Blood Rights

She sniffed at him. ‘You just fed and yet you still smell hungry. Animal blood will not sustain you. Why don’t you take what you really need?’ The question brought his head up. Her eyes were the pale blue of the last dawn he remembered.

‘Is that an invitation?’ Take it. He eased his hands over her right ankle, then worked up her calf over her trousers. So warm. So ripe.

She stiffened at his touch. ‘I meant why have you not fed properly for so long?’

‘I don’t drink from the vein, and my source hasn’t come through.’ A little honesty given might a little honesty get. He stopped midthigh and switched to her left ankle.

‘You’d be much stronger if you took from the vein. You’re barely surviving.’

‘I’ve survived just fine for the past fifty years or so, thanks.’ He glanced up. She was staring. Hard.

She leaned in, studying his contorted facial bones. ‘When the bloodlust is this strong, it keeps you from hiding your true face.’

With great effort, he shifted to his human face, then let it go, just to prove he could. ‘I can hide it if I need to.’ The exertion cost him a chunk of his control, just what he hadn’t wanted to do. His hands stopped above her right knee. So full of blood. Her body heat sank into his skin through her thin silk trousers like tiny, licking flames. Her heart’s rhythm pulsed into his gut, tightening it, making him want. This close, she seemed bathed in sunlight. He suffocated a groan. Drain her. Drink her. Hot, sweet, yours.

Her mouth moved, but the voices in his head drowned out the words.

‘What?’ Concentrate.

‘I said why do you wear those marks?’ Her eyes studied the strip of skin visible where his ripped shirt hung open. He should have changed.

He skimmed one finger down the back of her naked hand. ‘Why do you hide yours?’

She dropped her chin, breaking eye contact. ‘I do what I must to pass.’

At last, a little piece of her puzzle revealed. ‘Why do you need to pass as human?’

For the span of three breaths, she stayed silent. ‘How do I know I can trust you?’ Her voice was softer. Almost touching. If this was a ruse, it was a very artful one. Practiced. But of course it would be. She was comarré.

His hands slid up her arms, gently squeezing, feeling the mechanisms that had held the hidden wrist blades, then going higher. ‘You can’t. Just like I don’t know if I can trust you. You can take the chance though. See if it pays off.’

‘And if it doesn’t, I end up dead.’

‘Who would want to kill you, Anna? You’re comarré, not exactly the scourge of the vampire world.’ That was his job.

She tipped her head back, exposing the length of her pale, beckoning neck. If he’d had breath, it would have caught in his throat. Most likely the exact response she’d been going for. The voices begged.

‘My patron is dead.’

Blood coursed beneath her delicate skin. Think. Drink. Respond. With fangs. Find words. He stared at the ceiling along with her. ‘So … dead. Then … you’re free, right? Isn’t that how it works?’

‘He was murdered.’

Mal took his hands off her and rocked back on his heels. Another piece of her puzzle clicked into place. ‘And they think you did it.’

Chapter Seven

The cobra nudged Tatiana’s fingers, traveling over her palm to rest his heavy mother of pearl head against her wrist and forearm. She learned long ago her pet’s affection came easier if she fed before visiting him. Nehebkau preferred her warm.

His tongue flicked her skin, and she smiled. ‘My darling,’ she whispered. ‘Can you tell I’ve missed you?’

She stroked his smooth back as he slithered his meter-long body around her arm. In the two years since his hatching, the albino serpent had become her favorite companion, and the room she’d turned into his home, her sanctuary. The space had been transformed into the perfect habitat with all the appropriate jungle flora and fauna and elaborate systems designed to recreate the proper humidity and ultraviolet light. When Tatiana came to visit, the replicator automatically shifted to night. Overhead, a false sky twinkled with fiber-optic stars.

‘Those suckwits think I killed him. Can you imagine? I am nothing if not patient. The ruins prove that, don’t they?’ She shook her head. ‘Makes me want to drain the life out of something.’

Blood red eyes met hers expectantly as he raised his head. She smiled. Her anger cooled.

‘My sweet boy. At least you listen.’ Not that he had a choice. ‘We cold-blooded creatures have to stick together, don’t we?’ He hadn’t struck her since the first few months of his life, and those times were inconsequential. The venom had no effect on the already dead.

‘Come, let’s sit and you can tell me all about your day.’ She patted a lump in his midsection. ‘I see you got the rat I sent you.’ She’d begun feeding him rats injected with her own blood in an effort to make her pet as immortal as she was. Nehebkau was her fourth cobra and she hoped her last. Losing the first three had hurt, not as bad as losing a child, but close. As mementos, she’d had a belt and slippers made from the skins. A little macabre, perhaps, but such things did wonders for one’s intimidation factor. Everything for a purpose.

She carried her precious boy to the teak chaise and lay down beneath the special circulating heat lamps. Nehebkau stretched, uncoiling from her arm to wind across her belly and chest until his head nestled at the hollow of her throat.