Demon of Mine (20 page)

With his dark hair becoming wind-swept
under the starlight and his lips curved in rare laughter, he looked
beautiful. The ache in her core intensified, urging her to catch up
with him. She charged forward, willing herself to move
faster.

It worked. Soon, she was running by
his side. He rewarded her with a grin that made her want to throw
her arms around him and pull him tumbling down into the grass.
Resisting the urge, she looked ahead to where the doe had stood. It
had heard them and was bounding away, toward the edge of the
forest. “This is amazing,” Elsie said as they raced after it. “We
must be as fast as horses!”

“
I race my horse Ares
sometimes,” Damon replied. “I usually win, and he hates
it.”

They were too fast for the deer. With
a few long last strides, Damon overtook it and leapt, pulling it to
the ground with him. Elsie winced as they fell, waiting for the
sound of snapping bone. Surely all four of the creature’s slender
legs wouldn’t come away from the tumble unhurt – it would be too
easy for one of them to land at an odd angle or be broken beneath
the combined weight of animal and vampire.

But they didn’t. Damon brought the
deer to the ground just right, pinning it on its side. It
struggled, futilely kicking at air and tall grass while Damon
crouched on the ground behind its shoulders. Elsie stared,
transfixed, waiting for the inevitable. Her stomach churned in a
fit of mingled hunger and dread as Damon lowered his mouth to the
animal’s neck. She expected blood, gore and screams from the
animal. But when Damon pressed his lips to its throat, the gesture
was as light as a kiss, and the deer stopped struggling after a
quick moment.

“
It’s paralyzed now,” Damon
explained, rising with only a small drop of blood on his lower
lip.

Whether or not it could feel, it could
clearly see. It blinked up at Elsie with wide, dark eyes that
unnerved her. As reluctant as she was thirsty, she stalled for
time. “How did you do that?”

“
Venom. Our fangs produce
it. You may use it anytime you choose to still a victim
temporarily.”

Elsie swallowed, taking in the new
information. Her throat burned, desperately dry. She could smell
sweet hints of blood in the air and see little beads of it welling
against the deer’s caramel-colored pelt where Damon had pierced its
long, graceful neck.

“
Don’t be afraid,” Damon
said, taking her hand and gently pulling her down to the ground.
“You don’t have to kill it if you don’t want to. You can drink some
of its blood and let it go.”

Elsie nodded as his suggestion calmed
her, if only slightly. Logic told her that draining the animal of
all its blood would be no different than eating meat, which she had
done many times as a human. But eating a slice of roast prepared by
the cook was somehow different than personally draining a living
creature of its lifeblood. Damon placed a reassuring hand on her
shoulder and she lowered her head, feeling as compelled by his
gentle urging as her own thirst.

The animal’s hair was soft and warm.
She hated how pleasant it felt against her lips, how its texture
and the scent of blood combined to fuel her hunger. Opening her
mouth, she tentatively pressed her teeth to its neck.

Her fangs began to ache upon contact
with her victim, throbbing as if they might burst. The pressure
eased when something almost sickeningly sweet-tasting leaked out of
them – presumably venom. The taste was followed quickly by a whole
new level of thirst that drove her to bite down into the animal’s
muscle and let its blood rush into her mouth. She hardly had time
to feel disgusted before she swallowed, and after that, there was
no turning back. The deer’s blood was more delicious than any
venison she’d ever tasted – or any food at all, for that
matter.

Several minutes passed before Damon
spoke. “If you want to let it live, you’ll have to stop
now.”

She pulled her fangs from the doe’s
neck and rocked back on her heels, facing Damon.

“
You don’t have to, of
course,” he added. “You can drink all of it. It’s really no
different than having a bit of beef for dinner.”

She took a look at the animal’s
half-closed eyes and shook her head. “This feels so strange to me.
I don’t want to kill anything.” Worried about sending Damon into
the throes of guilt, she continued. “At least not tonight.” She
mimicked him when he rose and followed him to a spot in the grass,
several strides away from the resting animal.

He nodded as they settled down on the
ground again. “That’s fine. You can choose what you want to be and
how you want to live.” His voice grew suddenly sharp. “Don’t ever
let anyone tell you otherwise.”

Leaning back on her hands
in the grass, she eyed his frown curiously. “Who
would
tell me
otherwise?”

“
Many would,” he replied
bitterly. “Including my parents.” He grasped one of her hands and
pulled it into his lap, gripping it tightly. “Don’t worry. I won’t
let them corrupt you.”

“
Are they really that bad?”
she asked, eyeing the sleeping deer. Surely it wouldn’t be
difficult to live without killing anyone, or even an animal, if she
didn’t want to. Between the tone of Damon’s voice and the dark
gleam in his eyes, he made his parents sound like the demons they
were reputed to be.

“
Yes,” he answered without
hesitation. “But you don’t have to be like them. Or me.”

She laughed. “Of course I want to be
like you. Why wouldn’t I?”

He shot her a dark, warning look.
“Don’t be a fool.”

Her laughter died on her lips. Trying
not to let her hurt show on her face, she looked away from him and
at the sleeping deer, as if it could possibly offer some
comfort.

“
What I meant,” he said,
“was that you don’t know what you’re saying.”

She dared to look at his face again.
“You’re always saying things like that. I don’t see anything
terrible about you. I love everything I see. If there’s something I
shouldn’t, then tell me about it.” She forced herself to hold his
agitated gaze, not really afraid of what, if anything, he might
reveal. He seemed to have a fondness for being hard on himself. No
doubt his guilt sprung from some overly harsh
self-judgment.

“
Very well,” he said, his
tone unusually formal. “If you insist.” He looked away from her
before beginning. “When I was sixteen, just a few months after I’d
been changed, my parents hired a new stable hand. At least, that’s
what it looked like when I found the man mucking out the stalls. As
a boy I spent half my life in the stables, and the other half
riding, so I was on friendly terms with all the stable workers. I
saw no reason why he should be any different.” He pressed his eyes
shut and tilted his head back, sighing.

“
I was very proud of the
handsome gelding my father had given me for my birthday. I couldn’t
resist showing him off to the new stable hand and was delighted
when the man seemed to appreciate the animal as much as I did. He
was poor, but a true horseman. We talked horses for hours, until
the sun began to set and I went inside to wash and dress for
dinner. In the excitement of meeting another equestrian, I’d
forgotten all about my new nature.” His sensual mouth twisted into
a grimace.

“
We ate the evening meal in
a very private dining room on the third floor, my parents and I.
Lucinda was not there, for she hadn’t yet been changed. It was my
first formal meal alone with them, and my last. There were great
goblets on the table, engraved with silver and filled with blood.
They bid me to drink and I did. What I didn’t know – what I found
out when I stumbled across the freshly drained body draped across a
table in the next room – was that the blood had come from the
stableman I’d just made friends with.”

Elsie repressed the urge to gasp as a
shiver of distaste raced down her spine, causing the hair on her
arms and the back of her neck to stand on end.

“
They hired him intending
to murder him that night for their dinner. He had no family, and
had yet to become established among the other servants. He was
never missed.” The misery in Damon’s voice sliced through Elsie’s
heart.

She placed a hand on his arm and
pulled in an attempt to get him to face her. “That wasn’t your
fault. You didn’t know.”

“
It doesn’t matter whose
fault it was. I did it. I drank the blood of an innocent man, of a
friend.” He’d opened his eyes, but only to glare stubbornly at the
distant forest.

“
Damon…”

He shook his head. “I don’t want you
to try to convince me I’m innocent.” At last he looked at her,
laying a hand on her shoulder. “I know I am not, but the sight of
you makes me think my existence is not necessarily a sin, and that
is enough.”

“
Yes.”

She rose to her knees and brushed a
kiss across his lips. “I’m certainly glad that you exist. It was
after that happened that you took to the streets at night and saved
me from the fire, wasn’t it?”

His expression darkened. “Yes and
no.”

“
What does that
mean?”

He sighed. “It was after that that I
took to the streets, but you weren’t the first distressed person I
found.” The tall grass rustled quietly as he clutched a fistful off
it, crushing the thin stalks in his fist. “The first was a man – a
tailor, I think, for I found a packet of needles later in one of
his pockets. He was walking alone at night, traveling the dark
streets between a tavern and his home when a thief accosted him. I
was watching from the shadows and thought I’d play the hero by
intervening when the thug laid hands on the man.”

He tore his handful of wild grass up
by the roots and flung it away, scattering it. “By the time I tore
them apart the criminal had already drawn his knife. The tailor had
been cut, but it wasn’t a fatal wound – or at least, it shouldn’t
have been.” He let the silence stretch on for a while, and Elsie
shifted in the grass, as much for distraction from her impatience
as for comfort.

“
I hadn’t fed for nearly
two weeks,” Damon said. “After what had happened with the
stableman, I was too disgusted with myself to touch blood, though I
felt as if I were dying of thirst. And so, when the tailor’s blood
began to flow, I lost my mind. I killed both men.”

Elsie’s fingers itched with the desire
to bestow a comforting touch upon Damon, but fear that he’d reject
her effort caused her to hold back for a moment.

“
I drained their bodies dry
and disposed of them like the fiend I was, by dumping them in the
Thames. They’re still there for all I know – bones at the bottom of
the river.” He tore up another clump of grass. “I don’t know if the
tailor had a family, but I wonder every day. If he did, they’ll
never know what happened to him.”

When the silence had stretched so long
that Elsie feared he intended to spend the rest of the night in
wordless contemplation, he finally broke it. “It was not long after
that that I found you. I’d been despairing for several days,
devastated that my heroic plans had fallen through. I wandered to
the Thames that night – returning to the scene of my crime, I
suppose – and thought to throw myself in, thinking it would be a
fit end for me if my bones lay for eternity beneath the water with
my victims’. Of course, I later found out that a vampire can’t be
drowned, so it would have been a wasted effort if I’d tried. But I
didn’t, because something caught my eye as I stood ready to jump –
a beacon of flames in the distance. I abandoned my morbid
intentions then and went to it, where I discovered your house.” He
shocked Elsie by taking one of her hands in his. “You know what
happened after that.”

“
Yes, I do.” Emboldened by
his unexpected touch, she hurried to kiss him before she could
second-guess her decision to do so.

He let her kiss him, though their lips
brushed for only a moment before parting. Elsie settled back into
the grass, glad that he still held her hand. Seeking something –
anything – to distract him from his surely morbid thoughts, she
turned her gaze to the sky. “Do you know the summer
constellations?”

“
Of course,” he replied. “I
spend a great deal of my time outdoors at night.”

“
There’s Aquila,” she said,
pointing, “the eagle.”

He nodded, and to her satisfaction,
followed her lead when she sank back into the grass, lying sprawled
beside him on her back.

“
And Draco,” he said,
motioning toward the glittering string of stars that made up the
celestial dragon.

“
I’ve always liked that
one.” She shifted closer to him, so that their shoulders
touched.

They passed nearly an hour that way,
lying together and admiring the sky, occasionally pointing out a
favorite constellation. Elsie measured his comfort level by the
feel of his muscles against hers. When at last the tension seemed
to have gone out of his shoulder, arm and leg, she dared to break
the spell of their companionable study by kissing him.

He returned her kiss with alacrity,
crushing his lips against hers. The feel of his mouth was like
silk, and his tongue like velvet against hers. The heat that had
been burning in her belly since he’d first touched her flared in
intensity, causing her to moan.