Wicked Ever After (A Blud Novel Book 7) (7 page)

I rose off the bed, already starting my first climax, as always amazed that he knew my body this well. He didn’t slow his rhythm; he knew it undid me to keep going, to never flag, to let the echoes play out as the next wave built. I wrapped firm fingers through his fine, long hair, pulling his face to my neck. “There. There. Just do it. Please. Now.”

In response, he only thrust into me harder, and my whimpers became more frantic. I tried to scratch myself with all-too-human fingernails, tried to give him the blood he craved, but he only pulled my hands away and pinned them to the pillow over my head as he rode me. I dared to look at him, and he was a feral masterpiece of bared teeth and wild hair and stormy gray eyes, grinning fiercely as I came again, bucking beneath him. At last, his head fell back, and I felt him jerk inside me as he groaned and let loose my hands, his forehead to my shoulder and his breath hot and sweet on my skin.

Before he had opened his eyes, I pushed him off me and stood, pulling my skirt back down and my blouse back up, red-hot with shame and frustration. What good were a cascade of multiple orgasms if I still couldn’t get what I wanted from the one man who could give it to me?

“Letitia, my love, if you’d like to talk about it now—”

I shook my head and ran for the small water closet, slamming and locking the door behind me. Criminy had never denied me anything, and I felt an utter fool, more human and breakable and old and fragile than ever.

“Letitia?”

The soft whisper of his hand on the door nearly broke my heart. The first time he’d made love to me, we’d started like this, with nothing but a thin wooden door between us. It had happened on a submarine lined with posh red velvet, and I’d been partial to red velvet ever since. Now, as I wiped myself clean down below and splashed water on my face to rinse off the kohl-tinged tear tracks, I wondered if we’d ever be equals again.

“Go away, Crim. I have to get cleaned up so we can go find my Nana. Before I get old and die.”

“You’re not going to get old and die, love. Glances don’t lie.”

I swallowed hard and looked in the mirror. My glance, the very first time I’d touched his skin, agreed with everything that had happened to us thus far. Everything except the part of the glance I’d always feared so much: a black-scaled hand clutching Criminy’s in our bed.

And, for the very first time, it occurred to me that I’d only seen Criminy and another Bludman’s hand.

Perhaps it wasn’t mine at all.

7

“Just . . .” It was
hard to keep my voice steady. “I need to be alone for a minute.”

With his usual gentlemanly consideration, Crim murmured his love through the door and left. After the wagon door had closed, I emerged from the tiny bathroom feeling as transparent and breakable as a porcelain teacup. I dressed hurriedly in my nicest city clothes, the sort of thing any wealthy human woman would choose. A brightly colored dress in aqua and green with a high neck, a firm leather corset to fend off those dangerous Bludmen, high leather boots, and a hat that covered my ears.

It was ridiculous, I knew, as most Bludmen had more than enough self-control to resist an old woman’s flappy earlobes, but it made traveling in the city easier for me, as no one noticed me at all. And if Nana’s note was correct and she’d gone to London to find the witch, then I didn’t want to arouse any sort of suspicion on the way into town. Hepzibah had spies everywhere, considering that she paid better for information than she did for years, which she could steal with a touch. I’d given her five in a fair deal, but the spell she’d put on the locket had taken at least thirty.

Since we were just a few hours from London, I didn’t pack a trunk. We would go, face the witch, fetch my Nana, and either come back to the caravan or die trying. When I stepped outside into the gloaming, everything was as it should be. Twin columns of smoke barreling toward us across the moors signaled the approach of the evening’s city folk, while the scents of popcorn, caramel, and warm apple cider floated on the breeze to lure them closer, despite the slight fear that made them shiver at the turnstile. Last night, I’d been among them, one of them. Now I prepared to say my good-byes. The facts were these: my human body was old and frail, the witch was dangerous, and Criminy was right about the danger involved. If I didn’t come back to the caravan, I wanted to tell Imogen and Jacinda how much they’d meant to me and wish them well.

My first stop was the dining car, which was mostly empty, aside from two heads nestled close together in the corner. Catarrh and Quincy, the two-headed boy. One head turned and snickered, lips painted red. He—they were the most hotheaded, hungry, uncontrolled Bludmen I’d ever met, and even after six years with the caravan, I still didn’t trust them or know how to handle their pronouns. Crim kept them on a steady schedule of three times the usual amount of blood, as they’d been known over the years to drink from the odd spectator. I ignored them and hurried to what was left of the evening meal, still spread out on the buffet line. A few apples and oranges, a bowl of bludrabbit stew, a couple of hard rolls. I couldn’t eat now, but I could pack enough food to get me to London and the street vendors of the hot wrappy sandwiches I’d come to crave like McDonald’s whenever we were near a proper city.

Something rustled in the corner, and I looked up. The two-headed boy had switched to the other side of the bench to watch me. A chill went down my spine, much like a mouse must feel when a hawk’s shadow passes overhead.

“M’lady,” Catarrh said, his voice mocking.

Quincy snickered and dipped his head in a faux bow.

“Lads,” I acknowledged with a nod. Crim had taught me long ago that the only way to deal with them was to show them a hard, haughty front. They could smell weakness. And they liked the spice of it.

“Master Crim went to fetch a conveyance,” Quincy said, ending with his usual odd chitter.

“Said he’d be back shortly,” added Catarrh.

The heads met each other’s eyes, and they grinned, slow and creepy, showing more fangs than most Bludmen possessed.

“Shouldn’t you boys be in the tent for the show?” I asked.

Quincy shrugged. “No master, no consequences.”

“I’m the master’s lady,” I reminded them.

Another furtive look passed between them, and they stood. Their shared body had extra-wide shoulders tapering to a trim waist and average-sized legs spaced just a little farther apart than usual. Since we’d lost our more talented costumers, their clothes had gotten a little ratty. Everything they wore had to be built from scratch, but Emerlie refused to have them in her wagon, much less be alone with them. One hand reached to scratch a tuft of dark hair on their chest, and Quincy snickered again. They moved to block the door.

The only way out.

My eyes shot to the kitchen window, betraying me. “Cook?”

“Cook’s asleep, hen,” Catarrh said.

“All alone, all alone,” Quincy crooned.

I ran the count in my head as I stepped backward and reached for a three-pronged fork. Criminy: fetching a conveyance. Charlie Dregs, the stolid, good-hearted Bludman: in his puppet booth, minding his own business. Wee Pammy, the new but honest Blud child: collecting tickets. Marco the knife thrower: throwing his knives at harmless targets. Mr. Murdoch the artificer: locked in his wagon with his tinkerer’s tools. Torno the strong man: gone with my grandmother. My old friend and now Bludman, Casper: long gone, married to the Tsarina of Freesia. Criminy’s best friend, Antonin, the Bludman costumer: run away with a robot and presumed dead. Tattooed Peter, the newest Bludman: completely unaware of my peril and most likely far away in his booth.

All my champions, all the carnivalleros strong enough to fight Catarrh and Quincy? Were gone. It was just me and him—them. The two-headed fanged monster approaching me, step by menacing step, across the dining wagon.

I had a fork. I had a thick corset and a high, buttoned collar. And that was it. The dining wagon held no knives, no weapons, because why would we need them under the care of Criminy Stain? As I retreated backward, eyes desperately bouncing from one head to the other, my gloved hand dragged along the buffet line. There had to be something I could use as a weapon.

And then I found it among the spices. Quickly sidestepping a table, I grabbed a ceramic pitcher of water and, with my back to the approaching monster, dumped as much salt into it as possible, hands shaking.

“How ’bout a kiss, then, missus?” A velvet-gloved hand landed on my shoulder, untrimmed claws pricking all the way through his gloves and my jacket, straight into my flesh.

I took a deep breath, spun around, and dashed the hastily mixed salt water into the closest face.

Catarrh shrieked and stumbled back as Quincy hissed and grabbed for my neck. Salt water, after all, was poisonous to Bludmen. I’d managed to cripple half the creature and infuriate the other, more animalistic half. With a feral growl, Quincy shoved me in the chest, hard, and I fell back onto the sturdy table. I struggled to get up, but a firm palm pressed down on my corset, a wide torso angling to urge apart my thighs. Revulsion and fear squirmed through me, and I thrashed as my body rejected the possibility of rape and feeding with equal disgust.

“Kill her! Kill her!” Quincy yowled, and Catarrh struggled to loosen the buttons of my tall, thick collar with one clumsy hand, opting for food over lust. I fought back, ripping at his arm with my hands and kicking with my boots as much as his closeness would allow.

And then I remembered that the walls of the wagon were merely wood and started screaming. “Help! Help! Get Criminy! Pemberly! To me!”

“Enough of that,” Catarrh said, covering my mouth with a filthy glove.

I looked up at his face and shuddered. I’d never seen the effects of salt water on a Bludman’s skin, but Crim had sworn it was like acid to a human. Catarrh had never been a handsome man, but now his face was pink and bubbly, as if it might drip off his sharp bones. His eyes were red all around with burst vessels, pink-tinged tears rolling down his cheeks. But even more frightening was the hasp of one collar button unslipped at my throat, followed by Quincy’s snicker.

“Never tasted Master’s finest vintage,” he said, giggling.

“Blood’s blood. Always better hot. Always better when you can reach the last drop,” Catarrh added.

As if they truly could read each other’s minds, Quincy moved to hold me down while Catarrh’s far cleverer fingers stuffed a dirty hankie in my mouth and went after the rest of my buttons. I grew frantic, terrified, spitting vowels around the hankie and scrabbling with my hands at whatever I could reach. Quincy shook my hand loose and slapped me hard, my head banging off the table. My fist pounded the wall behind my head, at first with Crim’s secret knock and then, after another slap, with inarticulate drumbeats that destroyed my gloves and pulverized my knuckles. By the time my collar and jacket had been unbuttoned down to my corset, I was running out of air and skin. And hope.

“Now, then,” Quincy said, and Catarrh nodded in agreement. “Much better. Let’s?”

“Let’s.”

My vision went over spotted as the two faces descended, one monstrous with calm eyes and the other calm with monstrous eyes, twin mouths open to show long fangs. I squeezed my own eyes shut and clawed for their faces, but they each pinned an arm to the table. I shrank back, shook my head, flailed, trembled, but still their breath rolled over me like hot pennies.

When their teeth drove into my neck, one mouth on each side, I screamed around the wad of cloth, a muffled cry of anger and fear that shredded my throat. It hurt. So bad. Like having fire in my veins, pulling, sucking, drawing out every bit of who I was, what I was, and replacing it with burning acid and emptiness. I thrashed and fought, going weaker and weaker and feeling so very, very foolish. I had forgotten the number one rule of Sang: without Criminy around to protect me, I was either food or chattel.

Right before everything went over in a haze of red, I gave a sad, quiet chuckle. A few hours ago, I had begged my husband to do this very thing. Now, against my will, I had my wish.

The only difference was that Catarrh and Quincy weren’t going to give back what they had taken.

8

I was floating
in a warm pool, drinking the most delicious margarita. The sun shone hot on my face, and I was stretched out and weightless, my body bronzing and suffused with comfort. Eyes closed, I curled my toes and sighed.

“Drink more. Come on, damn you!”

Warm porcelain pressed to my lips, and I agreeably sucked down more of the tangy, sweet liquor. It ran down my throat to pool in my belly with the heat of pepper-infused tequila. So good. I needed more. With greedy fingers, I sought the cup, pressing it closer, drinking deeper.

“More! Come on, Letitia. Come on, love.”

“Crim?” I murmured around the sun-warm cup, and a hand rubbed my back.

“Yes, love. It’s me. Come on, now. Keep on.”

I breathed in deep, recognizing his particular scent of honeyed Cabernet wine, growing vines, and sweet spices. I blinked and saw white and red, the world bleary and smeared and dreamy. Trying to focus and fight up from the warm pool, I squinted at his set lips and stubbled throat, splashed with blood. One of my hands curled possessively around it, the other trailing dead on the wood floor of the dining car.

I closed my eyes.

No.

The dream. The pool. The margarita. The margarita was red. The pool was red. The sun was red. I was floating in blood, and it was glorious, and I wanted to drink it all dry, suck it up until I was full as a tick. I gulped, empty and dying of thirst, and I tried to imagine the sun shining, but all I knew was the heat of Criminy’s skin. Why was I so cold?

He held me like a baby, cradled in his arms, rubbing my back and murmuring. As he spoke eloquent nothings, the cords of his neck twitched under my tongue. He was the pool, the drink, the cup, the sun, the world. When I opened my eyes again, he wobbled, and strong hands pulled me away from him with a sudden pop.

“Here, m’lady. Try this.”

Red gloves held hard porcelain to my lips and forced my head back. The blood that slithered into my mouth was dead and cold and wretched. I struggled to get away, to fight back to the warm flesh and hotter blood I craved, but still the teacup pressed and poured, forcing it down my throat.

“No!” I spluttered, trying to push it away.

“You must,” a voice said. I opened my eyes to confirm it. Charlie Dregs supported my back with a wiry arm, looking just as kind and sad as ever, possibly sadder.

“No. It’s cold. It’s dead. I need—”

“You can’t, m’lady. He’s nearly drained. You need more volume to complete the process.” He gestured to the warming cauldron of blood tubes left out for the Bludmen at each meal in the dining car, and I shuddered at the thought of all that disconnected nothingness slipping down my throat like the juice that dripped off Styrofoam trays of past-date chicken. The cauldron kept it warm, but warm wasn’t the same as fresh. It wouldn’t do. I thrashed my way upright, hunting for the source of warmth and joy.

Hunting for prey.

What I found was my husband, ice-blue and barely breathing on the ground. I’d never seen him limp, drained, sick. It was possibly the only thing that could have moved the beast squirming in my guts, hungering for life.

He had no life left to give.

“Is he—”

I couldn’t ask, but Charlie knew what I needed to know.

“When you’re full, he’ll drink from you, m’lady. Once the process is started, equilibrium must be reached quickly.”

Drink from me? Memory jolted down my backbone and clenched my teeth, and I suddenly remembered what fear was.

“Where are the twins?”

Charlie’s mournful John Lennon face quirked up in a rare smirk. He wrapped my hands around the teacup, reached down, and held out his arms. In each hand, he clutched a shock of blood-soaked hair. The faces of Catarrh and Quincy stared at me, sightless, bone-white, and bruised purple. Their bodies were not attached.

“He drank them dry before feeding you. Wanted you to have your revenge in the form of their purloined strength.”

Part of me was disgusted to have anything of the freakish monsters inside me, but something new writhed deep in my gut, rising like a sleepy dragon and infusing my veins with fire and power. It was right, taking their blud. Drinking it into me, straining it through my strong heart. And it came from Criminy, and all things that came from Criminy were good.

I nodded and gulped down what was left in the teacup, knowing that the longer the blood sat, exposed to the air, the clumpier it would get.

“More, please, then,” I said, holding out the cup with a wobbly smile.

Charlie tossed the heads into a corner, where they bounced like bruised melons. With a flair I hadn’t seen in him before, he selected two blood vials, popped the corks with his thumbnails, and poured their contents into the teacup with the coordination of a seasoned bartender.

“It goes down better warm, m’lady.” He gave a genuine smile as I gulped it all down.

“How much more does she need?”

I spun, startled to hear Criminy’s voice. On one level, it was ragged and weak, barely a whisper as he sprawled on the floor. On the other, deeper level, it was like hearing violins, the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard, multidimensional and echoing in my veins.

“Just a few more vials, m’lord,” Charlie said, hurriedly emptying four more vials into my teacup until the blood nearly overflowed the gilt rim. Then, to me, in a whisper, “Hurry.”

With my eyes on Criminy, I gulped the blood down. The last few sips seemed to barely fit into me, as if I’d run out of room inside. I burped softly and smiled. I’d always expected blood to taste coppery and meaty, but it was delicious, like the finest red wine, velvety and rounded with just a hint of . . . was it butter?

Charlie touched my face, turning it left and right in the light, and nodded. “Now, m’lord.” Crim didn’t move, and Charlie jerked his chin toward my husband’s still form. “You’ll have to help him at first. Be gentle, m’lady.”

I was cozy warm all over, as full as I’d ever been after a Thanksgiving dinner. It was strange, remembering how to navigate my limbs, which seemed to move more fluidly, more powerfully. I was sitting cross-legged, and then, as if lightning had struck me, my legs were underneath me, and I was crouching over Crim, hands on either side of his fine face. I took a moment to wonder at the smooth, unmarked skin of my hands. The knobby veins and age spots that had sprung up in the last year were fading, and my hands looked like a teenager’s. Only the faintest shading of gray told me that the process was truly ongoing, that I wasn’t already a proper Bludman and might still botch the process.

“Beautiful,” Crim whispered, and then his cloudy gray eyes rolled back in a swoon.

“He needs you now. He gave too much,” Charlie said, indicating a line along his own throat.

I nodded. “He always does.” Taking a deep breath, I plucked Crim’s hand from the ground and used the talon from his pointer finger to score a deep scratch along my neck; my nails hadn’t yet found their points. I felt the blood—blud?—well up hotly on my skin and set my throat against his cold lips. “C’mon, Crim. You can do it. Goodness knows you’ve waited long enough.”

I felt as if lightning was coursing through me, making me twitch, forming new connections and reknitting the parts of my body that had grown old. And yet, at the same time, a chill pool of fear was seeping up my throat the longer Crim lay there, unmoving, not drinking. I rubbed my neck over his lips, scored my skin more deeply, dipped fingers into the blood, and slipped them into his mouth. His tongue barely curled around, too dry, and I worried the wound to make it flow.

He could only lick feebly at first. When his fingers wrapped around my neck, I could have cheered. But something in me knew that my place was to hold still, to give, to be the vessel for the man I loved, who had drained himself for my benefit when he’d claimed he wouldn’t do it until we were both ready.

Death had a way of hurrying along readiness, I supposed.

A long, soft sigh whispered over my skin, and I quivered and felt heat pool in my belly. I knew that sound, a sound we only shared alone, behind closed doors, or in the wilderness, pressed against a tree or crushed over a patch of flowers. His tongue dragged over my throat, and I gave an answering sigh, almost a begging whimper, and then I heard a door close as Charlie Dregs prudently left the wagon.

“About damn time,” Crim purred, and he hooked a leg over mine and flipped me onto my back.

In response, I let out a loud, careless laugh and ran my hands down his shoulders.

“Welcome back,” I said.

His fangs brushed over the wound, worrying it wider, and he drank deeper and slipped a hand under my skirts. My breathing sped up, and I felt wet all over and thrumming with new energy. Eyes closed, I saw the red sun again, and Crim washed over me like hot water pressing for entrance at every gate of my body, my being. I moaned and caressed the nape of his neck, urging him to drink faster, deeper, harder, trying to edge closer and closer to the red-hot wire, deep inside, that he was so close to plucking like a guitar string.

“Waited forever for this,” he murmured, breaking from his thirst to kiss me with blood-painted lips, a finger held tight over the wound on my neck.

“Don’t stop. So close.”

He chuckled and opened my eyes with his thumbs, gently, hunting for something and smiling when he found it. “You don’t know what you’re close to, love.”

With a ragged growl, I dug my fingers into his hair and yanked his face away, forcing it back to my throat.

“Drink,” I growled.

“If I drink too much, you’ll die,” he murmured. “This bit’s chancy.”

“Don’t take it this far and be gentle. Finish it, you bastard.”

“So demanding, my love. But it’s almost your turn again. I think you’ll like that even more.”

And then he was drinking above and teasing below, working his fingers under my skirts, slipping them inside me in time with his tongue’s lapping at my neck. He found that red-hot place, stroked it, drew a climax out of me along with my blood. As the echoes and my screams died away, he withdrew his fingers and pulled me up from my swoon with an arm around my shoulders.

I’d never felt so empty, so light, so beautiful, so clear. I was floating in the blood again, suffused with bliss and seeing nothing but heady red darkness.

“Drink now, love.”

“Mmmmargarita,” I murmured, and wetness pressed up against my lips, and the first taste of salt and sweetness and glory washed over my tongue in a haze of power. I drank my fill to fullness again, and then, without weakening his hold, he gently held me away and moved back to my neck to take his own turn. We went on like that, back and forth, the frenzy and fear replaced with purposefully sensual, thoughtful care.

I drank and drank and then suddenly sat back, licking my lips.

“Keep drinking, sweetness.”

I sniffed and wiped my mouth with the back of a dark gray hand.

“I think I’m full.”

Crim held me away and inspected me carefully from eyes to mouth to fingertips. He ended with my hand, holding it up to the light, turning it this way and that to admire the fine, light scales and sharp white talons. Eyes locked on mine, he licked the blood I’d just wiped off from the back of my wrist and smiled, radiant and true.

“Congratulations, Letitia Stain.” He stood smoothly and pulled me up with a hand. “Welcome to the superior species.”

I stretched, reveling in the fact that my back and hips weren’t popping, that I felt as sleek and strong as a tiger. All my aches and pangs, all my frailness and fretting, had disappeared. I sashayed to the buffet line with a new bounce in my step and a swagger to my swaying hips. There were no mirrors in the dining car, so I dumped out a dozen blood oranges from a silver bowl and turned it this way and that until I caught my reflection in the light. Even distorted, I could see a difference, as if I was somehow more real, more me. My eyes glittered, and my hair was a riot of dark waves.

“Did I grow more hair?”

He ran his fingers through it, and I wriggled like a kitten being stroked.

“Feels like it. I wouldn’t have told you this a few hours ago, but your hair’s been thinning in the last year, going puffy as a dandelion. All the gray’s gone now. You’re sleek as a racehorse, love.”

“I feel like I could run like one, too.”

His grin was fond as he curled a lock of dark hair around one finger. “You can. You will. We’ll hunt together under a full moon, naked and free.”

“Sounds positively barbaric.”

His sharp eyebrow quirked up. “Doesn’t it just?”

Our eyes locked, and it was almost as if the air shifted. He wanted me. I could taste it, feel it, like a silent telegraph tapping at my every entrance. But that wasn’t what I wanted, what I needed. “Let’s find Nana first. I’m ready. Let’s go.” I took a few steps toward the door, and he caught my wrist.

“Wait, darling. It’s getting late. The process is draining, and the twins nearly killed you. You’re not fully recovered yet. You haven’t slept. How do you feel?”

I shook off his hand, drew in a deep breath, and snarled at the press of my stays. How could I take stock when my body was bound so tightly? With a hand on either side of my corset, I popped the busk open, tossed the corset to the ground, and yanked open the few buttons remaining on my dress so I could inhale properly.