He felt a hand on his arm. When had Havily dropped down next to him?
“You’re wounded.”
“Yep. Horace on the way.” He took one more deep breath then passed out.
* * *
Havily knelt beside Marcus as blood pooled from his waist. The cornflower-blue silk shirt he wore was torn and bloodied.
Horace didn’t come.
He didn’t come.
Where the hell was he?
Marcus moaned. Havily put her hand on his shoulder very gently. His eyes opened, but they looked wild with pain.
“Horace isn’t here yet,” she said, “and I know my blood can help. Will you take it?”
He nodded.
She put her wrist to her mouth and with her right fang made a nice suicide cut across all the veins. The sting of it hurt but based on what had happened when Marcus drank from her, she knew her blood would help heal him. She put her wrist against his lips and let him taste.
His eyes popped wide and, as though she’d offered an elixir of Olympian quality, he moaned and started taking deep pulls.
She heard Parisa gasp.
Havily turned in her direction and shrugged. “I might have forgotten to mention that Second Earth is also the world of the vampire.”
Parisa nodded. “I knew that.” She was still sitting on the floor. She stared at the joined wrist and mouth and put her hand on her neck. Her lips parted and the color on her cheeks turned pink, but not in embarrassment.
Havily looked away. Yes, the suckling motion, and the exchange of blood to mouth, all spoke of a more intimate connection. She wasn’t surprised that Parisa rose to her feet and without a word left the room.
* * *
So this really is the world of the vampire.
Parisa left the foyer, but once she entered the expansive formal living room, out of sight of Havily and Marcus, she turned swiftly to lean against the wall. She closed her eyes and took deep breaths. She put two fingers to her neck right above the vein. She hadn’t been disgusted or even distressed by the blood-taking. It had seemed … natural … but very erotic.
In her visions of Warrior Medichi, Parisa had once seen him take a woman’s blood. He’d been in some kind of club with red velvet booths and loud music and he’d taken a woman into one of the booths. He’d sucked blood from her neck while he’d made love to her and the whole time Parisa had wished she had been beneath his big warrior body. She was embarrassed by the memory, not because of what he’d done but because instead of retreating, she’d kept her special vision open and had watched the whole thing from start to finish.
She was such a voyeur.
Now she was here, in his home.
She hadn’t told Havily, but she recognized this house. She had seen Warrior Medichi here many times before.
Many times.
She pushed away from the wall because she could still hear the suckling sounds. She moved into the room full of heavy antique sofas and chairs covered in cream silk. Large woven rugs anchored the furniture and olive-green silk panels flanked the windows at both the east and west sides of the room.
She needed separation from the oh-so-intimate contact going on in the next room. She sighed. How could she explain what it was she felt right now? From the moment she had entered Warrior Medichi’s villa she had been overcome, not by fear, but by lust, pure, heavy, saturated lust that kept her sex in an uproar. She caught the scent of sweet sage everywhere and had to conclude that since this was Medichi’s home, the sage smell must belong to him. Perhaps he used the spice a lot when he cooked. Whatever it was, her body loved it.
“Better?” she heard Havily say.
“Much,” Marcus responded.
The sounds of their voices, so tender, forced Parisa to move on, deeper into the house, one step in front of the other. She knew exactly where she was going.
She crossed the room and found herself in a second but much smaller foyer. A rectangular oak table sat in the center of the space.
Branching off from this smaller connecting room was a wing that faced west; a window down the hall gave a view of a rolling lawn and mountains beyond. She had never seen Warrior Medichi go into these rooms during one of her visions. She supposed these might be guest rooms.
The villa hallway stretched to the south, and she knew that the warrior’s private suite of rooms formed the entire southern wing of the house. Yes, she had been inside this suite of rooms in her visions as well. She felt a profound desire to explore them but squeezed her eyes shut and forced herself to set aside such invasive thoughts. She had no right to enter his rooms.
So she headed to the one room that made sense. To the east, opposite the supposed suite of guest rooms, was one very large room—the library. She had seen Medichi in this room numerous times as well. She was, after all, a librarian by trade.
She crossed to the arched doorway, and the smell of leather and sage drew her in. She couldn’t imagine a more erotic combination than what greeted her. A love of books was in her blood, deep, passionate, ages old, so that she would have loved this room no matter whom it belonged to. But smelling that rich sage scent embedded in all this leather nearly sent her crumpling to the floor all over again.
She let the overwhelming sensation move through her. She breathed … a lot … then swept her gaze over what was a magnificent chamber. Leather-bound books rose all the way to the ceiling along wall after wall after wall. She moved in a circle and blinked. The room was lit in a soft glow, the lamps throughout the house already on—or perhaps had come on once they arrived, she couldn’t remember.
But she wanted to see better so she searched for and found the light switch. She turned the dimmer mechanism. The room gradually flooded with light, directed downward from the ceiling, and a choir of angels began to sing … at least in her head.
She searched the shelves on the left and found an edition of
Pride and Prejudice,
no doubt an early edition. If the potential of immortality was part of life on Second Earth, just how old was Warrior Medichi? Was it possible he had purchased all of these books when each had first been published?
She took the treasured volume and moved slowly to a group of massive leather chairs, the size suited for big warrior bodies. The rich sage smell of the house rose up from one chair in particular. She drank in the scent. In her visions, she had seen Warrior Medichi sit here more than once.
She settled into the deep cushion of the chair and was immediately engulfed with what she now believed to be the warrior’s scent. Her heart beat a furious cadence, one coupled with profound desire of a sexual nature, yes, but something more. No, this desire crossed the boundaries of the body into the deep places of the soul. She found herself, as she had so many times before during the past year, in a state of profound longing that caused tears to pour down her face as she pressed a hand to her breast.
She had come home.
Those were the thoughts that moved through her, beat at her, caused the tears to flow so fast she had to set the book aside. The purple sequins could not in any way absorb the tears so she used her fingers, her palm, the back of her hand until a single thought brought her up short and the tears ceased.
She was a woman who had learned to live her solitary life, and she’d gotten so good at it that she never needed anyone. Long before she had released her wings for the first time, she had become comfortable with her isolated world.
When she was a child, she had moved a lot. Her parents used to joke about their itchy feet; changing cities, homes, and schools was the order of the day. Because of it, Parisa had learned early on that making friends with other children meant leaving them all too soon because of yet another move to another city.
The losses had soon taught her to keep to herself, a state she had never really minded. She had simply accepted the reality of her life. Books had become her refuge.
Later, when her wings had emerged, when she had begun having her special visions of Warrior Medichi, she had understood the value of all those early solitary lessons. She had even been grateful for them, since she could never have explained wings to another mortal.
What she hadn’t planned, however, was that one day she would actually step into this new world. Now what was she supposed to do?
She took a deep breath and with a will she had developed from childhood, she pushed all the longings away. She moved from her heart into her head and started analyzing her current situation.
She had come to a new world, the world of the vampire, and yes she felt,
she knew,
she belonged here. She had even had the most erotic fantasies of letting Warrior Medichi take her at her neck.
However, this was also a world at war, and clearly
Warrior
Medichi played a constant part in that war. His death, therefore, was no doubt an eventuality. Ascenders died in this extraordinary world even though they were in most respects immortal, although that was an oxymoron if she’d ever heard one. How could anyone be immortal
in most respects.
Whatever.
She might have a sense of having come home, but did she really want to ascend to a world so full of battle, of death vampires, and an enemy that threatened even the women of this world?
She rose from his chair and went in search of a bathroom. She found one en suite in a bedroom opposite the library. She grabbed a tissue from the counter, blew her nose, then wiped her face. Afterward, she crossed to the bed and sat down on the edge. She took deep breaths until she began to grow calm. She would need a clear head from this point forward to be able to chart her course. She didn’t understand her life right now or what was expected of her.
She was here, in a new dimension, a place called Second Earth, a world of the vampire, of immortality, of war.
Her thoughts flew to images of Warrior Medichi in all the ways she had known him through her strange visions. Because of what he was in this world, she couldn’t allow herself to become attached to him.
He was after all, a Warrior of the Blood, and his service to his world had only one likely end: He would fall by the sword as he had lived by the sword.
The last thing Parisa needed was to become involved with someone destined, no doubt, to die.
How proud she was of her analytical mind.
The myth of the
breh-hedden
lives in the hearts of all vampires.
—
Collected Proverbs,
Beatrice of Fourth
CHAPTER 12
Marcus released Havily’s wrist unwillingly. The power of her blood worked in him now and thank God the mortal had left because his desire to engage Havily in some hard-core sex was like a jackhammer at the base of his brain. He was rock-hard and in need.
That his wound felt better was not a surprise given the powerful nature of Havily’s blood, but he still required Horace’s healing hands, the sooner the better.
Still, he licked his lips, savoring the honeysuckle flavor of Havily’s blood. He was breathing in gasps and not from pain.
He palmed the back of her neck. “Come here,” he whispered.
“Marcus … no. We have a guest in the house.”
“She went down the hall. We’re good.” He didn’t care whether they were good or not. Bad sounded really good. He tugged, pulling her toward him.
“You’re injured,” she said, but her tone had a lovely whimpering quality.
He tugged again. “Kiss me anyway.” And she followed, her mouth on his in sweet surrender.
He breathed in her scent through his nose and at the same time tasted more of her honeysuckle flavor from her lips. He strengthened the hold on her neck and pressed so he could thrust his tongue and let her feel what he wanted to do to her.
She responded with a moan.
“I love your blood,” he whispered. “I love you here like this and thank you for taking care of me.”
“You feel better?”
“A thousand percent.”
“Good.”
However, a shimmering next to him put him in full warrior mode. He completely forgot about his wound and his aroused state.
He pushed Havily away as he sat up and at the same time folded his sword back from Bainbridge Island into his hand.
But holy mother of God. He grabbed his abdomen with his free hand and arm then rolled onto his side groaning. He had so many problems right now and so much pain he could barely function. His stupid arousal was bent and hurting like a bitch, he didn’t have the strength or ability to face the enemy and protect his woman, and if anyone touched his identified sword they were toast, including Havily.
Fortunately, the intruder was only Horace, the gifted healer who worked the Borderlands all night, taking care of the Warriors of the Blood.
“Don’t touch me,” he cried. It wasn’t pain that made him cry out but the dangers of his sword. If anyone touched the hilt, they’d die.