Vampire State of Mind (21 page)

The water clanged closed over our heads like a bell. Sil was a whirling presence beside me; the frantic rippling and gasping seemed to indicate that vampires had all the natural buoyancy of a house-brick. The sinking went on as we were swept downstream. The hull of a moored barge threatened to crush us, I grabbed at Sil, at passing flotsam, but the current carried us too fast to fight. We surfaced and sank, sank and surfaced, finally crashing into a small rowing boat which had jammed against a bridge support, and managing to surface together.

‘Police.' I gasped. ‘I ought …' My lungs ached. I tried to hang on to the side of the boat but my fingers were numb and had no grip and we were swept another hundred yards before an underwater obstruction provided us with another breathing space. ‘It was an accident, Sil! I never meant …'

‘Forget police.' Sil shook his head. ‘We have to get out of here. Going to freeze to death.'

The spring had brought the usual flood of meltwater down from the high moors, and although the air temperature was pleasantly mild, the water was bitterly cold. I'd lost the feeling in my legs. I wouldn't be able to make the scramble up the nearby bank without falling back into the water. ‘Can't.'

Sil closed his eyes. ‘Me, neither.' Under the water his hand fumbled for mine and squeezed. I felt the cuts along my palm.

‘Your demon can.'

Now his eyes opened. ‘What?'

‘You don't need to separate, just let it have control. Call it.'

‘It isn't like having a dog, Jessie. My demon …' He let go of my hand and crossed the released arm over his chest. ‘It will try to preserve itself, do you understand?'

I held up my released hand. The cold water had washed clean the cuts, but they gaped like open mouths. ‘Use blood.'

‘I – ' He tried to turn his head away, but his eyes wouldn't move from the bright beads of blood appearing along the edge of my hand. ‘Don't do this.'

‘Have you got a better plan?' My teeth chattered.

‘No, but – you can't.' His face was paling. ‘You
don't
understand. When … when Malfaire had us … we were going to die. My demon is all about self-preservation. If I let it have control it will save me, if it can but … it will be the demon in charge, not me.'

I looked him in the eye and whispered, ‘I trust you. You won't let it seed.'

There was a moment's silence. Then he said, ‘Jessie,' and let loose.

It only took a second – his demon must have been hovering under the surface. It burst its way free, half in and half out of his body; a snatch and it had grabbed my hand, licking the arc of blood from my grey-white skin with a tongue which felt like fire against the chill. I closed my eyes so as not to see. ‘We need to get out of the water,' I said, trying to sound calm. I didn't want to panic the demon into doing something unnecessarily brutal – of course, being a demon, it wouldn't see anything unnecessary in brutality – but I was becoming increasingly aware that outlying parts of my body were no longer receiving brain signals. ‘Can you get us out?'

And now I met the demon's eyes, black-red, like domesticated hell. ‘Out?' it said, pulling its mouth free of my hand.

‘Out of the water.' Then, because it seemed to want to go straight back to licking my palm. ‘There's more blood, if we get out of the water.'

‘More?' It moved Sil's body like a puppeteer, moving as part of him and yet distinct. I'd never asked a vampire what it felt like to let the demon have control and I didn't think I wanted to know. ‘More!'

The grip on my hand intensified and the demon propelled us through the water, then leapt for the bank. He hit it, dragging me along by the wrist, which smacked me into the concrete embankment, then crawled up the near-vertical wall and on to the cobbled rise.

Then he struck. I didn't have time to brace myself or prepare at all; he hit me in the vein in the side of my neck, but maybe because I was so cold it didn't really hurt. All I could feel was the heat of his mouth against my skin and a kind of aching, heavy sensation which ran down the muscles of my arm.

There was something very sexual about it, the closeness of our bodies and the firmness of the demon's grip. Dreamily I felt his skin heating up as I lay in his arms, a warmth that made me tingle where our flesh touched, along with a pleasant drowsiness. My eyes flickered, lids too heavy to stay open.

Suddenly I thought back to the girl in the club. Her half-drugged look after Sil had fed. How much blood could a demon take? How much blood could a human afford to lose, and how fast, before the body went into shock? And, given my previous experiences, I had about another thirty seconds before it seeded into me … ‘Sil!' It came out as a squeak. The demon ignored me, although its eyes flicked open for a second; I saw them shine out hell-bright from under the fall of hair. ‘Sil. Remember, I trust you.'

‘He cannot hear you, human woman. I have his body and mind.'

‘But he can send you back down, can't he? That's how it works – you are the
éminence grise
of the relationship, but he runs you.' Another rush of weakness. ‘Sil. Please.'

The demon jolted. Another mouthful of me and it jerked again, then hurled itself upright and away. When I managed to move my poor, battered body into a sitting position, Sil's demon had slithered back to wherever it lived inside him and he was back in control, head down, on all fours.

‘Hey.'

He looked up as I spoke. The fire-glow died away from his eyes but there was still blood spread along his cheek and on his mouth. ‘
God!
' Dazed, unfocused. He brought a hand up to his face and stared at it, as though he'd been expecting more fingers. ‘What a power!'

‘Oh, don't worry about it; I'm fine, hardly bleeding to death at all.'

Sil sat back, inhaling and flexing his fingers with his eyes shut. ‘Oh,' he kept saying. ‘Oh, let the devil take me now …'

‘We need to get under cover.' I couldn't just sit here, I was freezing again. ‘Sil?'

‘Can't move. Need to ride this out.'

‘You don't usually have any trouble in getting away from the scene of the crime. In fact, you're usually all energetic.'

‘This is … your blood is …' He put a hand to his chest as though to either quieten his demon or make sure it was still there. ‘It's
sensational
,' he slurred.

‘Oh, great. Well, we'll both sit here then, shall we, while you enjoy the party in your head and I die of
gangrene
!'

‘I can taste you.' He ran his tongue over his lips, over the tips of still-protruding fangs. ‘It's sweet.' He shook his head in slow motion. ‘
God!
'

I tried to stand. ‘Oh, damn.' A wave of dizziness broke over my head and the lamp-lit night disintegrated into thousands of tiny grey pieces. I clutched at the air and stumbled a couple of steps forward. My knees finally gave way and I plummeted on top of the vampire, who, at least, managed to catch me, although whether he knew he was doing it was debatable. ‘Right. So
I
can't walk, either. Great. Hypothermia, here we come.'

I hadn't known it was possible to feel this cold. At least when we'd been submerged I'd been numb; now I could feel how much everything hurt. I tried to move from my position half-wrapped around Sil, his clammy coat dripping diesel-flavoured water on my face, and touched his skin.

‘God! You're so
warm
!'
His body was a temperature that I didn't think mine would ever reach again, outside the crematorium. ‘How is that possible?'

‘The blood,' he said, eyes still closed. ‘It's burning through me like a furnace. I can feel you in my heart, in my veins, you're glowing like a sun in my head.'

‘Why? It doesn't always do this, does it?'

A ponderous headshake. ‘You –' he enunciated carefully – ‘are pure Class A.' Sil stretched a hand free of his clinging coat and ripped the front of his shirt open, smiling as more of his pale skin was exposed to the night air.

‘You're
high
.'

‘I am. But I am also
warm
.' And Sil opened his eyes and smiled. His pupils were all over the place.

‘We need to get under cover.' I looked around. A few yards further down, where the murky brown river's edge lapped against the cement of the river frontage, there was an indentation; storm drain, sewage outlet, right now I didn't care. ‘If I can get out of the night air, I'll be okay. Just … get my breath back and we can go home.'

Cautiously I tried to stand up but the filmy curtains of unconsciousness threatened to draw closed again, and I ended up crawling the ten yards to the mouth of the drain. Sil crawled alongside me, still smiling. The ground inside the tunnel was dry and sandy and thankfully free from rats. It was also out of the wind.

Sil collapsed and lay immobile, which was reassuring. The heat of his body was tremendous. I could see steam beginning to rise from beneath his coat, his black leather jeans looked as though they were drying already. Very,
very
carefully I moved one hand and laid it on his chest, where the skin was almost improbably smooth, only a brief line of hair running down the centre. The heat
hurt
.

Sil lay there. I half-raised my head to look down on him and felt my heart move. I mean, who wouldn't? Physically he was perfect. Slender and pale, stubbled enough to show off his faultless cheekbones and with eyes that changed colour more often than traffic lights. I couldn't help it. Although, God knows, I'd tried. Feeling anything for a vampire other than pure, hot-blooded lust, was asking to get your heart ripped out and handed back to you, dripping. And probably not in a metaphorical way, either.

Sil spoke without opening his eyes, it made me jump. ‘You need to get warm all over.'

‘I thought you'd passed out.'

Eyes switched open. ‘Metabolising.' A thoughtful look at where the neck of my T-shirt gaped, revealing the double bite mark. ‘I would really enjoy another hit though, if you're offering.'

‘I'm not.'

‘Shame.' He was still looking thoughtful, and his eyes were the pure grey of chinchilla fur. ‘Why won't you let me warm you up? You're freezing to death, you've probably got exposure, and I'm burning up. What is the
matter
with you, Jessie?'

‘Nothing.' I scooted a bit closer. The heat was radiating off him like a car bonnet in the sun, making my skin ache. Very carefully he reached out and began pulling the sodden T-shirt off my shoulders ‘What are you doing?'

‘Take it off and you'll warm up faster.'

I was clumsy, uncoordinated. My fingers hadn't recovered enough to grip the hem and pull it up over my head and I wasn't sure that what I was doing was sensible. Undressing in front of Sil, even an off-his-face Sil, had to have repercussions. ‘I can't.'

‘Yes.' Warm hands drew the T-shirt up my body.

‘You're enjoying this.'

Huge, nearly white, his eyes dominated his face. ‘You have no idea.'

‘That's it! I'm not taking anything else off. I don't care if I freeze to death. I am
not
sitting around in a tunnel with you, in my knickers.'

‘You're enjoying this too, aren't you?'

‘What?'

‘Stripping for me.' He looked down at my chest, which was quite nicely adorned with a pink-and-black stripey number, although I usually liked my nipples considerably less perky than they were at present. I folded my arms.

‘I'm cold, all right?'

‘Did I say anything?'

‘You looked.'

Sil, somewhat wobbly, got to his knees and faced me. ‘Jessie.' He reached out and ran his hands down my arms, the heat was almost unbearable. ‘How long is it since you last had sex?'

‘What's that got to do with anything?'

‘You've got this whole attitude thing going on, and yet something in you wants me. My demon can feel it. What in the seven hells is going on with you? You push me away all the time, but – '

‘God, you fancy yourself a bit, don't you?' I shut my eyes. It wasn't so bad if I couldn't see him. ‘Four years.'

‘You're
joking
! Four years since you last had sex? No wonder you're leaving a trail of pheromones that every vampire for miles can pick up. Why? Why so long?'

I shrugged. This was the bit that
really
hurt. It had been four years since I'd met Sil for the first time. Four years since I'd fallen completely for his sharp-tongued comebacks, his sniping, argumentative ways and that loose-limbed body. Four years. I was mad for him, but I didn't dare express it. And no-one else measured up. ‘Work, I suppose.'

Yes, I wanted him. But I didn't want
this
. He had a demon riding his endocrine system, making him fight and crave and live on the edge so that it could taste the hormones and surf the highs. And, while I could just about bear to watch Sil behaving like all the others, I could only do it because no part of him, however small, had ever been mine. And it was moments like this, when he got close, which hurt the most.

‘I always thought, maybe you and Liam – '

‘Liam?' I was so appalled I almost forgot to shiver. ‘You think I was shagging
Liam
?'

A shrug. ‘He is a kind man.'

‘You shag him then. Anyway, he's got Sarah and the baby.'

‘Oh, so you
have
thought about it. But honestly, Jessie, four
years
– ' He sat back and dropped his hands. ‘Go on. You're sitting there, horny as hell for me, well, here I am.' Now he held his arms out wide. ‘Come on. Do it. Touch me.'

I shrugged again and tried to look away. ‘Some of us can go more than twenty minutes without sex, you know.'