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“What happened to this…um…youngling?”
Kambyses reached out into the void again, yet still found no sense of Nico. Just like there had been no reports of unusual deaths or disappearances at sea from anywhere. A bony finger of grief touched his still heart. “He died.”
“Oh.” Her brows knit together. “So you’re not…I mean, he wasn’t immortal? Yet?”
“He was. But we can still be killed. Usually by each other,” he added more softly, vivid memories of the recent past roaring to the surface.
To prevent them overtaking him, he moved into the room, unclasped his cloak, and dropped it on a chair before inviting her to sit on the nearest sofa. He joined her there, not because of any social conventions of casual conversation, but because a great, invisible weight had settled onto his shoulders. “My last young one, Dominique…he was here only a few nights ago.”
A beguiling hint of worry laced her scent now as she drew new conclusions. Lost in reverie, he ignored the growing temptation.
“He was beautiful and cunning and so very tormented. He was…the perfect companion.” And what had Kambyses done to him? The same he did to all the others, the flawed ones, the weak ones, all the ones with so much promise who always disappointed him. While Kambyses roamed the night as a solitary shadow, seeking others to seduce, Nico was left to his own devices, struggling with what he had become while plotting bitter revenge. “I didn’t see the truth of him until he was gone. I don’t know if he is dead, but I have no reason to believe he still exists, either.”
Monica pulled her knees up underneath her as she faced him. “May I ask what happened?”
“You may.” He was about to add that he did not need to answer or explain anything to a human, but those weren’t the words coming out of his mouth as he gestured at the bullet holes in the wall. “He tried to kill me.”
This elicited a small, breathless gasp.
Kambyses continued, sharing how he had first found Nico, made him his, and kept him safe while the youngling’s blood lust raged. He told her some of what came after, too, and the attack on Apokryphos and on him. As he spoke, he tried to find a reason for how it all ended. He couldn’t.
Not so the human girl.
She listened with rapt attention until he fell silent. Then she nodded, eyes crinkling in thought. “I don’t think he’s dead, Kam. He ran away.”
Too surprised to react, Kambyses said nothing.
“He didn’t ask to be turned. You just dumped this life on him without explanation. He was pissed and desperate enough to try to kill you before. He couldn’t possibly think a bunch of humans with guns could do what he couldn’t. I think the attack was a distraction, a cover for him to…” She trailed off at whatever change she detected in his expression.
“Escape,” he finished, feeling numb. When she didn’t refute this, it was he who looked away. There was no denying this, not even to himself. He had known Nico’s mind before the transformation, when he fed from him. Kambyses knew how Nico thought, what drove him, what he was capable of and why, and what he craved more than anything else. Nico’s master he may be, but the youngling had never submitted. Not in his heart. And even though he would only add to his torment by taking more lives without a mentor to guide him—even risk his own immortal life in the unpredictable world of humans—Nico had not only chosen to flee into the dangerous unknown, he had also engineered the dangerous means to do so.
It would have been easier to believe Nico had merely tried to kill him again. Easier to think the attack resulted from nothing but a fit of temper. This was different, though. This was cold, calculated, and full of loathing, and it engendered a strange sensation behind Kambyses’s ribs. Almost…painful.
He drew in a deep drink of air. No hint of a youngling’s cool scent remained. Instead, the air was ripe with the girl’s sweet warmth. Beneath her heart’s excited hammering, he heard the activity of the crew all around the ship as they obeyed his silent, almost unconscious command to make ready to sail. Soon, he would be at sea again, free in the night—and filled with fresh blood. He would survive this disappointment as he had a thousand others.
No longer able to contain himself, Kambyses’s razor-sharp canines appeared, aching to pierce this virgin flesh. His vision changed, too, shifting into a realm that allowed him to see her veins like a delicate web of pulsing light stretched beneath her skin.
“I wonder, Monica, do we have enough privacy now?” He made no effort to conceal his rampant hunger, and greedily anticipated the blind terror that would supply the final, most perfect ingredient. What a sublime drink this would be. What balm to his raw nerves.
Her jaw slackened, but her scent remained free of apprehension even as the radio chatter from the crew coordinating the release of the lines reached them from outside. Her body would be fed to the sea long before dawn. “Well, it is, but, Kam…I’m not ready to forget you.”
He took the glass from her hands. Only half empty, she had drunk enough to flavor her blood and left enough to ruin the upholstery. His eyes did not leave hers as he leaned over her, reaching to set the glass down on the side table. She was prone prey beneath him, ready for the taking. Yet instead of tensing, she relaxed, lay back on the pillows, and opened like a flower.
Her hand burned against his cheek. “I don’t think you want to let me go yet, either, do you?” she whispered.
On the contrary. Kambyses was more than ready to end this yearning for her blood, her mind, her life. He brushed her hair from her neck, hypnotized by the pulsing light of her blood, the clamoring of her heart.
“Please don’t make me forget this magic, Kambyses. It’s all I’ve wanted for so long.”
The tip of his finger traced the thickest vein. Too plump. She would bleed out too quickly, the pleasure over too soon. He considered a smaller stream.
The girl shivered. “I’ll be honest. I would love for you to turn me. But if that means you’d stop confiding in me…well, I can wait.”
Startled, he met her glistening eyes. Make her a youngling? Even if he could, with all she knew of him now, he’d sooner turn her into a corpse. “You have belonged to me since the moment you set foot aboard my lair. I will do with you as I wish.”
To emphasize this point, he nuzzled against her cheek, forcing his scent into her flaring nostrils. Fire lived in his blood. The smell of smoke and destruction shrouded him. Still, there was none of the terror he craved. Still, she believed she would live past the moment her blood touched his tongue.
Her fingers combed into his hair, her voice husky as she said, “I could stay with you. As anything you want. No strings. No limits.”
