With wonder he said, “I used to love
night
skiing!” and then he smiled into her eyes, gave her a kiss, and said, “Thank you! Are you coming with?”
Gina had been a very plain girl, with thin, sallow cheeks and frightened, darting eyes. She was a very beautiful vampire, with a sort of austere, aloof face and slanting, mysterious, very
brown
eyes, and the look she gave him was all vixen.
“I thought you’d never ask!”
They were loaded up and in the car less than an hour later, and Green had even arranged for them to have tickets to the lodge and a special room, so they could stay as long as they liked.
They made it a tradition to disappear to the ski lodge that week every year. Sometimes they brought other lovers (Marcus always assiduously picking female lovers, in spite of what he’d learned during his blood frenzy), and sometimes they simply brought a shape-shifter for food and company. It didn’t matter—what mattered was that Marcus had friends at Green’s hill and not just bedmates, and it mattered that his passions survived his change to a vampire, and it mattered that he had found a good life now that he was dead.
On the fifth year of their traditional ski trip, and Marcus’s tenth as a vampire, the mountains were heavy with wet snow. Earlier in the winter, the cold had been intense, but now the peaks were covered with a slushy sort of ice, making the drifts treacherous and ensuring that only the experts went up the hill to the more advanced runs near Donner Pass.
Marcus and Gina were in their element—the cold didn’t bother them, and although the wet was uncomfortable, it would have been far worse for the poor humans braving the hazards with them. Gore-Tex was not yet common, and the most comfortable humans were wearing fleece-lined leather.
One of the few to brave the Black Diamond run with Marcus was wearing an outfit in all black, lined with fleece, with waterproof gloves and a set of ski goggles that Marcus was pretty sure he’d seen on television during the last Olympics. His hair was artfully slicked back from a faint widow’s peak, and his face was narrow, with a square jaw and pointed chin and a truckload of arrogance. As the stranger had walked by the Green’s hill party at the snow lodge (they’d brought a couple of shape-shifters and Adrian for this trip out), Adrian had flashed a little fang and cracked quietly that he looked more like a vampire than any vampire Adrian had ever seen.
Marcus had laughed at Adrian’s joke, because it was true. But as a schoolteacher who had always worn jeans and a polo shirt on the dress-up days, he also hated the stranger on sight.
They ended up sharing a lift, though, and for a few moments as the lighted track of the hill drifted eerily beneath their feet, there was an equally cold silence between them.
To Marcus’s surprise, the stranger spoke first.
“You’re a hell of a skier,” the guy said, and Marcus blinked at him, surprised.
“Thank you,” he muttered, flustered. He didn’t like the compliment—he had been average as a human. All of his speed, strength, fearlessness, and skill came from the knowledge that he was already dead. Anything that happened to him on the slopes from this point on would be uncomfortable but not fatal. “You too.”
The compliment was sincere. At first he’d assumed that all the flashy gear was just that—for show—but as the other man had zoomed gracefully down the slopes as though he, too, had nothing to lose, Marcus had been impressed. It was a style and panache he’d never had when he was alive, and he was gracious enough to give the other guy credit.
To Marcus’s surprise, the guy looked pleased, and from the other end of the ski lift, Marcus could scent the blood rushing under his skin. He was blushing. Wasn’t that interesting?
“I skied a lot as a kid,” the guy was saying, that blush getting stronger. “I wasn’t good enough to make the Olympic team, but damn, did I have fun trying out.”
“I’ll bet!” Marcus was interested in spite of himself. “What were your events?”
The other man smiled. It could have been a predatory smile, just like a vampire’s, but it wasn’t. In fact, there was a little bit of hidden sweetness in it, like Adrian’s. Marcus wondered if he ever would have spotted that sweetness under the shark’s smile if he hadn’t scented the blush and been able to see clearly the eager expression on the man’s face in the dark, under the full moon.
“I liked the long downhill events, myself. I loved the slalom—man, that was a rush.” The man looked at Marcus sideways and pulled off his glove, sticking out a hand that was probably freezing without the covering.
“I’m Phillip Chambers—pleased to meet you.”
Marcus was charmed. He smiled back and found that it was genuine, the kind of smile that his grandmother used to tell him had dimples in it. He took off the light knit glove he wore, held out his hand, and shook, liking the firmness of the other man’s hand, although it was almost as cold as
his
was, beating heart or no.
“Marcus,” he said, so used to not having a last name that he didn’t think to use it now.
“Jesus, your hands are cold!” Phillip exclaimed, and Marcus put on his light glove quickly, feeling a little embarrassed. “Marcus what?” Phillip was in his early thirties, and his eyes, a lighter, almost hazel brown, crinkled in the corners with his smile.
“Marcus has to get off the lift!” Marcus improvised, and together he and Phillip laughed as they lifted their toes up and glided through the snow at the top of the mountain. Together they slid to the edge of the Double Black Diamond and pulled their snow goggles over their heads. Marcus pulled his hat snug over his curly black hair, and Phillip gave him a grin—this one
definitely
predatory and decidedly competitive.
“Wanna race?” he asked, and even that was unnecessary.
“Oh
hell
yes!” Marcus nodded, and together they rocked forward and backward and forward and backward, and Phillip counted, “One, two, three….”
And they were off the edge of the hill, hurtling down through the flake-flurried night.
It was like flying, Marcus thought in the back of his mind, but better. They twisted, they turned, they danced through a frozen ocean of crystal-sharded dark. They zoomed like little kids on roller skates, and Marcus heard Phillip’s joyful cackle as they hit the end of the run neck and neck, knees bent and poles tucked under their arms as they tried to streamline their bodies.
They both twisted their bodies and rooster-tailed neatly to a stop, regarding each other laughingly for a moment, both of them pulling off their goggles at the same time.
“That was
awesome!”
Marcus breathed, not conscious that he
was
breathing, as he hadn’t been for quite some time.
“Amazing!” Phillip echoed, and Marcus grinned at him. Their gazes locked for a moment, and although Marcus didn’t detect a thing about Phillip’s breathing or blood pressure that would indicate arousal, he was suddenly, subtly reminded that although he made it a point to share a bed with women only, in that first frenzied year, he had truly liked men too.
The thought made him self-conscious and shy again. He remembered that it was freezing, and while he might not be affected by the cold, Phillip was definitely only human.
“So,” he said, trying to hide his disappointment, “you’ll probably want to go back to the chateau and—”
“Do you want to go again?” Phillip had apparently not even heard his socially weak attempt to back off.
“Absolutely!” Marcus grinned back at his new friend. “You couldn’t keep me away.”
MARCUS DIDN’T
realize how foolhardy he was, choosing to go on that second run, until he heard Adrian’s voice in his head halfway down.
“You’ve got half an hour until sunrise, mate! I hope you know what you’re doing!”
Shit! Half an hour?
“I can make it.”
He hoped he could make it. It had taken them half an hour the first time down.
“Fly!”
Jesus. Adrian didn’t usually command, but when he did, it was because he was worried about you. Crap.
“Human here!”
Marcus gave Adrian a visual of Phillip, who was right on his tail, whooping because Marcus had unconsciously picked up speed. Marcus went a smidge faster, and Phillip let out a holler that seemed to shake the ground.
“Hold up, mate. What’s that?”
Marcus could feel it too. He risked a longer look back and watched as Phillip faltered to look behind him as well. Marcus took advantage of the fact that the human wasn’t watching him to lift his skis up off the snow for a minute and take a good, long look at what was behind him.
“Fuck!”
He wasn’t sure who said it—himself, Adrian, or Phillip—but it didn’t matter. The last icy-wet snowfall or Phillip’s whoop of excitement or the sudden cracking cold of dawn—it didn’t matter. The cap of snow on the mountain had endured quite enough and was crashing down on their heads with the wrath of an angry Norse god!
“Get out of there, fuck it all! Blow!”
But Marcus couldn’t. Phillip had laughed at him and had offered him friendship and had raced him down a mountain,
twice
. Gina and Adrian hadn’t left Marcus to bleed to death on the side of the road, and Marcus couldn’t leave his new friend to die horribly in an avalanche either.
Marcus leaped right out of his skis and hovered horizontally for a second while a startled Phillip zoomed right into his arms. He grasped his new friend under the armpits and hoisted him up, up, up, up….
And not quite over the avalanche as it caught up with them.
Marcus could have let go by then—he could have. But he didn’t. He held tight, his body flush behind Phillip’s as they were tumbled about like pebbles in a blender, ass over toes over shoulders over nose, until his own body felt battered, and he knew for a fact that a couple of his bones were knitting together as they crashed against chunks of ice and boulders and tree limbs in their free-fall hurtle down the mountain.
Marcus knew Phillip’s bones wouldn’t magically knit together like his. He hunched his shoulders protectively and didn’t let go—not even when they were both skewered through the stomach with a tree branch like pieces of chicken on a shish kebab.
Adrian’s voice was a constant song of “
Get out of there, oh Christ, mate, get out of there get the fuck out of there get out of there oh Jesus, Marcus, get yourself safe!”
The panicked, crushing thrill ride stopped abruptly, freezing the two of them in a bubble of air under a solid four feet of snow. Marcus ripped the tree branch out of their bodies, laid his new friend down on the tiny, coffin-like space of the rocky bottom, and took stock.
It wasn’t good. Phillip was already convulsing, his body bloody, blood gushing through his mouth and nose. His stomach wound would be fatal if the awkward, misshapen breaks in his limbs didn’t kill him first.
Marcus looked at his new friend longingly. God, he was happy at Green’s hill, but besides Adrian, he couldn’t think of a single other person he could have shared a night like this with—and Adrian would have wanted it to end in bed.
And now, with regret, so did Marcus.
He couldn’t help himself. He was bleeding too—he felt his old vampire’s blood dripping sluggishly down his repairing nose, and he knew what would happen.
He hoped it would happen.
He locked his mouth over Phillip’s and kissed him, thrusting his tongue into that glorious blood-coated mouth and praying he swallowed.
“C’mon, Phillip, taste it. Swallow. Have enough life in you to swallow
.
”
“Marcus
?
”
Adrian’s voice was unmistakable.
“Marcus—you need your will…. Oh Jesus, I can feel you using it….”
Marcus was not good at vampire tricks. It had taken a while to learn to spell his prey with his eyes to calm them down. He didn’t like wiping people’s memories. While the other vampires could go outside the hill, brainwash their prey, and spend a pleasant evening with a lover or dinner or both, Marcus stuck to the hill and the willing shape-shifters and the people he knew. In school he’d led by personality, by being passionate about his subject, by making students see that behaving well was in the students’ best interest.
Marcus did not
will
anyone to
do
anything.
But he willed Phillip to swallow his blood, and he willed Phillip to live.
“Jesus, mate!”
Adrian’s voice in Marcus’s head was a little bit panicked, and then he felt a lovely thing. He felt Adrian’s will there with his own, even as he locked mouths with this man, this stranger, this friend, and together they
willed
the other man to want to live.
There was a movement in Phillip’s mouth—was it a swallow? Was it his final breath? Then there it was again—a swallow! Another! Marcus’s canines had popped out, and he used one to rip across his wrist. He pulled away from the compulsively clutching fingers in his hair and on his back and gave Phillip his bleeding wrist.
“It’s rich blood, Phillip. It’s rich; it will feed you. Drink, brother. Guzzle it until you’re sick.”
“Fucking awesome, brother.”
Adrian sounded tired.
“Now just give the shifters until dark to find you—and try not to let him rip your head off before then, because that’s one wound we can’t repair.”
Marcus was suddenly
exhausted
. He’d lost a lot of blood, he realized. He’d been wounded and now Phillip was drinking his reserves, and he would be
ravenous
when he woke up.
Phillip would be worse.
But the sun…. He could already feel it, shining on the other side of the mountain, pulling slowly up to peep over the peak…. Not yet… not yet….
Phillip’s suckling motions on his wrist stopped abruptly, and Marcus’s soul flew somewhere Marcus had never seen.
MARCUS WOKE
up with a mouthful of warm shape-shifter arm, when nothing around him was warm. He opened his eyes, locked his jaw, and fed.