Chapter 73: The Savage Side

Theo woke to a black combat boot nudging his face. “You still alive, vampire?”

He groaned and lifted his head. It was dark—as dark as it could be in June in Alaska—and he could hear the sound of traffic nearby.

The Inquisitor stood over him, hands fisted tightly, face covered in sweat. She looked like shit, most of her face covered in bruises, both eyes swollen to slits.

So. Tired. His whole body hurt like it had been run over by a semi. Considering the events of the day before, it probably had. He closed his eyes to go back to sleep.

The boot nudged him again. “He’s looking for me,” she said. “I can feel it.”

This time, when Theo tilted his head to peer up at her, he saw the way she trembled, heard the anxious gasps, saw the brightened pressure of her blood-web.

Seeing that pulsing glow of vein-netting clenched the glands in his chest with a sudden surge of hunger, a need to feed. He closed his eyes again so as not to covet the Inquisitor’s essence.

“Please help me,” she bit out. Now that he was listening, he could hear her heart pounding. “Please.”

Because holding up his head was taking too much effort, Theo rolled onto his back to look up at her, instead. “I’m exhausted,” he managed, his voice dry and hoarse. “I can’t beat Buðlungr on a good day…and right now I can barely move.” Out on the road behind them, a big green sign overhung the highway, probably the one that had knocked him from the top of the tractor-trailer.

“You’ll move less once that beast recaptures us both,” she snapped. “I can feel him getting closer. Fast. In a helicopter or car.”

Well…shit. Theo propped himself up gingerly, fighting the immediate wave of dizziness that followed—as well as the sudden hunger. “Look,” he managed, “uh…?” He waited for her to supply her name.

The suspicious way she looked at him told Theo she knew what he wanted, but it wasn’t until several long moments had passed that she finally muttered, “Aimée.”

The grudging way she gave him her name after he’d saved her life irritated Theo. “You got a last name, Aimée?” He didn’t need her last name, but, at this point, it was the principle of the thing.

For a moment, she tensed and it looked like she wouldn’t respond. Then, like she’d rather piss on him than give him that tidbit, “Bisset.”

“That your fake Inquisition code name?” Theo snorted.

Her blood-web brightened considerably. “It’s my name, démon.”

Her anger actually sounded genuine. Theo glanced up at her, considering. “All right, Miss Bisset. He hunts us. What do you think I can do about it?” He laughed and gestured at his legs. “I was drained like a sink and I feel like I was run over.”

“You were. Several times. I managed to pull you out of traffic before the police arrived.”

Theo could imagine that struggle. He frowned up at her, having to re-evaluate his impressions of the woman. Reluctantly, he said, “What do you want me to do?” He knew that anything he could do to help them, she wouldn’t like it.

“Drink his poison out of me and remove the blood-curse.”

While it was incredibly tempting to drink of her, as tired as he was, Theo knew she wouldn’t like the consequences. “Erm.” He rubbed the back of his head, frowning when his fingers brought back bits of bone and hair. Flicking it aside, he looked up at her and said, “While that sounds good, there’s…uh…this thing that happens when a lord encounters another lord’s venom in a victim. It’s an instinct, really, and I haven’t had enough practice to get mine under control. Hell, I don’t know of any lord who has…”

The Inquisitor was stiff all over when she said, “You pull their poison out and replace it with your own. I know how it works. It’s in the histories. Do it.”

Theo squinted up at her, knowing she was desperate, but also having seen enough desperate women that he wasn’t about to take advantage of one. “I can probably remove the seiðr. Give me your hand.”

She yanked her hand away from him, anger pounding in her blood-web. “It’s the poison he’s hunting. I can feel it.”

Which…was true. Even now, Theo could feel Masaaki as a general pull somewhere to the west, in the mountains. Shit.

“Look,” Theo said tiredly, “I told you, I can’t take his poison out without replacing it with mine. It’s not a wishful-thinking sort of thing. It’s a reflex and there’s no getting around—”

She stuck her forearm in his face. “Stop making excuses démon and do it. I can see you want to. It’s written all over your pale, inhuman face. You crave me. Drink.”

And, despite her bravado, when Theo’s gaze followed her arm up to her face, there was definite fear in her eyes. Fear…and desperation.

Grimacing, Theo pushed her arm away. “I’m not gonna—”

He was unprepared for the combat boot that took him in the face. Like a shovel to the brainpan, he went down, hard. As Theo lay there, dazed, the Inquisitor sat on him and started massaging his wrist, extending his fangs…

Realizing what she intended, Theo regained some of his senses. “Hey…hey!” He pushed her off him and rolled away, yanking his fangs back into his wrist.

There were tears in her eyes. “Never again, not with that beast,” she said…begged? “Please.”

Seeing the desperation there, having felt it so recently himself, Theo felt an unhappy part of himself yield. “Fine,” he whispered. “But you won’t like it. It’s gonna hurt. A lot. Not like a normal feeding.”

“Can it be worse than this?” she demanded. Her whole body was shaking with—Theo knew from experience—the urge to give herself to something she hated.

And, regretfully, she was right. “Okay, hold on,” Theo said. “Gotta collect my thoughts a moment.”

“Just do it, you disgusting creature!” she screamed, shaking with the vehemence of it. “He comes!”

Theo narrowed his eyes. Reduced to a walking sack of antivenom, he thought, irritated. “Fine,” he said. He leaned back, considering. “But you’re gonna promise me one thing first.”

“What’s that, beast?” she snapped, a combination of a snarl and a sneer.

Theo raised a hand to point at her face. “You are going to start calling me by my name. Theo. Theodore if you want, but only guys like Buðlungr use it and I’d rather you just call me Theo.”

“You can force me to call you whatever you want, once you enthrall me.”

“No,” Theo chuckled. “That’s not how that works. That’s a queen’s venom, not a lord’s, and you know it.”

He saw her swallow hard, fighting some internal struggle as she sat there on the ground a few feet away from him, shuddering. He knew that she knew the differences in the venom, and he also understood that she was trying to deflect his request out of some ridiculous, misguided Christian drive to not succumb to the demands of—or cooperate with—a demon.

“Treat me like a human being and I’ll help you,” he offered gently.

“You are not a human being, démon,” she snarled.

“Semantics.” He refused to get irritated.

And, as he watched, the Inquisitor chewed on that thought, grinding it with her mind, churning it to powder as she scowled at him through bruised and puffy eyelids.

“Let me know when the Duke shows up,” Theo said, lying back down. “I’d like to flip the asswipe off before he binds me again. For good ol’ times.”

“Theo.” The single word came out sounding as if it were being crushed between two millstones. “Help me.”

He yawned. “Please.”

“Please help me.”

“Please help me Theo.”

“Tu es un connard de cruel et dégoûtant. Aidez moi!”

“Please help me Theo.”

There was a very long pause from the woman glaring at him from her ass in the shrubbery, but finally, she grated, “Please help me. Theo.”

Theo sat up and moved toward her, then, when she flinched away from him, paused and raised a brow.

“Do it,” she muttered, refusing to look at him.

Theo sighed. All business, now, he said, “Thigh or upper arm?”

“Arm,” she muttered. Nobody ever picked the thigh.

Well…some people did, but they were usually hoping to get Theo to abandon his scruples, throw safety to the wind, and make love to them. Thinking of Mandi, still stuck in that vampire hell-hole, he grimaced. “You sure?”

“Don’t question me and do it!” she shrieked, her blood-web once again brightening with her rage.

Theo, who had been reaching for her shoulder, pulled back and crossed his arms. He waited for her to realize he wasn’t going to caper to her whims like a good little dancing vampire bear.

When she did, she just started to shake. “How dare you,” she snarled, trembling all over as she condemned him with her eyes. “You’re enjoying this! I should’ve known—you’re just as cruel as—”

“Let me just stop you right there,” Theo said, holding up a hand. “What you’re asking me to do isn’t just like, I dunno, removing a splinter. It’s life-changing. And you’re not the only one affected. I’ll get a glimpse into you and I’ll feel you just like you feel the desire to feed me. Maybe I’m not sure I want to be connected to a bigoted, self-righteous murderer who’s convinced I’m some sort of monster—you ever think of that?”

She met his eyes and swallowed hard. She looked like she would speak, but then her hands fisted in the leaves and mosses of the forest floor and she swallowed it down. Eventually, she whispered, “Please, Theo. My soul withers at the thought he will find me again.”

And the truth in her eyes, the fear there… Theo’s resistance crumbled. “Fine. Arm.” He snapped his finger.

She slid closer, though it was not, he noticed, without trepidation.

Theo took her shoulder in his left hand to steady her, then pressed his right palm to her upper arm. He didn’t, however, extend his fangs. “You want me to make it fast or slow?” he demanded.

“Fast,” she gritted.

You got it, sister. And, with a prayer to Karma not to kick his ass later for taking advantage of a desperate Inquisitor who hated his guts, he jabbed her as hard and as fast as he could.

Instantly, the wash of power up his fangs was like a balm to his soul. Oh god it felt good…

Then he felt the bitter twang of the other lord’s poison slice through his fangs, and, just as it always had, his body reacted in violent reflex. He snarled and tightened around her, driving his fangs deeper as his magic began warring with the competing lord’s.

The woman hissed under him, going completely still in his grasp, but she didn’t fight him, which was a relief, because at this point, Theo was so weak he was pretty sure he didn’t have the strength to keep her in check, and if she managed to escape while poisoned by two lords, she’d lose what little mind she had.

Exhausted as he was, what normally would have been a simple extraction became a slow and agonizing process. Theo distantly heard his chest rattling in a snarl and felt his body wrapping around her completely as that carnal reflex took hold, tightening around her like an anaconda enveloping a rabbit. Completely out of control, now, he rammed his second set of fangs into her back. At this point, buoyed by the strength he was pulling from her, the woman would no sooner have been able to pry him free than work blood magic with holy water.

In his arms, the Inquisitor whimpered in terror, but there wasn’t a goddamn thing he could do about it. Theo’s lizard brain was thoroughly engaged in ripping out the other lord’s venom and consuming it, claiming this new prize as his own. He felt the wash of her panic as a heady ebb, and actually tightened his hold, enjoying the extra energy…

Damn it, Theo thought, desperately trying to fight the instinct. His limbs, however, wouldn’t release their hold, and he felt himself squeezing the life out of her as tore both the seiðr and the other lord’s venom from her veins, his body locked in place with the same stubborn intensity of a starving badger’s jaws.

Caught in that grip, she was gasping, probably trying to scream, but not getting enough air to do so. Lizard-Theo didn’t give a damn—it was too busy staking a claim on this wretched soul as if Life itself depended on it.

Almost done, Theo thought, mentally pleading with her to stay alive. His body had completely stopped listening to his commands, as it always did when the primitive, monstrous side of him—the side that was a remnant from the terrible creatures that had been used to first make vampires—was triggered by the taste of a rival lord.

Just when he thought he was going to kill her, the last of the other lord’s magic slipped free, digested and recycled by his fangs. Theo then felt his carnal side search her thoroughly, prying into her mind and soul from the contact in his wrists. Then, finding nothing, the tendons in his wrists tightened in reflex and he jammed her full of his own venom. It was carnal, instinctive, and there wasn’t a goddamn thing he could do about it.

He felt her gasp underneath him as his venom entered her body, a small and terrified sound that cut through the carnal fugue and returned Theo to his senses.

Still, soaking in her delicious, fear-heightened energy, feeling it coursing up his arms, rejuvenating him, it took everything Theo had to relax and pull away from her. He did, eventually, but it was like forcing the Titanic to shift in its mooring. By the time he finally pried his own arms loose and let the Inquisitor fall from his grip, he was panting from the effort combating the lingering remnants of that ancient, distasteful animal side.

Free, the Inquisitor collapsed to the ground and didn’t bother trying to roll away, her shoulders quaking as she sobbed pitifully to her god. This close, he could feel her mind, body, and spirit like an extension of himself. Theo quickly did his best to wall that connection between them off, not wanting to pry—

—or feel just how much this Christian despised him.

“There,” he muttered. “I took out the seiðr while I was at it. It…tasted…of him and I wasn’t in control.” Not that he thought she wanted to be blood-bound to the Duke of course, but more out of the shame he had basically just acted completely without restraint and almost killed her, the self-loathing that always followed when he lost control forcing him to say something. He hated losing control. It was everything he hated about the Third Realm. Every despicable, savage, wretched, fear-stained, disgusting goddamn thing. He cleared his throat and looked away, steeped in shame. “Sorry.”

Still shivering on the ground, the wounds in her back and arm even then healing with the aid of his venom, the Inquisitor reached up and wiped tears—or snot, one of them—from her face with a black gloved hand. “You warned me, démon,” she said, clearing her throat.

Theo, who had been scanning the road, trying to place where they were on the Seward Highway, snapped his attention back to her with a frown. “Theo.”

And, to his amazement, the Inquisitor lying there on her belly after he’d savaged her like a piece of meat looked up at him with something other than hate. She gave him a tentative smile. “Theo.”