Bone Crossed (Mercy Thompson #4)(39)
Author: Patricia Briggs

"Some vampires can do that," Stefan said in the same sort of soothing voice a doctor uses to tell you that you have a terminal illness. "It’s not among my gifts – or any of our seethe except perhaps Wulfe."

"He bit me twice. That’s worse than just once, right?" Silence followed my question.

Something wiggled in my front pocket. I twitched, then realized what had happened. I pulled my vibrating cell phone out without looking at the number. "Yes?" Maybe I sounded abrupt, but I was scared and Stefan hadn’t answered me.

There was a little silence, and Adam said, "What’s wrong? Your fear woke me up."

I blinked really fast, wishing I was home already. Home with Adam instead of driving in the dark with a vampire.

"I’m sorry it bothered you."

"A benefit of the pack bond," Adam told me. Then, because he knew me, he said, "I’m Alpha, so I get things first. No one else in the pack felt it. What scared you?"

"The ghost," I told him, then let out my breath in a gusty sigh. "And the vampire."

He coaxed the whole story out of me. Then he sighed. "Only you could go to Spokane and get bitten by the one vampire in the whole city." He didn’t fool me. For all the amusement in his voice, I could hear the anger, too.

But if he was pretending, I could pretend. "That’s pretty much what Stefan said. I don’t think it’s fair.

How was I to know that Amber’s husband’s best client was the vampire?"

Adam gave me a rueful laugh. "The real question is why didn’t we suspect that’s what would happen. But you are safe now?"

"Yes."

"Then it’ll wait until you get here."

He hung up without saying good-bye.

"So," I said, "tell me what Blackwood can do to me now that he’s fed off me twice."

"I don’t know," Stefan told me. Then he sighed. "If I have exchanged blood with someone twice, I can always find him, no matter where he goes. I could call him to me – and if he is near, I could force him to come to me. But that is with a true blood exchange – yours to me, mine to you. Eventually… it is possible to force a master-slave relationship upon those you exchange blood with. A precaution, I suppose, because a newly turned vampire can get nasty. A simple feeding is less risky. But your reactions are not always the usual. There could be no ill effects to you at all."

I thought of Amber, who had been feeding the vampire for who knows how long, and her husband, who could be in the same condition, and felt sick. "Out of the frying pan and into the fire," I said. "Damn it."

Okay. Think positive. If I hadn’t gone to Spokane at all, the vampire would still have had Amber and her husband, only no one would have known. "If I was unconscious, could he have forced a blood exchange?"

He sighed and slumped in his seat. "You don’t remember him biting. That doesn’t mean you were unconscious."

I wasn’t expecting it. I hadn’t had one since leaving the Tri-Cities. But I managed to pull over, hop out of the van, and make it to the barrow pit at the side of the road before throwing up. It wasn’t sickness… it was sheer, stark terror. The panic attack to end all panic attacks. My heart hurt, my head hurt, and I couldn’t stop crying.

And then it stopped. Warmth ran through me and around me: pack. Adam. So much for not bothering Adam’s wolves, who were already unhappy about me, with my troubles. Stefan wiped my face off with a Kleenex and dropped it to the ground before picking me up and carrying me back to the car. He didn’t put me in the driver’s seat.

"I can drive," I told him, but there was no force in my voice. Pack magic had broken the panic attack, but I could still feel them all waiting and ready.

Ready to rescue me again.

He ignored my feeble protest and put the old van in gear.

"Is there any reason why he’d have simply fed from me and not done a blood exchange?" I asked, more out of a morbid desire to know everything rather than any real hope.

"With a blood exchange, you can call upon him as well," Stefan said reluctantly.

"How many? Just one exchange?"

He shrugged. "It varies from person to person. With your idiosyncratic reaction to vampire magic, it could take a hundred or only one."

"When you say I could call him. Does that mean he’d have to come to me?"

"A vampire’s relationship to those he feeds upon is not an equal one, Mercy," he snapped. "No. He could hear you. That is all. If you have blood exchanges with all of your food"  –  he bit out the word – "the voices in your head can drive you mad. So we only do it with our own flocks. There are some benefits. The sheep becomes stronger, immune to pain for a brief time – as you know from your own experiences. A vampire gains a servant and eventually a slave who will willingly feed him and take care of his needs during the day."

"I’m sorry," I told him. "I didn’t mean to make you angry. I just have to know what I’m up against."

He reached over and patted my knee. "I understand. I’m sorry." The next words came slower. "It is shaming to me, to be what I am. The man I was would never have accepted life at the expense of so many. But I am not he, not any longer."

He passed a semi (we were going uphill). "If he was just feeding from you because you were convenient, then he probably didn’t do an exchange… except…"

"Except what?"

"I don’t think that he could have blocked your memory so well if it wasn’t a real exchange. A human, yes. But you are strong-willed." He shrugged. "Most Master vampires feed off their get – other vampires. Blackwood will tolerate no other vampires in his territory, and I don’t know that he has any get himself. Maybe he makes up the difference by exchanging blood whenever he feeds."

I mulled over what he’d told me, then dozed a little. I woke with a start as we took the exit onto Highway 395 at Ritzville. Only a little over seventy miles until we got home.

"He won’t be able to coerce you if you find another vampire to tie yourself to," Stefan said.

I looked at him, but he was staring intently at the road – as if we were threading through the mountains of Montana instead of gliding down an empty stretch of mostly flat and straight pavement.

"Are you offering?"

He nodded. "I am perilously short of food. The exchange will feed me better, and I won’t have to hunt again for a few nights."

I thought for a minute. Not that I was going to do it, but there was more to his offer – with vampires, I was learning, there usually was. With Stefan that didn’t necessarily mean that he was hiding some benefit to him.