Incubus Moon (20 page)

“Leave us, Kassandra,” he said scrambling to his feet.

“For the love of God,” I begged her, “help me!”

The exotic beauty seated in the chair next to my bed threw back her head and laughed, exposing sharp white fangs. “Pray to your precious little god for that,
amore
.”

I balled my hands into tight fists and wailed. What felt like a thousand, red-hot knives stabbed repeatedly at them, the top layers of skin splitting open to expose my knuckles.

“Ooh.” The woman brought her hands together in mock appreciation. “It has teeth. Your Francesca was a similar viper.”

Dimitri rushed to my side again. “No, Austin, you’re not on fire. You’re safe now.”

The woman left her chair, bracelets clinking down her arms as she brought hands to rest on her shapely hips. “Just kill it and be done with it. Being this close to the poor creature is making my skin crawl.”

“Then leave,” Dimitri repeated, trying to get me to lean back against the bed pillows. “It was the sun, Austin. Its rays had…an adverse effect on you.”

“You did not tell your intended?” She snorted a laugh. “Oh, but this gets richer and more damming by the minute.”

When I shoved at Dimitri again, I began to tremble violently. Blackened hands and arms were stretched out in front of me, an oily, yellowish liquid oozing from dozens of blisters.

The ghoulish image and stench of burnt flesh was too much for me. I pitched to the side and fell out of bed onto my palms and knees, emptying the contents of my stomach.

Wiping the remnants of sick from my lips and chin with the back of my hand, I heaved again when a chunk of charred flesh fell away, revealing a waxy pink layer beneath.

It was then that I caught sight of the full horror of what I’d become in the reflective row of dark glass opposite the bed. I looked upon the ruined
thing
in Dimitri’s grip staring back at me, its face twisted by a mouth open wide in silent terror.

“Help me return him to bed,” Dimitri said.

“Just kill it.” The woman took a step backwards on stiletto sandals. “Or toss it overboard. The Council has ordered you to…” She stiffened, pure hatred now animating her upturned amber eyes. “This cannot be!” She looked between Dimitri and I, outraged. “You lied to me. It is not human at all. It is Incubus!”

She rushed me, but Dimitri was swifter and sent her sprawling. She was on her feet in a flash, fingers curved into claws ready to rip and shred.

“Come no closer,” he said over my piteous sobs.

The pain had moved beyond unbearable. All I wanted now was to die.

“You conceal a sworn enemy from us?”

“He was injured and would have perished had I not—”

“Shared your precious blood with it? By the Dark Gods I thought you foolish and arrogant for wanting to turn a mere human without Council approval, but it is so much worse! You give aid to an assassin of your own kind. This I cannot allow.”

“Do not force my hand, Kassandra.”

“Why? So you can play nursemaid to this…abomination?” She glared at me and positioned herself to pounce again, the fabric of her fitted skirt straining at the seams. “Never! By all we hold scared, I shall put an end to your treachery myself and compel you to return to Italy, where the Council Elders will see you kissing daylight for your unforgivable crime.”

Dimitri shook with cold laughter. “And you will die trying.”

“You do not frighten me. The might of the Council serves as my aegis.”

“Your beloved Council are not here to protect you.” I felt his body tense. He was prepared to carry out his threat. “And as the one true vampire elder, their authority means little to me. Now, leave us, or you will learn to be frightened.”

“
Che arroganza!
I shall be there to see you fall.”

The air in the stateroom expanded, crackling with an electric charge that skittered across my damaged skin and made me cry out in greater pain. When I turned my head to the spot where she’d been standing, the woman was gone.

“You have every right to hate me, Austin, and I am sorrier than you know for the injury I have caused you, but you must listen carefully to what I have to say.” Dimitri picked me up off the floor as gently as possible in an effort to return me to the enormous bed. He might as well have dragged shards of glass over my skin. “We haven’t much time.”

“Your blood did this to me?” I asked through a choked sob.

He averted his eyes and nodded. “Had I known, I swear to you that I would have—”

“Let me die from the fall at the hospital?”

He refused to make eye contact. Why should he look upon the thing that I’d become?
Because he’d fucking created it, that’s why!

“You should have,” I told him in a rattling breath.

He whispered what sounded like a prayer. All I could understand was the renewed fire raging beneath the surface of my skin and my intense loathing for this man.

“What is done can be undone. The damage to your body is repairable.” He met my gaze then and gently began to lower me onto the mattress. “Only if we make haste.”

The skin on my kneecaps split from the effort and I screamed. Holding out trembling, blackened hands and arms to him, my tears unable to flow because of the ruin of my skin, I asked, “How? How can you ever hope to fix
this
?” A mental image of what he planned to do flashed in my mind. “No! I won’t become like you, like what you tried to do to Francesca!”

“You won’t have to.” He gripped my shoulders to keep me from rising and I wailed in agony. “But you will have to drink from me. It is the only way.”

“Your blood’s the reason this happened to me!”

“You would choose death, then?” All trace of his sympathy for me vanished. “For this is what awaits you if you refuse my offer.”

I took in another wheezy breath. Anything would be better than the misery I was being forced to endure. I just didn’t know if I could trust him or not. Or, did my fears run deeper than that? Maybe I was terrified to wake up from this nightmare only to discover that I’d become the very thing of which nightmares were made?

“Swear you won’t turn me.”

“By all I hold sacred.”

I looked into his handsome, worried face and gave a dry, rasping laugh. “Go ahead. Do whatever the fuck you have to do to make me whole again.”

For the longest moment he did nothing at all, his body so still it appeared inanimate.

Then he discarded his shirt, his torso like sculpted marble in the cabin’s dim light. The way mine had appeared only a short time ago. “When I tell you to stop, do so at once, lest the blood thrall take you down with it.”

“And end up like you?” He nodded. “Anything would be better than that.”

Despite my anger and physical anguish, a flicker of fear rippled through me when Dimitri bared fangs. The last time I’d seen them, he’d been hell bent on murdering me. This time, it was to save my life,
yet again
. The million-dollar question was: Why? The woman had claimed that vampires and incubi were enemies. Why save an adversary?

Hopefully, there’d be time to question him later. Right now I watched him bite into his own wrist and offer me up the bloody puncture wounds. “Drink.”

When I hesitated, he slammed his wrist against my lips. They split open and his blood flowed over and into them, mixing with my own. “Drink!”

My body fought the coppery-sweet fluid coursing down my throat. I gagged on it, struggled to pull away, my stomach about to reject it. But little by little, I began to yield to its calming, almost euphoric, effect. Dimitri’s life force was rushing in to permeate every artery and vein, flooding the chambers of my heart, the taste of it suddenly electric against my tongue. I welcomed the steady tide, my body demanding more of it. My body demanding it all.

“That is sufficient.”

The hell it was!

I intensified my grip on his forearm and continued to gorge myself on the small meaty wounds, a flurry of abstract images flashing behind my closed eyelids. They moved too quickly to register, but I didn’t care. Was there anything better than this?

“Stop drinking, Austin.”

His voice held a note of fear which only added another intoxicating layer to the mix. Dimitri’s anxiety made the blood more savory and redoubled my excitement.

“Enough!”

My lips jerked away with a loud sucking pop and my voice came out a strangled, wet growl. “More!”

“You have had more than is wise.”

My blackened hands curled out in front of me, fingertips curved like talons, the way I’d seen Kassandra do. It was a natural response, instinctual, and I lunged at his wrist a second time.

Dimitri’s arm shot out in response. The blow sent me reeling back against the headboard with such force that the wood-framing within fractured.

I braced myself for the inevitable rush of pain, and while considerable, it was tolerable. The molten river beneath the surface of my skin was rapidly cooling. I could feel tiny nerve-endings knitting together and repairing themselves. The oozing blisters were beginning to dry and close up, as well. My God, if vampires ever made their presence known to the outside world…

“We would be hunted down to a one,” Dimitri said. “Humans would covet our strength and regenerative abilities, see them as miracles to eradicate disease and slow the aging process. A way for them to cheat death. They would enslave or slaughter us, or both. Coming out to the humans,” he said with a shake of his head, “is a day that shall never come to pass.”

The implications of such an event paled in comparison to what was taking place inside me. Any residual fear of my vampire captor vanished.

Although, curiously, none of my anger had abated. Ingesting so much of his blood had liberated me, made us equals, or so my body and mind believed, both of which were resolved to drain Dimitri Ravello of every precious last drop.

He must have sensed this, because he moved to infiltrate my mind.

I shut him down with a laugh, his supernatural sway ineffectual over me.

“Blood Thrall has you,” he said. “Sleep is crucial in order to accelerate your healing. I shall stay close during this process.”

The unexpected sting across my tongue as it crossed beneath sharp new incisors sent a delicious shiver through my body. Kassandra was right: I had teeth now!

“A temporary side effect. They will return to normal by morning.”

I smiled to see that my skin had lightened from charcoal briquette to a warm dark brown and stretched my pain-free limbs in a slow, catlike manner. “Maybe I don’t want them to go back to normal.”

Dimitri studied me for a long moment, trying again to penetrate my mind, but failed. “It is Blood Thrall talking, that is all. Come now and get beneath the covers.”

Movies and books had gotten it wrong. Becoming a vampire wasn’t painful or traumatic. My body wasn’t writhing on the floor in agony, shitting and pissing out all of my human fluids. I wasn’t dead. If anything, I felt more alive than ever. The realization that I was now free to sink these new teeth into a soft neck or inner thigh, to have a fount of delectable crimson warmth shoot into my mouth and bathe my throat, was giving me a hard-on.

“You are not becoming Vampyre. My promise to you remains unbroken.”

I settled onto my knees at the center of the bed and refocused on him standing there, on his firm, naked torso and the dusting of dark chest hair. “Too bad, ‘cause I sure feel like I could—”

Dimitri took a cautious step closer. “What is it?”

I swayed unsteadily. That same rush of runaway energy I’d experienced with him poolside in Los Angeles slammed into me now like a battering ram. It was incubus lust, and it roared to the surface, ravenous for the feel of bare skin against skin.

It also sensed danger.

Dimitri’s blood was searching for a foothold, seeking to establish dominance. He was the enemy. He was Vampyre. And yet I couldn’t shake the exhilarating scent of him. He was food and I was so very hungry.

“Fight it, Austin. Take what you need from my blood to heal and reject the rest.”

“It’s not just your blood…”

The moment the words left my mouth, the warring forces collided inside me—one consumed by an irrepressible hunger for blood, the other an insatiable need for sex. The impact knocked me onto my back. My body wasn’t strong enough to contain them both.

“Help me!”

Dimitri kneeled onto the mattress. “Quickly, get beneath the covers to get warm. The bloodlust must run its course. It will soon pass.”

“No,” I told him, feeling my eyes go wide with panic, “it won’t!”

“My preternatural blood is mixing with incubus blood. Your body is fighting the assimilation.” The momentary flicker of uncertainty in his eyes caused my panic to double.

Then the world around me ignited in vibrant color. The sea beyond the curved bank of windows was no longer lost to darkness, its indigo swells an undulating expanse of glittering, black diamonds under the silver moonlight. The stateroom’s polished wood surfaces glowed
with an aura of vitality that simply hadn’t been there before. But the beautiful imagery didn’t last.

The vying energies collided again. I had to grip the sides of the mattress with all my strength to keep from being thrown from the bed. I could hear seams ripping under the siege.

“They’re tearing me apart!”

Dimitri immediately fell in beside me, tucking himself into my backside and anchoring my naked body by wrapping both arms and legs around me. He pulled me back against his cool, bare torso and the contact was electric, sending a riot of pleasure through me. Exactly what my incubus energy needed to seize control.

When a third, even more violent, wave crashed into me, I pushed with my feet and we rolled onto our opposite sides. Twisting in his embrace so that I was facing him now, my hands clutched his belt buckle and snapped it free from the leather band in one violent tug.

“What are you doing?”

“It needs your skin.
I
need your skin!”

He gripped my wrists and held them firm. “This I cannot allow.”

After he’d gone to such dramatic and dangerous lengths to save me, the big, scary vampire was afraid to get naked with another man?