Walk Among Us, page 17
Her accent was local—although, he realized now, the lilt was dusted with an American twang; she must have done college overseas, somewhere coastal. New York, maybe. Its chimerical nature, regardless of origin, was charming, and Duke thawed slightly, enough to measure out a shy smile.
“So I heard. I hope the things you said were good.”
“The best,” said the woman. “But now that I’ve actually seen your face, I feel like I should go back and tell them I’ve revised my opinion.”
Amusement lit in him. “Oh?”
“Absolutely. Like Sven said, it’s a small city. We all run into each other again and again. Always good to be nice for that reason.”
“What do you really think of me, then?” said Duke.
“You’re interesting.” Her grin bloomed.
“Just interesting?”
“At least interesting.” Eva winked. “So, what’s your name?”
“Duke,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”
The woman jounced a finger at Duke. “You’re wearing far too much for a winter that’s so mild.”
“Am I?” He couldn’t tell if she was teasing. The room was equal halves those in their winter gear and those in club finery. “I guess so. I came from California.”
“I thought you said New Orleans.”
“Good memory,” said Duke, not missing a beat. “But that’s my hometown. California was my last stop. And yeah, I guess I’m still getting used to the weather here.”
“You really chose a good time to move.” Eva swayed closer, her interest entirely undisguised, a hip bone touched to Duke’s thigh. “But you know what? One way or another, you should take that off.”
Her hands flew to the zipper of his coat before he could intervene; a downward tug made a window to the gory mess caked under his down-cushioned exterior. The smile fled from her face. To Eva’s credit, charity, as opposed to terror, was her first instinct in the wake of an emergency.
“You’re bleeding. We need to get to a hospital. Did someone hurt—”
“Quiet.”
Later, Duke would wonder if his next action was coincidence or evidence of self-actualization. I think, therefore I am. In his case: I think, therefore my Blood kindles with the obscene power that is the Kindred’s heritage. A certainty of effulgent purpose roared up in him, magma through dead arteries, spreading through vascular tributaries until it clotted at his throat. Shut up, Duke begged, holding her terrified gaze. Please, he thought. Please, please.
The woman quieted immediately, though her eyes stayed wild with panic.
“Come on,” said Duke. “Let’s go outside.”
A hand flew to her mouth and Eva shook her head.
“Eva,” said Duke cautiously, zipping up his coat, a hand extended in entreaty.
At the sound of her name, she shrank away, inching backward, both hands steepled over her mouth, head wagging with increasing vehemence.
This was wrong, Duke knew. He should allow her to walk away, to leave, to escape what had to be an impossibly terrifying situation, take advantage of her muteness to flee himself. But he was so very hungry. A condition he’d temporarily forgotten in his recent consternation but now, oh, it was roiling in him, an appetite nearly bathyal in scope. Duke stared mutedly at Eva’s naked throat, the marbling of cartilage and muscle along the graceful bones of her shoulders, and was subsumed by his want for her, her skin, her warmth, the blood beating hot.
Throughout his life, Duke had adhered to an economical approach when it came to matters of ethics, particularly on the subject of the opposite sex; agendas didn’t always necessitate discussion, and commitment was invariably subjective. But consent, though, that he required to be mandatory, and preferably accompanied by boundless enthusiasm. Eva, he knew, was in no state to supply that. Her eagerness was a product of compulsion. Yet he couldn’t help himself. One drink, he compromised. One tiny sip. That was all he’d take.
“Follow,” he said, and he let her lead them outside, though not before detouring first to acquire her own jacket, a gallantry that nonetheless felt entirely hypocritical to Duke as he pressed her into a wall of an alley, mere seconds after their exit.
Eva gasped into his neck, body molded to his, while he fumbled at her hair. How he wanted her then, with the snow veiling them both, her skin nearly molten beneath his fingers, the smell of her a better intoxicant than anything he’d sampled in his sordid life. Duke kissed her, hard enough to bruise, savoring the benediction of her mouth, the normalcy of passion, however empty it was. The ritual of desire was reassuring, calming, panacea and placebo both, even with Eva trembling and terrified. He recognized what was coming, what he’d done in turn, and the clarity of that knowledge broke him like glass.
But not enough.
Not enough to stop.
He bit down.
Not on her neck, as he’d intended, but the jut of her lower lip.
Eva moaned.
Duke had planned to stop there: one sip, no more than that, a small reprieve from the emptiness at his core. But he couldn’t, wouldn’t. What was it that people always said? Just the tip? Except it never was. That one concession always precipitated the momentum for more, and if anyone disagreed, well, they shouldn’t have been complicit in the first place.
What a monster he had become.
He couldn’t stop, though, even with the flood of self-disgust, his threadbare principles too little, too superficial against the cavalcade of his gluttonous desires. Duke cupped his hands around Eva’s face, took as much into his mouth as he could, all the while berated by the one small part of him still cognizant enough to understand that this was coercion, an unforgivable violation.
But he was so hungry.
And Eva was enjoying this, wasn’t she?
Duke recalled his own circumstances, the masochistic ecstasy of desiccation, and unlike his own parent, he wouldn’t drain Eva completely. He’d stop. Soon. Besides, it wasn’t like this was pleasurable for him. Her blood, like the blood he’d sampled before, was repulsive. Eva’s lashes fluttered against his cheek and he swallowed hard, bracing as the relief of that warm fluid gave way to immediate nausea.
His gorge rose again. Duke flung himself away, palm over his mouth. Briefly, in the cresting nausea, he found himself with the fantasy that this was his repulsion incarnated into a physical response, and was overwhelmingly grateful at the delusion. Maybe he wasn’t that much of an animal yet. Duke clung to that delusion as his undead biology expunged itself of Eva’s blood, Orri’s warning recalled too late. What had the doctor said? That Duke’s kind—his clan, the Ventrue—could drink from only one specific phenotype?
Something like that.
Blood geysered from him, thick coagulated rivulets, streaming between his fingers, warm still. He dry-heaved once, twice. Then more came, bubbling between gasps, no matter how hard Duke tried to hold it down, rivers and rills of red, clotted despite it only being moments since consumption. Then after another minute, a new problem introduced itself:
Eva was screaming.
Not loudly, thank fuck, a keening wail obscured by the wind and her knuckles jammed into her mouth, a child’s expression of abject horror, performed with the hope no one would hear, counterproductive as that was. Because silence wasn’t always an option, not in the face of a real-life monster, not with your lip chewed raw by a recent stranger, your brain still fogged from his power.
Duke looked up into Eva’s eyes as her voice slimmed to a whimper, the girl sliding down to a shaking boneless heap.
“Please don’t hurt me,” she whispered.
“I won’t. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I did not mean it. I’m sorry. Please stop. It’s okay. I’m sorry. Please.
“Please, please.”
She inhaled, preparing again to scream. Every warning that Duke has been prescribed—by Mara, by Orri, by the commandments of common sense—surfaced to conscious attention. If he didn’t stop her now, this would be it. Someone would come. Someone would see. And if not a mob of Icelanders, then it’d be some Scandinavian Camarilla hitman who would show up to stake Duke for the sun.
Duke wasn’t ready to die.
But no one had prepared him for this causality of indiscriminate feeding or dealing with consequences, truth be said. All his life, he’d escaped recrimination on account of being white, good-looking, and, in recent years, statistically rich. Unfortunately, this phase of existence saw no merit in those traits. Things were going to end very poorly if he didn’t act now.
So, like a kid aping his forebears, he did the only thing he could think to.
He tore his wrist open with his teeth and pressed the wound to Eva’s mouth, his frame enveloping hers, sheltering her from the ice, them from view. At a glance, they might have resembled an amorous couple without sufficient respect for the climate, and hopefully, that would be enough to dissuade anyone from interrogating them.
“It’s okay. It’ll be all right. Just . . . drink,” said Duke, as Eva’s tongue explored his skin, its tentative examination quickly giving away to active suction.
His world constricted into sensation and the two stayed there, devoured by the ice, for what would soon feel like not long enough.
Duke had little recollection of how they’d reached home. There was a cab, at some point, and a transaction conducted entirely in Icelandic, and Eva coiled in the back seat, and her legs around his, and her mouth at his wrist, and both of them laughing, voices low and sweet and warm. The taxi driver had dialed up the music at one point, and Duke had chuckled in delight at his sense of discretion, while Sinatra belted out how he did it his way and with no compromise.
More memories came, stop-motion and disrespectful of chronological order: Eva leading him inside, both of them wobbling like fawns. One of them—Duke wasn’t sure whom, couldn’t be sure—had tried going upstairs, only to be whistled down by the other.
And there had been her skin, and wine on her breath, and her hair in his fingers, against his mouth, and her teeth shearing through the flesh of his arm. Yet somehow that wasn’t right either, not the pleasure of her attention, not anything. Duke was incomplete, starved still of what he needed. She wasn’t sated, but she was getting what she wanted.
Duke was getting nothing.
He blinked at the ceiling.
On the bright side, his head didn’t hurt.
Duke rose for the second time from his coffin, and found Eva draped over the side, lips still wrapped around the knob of his left wrist. The eroticism startled him. As a teenager, he’d fed on the Dracula mythos, enjoyed True Blood without irony, read too many of the Anne Rice books, enough to be embarrassed. Yet, confronted with the reality, he felt abashed. Her makeup was smudged. She’d gone raccoon-eyed from whatever they’d done over the course of the night. Her face had gained as well a childlike quality in sleep, a fragility that transformed Duke’s sheepishness to genuine shame. In a fit of emotion, he leaned down and skimmed his fingers along her resting cheek.
“Hey.” Eva stirred, lashes white-gold over blue eyes.
“Hi.”
She stretched, detaching from Duke’s wrist with a lurid smack of her mouth, tongue lightly stroked over her upper lip. Her gaze was unfocused, the look of an addict in the embrace of their vice. Eva lowered her arms and smiled at Duke as if he’d taught the world the word love.
“Hey,” she said again.
Duke walked his gaze up and over Eva’s head, to the trail of red-brown blood beginning at the fridge, the doors still somehow ajar. The mess was far from inconspicuous. It wasn’t restricted to the floor, either. The walls bore his handprints, and the streaks where he’d stumbled and slipped on his own fluids.
Had Eva not noticed?
He tensed at the idea she might have not, bracing for the moment when she did and her languorous worship morphed into screaming terror once more. Another memory stirred: Eva, balling herself as she sank to her feet in the alley, whimpering, over and again, “Please don’t hurt me.”
Did she forget, or had his blood erased any concern outside of the next hit? Instinctively, Duke understood it was the second, the revelation so uniquely horrible that he immediately relegated it to his subconscious, unable and unwilling to cogitate on the implications. Duke wasn’t a stranger to drugs, had no prejudice against their consumption, but he’d seen people spiral into obsession and how deep such lusts went.
And if petty narcotics could drive someone to larceny, what about the blood from an immortal being?
Not for the first time, Duke wished he’d been less antagonistic toward the old woman and her assistant, or even the peculiar staff he’d been given. Unfortunately, it was too late for reconciliation, and even without Duke’s own pride as an impediment, he knew they wouldn’t forgive him the first volley of insults. So better to keep on with what he was doing and pray his natural aptitude for adaptation would carry him through. Not that he had any room for extensive strategy, not with this hunger to manage, his appetite alive as any animal’s, muzzled for the moment but present, waiting, restless.
“What’s wrong?” Eva’s brow rucked.
“I was wondering if you remembered last night,” said Duke, cautious.
“I remember.” And her smile returned, pretty and nonchalant. “It was something else, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was.” Nothing of what she had said encouraged him. Duke remained guarded, as flummoxed at his circumstances as he was before this line of questioning, Eva’s features divulging nothing but an affectless fondness. “I’ll be honest, though. I don’t remember all that much.”
“You’re an alfar,” said Eva with glee.
“What?”
“Alfar,” said Eva again, enunciating the word with more care. “A foreign cousin, anyway.”
“I don’t know—”
“God, you don’t have to lie to me. I know you’re one of the huldufólk,” said Eva, her delight finally turned physical. She clambered into the coffin with Duke, a harlequin smile on display, the grin revolting in its width. “You’re one of the hidden people.”
He flinched away, wincing at her fervor. “What?”
It was the only thing he could think to say.
“One of the hidden people,” said Eva patiently. Their faces were inches apart, close enough that Duke could see the patterns of his blood on her cheeks: where it had dribbled, where it had soaked into the fretwork only beginning to spider across her skin. “An elf-thing. My grandmother talked about them all the time, and I know, we’re not supposed to actually believe in that. But I was always a little sure. And now you’re here.”
Duke’s first instinct was to laugh and not kindly, the concept so ludicrous, he wanted to berate her for suggesting it. By the next moment, he retired the impulse. Elves weren’t more far-fetched than vampires. More important, here was a happy fiction Eva had created for herself. What did it matter that it was inaccurate? She was there and docile and that was what mattered.
“You got me.”
“I knew it.” Her smile was satiated, lazy. Eva sat back once more, both arms crossed along the rim of the coffin, her features joyful. Her attention wandered the house, pausing on the charnel in the kitchen before drifting along. When her gaze finished its circuit, it returned to Duke and her expression remained unaltered.
“How?”
A lithe one-shouldered shrug. “The blood, the teeth. There are a lot of stories about the hidden people, some of them dark. At least, that’s what I remember.”
“And those dark stories, you’re not afraid of them?”
“As a girl, sure. I screamed. I had nightmares.” Eva sighed, lower lip pinched in her teeth. “But as an adult? Not so much. There’s something appealing about the dark, you know? The world is ending. Might as well be on the winning side.”
What Duke wanted to say was that he understood, empathized with her attraction to the macabre. The void had its allure, particularly when gift-wrapped in latex, and even more so when nihilism stood as the only other option. The words did not come. Instead what emerged was:
“Careful. The things that go bump in the night might want to eat you.”
“Let them.” Eva laughed gauzily. “I might like it.”
Duke studied her in silence, a radical idea cohering. “Is this universal among the Icelandic? I know your people have endless nights. So I’m wondering if you’re all naturally goth.”
“We’re people, not a stereotype,” chided Eva. “Not everyone shares the same kind of passions. We—”
“Yes, okay. Fair. How about your friends, though? Are they, you know, of goth-y persuasion?”
“What are your plans, Your Excellency?”
Duke swallowed a laugh. “Your Excellency?”
“You are a duke, after all,” said Eva, without missing a beat.
“Heh. Well. I was wondering if your friends might be as open toward being indoctrinated into this life.” He gestured feebly. The house wasn’t a feast hall, hadn’t any finery, couldn’t be mistaken for a place of power, even with both eyes closed and an optimistic attitude. “I’m still redecorating, I’m afraid. And I don’t want to force you to do anything, but yeah, if you have friends who might like what you’re feeling—”
“They’ll love it.” A pause. “They’ll love you.”
He studied her carefully, an echo of last night’s guilt throbbing in his chest. Duke recalled, with far too much clarity, how easy it had been to win her over, to quiet her, to sedate her into adulation. He remembered how it had felt to impose his will, the basaltic force of that exchange, how there had been no resistance at all, not even the hummingbird flitting of a captive spirit. She had simply stoved in.
Duke looked over at the fridge, still leaking gouts of cold.
“Bring them over.”
A conscience, Duke learned, was remarkably easy to ignore under the shadow of desperation. Had he any lingering moral quandaries, they evaporated by the time Eva returned, hours later, freshly changed, with an entourage of her friends, the three he’d met on the initial freezing walk.
The trio were dubious until the first draught.
And then it was easy.
