Хлоя Нейл: Friday Night Bites

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 muffled, 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 to the 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 embarrassment. 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 assured 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 shining, 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, wishing 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, I could 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 succumbed 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 relationship with Mallory. I also assume your relationship 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.”