Author: Kalayna Price

“Okay, but I’m not mortal. I just passed out.”

“Your heart stopped.” Biana smiled a mouthful of needle pointed teeth. “We were forced to remove all the blood from your body.”

“You what?” I felt the blood drain from my face, and black dots filled the edges of my vision. I blinked them away. “My arm?”

“Held the highest concentration of poison, but it had spread through your body.”

“So you sliced open my arm?”

She shrugged again. “You’ll heal.”

She’d butchered my arm, but, hey, I’d heal. Okay, my first impression of Biana wasn’t too shiny.

My feet drew paths through the blood coating the tub as I tried to get my legs under me. The effort made me dizzy, and I collapsed back into the tub with a sticky crash. Nathanial poured another bag of blood into the thermos.

I shook my head when he held the metal container out to me. “I’ve had enough of that stuff.”

“Drink it. You need your strength.”

“Didn’t you tell me once that I only needed a pint of blood a night to survive?”

Nathanial sighed, but he didn’t put down the thermos.

“First of all, we are replenishing your base blood supply. Secondly, this is processed plasma. It offers you only a fraction of what you need. Now drink.”

I took the thermos. The chemical taste clung to the back of my tongue, and my stomach quivered as the tepid liquid hit, but slowly warmth crawled to my skin. I balanced the still half-full thermos on the edge of the tub.

“So what happened after I passed out? Was Akane ordered to attack me? Was poisoning me some part of the Collector’s plan? Maybe she has an antidote?”

“There is no antidote for a hebi no josei’s poison,” Biana said. “The poison is typically fatal within minutes, but the effect of the poison on a vampire has never been studied.”

She sighed. “I suppose this means I’ll need to write another boring paper the university students will have to read.”

“I’ll write it,” Gil said cheerfully, her scroll in hand and quill poised to take notes.

Biana looked thoughtful for a moment, then nodded. “That will fulfill your debt for my help, but my name better be on it, not yours. I can use the paper to apply for a new grant.”

Disappointment played across Gil’s face, but she didn’t argue. I drained the remainder of the thermos and stared at my working hand. My claws were still out. I flexed the fingers, trying to retract the claws. A wave of dizziness crashed over me from the effort.

My claws. This was the second time the claws had extended since I became a vampire. Will I shapeshift again?

Is this proof I will? There was no one to answer. No one knew. While being the only shifter-turned-vampire had the fringe benefit of protecting me from the judge, the fact I couldn’t turn to anyone sucked. Everything was trial and error. So all I could do was try to retract my claws again, but it was no more effective than all the nights I’d tried to extend them. Both times my claws had appeared I’d been in danger.

Screw meditation, apparently my cat only surfaces during near-death experiences. If nearly dying was what it took to make just my claws appear, would I survive the kind of danger that provoked me to shift into cat-form again?

I pushed the thought aside. I needed to wash off the blood drying on my skin. If I didn’t want to be sitting in the gore, the shower was the way to go. Now just to get everyone to leave and to make it across the room. I shoved against the side of the tub, but I couldn’t get my feet under me.

Nathanial put a hand on my shoulder, stilling me.

I frowned at him. “No matter how weak the bagged blood is, haven’t I drunk enough that I should be able to stand?”

“Remember what Tatius said about vampire blood?”

Nathanial whispered. He held his wrist under my nose.

I grimaced. Right, I need master vamp blood. I didn’t like the idea, but as weak as I felt despite the quantity of bagged blood, I knew he was right. And I’d take his blood this time. I would. Just… not with an audience. I shot a meaningful glance toward the two mages. Nathanial’s gaze followed mine, and he turned to Biana and Gil.

“Thank you for your help,” he said tilting his head. “May I have a few minutes alone with Kita?”

Gil looked offended by the dismissal, but Biana stepped closer to the tub and shot us another smile. Did she alter her appearance? She certainly couldn’t pass for human, like Gil.

Biana’s pointed teeth and greasy, clumped hair reminded me of human stories of wild children raised by wolves. Of course I’d met plenty of people raised by wolves, hell, I’d been raised mostly by shapeshifting mountain lions, and I didn’t look like a wild child.

No, right now I just look like a field-dressed rabbit.

“A moment to discuss payment for my assistance.” Biana stroked the seal cloak again and stared at me with pupil-less eyes.

Great, I had to pay her for butchering my arm.

“Let me guess, you require an ‘unnamed favor to be called upon on a future date,’” I said, and her smile grew.

“I see you are accustomed to working with Sabinites.”

“I’m learning that favors are the acceptable currency for most supernaturals.”

She nodded. “Well, my payment is nothing so vague. If you encounter the hebi no josei again and can determine where she hides her skin, steal it. I want that skin.”

“Why? Can you use the skin to shapeshift?”

“Each skin is unique to the skinwalker born with it, but with the right magic, it can be used.” She stood and fingered her sealskin cape again.

“Does a selkie turn into a seal?”

She flashed another smile. “Tell Gil if you acquire that snake skin. She knows how to find me.”

Magic coursed through the room, and Biana disappeared. I glanced at Gil.

She shrugged. “I’ll be in the other room,” she said, letting herself out.

And then I was alone with Nathanial.

He raised a hand to cup the side of my face, but hesitated before he reached my skin. When his fingers finally landed, the touch was tentative, as if a butterfly had landed on my cheek. “Tatius doesn’t know where we are.”

That was all he said. But it was all the things he didn’t say that flashed in my mind. If Tatius didn’t know where we were, Nathanial must have taken me and left. Just left.

I’d heard Tatius command Nathanial to take me… somewhere. I assumed Tatius’s chambers. But if Tatius didn’t know where Nathanial had taken me… I shivered, remembering the press of Tatius’s knife in my throat. He’ll kill us. When he found us. And he would find us. I knew he would.

Tatius had known I’d left the sanctuary before. He’d told me he’d ‘felt’ me. I was missing that weird vampire sense but Nathanial always found me. So what would stop Tatius?

“He’ll follow the bond,” I whispered, knowing my eyes were wide, knowing they showed fear I wished they wouldn’t.

Nathanial shook his head. “No. We replaced your blood base, Kitten. All of it. His blood is no longer in you. He has no bond to you.”

“Oh.” That changed everything, didn’t it? No, because if we were in the city, Tatius would find us, eventually. He had enforcers, agents, spies. And he could pierce Nathanial’s illusions—he’d proven that. We couldn’t hide. “Now what? Do we run?”

“I do not know.” Nathanial sank to the floor behind me.

He leaned against the edge of the tub, and with him sitting outside the tub and me in it, we were the same height. The sides of our heads touched. I leaned against him, felt him do the same. We sat like that, in silence. Companions in uncertainty.

That thought made me stiffen. If Tatius’s influence had been drained from my body with my blood… “So my bond to you is broken, too?”

I heard Nathanial sigh, which was an unusually human gesture for him. “No,” he said after a moment. “My blood remade you when you became a vampire. It is a part of what you are. To fully bind you, Tatius would have to have given you enough blood to remake you again. He did not have that opportunity.”

So, Tatius’s influence had been drained away, and now I was Nathanial’s companion again. Just Nathanial’s. A fluttering sensation attacked my stomach, made my heart beat too fast.

“Besides,” he said. “You would not be cognizant if you completely lacked master blood. I gave you some while you were still… unaware. But you need more to regain your strength.”

Right. This conversation was getting a little too surreal. I needed out of the tub. I needed a shower. Clean clothes.

Something akin to normal. I struggled to stand, and suddenly Nathanial’s hands were on me.

He lifted me by the underarms. I balanced on my feet for a breath. Then my knees buckled and only Nathanial’s hands kept me upright. This is ridiculous. I had plenty of blood in my system; my stomach felt tight with all the plasma Nathanial had forced on me. I was cold, but nothing unmanageable. I can at least stand on my own. Clean off the blood.

Concentrating, I managed a step forward before sagging in Nathanial’s arms again. He pulled me out of the tub then held me in a tight embrace, which wasn’t necessary to help me stand, but it was obvious I wasn’t walking anywhere on my own. Not any time soon, at least.

“Can you drop me off in the shower?” I asked, knowing that would mean he’d have to come get me again later.

I reached up, intending to wrap my uninjured arm around his neck, but as my palm slid over his shoulder, liquid warmth seeped against my skin. I froze. Blood? I pulled back, and careful of my claws, pushed the shredded material of Nathanial’s dress shirt aside. Four deep lacerations—that looked suspiciously like claw marks—decorated his skin.

“How did this happen?”

He shrugged my hand away and bent to lift my legs. I frowned at him. Oh no. I wasn’t dissuaded that easily. “Gil said I went psychotic. Did I… attack you?”