“I didn’t know. I didn’t understand. I thought I could handle anything that came up.”
Caravelli swore again, using words Mac didn’t know. But the vampire’s tone said it all.
Mac smoothed back her hair. It had fallen out of its pins and was strewn across his lap like swatches of dark silk. His skin was growing hot, the demon inside him suffering as much as the man. “Do something, for God’s sake!”
A beat passed. Something in Caravelli’s posture softened. “All right. She needs strong blood. Vampire blood. Her first sire wasn’t old enough.”
“What does that mean?”
“Not enough power to successfully Turn her, for one thing.” Caravelli was stripping off his leather jacket. He wore a faded Grateful Dead T-shirt underneath. “Making a vampire isn’t easy, but some idiot always thinks he can do it on the sly.”
“And if an amateur job goes wrong?”
“If they’re both lucky, the victim dies.” He nodded at Connie. “From what you said to Holly, the guardsmen took your girl straight to the Castle as soon as she rose. That’s what kept her functioning all these years. The magic of the place acted like life support.”
“And I put her in danger,” Mac said bitterly.
Caravelli made a rude noise. “She should have known better than to date a demon. Sit her up.”
Mac did. The vampire pulled a boot knife. Mac tensed.
“Relax. It’s for me,” Caravelli said with a flicker of a smile. “I get the fun part.”
With a grimace, he slashed a six-inch gash on the inside of his left forearm. Sluggish blood welled up, thicker than a human’s. He held the wound under Connie’s nose. It revived her as quickly as old-fashioned smelling salts.
Caravelli fell to one knee before her, guiding her head to the open vein. “Drink,” he said, sounding suspiciously like the cape-swishing villain of a bad movie.
Constance gripped Mac’s knee, her long fingernails digging into his flesh. He could see her neck muscles straining, the impulse to drink, and not drink, equally strong.
“Vampires don’t taste like humans,” Caravelli explained. “We’re not normally food for each other.”
Mac took her hand, prying it loose so he could hold it. “Go ahead. Do it. It’s okay.”
She made a noise of disgusted protest, but obeyed. After a moment, she pulled her hand away so that she could grip Caravelli’s arm to her lips. He jerked in pain as she bit down.
Mac felt relieved, but unsettled. Bad enough he let her fall into this mess. The fact that he couldn’t help her was worse—not even with his blood.
“I called the hospital on the way here,” Caravelli said quietly. “The victim was more frightened than injured. I doubt there will be repercussions from the humans.”
“Venom?” Mac asked automatically.
“No.”
It was the first thing a cop who handles supernatural crimes asked. Presence of venom in the bloodstream was the legal standard for proof of a vampire attack. Caravelli was right. Without that, there wasn’t much a victim could do.
“Constance is lucky,” the vampire said darkly.
“That won’t do her much good if she ...” Mac trailed off, anger and frustration choking him.
“She’ll be all right, but you need to go,” said Caravelli, wincing as she lapped and worried at his wound.
Really not a sight Mac had imagined as a first-date memory. “But...”
“I’ll take her home.” Caravelli fixed him with his amber eyes. They flashed in the distant light of a passing car, setting the hairs on Mac’s neck on end. “She’s not herself right now. She won’t be until she sleeps this off and feeds again. There’s no point in seeing her like this. She won’t thank you for it.”
“My place is with her.”
“Trust me. I’ll make sure she gets what she needs.”
Mac knew what he meant. More blood. Human blood— this time from a willing donor.
“Come to our house late tomorrow night. She’ll be ready to see you by then.”
Mac nodded, feeling awkward. Every cell in his body wanted to keep her for his own, to push Caravelli aside and drag her away.
Caravelli stroked Constance’s head with a fatherly gesture. Mac stifled a possessive growl.
“It’s all right, Macmillan. She’ll be safe with me.”
Mac sighed inwardly.
He still wanted to throw a tantrum. He’d given Constance a dress. Caravelli was giving her life.
And then, like random lightning, what Connie had said struck him: Atreus had made a woman from the Castle’s Avatar, robbing its magic.
Mac had heard Atreus claim to have killed her. The sorcerer also said that the Castle had been crumbling for sixteen years. Atreus had taken in a foundling sixteen years ago.
The Castle was failing because Sylvius lived.
It meant he finally had an insight into the whole insane Castle puzzle. It had taken the sight of Caravelli doing the vampire sire biz—giving some of his Undead life to save Connie—to make the connection. Like it or not, Mac had work to do.
Feeling dismal, Mac got up, touching Connie’s shoulder. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Caravelli nodded, but didn’t reply. Connie didn’t respond at all.
Mac had barely gone a dozen paces before he looked back to see the two vampires huddled together in the small, urban graveyard. The headstones were a wash of grays under the streetlights, graffiti like sprawling spiderwebs across the granite humps.
He turned away, walked a little. He passed one that read: LOVE SUX!
Chapter 22
“Good evening to all you children of the night out there in radio land. This is Errata, your hostess from CSUP, the FM station that
“Good evening, Errata.”
“Now, Dr. Hooper, there are those who insist that transitioning is impossible and that denying your original form is at best wishful thinking and at worst an immoral act. How do you respond to that?”
“You mean those people who say that if you really, really try hard, you’ll suck in those fangs and go back to being a good little human?”
“Why, Dr. Hooper, don’t you buy into the power of positive thinking?”
Mac eyed the big purple and yellow Victorian with a cautious eye.
