Blood and Kisses

chapter 18



Akos dusted off his clothing and stood. His timing had been just a bit off. Fortunately Gideon had always been easy to manipulate.

He cracked his neck with a jerk of his head and assumed the body of the undercover policeman whose life he’d almost Claimed. He headed back into the bar, walking right past the police loitering around the entrance. They gave him no notice as he strode by.

He went up to the bar to order a drink. His stomach might no longer digest food, but he still enjoyed a little wine. Gideon’s lapdog wasn’t behind the bar. A young woman with long curly brown hair was bartending. She’d served Thalia numerous times and had a casual chatting relationship with her. Her skin glowed with health, although she wore too much eye make-up for his taste.

She might do. It would take no time at all to encourage her that she wasn’t feeling well and to leave work early. What would be more natural than for him to confess he was a policeman and offer to walk her to her car?

He flashed her a smile. She smiled back, revealing straight white teeth. He was grateful for the good dental care of this century. Not that it mattered to him, but it was more pleasant when his dinner didn’t have a mouth full of rotten black teeth. Her lashes swept up and down in a look as old as man, clearly pleased by the open, handsome face of his disguise.

He sighed inwardly. None of his prey put up much of a fight. It was almost boring really.

The cute little waitress from last night had been eager to meet him outside. The young witch she’d brought with her as a precaution had been a surprise, but no match for him.

They didn’t make them like they used to. In the past, a witch would have at least made a show of it, but with all their modern rules and ethics, they no longer learned the old martial spells. It was no wonder they were barely able to protect themselves. That’s what the Champion was for.

He sipped his wine, savoring the bouquet. No match for blood of course, but it provided a bit of variety. He took his money out and when she reached out to take it, he grabbed her hand. She smiled again, flustered, and tried to pull it back, but he caught her gaze with his eyes and her expression went blank. The young were so malleable.



Exhausted, Gideon staggered as he materialized back in the narrow alley where they’d left Akos. The rogue was nowhere in sight.

Damn.

He would have teleported right into the Tomb’s back room, but he hadn’t wanted to lose his elusive quarry. Now, he no longer had the strength to teleport, and he’d still lost Akos.

Although mere minutes had passed since Gideon had teleported to the hospital, Akos could be anywhere. But his old enemy still needed to claim a life, and taking a victim from some other part of the city wouldn’t follow his pattern.

Akos wasn’t the only one who needed to feed. Teleporting drained him dangerously fast. He had enough energy left to conceal himself, and he quickly did so rendering himself invisible. He needed to get into the Tomb. Luckily his home wasn’t the only place he owned with an escape route.

He made his way to the pedestrian bridge at High Falls and jumped over the side into the gorge. His clothing flapped as the wind rushed by. He landed lightly on his feet at the bottom of the gorge, and found the secret entrance to the Tomb. A door cut into the bedrock at the base of the falls, masked by rocks and vegetation.

Once inside, he made his way up the worn stairs and through the narrow, dusty passage carved through solid rock that led to the office of the tavern. Tom was standing with his back to the passage door checking over an inventory list.

“Tom,” Gideon said as he came up behind his manager.

Tom jumped and spun around, one hand on his chest. “God, you startled me. What are you doing here, Gideon? The police are everywhere. They’ve already been through every inch of this place.”

“Did you follow standing instructions and destroy my emergency rations?”

“No,” Tom confessed warily. “I thought you might need them. They’re in the passage.”

“Good man.” Gideon drew back and allowed Tom to lead him back into the tight corridor.

Gideon pulled the door shut behind him. He could see perfectly in the pitch darkness, but Tom flicked on a small flashlight they kept near the entrance. “Besides, I couldn’t figure out what to do with it. I can’t just pour it down the sink. They’ve got that luminol stuff,” he said as they walked down the stairs.

“You’ve been watching CSI.”

“Naw—well, yeah, but I heard about luminol years ago, from that Discovery Channel show, the FBI Files. Here it is.” Tom was an aficionado of T.L.C. and the Discovery Channel. He’d confessed to Gideon once that he hardly moved from the couch during Shark week.

He shined his light at a rectangular, blue cooler Gideon had walked right by when he’d come in. Gideon was surprised he hadn’t smelled it. He must be more drained than he thought.

Tom flipped the cooler open with his foot, displaying plastic bags of blood on ice. “I better get back before they know I’m missing.” He slid past Gideon and headed back up the stairs.

Gideon gulped down as much of the stale, chilled blood as he could stand. He preferred his blood warm and fresh, but he’d take what he could get. He didn’t have time to hunt, nor did he want to risk feeding when the place was swarming with police.

A moment later, flush with blood, he prepared to resume the search.

The club closed at two-thirty a.m. That gave Akos less than eighty minutes to find a new victim from one of its patrons, and dawn was a mere three hours after that.

Akos. Gideon felt his eyes ignite as he imagined rending his enemy limb from limb. He gritted his teeth. Death was too good for Akos, but it would have to be enough.

He wondered how Thalia was making out at the hospital. The doctors had probably taken her friend into surgery. He was no doubt being transfused at that very moment.

Was Paul a suitor? The man who would one day be the father of her children? She’d said Paul’s name with such emotion. There was fondness there, maybe more. He disliked the imaginary man who would some day win her. He hated Paul.

The decision to leave her at the hospital had been forced on him, but it was for the best. He hadn’t had enough power in him to teleport them both one more time, and he hadn’t wanted to lose Akos.

She would be safer at the hospital, anyway. Akos couldn’t know where she was.

Gideon was struck by the nagging feeling he’d forgotten something. The sense of unease followed him as he cloaked himself in invisibility once more and flew up out of the gorge.

He hovered high above the Tomb.

Now he could see the police presence in full force. A man dressed in dark clothing, sat on the roof with a pair of binoculars and a high-powered rifle. There were other similarly dressed men on other rooftops nearby. Down on the street he saw several plainclothes officers sitting in their cars, and still more pretending to enjoy the evening air. The police were throwing everything they had at this case.

A man and a woman left the Tomb and Gideon tracked them. He probed the man first, before he realized Akos could have just as easily disguised himself as a woman. His last victim had been male. He examined their thoughts. They’d been dating for quite a while. The woman was expecting a proposal at any minute. The man had already bought the ring, but was waiting for the right time.

He should move on, but Gideon found himself caught up. So this was what it was like to be normal.

He wondered what it would be like, if he and Thalia were just an ordinary man and woman like this couple, able to have children, work together, play together, grow old together.

They got into their car and drove off. He shook his head, dismissing them from his thoughts. They were a dead end. He had more important worries.

Another couple left minutes later. Once more he delved into their minds. The woman was thinking she was crazy to go home with someone new when there was a murderer on the loose, but Liam was just so attractive, so polite. Everyone knew serial killers were social misfits who kept to themselves.

She’d obviously never heard of Ted Bundy.

Besides, she thought, according to the news, the police are looking for that bar owner, what was his name? Damien or something like that.

He scanned the man and ran right into a mental shield. He’d have to break the man to get through a shield that strong. Fortunately, he didn’t have to. The shield had “mage” written all over it. The meeting must be over, or he hadn’t bothered to attend.

He turned his attention back to the Tomb. Akos wouldn’t take on a mage unless he was at full-strength, and if he’d claimed a life while Gideon had been busy, he’d be long gone.

A half an hour passed. A lone man left the Tomb. A Kodak employee by the look of the badge he’d forgotten to remove.

Seconds later, a redheaded woman in a short red dress came out. She ran after the man, high heels clicking on the pavement. She put her slight hand on his arm and smiled. The man gallantly offered her his arm. Gideon searched the man’s mind. He had gone to the Tomb out of curiosity after seeing it on the news. Divorced, he was nearing retirement and had wanted some companionship. Gideon pulled back to focus on the woman, but before he could do so he detected that the man knew Thalia. He’d hired her to follow his former wife.

Suspicious, Gideon swiftly probed the woman and discovered another wall, but this wasn’t a witch.

A thrill of triumph raced through him.

He had found his quarry.

Akos led the man around the corner into the alley where he’d assaulted the young man earlier. A creature of habit? Or bait for a trap?

Gideon decided not to wait to find out. He dived out of the sky and hit Akos, knocking him off his feet before he could do more than sink his teeth into the older man’s neck and take a sip. Gideon landed and revealed himself. Akos snarled, shifted into his true form and leaped to his feet. The mortal gasped and backed up against the wall. “What the—”

“Stay there!” Akos commanded. Completely at the mercy of the powerful compulsion inherent in Akos’ voice, the man froze, unable to order his muscles to move. “As for you,” Akos continued, gesturing with both hands, “come and get me.”

“My pleasure.” Gideon swept an elaborate bow before his adversary, hoping to enrage him.

Akos growled, his face warped with rage and hate, and launched himself at Gideon. He sidestepped faster than human vision. Akos’ momentum took him to the opposite wall. He ran up the uneven surface and flipped over to attack again, but Gideon was ready. His fingers bit into Akos’ shoulders. The other ancient grasped Gideon around the neck in return and tried to choke him. With a yell, he broke Akos’ hold and lifted them both off the ground, taking a struggling Akos high into the dark sky and into the clouds, away from mortal eyes.

He leaned toward Akos and pierced his neck with his fangs, taking his ancient blood. He immediately spit it out. Gods. It was bitter. His mouth burned.

Poison.

The blood Akos had stolen from Thalia’s friend, untainted by the Claiming, would have tasted sweet. Akos had already taken a life.

The rogue began to laugh. The sound rang through the clouds, amplified by their moisture. Still laughing, he grew beneath Gideon’s hands, shape-shifting into the form of a huge black dragon with sweeping bat-like wings. Gideon lost his grip on his now immense opponent. Akos threw him backward, bowling him over.

As he rolled through the atmosphere, Gideon started to shift into a large dragon. Time to fight fire with fire.

But before he could finish morphing, Akos was there. He stabbed Gideon with his massive, razor-tipped claws, tearing a deep gash in his scaly chest.

He tumbled, disoriented for a moment in the wispy white cloud, unable to discern up or down. Bleeding, he regrouped and flew above the dense clouds, wings beating rapidly, their powerful up and down drafts molding the clouds into new fantastic forms. A blast of orange flame singed one pumping wing, the iridescent blue of a peacock feather in the bright moonlight. Akos emerged from the snowy cloudbank like a shark leaping from the waves. He made another pass.

Gideon twisted and rolled, eluding the blazing missiles. He summoned fire from deep within his belly and blew a stream at Akos.

Akos dodged, ducking and weaving among the clouds. The shot went streaking into the night sky like a meteor, hissing as it cut through a cloud, evaporating the water droplets in its path.

Gideon’s enormous wings cut through the thinning air as he flew higher to get above his enemy. Akos gave chase. They careened through the sky, darting over, under, and through the clouds, pulling a trail of vapor behind them. Two leviathans locked in mortal combat. Their flashes of fire lit the clouds like sheet lightning.

Tiring, Gideon’s heart thundered in his chest. His huge lungs gasped for oxygen. He couldn’t keep this up much longer. He was bleeding heavily, and the energy he’d received from his emergency rations was almost depleted. He had to take Akos down while he still had the strength to finish him. It meant risking being seen, but what choice did he have?

In a breakneck maneuver, Gideon wheeled around and wrapped his leathery wings around his enemy’s large body. They plummeted toward the earth, a two-ton stone.

With a sound like thunder, the pavement deformed as they hit the ground, and the adjacent buildings shook.

Shaking off the force of the impact, Gideon blew fire in Akos’ face. The rogue twisted his lizard-like head away on his long neck, and the fire blackened the wall of a nearby building. His head snaked forward and he buried his long teeth in Gideon’s flexible neck.

Gideon cried out with agony as Akos’ poisonous, dagger-like teeth, slipped beneath tough scales and punctured muscle and bone, slicing through his jugular. Incapable of maintaining his dragon form, Gideon staggered back, blood flowing from his neck and chest, poison invading his blood stream.

Akos shifted back to his human body, his face stretched in a smirk of triumph. “At last, I’ll be rid of you.” He looked around. “There’s only one thing missing.” Headlights flashed. An engine rumbled. He turned back to Gideon, crowing with satisfaction. “Ah, here she is now.”

A late model sedan screeched around the corner. Its headlights shone like a spotlight, throwing a grotesque silhouette of Akos on the wall of a nearby building. The shadow shrank as the car raced nearer.

Akos looked over his shoulder, his smirk dissolving as he realized it wasn’t going to stop. He screamed as the car plowed into his back, knocking him to the ground and crushing him under its wheels. The passenger door opened and Thalia leaned out, her face white in the reflected light. “Come on!”

Gideon hesitated. He wanted to end this now. But he was gravely wounded and Akos, fueled by the Claiming would not be easily killed. If Gideon stayed to finish him now, it might be the last thing he did. He slid into the car. “Let’s go.” As he put pressure on his wound, he realized the persistent feeling he’d forgotten something had disappeared.



Thalia checked the rearview mirror. Akos squirmed on the wet pavement, and she knew he was healing his broken body with every passing second, but she’d stopped him temporarily.

Seeing Akos standing over Gideon, she’d reacted without thinking. For a second, she relived the nauseating crunch as the metal bumper had hit solid flesh and bone, and the thud as the rogue’s body had been taken under the tires.

To be on the safe side, she watched Akos until he was no longer in view. Then she looked across the bench seat at Gideon. He was hurt bad. Much worse than the last time. The skin of his neck had been laid bare, revealing the muscles and ligaments beneath, but it was the blood gushing from his neck that told the true story. If she couldn’t get him blood, he had only minutes to live.

“Take me back to the alley where we found Akos,” he gasped.

She didn’t ask why and turned the car around like a professional moonshiner running from the revenuers. He put a hand on top of hers on the steering wheel. “Slow down. We can’t attract attention.”

She nodded grimly and brought their speed closer to the speed limit.

“How did you find us?” Gideon’s face was ashen, and he was beginning to wheeze. The car reeked of blood as more of the precious fluid darkened his clothes.

Thalia struggled to concentrate on driving while her heart felt like it might explode. “Locator spell.”

She pulled up to the curb and jumped out, leaving the engine running. “The police—” said Gideon, hoarsely.

“Will see nothing I don’t want them to see.”

She muttered the last word of a spell she’d worked in the car as she’d frantically raced to his side. She felt the magic flow from her, could see it color the air.

People nearby were about to experience missing time. She grimaced and hoped none of them thought they’d had an abduction experience.

She yanked the rusty passenger side door open. It groaned in objection. She clutched Gideon’s arm and half-dragged him out of the car. A sick pressure squeezed her heart, tears blurred her vision. Tottering under his weight, she managed to help him into the alley.

An older, gray-haired man stood there, frozen, a look of surprise on his homely face.

“Who is this?”

“Akos’ bait,” he whispered, pulling the man to him with one arm. He sank his fangs into the man’s thick neck and drank.



Gods, he hated having her see him this way. When he fed, the beast was never more than a hairsbreadth from the surface.

Gideon stepped out from Thalia’s supportive hold and turned his back on her so he couldn’t see her.

The rich, warm blood spurted into his mouth, urging him to drink deeply, to take his fill. The blood rushed to his head like the finest champagne. The pleasure of feeding dulled the pain of his injuries. His wounds began to heal. Still he drank. The man moaned, and Gideon came back to himself. He wrenched away, panting. He’d come very close to taking too much.

His eyes found Thalia’s sober face. Her eyes were huge with concern, her soft bottom lip pinched between her teeth, her breathing irregular.

“I’ve taken a bit much, but he should be okay. I’ll meet you at Mina’s. You’ll be safe there.” He didn’t want to leave her alone, but after what she’d done to Akos, his adversary would also have to feed before he went to ground at dawn.

“Your wounds?” Thalia protested.

“Almost healed. I need more blood, but I don’t have much time left before dawn.”

He could see the reluctance in Thalia’s expression, but she agreed, and he led her back to the car. “Where did this car come from?”

Thalia looked abashed. “I stole it. I took it from the emergency department parking lot and it’s only for the people who drive themselves.”

“Why didn’t you take one from the parking garage?”

“I don’t have any money.”

Despite his weakness, Gideon smiled.

He left the older man in the alley and followed Thalia back to Mina’s car, watching over her while she wiped her prints off the stolen vehicle. The sky was turning an ominous gray. Gideon left her and flew to one of the few places he could find prey in Rochester at this hour—the local Perkins.



Hours later, Gideon awoke in the dark room. He looked around, disoriented for a moment, and saw a glimmer of light shining around the edges of the curtains. Memory flooded back. He was in a spare bedroom at Mina’s.

His feeding the previous evening had gone smoothly, but he’d cut it close—the first rays of sun had begun to burn the back of his neck as Thalia had let him in. She’d led him to the nearest bedroom, and he’d gone straight to sleep.

A faint shaft of light from the hall pierced the darkness, and he knew why he’d awakened.

Thalia. He could tell by her scent, the rhythm of her breathing, even the beating of her heart. “Come in,” he said gently, as if to a wild creature.

She slid into the room and closed the door softly behind her. The latch fastened with a whisper and a click. “I can’t sleep.” She walked further into the room, her arms wrapped around her body as if she were cold. She wore a floor length wrapper of chenille, borrowed from Mina, no doubt. She was wound tight.

Nervous.

Reasonable when he considered she was about to face the most difficult challenge of her life, but he didn’t think that accounted for the wide dilation of her pupils and the skittering cadence of her heart. Her sweet, fresh scent held a hint of musk.

She hadn’t come to him to talk.

He should send her away. Nothing had changed. The reasons he’d broken it off earlier still remained and they were still good, solid reasons. But somehow he couldn’t seem to remember them.

Not with her standing here, her breath coming fast, the heady scent of her arousal in the air.

He held a hand out to her.



At that minute, nothing seemed more important to Thalia than having this time with Gideon. Not the challenge, not the community, not the rogue, nothing. She didn’t know where the courage had come from, but when she’d finally given up on sleep, she knew she had to be with Gideon. Their time together was running short. No man had ever called to her as he did. Maybe it was because he was a vampire. She didn’t care.

She’d almost lost him last night.

And maybe he didn’t want her, maybe he’d turn her away, but she needed to try. To be with him was worth the risk of rejection.

She could barely see him in the dark room. He was just a shadowy figure on the bed. She could see his eyes, though. They gleamed in the dim light seeping around the window shades.

She took his hand. He pulled her toward him and she went into his welcoming arms. He simply held her for a moment and though she savored the warmth of his embrace, she feared he intended no more than that. But then he cupped her cheek in his large hand. His thumb caressed her cheekbone, the slightly callused surface scraping her smooth skin and sending a flare of heat zinging though her. His eyes held hers for a long intoxicating second, and he lowered his lips to hers.

Her eyes closed as his mouth worked a dark magic as smooth as melted chocolate and just as sweet. The rough velvet of his tongue glided past her lips and delved into the inner recesses of her mouth. The touch of his tongue against hers ignited a spark that scorched her nerve endings, leaving them tortuously sensitive. She gasped for air, but her breathlessness had nothing to do with lack of oxygen and everything to do with the sorcery of his touch.

He ran his fingers through the silky skein of her hair. The brush of his digits against her scalp sent a shivery thrill down her spine. Her hand found the back of his head. His hair was soft. She stroked his nape. He groaned. The sound hummed within her chest. That she could elicit such a response from this man evoked an answering moan. His lips played over hers, the tiny, stinging nip of his teeth, hot alchemy. She discovered the sharp points of his fangs with her tongue and drew back. His eyes glowed red in the dark.