Chicagoland Vampires - Friday Night Bites Part 35

The change. I was going through the rest of it.

I'd sobbed at pain that racked me, seizing muscle, gnawing at my bones.

And at some point in the midst of that change, I'd opened silver eyes and sought out the nourishment I knew, in that instant, that I would kill for.

And in that instant, as if he'd been watching, waiting, a wrist was placed before me.

My body shook with cold, and I heard a growl,my growl, before I tried to move away. There was whispering. My name. An incantation.

Merit. Be still.

The wrist was put before me again.

Ethan's wrist. I looked up into his own silver eyes. He gazed down at me, a lock of blond across his forehead, hunger in his eyes.It is offered. Willingly .

I looked down, stared at the beads of vermilion that slowly, so slowly, traced twin trails down his forearm, across his skin.

"Merit."

I gripped his arm in my left hand, his hand in my right. His fingers curled around my thumb. Squeezed.

His lashes fell.

I lifted his wrist, put my lips to his skin, and felt his echoing shudder of pleasure. Heard the earthy groan that accompanied it.

I closed my eyes.

Merit.

I drank.

The circuit closed.

When I came to, I was huddled in a ball, lying on my side in the cool, soft dark. I recognized the scent of it-I was at Mallory's house, in my old bedroom. Kicked out of Cadogan would have been my bet.

I blinked, gingerly touched my hand to my chest, the pain in my ribs now a dull ache. But the darkness-and the million sounds and scents that filled it-were suddenly choking, confining. I panicked.

I choked back a sob, and in the thick darkness around me heard myself scream for light.

A golden glow lit the room. I blinked, adjusted to the light, and saw Ethan in the cushy armchair across from the bed, suit neatly pressed, legs crossed, his hand drawing back from the lamp that sat on the table beside the chair. "Better?"

My head swam, spun. I covered my mouth. Voice m.u.f.fled, I warned him, "I think I'm gonna be sick."

He was up in a flash, putting a silver trash can from one corner of the room into my hands. Muscles contracted and my stomach heaved, but nothing came up. After minutes of retching, my stomach sore from it, I sat up, resting an elbow on the edge of the silver vessel, which was nestled between my crossed legs.

I risked a glance at Ethan. He stood silently at the end of the bed, arms crossed, legs braced, face completely blank.

After wiping the damp fringe of bangs from my face, I dared words. "How long was I out?"

"It's nearly dawn."

I nodded. Ethan reached into the interior pocket of his suit coat, pulled out a handkerchief, and offered it to me. Without meeting his eyes, I took it, dabbed at my eyes, my brow, then balled it into my hand.

When the room stopped spinning, I set the can down on the floor, brought my knees up, wrapped my arms around them, and dropped my forehead.

Eyes closed, I heard the trash can being moved, the creak of the armchair, and lambent sounds of the city around me. I guess that predatory sense of hearing had finally come online. I concentrated to shut out the background noise, tried to turn it down to a level that would still allow me to function.

Some minutes later, when the screaming had softened to a dull roar, I opened my eyes again.

"When you went down we brought you here-just in case."

Of course, I thought. What else could they have done? I was lucky he hadn't reported me immediately tothe Presidium, asked them to draw aspen and have me-as a danger to him, to the House, to the city-disposed of.

"What happened?"

Tears sprang to my eyes at the memory of the pain, and I shook my head against it. "Celina. She was outside the House. She wanted to test me." I shook my head. "One kick, Ethan. One kick, and I went down. I panicked, couldn't fight her." Tears spilled down my cheeks, which were warm from embarra.s.sment. The warnings he'd given me in his office hadn't worked. I was a failure. "I panicked."

"She hurt you." His voice was soft. "Again."

"And again on purpose. I think she wanted me to let her out."

Silence, then, "Let her out?"

I looked over. He was sitting in the armchair, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, body language inviting candor.

"I'm not . . . I'm not normal," I finally confessed and felt some of the weight of it leave my shoulders.

"Something went wrong when you made me."

He stared at me for a minute, unblinking, then said, with a strange kind of gravity, "Explain."

I took a breath, wiped a fallen tear from my cheek, and told him. I told him the vampire had somehow been separate from me, had a mind and will of her own, and had tried, time and again, to claim me. How, time after time, I'd fought her back down again, tried to keep her contained. And how, finally, the pain of Celina's single kick, her carefully crafted words, the doubt she'd sprouted in my mind, forced the vampire to the surface.

After a moment of silence, when he offered no response, I added, "I don't know what else to say."

I heard a choked sound, looked up, saw him with his elbows on his knees, head in his hands, blond hair spilling around them, his shoulders quaking.

"Are you laughing?"

"No. Not laughing," he a.s.sured me, then laughed uproariously.

Confused, I stared at him. "I don't get it."

He blew out a breath that puffed his cheeks, then ran his fingers through his hair.

"You attacked me. You attacked your Master, the one that made you, at least in part because the predator inside you was powerful enough to exist on its own-because the predator failed somehow to merge completely with your humanity. I'm not even sure how that's possible-biologically, genetically, metaphysically, magically."

He looked up at me, emerald eyes s.h.i.+ning, and his voice went a little lower. "We knew you'd be powerful, Merit. This was a complete and total surprise." He gazed absently at the wall beside me, as if watching the replay of memories there.

"It's happened before, you said? When the vampire has . . . separated?"

I nodded sheepishly, wis.h.i.+ng I'd spoken to him, to anyone, about this before today. When the fight and pain and humiliation I knew were probably in store could have been avoided.

"Since the beginning," I told him. "When you and I fought the first time, when the First Hunger rose, when I met Celina, when I staked Celina, when I trained with Catcher, when I fought Peter. But I never .

. .really let her out."

Brow furrowed, Ethan nodded. "That could tell us something-perhaps she, the vampire, was sick of being repressed, as it were. Perhaps she wanted airing out."

"I had that sense."

He was silent, then asked, tremulously, "What was it like?"

I looked up at him, found an expression of naked curiosity on his face. "It was like . . ." I frowned, picked at a thread in the blanket, trying to put it into words, then looked up again. "It was like breathing for the first time. Like . . . breathing in the world."

Ethan stared at me a long time, was quiet a long time, then offered softly, "I see."

He seemed to consider that for a long time. "You said Celina baited you, maybe tried to pull this reaction from you. How would she know?"

I offered my theory. "When I went to Red, Morgan's club, the first time, when she confronted me, Icould feel that she was testing me. The same thing you'd done in your office after I told you about the confrontation. Maybe she had some sense of it there? Some sense that my chemistry was off?"

"Hmm."

I wrapped my arms around myself. "I guess I succ.u.mbed to her glamour this time?" She'd so easily swayed me, made me look for Ethan, made me blame him for my hurt and confusion. As much as I'd like to blame my alienation from Morgan and Mallory on Ethan, even I could admit that those things had nothing to do with him. They were about me.

"The stronger the mind," Ethan said, "the less susceptible the individual to glamour. You have withstood it before, from her, from me. But this time, you were in pain, and you've had some setbacks in your relations.h.i.+p with Mallory. I also a.s.sume your relations.h.i.+p with Morgan is not . . . at its strongest."

I nodded.

"Glamour can catch us in a weak moment. Not to change the subject, Merit, but while you were out, it looked as if you experienced a portion of the change again," he added. "The chills, the fevers. The pain."

Ethan, of course, knew what the change felt like.

He also understood now the thing that I'd finally figured out. That despite the three days I'd spent making the transition from human to vampire, it hadn't completely worked.

And I had a guess why that had been the case.

"I wasn't going through it again," I told him. "This was the first full time, the completion of it, anyway."

His gaze snapped to mine, a question in his eyes. And I answered it, offering the conclusion I'd reached.

"I was drugged the first time I went through the change. After you bit me, drank me, fed me, you drugged me."

His expression blanked, eyes muting to forest green.

I continued, my gaze on his. "I know other vampires' changes were different from mine. I don't remember the things they remember. I was groggy when you sent me back to Mallory's house. It was because I hadn't fully shaken off whatever you'd given me. And whatever happened today, I remember more than I did the first time."

Including the fact that I'd taken his blood. That I had, for the first time, taken blood straight from another.

I'd taken blood from Ethan, gripping his arm like it was the ballast that would anchor me to earth. I'd searched his silvered eyes as I drank, as I cried, as I s.h.i.+vered from the inescapable pleasure of it, of the whiskey-warm essence that still flowed through me, that healed the wounds he'd inflicted and erased the lingering pain of Celina's attack.

Erased the pain, but not the memories.

"You drugged me," I repeated, not a question.

He respected us both enough to nod-barely a nod, more a closing of the eyes in answer-but it was enough.

And then he stared at me for a long, quiet moment. This time it wasn't the House Master who stared back, but the man, the vampire. Not "Sullivan," not Liege, just Ethan and Merit.

"I didn't want you to feel it, Merit." His voice was soft. "You'd been attacked; you hadn't consented. I didn't want you to have to go through it. I didn't want you to have to remember it."

I searched his eyes and found that to be truth enough, if not the whole of it. "Be that as it may," I quietly said, "you took something from me. Luc told me once that the change, all three days of it, was like a hazing. Horrible, but important. A kind of bonding. Something I could share with the rest of the Novitiates. I didn't have that. And that's put distance between us."

His brows lifted, but he didn't deny it.

"I'm not like them," I continued. "And they know it. I'm separate enough from them already, Ethan, with the strength, my parents, our weird relations.h.i.+p. They don't see me the same way." I looked down, rubbed my sweaty palms across my thighs. "They didn't before, and they certainly won't after tonight.

I'm no longer human, but I'm not like them, either. Not really. And I imagine you know what that's like well enough."

He looked away. We sat quietly together, gazes everywhere but on each other. Time pa.s.sed, maybe minutes, before I looked at him and he looked away again, guilt in his eyes. Guilt, I a.s.sumed, for hisforcing me to relive the experience, but also for precluding, however well-intentioned, the complete change the first time around.

Still, whatever the reason, there was nothing to be done about it now. Whatever his motivation, it was done, and we had more immediate problems.

"So what do we do now?"

He looked up, green eyes instantaneously widening. Surprise, maybe, that I wouldn't push the issue, that I would let it be. And what could I do? Blame him for trying to ease the transition? Berate him for the sin of omission?

Most importantly, wonder why he'd done it?

"About this, I've no idea," he finally said, his voice the flat tone of the Master vampire, whatever had pa.s.sed between us fracturing again. "If it truly was related to your incomplete change and the process is now complete, we'll deal with your strength, a.s.sess it. As to Celina, this would have been an added bonus of her Breckenridge game. Start a war between s.h.i.+fters and vampires, manage to capitalize on the fact that the Sentinel of Cadogan House is biologically . . . unstable." He shook his head. "You can't give her too much credit for being organized, for orchestrating plans. The woman is a master manipulator, a composer of vampiric drama. She knows how to set the stage, arrange her Goldberg machine, then release the trigger and let the rest of us run the game on her behalf." He glanced back at me. "She'll keep doing it. Until she brings us to the brink of war, whether with humans or s.h.i.+fters. She'll keep doing it."

"As long as she's here, until we can put her away again, she'll keep doing it," I agreed. "And we can't put her away until the GP understands who she is, what she is."

"Merit, you should resign yourself to the fact that, like Harold, the rest of them fully understand who and what she is. And that they accept that fact."

I nodded and rubbed my arms.

Ethan sighed and returned to the armchair. He sat down again, crossing one leg over the other. "And why, in this particular scenario, did she send you back to me?"

"To finish you off? So you or Luc would finish me off?"

"If you'd killed me, I'd be out of the picture-a Master out of her way. It would be convenient for her if I was gone. If you weren't strong enough to best me, she may have imagined that whatever punishment I offered would keep you out of her way."

More silence while I avoided asking exactly what he had in mind re: punishment.

Ethan broke the silence. "So, Sentinel, what's the next question?"

"Identifying her allies," I finally said. "She must be staying somewhere, maybe had financial or other connections who got her back to Chicago. We need to figure out who she's working through, and why they're allowing her to do it." I looked over at him. "Blood? Fame? A position in whatever new world order she has in mind? Or are these people who've always been her allies?"