"Don't make me choose."
"But it is a choice, Anita. It is a choice."
I shook my head.
"Do you want me to save him?" Damian asked.
I met his gaze, and didn't know what to say.
"His pulse is very weak," Cherry said. "If you're going to do something, you better do it soon."
"Do you want me to save him?" Damian asked again.
Nathaniel's fast, gasping breath was the only sound in the sudden silence. They all looked at me. Waited for me to decide. And I couldn't decide. I felt my head nod, almost as if I wasn't doing it. I nodded.
The vampires began to feed.
13
A feeding takes longer in real life than it does in the movies. Either it's too quick or they do a fade like a 1950s sex scene. We all stood around the room and watched. The room was quiet enough that you could hear the vampires making small, wet noises as they fed.
Cherry knelt by the head of the bed. She checked Nathaniel's wrist pulse periodically. The rest of us had moved farther away. I ended up on the far side of the room, leaning my butt on the desk. I was working very hard at not looking at the bed. Everyone moved around the room, restless, embarrassed, I thought.
Jason came to stand beside me, leaning on the desk. "If I didn't know his life was at stake, I'd be jealous."
I looked at him, trying to tell if he was teasing. There was a look in his eyes, a heat, that said he was not. It made me look over at what was happening.
Damian had drawn Nathaniel's body into his arms, his lap, so that he cradled the smaller man almost the full length of his body. Parts of Damian's body were lost to sight behind Nathaniel's naked body. His arm cradled the smaller man's chest against the green silk shirt. The pus had soaked into the cloth in blackening streaks. Nathaniel's face was pressed by one pale hand into the vampire's shoulder. Damian had come from behind for the neck strike. You could see the top of his bloodred hair, his mouth locked over the wound. Even from where I stood, I could see Damian's jaws swallowing.
Asher was still kneeling on the floor, one of Nathaniel's pale legs flung outward so his foot hung in empty air. Asher's face was buried in the man's inner thigh, so close to the groin that Nathaniel's slack genitalia touched the side of his face. Asher moved his head slightly and a spill of golden hair flung over Nathaniel's groin. It didn't hide it so much as have him peeking out through it.
A blush flowed over my face so hard and fast I was almost dizzy. In turning away, I caught a glimpse of myself in the room's only mirror. My face was burning. My eyes looked wide and surprised. It was junior high all over again, stumbling on couples under the bleachers, hearing their laughter chase me into the night.
I stared at myself in the mirror and got a grip. I was not fourteen anymore. I was not a child. I was not a virgin. I could do this with a modicum of grace. Couldn't I?
Jamil had moved to the farthest corner of the room. He was sitting there, arms tucked around his knees, face set in harsh lines, angry. He wasn't enjoying the show, either.
Zane had moved back to lean against the wall, arms crossed. He was looking at the floor as if there was something very interesting on it.
Jason was still sitting against the desk, watching the show. I looked at him without turning around. "You do realize that you're the only one who seems to be enjoying the view."
He shrugged, grinning. "It's a nice view."
I raised my eyebrows. "Don't tell me you're gay."
"Don't tell me you care," he replied.
My eyebrows went up a little farther. "My heart is breaking. I'll have to burn all my lingerie." I kept watching his face. He was smiling but not like it was a joke.
"Are you saying all that teasing is just an act?" I asked.
"Oh, no, I like women. But, Anita, almost none of the vampires in Jean-Claude's inner circle are women. I've been acting as a pomme de sang for two years. That's a lot of fangs sinking into your body."
"Is it really that close to sex?" I asked.
The humor left his face and he just looked at me. "You've really never been rolled completely by a vamp, have you? I mean I knew you had partial immunity even before the marks, but I thought someone somewhere would have gotten to you."
"Nope," I said.
"Sometimes I'm not sure, but it may be better than sex, and almost everyone who's been doing me has been a guy."
"So you're bisexual?"
"If what they're doing now counts as sex, yeah. If it doesn't then ... " he laughed, and the sound was so abrupt in the silence that I saw Zane and Jamil jump. "If this doesn't count as sex, let's just say that 'where no man has gone before' no longer applies."
Damned if I didn't want to ask who it had been. Maybe I would have asked, but Cherry spoke and the moment was gone. "His pulse is stronger. Losing this much blood, he should be getting weaker, but he's not."
Asher drew back from the wound. "We are not so much drinking blood as drawing out the corruption." He stood one hand under Nathaniel's thigh. He moved the leg back onto the bed, straightening his limbs as if he were a sleeping child. A moment before, it had been utterly sexual; now there was something in the way Asher acted that was tender, careful.
Damian pulled away from the wound. There was a spot on his lip, not red, but black. I wondered if it had tasted bad. He wiped the spot away with the back of his hand. If it had been pure blood he'd have licked it off. So it hadn't been pleasant.
He crawled out from under Nathaniel, laying him carefully on his back. He drew covers over Nathaniel as he moved off the bed.
Cherry had her first aid kit open. She recleaned the chest wounds with antibacterial antiseptic. The first few sterile cloths came away smeared with pus. We'd all moved next to the bed without realizing it. The smell was stronger here, unpleasant, but fading. When the skin and wounds were completely cleaned, the flesh was whole, and bright red blood welled into the slashes.
Cherry flashed the room a smile so warm and bright that you had to smile back. "He's going to be all right." She sounded surprised, and I wondered how close it had been.
Someone drew a hissing breath. I turned to the sound. Damian was backing up. He was staring at his hands. That pale, milky skin was turning dark, a blackness flowing under the skin. The flesh of his hands began to peel back while we watched.
14
"Shit," I said.
Damian held his hands out to me like a child that had burned its hand. I didn't know which was worse, the terror in his face or the almost resigned look in his eyes.
I shook my head. "No," I said, but my voice was soft. "No," I said it again, louder, stronger.
"You cannot stop it," Asher said.
Damian stared at the darkening flesh of his hands, soft horror on his face. "Help me," he said, and he looked to me.
I stared down at him and didn't have the faintest idea how to save him. "What can we do?" I said.
"I know you are accustomed to riding in on your white steed and saving the day, Anita, but some battles cannot be won," Asher said.
Damian had gone to his knees staring at his hands. He ripped his shirt off in pieces, leaving remnants of the sleeves on his arms. The rotting flesh was halfway to his elbows. A fingernail split and fell to the floor with a burst of something dark and noisome. The smell was back, sweet and sickly.
"I healed Damian once of a facial cut," I said.
Damian made a sound between a laugh and something more bitter. "I didn't nick myself shaving, Anita." He shifted his gaze from the peeling flesh of his hands to me. "Even you can't heal this."