Called By Blood

Chapter 6

"Will you excuse us, Helena?" Alex fought to keep his voice steady. Helena wasted no time in taking herself upstairs. As soon as he heard the door close, he said to his brother, "Like hell I'm staying."

Mikhail spun on his heel and began to stuff the few things he'd brought with him into his bag. "It's time I left. But you've tasted her. For you, there's no going back."

Alex stared at him in disbelief. He couldn't be serious. "You're leaving me here. Alone. Like this."

"Little brother, I'm leaving you and I'm forbidding Vamp Air to take you as passenger without my permission."

Vamp Air was what they called the private charter service that a handful of vamp families shared, but in which the Faustin family held a controlling interest. Regular commercial air travel made their kind nervous, what with the every present threat of layovers and delays. Vamp Air planes came with special fittings on the windows and sympathetic, highly paid human crews.

To escape this godforsaken state, Alex would break open his piggy bank and charter his own plane and pray to hell the pilot was trustworthy. But he was so weak he couldn't afford the slightest bit of exposure. And he looked like Freddy Kruger.

"You asshole."

"I know you had no choice, but still, you drank from her. You will taste nothing but dust and ashes until you make her yours. You know this."

Mikhail didn't know half of it. Helena was not going to accept this. Alex wanted to hug himself and rock against the horror of it.

"Misha, I can't stay here. It's breaking her. Can't you see that? She can't even look at me without twitching. All she does is scrub the floors. She's not sleeping, either. Her dreams are a mess."

Mikhail squatted in front of Alex so he could fix him with a hard look. "Why are you hearing her dreams? You've listened to her blood? You've started the bonding?" Mikhail's hands shot out as if he intended to throttle him, but he stopped himself just in time.

"You perfect idiot." He lowered his hands. "You tasted her even before you were burnt. Knowing the story of Roland. Knowing what happened to Gregor. I can't even feel sorry for you now."

Out of pride alone, Alex kept hold of Mikhail's gaze. Yes, he was an idiot. That was obvious or he wouldn't be sitting on a mildew-afflicted sleeping bag in a suburban basement shedding skin while his bride was upstairs having a nervous breakdown.

Mikhail wasn't mated so it was easy for him to stand in judgment. He didn't know what it was like to hold his destined wife in his arms. He didn't know how funny and sweet Helena was, how she'd yielded under his hands from the first moment, how perfectly their bodies fit together. It had been easy enough that ecstatic first night to believe they would be together forever. Easy enough to take her blood as an act of faith.

He'd screwed up. Helena was freaking out for good reason. And that was precisely why he had to get the hell away and give her some space.

Mikhail cocked his head at Alex, his eyes narrowing to pale slits. "You think you'll make yourself pretty again and return to court her as if nothing has happened?" He gave a short bark of laughter. "We are monsters, Alex. You and Gregor pretend we are not, but your little human sees the truth."

"And that truth is too much for her! Goddamn it. This is not all about me." Alex pushed to his feet. Tears for Helena welled in his eyes and spilled like acid over his raw skin. The pain of it brought even more tears to his eyes. "Fuck!"

Blind, Alex spun around in pain and frustration, striking out at the air, each of his wild gestures tearing tissue-thin skin. "Fuck!"

Too weak to pull off a respectable tantrum, he fell to his knees exhausted after a few seconds. When Alex's breathing slowed, Mikhail continued speaking as if nothing had happened. "You can't fool her or seduce her. You must make her love the monster you are. That is your only hope."

Mikhail was never just a brother. He was the prince of New York. Always perfect. Always exerting authority over lesser sorts. Alex wanted to drive a fist through his face. Once, just once, he'd love to see him lose it. See him on his knees.

Mikhail's upper lip twitched, revealing a bit of fang. Alex flinched, realizing Mikhail might have caught the direction of his thoughts. He could, sometimes. But Mikhail resumed his usual impassive expression. "I'll leave you now."

"Don't." Alex crawled in front of him, naked, exhausted, pathetic. Past pride, he raised his hands in the gesture of formal supplication, something he'd never done before, but he'd seen plenty of times. "Knyaz, I beg your mercy."

Mikhail studied him for a long, tightly drawn moment, during which Alex remained frozen, his hands out, his eyes pleading. Take me home, Misha. I need to be in my own place. I need my family. I need my donors. Please don't leave me like this.

With a small shake of the head, an almost imperceptible negation, Mikhail made a sign of blessing. "God be with you, little brother."

In a blink he was gone.

"How am I going to feed myself?" Alex shouted after him. "Just what the hell am I supposed to do?"

A little while later he knew what he had to do and made his way to the top of the stairs, shuffling like an old man. Helena would be wondering about the shouting, no doubt. Her office was just to the left of the basement door, but she wasn't in it. Reluctant to enter her space without permission, he stopped at the top stair and knocked on the open door. Her dog trotted down to bark at him.

The noise made him wince. "Shh."

Helena followed her dog down a few moments later. She was dressed in sweats and held a quart of chocolate ice cream in the crook of her arm. Her eyes were ringed with shadows. They flicked over him obliquely, taking in his relative position and condition before coming to rest on some point just behind him. She was good at not looking at him.

"Do you need something?"

"No. Yes." Suddenly chilled, he pulled the bag more tightly around his shoulders and winced at the pain of it. He stood one stair down, making Helena the same height as him. So not only was he a walking piece of beef jerky wearing an orange sleeping bag, but he'd shrunk too. "Mikhail has gone home. He left me behind."

Her eyes went round. "Why?"

"He wants me to—" Alex sighed, searching for words. "He wants me to be accountable for my own mistakes. But I told you I was leaving, and I will. I just have to ask you if you would mind if I stayed down here for two or three more days. I'm not strong enough to go out in the world yet."

Her mouth tightened. Clearly she'd already fallen in love with the idea of him clearing out, and was trying to imagine how she'd live through this delay.

"But if that makes you uncomfortable, I'll—" What the fuck would he do? Make do. Somehow. Find the seediest hotel on earth with a blind manager. Ordinarily he could disguise his appearance, but in his weakened state it was too hard to create even a simple illusion. What he needed was to spend a few days eating as much as he could. It was the only way to get back on his feet.

Reading his thoughts, Helena said, "How are you going to eat without Mikhail?"

Alex hesitated.

Helena took a step backward.

"Not you!" Alex cried, as horrified as her. Scully circled her feet protectively. Scully was pretty hefty for a little dog, he realized.

"Why are you looking at my dog like that?"

Alex swallowed. "I'm not going to eat you or your dog. Okay?" But maybe someone else's dog.

"What else are you going to eat if you can't leave the house?"

"I didn't say I wouldn't leave the house. I just can't show myself to the world, you know? Airports. Rental car agencies. I can't do that for a few days."

Her voice thick with revulsion, Helena repeated, "What are you going to eat, Alex?"

"Anything I can." He spat out the words. There it was, the truth, like Mikhail wanted. He was a monster. Monsters couldn't call for take-out when they didn't feel well. He was going to stagger out into the night, naked because he couldn't drag clothes over his tattered flesh, and he was going to search this godforsaken affluent woodsy fucking neighborhood for anything with a heartbeat. Dogs, cats, raccoons, rats, mice, birds, whatever he could find. Humans too, if possible, but it would have to be by some odd chance encounter, because he was too weak to enthrall them or take them down by force.

"You're going to eat my neighbors." Her teeth chattered as she spoke.

"Ah, Christ." Too tired to stand any longer, Alex slid down the wall to sit on the top stair, just inside the shadows. "We don't kill when we feed. Do you know that?"

The smaller creatures he'd kill, but she didn't have to know about that. He didn't even want to think about it. His jaw clenched with distaste as he imagined sucking on a rat.

She shook her head. "How should I know anything at all about this stuff?"

"So you thought Mikhail was on a killing streak? Was the local news reporting dead bodies all over the CU campus?"

Again she shook her head, but her chin lifted. "Your brother wouldn't leave tracks. He's not the type."

Alex caught the emphasis. "Unlike me."

With unexpected venom she said, "You leave tracks everywhere."

It stung, but he didn't know what to say. Instead he went back to his original point. "Me, my family, all decent vampires, feed in one of two ways. They either hunt, which means we draw a pint or two from an unsuspecting victim and let them go, or we turn to willing donors."

"Willing? For pay?"

"For pleasure."

Helena slid down the wall as he had, coming to rest across the hall from him. The light from her office bathed her face in white light. The hall walls were white, and the carpet too. Her sweats were white. She lived in an unstained world.

She leaned forward, her cheeks pale, her blue eyes as cold as Mikhail's. "Did you suck my blood the first time we had sex?"

"Yes."

"I knew it." Her lips curled in disgust. "When I was coming, right?"

He nodded.

"In my most vulnerable, trusting moment you attacked me."

"Feeding isn't an attack. It's sharing."

"Seems like a funny one-sided kind of sharing to me."

"At the time you didn't mind it at all. I'd go so far as to guess that at the time, you were having the biggest orgasm of your life."

"That's not the point. The point is I didn't give you permission to do any such thing."

"Did I ask your permission to kiss you, to eat you out, to fuck you?"

"Beg your pardon, but I think drinking my life blood is a little different."

"Well I don't!" Alex felt like shit. Inside and out. He was born a blood drinker. He'd never tried to defend the practice. Never had to. But here in front of Helena, with her acting like goddamn martyred Joan of Arc, it seemed indefensible.

"I wanted you. All of you. I can't take you by halves. And you wanted it, too. You were begging."

"Oh, it's my fault. I was asking for it."

"I'm a predator. I respond to signals."

"It must be convenient to be a predator among all of us stupid sheep. You can do whatever you want, take whatever you want."

"It is what I am." It was harder for him to say it than for her to hear it. Each word was a nail in his coffin.

"What you are is dangerous!" Helena jumped to her feet, looking like she was ready to come over and do a little more damage to his face.

"Helena MacAllister, I swear by all that I hold sacred that I would never hurt you by sharing your blood. I would never drain you dry, I would never pass you a disease, I would not make you a vampire, a slave, a mommy, whatever it is you're thinking about."

Trembling, her fists clenched, she restrained herself from hitting him—out of disgust more than mercy, he was sure. She addressed her next words to the carpet between them. "Oh, you swear? And tell me, just what does a vampire hold sacred?"

"Fuck you, Helena."

The silence that followed was the silence that followed a bomb blast, the long pause before the sirens began to wail. It hadn't been a casual fuck you. He hadn't meant to make it a curse, but his fear and frustration wrapped the words with power. If it sounded like a curse to him, it sounded worse to her.

Could I possibly make myself any more repulsive?

He had to leave before he hurt her again. But before he could open his mouth she said, "Don't you dare speak to me like that."

"I'm sorry." It was inadequate, but he was sorry. For everything.

Her eyes glittered fiercely. "I shouldn't have said you held nothing sacred. I don't know that. I don't know you at all." She swiped away her tears. "You can stay down here tonight and tomorrow night. That's it. I don't want to see you. I don't want to talk to you."

Alex tried to say, "No, I'm leaving now." It would have been dignified. But the hurt, damaged part of him was so relieved to have somewhere safe to sleep that he couldn't object. He said, "Thank you," but his voice was too low and she ran away too fast.

Helena retreated to the kitchen, sat down at the bar, and began to laugh. It was either that or cry. She'd been bickering with a vampire. Weren't you supposed to go after them with stakes? Instead she accused him of violating her boundaries.

That's when she realized she wasn't frightened anymore.

From the moment she'd found him collapsed in her backyard to her first talk with him this evening, she'd been in a state of continual, existential terror. But when they quarreled, Alex, huddled in the shadows of the staircase, sounded just like a man. Not a blood-sucking denizen of the night, but a pissed off, defensive guy. One who was maybe scared too. He'd been a jerk, but so had she in some ways.

Just when she thought she'd run the gamut of bad relationships, she'd hooked up with a vampire. One who was less than honest, to put in nicely. One who expected not only that she'd marry him, but that she'd become a vampire as well. He wanted to feed off her. Talk about control issues. Talk about co-dependency. She'd had enough of that of with Jeff.

The thing was, she'd had good chemistry with Jeff, too. Maybe not as wild as her attraction for Alex, but then again, Jeff didn't have vampire mojo backing him. But from the moment she and Jeff had met during a ski weekend in Telluride they'd been glued to one another. He was gorgeous, successful, and a five-time Ironman champion. She thought she'd finally found Mr. Perfect. They moved in together after three months. Problem was she was never perfect enough for him.

In short, Jeff was controlling and manipulative. And she'd never be involved with another man like that again, even if she had to be celibate the rest of her life.

She unwrapped a frozen pizza, wondering what Alex would be eating that night. He'd said he wouldn't kill the neighbors. How reassuring. She didn't know her neighbors real well, and honestly didn't like a couple of them, but she didn't think they deserved to be sucked on. At the same time, he had to eat.

He's a giant parasite. She'd not defined it so clearly yet, but that was exactly what he was. How could he live with himself, stealing from other people every day just to live?

He couldn't go back to New York fast enough.

On his second night alone, Alex woke up with rat hair between his teeth, hating Mikhail. His phone held concerned messages from his mother and Gregor, but no one was petitioning for his return. His father could override Mikhail's decision, but had not. As usual, the Faustins held strong—even against one of their own.

Alex braced himself for another farcical, humiliating outing. The night before he couldn't find any dogs or cats outside. It was too cold. He'd peeked through windows at people watching TV and considered creeping up on them while they slept. But if they woke up, if they pulled a gun, if they hit him… The thought of being struck made him hunch over. He was nothing but raw flesh and exposed nerve.

Children were tempting, but if they saw him, they'd be scarred for life. He just couldn't do it.

That left vermin as the only menu option.

Suffice it to say he'd found enough to fill his belly, and that was what mattered. The details of that night couldn't be forgotten too soon. But on the way home, he'd sniffed out a squirrel nest that he could start with that evening.

Squirrel. Mmm.

Around ten, when he could count on most people being settled in for the evening, he crept from the house. Helena was out somewhere. The blood bonding, incomplete as it was, amazed him. Helena traced through his mind like a blip on his radar. At any given moment he could pinpoint her location and her mood—which was always somewhere on the spectrum from nervous to frightened. The further away she was, the less he knew. At that moment all he knew was that she was somewhere north of him, and if he had to find her, he could.

It still hurt too much to dress. Or to wear shoes. He stepped naked onto the ice-slick pavement outside the back door. The next step took him shin deep into sharp, granular snow. The wind bit into his skin. The only way to warm himself was to move and eat and keep eating until dawn.

Though people were scarce, he kept to the shadows, walking off road among the trees, ducking behind them when he spotted headlights. Though he did his best to walk carefully, tree branches scored his arms and poked at his eyes. He flared his nostrils. Where was that damned squirrel nest?

His mind drifted to better times. His loft. The big windows sparkling with city lights. His sofa, the black leather buttery under his fingers. Candlelight. A slow groove on the stereo. A happy woman sprawled under him, tiny bite wounds marking her pulse points. That was how a vamp ate. Not this bullshit.

Thing was the woman in his daydream didn't have a face. No matter how he tried, he couldn't call up the faces of his former lovers. He could only see Helena. He almost groaned remembering how her skin yielded, resisted, then broke under his teeth. The sweet wash of her blood over his tongue.

Dazed with memories, Alex stepped out of the trees and onto an embankment where the snow was thin. Three deer—no, they weren't deer. Too big. Moose? No, not that ugly. What the hell were they?

Whatever they were, they were huge—fucking huge—and they were right in front of him, nibbling on dry grass. One had horns that must have been six feet across. In unison they lifted their heads and stared at him with wide, startled eyes. Alex froze too, listening to the wet, sweet rhythm of their hearts, the swish of blood in their veins. As one, they turned tail and ran, and without thinking he took off after them.

What are you doing, Alex? The reasonable part of him, the New Yorker, knew he couldn't bring down a…whatever. Caribou? Even if he were well, he couldn't do it alone. But another part of him, the hungry, burnt part, didn't give a fuck. It wanted beast blood, and a lot of it. And that part of him seemed to have the steering wheel. So, feeling foolish and more than a little out of control, Alex began to stalk the whatevers. Reindeer?

They were harder marks than people, that was for sure. One snapped twig could send them bolting for a half mile, and it took him forever to catch up with them. He tracked them by nose and eventually found them in someone's backyard—if an acre of unfenced land could be considered a backyard.

The deer things looked surreal—and larger than ever—as they nibbled their way around a big jungle gym with three frozen swings and a slide piled with snow. He circled around the yard to get upwind of them. All the lights in the house were off.

Okay, what now, nature boy?

He really didn't know, or maybe he just didn't want to think about it, but he found himself selecting a strong, smooth log from the woodpile at the side of the house. One that felt right in his hands. Nervous, and beginning to salivate, he swallowed hard. The arousal lengthened his incisors, forcing him to pull back his lips and open his mouth slightly so he wouldn't cut himself.

In the same way that smiling can make you feel better despite yourself, the adoption of that particular, snarling expression focused Alex like nothing else. It reminded him that he was vampyr, and not just vampyr, but a Faustin.

He guessed he had enough strength for one sprint and one blow. After that, all bets were off. But he'd be damned if he'd spend another night creeping after vermin. He wanted what was in front of him and he wanted it with every fiber in his body.

Peeking around the corner of the house, he saw the one with the horns was closest to him. It was as big as a horse and looked like it had two coat trees growing out of the sides of its skull. That one he'd rather avoid. He waited for one of the smaller ones to circle around.

But while he watched, the…wildebeest?…raised its massive head and sniffed the air. Alex knew it was going to bolt, and so would the rest of them, and he might not catch them again before dawn.

Alex rushed forward, moving so fast that he'd be a blur to the human eye. It confused the deer thing too, because it didn't take alarm until he was right next to it. It saw him then, but by that time it was too late. He was already swinging the log like a baseball bat. It cracked against the buck's skull, loud and hollow sounding. The blow jarred his arms to the sockets.

Alex could see the rattled confusion in the deer thing's eyes. It hurt, but it didn't fall. Instead, it charged.

Alex scrambled backward, keeping one bare step ahead of the coat hooks of death.

Alex didn't experience any moments of spiritual clarity during this brush with mortality. It sucked. It sucked profoundly as he scampered for his life. He wanted to live. But he also knew it was funny. Fucking hysterical that he should die naked out here in the sticks, skewered by a really pissed deer-like thing.

Funny until his back slammed into a cold, rattling wall. A cheap aluminum storage shed. The buck rammed the shed with a deafening, metallic crunch, its antlers encircling Alex like a cage, the short points bruising flesh and bone.

An elk! Alex realized in a moment of perfectly clarity, memories of some long gone nature show returning to him in a final blessing. That's what it is! I'm being killed by a goddamn bull elk.

The elk pried its horns from the aluminum to come at him again. Just before he was impaled Alex wrested the log up and brought it down right between the elk's eyes.

It dropped like a sandbag.

He jumped on it, straddling the shoulders and leveraging the horns back to stretch out its throat. The carotid arteries and the jugular veins throbbed deep beneath the elk's thick, black ruff. The rest of its body was covered with lighter-colored, shorter hair, but to get what he wanted Alex had to rip his way through that coarse, musky mane, growling with frustration until he found flesh and pierced the carotid.

A fountain of blood struck Alex's cheek. He opened his mouth and drank as fast as he could. The elk struck out with its legs and tried to raise its head, but Alex shoved its head back down to the ground and kept drinking. The elk heaved a huge sigh of resignation, one that lifted Alex like a swelling wave, and then subsided.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

The heat of its dying body soaked into his chilled, needy bones. Its massive, pumping heart sent mouthful after mouthful of hot, gamey blood down his throat. As fast as he swallowed, he could not take it all in. It flowed out of his mouth and down his chest.

In the back of his mind he knew that someone might come out of the house to see what the noise was about, but he just didn't care. All that mattered was feeding.

Alex had never gorged on a single victim—not once in his whole life.

And he'd never killed to eat, either, except for the vermin the night before. Their squirmy little lives he'd gulped down as fast as he could, just trying to get it over with. But taking this noble creature, this adversary, into death swallow by swallow seemed both an honor and a sin.

When the blood slowed to a sluggish trickle, Alex began to weep. He knew he was blood drunk. That is, overfed, over stimulated and prone to melancholy as well as violence. He knew the symptoms, had seen it in the newly converted, but knowing didn't make him feel any better.

The elk gasped over and over, trying to draw oxygen into its collapsing system. Its drum-like heartbeat turned erratic. He clenched the elk's thick hair in his fists, lapping and sucking until he couldn't pull fresh blood up anymore. Then he just lay still, marking the last, fluttering protests of its mighty heart.

When it was over, he slid to the ground. Droplets of frozen blood studded the snow around him like rubies. Icy, pinpoint stars winked in the sky above him. He'd never been so sated in his entire life. It seemed possible he might never move again. But eventually the blood on his face began to itch. He rubbed some of it off with a handful of granular snow and found his way to his feet. Even dead, the elk was still regal. Alex bent down to touch it one last time, then walked away, dazed and lost. For a time he followed the twin tracks of the other elk, but then he veered another direction, his sense of Helena guiding him home. At first he walked slowly, then he began to jog as a surge of unexpected energy buoyed him up.

As a test, he decided to run flat out and see how far he could go. He thought he could run maybe fifty yards. Instead he ran all the way back to Helena's house, one thought beating over and over in his brain, I'm going to be okay.

Around what he guessed to be three in the morning, he slipped in the back door on the lower level, meaning to head straight down to the basement.

High on elk, he didn't bother to pinpoint Helena's exact location.

He figured she'd be asleep.

Not in her office, gaping at him in mute horror.

"Uh, hi," he said, giving her a little wave.