“Yes, but. .” he sighed and ran a hand through his curls. “It is too complex to explain fully, but essentially. . my Lady pushed me.”
“Pushed? Wha—”
“It is done when a master wishes to elevate a servant’s rank quickly. A great deal of power is. . is shoved through a subject all at once,” he told her, swallowing. “It is rarely done, because many times, the subject involved does not survive. But the threats against her Majesty were grave enough to make my Lady decide that she needed someone on the inside, and no one in her stable was qualified. But a newly-made vampire has many weaknesses that—”
“Newly-made?” Gillian grasped onto the one thing in all that which made sense. “How new?”
He licked his lips. “A few years.”
“A few years?”
“If you round up.”
Gillian felt her stomach plummeting. “You’re telling me you’ve never Changed anyone before?”
“I never had cause,” he said, looking defensive.
“Didn’t they train you?” she demanded, suddenly furious. She had found a way out of this, against all the odds, she had found a way. And he didn’t know how?
“It is rather like sex,” he snapped. “The theory and the practice being somewhat different!”
“You have to try!”
“You don’t understand. It is a little-known fact that newly-minted masters, even those who took centuries to reach that mark, often have. . mishaps. . before they succeed in making their first Child. If I do this incorrectly—”
“Then I’ll be dead,” she said harshly. “Which is what I will be when the Circle finishes with me in any case.” She took off her kerchief, baring her neck before she could talk herself out of this. “Do it.”
For a moment, she was certain he would refuse. And why shouldn’t he, she thought bitterly. It sounded like masters changed only those who could be helpful to them in some way, and she’d been little enough use to anyone alive. Why should being dead be any different?
But then he swallowed and stepped closer, his hands coming up to rest on her shoulders. There was fear in his eyes, and it looked odd on that previously self-assured face. Like the bruises purpling along his jaw and cheek, wounds his kind weren’t supposed to get. Her hand instinctively lifted to touch them, and found his skin smooth and blood warm, nothing like the stories said.
She stared at him, wondering if his kind felt pain, if they felt love, if they felt. She didn’t know. She didn’t know anything about them but rumours and stories, most of which, she was beginning to realize, had likely been fabricated by people who knew even less than she.
“Try to relax,” he murmured, and she wasn’t sure whether he was talking to her or himself. But then his eyes lightened to a rich, honey-gold, as if a candle had been lit behind them. The pounding on the door receded, fading into nothingness, and the cool breeze flowing through the window turned warm. Incredibly, she felt some of the stiffness leave her shoulders.
For a moment — until his lips found her neck and she faltered in cold panic, the soft touch causing her heart to kick violently against her ribs. Her hands tightened on his sleeves, instinct warring with instinct — to push him away, to pull him closer, the will to live fighting with the need to die.
“I’m not doing this correctly,” he said, feeling her tremble. “You should not feel fear.”
“Everyone fears death, unless they have nothing to live for.”
“And you have much.”
She nodded, mutely. She hadn’t realized until that moment how focused she’d been on all that she’d lost, instead of on what remained. She didn’t want to die. She wasn’t supposed to die, not here, not now. She knew it with a certainty that was at war with all reason.
“I cannot do this if you fight me,” he told her simply. “Humans tell stories of us forcibly Changing them against their will, but that rarely happens. It is difficult enough when the subjects are willing, when they want what we have to offer.”
“And what is that?” she asked, trying for calm despite the panic ringing in her bones.
“For most? Power, or the possibility of it. Wealth — few masters are poor, and their servants want for nothing. And, of course, the chance to cheat death. Quite a few transition in middle age, when their bodies begin to show wear, when they realize how short a mortal life really is.”
Gillian shook her head in amazement, that anyone would throw away something so precious for such scant reward. “But few become masters, isn’t that right?” He nodded. “So the power is in another’s hands, as is the wealth, to give or withhold as he chooses. And as for death—” This didn’t feel like a cheat to her. It felt like giving up. It felt like the end.
The vampire smiled, softly, sadly. “You are a poor subject, Mistress Urswick. You are not grasping enough. What you want, you already have; you merely wish to keep it.”
“But I’m not going to keep it, am I?” The terror faded as that certainty settled into her bones. She had one chance, here and now, and it would never come again. She could let fear rob her of it and die, or she could master herself and live. A strange life, to be sure, but a life, nonetheless.
“Do you wish to proceed?” he asked her, watching her face.
Gillian took a deep breath, and then she nodded.
He didn’t tell her again that this might not work. He didn’t tell her anything at all. But golden threads of a magic she didn’t know suddenly curled around her hands where they rested on his arms. She had always thought vampires were creatures of the dark, but the same bright magic shone around him as his hands came up to bracket her face.
“I don’t know your first name,” he whispered, against her lips.
“Gillian,” she told him, hearing her voice tremble.
“Gillian,” he repeated, and her name in his voice was full of so much longing that it coiled in her belly, dark and liquid, like her own emotion. And perhaps it was. Because when he suddenly bit down on her lower lip, the sensation left her trembling, but not with fear.
He made a low noise in his throat and pulled her close. The same strange magic that twisted around them sparked off his fingers wherever they touched her, like rubbed wool in winter. The tiny flashes of sensation had her arching helplessly against him, one hand clenched on his shoulder, the other buried in the heavy silk of his hair.
She could taste her own blood, hot and coppery, on his tongue as he drove the kiss deep, and it drew a sound from her, something animal and desperate. She gulped for air when he pulled back, almost a sob. She wanted — she wanted more than this; his hands on her body, his skin against hers, his tongue tracing the tiny wound he’d made—
But when he returned, it wasn’t to her lips.
A brilliant flash of pain went through her, like a shock of cold water, as his fangs slid into the flesh of her neck. She drew in a stuttering breath, but before she could cry out, a rush of rich, strong magic flooded her senses, spreading heat through every fibre of her body. She’d always thought of vampires as taking, but this was giving, too, an impossibly intimate sharing that she’d never even dreamed was—
He didn’t move, but it suddenly felt like he was inside her, thrusting all that power into her very core. She shuddered and opened to him, helpless to resist, the vampire shining on her and in her, elemental and blazing and gone past human. The pain was gone, the magic driving that and everything else away, crashing over her like ocean waves, an unrelenting and unending tide. She screamed beneath it, because it couldn’t be borne and had to be; because there was no bracing to meet it and no escape; and because it would end, and that would be even harder to bear.