She tried to smile. It came out all twisted and wrong. “I’m starting to feel my Vegas again.”
He took a deep breath and pulled her into his arms. “That’s okay,” he said. His voice was as rock-steady as his gaze had been earlier. His cheek came down on the top of her head. “We knew it was coming. We’ll go through it together and we’ll learn more.”
She forced the words out. “That’s what I’ve been telling myself.”
Damn him, he stroked her hair, and then there were more feelings, traitorous feelings accompanied by weakening thoughts.
What would it hurt if she relaxed her rigid spine just once, just for a little bit? She tried it and found herself leaning against him. He guided her head so that it rested in the hollow of his shoulder. Her head seemed to fit there so flawlessly, the realization felt like it bruised her. Strength coursed through his long massive body, an inexhaustible well of Power that surrounded her with warmth. He wrapped his arms around her and somehow her arms found their way around his waist, and then they held on to each other tight.
Her eyes prickled again. They filled with burning liquid and spilled over. It had been so long since she had cried it took her several moments to identify the wetness.
He had done this to her. He opened doors in her that never should have been opened again. He was a sirocco that blasted through the topography of her mind and soul until they shifted like desert sands, and he forced her to confront feelings she had thought she would never feel again, wonder and desire, hope and fear.
Then he taught her how to feel new things, things that were so fresh and fragile and crushable, she was afraid they might break her. Fight to live, he said to her, and it was such a hard thing to do, because she couldn’t rouse herself to care enough to fight without also feeling afraid. Before he came, she thought she would only lose her life. She had distanced herself so she could witness her own end with detachment. Now she felt like she might lose something else just as valuable: her understanding of who she was.
She whispered, “Sometimes I think I hate you.”
He rubbed his cheek in her hair. “Why is that, darling?”
Her lips parted. Hadn’t he called her that once, so very long ago . . . or at least what seemed to her so very long ago? Only she hadn’t known what the word meant or understood what he was saying. She had thought he was a strange and beautiful god, calling her by a sacred name . . .
Rune cradled her close as he felt his T-shirt grow wet. He could smell a trace of frankincense in her hair, along with the clean fresh scent of lavender. Underneath that was her lush womanly fragrance, and she was so utterly perfect that bewilderment and outrage roared through him again at the thought of her dying.
Wait. His breath hissed. There it was, the word on the tip of his tongue, only it wasn’t a word but a concept. A premise, not a conclusion.
He buried his face in the slender crook of her neck, crushing her to him. She stirred and murmured either a protest or a question. He muttered, “Hold on just a minute.”
He wrapped his Power around her and opened his Wyr senses wide, and inhaled Carling’s fragrance again.
Wyr, especially the older and more Powerful Wyr, could sense disease in a way that animals could. They could taste when food was tainted, which made them extremely difficult to poison. They could smell when injuries became infected, or when illness was exuded in a person’s sweat glands.
Carling’s research had taken the path of modern medicine. She had followed closely the research done by Louis Pasteur and Emile Roux. She had chronicled how she had corresponded with the two doctors in the 1880s, asking detailed questions about their development of a vaccine for rabies. In turn the two scientists had studied Vampyrism with fascination.
Vampyrism had all the characteristics of a blood-borne pathogen. It was found in blood and certain other bodily fluids and had a 98. 9 percent infection rate when a direct blood exchange had occurred. It could not be transmitted through air, and intact skin acted as an effective barrier. The conviction that Vampyrism was an infectious disease had become so well-entrenched in modern thought, it was no longer questioned. Now in the twenty-first century, virtually all medical and scientific research on Vampyrism was based on that premise.
But every instinct Rune had was telling him Carling’s energy was robust. She did not smell diseased. He thought of the woman he had passed just outside the Bureau of Nightkind Immigration. That woman’s sickness had been evident. The taint had lingered on her skin underneath the scent of lilacs.
Carling smelled sexy and feminine with the tantalizing sultriness of her own Power, and the faint metallic tinge that all Vampyres shared.
In fact, to Rune she smelled perfectly healthy.