“Shit, Dom. Did you drain him? Her? That explains the speedy recovery. And your fabulous smell.” She grabbed his arm and pressed her nose to the inside of his wrist. “Her, right?”
He pointedly ignored her question and withdrew his hand. “I need your help. Foss and I covered up the scent trail, but in order to wrap up the assignment, I wanted to see if you could detect any lingering traces. To make sure the Darkbloods can’t track the scent back.”
She played with her straw and scowled into her glass. When she met his gaze, his gut clenched. He really didn’t want to explain it to her when he didn’t understand it himself. Besides, the whole experience seemed too personal, too intimate to discuss. He wasn’t like Jackson, or Lily, for that matter, who loved recounting their exploits to anyone with a set of ears. Not his style. Or at least it wasn’t now.
“Seems like a bit of an overkill, don’t you think? I’m sure you and Jackson covered the trail well enough.” Her hawkish eyes appraised him. He wasn’t going to get anything past her.
“I just want to be sure.” Leaning back in his seat, he forced himself to tap his fingers to the music, pretending to be focused on the band. He could almost hear the cogs in Lily’s head turning. No goddamn questions. Just take the assignment.
“It’s a woman, eh?” She reached over and put her hand on his wrist. She was too perceptive. Or maybe he was just a poor actor. He attempted to keep his face expressionless, hard. “And you have feelings for her. I’m right, aren’t I?”
He didn’t know what he was feeling. “It’s a woman.” He tried to sound emotionless.
“What’s going on? Talk. I can tell something’s up. I know you too well.”
For chrissake. Running a hand through his hair, he took a deep breath and resigned himself to the inevitable Oprah-like scrutiny. Feelings and talking and shit.
“The strangest thing happened. I almost drained her so I had to do a blood transfer.” She sat up straight and her eyes widened. “Spare me the lecture, Lil. Santiago knows about it and is probably going to report it to the Council. The bigger problem is now she and I have this weird connection, some kind of strange bond, yet we’ve never talked. She’s never seen me, or at least she doesn’t remember seeing me. I wiped her memory.”
As he recounted the incident at Mackenzie’s house, Lily listened with her head bowed, nodding at times, and picked at her red-tipped nails. He braced himself for twenty questions, but she remained silent.
“Have you ever heard of such crap? I had some unusual sensations with just her blood in my system. But now that she’s had a little of mine, it’s even more heightened. I even heard her dreams when she slept. I thought the old stories were a bunch of superstitious nonsense.”
“Enlazado por la Sangre.” Lily dropped her voice so low he could barely hear even though the band was now playing a slow ballad.
Her subdued reaction surprised him. “What?”
“Bonded by blood. My grandparents shared a blood bond, have I never told you that?”
Dom shook his head. Never heard of it.
“Hardly anyone outside the family knew. In fact, not many inside the family did, either. I’m the only grandchild my grandmother told.”
“I don’t believe it. You? Keeping secrets?”
“Yeah, well, she ended up staking herself. So we don’t talk about it much.”
“God, Lil, I’m sorry.”
“No problem. You didn’t know.” Lily took another sip of beer from her straw. “She described the bond as a joining of body, soul and spirit. They knew each other’s thoughts. Could sense each other’s energy and emotions. Kind of like tuning into a private radio signal of someone’s life force. Prana, I think she called it. Not only did they share blood, but they also shared energies and could absorb it from each other just by touching. They thrived off it.”
“What’s so earth-shattering about energy transfers?” Dom nodded his head toward their waitress still leaning on the bar.
“Between two vampires? As much as I like your prana, Dom, what’s yours is yours and what’s mine is mine. I’d take a little bit of yours if I could, though.” She flashed him a playful smile. “But my grandparents—they could share it between the two of them with just a simple touch.”
He supposed he had inadvertently absorbed some of Mackenzie’s energy at some point, although he had been careful not to touch his palms