Danior seemed to sense her weariness and bade her return to her room to sleep until she felt better. She did so gladly.
In her sleep though, she was tortured by images of dead things. They were all around her, demanding her life in return for theirs, claiming she was their murderer. Maggie screamed and ran away from them, but always she was hungry, looking for a new victim, looking for blood. She had to go through them to ease the unquenchable thirst. They clawed at her legs, nails painful, poisonous. Her legs were deteriorating beneath her, leaving her prey to them, unable to run away.
Maggie cried out in her sleep, struggling to wake herself. She knew she dreamed, but she couldn't fight the hold of her slumber, could only repeat the horrors again and again.
Cool hands touched her forehead before grasping her bare shoulders. They shook her, gently, and she came awake at last with a gasp. Danior stood above her, his face inscrutable in the dark.
Seeing him brought her a sense of relief so profound, it brought tears to her eyes. She wanted to ask him to hold her, but she wasn't brave enough to risk rejection—wasn't sure enough of how he would respond.
"You were having a nightmare,” he said softly, brushing the tears from her cheeks with a thumb.
Maggie shivered. It had been years since she'd suffered night terrors. Stress and uncertainty caused them, and she had this unwelcome feeling that they would only continue and grow worse. “I know, but it didn't feel that way to me. It felt real. Horrible."
"It happens to many of us,” he said. Without asking, but as if he knew she sought his embrace, he climbed into the bed, facing her beneath the covers. He pulled her against his bare chest, wrapping an arm around her back for support.
He was all muscle, hard and unyielding, but his gentleness with her made her feel indescribably tender, achy and needy for him.
The rhythm of his heart lulled her fears. She almost felt like she could trust him to keep the nightmares at bay, that she'd found a knight in shining armor instead of a creature of the dark ... a living nightmare.
It couldn't fight the hopelessness welling inside her, the despair—rational or irrational—that she would become a monster surrounded by other monsters more terrifying than anything she could imagine. She was a realist. This was an abandoned house, not a place where he lived. In the back of her mind, she knew they were hiding, that something bad hovered on the horizon, waiting to attack. She couldn't bring herself to ask him and confirm her suspicions, and she suspected he would lie about it anyway to spare her. Something bad was going to happen. Something worse than anything she'd experienced thus far. She felt it in her bones. “You should have let me die,” she whispered, turning her face into his chest as sleep overcame her.
Danior flinched at her words, tightening his arm at the small of her back. How often had he wished much the same thing? Eternity paled when there was no hope for a better existence, no hope for the common dreams of man. Immortality seemed to suck the life out even as it granted forever.
He felt her thoughts, felt the horror and despair, her uncertainty. She sensed a malevolence approaching just as he did. Her gift of clairvoyance was fledgling but promising.
He could tell her the truth, but he was reluctant to. She was strong, her will great, but she'd been hit by too much, and she hadn't yet fully recovered from the first stages of her disease. She would not come into her powers until the virus had time to spread through her body like a cancer, mutating cells instead of devouring them.
The council had likely discovered by now that Zane had left a changing human at Danior's mercy. In the week since, he had not returned to dispel surfacing rumors. They would know what he'd done, and they would kill him for it. He wondered idly who they would send to do the deed.
The only way for the council to maintain control was to issue death to any who broke their rules. Among the long lived, death was the only thing they feared. Ostracism had never worked, for most were loners by nature. The new world orders had forgone the torture of the old world in favor of dealing swift, lethal justice. There were too many vampires to hide. If their numbers increased, they would be discovered. As advanced as this age was, they would still be destroyed for their way of life, for feeding from the living—or taken for secret experiments.
Danior had understood the rule, had agreed with it for as long as he'd lived here, since the signing of the Louisiana Purchase.
It would have been better to let her die. She wanted it, but he simply couldn't bring himself to destroy her, no matter how hard the devils of reason spurred him to.
It was too late now to make a difference one way or another.
This place of massacre would not shelter them long. Only reluctance and fear of the past had kept them away for this long. Time was not on his side. He had to get her out of the states, to the old world and their old traditions.
That meant negotiating passage to the old world, so that they were not killed on sight. He had his cell phone in his back pants pocket. He could make the arrangements tomorrow. There was bound to be a ship they could take from port.
It meant leaving all she knew behind, but he'd read enough of her thoughts to know that no family held her here. Fortunate enough, since she would have had to sever all life ties anyway.
Danior stroked her hair, enjoying the silk of it between his fingers. Though he couldn't see its color in the dark, he knew it was a burnt amber, threaded with gold. It would turn dark as she spent her years in the night, as it did for most of their kind. The fair-haired were rare.
He nuzzled her temple, breathing in the unique scent that was all her own. She was helpless, in need of his protection. For the first time in his life, he felt needed, whether she wished it or not. He'd selfishly indulged his whim, but he wouldn't change his decision. His rule of the city as vampire lord had been meaningless. He was not needed for control—because the council were the keepers of the law. The vampires in the region were aged, fully capable of defending themselves, and fully willing to start wars with rival factions and their natural enemies, the Lycans.
Danior felt more like a politician shuffling for favor rather than able to bring about change and prosperity for his kind.
They did not need him. Life would go on as it always had.
But for Maggie....
How long had it been since he'd comforted a woman, comforted anyone for that matter? He'd only ever thought of his needs before. Women were to be used only for carnal pleasures. Hadn't he been taught that lesson over and over again? Love was a weakness, a dangerous emotion—one that would get him killed.
He felt strangely calm holding her, soothed by the motions of soothing her as she slept to keep her terrors at bay.
He hadn't slept during the night in centuries, not since his turning, but he found that just this once, he wanted to engage in it, if only to imagine he was human for just a little while.
Chapter Six
The dream changed. There had been something in the darkness around her that terrified her. Like most nightmares, she wasn't certain of what it was, only that it was dark and evil and it would hurt her if she didn't escape. When she'd tried to run, though, she'd found she couldn't. She struggled as hard as she could, but it was all she could do to move at all. Her heart was pounding, suffocating her. She fought to drag a decent breath of air into her lungs even as she labored uselessly to run.
She had reached a point of despair, knowing that whatever it was that pursued her, it was going to catch her and something horrible would happen. And then, she wasn't alone anymore. She felt safety in the presence beside her.