Called By Blood

Chapter 3

Helena woke with an empty space beside her. Alex dressed at the bedside, illuminated by nothing more than the glowing blue face of the alarm clock. Drugged with sleep and sex, she could barely speak, much less lift her head off the pillow. "Wus up?"

"Sleep. I have to be back to the hotel."

There was a crispness to his voice that she didn't recognize. It brought her awake and she sat up, rubbing her eyes. It wasn't even dawn yet. "Umm, do you want some coffee or something?"

"No, I have to go. It's a work thing."

His tone was clipped. She tried not to take offense, but it was hard. "Don't tell me you're one of those workaholic types. If we get married, I don't want to have to schedule face time with you on your BlackBerry."

He passed his hand over her head. "No, never."

"But it's so early."

He tied off a boot and sighed. "I have a 6:00 a.m. conference call with Brussels. I need my laptop, I need to review some papers, I really have to go now."

He's lying. Helena frowned. Why did she think that? He gave her an apologetic kiss. His lips were hard—he was nervous. "I'll make it up to you tonight."

Helena could not help pressing, testing. "Do you have to work all day? I don't. We could…I don't know, have lunch, go somewhere. I could show you the highlights of Boulder, it's not New York, but—"

"Helena." There was that sigh again. "I can't see you until five. I'll miss you all day long. But I have to go now." He shrugged into his long overcoat and began to walk away.

She ran after him, dragging the quilt with her. "Wait, hold on. What's going on, Alex?"

"Nothing. I told you—"

"You're lying."

His lips twisted into a bitter little smile. He was lying. "We'll talk tonight. I'll explain everything."

Helena's heart froze. Something was wrong. "Explain now."

"No."

She blinked and he was at the front door, his hand on the knob.

"I have to be in my hotel room by six, Helena. That's the truth. I swear I will be back here just after five. You have to trust me."

Helena clutched the quilt around her, her head aching with confusion and threatening tears. Trust? Last night he had forced his way into her heart and now—weirdness. Lies. Of course there would be weirdness. Of course he was too good to be true.

In three angry strides he was back in front of her, squeezing her shoulders. "Say you believe me."

"Believe what, Alex? Believe you can't wait to get out of here? Believe that I'll never see you again?"

His hands hurt her shoulders. "Believe that I love you."

Love? Right. The tears started. She couldn't help it. Her cynical inner voice, the one that always watched and never helped, said, What a pathetic scene. Alex took her face between his hands and licked away her tears. She broke away and grabbed her bag from the entryway table, found one of her cards and thrust it at him.

"Go. Go wherever you have to go so bad. But call me later today and we'll decide if you should come back tonight."

His head did a funny twitching thing. "If?"

Jerk. Arrogant jerk. "I said 'if'."

"I'm coming back tonight."

"You can't lie to me and boss me around and put me off and expect that I'll play nice with you. I'm not your doormat."

The son of a bitch actually glanced at his watch. He couldn't even keep his mind on fighting with her. Boiling over, she shouted, "Get the hell out of my house!"

Next thing she knew, she was against the wall and he was all over her, his mouth bruising hers. She slammed her fists against the sides of his head. Blood ran between their searching mouths and fed a current of desire so powerful that it hurt, need which ripped a trail from her mouth down to her aching, empty cunt. The quilt was gone. She was naked under him. His sweater tore at her tender nipples. One of his hands parted her thighs. The other opened his fly.

Oh yes—oh no—oh God.

His eyes wild, he caught her right hand and wrapped her fingers around his pulsing cock. "I need you."

"Tell me why you're leaving."

In answer he kissed her and kept kissing her, his cock and her fist pressed against her belly. Even though she wanted to shove him away, to hold on to some pride, she couldn't help but kiss him back. To take what she could before the cold aftermath closed in. The inevitable pain.

"If—" She started to say "If I let you come back," but he took hold of her chin.

"When."

"If!"

"Never." Eyes wild, pained, he shook his head. He lifted her right knee and guided her hand, still holding his cock, between her legs. "I won't leave." His voice was as tortured as his expression.

She could have run. Could have hit him. Done anything. But she succumbed to the emptiness in her. The urgency in him. He was a burning brand. She took him inside, wrapped herself around him with a low, miserable moan.

He thrust into her again and again. Breaking her down. Until there was nothing between them but unbound need. The pictures around them swung on their hooks.

No man had ever made her feel this way. No man. Ever. Never again. Glass shattered all around them, and she shattered too. Sobbing, jerking against him, biting into the thick wool of his coat. He was leaving. He wouldn't come back.

Next thing she knew, she was on the floor, surrounded by broken glass and bent picture frames. The quilt was over her and through the open door she saw Alex sprinting down her drive like he was running for his life.

Alex had parked his new rental car maybe a quarter of a mile away—there were no blocks to measure by out here in the hills and hollers. The idea being not to draw police attention. Now he cursed his caution. As he ran, he checked his watch every few seconds, as if that would help. The hotel wasn't too far away. This early, he could speed, run a few lights, drive straight into underground parking and he'd be fine.

But this was way too close. Crazy close. He'd kill himself over this woman. He'd kill himself with his own stupidity. When she told him not to come back, he lost it. Just lost it. And gave her another reason to hate him.

Or did she? He remembered her arms around his neck, her voice in his ear, urging him on. Or was that a fantasy?

Distracted by these thoughts, he rounded a bend and ran straight into the path of a police cruiser. It screeched to a stop. Two cops jumped out of the cruiser, weapons drawn.

"Freeze," said one. "Let me see your hands."

Alex put his hands up. Bullets killed vampires. Enough of them did, no matter what the bullshit myths said. "What's this about?"

"Do you live in this neighborhood, sir?"

The sky was an ominous shade of violet, a color that made him sick with dread. This would be a great time for some vampiric mind control trick, but that took focus and he couldn't think straight. His cock was wet with Helena, the taste of her blood was in his mouth. He was more like an animal than a master of the night. All the small hairs on his body were standing up, warning of a threat that had nothing to do with the police. He breathed in explosive gasps and grasped for a plan.

"Hands behind your head."

Alex obeyed. A siren sounded far away, but coming up the road. Backup. One cop approached him with cuffs, the other covered him from a distance.

The cop moved behind him. "Do you have ID?"

"In my pocket."

Exploding into action, he sent his elbow into the cop's throat and flew toward the other, toward the bullet, which whistled by his ear. He was on the cop before he could pull the trigger a second time. A second later he was crouching in the trees by the side of the road. What the hell was he supposed to do now? How could he drive his car down the road with cops coming up it?

Pink streaks were breaking over the horizon and the sleeping town was just beginning to stir under brilliant color. Motherfucking true dawn. He'd only seen the waking sky from his loft windows, with his fingers on steel shutters, ready to pull them shut.

And now he was out in the middle of goddamn nowhere with cops on his heels. A house sat higher up the hill, a few golden lights burning in its windows, the smell of frying ham drifting out of the kitchen. It would have a basement. He turned toward the house, got within twenty feet of the basement window, only to hear two big dogs barking inside.

This was not going to work. He thrust his hand into his pocket and checked for the space blanket there. It was not as reassuring as he hoped it would be, but it was something.

Far below, down on the road, the cops were dragging themselves to their feet. As they found their bearings, they pointed at the line of his footprints in the virgin snow.

What in the hell are you doing? The voice in his head didn't sound so much like his own as his brother Gregor's. Get off the ground!

He made a running leap at the nearest tree, a tall pine. He clung to its rough, sappy bark like a goddamn Koala bear. Breathe. Move. He leapt from it to the next tree, and the next and the next. Goddamn suburbs. It wasn't even a real forest, just a piece of land that had not been built on yet. It was too close to the road, too close to houses, and seriously lacking in caves and ravines. He dropped down on an outcropping of rock and ran along it, leaping from boulder to boulder, putting distance between himself and his tracks.

Once his mind wasn't in the way, his body reveled in action. Every movement flowed from instinct and he ate up ground.

The first searching fingers of the light streamed out over the distant plains. He'd only seen it on TV. The white light was cruelly beautiful. It burned blue trails across his retinas. He reeled to a halt. There was no more time. There were no more options. Dropping down to the ground, he began to dig with two hands like a dog. There was only about a foot of snow, and under that a layer of pine needles. He clawed through that, making a shallow…pit. Pit, not grave. Pit.

He shook the space blanket out of its wrapper. The morning breeze caught it and made it crackle and flap horizontal to the ground. It weighed nothing at all. It was meant for brief use, a dash from building to building, for instance, not as all-day protection. There was no telling how long he could last beneath it. He tucked it around himself and sat down in his…pit…and started to bury his legs in a mixture of dirt and snow.

As he did, the sun cut through the trees and hit his face. The burning began. His eyes watered with the pain, but he kept scraping up snow, piling it over himself, leaning back bit by bit, making an insulating layer of snow over the blanket that might make the difference between life and slow cremation. The skin on his hands broke out in blisters. Finally he was flat on his back, the blanket over his face a faint shield. He shoved snow over his head, scraping it against his sides with his arms. When he could do no more, he wiggled his arms into the blanket. His hands throbbed as they defrosted and his face felt even worse.

It's going to be okay. After a couple of calming breaths, he managed to cast a weak warding charm over his hiding place. Hopefully it would hold. The sun was enough of an enemy for one day.

He heard more sirens and voices in the distance. In a few minutes more, the sounds and vibrations of feet passed back and forth near his hiding spot. All the while, the sun grew stronger and stronger. It was hard not to groan, not to cry with the pain of it. It passed through the snow and burned through his shoes, which were not beneath the blanket. It beat against the aluminum, seeking entry, the heat blistering. It was not even seven yet. What would it be like at noon?

Goddamn sunny Colorado. Where else would it be so bright in January? Paris, London—they'd be socked in with a gloom so thick he could almost walk around by daylight. New York was rich with shadows no matter what time of year. Somehow he would have to convince Helena to come to New York. Boulder was not his city. He shifted uneasily under his heavy blanket of snow. Everything hurt. Yes, she'd move to New York, just as soon as she'd finished disemboweling him.

The footsteps and voices faded away. He heard one, two, three engines start, and the crunch of tires on gravel. The search moved on.

This exact scenario was his worst nightmare. It was every vamp's nightmare, but it was his special fear, the one that made him scream for his mother night after night as a child.

The phone in his pocket buzzed. The phone! It could be his way out. Cursing through the pain, he eased his crisped hand under his coat and brought the phone up along the side of his face and strained to see the number out of his peripheral vision.

It was his parents' number, which meant it was his mother, because his father never initiated a phone call. The phone had to be thrust into his hand, and then he always regarded it with suspicion, like it was a weasel or something.

"Ma?"

"Sasha! Sashka maia. Thank God I hear your voice. Are you hurt? What is this bad feeling that wakes me?"

What a horrible thing to have to tell your mother. I'm on the gallows. I'm strapped to the electric chair. "I'm caught out, Ma." It was hard to talk—his lips felt funny, misshapen. Maybe they were blistering.

"Oh, my baby! Where are you?"

"Under a space blanket and a few inches of snow. Do we have any friends in Colorado?"

"Colorado? No, who among us would live in a cowboy state up high next to the sun? I will send your brothers, but when? They can't move for hours."

Something changed outside. A sudden ratcheting up of the heat. Nothing blocked the sun any longer, not a tree branch, not a cloud, not a shadow. Every fiber of his body screamed to run away from the pain—to sprint for shelter or greet oblivion. But intellectually he knew he had a slim chance to survive if he stayed still and waited it out. It took every ounce of will not to move. Jesus fuck it hurt. How would he survive this day?

"Sasha? Sasha!"

His mother's voice cut through the fog of pain. "Ma?"

"Don't scare me so! Are you on the plain or in hills?"

"Hills." Pain folding in on itself, thickening.

"Good. Then it will pass over you soon enough, go behind the hill, take the heat off. If you were on the plain…" She made a clicking noise with her tongue. "Do you hear me, Sasha? The sun will not be on you all day."

"I hear," he gasped.

Her voice turned silken with power. "Open your mind."

Obeying her, his mind followed hers home, to their house in Brooklyn. To their living room. His mother sat curled up in her favorite chair, the one with the worn pink chintz. She wore one of her tattered silk kimonos and a scarf around her head to keep her long, skunk-striped hair out of her face while she slept. With shaky hands, she lit a cigarette. Great, she had stopped smoking a year ago.

"You're brave, like your father." A long thin stream of smoke curled out of her lips while she studied him. Her shining eyes did not tell him what she saw when she looked at him. "He too was caught out once, and he survived with no space blanket, even. They did not have them then."

That made him suspicious, because his father had a set stock of stories that Alex and his brothers knew all too well. "Pop never told us that story."

"It is true, though." She flicked the ash from her cigarette a little too casually. "He survived and so will you."

"Ma, are you making that up? Are you lying to me? Holy shit! I am fucked!"

"Hush. Don't swear at your mother. I don't know if you are…fucked." A little smile crossed her lips as she said «fucked». She never swore. With her little finger, she lifted a piece of tobacco off the end of her tongue. Such a familiar gesture. A loved gesture. "You will be your own worst enemy today, you know that. You will want to give in to the sun."

"I know." Already a quick death was looking like a reasonable alternative to slow roasting.

"Live today. I will send Mikhail. Knyaz blood will heal you fast, no? Now listen close. I can't keep you here for long. You need to sleep. Go inside where the sun can't find you." Her voice wound around him like tendrils of water weed. "Your back is against mother earth. Imagine you are sinking into her. Underground you seek hidden water and cool mud. Now you are swimming through an underground stream, the water cold and black as sin. Further and further underground you go, until you surface in a cavern of great beauty, surrounded by sparkling stones and blind fish…"