Was a man, once, walked down a city street in a long black coat, hunched like he was cold, or hurting. He stumbled, slowed, head hanging for a moment, then picked up his pace again, coat held close around him and flapping feebly like a bird’s broken wing.
He rounded a corner, half-fell down a short
flight of concrete stairs to the door of a basement apartment, beat four slow knocks on
the peeling blue paint and slumped against the frame, breathing hard.
Shortly the door opened and a dark woman with tilted black eyes and high, broad cheekbones looked out into the dusk. Her impassive expression vanished as recognition set her eyes sparkling, she grinned a huge, satisfied grin and leaned on the opposite side of the doorway. Her teeth were very white, the canines longer than humans’ and much sharper.
“I love how you always come to me when you’re bleeding.”
“You know why.” His voice was soft, the usual melodies muted with pain.
She laughed. “Of course I do. Doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy it. Makes perfect sense, but you have to admit it’s funny.” Pulling back from the door, she made space for him to pass inside, then shut and locked the door behind him. Once past her, the apartment was small, lit well enough by decorative lamps and tall candles, with no facilities visible, a tile floor and a very large bed. There were no windows.
As he edged out of his coat and hung it on the coatrack by the wall, she leaned against the door, crossed her arms, watched with a frown. His vest wasn’t badly marked, but the tunic beneath showed red stains even on the dark green cloth.
“So who’d you run into this time? I think this is the worst I’ve seen you.”
“The winged sisters have become… recalcitrant, of late, in their relations to travelers.” He carefully toed off his boots and nudged them beneath the rack, hanging his tunic on top of the vest. She stared at the jagged gash visible across his broad chest when he turned around, bright and bloody against the pale skin, and her dark eyes gained a certain amount of intensity – not quite hunger.
“Harpies did that to you?” One black eyebrow arced high on her smooth forehead.
“… I did not say that.” He edged his pants the rest of the way down, stepped out of them, clenched his teeth as he bent to pick them up and fold them over another arm on the coatrack.
Watching the grimace as his movements pulled at the open wound, she shook her head. “You’re always so tidy.” The amused smile she got in return would’ve made her heart race, were it still capable of such action.
She openly admired his long, well-muscled legs – not to mention the rest of him – as he paced over to the bed and gracefully sprawled in the position least likely to put strain on his injury. Blue-black hair like sheaves of gossamer fanned out around his head. “The harpies,” he said after a moment, “would very probably have a considerable amount of difficulty trying to inflict damage on me.” He chuckled very quietly, deep in his chest, winced, sighed. “However. The sisters have allies, now, some of them rather powerful. It was one of the latter gifted me with this.”
Tilted black eyes widened and she moved to the bed with quick steps to look down at his wound. “Wow. That’s pretty impressive.” A small tongue darted out and flicked across her lips, probably unconsciously. “What the hell could do that to you?” She smiled inwardly at the thought that even distracted by his pain, he was still mustering roundabout answers.
“More than a few creatures,” he sighed, proving her point, and met her gaze steadily with deep golden eyes that politely asked when she was going to get on with it.
Grinning lazily, she pulled herself onto the bed with feline fluidity, bent over his chest and lapped at the blood, savoured the taste of rich sharp sweet copper. Beneath her he lay still, not even twitching from the pain her tongue had to cause him. She swallowed, shivered with almost sensual pleasure as the blood began to revitalize her inhuman body, and felt him relax slightly, sighing as he in turn fed off her pleasure. Taken by a sudden wicked urge, she licked a wider area clean, then sank her fangs a little way into an edge of ragged flesh where it was just beginning to heal, worrying it.
He jerked under her in unpleasant startlement, raised his head to look sternly down at her. “Araki!”
“Yes?” she drawled, wide-eyed and innocent as she drank greedily from the fresh flow. Gold eyes softened again and he smiled as he shook his head at her reprovingly.
“You know you should finish what’s already there. You’re supposed to wait until it heals before you bite.”
“Aww, but you taste so good! Yeah, I know,” she rolled her eyes as his gaze sharpened, bent to drink again, pointedly delicate. Warm, sweet, salt, metal, and that trace of something else, something that fed her like no other’s blood had, filled her senses and her mouth.
“Ah, Talithonyel,” she smiled, lifting her head a bare centimeter from his skin, “you’re lucky none of my kin know how delicious you are, or you would’ve been dead long since, drained to the bone.”
“I doubt it.” He gave that deep, quiet chest laugh again.
“Why? You were hurt this badly, why not worse? It’s a wonder you’re not dead yet, the way you play at being a god.” She lapped again at the pale, red-streaked skin, cleaned up the last traces.
“I do not play at being a god.”
“Yeah? Well what else do you call it when someone goes wandering from place to place pretending to be damn near invulnerable and hauling people’s hides out of the fire with strange and arcane powers?”
“Altruistic. And I do not use strange and arcane powers. I am merely… persuasive.”
A skeptical eyebrow lifted and she opened her mouth to speak, then gasped as he shifted subtly underneath her, bringing sharply to mind the hard, long body she lay on. Suddenly there was nothing in the world so important as getting her clothes off, not even drinking his intoxicating blood. Rolling off the bed, she yanked off her teeshirt, arching her back with boneless grace, skinned jeans and underwear off with remarkable rapidity. She was not wearing a bra.
Smooth mahogany skin rippled over slender muscles as she stretched, feral and sleek. Then quicksilver she was crouched on the bed beside him, slitted black eyes staring into his with a glimmer of desperation.
“What is this, Talith? I’m hungry, not for blood, I don’t – ” cutting herself off, she dove down to kiss him fiercely, dark hands skimming over his pale skin as if to absorb him into her palms. When she raised her head again, gasping for breath and flushed as if with fever, the golden eyes had a touch of sorrow in them.
“I did warn you, if you remember, when we first met. You have been drinking my blood for how long now?”
“Long,” she muttered.
“Did you think it would have no effect?” One long-fingered hand rose to stroke the side of her face, offering comfort. “You have changed, become some of what I am.”
“I didn’t think it was possible for anything to change a vampire!” she protested. “We’re already changed, and vampires are an old power.” Unconsciously her hands continued to stroke his ridged chest, slipping gradually down his ribs.
“There are some older than vampires, dear one,” he murmured. “Don’t worry, it should fade quickly after I leave.”
“Good.” She bent to kiss him again, and for a short while there was nothing but the play of dark skin on pale, sliding and twining, sharp breaths and the occasional impatient growl. Then suddenly she stilled again, brushed black tangles back from her face, stared down at him. “Why now? What triggered it?”
Apparently undistressed by this abrupt halt, his rich voice was calm and unhitching, belied by the amber heat in his tiger’s eyes. His hands continued to stroke along her back. “Either my presence or my blood tipped the final balance. Does it matter?”
She shivered under his hands, breathed carefully for a moment. “Yes. If it gets stronger the next time you come, it matters.”
“Ah.” His hands stopped moving. “In that case, I may not come again. I cannot promise you that it won’t strengthen with every drop of my blood that you consume; I believe it will.”
“You misunderstand,” she rasped, dark eyes burning, and lay down on him again to sink her fangs a short way into his shoulder. Startled comprehension lit his amber eyes, and he smiled a happy, joyous smile incongruous from someone being chewed on.
“I think I’m about ready for another lifestyle change,” she grinned fangily up at him, then ducked to drink again. There followed a period much more typical of their time together, which involved as much judo and clever wrestling moves as kisses. Limbs twined and entangled, long black hair mingled and fell into two pairs of eyes, the vampire and the golden-eyed man rolled over and over in a flurry of pale skin against dark. Strength matched against strength, tricks were countered by experience as they contested for control, and the one on top was not always winning.
A rather lengthy space of time later, when they lay quiet side by side, she grinned. “If you passed through the harpies’ territory, you must have just come from Lori, yes?”
“Possibly,” he conceded. “Why?”
“Oh, just working out your route. After all, you never tell me anything, so I have to figure it out for myself. I wish I could go where you go,” she sighed, shifting course with her thoughts.
“The paths between the worlds are unsafe for anyone with a home,” he reminded her. “Even vampires, much less humans. People who are changing rapidly into something else and do not yet know what it will be shouldn’t even consider the journey.”
“Yeah, yeah, only those who have a job to do there walk the paths. But you’ve never even told me what your job is!” Restless, she sat up, sweeping her hair back with quick, impatient hands, stared demandingly down at him.
Undaunted, he smiled back. “True.”
“So, what is it?” she asked, restraining the urge to roll her eyes. His evasiveness in answering questions had used to drive her crazy, but she’d since learned to tolerate it.
“Pulling people’s hides out of the fire, as I believe you put it.”
“But you said that was altruism!”
“And it is. It is, nevertheless, a task I have set myself.”
Slowly she shook her head. “And you say you’re not playing at being a god.”
“I am not.” His smile grew a little, brightened the room as he sat up and swung his legs off the bed to stand. The ragged gash in his chest that had still been sluggishly bleeding when he lay down had long been completely healed, as had the fang-marks in his neck and elsewhere.
“So, where you off to next?” She watched him cross the room to where his clothes
hung, climb into his pants. “
“
“You freed
“Ah, but that is another matter entirely. He owes me much, and it is not quickly repaid.”
Araki considered, not for the first time, how very well the black-haired man concealed the ruthless side of his adamantine will. A smile pulled her lips wide, she reached for her tee-shirt and wriggled into it. She wholly approved of that part of him, as she did most of the rest of him. Talithonyel wasn’t the only one in the room with a coldblooded streak, she thought, and snorted at her own bad pun. Temperature of her vampiric blood notwithstanding, she had to have a callous side to live from night to night in this city.
The golden-eyed man stepped into his boots, laced them up, took down his coat as the vampire girl slipped back into underwear and jeans. “How do you feel?” he asked, concern shining in amber and tigerseye.
“Like any normal Night’s Child,” she shrugged, raking fingers through knotted black locks. “Strong, fast,” she smirked, “beautiful, really really lucky and therefore sweaty…”
He laughed, shrugging into his coat, shook back his hair, smiled his gorgeous smile at her. “Good. The new hunger should have no reason to be triggered until next we meet. Then perhaps we will learn how much more you are likely to change.”
“You sure? I’m not gonna be overcome with uncontrollable lust in the middle of the street, throw myself at some ugly thug I’ll have to kill later?” She grinned, sharp and undeniably dangerous.
Gold eyes glittered laughter at her. “No more than usual, I think.”
“Oh, well that’s good.” One fang gleamed.
Sweeping his arms out to either side, black coat swirling around him, the tiger-eyed man bowed low and elegant, hair swinging forward to screen his face, but the smile was in his voice. “I leave you now, lady. Undoubtedly I shall return, as you wish it, but til then, be well.” He straightened, flashed her a warm golden glance, turned on his heel, coat flapping with his stride.
Hands buried in her hair again, combing the tangles out, Araki followed him to the door. She caught his elbow as his hand touched the doorknob, pulled him around and down for a last kiss. His eyes narrowed to amber flickers of laughter as he straightened again, pulling the door open.
“Hey, gotta give you something to remember me by, no?” she grinned up at him.
“You know I never forget you.”
“Yep, or any other you bed.” She snickered, unrepentant. “Listen, no getting killed before you get back here.”
“Yes, Lady Araki, at thy command I will endeavor not to die anytime soon.” Two pairs of dark brows arched in amusement as the man in the black coat stepped out the door. “Luck go with you.”
“And with you, boy.” The vampire woman stood in the doorway, watching him up the steps and out of her line of sight. “And with you,” she murmured, smiled, shook her head, turning back into her apartment. “Not that you need it, eh, Talith? You make your own luck.” She finished combing back her hair, changed her shirt, put on her black leather cuffs and jacket and her high-topped boots. Sliding a couple of silver cuffs onto her ears, she grabbed her wallet and the key and strode out the door. It was going to be a good night.