“You ask me how I can bear to look at you.” He shook his head. “I became attached to you when I couldn’t see. Those feelings don’t go away. Your scent, your voice, your care for me were what saw me through, and what defines you for me.”
As she seemed surprised, he fell silent—until words left his mouth without any forethought, a truth shared because it had bubbled up within him and had to be expressed: “I had to come back to you for the same reason you feel the need to go now.”
He could sense her shock as a charge in the air.
But then she composed herself. “It’s not uncommon to think you have feelings for someone you see as your healer.”
“And maybe it’s just you. Maybe it’s not about the nursing… and all about you.”
When she just looked away, as if she wasn’t going to argue with him because the truth was too obvious, he had no idea what to say or do about any of it.
So he extended his wrist.
“Take my vein for any reason you want to justify to yourself,” he said. “I don’t care about the why. If we’re going our separate ways, I want you to be as strong as you can be. It will help me construct a future for you that I can be at peace with.”
In the silence that followed, the details of the living quarters they were in, from the blues and grays of the rug, to the plain walls and the comfortable furniture, became super-sharp in the periphery, as if his mind were recording everything about Nadya with such intensity, even the background around her was drawn into the intense focus.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“For what,” he prompted, when she stopped there.
“Your vein.”
With that, she lowered herself, and he felt the brush of the blanket’s fringe on his forearm first. Then came her small, cool hands, so gentle, so soft. Closing his eyes, he let his head fall back. As his breath began to pump, a tingling went through his body from the anticipation of the sharp points scoring his—
Her bite was slow and gentle, to the point where he worried she hadn’t seated her mouth properly—but he knew the instant she began to draw against him. There was a pull upon his vein and then she gasped deep in her throat and her hands tightened on him.
The drinking was very restrained, as if she were determined to cause him no discomfort. Except there was no way she could hurt him.
Actually, no… that was not true.
His free hand lifted because he wanted to draw her closer—and as his arm hovered in the air over her bent shoulders, he wondered how this had happened… how he had become attached to another other than Cordelhia. What did that matter, though.
Like their parting, it was something he could not change.
And she was right. He had a purpose to carry him onward, and vengeance was no casual thing. He just wished she could believe that, if not forahvenginghis murderedshellan, he would have begged to stay with her.
But if not for Cordelhia, he wondered if Nadya wouldn’t have asked him to stay.
He couldn’t notahvengehis mate, however. And anyway, it was clear that Nadya didn’t believe what he’d said to her.
So after this feeding, they would part, and if there was any fairness in destiny, he was going to kill someone if it was the last thing he did.
And he had the sense… it probably would be.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Thanks to the newscast’s footage about the burglary in Leczo Falls, Vishous was able to re-form safely in the middle of a picturesque town square, right behind a white gazebo that looked like it had been used in any one of the Kevin McCallister movies. As he glanced around the park-like public lawn, he checked out the line of nineteen-twenties-era storefronts across the street.
There was a diner, a clothing boutique, a grocer’s, and a butcher’s. Also a flower shop and a mail place.
And the pharmacy.
Had he been here before? V wondered. Because he had the sense he’d seen the layout somewhere, even before some parents had left a nine-year-old behind at Christmas.
“Well, if this isn’t a gingerbread village. Looks good enough to eat.”
As the female voice registered behind him, V smiled in the dark and turned around. His blooded sister, Payne—also a product of the truly toxic union of the Bloodletter and the Scribe Virgin—was standing tall in all her black leather, her shitkickers planted in the grass, her lean andpowerful body set, but not tense. With her long black hair braided, and no makeup on her face, she looked beautiful and deadly.