“All right. I hope he trips and falls on the pointy end of all those stakes he"s carrying. Gets a nasty, oozing infection that smells bad so you won"t want him within twenty feet of you.
How"s that?”
“Better.” When his fingers found hers, she tightened her grip in response. Inhaling the scent of Daegan"s shirt, she felt the fabric against her skin and imagined it was his skin. This wasn"t the first time Daegan had taken a trip away from her. As the Council"s private assassin, he traveled quite a bit. She"d been fine with that, because her own life kept her pretty busy.
Sometimes, though, she"d sleep in his bed the first day or two, absorbing his scent to tide her over while he was gone. Before, she"d never have revealed that kind of weakness for another, but of course the information was there for Gideon. He"d probably suggest they sleep in Daegan"s bed tonight, because he picked up a lot of things in her mind, even though they"d made a privacy pact of sorts.
She and Gideon had a tacit agreement, that she would limit her forays into his mind, trying to keep it high level when she couldn"t stay out completely, using the ability for conversation and trying not to probe his thoughts uninvited. It took practice and skill, somewhat like not using her vision when her eyes were open, but she was getting better at it. She couldn"t do it during their more passionate encounters, but he"d seemed fine with that.
In turn, he"d agreed that when he was in her mind to monitor the indicators of her violent transition seizures, he"d practice mental “peripheral vision” to ignore other thoughts that might float by. Most vampires had the ability to restrict their servants" access to their minds, but most
vampires didn"t take full servants as fledglings, or deal with the unusual transition issues she had. She had to trust Gideon more than she"d ever trusted anyone.
Without probing his mind, she knew enough about Gideon to know he was out of sorts about Daegan"s absence as well. He"d rationalize it, tell himself it was because Daegan was useful to help with Anwyn"s transition. She didn"t argue with him over it. With so many things uncertain right now, there was no sense goading Gideon, making him face possibilities that had only started to develop between the three of them before Daegan had left.
For the next week, Brian hooked her up to all sorts of monitoring equipment, but in the end she admitted she was glad she"d mostly held on to her patience. She"d had seven seizures during the first three days. Like those little balls sent up in the tornadoes to collect data, the monitors had given Brian a tremendous amount of data about predicting the episodes. He"d created the first cocktail and begun to inject it in her daily. Already it seemed to lessen the severity and frequency of the seizures, though he noted it likely wouldn"t stand up against extreme stress factors.
He also couldn"t predict if the injection was something she would need forever, or if, in time, the seizures would go away on their own. The shadow creatures in her head were something that the injections didn"t change. Like the schizophrenia that had infected Barnabus"s mind and spawned their presence in hers, only human drugs could address that, and her vampire blood would neutralize them. So that one she had to handle, but she could, with Gideon.
When he was in her mind, the shadow creatures tended to cower back into the shadows, not whisper so insidiously, as if they liked her best when she felt all alone. She"d lived most of her life adamantly independent, and probably the worst part of her transition was dealing with her dependence on others, her unpredictable loss of control. It was Gideon who had quickly recognized it could destroy what was left of her mind if some remedy wasn"t found, and it was Daegan who had figured out the remedy. A third-marked servant, one who could balance and steady her, help her sort between what was real and those voices, while in theory she had command over him, a sense of control that dangerously wasn"t a complete illusion.
A fledgling never took a third-marked servant, because they didn"t have the control to keep the proper shields in between their two minds. Not only was it an etiquette issue, because no vampire was supposed to be that vulnerable and open to her human servant, but it also was hard for a servant to function if there were two running sets of thoughts going through his head at once. On a more serious note, if a vampire let her bloodlust run away with her, she might pe too deeply into the servant"s soul, damage him psychologically.
Any one of those reasons would have kept her from marking Gideon, but mortally wounding him during one of her attacks took the decision away. Daegan made it for her, forced her to mark the vampire hunter. Gideon had made his peace with Daegan doing that. As for her, she didn"t know if she was angry at the act, or if her anger was a cumulative net. She"d been blaming him for all of it, but was that just because she needed someone to blame?
Not only was she a vampire; she was starting out with three major handicaps in her scary new world. Number one: unstable, uncertain if the completion of her transition in another couple of months would bring the improvement it normally would, allowing her to take steps back into the nighttime world. Number two: a fledgling vampire with a full servant. Number three: a vampire who, more often than not, allowed her servant full access to her mind to monitor those seizures, and lend her mental and physical stability.
She did practice that curtain Daegan had taught her, to help screen her thoughts from Gideon so he didn"t always have that running ticker tape of her subliminal thoughts in his mind. She also practiced increasing the thickness of the wall, because she knew there was no sense in not honing every skill she might need.