Cronin's Key II (17 page)

Alec swallowed hard. “How long does it take?”

“Normally, a full day. Twenty-four hours.” Cronin frowned deeply. “It might not sound like a long time, but it will be an eternity for you. You will beg for death.”

Now Alec cupped Cronin’s face. “If I do? Promise you won’t listen to me, no matter how much I beg.” Then Alec realized something. “What will happen to you when I’m… changing? Fated couples feel each other’s pain, yes? But no vampire has ever been fated with a human, so no vampire has had to endure watching them change.”

“Only you would think of such a thing.” Cronin smiled sadly. “I don’t know how I will endure it. No one knows. But have no concern for me, my love. You will have enough to endure. What I’ll be going through will be like a spring evening on the moors compared to the walk through hell you’ll be taking.”

“I’ll endure it a hundred times over if it means I get forever with you,” Alec said, kissing him softly again. “It’s just a means to an end for me, if that makes sense. Like I just need one door to close so another can open.”

“You mean, you need your life to end.”

“One life,” Alec replied simply. “So my next life can start.”

Cronin shook his head incredulously. “You are a confounding man. Though we’ve established your blood is different,
you
are different, so your change to vampire will not be a predictable one.”

Alec nodded and took a deep breath, not really knowing how Cronin would react to this. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. My other plan B.”

“What is it?”

“Well, when you drank my blood, it gave you the ability of vampires around you, right?”

Cronin’s brow knitted and he nodded. “Yes. It was highly irregular and most disconcerting. Why, Alec?”

Alec was sure Cronin knew what was coming next, but he laid it all out anyway. “I think you should drink from me again.” He put his hands up before Cronin could object. “Hear me out, please.” Alec took Cronin’s hand and sat on the bed. He looked up at him and took a slow breath. “It’s not for gratification or because I find it hot or because I need you to bite me. I mean, all of those things might be a little bit true, but it’s more than that. I think you should drink from me, take my blood so you can very deliberately transfer the powers of those around you.”

“Alec,” Cronin shook his head.

“Let me finish, please.” Alec pulled on Cronin’s hand and waited for him to sit beside him. “We have no clue what we’re facing. We don’t know what Khan’s powers are or who he has with him. We don’t know what the Terracotta Army are capable of, but if you have the ability to use their own powers against them or even just to warn us as to what they are, then we stand a better chance.”

Cronin was quiet for a while, obviously thinking about what Alec was saying. “I can see it would be beneficial if it went to plan. But it would carry its own risks. Not just to me but to everyone I take with me. If I get disoriented—to be in someone else’s head is overpowering, Alec—I put everyone else at risk because, what if I’m not capable of leaping us all out of there? I won’t jeopardize you like that.”

Well, Alec hadn’t thought of that. “Fair enough. But when you experienced it before, you didn’t know what it was. Now we do. It won’t be a shock. In fact, you’ll be looking for it.”

“I don’t know how to use other powers,” Cronin said, shaking his head.

“You might not have to
use
them,” Alec countered. “But if we get there and Genghis has some guards with powers, you’ll know what we’re up against at least. I think it would work, Cronin. I know you worry about others, but I have complete faith in you to do it. Actually, you’re the only one who I think
could
do it.”

Cronin made a face but he didn’t argue, and Alec knew he was almost won over.

“I think it could be the ace up our sleeve. Our secret. Not even Jodis or Eiji would know, and—”

“I won’t keep it from them,” Cronin said. “I cannot lie to them, Alec.”

Alec lifted Cronin’s hand to his lips and kissed his knuckles. “You are a man of integrity. Okay, so we tell them. I’d say Eleanor has seen this conversation anyway, or at least my decision to put it to you."

“What if your blood is more potent now than what it was before?” Cronin asked. “What if it—“

“What if it works?” Alec countered. “What if it’s how we win? Eleanor always said I was
Cronin’s key
. What if she meant I was the key, or my blood at least, to you being the one who saves us.”

Cronin sighed heavily. “You’re convinced, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And I have little to no chance of convincing you otherwise?”

“Correct.”

“And that’s why you wanted to not do the blood draw in the company of others?” he asked. “And allow me to feed.”

“You are a smart man,” Alec said. He stood up and unbuttoned his jeans, pushing
them down to the floor, underpants and all. He stepped out of the denim, lifted his right leg to the foot of the bed and let his cock hang thick and heavy in front of Cronin.
He gave himself a few long, languid strokes, knowing Cronin would also see the line of fading purple puncture marks on his inner thigh, and Alec bit back a groan when Cronin licked his lips. “Femoral or carotid?”

Alec found himself on his back in the middle of the bed with Cronin fixed well between his thighs. He licked the length of Alec’s cock, sucking good and hard before tonguing his balls and the silky skin of his inner thigh. Alec put his hands through his hair and closed his eyes, savoring every sensation. “Femoral it is, then,” he mumbled.

Cronin was purring and growling, a wicked sound that unleashed pleasure in Alec’s belly. He jerked Alec’s cock, twisting his hand over the glans, just the way Alec liked it. He teased his hole with his tongue and fingers, working both hands over him, quickly bringing Alec to the edge. Then when Alec was on the brink, when it was all too much and he couldn’t hold it back another second, Cronin sunk his fangs into Alec’s inner thigh, and Alec came.

Alec’s world had barely righted itself when Cronin, cock in hand, pressing it against Alec’s hole, was asking for permission. “Alec?”

Alec groaned, and reached for Cronin blindly, pulling him closer. “God, yes,” he mumbled. Alec knew his duty as
the key
was coming to an end soon, and if this was his last time to lay with Cronin as a human, he wanted him inside him. Filling him, fucking him, owning every inch of him, and finally pulsing and coming inside him.

Completion.

Alec understood now what that really meant. It wasn’t some prudish, polite way to describe an orgasm. It was to be at one with Cronin, to be whole, to be complete.

To be fated.

Alec put his hands to Cronin’s face, taking in his lust-drunk eyes and vampire teeth behind his lazy smile. “You’re so perfect,” Alec murmured and brought their lips together.

Eventually Cronin broke their kiss to moan. “My head is swimming.”

“In a good way?” Alec asked.

“Such a good way,” Cronin said with a bit of a laugh. “Your blood is the purest form I’ve ever tasted.”

“What will you do when I’m changed to a vampire?” Alec asked with a smile. “I won’t be human. There’ll be no more.”

Cronin laughed and shook his head slowly. “To the contrary. I’ll have it forever.”

“You can still drink vampire blood?”

“Only from your fated one.”

“Really?”

Cronin slipped out of Alec and quickly rolled so they were on their sides, their arms around each other. He pulled the covers over them, which Alec knew Cronin did as a gesture for him. “Well, there is a lot of intimacy between vampire couples. And that means a lot of biting.”

Alec hummed contentedly. “Does that mean I’ll get to bite you?”

Cronin moaned loudly. “I should hope so.”

Alec remembered how Cronin reacted to him nipping at the skin on his neck before, and he laughed. “I can’t wait to taste you.”

Cronin shivered from head to foot, and his breath caught. “As I can’t wait to be tasted.”

They lay like that for a long while, tracing absentminded circles on skin with dreamy fingers, though Alec knew a deadline loomed. Eventually he sighed. “I guess we should do the bloodsucking thing.”

Cronin chuckled low in Alec’s ear. “Don’t move.” Cronin grabbed the backpack that had fallen off the bed. “Why do you presume me to even know how to do this?”

Alec snorted. “Well, I figure it’s inserting a sharp object into a vein to draw blood—my blood—so that would make you an expert.”

One corner of Cronin’s lips curled in a half-smile. “I’ve never done it
this
way before.”

“We can go back to Doctor Benavides if you’d prefer.”

Cronin gave a low, threatening growl as his answer.

Alec chuckled. “Yep. That’s what I thought.” Still lying on his back on the bed, Alec inspected the crook of his elbow, tapping it for a vein. “It should be easy enough. I never had problems giving blood before.”

This time it was Cronin who laughed. “Your blood flow is exceptional.” Cronin took Alec’s arm and ran his fingertips over the crease in Alec’s arm. “Here,” he said, stopping at a precise point. “The vein is just under here.”

“You can feel that?”

“Of course.” Cronin gave a shrug. “Feel it, hear it, sense it. It is as though all of my senses are drawn to the easiest access of release.”

“Oh.”

Cronin laughed. “Shall we start?”

“Yep.”

Cronin disappeared briefly into the walk in closet and came back out wearing new clothes and holding a necktie. He sat on the edge of the bed. “You’ll need this around the top of your bicep to act as a tourniquet,” he said, tying it off tightly. Cronin frowned at the homemade strap around Alec’s arm. “Is this comfortable?”

“It’s fine,” Alec said, squeezing his hand into a fist over and over. With his other hand, he tucked the covers around his waist and kept his arm extended out near the edge of the bed while Cronin unpacked the half-pint blood bags. They were the ones used in hospitals and clinics. Alec had seen them a thousand times. Small, rounded, white-clear pouches with IV kits attached.

Cronin handled them expertly. He may have never done this before, but he was an intelligent man. After looking at all the pieces, he seemed to know which IV lines went where, how to use a cannula, and what clamps went where. “Are you sure?” Cronin asked one more time.

Alec gave him a kind smile. “Yes.”

Cronin slid the needle against the now-protruding vein, piercing the skin expertly. He attached the IV line to the cannula and blood started to flow through the tube and the bag began to fill.

“Are you well?” Cronin asked softly.

Alec always smiled when Cronin asked him that. “I feel good. Great, actually. You know, I think this bloodletting is making me better. You drinking from me made me better. Remember how I was fuzzy-headed and tired before? Well, that’s gone now.”

Cronin frowned. “You were suffering for my sake. I don’t like that.”

Alec rubbed his back with his free hand. “How were we to know? And anyways, it won’t matter after this is over. I’ll be a vampire, won’t I?”

Cronin was quiet for a while and seemed to find the bedroom carpet fascinating. “Will you regret it?” he whispered.

Alec laughed at that. “Never.”

“You will leave your humanity behind, by choice, Alec. That’s not something to take lightly.”

“I don’t take it lightly. You know, twelve months ago when I was just Alec MacAidan, New York Detective, living a semi-normal life, I would have said no.” Cronin met Alec’s gaze with a look of fire and confusion. Alec held out his free hand and waited for Cronin to take it. He couldn’t help but smile. “But I’m not that Alec anymore. Since I met you, I’m different, in the very best of ways. Now, I couldn’t not be a vampire. I couldn’t not have forever with you.”

Cronin smiled in return. “Your words warm my heart. Though I still wish you didn’t have to sacrifice anything. I wish to give you the world, not take things away.”

“You’re not taking anything away,” Alec replied. “You’re giving me everything.”

Cronin squeezed his hand before bringing it to his lips and kissing Alec’s knuckles. “Don’t misread my melancholy. I want nothing more than for you to join me in this life, though I will lament the loss of your humanity, Alec. How could I not?”

Alec wasn’t sure what to say to that. Because really, what words were there to cover such a thing? Instead, Alec squeezed Cronin’s hand and redirected the conversation. “You know what I’ll miss the most when I’m not human?”

“What’s that?”

“Sunshine. Not that I saw a lot of it. I mean I worked night shift in New York City. Even in broad daylight, the buildings shielded most of it, but I think it will be the age-old problem of wanting something you can’t have,” Alec said. “Or steak. An inch thick prime fillet, medium rare,” Alec hummed. “I can’t decide which one I’ll miss more.”

Cronin smiled at that. “Trust me, human food will not interest you. But if you wish, we can select your favorite meals and you can have them until its time.”

“Sounds great!” Alec chuckled. “Having a last supper. How very Jesus of me.”

Cronin laughed quietly, then set about changing the blood bag. He got Alec juice and a sandwich from the kitchen to replenish his sugar levels, or so Cronin had said. He was clearly concerned with the amount of blood Alec was giving, but Alec reassured him every time that he felt great. When the third half-pint bag was done, Cronin attached the fourth and last bag, and Cronin was insistent on feeding Alec more food and juice, Alec thought it might be a good time to ask him something that had weighed on his mind for a while.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“What will I be like?” Alec asked. “I mean, what can I expect after I’m changed?”

Cronin gave him a small smile. “I wondered when you would ask this.” Alec waited for him to continue. Cronin played with Alec’s fingers for a moment and exhaled loudly. “You will be different. Eleanor has seen it, citing your powers as a human for the reason you will acquire great power in your vampire life, and I agree with her theory. I cannot say for certain what your experience will be like. If your powers will make the transition any different, we have no way of knowing. I’ve told you before of the actual changing process: it burns and pulls and stretches every cell in your body. That process is the same for everyone, regardless of the talents they acquire upon transition, so I imagine that will not change for you.”