Friday Night Bites (41 page)

No more
, the vampire screamed.

“Don’t fight it,” Celina said, a tinge of lusty voyeurism in her voice.

The pain was too much, the night too long, my inhibitions too low. I stopped fighting it. I let it go.

I let her breathe.

I let her out.

She burst through my blood, the power of the vampire flowing through me, and as I kept my eyes on Celina, locked my limbs to keep from staggering back from the surge of it, I felt myself disassociate. I felt her move my body, stretch and test muscles inside my body—and sink into it.

Merit disappeared.

Morgan disappeared.

Mallory disappeared.

All the fear, the hurt, the resentment, of failing friends and lovers and teachers, of disappointing those I was supposed to care for, of ruining relationships. The discomfort of no longer knowing who I really was, what role I was supposed to play in this world—all of it disappeared.

For a moment, in its place, a vacuum. The undeniable appeal of nothingness, of the absence of hurt.

And then, the sensations I hadn’t known I’d been waiting two months for.

The world accelerated, burst into music.

The night sang—voices and cars and gravel and screaming and laughter. Animals hunting, people chatting, fighting, fucking. A raven flew overhead. The night glowed—moonlight bringing everything into sharper relief.

The world was noisy—sounds and smells I’d apparently missed out on over the last two months, the senses of a predator.

I looked at Celina, and she smiled. Grinned victoriously.

“You’ve lost your humanity,” she said. “You’ll never get it back. And you can’t defend yourself. You know who’s to blame.”

I meant to stay silent, to say nothing, but I heard myself answer her, ask her, “Ethan?”

A single nod, and, as if her task was accomplished, Celina
smoothed her shirt, turned and walked into the shadows. Then she was gone.

The world exhaled.

I glanced back and saw, only yards away, the glow of the breach in the Cadogan gate.

He
was there.

I took a step, ribs still screaming.

I wanted someone else to hurt.

I began walking. We began walking, the vampire and I, back to Cadogan House.

At the gate, the guards let me pass, but I could hear the whispers, could hear them talking, reporting me to the vampires inside.

The front lawn was empty, the door ajar. I took the steps slowly, one at a time, a hand on my ribs, the pain a little less, the healing begun, but still profound enough to bring tears to my eyes.

Inside, the House was silent, the few vampires frozen, staring as I moved between them, determined, my predatory eyes slitted against the harshness of electric lights.

I heard his voice in my head.

Find me,
I ordered, and stopped in the crossway between the stairs, the hallway, the parlors.

Down the hall, his office door opened. He stepped out, took one look at me, and moved forward.

“You did this to me.”

I don’t know if he heard me, but his expression didn’t change. He reached me, stopped, and his eyes widened, and he searched my own. “Jesus Christ, Merit. What’s happened to you?”

My sword whistled as I unsheathed it, and when I gripped it in both hands, I felt the circuit close. I closed my eyes, basking in the warmth of it.

“Merit!” This time, there was an order behind the words.

I opened my eyes, nearly flinched, wanted instinctively to bend to the will of my Master, my maker, but I fought it and through trembling limbs, I forced back the urge to yield.

“No,” I heard myself say, my voice barely a whisper.

His eyes widened again, then flicked to something behind me. He shook his head, looked back at me. His voice low, intimate, insistent. “Come back from this, Merit. You don’t want to fight me.”

“I do,” I heard, in a voice that was barely mine. “Find steel,” she advised him.

We
advised him.

He stood there for a long moment, silently, still, before nodding. Someone offered him a blade, a katana that glinted in the light. He took it, mirrored my stance—katana in both hands, body bladed.

“If the only way you’ll come back from this is to be bloodied by it, then so be it.”

He lunged.

 

It was easy to forget that he’d been a soldier. The perfectly cut Armani, pristine white shirts, and always shiny Italian shoes were more the workaday wrapping of a corporate CEO than of the leader of a band of three hundred and twenty vampires.

That was my mistake—forgetting who he was. Forgetting that he was head of Cadogan House for a reason, not just for his politics, not just for his age, but because he could fight, knew how to fight, because he knew how to swing a sword through the air.

He’d been a soldier, had learned to fight in the midst of a world war. She’d made me forget that.

He was amazing to watch, or would have been, had I not been on the receiving end of the slices and cuts, the kicks and
turns that torqued his body nearly effortlessly. The lunges and blocks. He was so fast, so precise.

But the pain began to ease, and repressed for so long, held back by my human perceptions, misgivings fears,
she
—the vampire—began to fight back.

And she was faster.

I
was faster.

My body knifed toward his, and I swung, used the katana in my hands to slash, to force him to move, to spin, to slice his own sword in ways that looked comparatively awkward.

I don’t know how long we fought, how long we chased each other in the midst of a circle of vampires on the first floor of Cadogan House, my hair wet and matted, tears streaking my face, bloodied hands and knees, broken ribs, the sleeves of my shirt in tatters from half a dozen near misses.

His arms were equally sliced, his twists and turns still not fast enough to avoid my parries. Where he’d once let me play the game, had moved in close enough to give me an opportunity to make contact before slipping away again, now he spun to save his skin; the expression on his face—blank, focused—told that story well enough. This wasn’t play fighting. This was the real challenge, the fight I’d tried to bring to him months ago, the fight that he’d mocked. He owed me a fight, a real fight, in recognition of the fact that I hadn’t asked to become a vampire but had acquiesced to this authority anyway because he’d asked it of me. This was less a challenge, I thought, than an acknowledgment. He was my Master, but I’d taken my oaths and he owed me a fight. A fair one, because I’d been willing to fight for him. To kill for him. To take a hit for him, if necessary.

“Merit.”

I shrugged off the sound of my name and kept fighting, dodging, and swinging, smiling as I swung the blade at him, parried
and countered, torqued my own body to stay out of the line of his honed steel.

“Merit.”

I blocked his blow, and as he reoriented and rebalanced his body, I glanced behind me, just in time to see Mallory, my friend, my sister, hand outstretched, an orb of blue flame in her hand. She flicked, and it came toward me, and I was enveloped in flame.

The lights went out.

A pale golden glow of light. The smell of lemon and comfort.

Then pain and cold and nausea. Waves of it.

Pain that clenched my stomach and a fever that flamed my cheeks, my skin so warm that the tears that slipped down my face left cold saline trails.

This was what I’d hardly remembered the first time it happened.

The change. I was going through the rest of it.

I’d sobbed at pain that racked me, seizing muscle, gnawing at my bones.

And at some point in the midst of that change, I’d opened silver eyes and sought out the nourishment I knew, in that instant, that I would kill for.

And in that instant, as if he’d been watching, waiting, a wrist was placed before me.

My body shook with cold, and I heard a growl,
my
growl, before I tried to move away. There was whispering. My name. An incantation.

The wrist was put before me again.

Ethan’s wrist. I looked up into his own silver eyes. He gazed down at me, a lock of blond across his forehead, hunger in his eyes.
It is offered. Willingly
.

I looked down, stared at the beads of vermilion that slowly, so slowly, traced twin trails down his forearm, across his skin.

“Merit.”

I gripped his arm in my left hand, his hand in my right. His fingers curled around my thumb. Squeezed. His lashes fell.

I lifted his wrist, put my lips to his skin, and felt his echoing shudder of pleasure. Heard the earthy groan that accompanied it.

I closed my eyes.

Merit
.

I drank.

The circuit closed.

 

When I came to, I was huddled in a ball, lying on my side in the cool, soft dark. I recognized the scent of it—I was at Mallory’s house, in my old bedroom. Kicked out of Cadogan would have been my bet.

I blinked, gingerly touched my hand to my chest, the pain in my ribs now a dull ache. But the darkness—and the million sounds and scents that filled it—were suddenly choking, confining. I panicked. I choked back a sob, and in the thick darkness around me heard myself scream for light.

A golden glow lit the room. I blinked, adjusted to the light, and saw Ethan in the cushy armchair across from the bed, suit neatly pressed, legs crossed, his hand drawing back from the lamp that sat on the table beside the chair. “Better?”

My head swam, spun. I covered my mouth. Voice muffled, I warned him, “I think I’m gonna be sick.”

He was up in a flash, putting a silver trash can from one corner of the room into my hands. Muscles contracted and my stomach heaved, but nothing came up. After minutes of retching, my stomach sore from it, I sat up, resting an elbow on the edge of the silver vessel, which was nestled between my crossed legs.

I risked a glance at Ethan. He stood silently at the end of the bed, arms crossed, legs braced, face completely blank.

After wiping the damp fringe of bangs from my face, I dared words. “How long was I out?”

“It’s nearly dawn.”

I nodded. Ethan reached into the interior pocket of his suit coat, pulled out a handkerchief, and offered it to me. Without meeting his eyes, I took it, dabbed at my eyes, my brow, then balled it into my hand. When the room stopped spinning, I set the can down on the floor, brought my knees up, wrapped my arms around them, and dropped my forehead.

Eyes closed, I heard the trash can being moved, the creak of the armchair, and lambent sounds of the city around me. I guess that predatory sense of hearing had finally come online. I concentrated to shut out the background noise, tried to turn it down to a level that would still allow me to function.

Some minutes later, when the screaming had softened to a dull roar, I opened my eyes again.

“When you went down we brought you here—just in case.”

Of course, I thought. What else could they have done? I was lucky he hadn’t reported me immediately to the Presidium, asked them to draw aspen and have me—as a danger to him, to the House, to the city—disposed of.

“What happened?”

Tears sprang to my eyes at the memory of the pain, and I shook my head against it. “Celina. She was outside the House. She wanted to test me.” I shook my head. “One kick, Ethan. One kick, and I went down. I panicked, couldn’t fight her.”
Tears spilled down my cheeks, which were warm from embarrassment. The warnings he’d given me in his office hadn’t worked. I was a failure. “I panicked.”

“She hurt you.” His voice was soft. “Again.”

“And again on purpose. I think she wanted me to let her out.”

Silence, then, “Let her out?”

I looked over. He was sitting in the armchair, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, body language inviting candor.

“I’m not . . . I’m not normal,” I finally confessed and felt some of the weight of it leave my shoulders. “Something went wrong when you made me.”

He stared at me for a minute, unblinking, then said, with a strange kind of gravity, “Explain.”

I took a breath, wiped a fallen tear from my cheek, and told him. I told him the vampire had somehow been separate from me, had a mind and will of her own, and had tried, time and again, to claim me. How, time after time, I’d fought her back down again, tried to keep her contained. And how, finally, the pain of Celina’s single kick, her carefully crafted words, the doubt she’d sprouted in my mind, forced the vampire to the surface.

After a moment of silence, when he offered no response, I added, “I don’t know what else to say.”

I heard a choked sound, looked up, saw him with his elbows on his knees, head in his hands, blond hair spilling around them, his shoulders quaking.

“Are you laughing?”

“No. Not laughing,” he assured me, then laughed uproariously.

Confused, I stared at him. “I don’t get it.”

He blew out a breath that puffed his cheeks, then ran his fingers through his hair.

“You attacked me. You attacked your Master, the one that
made you, at least in part because the predator inside you was powerful enough to exist on its own—because the predator failed somehow to merge completely with your humanity. I’m not even sure how that’s possible—biologically, genetically, metaphysically, magically.”

He looked up at me, emerald eyes shining, and his voice went a little lower. “We knew you’d be powerful, Merit. This was a complete and total surprise.” He gazed absently at the wall beside me, as if watching the replay of memories there.

“It’s happened before, you said? When the vampire has . . . separated?”