She tingled with the anticipation of what might come later that night.
“What do you know about the Avatar?” he asked.
“Ah,” she said. “I know some of the story.”
“Tell me.”
Mac’s food came, forcing their hands apart. The rich smell steaming off Mac’s plate made her vampire stomach queasy. As she sat back, he selected a knife and fork from the vast array spread across the table and began eating. Constance was relieved she didn’t have to cope with picking the right silverware—that would surely show how much of a peasant she truly was.
She turned her mind to Mac’s question. “There may be truth and lies mixed together.”
“Just tell me what you know.” The look he gave her came from another side of him—direct, precise, and unrelenting—that had nothing to do with dresses and dates.
She cleared her throat. “The Avatar belonged to the Castle. She was its spirit. She made the wind and the sun and the forests.”
“Not the prison for monsters we have now?”
“Yes and no. The version of the story I know is this: Once upon a time, nine sorcerer kings decided they should be the only ones to have magical powers. So with a mighty spell they made a prison for all the other supernatural beings and called it the Castle. Then the common people began to distrust the sorcerers and no longer wanted them to rule their lands. After a long battle, the sorcerers retreated into the Castle. But now, because it was their new home, they created the Avatar to make sun and wind and forests, and she turned the Castle into a beautiful haven.”
Mac cut into his steak. Pink juice pooled around the cut. “So originally it was nice?”
Constance’s eyes were drawn to the juice. The bones behind her eye teeth began to hurt, aching to bite. She drank more wine, denying a sudden stab of worry.
He’ll be through with the meat soon, and then it will be all right.
“Yes, but the magic of the Avatar failed long ago and the Castle became what you see now.”
“Why did it fail?”
“Atreus used his sorcery to turn the Avatar into a living woman. It took hundreds and hundreds of years, but as he did, her power over the Castle faded. All her magic went to flesh and blood, and the Castle gradually became the dungeon you see now.”
His fork drooped in his hand. “So you knew this all along? Why didn’t you say anything?”
Constance felt the tiniest stab of irritation. “You never asked about it. I had no idea you wanted to know.”
But he was already onto the next point. “Atreus said he killed the Avatar. He said she was the mother of his child.”
Constance took a quick breath of surprise. “A child? I hadn’t heard that. As to killing her—everyone thinks she simply died! Legend has it he kept her in the Summer Room. That’s why it’s special.”
“She lived in the Summer Room? Do you think that’s true?”
“I don’t know. I only first found it a little while ago. It’s all but forgotten.”
Mac took a bite, chewed. “I wonder why he killed her. If he did it. Or when.”
Nausea bumped at her stomach. “Who knows? Nobody can remember ever seeing her. Or maybe he’s making it up. He’s mad.”
Mac stopped, his fork raised halfway to his mouth. “I’m sorry. This is lousy dinner conversation.”
She turned the salt shaker around in her hand, trying not to look at the bloody steak. “Don’t apologize. You like solving puzzles. I do, too.”
He put his fork down, reached across the table, and squeezed her fingers. His touch was hot, making the skin over her entire body flare with interest. “Thank you.”
That made her smile. “I think the reason men and women date is all about anticipation.”
His smile was very male. “I’ll skip dessert.”
“Don’t you want the anticipation to last?”
“I’m only human.” A confused look came over his face. “Or not.”
She grinned. “Come now, love is like a ballad. It has to have plenty of verses.”
“Oh, no you don’t. I know those old Celtic songs. Everyone always dies horribly at the end, usually at a wedding feast. I’ll have no part of those.”
Connie pouted. “But the dance tunes always come after.”
“Celts. A bunch of manic-depressive maniacs with bagpipes.”
“That’s unkind.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “That’s my relations. I’m descended from sheep thieves who backed the wrong king.”
Constance looked down. “My family—we just were. We had no land of our own.”
“Hardly anybody does anymore.”
She met his eyes. They looked soft, and a little amused. “Why not?”
“It’s different now. There’s lots of ways to make a living besides farming. Anyone can go to school, men or women. That means you, if you wanted to.”
“But Atreus taught me to read and write.”
“That’s just opening the door. There’s an entire world over that threshold.”
The statement should have been electrifying, but Constance barely heard it. She was dizzy with wonderment and wine—and something else. The bones behind her teeth ached, jagged stabs of pain where her venom was supposed to be stored.
This doesn’t feel right
. Common sense said she should go back to the Castle immediately, but she was damned if she was going to end this evening now. It had barely begun. She raised her eyes to see Mac giving her a curious look.
She used a line she’d read in one of the magazines. “Excuse me, I need to freshen up.”
Picking up her tiny black clutch, she made her way toward the ladies’ room, careful of her high heels.
Moving helped. So did getting away from the smell of Mac’s dinner. There was enough beef on his plate to feed a family for a week. Who knew even a demon could eat that much!
Mac was so different. He wasn’t a lord’s son or a farmer. He was nothing like the vampire who had tried to Turn her. That one had been an English soldier, or at least someone who wore a soldier’s uniform. Lieutenant Clarendon. He’d given her pretty gifts—a silver thimble, a wooden case for her needles—until she’d agreed to meet him by the brook one moonlit night.
Constance found the door with the outline of a woman stenciled on it. She pushed it open.
Looking back, she wondered how long Clarendon had been a vampire himself. He’d been charming, but not like any of the older vampires she’d come across in the Castle. To think she’d been caught by a fledgling. It was all rather embarrassing now.
She set her handbag on the counter and stared at the sink. She wanted to cool herself off with water, but now she was flummoxed. There were traces of water in the sink, but no sign of where it had come from.
Irritability swamped her. She clenched her fists, sharp nails digging into her palms. The pain felt good, like an itch scratched.
Taps. Faucet. She’d seen pictures. Constance grabbed the tap and wrenched it, water gushing in a sudden spray. It splashed her dress.
“Damn!” She wrenched it off just as quickly. She looked back at herself from the mirror, ethereally pale. Her eyes were too dark, her lips too red.
Death
.
The door swung open, another woman walking in. The blonde wore a suit of champagne silk. Long hair piled on top of her head, ringlets falling at her temples. She smelled of iris and thick human blood. Mac’s scent had tempted her, but this aroma was almost unbearably delicious.
Constance started to tremble, suddenly very, very hungry.
Oh, no!
“Are you all right?” the woman asked. “Oh, look, you’re all wet.”
She grabbed a fluffy hand towel out of the basket on the counter and held it out to Constance. Constance took it, careful not to touch her. “Thank you. I had an accident with the tap,” she said softly.
“It’ll dry,” the woman said cheerily, pulling out a tube of lipstick and leaning into the mirror. She’d been drinking. The lipstick application wasn’t going well.
Constance looked down at herself, numbly blotting at the water stains. Strength ebbed from her limbs, leaving a strange rubbery sensation behind. The towel slipped from her fingers, dropping on her toes. Her mind was fading to a white haze, forgetting everything. Her name. Her will. Everything but the imperative to survive.
“Oh, dear. Let me.” The woman bent to rescue the towel.
Constance pounced, wrenching the woman’s head aside just as she started to rise, towel in hand. It happened so fast, even Constance had trouble following the speed of her own movements. The woman tried to wrench away, but that excited the hunter inside Constance. She snatched her tight with the quick efficiency of a mouser.
Somewhere deep down beneath the white haze, Constance was horrified, but couldn’t do a thing about what her body was doing. She licked the skin just beneath the woman’s ear, tracing the clean arch of her jaw and down the warm hollow where the pulse beat like the frantic flight of a bird. There was a gagging taste of perfumed lotion, beneath that a burst of hot, salty, succulent human. The taste flirted with Constance’s tongue like nothing else—it was better than the wine. Better than cool water on a hot, dusty day. It was life itself, dark and earthy.
An odd, almost painful pressure in her sinuses told Constance her fangs ached to release their venom—but there was nothing to come. No poison waited, ready to give ecstasy. She wasn’t a full vampire. Not yet.
The woman whimpered, dread freezing her, making her pliant from sheer terror. She raised a hand to Constance’s hair, her fight for freedom now no more than a pleading embrace.
The dance of death
.
Constance felt her meal’s pulse speed under her lips, quick and fast, titillating the dark hole gnawing in Constance’s gut. This one woman wouldn’t fill that hole. There would have to be others.
The woman was whimpering. “Please, please, please,” over and over, her voice that of a frightened child.
Mother of God, what am I doing?
At some point, they’d sunk to the cold tile, a dizzying pattern of black and white hexagons. Constance closed her eyes. She wanted to throw up, retch, tear herself away, but she clung to her victim. Survival instinct had taken over, her body doing what it had to over her mind’s objections.
Her teeth pressed into the woman’s neck, denting the skin, but she couldn’t find the courage to drive them home. She didn’t want to cause pain. Or tear. She wanted to be neat, as if in some crazy way that would make things all right.
The woman was crying. Her hand lay limp against the stark tiles, graceful in defeat.
Constance started to cry, too, every bit as frightened.
I can’t stop. I can’t do it
.
The woman writhed, a sudden buck against Constance’s grip. She bit down, a predator gripping its struggling prey. Red splattered the floor.
Holy mother!
Blood welled into her mouth, a surprising, hot burst.
Constance shuddered, her body close to a swoon as centuries of denial suddenly ended. She had been starving and had not even known it.
She heard the door open, almost physically felt the intruder’s shock. The newcomer’s scream sawed through her, giving Constance the impetus to raise her head. She snarled, baring her fangs, jealous of her prey.
“Vampire!” the intruding woman screamed just before she scrambled away.
I’ve finally done it. I’m the real thing now.
Cold fear—of herself, of the humans who would come after her—drove Constance to her feet.
Chapter 21
M
ac saw Connie shoot out of the washroom at warp speed, glasses and flowers flying from the tables as she dashed for the door. “Vampire attack!” someone screamed. “Somebody call an ambulance!”
Oh, shit
. Connie was running for her life. She had slipped.
He had broken his promise to make sure she wouldn’t get into trouble.
But she’d seemed okay
.
Mac was after her in an instant, vaulting over the half wall that blocked his table from a clear path to the exit. There were a couple of others running, too, including one of the werewolf diners. There was always rough justice for a rogue vamp. Mac couldn’t let that happen.
Time to cheat
. Mac dusted, materializing ahead of Connie. She ran straight into him, knocking them both to the pavement. The light fabric of his dress slacks did nothing to buffer the smack of the gritty road.
“Let me go!” she snarled, her blood-smeared face contorted with pain. “I need to get away!”
She tried to stand, but fell to her hands and knees and curled up, her forehead touching the ruined skirt of her dress.
Mac took her by the shoulders, feeling her body tremble. He couldn’t tell if she was sick or in shock, and there was no time to figure it out. One of the werewolves had changed and was bolting ahead of the others, still in his necktie and howling for blood.
Shit!
Mac grabbed Connie and dusted.
It was one thing to carry someone out of the Castle. It was another to take a passenger any distance. He made it as far as he could, a churchyard about eight blocks east, and materialized on one of the iron park benches. The cold metal felt good, like a makeshift ice pack. Everything ached as if he’d run a marathon.
Connie was dead weight, her strength utterly gone. She slumped over, resting her head on his knees, skin cold and clammy. Vampires had a lower body temperature, but this felt like she’d been refrigerated. Mac stripped off his jacket and draped it over her, wondering whether she could even feel the cold at this point. Her eyelids flickered open. Even in the darkness, he could see they were clouded.
“Connie,” he said, bending to her ear. Her old-fashioned perfume wafted up to him, mixing with the scent of blood and shampoo. She didn’t respond. She didn’t even blink.
Mac’s stomach turned to a cold, hard lump. Something had gone wrong. He’d seen death before. It looked a lot like this.
No, no, no!
“Connie?”
He had no idea how to help her. Hot, impotent anger flared. He wanted to shake her. He wanted to smack himself for not watching her every second.