Last Breath (3 page)

Evidently not. And hope was a beautiful thing. I opened the box and gasped to see the contents. It was a book, an old book nestled in clean white silk. I cradled it with the packing material as I gently pulled it from the box, careful not to get any of the oils from my hands on the fragile cover.

It was a first edition copy of the Lemegeton, translated from the original Latin, Hebrew, and French texts by Fra D.C.D.D. and Petra Marcus. Draping the silk over my fingers, I opened the cover and again caught my breath. Librarians, including Templar ones, might frown upon those who underlined in books and made notes in the margins, but magicians loved these insights by those who had come before them. Especially if the one making the notes had been Aleister Crowley himself. I traced the dark, scrawling script with a silk-covered finger and marveled that Raven had parted with such a treasure.

She’d given it to me. Monetary value aside, this book was priceless and she’d given it to me. I wrapped my gift carefully in the silk and stored it back in the box before putting it on the shelf with my other treasured manuscripts. Then I picked up my phone.

It went to voice mail. I hadn’t really expected her to pick up. Yes, this was hopefully the narrowing of the breach between us, but I was still a Templar and I’m sure she didn’t want to suffer the same fate as I had when it came to Haul Du.

When the beep came to leave a message, I said everything I could in two words before I hung up. “Thank you.”

Less than two seconds later my phone beeped with a text.

Miss you
.

I missed her, too. Hopefully this was a sign that in spite of her choice to stay with Haul Du, Raven and I would always find a way to be friends.

A
S MUCH AS
I wanted to immerse myself in my new book, I had work to do. I needed to catalog the contents of Ronald’s pockets before I forgot what they were, go through all the scraps of paper I’d taken off his body, and see if I could figure out which demon the sigil burned into the ground under his body belonged to.

I also had a date—a real date with a human male. Zac, the guy from my LARP group, to be exact. I should have been excited. I knew
Zac
was excited. He’d barely contained himself when I’d said yes to his invitation. He’d reminded me twice at the LARP about what time he’d be at my apartment to pick me up. He’d already texted me to confirm yet again.

I wanted to cancel. A guy died in the park, and there was a lot of research I needed to do. Maybe I could ask him to reschedule—like, reschedule for some time next month.

But growing up meant doing things you didn’t always feel like doing, like eating your broccoli or memorizing those Latin verb conjugations. I might have run out on taking my Oath of Knighthood, but I wasn’t the kind of woman who would cancel at the last minute on a guy with the lame excuse of having to wash my hair or research demon sigils.

And I knew in my heart that I needed this date. It had been far too long, and I was two steps away from becoming a nun. If my landlord hadn’t been so vehement about the no-pets clause in my lease, I probably would already have at least two cats roaming my apartment. I was considering taking up knitting. Well, no, not the last one, but I did miss having a pet. And the dating situation was becoming dire. If I was fantasizing about hot vampire guys and seriously thinking of cancelling a date to spend the evening reading the
Clavicula Salomonis Regis
, then I needed an intervention.

Zac was cute. He was fun. And he was crazy about me in a very flattering, if somewhat stalkerish, fashion. I’d do what I could for the next few hours, go on my date with Zac. Enjoy myself. Then finish up when I got back. Baby steps.

That decided, I sat down, pulled out a notebook and started writing. Fifteen minutes later I had what looked like a shopping list of magical supplies. Now to make sense of it all.

If the herbs and items in Ronald’s pockets had a magical purpose, then they were separated for a reason. I grouped the items together, and began to research what spells they would most likely be used for. It was a long and carpel tunnel causing project, so I took a break midway to read the papers I’d found in the dead man’s largest pocket.

A receipt for fast food. A grocery list. An address. I was just about to reverse look-up the address when there was a knock at my door. It was at least an hour before I expected Zac, and I’d had few other visitors since I’d moved to Baltimore. Well, except for one. I waited, hoping, but the locked door didn’t swing open. I knew that he’d hardly be able to come by when the sun was up, but I hadn’t been able to help my irrational anticipation. Tamping down my disappointment at who
wasn’t
at my door, I went to answer it.

It was Sarge, his nervous smile oddly contrasting with his buff, bouncer physique.

“You got a moment to chat?”

Not really, but I could hardly turn him away. Sarge was cool, one of the people I felt the stirrings of a fledgling friendship for. Normally I don’t think I’d have much in common with him beyond weight training routines, but Sarge was a blood slave. His connection with the local vampire
Balaj
meant he was one of the few people in the city I could discuss the supernatural with without being accused of being a looney. And he was one of the few sources of information on vampires who didn’t want to drink my blood.

“Sure! Come on in.”

Sarge eyed my sword on the table and made a beeline for the sofa, launching right into his reason for the visit before his butt had even hit the cushion.

“Geraldo is going to dump me. We’ve been together for six months, and I know that I tempt him to indulge more than he probably should. I can’t help it. I want him. I want him all the time, and… we had a fight.”

Okay. Time to have a girlfriend support session with a man in love with a vampire. I moved my notes from the couch onto one of the few places on my coffee table not covered with books, then got him a pint of ice cream.

“Here.” I jabbed the spoon into the open container. “It’s cookie dough. Makes everything better.”

I was just glad I had it to offer. A few days ago there was nothing in my apartment but some Ramen noodle packets and instant coffee but last night, when I got home, my monthly biological event led to my finding twenty-five hundred dollars in my tampon box. The vampires had paid up and Dario must have snuck in and placed it in my usual hiding spot for cash. It bothered me that I hadn’t seen him since the last confrontation with the necromancer. He could have waited to give me the money in person, or left a note of some sort. Nothing. Just a wad of hundreds in a tampon box.

I’d buried my disappointment deep, hid most of the money back in the box, and went to an all-night grocery, grateful that at least I was a regular sort of girl when it came to my fertility cycles.

So I had ice cream, milk, real coffee, a quart of potato salad, and a roasted chicken. And I’d replaced my Emergency Beer—just in case.

Sarge’s relationship problem might have warranted ice cream, but it didn’t rise to the level of Emergency Beer. No, that ten dollar bottle of Belgian was only to be broken out in case of a demon summoning gone bad, or if
I
was the one crying over a vampire.

“So… what happened?”

They probably didn’t have a lot of time left as a couple before Geraldo either broke it off, or lost control and killed Sarge. He wouldn’t mean to, but vampires couldn’t resist taking too much, or drinking too frequently from their blood slaves for long. At six months, their relationship had lasted longer than any I’d read about in my textbooks.

“The last two nights have been the usual. He takes care of his needs once he awakens, then I meet him around midnight. We spend the night together and he leaves my place before dawn.” Sarge stabbed the ice cream with the spoon a few times. “We have sex. He marks me as his own. Sometimes we watch a movie or play ‘Call of Duty.’”

Sounded like most relationships, outside of the biting. “So, why the argument? I don’t mean to be ignorant, but Geraldo seems pretty attentive.”

Sarge appeared determined to kill my pint of cookie dough ice cream with that spoon. “It’s not the same. You’ll see. Sex is good, but sex when they really drink from you is amazing. That’s what I want, and I don’t want to wait eight weeks for it.”

I winced. Clearly there wasn’t enough hit from whatever narcotic was in the vampire venom to sustain Sarge in between deep feedings. This was the nature of a relationship with a vampire, the life of a blood slave. Their venom was a drug that created a dependence and cravings that couldn’t be ignored. At first it was manageable, but over time, the need was all a blood slave felt. Textbook cases had a blood slave living for four months before the vampire took their life. Geraldo seemed to have amazing control, but with Sarge pushing him, he’d eventually step up the feeding frequency until his partner was an anemic husk. Eventually Sarge would die.

I didn’t know what to say. You couldn’t tell an addict to lay off the smack, to walk away. You couldn’t convince him that his seductive drug of choice was going to kill him. All I could do was hope the tub of ice cream that Sarge was massacring was going to help him make the right choice.

“Tonight is our night. You know, for us to really be together. I’ve been waiting eight weeks for this night, and I get the feeling it’s going to be our last.”

Sarge stopped stabbing the ice cream and set it on the coffee table next to Swift and Beachum’s
Cabalistic Rites
. I looked at the sad container of melting cookie-dough, then up at Sarge. “I think that’s even more reason for you to just enjoy tonight.”

Because tomorrow he’d be dead? Or ditched and facing the mother of all detox? Or turned, although I’m pretty sure that discussion would have been on the table prior to tonight.

The man shook his head. “I want more. He wants more. But we both know where that will end. This whole relationship was doomed from the start.”

It was. I wish I had some magical spell to lessen the addictive nature of the venom, or to allow a human to regenerate blood loss overnight. I barely knew Sarge, but I felt for him and his romantic tragedy. I wanted to be the good friend and just listen and sympathize, but it was hard to see anyone standing on the edge of a cliff and watch while they jumped.

“What do you want to happen? I mean, within the realm of reality, there are only three choices, and you’re going to have to pick one. You keep going like this and you’ll have a few weeks of non-stop ecstasy before you die. And I’m trying to stress the ‘die’ here.”

He eyed the ice cream. “Part of me wants that. I’d die happy. I wouldn’t suffer, Geraldo would make sure of that. Beats getting hit by a bus.”

Yeah, we all died eventually. I thought of Essie and her comment when I’d brought Dario to Middleburg last week. It would totally be worth it if Sarge were over a hundred years old or terminally ill. He was a healthy young man, though. He had his whole life ahead of him, and it could be a happy life. He’d never know if he went down this path.

“Have you spoken to him about possibly turning you?” That was one of the other options. I don’t know if he’d get the weeks of ecstasy—possibly only the one night before Geraldo did the deed. I wasn’t sure exactly how it worked except that it involved exsanguination on both sides and an overnight blood bath.

Sarge looked shocked at my question. “That’s not common. It would be a great honor, and I’ve put it out there that I wouldn’t refuse, but that’s not the sort of thing you ask. From what I’ve been told, it’s rarely offered. Siring takes a huge toll on the vampire, and there’s a lot of responsibility involved. Even the oldest of them have only turned a few dozen in their lifetime.”

I blinked in surprise. Dario had twice offered it to me and he’d never even shared my blood. It shed light onto those conversations and revealed some nuances I wasn’t sure I was willing to think about right now. Not that it mattered. I’m sure that and all other offers were off the table now.

“Besides,” Sarge continued. “It would completely change our relationship. In a way, we’d have a deeper connection, and we’d probably still love each other, but it wouldn’t be the same.”

No, there would be no sharing of blood, no drug-fueled orgasms. They’d both feed from humans, finding emotional and physical satisfaction in blood slaves. It sounded weird that Sarge would miss the obsessive need of a blood slave for his vampire, but it was true. Unfortunately, the man couldn’t have his cake and eat the whole darned thing without it killing him.

“Then you need to walk away.” Here came my tough love speech, the one I wasn’t sure I would heed if I were in Sarge’s shoes. “You walk away, get clean and find a boyfriend who isn’t a vampire.”

Sarge’s eyes met mine. “Could you? Walk away, that is?”

Probably not. Still, I needed to be the voice of reason. “Three choices, my friend. Three. Indulge and die an early death. Break with polite convention and have the make-me-a-vampire talk. Or walk and live. There are good guys out there, Sarge. Once you come down off the venom addiction, you’ll see that there are great guys out there to love who won’t wind up killing you.”

He smiled sadly. “You wait and see. I tried to break things off once, and went right back after a month. Sex isn’t as good. No one else is as good. All you do is think about them and how incredible you feel when you’re with them. I’d walk away and be living like a hollow shell, constantly missing what I’d left behind. I think I’d rather be dead.”

And with that, I realized that Sarge had made his choice. It was a choice that scared me, that brought a sting of tears to my eyes. The man stood picking up the container of soupy ice cream and taking it to my kitchen.

“Normally we meet at my house, but tonight I’m going to meet Geraldo at his place.”

I waited a second, wondering the significance of this.

“I’ve been there before. You know how vampires are about anyone knowing where they rest. Well, blood slaves are different. I’ve been to his house, I’ve met the other vampires in the
Balaj
. I’m part of their family. It’s what being a blood slave is all about.”