A thinking woman sleeps with monsters.
-Adrienne Rich
Tana walked down the hallway behind Lucien, past the oil paintings of landscapes in the French countryside and gory handprints. They came to a heavy oaken door. Lucien was reaching for the knob when the door opened wide.
Gavriel was framed in the opening. He had on the black jeans and black shirt he'd worn on their road trip, although they had a softness to them that suggested they'd been freshly laundered. His feet were bare. Stepping back, he waved them inside.
"See, I returned her," Lucien said, giving Tana a push against the small of her back, so she was forced to stumble into the room. "Unharmed. Undebauched."
Tana scowled. "You really are from another time, aren't you?"
Ignoring her, Lucien crossed the threshold, closing the door behind him. "We need to talk, my dear."
"All three of us?" Gavriel asked archly.
"She's your guest. We should entertain her-and keep an eye on her. According to you, she's killed two vampires in the span of a single day. Really, I should never have been left alone with her. She must be very dangerous." Lucien's smile didn't reach his eyes. He drew out from a pocket a folding knife with a handle of bone and began to pick underneath his fingernails with the point, scraping out flakes of dried blood and bits of tissue. She noticed there was something wrong with the way his nails curved, as though his fingers were tapering into claws.
"You're right. I never should have," Gavriel said, turning to Tana with a half smile just for her.
More dangerous than daybreak. She wondered if he remembered that he'd said those words. But right then, she didn't feel dangerous at all. She felt revolted and very, very afraid.
She looked around the room, trying to get her bearings. The windows were the same gray glass and the sun still blazed outside, making them glow, although she no longer had a sense of time. It might have been late afternoon or early evening. On the floor, beside the bed, was a leather duffel, several knives spilling out of it. She wondered where Gavriel had stashed it before his confrontation with Lucien.
The room was large enough for the four-poster bed at its center and the settee along one wall, its upholstery a shining black patent leather. Above it hung a painting, a meticulous study of a human heart crawling with maggots on a silver plate. It reminded Tana of her art teacher, and she wondered suddenly if it could be one of his pieces.
She should take a picture and text it to Mr. Olson, she thought. But that just made her imagine Lucien and Gavriel posing on either side of it, glowering at each other, and from there, hysteria threatened to crawl up her throat and force a giggle out of her.
That was the worst part. She could plan and she could make herself keep going, but she couldn't control when her brain overloaded on horror and threatened to shut down spectacularly, in a sputter of hysterical laughter. She felt as if she was teetering at the very edge of what she could handle; and if she started laughing now, she wouldn't stop.
Lucien crossed the room and flopped down on the settee, sprawling out, showing exactly how comfortable he was in Gavriel's bedroom. Which made sense, since they were, after all, in his home. He continued carving the underside of his nails with the knife, picking loose the last of what darkened them. The more she looked at him, the more she realized that some of his blond hair was stained with blood, too-toward the back of his head, where he probably couldn't see it. On the cameras, it would read as nothing, a blur.
She wanted to laugh again, which was ridiculous, because none of this was funny.
Tana perched on the corner of the mattress. When Gavriel looked over at her, she couldn't quite meet his gaze. She remembered how he'd watched her with the vampire in the basement, seen her stained mouth and her red teeth. What had he thought of her? She'd fallen a long way from the nice girl who offered him a ride in the trunk of her car.
No, not funny in the least.
"So," said Lucien. "The Spider's advance guard-his Corps des Tenebres-is coming tonight at dusk. The Spider himself will come later in the evening when everything has been arranged for him. We don't have much time for preparations and only one chance for this plan to work."
The casual way he spoke of the Spider's arrival, as though coming and going from Coldtown for vampires like the Spider or Lucien or Elisabet was as simple as crossing any other border, was alarming. She wondered if the only creatures really stuck inside the city were humans. No, she thought, humans and vampires created after Caspar.
Gavriel ran pale fingers through the mess of his black hair, an oddly human habit. He cut his gaze toward Tana and then back to Lucien. "Just let me get close enough and I'll kill him. Don't doubt that."
"The chains would have to be real," Lucien said. "He, above all others, knows what will hold you and what won't-I'll have to use heavy steel, but we can loosen a few links. Understand? It will all have to seem very, very real."
"Yes," Gavriel said, so softly that it was almost an exhalation of breath. "And there must be some sign of struggle. Marks on my body and face, as though we really fought."
Lucien's lips pulled back from his teeth in an expression that was half smile and half snarl.
"What is the plan, exactly?" Tana asked. Lucien glanced at her in annoyance, before his face very deliberately smoothed out. Maybe he'd realized that she couldn't help Gavriel stick to a plan she didn't understand. Or maybe he'd remembered he was trying to make her like him.
"It's simple, really," he said, waving a hand in Gavriel's direction. "The Spider is going to come pick up his prize. We're going to truss up Gavriel, and when the Spider gets close enough-and he will, he won't be able to resist gloating-Gavriel will pull free from the restraints and kill him."
Gavriel nodded his agreement. "And then Lucien's people will fall upon his Corps."
"And thus will the new world triumph over the old," finished Lucien.
"Nice," Tana said, feeling as though she ought to say something, but also as though everything she thought of seemed insufficient. That odd feeling of the surreal descended on her again.
Some vampires were going to murder some other vampires.
Lucien and Gavriel, best vampire frenemies, were going to murder some other vampires.
She put her hand in front of her mouth, smothering a smile.
Once upon a time, she and Pauline had had a big falling out over a leather jacket that Tana had borrowed and their mutual friend Ana puked on. There'd been a huge screaming fight and then avoiding each other for a week, eating lunch at different tables and upsetting their mutual friends with their endless snarking. But then Pauline got cast as a lead in a play and turned up at Tana's house to run lines. The fight was over, just like that.
Could Gavriel feel that way about Lucien, though? Was it possible to forgive someone who caused the death of his sister, whose necklace he'd carried with him for more than a century? Was it possible to forgive someone whose fault it was that he'd been locked in a cell and lost his mind?
Lucien stood up and started toward the door.
Quietly, Gavriel spoke, mouth curling up at one corner. "There is one more thing I would say to you."
Lucien turned, and something about Gavriel froze him in place.
"You won't betray me," Gavriel said. "But can you tell me the reason why?"
"Because I know you can kill him and I want him dead." Lucien frowned, speaking slowly, as if to a child. "You specialize in killing our own kind. And I want the Spider gone-he hates vampires who display themselves before mortals, vampires like me, who've become celebrities-so you're giving me what I want at a very small cost to myself. Besides which, you are my progeny, of which I am most proud."
Gavriel smiled. "No, you won't betray me, because if you do, I will tell the Spider your secret. I know why you gave me over to him so swiftly. I didn't realize at first, but being in a cage for a decade gives one a long time to think."
Lucien glanced up at the wall, above a painting, and then back. It was only a moment's change of gaze, but when Tana followed it, she saw the tiny glare of a camera lens.
Of course he was recording Gavriel. Of course.
It couldn't be part of the live feed, though, not if Lucien was casually discussing secrets. Unless Lucien was betraying Gavriel in the most obvious way possible-literally broadcasting their plan to the Spider. But even though the footage was likely to be hidden away in Lucien's vault somewhere, he looked nervous, as though he didn't want whatever Gavriel was about to say on a recording of any kind.
Gavriel turned toward Tana and directed the next part to her. He sounded chillingly sane. "Long ago, no new vampires could be turned without the approval of a small number of very old vampires. They pretended that they were worried about the spread of vampirism, but what they mostly worried about was one of their own progeny making an army and moving against them. As a Thorn, I hunted any progeny that stepped out of line. But what I mostly hunted were mistakes.
"Some vampires are foolish or sloppy. Some are interrupted in the middle of feeding, surprised by sunlight, or even fought off by the person being attacked. That victim goes Cold, turns, then not knowing any better, feeds without killing. She probably tries to feed without killing. But in the process, she makes more vampires and soon, it's an outbreak."
Tana couldn't help imagining Gavriel being interrupted by some frantic vampire, waving around his hands, trying to explain the terrible error he'd just made.
A laugh threatened to bubble up her throat again.
"Caspar Morales was different," said Gavriel. At his name, Lucien stiffened. "He didn't remember who turned him, only that he'd had a feeling of being followed and then was surprised, alone in an alley. He woke up in his own house, with the shades drawn. On the wall, in blood, someone had written 'tell death hello.'
"It was as though someone turned him for a prank."
Lucien stayed very still. "Who would do that?" he asked finally, his tone flat.
Gavriel turned back to her, and Tana suddenly realized that she was playing the role of the jury.
"I killed five black-haired and dark-eyed vampires in the month before, all of them with something in their features that made them look, from a distance, as though they could have been kin to me. Three women and two men. All of them with an odd story about how they were turned, all with faces that spoke to me of my brother. My sister. And the clothes they wore-oddly antique, as though someone set them out for them. The jewelry, too. It was uncanny. One of the boys even had a useless old dueling pistol.
"Tedium is the worst enemy of those that live forever. We all have ways to amuse ourselves. And Lucien's are often-how shall I say it-petty."
Tana shivered. The chill of infection was creeping back into her skin, but she could still ignore it.
"All right," Lucien said. "Enough."
"It was like murdering ghosts, over and over again," Gavriel said. "I couldn't do it that last time.
"I let Caspar go. I let him go, but I was not the one who turned him. You did that, Lucien. You turned all of them, to see what I would do. Because it made you laugh to be cruel. And the reason you won't betray me, Lucien, is that if you do, I will tell my story to the Spider and you will spend the next decade in a cage by my side."
Tana looked at them both and for a moment the enormity of what Gavriel had said went washing over her. He was saying that the end of the world wasn't an accident; it was a joke.
"You have no proof," Lucien said. "Only a story."
Gavriel shrugged.
"If you really believed that, why would you have kept this secret for so long?" Lucien's body vibrated with manic suppressed energy. His arrogant mouth trembled.
He was afraid, Tana realized. Afraid of what the Spider would do to him if he knew, maybe afraid of all the other ancient vampires, cheated out of their old world, banding together and ripping him apart as they had done to Caspar Morales. Maybe even afraid of humans, or at least human governments finally having one person to blame.
No wonder Lucien had praised Gavriel for changing the world. Every time Lucien praised him, he was really praising himself.
But being afraid made him dangerous. Tana could see the repressed violence in his face, could see the fresh hate glittering in his red eyes. If Gavriel thought that showing Lucien the power he had over him would ensure his loyalty, Gavriel was wrong.
"I kept your secret because I liked the thought of you free," Gavriel said.
Lucien crossed the room abruptly, as if he could not bear to hear any more. He opened the door to the hall. "After tonight, we'll both be free. We'll be free forever, so long as you don't screw it up."
He slammed his way out, making the wall shake.
Gavriel flopped down on the settee and put both his hands over his face. Then he looked at her with his strange eyes. "Lord, but you must despise me."
She slid off the mattress, shaking her head.
"I'm better now," he said. "Sometimes I am, anyway. Before, it was like being in a dream. I couldn't put everything straight. It got muddled and messy, and now I-now I see how horrifying it must have been. How horrifying it must all be."
"What was it you said-it would take a river of blood to wash away all my wounds? I saw a video of you the other night. You appeared to be taking all your medicine at once. So I guess that helped. I'm glad." She remembered him bent over the girl's throat, balancing his knee on the edge of her chair, covering her body with his. A shudder went through her that wasn't fear.
"I really said that?" he asked. "It sounds a bit mad."
Tana laughed, perching on the arm of the settee. He reached out with cold fingers and dragged her down next to him in a surprisingly human gesture. She let herself slip onto the cushion, her head falling against his shoulder.
"How are you?" he asked softly.
"Well," Tana said. "Every new outfit I get, I manage to ruin within a few hours."
His grin was immediate, his gaze going to her dress and then away. "Leather wipes down."
Resting there, smiling, his arm around her, felt a little like being out on a very dangerous date. She thought about the way he'd kissed her, with blood in her mouth and the sun rising behind her, and wondered if he wanted to kiss her again.
"So, you think this plan is going to work," she said suddenly, desperately needing to fill the silence. "You really trust Lucien?"
"How do you get a cat to bat at a string?" Gavriel whispered against her hair.
"I don't know," she said, shivering. "Drag it past really slow."
"Exactly," he told her, his cool fingers running over the arc of her cheek. He watched his own hand in fascination, as though he was surprised by what it was doing. "And if that doesn't work, drag the string over the cat. You don't show what you can really do with the string. You don't start with jerking it up into the air or moving incredibly fast. That comes later. First, you let the cat catch it. And once the cat gets it once, the cat wants to get it again."
"Like you're going to let the Spider think he's caught you?" Her voice came out a bit breathless.
He shrugged. "It's funny to watch them when the string is in the air and they're hanging on, paws off the ground. It's funny to watch them dance. They'll run right into walls to get that string back."
Tana pulled away from him a moment, regarding him seriously. He was all lush mouth and drowning eyes, all pretty monster reclining on leather cushions, but she'd seen the expression on his face before Lucien left. "He's been messing with your head a long time. Aren't you worried that he's manipulating you, Gavriel?"
She glanced up at the shining spot where the camera was. They were directly beneath it, which might mean that they might not show up on the film, but she was sure her voice would. If Lucien heard it, he'd know she never had any intention of helping him.
"I'm not sure it matters anymore. But will you do this one thing for me-will you lock your door tonight and stay inside until dawn? No matter what you hear?"
Tana took a shaky breath. That was the one thing that she couldn't promise him, not if she wanted to help Valentina. Not if she wanted Jameson's help. "Okay," she lied.
He looked worryingly relieved. "Then let me tell you a story while we wait for dusk to fall. When I was a boy, there was a woman who looked after my brother and me-she told us tales of firebirds and witches, and about the warrior-princess called Marya Morevna whom Prince Ivan married. Ivan was all alone, since he'd given his blessing for his first sister to marry a falcon, his second sister to marry an eagle, and the third to marry a raven."
"They married birds?" Tana echoed, not really so much for the answer as to show she was listening-and to make him smile.
"Birds who were sometimes men," Gavriel told her. "When Ivan saw Marya Morevna's fierceness in battle and her beauty, he fell instantly in love. They were married soon after. But warrior-princesses are very busy, so soon Marya Morevna had to invade somewhere or battle somebody and left Ivan in charge of her kingdom. He had piles of gold and very good caviar and everything anyone could want, except for one thing-she implored him never to go into a single chamber under the palace."
Tana thought of her own feet on the dusty steps leading down to her basement and to her mother, waiting in the dark. "He did though, didn't he?" Leaning in, she rested her head against his chest, closing her eyes.
"He couldn't resist." Gavriel's accent deepened as he spoke. "And there, chained with twelve strong chains, was Koschei the Deathless. And Koschei said, 'Please, I am so thirsty, pity me and give me some water. I have been locked away here for ten years, suffering torments you cannot imagine. My throat is so dry.' "
"Is this a real story?" Tana interrupted, thinking of Gavriel's own decade of torment, of his own thirst.
But the vampire only laughed. "A very famous one, I swear it. Anyway, Ivan is a kindly soul and brings Koschei water, but his thirst could not be quenched with a single bucketful, nor with a second bucketful. But when Ivan brought Koschei the third bucketful of water, Koschei was restored to his full strength and broke his chains."
"The sin of mercy," Tana said.
Gavriel looked a little embarrassed and a little pleased that she'd remembered. "Yes," he said softly, cool fingers resting against the skin of her bare shoulder, distracting her. "Ivan was merciful, and all the rest of the story is how he paid for it. Koschei kidnapped Marya Morevna and took her away to his own palace, leaving Ivan to chase after them. Three times he was able to find Marya Morevna and three times was able to run away with her, but Koschei had a magical horse faster than the wind. The first time Koschei caught Ivan, out of gratitude for the water he'd been given, he let Ivan go with a warning that if he was caught again, he'd be chopped into pieces. The second time Koschei caught Ivan, he let him go with the same fearsome warning.
"The third time Koschei caught Ivan, he made good on his threats. He chopped Ivan into thirteen pieces with his sword, put the pieces into a tarred barrel and threw the barrel into the sea. But the falcon, the eagle, and the raven who had married Ivan's sisters fished it out again. They took the pieces of Ivan's body and laid them on the ground, like a puzzle. Once they'd put him back together, they sprinkled his body with water and he woke up again, as from a deep sleep."
"So he was undead?" Tana asked. "Like a vampire?"
"Something like that. He woke up smarter, too, because this time he went to the witch, Baba Yaga, and won a horse as fine and fast as Koschei's. With it, he ran away with Marya Morevna one final time. Koschei chased them on his magical horse, but this time when he caught up, Ivan's horse struck Koschei a mighty blow, smashing his skull. Then Ivan and Marya Morevna built a pyre and burnt Koschei until he was ash. And then they lived happily, visiting each of Ivan's sisters and their bird-husbands, all of whom declared that Ivan did the right thing to risk so much for a woman as beautiful and fierce as Marya Morevna."
"If she was so fierce, how come she didn't just save herself?" Tana asked.
"But that's the interesting thing about the story, don't you think?" Gavriel asked with an intensity that belied it just being a story to him. "I loved it when I was a child, but as I got older I started to wonder-was it fair for Marya Morevna to lock away Koschei for ten long years without even water? And if it was fair for her, wasn't it just as fair for him to spirit her away to his castle? But Ivan-he's good. He's kind. He'd give a prisoner water. And he might not know how to save his wife, but he manages to do the impossible purely by not giving up. He is the chaotic part of the story, because he doesn't do what everyone expects of him.
"When I was a child, I thought of myself as like Ivan, but no-you are more like Ivan than I ever was. You expected me to be good, and because of you, I tried." He closed his eyes. "In the end, though, we both know I will be Koschei in this story. And that's why you should get away from me as fast as you can and keep going. Even my love is monstrous, Tana. I will keep on frightening you and-"
"You're not some fairy tale character." She caught his chin and turned his face toward her, so that when he opened his otherworldly eyes again, she could look into them without flinching. So she could show him she meant it. "And I'm not-I'm not even sure what I am. But I know you. Maybe I didn't spend decades with you like Lucien did, but I bet I can make you laugh faster than he could."
"Oh, really?" He tilted his head to one side, and it was hard for her not to stare too long at the softness of his mouth. She wanted to trace the swell of it.
She leaned close, heart hammering, and licked his cheek instead. For a moment, he looked startled and then he did laugh, real honest, helpless laughter at the sheer ridiculousness of what she'd done.
"You're yourself," Tana said, grinning. "More purely yourself than anyone I know. And if you can't see who that is anymore, then see yourself the way I see you."
Gavriel shook his head. "You can't know what I am-"
She interrupted him, talking fast. "When I was about to turn fourteen, my dad sent me to sleepaway camp. Maybe you don't know what that is, but it's usually for a couple of weeks in the summer and you-"
He pressed his hand to his chest in mock affront. "I've been locked away for ten years, not ten thousand."
"Fine, well okay," she said. "Anyway, I had these ideas about who I was when I left. I had about a hundred stuffed animals that my grandparents had given me over the years, all of them piled up on my bed. And I had two best friends, Nicole and Amber. Amber lived down the street from me, and we'd been friends since basically forever. Nicole had moved to town later and gotten really close to Amber when I was in the hospital. So it was always the three of us, and we'd ride our bikes around town together and watch movies in one another's rooms.
"In friendships, everybody has roles. I was the one who worried we'd get in trouble if we markered up the Macy's bathroom in the mall or stole a pair of feather earrings from a Claire's Boutique. The one who always did what she was told. The shy one. The scared one. The goody-goody. That was the way I'd been at nine and ten and eleven and twelve, so I never noticed that it wasn't the way I was anymore at thirteen."
He ran cool fingers over the scarred skin of her arm, and for a moment she was too spellbound to go on. "I think you had a reason to be scared," he said.
"Maybe. But the thing is that when I got to that camp, no one knew me. And by the time I went home, I saw myself differently. There, I had been the first one to swim all the way across the lake. When the sink backed up, I took apart the pipes and fixed it. I nearly killed some poor kid from the boys' cabins who tried to scare us by pretending to be a vampire."
"I'll bet," Gavriel said dryly.
"Laugh it up," she told him, "but the thing is, I hadn't known myself at all until I went away. I knew how Nicole and Amber saw me. And Lucien and the Spider and all the others-they're afraid of you so they figure you must be pretty awful indeed. They think you can't feel anything, because they've forgotten how. You're very, very dangerous, I get that, and you're prone to some very theatrical brooding, but don't let yourself mistake that for some kind of inner corruption. They see themselves in you and are blinded."
He leaned toward her, gazing into her face as though some great secret swam in her eyes, his hands drawing her closer, his mouth parting slightly, showing the very tips of his canines as he bent toward her, eyes hooded. "And what do you see?"
A shudder went through her, the chill of infection racing through her veins.
He pulled back, as though he'd been scorched. His lips were still apart and there was a wildness in the way he looked at her, as though he were a trapped animal expecting the lash of a whip.
"No," she said. "I'm just Cold. It's the sickness."
He looked as if he wasn't sure whether to believe her or not. "You didn't drink enough blood," he said, and lifted his wrist to his mouth, biting down.
Red staining his teeth and the inside of his lower lip, he held his hand out to her.
"I can't," she said softly, pulling away, the smell of his blood making her dizzy. "Something's wrong with me already."
He frowned, studying her face. Her eyes went to his red wrist. She wanted to kiss it, to drag her tongue across it, to sink her sharp teeth past his skin. And another part of her was screaming that she couldn't do that, that she wasn't like that.
She opened her mouth, letting him see the new points of her new fangs.
"Oh," he said, clearly surprised, but not that surprised.
"Please just tell me if it's really bad. Marisol said-oh, forget what she said. Just explain."
"I'll try," Gavriel began, ignoring his bleeding wrist. "Long ago, we visited humans we wanted to turn, night after night, taking their blood and giving them our own. When they were ready-after they'd become something not quite human-we let them taste human blood and become vampires. You've, er, hastened the process by drinking so much vampire blood on your own."
His explanation was like Marisol's, except that he'd obviously seen it done. No, you idiot, she thought suddenly, he had it done to him.
"What now?" Tana asked, the words something not quite human echoing in her head.
Gavriel shrugged. "A vampire who's been fed on vampire blood is stronger, that's all. Most vampires turned after everything went Cold are weak, with weak blood. They're what we used to call by-blows, accidents. Mistakes."
Tana's tongue ran over the points of her teeth. Gavriel's blood was running down his arm in three lines, and she found it hard to tear her gaze away. It looked like strawberry-blueberry syrup, just as in her little-kid dream. "I'm still just Cold, though, right? In eighty-eight days, if I don't drink any more-I'll get better, won't I?"
The look on his face told her more than his words. "I've never seen anyone go backward once the physical transformation began, but that doesn't mean it's not possible."
"So it's also possible that I could be Cold forever?" she asked, her heart pounding. "Hungry, forever and ever?"
He was silent for a long moment, which was answer enough. Then he reached for a scarf to bind his wrist.
If she stayed Cold forever and ever, that would make her a living vampire. A living vampire that could never have what it craved.
Just when you think you've sunk as far as it's possible to sink, there's always a lower place. There's always something worse to be scared about. Wasn't that some saying? Some rule?
I don't care, she decided. Just this once, for a little while, I'm not going to worry and I'm not going to care. She caught Gavriel's arm and when he looked a question at her, surprised, she couldn't bring herself to answer. She didn't want to explain the recklessness, the pleasure of making the bad choice, the glory of at least this once, picking her own path to damnation. So instead of speaking, she brought her mouth down on his wounded wrist, newly sharp teeth piercing his skin and making him-even him-gasp.
She swallowed his blood, a dark vintage from some forgotten cellar. She felt like Persephone in Hades, pomegranate seeds bursting against her teeth, juice rolling on her tongue, and the more she had, the more she hungered. Her skin felt as if it were lit from the inside, her whole body shuddering with delicious sensation. He made a few soft sounds before he brought his free hand up to smother them, pressing his fingers against his own mouth. She drew harder on his wrist.
Finally, she forced herself to pull back and gaze up at him unsteadily. She felt drunk. He didn't look particularly sober, either, watching her with slightly unfocused eyes, his lips apart when he drew his hand away from them, a shiver going through his body like some low electric current.
It occurred to her that Gavriel was going to fight a very old vampire in a matter of hours and that giving up even a portion of his strength was a terrible idea. He didn't look as if he cared, though, head tipped back and eyes falling half closed. She wondered if she'd taken too much already.
"Gavriel," she said, her tongue feeling clumsy in her mouth.
"Yes?" He blinked a few times, as though he was trying to focus on her.
"You can bite me," she said. "If you want."
That seemed to snap him out of his daze. He pulled back, eyes going wide.
She crawled closer, going up on her knees and straddling one of his legs, balancing herself with her hands on his shoulders. Her heart hammered in her chest. "I'm already Cold. I'm already doomed. It won't matter."
"Tana-" he protested, looking stunned. He wanted to, though, she could tell. He bent toward her throat as though the thrum of her pulse was beating in his ears, inhaling the scent of her skin.
She squinched her eyes closed, braced for the sharp stab of fangs.
"Tana," he said again, whispering against her skin. "Tana."
"Just do it," she told him. "I'm scared enough as it is. Don't let me chicken out and-"
She felt the press of his cold lips again and then the pressure of teeth on her jugular.
Fear choked a low sob out of her. He brought his bloody wrist to her mouth, and as her teeth found the fresh wound, he bit down on her neck. It felt like twin shards of ice slid into her throat.
She groaned against his skin. Pain raced along her nerves. She felt the pull of his teeth, the rush of everything warm inside of her pouring out. She felt the race of her heart, thudding faster and faster with fear. The taste of his blood was on her tongue, and cold pinpricks raced over her spine. Her lips felt numb.
Her body was pressed against his, one of his hands against the small of her back, nerves she'd never been aware of before clenched in sudden euphoria. Pleasure unfolded inside her, sinister and seductive. It was hard to remember to breathe, hard to remember to do more than bite down his wrist and drown in looping rapture.
She moved against him, as though she could crawl inside his skin.
Then he pushed her away, moving to the other side of the settee. Her neck stung and she gasped for air, the room coming into focus again. His eyes were closed, long sooty lashes brushing cheeks pink with her blood, black curls hanging in his face, mouth painted red. He was every bit the debauched angel, far from heaven.
Her lips parted, eager to taste, before she remembered herself.
Out the window, the sky was dark. She stood shakily.
He opened red eyes.
She wanted to tell him about Valentina and how she had to go, how she'd promised she'd help, and how she would help, except that right then she didn't want to help anyone so much as to kiss him and maybe bite him again, too, but mostly kiss him and do all the things that came after kissing.
She wanted to tell him all of that, except then the camera above the painting, the one that recorded everything they did, would record her words, too.
At the thought of Lucien watching, her gaze flickered to it, before she could make herself to look away.
"I've got to get back to my room," she said, not quite able to meet his gaze. She wanted him, wanted to stay and blot out all her fear with desire. She forced herself to take a step toward the door.
He looked as if he wanted to say something that would stop her, but he only stood, putting his hand against the wall to steady himself. Dark, bluish blood ran from his wrist.
Good-bye, she thought. Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye.
"It's nearly over," Gavriel told her, his voice low, a mad smile pulling up one corner of his mouth. "Time for us to read the day's entrails and prophesy a glorious future."
nking woman sleeps with monsters.
-Adrienne Rich
Tana walked down the hallway behind Lucien, past the oil paintings of landscapes in the French countryside and gory handprints. They came to a heavy oaken door. Lucien was reaching for the knob when the door opened wide.
Gavriel was framed in the opening. He had on the black jeans and black shirt he'd worn on their road trip, although they had a softness to them that suggested they'd been freshly laundered. His feet were bare. Stepping back, he waved them inside.
"See, I returned her," Lucien said, giving Tana a push against the small of her back, so she was forced to stumble into the room. "Unharmed. Undebauched."
Tana scowled. "You really are from another time, aren't you?"
Ignoring her, Lucien crossed the threshold, closing the door behind him. "We need to talk, my dear."
"All three of us?" Gavriel asked archly.
"She's your guest. We should entertain her-and keep an eye on her. According to you, she's killed two vampires in the span of a single day. Really, I should never have been left alone with her. She must be very dangerous." Lucien's smile didn't reach his eyes. He drew out from a pocket a folding knife with a handle of bone and began to pick underneath his fingernails with the point, scraping out flakes of dried blood and bits of tissue. She noticed there was something wrong with the way his nails curved, as though his fingers were tapering into claws.
"You're right. I never should have," Gavriel said, turning to Tana with a half smile just for her.
More dangerous than daybreak. She wondered if he remembered that he'd said those words. But right then, she didn't feel dangerous at all. She felt revolted and very, very afraid.
She looked around the room, trying to get her bearings. The windows were the same gray glass and the sun still blazed outside, making them glow, although she no longer had a sense of time. It might have been late afternoon or early evening. On the floor, beside the bed, was a leather duffel, several knives spilling out of it. She wondered where Gavriel had stashed it before his confrontation with Lucien.
The room was large enough for the four-poster bed at its center and the settee along one wall, its upholstery a shining black patent leather. Above it hung a painting, a meticulous study of a human heart crawling with maggots on a silver plate. It reminded Tana of her art teacher, and she wondered suddenly if it could be one of his pieces.
She should take a picture and text it to Mr. Olson, she thought. But that just made her imagine Lucien and Gavriel posing on either side of it, glowering at each other, and from there, hysteria threatened to crawl up her throat and force a giggle out of her.
That was the worst part. She could plan and she could make herself keep going, but she couldn't control when her brain overloaded on horror and threatened to shut down spectacularly, in a sputter of hysterical laughter. She felt as if she was teetering at the very edge of what she could handle; and if she started laughing now, she wouldn't stop.
Lucien crossed the room and flopped down on the settee, sprawling out, showing exactly how comfortable he was in Gavriel's bedroom. Which made sense, since they were, after all, in his home. He continued carving the underside of his nails with the knife, picking loose the last of what darkened them. The more she looked at him, the more she realized that some of his blond hair was stained with blood, too-toward the back of his head, where he probably couldn't see it. On the cameras, it would read as nothing, a blur.
She wanted to laugh again, which was ridiculous, because none of this was funny.
Tana perched on the corner of the mattress. When Gavriel looked over at her, she couldn't quite meet his gaze. She remembered how he'd watched her with the vampire in the basement, seen her stained mouth and her red teeth. What had he thought of her? She'd fallen a long way from the nice girl who offered him a ride in the trunk of her car.
No, not funny in the least.
"So," said Lucien. "The Spider's advance guard-his Corps des Tenebres-is coming tonight at dusk. The Spider himself will come later in the evening when everything has been arranged for him. We don't have much time for preparations and only one chance for this plan to work."
The casual way he spoke of the Spider's arrival, as though coming and going from Coldtown for vampires like the Spider or Lucien or Elisabet was as simple as crossing any other border, was alarming. She wondered if the only creatures really stuck inside the city were humans. No, she thought, humans and vampires created after Caspar.
Gavriel ran pale fingers through the mess of his black hair, an oddly human habit. He cut his gaze toward Tana and then back to Lucien. "Just let me get close enough and I'll kill him. Don't doubt that."
"The chains would have to be real," Lucien said. "He, above all others, knows what will hold you and what won't-I'll have to use heavy steel, but we can loosen a few links. Understand? It will all have to seem very, very real."
"Yes," Gavriel said, so softly that it was almost an exhalation of breath. "And there must be some sign of struggle. Marks on my body and face, as though we really fought."
Lucien's lips pulled back from his teeth in an expression that was half smile and half snarl.
"What is the plan, exactly?" Tana asked. Lucien glanced at her in annoyance, before his face very deliberately smoothed out. Maybe he'd realized that she couldn't help Gavriel stick to a plan she didn't understand. Or maybe he'd remembered he was trying to make her like him.
"It's simple, really," he said, waving a hand in Gavriel's direction. "The Spider is going to come pick up his prize. We're going to truss up Gavriel, and when the Spider gets close enough-and he will, he won't be able to resist gloating-Gavriel will pull free from the restraints and kill him."
Gavriel nodded his agreement. "And then Lucien's people will fall upon his Corps."
"And thus will the new world triumph over the old," finished Lucien.
"Nice," Tana said, feeling as though she ought to say something, but also as though everything she thought of seemed insufficient. That odd feeling of the surreal descended on her again.
Some vampires were going to murder some other vampires.
Lucien and Gavriel, best vampire frenemies, were going to murder some other vampires.
She put her hand in front of her mouth, smothering a smile.
Once upon a time, she and Pauline had had a big falling out over a leather jacket that Tana had borrowed and their mutual friend Ana puked on. There'd been a huge screaming fight and then avoiding each other for a week, eating lunch at different tables and upsetting their mutual friends with their endless snarking. But then Pauline got cast as a lead in a play and turned up at Tana's house to run lines. The fight was over, just like that.
Could Gavriel feel that way about Lucien, though? Was it possible to forgive someone who caused the death of his sister, whose necklace he'd carried with him for more than a century? Was it possible to forgive someone whose fault it was that he'd been locked in a cell and lost his mind?
Lucien stood up and started toward the door.
Quietly, Gavriel spoke, mouth curling up at one corner. "There is one more thing I would say to you."
Lucien turned, and something about Gavriel froze him in place.
"You won't betray me," Gavriel said. "But can you tell me the reason why?"
"Because I know you can kill him and I want him dead." Lucien frowned, speaking slowly, as if to a child. "You specialize in killing our own kind. And I want the Spider gone-he hates vampires who display themselves before mortals, vampires like me, who've become celebrities-so you're giving me what I want at a very small cost to myself. Besides which, you are my progeny, of which I am most proud."
Gavriel smiled. "No, you won't betray me, because if you do, I will tell the Spider your secret. I know why you gave me over to him so swiftly. I didn't realize at first, but being in a cage for a decade gives one a long time to think."
Lucien glanced up at the wall, above a painting, and then back. It was only a moment's change of gaze, but when Tana followed it, she saw the tiny glare of a camera lens.
Of course he was recording Gavriel. Of course.
It couldn't be part of the live feed, though, not if Lucien was casually discussing secrets. Unless Lucien was betraying Gavriel in the most obvious way possible-literally broadcasting their plan to the Spider. But even though the footage was likely to be hidden away in Lucien's vault somewhere, he looked nervous, as though he didn't want whatever Gavriel was about to say on a recording of any kind.
Gavriel turned toward Tana and directed the next part to her. He sounded chillingly sane. "Long ago, no new vampires could be turned without the approval of a small number of very old vampires. They pretended that they were worried about the spread of vampirism, but what they mostly worried about was one of their own progeny making an army and moving against them. As a Thorn, I hunted any progeny that stepped out of line. But what I mostly hunted were mistakes.
"Some vampires are foolish or sloppy. Some are interrupted in the middle of feeding, surprised by sunlight, or even fought off by the person being attacked. That victim goes Cold, turns, then not knowing any better, feeds without killing. She probably tries to feed without killing. But in the process, she makes more vampires and soon, it's an outbreak."
Tana couldn't help imagining Gavriel being interrupted by some frantic vampire, waving around his hands, trying to explain the terrible error he'd just made.
A laugh threatened to bubble up her throat again.
"Caspar Morales was different," said Gavriel. At his name, Lucien stiffened. "He didn't remember who turned him, only that he'd had a feeling of being followed and then was surprised, alone in an alley. He woke up in his own house, with the shades drawn. On the wall, in blood, someone had written 'tell death hello.'
"It was as though someone turned him for a prank."
Lucien stayed very still. "Who would do that?" he asked finally, his tone flat.
Gavriel turned back to her, and Tana suddenly realized that she was playing the role of the jury.
"I killed five black-haired and dark-eyed vampires in the month before, all of them with something in their features that made them look, from a distance, as though they could have been kin to me. Three women and two men. All of them with an odd story about how they were turned, all with faces that spoke to me of my brother. My sister. And the clothes they wore-oddly antique, as though someone set them out for them. The jewelry, too. It was uncanny. One of the boys even had a useless old dueling pistol.
"Tedium is the worst enemy of those that live forever. We all have ways to amuse ourselves. And Lucien's are often-how shall I say it-petty."
Tana shivered. The chill of infection was creeping back into her skin, but she could still ignore it.
"All right," Lucien said. "Enough."
"It was like murdering ghosts, over and over again," Gavriel said. "I couldn't do it that last time.
"I let Caspar go. I let him go, but I was not the one who turned him. You did that, Lucien. You turned all of them, to see what I would do. Because it made you laugh to be cruel. And the reason you won't betray me, Lucien, is that if you do, I will tell my story to the Spider and you will spend the next decade in a cage by my side."
Tana looked at them both and for a moment the enormity of what Gavriel had said went washing over her. He was saying that the end of the world wasn't an accident; it was a joke.
"You have no proof," Lucien said. "Only a story."
Gavriel shrugged.
"If you really believed that, why would you have kept this secret for so long?" Lucien's body vibrated with manic suppressed energy. His arrogant mouth trembled.
He was afraid, Tana realized. Afraid of what the Spider would do to him if he knew, maybe afraid of all the other ancient vampires, cheated out of their old world, banding together and ripping him apart as they had done to Caspar Morales. Maybe even afraid of humans, or at least human governments finally having one person to blame.
No wonder Lucien had praised Gavriel for changing the world. Every time Lucien praised him, he was really praising himself.
But being afraid made him dangerous. Tana could see the repressed violence in his face, could see the fresh hate glittering in his red eyes. If Gavriel thought that showing Lucien the power he had over him would ensure his loyalty, Gavriel was wrong.
"I kept your secret because I liked the thought of you free," Gavriel said.
Lucien crossed the room abruptly, as if he could not bear to hear any more. He opened the door to the hall. "After tonight, we'll both be free. We'll be free forever, so long as you don't screw it up."
He slammed his way out, making the wall shake.
Gavriel flopped down on the settee and put both his hands over his face. Then he looked at her with his strange eyes. "Lord, but you must despise me."
She slid off the mattress, shaking her head.
"I'm better now," he said. "Sometimes I am, anyway. Before, it was like being in a dream. I couldn't put everything straight. It got muddled and messy, and now I-now I see how horrifying it must have been. How horrifying it must all be."
"What was it you said-it would take a river of blood to wash away all my wounds? I saw a video of you the other night. You appeared to be taking all your medicine at once. So I guess that helped. I'm glad." She remembered him bent over the girl's throat, balancing his knee on the edge of her chair, covering her body with his. A shudder went through her that wasn't fear.
"I really said that?" he asked. "It sounds a bit mad."
Tana laughed, perching on the arm of the settee. He reached out with cold fingers and dragged her down next to him in a surprisingly human gesture. She let herself slip onto the cushion, her head falling against his shoulder.
"How are you?" he asked softly.
"Well," Tana said. "Every new outfit I get, I manage to ruin within a few hours."
His grin was immediate, his gaze going to her dress and then away. "Leather wipes down."
Resting there, smiling, his arm around her, felt a little like being out on a very dangerous date. She thought about the way he'd kissed her, with blood in her mouth and the sun rising behind her, and wondered if he wanted to kiss her again.
"So, you think this plan is going to work," she said suddenly, desperately needing to fill the silence. "You really trust Lucien?"
"How do you get a cat to bat at a string?" Gavriel whispered against her hair.
"I don't know," she said, shivering. "Drag it past really slow."
"Exactly," he told her, his cool fingers running over the arc of her cheek. He watched his own hand in fascination, as though he was surprised by what it was doing. "And if that doesn't work, drag the string over the cat. You don't show what you can really do with the string. You don't start with jerking it up into the air or moving incredibly fast. That comes later. First, you let the cat catch it. And once the cat gets it once, the cat wants to get it again."
"Like you're going to let the Spider think he's caught you?" Her voice came out a bit breathless.
He shrugged. "It's funny to watch them when the string is in the air and they're hanging on, paws off the ground. It's funny to watch them dance. They'll run right into walls to get that string back."
Tana pulled away from him a moment, regarding him seriously. He was all lush mouth and drowning eyes, all pretty monster reclining on leather cushions, but she'd seen the expression on his face before Lucien left. "He's been messing with your head a long time. Aren't you worried that he's manipulating you, Gavriel?"
She glanced up at the shining spot where the camera was. They were directly beneath it, which might mean that they might not show up on the film, but she was sure her voice would. If Lucien heard it, he'd know she never had any intention of helping him.
"I'm not sure it matters anymore. But will you do this one thing for me-will you lock your door tonight and stay inside until dawn? No matter what you hear?"
Tana took a shaky breath. That was the one thing that she couldn't promise him, not if she wanted to help Valentina. Not if she wanted Jameson's help. "Okay," she lied.
He looked worryingly relieved. "Then let me tell you a story while we wait for dusk to fall. When I was a boy, there was a woman who looked after my brother and me-she told us tales of firebirds and witches, and about the warrior-princess called Marya Morevna whom Prince Ivan married. Ivan was all alone, since he'd given his blessing for his first sister to marry a falcon, his second sister to marry an eagle, and the third to marry a raven."
"They married birds?" Tana echoed, not really so much for the answer as to show she was listening-and to make him smile.
"Birds who were sometimes men," Gavriel told her. "When Ivan saw Marya Morevna's fierceness in battle and her beauty, he fell instantly in love. They were married soon after. But warrior-princesses are very busy, so soon Marya Morevna had to invade somewhere or battle somebody and left Ivan in charge of her kingdom. He had piles of gold and very good caviar and everything anyone could want, except for one thing-she implored him never to go into a single chamber under the palace."
Tana thought of her own feet on the dusty steps leading down to her basement and to her mother, waiting in the dark. "He did though, didn't he?" Leaning in, she rested her head against his chest, closing her eyes.
"He couldn't resist." Gavriel's accent deepened as he spoke. "And there, chained with twelve strong chains, was Koschei the Deathless. And Koschei said, 'Please, I am so thirsty, pity me and give me some water. I have been locked away here for ten years, suffering torments you cannot imagine. My throat is so dry.' "
"Is this a real story?" Tana interrupted, thinking of Gavriel's own decade of torment, of his own thirst.
But the vampire only laughed. "A very famous one, I swear it. Anyway, Ivan is a kindly soul and brings Koschei water, but his thirst could not be quenched with a single bucketful, nor with a second bucketful. But when Ivan brought Koschei the third bucketful of water, Koschei was restored to his full strength and broke his chains."
"The sin of mercy," Tana said.
Gavriel looked a little embarrassed and a little pleased that she'd remembered. "Yes," he said softly, cool fingers resting against the skin of her bare shoulder, distracting her. "Ivan was merciful, and all the rest of the story is how he paid for it. Koschei kidnapped Marya Morevna and took her away to his own palace, leaving Ivan to chase after them. Three times he was able to find Marya Morevna and three times was able to run away with her, but Koschei had a magical horse faster than the wind. The first time Koschei caught Ivan, out of gratitude for the water he'd been given, he let Ivan go with a warning that if he was caught again, he'd be chopped into pieces. The second time Koschei caught Ivan, he let him go with the same fearsome warning.
"The third time Koschei caught Ivan, he made good on his threats. He chopped Ivan into thirteen pieces with his sword, put the pieces into a tarred barrel and threw the barrel into the sea. But the falcon, the eagle, and the raven who had married Ivan's sisters fished it out again. They took the pieces of Ivan's body and laid them on the ground, like a puzzle. Once they'd put him back together, they sprinkled his body with water and he woke up again, as from a deep sleep."
"So he was undead?" Tana asked. "Like a vampire?"
"Something like that. He woke up smarter, too, because this time he went to the witch, Baba Yaga, and won a horse as fine and fast as Koschei's. With it, he ran away with Marya Morevna one final time. Koschei chased them on his magical horse, but this time when he caught up, Ivan's horse struck Koschei a mighty blow, smashing his skull. Then Ivan and Marya Morevna built a pyre and burnt Koschei until he was ash. And then they lived happily, visiting each of Ivan's sisters and their bird-husbands, all of whom declared that Ivan did the right thing to risk so much for a woman as beautiful and fierce as Marya Morevna."
"If she was so fierce, how come she didn't just save herself?" Tana asked.
"But that's the interesting thing about the story, don't you think?" Gavriel asked with an intensity that belied it just being a story to him. "I loved it when I was a child, but as I got older I started to wonder-was it fair for Marya Morevna to lock away Koschei for ten long years without even water? And if it was fair for her, wasn't it just as fair for him to spirit her away to his castle? But Ivan-he's good. He's kind. He'd give a prisoner water. And he might not know how to save his wife, but he manages to do the impossible purely by not giving up. He is the chaotic part of the story, because he doesn't do what everyone expects of him.
"When I was a child, I thought of myself as like Ivan, but no-you are more like Ivan than I ever was. You expected me to be good, and because of you, I tried." He closed his eyes. "In the end, though, we both know I will be Koschei in this story. And that's why you should get away from me as fast as you can and keep going. Even my love is monstrous, Tana. I will keep on frightening you and-"
"You're not some fairy tale character." She caught his chin and turned his face toward her, so that when he opened his otherworldly eyes again, she could look into them without flinching. So she could show him she meant it. "And I'm not-I'm not even sure what I am. But I know you. Maybe I didn't spend decades with you like Lucien did, but I bet I can make you laugh faster than he could."
"Oh, really?" He tilted his head to one side, and it was hard for her not to stare too long at the softness of his mouth. She wanted to trace the swell of it.
She leaned close, heart hammering, and licked his cheek instead. For a moment, he looked startled and then he did laugh, real honest, helpless laughter at the sheer ridiculousness of what she'd done.
"You're yourself," Tana said, grinning. "More purely yourself than anyone I know. And if you can't see who that is anymore, then see yourself the way I see you."
Gavriel shook his head. "You can't know what I am-"
She interrupted him, talking fast. "When I was about to turn fourteen, my dad sent me to sleepaway camp. Maybe you don't know what that is, but it's usually for a couple of weeks in the summer and you-"
He pressed his hand to his chest in mock affront. "I've been locked away for ten years, not ten thousand."
"Fine, well okay," she said. "Anyway, I had these ideas about who I was when I left. I had about a hundred stuffed animals that my grandparents had given me over the years, all of them piled up on my bed. And I had two best friends, Nicole and Amber. Amber lived down the street from me, and we'd been friends since basically forever. Nicole had moved to town later and gotten really close to Amber when I was in the hospital. So it was always the three of us, and we'd ride our bikes around town together and watch movies in one another's rooms.
"In friendships, everybody has roles. I was the one who worried we'd get in trouble if we markered up the Macy's bathroom in the mall or stole a pair of feather earrings from a Claire's Boutique. The one who always did what she was told. The shy one. The scared one. The goody-goody. That was the way I'd been at nine and ten and eleven and twelve, so I never noticed that it wasn't the way I was anymore at thirteen."
He ran cool fingers over the scarred skin of her arm, and for a moment she was too spellbound to go on. "I think you had a reason to be scared," he said.
"Maybe. But the thing is that when I got to that camp, no one knew me. And by the time I went home, I saw myself differently. There, I had been the first one to swim all the way across the lake. When the sink backed up, I took apart the pipes and fixed it. I nearly killed some poor kid from the boys' cabins who tried to scare us by pretending to be a vampire."
"I'll bet," Gavriel said dryly.
"Laugh it up," she told him, "but the thing is, I hadn't known myself at all until I went away. I knew how Nicole and Amber saw me. And Lucien and the Spider and all the others-they're afraid of you so they figure you must be pretty awful indeed. They think you can't feel anything, because they've forgotten how. You're very, very dangerous, I get that, and you're prone to some very theatrical brooding, but don't let yourself mistake that for some kind of inner corruption. They see themselves in you and are blinded."
He leaned toward her, gazing into her face as though some great secret swam in her eyes, his hands drawing her closer, his mouth parting slightly, showing the very tips of his canines as he bent toward her, eyes hooded. "And what do you see?"
A shudder went through her, the chill of infection racing through her veins.
He pulled back, as though he'd been scorched. His lips were still apart and there was a wildness in the way he looked at her, as though he were a trapped animal expecting the lash of a whip.
"No," she said. "I'm just Cold. It's the sickness."
He looked as if he wasn't sure whether to believe her or not. "You didn't drink enough blood," he said, and lifted his wrist to his mouth, biting down.
Red staining his teeth and the inside of his lower lip, he held his hand out to her.
"I can't," she said softly, pulling away, the smell of his blood making her dizzy. "Something's wrong with me already."
He frowned, studying her face. Her eyes went to his red wrist. She wanted to kiss it, to drag her tongue across it, to sink her sharp teeth past his skin. And another part of her was screaming that she couldn't do that, that she wasn't like that.
She opened her mouth, letting him see the new points of her new fangs.
"Oh," he said, clearly surprised, but not that surprised.
"Please just tell me if it's really bad. Marisol said-oh, forget what she said. Just explain."
"I'll try," Gavriel began, ignoring his bleeding wrist. "Long ago, we visited humans we wanted to turn, night after night, taking their blood and giving them our own. When they were ready-after they'd become something not quite human-we let them taste human blood and become vampires. You've, er, hastened the process by drinking so much vampire blood on your own."
His explanation was like Marisol's, except that he'd obviously seen it done. No, you idiot, she thought suddenly, he had it done to him.
"What now?" Tana asked, the words something not quite human echoing in her head.
Gavriel shrugged. "A vampire who's been fed on vampire blood is stronger, that's all. Most vampires turned after everything went Cold are weak, with weak blood. They're what we used to call by-blows, accidents. Mistakes."
Tana's tongue ran over the points of her teeth. Gavriel's blood was running down his arm in three lines, and she found it hard to tear her gaze away. It looked like strawberry-blueberry syrup, just as in her little-kid dream. "I'm still just Cold, though, right? In eighty-eight days, if I don't drink any more-I'll get better, won't I?"
The look on his face told her more than his words. "I've never seen anyone go backward once the physical transformation began, but that doesn't mean it's not possible."
"So it's also possible that I could be Cold forever?" she asked, her heart pounding. "Hungry, forever and ever?"
He was silent for a long moment, which was answer enough. Then he reached for a scarf to bind his wrist.
If she stayed Cold forever and ever, that would make her a living vampire. A living vampire that could never have what it craved.
Just when you think you've sunk as far as it's possible to sink, there's always a lower place. There's always something worse to be scared about. Wasn't that some saying? Some rule?
I don't care, she decided. Just this once, for a little while, I'm not going to worry and I'm not going to care. She caught Gavriel's arm and when he looked a question at her, surprised, she couldn't bring herself to answer. She didn't want to explain the recklessness, the pleasure of making the bad choice, the glory of at least this once, picking her own path to damnation. So instead of speaking, she brought her mouth down on his wounded wrist, newly sharp teeth piercing his skin and making him-even him-gasp.
She swallowed his blood, a dark vintage from some forgotten cellar. She felt like Persephone in Hades, pomegranate seeds bursting against her teeth, juice rolling on her tongue, and the more she had, the more she hungered. Her skin felt as if it were lit from the inside, her whole body shuddering with delicious sensation. He made a few soft sounds before he brought his free hand up to smother them, pressing his fingers against his own mouth. She drew harder on his wrist.
Finally, she forced herself to pull back and gaze up at him unsteadily. She felt drunk. He didn't look particularly sober, either, watching her with slightly unfocused eyes, his lips apart when he drew his hand away from them, a shiver going through his body like some low electric current.
It occurred to her that Gavriel was going to fight a very old vampire in a matter of hours and that giving up even a portion of his strength was a terrible idea. He didn't look as if he cared, though, head tipped back and eyes falling half closed. She wondered if she'd taken too much already.
"Gavriel," she said, her tongue feeling clumsy in her mouth.
"Yes?" He blinked a few times, as though he was trying to focus on her.
"You can bite me," she said. "If you want."
That seemed to snap him out of his daze. He pulled back, eyes going wide.
She crawled closer, going up on her knees and straddling one of his legs, balancing herself with her hands on his shoulders. Her heart hammered in her chest. "I'm already Cold. I'm already doomed. It won't matter."
"Tana-" he protested, looking stunned. He wanted to, though, she could tell. He bent toward her throat as though the thrum of her pulse was beating in his ears, inhaling the scent of her skin.
She squinched her eyes closed, braced for the sharp stab of fangs.
"Tana," he said again, whispering against her skin. "Tana."
"Just do it," she told him. "I'm scared enough as it is. Don't let me chicken out and-"
She felt the press of his cold lips again and then the pressure of teeth on her jugular.
Fear choked a low sob out of her. He brought his bloody wrist to her mouth, and as her teeth found the fresh wound, he bit down on her neck. It felt like twin shards of ice slid into her throat.
She groaned against his skin. Pain raced along her nerves. She felt the pull of his teeth, the rush of everything warm inside of her pouring out. She felt the race of her heart, thudding faster and faster with fear. The taste of his blood was on her tongue, and cold pinpricks raced over her spine. Her lips felt numb.
Her body was pressed against his, one of his hands against the small of her back, nerves she'd never been aware of before clenched in sudden euphoria. Pleasure unfolded inside her, sinister and seductive. It was hard to remember to breathe, hard to remember to do more than bite down his wrist and drown in looping rapture.
She moved against him, as though she could crawl inside his skin.
Then he pushed her away, moving to the other side of the settee. Her neck stung and she gasped for air, the room coming into focus again. His eyes were closed, long sooty lashes brushing cheeks pink with her blood, black curls hanging in his face, mouth painted red. He was every bit the debauched angel, far from heaven.
Her lips parted, eager to taste, before she remembered herself.
Out the window, the sky was dark. She stood shakily.
He opened red eyes.
She wanted to tell him about Valentina and how she had to go, how she'd promised she'd help, and how she would help, except that right then she didn't want to help anyone so much as to kiss him and maybe bite him again, too, but mostly kiss him and do all the things that came after kissing.
She wanted to tell him all of that, except then the camera above the painting, the one that recorded everything they did, would record her words, too.
At the thought of Lucien watching, her gaze flickered to it, before she could make herself to look away.
"I've got to get back to my room," she said, not quite able to meet his gaze. She wanted him, wanted to stay and blot out all her fear with desire. She forced herself to take a step toward the door.
He looked as if he wanted to say something that would stop her, but he only stood, putting his hand against the wall to steady himself. Dark, bluish blood ran from his wrist.
Good-bye, she thought. Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye.
"It's nearly over," Gavriel told her, his voice low, a mad smile pulling up one corner of his mouth. "Time for us to read the day's entrails and prophesy a glorious future."