Demon's Kiss (3 page)

Yeah. Right. And just who do you think you're kidding, Reaper?

So he obeyed his instinctive need to go to the younger man, and go fast. He took an exit, following his senses, his intuition, and as he got nearer, he realized it was a damn good thing he had.

Reaper felt the cold breath of his grim namesake nearby and knew that Seth, his own charge, was near death. He skidded the car to a halt, leapt out, turned and ran, moving so quickly that he was invisible to human eyes. Moments later, he was at the mouth of an alley, where four upright men were kicking and beating one who lay on the ground, curled loosely in on himself.

Reaper didn't speak, he just moved. His first blow sent one man smashing into a wall, where his head took a chunk out of the cinder block it hit. He grabbed the second one by his nape and hurled him through the air, not bothering to watch where he came down, though he heard glass breaking. He grabbed the third by his hair and slammed his face into the ground. And then he delivered a kick to the solar plexus of the fourth that probably split his intestine apart. And all of it in the space of two seconds, possibly less.

Finally he knelt beside the young man, his cast-iron stomach churning as he bent closer. Seth's face had been badly beaten. His eyes were swollen and purple, his nose broken, lips split, jaw unhinged or broken. His own mother wouldn't have known him. Reaper knew him, though. He knew his scent, his essence. His restless, frustrated energy.

As much as he disliked physical contact, there was nothing else for it right then. Reaper slid an arm beneath Seth's shoulders and lifted his head up from the concrete floor of the alley where he lay. His body was as broken as his face, but it didn't show as much to the naked eye.

“Did J.J. get away?” Seth asked. His voice was coarse and soft.

Reaper narrowed his eyes, then probed the younger man's mind and saw the scene unfolding through Seth's memory. The attack. The other, even younger, man, J.J., being beaten. He saw what Seth had done, taking the attackers on himself to give J.J. the chance to escape. He could easily have gotten away himself, but he hadn't. Reaper sensed that J.J. had. “Yes, he's safe,” he said.

Seth sighed and closed his eyes. “I'm glad.”

Seth was dying. Or else he wasn't. The decision was his.

“Open your eyes, Seth,” Reaper said. “I need to talk to you.”

 

Seth wasn't sure if he was alive or dead. The pain was fading, and so was everything else. He felt as if he were falling farther and farther away from everything real. And then an insistent voice, a man's voice, one that was oddly familiar to him, made its way through a long and winding pathway from his ear to his brain.

“Open your eyes, Seth. I need to talk to you.”

He tried to obey—something about that voice made him want to—but he couldn't. And really, he
didn't
want to, not all that much. He was dreaming about her again. She was so real, so freaking real, this time. He could feel her when he touched her. Soft skin, masses of coppery hair he couldn't stop stroking. Her petite frame, her soft voice, the uncertainty that always seemed to linger behind her eyes.

“I really don't have time for this, you know. If you don't wake up and give me an answer, I'm just going to have to do it without your consent.”

Consent? Do
what
without his consent?

“Seth, honestly, I'm nearly out of patience.” The man sighed, and when he spoke again, his voice was different. It held some kind of power that hadn't been there before. “Hear my voice and obey, Seth Connor. My will is yours. Do as I say. Open. Your. Eyes.”

Seth realized he was alive after all. He had to be, to hurt this bad. He supposed he had to wake up and pay attention if he wanted to keep it that way. He hated leaving his dream girl behind, but maybe this way he would get that chance to meet her for real after all. Yeah. It could still happen.

That hope was what drove him to gather his strength, what little remained of it, and open his eyes. Barely. They were swollen and sore, and his vision wasn't any too clear. But the form that took shape, very slowly, before him, was that of a man, probably no more than a few years older than he was himself, and yet way,
way
older in some unnamable way.

“I…know you,” he managed to mutter. “I've…seen you before.”

“Yes, you have. I pulled you out of the river when you fell in, back when you were ten or eleven. And I dragged you out of the car wreck that killed your parents when you were sixteen, just before it went up in flames. There were countless other times when I helped you out of one scrape or another. None quite this serious, though.”

Seth's mind was spinning, because all of a sudden he
did
remember. “How come I didn't remember—I mean, until now?”

“Because I didn't want you to.”

The guy hadn't aged, Seth realized. Of course, he'd been beaten senseless, and his vision was blurry and it was dark, but somehow he didn't think it was a mistake. The guy looked exactly the same as he had those other times. Dark hair, brooding features, deep-set eyes that almost looked haunted. “Who are you?” he managed to ask.

“Your protector, for lack of a better term.”

“Why?”

“Not by choice, I'll tell you that much. The rest will have to wait, Seth. You don't have a lot of time.”

Seth nodded, and it hurt when he moved. “I'm dying, huh?”

“Yes, I'm afraid so. Your mortal life is ending. There are internal injuries. A ruptured spleen, I think, though I can't be sure. You're bleeding inside. It won't be long.”

“I didn't think it would be over this fast.” Seth tried to look around, but there were only out-of-focus shapes in the darkness now. His vision was narrowing, shrinking inward, so he squinted at the man again. “What is it you want me to do, before I…go?”

“I'm a vampire, Seth. I wish I had time to tell you all that entails. But I can only give you the barest of basics. I'm one of the undead. I live by night, and blood, not food, is my sustenance, though I do not need to kill in order to live. That's a myth. I never age. I'm powerful, strong, fast. My senses are heightened beyond anything you can imagine, and there are extra ones, as well. All of this can be yours, too, if you choose to become what I am. You need only tell me.”

Seth stared at him and wondered if he was hallucinating.

“The alternative is death, and whatever waits beyond that,” the man went on. “The choice is yours. But you need to make it soon, Seth. You won't be able to remain conscious much longer.”

And in that moment, everything became crystal-clear to Seth. Everything in his life fell into place, all the pieces interlocking, to form the outline of a jigsaw puzzle. There were still pieces missing, almost the entire inside of the thing. He couldn't see the design, the picture, only that outline, that form. For the first time he could see its shape, see that it was real.
This
was the destiny he'd been sensing all his life. This was the first step on the path of the life he was meant to live—the path that was going to lead him to
her,
at some point along the way. He was sure of it. This was the beginning of something big. And as it turned out, it was something far bigger than even he had ever imagined.

“I want to live,” he said. “I'm supposed to. There's something I have to do.”

“Is there? And what would that be, Seth?”

The man sounded almost amused. Didn't matter. Seth knew it was real. “I don't know all of it yet. There's a girl—a woman—God, she's something special.”

“Really?” Amusement was shaded by something far darker now. “She have a name?”

“I don't know it…yet. But I know I have to find her. And I know there's more—something major I have to do. So I'd better take you up on this…this vampire thing. 'Cause the alternative is to die, and I'll never get it done that way.”

“You'll never get
anything
done that way. So be it, then,” the vampire replied. And then he leaned over, and even as Seth told himself there would probably be some far less dramatic way to accomplish the thing than the one so common in pop fiction, the man bent closer, tipped Seth's head back and sank his fangs into Seth's throat.

He felt them pierce the skin, pop into the vein. There was pain, sharp and somehow good, and then there was the most incredible sense of release—not orgasmic, but more like a pressure cooker suddenly letting off steam. It rushed out of him, this pressure and tension and frailty, and pain, too. It rushed out of him with the blood that was rushing out of him, into the vampire's hungry mouth.

He tipped his head back farther, willing the stranger to take it all, and he felt his life ebbing away, flowing out of him with every swallow the vampire took. And then the creature lifted his head away, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and lowered Seth to the ground.

Seth's vision cleared, and he lay there on his back, in that alley full of trash, staring up at the glittering stars far, far away.

“You're dying now. Just as you begin to do so, Seth, I'll bring you back. Don't be afraid. Just relax and let it happen.”

Seth tried to nod, but he sensed that nothing moved. Then, just before it all went black, he glimpsed her. Just for an instant. Her long, thick, copper-red hair hung over one shoulder, and her huge brown eyes pleaded with his in a way they never had before. He saw her more clearly,
felt
her more clearly, than he ever had. Her eyes were darkly lined, exotic and slanted. Her body was small, lithe but incredibly powerful. She was
wild,
he sensed, and then he sensed something else. She was caged.

She was begging for someone to help her. For
him
to help her.

It wasn't a dream. Not this time. It was real. He was really seeing her, somehow, in his mind. It
wasn't
a dream. Everything inside him reached for her, yearned for her, and then everything in him simply stopped. There was darkness, silence, no sense, no feeling, and then…

Bam!

Sensation slammed into him like an electric jolt. He went as rigid as a flat-lining patient when the paddles were applied.

But there
were
no paddles. There was only a wrist, which he was holding to his mouth with both hands, and from which he was drinking just as greedily as if he were dying of thirst.

He
felt
beyond feeling.

He
sensed
beyond belief.

He tasted and saw and heard and smelled a million, million things all at once, and knew them all. Jerking the wrist away from his mouth, pulling his head back, he sat there, blinking,
reeling.

“It'll be all right,” the vampire said. “It takes some time, but you're going to get used to it.”

Somehow, Seth doubted that. “God, she's real. I mean, I always knew it, but I doubted—I wondered. But she's real. She's so real, and she needs me.”

The man frowned at him. “
Who
needs you?”

“The girl,” Seth told him. “We have to find her. We have to go to her. But I don't know how. I don't know where she is, or—”

“Okay, okay, you take it easy now. We'll get to the bottom of this, all right? Don't worry. Right now, you just need to…rest. Just rest and let your body adjust to the change. Okay?”

Seth nodded, lowered his head, closed his eyes and muttered, “Okay.”

V
ixen paced from one end of her cell to the other without breaking stride. Her steps were small and light and smooth, and she tended to walk on her toes. She didn't like it here. She didn't like the people who were holding her. She didn't like the bars that held her captive or the fact that she couldn't simply squeeze out between them. She could have, once. Before they made her into whatever sort of demon she had become. But she hadn't been able to change since.

“Vixen, is it?”

The one called Briar leaned against the cage from the outside. Her hair was wild, wavy, thick and mink-brown, like her eyes. She was very young, must have been made into one of
them
at an unreasonably early age.

Then again, so had Vixen herself.

“What do you want?” Vixen asked. She gathered her hair, pulling it around to the front of her, so it hung over one shoulder, and stroked it. Whenever she was nervous, she tended to stroke or play with it—her way of touching her own nature, reminding herself of who and what she truly was. Not one of
them. Never
one of them.

“It's not what I want,” Briar said. “It's what Gregor wants.”

Vixen shrugged. “What does
he
want, then?”

“He wants you to help him. After all, he's helped you.”

“He caged me. In this body. In this cell.”

Briar shrugged. “In the cell, maybe. Not in the body, though. You can still change.”

Vixen lowered her eyes, shaking her head slowly. Her throat felt tight, and odd, warm fluid filled her eyes. “I was in human form when he…bit me and drank my blood as if I were a chicken.
He
made me…whatever I am now. I tried to shift back, but—”

“You were newly made, and you were weak and frightened. That was six months ago, Vixen. You're stronger now. You have to try again.”

Vixen looked Briar in the eye and shivered. She always shivered when she caught the scent of the darkness that lived in that one's soul. It was cold and frightening.

“Try, Vixen.”

Vixen sighed and shook her head side to side.

“Try, Vixen,” Briar said again, but she said it differently this time. There was anger in her voice. “Try, or go to sleep hungry again.”

“I don't mind going to sleep hungry.”

Briar sighed and reached up to the wall, where the long metal prod rested on a hook. Vixen flinched, and backed up as far as her cell would allow.

“Fine,” Briar said, “I'll just play with you for a while, and
then
you can go to bed hungry. How's that sound?” She stuck the rod between the bars, and no matter how Vixen twisted away, she couldn't get beyond its reach. It touched her belly, and jolted her so hard her head snapped back and her knees buckled.

She curled on the floor, trembling. “Please, don't.”

“But I enjoy it so.” Briar poked her again, in the neck this time.

Vixen jerked away, and her head hit the floor.

“Now, you're going to try for me. Aren't you, Vixen?”

Vixen opened her mouth to answer, but she couldn't get words out. Briar stabbed the rod in the small of her back, and she arched and cried out, forming the word
yes
on her agonized scream. When it died, she lay there on the cold stone floor, shaking uncontrollably. “Yes,” she whispered. “I'll try.”

“Good. I'll give you an hour to recover. And if you make me torture you again, Vixen, it's going to be something a hell of a lot worse than the prod. Understand?”

Vixen nodded, the motions jerky and tight.

“One hour.” Briar turned and walked away down the echoing stone hallway, taking the light with her. Vixen heard her feet ascending stairs, and then the slamming of a heavy door. She was alone. Her senses wouldn't deceive her about something so simple. She was alone, here. The only prisoner of these cruel sapiens.

And yet, she wasn't alone.

There was a mouse family living on the other side of the room. They'd made a nest in one of the deep chasms in the stone, and they huddled there out of sight whenever one of
them
came into the dungeon. But they would come out for her. Oh, they wouldn't get too close. After all, she'd spent a good many hours of her life as one of their natural predators. But despite that, they sensed her animal nature, and her pain and distress. They were curious.

They came out now, though she'd felt them coming even before she saw them. She heard their little squeaks as they conversed and began hunting the floor for any crumbs, shooting looks her way as they went.

You won't find any crumbs around here. Those ones don't eat food.
She thought the words at them, as images and ideas, not as a language. And she knew they understood. They hurried across the floor, to the loose board in the bottom of the door that led outside, and squeezed their tiny bodies through it.

She hoped they would gnaw it some more as she had tried to convey they should. If she could shift, she would need the board to give a bit more to allow her to squeeze through easily—though she might be able to fit even now, if only she could change.

Even when the mice were gone, she still didn't feel entirely alone.

There had been someone else. She'd sensed him all at once tonight, when one of the drones had taken her outside for a well-guarded and far too short walk. Gregor wanted her healthy—weak, and half-starved, but basically sound—until he figured out whether he could use her or not. So she was granted a nightly walk. And tonight, she'd felt him. A male. A kind one. He had seemed so very real, and so near that she had even lifted her head, sniffing the air and feeling with her senses to try to locate him, even identify him. Human or animal or vampire—she couldn't be sure. And then she had realized that he wasn't close to her, not physically. But in some other way, he was. Incredibly close. And he was coming—coming to help her. She had felt it, known it.

He had told her so, somehow.

She had closed her eyes and focused on that feeling with everything in her. “If you're coming to me,” she'd whispered, “please hurry. If I have to stay here much longer I'll die. Please hurry. I need you.”

And just as suddenly as it had arrived, her sense of that other person, the male, faded entirely the moment she was ushered back inside, through the cellars she thought of as dungeons and into her cold cell.

She hadn't sensed him again since then. She wondered now if she had only imagined him, and she sank to the cold floor, lowering her head as despair crushed her.

But she didn't allow it to hold her in its grip. She lifted her chin, and she vowed that she would escape these creatures who held her. She was smarter than they were, more cunning, and more in tune with her senses and her instincts. If they were right, and she
could
shift back, then it would not take her long to make her way out of here. She would slip away at the first opportunity.

And then she would be free. Free to run and play and
live
again.

But even then, it would never be the same. She could never go back to what she was before. She knew it, sensed it. In a very real way, her life was already over.

 

Seth opened his eyes and lay very, very still, because
damn.
Everything was
different.

“Ah, you're awake,” the vampire said.

Seth blinked, amazed, because, yeah, the guy was a vampire, and it was real and now he was…he was…

“What's wrong, Seth?”

“Your voice. Dude, it's like I can hear every vocal cord vibrating when you talk.”

“I know.”

“I can feel the air touching my skin.”

“You can probably hear the grass growing, if you listen for it,” the vampire said.

“So I'm either tripping on acid, or I'm…”

“You're a vampire. Your senses are heightened. Magnified. Everything is impacted. You'll feel both pleasure and, unfortunately, pain, at levels almost beyond endurance.”

Seth closed his eyes. “What a trip.”

“An endless one,” the man said.

Seth lifted his head, realizing he was in a car, and that the other man was driving. The road was dark before them, the lines flashing by at an alarming speed. “Where are we going?” A little voice deep inside told him he knew damn well where he was going. He was going to
her.
He didn't know how, or exactly why, but he felt it. He was getting closer to her with every mile.

“North Carolina. I was on a mission when you interrupted me, Seth. I don't have any more time to waste.”

“I
interrupted
you? By what, almost dying?”

“Exactly.”

Seth searched the vampire's dark face, awaiting an explanation he seemed reluctant to give. Finally, the man nodded as if he'd decided on something. “There are a lot of things you're going to need to learn in a very short time, Seth, and this isn't the most important among them. But I'll try to sate your curiosity all the same.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“You don't need to thank me. I'm your maker, your sire. Your father, in a way. It's my duty to educate you.”

“I was being sarcastic, pal. You don't have much of a sense of humor, do you?”

“I've never seen the need for one.”

“You ever…make any others?”

The vampire frowned at Seth briefly, before returning his gaze to the road. “You have a rare blood type, Seth. It contains an antigen called Belladonna. Humans with this blood type tend to grow weak and die young. They also tend to bleed excessively.”

“I've always had the bleeding thing. I knew about the antigen—makes transfusions tough to come by. I didn't know I was gonna get weak and die young, though.”

“You would have, eventually. Now you won't. But you know that. What you don't know is that only humans with the Belladonna antigen can become undead, Seth. Such mortals are known among us as the Chosen. All vampires had the antigen as mortals. And all vampires sense mortals with the antigen, and are compelled to aid and even protect them.”

“You're kidding me. Hell, that's why you've shown up before. Helped me out when I got into trouble.”

“That's why.”

“But…why you, why not any others? I mean, there
are
others, right?” He sat up straighter in the seat, surprised that the movement didn't hurt him. Last he remembered, he'd been beaten within an inch of his life. “How many of them—of us—are there? And where are they? Are we going to meet them? Is there some kind of a—”

The driver actually smiled, and it was such a stunning thing to see that Seth went silent. That dark, morose expression faded for just a moment. But then it returned so swiftly that Seth almost wondered if he'd imagined the change. “May I continue now?” the vampire asked.

“Yeah. I just…There's so much I want to know.”

“And you'll learn all of it, in time. For now, I'll continue with the part I've begun. For each vampire, there is one mortal with whom the psychic bond is particularly strong. For me, that mortal is you. That's why you've seen me before. That's why I've helped you when you've been in trouble in the past. And it's why I could not do anything but come to you again when you were near death.”

Seth nodded slowly. “I appreciate it.”

“If I'd had a choice in the matter, I'd likely have continued on my mission and left you to live or die on your own.”

Hell, this guy was one cold son of a bitch, Seth thought.

“Careful. I can hear your thoughts, you know.”

Seth's brows rose high. “You…?”

“But you aren't wrong. I
am
a cold son of a bitch.”

“Damn.”

Again the vampire smiled, just slightly this time. “I'll teach you to block your thoughts. It's just further evidence I made the right decision in bringing you along with me. Initially I intended to transform you and leave you behind. I only realized after the deed was done that a fledgling vampire as clueless as you wouldn't last a week on his own.”

“Hey, ease up there, pal. I think I could have managed just fine on my own.”

The vampire looked at him briefly, brows raised, a look of skepticism in his dark eyes.

“I'm not kidding,” Seth told him; then he turned to gaze out the window, amazed that he could see for miles, and that everything was as clear as day to him, despite the fact that it was dark outside. “I've been waiting my whole life for this. I mean, I didn't
know
it was this, but it has to be. I always knew I was meant for something big, something important.”