The Coldest Girl in Coldtown (41 page)

“He couldn’t resist.” Gavriel’s accent deepened as he spoke. “And there, chained with twelve strong chains, was Koschei the Deathless. And Koschei said, ‘Please, I am so thirsty, pity me and give me some water. I have been locked away here for ten years, suffering torments you cannot imagine. My throat is so dry.’ ”

“Is this a real story?” Tana interrupted, thinking of Gavriel’s own decade of torment, of his own thirst.

But the vampire only laughed. “A very famous one, I swear it.
Anyway, Ivan is a kindly soul and brings Koschei water, but his thirst could not be quenched with a single bucketful, nor with a second bucketful. But when Ivan brought Koschei the third bucketful of water, Koschei was restored to his full strength and broke his chains.”

“The sin of mercy,” Tana said.

Gavriel looked a little embarrassed and a little pleased that she’d remembered. “Yes,” he said softly, cool fingers resting against the skin of her bare shoulder, distracting her. “Ivan was merciful, and all the rest of the story is how he paid for it. Koschei kidnapped Marya Morevna and took her away to his own palace, leaving Ivan to chase after them. Three times he was able to find Marya Morevna and three times was able to run away with her, but Koschei had a magical horse faster than the wind. The first time Koschei caught Ivan, out of gratitude for the water he’d been given, he let Ivan go with a warning that if he was caught again, he’d be chopped into pieces. The second time Koschei caught Ivan, he let him go with the same fearsome warning.

“The third time Koschei caught Ivan, he made good on his threats. He chopped Ivan into thirteen pieces with his sword, put the pieces into a tarred barrel and threw the barrel into the sea. But the falcon, the eagle, and the raven who had married Ivan’s sisters fished it out again. They took the pieces of Ivan’s body and laid them on the ground, like a puzzle. Once they’d put him back together, they sprinkled his body with water and he woke up again, as from a deep sleep.”

“So he was undead?” Tana asked. “Like a vampire?”

“Something like that. He woke up smarter, too, because this time he went to the witch, Baba Yaga, and won a horse as fine and fast as
Koschei’s. With it, he ran away with Marya Morevna one final time. Koschei chased them on his magical horse, but this time when he caught up, Ivan’s horse struck Koschei a mighty blow, smashing his skull. Then Ivan and Marya Morevna built a pyre and burnt Koschei until he was ash. And then they lived happily, visiting each of Ivan’s sisters and their bird-husbands, all of whom declared that Ivan did the right thing to risk so much for a woman as beautiful and fierce as Marya Morevna.”

“If she was so fierce, how come she didn’t just save herself?” Tana asked.

“But that’s the interesting thing about the story, don’t you think?” Gavriel asked with an intensity that belied it just being a story to him. “I loved it when I was a child, but as I got older I started to wonder—was it fair for Marya Morevna to lock away Koschei for ten long years without even water? And if it was fair for her, wasn’t it just as fair for him to spirit her away to his castle? But Ivan—he’s
good
. He’s
kind
. He’d give a prisoner water. And he might not know how to save his wife, but he manages to do the impossible purely by not giving up. He is the chaotic part of the story, because he doesn’t do what everyone expects of him.

“When I was a child, I thought of myself as like Ivan, but no—you are more like Ivan than I ever was. You expected me to be good, and because of you, I tried.” He closed his eyes. “In the end, though, we both know I will be Koschei in this story. And that’s why you should get away from me as fast as you can and keep going. Even my love is monstrous, Tana. I will keep on frightening you and—”

“You’re not some fairy tale character.” She caught his chin and
turned his face toward her, so that when he opened his otherworldly eyes again, she could look into them without flinching. So she could show him she meant it. “And I’m not—I’m not even sure what I am. But I know
you
. Maybe I didn’t spend decades with you like Lucien did, but I bet I can make you laugh faster than he could.”

“Oh, really?” He tilted his head to one side, and it was hard for her not to stare too long at the softness of his mouth. She wanted to trace the swell of it.

She leaned close, heart hammering, and licked his cheek instead. For a moment, he looked startled and then he did laugh, real honest, helpless laughter at the sheer ridiculousness of what she’d done.

“You’re yourself,” Tana said, grinning. “More purely yourself than anyone I know. And if you can’t see who that is anymore, then see yourself the way I see you.”

Gavriel shook his head. “You can’t know what I am—”

She interrupted him, talking fast. “When I was about to turn fourteen, my dad sent me to sleepaway camp. Maybe you don’t know what that is, but it’s usually for a couple of weeks in the summer and you—”

He pressed his hand to his chest in mock affront. “I’ve been locked away for ten years, not
ten thousand
.”

“Fine, well okay,” she said. “Anyway, I had these ideas about who I was when I left. I had about a hundred stuffed animals that my grandparents had given me over the years, all of them piled up on my bed. And I had two best friends, Nicole and Amber. Amber lived down the street from me, and we’d been friends since basically forever. Nicole had moved to town later and gotten really close to Amber when I was
in the hospital. So it was always the three of us, and we’d ride our bikes around town together and watch movies in one another’s rooms.

“In friendships, everybody has roles. I was the one who worried we’d get in trouble if we markered up the Macy’s bathroom in the mall or stole a pair of feather earrings from a Claire’s Boutique. The one who always did what she was told. The shy one. The scared one. The goody-goody. That was the way I’d been at nine and ten and eleven and twelve, so I never noticed that it wasn’t the way I was anymore at thirteen.”

He ran cool fingers over the scarred skin of her arm, and for a moment she was too spellbound to go on. “I think you had a reason to be scared,” he said.

“Maybe. But the thing is that when I got to that camp, no one knew me. And by the time I went home, I saw myself differently. There, I had been the first one to swim all the way across the lake. When the sink backed up, I took apart the pipes and fixed it. I nearly killed some poor kid from the boys’ cabins who tried to scare us by pretending to be a vampire.”

“I’ll bet,” Gavriel said dryly.

“Laugh it up,” she told him, “but the thing is, I hadn’t known myself at all until I went away. I knew how Nicole and Amber saw me. And Lucien and the Spider and all the others—they’re afraid of you so they figure you must be pretty awful indeed. They think you can’t feel anything, because they’ve forgotten how. You’re very, very dangerous, I get that, and you’re prone to some very theatrical brooding, but don’t let yourself mistake that for some kind of inner corruption. They see themselves in you and are blinded.”

He leaned toward her, gazing into her face as though some great secret swam in her eyes, his hands drawing her closer, his mouth parting slightly, showing the very tips of his canines as he bent toward her, eyes hooded. “And what do you see?”

A shudder went through her, the chill of infection racing through her veins.

He pulled back, as though he’d been scorched. His lips were still apart and there was a wildness in the way he looked at her, as though he were a trapped animal expecting the lash of a whip.

“No,” she said. “I’m just Cold. It’s the sickness.”

He looked as if he wasn’t sure whether to believe her or not. “You didn’t drink enough blood,” he said, and lifted his wrist to his mouth, biting down.

Red staining his teeth and the inside of his lower lip, he held his hand out to her.

“I can’t,” she said softly, pulling away, the smell of his blood making her dizzy. “Something’s wrong with me already.”

He frowned, studying her face. Her eyes went to his red wrist. She wanted to kiss it, to drag her tongue across it, to sink her sharp teeth past his skin. And another part of her was screaming that she couldn’t do that, that she wasn’t like that.

She opened her mouth, letting him see the new points of her new fangs.

“
Oh
,” he said, clearly surprised, but not
that
surprised.

“Please just tell me if it’s really bad. Marisol said—oh, forget what she said. Just explain.”

“I’ll try,” Gavriel began, ignoring his bleeding wrist. “Long ago,
we visited humans we wanted to turn, night after night, taking their blood and giving them our own. When they were ready—after they’d become something not quite human—we let them taste human blood and become vampires. You’ve, er, hastened the process by drinking so much vampire blood on your own.”

His explanation was like Marisol’s, except that he’d obviously seen it done.
No, you idiot
, she thought suddenly,
he had it done to him
.

“What now?” Tana asked, the words
something not quite human
echoing in her head.

Gavriel shrugged. “A vampire who’s been fed on vampire blood is stronger, that’s all. Most vampires turned after everything went Cold are weak, with weak blood. They’re what we used to call by-blows, accidents. Mistakes.”

Tana’s tongue ran over the points of her teeth. Gavriel’s blood was running down his arm in three lines, and she found it hard to tear her gaze away. It looked like strawberry-blueberry syrup, just as in her little-kid dream. “I’m still just Cold, though, right? In eighty-eight days, if I don’t drink any more—I’ll get better, won’t I?”

The look on his face told her more than his words. “I’ve never seen anyone go backward once the physical transformation began, but that doesn’t mean it’s not possible.”

“So it’s also possible that I could be Cold forever?” she asked, her heart pounding. “Hungry,
forever and ever
?”

He was silent for a long moment, which was answer enough. Then he reached for a scarf to bind his wrist.

If she stayed Cold forever and ever, that would make her a living vampire. A living vampire that could never have what it craved.

Just when you think you’ve sunk as far as it’s possible to sink, there’s always a lower place. There’s always something worse to be scared about. Wasn’t that some saying? Some rule?

I don’t care
, she decided.
Just this once, for a little while, I’m not going to worry and I’m not going to care.
She caught Gavriel’s arm and when he looked a question at her, surprised, she couldn’t bring herself to answer. She didn’t want to explain the recklessness, the pleasure of making the bad choice, the glory of at least this once, picking her own path to damnation. So instead of speaking, she brought her mouth down on his wounded wrist, newly sharp teeth piercing his skin and making him—even him—gasp.

She swallowed his blood, a dark vintage from some forgotten cellar. She felt like Persephone in Hades, pomegranate seeds bursting against her teeth, juice rolling on her tongue, and the more she had, the more she hungered. Her skin felt as if it were lit from the inside, her whole body shuddering with delicious sensation. He made a few soft sounds before he brought his free hand up to smother them, pressing his fingers against his own mouth. She drew harder on his wrist.

Finally, she forced herself to pull back and gaze up at him unsteadily. She felt drunk. He didn’t look particularly sober, either, watching her with slightly unfocused eyes, his lips apart when he drew his hand away from them, a shiver going through his body like some low electric current.

It occurred to her that Gavriel was going to fight a very old vampire in a matter of hours and that giving up even a portion of his strength was a terrible idea. He didn’t look as if he cared, though,
head tipped back and eyes falling half closed. She wondered if she’d taken too much already.

“Gavriel,” she said, her tongue feeling clumsy in her mouth.

“Yes?” He blinked a few times, as though he was trying to focus on her.

“You can bite me,” she said. “If you want.”

That seemed to snap him out of his daze. He pulled back, eyes going wide.

She crawled closer, going up on her knees and straddling one of his legs, balancing herself with her hands on his shoulders. Her heart hammered in her chest. “I’m already Cold. I’m already doomed. It won’t matter.”

“Tana—” he protested, looking stunned. He wanted to, though, she could tell. He bent toward her throat as though the thrum of her pulse was beating in his ears, inhaling the scent of her skin.

She squinched her eyes closed, braced for the sharp stab of fangs.

“Tana,” he said again, whispering against her skin. “Tana.”

“Just do it,” she told him. “I’m scared enough as it is. Don’t let me chicken out and—”

She felt the press of his cold lips again and then the pressure of teeth on her jugular.

Fear choked a low sob out of her. He brought his bloody wrist to her mouth, and as her teeth found the fresh wound, he bit down on her neck. It felt like twin shards of ice slid into her throat.

She groaned against his skin. Pain raced along her nerves. She felt the pull of his teeth, the rush of everything warm inside of her pouring out. She felt the race of her heart, thudding faster and faster with
fear. The taste of his blood was on her tongue, and cold pinpricks raced over her spine. Her lips felt numb.

Her body was pressed against his, one of his hands against the small of her back, nerves she’d never been aware of before clenched in sudden euphoria. Pleasure unfolded inside her, sinister and seductive. It was hard to remember to breathe, hard to remember to do more than bite down his wrist and drown in looping rapture.

She moved against him, as though she could crawl inside his skin.

Then he pushed her away, moving to the other side of the settee. Her neck stung and she gasped for air, the room coming into focus again. His eyes were closed, long sooty lashes brushing cheeks pink with her blood, black curls hanging in his face, mouth painted red. He was every bit the debauched angel, far from heaven.