She hesitated. “You’ll have to touch me.”
“It’s all right. It won’t hurt for long.” He held out his hands to lift her onto the table.
“Wait. I know we don’t have long and that we must escape. But I have to tell you what I learned. Those men said that a vampire who takes my power will be destroyed. You have to—”
“I know, Ophelia. I’ve known it all along.”
“You know and you—you are willing to die to free me?”
This time he hesitated. He threw a glance back toward the door. “It’s complicated. There is a way out for both of us. Guidon told me how it can be done. But that is for later.”
He grasped her hips and lifted her. With his amazing strength, he easily lifted her up on the table.
Impulsively, she swiveled and bent down. Her hands cupped his jaw, which was soft to her touch, but rough and scratchy, too, because it was shadowed with black stubble.
She had never cradled a man’s face.
She had to stop touching him. But as she tried to move her hands, he grasped them and held them against her face. His eyes widened, his dark brows shot up and disappeared beneath his mussed hair. His full, beautiful lips parted. “Ophelia, there’s no pain. I don’t feel any pain.”
How could it be possible? He cupped the back of her neck with his hand and drew her to him, so their mouths were only an inch apart.
Ophelia surged forward and hastily, clumsily, pressed lips against his. Her heart thundered. They could be caught and killed any moment. But she wanted to know if she could do this without pain. Just one quick, wild kiss.
Heavens, his lips were so warm and velvety soft. When her mouth touched his, there was a sizzle—but a glorious, thrilling, exciting one. The gentle contact of their mouths stole her breath. It made her hot and achy inside.
He drew back. “There was no pain.”
“Does it mean you took my power?” Reality hit her. There was no joy, no happiness now—just horror. If he had taken her power, she’d killed him.
“I don’t know. But it means I can get you out of that window. Come, Felie, let us hurry.”
Felie. A pet name. She’d never had one.
Ravenhunt jumped onto the table beside her, then he wrapped his arm around her hips and lifted her so she could grasp the ledge of the window. She gripped it—a small piece of glass bit into her hand, but she didn’t care about pain. Pulling on the ledge, she tried to scramble up, but he gently pushed her, so she was out the opening in moments. Ophelia scrambled to her feet—the window was just above the level of the cobblestone street. She turned to help him, but he leaped up from the table, soared cleanly out of the window, and landed on his feet beside her.
They were alone in the street, which was good as Ravenhunt was naked.
“We have to run, but you’re—”
“We don’t have to run,” he insisted. “Since you can touch me now, I can transform into a larger bat, and you can ride on me.”
“Ride on you? You mean—in the air?”
He nodded, and then his body jerked and writhed as he went through his transformation. She had seen it in his bedroom, but she’d been too shocked to really understand what had happened to him. His skin stretched in ways that must be impossible. Beneath his pale skin, his muscle and bone reshaped. His back widened, then in the blink of an eye, huge wings formed out of his back. His body had barely changed in size. He still possessed legs, a man’s torso and hips and—and all the other parts. He looked more like a gargoyle than a man and in this form he was covered in sable-smooth black fur.
He turned, so his broad back and his wings faced her. Smoothly, he dipped down on one knee. She climbed on his back, lying along the lean, hard planes. So strange that instead of skin, she was pressed to velvety fur. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and her legs around his waist.
Then his wings flapped, raising up dirt from the street, and sending a soft breeze to ripple over her.
Together, they rose into the air. His wings beat slowly, with a languorous, graceful smoothness, but they lifted swiftly. By the second building they passed, they had reached such a height that they flew past the upper windows of two-story buildings. A heartbeat later, she could look down upon the roofs of Whitechapel High Street. Ahead were open fields beyond the London Hospital, a stretch of gray-tinted blue with moonlight. Shadows clung to the buildings, and Ravenhunt flew within them. She supposed it meant they disappeared from view when they were in the dark.
She held her breath. They climbed higher and higher. She felt as if she could reach out and touch the moon. For one moment, she felt a twinge of fear—they were dizzyingly high—but it disappeared. She had nothing to be afraid of when she was with Ravenhunt.
Ophelia drew in a deep breath. Up here the air felt and smelled different—cooler, crisp, clean. Her arms were securely wrapped around his neck. His powerful muscles flexed and moved beneath her slim arms.
As they’d risen into the sky, she’d heard shouting down below them. Her captors must have discovered she had escaped.
She could not believe she was flying. And if he’d taken her power, why was he not dead? What had he meant that Guidon had told him there was a way out?
Beneath her, she saw the streets of London laid out, following the curves of the Thames. Powerful wingbeats took them closer to the buildings below them.
Her heart dipped and then soared downward, and beat frantically when he climbed again.
Now she knew what it was like to fly. Exhilarating. Amazing. Somehow it seemed even more miraculous to fly close to the buildings below, to just graze over them, to whirl around them. Below them were narrow, elegant buildings with bow windows and painted signs that shone with gilt.
Charing Cross. They were going to Guidon’s.
Ravenhunt slowly descended to the sidewalk outside the bookstore. He landed lightly on his feet, then crouched so she could safely slip off his back. It was dark—no light glowed in Guidon’s shop. She looked back to Ravenhunt and in the seconds she’d peered into the shop, he had transformed back to a man.
“Is he asleep?”
“He’s a vampire.”
A vampire? She’d never dreamed of that, though it explained why he had been working in his shop at night. “What about you?” she asked Ravenhunt. “It is cold and you have no clothing. You cannot go in to see Guidon this way. We must get you clothes so you do not catch pneumonia.”
“Love, vampires do not become sick. The Royal Society will have armed men watching my house, so we cannot return there. Guidon will help me acquire clothing. This is the safest place for you.” He touched her cheek. The warmth of his hand on her skin was enthralling. But she couldn’t do this yet.
“We must find out from Guidon if I’ve lost my power—” She could not make herself say, “and if you are going to be destroyed.”
Ravenhunt hauled open the door. It was unlocked, and they stepped into darkness. Ravenhunt slid a bolt in place to secure the door behind them, then he took her hand. He threaded his fingers through hers—she hadn’t held hands like this in forever. She had last done it with her sister Lydia—she hadn’t seen her sister in years, nor her younger brother, Harry. Not since her family understood her power and kept her away from them. She had not started her life by killing people—it had begun when she was thirteen. She had hurt servants by accident; she had made her family ill, she had almost killed the man she loved. Then she had been locked away.
Holding someone’s hand felt reassuring.
But it reminded her of what she’d done. Probably destroyed Ravenhunt.
“Guidon?” he called.
There was no answer, only silence, but Ravenhunt murmured. “He is in his garden.”
“His garden? It is the middle of the night. How do you know?”
“He told me by thought.”
She let him lead her through the crowded bookshop, in the narrow aisle between shelves, skirting stacks of books. At the back, they passed through Guidon’s kitchen, its kettle on a table. Ravenhunt opened a rear door, and Ophelia walked out first into a tiny, walled garden.
