“Jesus Christ,” Guthrie said. “Okay. Right. Now, give me your left arm, I guess?”
Len extended his arm without hesitation. Rans showed Guthrie where and how deep to bite, while I deliberately avoided focusing on the small dribble of Len’s blood that dripped free, spattering onto the kitchen floor at his feet.
True to Rans’ word, the blood Guthrie had drunk earlier was apparently enough to keep him from slipping back into bloodlust. A few moments later, he was following Rans’ directions on closing the small wounds with a couple of drops of his own blood, and it was done.
“Well done, mate. Congratulations on popping your artery cherry,” Rans said. “Now, normally at this point you’d want to order him to forget about the last few minutes. It’s not necessary in this case, though, so you can just wake him up.”
Guthrie looked like he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to throw up, or dive right back in for another vein. Happily for everyone, he did neither—letting go of Len’s wrist as though it burned him and turning his glowing gaze back on Len’s steel-gray one.
“You can... wake up now and, uh, go back to normal,” he said. “And in other news—fucking hell, I cannot believe I just did that.”
Len blinked rapidly and swayed on his feet before his knees locked, holding him upright. He looked from Guthrie, to me, to the smear of blood on his wrist, covering a wound that wasn’t there.
“Not bad for a first time, gramps,” he said. “I mean—I’m guessing, anyway. Not like I’d know or anything.”
Guthrie gave him a cautious nod. “I feel like I should say ‘thank you,’ but I also feel like I should warn you not to let half-crazy vampires get anywhere near you in the future.”
Len shrugged.
I cleared my throat. “No harm done, at least. That’s got to count for something, right? Guthrie, are you feeling better now? I can’t imagine that bagged blood really compares to free range.”
Rans snorted.
“It... definitely doesn’t,” Guthrie admitted. He still didn’t sound terribly comfortable discussing the finer points of human blood as nourishment, but his eyes lost focus as his attention turned inward. “In fact, it feels really different. Kind of euphoric... almost like a high.” He looked at Rans, frowning. “Is that normal?”
Rans tilted his head. “Well, I’m not sure I’d describe it as a high, exactly.”
Beside me, Len went still.
Rans noticed, and gave him a thorough once over, his eyebrows climbing. “At least, not unless...”
He crouched, swiping up the drops of Len’s blood that had fallen on the floor, and sniffed it before popping the finger in his mouth. I would have commented on how gross that was, but the old saying, ‘so clean you can eat off the floor’ might as well have been coined to describe Guthrie’s kitchen.
“Ah,” Rans said, straightening. “Recent cocaine use; that would explain it. Sorry, Guthrie—the answer is no, human blood doesn’t normally deliver that kind of kick. The good news—or possibly the bad news, depending on your outlook—is that it will wear off in a few minutes. Undead metabolism tends to make short work of such things, generally speaking.”
I took a fresh look at Len, and several things clicked into place. Disappearing into the bathroom for several minutes after we returned to the penthouse. His pale complexion and the dark circles under his eyes. His restless jitters. The nosebleed. His apparent fearlessness after Guthrie almost came at him, and his questionable judgment in offering a vein to a newly fledged vampire with barely a second thought.
“Len,” I began tentatively.
He paced away, putting distance between us. “Don’t, Z. Yes, I’m an addict. Yes, I’m off the wagon after this shit with... well... everything. And yes, I know it’s a problem and that I’ll have to deal with it. Again.”
Guthrie scrubbed a hand over his face and flopped onto one of the bar stools. “For what it’s worth, I’m not complaining right now.”
I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say to the guy whose life I seemed to be doing a terrific job of ruining. Perhaps it was just as well that whatever I might have come up with was interrupted by Rans’ phone ringing. He pulled it out and glanced at the screen, his expression tightening.
“Albigard,” he said, his tone flat.
I sighed and marched over to Rans, my hand held out in an imperious gesture. “Give it here,” I told him, and took the phone when he grudgingly handed it over.
“Ah,” Albigard said. “Demonkin. I’m not certain if speaking with you constitutes an improvement over speaking with the bloodsucker or not.”
I thumbed the call onto speakerphone. “Yeah, I’ve missed you, too, Tinkerbell. So, here’s the thing. I’ve got some information, and I need to make a trade with you. Well, two trades.”
“Hmm. I can hardly contain my excitement,” Albigard quipped, his voice sounding tinny over the cellular connection. “Pray tell, do either of these trades involve having iron blades hurled at my person?”
“Not if the blade-hurler in question wants to get laid anytime this century,” I said sweetly, pinning Rans with a look. “Basically, we need fast, discreet transportation. Magical transportation.”
“And in return?”
“Intel on the demons,” I told him. “Let’s just say, we’ve had a very interesting few days.”
The line went silent. I stared down at the phone for several seconds, wondering if Albigard had somehow unintentionally fried it with his Fae-ness. Or, perhaps more likely, if he’d decided to flip us the proverbial bird and hang up on me. My dark thoughts lasted until a crackling sound echoed through the kitchen. I turned in time to see a fiery oval trace through the air.
“What,” Len said faintly, taking a step back from the hole that had just appeared in reality. Across the room, Guthrie looked similarly gobsmacked.
“Don’t panic,” I told them both. “Have you ever played the videogame Portal? Turns out that for Fae, it’s, uh, kind of a real thing.”
Albigard stepped through the gap, haughty and beautiful as ever. His moss-green gaze fell on
