Ancient Blood: A Novel of the Hegemony (The Order Saga Book 1) (7 page)

I preened in my Count Chocula Tux. “Pretty snazzy, huh? I hear Sebastian’s coming as Little Red Riding Hood.”

She smiled, shaking her head. “I’ve been trying to get any last bit of information but no one who knows anything is talking.”

I kneeled down and stroked her beneath the jaw. “I think we’re as prepared as we can be.”

“I know. I’ve prepared some general biographies for—”

“Wait,” I said, toying with her hair a little while my other hand slid up her pajama-clad leg. I’d noticed Sebastian was something of a late riser. “Let’s put all this out of our minds for little bit, while there’s still time.”

“I don’t know if we should … not while—”

That’s when I tickled her, striking quickly and without mercy. We’d managed some furtive, desperate sex on our second night of captivity but I was hungry for a genuine smile or a laugh.

I ignored her attempts to slap my hands away as she squealed laughter. After a few seconds, I let up to scoop her out of her chair and lay her down on the floor. Then I started in again, cooing things like, “Who’s making all that noise?” and “Look at that pretty pajama girl,” in baby-talk as she writhed and thrashed beneath me.

I have to admit that I love tickling girls. It rocks. It’s weird because it is a childish sort of thing but it’s incredibly sexual. My theory is that being tickled is the only time outside of orgasm that you’re completely at the mercy of your body—and girls can fake orgasms. I love the pure, uninhibited pleasure it allows you to see.

Being an experienced practitioner of the art, I stopped long before the pleasure could turn to real discomfort and started kissing her long, lovely neck.

She smacked my shoulder, still laughing and catching her breath. “You’re awful!”

I looked her in the eyes, smiled and nodded.

She laughed again and caressed my face. “I love the way you make me feel.”

“Ticklish?”

“Normal.”

I kissed her again, working toward the full urgency of sexual passion. Naturally, that’s just when Sebastian barged in.

Caroline sprang up, while I sat and glared at him. He seemed upset to see us together, yet satisfied at having interrupted our intimacy.

“I trust thou have made thine communications,” he said. I thought back to his vague threat from the night before and how relatively calm his reaction had been to my barb about Caroline. She was right about him planning something.

“Yes,” Caroline answered. “I’ve made the necessary contacts.”

“I’m so pleased.” As usual, he wore nothing beneath that red silk robe of his but carried some garment. He hung it from the top of the door, saying, “This was finally cleaned and made ready during the day, so I expect to see thee in it tonight.”

The dress was green but more of an emerald than my vest and tie and looked like something out of
The Age of Innocence
.

“I can’t say for sure,” I told him, “but I think that waist is gonna be tight on me.”

Sebastian glared and pointed a clawed finger at me. “Boy, I’ll not suffer any of that fool’s tongue of thine once the Hegemons arrive! And, as for thou…” he began, turning back to Caroline.

“I’ll wear the dress.”

Looking for any sign of resistance and finding none took the wind out of Sebastian’s sails. The anger blew from him in a sigh, leaving behind a bitter determination. “Aye, see that thou do. I’m off to hunt now but I expect ye both in proper station upon my return.”

As defeated as Caroline looked sitting there, I can’t imagine anybody who could have kept at her. Taking my cue from her, I told Sebastian, “I’ll be down in a minute.”

He paused in the doorway, his eyes gazing away. “Nay. Tonight it’s the swift, sure-footed old stag I’m set upon.” He walked down the hall.

“And the prize for the most cryptic comment goes to…” I said, closing the door.

“There’s a few acres of dense woods at the rear of the island,” Caroline said. “Sebastian had breeding pairs of deer and rabbits brought over shortly after the house was finished. Food and recreation for the staff, in case weather delayed the supply ships. Happier times.”

“What’s wrong? The dress isn’t that bad.” I tried to laugh but I knew it wasn’t gonna fly.

She lifted her head and I saw the tears in her eyes before she wiped them away. “It’s so much harder than I remembered…seeing him like this. You have no idea … Avery, he was such a good man: brave, idealistic, gentle. The things he wanted to accomplish, the dreams we had for the future…”

I held her for a few minutes until she broke away.

“Thanks,” she said and kissed me. Turning away, she grabbed a sheaf of papers off her desk. “Here, I prepared some brief biographies on each of the visiting Hegemons, along with a list of personality traits and important things to keep in mind. Read them while I get cleaned up and dressed, then you can ask me any specific questions you have.”

I sighed. “You know, sometimes I think you missed your true calling as a high school English teacher.”

She smiled and went into the bathroom to get ready. I took the pages over to her bed, propped myself against the headboard, put my feet up and began to read. She’d been writing and compiling this stuff all during her years with Sebastian with the intention of putting out a book on the history and social structure of The Order. To her deep disappointment, Sebastian went cold on the idea after deciding some of her conclusions might be offensive to the traditionalists.

So I lay on her bed, reading but my mind was still on our relationship and Sebastian’s increasing place in it.

* * * * *

I thought back to the conversation Caroline and I had about a week after I moved into her place in Princeton. Dawn was approaching and we waited for it, lying together in our bed. We had just finished making love and were basking in that afterglow cuddling.

I was her Dhampir at that time (still fat and still sure she wished I was thinner) and loved the comparative heat of her body and strength of her heartbeat.

“I love you,” I said.

She gave my ribs a quick hug and kissed a spot near my Adam’s apple before going back to her snuggling.

I waited, hoping she’d say it back and felt my heart sink a little when she didn’t. “Caroline … I don’t mean to be all needy but—”

“Please, let’s not spoil the moment.”

“I’m not trying to,” I said, wrapping my arms around her. “But I need to know. I need to know if you won’t say it because you’re afraid to or if it’s because the feelings aren’t there. I can deal with the answer either way but I just can’t stand the uncertainty.”

She was quite for a minute or so before she said, “It has a lot to do with Sebastian.”

“I kinda figured that.”

“First, though, you have to understand about me. I … Sebastian was my first love. I was always the plain one, the dowdy one, the academic. I got fixed up on dates, of course but they were always the men from good families who nobody else wanted: boring or obnoxious or sickly or drunkards and I don’t remember any of them who could tolerate a woman more intelligent and opinionated than they were.”

She was trying to be breezy about the story but I heard the pain. I knew that pain well. There are certain wounds that just never stop hurting, no matter how far beyond them we think we’ve grown. I wanted to travel back in time and pursue that Caroline and make her understand how special she was, how worthy of love, devotion and attention.

“Sebastian was the first man who was ever interested in all of me. He was intrigued by my intellect rather than put off by it but he could also challenge me in return and we had so many interests in common. He would tell me that I was beautiful, like the women in a painting by Rubens or Rembrandt and make me believe it. Then he Created me and I
felt
beautiful. He was my first experience with a romantic relationship and everything about it was just so … intense. When we were happy, I felt like a goddess in Olympia and, later, when there was trouble, it was like I was the most miserable creature that ever existed.”

She lifted her head and turned to look up at me. I stroked her hair and shoulder to show her with my body language that I still loved her. “What I’m trying to explain,” she said, “is that comparing you and Sebastian is like comparing apples with oranges. The things I cherish about you—your humor, your gentleness, your almost naïve romanticism, the way you consider my feelings in everything … Avery, even the things that I sometimes get irritated about are things that I love about you. But all those things are so different from the qualities that I loved in Sebastian, that it’s hard for me to know whether what I feel for you is actually love. So much of my concept of the word love is wrapped up in memories of Sebastian. Am I making sense?”

I held my breath. It was crucial that I get this right. “Yeah, I think so. You’re saying you’re not sure you’re in love with me because it doesn’t feel like being in love with Sebastian did?”

Dear Goddess, how I wanted to kill Sebastian at that moment.

“Yes, exactly. I don’t want to say it unless I’m sure that I mean it but you have to understand that I’m trying to articulate feelings and associations here that are nearly subconscious. I’ve put a good deal of thought into this but—”

“Well, have you—sorry for interrupting—but, I’m wondering if maybe the problem is that you’re trying to think about it too much. I mean, with stuff like this, you have to mostly follow your heart.”

“Yes, I know,” she said. “But I think things through, I analyze, I weigh options. I’ve had to in order to survive.”

I nodded, fiercely debating what I was about to ask before looking her right in the eyes. “Okay, I get that. Let me ask you something though and I want you to be completely honest because I’m absolutely serious. Is there anything about me that you would want me to try changing? Maybe some way I could be more like Sebastian to make you comf—”

“Oh, God, Avery, don’t!” She sat up and pulled me to her and held me close. “Don’t say that, please, don’t even think it. The
last
thing I want is for you to be like Sebastian. That isn’t what I meant at all. Don’t you see that I wish that I could be more like you? The whole point of all this research I’m funding is that,123 hopefully, someday soon I can find a way to reverse the Creation process and go back to the kind of life where I
could
just follow my heart.”

I kissed the back of her neck and separated just enough to face her again. “Let me help,” I whispered. “
Really
help. I know you’re afraid of doing to me what Sebastian did to you but I swear it won’t be like that. This is what I want, what I’ve always wanted. Besides, watching my Creation and running some of your tests during the process will help your research, you know it will!”

She started to protest but I cut her off. “And it’s not just that. I want to be like you, I want to feel the things you do and see things the way you do. I want to understand you more than I do. There’s so much that you admit you can’t explain and I want to feel those things with you! Then, when you find the cure, we’ll both change back together but we’ll have that … that bond of shared experience.”

She drew back, a little fearful but I could see her giving it serious consideration. This was the first time I’d suggested that she should Create me but I knew how important her work was and had worked it into my argument.

“Let me think about this for a bit,” she said. “I’m serious. This isn’t something that I can decide quickly … I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the idea.”

I kissed her and then we dropped the subject by mutual consent and lay back down to wait for the sunrise.

At the time, I wasn’t operating with any sort of master plan in mind but it’s funny how looking back allows you to see more of what was going on in your own mind and heart. I’d wanted Caroline to make me into a vampire from the moment I found out she was capable of it. Did I manipulate her into it? I think I did, as much as I was capable of doing so (though she must have seen it and decided to go ahead anyway). Deep down, I was afraid that just being her Dhampir or her pet human made me disposable in a way that being a fellow Vampyr wouldn’t. As much as she’d tried to assure me, I know I was also afraid that she was going to start seeing me as weak compared to Sebastian (the way Michelle had eventually come to see my consideration as weakness) and I wanted to be stronger before that happened.

* * * * *

It’s a strange feeling, having the life-blood sucked from your veins.

The best part was the beginning. We made love until I was completely spent and then Caroline drained me. Not like in the movies, with the swooning and all. She just nicked the artery on my arm with a sterile scalpel and quickly fastened her mouth there to catch the blood that bubbled up. It’s incredibly sensual but also a little terrifying even when you love and trust the person doing the draining. Your body knows that harm is being done to it and panics. Adrenaline surges, heartbeat increases and all the primitive parts of the brain tell you to fight, to flee, to preserve yourself.

It’s like drowning in slow motion.

When she’d finally decided to do it, Caroline gave me a few days warning so I could switch back from the night schedule I’d been on and “say my goodbyes to the light” like in
Interview
. Though I’d always been a night owl, I did my best to make those last days count. I remember I gorged myself silly on all my favorites, since I knew that food was gonna be one of the main things I’d miss about being human. I took the time to walk the streets and parks, lie on the fresh grass and feel the sun on my face and save up memories of sunrises and sunsets.