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Rand considered that. "So we succeed or fail together."
"Pretty much."
Rand still had his thumb hooked in Cai's waistband, and his fingers curled over the denim on the outside, an absent caress. Cai's shoulder was pressed to his chest, and he realized they'd somehow eased into a fairly intimate position with one another. If that was a wolf thing, he didn't mind it so much. But vampires had a little edgier way of showing affection.
Rand was thinking, so Cai slid his hair back from his shoulder and put his mouth to his throat, taking a nip and then holding it there, letting the fangs press inward. Not breaking skin, just a clamp, his tongue lazily tasting the caught flesh. Rand's fingers tightened and his deep voice came out satisfyingly more throaty. "What are you doing?"
"You did say whenever, and however much I liked. Just enjoying the flavor of you, wolf." But Cai lifted his head so their faces were close. "So, do we do something stupid, or do we go to Syria?"
"You're letting me make the call?"
"No," Cai said decisively. "But if you prefer Syria, it's going to be way easier for me to talk myself out of the stupidity you just talked me into."
"So I am making the call."
"No. Aren't you listening? I'm the vampire, you're the servant. I'm always in charge."
Rand's lips curved. "Sounds like you've decided we're going to do something stupid."
"And you're good with that."
Rand shrugged. "It's a chance to go out doing something worth doing."
Cai shook his head. "Just like that. 'Hey, let's do a third mark soul-binding, hike into the Appalachians, and find a bunch of psychotic fuckheads. They'll probably torture us to death in ways so creative, Lucifer will award said fuckheads an Exceeds Expectations trophy. Whaddya say?'"
"Anything that turns out better than that will be gravy." Rand shrugged again.
Cai grimaced. "Forgot to add the worst part of it. Being saddled with a cheery optimist with dog breath. Kill me now and spare me undue suffering."
Rand snorted, but he became serious once more. "Why do you kill them?"
Despite the jump in topics, Cai didn't have to ask what he meant, but he thought he'd covered the ground back when they'd had their last argument about it. Rand didn't seem to agree, though, since he pressed onward.
"You were human. You were taken from your family. You remember what it is to be human. You know who Harry Potter is, so you spend enough time in their company to connect with them."
"I like to read," Cai argued. Rand pressed on, ignoring him.
"You abhor Trads, but your feeding habits are theirs. You kill humans rather than take what you need and leave them alive. I need to understand why."
"Why?" Cai could feel himself locking up, and told himself not to do it. For one thing, the wolf could sense it, and if it didn't matter much to Cai as he claimed, he wouldn't get defensive about it, would he? "If I give you the wrong answer for your comfort zone, will you let me off the hook for this whole save-the-girl shit?"
"You made the choice yourself, remember?" Rand arched a brow. "You're the vampire, I'm the servant. All choices and decisions are yours." His expression softened. "I'm just trying to understand."
"Well don't," Cai said shortly. "Don't try to figure me out like you're going to get to the bottom of it, and find out I'm a nice guy who got permanently mindfucked somewhere along the way. I mean, yeah, that's the story, but who the fuck cares? Not my prey, right? Rabbits don't sit around and try to understand why a wolf decides to chow down on them instead of a rat or a deer."
"It's a little different. If you can survive without taking a life, but you choose to do so..."
"It started out as survival, proving I was as much of a psycho as those around me," Cai snapped. "Like smoking to be cool with your so-called friends and then getting hooked. Simple enough."
Rand's brow furrowed. "I'm pretty sure that's a stupid analogy for what we're discussing."
"Doesn't make it less true. Just makes it more appalling. Go back to square one. I'm a fucked-up asshole. It's easier." Cai sighed, and turned his gaze to the forest. "Somewhere along the way, Rand, I lost whatever compass guides someone like you. No, not lost it. I smashed it myself. It was a desensitizing thing. They treated me like I was nothing because I was human. Then, when I became a vampire and finally had a measure of power, that was how Lodell, my sire, taught me to feed. He told me I was no longer human, and that was the best way to remember it. He was right. I couldn't go back and, in some weird way, I wanted to make sure of that. Make sure I didn't even look, didn't think of what kind of human I'd be, if things had been different.
"So I fed the way he fed. Unlike some of them, he was never cruel about it. Said we were actually more honest about it than people who sit down to a hamburger but could never in a million years handle killing the animal themselves."
Cai shook his head. "One-on-one, sure, there are humans I've connected with, but when it comes to food, going on the hunt, something else entirely happens. Maybe because we don't shift to fur, your kind doesn't see it in a vampire, but it's no different. When you were sitting out on your porch as a human with Dylef or Sheba, how many times did you see a deer come out of the woods and get tickled by it, that I'm-all-connected-to-nature-harmony shit?"
Cai locked gazes with Rand. The dangerous hardness in his eyes raised the small hairs on Rand's neck. "But later, when you're a wolf, and you're hungry, that deer crosses your path again. When she runs, something else rises in you. Something real and undeniable, and linked to the deeper, darker pulse of nature. The Trads made me a vampire, and there's no going back from that. I don't spend a lot of time bullshitting myself about it, and taking my prey the way I was taught is part of that."
Rand's thumb slipped over the valley of his spine, a caress of flesh. "Would it hurt too much to try to change?"
"Change for what? And for who? The only one I have is the one in the mirror and oh, hey, I have no reflection."
Cai rose, moving away from that distracting touch, and repeated his earlier mantra.
"Don't make the mistake of thinking there's something better here than what you see, Rand. Some vestiges of that fifteen-year-old kid. I learned a long time ago that soul is long dead."
Cai left Rand after that. In his usual smartass way, he told Rand to occupy himself for an hour, maybe by begging the kitchen help for those bones. He said he'd rejoin Rand shortly.
As Rand watched him stride off, he suspected the vampire would leave the grounds entirely. Walk the quiet roads and trails amid horse country, until he could work out in his head whatever he was thinking. Maybe strategy. Maybe trying to talk himself out of this. Maybe taking off entirely. Rand wouldn't realize he'd gone until hours had passed, but he didn't expect that.
The vampire was a solitary creature. Rand had been surprised the male had responded to physical affection earlier. It had moved him, twisted something in his heart, remembering how easily he and Dylef gave that to one another. He was in no danger of thinking Cai was like Dylef, but it had been welcome, that response to touch that didn't have an immediate sexual drive behind it. But Cai putting his mouth to his throat had reminded Rand vividly of the differences between his relationship with his former mate and...whatever he and the vampire were.
Even Cai shied from calling Rand his servant, except to goad or tease. Their bond at this juncture was unclassifiable, but if they did this, they would be brothers-in-arms, relying on one another in a situation where having each other's back was necessary. Vital.
Rand didn't know if Cai could be trusted for that, though his death wish took care of making it a top concern. But there was more at stake here than Cai's trustworthiness or Rand's careless attitude toward his own life. Dovia. It was one thing to go on a suicide mission to exorcise one's demons once and for all; another, when an innocent's life hung in the balance. He and Rand might be her best hope of survival, slim though Cai seemed to think that was.
It was only about an hour from dawn whe
