“You wanted her to find me and kill me, so I would kill her for you?” Eliana clarified. She felt like she was going to be sick. She’d been used. She had killed for him, been killed for him.
“I was tired of Nicole, but it was more than that.” He wrapped his arms around her waist and held tight as she tried to pull away. “We still need the same nutrients that we needed as humans, but our bodies can no longer extract them from solid food. So we take the blood from those who can extract the nutrients.”
“Humans.”
He nodded once. “We don’t need that much, and the shock and pain makes most people forget us. It hurts, you know, ripping holes in people’s skin.”
She dropped a hand to her leg in suddenly remembered pain. It did hurt. Her entire thigh had been bruised afterward. And her chest. At the time, she couldn’t remember what the bruises were from. And the bend of her arm.
He kissed her throat, softly, the way she’d fantasized about afterward when she’d believed it was just a dream, when headaches kept her from remembering more.
“Why?” she asked again. “You needed a meal and a murderer. That didn’t mean you needed to screw me.”
“Oh, but I did. I needed you.” His breath wasn’t warm on her throat; it was a damp breeze that shouldn’t be appealing. “The living are so warm. and you were perfect. There were others, but I didn’t keep them. I was careful with you.”
She remembered him looking at her and asking permission.
“Sometimes I can’t help but want to be inside humans, but I won’t keep them. We’re together now.” He kissed her throat, not at her pulse, but where her neck met her shoulder. “I chose you.”
Eliana didn’t move away.
“Nikki found out, though.” He sighed the words.
“So she killed me.” Eliana stepped backward, out of his embrace.
Sebastian had an unreadable expression as he caught and held her gaze. “Of course. Would you do any differently?”
“I. ”
“If I left you tonight and sank into some girl — or guy — would you forgive me?” He reached out and entwined his fingers with hers. “Would you mind if I kissed someone else the way I kiss you? If I knelt at their feet and asked permission to — ”
“Yes.” She squeezed his hand until she saw him wince. “Yes.”
He nodded. “As I said, territorial.”
Eliana shook her head. “So that’s it? We kill, but not under full or new moon. We drink blood, but really not so much. If we do kill, it’s some sort of territorial bullshit.”
“An area can support only so many predators. I have you, and you have me.”
“So I killed Nicole, and now you’re my mate?” She wasn’t sure whether she was excited or disgusted.
Or both.
Sebastian whispered, “Until one of us makes someone alert enough and strong enough to kill the other, yes.”
She pulled her hand out of his. “Yeah? So how do I do that?”
Sebastian had her pinned against the crypt wall before she could blink.
“I’m not telling you that, Eliana. That’s part of the game.” He rested his forehead against hers in a mockery of tenderness.
She looked at the floor of the crypt where Nicole’s heart had fallen. The bloodied shirt lay in the thin layer of soil that covered the cracked cement floor. Moss decorated the sides where the dampness had seeped into the small building.
Transition. Eliana felt an echo of herself crying out, but the person she’d been was dead.
She looked at Sebastian and smiled. A game? She might not be able to kill him yet, but she’d figure it out. She’d find someone to help her — and unlike Sebastian, she wouldn’t be arrogant enough to leave the vampire she made alive to plot her death.
Until then.
With a warm smile, she wrapped her arms around him. “I’m hungry again. Take me out to dinner? Or” — she tilted her head to look up at him — “let’s find somewhere less depressing to live? Or both?”
“With pleasure.” He looked at her with the same desperation Eliana had seen in Nikki’s gaze when she watched Sebastian.
Which is useful.
Eliana pulled him down for a kiss — and almost wished she didn’t need to kill him.
Almost.
History
by ELLEN KUSHNER
“You just totally ran that red light,” she says, not without admiration.
“I know.” As always, he sounds smug. He downshifts and passes a van that has been in front of them for blocks. “I love driving.”
He is much too old for her, but that doesn’t bother her. She has never been fussy about age. She is a historian — almost. Just a couple more papers, and she’ll get honors this year from their country’s oldest university. What bothers her is that he won’t tell her about history. “I forget,” he says when pressed. “It was all a long time ago.”
He knows. She knows he knows. He just won’t say.
“Why do you still drive shift?” she asks crabbily.
“Everyone should drive shift. Can’t you drive shift?”
“Of course I can. I just wouldn’t in city traffic, if I didn’t have to.”
He is now weaving his way through a densely populated open square ringed by ancient buildings, where the traffic vies for road space with students late for class — brilliant adolescents who believe all cars will stop for them — and with beggars and tourists and absentminded faculty. When he first knew it, the square, it was full of students in black robes and muddy shoes, never looking straight ahead of them but always up for tavern signs, or down to avoid horse manure and rotting cabbage and the occasional peasant. These students don’t look down, and they don’t look up much, either.
“Out of my way, asshole!” he growls at a blond waif with a backpack who has just stepped off the curb to wait for the light.
He loves to drive, and he loves to swear. In his youth he did neither. But that was a long time ago.
He also loves rock and roll. And the blues. “American blues,” he says. “There’s nothing like them. Muddy Waters taught Eric Clapton all he knows.”
“Have you ever been to America?” she asks.
“Once.” He scowls. “I hated it.”
She has learned not to make jokes about his needing his Native Soil. He really hates that. She’ll do it to get a rise out of him, but that’s all.
She tries to catch him when he’s half awake. “Tell me about the Great War,” she’ll say, but he turns over, muttering, “Which one?” or “They were all great.”
“Which was your favorite, then?”
“The one with the little short guy on the horse. There he was, looking out over the plain at the smoldering campfires below at what remained of his army. They were a ragtag lot. The sun was low. He turned to the adjutant next to him and said softly, ‘My friend — ’”
She whacks him on the head with her bookmark. “I saw that movie, too.”
They take a walk down by the river that runs through the heart of the city. People are lined up on the sidewalk along the bridge trying to sell them things: bead earrings, knockoff purses, used comics, watercolors of the cathedral. There’s a caricaturist drawing portraits. Her lover does reflect in mirrors, but she has the sudden thought that he would not show up in caricature. What would a cartoon sketch of him look like? The things that make him most himself are not visible to the eye. She sneaks a peek off to the side, where he stands looking at the cathedral. Long, bony nose, high brow, hair swept back. Another thought strikes her.