Forbidden Drink (41 page)

It was his hand on his left side which grabbed mine. I felt the blood well up between my fingers, there was just so much red, so much warm liquid, but he was pale and getting colder.

“Go back.” I think that's what I said, it sounded kind of weird, a little off. “Go back and let Nafrini heal you.”

He shook his head and gurgled something, I leant down to try to catch his words, my hair falling into his chest and all that blood. So much blood. I didn't care, his grip was growing weak, his eyes, those beautiful cinnamon and copper and coffee coloured eyes, the windows to his most gorgeous soul, were fluttering, but he still tried to say something. The words lost in amongst the blood pooling in his mouth. He leaned over painfully and spat it out and then tried again.

“Just shut up and go,” I begged. I was really crying now. Great big heaves of sobs. I had no idea what was happening around me, I could sense a presence, a lot of presences, but all I could hear, all I could care about, was the man in front of me who was dying. I knew he was and the stubborn prick was not returning to his body, where Nafrini could be healing him. He was clinging to me and trying to say something I could not understand.

He kept trying, right up until I felt his essence go. Right up until his hand vanished from mine and I knew without a doubt that he had died. He kept trying to tell me something, something obviously so important to him, that he stayed with me, in a Dream, right up to the end.

I don't know what it was he was trying to say. I couldn't understand him.

But I do know what my last words were to my beloved teacher and friend.

“Just shut up and go.”

The realisation that Nero had died protecting me, saving my life, came minutes after he had vanished. Amisi was on her cellphone wailing, confirmation of his death and that Nafrini had burst into dust next to him, coming down the line. Nafrini Al-Suyuti, Master of Cairo City for the past six hundred years, was no more. And neither was her kindred Nosferatin, my beautiful, intense, compassionate friend, Nero.

I thought Amisi would hate me. I had caused the death of her mentor and her Queen. But, when I staggered over to comfort her, with no one getting in my way, she dropped her cellphone and threw herself in my arms. We clung to each other crying and crying and crying and aching for our loss.

It was Michel's arms that came around me, only making me cry more because he had crossed the borders of the city and could now incite war with Gregor because of me.

Be still, ma douce. It is all right, Gregor has invited me in.

I was vaguely aware it was Erika who helped Amisi to a car, that Gregor's vampires formed a sort of honour guard as we were almost carried away from the scene. Michel told me later, it was because we had fought so well beside them and had sacrificed something precious on their soil.

Michel and I accompanied Amisi back to Cairo and stayed for the funeral and
Elysium
service held for Nafrini. It took three days of celebrations, a carnival like atmosphere, a happy remembrance of life. Nafrini had a good second, who was more than capable of taking over the reins. The line would not be without a Master. Nero's Nosferatin community assured a place in their world. We paid our respects to the newly appointed Master. Awan Hamadi seemed a nice vampire, as far as vampires go. Amisi knew him well and it was with his blessing that she returned to New Zealand with us, probably for good.

I hadn't expected her to come back. I thought it would be too painful, that she would need her family now more than ever. She said she would miss them, but her job was now helping me. I think that's what hurt the most. That she had been pulled into the war so completely now, as my new side-kick. I couldn't turn her away though, she knew things about being a Nosferatin that I didn't. She was no Nero, but she brought a chest full of scrolls and various other paraphernalia relating to the Prophesy with her. She had decided to educate herself and to take over where Nero had left off. She wasn't the Herald, but the Herald had done his job, we just needed someone to interpret the signs and head us in the right direction.

I knew Amisi needed to do that, I knew she needed to keep busy, to honour Nero's death, but the hours she spent pouring over those scrolls for the next two weeks was painful to watch. She immersed herself in the Prophesy and we lost our shining Light, our Amisi. She became fixated and nothing would tear her away. Erika tried, I tried, even Michel tried. But she was glued to them and would not let anyone else touch them. It was her responsibility. And hers alone.

I decided all I could give her was time and I ended up being the one to make pancakes and bake blueberry muffins and force feed my friend. Out of desperation, when we hit the two week mark, I called Gregor. His human vigilante problem had been fixed, there didn't seem to be any of them left alive. So, now I really was an orphan. Other than my Aunt and Uncle, who are really the only ones who count anyway, I have no relatives. Well, none that I'm aware of. I still have questions about my father, about what happened on that South Island road when they were killed, but I have no one to ask. My Aunt and Uncle wouldn't know. They didn't even know I was a half breed supernatural, how would they know about my heritage at all?

With Michel's permission I invited Gregor to Auckland. I was grasping at straws, but Amisi had promised she would take on the role of Nosferatin in Wellington once the war had been won, despite the fact that she didn't accompany me when I went there once a week, to hunt. Gregor and I had developed a kind of easy relationship. He'd still flirt, but he rarely touched. I think he had finally got the message when it was only Michel who could calm me after Nero died. Apparently Gregor had tried, to no avail. That's why he had allowed Michel to enter his city. He couldn't bear to watch me so distraught.

Gregor turned up on a stormy Spring night and I left him to Amisi and the house and took a walk along the beach under the solemn gaze of the moon. I asked Nut if the pain would ever leave me, if I could accept what had happened to my friend. She didn't answer, but the wind died down and just caressed, no longer battering me with sea spray, but warming me with a soft touch here and a gentle sweep there. I felt desolate, but not alone and I knew Nero was with her, with our Nut. And that she was taking good care of him until I arrived and could apologise for the final words I never managed to say. That I loved him, maybe not the way he had wanted, but in a way that meant more to me than just a friend.

I hadn't been able to tell he was there, I was on a beach and he always smells of fresh sea salt spray to me, so his scent had been covered by nature, but the fresh smell of clean cut grass did cross my mind briefly. It wasn't until he stepped out in front of me though, hands in his black trousers, open neck black shirt rolled up his beautifully sculptured arms, his lovely long near-black hair blowing in the gentle breeze, that I noticed him at all. He smiled and took my breath away, as he always does. As he has always done.

“I thought you might like some company,
ma douce
.”

“I'd love some.”

He came and wrapped an arm around my shoulders, kissed my forehead and starting walking slowly with me in the sand. No one else was around, just us, the waves, the odd seagull taking a late night dip and the moon.

“Do you think Gregor can reach her?”

“I don't know. I hope so," I replied, leaning my body against the length of his. "At this point I'm prepared to bring in anyone if it will make a difference. He is going to be her Master of the City and I get the impression, there's something more there too.”

“Ah.” He laughed quietly. “You are hoping for a trigger other than work, to flip our Amisi back to life. I do hope you are right,
ma douce
. For many reasons.”

I could just imagine what other reasons Michel would have. If Gregor showed a romantic interest in Amisi, wouldn't it just make Michel's day?

“I do still care for him,
ma douce
. It is not all business.”

Yeah, right.

He squeezed my shoulders at that come back.

We walked on silently for a while. Enjoying the setting, enjoying each other.

“We should do this more often. I do not think we stop to breathe enough, you and I.”

“It's a bit hard, Michel, with a war and crazy shape shifters and idiotic humans and a Dark goddess who isn't dead, but just biding her time before she can take another shot at me.”

He stopped me and turned me towards himself, wrapping both arms around my shoulders and lying his forehead against mine. This is one of his favourite positions, head to head as it were. He likes it, I think, because he can smell me, can feel my breath against his skin, where it hits his throat just below his chin. He brought one hand back around to tip my chin up and studied my face for a moment, taking all of me in. The colour of his eyes was hard to ascertain in the moon light, I was guessing still a deep blue, nothing else, but when he whispered against my lips, “We should make time.” Then gently brushed his own mouth against mine and slipped his tongue inside, I was guessing a little indigo, maybe amethyst was starting to build there, in the depths, changing the deep blue to something altogether different and just as beautiful.

We kissed slowly at first, then more deeply. He pulled my body against his, moulding me with his own, wrapping me up in his arms in a beautiful blanket of Michel, something beyond intimate, beyond perfect and all mine. His hands drifted lower, down my spine, into the dip at the base of my back, cupping both my buttocks, lifting me off the ground and forcing my legs to wrap around him. I could feel his response to me then, hard and firm and long, straining against his trousers, pleading to be released.

I thought he might very well take this further, right here, right now. You know how he is with public displays of affection and you couldn't get more public than the beach, despite it being after midnight. And he was still very much on the claiming wagon, no changes there, despite the fact that we were spending every day together and practically every night. How the claiming had not yet been satisfied, I do not know, but I guess I was still holding something back, I just wish I knew what it was. Michel never complained though, he just took what he could get and kept giving in return. And was I really that upset about being claimed? Not a chance, this is Michel. I could never say no, even at the beginning and definitely not now.

He had walked us over to a low stone wall that surrounds the beach and propped me up on it, still kissing, still touching, still rubbing that beautiful length of his against me. Teasing, letting me know exactly what he was planning to do. I was giving everything I had back too.

Just when I thought he couldn't hold out any further I felt it. At first I thought it was my
seeking
ability, some sort of call from a vampire in the CBD. They still didn't seem to want to meet me out in St. Helier's Bay, it was always a knock on the metaphysical door and off to the city I went. I think that's why Michel was stalling on my apartment, he liked me having that warning. I didn't really complain. Where would I fit Amisi, a chest full of scrolls, Erika, who was equally part of my home life and Michel's gym in my one bedroom apartment? I think he may well have won the move-in-with-me argument. Even if it wasn't
Sensations
it was still his home.

But, it wasn't my
Prohibitum Bibere
powers that called right now, it was something else altogether. It was another bright light, they always are, they always start that way. I knew it was a power, I'd received a few by now, I knew what they felt like. And I knew Michel was aware too, still in my thoughts, still with me. How many more powers, though, could there be? Wasn't I done already? Hadn't I got my cup full of mojo by now? It seemed not.

Rather than fight it, as I had done so in the past, I just let it wash all over me. I was vaguely aware of a shot of light shooting straight up to the stars, kind of like those huge search lights they have on tall buildings in the city at New Years Eve, strobing across the galaxy, blinding aliens in the Milky Way. I think Michel might have said something, something that sounded pretty much like, “
Merde!
” But I couldn't do anything about it, I was at its beck and call, not the other way around. Kind of familiar. Nut always gives me powers that I have absolutely no control over for at least the first few weeks, why should his one be any different?

When it finally subsided, I don't know how long it took, but it felt like a week, I collapsed against Michel's chest, his firm arms holding me tight and we both held our breaths to see what monster would peek out from behind a closed door. When nothing happened for at least ten minutes we began to relax, incrementally, slowly, uncertainly. Still nothing went
boo!

“Wow. That was anti-climactic,” I said into the still night air.

“With you,
ma douce
, nothing is anti-climactic.”

“What do you think it is?”

He brushed my hair out of my eyes, returned his head to his favourite position and inhaled deeply.

“No matter what it is, my love, we will face it together.”

And I knew he was right. We would. It wouldn't be easy, it wouldn't nice, this Prophesy was no picnic, no slow walk in the park. It was not about comfort, but I knew I would have him beside me and that's all that mattered.

Right now, that's all that mattered to me.