Page 85 of The Reveal
That’s not all. I have flashes of him running his nail along his own neck, then guiding my head there, holding me in place until I began to lick.
Until I could gulp him down, warm and bright and thick on my tongue.
I’m breathing heavy now and I look around again, wildly, and that’s when I see the still figure standing over by the tall windows that make up the wall above the street, staring out.
It’s just a dream,I tell myself.Just a crazy dream after a crazy day ...
My hand moves of its own accord, up to my neck, where I can feel what ought to be a terrible, open wound or nothing but the smooth bit of skin it was yesterday—
But what I feel instead is a faint, raised scar.
Like a wound that’s already healed.
I’m scrambling out of bed before I know what I’m doing, and it’s only when my feet hit the hardwood floor that I realize I’m naked.
I should probably care about that, but I don’t. That phoenix tattoo on his back is like some kind of homing beacon and I move toward him, not sure why I’m running directly toward the very creature who made medrink his blood.
I don’t know what I might have said when I get to the window where he’s standing, but the rain stops me.
Because I remember, then, that Savi makes it rain. That she’s doing this right now.
I remember that clearing, how it was soaked with blood. This must be her way of washing it all away.
It’s suddenly clear to me then. This ecosystem I’ve lived in for years now without knowing it. How they work together—vampire games, werewolf brawn, and a sorceress to tie it all together and sometimes make it pretty.
I put my palms on the glass and let the chill seep into them. I have the urge to press my forehead against the glass, but that makes me think about Augie belowground, and that’s another spiral of shame and fury.
“How long have I been out?” I manage to ask.
He doesn’t look at me. “You slept all night once I brought you here.”
I shut my eyes. “What did you do to me?”
It takes Ariel so long to answer that I open my eyes again, then turn to look at him. He’s staring out toward the rain, out over the buildings across Main Street, and I find it ... odd.
All our other interactions were heavy on contact and intensity.
Now I’m naked and in his bedroom, and he won’t even look at me. If even half of what’s in my head happened last night, doesn’t that mean ...?
“Ariel.” I make my voice as stern as I can. But maybe what comes out is scared. “What did you do to me?”
“I saved you.” He says it quietly. As if he is saying it to himself. Or maybe to the rain. “Isavedyou, Winter, when what I could have done, more easily and without your input, was simply help myself to whatever gift you received from last night’s sacrifice.”
Ty called it a gift too, I remember. And clearly not a happy one. I decide I can’t focus on that. My heart pounds, but I remember the taste of his blood, and I don’t know if it’s his or mine I feel rushing too hard inside me. “What do you mean, help yourself?”
He turns to me then, his silver eyes blazing, though his mouth is stern.
“If I take your life, I get your life.” There’s a starkness in his voice that I don’t understand. A bleakness. “That means all your visions. All your memories. All your hopes and dreams, everything you carry in your blood and bones, all mine.”
I don’t know why that makes me ... not as upset as he looks. “Thanks for showing restraint, I guess?”
He does not look restrained at the moment. He looks ... bothered. Furious. Confused, even—though it seems ridiculous to imagine that a twenty-five-hundred-year-old vampire could beconfusedabout anything.
On him it looks a lot like temper.
Yet I don’t flinch when he reaches over and runs his fingers over that very same mark on my neck that I found myself. “I could have simply helped myself to the gift you received from last night’s sacrifice. It would have been so easy. Of course, if I had, even if I’d showed restraint, you would be little more than a vegetable now.”
I lift my hand as if to push his away, but it doesn’t end up that way. Instead, the two of us stand there, rain beating against the windowpanes, both of us holding tight to that bite mark on my neck.
