Carnal Sacrifice (5 page)

He swept a hand through his dark hair, looking both troubled and protective of her. She knew he would have done anything not to share this conversation with Val. But something unthinkable was about to happen, world-in-peril unthinkable. There was no way she could keep standing at this point, because her legs shook and her head wouldn’t stop throbbing. She sat on the steps leading to the altar. Jaden came and sat beside her.

“I know it’s a lot to take in,” he began. “No one is going to force you to participate in the sacred rites.”

“Not at first, perhaps,” Val said from where she stood with her arms crossed.

Jaden glared at her, then said to Delaney, “Once every thousand years, vampires are given the choice to either go fully demon and kill as much of humanity as possible before they themselves are killed, or they can forsake their demon nature, live as mortals, and do harm to no one.”

“But you live that way now,” she said. “Can’t you just keep doing it?”

“We’re about to experience what’s known as a Reckoning, and we must choose one way or the other.”

Delaney raised her eyes to Val. “But you don’t want them to. Why?”

Val shrugged her elegant shoulders. “I was born a vampire. Jaden too. Some vampires are made, but our family dates back to the Crusades. If we turn our backs on who we are, we are doing our heritage a terrible disservice. That will be the end of our line. Jaden will not be able to father a vampire if he refuses to heed the call of his people.”

“But you would turn savage, wouldn’t you?” Delaney asked him. “You and the others.”

“Yes.”

“And you would feed on humans. Me, maybe. My village.”

“Delaney, once a vampire goes fully demon, he isn’t himself any longer. I…
we
wouldn’t be able to control ourselves. We would feed until somebody—or what’s more likely, an army of somebodies—stopped us.”

The thought made her frantic. Every compassionate instinct came rushing to the defense of future victims, but anger was there as well, a righteous anger that felt far more manageable than her uncertainty. So it was true, then, what the villagers believed. The Hungering Ones weren’t superstitious nonsense. They were real. And once they turned fully demon, they weren’t going to suck the blood out of a few guinea pigs. They were going to tear through her village one innocent soul at a time, draining necks until nothing was left, and then move on to the next village. And they wanted her to stop it?

“How on earth do I figure into this?” she said. “How do we go from ‘creatures of the night’ to ‘all-night orgy’?”

He glanced at Val, who wore an expression of feline alertness, then said, “The first vampire predates the Incas by thousands of years. The Incas conducted their ritual sacrifices to appease Pachacamac, the god that protected them from our kind. But the maidens they sacrificed had been cheated of life, love, family. Their ghosts demand retribution—one woman through whom they will finally know sexual ecstasy. One woman who will serve as their vessel. Five vampires will have congress with her. Five vampires will climax inside her. With five men, she will achieve many climaxes. And in that woman shall they find their humanity and be saved. In that woman, they shall be redeemed.”

Delaney recoiled as though he’d struck her. “So it’s true, then, what your mother said.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve come to pimp me to your friends.”

Jaden’s eyes betrayed his guilt and horror. “No, Delaney. Surely you don’t think me capable of that.”

Delaney struggled to her feet. She had to do something, anything, productive, real, because it was just too much to take in, all of it, and…she couldn’t. This was crazy. Unthinkable. Five men. No, five
vampires
.

“No,” she said emphatically. “I can’t.” She went to where the supplies were, knelt down and picked up an ancient skillet. For a second, she thought about using it on both of them. Instead, she set the pan on the fire, but her hand shook, and the silence was both ominous and electric.

“You and I have never been close,” Val said. “I know that I could have been a better mother to you. There’s been bad blood between us.”

“You give that phrase a whole new meaning.” Delaney recognized the chill in her own voice. She picked up a potato and a paring knife, and then sat cross-legged to slice it.

Val pulled her sweater closer over her shoulders. “When your father was sick…” Val seemed to hesitate, as though sunk by the memory of it. She looked so incongruous in this space, all pressed and coiffed, while the damp stone walls sent her words spinning up to the pyramid high above. “When he lay dying of cancer, I offered to turn him, to make him like me. He refused. Do you know why?”

Despite her dislike of Val, Delaney found herself unable to look away. “It was because of you,” Val said in a voice dripping with venom. “He said you would be destroyed by it, that you would consider it an abomination.”

“You fought about it, didn’t you?” Jaden said in apparent amazement. “I heard you. About a week before he died.”

“I loved him,” Val said bitterly. “Loved him enough to watch him age and die while I remained unchanged.” Her gaze, diffuse with remembered grief, zeroed in on Delaney. “Everything he did, he did for you. Always you. I railed at him about his stubbornness and stupidity. I could have cured him, made him immortal. But his sainted daughter might not approve, and now he’s as dead as those poor bastards on that tour bus.”

“And you blame me,” Delaney said tonelessly.

“You
are
to blame, don’t you see? You had his heart, the man I loved till his last breath, and you have Jaden. It’s a bit more than flesh can bear.”

Delaney looked up at Jaden, and Jaden looked at her. He was the handsomest, most talented man she had ever set eyes on, and possibly the kindest. She remembered the time her beloved cat, a three-legged relic from her childhood, had gotten stuck in a drain pipe on the estate. Jaden had stayed up until four in the morning coaxing the creature out while Delaney fretted inside with pneumonia. She would never forget the sight of them, drenched from a cold miserable rain, dripping in the mud room. Val was there too, screeching at Jaden to come in and not catch his death of cold. Which, given the circumstances, was pretty ironic.

“I want to talk to Jaden,” she told Val. “Alone.”

“Why, so he can seduce you again? Don’t be a fool. You aren’t cut out for this, and you know it.”

Delaney took up her pocketknife once more and continued to slice potatoes into the pan. “Where will you go, Val? There aren’t many Hiltons up here.”

Val gave a snort of disgust. “Tell me you aren’t for one minute considering this. Vampires are vampires. Humans are humans. You would be changing the course of history.”

“I think she told you what she wanted,” Jaden said. “If you leave now, you might make it to Cusco before daybreak.”

“Unless vampires have the ability to fly, she’s stuck here with the rest of us,” Delaney said. “The earthquake knocked out a big chunk of the road. We’re all essentially stranded here until they fix it, but that could take weeks.”

“Earthquake?” Jaden whipped his gaze toward Val. “You did that, didn’t you? My God. Was that to prevent my coming, or were you trying to kill…?” The color drained from his face.

“I do what is necessary to survive,” Val said with an air of injured virtue. “That’s how the game is played. Winners, losers. The eaters and the eaten.”

“Get out!” Jaden said, his voice hoarse with emotion. “How could you? What kind of person could do such a thing? Even if you hated Delaney, how could you try to murder the only daughter of a man you claimed to love?”

Delaney set down the knife and rose slowly. She felt sick. The earthquake could have killed more than just her. She still had no idea what might have happened in her village. How was Val able to cause a natural disaster? It was as though this was still earth, sure, reality was reality, but all the rules had changed.

Val slipped her purse over her shoulder. “You’ll regret this. Mark my words. Ask Jaden what the consequences are of you going through with this ridiculous ceremony. Ask what will happen to him.”

She left a cloud of floral perfume in her wake, her heels an angry staccato. Delaney stared after her in stunned disbelief.

“What is she talking about, Jaden? What consequences? How did she trigger an earthquake? And why were you unable to stop her?”

Jaden took her in his arms. He was warm, and her cheek rested comfortably against his chest. “Pachacamac, the Inca god of earthquakes. The fate of vampires has been entwined with that of Pachacamac for centuries. Female vampires have the power to summon him, to do earth magics. Male vampires do not.”

“She means to kill me,” she said.

His embrace tightened. “I will never let that happen.”

“So what
will
happen if I undergo the ritual? What consequences was she talking about?”

For a moment, Jaden seemed to hesitate. Then he said, “To channel that much sexual energy… I have no way of predicting what might happen. I’m not going to tell you it isn’t dangerous.”

“Will I be…?” Was there a word for what a vampire did to his victims? She remembered the shriveled remains of the guinea pigs she’d buried. “Will you drink from me?”

“Never. We’re here to cure our blood lust, not to indulge it.”

“What will happen to you if I agree to go through with the ritual?”

“Vampires don’t age as fast as humans do. For every ten human years, vampires can add on another ninety. But once human, I’ll live out the rest of my life like anyone else. I will die, like any other mortal.”

* * *

Jaden felt her startle in his arms. He knew she would need persuading. He knew she would need answers. And he knew in the end, she would agree to do the ritual, but that he would be the one making the sacrifice.

He loved her. Coveted her. And he would have to share her with four other vampires, all of whom had been handpicked to bring her to the greatest sexual ecstasy experienced by a human female.

“Why would you ever want that?” she said. “Why be mortal when you have the chance to live forever?”

He sighed. “I’m over two hundred years old, Delaney. I’ve done damn near everything. And there’ve been losses. Painful losses. There’s no natural progression to a vampire’s existence. Nothing to strive for. If you could be immortal, would you really want to?”

She turned away and went back to the fire. The smell of potatoes frying filled the air. “Maybe… No, I suppose not.”

“Being a rock star… Sometimes it’s just sad.”

The look she gave him betrayed her skepticism.

“I’m serious. You know how much I love the music. Can’t say that I love the business, though.”

“Is it worth dying for?”

“You’re worth dying for. And when you go someday, I see no reason to stay here without you.”

She looked up at him, her eyes full of love and also remorse. “I was wrong to leave you, Jaden.”

The scab was still there to be picked at. He kissed her upturned mouth, remembering that terrible night when Val had found them in the boathouse, and reminded himself why it was Delaney felt she’d had to run. He had long ago forgiven her, if there had been anything to forgive. She was his destiny. In two hundred and sixty-six years, she was the only woman he had ever truly loved.

Now, it was possible that she loved him too, despite knowing his true nature. The need for it burned inside him, as insistent as his need for her. She responded hotly to his kisses. She came alive in his arms. It was all that mattered—not Hollywood, not the ego-driven madhouse of being a celebrity, none of it. Just the moments like these, when he held the one thing that mattered: her.

When she drew away, she seemed to take a part of his heart with her, but he willed himself to be patient.

“I assume you still eat food?” she said with a glint of her old humor. “It’s not much, and it’s not what your chef makes you… You do have a chef, right?”

He felt a trifle embarrassed about the spoils of victory. If his frequent house parties were up to him, the only things to eat would have been pretzels and beer. “A chef, a housekeeper, a driver, a dog walker, a personal trainer, a personal assistant, a landscape architect, a pool boy, a PR agent and a manager.”

She blinked. “Wow.”

They ate out of the pan. Blue potatoes. He was surprised by how tasty they were. She painted a picture of her life there, her occasional clashes with the villagers. Many Andean men, seeking a better life for their families, went to Cusco to find work. Unable to navigate the strange new world of a big city, many got hooked on drugs, drink, gambling. She spoke of a woman named Amaru, of the difficulty in getting medical supplies, of finally understanding what had happened to all the guinea pigs.

“It’s tradition to keep garlic knots by the door,” she said. “They don’t work, do they?”

He smiled. “Just be thankful they ate guinea pigs and not people. It’s not as though they’re incapable. These are vampires, like me, who simply want to live out their years without the demon bloodlust.”

“Some, but not all?”

“Not all, but enough.”

She appeared to digest this. “Jaden, if I agree to the ceremony…”

“Yes?”

“What would happen if I couldn’t go through with it? All those men. I’ve never been with anyone I didn’t know well.”

With effort, he banked down the flare of jealousy and sexual possessiveness. “You’ll have to let go of the idea of being a ‘good girl’. You’ll have to give in to your purely animal nature. To bring you to that level of sexual ecstasy, they’ll need to do things to you that you’ve never done before, not even in your dreams. No part of your body will be off limits. They must work you into such a sexual frenzy, you don’t care who does what so long as they bring you to your next orgasm, and the one after that.”

He saw, and understood, the fear in her eyes. Saw too that beneath that fear lay a flicker of curiosity.

“I’m not… I’m not used to it. To sex… Up here, all I do is work. There hasn’t been time for anything else.”

“If you decide to go through with it, you’ll need to prepare. Physically.”