Mirror: Book One of the Valkanas Clan (17 page)

Cesar’s house, in fact, had been oddly empty of sensation. After the mix of sensations that had been imposing themselves on me throughout the night, it had been extremely strange to walk through room after room and feel absolutely nothing: no pricks of warmth or ice at my shoulders, no clenching in my gut,
no
fear or relief or even anger. Cesar’s place had felt like the banana I’d tried to eat shortly after being turned: nothing wrong with it directly, but
so
empty of everything as to make it faintly nauseating. I had gone outside again as soon as I could rationalize it, taking deep breaths of the pine-scented air.

“In a way, it’s almost like there are more traces of him here than there were there,” I murmured, continuing my train of thought aloud.

“What does that mean? Do you think he’s going to attack us here,
Aly
?” Tom asked.

I could feel him tensing for a fight from across the room. I admired his readiness—I was so wiped that even if Cesar himself had appeared in the living room at that moment I didn’t think I could have done much more than politely ask him if it could wait until tomorrow.

“No,” I shook my head. “I just meant his house was bizarrely empty. Here you can kind of taste how much concern and planning has been going on in response to him. But there, it was like being in a house that hadn’t been lived in for months.”

“
Hmmph
—that mess didn’t look unlived in to me,” Valerie said, arching an eyebrow.

Tom pressed his lips together for a moment,
then
nodded.

“I think I see what you mean," he said, "almost like it was museum’s display of a lived in house, rather than an actually lived in house.”

“Yeah, kind of.”
I nodded. “Not that my observation helps us figure out how he disappeared though,” I added, the shame firmly back onto my shoulders.

“Actually…” Damian whispered, and then zipped out of the room with unnatural speed. Even though I was capable of doing the same, it was still creepy to watch, and I suppressed a shiver.

“Damian?” Valerie said, hopping up to follow him.

Tom and I exchanged glances, and then I snuggled deeper into my comfortable corner of the couch. Everything was starting to catch up with me, and I began weighing my curiosity against my fatigue, trying to determine which was stronger at this point.

“You should really have something to drink before going to sleep so you don’t wake up raging,” Tom said.

“
Mmmm
,” I responded insightfully, my eyelids tugging closed.

I heard Tom chuckle, and then the rapid whisper of his footsteps leaving and returning, with only the briefest pause in between. Then I felt him set something beside me.

“Drink,” he said.

“
Mmm
,” I said, continuing to prove my conversational brilliance.

“You know, it’s very hard to take care of a new vamp
who
doesn’t have to obey orders,” he said, trying to sound stern but failing, since I could hear him smiling.

Half-asleep, I felt a soft shift as the cushion next to me sank down under his weight, and then the slippery touch of a bag being slid into my hands. When I didn’t move my hands, Tom lifted them towards my mouth for me, until the pack was close enough that I could faintly smell the blood through the oily scent of the plastic. That woke me up, and I slid a corner in my mouth and bit down, drinking with a hunger that was both abrupt and deep. When I finished the first one, Tom handed me another, and I went through several within minutes.

“Thank you,” I said.

I opened my eyes, planning to tell him I was heading for bed just as soon as I found where Beckett had scooted off to. But once I looked at him I found myself wishing I’d just kept them shut. He was watching me intently, his pupils dilated to a frightening black, his lips just barely parted, and his hands curled into tight fists in his lap.

“Tom?” I said, trying my best to keep any trace of fear out of my voice.

“Your lips…” his voice trailed off, and he gestured towards my face. I lifted my hand, brushing it across my mouth. There was a smear of blood across my fingers.

“Do you want me to get you a few packs?” I asked.

“I gave you the last of them,” he said, looking away, his voice still deeper than normal. “I thought I’d be fine since I drank yesterday. Usually I only need blood a couple times a week.”

He got up and began pacing, his gait eerily reminiscent of a jaguar that’s been penned up in far too small a cage at the zoo.

“What can I do?” I said, standing up. I began smoothing my hands across my pants unconsciously, trying to keep calm, until Tom stared at the motion, and I stopped.

“Nothing, I’ll just…I’ll just go out.”

He turned for the foyer, and I saw a flash of fear on his face that I couldn’t decipher. And then I remembered what he’d told me early on—that you didn’t have to kill people as long as you didn’t let yourself get too hungry. Was he too hungry to maintain control?

“Tom, wait,” I said, catching up with him as he was about to open the door. “Is there, um, anything else? Anything I can do to help you gain some control before you, uh, go out?”

 ”Yes, but…” He studied my face, looking for the answer to a question that hadn’t been asked. “Normally this wouldn’t work, but since I turned you and you just drank, I…” he paused “I could drink from you.”

I froze. He saw my fear, and turned away, reaching for the door. He paused, his hand resting on the knob, staring at the threshold.

“
It’s
fine,
Aly
. I’ll be fine.” He slipped out, closing the door behind him.

It took only a moment for my muscles to unlock, but then I went flying out the door after him.

“Tom, wait!” I called out, seeing him already a good fifty paces up the block. He didn’t turn. I broke into a run, catching him just as he reached the stop sign at the corner. I gripped his arm tightly, so he wouldn’t pull away while I tried to figure out what to say.

“Please, don't,” he said. “The longer I wait, the harder it will be to control.”

“You said…you said it doesn’t have to hurt,” I said.

He looked at me, the surprise plain on his face.

“Yes, but—I don’t want you to be scared of me,
Aly
.”

“You might lose control without it though, right?”

He glanced away sharply, his obvious fear answering my question.

“Then do it,” I said. “I couldn’t forgive myself if someone got hurt because I was too scared to deal with what we are.” 

“Are you sure? I want you to be sure about this.”

I nodded, and before I had the chance to ask him what happened next he had pulled me to him, wrapping his arms around my back and gently caressing the base of my neck with one hand. Warmth flooded through me, suddenly bending the knees I hadn’t realized I’d locked, and I would have collapsed had he not been pressing me to him so tightly. I regained my balance just before his head bent to my neck, his lips pressing against me for only a second before his teeth slid into my skin.

I gasped, my eyes shooting wide at the wave of pure pleasure that rocked through me.
This is what it felt like to get bit? Holy crap! How does he not have humans trailing him like lovelorn stalkers everywhere he goes?
My hands reached up and fisted in his hair. I couldn’t speak, but my mind was repeating
Don’t
stop
like a broken record playing at full volume. The tug of his mouth seemed to pull not just at my neck but throughout my whole body, leaving tingling pockets in my arched fingers and curled toes.

And then he stopped, and I heard a moan. It took me a few seconds to realize it had come from me, and I think every last drop of blood that was left in me rushed to my cheeks. I was too embarrassed to look at him, and so I murmured into his shoulder “Why did you stop?”

“I didn’t want to take too much—you need your strength too,” he whispered, his breath tickling the edges of my ear. “I just needed enough to take the edge off, so I don’t lose control.”

“Wait,” I stepped back and looked at him. “You’re still going out to feed?”

“Of course,” he said, giving me a puzzled glance. “I don’t need as much as you but I do need more than that.” He lifted my hand and kissed it. “Not that I wouldn’t rather spend my time with you, especially since you seemed to be…enjoying yourself.” He grinned at me, and I felt myself blushing again. Clearly I had plenty of blood left.

I stepped back, out of his embrace, and looked away. What was my problem? I’d been fine with him going off to feed before.

Yeah, but that was before you knew how it felt
, I mentally retorted. Was I really…jealous? I had no right to be. We weren’t dating—though at least some parts of me appeared to be quite eager to change that state of affairs, I realized—and even if we were, he’d still need to turn to humans to feed. I had no right to wish otherwise.

Not that having no rational reason to feel some way had ever stopped me before.

“
Aly
, what’s going on up there?” Tom asked, gently brushing his fingers across my temple. I shivered, my skin tingling.

“Um, well, I, uh,” I stammered, having no idea what to tell him.
Certainly not that I was jealous of his
food
.
“Just spacing out, I guess. I’m really tired, and after that, well…” I tried to grin at him coyly. When all else fails, turn on the flirty girl approach. “I think now I’m really ready for bed.” I hit “bed” with as much innuendo as I could manage in my flustered state and turned to begin walking back to Damian and Valerie’s, trying to swing my hips suggestively. “See you tomorrow, I guess,” I called over my shoulder.

“
Aly
, are you sure you’re feeling okay? You look like you’re limping.”

Well, crap.
So much for my suggestive swagger.
I tripped slightly, returning to my normal walk, glad he couldn’t see my latest blush.
Couldn’t he have taken just a
little
more blood? I feel like a lobster.

“Just tired!”
I called back, hoping I sounded cheerfully resilient rather than humiliated. And then my fatigue returned in earnest, and I sped back to Damian and Valerie’s before I fell asleep on the sidewalk.

The next morning—well, afternoon—I actually woke up feeling pretty good. Of course, it may have had something to do with the rather inventive and enjoyable dreams my imagination had seen fit to weave out of my encounter with Tom. I stretched out across the bed, in no hurry to rush about for once, now that most of Cesar’s people were imprisoned and Temora’s knights were after Cesar himself.

After dawdling in pleasant recollections of my dreams for a few minutes, the soft sound of footsteps on the stairs reminded me that now might be the perfect time to finally get a few more answers to my growing list of vampire questions. After last night, I was specifically curious as to whether it was possible to feed without triggering either lust or fear in the one being fed upon, since those were my only two experiences, and I wasn’t wild about the prospect of Tom inducing either of them in humans. I knew I still had no right to be jealous, but knowing that didn’t seem to be making the slightest bit of difference, and it both frustrated me and piqued my curiosity. I’d never been the jealous type before—I’d had more of a “hey, if you think you can do better, go for it” kind of attitude—and I was wondering whether this sudden change was due to becoming a vampire or due to being more interested in Tom than I generally had been in the guys I’d been dating over the last few years.

Beckett strolled over and head-butted
me
in the leg, reminding me that, at least in his opinion, getting him fed was far more important than over-analyzing myself.