Damien (31 page)

The Vampire Prince fell back onto the pillows and Syreena fell with him, sprawling weakly over his chest. She could not breathe, yet was breathing too hard. She could not silence herself as she continued to weep against the column of his neck. She felt his hands weave into her lax hair, holding her against him with that masculine gentleness of touch only his hands could ever convey. Damien did not try to console her in any way other than that fitting of his hands against her hot scalp. He was busy enough trying to settle back into his own body, trying to figure out how so much fullness of feeling could ever fit back within the limited confines of his skin.

She had told him she loved him. He had known that, but hearing it in the traditional phrase had affected him in new and blinding ways.

Ways that made him believe he could do anything.

Anything she needed or wanted him to do.

Because her loving him meant so much more than him loving her.

Syreena felt as though she were completely paralyzed.

She could not move, even quite some time after she had calmed down from her emotional and sexual roller coaster of feelings.

So she simply lay still, sprawled over her lover as if she had been doing so for years, not days. She could feel his fingers drifting up and down the length of her spine, the sensation soothing and sweet in the aftermath of such tumultuous feedback.

She thought she wanted to sleep, everything she had been through recently both mentally and physically exhausting. At the same time she was far too wired to ever succeed at rest, even though it was certainly past sunrise.

Syreena sighed, feeling safe as well as content. Sunlight had always been such a fearful thing for her people, the sun poisoning they could suffer a terrible thing to experience. Now, however, the sun meant such different things to her. It meant the likelihood of enemies disturbing them was reduced to nearly nothing. It meant that neither of them would go beyond the walls of their living space again until dusk. There was something about being locked in with Damien that made it seem like they were cocooned together. He could not leave her, and she could not leave him. Of course, they did not need such things to keep them together, but still it provided an added sense of togetherness and security.

“I can hear those abstract thoughts of yours even without trying,” he murmured close to her ear.

She smiled.

Syreena realized she had never smiled much in her lifetime. She had always been such a seriously centered person. She’d really only first discovered the ability to be lighthearted when she had become a part of Siena’s household fifteen years earlier. Her sister was known for her mischief and humor and had a way of getting to everyone’s funny bone. She had taught Syreena the pleasure to be found in joking and teasing.

But it was Damien who had sparked one irresistible grin after another this past week in a way that she had always thought to be beyond her, just out of reach of her understanding. She knew now it was because she was becoming comfortable with herself for truly the first time in her life. One needed self-comfort in order to find ease in humor and happiness.

“Are you always going to be this philosophical after we make love?”

Syreena giggled, raising her head to look at him and finding she was glad to actually be able to do so. She looked down into those eyes that seemed as deep as the deepest ocean.

“I hope it’s telepathy, this part of you I am supposedly getting. I would very much enjoy snooping around in your head in return.”

“Sweetling, I would love it if you did. It would save me a lot of foreplay.”

“Mmm, sure it would,” she said, her disbelief all too apparent. “I think you’d be very upset if we subtracted the neck nibbling from this whole affair.”

“Too true,” he agreed with a laugh. His grin lingered as he reached to rub a thumb over his latest brand on her. “I am sorry if I get carried away. I cannot seem to help myself.”

“Do not apologize, Damien. It always seems natural when it happens. It is an enhancement, not an intrusion.”

“I can believe that,” he said, reaching to touch the wound on his throat that was already beginning to heal. “I have never felt anything like this before. You make a very good Vampire.”

“Thank you.”

Syreena found she had regained strength in her arms, and using her healthy arm, she levered herself up into a sitting position over him. She paused midway, making a sound of discomfort as parts of her body protested fiercely at the movement.

“Hurting?” he asked.

“A little. I feel…I feel like…”

“You have been turned inside out?” he supplied.

“Yes. Of course, you would know that.”

“Yes, though I believe it was a bit more violent for me.”

“I beg to differ. I would definitely claim violence on this end.” Syreena groaned as she moved a little too far in a sore direction.

She felt his hands reach up to help support her efforts, but then he went distinctly still. She watched as his chin tilted down and he acted as though he were listening to something. Her heartbeat picked up momentarily, her sensation of security bleeding away suddenly as she tried to sense what had caught his attention.

“What is it?”

He looked at her as if surprised by the question. “Nothing. No, that is not true. It is nothing bad. Relax, sweetheart, we are safe here.”

“How do you know that?”

“Trust me. We are surrounded by Vampires, Syreena. They know I have returned. They would never let anything make it this far inside our county.”

“I thought Vampires did not congregate in the same areas.”

“Romania is the homeland. It is different here. The Vampires of this county have been affiliated with my bloodlines for generations. You may not think so, but even we honor certain loyalties. This is why Jasmine wanted me to come here. She knew it would protect us from all threats to surround myself with known allies.”

“So then, what were you listening for?”

“To. I was listening to a telepathic message. Forgive me, I did not mean to get distracted.”

“Never mind that.” She waved him off. “What kind of message? Must I ask you for everything? You are so stingy with information sometimes.”

“I suppose I am. I am not used to…well, never mind. It was just a greeting of sorts. A very old-fashioned one. It actually has no linguistic equivalent.” He paused to think about how to best explain it. “It is our version of a call-out. An ‘all’s well,’ so to speak. I have not heard it in so long, I almost forgot it existed. It heralds the dawn, marks the time when all should be accounted for and safe. If anyone answers, it means something is wrong. Out of habit and respect, you listen in case there is an answer.”

“That is very…well, it’s like a pack cry. It’s very Lycanthropic.”

“We are not so different as we sometimes think, our two peoples.”

“I am learning that. I—”

She broke off as the room spun out from under her suddenly. She made a sickly noise and instantly lay back down over him. His hand went into her hair, the other against her cheek with concern.

“What is it?”

“Just a little dizzy,” she said as lightly as she could, considering the turning of her stomach. “There you go, this is the part of you I am doomed to get. The off-balance part.”

“Do not joke when you are seriously not feeling well,” he scolded her gently. “I hope we have not been reckless, doing this Exchange with so little knowledge.”

“We have been,” she admitted, resting her cheek on his chest and trying to focus on the candle on the bedside table. Closing her eyes only seemed to make it worse. “But I knew that before we did it. I was prepared to accept the con—”

She broke off again, this time with a shudder that flowed over her entire body.

“Syreena?”

Damien sat up with her still clinging to him. There was a helplessness in her grasp that troubled him. He gingerly turned her in his hold so that he was cradling her in his lap. He braced her forehead to his chin, hoping it would help the dizziness that was clearly not getting any better.

“It will pass,” she murmured, though less with conviction so much as with hopefulness.

“You know, it occurs to me you have not eaten much since you have been dwelling with those of us who do not eat. That could be why.”

“Yes. You are right. Of course.”

She took a breath, and then passed out cold in his arms.

Damien was trapped.

The sun was up and he was in a barren household with no assistance, no supplies, and no way of obtaining any of the above. Syreena was still breathing, but in soft, shallow bursts that were more unnerving than they were reassuring. He had laid her out on the bed, succeeding in finding a reasonably clean sheet in a nearby cedar trunk in order to cover her. He could feel she was losing body heat, but could find no explanation for it other than the one he dreaded.

He had survived his part of the Exchange, but it had been a fairly close dance with the beyond, as he recalled. Though Jasmine had told him that there was proof of it being a regular success between breeds in the past, Syreena was nothing like an ordinary Nightwalker. What if her mutations had made this a deadly choice for her? Damien did not think he could bear to live if anything happened to her because of this.

“Okay, relax,” he said aloud to himself.

She was going through what could be termed a catastrophic change in her physical makeup, just as he had done. It would simply take a little time for her to recover. It had only taken him a day to overcome the same effect. Perhaps that was all he needed to do, remain patient for a gathering of hours.

The reassurance helped to keep him from panicking, but it did little to relax him.

Damien spent the remaining daylight hours keeping vigil over her, watching her very closely, to the point where he knew exactly how many breaths she would take in an hour. He recovered his pants from their discarded clothing and searched the household, but he had been right to assume nothing of any usefulness would be found there. Unsuccessful in that venture, he took to pacing the room.

About five hours into the ordeal, she began to breathe a little easier and seemed to slip more into a form of sleep than a state of unconsciousness.

This was what finally relaxed him a little, enough so that he could settle down beside her instead of circuiting the room helplessly. He gathered her up against him, cocooning her body with his in every way he could manage.

The Prince closed his eyes, but he did not sleep. He simply listened to the way she breathed.

About three hours before dusk, she began to get restless. It started with a few nervous twitches, but then her central nervous system seemed to take over. She twisted and turned as if she were having a brutal nightmare. She made low noises deep in her throat like a small wounded animal. He bore this torture for nearly an hour, cursing himself the entire time for putting her through such a terrible experience. It gave him no comfort when he recalled that she had made the choice willingly.

In the later part of that hour, he wished Jasmine had never told him about the Exchange. This was because the restlessness gave way to petite seizures, and then escalated to worse ones until he thought her delicate spine would snap in two from the arching of her body.

Nothing signifying love and bonding should be so painful
, he thought with anger.

He forgot that he had not minded so much in the aftermath of his own painful process. All he could think about, all he could see, was the woman he loved suffering.

At last, an hour before dusk, she fell into a deep sleep. So deep that he could not even sense her dreaming. Her body temperature returned to normal; so did her breathing. The perspiration that had coated her and soaked the first sheet had evaporated by the time he tucked her beneath a second one.

He rested beside her again, and again he did not sleep.

Damien closed his eyes as he settled back against the headboard of the huge bed. He acted as Syreena’s pillow, her back in a reclining repose against his chest and her head nestled securely beneath his chin. He could feel the soft movements of her hair against his skin as the restless ends seemed to seek a comfortable position.

Damien did not notice that the gray stubble that fuzzed over her altered hairline was growing, at quite a rapid pace. The cool gray hair darkened as it lengthened, the living strands spilling over Syreena’s cheek. Then, with every delicate pulsation of blood that circuited through her hair, the brown side deepened in color as well. For the first time since recovering from her illness as a young girl, her hair came as close to having a uniform color as it had ever had. In the end, however, it was all a marvelous charcoal color, not quite the pitch black of Damien’s hair, but nearly so. The distinction that remained, however, was the clear streaks of dark gray, dark brown, and pure black, that plumed back from her hairline just above her forehead, then fountained in three separate directions down the full length of her hair.

When Syreena opened her eyes at last, it was with the overwhelming sense that it was past dusk. All Nightwalkers could sense that on one level or another, but it seemed somehow sharper to her than usual. She did not feel well rested, but neither did she feel the exhaustion she probably should have. She took a moment, resting contentedly against Damien, ridiculously happy to find herself waking with his arms around her.

All traces of the dizziness that had plagued her earlier were gone, and it was a relief. The soreness had faded with her healing time, though she suspected once she moved she would find a few tender spots that would still be under reconstruction.

She had no idea how accurate her metaphor would turn out to be.

Damien felt her busy thoughts bumping around his extrasensory awareness before she even moved, opening his eyes quickly to look down at her. The change and growth in her hair was dramatic, and it took him several beats to absorb the impact of it. He was barely recovered from it enough to tell her about it when she looked up at him, exposing her eyes.