The Deadliest Bite

moans, that he felt exactly the same way.

Afterward we lay in the doorway, tangled around each other because, final y, we didn’t have to let go. Vayl ran his finger across my col arbone. It stung enough that I looked down, saw the trail his teeth had left. Just scrapes; he hadn’t drunk from me this time.

“Jasmine, I cannot decide how to feel about these.” His finger traced the marks again, a sweet irritation. I looked into his eyes and realized how much I depended on their color to clue me into his thoughts and emotions. They’d faded from passion-bright emerald to stormy blue.

“What are you worried about?” I asked.

His finger came under my chin, lifted it up so he could plant a gentle kiss on my lips. “The temptation to taste of you ful y rises higher each time we make love,” he said. “You feel it as wel .” It wasn’t a question. He’d had a special insight to my emotions since I’d offered my neck to him the first time, during a mission to Miami when his personal blood supply had been tainted.

I said, “Yeah. Resisting has been… tough.”

“And yet we must.”

I brought my hand up to his wrist and squeezed. “You never stop surprising me, you know that?

Not two months ago you were suggesting you should turn me. And now—”

“You know I was not myself then. Besides, I have had time to consider, and so have you. Think what happens to us each time I drink of you. We are becoming more powerful, and yet unlike any other man and woman on earth.”

“Wel . We did start out kinda unique.”

His nod gave me that. After al , the guy was a Wraith, which meant he could freeze his enemies from the inside out. Even among the Vampere that talent was rare. And people who knew me hesitated to even cal me human anymore. Being able to walk in Vayl’s memories had made me wonder sometimes myself, although I thought I’d proven that I stil had it where it counted.

Vayl said, “I have mentioned couples like us to you before. You do remember the reason that sverhamin and avhar are so deeply respected among my people.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I remember.”

His hand went to my hair. Dove into my curls and brought a bundle up to his lips, as if only they could resuscitate him. His eyes closed as he inhaled my scent. “Woman, you have no idea how close we walk to the edge of disaster.”

“You mean, besides the fact that we assassinate national security threats for a living? Or did until our goddamn Oversight Committee shut us down.”

“Never fear about that,” Vayl reassured me. “The circle always turns. And I believe Martha knows exactly how to spin this particular wheel.”

I had to agree. After learning that our old secretary had actual y been running the department al along, I was more certain than ever that nothing could stop the bul et train that was Martha Evans from getting exactly what she wanted. And since, currently, her two priorities were to reopen our department and catch the clawed kil er of Pete, the man who’d believed in me when no one else had, who’d hired me into the department and paired me with Vayl, I was cheering her on with both fists in the air.

I shook my head. Leave it to me and Vayl to turn a forced vacation, not to mention a beautiful relationship, into an even more potential y lethal situation than offing monsters for a living! I said,

“Okay, so what’s so bad about you taking a sip from me every once in a while? Why is it something that should keep me looking over my shoulder?”

He buried his face against my neck, speaking so quietly that I had to strain to hear.

Maybe he hoped that, if I didn’t, none of it would be true. “I have told you something of the world that paral els yours, the one in which we others walk without pretense but, perhaps sometimes, with even more fear. The Whence runs according to a set of rules you would find both brutal and baffling.

And its Council enforces those rules always with its bottom line in mind—whatever happens, do not attract the ire of humanity.”

“What does that have to do with you and me?” I asked.

Vayl’s hold tightened, becoming almost painful as his breath caught. “I believe because we are avhar and sverhamin we are changing with every exchange of blood and power, but not into anything this world or the Whence has ever seen. Because I am Vampere and you are Eldhayr the eventual outcome wil not be that you become a vampire, but that we both transform into new creatures. Different, powerful species who began our lives as kil ers. Who are, in fact, the most effective assassins on the planet. Do you think the Whence, or even our own people, wil wait around to see if we decide to be friends or foes?”

I couldn’t answer. He’d sealed my lips at the word “species.” He went on. “I believe this is why every avhar/sverhamin couple has disappeared within a year of their bonding. Either they realized their own danger and melted into the night of their own volition, or they were erased out of fear of what they were becoming together.” He drew his face back, showing me eyes that had gone orange around the edges. “This is why we must hold back, though every desire in us cal s for the exchange. Your blood, my power. We must never taste of one another in that way again. It is too dangerous for us now.”

“How do you know we’re not already doomed?” I whispered.

He smiled then, his dimple appearing just long enough to charm me into a stress-releasing breath. “Because we have not yet been visited by a Blank.”

“A Blank? Who’s that?”

“One of our counterparts in the Whence,” Vayl answered. “Except instead of eliminating the monsters who threaten to destroy humanity, they kil others whom the Council fears wil