Makeda must have been near collapse to not consult with him about sleeping arrangements. Or perhaps she assumed the house was hers and he had another on the island. Either way, he had no desire to sleep on the floor. Shifting Makeda’s body to one side of the bed, he climbed in. There was plenty of room, and she was safe with him. He would wake before her anyway.
But when her eyes fluttered open at nightfall, Lucien still hadn’t left the bed.
“What are you doing?” she said.
Trying to understand why I still find you fascinating. Lucien raised a hand and moved an errant curl that had fallen over her face. “Observing you.”
Her eyes were wide. “I meant why are you in my bed?”
“It’s my bed, actually.”
“You mean—”
“There’s only one tukul on the island and only one bed. I don’t mind sharing with you. You’re a very quiet sleeper, and it’s a very wide bed.”
She said nothing, but he could tell she wasn’t pleased.
“It’s practical,” he said. “This way I can guard you. I will wake during the day if we’re disturbed. You will not. You’re completely vulnerable when you sleep.”
She glanced down at his bare chest. “Apparently.”
“Don’t insult me by implying I would violate you. One, you should know me better than that. Two, I would be a pariah among my associates for taking advantage of a newly turned vampire under my aegis, and three, my own sire would cut my throat if I ever violated a woman.”
He saw her shoulders relax. “Your mother would really do that?”
“Yes.”
“She sounds…”
“Harsh?”
“No. I wasn’t going to say harsh.”
But she didn’t expound on her original statement. They lay, openly staring at each other as rain fell on the roof of the tukul. The thatch rustled in the wind and the rain, but the reeds swelled to keep them dry.
“I prefer tukuls,” he said. “They’re very sensible. Ecologically sensitive. Efficient.”
“And the rain sounds lovely on the roof,” she said. “I’ve never slept in one before. I grew up in the city.”
“I don’t like cities.” He picked up another curl and rubbed it between his fingers, examining the weight and texture of her hair, which was extraordinarily fine. “Tukuls are light-safe too.”
“I know. I checked before I went to sleep.”
“Smart girl.”
“I’m a genius.”
“I know. I read Katya’s file on you.”
She paused and watched him play with her hair. “Don’t be impressed,” she said. “Genius is not an accomplishment.” Makeda frowned but didn’t move away from him. “Do you have a file too?”
The corner of Lucien’s mouth turned up. “I’m sure I have files in archives all over the globe.”
“Why are you doing this?”
He propped himself up on one elbow and continued playing with the curl he held. “I like your hair. Do you mind?”
“No, the Elixir virus,” she asked. “Why are you working on it? Curiosity?”
He considered how to answer her.
It killed my lover.
But that wasn’t true. Not really. The cancer would have taken Rada if the Elixir hadn’t come along.
I’m trying to save the world.
Arrogant. And fundamentally untrue. He was ambivalent about the world as a whole.
I’m obeying my mother.
It was accurate. It also made him sound like a child.
“I was visiting a friend—a former assistant—when I first heard of it,” he began. “She was dying. She had pancreatic cancer, and there was nothing more the doctors could do. Her family didn’t know who I was, but I visited her at night.”
“You cared for her,” Makeda said.
“Very much. And I couldn’t save her.”
Makeda shifted closer on the bed, and Lucien resisted the urge to take her in his arms. She wouldn’t be warm, but she would be soft. He coveted the weight of her body and imagined her head resting on his chest.
“We can’t save everyone,” she said. “We’ve all had to learn that.”
“True. But I wanted to save Rada. And then a man—a vampire—showed up and offered me a miracle. I didn’t think it would work, but it did. For a while. She had this unaccountable burst of health. The cancer disappeared. We…”
Makeda’s eyes grew wide. “You bit her, didn’t you?”
He nodded. “I thought I had lost her. But then she was back, and… I didn’t take more than a few drops. The bite wasn’t for feeding.”
Makeda allowed his confession to go unquestioned. “How are you alive?”
“Saba,” he said simply. “She drained my blood and gave me her own. I was not in good health when she brought me home four years ago. Saba healed me. Then she sent me out to find a cure for this poison.”
“You survived.” Her eyes turned inward. “Have you tested your blood?”
He followed her train of thought immediately. “Yes, that was my first thought. Unfortunately, because I received nearly a complete transfusion of my mother’s blood, my own immunity did not kill the virus. I simply had new blood.”
“What about human patients? A few have shown resistance.”
“Inconclusive.” He relaxed his head back on the pillow. “There are some humans who are naturally immune to certain viruses, and we do not understand why. Their immunity doesn’t seem to transfer to others.” It felt natural to talk with her this way. Head sharing a pillow and minds sharing ideas.
If you were sharing bodies, it would be even better.
He shifted away from her when he grew erect. He didn’t want to break the strange spell wrought by the rain and the dark night. He wanted to lay in bed and watch Makeda think. Watch the darting motions of her eyes and the slight movement of her lips when she formed an unspoken thought. She was fascinating.
And if he didn’t leave the bed soon, his predatory instincts weren’t going to be focused on anything as mundane as blood.
He leaned over and brushed a kiss over her lips before he could think too much about it. Then he rose and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “We should get to the lab. I want to show you around, and your notes should have been delivered during the day.”
He pulled on a shirt and stood, walking into the night before Makeda could get out a word.
❖
“I thought you said there were solar generators,” Makeda said.
“Yes, but I don’t waste the electricity,” he said. Florescent lights glowed over each workstation, far better than the smelly kerosene or oil lamps he’d once been forced to use in the lab. “Stations are lit. Lighting the whole building wastes energy. There are lamps for the rainy season.”
She walked into the laboratory and slowly turned, taking everything in.
Perhaps it wasn’t what she was used to, but the basics were still there. Besides, what they were working on involved unlocking her mind. For the moment, they were dealing in the theoretical, and Lucien didn’t need a modern lab to think.
“And computers?” she asked.
“No computers.” He shrugged at her wide eyes. “We can’t use them anyway.”
She made a disgusted sound. “Haven’t you heard of Nocht?”
Lucien scowled. “Is that the voice-recognition system Patrick Murphy’s labs are working on?”
“Yes. Every lab in Katya’s territory is using a beta version of the program. Even our lab in California. Did you see Ruben using it?”
His chin lifted. “I don’t need a machine to record my thoughts for me.”
“It goes far beyond voice recognition and data collection. It’s a complete operating system designed for voice. There are proprietary devices designed for vampires that run Nocht software, and it’s significantly faster. Even some humans are starting to use it exclusively.”
Interesting. “Is it cloud based?”
“Are you kidding? Can
you imagine any immortal trusting their information to a cloud?”
She had a point, but it didn’t make any difference.
“It doesn’t matter what is available in other places, Dr. Abel. You’ll have to make do with what we actually have. Anything more modern is going to be too close to human populations. Right now you are not to be trusted around humans, remember?”
She spun in circles, taking in the hanging wires and metal shelving. “I was expecting something basic, Lucien, not something from the nineteenth century.”
He crossed his arms. “That is an electron microscope in the corner, and I can assure you those didn’t exist in the nineteenth century. I know because I was alive then. You’d be amazed what real scientists could accomplish when they just used their minds.”
She put her hands on her hips and stepped closer. “Are you implying the hack-science boys’ club you were a part of a hundred and fifty years ago is somehow better or more thorough than a modern research lab? Weren’t you still using leeches?”
“At least we didn’t have to rely on machines to think for us.”
Makeda’s fangs dropped and a low snarl came from her throat.
His arousal was instant, and it made him angry. Lucien could admit he’d found Makeda attractive as a human, but he’d expected her appeal to lessen when she became vampire. The fact that it hadn’t irritated him, which made him perversely angry with her.
His voice was acid. “Supposedly you had some kind of brilliant breakthrough in your own home, so if you can’t think here—if you can’t sort through your ideas and theories in this lab from the twentieth century—then you’re a piss-poor scientist and your so-called breakthrough would have amounted to nothing.”
Her fangs shone in the light. “Screw you! I didn’t ask for this.”
“You’d rather you were dead?”
“If I have to spend my eternity dealing with your patronizing ass, then a sunburn sounds great!”
No.
Not acceptable.
Never.
Lucien grabbed her by the nape of her neck, brought her mouth to his, and kissed her.
CHAPTER TEN
When Lucien’s lips crashed into hers, every cell in Makeda’s body screamed at her to take more. She’d woken aroused and hungry. One hunger had been fed, but the other pulsed under her skin, begging to be released. With Lucien’s lips on hers, she was a creature of raw nerves.
He bent, never releasing her lips, and lifted her, pushing up her dress to wrap her legs around his waist. Then he gripped the curve of her bottom with one large hand. He was a big man. Taller than Makeda and muscular over his lean frame. Perfectly proportioned with wide shoulders and narrow hips she squeezed with her thighs. She pressed her body to his and felt his rigid arousal at the juncture of her thighs.
“Yes,” he groaned. “More.”
She lifted one hand from his shoulder and slid her fingers into the silky weight of his hair as he angled her mouth to take her deeper. His tongue invaded and was met with her own. He tasted the length of her fangs, and Makeda felt the hunger grow heavy in her belly.
She wanted him so much, and she hated her own weakness.
“I’m still angry with you,” she muttered through biting kisses.
“I know.” He bit her lip and sucked the blood into his mouth, groaning at the taste.
“But I want you,” she hissed.
“I want you more.” His hand tightened on her buttock, and he ground his pelvis against hers. “I don’t… do this.”
She licked out, tasting his neck. “You don’t seduce colleagues?”
“I don’t take vampire lovers.” He growled when she bit his neck, even though she didn’t break the skin. “I don’t… It’s not—”
“Shut up,” Makeda said, pulling his mouth back to hers.
He held her as if she weighed nothing. His muscles bunched and flexed under her fingers. His hands dug into her bottom and her lower back. If she’d been human, the bruising would have been extensive. The primitive creature that had taken residence under her skin approved, but her rational mind…
It was screaming at her.
The hand Makeda had buried in his hair moved to collar his throat. She forced him away with a hard shove, though he didn’t release his hold on her buttock or lower back. She was no longer the feral creature who had woken and attacked the first vampire she saw. She could be better—be stronger—than this.
Lucien asked, “What is it?”
Makeda stared at the dip of his suprasternal notch, aching to taste the delectable hollow between his collarbones. She didn’t. She wanted to, but she didn’t. She forced her fangs to retreat but wasn’t sure how successful she was. They still felt heavy in her jaw.
Her life in the past two weeks had become a marathon of self-control. The air around her tasted like temptation because she could always scent the faint smell of humanity. She felt controlled by her hungers. A captive to a body she was still learning. She was aware of every temptation at every point she was conscious. The hours she spent asleep terrified her.
Waking next to Lucien that night had terrified her. It had also thrilled her.
“I can’t do this,” she said.
“Why not?” His voice was a low rasp. He tried to kiss her neck, but she pushed him back, her hand a vise around his throat. “We both want this,” he said. “We’ve wanted it for months. All the fighting was just—”
“No.” She took a breath, began naming bones in her mind. “I cannot do this. Let me down.”
“If you’re afraid—”
“I’m not afraid.” Her temper spiked. “Let me down, or I will hurt you.”
He dropped his voice and whispered, “You could try.” Then, very deliberately, he relaxed the hand on her buttock, moved the hand from the small of her back to her hip, and lowered her to the ground, dragging his erection over her abdomen. She shuddered, need gnawing at her belly, but she took a careful step back.
“What game are you playing, Makeda?” Lucien’s voice was hostile again. “You fight with me. Kiss me—”
“You kissed me.”
“You kissed me back.” He looked down at her with the dispassionate expression that made her want to scream and tear at his chest until he bled. Then she’d lick at his skin until the wounds closed. Then she’d bite him again.
“I’m completely out of control,” she muttered, closing her eyes. “I’m mad.”
“You’re not insane.”
Without another word, Makeda spun and left the laboratory, running through the forest of coffee trees and ficus until she reached the stone dock. She ran to the end and dove into the water without taking a breath, sinking until she could no longer feel anything but the pull and tug of tiny currents in her hair and around her dress. The water caressed her, and she plunged into the darkness, searching for peace in a place that felt both foreign and familiar.
Lucien swam behind her.
❖
Makeda floated in the lake, watching the sea of stars above her. Black had no place here. To her newly keen vision, the stars didn’t look like ice but tiny jewels. Faceted gemstones floating in the sky.
New eyes.
For the first time, something about immortal life made her smile.
“What do you think so far?” Lucien was floating a little way from her. He’d been silent for hours, ever since their fight in the lab, but he moved toward her as he spoke.
“About what?”
“Being back in Ethiopia.”
“I don’t know.” She kicked her legs out and listened to the splash of water in the still night. “I don’t remember much about this area besides visiting the monasteries when I was a child. Most of my memories of Ethiopia revolve around our house in Addis or my grandmother’s village.”
“Where is that?”
“Near Yirgalem.”
“Sidamo region,” he mused. “Very beautiful.”
“And the cave where the princess hid,” Makeda said.
>
She heard Lucien swim closer. “What was that?”
Makeda smiled. “It was a story my grandmother told us. I don’t know if it’s true or not. There was a cave on the mountain where the village was. My grandmother said that a princess once hid there when armies came to attack her father’s palace. She hid in the cave and hyenas guarded her.”
“They didn’t eat her?”
“Of course not. She was a princess.”
“Ah.” He drifted closer. “I had no idea scavengers held royalty in such high regard.”
She couldn’t stop her smile. “It’s just a story. We were so curious about that cave. I’m sure my grandmother wanted us to stay away from it. There was a family of hyenas that lived there, and we might have been bitten.”
They swam until Makeda could hardly feel her legs, but it seemed to make no difference to her body. She never once ached or grew tired. And though the water didn’t feel as heady as the ocean, it still embraced her, soothing her nerves and feeding her soul until she felt as comfortable as a child nestled in her mother’s arms. Lucien stayed behind her, letting her lead.
When Makeda spotted a rocky outcropping jutting out of the water to her right, she headed toward it. It sloped sharply, with weeds and algae making the base of the rocks too slick to climb. Makeda treaded water next to it, considering how she might be able to get on top.
“Use your amnis,” Lucien said behind her.
“What?”
“Your amnis,” he repeated. “You’re a water vampire, remember?”
“I’m aware of that, but…” She frowned, considering the rock. She lifted her hands from the water and let it dance in her palm. It came instinctually, but she didn’t know how to lift herself onto the rock with it. “How?”
Lucien was at her side, treading water. “This could be an issue.”
“You don’t know how?” An unexpected laugh burst from her throat. “Of course you don’t. You’re an earth vampire.”
“Correct.” He swam closer to the rock. “So until we find a better teacher than me…”
She felt his amnis fill the air. The punch of energy was as potent as when he kissed her. Makeda watched Lucien place his hand on the rock, and it reformed under his power. Like a giant stretching its shoulders, the rocky outcropping shrugged up and out. Before her eyes, natural steps formed in the rock, leading to a smooth platform flat as an open palm.