Blood Work (44 page)

“I want to
go.”

It was falling
away. That precarious, fragile foundation crumbled beneath her. I
sat down hard. “Erin, no.”

She struggled
to sit up and I helped her. Her bound hands lifted and her fingers
grazed over my stubbled jaw, then dropped down between us.

“You’re
needed, Matthew. You protect people with what you and Mercy do. I
have no purpose anymore. If someone must not survive this, let it
be me.”

Veilchen. It
must be. She’d laid some sort of compulsion on Erin. I touched her
temple lightly, reached out and sank myself in her aura. Unlike the
night she’d been used by Martínez, there was no invading
flavour.

“How
beautiful.”

I looked up.
The darkness amongst the trees parted and a tall, thin woman
stepped into the soft fall of moon and stars. The bleaching effect
of the moonlight left her eerily white, almost glowing. Her starkly
blond hair fell to her waist, her white eyes lost in her face,
framed by pale lashes that failed to stand out against her skin.
She wore cream slacks and a pale purple blouse. The sense I got of
her was null, a void. If I closed my eyes, she would not be
there.

“I have not
touched her,” Veilchen said as she circled us. “Her will to die is
entirely her own.”

“Why should I
believe you?”

“You have the
evidence in your arms.”

I gently set
Erin down and stood to watch this creature prowl. Erin curled up at
my feet. “I have not encountered your type before. You could have
abilities beyond mine to detect.”

A sly smile
touched those pale lips. “Indeed. But in this case, you have beaten
me to this one. Your touch is heavy and clumsy, yet sadly
effective. Perhaps if you had not set your compulsion on her, I
would have been able to take this morbid desire from her. There
were moments today when I worried she would not survive until this
meeting.”

I knew exactly
what she meant, but that didn’t stop my mouth from shooting off on
its own accord.

“Feeling
peckish, were you?”

She smiled
again, broadly this time, revealing a row of even teeth. No fangs.
Aurum had said Primals were not exactly vampires.

“My sisters
and brothers and I do not require the sustenance of blood, as our
children do. But we do like the taste.”

Something
brushed my mind. A strange flavour welled over my tongue. I
couldn’t place it, but it was strong enough to flood into my nose
as well. It was a musty, flat scent and flavour. It took a moment
to register, drawing on my memories of childhood and hugging my
grandmother. She always had that same scent. Lavender.

I nodded
slowly. “The fabled Violet clan.”

She returned
my nod with a noble tilt of her head. “And how shall we classify
you, young one? Your colours are a frightful mess. I fear it would
take some time, and pain, to sort them out and find what lies deep
in your true heart.”

“Time we don’t
have, as I’m sure you’re aware. So let’s just go with Team
Hawkins.”

She mouthed
the words ‘Team Hawkins’ and blinked slowly. “Far too clumsy, but
it suits you. And yes, I’m more than aware of your pursuers. If you
thought to overwhelm me with them, then you were sadly mistaken.
And you have set my stolen daughter against them.”

“I had to try.
And it gives the kiddies something to do while we adults talk.”

“You amuse me.
Somehow you have taken my child and made her your own and you think
that makes us equals.” Veilchen gazed at me fondly. At least I
think it was fondly. It might have been her hungry face. “You have
much to learn, young one.”

“Young one?
Ugh. Talk about clumsy. Call me Night Caller instead.”

She actually
laughed. “I will give you a name when you have earned it. Now call
my child to you. I wish to see her.”

“Sorry, but
she’s out playing with her friends at the moment. Maybe can you
come back some other day and we’ll set up a play date.”

It was pretty
much close to the truth. Coasting along on the morphine high, Mercy
was having a grand old time baiting the Reds. I needed to make sure
that they found me and Veilchen. Still, I could feel Mercy’s
strength fading as she flittered through the trees, firing upon the
advancing Reds with the paintball rifle. She was perhaps halfway up
the slope, moving slower than usual, but still faster than a human.
And the Reds surged up after her.

“Which brings
us to a point of law,” I said, moving so I could keep myself
between Erin and Veilchen. “Namely, the law of finders keepers. You
lost Mercy of your own accord. I did not take her from you. No
judge in the land would favour you in a custody battle.”

The mindless
roar my earlier denunciation of her parenting skills threatened to
return. Her lips parted and this time, there were fangs in there.
Big ones. Bigger in comparison to Mercy’s. Maybe Mercy’s were just
baby teeth.

“She was
stolen,” Veilchen hissed. “I had crafted her especially and someone
took her from me. If not you, then someone else. But I did not lose
her.” She bit off each word with a finality that rattled in my
guts.

“Well, it
wasn’t me, lady. Your gripe is with someone else.”

“But you have
her now. Currently, that is all that matters.”

“Exactly. I
have her. Which means that you can’t control her. You can’t get her
back.”

Veilchen
stopped pacing. She stood still and her presence condensed back
down to nothing. The taste of lavender left me. Man, that was so
nifty. I wondered how it was done.

“But I can. As
I said, you have much to learn.”

“Fantastic. I
am simply surrounded by Kenobis. Oh please, teach me.”

The reference
obviously went rushing right over her head. She tilted it
quizzically, but didn’t question me. Instead, she nodded once.

“My kind are
eternal. We cannot be killed.” Veilchen ran a long fingered hand
down the length of her torso. If it was meant to be seductive,
let’s just say I wasn’t the only one with a lot to learn. “These
bodies, however. They are not eternal. They are…” Her nose wrinkled
in distaste. “Poorly designed for long use.”

“Ah, I get it.
You have to trade up every, what? Eighty, ninety years?”

“Every three
hundred, if one does not take particular care of the vessel. This
–” Again she indicated her body. “– is nearing its final years. I
must soon… trade up.”

Cold claws
sunk into my stomach. “And that’s why you turned Mercy. You wanted
her body.”

“We have
found, over the years, that taking a freshly turned vampire
increases the longevity of the body. You can understand then that
we choose carefully.”

“Sure, just
like buying a house. You’re going to spend thirty years paying it
off, may as well get something you can, well, I guess, live
with.”

Another
comment that rushed past her comprehension with all the subtly of a
freight train. This woman needed to get out more.

“But,” I
continued, holding up a hand. “I think Mercy’s expiry date might be
long gone. She’s not freshly turned anymore.”

Veilchen
curled her lips into another not-a-smile. “We have differing
opinions on time, young one. She is so fresh I can still sense the
taint of humanity in her.” She began walking again, drawing closer.
“But if she falls before the Red horde, as she most likely will in
her current state, I might be encouraged to look elsewhere for a
body.”

Her cold gaze
dropped down over me and back up. My knees threatened to knock
together at the look on her narrow face when I met her eyes again.
Yup. It had been fond before. Now it was hungry, and not for
dinner.

Lavender
swamped me again. I tried to spit it out, but my mouth refused to
respond to commands. Unlike my legs, which responded very well.
Just not to me.

I lurched
toward Veilchen. Inside, I was screaming all sorts of denials and
curses. Couldn’t utter a sound though. She had complete control of
my body. I was going to suffocate in her musty odour. It swarmed
all over me, an almost tangible thing, crawling on my skin and
through my hair, and like the cold electricity created by lesser
supernatural beings, this strange force invaded my body. It coiled
through my muscles and bones and my movements eased out until I was
striding toward her with a smooth, steady gait.

When I reached
her, she slipped into my arms. Her body was as chilly as her manner
had promised, not like a real vampire at all. They were all heat
and raging blood. She was an empty void, as cold as outer space. I
would freeze in her embrace, but I had to hold her, had to caress
her.

Veilchen
pressed against me. Her hands roamed over my body, leaving trails
of chill burn in their wake. My jacket was pushed from my
shoulders, my shirt pulled from the waist band of my pants. When
she touched my bare skin, the shudder that ran through me was
entirely involuntary and totally at odds with the violent, raging
scream in my head. Dear God, my body got an erection so fast it
actually hurt. She delighted in it, rubbing me though my pants and
I thought my balls would turn to ice and break off.

And when she
kissed me, my body kissed her back. Open mouthed, greedy,
demanding. I was going to get frostbite of the tongue. Then she
broke the kiss and my head dropped to the side, oh so conveniently
exposing my juicy jugular.

Crap.

Veilchen’s
lips drew back from her fangs. She opened wide and bit down.

Back in the early days, when Mercy
and I were still learning our way around each other, she’d fed on
me twice. The first time, I think I had wanted it. All those months
I’d spent watching her from a distance, falling in love, or lust,
or simple obsessive infatuation. Whatever. Then in the hospital,
watching her sleep and being torn apart and remade. And finally,
there she was with me; strange and dangerous, absolutely, but the
body was the same, the voice was the same, even if the eyes were
silver glazed and impenetrable. She’d come at me, lust for my blood
in her eyes and coursing down the burgeoning link between us. I’d
let her.

And it had
been the single most mind blowing, orgasmic feeling ever.

It hurt. How
could it not? A vampire bite is of necessity a small thing. Two
holes over which they must fit their mouth, otherwise there is too
much wastage to make the kill profitable. Drawing litre upon litre
of blood through wounds of that size is going to cause pain. You
can feel it being pulled up against your heart’s will. Like someone
has wound a needle and thread through every organ and muscle of
your body, starting at your feet and ending at your neck, then they
start tugging on that thread. It feels like your guts, stomach,
lungs, heart, everything inside you, is about to be drawn out
through your mouth.

At least,
that’s how it was without the feeding compulsion that numbs the
victim to all sensations.

Mercy had
still been too young to have worked out her mental whammies. When
she fed on me, it was with no nice, considerate thought for the
food’s comfort. It had hurt, and I’d got off on it. If I hadn’t
been totally consumed in mistaking pain for pleasure, I think I
would have tried to fuck her while she killed me.

That first
time, the only reason she didn’t kill me was because she was too
weak to drain me. I spent two days in a delirium and she had her
first reaction to a wrong blood group.

The second
time, my memories of the first encounter had scared me sufficiently
I performed the first reverse whammy on her. She’d got away with
only a couple hundred mils of blood that time. No vampire had fed
off me since.

Until now.

Veilchen might
have been able to control my body, but she was unable to touch my
mind. No feeding compulsion for me. Not only did I get the full
force of all the inherent pain, but that savage lust rose in me
again. I enjoyed the way she hurt me. I wanted it to go deeper, to
sink right into my body and twist and tear. She felt it. Against my
neck, her mouth shivered, a mixture of amusement and responding
passion. Her control over my limbs eased but I didn’t take the
chance to fight. I simply grabbed on tighter, hauled her hips
closer to mine, let her know how much I liked what she was
doing.

I clawed at
the fastening on her slacks. Her hand made the same motions at my
own.

Suddenly,
Veilchen pulled away from me. She threw herself backwards so
harshly I fell back onto my arse, jarring my back and knee.

Howling,
Veilchen spun around and swept her arm out. Erin went spinning
away, falling to the ground by the creek. My eyes focused on the
Primal’s back. There was a sizzling hole in her blouse in the
centre of her shoulder blades. Jutting from the middle of the burn
was the hilt of my SAS knife. Veilchen furiously tried to pull the
weapon free, but it had been placed well. She couldn’t reach it.
Her finger tips brushed it but could gain no purchase. She flew
into a rage and blurred out of my perceptions.

For a moment
only, the lust for her coursed through me. Then I felt the blood
trailing down my neck and into my shirt. That woke me up.

“Matt?”

Erin struggled
to sit up by the water. I crawled over to her. Her lips were split
from Veilchen’s blow and there was a deep red patch over the entire
right side of her face that would bruise nicely. I couldn’t look
her in the eyes. My head was clear of whatever mania Veilchen had
inspired, yet there was still a slight and distressing tent in my
pants. I set about untying her hands.

“I’m glad you
decided not to die long enough to lend a hand.” It came out harsh,
fuelled by an inward directed anger but I don’t think that
clarification came through.

Erin stiffened
but let me finish freeing her. “Well, you seemed all too willing to
let her kill you. And more.”