the blackest vampire I had ever seen. Unlike most vamps, whose skin paled after long years without the sun, her flesh was blue-black, her lips even darker. Her sclera were brownish and her irises blacker than any I had ever seen, blacker than the People's, blacker than the darkest night. Her hair was knotted and twisted into dreadlocks and worked with hundreds of gold and stone beads; the locks were pulled to the nape of her neck, hiding her ears except for the lobes, which dangled a multitude of gold rings.
Power surrounded her like an aura, but softer in texture than the spiked, mailed fist of Leo's vamp clout. Bethany's energies were ephemeral, questing, and carried a scent similar to witch power, but more bitter. I didn't know what she had been before she was turned, but she was old, maybe the oldest vamp I had ever seen, and full of a strange power. I thought of Sabina Delgado y Aguilera, the old vamp at the chapel, who wore the white wimple of a nun. This power was like hers, slow and roiling, building and moving as an avalanche builds and moves, but with intent and purpose.
Bethany was staring at me, her gaze so dark it was like the sky on a moonless, clouded night in the Appalachians, so deep it was like staring into an ocean trench, empty and fathomless. A primal reaction sent gooseflesh over my skin. Beast did nothing, hunched deep in my mind, watching, worried, nearly - but not quite - fearful. Without taking her eyes from me, Bethany shifted the Porsche into gear and moved along the street. She looked away from me when she turned, guiding the car right, then left. Three blocks later, we were out of the Warehouse District. My shivers worsened. I was pretty sure I was going into shock. I needed toshift .
She pulled the car into a twenty-four-hour gas station with bars on the windows and blinding security lights and eased around back into a garbage-strewn alley. Deep in the shadows, she cut the motor. "You are injured," she said. "Do you choose to be healed?"
There was something odd about the phrase but I didn't have much choice. I wouldn't make it home and didn't have the energy to shift without the fetishes or boulders. I licked my dry lips and said, "Sure."
She lifted her hands from the steering wheel and reached out, taking the back of my head in one iron-hard palm; her other palm pressed against my forehead. Her hands were icy cold, as if she slept in a refrigerator. With implacable strength, she bent my head back. I forced down my reaction to her touch. I had agreed to this, whatever this was.
Beast, who had been oddly silent since Leo appeared, came alert and sank her claws into my mind.Dead meat fingers. Trap! Beast thought, drawing up power to fight or run.I am not prey , Beast said. I gripped the door and pulled back. It was too late.
Bethany's hands stopped me, hands cold and hard as black marble. My heart rate trebled. I sucked air to scream.
She licked my throat. As quickly as her cold tongue touched me, Bethany's fangs struck. I stiffened, stopped, one hand raised, held up in silent protest; Beast hissed. An electric cold suffused my chest, seeming to fill my lungs, my heart, and travel through my arteries like a freezing river, or like the finest rum, poured over dry ice, crackling and burning. My nerves and muscles spasmed.
I had known the damage to my body was there, but the pain had been blunted by shock.
Now it hit me with a slashing charge, as if every nerve at once was scraped raw by frozen steel. It lasted one brutal moment. The pain mutated into something chilled and euphoric, like iced vodka swimming with snowflakes. The sensation flushed through me and pooled in my middle like satisfied hungers, like the sensation of falling through frigid air at the top of the world, like nothing I had ever experienced.
I drew in a slow breath, my throat and ribs moving carefully. I was held in the bite of a predator, and moving too quickly could tear out the rest of my throat. Again.
Chapter 11
Biting things, too small to eat
Strength poured in, filling my veins and arteries, a stunning, exhilarating, arctic force, as potent as the night sky at the top of a frozen mountain. The weakness that had drained me was gone. Power shuddered