She was so close to him, the comfort of her presence so real and caring. He laid his face against her shoulder, expecting her to object, but instead she grew warm—flushing—and held tighter. Her voice was a little unsteady. “There . . . that wasn’t so bad.”
At her words, he began to tremble, and she kissed the top of his head and took his hand. After a moment, as he calmed, he realized he was drenched in sweat and suddenly freezing. The blood had broken his fever.
Another voice piped up at the door: “Good evening, Miss Stella—how is our patient?”
Nico didn’t recognize the voice, but Stella seemed familiar with their visitor. “Hey, Mo . . . I think he might be doing better.”
A shadow fell over him, and he looked up blearily into a cheerful brown-skinned face with lively dark eyes and a beard. Nico didn’t really know what to make of beards, and the vampire’s face and demeanor were novel enough to distract him, for a moment, from his own misery.
“Here everyone calls me Mo,” he said. He had an accent different from any other Nico had heard. “I am the Haven medic—odd, I know. You would be surprised how much work I have to do with the Elite getting themselves injured and our Prime and Queen being poisoned, shot, staked, murdered, blown up, and knocked into various comas. I cannot say I know much about Elf anatomy, but I’ll do my best.”
Mo examined him quickly and efficiently, still talking, probably to help with the distraction. His voice and accent were very soothing. “I have seen many crossings, but never one this rough. Human nature is usually ready to give itself up to vampire nature. Apparently Elven nature is another thing altogether.”
A third voice: Miranda. “What do you think, Mo?”
“I think perhaps the worst is over. The important thing now is that he sleeps. If he doesn’t drop off on his own in the next hour, give him this—aim the needle for a vein if you can.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
“How are you feeling, my Lady?”
A sigh. “Terrible, to be honest. He’s not actively draining us anymore, but the emotional drain is wearing me out. But hopefully it’s just for another couple of days.”
“And you, Miss Stella? Feeling weak or dizzy?”
“No,” Stella replied. “I feel fine, actually.”
“Good, good. Now go and eat—you may feel fine but we cannot have you passing out in an hour and bashing your head on the furniture.”
Nico felt Stella’s presence, and then Mo’s, retreat from the room, leaving him alone with the Queen.
She sat down next to him. “You look like hell,” she said, kindness in her words. “I was really worried we were going to lose you there for a while.”
“So . . . was I. Still not sure.”
He felt something cool on his forehead; she’d brought a wet rag and used it to sponge the sweat from his face. He could feel her need to do something, anything to help. Guilt, he realized, for doing this to him.
He tried to ask where the Prime was, but weakness was overcoming him quickly.
Goddess, let me sleep. Just let me sleep.
After the hell of the last few days, just lying there feeling his temperature slowly dropping and the gentleness of the Queen’s touch was a relief too profound to describe. He even managed a tiny smile, in the midst of sliding gratefully into the dark, when he heard her voice again and felt the velvet-soft nudge of her empathic power helping him down as she sang him to sleep:
Don’t you dare look out your window, darlin’, everything’s on fire
The war outside our door keeps raging on . . .
• • •
“Rise, child. Have no fear. You belong to me now.”
His eyes opened reluctantly, blurry at first, then sharpening to a knife’s edge. His vision took in the entire room in a single glance, noting every detail. Except for the area before the fireplace, everything had a faint blue or gray cast to it, and it was as if the shadows had a light of their own, for as he looked into them everything was visible.
It took a moment to understand he could see in the dark.
Nico sat up slowly, fascinated. Where was this? Yes . . . the Pair’s room. He had been in this absurdly soft bed for four days, most of it in agony. Now, though, his body felt strong, and as he lifted his hands and looked at them, they seemed somehow more real, more than three-dimensional.
And while there was a sleepy quality to how he felt, at the same time paradoxically he felt more awake than he ever had in his life. A continuous stream of new sensory information was flowing into him: sight, scent, sound, touch, all intensified.
Touch . . . his skin was on fire again, but this time not from pain. He wanted nothing more in that moment than to feel another’s flesh against his, to taste sweat, to lose himself in someone’s body.
And he was hungry.
He climbed out of the bed with care, expecting to feel weak from so long lying down, but the second his feet hit the floor he felt he could run a thousand miles without pause.
He’d been stripped of most of his clothes—or had pulled them off with the mad need to relieve his fever. They were folded on a chair nearby. The fabric felt different, softer but with so much more texture than he remembered.
There were guards flanking the suite door, but he leveled a look on them—the same one that had always made the Elite in California clear their throats and look away—and they didn’t comment on his passage.
Once out into the hallway, though, he really had no idea where to go. After turning the corner to get out of the guards’ line of sight, he stopped and shut his eyes, listening . . . for what, he wasn’t sure, but he knew it was there somewhere.
Hundreds of lives surrounded him; he could feel them, hear them moving around. They all had a certain family resemblance, of a sort; an undertone in their energy that he found comforting . . . except one.
He was drawn to that one for an entirely different reason.
He followed it along another corridor toward a door that stood partway open. The smell of old books wafted from the doorway, and as he got closer, so did a faintly sweet scent, something like vanilla and brown sugar. Peering carefully around the door frame, his eyes confirmed what he’d already known: It was a library, rows and rows of books in all descriptions with cushioned nooks for reading spaced between shelves.
He caught movement—a shadow under the nearest row.
Bright red hair caught up in a bobbing ponytail; a sleeveless shirt showing off a spiderweb tattoo; and clunky black boots under wide-legged pants with a variety of pockets. She was softly shaped, with a pale and slightly pink complexion. He could hear her pulse all the way from the door.
The Witch stood on tiptoe to put away a slim blue volume and ran her finger along the shelf, looking for a specific title. She was humming and had no idea anyone was there until he had moved up behind her and was no more than a foot away. The warmth and sweet scent from the back of her neck made his upper jaw ache.
She turned around.
Before the scream could pierce the library’s contemplative quiet, he had his hand over her mouth and gripped her arm with his other to keep her from bolting.
When she saw who he was, she sighed, relieved . . . until she got a good look at him. Her eyes grew wide, and she stepped back; he let her go, as there was nowhere for her to run, and sure enough she backed into the shelf.
“God, Nico . . . you look . . . different.”
He tipped his head slightly to the side inquisitively. “Do I?”
He moved in closer, almost touching. Her hands reached back and sought something to hold on to, but all she met were books, her nails scraping over the spines. “I was just in here doing some research for Miranda,” she said. “They’ve got this book with some weird runes in it that I thought . . . um, thought they looked familiar.” She swallowed hard, staring up into his face with a strange mix of emotions that were both innocent and decidedly
not
.
“Everyone here has strange eyes,” he observed quietly. “I only ever saw violet until I came here.”
“I don’t know if you knew this, but . . . right now . . . yours are silver.” Stella gave him a weak smile. “I guess that means you’re hungry.”
“I am indeed.” He leaned down until their lips were nearly touching, and on her breath he could taste the cinnamon candy she’d been sucking on before he found her.
She stiffened slightly when she felt his hands move around her waist, but once she realized that was all he was doing, she relaxed visibly—so trusting, even knowing what he could do to her. “Well, I . . . I offered you my blood, and you can still have it, just . . .” In the second before their lips met, she breathed, “Please don’t hurt me.”
Stella’s hands shot forward from the shelves and took hold of his shoulders, perhaps with the thought of pushing him away, a thought that morphed rapidly into its own opposite.
Considering how young she appeared, the way her nails dug into his upper arms and her breasts pressed against him was somewhat surprising . . . but then, he knew the others underestimated her, thought of her as little more than a girl. He knew better, and when she pulled back and leaned her head over to expose her throat, one hand wrapping around the back of his neck to pull him in, she was anything but a child.
He was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to operate his own teeth, but it turned out his instincts had no intention of waiting another minute. His canines slid down and curved, the motion painful in a delicious and almost sexual way, and he whispered into her neck, “This will hurt . . . forgive me.”
Her entire body tightened as he bit down, and she struggled for just a second—that fear was far older than logic. Teeth withdrawn, he lowered his mouth to the wound.
He knew he was giving off some kind of aura that was affecting her strongly, but right now he didn’t really have any control over it; that would come later, he supposed, when he was used to this. She moaned softly and rocked her hips against him, and he got a better idea of what it was doing to her.
Her heartbeat began to slow . . . slower . . . slower . . . he knew he should stop, but taste and power both fought against reason.
Suddenly, a hand seized his shoulder and tore him off Stella, who sagged against the shelves, panting.
“That’s enough!”
He turned on his assailant and hissed.
Miranda’s face went paler with shock when she saw his face. “Jesus.”
Again, instinct took hold. He could sense her strength, and the glowing red stone she wore whispered of authority older even than he. Power mantled around her like great dark wings—not quite threatening, but suffering no disobedience.
They stared each other down.
Finally he averted his eyes and slowly knelt, begrudgingly offering his submission.
Miranda glanced at the Witch. “Stella, are you okay? I’ll call Mo.”
“I’m all right—really, I’m fine.”
The Queen looked at him again and spoke sternly. “Wipe your mouth, Nico. Only animals leave a mess.”
He heard another voice beyond the doorway, this one masculine, dark. “Did you find him?”
“Yes,” Miranda called. “He came after the only human blood in the Haven.”
“Shit—” The voice’s owner appeared, and again Nico felt twin urges to snarl defiantly and bow low to the ground in deference, choosing to remain where he was and meet his eyes directly. “Holy God.”
They both looked him up and down. “I didn’t think I’d be able to tell so easily,” the Queen said. “I thought since he was already immortal it wouldn’t make that much of a difference.”
“It was there already,” the Prime mused. “We just couldn’t see it until now. But I felt it when we drank from him.”
“‘Born under a dark star,’” Miranda said, coming forward and touching Nico’s face. “You won’t ever see this, Nico, and it’s hard to explain, but . . . you look like a hunter now.”
David came into the room and gestured for Nico to stand; he echoed the Queen’s motion, then turned Nico’s head from one side to the other, his deep blue eyes betraying something that might have been desire.
“He really is striking,” the Prime said with a slight smile. “Especially now. It was all white light and celestial harmony before.”
“Why don’t you get him back to bed,” Miranda told her mate. “I’m taking Stella for a quick check with Mo—don’t argue,” she said to the Witch. “You’re a lot paler than you were last time. He probably took more.”
“I don’t think it’s that,” Stella said quietly, but the Queen was too busy helping her up for the words to register.
“Come on,” David said, taking Nico’s hand and pulling him out of the library. “That’s enough excitement for one night.”
Instead of going to the Pair’s suite, David led him to his own room; Nico followed him obediently but reluctantly. “I think you can have your own bed now. After this sleep you should be yourself again.”
I am myself.
He didn’t say it aloud, but he could tell the Prime heard the thought.
“No, you’re not,” he said. “Turning brings out the darkness in you, but once it’s finished you’re still basically who you were—right now you’re all hunger and hormones. Case in point, the way you’re staring at my ass.”
Nico had to smile. “It is a lovely ass.”
He smiled back. “I know. Now, to bed.”
The Prime tucked him in, still smiling, and kissed him on the forehead.
Nico caught him and kissed him hard on the mouth. “Stay,” he said softly. “Stay with me.”
They held each other’s eyes for a moment, and he could see some temptation there, but then David chuckled. “So many reasons no.” This time, he bestowed a light kiss on Nico’s lips before turning off the light. “Sleep, Nico.”
Nico shrugged inwardly. Worth a try. He burrowed into the blankets, and though he expected to be awake for a while, within minutes his body remembered what it had been through in the last few days and shoved him off wakefulness and into the placid waters of oblivion.
Nineteen
Stella waited anxiously, wiping her clammy palms on her ritual robe. She had no idea what to expect when the Weaver arrived; it had been two nights since the library and the only communication she’d had from him was when one of the Elite delivered the request for her to come to the ritual room.