Blood Ex Libris Page 15

  “Let me tuck you in, micuţo. It is a pleasure for me.”

  “Uh, you’re not going to sleep with me? This is your bedroom, right?”

  “It is, and I will sleep with you later—and all the rest of our days. But I must meet with some people. We must speak hurriedly, without time for explanation, and while we all speak English, it is faster and more private for some of us to speak in our native languages. It would only be tedious for you. Sleep now, and I will join you in a while.”

  I didn’t want him to go. Didn’t want him to go out for clandestine meetings into who knew what sorts of danger from which he might never come back, leaving me alone in the midst of a danger I could hardly start to understand. But sleep was irresistible. I couldn’t stop myself from being pulled down into it. The bed—with a modern foam mattress, I was relieved to find—was soft and hugged me into it and pulled me down further. I was mostly asleep when Sandu tucked the covers over my shoulders, and I didn’t notice him leaving the room.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I was buried deep under rock and dirt. But I was warm, held securely in the dark, and safe from the cruel, sharp light. It was like the earth was my mother, embracing me and keeping me protected and secure. It was never stifling, never confining. I could never feel claustrophobic again and would from now on long for such snug enfolding in the rich earth.

  I was there for an eternity, safe and warm, warm and safe, down in the darkest center, and I never wanted to leave. But I was called back, and with each layer up, it became bearable, comfortable, all right not to be in that safe darkness. Each layer brought a new sense of freedom and space that made the light tolerable, acceptable, worthwhile. By the time I came up to the point where I was aware of myself as a person sleeping in a bed under covers, it did not seem a bad thing to be, and I could no longer remember where and how I had been.

  I realized there was a presence in the bed with me, snugged up under the covers. I was still in a warm sleepy place, but he was not. Or at least, parts of him were not. I felt Vlad’s Impaler poking demandingly between my legs, his hands questing around on my body and his lips and teeth making a tentative exploration of my neck. It wasn’t that I was against the idea of another bout of The World’s Best Sex™, but I was having a hard time pulling myself up into wakefulness. Indeed, sex was all very well, but sleeping was so niiiice, too...

  I must have drifted off into deeper sleep, but I slowly came to the realization that Sandu had worked his way inside me, and was moving slowly in-and-out, creating the most marvelous gentle waves of pleasure. I moaned as the pleasure built up along with my increasing consciousness, and this inspired him to reach around and play with my nipples, making sleep recede even faster on the building tide of bliss. I started moving my hips against his, making the motion and the intensity greater.

  His lips and tongue were doing their usual foreplay on my neck, but also moving over my shoulder and the back of my neck. It was still sleepy-fuzzy and lovely, not quite real. It felt like I was still dreaming, and that was part of the pleasure.

  It went on in a marvelously timeless way before I felt Sandu’s teeth slide gently through the skin and muscle of my neck, pushing me into a new kind of orgasm: soft, smooth ripples across all of me, not pushing me to all the intensity of the universe, but perfectly sustainable for a long ride of sheer delight. As he had the last time we had fucked, he took a break from suckling at my neck to rip open his wrist and shove it in my mouth. This “66” was perfect: our bodies pressed together, his Impaler fully inside me and moving just enough to provide wonderful friction, and his salty blood gushing silkily down my throat as he drank from it. I gulped and gulped, and felt the high come on that took my fuzzy sleepiness to full waking dream, all synesthesia and ecstasy.

  After we were done, and my lips rested against his perfectly healed wrist, he held me and we lay together, not wanting to move again, ever.

  A quiet knock on the door woke us and Sandu slipped away, leaving a vacuum at my back. I sat up slightly and watched as he found a black silk robe in a wardrobe, and another tray was delivered for me. “I must admit,” Sandu said as he delivered me breakfast in bed, “it is easier to remember to feed you when there are other people to be told to remember it for me.” I found myself guzzling down cups of strong black tea, more mămăligă with sour cream and cheese, and sausages.

  I’ve always liked saying—to myself, anyway—that after my morning caffeine and a good breakfast, I would feel “almost human” again. But nowadays, I felt superhuman even when I forgot to eat, and caffeinated beverages were simply to be drunk for the pleasure of the taste since they also no longer had any effect on me. It seemed every time Sandu and I had epic sex—or at least the blood exchange, but I didn’t see the sex as optional—I would find myself feeling just a bit more…more...well, more. My blood gushed contentedly through my veins, well-being rippled through my nervous system, my muscles moved smoothly and never knotted from fatigue or strain, and my skin glowed with health and was pretty much poreless. Drinking the blood of the undead or whatever the am’r were made me more alive.

  Except that I still had to use that damned indoor outhouse.

  I stopped and stared at Sandu when I got back from the so-called bathroom. He was garbed—that was the only way to describe it—in what looked like a museum piece or a costume from a film on his life. It was a black…well, not a dress, but I had no idea what to call it. The lovely fitted item was made of fine black wool, with a double row of silver buttons to the waist, after which it was open to the knee. When he moved, black wool hose were exposed, showing off his well-muscled legs. His black leather boots came to mid-calf, fitting him tightly.

  At his neck was the only thing not black: a white silk mandarin-collared shirt peeked out from the black wool. A golden chain ran diagonally across his chest, down to where it attached to a sword. I was not surprised to see it was the sword from the place of honor in his front room. Over all of that, a wide belt of tartan-like fabric wrapped around his waist. Finally, but most eye-catching, a thicker gold chain went around his shoulders and held on his chest a dragon curved into the form of a circle, its tail strangling it, divided along the middle of its back from the top of its head to the tip of its tail by a blood-red cross. It was the symbol from the door, and I realized it must be the Order of the Dragon.

  Since he was dressed to impress and ready to go, I felt pressure not to dawdle. Two pitchers of hot water and a pile of towels had come in with the food, which was enough for me to have a French bath and change into the outfit he’d picked out.

  I wonder if I’ll ever have control of my wardrobe again? But this does remove the guesswork of what to wear to the vampire U.N. Council.

  Sandu had chosen an outfit of medium-gray silky wide-leg trousers, which looked like a skirt until I moved, and a tight, darker gray knit top that clung from a mock-turtleneck through fashionably long sleeves with thumb-holes. I figured the turtleneck was an excellent idea. It sent a subtle message of, “Don’t even think about my neck!” My black leather ankle boots showed perfectly under the swishy wide legs of the trousers.

  There was a mirror inside the wardrobe, which confirmed that the mirror myth was just that. I was glad because I liked what I saw outfit-wise, but my hair was a disaster. Curls need attention and pampering, and mine had been sorely neglected as of late. They were more frizz than curl by this point. I dampened the unruly mass and pulled it all severely back into a chignon, which was my default Librarian-style, and which I could do perfectly without being conscious.

  Sandu was making the movements and small noises of impatience, but I felt eyeliner, mascara, and lipstick were called for. He obviously didn’t disagree, so he did not verbally hurry me along. He was edgy and impatient, however. That made me feel nervous, and when I’m nervous, I tend to look for extra things to do to avoid the inevitable. But I was dressed and styled and could find no more ways to put off going down into a conclave of am’r, not properly knowing who was friend
or foe—or how much difference there was between the former and the latter.

  As we went down the twists and turns of the hallways back to the Rave Cave, Sandu doled out information. “We shall arrive there a bit early to greet the am’r as they enter. I have gathered them here in my stronghold, but they need to see that Bagamil fully supports this and believes as strongly as I do that it is the only way forward for the am’r. And they need to be made aware of you, dragă Noosh, and understand you are under powerful protection.”

  “What you’re saying is that we are stuck in the receiving line.”

  “Yes, ‘receiving line’ is the right phrase. I am the host, and now I have you as my hostess. We cannot get out of this duty, as much as we both would prefer it. This is an exceedingly important gathering for the am’r. Tonight will change the course of our culture, and it might even change us as a people.”

  “No pressure, then.”

  Sandu laughed. “No pressure at all.”

  When we arrived at the vast, cavern-y room, Bagamil—in his Mister Sunshine outfit—was already there, alone, in the same place as last night. He nodded at us. We nodded to him and kept walking. No last-minute advice or game-changing directives or anything.

  Damn. I’d have liked the comfort of his nearness, even for a few moments.

  It seemed the big front doors would be used again tonight. Sandu found another otherwise-impossible-to-locate button to press to open them from this side, and they swung open with their grumbly stone complaint.

  Would he ever give me a guide to all the ridiculous and overly-complicated shit I need to learn to live in this vampire warren? He couldn’t personally lead me around forever. I guessed that was a problem for another night; we had enough more immediate problems to deal with. Once we’d survived this event of life and death importance, we’d get around to the mundane problem of how to find the door, never mind my way from point A to point B.

  The Romanian Crew was waiting on the other side of the doors, obviously the cheerleaders for Team Bagamil. Was there another team? And if so, who was on it? They came past us, and Meet-N-Greet Round Two: Electric Boogaloo began. Everyone in the Romanian Crew had warm smiles for both of us, and said, “Noroc!” which seemed to mean something between “Good luck” and “More power to you”—an am’r sentiment if ever there was one—to Sandu and me. Daciana added in a discreet aside to me: “Do not worry. You will do fine.”

  After we’d greeted the Romanian Crew, the real work began. Down the winding stone corridor stretched the clustered and disordered queue of vampires, some conversing sotto voce, some standing alone and watching us impassively.

  This was going to be the receiving line from hell.

  I cringed as I watched even more am’r coming down the hall to add to the group waiting to be welcomed in. There were am’r I knew from last night, and more to meet for the first time. Sandu and I had managed to get “married” without all the usual fuss, but it seemed we still had to do time in painful social ritual as if to make up for the early bit having been easy and enjoyable.

  I met Llorenç, a saturnine Catalan, Violante, a strangely blonde Italian, with amazing amethyst-colored eyes, Tryphena, on the arm of Zopyros, who was another example of patar-frithaputhra bonding which had withstood the test of time, and Jiang Lili, whom Sandu was obviously quite surprised to see. He introduced me to her with careful, almost painful courtesy. She was breathtakingly gorgeous, with eyes like black jewels, the whitest skin of any am’r I’d met so far, and perfectly straight black hair that fell thick to her knees. She was also the farthest from human-seeming of all the am’r I’d met. Her beauty and her utterly expressionless face made her seem another species in a way none of the other am’r had done. Indeed, many of them had seemed all too human in their character and actions.

  There were more, but they blurred together, and after a while, I couldn’t remember the current impossible name by the time the next outlandish or unpronounceable one came along. The am’r trickled in one by painful one, needing to be greeted from across a formal and not insignificant personal space.

  Sandu made significant eye contact and subvocalized a few urgent words with one or another of them, and I tried to mark those. They are all some variation of attractive, I thought, although the luminous good health of their skin, hair, and eyes that marked an am’r—and now me as well—might have had a lot to do with my perception. Basically, am’r all looked photoshopped into inhuman perfection. It made it hard for me to read them, because even the ones who set Sandu’s spine uncomfortably straight just looked unreadably, inhumanly gorgeous to me.

  It all lasted too long. Way too long. It couldn’t have taken years, but it felt like it did, and, who knows, am’r might not care about the passage of time. Maybe it was like entering a fairy mound and eventually stepping back into the real world to find hundreds of years had passed. No. Stop it, silly girl. Obviously I was getting slap-happy, fatigued by the stress of it all.

  Abruptly, a change—a charge, actually, like an electrical one—filled the atmosphere. I could sense that Sandu was quivering with tension, although outwardly he was perfectly relaxed—almost too relaxed, and back in his put-on teenage slouch. A party of seriously be-suited am’r had reached us. The rest of the am’r had walked up singly or in pairs, but this group of am’r was even more of a unit than the Romanian crew.

  In that first moment of seeing them, they could have been clones, there was such a similar quality among them all. Gorgeous clones, all dressed in aggressively modern-cut suits like GQ models. Or maybe male strippers. They were too studied, too perfectly creased, their black patent shoes shined too mirror-like. They made the rest of the am’r before them seem human, unaffected, and even a bit untidy, which was a real feat.

  Who the fuck were these guys?

  I didn’t have to wait long to find out. He who was obviously—painfully obviously—the leader led his clique right up to Sandu. It was as they got closer, I realized they did not all look the same; their hair ranged through the darker shades from glossy black to the leader’s shade of strangely dark red. Almost all had dark eyes, but the kingpin had eyes that seemed brown at first, but upon closer inspection were oddly metallic, catching the greenish light like they were mercury. They all had strong noses, and here as well, their leader led, having an aquiline nose to do anyone proud.

  Anyone who’s heard jokes about a correlation between nose and penis length will eye this man with consideration.

  Under his impressive beak was a well-manscaped goatee with extra-long mustaches. It made me realize what set this group of am’r apart: facial hair. Almost none of the am’r had any worth noticing, beyond Neplach’s beard, Eben’s impressive muttonchops, and Bagamil’s Freddie-stache. But all of this gang had proper facial hair, from trim mustaches to perfectly-shaped goatees. None more so than The Nose, however. Obviously, he made sure to be the leader in everything.

  I noticed he had the same teenage slouch as Sandu: uncaringly loose, indifferent, insouciant, perfectly “I don’t give a fuck, I don’t even care that I’m here, and I’m really bored right now.” His body language mirrored Sandu’s so perfectly I thought maybe he was mocking him, but when I saw his eyes—those strange metallic eyes—I saw no humor there. If I hadn’t seen the look in his eyes, I might have been taken in by his easy smile and casual, “Vlad Drăculea. Good to see you, old friend. It has been too long. We must catch up, yes?” Then he turned his head to me...and the nostrils in his long, aquiline nose whiffled my scent, and whiffled some more.

  Obviously, the news about me had gotten around since last night.

  Vlad’s brought in not only a new frithaputhra, but an am’r-nafsh one at that! Gasp! Shock!

  You’d never believe that beings who had centuries under their belts would gossip like teenagers, but it seemed there are some things people never grew out of.

  Anyway, news had clearly gone around about me, because tonight all the am’r I met for the first time were obviously prepared to m
eet me, and upon introduction, clearly and obviously did not point out that I was a delish am’r-nafsh. There were various nostril reactions, which I’d come to be rather sensitive about, but they ranged from “utterly expressionless face with the barest olfactory tremble” to “keenly interested but trying for subtle deep inhalations.”

  Wriggling your sniffer like a pig scenting truffles must be just as impolite as conversationally bringing up my “scrumptious snack” status would be. So if I’m right, it means The Nose is being deliberately rude before he’s even said word one to me. Nice.

  “And this must be the one who has swept you off your feet, old friend.” Twitch, twitch went the nostrils. “I can...see why. Truly, Kazıklı bey, you will make us all jealous.”

  Sandu ignored this, which made me proud of him.

  Although he’s probably been practiced at diplomatically ignoring things since six centuries before I was born, and doesn’t need me being proud of him.

  “Noosh, may I introduce el-Fātiḥ, Meḥmed-i s̠ānī, Kayser-i Rûm, Turcarum Imperator, otherwise known as the Grand Turk. Fatih Sultan Mehmet Han, this is my frithaputhra, Anushka.”

  I decided if there was at least one person in the world who could and should call me by my full name, it was The Nose. I never wanted to achieve any level of informality with him. I mean, it was impossible to have learned anything about Sandu—about Vlad—and not have read his name. This piece of work was the guy who’d seduced Vlad’s brother Radu and turned him against Vlad, and who’d fought against him many times during their lives. They had been mortal enemies, back when they were mortal.

  Does this mean they are immortal enemies now? I’m guessing yes from body language alone, although the rest could just be Mehmet’s charming personality.

  “Anushka, sevgili, this is truly a pleasure.” He bowed deeply, and on the way back up, he winked at me. Seriously? “It is good to meet the lady who has become so dear to my old friend. I hope we shall become friends as well. Good friends.”