Текст книги "A Bargain So Bloody"

Автор книги: Vasilisa Drake

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

Chapter Twenty-Three

A gasp flew from my mouth when his fangs pressed into my neck, twin points digging into my flesh.

I’d expected pain. I’d braced for it as stoically as I could manage. And maybe there was some, the slightest pinprick.

But it was erased as a tide of heat rose inside me at the contact.

His fingers clenched my arms tighter, as though to hold me in place, but I couldn’t have moved away if I wanted to. My eyes shut as I gave in to the sensation. It was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before.

Bliss.

That was the only word for it. I arched in his grip, urging him to drink me deeper. My chest pressed against him, my nipples pebbling into stiff peaks. My body warmed throughout, my thighs squeezing together as desire pooled between my legs. The only thing I knew was pleasure, and I never wanted it to stop. It feels so, so good. I’d give him everything just to have more of this.

Raphael abruptly shoved me away, ripping his fangs from my neck.

I blinked, the daze receding.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, pupils blown wide as they flicked between my neck and my expression. I slammed my own palm over the spot he’d bitten, but the wounds were already healing. Under my palm, my pulse raced. I tried and failed to tame my shallow breaths, leaning back on my heels as we stared at each other.

“Your taste… you’re without parallel.”

The words were a caress in the worst way because Raphael didn’t even seem to realize he’d said them. His slight rasp raked over my body, which still throbbed with need. I’d never experienced any approximation for what he’d just stirred in me, and all at once I felt lost.

I let a vampire feed on me.

Horror. I should be feeling horror. But none came.

“So did it work?” I demanded, trying to stir the panic I’d felt just moments ago while he’d seemed on the brink of death. It was like I was drugged. The frantic energy I knew should be there was just out of reach, while it was all I could do not to ask him to bite me again.

Raphael rolled his neck.

“It did.”

He rose to his feet and offered me a hand. I pushed myself up from the ground without taking it, trying to hide my sway. Of course, he noticed. To avoid meeting his gaze, I demanded he turn around, and I inspected his back.

Unmarred.

It was startling. I’d expected some healing, but this was… well, it was like magic. The skin appeared as though it had never been broken, had never taken a dozen copper arrows directly, even as his blood coated the floor.

We returned to the glowing hallway.

“Don’t open the Black Grimoire, but pick it up,” he ordered as the book we’d abandoned on the floor came into view.

“You sure it won’t set off another trap?”

“You removed it from its resting place. The worst of the protective magic should be gone, and most of it will fade once we leave.”

I lifted the grimoire into my arms, clutching it to my chest to avoid temptation. Its edges were stained with blood now.

“How do we get out?” There was no chance I could make it over that chasm again.

“That’s the easy part.”

The easy part turned out to be a secret passage that Raphael activated with a few careful touches of the runes on the wall. It led us down a winding corridor, one without the perfect angles of the rest of the temple. My torch was dead; I had to clutch the tattered back of his shirt to avoid stumbling. I fought the inane urge to spread my fingers over the freshly mended skin, as if I could convince myself the arrows had never been there.

That the bite had never happened.

That I’d never offered to let a vampire feed on me.

We hit what seemed to be a dead end just a few minutes later, but with a couple more touches, the barrier disappeared. Moonlight splintered past Raphael. I’d been about to ask why we didn’t just enter through whatever passage when I tilted my head and realized exactly where the opening led.

Into nothing.

More accurately, we were at least twenty feet in the air. Before I could ask Raphael just how we were supposed to get down, he jumped.

I shrieked and clapped a hand over my mouth, edging tentatively closer so I could peer out.

And there was Raphael. Not splattered against the ground, but standing tall, waving to me while the silver light of the moons danced through his hair and bounced off his skin.

“Jump down,” he called.

I shook my head, trembling slightly while I gripped the book for stability. Its gentle thrum of magic did little to steady me. Blame it on the blood loss. “I can’t! I’ll break my neck.”

“I’ll catch you,” he assured me. “Trust me.”

Trust a vampire to save my life.

A third time.

I jumped.

Air whooshed past me, blowing my hair away. I tucked my legs in and shut my eyes, bracing for death or at least several broken bones.

Contact.

But not with the ground. Strong, steady arms held me, one under my knees, the other supporting my back. I slowly unclenched my face, forcing my eyelids to open.

Raphael grinned down at me. “Told you.”

I blew out a breath, trying to calm my racing heart as I tried to process the fact we’d not only survived this crazy adventure, but we also had the lost Black Grimoire with us.

Raphael made no move to drop me as he surveyed our surroundings. I found myself relaxing in his arms, breathing in his cedar scent like I could wrap it around me and hold it close. The rise and fall of his chest was gentle, even if no heart beat inside it.

No heartbeat. Because he’s a vampire. Who you let drink your blood.

“Put me down,” I demanded.

Raphael gently lowered me to the ground, and I turned away from him. Alphonse, to my immense relief, had not been eaten by an ogre in our absence. I slid the Black Grimoire into Alphonse’s saddlebag. It took my hands an extra moment to release the book, but I let it go with a caress against the edges. Maybe because I’d nearly died half a dozen times getting it.

Raphael didn’t miss the movement. “Do you know Old Runyk?”

He must have seen me reading the walls in the temple. Though it begged the question: How did Raphael know it? “A little. I studied as a child, but it’s been many years since I’ve come across it. Do you?”

“Only enough to recognize it.” Raphael considered me, clearly weighing something more. “Do you think you could learn to read the grimoire?”

I scoffed by reflex, then looked back at the book. Could I? I hadn’t studied anything academic in ages. “It would be useless without a witch who can use the grimoire.”

Raphael nodded, reluctantly, letting the subject drop. Neither of us moved onto Alphonse.

Now what?

I’d gone with Raphael on this little retrieval quest—not realizing exactly how perilous the abandoned temple would be—because he’d taken care of me while I healed, and I was out of options. The Monastery would never take me back, and no matter how I wanted to survive, there was no way I could put myself through that again.

But without Raphael around… at best, I could hope to reach some farm out on the edges of the kingdom that could use a pair of hands only used to rat catching. Would I be safe there? They might not look for me specifically, but every once in a while, they tracked criminals via magical means. They would find me. Without the Monastery to stand in their way, I’d eventually be found and executed. I had no money, no skills, no refuge.

“What is it?” Raphael asked.

I have nowhere to go. “I’m… not sure what my next steps are.” For years, I’d worked towards my goal of starting a new life at the Monastery. Now I was lost. Each step seemed to edge me closer and closer to the precipice of a cliff. I fingered the flap of the saddlebag, even now wanting to soothe myself by holding the grimoire.

“There’s more to Eurobis than the Witch Kingdom,” Raphael said, voice soft.

I glanced at him, then realized: “You mean the lands beyond the Vampire Kingdom?”

Raphael’s expression said that wasn’t quite what he meant, but now that the idea hit me, new air filled my lungs. I’d never considered moving beyond the Witch Kingdom, because the vampires had us locked in. There was no way out except through their domain, and no one would choose that.

But I had a vampire. “Could you get me safe passage through the Vampire Kingdom and out to the west?” No soldier in the king’s army would ever be able to hunt me down there.

“I… could.” Raphael seemed to hesitate, unlike his usual, assured speech.

I was too relieved to care. I drew myself up onto the horse and tried not to tense when Raphael sat behind me once more, his hand coming across my middle to hold me steady as we began to move.

“You’re uneasy,” he said. “Why?”

Was my body so obvious? “I’m fine.”

He snorted and stalled Alphonse. “That’s a lie.”

I was uneasy because the vampire was holding me again, and unlike before, I couldn’t ask him to just let me down. Nor did his steadying touch feel like it had when we’d first been forced to ride together, like something I had to endure for survival.

It felt like something I might want.

The way he’d looked at me after feeding…

“Won’t you have trouble being this close to my neck?” I blurted.

“I’ll restrain myself,” he replied.

That didn’t make me feel better.

“Relax, Samara. I won’t bite you again.”

Finally, the tension in my shoulders eased. There was quiet determination in his words, and I found myself trusting them. At least, until he added—

“Not without permission, anyway.”

He clicked his heels, and Alphonse began to move again before I could finish stammering my vows that that would never, ever, ever happen again. Even as his reassurance made me recall exactly how my body had heated when he’d bitten me, the pleasure his fangs had wrought that had me imagining a repeat.

Never.

Raphael’s assurances weren’t exactly convincing. I managed to keep quiet until we hit the edge of the marshes, when I finally dared ask: “Now what?”

“Now,” Raphael said, “you come home to Damerel with me.”

To the Vampire Kingdom.

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter Twenty-Four

Snowfall stalled our trip.

We completed two days’s journey before the snow began. This late in spring? A bad omen. A sign something was amiss.

Like a human willingly going to the Vampire Kingdom.

Temporarily, at least. Raphael insisted it would be safe to rest there for at least a few days. I wasn’t fond of the plan by any means, but I needed supplies. I’d used almost all the cards available and had only a few coins left. Going to the Vampire Kingdom was terrifying, but the promise of a new life where no one knew me—or wanted me dead—was enticing enough to make me look past it. And while I had reservations about being in the home of other vampires, a part of me trusted Raphael would be true to his word and keep me safe.

With the Black Grimoire in our possession—and no more disguise cards—Raphael refused to consider going near any human settlement. Which presented a problem, since unlike the vampire, I was decidedly not impervious to the cold. I’d used the enchanted warmth card on my cloak days before, when the cold had first settled around us, but its magic was waning. Fortunately, one of the cards I’d traded for in the first village had been a shelter card.

Unfortunately, the “shelter” that sprang from the enchantment wasn’t the inn-sized tent promised in the picture. It was a tent, with a ceiling maybe two feet tall, twice as wide, and four times as long. A threadbare folded blanket appeared at its center.

It was a glorified sleeping bag.

“That d-dealer ripped me off,” I groused between chattering teeth. “We’ll ha-have to find an inn. Or at least a h-house.” It was so cold my fingers were turning an even starker white. I didn’t care who Raphael had to thrall to get us somewhere warm.

“This will be fine,” Raphael said. “The storm doesn’t seem too bad. It should break overnight.”

I hated that I recognized by the tone of his voice there’d be no arguing. Unwilling to stay out in the cold a minute longer, I slid into the tent. It was hardly better than being outside, except there was no snow in the tent.

I’d used up all the fire cards in the temple and didn’t stand a chance of making a flame without magic. I curled up, pressing my body as close together as possible. Whatever could be said about Greymere, it had never been cold like this. In fact, growing up as I had, I’d never known cold like this at all. Any chill that permeated the great halls was quickly chased off with a heating spell. I clutched the tattered blanket closer. It was a poor substitute for real warmth.

The cold made it hard to think or feel. I had to resign myself to the fact it would be a long night. But I’d survive it. Probably. I shut my eyes and prepared to rest.

Then the entrance of the tent jostled.

My eyes flew open as Raphael moved through the small entrance.

“What are you d-doing?”

“You’ll hardly avoid freezing to death with this tent alone.”

I blinked at him, and in the time it took my ice-addled brain to process, he had slid beside me in the minuscule tent. His arm pinned me down, his body curved around my back. The thin blanket of my cloak was the only barrier between us.

“I’ll b-be okay,” I protested, even as I felt some of the chill ease. Vampires didn’t produce quite as much body heat as a normal human, or so I suspected. It had been so long since I’d pressed myself against another human, I struggled to recall.

“Humans. So delicate.”

I wasn’t sure if he meant the fact I was weak to the cold or that I was objecting to huddling for warmth with a vampire. I made a sound with the back of my throat and squeezed my eyes shut, trying to fall asleep.

It was not forthcoming. Even with Raphael and the tent, I couldn’t stop shivering.

“You’re still too cold.”

“I’m f-fine.”

He snorted. “I’ve worked too hard to keep you alive to let some snow destroy you, dove.”

He reached for the blankets, and I yelped a protest. But my half-frozen fingers clutching the blanket were no match for Raphael, who with a deftness that shouldn’t have been possible, maneuvered himself under the thin fabric.

The barrier was gone.

“This is inap-p-propriate,” I chattered. It was an utterly inane protest, but it was the only thing my iced-over brain could think of to try to articulate that this should not be happening.

“You freed a vampire from the most secure prison in the Witch Kingdom and stole a sacred grimoire from a goddess’s temple, and now you expect me to believe you’re worried about propriety?”

“Yes.” It was petulant. It was my only defense against the foreign sensations curling around my center. I’d never had this awareness before, not the way I’d felt since when Raphael fed on me in the temple. It was like my eyes had opened to an entire world, and I was desperate to keep my eyes shut because it was a vampire opening my eyes to that world.

The past few days’s ride had been agony. While I’d once reveled in the admission Raphael made about our riding impacting him, now that I understood it intimately, there was no revelry, only shame.

“Too bad, Samara. We both know you’re a survivor first. And that’s all this is—survival.” His words were soft steel, each one a counter to the arguments in my head.

The trouble was, it didn’t feel like survival. Survival was unpleasant and brutal. It was catching rats and having my scraps of food spat in. It was making myself small and staying unnoticed. It was serving a sentence for a crime I didn’t commit. It was taking blows to prove I was worthy of the gods’s grace.

Whatever survival was, it wasn’t the warm embrace of a male and bone-deep awareness that, against all odds, I was safe. Because no matter what predator lurked in the woods, there was none worse than the one in bed with me. And this one was devoted to keeping me safe—for now, anyway.

Every spot Raphael touched me felt like a brand, his skin scalding me. He was so godsdamned large. The tent wasn’t big to begin with, but with him inside, there seemed to be no space that wasn’t part of him. His arm was heavy across my stomach. He didn’t deliberately press against me, but it was only natural our legs brushed, the backs of my thighs pressed against the tree trunks he called legs. Hard, firm muscle. A protective barrier from the chill. The spice of his scent filled the air, and it immediately brought me back to the temple. To the way he’d been so close against me when he’d bit my neck. I tried to despise the memory, but my body remembered a very different story. Even in the cold, heat rose between my legs that had me squeezing my thighs and willing my thoughts to change, burying my nose in the blankets to stifle the scent. But magic-produced blankets had no smell of their own.

When Raphael sighed in exasperation, his breath tickled the back of my neck. Right over the spot he’d bitten.

“Whatever you’re thinking, I suggest you stop and just sleep.”

My eyes flew open.

How did he know?

“I’m not thinking anything,” I hissed, noting my teeth no longer chattered.

I felt, more than heard, the rumble of his chuckle. “Now, we both know you’re not capable of having less than ten thoughts in a second, Samara.”

“Well, I’m not having any right now.”

“I can scent the truth.” His whispered words sent a shiver down my spine—and not from the cold.

“You… you can smell when someone is telling the truth?”

He chuckled, a low, strained sound. “I can scent the evidence from you that your thoughts are a bit, let’s say, amorous.”

I flushed, my cheeks suddenly warm against the frigid air. “There’s nothing to scent.” Dear gods, please let there be nothing to scent. I squeezed my thighs, trying to will my desire away. In doing so, I accidentally brushed closer to Raphael, something moving against my back.

My cheeks weren’t just warm. They were blazing.

“If it makes you feel better, you’re not the only one affected.” There was that low, strained chuckle again.

“There’s nothing to scent, I told you. Your nose must be defective.”

“There’s not a part of me that’s defective, I assure you. Though I do love how easily you lie,” he mused. “Not a talent I ever acquired.”

“You’ve probably never had to.” I wasn’t sure why I said it. The cold, the exhaustion, the proximity where I wasn’t meeting his gaze. Or just because I didn’t want to discuss my other thoughts any further.

“There’ve been times I wanted to,” Raphael admitted. “But vampires aren’t capable of telling untruths.”

I shifted slightly at his answer and immediately regretted it. Because it was obvious, I wasn’t the only one having thoughts in the tent.

“You expect me to believe vampires are always honest?” I countered, trying to move the conversation past any chance to mention we both knew I’d just felt his erection press into me.

“Not hardly. We merely cannot tell untruths, and that’s not the same thing. In the vampire courts, twisting words is a great game, though I can’t say it’s one I care for.”

Not unlike the courts of King Vaughn, then. My mother had been a master at the game—until she’d lost grievously.

“But you lie when you thrall people. You tell them they see things that aren’t there.”

“That’s different. It’s less a lie and more of a command on the mind.”

Some good that was, then. Instead of trying to poke holes in the logic of vampire magic, I asked, “What’s Damerel like?”

“Damerel sits inside the Western Vampire Kingdom. It’s—”

“Wait.” Another jerk before I could stop myself, and a loosening of breath from Raphael I wanted to drink in even though I made myself ignore it and the accompanying pulse at my back. “What do you mean Western Vampire Kingdom?”

“There are three realms ruled by vampires,” Raphael explained. He didn’t seem surprised I wasn’t aware of this. “The North, the West, and the South. The West, seated at Damerel, is the strongest. The South is the most populous and richest. The North is… I suppose unusual is the most succinct way to describe it.”

I didn’t want succinct, but I forced myself to process what he’d said. Multiple Vampire Kingdoms. I’d never considered it.

“Damerel,” he continued, “is inside a mountain. Its walls are carved from the mountain stone itself, allowing people to shelter themselves from the sun. It could be considered a palace from that view, but it’s the size of a city, with three layers. The base is the common folk, then the merchants and commerce levels, and then the seat of the Crown, where the aristocrats and king live.”

We’d be going to the base of a mountain. I tried to imagine it but came up empty; all I could picture was Greymere. It was hard to read Raphael’s tone. He described the mountain-city in neutral terms. There wasn’t any longing in his voice, nor any contempt.

“Is it home?”

There was a long pause. So long I wondered if perhaps the vampire had gone to sleep. But then—

“I confess to you, I think I’ve forgotten the meaning of the word.”

Perhaps the vampire and I were more alike than I’d realized.

OceanofPDF.com