Lust Bites (21 page)

Merle wakes up early and slips out of bed. When she remembers the day before in the library and Darius's ink-black eyes and calm low voice ordering her to stay she feels slightly light-headed and confused. She's sure Darius would be able to stop her again if he caught her leaving.

She's outside the castle, walking away towards the tree line, when she hears the front door of the castle open behind her. She turns and Darius stands just inside the doorway. 'Merle!'

She knows she's out of his reach, standing in bright sunlight. 'I have to go Darius.'

'No, Merle, wait. I have something for you.' He holds up a small parcel wrapped in canvas. She shakes her head, she knows that if she goes back to the castle doorway he'll be able to drag her inside. What with his psych-powers and his strength, the sunlight is the only weapon she has against him. Merle shakes her head and turns away from him, starting to run.

She has no money. Hitchhiking is something she'd always considered dangerous, but now, after nearly a whole month living in a vampire castle, it seems like nothing. It takes a few hours to get to London and almost as long again to get into Westminster. But eventually she's walking through the corridors of Cobalt again, buzzing with confusion and close to exhausted tears.

Her mother rushes over when she appears in the doorway, embracing her and muttering the same platitudes into her hair as before. How it was no problem that she couldn't make it all the way, that Darius Cole would have primed her to fail, that they would storm the castle and overwhelm him.

She pulls back from the embrace. 'No, Mum. I'm not here for that. I'm here to talk to you, because I know. Because he told me what you did.'

Her mother's face goes white. 'Whatever he's told you ...'

'No. Don't. Just listen to me. I just need to know the truth. Please.' Merle explains everything Darius told her as fast as she can, stunning her mother into reluctant silence with her explosive burst of speech. Talking and talking until she dissolves into gasps and tears.

Her mother grabs her by the shoulders and pulls her into a forceful embrace. 'It's not true. Darling, none of it. This is what he does. It's a game to him.' Merle's mother strokes her hair. 'Darling, it's us. We're your parents. You know that. Cole is doing things to you. Nasty things. He's using his psych-powers on you. Come home with me. I can show you your baby pictures. Pictures of me when I was pregnant. It wasn't until two years after Cole was imprisoned.'

'And Magdalena Wright was killed?'

Her mother looks a little uncomfortable

Merle pulls away from her so she can look at her properly. 'Magdalena Wright? Is she real?'

Her mother swallows. 'Yes. At least, there was a woman. She was important to him and that is how we captured him in the end. I don't know who she was.'

'Did you kill her?'

'She was killed.'

'Was her soul put in a prism?'

'What? No. We don't do things like that here. We don't mess with that kind of stuff. Cobalt is funded by vampire money. We don't touch witchcraft. Can't you see what he's doing? This is his revenge. We know he wants revenge on your father and me. Look at what he's already done.' Her mother waves a hand to her unconscious ashen father. 'And what better way to punish us than to take you away? Destroy your love for us. Oh, I should have known. Sweetheart, remember what you knew about him. Before. He is the master of this type of deception. Think about how he's spun this story to you. Hints and secrets. I bet he made it seem as if you were uncovering the truth for yourself when all along he was controlling every part of the web of lies he was spinning for you.'

Merle stares at her mother's face, her mind racing. It could be true. He could have constructed this entire thing, fed the information to her piece by piece. She sits down on the chair. She feels like she's losing her mind.

Darius's words echo in her head. You're too vulnerable. They'll try and confuse you.

'I'll kill him myself.' Merle turns to the sound of the familiar, strong dark tone. Her father.

'Dad!' Merle jumps up. He's sitting up in bed. Still grey and weak looking, but with something of his usual imposing charisma back.

'Erin,' he barks, 'pass me my clothes. I'll go and stake that sucker myself.'

Her mother rushes to the bedside. 'Charles! No! Please, you're very ill.'

But Merle's father is already swatting the pads of the monitoring equipment from his body as if they were irritating insects.

'Dad,' Merle says gingerly, 'you can't. This is about me.'

'No it isn't, Merle. This is nothing to do with you. He's only using you because he knows that the thing that would hurt us the most –' He freezes. He stays rigid for a second, then slumps back onto the bed and starts jerking wildly around.

'He's arresting,' Merle's mother shouts, grabbing a trolley that holds a large machine and knocking Merle out of the way as she rushes back with it. She places two large metal plates on Merle's father's chest. Merle just watches in horror.

When her mother turns to her, having shocked her father's heart back to life, Merle says, 'I'm going back. Right now. I'll kill Cole and bring back the antidote.'

Moments later, as she emerges onto the street, she has her mother's handbag in one hand and a Cobalt-issue wooden stake in the other.

Kristina opens the castle door. Merle pushes straight past her. 'Where is he?'

'I don't know if he's taking visitors,' Kristina says weakly.

Merle raises her stake. Kristina's eyes go wide. 'Where. Is. He?'

'His study.'

'Thank you,' Merle says, starting up the stairs. Halfway up she pauses and turns. 'And don't you dare follow me.'

'Yes, ma'am.'

In Darius's study, Merle runs the length of the room. Darius smiles and gets up, walking around his desk to meet her. He doesn't seem to notice her anger, even when she's almost on top of him, forcing him back against the desk, pressing the stake to his heart.

'You've been running,' he whispers. 'You're exerted and excited. I can see it in your skin. You look so beautiful.' He raises a hand and moves to touch her cheek.

'Don't,' she spits, 'don't touch me.'

Darius stills his hand a fraction before it makes contact. He looks down at the stake. 'Are you really going to use that thing, Magdalena? Is that what you want? Why don't you lift my clothing out of the way? Make me feel it against my skin.' His voice throbs with arousal.

'I'm going to kill you, you bastard.'

'Yes,' Darius sighs, doing what he had suggested she do herself and pulling up his sweater so the point of the stake presses against his bare chest. He makes a sound like a bitten off moan when it makes contact. 'I used to beg them for this, Magdalena.'

'Who?'

'The Black Emerald Clan. They would usually keep torturing me until I begged them for the stake.' He pauses and covers her shaking hands on the stake with his own. 'They would have me place it against my own chest. Just like this. It amused them to see me that desperate for death. Especially when they laughed and refused to administer the blows to drive it home. How much easier it would have been to bear if I'd known that when death finally did come, it would be you that brought it.'

Merle looks into his dark eyes, holds them and tries to keep thinking of her father, convulsing in that machine-enshrined bed at Cobalt. 'It was wrong, what you did. No matter what happened to you. My parents didn't torture you, the Black Emerald Clan did. Why did you attack my parents and not them?'

'I did attack the clan. They're all dead, remember. Not that your parents weren't equally responsible in their own way. But I had no choice, Magdalena. I had to go through your parents to get to you.' He takes his hands off the stake and cups her face. 'I promised I'd come for you. I promised
you.'

She looks at him. The pain in his eyes goes deep, deep down. Maybe he really does believe she's Magdalena. Maybe he's insane. It wouldn't really be that surprising after what had been done to him. She drops the stake and pulls away from him.

He catches her wrist. 'Come to my bed, Magdalena. Please. Come to my bed and bleed for me.'

Merle pulls her hand free and runs.

She's still breathing heavily when she gets to her own room on the floor below. On the table in the window – the one where her food is usually left – is a small canvas-wrapped parcel. She recognises it as the one Darius was carrying when he called to her from the doorway as she was leaving.

She unwraps it.

Inside is a small stoppered bottle containing a gold-coloured liquid that sparkles in the light. The bottle is labelled
Charles Cobalt Antidote.

Darius isn't in his study. Merle goes to his bedroom.

She stands in the doorway for a second. Darius is sitting at a small table by the window, writing in a journal. She holds up the bottle as she walks across the room to him. 'This is the antidote.'

'I know.'

'You were trying to give it to me when I left.'

'I know.'

'But if you'd given me this I might never have come back.'

'I know.'

She inhales sharply. Darius is close enough that if she reached out she'd be able to touch him. 'Is that true, Darius? This isn't a game? They told me you were playing mind games with me.'

'This isn't a game.'

'This is real?'

'This is real.'

She looks at him. For a long time she can't think what to say. And then, sudden and sure, she finds the perfect words. 'I think, I'd prefer it if you did the cutting. I'm not sure if I could cut myself.'

Darius goes pale. He stares into her eyes. 'Now you have to promise that you're not the one playing games.'

'I'm not, Darius. I know it. Maybe it's the only thing I know for sure right now. But I know I want to bleed for you.' She pauses for a moment to trace her bottom lip with her teeth. 'I want to see you come.'

Darius doesn't say anything else. He gets up and goes and opens the small top drawer of his bedside cabinet. A second later he turns around holding a tiny silver object. A razor blade. Merle swallows.

'You want me to do the cutting?' Darius says softly.

'Yes.'

Darius makes a soft little aroused noise. 'With the razor? It's up to you. If you prefer I could bite you.'

'If you bite me is it different? For you, I mean?'

'A little. The sensations are rather more intense for me. That way.'

She nods. 'Maybe next time then. I think the razor blade would be easier to accept, right now.'

'I understand.' Darius raises his hand, holding up the blade between his fingers as if he were showing it to her. 'Where?'

'What?'

'Where may I cut you?'

She closes her eyes. 'Cut me where you used to cut her.' Then she looks right at him. Deep inside. 'Where you used to cut me.'

They're standing so close to each other and yet Darius manages to move in and close the gap further. 'There were many places,' he whispers. 'Inside your thigh. Just above your breast. And then, there was this. I think this was your favourite.' Darius flickers the blade against her bottom lip. The pain is instantaneous and gone. Hardly pain at all. And then she notices a slight damp feeling on her lip and licks at it. Blood. The razor blade makes a tiny
ching
as it hits the floor and in Darius's eyes she can see he is almost incapacitated with arousal.

Moving with a dreamy underwater kind of slowness he reaches out and runs the pad of his ring finger over her bloodied lip. Then he pulls his hand away and turns it around, staring at the redness there. Very, very softly he says, 'Magdalena.'

He locks his eyes with hers as he pushes the finger into his mouth and slowly draws it out again. The sight of that alone is making her start to burn between her legs.

He pauses with the tip of his finger still in his mouth. She realises he's waiting. Waiting for her to indicate to him that she's OK. OK with him having her blood in his mouth. She reaches out, moves his hand gently from his mouth and kisses him.

He gasps, so overcome he barely kisses her back for a moment. She takes a step backwards, bringing him with her, holding him in her arms until she can feel the bed behind her. She lets herself fall backwards with Darius on top of her.

He groans again as his weight crushes her body down into the mattress and then he uses the position to drive himself harder down on her broken lip. Worrying the wound with his tongue. Delicately coaxing it open with his trademark skill and precision. Pain spangles across her mouth with each new exploration of his tongue. She finds she is bucking her hips up under him. Unable to think of much beyond the sensation.

Darius raises his head from her mouth. 'I'm going to bite you now. I have to.'

She sits up as he moves off the bed to the floor and kneels by her feet. He unbuttons her jeans, waiting while she kicks them away. He removes her underwear too and his sweater, then takes hold of her left leg with two cool hands, turns it outwards a little, and sinks his teeth into the thin skin of her inner thigh, just below the pouty lips of her cunt.

Just the fact his mouth is
there
is overwhelming. But the feel of the bite, the penetration, of him inside her – in a more intimate way than she would have ever thought possible, is beyond anything she's ever felt in her life. It transcends any pain; moves through it into crystalline ecstasy.

He moves back from the bite, the lower part of his face bloodstained and beautiful, and smiles up at her. Again he says, 'Magdalena.'

Ducking his head back down, he starts moving between lapping at the wound and sweeping his tongue over her clit. In her mind she sees how he must be covering her cunt in blood. Mixing it with her scents. When she thinks of how the swirling cocktail of frictionless musky slickness and sticky metallic scarlet must be overwhelming his senses, it almost feels like she can read
his
mind.

His tongue brings her over and over to her edge, just as before, but this time he quells her orgasms by spiking the sensations with sharp slivers of pain as he slips his mouth away to bite at her again. He goes through this cycle over and over, until she is delirious, fallen back on the bed, beyond herself.