Blood Tint ~ Part 23

{Start with Part 1}

Blood Tint ~ Part 23

“We’d been in port for a fortnight,” Daci continued, “and a demon had killed my quartermaster– and not just ‘a’ demon, but the dockworkers all called it the Demon. Investigating the city night led me to believe a vampire might be responsible. I took it as my responsibility to deal with it. I’d ridded more than one county of rogues before, usually with the help of others, like-minded. Still, it had to be done.

“You were a… vampire hunter?” Neave asked, a quirk of a smile despite the seriousness.

“In both senses of the word, Darling, though not in some time. Nonetheless, Alak wasn’t hard to find.”

“I knew how to hide,” I said, “and fight if I was found, but from and against normal people, not my own kind.”

“Alak was strong physically, but also terribly weak at the same time. The psychic lack in him took away so many of his senses along with his sense. I found him in an abandoned farm house a few miles from the city.”

“Abandoned, most likely, because of me.”

“Not necessary, Alak,” Daci said evenly, and I recognized the tone. I was recriminating, and she was telling me not to. “But the place did smell strongly of him, and those he’d taken there. I knew I was right, then, and knew I had to kill him.”

Neave almost interrupted there, I could tell in my defense, but caught herself after looking over at me.

“We fought. Alak was strong and fast, but mad, and I was experienced and faster.”

“She had me pinned, beaten, a knife to my neck. We heal fast and sure, but not from decapitation or something equally catastrophic.”

Daci and I both paused there. I remembered the sorrowful ice in her eyes, steeled to put down a rabid dog.

“But, clearly, you didn’t, Daciana,” Neave prompted.

“No.”

“Why?”

Daci still looked at me.

“I saw something in him. Beyond his madness and pain, his crushing loss; and beyond that something else. He didn’t _feel_ dark-driven. He had a, nobility? A potential? After all this time, I still don’t have the words for it. But, even as my blade nicked his throat, I decided on a different course of action. I was long tired of death – of humankind and ours. If Alak was what I began to think, then, perhaps, I could rescue him from what he’d become. If I couldn’t, I knew I’d have to kill him despite, but I felt I had to try. I would take him away, bring him home, bring him back to himself.”

“You subdued him?”

“After a fashion. Remember, Alak had been missing something vital for a longer than he could remember. A starving man looks kindly upon she who feeds him.”

“So…”

“I fucked him unconscious. Quite literally. Even secondhand, filtered through me, the intensity of _pleasure_ transmitted through the act was-“

“Overwhelming,” I finished. “This memory is seared in me, Neave. I’d been certain I was about to die, finally – almost gratefully – and then my vanquisher is straddling me, cutting my rags away and enveloping me with hand, then mouth, then cunt. I could have struck back, fought, but her feelings, the emanations of pleasure, lust, and pleasure, flattened me. I thought then I was going to die a different way, and when I didn’t, when I found I was more alive than I could remember, I thought Daci was a goddess.”

Daci smiled.

“It took a long time to get back to Dimir, and much longer still to bring Alak out of the haze he’d been living in for so long. Back then it would have been called almost resurrection. Today more like restoration.”

“Daci became my healer. A caretaker, mentor, teacher. And it was a long, hard road. I had killed hundreds, even thousands in and around Ayutthaya, Neave. More than most vampires surviving today. And my re-education cost more lives. Dozens. I made mistakes, I had nightmares, lapses, reversions, and for a night, or a week, or a month, I’d be the demon again, and Daci had to choose once again. I thought.. It’s been over 100 years since anything like tonight happened.”

“What happened, Alak?”

“A nightmare. I was the monster again. I hunted New York, and almost killed an innocent, just like when I was the Demon.”

“A dream, Alak?, but-”

“No, a half dream. A hallucination. I was hunting. Daci barely stopped me in time.”

I looked down, sadness washing over me, and I spoke slower, the words unwilling to come.

“I don’t know why, but something in me is slipping, and I don’t know if I can control it. I _do_ know I’m not safe to be around. Not for you. You have to understand when I say-“

“Shh.” Neave interrupted, fingers gently on my lips. “Don’t say it.”

I took her hand.

“Neave…”

“Alak, I’m an adult, aware, informed. I’m responsible for myself, and choose what I do. I choose what risks I’m willing to take.”

Part of me leapt for joy. Another cringed in fear – for her.

“Even knowing what I was? What I am, maybe, still?”

Neave didn’t answer. Instead she took my head in her hands and pulled me into a kiss, and the contact… Neave’s broadcast of want, and the near electric jolts of love, stilled my objections in my throat.

{To Be Continued}