said he would.
But now I must … rest for a while.”

“Aye, milady,” Matthews said rather bleakly, a knowing look in his eye. “And
thank you,” he added softly, gravely.

Christiana glanced away quickly. She lifted her shoulder in a
half-hearted shrug. “I’ve a feeling the war has only just begun.”

“Aye, but the rest is up to him, milady.”

Only when she had reached her bedroom and closed the door did she allow
her wobbling knees to finally buckle. She fell to the floor, unable to hold
back the maelstrom of emotions inside any longer. She squeezed one fist against
her temple, one against her belly, and curled up on her side on the carpet,
exhausted, annihilated.

She finally stood and went to the full-length mirror at her boudoir. With
trembling fingers, she undid her robe and slid it off, studying herself. Her
lips were swollen and red, her hair wild. Her chin and throat were covered in a
faint rash from the rasping of his whiskers against her skin. Small red marks
from his teeth marred the pale skin of her neck and her breasts, the corners of
her mouth. Her flesh throbbed between her legs where he’d taken her virginity.

Soon all of the marks would be gone, since her body was quick to
regenerate itself, but she didn’t know whether to feel devastated or thrilled
at the sight of them. Such contradictory emotions, however, were too confusing
to reconcile, and she was so tired, so…

She sank back down to the carpet as the enormity of what she’d just done
washed over her, followed by a giant wave of doubt. This was meant to restore
her hope –
his
hope – but at the moment, hope had never
seemed so far away.

Those tears.
She’d never witnessed anyone cry like that before.
And that he had done so right after … well, it could
not
be a good sign.

She would not regret it, for it was what she should have done years ago,
had her cowardice and uncertainty not stood in her way. But she didn’t know if
it would be enough to save him. She’d healed his body, given him release and a
sleep unmarred by nightmares. She’d given him everything of herself, and she
could do no more.

The rest was up to him, just as Matthews had said, and it was terrifying.

She buried her head in the rug and wept.

THE nightmare
seemed never-ending this time, for every cell in his body was on fire. It was as
if he’d fallen, at last, in the pits of hell to roast for eternity. The pain
was worse around his abdomen, in his heart and guts, radiating outwards like a
blight, down to the very tips of his toenails.

If he wasn’t in hell, he didn’t know where he could be, but it was dark
there, and he was trapped, unable to shift a muscle to relieve the crippling,
searing pain. People and monsters drifted in and out of the dream. O’Connor was
there, as always, laughing at him with his chipped front tooth, for once
content to wait, it seemed, to dole out his familiar brand of torment. Even Romanov,
of all people, appeared a few times as a demon who stabbed him with a needle in
the places that hurt the most again and again and again. The torment never
seemed to end.

But then it suddenly did. Even the pain receded, until all he knew was an
oblivion without sound, without sight. He could have stayed there forever.

It didn’t last long enough, though. Coming out of the dark void once
more, the pain radiating through his body had been joined by the icy-hot,
skin-crawling ache he always got when he went too long without morphine. And it
was worse than it had ever been before. Even his teeth ached from the withdrawal.
But he couldn’t move, couldn’t even open his eyes. All he could do was lie
there in his prison as the pain and craving grew and grew until he lost any
lingering sense of coherency.

Then he knew for certain he was in hell when Lady Christiana was suddenly
there, touching him, murmuring endearments, drawing him closer until he was
drowning in her. But it couldn’t be her, not really. Not his Ana. This
apparition looked like an angel, but she had to be a devil, tempting his
pain-addled body to break all of the vows he’d ever made to himself. And it
felt
good
. Brilliantly, incandescently good. Just as he knew it would.
So good his pain ebbed, his craving for the drug ceased, and he wept like a
baby.

Yes, this had to be hell, he thought to himself as he drifted once more
into the void.

HE came awake
with a gasp of air, stretched out on a large bed in his smallclothes. Sunlight
drifted in through the half-opened drapes in an unfamiliar room, warming his
body in strips. He didn’t know where he was, or how he had managed to get
there, but he felt … better. Strangely relaxed, strangely content. Entirely
free of pain. And his head felt clear, his mind alert as it had not been in
ages.

The last thing he remembered clearly was chasing the Gentleman across the
rooftops. But after that he remembered nothing, had only a vague recollection
of pain and half-forgotten nightmares.

He glanced down his exposed body. Not one mark marred his torso, though
he could have sworn…

He shook his head as he sat up, struggling to sort through his hazy
memories. When he caught sight of one of his arms, the rotting jumble of
injection sites faded to nearly nothing, a vague sense of disquiet took up
residence inside of him, ruffling his rare moment of serenity.

“Yer up, then,” came a gruff voice next to him. He turned from inspecting
his arm to find Matthews’ bulk occupying a chair next to his bed. The Constable
seemed to have been napping, for his spiky dishwater blond hair pointed in
every direction, and an imprint of the chair back marred his cheek. He looked
like he’d slept in his rumpled, soiled suit for a week. He studied Elijah with
a mixture of exhausted relief and wariness.

“Where am I?” Elijah asked. Even his voice sounded surprisingly clear.
Healthy.

“The Professor’s,” Matthews answered.

Romanov’s? “Why am I here? What happened?”

 The furrow in Matthew’s forehead deepened with each question Elijah
asked, along with Elijah’s sense of unease.

Healthy
. He’d not be
healthy
in years.

And though he smelled Matthews’ blood flowing thick and rich through that
big body of his, could even hear the Constable’s heart beat like a kettle drum
even across the distance separating them, he felt no bloodlust.

His mind, as disturbingly clear as all of his other senses, seemed to shy
away from pursuing the reason why, however.

“You’re not remembering any of it, then, gov?” Matthews said haltingly.

“Any of what?” he demanded, swinging his legs over the side of the bed
and standing up. “Did we lose the Gentleman? What the hell is going on?”

The Constable slowly climbed to his feet. He looked increasingly worried.
“Aye, we lost the Gennelman all right,” he muttered darkly. “But that’s the
least of it.”

“Well?” he prompted.

“You’ve been … indisposed for a week.”

“
Indisposed
? What the bloody hell does that mean? And when did you
start using such fancy-arse words, Matthews?”

Matthews shook his head. “Just clean yerself up a bit, gov. You’re a rank
one, you are. Our Professor set out some clothes for you in that new-fangled
lavatory of his across the hall. After that, well … we can talk.”

Elijah opened his mouth to argue, but then thought better of it. He knew
he was being a coward, but something told him he didn’t
want
to remember
what had happened. Not yet anyway. So he followed Matthews across the hall and
into the elaborate bathing chamber Romanov had recently installed.

Under a domed tile ceiling, a system of metal pipes ran along one wall
before twining together and curving overhead like the branches on a tree.
Matthews showed him how to turn the knobs on the pipes, which turned on the
water. After a bit of clanging in the bowels of the house, and the distant
sound of rushing water, a warm cascade fell down from the broad, perforated
spigot at the end of the pipes, into a steel drain set within the tiles at his
feet. It was certainly a far cry from his scant accommodations in Whitechapel.

Bloody nobs.

He waited until Matthews had left him before stripping out of his
underclothes and stepping under the shower, hating to be naked in front of
anyone. He let himself savor the exquisite feeling of the warm water running
down his body. It had been ages since his senses had felt so keen, so unpolluted…

No, that wasn’t quite right. It had
never
felt like this, even
when he was human, even in the early days of his transformation. He could feel
every drop of water against his skin, could almost enumerate them in his head.
And when the steam rose around him, enveloping him, it was as if he could differentiate
between the individual molecules of vapor dancing their way towards the
ceiling. His vision had never been so acute. It was miraculous and overwhelming
all at once, and he had to brace himself against the wall as his head began to
spin with the implications.

What had he done
?

He stayed under the metal spigot long after the hot water had disappeared,
torturing himself with the icy cold spray, reluctant to face the world, to face
the memories hovering just below the surface of his consciousness. But
eventually he turned off the water, finished his ablutions, and found the
finely tailored suit Romanov had left for him. He took his time dressing,
feeling vaguely ridiculous in the expensive, fashionable rig, which hung a
little too large on his lean frame.

When he glanced into the mirror as he shaved over a porcelain sink, he
barely recognized the man staring back at him through the lingering steam. The
last time he’d looked in a mirror, he’d been as gaunt and colorless as a corpse.
But the hollows had filled in, the color had returned. In his borrowed suit, he
looked nearly
human
, despite the lightning streak of a scar running down
one cheek and his mismatched eyes.

A shiver raced down his spine, so he quickly finished shaving and turned
away from his reflection. He’d never liked looking in mirrors, and he’d been
far more comfortable with how he’d looked before, as macabre as it had been. One
of the best things about the drug had been its destruction of any vestiges of
beauty. He’d hated the daily reminder of why O’Connor had pursued and used him
so relentlessly. He’d hated the sight of that beautiful, doomed little boy
staring back at him.

But all of the damage had been reversed. There was only one explanation
for his altered state, and just the thought of it made his guts churn with an
unsavory blend of dread and anger.

Surely she’d not done it again, without bothering to ask for his consent.
Had she learned
nothing
? Did she care
nothing
for his wishes?

But he hadn’t wanted to die, had he? This time around, at least. He
remembered that much.

And as he stepped into the hall and scanned it up and down for signs of
Matthews, he began to remember more. He clutched at the wall as the memories
assaulted him. He had flashes of his nighttime race across the rooftops, the
Gentleman’s cheroot break, and the tickertext that had sent the thief into a
panic. Elijah remembered wondering if Percy would ever be able to catch up to
them as he’d followed the Gentleman into Whitechapel, back to his own
neighborhood.

Then he recalled the flat at the top of a ramshackle building and the
flame-haired children the thief had tried to protect. He recalled two of
O’Connor’s top bullyboys, and the threats they had made to take the children and
turn them to the trade. He recalled the rage those threats had engendered
inside of him, blurring his judgment, sending him into a frenzy of violence
that had ended with his guts spilled out and a dagger through the heart.

He’d died … or he should have died, but he’d not wanted to. Not with so
much yet unfinished.

Matthews never appeared, and so he wandered down the hallways. They were
strangely empty, not a sign of Romanov or his wife or any of their legion of
servants. He sensed other people in the residence, but not on the floor he
occupied. He suspected Romanov had quarantined him, not knowing what to expect
from a wounded, half-insane vampire, and Elijah didn’t blame him for the
precaution.

Elijah wouldn’t have let someone like him past his threshold in the first
place, wounded or not.

He finally reached the grand staircase leading down to the main floor of
the townhouse and paused at the top, steadying himself against a brass post.
The scent of
her
bombarded his newly honed sense of smell. Green grass
and country roses – or at least what he imagined such things smelled like.
As fresh and clean as the city was soiled by soot and Fog. She’d never smelled
so good to him, and he could feel his fangs just itching to descend. But they
didn’t.

It was rather shocking how easy it was to restrain himself, when he’d
spent the past decade fighting tooth and nail for the smallest measure of
control. He still wanted her, still wanted to devour her, but he no longer felt
like he would die if he didn’t.

With a growing but guarded sense of relief, he descended the staircase to
continue his search for Matthews. But his feet led him to Ana instead. He
couldn’t seem to help himself. One minute he was heading towards the kitchens
at the back of the house, where he could hear Matthews talking to someone, the
next he was standing in the doorway of the drawing room, watching her arrange a
vase of flowers in front of a large bay window, the sunlight making her golden
hair gleam. She wore a light green gown that had a girlish ribbon tied in a bow
at her back, reminding him of the gossamer frocks she’d worn as a young woman.

Her back was to him, so she didn’t notice him yet, her attention focused
on the flowers. He watched her tilt her head to the side, shuffle a few stems
around, then step back to survey the results. Every move she made, as meaningless
as they were, entranced him, made him yearn for her in a way that had nothing
to do with his body’s craving for her blood.

He wanted those delicate hands, which caressed the flower petals so
gently, on him. He wanted to run his own hands through those golden tresses, to
bury his nose in the crook of her neck and take long draughts of her scent into
his lungs. He wanted her beneath him, skin to skin. He wanted inside her, even
though he didn’t deserve her.

Fire seemed to blaze through every part of his anatomy, fanning an insane
longing in him until he was stiffly erect beneath his borrowed trousers and
blushing crimson from head to toe like an adolescent. She’d be better than any
drug…

She
was
better than any drug.

Then suddenly all of the missing memories rushed back, and he staggered
against the doorframe, gripping it so tight the wood splintered. His arousal
sputtered out, the heat of his body turned arctic.

He’d been looking for the morphine that night, had torn apart the bedroom
for it, half insane from the pain. But he’d had her instead. He’d used her.

Have me, Elijah … Have me
…

No, no
! he wanted to scream. What had he done?

It couldn’t be true, could it? Was it all just part of his nightmare? He
remembered that, too, the burning fire, the dreamless oblivion. That had to be
it. For if it wasn’t … if it wasn’t…

But then she turned and saw him, and the smile on her lips wavered, and
her shoulders tensed the barest of fractions. She quickly recovered, but he’d
seen it. And he knew it was all true, every single detail of his desperate…

He didn’t even know how to describe it. He’d not raped her. But, God in
heaven, he’d
taken
her, sunk his teeth into her, like a bloody animal.
And she’d just held him, expecting nothing in return. Receiving nothing in
return.

Her bright, forced smile wavered again as she saw his growing distress,
and she began moving in his direction. The fool. He held up a hand to stop her,
and she paused, a flash of hurt passing over her perfect features. He felt
kicked in the gut. God, the last thing he ever wanted to do was hurt her, but
he had. At every turn, he sinned towards her, and he was so tired of it. So
tired of suffering and making her suffer in return.