Department 57: Bloody Crystal Read online

  “We do it. Now,” he said.

  Chapter Six

  She didn’t pretend to misunderstand him. “We do?”

  “If you still want to. Let me be clear. If we do this, we’ll never be free of each other. We’ll always know where the other is, and what they’re thinking, if we open our minds. We’ll be linked irrevocably. I’m told that a constant denial might one day work out, but that’s all that can kill it. But I want to do it, with you.”

  And because he left his mind open to her, she saw his concern and his deep caring for her. Not love—she didn’t sense that in him. But everything else. “We could be like siblings?”

  “Not while we’re doing this.” He moved, and his cock slid deeper inside her. She swiveled her hips on him and found a new way to pleasure.

  Her orgasm had faded, or so she thought, but she’d kept it there, simmering under the surface. The concept of a blood exchange with this glorious, fascinating man only increased its potential intensity.

  “Yes. I want to.” The first vampire since her parents, and the only one she’d trust. He’d opened so much to her, she knew she could trust him. Perhaps more. Would he be suggesting this if he didn’t care for her?

  Maybe, her heart told her reluctantly, he wants to protect you. This is his way. Whatever. She’d take it.

  He moved again, and she responded with another lascivious hip swivel, but they did it slower, more carefully. It heated her. She kept his gaze and slowly brought her face down to his. They shared a long, sweet kiss, unlike the passionate devouring of before but just as heartfelt. It was like sealing an oath.

  He drew away, touched his lips to hers once more before gazing up at her. His mouth curved in a smile before he tilted his head to one side and delivered a kiss to the corner of her mouth, then her jaw, and lower still, working down her throat. His breath seared her neck until he reached her shoulder.

  She caught her breath. His action had stretched his throat out for her. In a vampire, a clear sign of invitation. He didn’t speak to her, verbally or telepathically. He just waited. Tentatively she stuck out her tongue and licked him. His whole body shuddered. He kissed her throat. They moved together in a kind of rhythmic dance now, their orgasms bubbling under. Maintained.

  She could still change her mind.

  She spread her hand over his back, splayed the fingers wide, drew on his strength. Extended her fangs, felt them emerge from her upper jaw. Retractable fangs.

  She sank her fangs into his flesh, as easy as a knife going through a block of fresh cheese. The blood spurted. Then she closed her mouth over the place and contained it, sensed its metallic, sweet-sour taste. Her fangs warmed as his blood flowed up the hollow centers, and she fed. She didn’t suck; she let it happen.

  A twin prick on her shoulder told him he’d let his fangs emerge, and then came the sweet ecstasy as they entered her body. He fed expertly, neatly. She could tell by the way he closed his mouth around her without sucking. Gentle, so gentle.

  The first rush of blood made her close her eyes. Into and out of. Her parents had fed from her before, but only to teach her what it felt like and to bond with her so they could keep tabs on her. She’d never fed from them. That was how she’d known they were in trouble before the news came officially.

  She remembered the events without emotion for once. Not because she didn’t have a lingering sadness, but because he had taken all her thoughts, all her senses. All her emotions. She remained open, letting him read everything, wrapping her in care and concern, while still working his body under hers.

  Cerys remembered and moved again, but gentler. Every part of her body seemed to be more sensitive. Everywhere they touched felt better, warm. She could detect every ridge of his fingerprints, every ripple of muscle, every hair rubbing against her. She’d never had anything so good in her life before.

  “That’s enough, cariad. Withdraw and seal the wound.”

  A soft whisper of command, but he didn’t reinforce it with mental persuasion. Just left it up to her. Then she knew he’d give up his life for her if she wanted it, and she wondered. She sensed that what he was giving her, he didn’t give to many people.

  She obeyed him, kept her movements as gentle as she could, and felt him withdrawing at the same moment. Swirling her tongue around the small wounds she’d made, anointing them to seal them, she tasted his blood again. Like no one else’s she’d ever savored. Unique and almost indescribable. She’d know it anywhere. Blood tended to taste the same, with small variations due to the dietary and biological differences between the people she chose to feed from. Not Rhodri. He just tasted of him.

  Without warning, her orgasm struck. All she could do was rest her cheek against his strong shoulder and ride it out, experience it, the tight waves growing stronger, taking her with a taut peak of ecstasy, and then fading away again, rippling into a sense of happiness and sheer physical pleasure. He cried her name once, and his semen jetted into her, bathing her womb.

  He leaned back, drawing her with him, lifted her, and placed her on the bed under the covers before joining her. She settled in his arms as if she belonged there, laying her leg over his, lifting her knee to snuggle between his thighs. With a murmur, he drew her close.

  “You are good, lady.”

  “So are you.” She gave a happy sigh. “I don’t feel any different.”

  “You won’t. But you’ll know where I am, what I’m doing. If I cut you off, you’ll become distressed and restless. That goes both ways.” He turned his head and kissed her brow. “So you won’t, will you?”

  “No.” He’d done it to ensure her safety, not that he wanted to from passion and needing, no sense of jealousy or possession. She told herself she should be glad. Those kinds of primitive emotions didn’t belong in the modern world. Old-fashioned notions, and she wanted none of them. That was what she told herself. She needed to know something else. If she’d had her wits about her, she’d have asked him before. “What happens when one of us dies?”

  “Ah.” He paused. “Usually the other dies too, but we didn’t fully bond, cariad. We can fight that part. True bonding would happen if we did it more than once. I have plenty of time left. In a loving bond and a true exchange of souls, they will die together and welcome the opportunity. But we’re not like that, are we?”

  She buried her face in his neck, not wanting him to see her eyes, and shoved her traitorous thoughts to the back of her mind, to her secret place. “No. So why did you do it?”

  “You know why.” He sighed. “You have no family, Cerys. I want to be your family.”

  She chuckled. “Not my brother, though.”

  He laughed. “Hardly. Maybe foster brother, friend, someone who cares about you.”

  “And you’re leaving soon, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I am. I don’t know exactly when.”

  She sighed and lifted her head, pushing her hair out of her eyes. “What do you do?”

  He kept her gaze. “I’m an agent for Department 57.”

  Silence as she took that in. She knew he had a dangerous edge, had known it from the moment she’d seen him dispatch the thugs who’d attacked her so efficiently. He didn’t use spectacular moves. He’d just done what he had to, as quickly as possible and with the minimum of effort. But not this. She’d hoped he was some kind of copper, something like that. In a way, he was. But he worked for the organization that hunted down the enemies of Talents. In danger all the time, closer to death than any other Talent because the people they came up against knew who and what they were and how to combat them.

  He reached out, brushed aside a strand of hair that she’d missed, lingered to wind it around his finger. “If we don’t take the ultimate step, if we don’t fall in love and commit to each other, you don’t have to accept the inevitable. What we did just now was only once and not completely. We didn’t have a complete exchange. That takes longer, and in our kind, it’s irrevocable. Full commitment. What we did was partway there, so while we’ll alw
ays know the other is somewhere, alive, we won’t be completely two people united with one soul. That’s what they call it, sometimes, the poets of our people. Combining souls. We didn’t do that, Cerys.”

  Nor would they. She knew that now. He wouldn’t risk that. She would; she knew it for sure. But he could never know she was falling in love with him. She wouldn’t have him make any more sacrifices to care for her. She’d have to take steps to care for herself, to look after herself so that he wouldn’t worry. What if, concerned for her, he wasn’t fully aware, not fully on guard?

  “It’s good that I have someone. I promise I won’t take risks or anything.”

  “I know.”

  “And you mustn’t too.”

  He laughed, rich and full, the sound rolling through the room. “In my line of work, sometimes that’s inevitable. But I can promise not to take unnecessary risks. I’ve been doing this job for a while now, and I think I’ve got it worked out”

  “How long?”

  He reached out and pressed a switch. Golden light glowed from a bedside lamp, illuminating the fast-falling darkness. This room faced the sea, so there was no chance of being overlooked. There was also little light from the streetlamps outside. She loved it. She could lie in here and watch the stars. “Thirty years. I worked for another organization before that.”

  “MI5? MI6?” She could see him as the pattern for James Bond. Superspy.

  “GCHQ for a while, then intelligence.” He shrugged. “I started because I was bored. Bad, isn’t it? I should have done it from a burning sense of injustice or something like that.”

  She lifted up, pressed him onto his back, and came over him, leaning on his chest. He showed no sign of discomfort. But then, night proper had fallen, and she was in bed with a powerful being, not just the strong man she’d started this session with. “So tell me. How did you become a vampire? I’ve never met a made vampire before.”

  He fascinated her, and she wondered so many things. Some things she’d never ask him, such as what it was like to see your family age and die and not age and die yourself.

  He stroked her hair, gazed into her eyes. “A long time ago. When coal started to get important. When they found it in South Wales. I can remember my da and Uncle George talking about it over breakfast. We lived here, in Llandudno, though the old house is long gone. We fished and made money selling souvenirs to the tourists. It wasn’t a bad life. The Victorians loved this place, called it genteel. How about that? No Kiss me quick hats in those days.”

  She kissed him since he’d put her in mind of it. “Very few these days, either. It still has that genteel air about it. I love it.”

  “It’s endearing.” He kissed his fingers, pressed them against her lips. “You want to know more?”

  She nodded. He grasped her hand. “All right then. One night I was walking very close to here when someone grabbed me. He kidnapped me. You know there are people who know who we are, who chase us and persecute us? Well, they’ve been around a long time. This was one of those. He fancied himself a vampire hunter, and he’d captured me. I was barely twenty, cocky, full of myself. Idiot. I had a girl and a family, and I knew my place in life. I was considering going south, to the coalfields with Uncle George, to make some extra money. But this man knocked me cold with a cosh, and when I woke up, I wasn’t anywhere I knew. He’d taken me as live food for his captive vampire, much as you’d give a mouse to a snake. I woke up in the cage with him.” He swallowed, and she saw distaste in the hard lines around his mouth. “My captor, one Michael Windlass, had happened on the vampire during the day. Drugged him and captured him. He must have been watching him for weeks. Months, maybe. Anyway, he was sure that his scientific studies would bring him great fame, but he didn’t want to share his find with others. He wanted all the glory. He put the vampire in a cage and knew enough to hang silver as a deterrent.”

  She frowned. “I can wear silver. Can’t you?”

  He shrugged. “It makes me itchy. But the allergy is more common with vampires and sometimes shape-shifters than it is with the general population. That’s where the legend came from. One of the ones we use to confuse people. If it’s allergic to silver, can’t go out in daylight, and has no reflection, it’s a vampire.”

  She laughed. “And can’t wear a cross.”

  “Oh yes, I forgot that one. That doesn’t even make sense. I’ve known a Jewish vampire or two in my time. This one believed it all, but he’d driven his captive mad. Deliberately. He’d starved him. You know the older we get, the more efficient we get at processing the blood?”

  She nodded.

  “I can go for up to a month without feeding, although I prefer to feed once a week at least.”

  She nodded again. “Is it the same for made vampires?”

  “Very much so.”

  She moved against him, and he groaned.

  “If you want to hear the rest of the story, you won’t do that. You have the most gorgeous breasts, and I love them right where they are. Against me.”

  He stopped for another kiss, which she gave willingly. She would have rolled completely over him, but she stopped herself, guessing he didn’t tell his story to many people. For all she knew, she was the first to hear it.

  He sighed. “Okay. Well, you can just about guess the rest. The vampire was so hungry he latched on immediately. He gave me climax after climax. But this one was mad enough to give and give.”

  He paused, watched her closely. She met his dark gaze unwaveringly. “A vampire is made when another takes all his victim’s blood. At the moment the last drop passes into the vampire’s body, he ejects a hormone, something that vitalizes what should be a corpse. If we leave even half a pint, less, the victim will die. That’s all. But if the vampire takes it all, then the magic happens. The corpse gains superstrength and turns on the vampire, mesmerizing him and pinning him down. There’s nothing he can do but take it. At that moment, he is a dead man. Halfway through the exchange, the vampire who made me opened his mind, and I had to listen to him. I couldn’t stop taking his blood, absorbing it, letting it flow into my parched tissues. I felt every capillary, I swear. He wanted to die. The bastard Windlass had killed his family to get to him. He had nothing left, nothing to live for, so he willingly passed his Talent to me. He wanted me to know that, I think. Wanted me to know that I wasn’t taking anything from him that he didn’t want to give. He passed on knowledge too. A full exchange takes a while, so he had the time to tell me about my new strengths and how to get out of the place. I absorbed it along with his blood.” He sighed. “Is that enough?”

  She shook her head. “You’ve started…”

  “So I’ll finish. I get it.” He gave a short laugh, not bitterly, and stroked his finger down her cheek. “Your skin is wonderful. Like silk caressing me. You make me forget.”

  “What?”

  “How should I know?” At the old joke, something melted. Without her realizing it, tension had entered the room, and the familiar saying helped to dissipate it. “Well, after that, I played possum for a while, pretended to be unconscious, let myself recover. Windlass took the empty husk away. Then he returned and kicked me to wake me up. With my new senses, I could tell it was still day, but sunset wasn’t far off. When it came, he was still in the cell.” His grin was merciless and without humor. “It didn’t take much to get out of there, especially since I’m not particularly allergic to silver and rather fond of crosses. All the members of my family were God-fearing nonconformists. We had crosses everywhere, and they meant home to me. So I got out.”

  “And your family took you back?”

  “I was only gone a few days. I didn’t look any different. Of course I had nobody to learn from, only what my poor sire had managed to tell me before he died. But I learned fast.” He stroked her cheek. “I found that the life of a miner was a pretty good one for a vampire. Good money for the time too. And I found more of my kind, who told me what to do, how to move on.” He paused. “That’s about it, really.�
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  To watch his loved ones age and die must have been agonizing. But she’d forgotten their closer connection and how quick he was.

  “It was,” he said. “I learned how to reinvent myself, and eventually I told my family. They’ve always known. Gareth knew, which was how he knew how to get in touch and will me his property. Not that I wanted it. I have enough. You can’t live this long without accumulating something.”

  “My parents did. They always gave their stuff away. Didn’t want property or the burden of it, they said.”

  “Like it or not, cariad, it makes life easier.”

  She grimaced. “Yes, well, it was their decision.”

  “It doesn’t make me like them very much, to know they left you like that.”

  “They didn’t plan to leave me.” She shrugged. “They said they’d wanted to give me something. A start, they said, but when I looked at the bank accounts, the balances were just about nil. And yes, I’m as sure as I can be that I didn’t overlook anything.” She rolled over him, the brief contact of pussy against cock making him groan and reach for her. “No, we need a bath. Or a shower or something.”

  “Ah yes, my next surprise.” He waggled his brows at her. “A shower big enough for two.” He followed her out of the bed and caught her hand. “Come this way, madam.”

  Chapter Seven

  She loved him. For sure and certain, she knew it now. It didn’t make her feel particularly different, since this had happened over the course of two weeks. Two weeks of him letting her deep inside him, to understand him. A time when he’d told her things she guessed he told few people, if any. Two weeks of fucking like she’d never known before, inventiveness and passion matched by caring and concern. And he made her feed, watched out for her when she wanted to go straight home and make love. Not feed from him, though. They never repeated that after the one time. Too dangerous, he said. They’d established a connection so he could be assured of her safety. It was a start, she told herself. Maybe soon he’d want more.