Death Masks

Chapter Twenty-five

I didn't have much left in me in the way of magic. I wouldn't until I got a chance to rest and recuperate from what Nicodemus had done to me. I might have been able to manage a spell that would hold a normal person, but not a hungry vampire. And that was what Susan was. She'd gained strength in more senses than the merely physical, and that never happened without granting a certain amount of magical defense, even if in nothing but the naked will to fight. Snakeboy's serpent-cloud had been one of the nastier spells I'd seen, and it had only slowed Susan down.

If she came at me, and it looked like she might, I wouldn't be able to stop her.

My motto, after the past couple of years, was to be prepared. I had something that I knew could restrain her-assuming I could get past her and to the drawer where I kept it.

"Susan," I said quietly. "Susan, I need you to stay with me. Talk to me."

"Don't want to talk," she said. Her eyelids lowered and she inhaled slowly. "I don't want it to smell so good. Your blood. Your fear. But it does."

"The Fellowship," I said. I struggled to rein in my emotions. For her sake, I couldn't afford to feel afraid. I edged a little toward her. "Let's sit down. You can tell me about the Fellowship."

For a second, I thought she wouldn't give way, but she did. "Fellowship," she said. "The Fellowship of Saint Giles."

"Saint Giles," I said. "The patron of lepers."

"And other outcasts. Like me. They're all like me."

"You mean infected?"

"Infected. Half-turned. Half-human. Half-dead. There are a lot of ways to say it."

"Uh- huh," I said. "So what's their deal?"

"The Fellowship tries to help people the Red Court has harmed. Work against the Red Court. Expose them whenever they can."

"Find a cure?"

"There is no cure."

I put my hand on her arm and guided her toward my couch. She moved with a dreamy deliberation. "So the tattoos are what? Your membership card?"

"A binding," she said. "A spell cut into my skin. To help me hold the darkness inside. To warn me when it is rising."

"What do you mean, warn you?"

She looked down at her design-covered hand, then showed it to me. The tattoos there and on her face were slowly growing brighter, and had turned a shade of medium scarlet. "To warn me when I'm about to lose control. Red, red, red. Danger, danger, danger."

The first night she'd arrived, when she'd been tussling with something outside, she'd stayed in the shadows for the first several moments inside, her face turned away. She'd been hiding the tattoos. "Here," I said quietly. "Sit down."

She sat on the couch and met my eyes. "Harry," she whispered. "It hurts. It hurts to fight it. I'm tired of holding on. I don't know how long I can."

I knelt down to be on eye level with her. "Do you trust me?"

"With my heart. With my life."

"Close your eyes," I said.

She did.

I got up and walked slowly to the kitchen drawer. I didn't move quickly. You don't move quickly away from something that is thinking about making you food. It sets them off. Whatever had been placed inside her was growing-I could feel that, see it, hear it in her voice.

I was in danger. But it didn't matter, because so was she.

I usually keep a gun in the kitchen drawer. At the time, I had a gun and a short length of silver-and-white rope in there. I picked up the rope and walked back over to her.

"Susan," I said quietly. "Give me your hands."

She opened her eyes and looked at the soft, fine rope. "That won't hold me."

"I made it in case an ogre I pissed off came visiting. Give me your hands."

She was silent for a moment. Then she shrugged out of her jacket, and held her hands out, wrists up.

I tossed the rope at her and whispered, "Manacus."

I'd enchanted the rope six months before, but I'd done it right. It took barely a whisper of power to set the rope into motion. It whipped into the air, silver threads flashing, and bound itself around her wrists in neat loops.

Susan reacted instantly, going completely tense. I saw her set herself and strain against the ropes. I waited, watching for a full half a minute before she started shaking and stopped trying to break them. She let out a shaking breath, her head bowed, hair fallen around her face. I started to move toward her, when she stood up, legs spread enough to brace herself firmly, and tried again, lifting her arms.

I licked my lips, watching. I didn't think she'd break the ropes, but I'd underestimated people before. Her face, her too-black eyes scared me. She strained against the ropes again, the movement drawing her shirt up, showing me her smooth brown stomach, the winding swirls and barbs of her tattoo red and stark against her skin. There were dark bruises over her ribs, and patches of skin that had been scraped raw. She hadn't come away from our tumble from Martin's car without being hurt, after all.

After a minute more, she hissed out a breath and sat down, hair a tumbled mess around her face. I could feel her eyes on me more than I could actually see them. They didn't feel like Susan's eyes anymore. The tattoos stood out against her skin, red as blood. I backed off, again deliberately, calmly, and got the first aid kit out of the bathroom.

When I came back out, she flung herself at me in blinding speed and utter silence. I'd been expecting as much, and snapped, "Forzare!"

The silver rope flashed with a glitter of blue light and darted toward the ceiling. Her wrists went with it and she was pulled completely from the floor. Her feet swung up, and she twisted, again in silence, fighting the bonds on her. She didn't get free, and I let her swing there until her legs had settled again, her toes barely touching the floor.

She let out a quiet sob and whispered, "I'm sorry. Harry, I can't stop it."

"It's okay. I've got you." I stepped closer to examine the injuries on her midsection and winced. "God. You got torn up."

"I hate this. I'm so sorry."

It hurt me to hear her voice. There was enough pain in it for both of us. "Shhhh," I said. "Let me take care of you."

She fell quiet then, though I could sense flashes of that feral hunger in her. I got a bowl of water, a cloth, and set to cleaning up the scrapes as best I could. She quivered once in a while. Once she let out a pained groan. The bruises went all the way up her back, and she had another patch of abraded skin on her neck. I put my hand on her head and pushed forward. She bowed her head and let it hang forward while I tended to the wound.

While I did, the quality of the tension changed. I could smell her hair, her skin, their scent like candle smoke and cinnamon. I became suddenly, intensely aware of the curve of her back, her hips. She leaned back a little toward me, bringing her body into contact with mine, the heat of her something that could have singed me. Her breathing changed, growing faster, heavier. She turned her head, enough to look at me over her shoulder. Her eyes burned, and her tongue flickered over her lips.

"Need you," she whispered.

I swallowed. "Susan. I think maybe that-"

"Don't think," she said. Her hips brushed against the front of my sweats, and I was abruptly so hard that it hurt. "Don't think. Touch me."

Somewhere, I knew it wasn't the best of ideas. But I laid the fingers of one hand on the curve of her waist, wrapping them slowly to her heated skin. Soft smoothness caressed my hand. There was a pleasure in it, a primal, possessive pleasure in touching her. I ran my palm and spread fingers over her flank, her belly, in slow and light circles. She arched at the caress, her eyes closing, and whispered, "Yes," over and over again. "Yes."

I let the washcloth fall from my other hand and reached up to touch her hair. More softness, rich texture, dark hairs gliding between my fingers. I felt a second of gathering tension in her and then she whipped her head around, teeth bared, reaching for my hand. I should have drawn my hand away. Instead, I tightened my fingers in her hair and pulled back, forcing her chin up and keeping her from reaching me.

I expected anger from her, but instead her body became pliant again, moving against me with a more willing abandon. A languid smile spread over her lips, and faded away to an openmouthed gasp as I slid my other hand up, beneath the cotton shirt, and ran my fingertips lightly over her breasts. She gasped, and at the sound all of my recent worry, fear, anger, pain-it all faded away, burned to ash by a sudden fire of raw need. To feel her under my hand again, to have the scent of her filling my head-I'd dreamed of it on too many cold and lonely nights.

It wasn't the smart thing to do. It was the only thing.

I slid both hands around her body, teasing her breasts, loving the way their tips hardened to rounded points beneath my fingers. She tried to turn on me again, but I jerked her back hard against me, my mouth pressing against the side of her throat, keeping her from turning her head. It only excited her more.

"Need," she whispered, panting. "Need you. Don't stop."

I wasn't sure I could have. I couldn't get enough of the taste of her onto my lips. Impatient, I shoved her shirt up, over her breasts, to the top of her back, and spent a slow and delicious moment following the line of her spine with my lips and tongue, tasting her skin, testing its texture with my teeth. Some part of me struggled to remember to be gentle. Another part didn't give a damn. Feel. Taste. Indulge.

My teeth left small marks here and there on her skin, and I remember thinking that they looked intriguing beside the curling scarlet designs that swept in a spiral around her body. The dark leather of her pants blocked my mouth, a sudden ugliness beneath my lips, and I straightened with a snarl to get it out of my way.

For the record, tight leather pants don't come off easily. Berserk lust is likely not the best frame of mind for removing them. I didn't let that stop me. She gasped when I started taking them off, started squirming and wriggling, trying to help me. Mostly, it just drove me insane as she brushed against me, as I watched her move in sinuous, delicious need. Her panting gasps all had a quiet vocalization to them now, a sound that both spoke of her need and urged me on.

I got the pants down over her hips. There wasn't anything else beneath them. I shivered and paused to spend another moment savoring her with my hands, my mouth, placing delicate kisses around the scrapes, biting at unmarred skin to elicit more desperate movements, louder moans. The scent of her was driving me insane.

"Now," she whispered, a frenzied edge to her voice. "Now."

But I didn't hurry. I don't know how long I stood there, kissing, touching, driving her cries into higher and more desperate pitches. All I knew was that something I'd wanted, needed, longed for had come to me again. At that moment there was nothing on earth, in heaven or hell, that meant more to me.

She looked over her shoulder at me, eyes black and burning with hunger. She tried for my hand again, driven beyond words now. I had to control her head again, fingers knotted into her hair while my free hand got the interfering clothes out of the way. She let out mewling sounds of raw need, until I pulled her hips back against me, feeling my way, and in a rush of fire and silk felt my hardness press into her.

Her eyes flew open wide, out of focus, and she cried out, moving against me, meeting my motion with her own. I had a fleeting thought of slowing down. I didn't. Neither of us wanted that. I took her that way, my mouth on her ear, her throat, one hand in her hair, her hands stretched out over her, body straining back to meet mine.

God, she was beautiful.

She screamed and started shuddering, and it was all I could do not to explode. I fought away the inevitable for a little time more. Susan sagged down after a moment, until with my hands, with my mouth, with the thrusts of my body, I kindled the quiet moans once again to cries of need. She screamed again, the motions of her body swift, liquid, desperate, and there wasn't any way I could keep her from driving me over the brink with her.

Our cries mingled together as we intertwined. The strain of muscles and bodies and hungers overwhelmed me.

Pleasure like fire consumed us both and burned my thoughts to ash.

Time drifted by and did not touch us.

When I recovered my senses, I found myself on the floor. Susan lay on her stomach beneath me, her still-bound arms laid out above her head. Not much time had passed. Both of us were still short of breath. I shivered, and felt myself still inside her. I didn't remember releasing the spell that held the bonds up to the ceiling, but I must have done it. I moved my head to kiss her shoulder, her cheek, very softly.

Her eyes blinked slowly open, human again, though her pupils were dilated until they all but hid the dark brown of her irises. She didn't focus them. She smiled and made a soft sound, somewhere between a moan and a cat's purr. I stared at her for a moment, until I realized that the designs on her face had gone dark again, and had begun to fade away. As I watched over the next few moments, they vanished completely.

"I love you," she whispered.

"I love you."

"Wanted that."

"Me too," I said.

"Dangerous. Harry, you could have been hurt. I might have-"

I leaned down and kissed the corner of her mouth, silencing her. "You didn't. It's okay."

She shivered, but nodded. "So tired."

I felt like nothing more than dropping off to sleep, but instead I got to my feet. Susan let out a soft sound, half pleasure and half protest. I gathered her up and put her on the couch. I touched the rope, willing it to release her, and it slid away from her skin, coiling itself into neat loops in my hand. I pulled a blanket from the back of the couch and folded it over her. "Sleep," I said. "Get some rest."

"You should-"

"I will. Promise. But - I don't think it would be a good idea to go to sleep near you."

Susan nodded wearily. "You're right. I'm sorry."

"It's okay," I said.

"Should call Martin."

"The phone won't call out," I said. "Not until the defenses go down."

I didn't think her voice sounded particularly disappointed as she snuggled down a bit more onto my couch. "Oh," she said. "We'll have to wait it out then."

"Yeah," I said. I stroked her hair. "Susan-"

She touched my hand with hers, and closed her eyes. "It's all right. I told you, I'd never be able to separate the hungers with you. It - it was a release. Took some of the pressure off me. I wanted it. Needed it."

"Did I hurt you?"

She made a purring sound without opening her eyes. "Maybe a little. I didn't mind."

I shivered and said, "You're okay?"

She nodded slowly. "As I can be. Get some rest, Harry."

"Yeah," I said. I touched her hair again, and then shuffled into my bedroom. I didn't shut the door. I put my pillows at the foot of my bed, so that I could see the couch when I lay down. I watched her face, graced by pale candlelight, until my eyes closed.

She was so lovely.

I wished that she were with me.