Do you not study the tools your enemies use?
She had said it in passing, and that one question had hinted at a hidden vista of magical tensions and Power plays. He thought of the dark Powers she had talked about, those hungry forces that ate the souls of both victims and black magic practitioners alike. He pictured something coiling around the young Carling like black smoke, and then he did break into a sweat.
He also lost all interest in keeping his promise. As he turned to go search for her, he caught sight of Rhoswen coming down the bluff path. Rhoswen was dressed in a wet suit, her pale hair pinned back in the usual tight chignon, and she carried a bundle in her arms. She had a pair of diver’s swim fins, a dark waterproof bag, and Rasputin’s silent, motionless form. Her cold bitter gaze raked down the length of his body and ran over the bags on the ground, and paused on Carling’s worn leather bag. “Carling’s leaving?” she asked.
“We’re going to the city to research a few things,” he said.
Even as Rune started to ask about Rasputin’s odd stillness, she tossed her armful, Rasputin and all, to the ground. He lunged forward to snatch up the dog before Rasputin hit the sand. He said, “The hell’s the matter with you?”
The Vampyre curled a lip at him. “Relax, Wyr. The little shit’s in a stasis spell. He wouldn’t have felt a thing.”
Rune studied the dog he held in his hands. Rasputin’s body was lax and warm under thick, luxuriant fur. He wasn’t breathing, but Rune could feel his life force, glowing like a firefly underneath his fingers. An unfamiliar metallic collar at his throat thrummed with magic. Gently Rune manipulated one of his legs. The flesh was pliable under his fingers, and the delicate muscle and bone flexed easily. The dog might not have felt the initial impact, but the stasis spell would not have prevented him from being injured in the fall.
“How long can he stay this way?” he asked.
“For as long as a day or so, until the collar wears down and has to recharge. It’s the same spell Carling used to hold Tiago in stasis when he was bleeding to death. The dog doesn’t know a thing. He’s perfectly fine, more’s the pity.”
He noticed the leg he was flexing was one of Rasputin’s crooked ones. He bent to place the dog carefully on the sand.
Then he pivoted on one heel and sprang at Rhoswen with a snarl. Shock flared across her face. She tried to leap back, but he was far too fast for her to evade.
He locked one hand around her slim neck, lifted her off of the ground and shook her hard. Her body snapped back and forth. Her eyes flared red, her mouth opened wide and fangs sprang out. So did her claws. She raked at his forearm, gouging deep furrows until his blood splattered over the sand.
He ignored it as he yanked the Vampyre close. He said into her distorted face, “Grow the fuck up, you petulant bitch.”
Her claws dug deeper. He felt the scrape as she hit bone. Rhoswen hissed, “I gave her everything.”
“Oh, you did not,” he said, exasperated. He slammed her into the ground with such force he could hear as well as feel something snap in her body. A strangled cry broke out of her. Her back arched as she tried to flip out of his hold. “Shut up. You’ll heal. Which is more than I can say for Rasputin if he’d broken his neck when you dropped him.”
“Come on,” she gasped. She clawed at his arm again. “You don’t care about that horrible little creep any more than I do.”
“I understand him better than you think. He’s an alpha dog. There’s not a thing wrong with him that some obedience training wouldn’t fix.” He bent over her. “I also don’t go around killing or maiming just because things haven’t gone my way. You got handed a pink slip. Get over it.”
“She threw me away like garbage.” Tears glittered in the Vampyre’s red gaze.
“Did she, now. Did she, really.” He rolled his eyes. “She’s been remarkably patient with you, considering. Interrupting us at the cottage? Slamming the door on us like a goddamn teenager? You would have been happy just now if you had hurt her dog.”
Rhoswen didn’t say anything, but he could see the truth in her eyes. She had wanted to hurt Carling and had, in all seriousness, hoped Rasputin would get injured.
“You know,” he said. “Dragos would have filleted you by now, if you had acted out around him the way you have acted around Carling.”
Rhoswen looked at him with loathing. She spat out, “She only got rid of me when you came along.”
“Were you her lover? Did she cheat on you?” He paused. Rhoswen glared at him but remained silent. He said, “I’m gonna take a wild guess and say that’s a no. Did she really have to get rid of her servant just because I came along? Wait, here it comes again: no.”
“She needed me. She didn’t have anybody else. You changed all that.”
Okay, that was getting a little too unbalanced for him. He said, “I can see there’s no talking sense to you. Here’s what we’re going to do.”
He shifted his hold on her, grabbing her by the arm and the leg. She tried to escape again, bucking her body hard, but he held her easily as he stood up. Then he threw her down the beach and walked after her as she tumbled head over heels on the sand.
Rhoswen caught herself and came up on her hands and knees. As he approached, the Vampyre watched with an animalistic cunning, all trace of humanity gone from her distorted features.
He had faced them so many times before, Powerful children who rampaged like drunken godlings, profligate with their gifts as they brutalized more vulnerable creatures in fits of sullenness. He had no patience for it. He squatted down in front of her, leaned his healing forearm on one knee and regarded her calmly. Gradually the snarl faded from her expression, to be replaced with a flicker of fear.
She knew better than to try to attack him, even though he could see how badly she wanted to. He said, “You’ve been good to Carling in the past, so even though I am tempted, I will not kill you. You are going to leave now, and maybe someday you’ll realize that life is not all about you. Then again, maybe you won’t. I don’t really give a shit either way. But what you will do is stay the hell away from both Carling and that dog, because if you don’t, I will tear the limbs from your body and burn them on a pyre while you watch. Vampyres can live for a very long time that way.”
She whispered, “You wouldn’t.”
He raised his eyebrows. “I have.”
The fear in her face grew. He saw that he had shaken her at last. He really didn’t know why people always forgot he had this side to him.
“I can’t even say good-bye?” She didn’t even try to pull the pitiful card or to appeal to his better nature; she just asked it in a flat, matter-of-fact voice as her red, fascinated gaze clung to his.
“No,” he said. “Not after the shit you’ve pulled. I don’t trust you now. If I see you again, I will kill you. No excuses, no conversations, no second chances. Do we understand each other?”
She held his gaze as she raised her fingers to her mouth and licked away his blood. “We understand each other quite well, I think,” said Rhoswen.
H
e stood, hands on his hips and watched the Vampyre dive into the ocean. She did not resurface. After several minutes of waiting to make sure, he scooped up the dog, tucked him in the crook of his elbow and went in search of Carling. He met her on the path to the forest.
Carling studied Rune curiously as she walked toward him. She was growing almost used to the mélange of unfamiliar emotions that started rioting the moment she laid eyes on him. He was shirtless, dressed only in jeans, boots and the bright silver cascade of moonlight, and his powerful body moved with liquid feline grace. His chest was heavy with the muscles of a swordsman, a light sprinkling of hair arrowing down the long taut abdomen.
She had no racing pulse for him to detect, and she put her hands behind her back to hide how much they started to shake as he grew close. Then she caught the rich iron scent of blood, his blood, and she noticed Rasputin’s small form in his arms and suddenly she was running toward them.
As she reached him, he said in a calm voice, “Don’t worry. Everything’s all right.”
She touched Rasputin and scanned both dog and collar magically even as she searched Rune with her gaze. The dog was fine, the collar working as it should. She tried not to be affected by the play of shadows along Rune’s bare torso but found it to be impossible. He had no softness anywhere, not even an ounce of extra padding that civilization gave to so many creatures. He was all ridges and hollows, and the thick flex of hard-used muscle underneath the flow of skin. Even though he was standing relaxed beside her, his breathing slow and unhurried, the force of his presence punched the air.
Then she found the marks. The long scores ran the length of his forearm. They were faint in the moonlight and fading fast. She touched them and ran her fingertips lightly along his skin. They were claw marks, made by a hand very similar in size to hers.
Rage locked up her body. She said, “Rhoswen did this.”
“It’s nothing,” he said.
“This is not ‘nothing,’ ” she murmured. The wounds had gone deep, maybe to the bone. The heavy scent of blood lingered in the air. The scent was as intoxicating as she had imagined his blood would taste. She saw that he had bled on his jeans. “Did she taste you?”
A long-fingered hand came under her chin. He eased her face up. His head was bent over hers, his expression mild, the lean features peaceful, those lion’s eyes clear. “You’re smoking around the edges, darling,” he said gently. She was, too. He could sense in his mind’s eye the fury spreading through her aura.
“Did she taste you?”
He went immobile, staring, his expression arrested. Then his beautiful carved mouth lifted at the corners, just a little. He said, “She tasted the blood on her fingers.”
Carling’s long dark eyes flashed ruby red in the light of the silver moon.
Rune caught her by the arm as she started toward the house. “She’s gone. I’ve already drop-kicked her on her way.”
Carling struggled to take in what he said. The rage was an overriding force with a life all its own. It bucked against her attempt to control it. “What did she do?”
“She was indulging in petty vengefulness,” Rune told her. He raised his hand to turn her face back to him. His smile had disappeared. He looked serious. “I’ve warned her to stay away, so if you see her, don’t trust her, Carling.”
“I won’t,” she said.
He slid his fingers in the heavy hair at her nape and bent his head. She was already lifting her face to him as he gave her a soft, lingering kiss. All the passion from the cottage was still there, still burning hot, underneath the gentle, leisurely caress. His enjoyment of the kiss for its own sake allowed her to relax and enjoy it too. None of the distant memories of her previous sexual experiences held this dimension. The pleasures of sex had seemed perfunctory, and the few lovers she had taken too self-involved, so much so that she had grown bored and stopped taking lovers altogether. Intrigued by the foreign concept of sexual affection, she moved her lips experimentally under his. The serrated edge of her rage eased into a smooth murmuring pleasure. She found herself leaning toward him, tilting her face further.
He slid his free arm around her and pulled her against his body, keeping the kiss easy. She spread her flattened hands across the broad expanse of his chest, and the feeling of his naked skin under her palms was so erotic, she almost sank to her knees.
As hot as her rage had flashed, this flashed hotter. She felt like she had been starving for an eternity, trapped in a black, sense-deprivation oubliette for so long she was only just beginning to realize how much her soul had been screaming. She broke into a spasm of uncontrollable shivering and found herself holding on to him tightly. A sound came out of her and she was shocked anew, for it was nothing she could remember ever hearing herself make before, a raw, shaken groan.
“Shh,” he whispered. He rubbed her back soothingly as he kissed the corner of her mouth, her cheek, her temple. He hugged her hard against him. He was so much taller, and so stable in his strength she could imagine him standing in just such a relaxed stance as mountains fell down around him. “We’ll get there, darling. And it will be better than anything. I promise.”
It was such a gentle, nurturing moment and so completely devastating. She turned her face away from his caressing mouth when she wanted nothing more than to lean against him and soak up everything, his scent and his presence, his easy confident affection, that silent roar of Power that continually filled him, that eternal, elemental column of creation’s flame.
All that time she had worked in the acquisition of Power. All that time she had been ruled by ambition. All those centuries that she had lived in such a vast yet fleeting journey, and here he was holding everything she had reached for, not striving, not continually learning to be better, not fighting to acquire any of it. He just was, the mysterious, magical rune, the riddle of a creature that nature decreed should not be able to exist, and yet he did.
She stiffened her spine, bracing herself against the moment. She tried to stiffen her knees and stand on her own, and after a moment she managed to do it. She fought to stop the cascading emotion, to reassert her control, and somehow she found a way to do it.
Then she happened to look down.
Rune was still cuddling her dog in the crook of his arm.
The wild feeling surged back, higher and more devastating than before, and she—the woman who had bargained with demons and stared down monsters, who had counseled pharaohs and created kings, who had once looked into dust-filled shadows of her empty, partially constructed tomb and said no, I will not go there—she broke down and fled.
Rune’s body went into a clench as he looked after Carling’s slender, escaping figure, his eyes narrowed. He took in deep draughts of the cool night air, fighting his instinct to give chase. After a few moments, he followed at a slower pace.
His battle was hard-won, because all of his instincts were roaring to go after her. He wanted to drag her to the ground, tear off that god-awful wretched caftan and spear into her naked body. He wanted to watch her face as she climaxed with him inside of her; he wanted to climax as he watched her beautiful face. He felt immense, full up to bursting and hard as a rock. His erection strained against the zipper of his jeans, and he had nearly come from just the touch of her hands sliding across his chest, from that broken needy little groan Carling—
Carling
—had made against his mouth.