Page 10 of Taste of Death

I looked up to see Lourna, my human housekeeper in the doorway. “Thank you, Lourna. Did you check in on Amy?”

“I did, sir. She drank her fill of your blood and appears to be in a healing sleep.”

My eyebrows shot up at that. The little brusang obviously hadn’t been in good shape when I found her, but to fall into a healing sleep she must have been worse off than I thought.

“Should I try to wake her and take her to the guest room?” Lourna asked.

“No, that’s all right. I’ll take her myself. You go ahead and take the rest of the day off.”

Lourna hesitated by the door. “Jo said to tell you she’s prepared a whole board of bites to eat if Amy wants solid food. We don’t know what she likes, so there’s a variety. It’s wrapped up in the fridge.”

I smiled at that. I was older than my human staff by a good two hundred years. And yet these two women in their forties were more motherly than any vampire matriarch I’d ever known. “I appreciate it, thank you.”

Lourna took her leave, and I spent a few minutes organizing the papers on my desk before heading down after her. After closing the study door behind me, I paused at the wall mirror on the landing to make sure my clothes weren’t rumpled.

Old habits never truly died, especially when vampires didn’t reach adulthood until the age of one hundred. My mother hadn’t fussed at the invisible creases in my shirt, hadn’t threatened to drain the human staff dry for their incompetence at pressing clothes in well over a century. And still, I couldn’t stop checking myself over before going downstairs.

That was all it was, a habit that refused to die. It had nothing to do with wanting to look presentable to the strange little brusang in my sitting room.

It wasn’t like Amy tried to make herself presentable. The poor thing had been trying to end her own life, most likely. Incidents of self-harm and suicide were higher in brusang than other populations. Many of them didn’t adapt well to their new vampiric traits and considered themselves monstrous.

That showed how highly they regarded us full-blood vampires, which was not at all.

I wondered what Amy’s story was, if she was someone’s human blood pet who begged to be turned in order to match the lifespan of herverakt, her protector. A lot of naive humans did that, fell in love with the vampires who fed on them and proposed being turned so they would have centuries together.

Of course, any vampire who agreed to such a thing was a massive piece of shit, because a human had to be near death for the turning process to work. And then, it only worked about half the time.

Amy was one of the lucky ones to be alive.

Once down the stairs and on the first floor, I smiled at the sound of Jo’s whistling as she tidied up the massive open-concept kitchen. Happy humans always expressed themselves in the most amusing ways.

At the entrance to the front sitting room, I paused to take in a passed-out Amy splayed out on the settee. A blanket covered her legs, probably Lourna’s doing. The empty glass of blood sat on a side table.

She already looked healthier, with color in her cheeks and more softness to her face. Everything about her had been brittle and sharp out in the courtyard, from her limbs to her tongue. She had been defensive but fragile, like a cornered animal caught in a trap.

“What happened to you, little one?” I wondered aloud.

She had been clearly starving, but there was a fierceness to her. A clear will to live. And yet she seemed put off at the idea of taking blood from a wrist, the most benign of all places. At least the glass idea seemed to work.

I clicked my tongue in self-chastisement as I entered the room. It was disquieting to watch her sleep from the doorway while creating a narrative in my head, and I intended to keep my word to her about not being a creep.

Scooping under her back and knees, I lifted her limp form off the sofa and secured her against my chest. She was still light in my arms but there was more heft to her than before, which was a good thing. A sign that my blood was doing its job of replenishing much-needed nutrients.

Amy’s head rested on my shoulder, her cheek nuzzling my shirt. Her hand even curled into the fabric from where it rested on her stomach. Despite her stirring, she didn’t wake from the healing sleep. Her eyes were shut and moving behind her eyelids.

She wasn’t likely to hear me, but I spoke to her in a low voice anyway. “I’m taking you to the guest room. Rest as long as you need, no one will disturb you.”

A soft sigh escaped Amy’s lips and her head fell back slowly. If she’d been awake, I’d assume she was trying to look up at me. I looked down just as her head came forward, and felt her lips brush my neck just above my shirt collar. And like the strike of a match, my body reacted.

“Fuck.” I groaned at the lengthening of my fangs, the pulsing ache in my upper jaw, and my own heartbeat elevating in a sudden rush.

“Hmm… ” Amy mumbled in her sleep, her lips gently mouthing over the blood vessel in my neck over and over. Not quite kissing or biting, but just… lazily tasting. She was still hungry, her instincts taking over as she slept and seeking more sustenance.

There was no fear in her motions now, no hint of the pinched look of disgust from earlier. But she was also unconscious, with no idea of what she was doing. If she did know, she would probably be horrified and press herself against a far wall like she did in my courtyard.

Her lips were soft, and it had been a long, long time since a woman nuzzled my neck before helping herself to my blood. I’d forgotten how sensitive the area was, how the warm contact made me crave physical connection.

But I was not about to take liberties with an unconscious brusang, no matter how good her mouth felt.

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