Dark Rapture (12 page)

You promised.

His concentration broken, he released his death grip from her neck and looked down at his handiwork, ashamed as always of the havoc he wrought on a woman’s delicate skin. Scarlet’s neck was swollen and bruised, and the blood spilled out of the gaping wounds and into the tight threading of the sheets.

Her eyelids fluttered as she struggled desperately to hold them open long enough to see what was happening. Sebastian hung over her, a darkened blur, his mouth open and panting, his lips bloody and his fangs dripping with her blood. His eyes were sparkling black voids. Wild.

The orgasmic bliss had slipped away and now her head was buzzing. Panic reverberated in her mind. Something must be wrong, she thought.
I need help.
She heard his voice, deep and soft, drift through her mind like an erotic dream.
We are soul mates.

“Soul mates,” he repeated. “If you choose, we can spend the rest of eternity together. It’s up to you.” He kissed her neck, licking her wound, which sent a ghastly chill down her arms, raising thousands of tiny shiver bumps.

“I can do it. I can transform you into a vampire, like me.”

What?!
Scarlet’s eyes flew open.

“No,” she said loudly, thankful that it came out with such force. Yet that simple protest left her panting for breath as her head spun dizzily back against his arm.

“Yes, you must let me.” He was insistent. “There’s no going back,
ma cherie.
If I don’t transform you now you’ll die.”

“No, you promised,” she protested weakly.
He said that I wouldn’t die. What has he done?

“You must help me,” Sebastian continued. “I can’t do this unless you help.” He brushed his hair off her ashen face, knowing that it would only be a short time before he lost the race and death would take over his lover’s body.

Her lips mouthed a silent plea for mercy. She didn’t want to become a vampire. But she didn’t want to die. Her mind balanced a fine line between reality and a phantasm of death. No more bliss.

Sebastian leaned back and reached into his abandoned leather pants' pocket. His fingers scraped across a sharpened bowie knife. Carefully, he folded Scarlet's slackened fingers around the handle and turned it so the blade was directed toward him.

Steel flashed in the flickering candlelight as he brought the blade to his neck and held her fingers tightly around it. “You must drink from me or you will die. Listen to me, Scarlet. My blood will renew your life and give you immortality.”

Immortality? She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. But it was hard so hard to concentrate.

Desperately, she resisted his pleas, trying to pull her hand from his grasp while her head lolled from side to side, making it impossible to control her actions. Death was inches away, and as she was unable to budge it from his steel grip, the knife remained against his vein.

Sebastian pulled her hand swiftly across his neck, cringing as the blade lacerated his flesh.

“Scarlet, listen to me. You must do this. I love you.” He touched her cold cheek. “Drink from me now and I will be your faithful lover and friend throughout eternity. I will be your protector and master. Please!”

He could feel the skin tightening around the gash on his neck. If he didn’t act quickly the wound would close up within minutes. Shifting his weight against the headboard he brought her limp body with him. He lifted her head to his neck and pushed her parted lips to the opened wound.

"A l’immortalite,”
he said aloud and then repeated the words in his head.
To immortality.

Hot liquid seeped into Scarlet's mouth and rolled down her throat. It burned but instantly quenched her dying spirit. At first the taste was sickening and repulsive and she gagged in an attempt to prevent it from sliding down her throat. But then the taste changed. Her body awakened to the brilliant red potion.

She wanted more.

With Sebastian supporting her, she dragged her deadened hand up to rest upon his shoulder, and started to suck at the knife wound. The blood traveled in a rush of heat from her mouth to her weakened limbs. With each taste of Sebastian’s sweet blood her limbs reanimated. She pushed her hands over his head tangling them within his hair. With a force of renewed passion, she meshed her body against his and fed hungrily upon her vampire lover, taking his soul with her.

Eager to satisfy the newly forming life above him, Sebastian lay back and let her nurse upon his neck, gently caressing her hair. “That’s right,
cherie,
take all you need.”

Her incessant sucking and the rapid movement of the blood through his veins sent waves of cool passion streaking through his body, and he let her take control of him as her fingernails dug deeply into his shoulders.

She was his blood child now. His lover. His soul mate.

Forever.

***

She was warm again, warm from the blood of her new master. And she continued to silently feed upon him as if it was an inborn instinct.

Then suddenly, Scarlet’s head whipped violently back and the stillness of the room was shattered as her scream rang out in the night. Intense pain pinched mercilessly at her body. She clenched her teeth, looking over Sebastian’s satisfied face. Her body contorted and she doubled over, plunging her head onto his chest, shaking violently against the savage beast tearing at her insides.

“Sebastian!” The words gurgled from her mouth. “Help me! What’s happening?”

He remembered the pain. Her mortal soul was leaving her body.

He harnessed her writhing figure in his arms and struggled to comfort her as she tossed her head about. After numerous attempts he was able to pin her beneath his body and rest his full weight upon her. Shackling her hands to the bed, he watched as she battled against the loss of her mortal soul.

“
Cherie."
Pressing his head to the crevice of her shoulder, he steadied her twisting head as he whispered, trying to reassure her. “It won’t last long. Your soul is leaving your body. My soul has already entered and it’s building a new life.”

“No! Make it stop, Sebastian!”

But, true to his words, her body slowed its frantic shaking as the last fragments of her mortal soul were released into purgatory. A quake of tears poured from her eyes, streaming through the bloodstains around her mouth, washing them clean.

“It’s over. You’ll feel no more pain.” He wiped the pink tears from her face with a corner of the sheet. “You are now a vampire, like me.”

He gently ran his fingers over the wound on her neck and then kissed it, tasting her blood. “You need to rest now. I’ll be here for you when you wake.”

Scarlet grabbed his wrist as he moved from the bed. “Don’t leave me. Please.”

“I won’t leave you.” He kissed her face over and over, making sure every inch of it received attention. “But you must rest now. When you wake I will explain all you need to know.”

He ran his finger across her lips and they parted to feel his warmth. Then he bit into his lower lip and let the blood drip into her mouth. She swallowed, closed her eyes, and drifted into sleep.

Outside, the moon slipped out from behind misty clouds.

***

Miles away, Francesco jerked his teeth from Matthias’s neck and looked out the window toward the moon. He felt the new life, and he knew.

“Noooo!”

Sebastian had beaten him. Again.

Chapter Eleven

Decades of dust billowed around Matthias’s face as he hit the hard stone floor under the wrath of Francesco’s hand. Still in a swoon, he scrambled across the rubble and curled up next to the wall, pulling his legs to his stomach and watching through bleary eyes as his master paced the floor dressed only in faded satin breeches and dingy white knee socks that had developed runs decades ago.

“He’s done it, Matthias! That bastard has gone and changed her into a vampire.” Circling the stale air with an invisible saber, Francesco approached Matthias with a quick stab and then resumed pacing. “Now what shall I do?”

He stopped at the foot of the bed rubbing his palm into the rounded bedpost as if to grind his enemy’s face into dust.

“This certainly does add a new twist to our little scenario, doesn’t it?”

With a drunken smile, Matthias nodded while Francesco tapped madly on the wooden post, trying to discern his next move. His hopes of leading the unknowing Scarlet to his lair had been dashed. She would know better now because she would know immediately that he was a vampire.

Forgetting his anger for the moment, Francesco turned and looked at the boy. The imbecile crouched naked in the dust, still in a swoon. The boy was almost wasted. His ribs poked through the thin layer of pasty skin, and his hair was beginning to fall out in clumps. Each time it took longer for him to come to after Francesco had drunk his blood. He would die soon.

Perhaps that was good thing.

“You shall be a hard one to replace, my love,” he whispered.

Francesco’s shoulders drooped and he sat on the edge of the bed, tearing the tired blue-striped cotton further from its age-old seams. Sebastian had a partner now. And not just a woman. No, she was a vampire. And it was so different between two vampires than between a vampire and a mortal woman. The love, that was, and the sex. He knew that, although only from hearsay. He himself had never encountered a female vampire in all his early years of wandering the French countryside.

Francesco twisted his hands together. He would take Sebastian’s love from him, vampire or not. If he got to her soon enough she would be weak, unaware of the fantastic powers that germinated within her body. In fledgling vampires, they did take a while to mature.

And if he got to her soon, then perhaps he would make her his slave. Francesco pondered the fate of one so beautiful.

No, death would be much sweeter.

The task would prove difficult. Perhaps, though, he could use the other man, the one who was also interested in her.

***

Rays of brilliant colors sifted through the window, shifting from spot to spot on the far wall in a mystical kaleidoscope of images. Slowly Scarlet realized that she was looking at the wall before her and the colors were not just a vision in her sleeping mind.

Her tongue was swollen and sore as she rolled it around her dry mouth. She needed water, something wet to dissipate the cotton mouth. The wall flashed madly like a Disney cartoon. One shape in particular was a deep aquamarine blue and it hovered before her eyes, a tempting lake to quench her thirst. She strained to look away from the image but her muscles were slack—except for her eyes, which darted across the room surveying its contents.

This was Vince’s room! It all came back to her as she closed her eyes and remembered.

“What have I done?” she said aloud.

Feeling as though she’d just completed a triathlon, Scarlet slowly pulled the sheets up to her shoulders. She ran her hand along the slippery maroon silk and felt a stiff dryness under her palm. Reality slashed through her as she pulled the sheet up before her eyes and saw the blood stains. She felt around her body, discovering many more patches of the crusted liquid. With all her strength, she pushed from the bed and rolled to her side, and stared in horror at what lay before her.

Her neck was sore, but smooth to the touch, except for two small raised bumps, like goose bumps, she thought. And then she remembered the painful pleasure she’d endured last night.

Her mind scrambled for answers.
What has happened? What did I do?
She felt at her chest, her arms and legs. Everything was the same.
I’m not dead.

“I’m still alive,” she said in quiet disbelief. “How is that possible after what he did?”

She had let Sebastian make love to her. No, she had
wanted
him to. And she had known, as he lain her across the bed that he was going to bite her. But . . .

Sebastian had transformed her into a vampire!

But she didn’t
feel
any different. Looking down over her body she could see no changes that would verify her transformation from human to monster. Her skin still had good color, not pasty white like a corpse. Cautiously, she ran a finger over the bottoms of her upper teeth. There were no fangs or sharp points. She was still the same person, at least physically

Of course, what had she expected to feel?

She glanced over the side of the bed. Her dress, which had melted off under Sebastian’s exquisite touch, lay in a heap on the new throw rug that Vince had proudly purchased days ago. She realized that she didn’t have time to worry about what had become of her. Vince and Gary could show up at any time.

Sore muscles prevented her from moving quickly. She tried to lever herself up into a sitting position, but it was as if she had been drugged. She gave up and her head hit the stained pillowcase. She resolved to wait it out until she could sit upright without feeling so drained.

But the silence only fueled the wheels in her mind as she struggled for answers.
What has happened to me?
If it weren’t for the bloodstains on the sheets, she’d have thought it all a dream. But no, this was real.

Sebastian’s words came back to her.
Drink from me now and I will be your faithful lover and friend throughout eternity.

“I really am a vampire,” she mouthed incredulously.

Oh God, what have I done?

The door crept open and Sebastian slipped quietly across the floor, wearing his usual charming smile. What was it that she’d wanted so badly? A wild child? Well, there he stood, wild and
inhuman.

When Sebastian smiled the corners of his mouth curved up, his lips full and red. Blood red, she thought. And he did appear a little devilish.
Was I created by the devil?

Her heart quickened, beating mercilessly within her chest. She laid her hand over her breast in an attempt to quiet the pounding, not daring to take her eyes off Sebastian. A deadly vision of wicked desire. Was he an approaching demon or a fallen angel who had lost his way to heaven?

He leaned over her and took her hand. “Good morning,
cherie.
How do you feel?”

He’s acting as if nothing has happened. She felt the fury threatening to unleash. How can he do that? And how do I feel? I don’t know, you tell me. How are you supposed to feel after being changed into a vampire against your will?

She closed her eyes and turned away from him, hoping that he’d go away. She thought about pulling her fingers from his, but it seemed it would take monumental energy, so she merely sighed and sank further into the pillow. Sebastian stroked her hair and pulled it from her face where it stuck in places on her cheek with dried blood.

“Don’t be upset with me, Scarlet. I had to do it. You would have died.”

He
had
to do it?

“You should have stopped before it began to happen,” she hissed at him, still not turning to look into his eyes. “You told me you would.”

“I know,” he said quietly. “I did not tell the truth.”

Scarlet ripped her fingers from his hand and Sebastian stepped back, seemingly surprised. “You lied?” She struggled to prop herself up and finally settled back against her elbows. “You bastard! How could you do this to me? You kept on saying
trust me!”
She stared fiery arrows, aimed for his heart.

“Scarlet, you don’t understand. I did this for both of us.” He put his hands on her shoulders, but she pushed him away again. Her strength was little at best, but he moved back as she touched him.

“Understand?” She pulled the sheets around her breasts and sat up against the headboard. “You’ve turned me into a vampire. I did not ask for this! I believe in God and heaven, and love and death, and the President, and . . .” The tears came quickly and she wasn’t even sure what she wanted to say.

He tried to wipe the tears away, but she pushed his hand from her face. “No! I would never have asked for this . . . this . . .
condition
in all my life. It was extremely selfish of you to do this to me.”

She stared at Sebastian, sensing his regret.

The room began to swirl, the sparkling chandelier a kaleidoscope casting colors on the walls, while the stains on the bed twirled in her head like a carousel. Vince’s chandelier, and Vince’s bed, and his room.

“I want to leave. We have to get out of here,” she demanded. “What if Vince and Gary come?”

“No, Scarlet, you can’t, not until—”

“Don’t touch me! I hate you, Sebastian. You lied to me.”

She swung her feet over the side of the bed opposite from him and wrapped the sheets around her body, prepared to walk out of here if it killed her.

Maybe I'm already dead.

“Scarlet, you have to rest a while longer. You don’t understand everything that has happened to you.” He ran around to her side of the bed just in time to catch her as she tripped over a mass of sheets. She tumbled into his arms, pushing and kicking to free herself, but he clutched her tightly.

“Let go of me!” she yelled as she kicked into the air and her fingers slashed through his hair. “You selfish bastard!”

Her words injured him, and he dropped his arms to his sides, letting her shuffle across the floor on hands and shrouded knees. She leaned against the bed, pushing her back into the iron frame and staring at him.

“That’s right,” she admonished, no longer afraid, only angry. “You’re selfish. You wanted me for yourself like a child hoards a precious toy. So you took me, not caring what I would think.” The tears were uncontrollable. “And look what you’ve done. How can you say you did this for both of us? You did this only to please yourself, Sebastian DelaCourte!”

He winced. “But I love you,
cherie."

“Oh! Just quit with the
cherie
bit!” She was seething and choked on her tears but she wiped them away and felt her voice regain its strength. “Love me? You wouldn’t know love if it bit you on the neck.”

She growled at him, her new animal nature already emerging, but was abruptly stopped as her body convulsed and a ripple of pain shook her limbs. Her head jerked back against the mattress and she hunched into a ball on the floor in a futile attempt to quench the intensity of the pain. It was like the pain she’d endured as her soul had left her body, but this was hollow, a starving child bellowing for food.

She looked up at Sebastian. He had moved closer and his hand was extended to offer help, but she defied him to dare touch her. She would bite his hand if he got any closer. Yes, that would teach him.

The animal urges came so quickly.

“You’re going to need more blood. That’s why you’re in pain. Trust me, Scarlet, you must do as I say or you will only suffer more.”

She righted herself on the floor, glaring through long lashes at him, hating his pretty face and his calm, rational demeanor. But with the next piercing ripple of pain it was clear that she would need his help.

“Don’t ever say that you love me again.” She pulled the sheet from her legs and stretched them out on the floor before her, pushing her toes into the hardwood.

“All right,” Sebastian said. “For now, I promise you I won’t. But will you let me help you? I don’t like to see you suffer. There’s no need for it.”

Controlling the pain was becoming more of a challenge. It felt as if her blood bubbled inside her veins. A peculiar feeling, not so painful as she concentrated on it more intensely, more like an effervescing beneath her skin.

“What kind of help do I need?”

He went on all fours, a panther stalking its prey. But to Scarlet’s relief, he didn’t touch her. “You need more blood. Once more this morning and you will be much stronger. Then you can leave.” He looked away. “If you wish.”

Yes, she did wish to leave. But drink more blood? No, she couldn’t bring herself to do that. Could she?

Remembering what she’d done last night disgusted her, the way she’d shamelessly drunk the blood from Sebastian’s neck like a vicious animal. She remembered feeling strangely at ease at the time. She sighed, mulling over his suggestion of drinking more blood.

So this is how it must be? To survive I must become an
animal. A blood-drinking demon.

Sebastian stretched a leg out beside her and his arm brushed hers. The cool silk sleeve sent a shiver down her arm, and she felt a shock of desire. She jerked her head to the side, determined to fight the feelings that had gotten her into this situation in the first place.