Last Enchantment

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve

Wake up, damn you!

Oliver jerked awake, memory flooding back with consciousness. Somebody hammered on the door, and he stared down at the writhing couple on the floor, making his decision in the blinding instant between awareness and full-on fury. He pushed into her mind and found his way blocked. Marcus had erected a barrier stronger than he could break down. Vampire strength had knocked him out. His mind reeled. Marcus, a vampire?

He needed help. He grabbed the key from the floor where it had fallen and made it to the door, thrusting the key in and opening it. G burst in, Spartan on his heels, and they hurried to where a naked Marcus lay on an equally naked Tegan. She lay, her head thrown back, but the expression of abject horror he expected to see was absent—instead, a sultry gaze of absolute ecstasy.

“He’s flooded her with endorphins,” G said, his voice shockingly steady.

“Ah, fuck,” was Spartan’s contribution to the conversation before he put a hand on Marcus’s shoulder, ready to wrench him away.

Oliver and G cried out at the same time, “No!”

Thankfully, Spartan listened to them and straightened. “Is this what I think it is? I’ve never seen this before.” Unlike G, his deep voice wasn’t in the least firm.

“She only has one chance,” G said while Oliver watched the sucking, fucking couple with increasing desperation. “Go lock the door. I don’t want anyone else in here while this is going on.”

Numbly, Spartan obeyed and came back to them. “What happens now?”

“He’s taken too much blood for her to survive on her own. Even if we got her hooked up to a donor immediately, by fang and tube, she’s too far gone. Look at that pallor. If he pulls out of her artery, she’s dead.”

“So…”

“So we have to make sure he takes every last drop,” Oliver said softly, menace lacing his voice, only a tiny part of what he was feeling inside. If Marcus hadn’t already condemned himself by doing this, he’d have been dead anyway. He was still reeling with the revelation that Marcus was a vampire. How long? He was almost sure he’d never been one until recently, although there were some very ancient beings who could conceal themselves so well, even other Talents couldn’t detect them.

G explained tersely. “With the last drop, she will take on the strength of ten and turn on him. He can’t escape. But if he leaves her before he’s drained her completely, she’ll die.”

“One way or another, he’s not leaving this room alive,” Oliver said grimly. He kept his attention focused on the couple, forcing out all thoughts of helplessness and confusion. Marcus would feed on those emotions, use them against him to weaken him, and he couldn’t afford that now. “He knocked me out.”

“You don’t say.” G indicated Oliver’s naked body, still bleeding sluggishly from a few cuts. Fully vampire, his wounds were healing fast. “You might want to put some clothes on. We don’t care, but your guests might.”

Oliver grabbed his pants off the floor and pulled them on. “Oh, shit, do they know what’s happening?”

“They heard a commotion. We’re calling it a fight. You could be in trouble if they call the police, so we’d better get that sorted out.”

His heart sank. He didn’t care for himself, but he didn’t want to leave her when she needed him most. “That’s the trouble with coming out. Everything is in public.”

“That is why we’re exonerating you.” G sighed and ran his fingers through his slightly too long hair. He probably hadn’t found time to get it cut. “Leave it to me. There might be a little trouble, but I’ll sort it out. By our laws, this is murder, but the murderer will die in the process, so justice will be done.” He groaned softly. “If it were anyone else, I’d turn this into a test case.” He paused. “I tried to minimize it, told the people who heard it was probably a fight or something, laughed that you were old friends and these things happened. I’ve changed my mind. I can’t protect both of you, so Schofield it is. He attacked Tegan, tried to rape her as he did before, she hit him with the whisky bottle, and he died. Self-defense.”

“Say I did it,” Oliver insisted.

“It won’t work. It’s manslaughter if you do it, self-defense if she does. In any case, she’s a better victim for the press to sympathize with.”

He detested G’s cool analysis of the situation. His blind instinct was to tear Marcus away from her and finish the job himself, convert her with love, not violence, but this process was visceral, messy, and appalled even other Talents. But he knew if he did that, she was dead. And he couldn’t even stand between her and the press. Helpless didn’t begin to describe the way he felt. Watching was the biggest torture of his life, and he’d been tortured by the best in the business in his time. This was worse.

“I’m not letting her out of my sight. The only thing that will stop me is her telling me to fuck off.” He stared at the figures on the floor. “I’ve changed my mind. Not even then.”

Watching the scene before him, he understood deep down why rape was a crime of violence. Of course, he had known it intellectually for years, but not seen it. Domination and control. Except it was no longer clear who was controlling whom.

She wouldn’t even look at him, or she couldn’t. Only stared at Marcus, her mouth open, as he drew the life out of her system. Oliver couldn’t have been unconscious for long. Just long enough to allow Marcus to go past the point of no return.

His senses flared. If there was another vampire in a ten mile vicinity of this place, they’d react the same as Oliver, all his senses flaring into high alert. His fangs and claws shot out, his eyes burned with the intensity of the change, and his blood burned its way through his system. G reached out a hand, but withdrew it in time. Otherwise, Oliver would have forced himself on the man. Touch just wasn’t on the agenda. Another vampire was about to be created.

When Marcus finally sprang to his feet and glanced around, his face haunted by his imminent death, G and Oliver stayed where they were. G caught Spartan’s arm as he threatened to go after him. “No. He has to do this to stimulate her to chase him. It’s the hunting instinct kicking in.”

The Scandinavian warrior understood that. He stood back with a grunt. “I never want to see this again.”

“You and me both,” Oliver said.

In less time than it took to explain it, Tegan was up and on her feet. She stared around, an animal hunting prey, not a human. Everything but her primeval instincts were pushed away, not relevant for the task in hand, and Oliver wasn’t surprised when her gaze skimmed over him with no signs of recognition. Only in appearance did she resemble Tegan, and even then, this disheveled, bloody female was a far cry from the pin-neat, elegant woman he knew. But his heart still ached for her. He still yearned to take her away and treat her with tenderness and care, not this brutal initiation into something she never asked for.

She lifted her chin, drew in a sharp breath, scenting her prey, and leaped, landing on Marcus with a sigh of need. She bore him to the floor with no effort and dug newly developed fangs into the back of his neck, ripping into his skin.

Oliver did the only thing he could. He grabbed a blanket draped over one of the chairs and threw it over them, covering her from breast to feet. At least she could have that privacy. But conversion was best witnessed. Tradition, and the desire to see that the ritual was properly observed, as well as removing the possibility of accusations of murder, made it essential that someone watch it. Also, after it was done, the new vampire would need mentoring, caring for, and guiding in her new life.

No way on God’s earth was anyone else going to do that. He was only waiting until this ordeal was over with, and then he’d take her away. Which meant he’d better stop G interfering. “After this, she’s mine. Mine to care for. I’ll take her somewhere she can deal with this. Somewhere quiet and private.”

“The police might not want you to leave the country,” G said. “I know you can do it, flash out, but I’d advise you not to. They will check, and knowing vampires have that ability will only scare them more.”

He glanced at G and saw Spartan, eyes bugging out at the sight before him. He was glad he’d covered her. G had set his expression into stoical acceptance, and Oliver didn’t need to go deep into his mind to know that the cogs were running, planning how to use this to Talents’ best interests, or how to cover it up if it didn’t play well. He probably had a timetable mapped out.

So did Oliver. He had to, and they’d probably better share. “I left the board discussing what to do about my revelation. Before this, I’d steeled myself for TV interviews and suchlike, but I won’t do them. Not for at least a week, maybe two. You get my address, and so does my PA, but nobody else.”

Spartan cleared his throat. “I’ll take you where you need to go. No reason you should wear yourself out flashing.”

It was true; most vampires found flashing—the art of instant transportation from place to place—temporarily debilitating. It would be better if he could remain alert and at full strength while guarding Tegan. “Thanks. So that makes three of you who know. Nobody else. I’ll listen to what the board has to say. They might want me to resign. In fact, that’s highly likely. I’ll ask George tomorrow, before he leaves, if he doesn’t decide he won’t accept a vampire’s hospitality. But I doubt that very much. He’ll tell me. If I resign, I sell out, which will take some doing, and reinvest in something else, which will also take some doing. In that case, I won’t be available for CAT assignments.”

“We need to stick together,” G rumbled. “And the next few years are crucial. Talents could end as second class citizens, segregated, or dictators over the next few years. All three, possibly. I’d like to avoid that as far as possible, but we need a united community.”

“Do you ever stop thinking about the big picture?” Oliver asked, exasperated. All he cared about was Tegan.

G shook his great head. “No. But one detail, Oliver.” He turned and met Oliver’s gaze, taking his attention from the sight of Tegan draining her victim of every drop of blood and every scrap of life. “Tegan will be someone different. You know that, don’t you? She won't be the Tegan we knew. In that case, she might not want you. You have to give her the chance to choose what she wants to be and what she wants to do.”

Oliver’s mouth tightened into a thin line. “I know that. I won’t try to change her, and I’ll see her free. But she needs mentoring, and this time, I’m the one. I don’t know how she’ll take this, how it will affect her. It would traumatize a normal person, but Tegan has reserves of strength I’m only just beginning to appreciate.” Boundless strength, he thought sometimes. If she comes through this sane.

Because that was the other possibility. Conversion drove people mad. In that case, the mentor would destroy the newly made vampire. It was his duty if he took on the mentorship. It would kill him to do it, but he would. He would. And then he’d destroy himself, because there was no way he could live with the knowledge of what he had done. That would be his limit, the end of his existence. At last, he’d found it.

He could do it to anyone else, not without a qualm, but certainly with the knowledge he was doing the right thing, and so he could live with the consequences. But not Tegan. She’d gone through so much already, fought through it all, and he’d tried to give her something back. If this killed her, it would kill him. But he could only wait and see. Her mind was still closed to him.

At the point of no return, when the sire had taken too much blood for the victim to live, they bonded, became one in spirit and mind. Tegan would retain something of Marcus inside her always, and it was up to her what to do with it. If she wished, she could merge the personalities. Under vampire law, she would also inherit his belongings, but Oliver wasn’t counting on that, nor did he wish it. That was a law that might change with the emergence of Talents into the light.

If Marcus was the bastard he appeared to be, then he might find Tegan intolerable.

If, if, if. Would this process never end? The more he watched, the more possibilities for disaster raced through his mind, setting up doubts and blocks to what he planned to do. Finally, he accepted the possibilities and then shut them all out. He believed in her. He would see her through this.

Finally, the sucking sound stopped, and with a sigh, Tegan dropped her head onto Marcus’s shoulders. She’d done.