“So are you taking me home now?” I asked.
I wasn’t sure if I would be more frightened if the answer were yes or no.
“No, Cora.
You’ll stay in my Georgetown house tonight.”
I shivered slightly, remembering what had happened between us the last time I had been in his house.
Wanting it to happen again.
Stupid, stupid, stupid….
Dorian didn’t notice. “That house is the safest place I have in this country. As for me, I will be staying in Baltimore. Now that I’ve seen the scale of the attempt, there must be a large Kyrioi-aligned faction behind it—the Star Junta perhaps, or the League of Westphalia. Baltimore is a Kyrioi stronghold and so the best place to track them down.”
“Oh,” I said
, not sure if I was more sorry or relieved that he would be gone and understanding less than half of the rest.
“If you don’t want to know any of this, just tell me.
Most agnates—that’s what vampires call ourselves, you understand—would consider this sort of thing to be beyond your place.”
“And what is my place, exactly, then?” I demanded acidly.
He looked amused at my reaction. “Wherever I choose it to be. Right now, your place is eating dinner. Dalton, hand over the basket.”
The l
ast order was directed behind us, and I jumped slightly as a basket was passed by one of the men in the middle bench up between the two front chairs.
I hadn’t eaten since my late breakfast hours ago.
My stomach growled at the smell of the food that wafted from under the cloth over.
I took it with a somewhat tentative, “Thank you
.” I pulled off the cloth to discover an assortment of fussy little sandwiches and a thermos underneath. Dorian’s chef again, trying to impress me.
I couldn’t help it.
The stress and fear and exhaustion had been all too much—and now this. Fancy-cut gourmet sandwiches. I burst out laughing.
Dorian raised an eyebrow.
“A picnic fit for a car chase,” I said, raising a delicate confection in a salute. “Why not?”
And then I wolfed it down.
***
The clock
on the dash read 10:12 when we pulled up to the front of Dorian’s Georgetown house. He threw the SUV into park and circled to my side as one of the men in the back stepped out to take his place in the driver’s seat.
My hand was on the door handle when he opened it for me, catching my arm and supporting me as I slid to the ground.
At his touch, the trickle of awareness in his presence turned into a sudden flood of raw need, no buffer left in my exhaustion. I half-lurched against his chest as he steadied me. I was too tired to stop myself. I almost despaired to realize that nothing that had happened that day had changed it.
I was frightened
at the thought that nothing at all could.
My shredded, bloodied shirt had finally finished drying against the warm captain’s chair, and it stuck to my skin and clumped in my ponytail.
My legs were wobbly now that the last of my fear-fueled energy had drained away. But none of that mattered with him.
I
t occurred to me to wonder if Dorian’s gallantry was because I was a woman or because I was human. If I were a human man and he was a female vampire—agnate, I corrected—would our roles still be the same? Was it human or vampire society that made him open doors and stand when I entered the room?
I
leaned on Dorian’s arm as he escorted me up the walk to his bone-white mansion, its classical symmetry standing in merciless perfection over the garden, with its walls of holly and rigidly trimmed boxwood borders along the paths and flowerbeds. Everything was carefully controlled, any hint of unruliness mercilessly lopped off, as if there was a danger in the least unconformity.
We went up the front steps to the portico.
Expecting the butler, I was surprised to see an unfamiliar woman open the door. From the power that rolled out from her and her unnatural beauty, with her flawless ebony skin and her slanting almond eyes, she was vampire, not human.
So
,
I thought, my brain still muddled with exhaustion.
Some vampires are black.
I didn’t know whether that should be a surprise, since I still didn’t know where the hell vampires came from
in the first place. All I knew was that they’d never been human, and humans could never become vampires.
“They’re assembling
in the ballroom,” she said without introduction when we stepped inside. She didn’t even look at me. “It will be another half hour before they’re ready for the proving.”
She didn’t affect me the same way Dorian did.
I wondered if it was because she was female or due to some side effect of my bond.
Dorian’s mouth pressed very briefly in a hard line before relaxing into his usual marble impassivity.
“Very well. We will be there.”
The vampire—agnate—raised her eyebrows.
“We?”
Dorian looked down at me.
“It’s up to you, of course. Do you want to see this?”
I started to say,
Of course,
but I stopped myself. I took nothing as a matter of course with him.
“What is it?” I asked
carefully.
“If one of my people was subverted,
the proving will reveal it.”
“Dammit, Dorian, she’s a baby,” the female agnate said impatiently.
“She doesn’t understand what’s going on. Send her back to her nursery. You can play with her later.”
I bristled.
She was right—I didn’t understand. But if I got sent upstairs, I never would.
“I want to come with you,” I said quietly.
The female agnate just shook her head, looking disgusted.
“Half an hour,” she repeated.
She took the foyer stairs down to the lower level, where I’d never been before.
I looked up at Dorian.
We were alone, for the moment. For the first time since he had come to my rescue. As alone, at least, as we ever were in his house.
My arm was still resting lightly over his, a curiously old-fashioned gesture.
Through the fabric of his sports jacket, I could feel the tension in his body shift in keen awareness of me. A ripple of anticipation went through me.
My lips formed his name.
“Dorian.”
He gave a broken chuckle
. “The world falling down around our ears, and what I want most is…you.” He lowered his face to mine. “To take you.”
He was so close to me.
My hand shifted, no longer hooked over his but gripping his forearm. Little tremors of arousal shivered down into me.
“Take me,” I breathed, an echo,
an invitation—and a dare.
And then his lips met mi
ne, and nothing else mattered. The world and all its horrors and complications fell away, and there was only him, his body, long and lean against mine, his mouth over mine, laying claim to it like he laid claim to my body and life.
I knew now what he was even more clearly than before.
A killer. Ruthless in pursuit of his goals. Willing to gamble my life to satisfy his thirst—and willing to end a thousand to keep me.
The thought of it should make me sick, and
I knew that later it would. But when it really counted, when I was in his arms, I didn’t care about what he was or what he’d done. I couldn’t. I needed him too much.
Heat
unfurled inside me, wakened by the electric tingle that went from his lips down to the juncture of my thighs. I pressed myself against him, opening my mouth to him, wanting him more than anything as I stood in front of the very doors through which I’d tried to escape him only the day before.
He pulled back.
“Dammit, Cora,” he said roughly. “The blood—all that blood. In the vehicle, I had almost….” A shudder went through his body. It passed from his to mine, the sudden violence of his desire sweeping across me as some invisible control that he had clamped over it suddenly loosed, broken.
I
gave a small, ragged gasp, my skin suddenly alive and burning under his hands, wanting his touch, his mouth, his teeth, his bite—
“You have to get out of those clothes, Cora.”
The darkness was roiling out of him now in streams that seemed to dim the light. He grabbed me by the upper arm and pulled me in three long steps over to one of the two bronze doors that stood directly off the foyer.
Dazed, I could neither resist nor assist him.
He flung the door open, slapping on the light to reveal a row of coats within. He pushed me in ahead of him, then, keeping me at arm’s length.
Dorian
grabbed my hoodie and the shirt under it and ripped them from collar to seam in one motion. He flung them away, deeper in the closet, and took hold of my bra where the cups met the band. With another quick jerk, the fabric gave, and he threw it after.
I stood, swayin
g under the force of his regard, a welter of thoughts coming over me that I didn’t dare to examine too closely. I didn’t want to put a name to my sudden longing—because not only did I want him, but I wanted him to hurt me. He’d been so gentle before, just as he’d promised. I wanted to feel what it would be like when he wasn’t—I wanted to feel my linger in the candle flame again.
And the thought scared me almost as much as he did.
His eyes seemed to be holes into another universe, sucking at my soul. He traced a hooked finger along my jaw and down my neck.
“It’s still on your skin,” he said softly.
“In your hair, Cora.”
“I know.”
I breathed the words. My heart was loud in my ears, a terrified thrum, fast and jerky.
Please, please, please….
Then his mouth silenced mine, his body driving me back into the coats, hard against the wall. He rolled my pants down over my hips even as my own shaking hands scrabbled to loosen his belt. My head was heavy and light at once, my limbs tingling with demand.
The hot ache was growing, a slickness between my legs that begged for him.
I could smell my need in the confines of the closet, and I could smell him and the metallic tang of my blood.
His hands were
rough on my back, tangled in my matted hair, moving down across my breasts, across my belly to find my clitoris. His mouth descended in a line down my jaw and neck, hard against my body, his teeth against my skin, so close to making it part, the hot blood spilling out—
My body was on fire.
I shook as I neared my peak, but he didn’t give it to me. With a low sound, he turned me in his arms, pushing my face against the cold wall. His hand hooked around my hips drove me onward as his mouth found the bloodied skin of my back.
He
pulled my hips back, toward him, even as he pushed up and in, filling me with a sudden motion and surprising a noise from me as he came up against my deepest place. The shudders of his body as his tasted my blood shot through me with every hard stroke.
And
I shattered, the hot darkness roaring out from my center, connecting his mouth on me, his hands, his erection deep inside me, my hands clenching around fistfuls of fabric as I cried out. I felt him come seconds later, and then, almost as abruptly, he stepped away, leaving me gasping and leaning against the wall for support.
I
rolled against the wall to face him, shaking with the aftermath and with all the thoughts that still tumbled through my head. I could still feel the darkness seething around him. I knew what he had really wanted—to open my veins, to drink from me. To break me, so that I spilled out all at once.
I knew what he wanted b
ecause the complimentary urge had burned in my body—the urge to give until nothing was left. He had held back. But I wouldn’t have. Even if I were strong enough to fight him, I wouldn’t have wanted to. I would have given him everything he’d asked for, and I’d have begged him to take more. No matter what the cost.
I
clung to the coats as if they could offer some support.
“
Not a good time,” he said abruptly. “Too close to bonding. Too much temptation. Too much to lose.”
I didn’t understand
what the time since bonding had to do with anything, but I nodded anyway, my body still trembling with reaction. If it had something to do with what I was feeling, I could only agree.
“Wear this,
” he ordered, holding out a long woolen coat without looking at me.
Wordlessly, I toed off my tennis shoes so I could strip off my yoga
pants and underwear, which were dark red and stiff where the blood of my wounds had run down from my back. I used the leg of the pants to clean myself up quickly, then wrapped the long coat around my body, buttoning it from neck to knee and leaving my blood-matted ponytail tucked inside.
Dorian took a deep breath.
I knew he could still smell the blood—I could still smell it, thick and corrupted in the air. But now that I was covered and my bloody clothes were far away, he relaxed fractionally and straightened his clothes.
My heart was still beating hard as I put
back on my shoes, my limbs weak with the aftereffects of adrenaline. Fear, I realized. That primal part of my body knew exactly what had happened, how close I’d come to an edge I couldn’t return from, and I shook with the reaction. I fumbled with my laces, getting them tied again somehow.
When I straightened,
Dorian stood in the doorway, his face a mask. He made no attempt to touch me again.
“I am sorry, Cora,” he said quietly.
“Don’t be,” I said. “You stopped.”
Don’t be, because I wanted more.…
My mind reeled away from the thought.
“I will always stop,” he said.
He didn’t mean that he would not drink my blood. That would happen again. I knew it, and at that moment, I not only accepted it, but I was glad. What he had wanted at that moment went far beyond that. He had wanted me to be opened, to be flayed, to give him everything I had until there was nothing left.
And I would have.
I’d heard stories of kinks and fetishes, of dangerous games and safe words.
With a vampire, there was never a safe word.
Even to the very end.
“Will you ever stop scaring me?” I
asked. But that’s not what I really meant. What I really meant was, would I ever stop scaring myself?
A brief, humorless smile flicked over his lips.
“I hope not. If I do, then we are both damned.”
He stepped out of the coat closet, back into the foyer.
“Come on. You’re safe now.”
Safe.
He’d said that word when he had rescued me on the road. Now he meant that I was safe from him.
I took a deep breath and joined him.
There was nothing else to do.
“This way,” he said, and he led the way across the foyer to another bronze door, the twin of the one he’d just opened.
“Another coat closet?” I asked.
“Not this one,” he said, and he swung it open.
“I want to show you something. Before we go down.”
The lights were off, but the room glowed
from the light of the bank of monitors against the wall. I stared, mesmerized, at the rotating display. The salon, from four different angles. The grounds. What must be a garage. Rooms I recognized—and many more that I did not. My attention was drawn by a huge room in which a crowd of people milled about. It must be the ballroom, I realized.
“They’
re here for the proving,” Dorian said quietly, keeping his distance from me.
“
Proving for what?”
“
A thrall. To see if any of them has been compromised by another agnate.”
Thrall, like enthralled?
The police who’d chased me had certainly had something done to their heads.
“
You mean like the police? And those bikers?” I asked.
I was pretty sure the motorcyclists
had been human, even with their helmets. They’d shown none of the impossible speed or strength of an agnate or a djinn.
“Exactly like that,” he said.
“A human can be persuaded of a great deal in an agnate’s presence. To maintain a deeper level of control, a control that does not dissipate with distance or in another agnate’s presence, requires a longer term hold, called a thrall. I hold provings monthly, as much for my staff’s protection as for mine. They like the assurance that they can’t be made another agnate’s agent for months at a time, and the provings mean that other agnates hardly ever even try.”
“Hardly ever.
That’s not the same as never,” I said. I looked away from the changing view of the people gathered in the ballroom to frown at Dorian.
He shrugged.
“One every few decades. I can’t keep them from being subverted, but a proving will break the thrall and enable them to tell me what happened to them and what secrets they betrayed. That makes the technique of limited use to one of my enemies.”
“But you suspect that at least one of them is…subverted…now.”
His expression was grim. “Not many others, human or agnate, knew of your conversion until you called me for help. If a human is put under another’s thrall, he will do the other agnate’s bidding until the control is broken—including telling him all about you.”
I looked again at the people standing around the room.
They looked so ordinary. Some appeared to be my age or even younger. Others looked older than my Gramma. Tall and short, fat and thin. Some were talking in animated groups. Many looked bored. A few looked angry or scared. They didn’t look special or different. They could have been any crowd, selected at random.
But they weren’t.
They were all employees of an ageless vampire. And he’d already told me that they all knew what he was. I was sure that, without compulsion from another agnate, they’d never betray that knowledge. Dorian would never allow that.
The
thought made a sour taste in my mouth even as asked the question.
“So
they’re all in your thrall, then? Normally, I mean?”
“Of course,” he said.
“It’s a part of the proving, and every agnate must demand absolute loyalty from those who serve him.”
His cold
logic made the thought no more pleasant.
“Then they aren’t ever doing anything of their free will
. They’re just…puppets,” I said, remembering the word that the person on the other end of the radio had said.
“With some agnates, that is the case,” he said evenly.
“They wish their servants to be nothing more than bodies to do their will. I have found that allowing people to have full lives, both in the physical world and in their own minds, is mutually beneficial. I require only loyalty, nothing more. And those who serve me know this before they make the choice to do so.”
“Why would anyone agree to that?” I
protested. But I knew. A vampire could make cutting off one’s own arm seem attractive in his presence. How many people would even hesitate if he asked only for loyalty?
“T
here are certain advantages.” His tone was dry. “Aside from my charm, which humans find not inconsiderable, I pay well, the job always has complete satisfaction, and there is a lesser version of the benefits that you enjoy—a slightly increased resistance to human ailments and a somewhat decreased rate of aging. There are many humans who would give much to live longer than ordinary people. These benefits are directly related to the closeness of working with us and the frequency of the renewal of the thrall.”
“I suppose so,” I said, still feeling uncomfortable about the entire idea.
“So how do you…put them under your thrall?”
“A small amount of their blood is mixed with mine externally, then taken by mouth,” he said.
“This establishes a new thrall, replacing any that already exists.”
“It doesn’t kill them?
I mean, when you bite someone—”
“No,
saliva doesn’t mix in their bloodstream, so it does no harm.”
I thought about this for a moment.
“And to break a thrall without making a new one?”
“
That would be another area of research,” he said dryly. “One without a compelling enough benefit to invest in. Even if a human is nominally under an agnate’s thrall, it doesn’t mean that the agnate must affect him. If the agnate chooses to give him no orders or thoughts, he would not live any differently than a person in no thrall at all. And a thralls fade over time of its own accord. If a vampire desires a true puppet, the thrall should be renewed every week. Even the slightest influence is entirely dissipated within a few years.”
“What about a bond?”
I asked the question that was more relevant to me. “Can it be broken or reformed with the blood of another vampire? Does it…dissipate?”
His face went perfectly still.
“No, Cora. Bonds don’t work like that. They never dissipate, and if another agnate tried to feed from you, you would both die.”