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“Your distraction strategy worked, you know. I was so worked up I was going to come, right then and there, all over the nice china.”
She smiled. He felt the pull of it against his chest when she turned her cheek to him. “Think that was all for you, do you?”
“No,” he said. “It was done for them. But you made yourself hot with it by pointing it toward me, to make it more believable. And truth, that’s what made me hard as a rock, even more than seeing so many beautiful women play with one another.” She was silent a moment or two. “We’re good for one another, Dev.”
“Two destructive forces usually attract,” he observed. “So when they detonate, they can cause greater damage.” Angling her head to look at him with her golden-lashed blue eyes, she shook her head. “I’ve no desire to self-destruct. I want this station. I don’t care about being more than that. I have no aspirations of being a Region Master, or going abroad to acquire a more prestigious territory, like Charles. But I’ll claim this territory for my own to protect the handful of vampires who’ve chosen to live in it. Make it a home.”
“So why haven’t you ever taken a servant? Seems one would help you with all that. It’s the person who protects you during daylight hours, your primary food source. You can communicate with him without speaking—”
“Sounds like you’ve been auditioning for the part, doesn’t it?”
When he gave her an annoyed look, she held up a placating hand. Turning so her gaze rested on his face, Danny studied the lines of it, the shape of his mouth. “I can hear your blood, Dev. The beat of your heart, the rush of blood through it. Now that you bear my second mark, I can plumb as deeply into your mind as I wish. I have heightened senses and strength beyond any human’s comprehension. Every bruise you bear is proof of my restraint, because I can crush your bones without a thought. But having a third mark is all that and more. In the vampire world the only comparison is a spiritual commitment, like a priest taking his vows.” He rested his hands on her hips, his fingers pressing into silken fabric. “Somehow I don’t think most priests expect their vows to include the things you demand, my lady.”
“What a lovely surprise for them, then,” she rejoined, but he didn’t smile.
“When I get close to you like this, your lips part before you even think about it, and your body sways toward me.” His hands tightened on her in midmotion, making her aware of it. “You’re conveying need. Desire. Wanting. We all have that.”
“Yes, we do. But my desires and wants can kill you. Quite easily.”
He shook his head. “Might as well give over, love. You’re an interesting woman, a dangerous one. Can’t decide yet if I like you or not, but I reckon you can stomp me like a bug. Maybe you even have the power to hold my mind, make me strut about like an emu, or think I’m a spider and try to spin a web out of my arse hairs. But it doesn’t change the fact we’re made out of the same dirt and air, fire and water, and whatever was in charge of that doesn’t likely view us much different than one little ant and a slightly bigger one from His perspective. I understand how your world is, or at least, I’m learning. I don’t have to be convinced it’s sensible to get along with it. So let’s just leave it there for now.”
“Why are you still here, Dev?” She flattened her palms on his chest, and he was taken aback by the tension in her voice. “I’ve put no hold on you, offered you the choice. Given what you’ve seen tonight, you should be gone. Take off in the daylight. I know you know how to get out of here undetected by Charles’s men. They’ll never find you.”
“His ‘hounds’ might.” Dev shook his head. “Danny, that’s a crook deal. How could he . . .”
“It was one of the things I went to talk to the Council about,” she responded bitterly. “They agreed it was a serious transgression, if it was true. But none of them were willing to come here and address it. Our Council likes having Ruskin here, because they know he’s a problem, though they’re not acknowledging the full extent of it. Out of sight, out of mind, remember? Lord Ruskin wrote the Council, exaggerated my youth, suggested a tendency to overreact, and courteously extended them the invitation to visit anytime, knowing they won’t.” She gripped his collar. “You still haven’t answered my question. Why are you still here?” He cupped her face. “You can read my mind, love.”
“You’re doing that stillness thing. I can’t really tell.”
“Beats the hell out of me.” He gave her a half smile, grazed his fingers over her brow. “I’ve lived on my gut awhile now, Danny. My gut says I’m not done yet. Though no lie, after what I saw tonight, I wish I could tell the bloody thing to rack off. Tell me more about what I’ll be facing. Where did he get them? And why are they so wild? Is that from that bastard starving them?”
“You are a frustrating man,” she informed him. Gripping the two sides of his shirt, she laid her forehead down on his sternum, took a deep, steadying breath that surprised him. When he laid his hands on her upper arms, intending a tentative stroke of reassurance, she lifted her face back to him again.
“Some of the children were orphans, brought here from Europe to be placed in new homes. Others are aborigines taken from their parents under the guise of the government’s program to relocate them with white families to give them education, a supposedly better life.” She shook her head at his look, continued. “When a human is turned, there’s a very rigorous process followed to teach them to control bloodlust. In this case, Ruskin uses hunger as bait, to train them into a pack that will track a blood source at his bidding. He’s also made damn sure the only thing they fear is him.”
Then, before he could digest that, her blue gaze grew cold. “Dev, I know you’ve been a father.” When he would have pulled back, she dug into his biceps, earning a flash of temper from him. “Do not think of them as children. I was born a vampire, which means I grew until I reached the age of twenty-five. I will look twenty-five all my life. A made vampire child will never age. Living year after year without sexual or physical maturity, they are the most vulnerable of us. Think of the hormones and aggression that comes with youth on the cusp of adolescence, and imagine being trapped in that forever. He has exploited that, pushed their minds to the breaking point and turned them into mindless beasts. It’s a terrible, horrible thing, but they need to be put down, the whole mob of them. Not out of cruelty, but out of mercy. So promise me you won’t hesitate to kill them if you have to do so.”
Dev thought of the hissing, naked bodies in the cage, fighting over bloody raw meat. The brown eyes of one girl as she tried to watch him, Ruskin and the others, while she licked blood residue off the filthy bottom of her pen. Releasing Danny, he turned away, went to the side of her bed and slid down to a seated position on the floor, dangling his hands loosely between his knees. “Did you know that some aboriginal tribe members adopt temporary names to explain who or what they are?” he asked. She stood across the room from him now, remote, beautiful. He could tell her anything. It didn’t really matter, anyway. “What they’re becoming, what they’ve been. Whatever has the strongest hold on them at certain times in their life?”
“No, I didn’t.”
His throat flexed as he swallowed. “I didn’t pick mine. They gave it to me. Gravedigger.” She surprised him when she said nothing. Simply came and slid down next to him, shoulder to shoulder, drawing her legs up into a triangle, loosely linking her hands over it. The peach gown floated down, pooling around her feet, over the toe of his boot.
Dev turned his head against the mattress to consider her. One moment determined to imprison his soul, a sorceress who could seduce him to it willingly. No contest there. But it was the duality that made her impossible to resist. If she was all darkness and fangs, he could pull himself loose of what was entirely a fantasy, knowing a fantasy would wear thin after a while, become too dangerous and destructive to indulge. But she was quite real as well, particularly in moments like this, when she wore an expression of shrewd concern. Plus, he could tell she was tired.
This hadn’t been her tonight, but she’d made herself play the part, do what she felt had to be done. It would bother her, weigh on her conscience, but she wouldn’t go on about it. She’d made her decision, done it, and it was hers to carry. That was the way it was out here. You might bear a lot of burdens on your back, but hardship toughened you, made you what you were supposed to be, and that was that.
He adjusted so he could finger a strand of blond hair where it fell forward over her breast. She leaned back, giving him access to stroke the curve beneath, indulging his need to touch.
“You said you were born a vampire. Does that mean you were a child?”
“It usually does. My mother wouldn’t have been very happy if I came out this size.”
“No, I suspect not.” He smiled. “What were you like?”
She blinked. Reaching up, she took his hand from her hair, held it palm to palm with hers, her large eyes staring steadily into his, so he was acutely aware of the extraordinary beauty of them, the long lashes, the preternatural focus. “You don’t want to go to this place, Dev.”
“That much of a brat, were you? I suspected as much.” But neither of them smiled now. “Did you play games, love? Get in trouble?
Have a strap taken to you?”
Danny didn’t think she could keep this up, not on his last night on earth. But while she thought she’d concealed her worry and fear, knowing it served no purpose, now he scooped an arm around her, brought her onto his lap so they were heartbeat to heartbeat.
Wrapping his arms hard around her, he held her close to him, reminding them both, their minds twined together, of that night they’d been together in the cave, only the two of them.
Sliding her arms around his neck didn’t feel wrong, so Danny did it, and let herself be held. “I had a wonderful childhood, Dev. I was surrounded by loving humans faithful to my parents. I learned literature, art and music.” She hesitated. “My mother loved to fence. All types of blades. My father taught me to shoot and fight hand to hand. I learned how to compel a human so I could drink from them unknowing, if I had need.”
