“Ah... yes. Quite. The thing that’s driving you insane with how wrong it feels?” Rans said. “That would be the sudden lack of a heartbeat, after a lifetime of having one. For what it’s worth, your heart was pretty well knackered after Myrial got hold of it. You’ll get used to the silence before long, if it’s any consolation.”
Guthrie’s face had taken on a definite ‘blue screen of death’ look, but he eventually managed to ask, “Myrial?”
I drew in a deep breath and straightened my shoulders, bracing to take over with the next bit of bad news. “Your demon. He probably used a different name in his dealings with you. Multiple names, in fact. Myrial visited you in a couple of different forms over the years. She... he... is an incubus. Or a succubus. They can change sex at will.”
The blue screen of death remained static; the cursor behind Guthrie’s eyes circling endlessly. And I felt like the worst kind of bitch for dumping a new atrocity on the poor guy right now.
“Go ahead, love,” Rans said, as if reading my mind. “Probably best to rip the band-aid off all at once, at this point.”
I steeled myself. “Okay, then. So... a couple of decades after Myrial bound your soul, she came back in female form and, uh, slept with you. Apparently. Then she used your stolen genetic material to impregnate my grandmother. So it turns out, you’re almost certainly my biological grandfather,” I finished weakly. “Surprise.”
The good news was, something stirred in Guthrie’s stricken expression that wasn’t blank incomprehension. The bad news was, that ‘something’ was rage. I tried very hard not to assume that his anger was directed at me, despite the twenty years of emotional and psychological fuckitude trying to convince me that it was.
Guthrie turned his focus back to Rans, rather than responding to my words directly. “He finally tried to kill me? The demon?”
Rans nodded. “And reap your soul, yes.”
The eerie inner light flared in Guthrie’s gaze. “Then you should have let me go.”
I shuddered, gripping the doorframe. “Guthrie, no. That filthy piece of Hell-trash doesn’t deserve your soul.”
A snarl twisted his lips. “It doesn’t matter if he deserves it. He still has it. At least if I’d died it would finally have been over. The two of you did this to me for nothing!”
Rans shifted forward until he was resting on one knee, the movement bringing him close enough to lift a hand and cup it around Guthrie’s nape, squeezing lightly. I hoped he wasn’t about to get it chewed off at the wrist for his trouble.
“Let’s be clear on something, old friend. Zorah didn’t do anything to you,” Rans said, not entirely truthfully. “This is all on me. If you’re going to take out your anger on someone, you’ll do it on me, and me alone.”
Guthrie glared at him, anguish warring with the rage in his expression. “Why? Goddamnit, Rans—why?”
Rans drew breath to speak, but the air remained trapped in his throat as he searched for a suitable response.
“Because I’m a selfish wanker and always have been,” he said eventually. “Because neither of us wanted to lose you.”
Guthrie just stared at him, his head moving back and forth in dazed negation. “You’re still going to lose me, you fucking idiot. He’ll reap me again as soon as he realizes what’s happened.”
“Maybe not,” I told him, hoping against hope that I was right about that. “It turns out, you’re one hell of a valuable commodity as a vampire. Pun intended.”
We quickly filled him in on Nigellus and his plot to use vampire blood to raise a new army of demon-bound undead soldiers. To his credit, while Guthrie looked dazed, he didn’t check out on us completely. When we were done, he blinked slowly at Rans, his eyes settling back to human-brown again.
“Jesus Christ,” he said. “I really hate your guts sometimes, you sanctimonious English bastard.”
Rans settled back on his haunches. “Don’t feel bad. I tend to get that from a lot of people.”
I huffed out a breath, trying to turn the conversation onto a more practical path. “So, anyhow—the good news is, you might not die again right away. The bad news is, at the moment, we have no plan that’s worth a shit.”
“Yes. And we’re also running low on blood bags,” Rans added.
I stared at him. “We’re what? You know, you might have mentioned that earlier!” I huffed a sigh. “Well, that’s just brilliant.”
THREE
“I’LL JUST NEED TO pop around one of the other hospitals and steal some more,” Rans said, rising from his crouch in front of Guthrie. “We should also train you to feed from a live human as soon as possible, mate.”
I drew breath to speak, but Rans jabbed a pointed finger in my direction without even looking. “Not from you,” he finished, cutting off whatever I might have been about to say.
Guthrie used his hands on the wall behind him to push himself into a standing position. He still looked shaky and shell-shocked, but his knees held and his eyes stayed their normal human color.
“Yeah, no... I get it,” I said, not arguing the point. “Guthrie, normally I’d offer. Really, I would. But I’m part succubus, and succubus blood has kind of a predictable effect on vampires.” I swallowed, trying to moisten my dry throat. “I’m also really sorry I had to dump the whole ‘biological granddad’ thing on you, and believe me—I don’t expect anything from you because of it. I mean... unless you want there to be something—”
I was babbling. I cut myself off and tried again. “Anyway... sorry. About the blood, I mean. But I don’t think either one of us want you sporting an uncontrollable grandpa-boner after drinking from me.”
Guthrie stared at me for an uncomfortable beat. “Tell you what. I’m just going to pretend I didn’t hear that. Maybe you
