Funny until his back slammed into a cold, rattling wall. A cheap aluminum storage shed. The buck rammed the shed with a deafening, metallic crunch, its antlers encircling Alex like a cage, the short points bruising flesh and bone.
An elk! Alex realized in a moment of perfectly clarity, memories of some long gone nature show returning to him in a final blessing. That's what it is! I'm being killed by a goddamn bull elk.
The elk pried its horns from the aluminum to come at him again. Just before he was impaled Alex wrested the log up and brought it down right between the elk's eyes.
It dropped like a sandbag.
He jumped on it, straddling the shoulders and leveraging the horns back to stretch out its throat. The carotid arteries and the jugular veins throbbed deep beneath the elk's thick, black ruff. The rest of its body was covered with lighter-colored, shorter hair, but to get what he wanted Alex had to rip his way through that coarse, musky mane, growling with frustration until he found flesh and pierced the carotid.
A fountain of blood struck Alex's cheek. He opened his mouth and drank as fast as he could. The elk struck out with its legs and tried to raise its head, but Alex shoved its head back down to the ground and kept drinking. The elk heaved a huge sigh of resignation, one that lifted Alex like a swelling wave, and then subsided.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
The heat of its dying body soaked into his chilled, needy bones. Its massive, pumping heart sent mouthful after mouthful of hot, gamey blood down his throat. As fast as he swallowed, he could not take it all in. It flowed out of his mouth and down his chest.
In the back of his mind he knew that someone might come out of the house to see what the noise was about, but he just didn't care. All that mattered was feeding.
Alex had never gorged on a single victim—not once in his whole life.
And he'd never killed to eat, either, except for the vermin the night before. Their squirmy little lives he'd gulped down as fast as he could, just trying to get it over with. But taking this noble creature, this adversary, into death swallow by swallow seemed both an honor and a sin.
When the blood slowed to a sluggish trickle, Alex began to weep. He knew he was blood drunk. That is, overfed, over stimulated and prone to melancholy as well as violence. He knew the symptoms, had seen it in the newly converted, but knowing didn't make him feel any better.
The elk gasped over and over, trying to draw oxygen into its collapsing system. Its drum-like heartbeat turned erratic. He clenched the elk's thick hair in his fists, lapping and sucking until he couldn't pull fresh blood up anymore. Then he just lay still, marking the last, fluttering protests of its mighty heart.
When it was over, he slid to the ground. Droplets of frozen blood studded the snow around him like rubies. Icy, pinpoint stars winked in the sky above him. He'd never been so sated in his entire life. It seemed possible he might never move again. But eventually the blood on his face began to itch. He rubbed some of it off with a handful of granular snow and found his way to his feet. Even dead, the elk was still regal. Alex bent down to touch it one last time, then walked away, dazed and lost. For a time he followed the twin tracks of the other elk, but then he veered another direction, his sense of Helena guiding him home. At first he walked slowly, then he began to jog as a surge of unexpected energy buoyed him up.
As a test, he decided to run flat out and see how far he could go. He thought he could run maybe fifty yards. Instead he ran all the way back to Helena's house, one thought beating over and over in his brain, I'm going to be okay.
Around what he guessed to be three in the morning, he slipped in the back door on the lower level, meaning to head straight down to the basement.
High on elk, he didn't bother to pinpoint Helena's exact location.
He figured she'd be asleep.
Not in her office, gaping at him in mute horror.
"Uh, hi," he said, giving her a little wave.
Chapter 7
Helena shrieked and threw herself at the office door. The cheap, hollow core door couldn't even make a convincing slamming noise, and it had no lock. Alex heard the hiss of her bathrobe on the wood as she braced herself against it. He heard her panicked breathing and her racing heart, too.
Shit. Alex glanced down. He looked like he'd been rolling around in an abattoir. Oh yeah, and he was naked. She was going to call the cops.
"Helena?" He tried to sound as casual as possible. As human as possible. "It's elk's blood. That's all. Long story. But I'm, uh, going downstairs now. So…goodnight."
He waited a couple of heartbeats, until he heard a long, shuddering exhale on the other side of the door. "N-night?" she said in a whispering squeak.
Stomping so she'd hear every step, he went down into the basement, and then stood at the base of the stairs, listening, tense as a pointer. If she called for help, he'd be facing more outdoor adventures. But he heard nothing until, after a long while, she tiptoed upstairs. He followed her up and leaned out the door, listening until he was sure she'd gone back to bed. Amazing she didn't have a complete freak-out. Helena was actually very brave. She just didn't know it yet.
And she kept her word. He liked that about her. Two nights in the basement, she'd said. Two nights he had. Even if he was scary as hell.
After a half hour or so Alex realized that there was no way he could go to bed early, not with his heart beating so fast. It wasn't a bad feeling at all—just an over-energized one. Like he could run all the way back to New York. Like he might never sleep again. And there was absolutely nothing to do in the basement.
Moving like a shadow—an antsy shadow—he slipped into Helena's domain and walked around the dark rooms, learning what he could from them. He found pictures of her parents and a case full of trophies topped with tiny silver and gold runners. Helena was a track star. He wondered if she still ran. Idly he imagined them running side by side in Central Park, cutting a jogger off and bringing him down in the bushes.
He shook his head, abandoning the image for what it was—complete fantasy. Unless he straightened things out between them, their future would last about fourteen more hours.
Mikhail said Alex's job was to make Helena love the monster. He also said that Alex and Gregor didn't believe they were monsters. Mikhail was a bastard, but he was right. If Alex wasn't proud to be a vampire, how could he ever ask Helena to convert?
The last few days had taught him what it really meant to be a vampire. The learning curve wasn't pretty, but he was better for it. He'd been caught out, his worst fear, and he'd survived. He'd been hungry and sick, left without family or donors and he'd fed himself. He'd killed an elk with firewood.
And best of all, he'd tasted his destined mate. This wasn't a disaster. He wasn't Roland. He was going to win Helena back. All he had to do was show her that while he was undeniably a blood-soaked monster, he was a complex and sensitive blood-soaked monster. One she wanted to marry.
Jesus Christ, I'm still drunk.
Laughing at himself, he wandered into the kitchen. It looked like a typical vamp kitchen—in other words, she didn't use it. His cabinets were better stocked, but then he was unusual in that he liked experimenting with human food. In light of recent events, he could now see that as another form of denial of his vampirism.
A traditionalist like Mikhail lived on blood, water, and good scotch. Gregor liked beer, and if he didn't have one cup of black coffee when he woke up you just didn't want to be around him. But that was as far as he went. Alex, freak that he was, fetishized beverages of all sorts. He knew how to make perfect espresso, green tea with powder and a whisk, Italian sodas, and ices scented with cardamom and orange flower water. He crafted clear broths rich with the distilled essences of herbs and vegetables and meats, trying to recreate what he smelled drifting out of the restaurants of the city.