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Gus just stared at her. “Well, you’d probably have to ask him that, but I wouldn’t. There’s more to blood-taking than I think you or I can understand. I think it’s one reason the vampires hate the Invictus wraiths as much as they do.” He turned to close the curtains across the wide landscape at the now empty room and flipped off the switch. “Because the victims are unwilling, I’ve heard them call it a blood-rape.”
“Oh, God.”
“Yes, exactly.”
The door opened and light from the hall formed a rectangle of yellow on the floor behind the couch shaded by Gerrod’s massive shadow. Funny, she always seemed to forget how big he was until he stood in a doorway. He filled it from side to side, the top jamb clearing his head by only a few inches.
He held his left hand in his right now, and rubbed his wrist back and forth. “Everything okay?”
His voice was a deep hole.
“Sure,” she said. But what Gus had told her had knocked her out of stride.
She was about to ask to be taken back to Flagstaff, but Gus was before her. “I’m putting Mistress Abigail in one of the guest rooms.”
Gerrod looked around. “She should go back to Flagstaff.”
“It’s a long trip by car and all the way east. Is there a Guard in that direction? Someone watching the plane access point?”
Gerrod shook his head. “We have never needed guards at the access before.” He scowled, harder now. “Very well. We certainly have enough guest rooms.”
He backed into the hall and Abigail followed him.
He stood aside watching her carefully, very guarded. She wanted to say something to him, to offer some comfort, but no words came. Since he made no move to invite her to chat, even a little, she turned in the direction of the north rooms away from Gerrod. Gus hurried to move in front of her, leading the way.
“I’ll bid you good-night,” Gerrod called out.
Abigail stopped and turned toward him. By now, he stood beside his library door. She lifted a hand, still feeling so strange after having heard about his blood-starvation and why hadn’t she known of it? Although, honestly it explained a helluva lot about his perpetual irritability. Men needed to be fed. She was sure that axiom was as true in the realm world as it was in Flagstaff. Megan’s husband got a lot louder when his blood-sugar bottomed out.
As she turned back to follow Gus, her thoughts started tumbling around until at last she caught up with him and asked, “What does Gerrod usually do now, after a battle like this? Does he go to bed?”
“No, he’ll probably call for a bottle of whiskey, drink about a third of it, and pass out in one of the big chairs in front of the fire in the entrance hall. It’s sort of a ritual.”
“I guess he would deserve at least that much,” she said, but her footsteps grew slower and slower, until she stopped altogether.
Gus turned back to her, his three ridges floating upward, questioning.
Her right shoulder now faced back down the hall. She could see the light from the library flicker as though Gerrod walked back and forth in front of a lamp, pacing.
“Is everything all right?” Gus asked.
“Just give me a sec.” She headed back in the direction of the library. Her heart was slamming in her chest because she had never done anything like this in her life.
When she reached the doorway, she had meant to walk right up to him and ask him a few pointed questions, but she couldn’t. Gerrod now sat in his chair, his elbows on the massive central table, his head in his hands. He rocked slowly, back and forth as if in great pain.
Oh. God.
Something inside her settled very deep, maybe falling into that hole that was his voice, or maybe she was just feeling all his pain on some kind of vampire frequency he was emitting right now, she wasn’t sure.
But a decision came to her, though she felt strongly it had to be just for this night, this one night.
She retraced her steps up the hall, rejoining Gus.
For the past year, she had seen Gerrod in more than a dozen settings, consoling a mother who had lost a son, kissing a grandmother on her cheek, offering stern but solid advice to a younger Guardsman, teasing Augustus. She wondered if this was the true basis for her attraction to him, that on some level she knew the vampire and knew him well. His character showed in everything he did and all that he was, every word he spoke, every soft touch on a shoulder, every sympathetic gesture.
Abigail blinked. She couldn’t believe she was going to do this, but after seeing Gerrod in a shattered state in the library, she had to. Besides, her blood had that thick feeling again, almost lumpish as she liked to think of it. Though she never really felt in danger of a heart attack or anything, she did feel a pressing need to give some of it away. And right now she might just have a solution that didn’t involve donating to the blood bank.
“Come with me, Gus. I want you to show me to the mastyr’s bedroom.”
Gus’s brows rose almost to his upper ridge. But after staring at her for a long moment, he nodded very firmly, then said, “Yes, mistress. If you will follow me.”
Once in his bedroom, which she knew well from the tour he’d given her many months ago, she said, “And where is the bathroom?”
Gus led her into a side chamber, very deep with a huge copper tub. She drew near, leaned over and pushed the plug in hard. She turned the water on adjusting until the temperature was on the hot side.
“Where are the herbs he bathes in?”
“Herbs, Mistress?”
“Yes, he always—” She felt her cheeks grow warm. That she always smelled Gerrod, and that his scent reminded her of fresh rain in the forest, was not something she intended to reveal to Gus. “That is, where is the soap he would ordinarily use?”
“Ah.” He moved over to the shower and brought a bottle of gel, an amber color.
Abigail took it and sniffed the spout. But it didn’t smell like fresh rain. “Towels?” she asked.
As she watched the steam rise from the copper tub, she laughed. “Gus, there is something more. Do vampires like hot water, I mean hot like this?”
Gus smiled and his smile broadened to a grin. “Very much. Ah, mistress, you have gladdened my heart.”
“And now, there is one more thing I should like, then I’m hoping you will send all the staff to bed.”
He blinked at least four times. Finally, he bowed to her. He actually bowed. Then he said, “Understood. And what is it you’d like me to do?”
“I should like a platter of fruit and cheese and your mastyr’s favorite German sweet wine. Nothing more, or less, mind.”
