“Pretty,” he said.
“And me?” she said, sounding just a bit put out. Her lower lip was protruding in a pout.
“Pretty,” he said. And his voice croaked with thirst on the word. “Ohhhh. You’re thirsty.” He heard a little snick. The sound of fangs clicking down into place. “So am I.” Her voice dropped lower, suggestive, a sensual caress. Isleen was close enough now that he could see her eyes in the lantern light. Pupils blown, black as the devil’s heart, resting in the bloody sclera of her eyes. And something in the way she tilted her head, her blond hair falling in a long slow wave, looked . . . not quite right. The little vampire wasn’t just thirsty—she was hungry.
But instead of biting him, she brought the glass of water over and—sinking onto the dusty stone at his side—brought the red straw to his lips. He drank, a desperate sucking sound that she seemed to like. Her face softened into desire and she licked her lips, a flick of tongue between inch-and-a-half-long fangs. The straw had a bend, and she set it on the stone so that he could reach it by lifting his head and craning to the side. Curling his lips around the top, he again sucked deeply, and finished the water with a loud sputter of air through the straw, leaving only a dribble in the bottom.
He focused on Isleen. She was bent over his left wrist, her mouth open, breathing in the scent of his blood with a soft scree of sound, one with a muted moan of desire in it. Her tongue darted out and licked across the seeping wound, along the sides of his wrist and down the center of his palm. Almost instantly, the pain abated in his wrist. Pleasure trailed up his arm. His heart boomed hard, a bass drum in his chest, in his ears. He dropped his head back to the stone, breathing out a faint gasp of desire. And Isleen filled his field of vision, imprisoning him with her eyes, one hand splayed on his chest. “I like the way you tassste,” she hissed. “And you are mine now. Miiiine.” Isleen placed a slow kiss to the soft part of his belly where his rib cage ended and his belly began. He could feel his pulse pound there, in the huge artery just beneath her lips. Rick was quite certain that she was mad.
He fought his rising fear, knowing that she could smell it and could hear his heart pound, knowing his reactions would incite her predatory instincts. She laughed, the low, sensual sound vibrating deep through her lips into his belly.
Looking over her shoulder, Rick saw the barn door open. Only a crack, but the silence let him hope—for long, hopeless moments—that he might yet be saved. And then a small voice said, “I am here, mistress.”
Isleen rose and whirled so quickly it was dizzying, as if time stuttered and stumbled and he missed some vital second where she moved. She crouched and hissed. Stopped for a second and slowly stood upright. “You are late.”
“Yes, mistress. There was traffic.” When Isleen didn’t respond, the newcomer said, “I have my equipment.”
“You may begin. But first I will eat. To your knees, girl.”
Rick heard a soft thud as knees hit the earth of the old barn. The voice whispered even more softly, “I am yours, mistress. But I thought you wanted him bound to you by the end of the new moon.”
Isleen paused again, that otherworldly stillness that was another aspect of the Mithrans, the vampire race. It was a stillness that mimicked death, as inhuman as the speed with which they could move and as strange as the need for human blood. “And my drinking from you will impede this?”
“Even if you allowed me to drink from you, I am weak. You have fed deeply, and my body has not yet recovered. I would not be able to finish in time.”
Rick understood. Isleen had taken too much for too many days. The girl—Isleen’s blood-servant—was dangerously anemic.
“I shall hunt, then. I will return before dawn.” Isleen looked back at him over her shoulder, her head cocking, birdlike, the angle not possible for a human, her hair falling like silk. “And I will have my vengeance on Regina Katarina Fonteneau for taking what was mine.”
Regina Katarina Fonteneau . . . had to be Katie of Katie’s Ladies. But how would killing him hurt Katie?