Seconds ticked on. The others stared, holding their breath.
“Submit, and I will tell you,” he said finally. I expected him to leer, but he didn’t. He was making a deal, and he was serious.
The tension in the place was at a constant pitch, so I didn’t notice it anymore. Like the smell of rock, the itch of silver. But I felt a spike, all of them watching, wondering which way I’d leap. My eyes burned, my gaze intent, haunted.
I’d already gone all-in, hadn’t I, when I turned around and came back underground?
Kumarbis nodded, and Enkidu and Sakhmet stepped away. Then, I stretched my arm to him. My left arm. When I’d done this before, she asked for my off hand, out of politeness. The memory of Alette sparked an image, a scent—I could almost smell her, clean and chilled, in the startlingly domestic setting of her Washington, D.C., townhome. The sensations were so visceral I almost choked. Maybe she’d come and rescue me from this.
&n
bsp; I clamped down on everything, every memory, every emotion, every reaction, so that I could hold my arm steady. Not so much as a tremor shook me. I set my jaw and stared, determined.
Kumarbis stepped forward and took my hand. His touch was gentle, more gentle than I expected. As if he realized how close I was to losing it, to freaking out and giving Wolf permission to get us out of this. His skin was rough, calloused. I wondered—was the rough skin preserved from his former life? Or maybe this was part of him simply not caring about appearances. He wasn’t an aristocrat. He didn’t need to be an aristocrat.
He moved so he was standing next to me, but at an angle to better cradle my arm, which he handled like it was a piece of glass, fragile and precious. Petting the skin, stroking his thumb along the inside of my forearm to warm it, to bring the blood to the surface. He knew what he was doing, to calm his … donor. Not victim. In other circumstances, his movements might even have been seductive. Some vampires I’d spoken to told me that a willing, aroused victim tasted better than one who struggled. That was why they did what they did, acted the way they did. Attracting, luring, rather than hunting. Most vampires I’d met were very good at it. I thought again of Alette, and wished I hadn’t. I didn’t want to remember her when I remembered him, and this.
My stomach churned. I’d either eaten too much, or not enough. I looked away, squeezed my eyes shut. I hadn’t meant to, but it was either that or panic.
When his lips, as rough as his hands, brushed the inside of my wrist, I almost decided that feeling him was worse than seeing him. His movements were amplified in my imagination. The lips stroked along the tendon, to the base of my palm, and back. He tightened his grip on my arm, tucking it under his own to stabilize it. His tongue darted, tasting my skin. I clenched my fist, tried hard not to yank away. His story had better be worth it.
When he finally bit, I hardly felt it. I’d been so tense, waiting, so overwhelmed with anticipation, that the pain of his fangs in my skin lasted only a second. His lips closed over the wound, and he drank. I kept my eyes shut, my head craned away from him, and waited.
He shouldn’t have needed much. Vampires didn’t need to kill their prey. They only needed a few sips to survive—more, to be strong. But I was a werewolf, and he could take a lot more from me than he could a normal person without hurting me. I was pretty sure he’d take advantage of that. I should have eaten more, so I’d get through this easier. Asked for another bottle of water. I should have done a lot of things.
My sense of time was shot to hell. I didn’t know how long he drank from me. It seemed like far too long, but then any amount of time would have felt too long.
His mouth lifted, and cool air chilled the wet spot on my wrist where his lips had been. I sighed, relaxing in spite of myself. Over, it was over. He licked the wound twice to speed the healing, then let go of me and moved away, until he was standing just out of my reach.
My arm fell, dangling at my side. I sat slowly, because I was afraid I’d fall over. Cross-legged, I left my arms resting on my legs and sighed. Let the dizziness pass. I felt like a little kid getting a shot. I stretched, rubbing my arm to put some life back into it. It tingled. Blood loss—he’d taken a lot. But the wounds—two little circles, hardly bigger than bug bites—were already scabbed over, turning pink. Another reason vampires liked feeding from werewolves—rapid healing. Fast food. Ugh.
Sakhmet crouched and put her hand on my shoulder. I didn’t even flinch away. I was too exhausted to feel anything. She offered me a bottle of water, which I desperately needed after this. As she’d well known. Den mother. I smiled at my own joke.
“Are you all right?” she whispered.
“I’m feeling a little drained,” I said. That choking sound was Enkidu, standing behind her, sputtering. He either thought it was funny or horribly disrespectful. Or both, that was okay, too. She only smiled, rubbed my shoulder, then left me alone. I drank, downing almost the whole bottle of water.
“Your blood is now combined with all of ours, in me,” Kumarbis announced. Like I should be proud. “Now, our circle is truly complete, and we may perform our rituals.”
This wasn’t over yet. Of course it wasn’t. Zora was lurking at the edges of the antechamber, scowling. Impatient, probably. I was holding up her party. Whatever.
“I want my story,” I said. “If I really am part of the circle—I want to know what you know. You want me to trust you, give me the story you promised.”
He closed his eyes, bowed his head, nodded. Then, he spoke.
Chapter 16
“I AM VERY old. I’m not sure how old. I have spent stretches of time when I was not as … aware as I should have been. Always, I managed to survive. But … I was not old, once.” Kumarbis spoke with something like wonder in his voice, as if he could not believe that he had ever been young. Though when he said “not old,” why did I think he meant a century or two? A span of time that would have been forever to the rest of us. “I don’t remember what it was to be mortal. My life then, who I was then, has not been important for a very long time. I feel myself a creature who came to being out of nothing.
“I was made what I am now in the mountains of Anatolia. I was made, but not claimed. Attacked and abandoned. I could have been destroyed as a demon. Perhaps I should have been, times being what they were. But Fate took me in hand. I had a destiny. I must have had a destiny.”
The others, even Zora, settled on the stone floor, gathering around the vampire in a semicircle, watching him with intense focus. Something about the warm light of the candles, the ancient scent of the granite, made me feel as if we had traveled back in time to those ancient mountains. Kumarbis’s voice itself had altered the flow of time, and we were in the ancient world.
“When the Roman Empire rose and spread, it seemed new to me. I traveled, studying it. The Romans—they had very good roads. I traveled, looking for … purpose. I had so much power—I could have set myself up as a god in some small village. Others of our kind did so. But that seemed too obvious, too easy. If one of our kind was a god alone, how powerful would two of us be? Or all of us? A pantheon of the supreme undead. That is how we were meant to be. An empire of our own, like others that had come before, but this one would last, ours would be eternal, as we were. What Rome dreamed of but could not achieve. I traveled, spoke to others, tried to show them my vision. But I could not sway them. They were satisfied with their tiny, inconsequential kingdoms. I—I was not meant to be an emperor. But there was another.
“Something … something guided me to Palestine and the Roman occupation there. Like a voice in the wilderness. That’s how the story goes, I think. A voice in the wilderness calling me. There were so many in those days putting themselves forward as prophets, as preachers, promising a better world to their followers. I thought one of them might be my worthy partner. But no, one by one they failed, they fell. Then I found this man, this centurion. He was one of hundreds, thousands of soldiers I had seen. I shouldn’t have been able to pick him out of a crowd. But I did. I saw him and knew he could be powerful. That feeling I had, that voice, had steered me true.”
He smiled, triumphant at the memory. He had entranced himself into returning to that distant past. To distant glory.