Damned by Blood

Chapter Eight

She woke in a fighting crouch. Three rifle muzzles surrounded her at close range. Grim-faced vamps held the guns. The strangest vamps she’d ever seen.

Just a few feet away, Mikhail was already fighting with six more of them. She lunged his direction, but her captors rammed their guns into her body. One under her left breast, another against the small of her back, and the third in her side. She imagined them firing in unison, her torso exploding in all directions, and held perfectly still.

All of Mikhail’s teeth were extended and blood coated his naked body. None of it his own, she hoped. He caught hold of one of his attackers, a burly man in a plaid shirt. With a brutal twist, he broke the man’s neck and threw him aside.

Two more bodies lay at his feet. One didn’t have a head at all. That’s where the blood came from.

He’d captured some sort of club or baton and fought with it like the devil himself. They were trying to close on him, but he kept spinning that club, keeping a perimeter open around him, striking anyone who entered his range. The sight of him filled Alya with a fierce, unexpected pride.

One of the people holding guns on her, a rosy-cheeked kid in a trucker’s cap, said, “I think that guy is…him. You know? Ice. Michael Faustin.”

He was speaking to a stocky woman wearing a Mall of America T-shirt that hung down to her knees. She said, “Yeah?”

“Oh yeah. I’m pretty sure, too.”

“Well, all the luck.” She raised her voice. “You better take that big feller alive, Paul!”

Who were these people? Alya tried to make sense of the situation. If they wanted her dead, she’d be dead already. There had to be a way to turn this around.

One of the men snuck up behind Mikhail with a long length of pipe.

“Watch out!” Alya shouted. She heard a cracking noise, and an explosion of pain filled her head with white stars.

Mikhail opened his eyes. He was flat on his back and tied down. He saw only the tops of skyscrapers and open sky. They were outside. Rooftops were never good news.

He jerked against his restraints, “Alya!”

“I’m here. I’m okay.”

If he craned his neck to the left, he could just barely see her. Coils of heavy chain bound her from the shoulders down. He assumed they’d bolted the chain to the wall. Her eyes were shining and wide. That meant she was pumping with adrenaline.

He guessed they were about twenty stories up, and in downtown LA. He knew they were still in LA because it smelled like LA.

His own situation was worse than Alya’s. While primitive chains held her, he was stretched out on a steel table, his wrists and ankles cuffed by a sophisticated restraining device. These cuffs were broad steel bands integrated with the table. He couldn’t move his wrists or ankles a millimeter.

A woman he could not see said, “Okay, fellas, thanks a lot. We got it now.”

Three vamps walked into his field of view. They positioned themselves at the foot of the table, so that they could see both him and Alya behind him. One was a big man in a faded denim jacket. He had a red, weathered face, soft jowls, and a bushy blond mustache. Mikhail remembered fighting him at Alya’s. He was strong.

Next to him stood a short, plump woman with no-nonsense hair wearing an oversized T-shirt and jeans. Though she was a vamp, she resembled a typical tourist mother—he’d watched plenty of them shepherding their families around Times Square—but there was shrewd intelligence about her that put him on his guard.

The last of the three was a young man, still in his teens, clean shaven, with round, ruddy cheeks. He twisted a hat in his hands, fighting to keep his lips over his fangs. That one wanted him dead.

The older man spoke. “My name is Paul Halverson.”

Mikhail groaned to himself. The North Woods rebel.

“So you’ll know what this is all about, then. This is my wife, Anna, and my son, Gunnar. We’re real sorry it had to come to this, but we can’t have you messing with us like you’ve been, and putting a call out on my life took it way too far. And I mean both Miss Adad and you, Mr. Faustin. Folks like to be left in peace. Our friend Frank—” He gestured another vamp into Mikhail’s line of view.

This Frank didn’t even look at him, but focused on Alya, visibly shaken.

“We heard through the grapevine that Miss Adad put a call out on our life, and Frank here––Frank is Anna’s cousin, did you know?––told us you’d come to Los Angeles to see her We thought it would be a good time to visit, too. Turned out better than we expected. We came for the lady, but found you both together, and the doors wide open. Couldn’t have been easier.”

“Hadn’t heard you two were friendly,” Anna Halverson interjected, her face sour.

“Oh yeah, real lucky I’d say. We’re not set up for war where we come from. No, it’s best to do it like this. Straight to the point.”

Mikhail didn’t have to ask what they meant to do. He was strapped down on a rooftop. They meant to let him and Alya burn with the dawn. It was a particularly disdainful form of execution. There’d be no formal combat. No ritual exsanguination. And that was surprising, because both he and Alya were well worth draining.

“Gunnar got this nice table for us,” Anna said, drawing her hand along the slick metal. “He ordered it over the Internet. They say it’s strong enough to hold an elephant. More than we needed, I’d say—”

“Mom, you said the very best.”

“It’s a beauty, I’ll give you that. Never thought we’d need two at a time, though. Hope those chains aren’t too uncomfortable, Miss Adad.”

“Oh no,” Alya said. “They’re fucking lovely.”

Mrs. Halverson pursed her lips at Alya and turned back to Mikhail. “Isn’t this straight out of a James Bond movie? No one but Paul can set you free—”

“Anna,” her husband said, his voice quiet but cutting.

Mikhail knew the table. The locks were coded to handprints. Halverson’s prints, apparently. Knowing the table, he knew there was no escaping. Little Gunnar had done his research well.

Alya’s bonds, however…

Gunnar stepped forward. “You killed my best friend back there. I wish I could watch you die.”

Mikhail raised a dismissive brow at him and rolled his head toward Halverson. “New York doesn’t want your land. House Faustin never attacks sovereign territory unless there is compelling reason. I’m sorry you gave us one. The code we all must live by is discretion.”

“I’m sure sorry, too. But folks have a right to live as they see fit without other folks coming from hundreds of miles away to tell them how to do it. Our kind keep to themselves. Always have.”

“You are eating animals. By choice.”

“We’ve come to realize it’s the right thing to do.”

“Humans are our perfect food. Swallow anything else and it degrades you.”

“And I’d say it’s degrading to hunt our close kin.”

Every so often a group of vamps would get it in their head that it was wrong to feed from humans. As if they hadn’t evolved side by side to do just that. As if all vampyr society wasn’t built around the safe and controlled consumption of human blood. Idealistic vamps who decided to live on animal blood inevitably became animals themselves. Blood was not just so many liquid calories. Vamps quite literally were what they ate.

Mikhail was sure the degradation had already begun in these families. That’s why they weren’t even cleaning up after themselves anymore.

Curious about their reasoning, he said, “The media has picked up on the carcasses. That’s our immediate concern.”

The boy smirked. “They blame it on Satanists—or space aliens.”

“How long do you think those answers will satisfy them?”

The boy lifted his chin. “When they realize we eat animals, like they do, they’ll be okay with us. One day we won’t have to hide anymore.”

Mikhail sighed. The Halversons hadn’t been reading their history books.

Alya finally spoke—he wondered how she’d managed to keep her mouth shut so long. “Bloody fucking hell. Why don’t you just kill us now so I don’t have to listen to this idiocy anymore.”

Anna stepped forward. “You know, I’m real tired of taking my marching orders from people I’ve never met. You have nothing to do with us. We ask you for nothing and we’ve never caused you harm. And yet you decided to put a hit on my husband, Miss Adad. Why?”

Had she? Mikhail wondered why she’d targeted Halverson.

Her voice dripping with scorn, Alya drawled, “Oh, I don’t know. I suppose I thought it would be fun to declare open season on lunatics.”

Anna took hold of her husband’s arm. “And you call us animals.”

It was hard to make convincing threats when you were naked and strapped to a table, but Mikhail gave it a try. “If you go through with this, I promise you my family will seek revenge. Faustin revenge is extracted straight from the flesh. I assure you they will not stop until they slaughter you and all your kin. I’ll die now, but you’ll not live another week.”

Halverson smiled under his mustache. “Now why would your family think we have anything to do with your death? Our intelligence told us you and Miss Adad were fighting. And in fact, it looked like you’d been fighting before we got there.”

Mikhail bit the inside of his cheek. There was that. They might think he and Alya had killed each other.

“And Miss Adad doesn’t have any family to speak of—or at least that’s what we understand.” Anna Halverson smiled sweetly at Alya. “At least, not since your father disowned you for being a whore.”

Mikhail’s hands curled into fists. Halverson jabbed a finger at him. “Don’t look at my wife like that.”

“Tell your wife not to speak to my––” The word mate came to his tongue, the certainty of it surprising him. In an instant he recovered, rephrasing the sentence. “Tell her to apologize to Prince Adad.”

Halverson chuckled. “Sorry. Don’t think I can do that for you.”

“Don’t worry, Mikhail. I’m not impressed by apologies from filthy animal eaters.”

The Arabic tinge to her English came out under stress. It pained him to hear it. She was his mate, and he’d failed her back at the house. When she crept into his arms, exhausted and vulnerable, instead of making her safety his first priority, he’d fallen asleep. He couldn’t stand the thought of the sun blackening her skin. Lord, take me. Let her live.

“That’s enough.” Halverson put up his hand. “Each to his own, that’s what I always say. You think the way I eat is an abomination. We think the same of you. I’m not even going to exsanguinate you, Miss Adad. Or you, Faustin.”

“In a couple of generations, you will be animals,” Mikhail said with absolute certainty.

“We’ll see about that.” Halverson took his wife by the arm and popped a toothpick in his mouth. “We’ll just see.”

The vamp named Frank started to slink away.

“En joy yourself while you can, you sneaking rat bastard!” Alya called after him.

Frank stopped and turned around. He pointed at her, opened his mouth, then closed it again. His face flushed purple and he began to shout. “No more high and mighty threats from you, your royal bitchiness. No. It’s over. Sometimes the little guy wins. Like now. So…so…fuck you.” He gave her the finger, stepping backward as he did, ruining the effect.

Alya said, “I should have killed you for biting Jason Biggs.”

“You should have, ’cause I did it on purpose,” Frank said. “But I gotta go. Sun’s coming up. That always makes me a little, you know, edgy.”

Frank left his field of vision. Mikhail heard a door slam shut behind him.

Alya said to the Halversons, “I’ll give you all one more chance. Let us go, and we’ll call it even. Force me to take matters into my own hands, and I won’t answer for the consequences.”

Halverson laughed. “You’ve got a pair of brass balls on you, missy, I’ll give you that. But nope, best you both just die quietly, so we can sort out our own business in peace.”

Anna added, “Better than war, you know?”

Alya said nothing more. Mikhail said nothing. He wanted them to go, but they just stood around. Apparently they intended to stay out there until the last possible moment. Close to writhing with impatience, he forced himself to be still and profoundly uninteresting. They had to leave. If they left, Alya might be able to escape. The awkward silence grew and grew until the parents began to look like they might go inside, but then the boy plopped himself on the corner of the table.

“So, does that A on your chest stand for asshole?”

Alya let loose a long, trilling cry, as wild as a coyote’s, but far more menacing. Mikhail’s hair stood on end. The Halversons instinctively moved closer together. At the end of it, Alya gulped a huge mouthful of air and began to chant—pray—rant—he didn’t know what, because it was in Arabic. It sounded like a curse. Her chains creaked and groaned as she rocked against them, her words fast and husky with emotion.

Anna Halverson mustered a weak smile. “Well, time for us to go in.”

Mikhail twisted to see Alya. She leaned against her chains, snarling and spitting as she screamed, her eyes burning. He’d go inside, too.

“Wish it could have been otherwise,” Halverson said to him.

“No you don’t,” Mikhail said. “If you did you’d let us go.”

“Got me there.” He touched his forehead in a brief salute and ushered his family off the roof.

“Have a nice day,” Anna called from behind him.

When the door slammed closed, Alya stopped ranting. “I thought they’d gloat until we were ash.”

“What did you curse them with?”

“I don’t know any curses. I was just making shit up.”

Mikhail grinned. He enjoyed smiling, now that he’d remembered how to do it. “How long until sunrise, do you think?”

“Fifteen minutes.”

“That building to the east will shade us from the first rays, give us a few minutes more. Can you get out?”

Alya had always been an escape artist. When she was a teen, she’d had a poster of Houdini on her bedroom wall. Every bit of his hope rested on this memory.

“I’m working on it. What about that thing they’ve got you in? It looks like they bought it at a Star Trek convention.”

“Wish they had. I know this manufacturer. These are state-of-the-art locking mechanisms. They can’t be picked or broken.”

“What if I smashed your hands and feet? Could we pull them through the cuffs?”

His toes curled at the idea, but he liked her thinking. She would have been a good wife for him.

“Not going to work here. The cuffs contract automatically. They keep constant pressure on whatever is inside them.”

“Fucking hell.” He didn’t know if she meant his situation, or if she was just struggling with her chains.

“Alya, what are the odds you can escape?”

“Not too bad. I’m going to dislocate my shoulder. I don’t see any cameras. Do you?”

“No, but they could be around. We could be miked. There could be lookouts in the adjacent buildings.”

“We’ll find out, won’t we?” He heard her grunt and a length of chain clanked to the ground. “Progress.”

“Excellent.” If she could escape, he knew what he had to do. The horizon glowed purple. “I’m going to finish the story.”

“Roland and Illysia? Now? Ow! Son of a bitch.”

“You’ll understand.” Mikhail rushed through the story as fast as he could. “Roland found her at last. She’d taken shelter in a monastery. He came to her a walking skeleton, repentant as hell, but he came too late. She was dying.”

“Dying?” Another chain hit the ground.

“She’d eaten poison mushrooms. It doesn’t matter. Point is she accepted Roland’s apology. And she gave him a choice. Either die with her, or drink of her and be free.”

“‘Drinking of her’ is what fucked him over to begin with.”

“The choice she offered was to drink her to the dregs. Take her soul.”

“He wasn’t a prince, she wasn’t a combatant. He had no right to do that.”

“He was her bound mate. Listen to me. One mate can free themselves from the bond by exing the other.”

Even the chains went silent while she considered that.

“You understand? If you swallow the soul, you won’t pine for it.”

In a quiet voice she said, “You could have done that right off. You could have finished me by the pool and walked away.”

Mikhail jerked against his cuffs in frustration. “No! Well, yes. I could have. But that’s not the point right now. Not at all.”

“Hold on a second. I’ve almost got it.” Then lower, to herself she said, “This is going to hurt.” He heard a soft pop, and she shouted, “Motherfucker! Cocksucking Minnesotans! Goddamn them!”

Suddenly she was above him cradling her arm, tightlipped with pain, but free. “Open your hand,” she said. “Hold this.” She put her elbow in his palm. He clamped his fingers around it, and she used the leverage to pop her arm back in its socket.

When it was done she sighed and smiled at him gratefully. The beauty of her smile took his breath.

Her gaze lingered a beat too long on his face, and then she turned away, coloring. She made a show of trying out her arm. “All better. Now how are we going to get you out of this?”

“You’re not.”

“No?”

“Adrenaline can only get you so far. You have no weapons.”

“I’ll take a length of chain.”

“And they have guns.”

“Maybe they cleared out. Maybe there’s no one down there.”

“I doubt it. They won’t go until they know we’re ash.”

“But I need Halverson to open this lock.”

“Give it up. I want you to think about yourself. How are you going to make it past them? Think. They’ll be in there, the three Halversons and five others that I know of, probably more. All men. All strong. And you’ve been tapped, Tasered, shot—”

By me. Gritting his teeth, he slammed his head against the table.

“Mikhail!” She slid her hand beneath his head. “Don’t. I’m going to get you out.”

“No. You’re not. This is my fault. I’m going to get you out. Listen to me.” He held her eyes. She had to understand. “You’re going to make Roland’s Choice. You’re going to ex me.”

She blanched.

“It will give you the strength you need to get out of here. And if you take my soul, you’ll not suffer afterward.”

“Not suffer?” She shook her head. “No. That’s not even an option.”

“I’ll live on inside you.”

“I’ll get Halverson. I’ll make him—”

“Alyaushka.” He used his old pet name for her. “I know how strong you are, but you’re outmanned and outgunned.”

“I won’t do it.”

“Then we’ll both die.”

“You underestimate me.”

“I understand odds. You know it’s the only logical plan. Tap my strength. Get out of here, however you can. Go home, get your men, call my family and rain hell down on these people.”

She stared at him, trying to break his resolve, but he just stared back, knowing he was right. Somewhere, a bird began its morning song.

“There is no time!”

Alya turned toward the mountains, as if some last hope might be found there. A second later she turned back, her jaw set. “Okay.”

Mikhail let out the breath he’d been holding.

She leaned over and kissed him fiercely, her hands deep in his hair. This was right. It would work.

She climbed up on the table and crouched over his body. “I don’t know how I’m ever going to do this.”

“Lust.”

They’d both ex’d at the climax of a fight. The passion of violence helped drop the inhibitions against cannibalism. Lust would work the same way.

“Lust? You’re feeling lust now?” She wiggled backward. “Oh. So you are.”

“You’re on top of me. Naked.” That was incitement enough, but strangely, he found that the idea of imminent death aroused him. The cuffs and the smooth steel at his back aroused him. The prospect of her bite aroused him.

“You’re disturbed. I’ve said it before.”

She didn’t even begin to know. The things you learned about yourself when you were dying.

He lifted his head to meet her kiss. He closed his eyes and savored the taste of her mouth, remembering the powerful ambrosia of her blood, and how it warmed his throat and blew open his mind. She took hold of his cock. He was so ready. He groaned aloud and thrust into her fist. “Hurry.”

She spat into her hand, rubbed her spit on the head and then guided him in. Her brow creased as she settled over him. She wasn’t ready. But she bit her lip and wiggled until she took him anyway. He couldn’t repress another groan as he sank into her heat. “Okay,” she whispered, “I’ve got it.”

Mikhail said, “Tell me when to come.”

He meant to remind her of her wicked blowjob. It might have worked, because she turned slick and took him deeper. With the first hints of pink breaking over the horizon, she began to ride him.

She ran her palms over his chest and pinched his nipples hard. He jerked under her. But then she stroked the pain away and gave him a sad smile.

“You’ll come when I bite you.”

He smiled to reassure her. But instead of reassuring her, it made her cry. She didn’t sob, but tears flowed down her cheeks. He wished he could wipe them away, but all he could do was watch her fight her embarrassment, lock down her emotions and transform herself into a predator.

And it was this predator, not Alya, who fell upon his throat.

Play biting was highly stimulating, and once started, it took an iron will to back off. Each vamp had a point of no return, and she was racing toward it. In no time, her nips became more aggressive, the licking more frantic, the kisses bruising. Her hips rocked faster and faster. She was losing control—and he loved being devoured by her.

This is an excellent way to die.

She growled low in her throat. The sensual, satisfied sound curled around his spine.

One of her hands slid behind his neck, lifting his jaw skyward, exposing his veins and arteries. Her scratchy tongue traced his neck. Her sucking kisses called up his blood. He went lightheaded, loose limbed and warm. No wonder feeders begged for it.

She jerked upright with a short cry, climaxing fast and hard. Just as fast, she swooped down and ripped open his throat. The pain jolted through him, spurring his release. As he ejaculated, she began to suck. He flowed into her. His spirit soared free.

“Misha.” There was no holding back from her, no secrets, no half-truths. Her consciousness flowed into him and saw all of him. At the same time, everything he ever was or hoped to be rushed to join her.

“If there’s a child, I’ll keep it.”

A child of theirs. He’d never even considered...

Her inner voice pushed into his reverie. “I’m sorry, so sorry.”

Outside he heard her swallowing convulsively. His heart lurched crazily, trying to compensate for blood loss. Fascinating. What had she been saying? She was sorry for something that happened a thousand years ago. It didn’t matter.

She was still drinking, but she was crying again. He smelled her tears. They made him thirsty. He wished he could have tasted her one last time. Dying under her mouth was like sinking into a velvet void. Summoning his strength, he opened his eyes to see blazing wisps of orange clouds reflected in the windows of the skyscrapers.

“Finish. Go.”

Alya tore a fresh hole and sucked viciously. The black closed in gently.