Her eyes went round. "Why?"
"He wants me to—" Alex sighed, searching for words. "He wants me to be accountable for my own mistakes. But I told you I was leaving, and I will. I just have to ask you if you would mind if I stayed down here for two or three more days. I'm not strong enough to go out in the world yet."
Her mouth tightened. Clearly she'd already fallen in love with the idea of him clearing out, and was trying to imagine how she'd live through this delay.
"But if that makes you uncomfortable, I'll—" What the fuck would he do? Make do. Somehow. Find the seediest hotel on earth with a blind manager. Ordinarily he could disguise his appearance, but in his weakened state it was too hard to create even a simple illusion. What he needed was to spend a few days eating as much as he could. It was the only way to get back on his feet.
Reading his thoughts, Helena said, "How are you going to eat without Mikhail?"
Alex hesitated.
Helena took a step backward.
"Not you!" Alex cried, as horrified as her. Scully circled her feet protectively. Scully was pretty hefty for a little dog, he realized.
"Why are you looking at my dog like that?"
Alex swallowed. "I'm not going to eat you or your dog. Okay?" But maybe someone else's dog.
"What else are you going to eat if you can't leave the house?"
"I didn't say I wouldn't leave the house. I just can't show myself to the world, you know? Airports. Rental car agencies. I can't do that for a few days."
Her voice thick with revulsion, Helena repeated, "What are you going to eat, Alex?"
"Anything I can." He spat out the words. There it was, the truth, like Mikhail wanted. He was a monster. Monsters couldn't call for take-out when they didn't feel well. He was going to stagger out into the night, naked because he couldn't drag clothes over his tattered flesh, and he was going to search this godforsaken affluent woodsy fucking neighborhood for anything with a heartbeat. Dogs, cats, raccoons, rats, mice, birds, whatever he could find. Humans too, if possible, but it would have to be by some odd chance encounter, because he was too weak to enthrall them or take them down by force.
"You're going to eat my neighbors." Her teeth chattered as she spoke.
"Ah, Christ." Too tired to stand any longer, Alex slid down the wall to sit on the top stair, just inside the shadows. "We don't kill when we feed. Do you know that?"
The smaller creatures he'd kill, but she didn't have to know about that. He didn't even want to think about it. His jaw clenched with distaste as he imagined sucking on a rat.
She shook her head. "How should I know anything at all about this stuff?"
"So you thought Mikhail was on a killing streak? Was the local news reporting dead bodies all over the CU campus?"
Again she shook her head, but her chin lifted. "Your brother wouldn't leave tracks. He's not the type."
Alex caught the emphasis. "Unlike me."
With unexpected venom she said, "You leave tracks everywhere."
It stung, but he didn't know what to say. Instead he went back to his original point. "Me, my family, all decent vampires, feed in one of two ways. They either hunt, which means we draw a pint or two from an unsuspecting victim and let them go, or we turn to willing donors."
"Willing? For pay?"
"For pleasure."
Helena slid down the wall as he had, coming to rest across the hall from him. The light from her office bathed her face in white light. The hall walls were white, and the carpet too. Her sweats were white. She lived in an unstained world.
She leaned forward, her cheeks pale, her blue eyes as cold as Mikhail's. "Did you suck my blood the first time we had sex?"
"Yes."
"I knew it." Her lips curled in disgust. "When I was coming, right?"
He nodded.
"In my most vulnerable, trusting moment you attacked me."
"Feeding isn't an attack. It's sharing."
"Seems like a funny one-sided kind of sharing to me."
"At the time you didn't mind it at all. I'd go so far as to guess that at the time, you were having the biggest orgasm of your life."
"That's not the point. The point is I didn't give you permission to do any such thing."
"Did I ask your permission to kiss you, to eat you out, to fuck you?"
"Beg your pardon, but I think drinking my life blood is a little different."
"Well I don't!" Alex felt like shit. Inside and out. He was born a blood drinker. He'd never tried to defend the practice. Never had to. But here in front of Helena, with her acting like goddamn martyred Joan of Arc, it seemed indefensible.
"I wanted you. All of you. I can't take you by halves. And you wanted it, too. You were begging."
"Oh, it's my fault. I was asking for it."
"I'm a predator. I respond to signals."
"It must be convenient to be a predator among all of us stupid sheep. You can do whatever you want, take whatever you want."
"It is what I am." It was harder for him to say it than for her to hear it. Each word was a nail in his coffin.
"What you are is dangerous!" Helena jumped to her feet, looking like she was ready to come over and do a little more damage to his face.
"Helena MacAllister, I swear by all that I hold sacred that I would never hurt you by sharing your blood. I would never drain you dry, I would never pass you a disease, I would not make you a vampire, a slave, a mommy, whatever it is you're thinking about."
Trembling, her fists clenched, she restrained herself from hitting him—out of disgust more than mercy, he was sure. She addressed her next words to the carpet between them. "Oh, you swear? And tell me, just what does a vampire hold sacred?"
"Fuck you, Helena."
The silence that followed was the silence that followed a bomb blast, the long pause before the sirens began to wail. It hadn't been a casual fuck you. He hadn't meant to make it a curse, but his fear and frustration wrapped the words with power. If it sounded like a curse to him, it sounded worse to her.
Could I possibly make myself any more repulsive?
He had to leave before he hurt her again. But before he could open his mouth she said, "Don't you dare speak to me like that."
"I'm sorry." It was inadequate, but he was sorry. For everything.
Her eyes glittered fiercely. "I shouldn't have said you held nothing sacred. I don't know that. I don't know you at all." She swiped away her tears. "You can stay down here tonight and tomorrow night. That's it. I don't want to see you. I don't want to talk to you."
Alex tried to say, "No, I'm leaving now." It would have been dignified. But the hurt, damaged part of him was so relieved to have somewhere safe to sleep that he couldn't object. He said, "Thank you," but his voice was too low and she ran away too fast.
Helena retreated to the kitchen, sat down at the bar, and began to laugh. It was either that or cry. She'd been bickering with a vampire. Weren't you supposed to go after them with stakes? Instead she accused him of violating her boundaries.
That's when she realized she wasn't frightened anymore.
From the moment she'd found him collapsed in her backyard to her first talk with him this evening, she'd been in a state of continual, existential terror. But when they quarreled, Alex, huddled in the shadows of the staircase, sounded just like a man. Not a blood-sucking denizen of the night, but a pissed off, defensive guy. One who was maybe scared too. He'd been a jerk, but so had she in some ways.
Just when she thought she'd run the gamut of bad relationships, she'd hooked up with a vampire. One who was less than honest, to put in nicely. One who expected not only that she'd marry him, but that she'd become a vampire as well. He wanted to feed off her. Talk about control issues. Talk about co-dependency. She'd had enough of that of with Jeff.