A Dark Heart (10 page)

“Someone needs to,” Matthews insisted. “You’re losing it, gov. Have you
even realized yet that you walked through the Yard without your bloody
eyepiece?”

Elijah raised his hand to his uncovered right eye. He had not, in fact,
realized it. No wonder everyone had stared at him with such shock. It hadn’t
been his scratched cheek that had concerned his colleagues at the Yard after
all. It had been his damned eye. The one he was
not supposed to have
. In
all of his confusion this morning, he’d forgotten all about keeping up
appearances.

“Fuck,” he murmured.

“Fuck is right, gov,” Matthews said angrily. “You aren’t even bothering
to limp these days either. You might as well tell the Chief you’re a bloody
leech.”

He glared at Matthews. “I’ll think of something. I doubt anyone noticed,”
he lied.

Matthews looked skeptical, but Elijah didn’t have the time or energy to
address this particular crisis. He turned back to his most immediate concern.
The morphine.

Matthews gave a heavy sigh as Elijah flicked the latches on his kit and
began to roll up the sleeves of his shirt. “I can’t bloody watch this anymore,”
Matthews muttered, heading for the door. He slammed it behind him so violently
an old painting beside the door crashed to the floor.

“Didn’t ask you to,” Elijah muttered to the now empty room, feeling
suddenly drained.

He sat down with a thud in his desk chair and stared at the fallen
painting for a moment. His foster mother had hung that painting for him long
ago, in a futile attempt to brighten up the place. It was a landscape of the
countryside, nothing but rolling green hills and blue sky, from a time when
such vistas still existed – before the Crimean War and the Fog had turned
the skies gray and the ground brown. Mrs. Drexler had told him she’d been born
in a place that looked very much like the painting. He hadn’t believed her.
He’d never been outside the city, or known anything other than a world where
Iron Necklaces were a necessity and fresh vegetables were a rich man’s luxury.
He hadn’t been able to imagine a place so lushly beautiful … until he closed
his eyes and remembered Ana’s green eyes.

Then
he’d believed Mrs. Drexler, just a little.

But she’d died too, not long after she’d hung that painting, years before
he’d been turned. She’d never had to see what he’d become, and for that he was
bitterly grateful.

God, Ana
. It was as if he could smell her even now. As if his
blood was singing for her, even though he knew it was impossible. She was miles
away, safe from the insanity his life had become.

He closed his suddenly wet eyes – why were they wet? – and
took up the vial of morphine and his syringe, preparing a large dose with
shaking hands. Then he blindly reached for the tourniquet and began to wrap it
around his upper arm.

Suddenly, the door slammed open, and the tourniquet flew off of his arm.
At the same time, his flagging senses filled with
her
. He was knocked
sideways by the smell of roses, the glint of golden hair beneath a ridiculous
peacock feather hat, flashing green eyes, and yards and yards of expensive
violet taffeta crinkling with every determined step. It was too much for him to
take in, alongside the violent operatics his blood seemed to be performing, now
that she stood a few feet from him.

Lady Christiana was truly here.

Matthews came up hard on her heels, arguing for her to leave, but she was
having none of it. Her chest was heaving under the elaborate brocaded bodice, as
if she’d run clear across the city to him, and her usually serene face was
contorted with fury. Elijah hadn’t thought she even knew what fury was. She was
just full of surprises these days.

She pinned Matthews with a deadly look when he attempted to guide her
outside. “Sod off,” she told the gigantic Weldling constable.

The hypodermic Elijah had been gripping fell to his desktop. He was too
shocked by the two words she’d just uttered to notice.

But
she
noticed, when she turned to face him. She noticed the syringe,
and she noticed the tourniquet, and she noticed the rotted black veins and
scabrous injection sites covering the length of his exposed arm. The angry
flush immediately drained from her face. She looked like she might faint. Or
cast up her accounts.

He was having a nightmare. That had to be what this was. He was still on
that rooftop across from Lord Montague’s, curled in his greatcoat, having a
massively horrific nightmare.

He didn’t know whether to be relieved or even more alarmed when she
quickly recouped her fury. She came at him then, a green-eyed angel in violet
couture and a truly horrible hat, and knocked the needle and contents of his
kit to the floor with an angry sweep of her silk-gloved hand. He heard his vial
shatter and the clinical smell of his morphine suspension pervade the room.

He barely resisted the urge to whimper.

Then she hauled back her arm so far a seam popped at her shoulder, and
brought her hand across his cheek.

The slap echoed in the suddenly silent room. After one frozen moment,
Matthews quickly made his escape, closing the door behind him, caging Elijah
inside. With a Bedlamite, apparently.

He was so stunned that it was a good minute before he actually felt the
slap. And he indeed felt it, a stinging, angry irritation against the one side
of his face that had managed to remain unscathed when he fell from the rooftop
earlier.

It wasn’t unscathed any longer.

“How dare you!” she seethed, her face mottled red. He could actually
feel
her rage, vibrating through her blood, straight into his own. All the way down
to his groin.

God, she was
brilliant.

“How dare you! I don’t care what you think I did to you. I don’t deserve
this!” she raged.

He would have stood up if he thought his legs could hold him … if he
thought she wouldn’t notice the very obvious erection pressing at the fall of
his trousers. With one smack of her hand and one flash of her green eyes, he
was reduced to a trembling, aroused disaster. He couldn’t seem to focus on
anything but the primitive urge to pin her down against his desk and bury
himself inside of her – with his cock
and
his fangs.

And with just that one forbidden thought, he felt the latter elongating
from the roof of his mouth once more to match his horrifyingly inappropriate
erection. He clutched the edge of his desk with both his hands until his
fingers penetrated the burnished wood, trying his damnedest to resist his
monstrousness.

God
.

He knew now he wouldn’t kill her. She was his maker, the one person whose
blood could slake his thirst in just a few sips – the one person who
could tame the monster inside of him, if he let her. But he could never touch
her. He wanted more than her blood, would never be satisfied with anything less
than
all
of her. She’d be horrified by his base desires, as she’d been
horrified that night he’d come to her nine years ago and rubbed against her
like the animal he was.

“What are you doing here?” he bit out.

“I know everything,” she said angrily. “I know about the morphine, and about
your idiotic refusal to take my blood, even though you
need it to live
.”

There was such anguish behind her anger that he glanced up at her in
surprise. It was a mistake, because she no longer looked furious. She looked
devastated. And his tattered heart turned over in his chest.

“Why?” she whispered. “Why?”

 “What do you mean
why
?” he demanded.

“Am I so repulsive to you? Do you hate me so much that you’d rather die
than take my blood?”

He stared at her with growing incredulity.
This
was what she
thought? That she was repulsive to him? He
did
hate her, he couldn’t
deny that. But it was only because she made him want her so damn much. He’d
long ago forgiven her for turning him. She’d just wanted to save his life, like
any normal, empathetic person would want to do. It wasn’t
her
fault
she’d saved the life of a lunatic.

Because that was what he was. He had to be, to even be contemplating
telling her the truth – that he didn’t find her repulsive at all, that he
in fact wanted to bend her over his desk and sink his fangs deep while humping
her from behind like a wild animal.

He was sure she would love to hear
that.

He turned his head, unable to bear the sight of her. The edges of his
desk crumbled to dust under his clawing grip. “Yes,” he said. “You’re
repulsive. I’d rather die.”

For a long moment, nothing but the sound of their thunderous breathing
filled the room.

“You’re lying,” she finally said with quiet certainty. “Tell me the
truth, you selfish bastard.”

His gaze flew to her again at her rough language. Who
was
this
woman?

“This is the last time I’m ever going to come to you and beg,” she said.
“I am so tired of walking on eggshells around you. I am so tired of your anger,
of the looks you give me. As if you’re afraid I’m going to throw myself at you.
I’m so
tired
of this, Elijah.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked, though he knew he shouldn’t
pursue the subject.

Especially without morphine to calm the beast rising up inside of him.

She glared at him, as if what she meant was obvious … when it really
wasn’t at all. “I know you don’t love me,” she gritted out. “I know you don’t
feel the same way I feel about you. But I’m not going to try to
force
you, for God’s sake!”

“
Force
me?” He nearly choked on his words.

“To …” She broke off and began waving her hands around in wild circles,
as if to elucidate her point. “You know.
Do
something.”

“I really don’t know,” he whispered, though his suspicion … his most
secret, forbidden hope … was growing out of all proportion. He could have sworn
she’d just told him she loved him, in a roundabout way.

He scanned the floor at his feet in a panic. The hypodermic jacked full
of morphine lay just out of his reach, between the edge of her skirts and his
left boot. He needed to retrieve it and sink it deep in his arm before he did
something he’d regret for the rest of his misbegotten life.

But he was distracted by the next ridiculous thing that came out of her
mouth. “If you think I expect you to … pay me back  … er, bodily … for my
blood, I don’t. I’ll give it to you. I’ll put it in a teacup or something. You
don’t even have to touch me if it disgusts you too much to do so.”

Bodily
. A
teacup
.

Maybe she was a lunatic too.

He buried his face in his hands and immediately regretted it. One of his
fangs ripped open his palm, and his sluggish blood gushed down his wrist. “This
must be a nightmare,” he muttered. “That’s the only explanation.”

She looked at his cut palm in dismay. “This is me begging, Elijah. Take
my blood. Put it in that damned needle, if you wish. I’ll have it couriered
across the city, if that is what it will take.”

He shook his head. It would never work. It would never be
enough
.
And he’d never be worthy to take more.

“My God,” she said. “My God. You’d refuse even this! When just a few
drops of my blood would
heal
you.”

He laughed incredulously. Nothing could ever heal him. Not a thousand
Welders’ blades, not the oblivion of the morphine, not even her blood. Not
really, not beyond the physical. He’d been broken long before he met her,
unfixable before his sixth birthday, when he’d turned his first trick. “Is that
what you think? It would
shatter
me.”

Her face fell, as if he’d wounded her. She didn’t understand what he
meant. But how could he ever bear to explain himself? He’d keep the truth of
what he was as a lad from her at any cost. Even at the cost of causing her
disappointment.

 “You’re so unbelievably cruel. You’ve punished me enough, Elijah,”
she said. “You think of no one but yourself in this suicidal quest of yours. Do
you know what it does to me? To see you in such a state? To see your horrible
arm and that needle burned forever in my brain? To know that you’d rather die
than touch any part of me?”

He clenched his jaw, misery churning in his stomach. “Lady Christiana…”

“I am
Ana
,” she cried passionately, as if everything had snapped
inside her. “I’m Ana to you. And I’m sorry I left you. But I came back. And I
love you! I
love you
, and when you die, I think I’ll die too.”

He wanted to howl in agony. He’d never heard words so sweet yet so
unwelcome … and so preposterous. “You can’t mean it,” he cried, his whole body
quaking. “You
don’t
!”

She stared at him with growing shock. “Oh, you can’t be bloody serious!
How is it possible
you
haven’t realized it either? Are all men truly so
oblivious?” she demanded with an edge of exasperation to her tone. “I’ve pined
for you for fifteen years, you impossible idiot. I want…”

He moaned and dove for the syringe at the edge of her skirts so abruptly
she cut her words off with a yelp and jumped back. For some reason, his unruly
body had taken her words as permission to ravage her, and he needed to stop
himself before he did just that. But the problem with his plan was that now he
was kneeling at her feet, even closer to her, drowning in her scent, his blood
now sizzling instead of merely singing. And the throb in his cock had reached
unbearable proportions.

The syringe shook in his grip.

“Really!” she screeched, horrified. “You’re going to jab that in your
arm, after I’ve just poured out my bloody heart? Are you really that cruel?”

He glared up at her, knowing what she saw crouched at her feet. A
bloodied, unwashed animal with glowing eyes and razor-sharp fangs. Nothing she
could possibly love. It was time for a little brutal honesty. “It’s either
that, my lady,” he sneered, “or I fuck you where you stand. Because that’s what
I want, all I could think about as you
poured out
your bloody heart
.
You don’t think I want to touch you? I want to
consume
you.”