I fell hard as Ivy cut my legs from under me. I rolled away, already aching where my hip had hit the floor. My heart pounded in time with the twin pains on the back of my calves. I tossed a strand of hair that had escaped my exercise band from my eyes. Putting a hand against the wall of the sanctuary, I used it for balance as I got to my feet. Lungs heaving, I ran the back of my hand across my forehead to wipe the sweat from me.
"Rachel," Ivy said from eight feet away. "Pay attention. I almost hurt you that time."
Almost? I shook my head to clear my vision. I had never seen her move away, she was so quick. Of course, I might not have seen her move since I was falling on my can at the time.
Ivy took three loping steps toward me. Eyes wide, I twisted my body in a tight circle to the left, sending my right foot into her midsection.
Grunting, she clutched her stomach and stumbled backward. "Ow," she complained, retreating. I hunched over, putting my hands on my knees to signal I wanted a breather. Ivy obediently moved farther away and waited, trying not to show that I had hurt her.
From my position, I glanced at her standing in a band of green and gold afternoon sun streaming in through the sanctuary's windows. The black body stocking and soft slippers she wore when we sparred with each other made her look more predatory than usual. Her straight black hair was tied back, accentuating her tall, lean appearance. Face blank and pale, she waited for me to catch my breath so we could continue.
The practice was more for me than her. She insisted it would extend my life expectancy should I run up against a big-bad-ugly without my spells or a direction to run. I always came away from of our sparring bruised and headed for my charm cupboard. How that extended my life was beyond me. More practice making pain amulets, maybe?
Ivy had arrived home early from her afternoon with Kist, surprising me with the offer to work out. I was still seething over Edden's refusal to let me question Trent and needed to burn off some anger and so said yes. As usual, within fifteen minutes I was hurting and breathing hard while she had yet to break a sweat.
Ivy danced impatiently from foot to foot. Her eyes were a nice steady brown. I kept a close watch on her when we worked out together, not wanting to push her too close to her limits. She was fine.
"What's up?" she asked as I straightened. "You're more aggressive than usual."
I bent my leg back to stretch my leg muscle and pull the cuff of my sweatpants back down about my ankle. "Every one of the victims talked to Trent before they died," I said, stretching the truth. "Edden won't let me question him." I pulled the other leg, then nodded.
Ivy's breath quickened. I dropped to a crouch as she darted forward. Too quick for thought, I ducked her blow, sweeping my leg at her feet. Calling out, she flung herself in a backflip to avoid it, landing on her hands and then feet. I jerked back to keep her foot from hitting my jaw on the way by.
"So?" Ivy questioned softly, waiting as I stood up.
"So Trent is the murderer."
"Can you prove it?"
"Not yet." I lunged for her. She danced out of the way, jumping onto the thin windowsill. As soon as her feet landed, she pushed off, somersaulting right over me. I spun to keep her in view. Red spots of exertion were starting to show on her. She was dipping into her vamp repertoire to evade me. Encouraged, I followed up, striking with my fists and elbows.
"So quit and finish the run yourself," Ivy said between blocks and counterstrikes.
My wrists smacking into her blocks hurt, but I kept at it. "I told him... that's what I was going to do..." Strike, block, block, strike. "...and he threatened to lock me up for harassment. Told me I should concentrate on Dr. Anders." Pull six feet back. Pant. Sweat. Why was I doing this again?
A smile, real and unusual flashed across her face and was gone. "Sneaky bastard," she said. "I knew God had put him on earth to be more than a happy meal."
"Edden?" I wiped at the sweat dripping from my nose. "He's more of a big kid's meal, isn't he?" I gestured for her to come get me. Eyes glinting in amusement, she obliged, attacking with a barrage of blows ending with a strike to my solar plexus that sent me reeling.
"Your concentration is slipping," she said, breathing hard as she watched me kneel, gasping, on the floor. "You should have seen that coming."
I had, but my arm was going numb and slow from having been hit too many times. "I'm all right," I wheezed. This was the first time I'd seen her break a sweat, and I wasn't going to stop now. I shakily got to my feet and held up two fingers, then one. My hand went down, and she lunged with a supernatural quickness.
Alarmed, I blocked her vamp-quick blows, retreating off the mats and almost into the foyer. She grabbed my arm as I reached the threshold, flinging me over her and back onto the mats. My back hit with a thump, knocking the wind from me. I felt her feet padding after me. Adrenaline surged. Still not breathing, I rolled until I hit the wall. She was hot after me, landing to pin me there.
Eyes alight, she leaned over me. "Edden is a wise man," she said between breaths, a strand of hair that had escaped her tie tickling my face. Sweat dampened her brow. "You should listen to him and leave Trent alone."
"Et tu, brute?" I wheezed. Grunting, I jerked my knee up to her groin.
She sensed it coming and fell back. I had known she was too fast to let it land, but it got her off me - which was what I'd wanted.
Ivy stood her usual eight feet back and waited for me to rise. It was slower this time. I rubbed my shoulder as I took her in, avoiding eye contact to let her know I wasn't ready.
"Not bad," she admitted. "But you didn't follow it up. Mr. Big Bad Ugly isn't going to stand aside and wait for you to regain your balance, and neither should you."
I gave her a weary look from around my red frizz of hair. Trying to keep up with her, much less best her, was hard. I'd never had to think about overcoming a vampire before since the I.S. didn't send witches to tag them. And whatever else, the I.S. took care of its own, on or off the job. Unless they wanted you dead.
"What are you going to do?" she asked as I felt my ribs through my sweatshirt.
"About Trent?" I said, breathless. "Talk to him without Edden or Glenn knowing."
Ivy's rocking motion faltered. With a warning shout, she leapt forward.
Instinct and practice saved me as I ducked. She spun in a tight circle, and I jerked out of the way. Ivy followed with a series of blows that backed me to the wall. Her voice echoed against the empty walls of the sanctuary, filling it with sound.
Shocked at her sudden ferocity, I pushed myself from the wall and fought back using every trick that she had taught me. I became angry that she wasn't even trying. With her vamp speed and strength, I was a moving target dummy.
My eyes widened as Ivy's face went savage. She was going to show me something new. Swell.
She shouted and spun. I foolishly did nothing as her foot slammed into my chest, sending me into the wall of the church.
My breath whooshed out and pain crushed my lungs. She darted away, leaving me to hang gasping. Staring at the floor, I saw the green and gold sunbeams shake as the stained-glass windows to either side of me shivered. Still not breathing, I looked up to see Ivy sauntering away. Her slow, mocking pace ticked me off.
Anger burned, giving me strength. Still having not caught my breath, I jumped her.
Ivy cried out in surprise as I landed on her back. Grinning savagely, my legs went around her waist. I grabbed a fistful of her hair and jerked her head back, sliding an arm around her throat to choke her.
Gasping, she backpedaled. I let go, knowing she was going to slam me against the wall again. I dropped to the floor, and she tripped over me. She went down. I grappled for her, catching her around the neck again. She bucked against the floor, twisting her body at an impossible angle, breaking my hold.
Heart pounding, I flipped myself to my feet, finding Ivy standing eight feet away - waiting. My exhilaration at having surprised her vanished as I realized something had shifted. She was moving from foot to foot with an unnerving, fluid grace, the first sign of her vamp background getting the better of her.
Immediately I straightened and waved my arms in surrender. "That's it," I panted. "I have to get cleaned up. I'm done. I've got to do my homework."
But instead of backing off as she always did, she started to circle. Her movements were languorously slow and her eyes were fixed to mine. My heart pounded and I spun to keep her in view. Tension laced through me, tightening my muscles one by one. She came to a halt in a sunbeam, the light glinting on her black body stocking like it was oil. Her hair was free, the black band lying between us where I had accidentally ripped it off her.
"That's the trouble with you, Rachel," she said, her soft voice echoing. "You always quit when it starts to get good. You're a tease. Nothing but a goddamned tease."
"Excuse me?" I asked, the pit of my stomach clenching. I knew exactly what she meant, and it scared the crap out of me.
Her face tightened. Forewarned, I braced myself as she lunged. I blocked her fists, driving her away with a foot aimed at her knees. "Knock it off, Ivy!" I shouted as she jerked out of my reach. "I said I'm done!"
"No you aren't." Her gray voice settled over me like silk. "I'm trying to save your life, little witch. A big bad vamp isn't going to stop because you tell him to. He's going to keep coming until he gets what he wants or you drive him away. I'm going to save your life - one way or another. You'll thank me when it's over."
She darted forward. Catching my arm, she twisted it, trying to force me to the floor. I gasped and kicked her legs from under her. We went down, my breath exploding out of me. Panicking, I pushed away and rolled to my feet.
I found her waiting her usual eight feet back - circling. A subtle heat had soaked into her movements. Her head was lowered and she was eyeing me from around her hair. Her lips were parted, and I could almost see her breath passing through them.
I backed away. Fear grew as the ring of brown around her pupils flashed to black. Damn.
Swallowing, I ran a hand over myself, foolishly trying to wipe her sweat off. I had known better than to jump her. I had to get her smell off me, and now. My fingers touched the demon scar on my neck, and my breath caught. It was tingling from the pheromones she was pumping into the air. Double damn.
"Stop, Ivy," I said, cursing the quaver that had crept into my voice. "We're done." Knowing my life hung on what happened in the next few seconds, I turned my back on her in a false show of confidence. Either I would make it to my room and its two locks or I wouldn't.
The hair on the back of my neck prickled as I paced past her. My heart pounded, and I held my breath. She did nothing as I neared the hallway, and my breath slipped out.
"No, we aren't," she whispered.
The sound of moving air pulled me around.
She attacked silently, her eyes lost in black. I fended off her blows by instinct. She wasn't even trying. Ivy caught my arm, and I cried out in pain as she spun me around, crushing my back against her. I leaned forward as if trying to break her grip. As her arms tightened and her body leaned to find our balance, I slammed my head backward into her chin.
Grunting, she dropped her grip and stumbled back. Adrenaline sang through me. She was between me and my spells. If I went for the front door, I'd never make it. This was my fault. Damn it back to the Turn, I shouldn't have jumped her. I shouldn't have become aggressive. She was driven by instinct, and I had pushed her too far.
I stood, watching her come to a swaying halt in a sunbeam. Standing sideways, she tilted her head and touched the corner of her mouth.
My stomach clenched as her fingertip came away colored in blood. Her eyes met mine as she rubbed the blood between her fingers and smiled. I shuddered at the sight of her sharp canines. "First blood, Rachel?"
"Ivy, no!" I shouted as she lunged.
She caught me before I had moved a step. Gripping my shoulder, she flung me to the front of the church. I hit the wall where the altar had once stood, slipping down to the floor. I struggled for air as she paced to me. Everything hurt. Her eyes were black pits. Her movements were smooth with power. I tried to roll away. She caught me, yanking me up.
"Come on, witch," Ivy said gently, her black, owl-feather voice in stark contrast to her painful grip on my shoulder. "I taught you better. You're not even trying."
"I don't want to hurt you," I panted, one arm clutched around my middle.
She held me to the wall under the shadow of a long gone cross. The blood from her lip made a red jewel caught at the corner of her mouth. "You can't," she whispered.
Heart pounding, I jerked to get away, failing. "Let me go, Ivy," I panted. "You don't want to do this." A cloying scent of incense pulled the memory of her pinning me to her chair last spring. "If you do this," I said frantically, "I'll leave. You'll be alone."
She leaned close, putting the flat of her free forearm against the wall by my head. "If I do this, you won't leave." A heated smile curved over her - showing a hint of teeth - and she pressed closer. "But you could get away if you really wanted to. What do you think I've been teaching you the last three months? Do you want to get away - Rachel?"
Panic lanced deep into me. My heart beat wildly, and Ivy sucked her breath in as if I had slapped her. Fear was an aphrodisiac, and I'd just given her a jolt. Lost in the blackness of instinct and need, her muscles went tension-wire tight. "Do you want to get away, little witch?" she murmured, her breath against my demon scar sending a surge of tingling through me.
My intake of breath went to my core, seeming to turn my blood to liquid metal as it conducted a pulse through me. "Get off," I panted, the delicious feeling coursing from my neck to fill me. It was my scar. She was playing on my demon scar as Piscary had done.
She licked her lips. "Make me." She hesitated, the hard hunger shifting to something more playful and insidious. "Tell me it doesn't feel good when I do this." Breath easing from her in a sigh, she watched my eyes as her finger ran a trail from my ear, across my neck, and down my collarbone.
I almost buckled at the sensation of her nail finding the faint bumps of scar tissue, stimulating the scar back into full play. My eyes closed as I remembered that the demon had taken Ivy's face when it ripped out my throat, filling the wound with a dangerous cocktail of neurotransmitters to make pain into pleasure. "Yes," I breathed, almost moaning. "God help me. It does. Please...stop."
Her body shifted against mine. "I know how it feels," she said. "The hunger racing from it to fill your body, the need it stirs, until the only thought burning in you is to touch the craving to fulfill it."
"Ivy?" I whimpered. "Stop. I can't. I don't want to."
My eyes flashed open at her silence. The drop of blood at the corner of her mouth was gone. I could feel the blood pounding through me. I knew my reactions were tied to the demon scar, that she was sending out pheromones to restimulate the pseudovamp saliva that remained in me to make pain into pleasure. I knew it was one of the survival adaptations vamps relied upon to bind people to them, ensuring that they had a willing supply of blood. I knew all of this, but it was getting harder to remember. Harder to care. It wasn't sexual. It was need. Hunger. Heat.
Ivy put her forehead against the wall beside mine as if to gather her resolve. Her hair made a silk curtain between us. I felt the warmth from her through her body stocking. I couldn't move, wire-tight with fear and want, wondering if she would sate it or if I would be strong enough of will to push her away.
"You don't know what it's been like living beside you, Rachel," she said, her whisper coming from behind her hair as if from a confessional grate. "I knew you'd be frightened if you knew how vulnerable your scar makes you. You've been marked for pleasure, and unless you have a vampire to claim and protect you, they all will take advantage of it, taking what they want and passing you to the next until you're nothing but a puppet begging to be bled. I was hoping you might be able to say no. That if I taught you enough, you would be able to drive a hungry vampire away. But you can't, dear heart. The neurotoxins have soaked in too far. It's not your fault. I'm sorry...."
My breath came in small pants, each one sending the promise of coming pleasure through me, flowing back to renew that which ebbed, building on those that came before. I held my breath, trying to find the will to tell her to get off me. Oh God, I was failing.
Ivy's voice went soft, persuasive. "Piscary said this is the only way to keep you. To keep you alive. I would be kind, Rachel. I wouldn't ask anything you didn't want to give. You wouldn't be like those pathetic shadows at Piscary's, but strong, an equal. He showed me when he bespelled you that it wouldn't hurt." Her voice went little girl soft. "The demon already broke you. The pain is over. It will never hurt again. He said you would respond, and my God, Rachel, you did. It's as if a master broke you. And you're mine."
Fear flashed through me at her hard, possessive tone. She turned her head, her hair falling back to show her face. Her black eyes were an ancient hunger, faultless in their innocence. "I saw what happened under Piscary, what you felt with no more than a finger touching your skin."
I was too frightened and enraptured by the waves of feeling coming off my neck in time with my pulse to move. "Imagine," she whispered, "what it's like when it's not your finger but my teeth - slicing clean and pure through you."
The thought sent a pulse of heat through me. I went slack in her grip, my body rebelling against my railing thoughts. Tears slipped down my face, warm on my cheeks to fall on my collarbone. I couldn't tell if they were tears of fear or need.
"Don't cry, Rachel," she said, tilting her head to brush her lips upon my neck in time with her words. I almost passed out from the ache of desire. "I didn't want it to be like this, either. But for you," she whispered, "I'd break my fast."
Her teeth grazed my neck, taunting. I heard a soft moan, shocked to realize it came from me. My body cried out for it, but my soul screamed no. The eager, pliant faces at Piscary's intruded. Lost dreams. Wasted lives. Existence turned to serve someone else's need. I tried to push her away, but failed. My will was a ribbon of cotton, falling apart with the slightest tug. "Ivy," I protested, hearing my whisper. "Wait." I couldn't say no. But I could say wait.
She heard, pulling away to look at me. She was lost in a haze of anticipation and rapture. Numb terror struck through me. "No," I said, panting as I fought the pheromone-induced high. I had said it. Somehow I had said it.
Wonder and hurt crossed her face, a breath of awareness returning to her black eyes. "No?" She sounded like a hurt child.
My eyes closed in the ripples of ecstasy that flowed from my neck as her fingernails continued to trace the scars where her lips had let off. "No..." I managed, feeling unreal and disconnected as I weakly tried to push her away. "No."
My eyes flashed open as her grip on my shoulder tightened. "I don't think you mean that," she snarled.
"Ivy!" I shrieked as she pulled me against her. Adrenaline scoured my veins. Pain followed it, punishing me for my defiance. Terrified, I found the strength to keep her from my neck. She pulled me with an increasing power. Her lips drew back from her teeth. My muscles began to shake. Slowly she pulled me closer. Her soul was lost from her eyes. Her hunger shone like a god. My arms trembled, ready to give out.
God save me, I thought desperately, my eyes finding the cross incorporated into the ceiling.
Ivy jerked as a metallic bong reverberated through the air.
She stiffened. The need in her flickered. Her eyebrows rose in bewilderment and her focus wavered. Breath held, I felt her grip slacken. Fingers slipping from me, she collapsed at my feet with a sigh.
Behind her stood Nick with my largest copper spell pot.
"Nick," I whispered, tears blurring my vision. I took a breath and reached out for him, passing out as he touched my hand.