In the Blood (14 page)

Her thoughts became muddled, and she struggled to hold her memories close. The pain faded. She couldn’t feel her body anymore. Her mind wandered, all the way to the little attic room where she’d spent her wedding night as Melina. Lying beside Viktor in the dark, she had listened to the sound of his breathing, her heart nearly bursting with the love she’d felt for him in that lifetime.

“
Miluji tê
,” she whispered to Viktor, lying sleeping beside her, and to Viktor, transformed into a monster from her nightmares. “
Miluji tê
, Viktor.”

Then she died.

Her blood washed through him like a tidal wave, blasting away years of pain, decades of dying. He had the presence of mind to release her, to roll away from her body so that as he collapsed, he did not crush her. Melina. No,
Cassandra
. That was her name now. Her soul was nameless, though it was familiar, and it poured into him as a healing balm. How had he forgotten her?

It took him a moment to become aware of what he’d done. It took him another moment to stop. He drew away, his broken arm still cradling her. She’d spoken to him, in words that had penetrated his consciousness, in a language he had not spoken for decades but still remembered with piercing clarity. She had told him she loved him.

“
Miluji tê
,” he repeated to her still form. He wanted to weep, but he could not allow it. He had done this. He had murdered his beautiful Cassandra. His Melina. For the second time, he had failed her.

No, it could not be this way! With a roar of frustration, he slashed his own wrist and let the blood well up. He had condemned her to death before by being too weak to protect her. This time there was something he could do about it. He pressed his wrist to her slack mouth and prayed that some spark of life remained within her. Prayed that she could forgive him for what he had done, what he did to her now. The act of changing her might make him into a monster once more. He had balanced so precariously on the limit of his humanity for so long, he no longer knew what might tip the scales. He silently urged her to wake, to drink the blood that flowed into her mouth.

She stirred in his arms, pushing him away, gagging. She spit the blood from her mouth, scrubbed her hand across her face as she did so. Her hair, matted with her blood, stuck to her cheek, and she pushed it away with a grimace of disgust.

She should have been unable to move, seized by agony as the change had taken her. It had taken him days to recover from his transformation. Days of fever and uncertainty, days of praying for a death that would never arrive. He didn’t wish that horror on anyone, especially not Cassandra. The thought of her hurting, the thought of the pain he had already caused, drove a spike of helpless rage into him.

Cassandra rolled away from him, choking, and he didn’t dare to touch her. Finally, her coughing subsided, and she asked in a strangled whisper, “What happened?”

Viktor squeezed his eyes shut. “Anthony and I saw on the news that Minions had attacked near here. We came to protect you. He did not survive.”

A sob escaped her, and it surprised him. She had never seemed to care for Anthony, and Anthony certainly had never cared for her. She’d consumed vampire blood. At this moment, she should care only for blood, for feeding, if she had truly transformed. He reached for her. Her skin did not burn the way a new vampire’s feverish flesh should feel. She was human still, warm and alive. He had not killed her. He had not turned her.

“This is all my fault. If I had never left—”

“No.” He tried to pull her into his arms, but she resisted him. Why shouldn’t she? He’d nearly killed her, and he had certainly destroyed her life. “You are not responsible for what happened here. There are Minions all over the city. Right now, many Conclave members are losing their lives. You are responsible for none of them.”

“No.” She turned wide, tear-filled eyes to his. “I meant before. In Prague. I should have never left by myself that night. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have died, and you wouldn’t be—”

“Dear God.” He pulled away from her, then cursed his reaction. What reaction did he expect to have, faced with a living ghost?

“You should have let me die.” She sounded tired and defeated. “This time. You should have let me die.”

His hands trembled as he reached for her. On her left ring finger, she wore Melina’s wedding band. He covered her hand with his own, and the skin-warmed gold did not burn him. “Melina?”

She looked up at him and gasped. What must he look like now, half-transformed, halted in his transition to Minion?

“Viktor,” she sputtered. “Your hair.”

In the fight, her little vanity table had been destroyed, and pieces of mirror lay all around them. Cassandra reached for one with trembling hands and held it out so he could see. In the fragile shard, a face from long ago stared back at him.

He touched his hair, no longer the colorless white from before, but the dull brown it had been in his youth. His face, too, did not appear so pale or grim. He looked…almost human.

“Does this mean…” She paused and licked her lips. “Does this mean that you’re not a…”

“No.” The hunger remained, taunting him. “No, I am still a vampire.”

“Oh.”

The soft noise of disappointment pierced his heart. She would have liked it better if he had not been a vampire anymore. The sound of sirens pricked his ears. “We have to go.”

With his help, Cassandra rose on shaky legs. “You can’t go out like that, you’re practically naked,” she said, indicating his torn clothes. “And the sunlight!”

A crack of thunder split the air, and raindrops pelted the window. The sunlight would not be a problem, but everything else…

With a growl of frustration, Viktor grabbed the sheet from the bed and shook glass off it. He tied it around his waist and helped Cassandra downstairs, to the waiting car. The sun stung his eyes, but his skin didn’t ignite. Anthony had left the keys in the car—a final favor. Viktor peeled away from the curb without a look back. When he finally relaxed enough to check on Cassandra, she was asleep, slumped against the window in the passenger seat.

Safe. Covered in gore, almost dead at his hands, but safe. He trembled and turned his attention back to the road and the unfamiliar mechanics of driving. Anthony was gone. The Conclave wouldn’t be happy. Minions still swarmed the city.

He had failed her.

It wasn’t just that he hadn’t been able to stop himself from draining her dry. It wasn’t that he’d failed to transform her. He rejoiced in that. No, the thing that bothered him most was that he had even considered condemning her to this life. In his desperation to keep her, he’d been willing to sacrifice her soul.

For years, he had mourned Melina, prayed to have her back. The impossible had happened. And now, he had to let her go. To protect Cassandra, he had to let her go.

Chapter Ten

Cassandra woke to an empty room. She lay in Viktor’s bed, and the shades were open to the city lights stretching beyond the darkened rectangle of the park. Standing gingerly, she winced at the soreness in her limbs. She’d never have thought that beating something to death with a weapon would take so much physical effort. She’d always assumed the weapon did most of the work.

Her neck stung too, and she reached up to touch the wound from Viktor’s bite. A shiver ran through her, all the way to her toes, and not the good kind. Viktor had been one of those creatures, or nearly one of them. A monster from her nightmares.

She paused. Something was wrong. She hadn’t woken screaming or sweating. She hadn’t been tormented by hellish visions. She’d just…slept.

Frowning, she slid from the bed. When Viktor had carried her into the apartment, he’d taken her straight to the master bathroom and helped her to undress. She’d stayed awake just long enough to shower away the blood before crawling under the covers. At the foot of the bed, a black silk nightgown waited for her, and she pulled it on, grateful for the comforting softness. Her neck ached where he’d bitten her, and she touched the edges of the wound gingerly.

Padding down the hall, she found the door to the living room open and warm firelight in a flickering reflection against the marble. Her muscles tensed and she shot into motion, running toward the flames and shouting, “Viktor!”

When she burst into the living room, she realized her foolishness. The apartment was not engulfed in flames. A cheerful fire crackled in the fireplace, and Viktor sat on the couch, holding a glass of something that was not red, but a warm amber. He looked at her with concern written across every feature. “Is everything all right?”

Her chest almost caved in under the weight of her relief. “Yeah. Everything is fine. I thought the apartment was burning down.”

He chuckled. “You’re still in shock. You’re waiting for monsters to jump out at you from every corner.”

“Can you really blame me?” She sat beside him, wanting to touch him, to melt against his sturdiness and stillness, but she kept her arms tucked around her waist, pulling her body into a shell. He didn’t seem like the same Viktor. Though he hadn’t looked old before, he seemed younger to Cassandra now. He was the man she’d seen during her past life exploration, but she was not that woman. “What do we do now?”

He lifted his glass to her. “Since my transformation has been somewhat…reversed in its progress, I thought I would see if it is possible to get drunk. And watch the sunrise, if I am able.”

“The sunrise?” It hadn’t been the answer she’d been looking for, and she couldn’t ask him again. Despite all they’d been through, he seemed unapproachable now. “Isn’t that a little dangerous?”

“Only as we lose our humanity. At first, we can do nearly all of the things we were able to do while alive.” He smiled sadly, but Cassie couldn’t fathom why he’d be sad to regain his humanity. Not when she’d seen what he was about to become.

“Well, I meant…what now? The cops would have found my apartment full of dead monsters. They’ve got to be looking for me.” She wished he would take her into his arms and tell her that it would be okay. He would have, a day ago.

He shook his head. “No, they will not look for you. The Conclave has an infinite reach. They’ll have that apartment completely made over by now. It will look like you never lived there at all.”

“But the cops will know I lived there. They’ll want to question me and—”

“The Conclave will take care of the details. And if they do not…my wealth will take care of what they miss.” The silence stretched between them for some time, until he continued. “I am sorry to have complicated your life so. I fully intend to help you with whatever you need to rebuild. A job, a new identity, an apartment. Say the word, and it is yours.”

A cold knot formed in the pit of her stomach. “Um…I don’t know what I would need.”

“You need something better than a vampire, Cassandra.” He looked back to the flames.

Now that it was out in the open, the knot turned into lead and hardened everything inside of her. “What did you do to me? After you bit me.”

He didn’t answer her.

“Tell me!” She had remembered choking on blood, spitting the foul, coppery taste from her mouth. Had it been hers? “Why didn’t I die after you drank my blood?”

“Vampire blood is very powerful.” He looked up at her now, and in his gaze she felt the import of his words. “I gave you mine.”

She struggled to keep the fear from her voice. “Why would you do that?”

“You had died. I fed you my blood, in the hopes that—”

A prickle of understanding crept up her spine. “You were going to turn me into a vampire?”

“I thought it was the only way. I could not lose you again.” He closed his eyes and turned back to the fire.

“You didn’t want to lose me, but you’re sending me away now?” She shook her head. He had to realize how ridiculous that sounded. Please, God, let him realize how ridiculous it sounded.

“I was willing to condemn you to this life, Cassandra. I do not know why the Minions did not also turn you when we were attacked in Prague. For many years, I wished that they had. But time…it does not heal, but it gave me a new perspective. How could I have lived with myself if you, Melina, had lost your humanity and become a monster? Wasn’t it better that we were separated, if only to protect you from what I am?

“Now that I have you again, the temptation to hold on to you forever is far too great. I was willing to give you my blood and snatch you back from Death himself. I was willing to sacrifice your soul just to keep you. By the grace of God, you received only enough to restore you, but not enough to turn you. Knowing that I am capable of doing that to you… I would rather be apart, than risk giving in to the temptation to make you what I am.”

Tears coated her eyes, and she blinked them back. Fine, if that was how it would be, that was how it would be. She could live with disappointment. She had before. Even as she thought it, she knew it was a lie. After everything that had happened between them, he would just throw her away? He’d had decades to get used to his broken heart, but she hadn’t. She couldn’t adapt to the pain that froze her lungs. But she couldn’t make him love her, either. Desperately clutching the last shred of cold detachment that lingered in her soul, she strove to connect with the old Cassandra, the one who didn’t need anyone but herself. The persona didn’t fit as well now, but she forced her voice to sound bored and unaffected. “I’ll need an apartment.”

“You have your pick of any in Manhattan.”

She wetted her lips. “And I’ll need a job. A legit one. I’m not going back to the club.”

He nodded, still gazing into the fire. “There are openings in my company. Or, if you prefer—”

“I don’t want to work for you.” She’d declared that a little too stridently. Now was the time to get a bit of the old Cassie back, to use her pretend strength to get through the next few minutes, possibly the next few hours and days. “If it’s all the same to you, I think we should make this a clean break.”

“Of course.”

“And until I have a place to stay, I should stay in a hotel or something.”

“I’ve already had my new assistant make arrangements. You’ll be staying at the Waldorf-Astoria. From what I understand, the suites there are very tasteful, nothing like being in a hotel room.” He swallowed the rest of the liquid in his glass. “I’ll send someone over to show you apartments.”