Divine Madness (12 page)

Or perhaps he did comprehend, felt her optimism, and believed, although he had to think the situation hopeless.

His head dropped and he began kissing his way down her body where she could still feel. The drug paralyzed but did not block sensation. Her face and head were almost frozen in place but the rest of her could experience and savor. At the moment, that was an excellent thing. The caress at her navel made every muscle in her abdomen contract. Sensing this, he used his lips mercilessly, trying to lose himself in the act.

She moaned. He could probably do push-ups with that tongue. Under any other circumstances, she’d be ecstatic.

Miguel smiled against her skin.

The god’s listening. Miguel’s probably still in your head and passing your thoughts on to him,
the voice warned.

Maybe. But he’s just on the surface. Now hush. I’m busy.
She wasn’t thrilled with having an audience—especially one that could intrude at any moment—but if the god thought to add to her discomfort by hanging around, he would be disappointed. She did not have performance anxiety.

“Make love to you? Perhaps I can. I feel…energetic,” Miguel said at last with a slight smile. His voice was heavy, drugged, and his eyes glittered. He was giving himself to the animal, letting it do what he could not. The beast was scary, but it was still partly Miguel. “I have to be careful with my sibilants now or I’ll end up stabbing myself.”

He moved back up her body until he was above her. He lifted his tongue and unfolded the stinger on its end. It was no more than three-quarters of an inch long.

I like it better than teeth,
she thought at him, willing him to hear. Then, in amazement:
Miguel, are you stoned?

“Oh yeah. I took a bit of
datura inoxia
—jimsonweed. For some reason, I thought maybe I wouldn’t enjoy this.” He chuckled, and Ninon found herself wanting to laugh with him. It was half hysteria and half relief. It was probably
the drug that was keeping the beast in check. “I am having the time of my life—isn’t that weird? This isn’t true love though. I just want you to know.”

I know
, she thought. And she did know, and was glad he knew. She didn’t believe in true love. It was an illusion that could lead to broken hearts and, worse, marriage when both parties were taken unaware by the rush of first uncontrolled emotion. Even in this day and age, a woman could find herself imprisoned by a wedding ring before the hormone high wore off, and that little finger band could be harder to break away from than any slave’s shackles. And falling back out of love was messy in court.

“I’m not the marrying kind,” Miguel assured her, reading some of her thoughts but seemingly unaware that he did. The drugs had provided his psyche with a strong cushion, which was all to the good. He didn’t need anything else to disturb him. “I might kill you in a blood frenzy, but I’d never force you into marriage.”

Thanks
, she thought. And they were both laughing. His high was giving her some kind of contact buzz. This probably puzzled Smoking Mirror.

“So, what do you like? Push-ups? Sit-ups?”

Sex was something more than isometric exercise, though if done right, it could be an excellent workout. She was fit—more than fit—but it was getting harder to participate because it felt as though gravity had doubled around her, making her limbs heavy. Her lungs also began to labor.

She looked down at her body and saw it as Miguel did; pale except for the gold lace of lightning scars. Her breasts were soft, her belly slightly rounded, everything small, delicate, defenseless. It was great camouflage. Less discerning people mistook delicacy for weakness. Delicacy might bring out Miguel’s protective instincts. It might not. In any event, her body would keep him from focusing on her thoughts and feelings. She really didn’t want him in her head right now. She would open up at the very end, but for now needed to gather herself.

O quam misericors est Deus
. Her inner voice was wry, but it spoke true. God was miraculous. Her body was a testimony that miracles existed. It hurt and it was hard to breathe, but she needed to have some faith that all would be well. Surely God would grant her strength in the face of this great evil.

She smiled a little at the thought. Neither Miguel nor his father knew of her delicate-looking body’s relentless urge to heal itself—
and thank you,
bon Dieu,
for that
. The god merely thought of her a poker chip that could be used to up the ante in the nasty game he played with his son. And as for Miguel…his motivation was harder to understand. Certainly he wanted her, but this wasn’t about sex. At least, not entirely. He could have fled, avoided this confrontation. Maybe it was guilt and an unwillingness to play the coward’s role, but she thought that he also had to want something else very badly if he were finally giving in to his vampiric nature. In time she would discover what that was.

She ran her hands down his back, feeling a series of scars along his spine, unnoticed until she touched them, calling them to life along with the rest of his erectile tissues. The scars were round, too large for a normal needle. These were not from a medical procedure; they were more like bullet holes.

Or stab wounds. And she suddenly knew who had made them. Did Smoking Mirror like spinal fluid? she wondered, repulsed.

Miguel shuddered under her touch. Like her, his pleasure was proving to be very close to pain.

He reached again for her necklace, but she batted his hand away.

“Leave it,” she said. Only it came out more like “Ee-i.” She tried to think her message at him but feared it was too complex. She had to make him understand that if she were struck by St Elmo’s fire, she needed to direct the current to where it would do the most good.

“This is it then,” Miguel whispered. His hair danced about him, lifted by the rising static. His eyes were wild and beautiful, and her soul yearned for him to be part of her at least for a while.

For a moment, they both held their breath and waited. The instant of anticipation surrounded by fear of the unknown on one side and possible death on the other made the moment of hesitation as sweet as the last breath of air for a man condemned to walk the plank.

A last look into Miguel’s eyes, and then she gave in to her desire and let it blind her, and through the conduit of the god, Miguel. Rationally, she knew that attraction of the magnitude she felt was a form of slavery, at least temporarily, but he wasn’t seducing her into its bonds this time. She had placed herself here—just as she had said to the god—and she took responsibility. It might be stupid, allowing herself to touch him empathetically, to be intimate with his mind. She was allowing herself to be seduced first by his pain, and then by soft hums of pleasure, which were not deliberately enticing—and this was probably because they were not intentional and therefore pure and beautiful and, most rare of all, honest. She simply craved his touch. And to touch him, his black hair as it lay fanned on his strong shoulders, his powerful scarred back and his long muscled legs and, yes, his delightful male parts that reacted so wonderfully to her touch. But above all, she needed to not be alone. Not right now. And not for always. Her soul was cold with fear at the step she took and needed to be warmed at these passionate fires, however brief they might be.

The sex was rough but she found it sweet, and there was a certain wicked pleasure in giving in to the paralysis of Smoking Mirror’s drug and letting Miguel have his way with her, to pound into her with all his strength and not resist. But then came the part where he had to drink from her. He waited until she was lost in ecstasy, but even so she felt the pain of his spike driven into her flesh, piercing
muscle and vein. His saliva burned like acid. Agony was a clear signal to her body to heal, and to her mind to clear. Her brain began pouring out endorphins, helping her manage the pain, perhaps even to enjoy it because it meant that she was close to her goal.

Miguel’s eyes changed as he drank. The black of his pupils expanded to cover the iris and then continued to bleed over into the whites until he had the eyes of an obsidian statue.

Pleasure, or something else, convulsed him a second time. She forced her arms to move, to hold him. To offer comfort, but also to remind him that she was there, alive and suffering and that he must remain aware enough to rein his monster in before it truly killed her.

It was a near thing, the struggle between Miguel and his beast, and if she had been unaltered she would have died of blood loss while the battle raged. Miguel finally mastered the killer, though. He released her abruptly and rolled onto his side. Ninon could feel a trickle of blood on her throat and smelled copper in the air. But that was all she could feel and smell. He hadn’t offered her blood. He hadn’t given her any power.

“You didn’t finish,” she said, her words barely audible above the moaning wind and still a bit slurred. As she had hoped, the electrical interference of the storm made it easier to hide her thoughts from both the god and Saint Germain.

“He didn’t want me to—and I wanted to spare you. You have no idea of the pain involved, the eternal craving.” He opened his eyes. They looked almost normal again. Only his pupils remained dilated, and that was probably from the jimsonweed.

“I don’t want to be spared. I need to be changed, Miguel, if I’m to live. But we’ll have to exchange blood later. There is something else I must do right now.”

“It isn’t blood,” he said, frowning. “I told you—forget
all that Dracula crap. You don’t drink my blood. That isn’t how it’s done.”

“Then what…?” She suddenly understood the scars on his back. “You inject something into me.”

“Yes. Into your spine. I crack open your bones and shoot poison into you—and it will eat at you like acid, like decay. You can’t want that.”

She looked at Miguel, so concerned for her—and, emotional slavery or not, she cared back. The thought was mildly dismaying.

Smoking Mirror, you had better not try doing anything else to your son, because he is mine now and I will protect him.

“But I do want it, Miguel. However, we have to get out of this storm before you get fried,” she said, finding that she could talk clearly again. Bless her body’s superior metabolism! Fear and anger left her by degrees, allowing her lungs to expand as they needed so that she could draw deep breaths and prepare her muscles to move. The returning calm was welcome.

You are still very annoyed, though. I’ve never felt you so angry.

The lightning did not affect her own inner voice. Why had she thought it would?

That’s because I am you, cherie. As long as you can think, so can I.

I
am
annoyed—enraged even. The god tried to kill me with his damn drug, and he stopped Miguel from finishing the ceremony and giving me his power. That’s hostile and breaking our bargain. I didn’t die, true, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s the nasty thought that counts, not whether or not Smoking Mirror succeeded. And I don’t trust him to kill Saint Germain when he should. He’ll try and suck out his power, or maybe make him a protégé. I can see him thinking that Saint Germain would be a swell son. After all, Saint German would kill without qualm.

And you think Saint Germain might win that encounter and steal the god’s power?

I think it’s possible. The god is stupidly arrogant. And it would be too much to hope they’d get into a pissing contest and kill each other.

I suppose…well, we’d best make haste. The storm draws near.
The voice paused a moment.
Cherie, are you actually thinking of trying to kill him. A god?

He isn’t a god in anything except name. He’s just a monster. And I admit that the thought has crossed my mind a few times in the last few hours. I don’t know how yet, but I have learned one thing from Saint Germain and the Dark Man—the only thing to do with an enemy is bury them as soon as you get the chance. You don’t leave pissed-off people behind, and looking for revenge.

The voice sighed but didn’t argue.
You’ve grown hard.

I’ve had to.

“I thought you wanted lightning!” Miguel shouted over the storm as she sat up. He couldn’t talk in her head anymore either.

“I do, but not just now. We need tools. Help me up,” she commanded. Smoking Mirror was trying to pull the storm away, but it was too late. She had hold of it now.

Miguel reached for her and hauled her to her feet. He didn’t seem surprised by her recovery. She wondered what he knew about their encounter, about how much blood he had taken, and that it was supposed to be fatal. He hadn’t guessed that the storm was just window dressing to keep her pliant until she was paralyzed. He didn’t know that his father was going to have him kill her and then let him live with the shock and guilt. The son of a bitch, Smoking Mirror, deserved to die.

They dressed quickly. There was no basking in postcoital glow, or napping as they cuddled and talked.

“Wouldn’t it kill you to be hit by lightning?” he asked as they began to run toward town. As she suspected, he had no trouble keeping up. Perhaps because she was still
somewhat under the influence of Smoking Mirror’s paralytic drug.

“I don’t know. In my current state…maybe. If it were the wrong kind. What about you?”

“I don’t know.” Lightning crashed behind them, followed by almost immediate thunder. So, the god was feeling pissy. Too bad. He was going to follow through with their bargain now whether he wanted to or not.

“Why did you lie before about the storm and your reasons for coming here? And why tell the truth now?” he asked, sounding curious rather than judgmental.

“Because neither the god nor Saint Germain can hear me right now with all this electricity in the air. They could before—and they can’t know what we’re doing until it’s too late to stop us. This storm isn’t window dressing. It’s a tool—a weapon.”

He digested this, perhaps recalling that he had been able to read her mind.

“What
are
we doing?”

“For one thing, you’re going to finish that ritual and give me your blood or whatever.”