“Did I hurt you?” he asked. Even his voice was more soothing in its resonance now, like melted honey.
“No.”
“Your hands?”
“Uncomfortable from the handcuffs. Can you release me?”
His eyes slid away as he pulled out a wipe. “You know I cannot.”
Without another word, he cleaned me and dressed me. Maybe there was a limit to how embarrassed you could get. I’d apparently reached mine. I sat there and did nothing as he finished caring for me. Then wiped himself down and zipped himself back up.
He turned suddenly to look up into the sky. An eagle circled high above us. So high I almost didn’t feel it—that faint, shimmering presence of another Monère.
It was Aquila shifted into his bird form. Drawn to our location by Chami’s whistle blasts.
“Maudrëa,” Dante said, muttering an imprecation in a language so old it had almost been forgotten by all. He shut my door and went around to the back, opening the trunk.
My eyes widened in alarm as he drew out a rifle. “No, don’t. You can’t! It’s Aquila,” I said, twisting around in my seat. “You might kill him.”
“That is my intention,” he said coldly. He slid two bullets in, chambering the rounds.
I looked at him with horror, then turned my head skyward. “Aquila,” I shouted. “Go away. Leave us!”
A shot rang out with a flat crack, and the eagle jerked, tilted. He fluttered in the sky for a moment, still airborne. Then he began to fall.
“No!” I moaned as I watched Aquila plummet from the sky, silent, graceful, so terribly still. Blood washed down his right wing, streaking his feathers like wine-red paint as he spiraled, until trees cut him from our sight, but not our sound. I heard the rustling of leaves, the snapping of twigs as he crashed through the foliage, a discordant cascade. Then that final, terrible thud as he hit the ground.
“Aquila.” His name was a mournful, teary sound slipping unconsciously from me. My mind, my body felt numb. I didn’t even register my own actions, my bound hands blindly seeking the door handle, lifting the lever. I wasn’t aware of what I was doing until I was hauled halfway back across the seat toward the driver’s side, with Dante’s hard furious face above me. He reached across, slammed shut the door I had just opened.
“Stop it,” Dante commanded. Shifting me back into my seat, he pulled out my seat belt strap. “Stop crying,” he said. Only then did I realize that I was making harsh, guttural sounds deep in my throat. Like an animal that was being beaten.
I leaned forward, preventing him from latching the seat belt, and slid back against my door, twisting against his hold almost hysterically. “No, I have to go to him!”
“He’s not dead,” he said, giving me a little shake when I continued to fight him. “Mona Lisa, look at me! He’s not dead.”
His words calmed me down enough that I stopped struggling for a second. As soon as I did, Dante snapped my seat belt in place, then gripped my arms. “I just shot his wing, not his heart. He will heal.”
“He fell so far. Was so still,” I whispered brokenly. “And there was so much blood.”
“He’s not human. Only taking out the head or heart will kill us, remember? Listen. Take a breath and listen, and you can hear his heartbeat.”
He slid his hand beneath his shirt, deactivating the privacy shield, and I heard it for an instant…a faint, rapid heartbeat out in the woods. The sound disappeared as he reactivated the charm. I sobbed then. Sobbed as if my heart would break as the car pulled onto the road, taking me away from my fallen men. Both of them injured because of me.
We drove for a time, not long, or at least it did not seem so, before he pulled off the road into a gas station, and parked in front of a minimarket. I sat there, staring straight ahead, not seeing anything. Numb. He glanced at me, then went inside, keeping an eye on me through the glass doors. No need. I was not running anywhere. I didn’t have the heart or energy to do so. Lethargy had gripped me, a cottony distance separating me from the rest of the world and its trifling concerns. He returned with a soft drink, some chips, a candy bar. Driving to the back of the parking lot, he parked there, away from prying eyes. He said something, opened his mouth and spoke, but I wasn’t aware of his actual words. Not until he lifted the can of soda and put a plastic straw to my lips, intruding into the soft bubble that surrounded me.
“Drink this,” he said.
Because it was easier to do that than fight him, I took two sips before turning my head away and losing myself once more in the emptiness of not thinking, not feeling.
The door shut as he got out of the car and came around to my side. Opening my door, he crouched in front of me, ripped open the candy bar, and held it to my mouth. I looked past it without interest.
“One bite,” he urged, nudging the chocolate against my lips.
I frowned. Felt a brief flare of irritation at the intrusion. What did he want, I wondered?
“One bite,” Dante repeated, “and I’ll leave you alone.”
Because that was what I desired most, I took a bite and swallowed. The peace I sought, however, did not come. Not because of his actions. But because of another’s.
Like the silent demon he was, Halcyon suddenly appeared. He was dressed in his usual shirt of white silk, with diamonds glinting at the cuffs. Only his attire was civilized. Not his actions.
His long, sharp nails sank with almost sickening ease into Dante’s flesh, his fingertips half-buried in Dante’s shoulder. Blood—and the demon’s presence—stirred my unholy hunger to life, and it roared past my numbness, shattering it with a desire to feed that overrode my emotional state. That did not care if my men were hurt or killed. The only thing it cared about was the crimson, shiny blood welling up from beneath the thin barrier of skin.
My fangs burst forth, eager to sink into the meal that was bleeding before me. But it was not to be. With one casual fling, Halcyon sent Dante flying back into the copse of trees lining the lot. One quick glance at me, then Halcyon was gone, moving almost too fast to see, gone after the prey he had casually flung away.
“No!” I screamed, and wanted to howl with thwarted hunger, with terrible need. I could not think, could not feel with that overwhelming, driving thirst for blood overtaking me.
The sound of a door opening drew my attention to other prey as the gas station attendant came running out.
“Hey, what’s going on out here?”
He was a bald, middle-aged man with a ponderous belly. But it was not his fat belly I was interested in, only his blood. I was on him in an instant, with no knowledge of moving, of snapping the seat belt, opening the door. His heartbeat surged faster, began to race like a thumping rabbit when he saw my fangs. How delectable, that fast rhythmic pounding, that stink of fear.
“What the—” He gurgled as I struck, fastening onto his neck. He was a big man, bigger than I, weighing almost twice as much, straining wildly, pushing against me with his hands to no avail. Such a delicate creature. So easily broken, was my impression before the richness of his blood filled my mouth and ran down my throat like the sweetest and most intoxicating wine. Yes! I mentally cried as I sucked and pulled with long, succulent swallows, drinking down that potent elixir of life. This is what I need.
My body sang with the richness pouring into it, and a moan slipped out, mixing with the juicy, slurping sounds I made as I feasted on him. A moan that came not from me as I first thought, but from the thing I was drinking from. Instead of pushing me away now, his arms wrapped around me. It was that protruding belly nudging against me, the odd, alien feel of it, that broke me from my thralling hunger. That made me realize, suddenly, what I was doing.