I look away, feeling shame, but everywhere I look I see blood. “Would I have killed you? If you didn’t stop me?”
“Only three ways to kill a vampire,” he reminds me, adjusting his grip, loosening a little. “You can’t bleed one dry. But you can take a lot of their life force. You can make them weak.”
“Have I made you weak?”
“You would like that, wouldn’t you?”
I nod. No use lying. “If I make you weak, maybe you’ll let me go.”
“It’s too late, Lenore,” he says gravely. “You’re mine now. You just cemented it.”
I gulp, my stomach flipping. “You’re auctioning me off tonight.”
“And that’s of my choosing. But, until I consciously let you go, you’re mine. That’s what happens when you feast on the blood of another vampire when you’re still becoming.”
Realization dawns on me, kicking me in the head.
“You tricked me,” I say, my voice a hush. “You weren’t trying to feed me—”
“I was trying to keep you,” he finishes, observing my face with little flicks of his eyes. “You belong to me now, until I decide to let you go.”
“But…I already fed from you before. In bed.”
“You were in The Pause. It has to happen now, just as it did. I knew that I couldn’t get you to attack me on your own accord, but if I let you see the blood, smell it, it would have pushed you over the edge. I was right.”
I shake my head, fighting to get off him. “You don’t own me. You never will. No one will.”
“You can keep saying that, but it doesn’t make it true.”
“You sicken me,” I seethe.
“I know I do,” he says. “But this a whole new world, Lenore. And it’s your world now. You’re going to be sickened by a lot of things.”
He finally loosens his grip and I scramble to get off of him. I step down on the carpet and turn my back to him, face in my hands, feeling so lost and unscrambled that I don’t know what way is up anymore. I certainly don’t know who I am. I mean, look at me. I’m covered in blood, I must look like a monster.
“You’re standing on glass,” Absolon comments calmly.
I look down at my bare feet, at the shattered martini glass around it. I can feel the shards poking up through my soles, but I don’t feel any pain. Not physically, anyway. Emotionally is another story.
He gets up from his chair and I hear him stride over to the door to the lounge, opening it. “Wolf,” he barks. “Come in here, please.”
I stare down at my feet, feeling blank inside, then turn to see Wolf stepping in the room, staring at the both of us, brow raised. “Things get out of hand?”
I look at Absolon. His white shirt is completely splattered in blood, and I must look like a fright.
“She was hungry,” he says, eyeing me admiringly. Then he looks back to Wolf. “I need you to get Yvonne to clean up this mess, and wake up Ezra while you’re at it. I’ll be taking Lenore to her room.”
He gives me a commanding look to come over and I’m half-expecting him to snap his fingers.
I raise my chin, faking calmness, coolness, all those vampire things I should be but aren’t, and walk out of the cigar lounge. Behind me Absolon gives a grunt of disapproval, then appears by my side, taking me by the elbow, his fingers digging into my skin.
“You know you don’t have to hold me so hard,” I tell him as he leads me out of Dark Eyes.
“I believe I do,” he says. “You might take on some of my characteristics for a while.”
This is news to me. “What kind of characteristics?” I ask as we head up the stairs, holding up my nightgown with my hand so I don’t trip.
“Not sure yet,” he says, his tone tinged with curiosity. “I hope for my sake it’s none of the bad ones.”
“You mean you have good characteristics?”
He shoots me a wry look. “They’re few and far between.”
He brushes against me as we round the corner to the main floor, his scent flooding through me again, but it’s not just of roses and tobacco anymore. I smell his blood too. The scent is indescribable, but it turns me warm from the inside out, not just stirring up my hunger, but desire, too. It feels like something very basic and raw and primal.
I swallow the feelings down.
He takes me up all the stairs until we get to my floor, but when we walk down past the roses and candles from earlier, he stops, his grip tightening on me.
“What do we have here?” he asks.
I stare. The roses are no longer dead, dried and shriveled. Instead, they’re alive again, the red petals so lush and voluminous…and dripping with blood.