“Well, just so we understand one another. Come with me.”
She walked him back down a quiet hallway full of plush carpet and dim lighting, taking him into a private playroom that was all mirrors. Floor, ceiling and all four walls, and she wouldn't see his reflection in any of them. The only thing in the small room was a vase of red roses, sitting on a pedestal in the middle. A few petals had fallen, scattered on the mirrored floor like drops of blood.
He didn't wait. When the door closed, he turned and tore the side of that snug skirt, all the way up to her thigh. She wore nothing under it. Lifting her up, he pressed her back against the smooth surface of the closest mirror. Her arms and legs wound around him as he gripped her hair, pulled her head to the side and sank his fangs into her neck.
He'd planned none of it. Looking back, it had been an astounding series of events, because she hadn't known him, and he'd made no effort to prepare her in any way for what he was. He'd just seen her and known, from her lack of fear, from what she was and he was, that the moment could and would happen.
He'd never told her he loved her. He'd never told her he couldn't live without her in his world. She was human and he was something so odd, even to his own species, that he couldn't break that rule, make himself that vulnerable.
In return, she gave all herself to him, and yet nothing at once. It had always been that way. Though he desired her to be his servant with an urgency that bemused him, she had never been willing. She gave him everything else he demanded instead, responding to the inexplicable bond that had drawn them together from the first.
With every year he'd spent with her, he'd become more certain that, if ever he lost her, everything would end for him. He would walk into the sun and see if it could kill him, when nothing else seemed to do so.
Even if the sun couldn't destroy him, her howls of pain and agony might. She went from the aftermath of the second seizure directly into another. As he'd suspected, the terrible stress of the past hour had unbalanced her. She needed more of the sire's blood and he gave it to her, steeling himself to be firmly brutal, rather than prolonging it with an attempt at gentleness. Her enraged cries vibrated off the walls, off every alert nerve and inside every cell of his heart.
If there was such a thing as Hell, he was sure this was it.
He knew she blamed him for all of it. In time, her logic and intelligence would reasonably accept that it had been unavoidable fate, that he'd not intended it. It wouldn't make the relationship any less over.
Some things were never overcome, the feelings severed like a limb, blackened and withered by the fire of one significant event. How could he fight for her, fight against it, when he didn't think she was wrong? It had been his fault. He'd wanted her, needed her, had allowed her to be part of his life without giving her any protection. All because he'd capitulated to the human concept of free will, which had no place in his world.
What would have been best was leaving her alone from the beginning, letting her walk across the club and back out of his life without their eyes ever having met. Yet she'd turned toward him as if drawn . . .
It didn't matter. If she could do it over now, she probably would have blinded herself before making that turn, meeting his gaze in the crowd.
He couldn't do anything about that. So, as he had with that dog, he waited with Gideon. The vampire hunter muttered in his unconscious state, his brow furrowing in pain, stress deepening those lines from whatever haunted his dreams now. When Daegan reached out, he was startled to see his hand was trembling anew. Forcing it to still before he laid it on Gideon's brow, he grazed the hot skin with his knuckles. With bemusement he noted the hunter had some silver strands. By the Blessed Virgin, the man couldn't be more than thirty.
While he hadn't been certain if his touch would make the dreams worse or better, Gideon seemed to settle down, so Daegan kept stroking.
No matter what the future brought, no matter how she felt about him, Anwyn was his. Now that Gideon was hers, that made them both Daegan's. He would take care of them, no matter how much they despised him. He prayed for her attack to pass before her pain drove him mad, prayed like hell for Gideon to survive.
If he didn't, Daegan knew that disposing of the body and telling Anwyn he'd bolted after he healed wouldn't work. For one thing, Gideon wouldn't back away from a situation because he couldn't handle it. He'd rather it destroy than defeat him. And Anwyn, with that gift she had for seeing the truth, no matter how deeply it was buried inside a male, would know it. If Gideon died, Daegan couldn't protect her from the truth that she'd killed him.
That would destroy her soul in a way Barnabus hadn't been able to do. Or even Daegan.
Gideon woke with a hell of a headache. He wasn't entirely sure of his surroundings, so he played possum for a few minutes. Had he been taken captive by another vampire stupid enough to try and torture him, rather than kill him outright? It felt as if he was in a different place, almost a different dimension. Everything seemed . . . skewed, somehow.
His head was in someone's lap, though, and it wasn't a bad place to be. Female fingers were whispering over his face, tracing his lips, his brow, the broken line of his nose. Her knuckles slid down his neck, hesitated, and then kept on, but he'd felt the soreness there, the sense of a wound. When she passed over it again, he knew what it was. A bite wound.
It's all right. Don't be alarmed. I'm so sorry, Gideon. It's all right.
He shook his head like the confused, disoriented animal he was. He made it to his feet, seeking balance blindly. He stumbled into a wall. No, not a wall; another body. A man who turned him with firm but not ungentle hands. Now he was leaning back into him, a man who clasped his biceps.
“Let go of me.”
“No. Reach for your third-mark energy, Gideon. Let it steady you. Let it focus the picture, help you get a handle on it.”
Daegan. Daegan Rei. Whom Gideon should be shoving away because he was a vampire, and an arrogant asshole, besides. However, as Gideon reached out with his senses, he found it, a field of steadying energy, available because . . . third mark?
“Jesus Christ, tell me you didn't mark me.”
“She did. At my insistence, to save your life.”
Gideon's senses seemed to be on hyperdrive. He hadn't thought to open his eyes yet, not because of the headache, but because of all the input his other senses were handling. He could smell every distinct odor around him. Their clothes, the lingering scent of blood, the individual shampoo, soaps, fabrics and cleaners that attended a body and its home surroundings. There was an air conditioner running, a refrigerator. The faint hum of a computer somewhere. The air felt weighted with sound vibrations.
He tried to open his eyes and was refused. His brain had no spare energy for something basic like opening his eyes, not when it was processing all the rest. Jesus, he could hear their hearts beating, as well as his own. He wasn't sure, but he thought he even had some sense of the rush of blood through his veins and other internal organs.
But that wasn't the most significant difference. Those things were just an enhancement of the second mark. He had a sense of Anwyn so close, it was almost as though she was inside of him. Or he was inside of her. He could still hear the uneasy boiling of thoughts in her mind, the occasional sharp word or call from the shadow creatures, like shrill, menacing birds in a dark jungle. They were getting louder, responding to his awakening, apparently. But he was sinking, dropping to a deeper level than her thoughts, going down and down. Like quicksand, but it wasn't entirely unpleasant. He could discern her emotions, her state of being. Anger, fear, relief . . . a mind-numbing tiredness. Her emotions were spiraling inside of him.
The disconnection he'd felt from everyone for so long, the shielding that had exacerbated it and all his dysfunctionality, all that was still quite operable, but this was a wondrous sense of connection, of empathy, that made him aware of exactly how lonely he'd been.
It was unsettling, to say the least. He remembered Jacob saying it was hard to explain the third mark, how it differed from the second, just that it did, big-time. Maybe his experience was different because Anwyn couldn't yet completely shut the link between them, but right now . . . he felt as though he was walking in her soul, as connected to her as he would be connected to the earth, walking through soft grass barefoot. He wasn't normally a poetic man, but that was just the best way to describe it, no way around it. She was here, in every part of him.
“Anwyn, help him.” Daegan's voice. “Try to draw the curtain closed. You must focus. Use my energy in your mind if you need it. He's getting mired inside of you.”
No, really. It's okay. I'm fine with the miring.An unconscious, emotional reaction more than a spoken thought. Regardless of whether or not she'd heard it, a few minutes later, those shadow whispers became more muted, and the ground under his mental feet became more stable, taking him on a halting elevator ride back up to her mind. While he was aware of a background of white noise that must be her mind, held at a distance but not completely disconnected, Gideon was able to focus a little better. “What happened?”
Daegan's hold eased, but Gideon was mortified to find he couldn't quite straighten yet, leave the prop of his body behind. Daegan spoke. “Your skull was compromised and your back was broken. You were hemorrhaging internally.”
Gideon digested that. “Why didn't you mark me yourself?”
“Because you were considering allowing her to do so, the closest thing I had to a consent. I don't force unwilling humans to become servants. And, under any circumstances, you wouldn't have willingly become my servant.”
True enough. Gideon's eyes finally cracked open. Though he had to squint at the distinct colors, the excessively sharp details of his surroundings, he was able to orient himself. They were in Anwyn's cell.
She was still on the sofa, her feet curled beneath her. Her hair was lank around her face, her eyes hollow and tired, her mouth tight from stress. “How long have I been out?”