Blood Sworn 1: Salva Me Page 11

  Jeremy crossed the room with a speed that defied any thought of weakness. “What did you say?” The hunger-light blazed red in his eyes, brighter than Morgan had ever seen.

  He held his ground. Having extended the opportunity, he would not now renege like a coward who couldn’t pay his debts of honor. “You are leaving Makoto behind to guard Laura. Therefore, you need to have all of your strength with you on this hunt. I have neither his skills nor the reflexes of any nosfera, let alone the power to protect you as he could. But I can give you the means to strengthen your own powers.”

  His last words found him crushed against the wall, pressed there by the full strength of the Baron of Colbourne, whose unleashed fangs stopped just short of penetration. Morgan’s whole body began to burn for their sting, even knowing the pain that accompanied an unprepared bite. Yet though he waited, half in fear, half in longing, those razor-sharp teeth never made contact. Instead, he became aware of Jeremy’s hot breath as it laved the side of his neck in hard pants, and the pain of a trembling grip on his shoulder.

  “Don’t.”

  The rawness of that plea sent a shock of lust through Morgan. He struggled to make sense of the bewildering situation. After a moment, the tremors eased, and the painful grasp on his shoulder loosened to a light clasp.

  “Watashi o yūwaku shinaide,” Jeremy whispered, lapsing into Japanese. “Watashi wa anata no yobidashi ni taeru koto ga dekinai.”

  “My lord?” Morgan’s concern grew. Jeremy Colbourne rarely, if ever, used his mother tongue, even when conversing with Makoto.

  Jeremy raised his head, the strangely bright glow of his eyes replaced by their normal earthen brown. “Forgive me, Morgan. I had not meant to alarm you. Your words triggered…something strange…”

  Jeremy faltered to a stop. Stunned, Morgan could only stare at the sight of a discomfited Baron of Colbourne, a thing surely no one had ever before seen.

  “I only meant to offer—” His words were cut short by his master’s raised hand.

  “Don’t say anything more, please. I would hazard this reaction is some…some instinct driven by what happened during the turning.”

  Morgan tried to speak again, only to be silenced once more.

  “Give me leave to consider this, please,” Jeremy said with grim determination. “Then, perhaps, I will allow you to repeat your offer to me.”

  Hearing the desperation beneath the words, Morgan nodded. The heat that had begun to build in him cooled, leaving an uneasy void where the fire lurked below the surface. They both needed clearer heads, so he forced his mind into long-accustomed channels, hoping to recover a bit of the calm he’d held before their lives had turned upside down.

  Jeremy stepped away from him, calm once more, though his self-control did not quite erase the faint frown creasing his forehead. “We will discuss this later, Morgan. For now, see to it you eat properly. I need to prepare for the hunt.”

  Morgan watched Jeremy walk out the door, mistrusting that calm facade. The tiniest shake had underscored the dismissive words. Moreover, for Colbourne to have spoken anything other than English or Latin suggested how unsettled the incident had left him.

  “You’re not the only one troubled, Master,” Morgan mumbled, sinking onto the bed with legs that refused to support him. “I wanted you to bite me, ready or not. And I wanted more despite myself.”

  Morgan leaned forward against his knees, trying to consider things with an even perspective. He hadn’t had any stability since they’d found that first poor girl lying in the reddened muck of the road. The angry edge haunting him started to creep in, and he pushed it back with ruthless determination. He couldn’t think if he allowed the ever-present irritation to muddy his mind. Worse, such a hair-trigger temper was unlike him. The turning would not alter him to such an extent. He refused to allow it. The constant longing to be touched, to be in physical contact with Colbourne, was bad enough.

  And it was bad. Morgan ached, from his balls to his neck, and everywhere between and beyond. His very skin yearned for his master’s touch. It bordered on animal instinct, another thing he refused to allow. He had made this decision rationally, with full awareness of the consequences, if not complete understanding. Lord Colbourne had attempted to warn him, but Morgan’s duty to Laura overrode any possibility of refusing the turning.

  In consequence, he must now yield what he had previously protected. Did that make him less of a man? Did it change who and what he was? Morgan had no answer yet to the first, although his vacillating emotions undermined his masculinity more than surrendering his body to another man’s invasion. As to the second—the mirror showed no trace of his raging internal storm in the face reflected there. Yet the storm whirled on inside, as his senses were led a merry dance every time he got so much as a hint of Jeremy’s exotic scent.

  Ah, that exotic, erotic temptation. It had called to him the very first day, within moments of their meeting, even with Colbourne close to death. It had invaded him, binding him to the Baron of Colbourne for eternity. Luring him with a promise of things unknown, it had caused him to yield to a man’s touch. Caused him to surrender to a vampire’s bite, branding him with the impossible pleasure both brought.

  “Damn!” Just the recollection brought intense pleasure. He tried to focus his mind elsewhere, on anything but the heat flooding his groin. All that came to mind was the sight of Jeremy’s lips, red with his blood, and the feel of his master driving into him.

  Morgan bit his lip, feeling the sting of his teeth cutting through the skin. The dull pain softened the raging lust. He drew a deep breath, feeling sweat bead his brow.

  Wait. Master. The word gripped him hard. His heart began to race, and he fought to stay focused on where the idea took him. Master. He’d used that word frequently in jest, and occasionally in appropriate servant-master settings, but never with the meaning now behind it.

  The word devoured him, remade him, bound him to Colbourne in a way wholly nosferii. It spoke of blood and life and death. It rang in his head with a call to surrender every last part of himself to Colbourne, to serve and protect, with his life if need be. He forced his mind past the growing alarm and thought back to their last encounter.

  He’d said “Yes, Master,” and something had shifted between them. The words had resounded with an unusual rightness inside him, and he had yielded everything. Everything.

  Not just his body but his soul. Before, he would have done anything to help Jeremy, anything within his power, so long as it harmed no one and broke no law. Yet now Morgan knew he would throw away all he had to protect the Baron of Colbourne. Even Laura.

  Yes, even his daughter, for whom he’d abandoned dignity and the last vestige of his prior life. Now the deed was done, the changes in him had sparked dangerous new flames that threatened to consume him.

  But if he had any say whatsoever, he meant to keep his sanity and regain what dignity he could.

  He strode to the wardrobe where Makoto had stored his clothes. For a start, he refused to continue sharing Jeremy’s bed. It made him feel too much like a wife, rather than a…a what? Host? That he was, and more, but he was also steward to the Baron of Colbourne, responsible for the well-being of all who lived beneath his master’s protection. He had abandoned his duties long enough.

  Once made, the decision felt right. As steward, Morgan’s position required him to travel with his master when so ordered. Though Jeremy had not actually done so, the necessity could not be denied. With Makoto staying behind to guard and guide Laura, there would be none to guard their master if his hunt went ill. Certainly the past had proven to Morgan he could be useful, even if only to save Jeremy’s life.

  Clothed and ready to depart, he headed back to his own rooms to pack after a last look at the bed where he’d spent the past four days. His master’s scent permeated the room and the rumpled sheets, making it difficult to leave. He refused to be bound to a place merely because it brought his basest instincts to life. He would rebuild his protective wal
l, for what little good it would do, and make the Baron of Colbourne earn every bit of sexual satisfaction. That, at least, would allow Morgan to regain some portion of his honor.

  Chapter Ten

  A ravening hunger raged through Thorven’s innards, a hunger that refused to be assuaged no matter how much blood he drank. Nothing sated him without the kill, without the desperate fear that accompanied the painful approach of death. He fought it, had done so since he’d left London, but the battle was already lost.

  His visit to Colbourne had resurrected old memories, remembrances of happier times. More, it had called to mind the face of Argyle Holland, his lost Host, the only man to refute his Contract and return to his family. The accusations the man had hurled in departing still stung, but Thorven had never been able to overcome his nature. Holland was only a Host, only a blood source. Yet the sweet taste of his blood remained unequaled in any Host Thorven had Contracted since.

  Yet Laura Holland’s blood had been almost as sweet. And her father… He had smelled the same as Argyle. Morgan Holland had run, vanishing into the countryside of England, leaving Thorven constantly craving something lost forever. Until he’d heard news of Holland’s Contract with the Baron of Colbourne.

  Unable to claim the man as his own, he’d taken his vengeance on the man’s family, but only Laura’s blood had satisfied him—until she’d broken free. The boy and his mother had both been tasteless, but their deaths had satisfied all his desires while he slaked his blood lust.

  Those had been the first kills in a long, long time. The explosion of sensation accompanying the full discharge of his venom had far exceeded any pleasure he’d known before. His senses had flooded with some deep, instinctive desire to take, to rend, to utterly destroy. It urged him to taste more than just the blood. The drive to consume flesh saturated with primal terror ate at his gut. He’d staved off that desire until now, but the need consumed him. More, it summoned him with its dark call.

  Thorven stopped pacing, feeling the rush of adrenaline as he triggered his fangs and allowed the venom to drip onto his tongue. He shuddered in ecstasy at the burn.

  Time to hunt.

  * * * *

  Jeremy swore as his horse sidestepped and protested any attempt to approach the body in the ditch. One look at the poor wretch nearly turned his stomach. The damn nosferatu grew less cautious as the hunt progressed. This was the third corpse in a week, an abominably fast kill rate. Worse, each unfortunate had been more brutally savaged than the last. This one looked as though something had been gnawing on it.

  The last time he’d hunted, his target had only killed once a month. By the time he’d cornered the devil, it had taken all he had to overpower those venom-flooded muscles. He’d nearly died during that encounter.

  At this rate, there’d be little left of sanity in his quarry. The kill rate implied a rapid descent into the power-driven madness that had shortened the lives of nosferii of old. The same madness that gave rise to tales of the undead who were the tools of the devil and burned to a crisp under the sun.

  “Good God, why did the bloody thing have to chew on the man?” Thick distaste resonated in Morgan’s voice.

  Jeremy turned, his body humming and sensitized to the pound of his Host’s blood. Every day the need to touch Morgan had grown, until he could smell the man from across a room. He itched to hold him close, to sink his fangs into tender flesh and bury his cock deep inside. Here he stood, worrying about the damn nosferatu’s sanity when his own had been cobbled together from sheer willpower.

  “Whoever he is, he is sinking into the mindless fury that accompanies too many kills. Our early history is rife with stories of such slaughter, until the nosferii were hunted almost to extinction by the Church and their dutiful flocks.” Jeremy shuddered, thinking back to unwanted history lessons about the duty of each Baron of Colbourne. “Not only were the ancients hunted, but they destroyed themselves. The kill-madness steals life, poisoning the nosferatu with his own venom, as surely as it rots the flesh of his victims.”

  “How is such a thing possible? I thought nosferii couldn’t be harmed by the bite of their own kind.”

  Jeremy tore his gaze away from the ravaged man in the culvert. “Though we’re usually immune from the effects of nosferii venom, each nosfera is susceptible to his personal toxin or that of close relatives. Overuse floods the body with incredible strength but slowly roasts you alive as your body heat rises to fight the infection.”

  Morgan sat motionless, his strong face drawn up in a pensive frown. “Then the tales of vampires being destroyed by sunlight—”

  “—sprang from witnesses to the death throes of a nosferatu after the sun’s warmth pushed the fever beyond recall.”

  Silence reigned between them for a breath. “What of a turning? Did the fever which racked my body burn inside you as well?”

  Trust Morgan to have guessed what Jeremy did not state. “Yes, though to a lesser degree. It allowed my scent to strengthen, and our mingled heat raised your fever enough to alter the venom properly. Nosferii nobles discovered long ago that knowing their own body’s limits permitted them to control the turning Host with superior precision.”

  “Just how much danger did this bring to you?” Anger resounded in Morgan’s tone.

  The tightly controlled ire took Jeremy aback. He would not have thought his Host would carry such concern. His hopes for the future lifted, only to be dashed with Morgan’s next words.

  “If you had died, Laura would have died as well. I relied on your prior successes, thinking there was no harm to you. Your death would have destroyed any chance for my daughter to live.”

  There it was again. Everything for Morgan’s daughter, and nothing for Jeremy. He clenched his teeth against the pain, unconsciously triggering his fangs. He swallowed the small bit of blood it caused and dismounted, choosing to face the grisly task of determining the age of the trail rather than the unpalatable fact of Morgan’s divided loyalties.

  He had no need to approach too closely; the stench of decay carried an undertone of rank sepsis, the foul odor of venom-rotted tissues. At least four days, then. That meant another corpse along the way. At least they were headed in the right direction. He remounted, turning away from the grisly scene. “For now it appears our quarry hunts only in London and Sussex.” A hint of fear settled in as he thought of the helpless people who worked the lands around the barony of Colbourne. The chill intensified as a new thought came to him. Thorven’s haggard look hung before his eyes for a haunted moment. “What of Raavenshal,” he muttered, considering. “Could it be one of his people?”

  “Raavenshal?” Alarm colored Morgan’s voice.

  Jeremy looked at his Host, surprised. To his knowledge, Morgan had never met Archibald Thorven, despite living a dozen years in the Colbourne household. Nor had he evinced even the faintest awareness of Thorven’s name when handling Jeremy’s correspondence. Nonetheless, that small bit of fear suggested more than a passing familiarity with the new Master of Raavenshal.

  “You know Thorven?” He kept the question bland, not wanting to reveal anything more than curiosity. An irrational jealousy started to eat at him, for no other reason than that Morgan was aware of another nosfera noble.

  Shocked understanding crossed Morgan’s features, and an eternity passed before he answered.

  “Until just now, I did not know Archibald Thorven was the Master of Raavenshal. For generations, the Hollands were free farmers, owning our land and doing well for ourselves. Then the Raavenshal lords took our farmland under the Acts of Enclosure and forced my grandfather to work at the great house while his sons worked the land. From reaping the benefits of our own labor, we were reduced to sending up a tithe of each season’s crop in exchange for keeping our land.” Morgan urged his horse closer. “When my grandfather came back, he was old before his time, as though they had worked him to the bone. He was never quite sane after his return.”

  Jeremy could find no answer, though Morgan clearly expe
cted one. After an awkward silence, he nudged his horse onward, leaving his puzzled Host to follow after. It was ridiculous, but this new and unexpected bit of information about Morgan irritated Jeremy unreasonably. Laura Holland’s arrival had been the first hint that he had not known his Host as well as he should. Now, he faced the possibility that Morgan had known of the nosferii all along. How many other secrets might Morgan be hiding?

  He’d thought he’d finally captured Morgan’s heart, or come close. Yet if Morgan continued to keep secrets, the promised intimacy of the tamashī no hanryo would lie forever beyond their grasp. The turning might have made it possible, but soul mates could hide nothing from each other. In that case, his overwhelming need for Morgan Holland would become a curse, their physical intimacy only a necessity driven by the changes of the turning.

  He saw nothing for the future beyond a living hell.

  * * * *

  By the time the sun had set over Colbourne Manor, they were both dust covered and exhausted as they stalked into the main hall. Not one but two more of the mauled bodies had laid as clear a path to Raavenshal as could be set. Jeremy’s fears had grown mile by mile, his relief at the relatively unscathed roads to his seat overlaid by the knowledge of the scourge hunting less than fifty miles from his home.

  Worse still, he needed to feed. Only three days from the turning, and his desire for Morgan had reached near desperation. Not just for the exhilarating tang of Morgan’s blood, but for the taste of his skin and the feel of his strong body when Jeremy held him. He had restrained himself, hoping to give his Host precious time for recovery from the turning, as well as time for them both to adapt to the changes they had undergone. Now the time for waiting had passed.

  Yes, the time was long past. The bond created during the turning refused to ebb; in fact, it had strengthened, sinking into his psyche like his own unyielding fangs when he bit Morgan. Moreover, he could feel the beast inside him, sense the aggression lurking just beneath the civilized veneer of all nosferii. That snarling vestige of his ancestors clawed its way ever closer to the surface, spurred on by Jeremy’s hunger to claim Morgan as his own, binding him in body and blood.