Blood Ex Libris Page 17

  Astryiah appeared beside us. “Daciana and I are having a bathe during this kibitz. Daciana stands with you, of course, and does not need her mind made up further. I already have my own opinions, and no one can change them.”

  “Of course not!” Sandu replied with a real smile. Astryiah smiled with affection and amusement back at him. “We shall take your Noosh with us because otherwise, she will be so bored and so offended by all the sniffing nudniks that she will run away from all of us and go back to the kee.”

  Sandu looked at me. Astryiah looked at me. I certainly felt ready to run away from the am’r—and possibly from Sandu as well, but somehow I didn’t think it was an option. At the same time, however, I also wasn’t sure I wanted—or to be honest, dared—to be separated from Sandu. I’d never been alone with another am’r before. There were also some conversations which I wanted to have with Sandu alone—but getting any alone-time seemed highly improbable.

  Well, what the hell, a hot bath would be nice, and it’s better than staying here, desperately wanting to talk to Sandu and unable to, all the while being a delicious nosegay to a crowd of scheming vampires: most of whom I don’t know, some of whom I don’t need to know any better to know I do not like. I gave a slight nod to Sandu. Damn, now I’m doing those am’r micro-expressions, too.

  “Very good, very good, come with me!” Astryiah peremptorily grabbed my hand—I felt a jolt of how strange it was to be touched by a non-Sandu am’r—and yanked me away. I looked back at Sandu helplessly. “Don’t worry, Vlad the Heart-Impaled,” she tossed back over her shoulder, “I will bring her back clean and safe. And with all the vhoon she left with!” Sandu looked not remotely comforted by that. Neither was I.

  Chapter Sixteen

  As we got to a doorway, I remembered my call of nature, and, profoundly embarrassed, mentioned it to Astryiah. “Oh, that.” She laughed. “You won’t miss that when you become am’r, chamuda. Mmmmm, where did you ‘go’ last?”

  “It was a room off Sandu’s suite. I’m afraid I don’t remember where it is.”

  “Never fear, chamuda, I know how to get there. We take this way.” This left me uncharitably wondering how she knew where Sandu’s rooms were.

  We found the nasty little latrine, and Astryiah waited well down the hall from where I was doing my business.

  It was humiliating, being the only person who needed to, well, excrete, in a group of people who were beyond such things. Centuries beyond. There were some real downsides to being am’r-nafsh. On the other hand, to get to the next stage, I was pretty sure I would have to, well, to kick the bucket, and I was not prepared to look into that option just yet.

  We met Daciana in a hallway on the way back, and we walked together in the direction I assumed was the onsen Sandu had mentioned the night before. It was not a comfortable thing to be following two vampires I hardly knew. Underground, disoriented, and lost to all sense of direction, I was taking it on faith we were going where I thought we were going. It might be a final, fatal assumption.

  Am’r didn’t go in for small talk, it seemed. My companions didn’t chat with me on the way. Which was fine. I had a lot to process. They walked fast. I liked women who walked fast. I happily kept up the speed and the silence.

  After turning down one passageway, it started to get muggier and smelled of minerals and steam. I wasn’t surprised when we turned a final corner and were in a series of rooms decorated in the unfinished cave style, thermal pools steaming gently within. There were columns made by stalagmites that had grown up to meet stalactites, and more of each that were planning to become columns when they grew up. The green lighting came from under the water in this room, the curving ceiling and walls and columns decorated by the swaying reflected light.

  Astryiah and Daciana had their clothes off before I looked back at them. I decided modesty was superfluous here and shucked mine with relief. Even with my reduced sensitivity to temperature, the humidity was making wearing clothing annoying.

  I climbed awkwardly into the same pool into which they’d slid splashlessly. I had thoughts about choosing a different pool and keeping my tempting am’r-nafsh perfume out of temptation distance, but then I thought it probably would have been ungracious, if not downright rude. This is supposed to be a friendly bathe, all of us girls together.

  The water was almost too hot—that is, just perfect. We all made little sounds of pleasure as we settled into it, and I almost forgot I was around vampires and just felt like I was around people who were on the same page as me. Astryiah slid close to Daciana, and they murmured unintelligibly over the water sounds. Here and there I caught the names of am’r who’d been at the Very Important Conclave just now, especially “Mehmet,” but I didn’t try too hard to make out what they were saying because the water was luxuriously warm, and it was turning my body and brain into melty butter. I watched them talking, and they looked like pre-Raphaelite sirens in a living painting. Both had wavy hair: one a dark chocolate, which was now essentially a warm, glistening darkness, and the other’s honey-colored hair, now that it was wet, a darker honey than her gilded skin.

  After a while, I found myself barely capable of holding myself in a sitting up position. My body just wanted to float in the mineral-thick water. The gals were still gossiping or plotting world domination or whatever in velvet-accented whispers and ignoring me, so I gave in, let my head fall back, and floated, watching the play of light on the rough ceiling and variously-sized stalactites in almost a dream state.

  Indeed, maybe I even fell asleep for a moment because what seemed like the next moment, they were both on either side of me and far too far inside my personal comfort zone. They were both silently staring at me with hunger naked on their faces, their mouths open slightly, showing a bit of fang. I splashed upright in ungainly surprise and burgeoning terror.

  “Hush, chamuda, we will not bite you.” Astryiah put out a hand to my arm to calm my clumsy movements, but her touch, while it froze me, did not soothe me in any way. She left her hand there regardless of my living rigor mortis, and after a while, as she talked, she absent-mindedly stroked her fingers up and down.

  “Nu, nu, do not worry, Noosh,” Daciana added. I looked back and forth between their earnest but not particularly comforting faces. They were flushed. Which, to be fair, could be from the hot water, but their eyes were glittering and they looked aroused.

  I’ve probably reverted to my deer-in-headlights look, which is almost certainly the wrong look to wear around predators.

  My mind now racing, I realized I’d made the mistake of relaxing around them because they were girls, fellow females.

  Yet another of these “could be your last” mistakes I’ve recently been exploring thoroughly. They are fucking vampires, I belatedly admonished myself. Just because they are women doesn’t mean they can’t and won’t tear your carotid artery out and suck on it like a Pixy Stix.

  Astryiah was still stroking me. “You are the most delicious thing I have smelt in a long time. Vlad’s vhoon-anghyaa—that’s bloodline, in the am’r language—mixed with yours is a powerful, mmmmm, I should like a better word than ‘aphrodisiac,’ but I’m afraid that’s what it is, to us. You cannot blame Daciana and me for enjoying an innocent lungful of you. We both promise not to go any further. Please?”

  Her voice was pleading and seemed sincere. Or maybe she’d zapped me with vampire mesmerism, and everything she said would sound reasonable and valid. What did a rabbit say to the two foxes eyeing it?

  “Just don’t bite me, not even a little,” I choked out. “It’d make me feel like I’d cheated on Sandu. Or something.” They took this as permission to slide closer to me, and their arms slipped around me in the water, around my back, encouraging my legs up so I was floating again. I closed my eyes and tried not to shudder. Uneasiness flared and flickered in my mind, along with such thoughts as How do I keep ending up in situations like this? and I need to find out if am’r can smell fear. After a while, the heat and the intensity of the si
tuation combined to melt my tension, and I just floated there, feeling their bodies pressed to mine, my hands having been taken and our fingers intertwined, and listening to their deep inhalations, like slow, meditative panting. Their faces were close, moving around in the area of my neck and shoulders. No one spoke. It was the most intimate non-sex I’d ever had.

  They are truly reveling in my essence, totally focused on me. How often does one experience that? Well, in my limited experience, only with vampires. But it seems they don’t even need to be actively having sex with you to be able to do it. It was heady. I didn’t want it to stop, but I was afraid of what would happen if it went on. Not in the “fear of something bad” way, but in the “fear of doing something that feels good at the time, but that you know is wrong.”

  After an immeasurable period of time, Astryiah sighed—a profoundly regretful sound—and pulled a little bit away from me. A few seconds went by and Daciana did the same. Like a child forced to leave a favorite toy. Or dessert. A few more seconds, and I belatedly realized it was all over, opened my eyes, and looked from one to the other.

  “We are close, now, chamuda. We may not have vhoon-shared—” and here Astryiah gave another lamentful sigh, “but you have given us a gift, nonetheless. Your trust is as beautiful as the rest of you.” Daciana was nodding in solemn agreement. “We were your protectors for Vlad’s sake before. Now, we are your friends, your allies, for your own sake.

  “We return now. We have skipped the trivial tittle-tattle and intrigue, but there are a few with whom I do need to speak, and Daciana should be visibly supporting Vlad—a show of numbers, as it were. But you—I do not know if Vlad wants you back in Great Hall for this next part. I will take you to his rooms, and let him know you are safely there. He can decide what he wishes from there.”

  I genuinely wanted to get back to the relative safety of Sandu’s side, but Astryiah was impossible to argue with. She simply ceased to perceive me as she pulled on her clothing. Neither am’r seemed bothered by damp clothes or by their still-wet hair. I guess am’r drip-dry better than the rest of us. My curls were going to need proper attention imminently, but I was more bothered about forcing my wet limbs into now-clingy sleeves and pant-legs.

  We returned by hallways that seemed familiar enough—except that all stone corridors look more or less like other stone corridors. There were no pictures or signs to help guide the way.

  Of all the ways in which I was in over my head, why did not being able to find my way around the lair bother me the most?

  Daciana peeled off shortly after we left the onsen with a smile to me and a meaningful nod to Astryiah. After more obscure turnings, I was back at Sandu’s door.

  Astryiah turned before she left. “It was well you trusted us,” she said, earnestly. “But do not trust others in the same way. It would not be good for you.” I had about a million replies to that, ranging from “Well, DUH!” to some really sarcastic zingers, all trying to rush out of my mouth, but for once, I had the good sense not to say any of them. I just nodded, possibly a bit curtly, because her assumption of my utter naïveté left my ego rubbed raw and smarting. And then she was gone, and I was alone in Sandu’s suite.

  I wandered around the rooms. Too many things to think about. Will Sandu think I’ve cheated on him? I mean, we’d been naked and all, but, hey, we were in the baths, and they only sniffed me! “Only sniffed me.” Is this my new normal? Splashing around in hot springs in vampire-gnawed caves with lesbian (or at least bisexual) creatures of the night who have an overwhelming desire to slurp my blood as soon as look at—or, rather—sniff me? This sort of thing is just too weird.

  Anyway, how can I even know what is cheating in a patar/frithaputhra relationship? It’s not like Sandu actually ever tells me anything I need to know before I’m literally in hot water, so fuck him if doesn’t like what I’d done! He can damn well tell me the rules before getting pissed at me for breaking them!

  I was flushed and sweating with anger, not pacing so much as stomping around the medieval-chic rooms. I passed my purse and grabbed it, found a packet of tissues, and dabbed the sweat from my face. And did a double-take. There was the lightest diluted red on the tissue. I’m now literally sweating blood. Fucking great.

  I resumed stomping. I didn’t think I’d had this many mood swings in the worst of my teen years, but then, my teen years hadn’t seen half as many changes as I was going through now.

  The next target of my anger was—well, it was still Sandu. How could he just leave me here to go through this all alone? Wait, what if he didn’t even know I was here?

  Astryiah might be older and more powerful than I could imagine, but for that very reason, her concerns might be on a totally different level than updating Sandu on where she parked his girlfriend. She might have stopped for a supernaturally-profound gossip session with some other ancient and powerful being, and not have even seen Sandu yet.

  He might even now be wondering where I am and worrying.

  And what if he needed me? Three hours were definitely up by now: the big dramatic convocation of doom was almost certainly back in session. Both Sandu and Bagamil had stressed my importance to them. I didn’t get why I was important, really, but what if Sandu needed me right now, and I was off sulking in the bedroom, pouting in am’r-nafsh angst?

  I could find my way back to the Rave Cave by now, surely. My fears of not knowing my way around were obviously just projections of my fears about the uncertainty of my situation. I was certain I just went down the hall to the right, and then two lefts, and there were the first stairs, and then it was all very easy from there.

  OK. Maybe not quite so easy.

  I felt really good about the first four turns and a staircase or two. It felt like I was a Big Girl Am’r-nafsh who could totally find her way around a vampire warren. Then I got uncertain, and I thought I’d made some bad guesses, and then I’d tried to go back and correct them...and then I’d realized I was completely, perfectly lost.

  I leaned on a wall and tried not to cry. I’ve just totally failed. I let myself slide lifelessly down the wall, and ended up in what was as close to the fetal position as you could get while still sitting upright and had a thorough cry.

  Blood-tinged tears, I discovered as I tried to wipe them away with my sleeve. Of course.

  My glorious cry-out eventually wound down. I mean, I was as scared and as confused and as lost as a person could hope to be, but I’d also been living my wildest fantasies and having glorious sex (and whatever the literally -and figuratively steamy session in the onsen was) at regular intervals. Even with all the reasonable frustration and distress, I could only keep my self-indulgence up for so long.

  My tears did show up on the knit gray top I was wearing. I had a real appreciation for why am’r might want to wear black all the time. I mean, with all the blood that got shed, wearing clothes on which bloodstains did not show was a fine plan when getting dressed in the morning. Or rather, evening.

  My equanimity had returned, but how was I going to find my way to either the great hall or back to Sandu’s suite?

  Now that I was thinking about it more clearly, I realized he probably could find me—once he realized I was lost—by sniffing me out like a bloodhound.

  I’d probably left a distinctive scent-trail, what with being am’r-nafsh-delicious and all, and he’d be hyper-attuned to it.

  Of course, the next immediate idea was a realization that if Sandu could sniff me out, probably all the am’r could follow me as well as if I were dropping breadcrumbs along behind me—and would that I had been, because then even I could follow my own path. The thought that any am’r who wanted to follow me could—and could probably also tell I was alone—was seriously worrying.

  When you were lost, the accepted wisdom was to stay put until someone came to find you, right?

  But I wasn’t sure I could handle the utter humiliation of Sandu having to scent-hound me because I was incapable of remembering how to get from Point A to Point
B. Also, there was the all too real threat of a less friendly am’r than Astryiah and Daciana coming across me in this random stretch of hallway.

  How far was I from the Rave Cave? I could be right next to it, or I could be on entirely the other side of the vampire warren by now.

  I was still engaged in internal debate—i.e., too terrified to make a damn decision—when I heard footsteps coming down the hall to the right. They were am’r-soft footsteps, which meant I more sensed someone was coming than heard them, but it gave me time to stand and look as nonchalant as possible, hopefully like I’d not been a crying mess of girl just a moment ago.

  It was Mehmet. Well, fuck. I composed myself. He didn’t need to compose himself, he just glided over. “Anushka, sevgili! How lucky to run across you here! I wished to speak to you, but despaired of a moment alone with you, as I know how busy my friend Vlad is keeping you with the tedious social duties of being his consort.”

  I nearly laughed because most recently, my “tedious social duties” had been limited to nearly having a lesbian threesome in a hot spring, which, despite being more than a little nerve-wracking, could not in any way be categorized as tedious. But I didn’t want to laugh around The Nose because he might take it as evidence of pleasure in his company, so I just inclined my head and said, “Well, I am in a hurry to rejoin Vlad.”

  “Ahhh.” He sighed. “My female frithaputhraish I do not send running about to do my errands, always in a busy hurry. I give them respect and honor them in luxury, with servants and other attendants to do their will. But perhaps as a modern American woman, you are unused to such attention and generosity in your partner?”

  I wouldn’t have known where to begin to respond, but he flowed on, obviously not in the slightest bit worried about my busy schedule or my clear desire to be elsewhere. “It saddens me to see such a special woman as you not appreciated and pampered as she ought to be. But my concern is much deeper. I fear my friend Vlad has perhaps not told you all the truth all the time? Did I not observe such a thing last night? You were quite dismayed when he announced you to us all, and rightly so!