In the Dark (27 page)

“What’s
it like?” she asked.

She sounded like
she was asking a junkie what it was like to shoot up. Disgusted.
Confused. Nakedly curious – what the hell could be so great?

I gave her a
sideways look. I couldn’t just answer that. Jaw tight, I made a
show of getting Gypsy fresh water, to have a reason to look away.

Kent nodding
to me, showing me how to bite, holding the unconscious girl’s
head so I could get to her neck.

“
That’s
it, her heart will push it out to you once you bite . . .”

The sound of
skin stretching and breaking in my head. I let go, suddenly ill.

“
It’s
okay,” Kent said, as if nothing was wrong. I trembled. I had
bitten someone.

With Kent
coaxing me, I put my mouth back over the wound I’d made,
catching drops of blood on my tongue. The sudden sexuality of it
rushed through me. Instead of distracting me, it only made me more
aware of what I was doing.

“
I know
how weird it feels, you’re fine,” Kent kept talking, but
I couldn’t take it. I pulled away, my stomach clenching . . .
“No, shh, Jen, you’re fine . . .”

I had tasted my
first drops of mortal blood and promptly freaked. Kent had nursed me
from his wrist the first year, while I got used to drinking blood,
learned how to feed from him. It had never seemed real – not
until I took hold of that girl’s neck in my mouth and bit. It
took months of solid practice and coaching for me to come close to
getting my own.

“I can’t
just tell you,” I said. I gave Gypsy her water and nearly
tipped it.

“Why not?”

I sighed. Still
didn’t look at her. “What do you want me to say? I drink
peoples’ blood. It’s creepy and gross and weird. It took
me forever to get used to. I can’t just explain all that to you
right now.”

“Do . . .
do people like it?” She shifted her weight uncomfortably.

My mind jumped
to all the people I’d ever fed from – the handsome man at
the club the other night, my regular lovers I usually fed from.
Emily. Not-Emily. Kent feeding from me, taking my life from me in
one, drawn out orgasm. The girl Sebastian had fed from behind the
Half-Moon.

“Yes,”
I said. “Usually.”

“Do you
like it?” Her voice sounded even smaller.

Her voice should
sound small! How personal was she going to get?

“I have
other things to do besides stand here and play lab specimen,” I
said. “If you want to talk, we can talk later. If you’re
just going to ask talk-show questions, forget it.”

She cringed a
little. Damn right she should cringe. That level of nosiness from her
surprised and upset me. She was usually better than that.

She didn’t
speak. If I could have blushed, I would have been on fire.

“Where do
you want to meet?” Amanda asked, quietly.

“Don’t
care.”

“Why not
back here, then? I’ll go grab something to eat, maybe some
coffee, and then we can talk.”

I shrugged.

“I just
thought that if we met here, we wouldn’t have to worry about
people listening in,” she went on, as if I’d disagreed.

“All
right,” I said, then, because that came out harsh, “That’s
fine. Really.”

She seemed
satisfied. “When? An hour or two?”

“Better
make it three,” I said. “Just in case.” Just in
case Sebastian and I had a real long talk. A real long
unpleasant
talk.

I felt more like
climbing back into bed and hiding there.

“All
right,” Amanda said. “Here, in three hours. I’ll
see you then.”

I nodded. This
wouldn’t be fun.

Amanda went to
the door, slipped her boots on, and left.

After staring
around my silent house for a minute, arguing with myself, I screwed
up my courage and followed her.

I
didn’t let myself think about Sebastian until I reached the
parking garage. If I did, I would turn right around and go home. But
when I pulled into the guest lot, I couldn’t help remembering.
How stupid I’d been. His eyes crackling like lightning. He
might refuse to see me at all.

I clenched my
hands on the steering wheel, then let them fall into my lap. Only one
way to know. Even if it scared me.

If he did speak
to me, I would say I was sorry for rubbing his nose in a sore spot
and ask what had upset him like that. If not . . .

Don’t
worry about it. Don’t even consider it.

I got out,
pocketed my keys and headed for the main lobby. The lobby attendant
smiled helpfully when I walked up to the desk. I hoped I didn’t
look as dismal as I felt.

“I’m
here to see Sebastian Cain?” I said. “Penthouse? My
name’s Ian.”

While I bit my
lip and wondered if Sebastian would refuse to speak to me, the lobby
attendant called up and told him who was here. He hung up and nodded
to me. “Go right up,” he said, and went back to whatever
he’d been doing.

“Thanks,”
I said, mostly to myself.

I boarded the
elevator. Hit the penthouse button. It took a minute. Or a hundred. I
lost count. When the elevator slid to a stop, it seemed to take an
hour for the doors to open. I watched them, waiting forever. And then
they opened, too soon.

Sebastian stood
there, waiting, his face a little dark. As usual.

“Good
evening, Ian.”

“Hi,”
I said.

We stood there.
I shifted my weight.

“Are you
coming in?” he asked.

I nodded, too
eagerly, and stepped off the car. The doors slid shut behind me.

“Hey,
Sebastian?” I said, softly. He met my face with mild curiosity
in his eyes. I wound my fingers together and squeezed them. “Hey,
look, about last night . . . I . . . I just wanted to say I’m
sorry. About getting on your case like I did.”

“Ah.”

I stared at my
hands and wondered what he was thinking. After a moment, he seemed to
come to some sort of conclusion.

“I would
also like to apologize.” He didn’t hesitate at all. Like
I had. “Your words brought up . . . a painful subject. I should
have responded more appropriately.”

“Are we
still friends?” I asked.

He met my eyes
with a dark and serious gaze. “Yes,” he said, and like
that, it was over.

I should have
been relieved, but I felt something hanging. Like more should be
said. He didn’t want to say more, I could hear it in his tone.
I let it slide. We could talk later.

“Shall we
begin?” he asked.

“Yeah,”
I said, and he led me back to the practice room.

T
hey
went over the same moves they had worked on the night before. Again.
And again. He evaded her defenses easily, again, and again, showing
where she had missed, how to correct it, making her try again. Each
time she missed, her eyes took on a faintly brighter sheen. A bit
less sane. He expected this. It had started last night.

When Ian’s
eyes began to glow with frustration, he let the training go on. When
she lifted her lip to bare her fangs at him in a low snarl, he held a
hand up to bring the exercise to a stop. Perhaps Specter had forced
them on at this point, taunted them to continue, but Sebastian did
not believe that method would work best with Ian.

She snarled when
he held up his hand. “Dammit, lemme try again! I almost got
it!”

Sebastian
recognized the growl behind her voice all too well. He lowered his
eyes to meet hers. “No.”

Ian bared her
fangs in mute threat, but did not hold his eyes. She stomped a foot
and began to pace the room. Sebastian stood against one wall and let
her, watching. This state accentuated her grace. She prowled the
corners of the room like a caged tiger.

A caged cub,
he corrected himself.

He allowed
himself to roll his shoulders while she walked. Training her properly
in the basics of self-defense would take months. If someone else
attacked in place of the shape-changer, he would not have months.

Then hope no
one else does.

Futile hope. The
shape-changer had been taught, trained. Had to have been, to stand
and walk on two shattered legs. Someone so trained would not work
alone. Or rather, Sebastian thought it unlikely. Ian kept walking,
shaking her hands, pacing back and forth. Sebastian watched, and
hoped.

After a few
minutes, she stopped moving her hands. Then, gradually, her pacing
slowed a little at a time, until she simply stood, facing him.

“Feeling
better?” he asked.

Shamefaced, she
nodded.

I was right
not to have pushed her further.

“Good.
This session went well, I think. Your balance is better, your attacks
are more timed.”

She stomped a
foot. “But I never hit you. I spent all my time hitting the
floor.”

“Do you
expect to hit me?” He cocked his head. “My training has
gone on for centuries and my practice has seen that it does not
atrophy. You have been taught in very basic self-defense and have
worked to expand that for only two nights. I do see improvement
tonight. Take it for what it is.”

Her mouth
twisted and she glanced away. She paused, then turned back, her
disgust replaced by curiosity. He raised an eyebrow at her.
“Centuries?” she asked, as if the word horrified her.

Sebastian
inclined his head.

Her eyes
widened, no longer a caged cub but a frightened one, longing for its
mother. “You’ve been killing people for centuries?”

“I have,”
he said, then added, “All but these past five decades.”
He wondered, vaguely, if that would be considered boasting.

Ian continued
staring at him, a touch puzzled now. “Not these past fifty
years . . . ?” Wanting him to finish the sentence for her.

“Except
for Kent’s murderer,” he said with a nod of admission. He
knew she wanted a different answer. Perhaps this one would do.

Ian shook her
head. “No, I mean . . .” she sat down, folded her legs
and held out her hands. “Sebastian, talk with me. I want to
know why. I want to know why you say you’re a killer, and why
you say you haven’t killed anyone for fifty years. Tell me
what’s going on with you.”

This again.
Trying to get to know him. He found himself struggling once more with
the urge to reply. That, and an intense discomfort with the thought
of replying. He searched for an answer. Something he could give that
might satisfy her.

There were so
many. Reasons why each individual died, reasons he had chosen the
life of an assassin. And yet each one seemed insubstantial. As if
speaking them out loud would rob them of their truth.

“I don’t
know,” was, at last, the only true answer he could give.

She cocked her
head at him. “You don’t know? At all? You never even
thought about it?”

“No,”
he amended. “I have thought about it. And that is why I
stopped.”

They looked into
one another’s eyes for a long second, from across the room. Her
expression was sad.

“You
stopped killing people because you didn’t know why you started
in the first place?”

“Yes.”

Ian shook her
head. “You scare me.” She meant it. But perhaps not as
vehemently as he had heard it in the past.

He nodded, more
to himself than Ian. “I frighten myself.”

And that, too,
was truth.

“So the
person – the vampire who trained you, where are they now?”
Ian asked.

Sebastian
shrugged. “Wherever he is. I have not made an effort to keep up
with him.”

She nodded,
slowly. Her eyes caught on the empty spot on the wall where the
mirror he’d destroyed had been. He waited for her to ask,
uncomfortable. Instead, she looked away from it, back to him.

“I’m
sorry again, about what I said.”

She seemed to
have something more in mind, so he waited for her to finish. When she
didn’t say more, but looked at him expectantly, he nodded. “And
I accept your apology, Ian.”

After another
moment, she stood up and brushed imaginary dust off her pants. “Well,
I’m going to get something to eat. Tomorrow night, same time,
same place?”

“Of
course.”

She turned to
the practice room door, then glanced over her shoulder at him. “Maybe
someday you’ll tell me what was so painful?” Her eyes
flicked to the empty spot on the wall.

Sebastian
considered it, and came upon another truthful answer.

“Perhaps.”

Ian smiled, a
small, hesitant thing, and took herself out. Sebastian stayed in the
practice room.

Perhaps.

B
ack
in my car again, I paused to blow air into my bangs. My training
session had gone all right – or rather, my talk with Sebastian
had gone all right. Thinking about all the times I hit the floor and
all the times I
didn’t
hit Sebastian made my hands
tighten on the steering wheel. I made them let go and refused to
think about it anymore. I would get better. Later. Right now, I
needed to eat and go talk with Amanda.

I started the
car and pulled out, mulling over where to go. Club Helle? I could
probably find one of my regulars hanging out there, and if not one of
them, the vampire scene offered enough blood fetishists that I could
get a bite from someone . . .

I decided to
stop home first, to grab some cash for door cover at Helle –
no, not really. I had enough cash on me. I needed different clothes,
though, that was for sure – clubbing in my workout stuff
wouldn’t win me any meals real quick. Of course, once I smiled
at them, people tended to forget all about my clothes. I didn’t
need
to change, not really.

There was some
reason I wanted to go home. Some perfectly sane, realistic reason –
I just couldn’t think of it.