The vehicle moved slightly, rocking on rubber wheel-feet. A flimsy fortress indeed, and no hint of invisible seals. Either the wanderer was missing a critical element of the scene and her protector was even now stealthily preparing for the kill, or…
Was it possible? It would be a miracle, an insanity in and of itself.
Clicking, sliding metal. A rectangle on the vehicle’s side flung itself open, dim golden glow limning a slim shape. A bounce, a hop, and she folded down to sit on a low, handmade wooden stepstool, clearly accustomed to the maneuver.
A cat poised to watch unwary prey would have seemed frenetic next to his utter motionlessness, breath and pulse both in abeyance, his own scent thoroughly masked. In fact, another of his age and experience might have sensed something wrong in a single frozen patch amid the flow of night, camouflaged in long grass and scrub bush greedily seeking the creek’s hidden damp.
Between starshine and candleflicker she perched, lithe and graceful, long fingers rubbing at her nape under rippling dark hair just the color he had scented—cedar bark, matching the spice of her scent. Sandalwood, clove, cardamom, cassia, all rich and wonderful savours mixing to fill his mouth with the tingling honey-numbness of change and analgesic agents, his true teeth sliding free without a single betraying crackle of shifting bones. His eyes burned, dry and avid; suppressing the pinpricks of killglow required an effort of will he was unused to making.
The wind, capering across miles of empty rolling grassland, wrapped him in her warm, enticing fragrance. Another layer of dust peeled from his perceptions; he marveled at how dull his senses had become.
And oh, was she not superb? Wide dark eyes under winged brows, her cheekbones starkly shadowed, a sweet bow of amouth drawn with some emotion he could not name, her slimness very obviously tense even as she sighed and gazed at the distant horizon.
He realized the vehicle was deliberately parked to afford her quite the artistic vista, which bespoke some planning. And her thinness was not that of fashion; her scent held a faint edge of burning sugar, caramel turned too dark upon high heat. She was not properly fed, and no smoky screen of another sanguinant’s possessiveness hung upon that gorgeous, compelling aroma.
Can’t be.His mind trembled upon the edge of fracture once more; the sensation retreated as he allowed another trickle of air past his nostrils. Even the most momentary relief was worth unending devotion; a sanguinant would pay any price, perform any feat to have unfettered access, to be near the source of that surcease.
It simply cannot be.
Yet it was. Sitting before him, in jeans and a soft, clinging long-sleeve shirt, an actual, unmistakable leman pointed her booted toes and sighed. “Fuck,” she said, conversationally—an old word, perhaps older than himself. He almost twitched, looking for her interlocutor. Or did she speak to herself, as the lonely were supposed to?
He had, as the madness waxed over seasons and mortal years, babbled in the depths of night or cave. He had sung, hardly realizing the voice was his own, and howled during storms when the thunder-gods hurled bolts earthward. Butshe, she was too beautiful to ever know such things.
“Might be a good idea,” she continued, softly, ruminative. A lovely voice to match the rest of her, a low restful alto, the sweetest song imaginable. “No harm in trying, I suppose.” A long pause, as she leaned against the vehicle and tipped her chin up, examining the sky. The lovely line of her throat—so tender, so exposed, a pleasant torment.
Young. Barely fledgling. The sure instinctive sense of another sanguinant’s age spoke, clarion-loud inside his own veins. And it added,Unclaimed.That was the important part.
Had she killed the trespasser? Impossible, and yet… so was she. An unclaimed leman,deva,aima-glyza,imprima, sitting within his reach, staring at the starstrewn sky. Dawn grew close; she should be behind invisible seals, in a secure, silken nest. His blood surged at the thought, an iron bar with its claws sunk deep in his belly, reaching to the base of his spine. Diamond nail-flickers raced up his back, nerves and strong ancient muscles tensing by imperceptible fractions.
Unblinking, he watched. If her protector existed, theymuststrike now. Yet no trace of another sanguinant lingered upon her, unless it were the fading tang of violent death—the trespasser’s. Shemusthave been responsible; there was no other explanation. Perhaps their mutual opponent, drunk upon the very glory of her, had been singularly easy to dispatch.
The wanderer was very nearly thus himself, though another invisible layer of madness dropped from him with a stunning silent crash. He longed to flicker across the space, his teeth sinking into that naked, tempting pulse, carry her through the door into the vehicle, and…
She sniffed, heavily, rubbing below her pretty nose with the back of one hand. A strange, almost childlike motion, before she rose and re-entered her egg-thin castle walls. The door slammed, and he was left to wonder if she had indeed been weeping.
Where was the one who had granted her the Dark Gift? Had her protector been challenged and killed? If so, why had the victor not claimed her? A leman was not left to wander.
They were, simply and starkly, too precious. Already the wanderer was more awake and aware than he had been at any time since the fire. And—even more of a gift—the thought of theburning city, the heat, the sounds, the smell of roasting did not drive him to restless motion, seeking escape from an internal enemy.
Dawn comes.A fledgling’s unconsciousness was deep and utterly vulnerable, beginning at sunrise. Did she know how to set seals about her place of rest, or was she intending to sleep in this… this tin can? It defied belief and insanity both.
Scraps of that maddening, glorious perfume twist-trailed about him. He longed to fill himself at the font; hecraveda much closer acquaintance. The fear that somehow she would vanish, that this was a hallucination preceding true-death, did nothing to aid him in discerning the most efficient course of action.
Balanced between caution and the mounting urge to claim this fragile, fabulous, utterly maddening miracle, he waited for dawn.
CHAPTER 3
Her ex-husband,while one of the greater assholes God had inflicted on both earth and humankind, was also indubitably correct in one small way: there was, as Curt always said, nothing fucking like getting home from work and cracking a cold one.
Of coursehischoice of poison had been fancy IPAs in sweating brown bottles, not pouches of human blood stamped with lot numbers and antigen information, but that was beside the point. Simone didn’t even feel self-conscious about the fangs, the sucking sound, or draining the goddamn thing like a Capri Sun with a missing straw; she lived alone now, and that was one of the great gifts of both divorce and attaining the grand age of a half-century plus. She could belch, scratch, sing, scream, walk around naked as a jaybird if she pleased, and nobody would or could say a goddamn word.
Getting back to the RV and cautiously circling to make sure nobody else was around was habitual by now. So was climbing inside, opening the fridge, and letting out a giant sigh that would’ve driven Curt up the wall. He’d want to know just what the hell she had to be unhappy about, or he’d make some kind of passive-aggressive remark about her sagging ass. Not that hiswas worth any prizes, but like most men he considered himself aging like fine wine instead of turning into pissy, melted Play-Doh.
Thinking about her ex-husband was a bad sign. Besides, the general fix-up vampirism seemed to have done on her entire body could not have left her hindquarters out of the equation; she hadn’t fit into jeans this size since gaining her freshman ten. Her tits seemed to have perked up bit by bit too, as the vampirism settled into her body, though her stretch marks were still faintly visible.
Her childhood scars had vanished; the old mole on her left instep remained. Which was interesting, but not the type of information online forums reveled in.
Simone touched a match to a few tealight candles—saving battery charge in an old RV was plain old prudence, not aesthetics—and fired up the sleek black laptop as she finished draining the blood bag. Cold going down her throat, the liquid hit a point behind her breastbone and exploded with welcome heat, her body recognizing at least part of what it wanted.