In the Contagion of Blood Read online

  “I asked myself the same question,” he said. “And I have not found the answer.”

  “Some dissertation,” I murmured.

  “My paper was about the life of Morgan Le Fae. It was completely affected by her inability to be accepted by either her mother or her father’s court.”

  “But surely you must have been able to prove who her real father was, to have your theory stand at all.”

  “Well, there were great plagues in Ireland at the time, one right before he appeared and one right when he disappeared,” Turin said. “There was also a famine.”

  “Circumstantial evidence.”

  Our words faded out as we entered the grounds inside the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey. I did a little bit of homework on the flight over and I knew the location had been a religious site for more than six hundred years. Before even a stone of the Abby was built in 1245. The Abby had fallen into ruin in the 1400s, under the rulership of King John, when all the money was redirected from the churches to the battles against France.

  You would think the Fantom world would keep record of the past better than we do, but unfortunately history is only ever kept by the winners and it’s tainted by what happened before. Always twisted and turned into someone’s perspective who wants the people after them to think a certain way. And in this case, the light fae of the Seelie Court and their allies, Spring and Summer, were the winners and all the rest of us had bowed to their rule and whatever history they wanted to tell us. I had a sneaking suspicion, as Turin’s eyes lit up as we approached the altar, that he was one of those who didn’t quite believe all the “truths” of the Seelie Court.

  Even for all of their long lives and the millennia they lived, they forgot more than the miniscule humans remembered. The fae lost memories of places. When it came to Glastonbury Abby, the fae wanted it forgotten. But it wasn’t because of King Arthur or Morgan Le Fae or anything to do with that.

  It was because of the massacre here twenty years ago. Even I could remember it and I was not fae. During the Glastonbury festival, a huge coming together of different peoples from our world, the mages, the gargoyles, the vampires, the fae. It was one of those equalizing events where, even though we were under fae rule, they tried to make it seem we all lived equally together. But as the bands took the stage one after the other and the crowd got a little crazier, something completely unheard of happened. From the tower at the top of Glastonbury tor, some crazy man opened fire. The gargoyles took flight, but instead of flying to the source of the bullets they abandoned the scene. The vampires disappeared and the mages were left to die. Even fae died that day. Two hundred of us was the tally, if you include the humans who mingled unknowingly amongst us.

  Humans couldn’t find a reason, but we knew. The psychotic murderer had been a general in the Seelie Court’s army. They tried to capture him alive, enclosing the Tor in vines and light, but they couldn’t stop the magic-laced bullets. Finally, the general killed himself and they took back the Tor. Scrawled in blood inside the tower had been a single message, desperately scrubbed at for years, but people knew what it said. It was whispered in dank corners and houses of dark magic. It wasn’t always thought to be wrong but it certainly wasn’t accepted. It said: Die all you who eat from the rot of the Seelie Court.

  It was quite startling how quickly Glastonbury and all of the stories around it had become a gray patch in our history, only whispered about in dark evenings. It was completely unheard of that a fae would be consumed by such blind murderous rage. I had been in school at the time, and my family had talked about it because they believed it should not be hidden. But we only talked about it once. After that it was never brought up, like it hadn’t happened. Now, as I stood here and looked around, I knew it had existed.

  The jagged broken walls of the Glastonbury Abbey rose cold and damp around us. It felt like a fog in my head. It was tangible and in the air around us. The scent of wet stone and lingering moss settled in every particle of air. But there was a taste of something else. I sniffed the air as Turin gazed at me, his eyes piercing as they glided over my body, but it was obvious he could smell it, too. There was something faint behind the mist, something fetid and rotted, as if drifting up from a dim dark past.

  I scanned the murky walls the Abbey as best I could. The Abbey was lit, but the lights were for show, not for actually seeing anything. They were carefully placed to create stark outlines of the remnant church walls and create impenetrable shadows around it. But Turin was a vampire, he didn’t need light to see. He reached back and grabbed my hand startling me in the darkness has his cold long fingers enveloped mine. I almost yanked my hand back. Nobody touched a blood mage purposefully, except other blood mages. But his fingers closed tighter around mine, not in force but in reassurance as if to let me know he was okay touching a blood mage.

  “He was right,” Turin said, as we step forward onto the walkway that led down the center of the church ruins. His steps slowed as we approached the altar hiding in the shadows. The fingers of Turin’s free hand reached out to touch the raised black stone entwined DNA symbol that was on the altar, but I grabbed him back.

  “Don’t touch it!” I insisted. “It’s the same symbol that was on that shifter’s back. Don’t touch it…”

  Turin’s eyes flicked to me. He clenched his fist and dropped his hand, taking a step back as if he didn’t trust himself. The air around the altar positively thrived with an energy, not rising up from the ground, but coming from the altar itself. Unseen, but definitely felt. It rose directly up and circled in the air. Turin breathed in deeply as the energy rose and encircled us. The pulsating energy was alive in the space. The power descended from the air around us and drove into the core of my body, heating me up and making my skin thrum. Turin’s eyes were aligned in a faraway place, full of excitement. A light breeze touched my skin, feathering in the dark, goosebumps rose, but in a way, that made me want to touch something.

  Another being.

  Turin stood next to me and suddenly I could feel the blood in his veins, regardless of his vampirism. I wanted to reach out and touch him and pull him towards me, feel our skin pressed against each other and touch the dancing blood beneath.

  My breath became shallow as I dragged it in between my bared teeth. All of my body tingled, as if there was a vibrant energy alive inside of me, craving the touch of flesh. Heat radiated from my face and Turin took in a deep breath through his nose and I knew he could smell me and sense my desire for him. There was a hunger of desire in his eyes that met mine. It was as if we had come to church not to pray to a god or to an angel or even to a saint, but to pray folded in the carnal flesh of each other.

  Vampires moved fast, but at that moment Turin didn’t move at all. He stood there, hands balled into fists against his sides, his broad chest towered in front of me. And it was me who touched him first. I brought my cold hand away from my athame and raised it up to touch his steady jaw. I hesitated an inch from him, feeling the heat radiating off his body. People believed vampires were cold, but anything with blood inside it can be warm if you know how to sing just right. I couldn’t stop myself, I began to hum the song, calling his blood to the surface, forward into his lips, his extremities. His nostrils flared and his eyes narrowed, but I couldn’t stop. Like an empty chalice waiting to be filled I pulled what blood was in him forward. I was thirsty.

  But he was slow and deliberate and…cautious.

  I had been told it was impossible to sing a vampire.

  But they were wrong.

  It is not that you cannot sing a vampire. It is that they can stop you if they desire. But he didn’t. He understood the only thing I want on this cold, dark night was our blood together, pressing as close as we possibly can. I knew he could stop me simply by raising a hand or saying a word, but as his fists unclenched by his sides, his lips softened and he lowered his head towards me. My chin was already lifted and waiting for him, every part of me wanting to be filled. But his mouth was surprisingly soft and gent
le as they pressed their way to mine. I could feel the heat of whoever’s blood was in him and my tongue lightly stroked his bottom lip. The song in my throat dimmed, but its job was done.

  This wasn’t right.

  This so wasn’t right.

  I didn’t even know this man, this vampire, but all I wanted was to have him strip be bare and fill me with every inch of the red-hot blood now simmering in his veins.

  I tasted his lips, intertwining my fingers in his and lifting his hand against my hips. It only took him a millisecond to pull me closer, and I could feel the blood rising in the swell of his pants. A fever was burning me inside from between my legs and into my hands.

  There was nothing to stop this.

  A groan escaped from his mouth as he clenched my hips, pulling me against him, a coiled spring ready to explode. I had never been with a vampire before but I was desperate for it right now. It clouded my thoughts and my world. There was nothing to stop this.

  Nothing.

  “Is this okay?” His words were a low growl against my lips.

  “Yes,” I whispered and I didn’t even recognize my voice. “Yes.”

  And with a speed I did not know truly existed I was in his arms and on the ground, undressed, and he was upon me, filling the void that I had suddenly discovered inside me.

  #six

  A knocking on the door woke me up. I opened my eyes, looking around my small wood-paneled bedroom in Magdalene House, the tiny bed-and-breakfast where we were staying.

  “Theía Ophelia! Time to wake up!” Helene hammered on the door again. “Why did you lock the door?”

  It all flooded back in a red hot second. Turin. I twisted my head to the side.

  Fuck.

  I jumped up and pulled the curtains closed. Turin was in my bed, his arm flung over his head, eyes closed.

  My head throbbed in pain and my whole body felt…shit…really, really good.

  I bit my lower lip as Helene hammer on the door again. “Come on, I want to get to the lab,” she said. “It’s already seven o’clock.”

  How the hell was I going to explain this? She knew I didn’t know Turin. She knew I just met him yesterday, the same time she did. How would I explain why he was in my bed? My whole body rushed with heat and a shiver moved through me as I remembered the Abbey, pressed into the dirt with Turin deep inside me and the shadows above me. It had been…amazing.

  “My alarm didn’t go off,” I yelled through the door. “Go down to breakfast. I’ll meet you there.”

  “But –”

  “Go!”

  I could still pull rank with Helene and I breathed a sigh of relief as I heard her mumble “okay” as she stepped away from the door. Her footsteps wandered down the bed-and-breakfast’s hallway. The building itself was incredibly small and I could still hear as she made it to the bottom of the stairs.

  By the Seelie queen what had they heard last night?

  It was all a blur, as if I had been drugged. But I saw his face. Turin had felt the same thing. And then what? We made it back here? I couldn’t stop. I needed him again and again and again.

  I frowned, staring at his broad chest, free of the fine weathered quilt that covered the bed.

  The way I was feeling wasn’t right. The plains of his face were smooth and peaceful in the damp morning light. I wanted to kiss him. And that feeling in the pit of my stomach moving through my entire body, it wasn’t just wanting him. There was some kind of crazy voodoo going on because the more I stared at him the softer my heart felt.

  “Get a grip,” I mumbled to myself, stopping my hand from reaching for him.

  I’d never had a one night stand before. The last thing I needed was to have one and then think I was in love with the guy. What an idiot I was.

  “Get up,” I said loudly, banging the bathroom door to startle him awake.

  He sat up instantly, as if he’d actually just been lying there with his eyes closed listening to Helene and I. His gaze took in everything from the top of my head down to my toes, and I suddenly realized I was standing there completely naked. I clenched my teeth but wasn’t about to cover myself up. I will not be ashamed of my body. But I wasn’t going to let him lay there and look at it. I stepped into the bathroom.

  “Close the door on your way out,” I said. “And make sure my niece doesn’t see you.”

  I rested against the closed door until I heard him pull himself up and out of the bed.

  ***

  I stopped in the doorway to the dining room. He’d done exactly the opposite of sneaking out without my niece seeing him. Turin was sitting directly across from Helene at a tiny breakfast table. I turned every shade of red, I’m pretty sure, as they both looked up smiling.

  “Turin’s staying at our hotel, too!” Helene said, as if she had discovered some lovely present from the Beltane goblin under her pillow.

  “Good morning, Turin,” I said as coldly as I could. He knew I didn’t want him there, but it didn’t stop him from grinning at me as if we were longtime friends. His gaze, that hinted of last night and his lips on my neck, only deepened the red pouring across my skin, down my arms and to the tips of my fingers.

  Dammit.

  If I kept blushing like this, Helene would know something was up. I pressed the back of my teeth together clenching down tightly as I breathed cool air in through my nose, sending it to every part of my body, willing it to cool down, convincing my blood to relax and go neutral. There was no way I was going to give away what happened last night between me and this devilishly handsome vampire.

  “I didn’t think vampires ate breakfast.” I gave him a small pleasant smile, showing distance and definitely no familiarity.

  “Well, no, but I wanted to speak to you and your niece this morning.”

  The bed-and-breakfast is small and the dining area where we were crammed was narrow with just tables of two set up along the walls. I stood awkwardly looking around, but Turin reached across the narrow dining area grabbed a chair and pulled it up between him and Helene, motioning me to sit. My knees bumbled against both Helene’s and Turin’s as I jammed myself into the seat. Helene moved hers away, but Turin just stared at me, his deep brown eyes, soft and evocative of those moments when our knees were touching through the night.

  A cough came out of my mouth but I covered it before I blew over the faded pink fabric flowers sitting crookedly in the dusty vase in the center of the table. The table was already laden with breakfast items, but my stomach was too twisted to eat. I glanced at the scones and pastries and shook my head, not daring to make eye contact. Turin reached for the pot of tea and poured out a steaming, fragrant cup of Earl Grey heavily laced with bergamot, and, if I’m not mistaken, its bergamot from the hilltops of northern India.

  I took a deep, long drink of the hot liquid, enjoying the way it burned down my throat and infused my body.

  “I was thinking about the symbol last night,” Turin said, leaning back in his chair, and I nearly cough up my tea. I shoot him a dirty look. That’s what he was thinking about last night? Great. I must’ve made some impression.

  “In all of the studies that I’ve done of the Glastonbury area I have never seen that symbol before. It’s not from there. It’s not from this region at all.”

  “What does it look like?” Helene asked.

  “It was two parallel lines with a diagonal line running through it,” I said. “Exactly like we saw on the corpse of the shifter.”

  Helene grabbed a toothpick and scrawled out the symbol in the raspberry red jam on her toast. “Could it be part of a magic spell?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I think it’s pretty obvious it has to be.”

  She dropped her head and glanced over at me sheepishly. I cringed. Even I had heard the sharpness of my tone. “Sorry,” I said. “It’s not you, I just…I didn’t get enough sleep last night.”

  I so wanted to kick Turin under the table for the way his face broke out in a grin, as if my lack of sleep was some badge f
or him. But any movement I made under the table was going to be noticed by Helene, and his knees were only about half an inch from mine. Instead, I breathed in sharply through my nose and refocused on the lines in Helene’s jam.

  “But…” I glanced briefly over at Turin, what the hell do I care what he thinks? “It was a mark of necromancy.”

  It’s the blood mages who govern necromancy. We are the only ones who can bring a dead body to life or animate a corpse. Helene was too young to know these spells, but I was well-versed in them.

  “But it’s not quite right. The mark should go like this.” I took the toothpick from Helene and quickly drew out two lines with a diagonal line going the other direction. “It should go left to right, not right to left. Is there a way this could come from medieval times?“ I asked Turin.

  “I have never seen it before,” Turin said. “I’ve never seen either one of those marks before.”

  Great, now he thought I was some of necromancy freak.

  This wasn’t going well.

  But then again, why wouldn’t a vampire like necromancy? Weren’t they practically walking dead themselves?

  I shook the thought out of my head.

  We are not shifters. He is not my mate. Last night was a mistake, some crazy ruins-of-the-church-at-the-altar kind of bullshit.

  “There may be some clues in the blood of how the symbol animated it. I have to test the flesh.”

  A large grin danced across Helene’s face. She could hardly wait. I grinned back. I can’t help it. She’s not my daughter, but that’s so my girl.

  #seven

  “Don’t you have to rest or something?” I asked Turin as he followed us out into the narrow cobblestoned street and ushered us towards the lab, which was apparently just down the road.

  His damnable smile turned on me with a slight shake of his head. “Never,” he said. “Do you?” The look in his eyes was almost concerned and I saw Helene glance from him to me. I quickly sped up my steps, swinging my arms with determination as if it was my daily workout.