Yearnings: A Paranormal Romance Box Set (65 page)

“
Why are they so afraid of you?”

“
There is no fear, only tolerance. We are dead blood.”

She refused to accept that. “You say that, but if their hatred was so great, why keep any dead bloods alive? If you are so beneath live bloods, why don’t they just exterminate your kind?”

Tyr’s face clouded over. Even in profile she could tell his jaw had clamped down and his shoulders were drawn up in anger. “You know not of what you speak.”

“
Really?” Sal queried. “Because by my take, even though you don’t understand what a threat you are to them, they sure as hell understand your power. The very people that disdain you have taken advantage of you.”

While he struggled to find the words to retort, Sal took her thoughts several steps further. Tyr’s society needed dead bloods. Without them, who would fight the beasts? Equally important, though, they needed the Praxis wielders under their control. How better to do that than through shame? Act as if a dead blood’s very birth were a sin, when in truth Sal guessed the higher muckety-mucks were relieved that one was born to serve their needs.

“
I bet that dead bloods aren’t allowed to marry, either.”

Fury shook his frame. “Enough!”

*

* * * * *

CHAPTER 70

There was enough force behind the word that it would have been an edict if Tyr’s voice hadn’t cracked. Sal had gotten so caught up in her quest to reveal his society’s flaws that she’d forgotten he was a part of that society.

“
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

He held up a trembling hand to stop her apology. Despite the desire to explain herself further, Sal sealed her lips.

The dark, cramped closet seemed all the smaller. Their strained silence filled the space, making it nearly claustrophobic. She risked a glance over to Tyr. His hand had fallen, but the stubble along his jawline still bristled. Sal almost wished she didn’t have this new appreciation for essence and intent.

She almost wished she didn’t understand that a part of Tyr’s pained plasma was very literally being carried over by electrons and depositing his ache in her heart.

Sal wanted to respect his desire to not talk about something so grievously hurtful. But she couldn’t just sit there without offering her support. Tentatively, Sal reached a hand out and placed it upon his.

Tyr flinched, and she nearly retracted her gesture, when his fingers entwined with hers, his grip a welcomed vise. They sat there in the dark for several heartbeats, allowing his essence of pain to be soothed by her intent of healing.

Finally, he took a shuddering breath. Hanging his head, Tyr licked his lips before starting. “Dead bloods must keep constant vigil, lest they taint a live blood with their Praxis, blade, or … seed.”

Nodding, Sal explained, “In my world, many clergy, priests, monks, and nuns take a vow of chastity. A vow of abstinence.”

Tyr snorted. “It is no vow, it is the law.”

No kidding,
Sal thought but didn’t voice. A society so afraid of such a powerful element in their midst would take the most logical step to keep them from multiplying their numbers. However, she could sense that Tyr’s anger rose from a much more personal issue than population control.

When the silence lengthened, Sal prompted, “You broke this law?”

She could feel the shame in his grip. His fingers dug into her palm, flexing and unflexing, seemingly without his notice. He didn’t seem eager to reveal his failing, yet the real struggle felt like he desperately did want to tell her.

“
My beard hadn’t grown more than a dander when Dyn and I were arrived at a large duchy. The patriarch had succumbed to a fever, and despite a parade of witches and their brews, he’d fallen into a stupor. Dyn was known across the land for his ability to coax health from the gravely ill, so we were summoned.”

Sal doubted very much that the story had anything to do with Tyr’s thane or the duke, so she squeezed his hand, urging him to continue.

He sighed. “When Dyn not only brought her grandfather back to speech but daily watched his infirmities fade, Lainli became fascinated with all manner of Praxis.”

And Tyr, Sal suspected. She could only imagine a young Tyr. What had his features looked like before they were hardened by his years of servitude? By the slight glint in his eyes, she could guess a little of Lainli as well.

“
Was she pretty?”

“
It was widely rumored the youngest prince had sought an audience, but found himself rebuffed at the duchy’s gates.” A smile flickered across his lips. “She sought the Path, rare for her age, rejecting all suitors.”

“
Until you?”

Tyr’s grin turned downward. “Lainli had no worldly interest in one such as me. She wished only to blend her knowledge of the witch’s weir with the potency of Praxis.”

“
So she began her descent?”

“
No!” he answered forcefully, then lowered his voice. “With the blood of a beast we’d slain still beneath my fingernails, I was resolute against offering her any of the secrets of Praxis. I taught her only minor root potions and bloodless distillations.”

“
But?”

“
Given the taboo of our discourses, they were held in secrecy during the late hours after the servants had sought their beds.”

No matter their high and noble purpose, Sal knew once you put two teenagers together unsupervised, late at night, the hormones would do the rest of the damage. Tyr didn’t have to explain what happened on one of those long, dark, intimate nights.

“
Were you caught?”

“
If only we had been, perhaps Lainli would still be alive.”

* * * * *

CHAPTER 71

Sal’s brow knotted. “She died after you …?”

“
No, no,” Tyr corrected. “We indulged our lesser instincts only once and swore to keep our studies to the library and in the presence of my thane.”

“
Okay.” She waited, but he didn’t elaborate. “Then I don’t understand. How did she die?”

Tyr struggled to speak, but ended up gulping instead. These events had clearly occurred over a decade ago, yet his pain felt fresh and sharp. Would this be how Sal thought of Maria later? Would this ache ever subside? If Tyr’s wrestling to even talk about his loss was any indication, it appeared not.

“
Once the duke was well on his way to walking without a cane, we were due to leave, when Lainli’s belly betrayed our …”

For several seconds, Sal didn’t understand to what he eluded, then blurted out, “She was pregnant.”

The words sounded like a horrible accusation in this cramped, chlorine-bleached closet. If sex with a dead blood was considered a sin, what would an illegitimate child be thought of as? Sal didn’t want to utter the next words. “What happened?”

“
The lady-in-waiting who noticed her lack of menses was put to death, and despite Dyn’s—”

“
Wait. Wait. Wait.” Sal still hadn’t processed the horror of the first passage. “They killed the maid?”

“
Of course.” Tyr’s eyebrows quizzed her as to why she doubted him.

Still revolted, Sal clarified. “They killed her because she mentioned Lainli’s period was off?”

“
If word spread of not only our union, but the child within her …” Tyr’s throat constricted, and he couldn’t continue.

“
Your
child within her,” she added gently, as tears misted over his normally glacial eyes. Sal could only imagine what it felt like to have one’s baby be considered an abomination. It was one thing to find yourself born to discrimination, but quite another to have your offspring despised before it was even born.

He paused until his throat loosened. “Dyn begged that if the procedure must be done, to allow him to perform it, but—”

“
Procedure?” While Tyr didn’t answer her, Sal suddenly realized what he meant. “They forced her to have an abortion?”

It sounded as though bile burned the back of his throat as he finished. “The old witch they brought from the far, far south was nearly blind, and when she tried to … The cries that came from that room … Lainli’s screams … Dyn overcame the guard and broke in, but … his effort was in vain. They banished us from their lands even before the funeral.”

Sal pulled his hand to her, holding it tight, trying to give him some sense of her sorrow for him and for Lainli. Tears at the edge of his lids, Tyr turned to her.

“
Salista, can you not see? You thought me damned at birth, but my ruination came from my own hand.”

“
Tyr. You were just—”

Outside the door, a nasal voice asked, “Is somebody in there?”

Tyr was on his feet, blade drawn, before she could answer.

* * * * *

CHAPTER 72

Sal jumped to her feet, reacting on instinct. Her heart and mind were still consumed by Tyr’s pain. With luck, her action knocked a mop across Tyr’s path. For that fleeting instant, he was blocked in. She used it to her fullest advantage.

Opening the door, Sal exaggerated stumbling out into the hall, making certain to awkwardly, but quickly, close the door behind her. “God, this is so embarrassing.”

Before her stood a tall, mop-headed student. Even though his stern face looked like someone had elected him hall monitor, the guy’s eyes wandered up and down her form, checking her out. After the fierce, pure intimacy she experienced with Tyr, this grad student’s sophomoric interest repulsed her.

Which didn’t mean she wasn’t above using it to her advantage.

“
I was looking for Dr. Hing’s laboratory.”

Sarcastically, the kid pointed down the hall to the sign that announced in large yellow letters—“Dr. Hing’s Clinical Experimental Laboratory,” but Sal squinted. “Sorry, forgot my glasses, but hey, maybe you could help me.”

The student puffed up at her interest. Sal had spent enough time at this school and gotten into enough trouble with the administration to talk her way out of just about anything. So she began babbling on about her dissertation and asshole advisor that wouldn’t put her doctoral thesis through to the committee, for the only reason that her work was way over his head.

The mop of tight curls bobbed up and down in sympathy. The kid’s Browncoats Forever T-shirt and innocent face felt almost surreal, given the fact that Tyr’s knife was within inches of his heart. She didn’t need to be in the same room as the hunter to know that his patience had reached its limit.

“
So I got pointed in the direction of Dr. Hing to help flesh out my ‘directed’ intercellular healing model.”

The kid looked a little surprised. “So you really are looking for Lionel?”

“
Yeah. Tonight’s his office hours, aren’t they?”

“
Oh, I thought you were trying to crash our ‘while the cat’s away the mice will play’ shindig.”

“
Come again?”

The student shrugged. “Hing’s at the hoity-toity party over at Alcatraz, so we thought if the lab was empty, why not get our groove on?”

Now all those jubilant students passing by made sense. She had just assumed that Lionel was a really inspiring teacher. Now it turned out he was just a really endangered teacher.

Sal turned on her heel, rapidly heading toward the exit, and then realized she’d just left the kid standing there. “I’ll come back next week.”

“
Sure you don’t want to tag along?”

“
Thanks, but I’ve really got to get working.”

Without a look back, Sal practically ran from the laboratory complex.

She should have realized where Lionel was headed tonight. An event that she herself had been asked to attend. The damned fund-raiser. They’d lost hours of valuable tracking time waiting at the lab.

Damn it, how had the beast gotten one step ahead of them again? Then she remembered poor Mika. Hing’s assistant must have known his plans for the night. The beast had pulled that essential fact from the grad student.

Once onto the campus proper, Sal broke out into a run, angling south. 19th Street, to the north, was closer, but had far less taxi traffic. They couldn’t depend on the buses this time.

She looked at her watch. The boats were loading with hopeful department heads and wealthy patrons at Fisherman’s Wharf right now. It was only a fifteen-minute ferry ride over to Alcatraz. Even with the mini-tour of the bay included in each year’s festivities, everyone would be disembarking within the hour.

Sal doubted if Lionel had much time beyond that.

Luckily, her route was exclusively downhill, and she made it to Lake Mead Boulevard in record time. It was still early enough in the evening that taxis were trolling for college students heading over to the Market district to hit the DNA Lounge or some other hipster club.