He tried to open his eyes and was refused. His brain had no spare energy for something basic like opening his eyes, not when it was processing all the rest. Jesus, he could hear their hearts beating, as well as his own. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he even had some sense of the rush of blood through his veins and other internal organs.
But that wasn’t the most significant difference. Those things were just an enhancement of the second mark. He had a sense of Anwyn so close, it was almost as though she was inside of him. Or he was inside of her. He could still hear the uneasy boiling of thoughts in her mind, the occasional sharp word or call from the shadow creatures, like shrill, menacing birds in a dark jungle. They were getting louder, responding to his awakening, apparently. But he was sinking, dropping to a deeper level than her thoughts, going down and down. Like quicksand, but it wasn’t entirely unpleasant. He could discern her emotions, her state of being. Anger, fear, relief . . . a mind-numbing tiredness. Her emotions were spiraling inside of him.
The disconnection he’d felt from everyone for so long, the shielding that had exacerbated it and all his dysfunctionality, all that was still quite operable, but this was a wondrous sense of connection, of empathy, that made him aware of exactly how lonely he’d been.
It was unsettling, to say the least. He remembered Jacob saying it was hard to explain the third mark, how it differed from the second, just that it did, big-time. Maybe his experience was different because Anwyn couldn’t yet completely shut the link between them, but right now . . . he felt as though he was walking in her soul, as connected to her as he would be connected to the earth, walking through soft grass barefoot. He wasn’t normally a poetic man, but that was just the best way to describe it, no way around it. She was here, in every part of him.
“Anwyn, help him.” Daegan’s voice. “Try to draw the curtain closed. You must focus. Use my energy in your mind if you need it. He’s getting mired inside of you.”
No, really. It’s okay. I’m fine with the miring.
An unconscious, emotional reaction more than a spoken thought. Regardless of whether or not she’d heard it, a few minutes later, those shadow whispers became more muted, and the ground under his mental feet became more stable, taking him on a halting elevator ride back up to her mind. While he was aware of a background of white noise that must be her mind, held at a distance but not completely disconnected, Gideon was able to focus a little better. “What happened?”
Daegan’s hold eased, but Gideon was mortified to find he couldn’t quite straighten yet, leave the prop of his body behind. Daegan spoke. “Your skull was compromised and your back was broken. You were hemorrhaging internally.”
Gideon digested that. “Why didn’t you mark me yourself?”
“Because you were considering allowing her to do so, the closest thing I had to a consent. I don’t force unwilling humans to become servants. And, under any circumstances, you wouldn’t have willingly become my servant.”
True enough. Gideon’s eyes finally cracked open. Though he had to squint at the distinct colors, the excessively sharp details of his surroundings, he was able to orient himself. They were in Anwyn’s cell. She was still on the sofa, her feet curled beneath her. Her hair was lank around her face, her eyes hollow and tired, her mouth tight from stress. “How long have I been out?”
“You’ve been unconscious for nearly a day. We thought at times we were going to lose you. Anwyn has fed you at proper intervals.”
Which explained the faintly bitter, metallic taste on his otherwise furry tongue.
There was a pillow on Anwyn’s sofa, and she’d gathered it into her body now. She was trembling, he realized, and perspiring, the way she did right after a seizure, so she must have recently come out of one. Though she’d been changed into a nightgown, it was filthy with dried blood, vomit stains. She was back in chains, but Daegan had let her have the slack, apparently having fixed the loosened bolt. The links and manacles firmly fastened to wrists and ankles had more of her bodily fluids crusted on them.
Gideon rallied enough to glare at Daegan. “Why is she chained? And why haven’t you cleaned her up?”
“Because she preferred the manacles during her seizures. She has not allowed me to touch her.”
Gideon blinked. Though Daegan’s expression remained impassive, Gideon didn’t need an inroad into the male’s mind to know things here had been pretty volatile while he was out. Something in Daegan’s tone told him the vampire might be remarkably close to a breaking point.
“Okay. Well.” He cleared his throat. Things were coming back to him. He remembered he’d been pretty bloodstained himself, but he was in a pair of loose
gi
pants and thin T-shirt, probably both from Daegan’s closet, because there was a lingering aroma of the man on them. Jesus, that was weird to notice, let alone receive a sense of reassurance from it. However, the headache was receding, and oddly, he was starting to feel pretty good. Better than pretty good. Realizing that was because he was third-marked gave him a sharp jolt in his gut. He had no idea how to feel about that. He vaguely remembered the sense of being in a vise clamp, his body wracked by convulsions, the horrifying pain of it. Jacob had never described it that way. But none of this had been the usual, had it?
“Um . . . Why don’t you go take a break, and I’ll help her clean up.” He glanced at Anwyn. “If you’re okay with that.”
It was a long moment, but then Anwyn’s head moved. One short nod. Her gaze touched Gideon’s face, then moved away, not avoiding his gaze exactly, but more as if she wouldn’t take the chance that she’d look toward Daegan, since he stood next to Gideon.
Daegan blinked once. “It would be best if I stayed close. Though she can no longer do you permanent damage, unless she finds a way to stake you with one of the metal bars, she will not have a great deal of control on the filters on her mind. You may have periods of great disorientation, where you cannot tell which thoughts are your own.”
“I think he’s telling you to fuck off, Daegan,” Anwyn said. “Maybe give us a few minutes to ourselves, since you’ve taken every other choice we have.”
Okay, correct that. The volatility wasn’t past tense. Things were still pretty inflamed. Other than himself, armed with a crossbow and more guts than brains, Gideon had never heard anyone talk to a vampire like that, particularly not one as strong as Daegan. He found himself tensing slightly, not sure how the vampire would react, though he also wasn’t sure what he could do about it if he reacted as Gideon expected, with a sharp put-down for the insolent behavior.
Instead, Daegan’s jaw tightened, his eyes revealing a brief, dangerous flame before it was gone. “I will be near if you need me.” He pivoted without clarifying to which person he was speaking, but Gideon assumed it wasn’t really necessary.
As the vampire left, Gideon saw Anwyn’s gaze at last flicker toward his retreating broad back. A maelstrom of emotions swirled in her expressive eyes. If Daegan could be in her mind, he had to know what Gideon could see, that she was really messed up right now. But maybe he’d been like Gideon, trying to give her privacy as much as possible, help her feel as if she had some self-determination. Of course, that was what had gotten them into this kind of trouble, wasn’t it?
When she flinched, he cursed himself for forgetting. He could see some advantages to that curtain thing—with that faint buzzing noise that came with her presence in his mind, he’d have a better sense of when she was paying attention to his thoughts. “Hey,” he said quietly. “I’ll go get you some fresh clothes, all right?”
She wanted to touch him, wanted to assure herself he was alive. He could read it from her mind. She had forgotten that, too. But when he started toward her, she curled herself back into the couch, wrapping her arms around her legs and shaking her head.
“I could have killed you. I wanted to.”
“No, you didn’t. You were just hungry. It’s hard to manage at first, for any vampire.”
“I’ve spent my whole life staying in control of my emotions.” The broken note to her voice alarmed him, even more than realizing she’d been about to go into full-blown bloodlust in a room full of easy victims. “I don’t know how to rely on anyone but myself, and not feel like I’ve utterly failed.”
“Ah, sweetheart.” He sat down next to her on the couch, put his hand on her foot. She choked out a sob.
“Some all-powerful Mistress, hmm?”
He caught her face in gentle hands, brought it up to him. “‘Nothing outside of you destroys who you are, what you want to be. If you’re strong enough, you can put it back together, no matter who or what shatters you.’ You remember saying that to me?”
She stilled, her gaze fixed on his face, and he nodded. “I don’t know everything about being a Mistress or Master, but I know nothing prepares you for something like this. If anything, maybe that makes it harder for you, because you’ve been used to holding the reins, figuring things out for others. You haven’t failed at all. It was like he said from the beginning. By choosing to let us help you, you stayed in control.”
“When I overrode your common sense and insisted on going upstairs, I lost all of it.”
”Hey.” He dropped his hands, squeezed her foot, running his thumb over the painted nails. “I made my own choice, all right? It was the wrong one, but it was made for the right reasons. You’ll get there. It’s just going to take time.”
“You make it sound like a twelve-step AA program,” she said in a weary voice.
“Yeah. Maybe the principles are similar. Because in the vamp world, there are no small mistakes.” He sighed. “In fact, most of the time they’re brutal and violent mistakes. You can’t hold on to it. You’ve got to get past it and just keep working toward that day when you’ll be a hundred percent again. A hundred and twenty, since you’ll be a vampire. And then you’ll be the most formidable Mistress a man’s ever seen.”
“You didn’t ask for that third mark. You didn’t want that.”
“You didn’t want to be a vampire. Sounds like we’re a good match, right?” He won a surprised look, followed by a small smile. “Why don’t I get you to the shower?” He tugged on the chains. “And seriously, I’m going to throw these damn things out.”
Instead, she reached out, traced his features. At the contact, her eyes closed, her face suffused with a sudden overwhelming flood of emotion that had him pulling her to him, impatiently unclasping those chains and throwing them to the ground with a decided clank. He enfolded her in his arms, bringing her onto his lap. She allowed it, clinging to him, trembling.
She was castigating herself in her mind again, for not holding on to her control, for not managing the situation. Getting a hand under her chin, he tipped it up.
“Anwyn, you’ve been turned to a vampire, raped, and you almost killed me.” At her flinch, he shook his head impatiently. “I didn’t tell you that to upset you, but to remind you that if you could keep it completely together through all that, I’d think you were a fucking cyborg. Crying and breaking down is how you get past this kind of stuff, find what you need to go on. I’ve had some wretched days as well, and you can’t hold it all in.”
“Do you cry?” Her lips trembled, her blue-green eyes focused on him. They were back to their rich color, but with his enhanced senses he could now see the permanent trace of red in the pupils.
“Of course not,” he said. “I vandalize property. That’s the male version of crying.”
“I remember. You owe me a stained glass window.” She pressed her lips together, took a hard swallow, and now her eyes intensified, clinging to his face. “I wouldn’t have survived losing you, Gideon. You know that?”
He didn’t know how to respond to that, the raw emotion in her expression, the flood of feeling that swamped him, but she saved him by continuing to whisper in that broken voice. “You balance me. Daegan was right about that. The moment you woke up, and our minds connected once again, I felt better. And horribly guilty for being so relieved about that, even more relieved than knowing you were alive.”
“Until you get your feet back underneath you, you don’t have to feel guilty about anything. You won’t take anything I wouldn’t give you willingly. Okay? You have to trust someone more than you trust yourself right now. He was right about that as well. Stupid, know-it-all vampire.”
She didn’t smile, the pain in her gaze now something different. Her hands closed around Gideon’s forearm, her temple pressing against his jaw. Emotions trembled through her, something he sensed was too hard for her to feel, let alone say. Some things were too big. You had to go at them a different way.
“Hey,” he murmured after a long moment. “Something’s been bugging me.”
“What?” she said, her voice muffled against him.
“Why does he call you ‘
cher
’? I mean, he’s obviously not Cajun. Don’t get me wrong, he manages it in a seriously sexy, suave way—big shocker—but I was curious.”
“Seriously, sexy, suave . . .” She gave a half laugh, tinged with despair. “Say that three times fast.”
“Seriously, sexy, sauve. Seriously, sexy—”
She placed her hand on his mouth, her head lifting to gaze at him from several inches away. But the amazing thing was, if she was in the next room, the next building, maybe even the next town, he’d feel this close to her. It was as if there was nothing that could separate him from her.
He wanted to tell himself not to lose his head, that this changed nothing. The vampire world she inhabited would separate them eventually. He still couldn’t be part of that world. But despite all this shit happening, being here gave him this sense of . . . completion. Just like that sappy chick flick that was quoted every which way in the nineties, such that even he’d picked up the line. He couldn’t imagine ever wanting to be without it.
“He took me to see
The Big Easy
at an outdoor movie showing in the park one night, soon after we met. Lying on a picnic blanket under the stars, I was quite . . . impressed by Dennis Quaid, how he said ‘
cher.
’ ” A light smile touched her lips, not quite so desolate. “It was a nice night. When Daegan teased me, calling me by that endearment, it stuck, for both of us.”