Chapter 12
Regina said nothing,
but I could feel the tension as she made me lie down with my head
on her lap. My stomach churned; it felt like I was cramping from
the fire within. I didn’t want to talk about Lannan. Even though my
mind rebelled, all I could think about was the feel of him inside
me, the ache that raged through my body, and how much I regretted
the interruption.
A sudden wave of fear
rushed over me. “Crawl can’t get out of the temple, can he? He
can’t come after me?”
She glanced down at
me, frowning. “What do you mean?”
“He drank from me, he
yanked me up on the dais and he held me down—”
Regina let out a
mumbled curse. “I should never have allowed my brother to escort
you there. I adore Lannan, but he isn’t equipped for delicate
procedures. Tell me what happened to you.”
So I did—I told her
about Crawl and about Lannan ordering him off me and forcing me to
drink from him. “I didn’t want to, but he said I was too weak and
would pass into shadow if I didn’t.”
“He was right,”
Regina said. I could hear Rhiannon from the front seat—she let out
a little mew. “So you drank from my brother . . . no wonder you
burn with the fever. We should have left you alone with him to
finish your tryst. One of the few ways to release excess fever
brought on by drinking vampire blood is to fuck your brains out,
Cicely. I’m afraid that if you don’t have sex tonight, you’ll get
sick. I can send Lannan over if you like.”
“No . . . I can’t . .
. I thought . . . I don’t know—everything is so mixed
up.”
“We’ll take care of
her.” Leo’s voice came ringing from the front seat. “Don’t bother
your brother, Emissary.”
“I doubt he would see
it as a bother.” Regina shook her head. “You invest too many
emotions in the act, you know. Sex is a bodily
function.”
But I just shook my
head. “No, please, no.”
“Very well, but
either Leo or one of your friends had better soothe your passion or
you’re going to be a very sick little girl tomorrow.” Regina let
out a short laugh. “At least Lannan remembered the way to harness
the Blood Oracle’s thirst.”
“Tell me—if you would
. . . why is it against the rules for him to drink from the
living?” I looked up at her face, which was unreadable. She was
stroking my hair, gently playing with it in an almost endearing
way.
Regina pressed her
lips together, then abruptly said, “That should never have come up
in your presence. You’d do best to forget it. But you have nothing
to worry about. The Blood Oracle never emerges from his temple. He
will not come stalking you.” She paused, then added, “See, here we
are—your home. Leo, you and your lady friend should get Cicely
inside quickly and call us tomorrow night should she fall deeper
into the blood fever.”
The limo waited as I
scrambled out of the car and, with Leo and Rhia’s help, I made it
through the snow, up into the house. Then it pulled off into the
night and we shut the door behind us.
I dropped on the
sofa, still burning from Lannan’s blood, from his touch. “I need
water. I need . . . a cool cloth.” The blanket Geoffrey had wrapped
me in was driving me nuts and I wanted nothing more than to tear it
off.
Kaylin took one look
at me and motioned to Rhiannon. “Get a towel and an ice pack.” He
knelt beside me. “Cicely, I can feel your blood, it’s racing
through your body. Did you drink from a vampire
tonight?”
I nodded, stammering
out what happened as best I could.
“She’s got blood
fever.” Kaylin swept me up and carried me to the sofa. “I can’t
stem it, but I know someone who can. I’ll head out and bring her
back. Meanwhile, keep her temperature down.” And with that, he was
out the door.
I thrashed as
Rhiannon placed the ice pack on the back of my spine and a cool
cloth on my forehead. All my instincts were on overload, my mind
clouded with a haze of lust and pain from the intense sensations
flooding my system.
Leo stood behind the
sofa, shaking his head. “I don’t know what to do—everything’s going
to hell and I can’t stop them from touching her, from doing what
they want with her.”
“Then why are you
still working for them? How can you stand by and watch them do this
to my cousin?” Rhia’s voice was harsh against my ears, her emotion
too much for me to handle.
“Argue somewhere
else—I can’t bear listening to you.” I shot up, my skin crawling.
“I need it dark and quiet. This is just too much. I should have
just finished fucking him and gotten it out of my
system.”
Rhiannon shot Leo an
angry look. “Carry her up to her room and then come down to help me
prepare a cooling poultice for her.” She grabbed the already warmed
washcloth off my forehead and marched out of the room.
Leo collected me and
carried me up the stairs, his lips pressed tight. He gently laid me
atop my bed covers and whispered, “We’ll be back, with help. I’m
sorry, Cicely. I’m so sorry.”
As soon as he left, I
was able to calm my thoughts enough to search for Ulean.
Are you there? I need you.
I’m here . . . oh, Cicely, I wish I could help you, but
there’s nothing I can do.
Stay with me.
Cicely—Cicely . . . A different voice echoed off
the slipstream and my wolf shifted. I pressed my hand against my
stomach and almost cried, the desire and hunger were so
great.
Grieve . . . are you there? I need you. I need you
now.
Come outside. I’m here for you. I can feel you.
Hurry.
I pushed to my feet
and staggered to the window, where I shoved it open. There, in the
far corner of the backyard, I could see the figure of a wolf, huge
and silvery-gray, gorgeous and wild. He was staring up at my
window, waiting.
I shuddered as the
blast of air met the prickling of my body. My breasts quickened in
the wind, nipples stiffening as I raised my nose to catch the scent
of ozone and snow. Even the chill couldn’t dampen the heat flowing
through me—I was a wild horse, aching to be broken, and nothing
could stop the fire that burned through my veins.
Except . . . except . . .
I crawled onto the
sill and, with only my pendant hanging around my neck, closed my
eyes and dove. I came up, pulling aloft, spiraling over the yard,
reveling in my flight. And then I dove toward Grieve, pulling up
short to land gently on his back.
He glanced over his
shoulder, his wolfen eyes glowing, and as I held tight with my
talons, he loped into the bushes with me astride him, not into the
Golden Wood, but to the other side of our property. As soon as we
were out of the yard, I hopped off his back and shifted back into
myself, as he did the same.
Grieve was full Fae;
he could fashion his clothes out of magic if he wished, but I was
naked and shivering under the slow drift of flakes that floated
down to blanket the yard. He was wearing a fur cloak, and he pulled
it off. As he wrapped it around my shoulders, I lost all
caution.
“I don’t care, I
don’t care if you kill me. I just need you—now, forever, in my
life. I need you to be with me, to touch me, to love me.” I burst
into tears. “I can’t stand this—I’m in pain.”
“I felt you call. I
heard your shriek on the wind. What happened to you?” He turned me
around, lifted the cloak, and crumbled to the ground. “How—how did
your back get marked up?”
“I felt you being
whipped. The blows transferred.”
He pulled off his
shirt and turned. There were no marks on his body. “Myst was
furious. The blows did not take. She couldn’t figure out how, and
neither could I. Oh, Cicely, you took my punishment into yourself.
I can’t let this happen anymore. I can’t chance hurting you again.
We have to break the connection.”
“No,” I whispered.
“Please, don’t. I can’t stand the thought of life without you. Myst
is out to torture me—I know, Grieve. I know she was my mother when
you and I were together before. I know she remembers and hates me
for it. She’s trying to destroy everything and everyone I
love.”
He gathered me in his
arms, pulling the cloak around my shoulders to protect me from the
cold. My breasts pressed against his body and I sought his lips.
His teeth were sharp, needle-like, and he let out a soft gasp as I
wrapped my arms around him and kissed him, deep and soulful. He
tasted of dark wine and burnished leaves, and cinnamon and the
promise of haunted moons rising high in the sky to light the
ancient autumn.
Our kiss turned
darker, and I dropped my neck back as he burrowed his face in my
hair, trailing his lips along my skin, gently tugging at the skin
with his teeth. And then I moaned and sought his belt.
“Please, I need to
feel you inside me. I can’t stand this pressure any longer. I
almost . . . I can’t go back to the house without release. Please,
fuck me, Grieve. Make me forget about Lannan, about Crawl, about
Myst . . . about the darkness that haunts both of our
lives.”
And he laid me down
on the fur cloak, and was naked in a flurry of sparkling light, and
then he was over me, touching me, running his hands across my
breasts, down my sides, sliding his fingers into my secret
recesses. I let out a moan, opening my legs, hungry for him. Hungry
and aching as the waves pounded against the shore, I reveled in the
feel of his back under my hands as I pulled him between my
thighs.
He gasped, kissing me
again and again like he was a drowning man and I was his life
preserver. “Cicely, it’s only you. I service Myst because I must,
but it’s only you. I can’t touch her again—I hate her. I hate the
rage that hits in the morning light. I hate the taste of blood in
my mouth, but I crave . . . oh, how I crave.”
He slid into me,
smooth, a perfect fit, and we rocked on the ground under the long
winter’s night. I began to cry.
“Grieve, I have to
get you out of there. If I can find a way, please, let me rescue
you. I can’t stand that she perverts you day after day—you are not
Vampiric Fae. You are Cambyra and that she turned you sickens
me.”
A flash and there was
a feral grin on his face, dark and clouded. “But I do crave,
Cicely. I hunger for your blood even now. I want to drink from
you.”
I shivered. I’d been
drunk from far too much already. “You can’t,” I whispered. “I’m
still low.”
“Low?” He pulled
back, looking both angry and afraid. “What do you mean, low? What
happened to you tonight, Cicely?”
And so I told
him—almost everything. I did not tell him it was Crawl who had
drunk from me, but that an elder vampire had gotten his fangs in
me, and that Lannan had forced me to drink from him. I didn’t tell
him that I’d let Lannan inside me, though. That would be a truth
too far.
“You have blood
fever,” Grieve whispered. “No wonder you’re so dry and parched. I
won’t drink from you—not tonight. But I swear to you, one day and
it won’t be long, I will personally rip Lannan Altos’s throat out
and stake his heart and hand it to you on a silver platter.” And he
began to fuck me hard, like I needed, thrusting deep and long and
rough.
“Oh please, don’t
stop,” I begged, reveling in the feel of his body against mine, of
the grind of his hips against mine. We rolled over, and I was atop
him, straddling his body. I threw his arms back, holding him
against the snow, and he did nothing to stop me.
“I want you,” I
whispered. “I want you forever, I want you in me, around me, with
me. You are my beloved, no matter what Myst says. I will have you
back.” And I drove myself down on him, head thrown back, letting
our motion take me higher and higher. The heat in my body was
channeling through me like a serpent, rising up to coil and
strike.
“Myst can never hold
a candle to your light,” he said, his arms wrapping around my waist
as he moved to my rhythm. “It has always been you.”
And then the burning
within rose to a head and I thought I was going to die, gasping for
breath as I came, screaming like a wild creature in the night,
letting out all my pain and anger and frustration in one rush that
spiraled me up toward heaven, then dove back down into the
depths.
As I fell onto his
chest, spent, I glanced into his eyes. He murmured softly and
wrapped his arms around me.
“I want you to drink
from me. I want the last fangs of the day in my body to be yours,
not Lannan’s or . . .”
“Or whose?” Grieve
looked at me expectantly.
I gave him a quick
shake of the head. “Never mind. But feed—drink, even just a few
drops, please. Make me remember who I truly belong
to.”
Grieve sat up,
pulling me astride his lap. The fire within me still raged but the
most painful part had been quenched, at least for now. “You’re sure
about this? I will not hurt you.”
“I want to feel you
drink from me. I want you to mark me.”
He slowly licked his
way up from my nipple to my neck, then, with closed eyes, sank his
needle-sharp teeth into my flesh. I cried out, but this time it did
not hurt. This time it was ecstasy. The passion of pain, the
passion of being owned, of feeling my life force enter his body . .
. it all fell into one kaleidoscopic orgy and I came again,
laughing wantonly as Grieve coaxed the blood from my
throat.
As we sat there in
the snow, his erection rose again, hard and eager, and I slid onto
him, straddling his lap, rocking gently as he drank in droplets of
my blood. I felt like one of the sacred harlots, finding my
communion through fucking, the divine and sacred joy of merging
bodies and spirits.
And then, slowly, we
eased down from the heights. Grieve’s eyes were dark—the obsidian
of the vampires with the sparkling stars of the Vampiric Fae, and I
lost myself in the swirl of galaxies. After what felt like forever,
I could hear someone calling my name from the house.
“I’d better go. Won’t
you please come with me now? We can lock you up, keep you from the
light.”
He shook his head.
“She would hurt you and I wouldn’t be able to stop her. Not yet. If
you can find a way, I’ll come, but I can’t be around you when the
light-induced rage hits—I would stand far too much chance of
injuring you or your friends. And Cicely, if I hurt you, I might as
well kill myself. It’s all I can do to keep myself in check now. I
love you, but I’m not safe and you know it.”
He put the cloak
around my shoulders and pushed me toward the open yard. “Go, I will
make sure you get inside without being harmed. And then, I must hie
myself away before Myst discovers where I am.”
And then he pulled
back into the shadows. Unwilling, I headed toward the house. Rhia
saw me coming first and raced into the yard barefooted to guide me
toward the door. Leo insisted on wrapping his arms around me and
carrying me inside. As soon as we hit the light, Rhia cried
out.
“You were with
Grieve!”
I gave her a long
look. “I had to be . . . it was either that or return to Lannan.
And so help me, if that happened . . .”
Kaylin was back,
motioning from the living room. As Leo deposited me on the sofa,
the cloak fell away and I grabbed for it.
“I’m naked,
dude.”
He ignored me. “I
could not find a healer willing to come, but one did give me this.”
He handed me a small vial of orange liquid. “This will manage the
blood fever until it burns itself out of your body.”
I stared at it. Part
of me didn’t want to drink it. The intensity I’d felt with Lannan,
with Grieve, as my owl self, begged me not to quench the fire. Now
I understood the appeal of being a vampire—if life continually
burned so brightly, if every sensation led to a shiver, the
temptation would be hard to resist.
After a moment, I
looked at him.
“I know your
struggle,” he whispered. “I can feel it. You are
torn.”
“Yeah.” I held up the
vial. “Is this safe? Do you trust who made it?”
He nodded. “Yes. She
is safe.”
With another pause, I
flicked open the lid and upended it down my throat. As much as the
blood fever beckoned, my common sense won out. As soon as I drank
it, the pounding waves of my pulse began to subside almost
immediately.
Cicely, can you hear me?
Ulean—it was Ulean.
Yes, I can. Why?
Because while you were outside with Grieve, you could not.
While you were deep in the blood fever, you couldn’t hear me,
though I could feel you. Now I know why vampires don’t like
Elementals. We can sense their moods, but they can’t sense when
we’re around. That is an interesting piece of information we should
not forget.
I glanced at the
vial. “Is this a cure?”
“No, but it will keep
you calm until the fever burns out. Muted like this, it will only
last another fifteen to twenty hours. You drank from an old
vampire. Lannan is many things, but he is not young and he wields
more power than you would give him credit for.” Kaylin settled in,
looking grim. “This will appease the blood fever but not the other
ramifications of drinking from him.”
“What are those?” I
couldn’t imagine much worse unless . . . “He didn’t enthrall me,
did he?”
“Briefly, yes, but it
will subside. However, the fact that you drank from him will make
it easier next time he drinks from you to bewitch you. And if you
drink from him again, you will fall deeper under his spell.” His
lips were set, grim. “Vampire blood can heal, but it can also
enchant.”
“Yes,” I said softly.
“I understand that . . . I’ve never before grasped the allure of
the bloodwhores, but if they drink from their masters regularly, I
can see . . . I can see how easy it would be to get
addicted.”
“And addiction it
really is.” Leo handed me an afghan and I wrapped it around me and
curled up on the sofa, exhausted. “What most people don’t know—and
the vampires try to keep under wraps—is that their blood is as
strong as heroin. It only takes a few times in a row before you’re
hooked. Withdrawal symptoms are bad. If you drink it two or three
times over the period of a year, it won’t enthrall you, but two or
three times in a week? You’re done for . . . hooked.”
Rhiannon brought me a
cup of tea and I sipped it, reveling in the quiet my body felt.
Grieve had taken a big bite off the edge of my passion, and the
serum Kaylin had brought was doing the rest. I could think again,
and remember. Blushing, I shook my head, not wanting to talk about
Lannan and drinking his blood anymore and how good he had felt
inside me. I didn’t want to face my own reaction to
him.
“What I want to know
is why they won’t allow Crawl to drink from mortals. You should
have heard Lannan when he was ordering Crawl to back away from me.
And the Blood Oracle obeyed.”
“I haven’t come
across anything in their history regarding that, but then again,
it’s a dense book and much has never been found out. Several
researchers died in procuring the information contained in
The History of the Vampire Nation.” Leo
shrugged. “But yes, it’s something we should look
into.”
“Do you think it
might weaken him somehow?” Rhiannon picked at a cookie, crumbling
it on her plate.
“I doubt it,” Kaylin
said.
As the others joined
in the discussion, my thoughts drifted back to Grieve. I had to get
him away from Myst. Lainule and Geoffrey were working on an
antidote. If I could get hold of some of it . . . it would be worth
a try. Grieve couldn’t go on the way he was. And he couldn’t try to
escape until he was free from the infection. But how? Neither
Geoffrey nor Lainule would give me a bottle of it if I asked. Of
that, I was sure. And Lannan hated Grieve.
But Lannan wants me . . . and he’s going to want me more
even now . . . I could offer a trade . . .
I shook away the
thought. I didn’t even want to go there.
Don’t. You can’t bargain with him. You already sold
yourself in so deep to the vampires that they own your life. Don’t
give Lannan a reason to own your body, too. You love Grieve, but
it’s too dangerous.
Ulean was right. I
could go to Lannan and ask him for the antidote, and he’d fuck me
and torment me and turn me into his whore. But would Grieve want me
then? Would he want me to save him that way?
No . . . I had to
think of something more clever. I had to figure out a way to get
hold of the antidote without anybody knowing. I had to save Grieve
on my own, because nobody here—or over at Geoffrey’s—was going to
help me.
“I’m tired,” I said,
a terrible fatigue settling through me. “I need to
sleep.”
Kaylin picked me up
and carried me upstairs, and I didn’t even care that my afghan
slipped. He seemed more reserved than he had before his night-veil
woke up, and I wondered how he was doing. But asking would have to
wait for morning. Grieve had sated my passion; being with him had
given my heart a little boost. The serum had quenched a good share
of the fire, and I was left spent.
As Kaylin laid me
under the covers and closed my window and made sure the protection
wards were affixed to it, I slid into my dreams, and stayed there
till morning.