Part 19 (1/2)
His smile held no mercy whatsoever. ”You only wish you could say the same about how I make you feel.”
She wasn't sure how he did it-how he could move so fast in the time it took for her to blink-but in that same instant, Lucan's breath was skating close below her ear, his deep voice rumbling along her neck as he pressed his body against hers.
It was too much to process: this terrifying new reality, the questions she didn't even know how to begin asking. And then there was the other disorientation brought on by the exquisite power of Lucan's touch, his voice, his lips softly grazing her tender skin.
”Stop it!” She tried to push him, but he was a wall of muscle and cool, dark purpose. He withstood her anger, and the futile blows she threw at his ma.s.sive chest didn't seem to faze him in the least. His placid expression remained as unmoving as his body.
She backed away from him in frustration, in anguish. ”G.o.d, what are you trying to prove here, Lucan?”
”Only that I am not the monster you want to believe I am. Your body knows me. Your senses tell you that you are safe with me.
You need only listen to them, Gabrielle. And listen to me, when I tell you that I did not come here to frighten you. I will never strike you, nor will I ever take your blood. On my honor, I will never harm you.”
She let out a choked laugh, a knee-jerk reaction to the idea of a vampire possessing anything close to honor, let alone pledging it to her now. But Lucan was unwavering, solemn. Maybe she was crazy, because the longer she held his silver stare, the weaker her grasp on the doubt she wanted so desperately to cling to.
”I am not your enemy, Gabrielle. For centuries, my kind and yours have needed each other to survive.”
”You feed on us,” she whispered brokenly, ”like parasites.”
Something dark moved across his features, but he did not rise to the contempt in her accusation. ”We have protected you as well. Some of my kind have even cherished yours, sharing life together as blood-bonded mates. It is the only way the vampire race continues. Without human females to bear our young, we would eventually be extinct. It is how I came to be, and how all those like me came into being as well.”
”I don't understand. Why can't you... mix with women of your own kind?”
”Because there are none. Through a genetic failure, Breed offspring are solely male, from the very first of the line, down through hundreds of generations.” This last revelation, among all the other astonis.h.i.+ng news she was hearing, gave her pause. ”So, that means your mother is human?”
Lucan gave a slight nod. ”She was.”
”And your father? He was... ”
Before she could say the word vampire, Lucan replied. ”My father, and the seven other Ancient Ones like him, were not of this world. They were the first of my kind, beings from another place, very different from this planet.”
It took her a second to absorb what she had heard, particularly on the heels of everything else she was coming to grips with at the moment. ”What are you saying-they were aliens?”
”They were explorers. Savage, warminded conquerors, in fact, who crash-landed here a very long time ago.”
Gabrielle stared at him. ”Your father was not only a vampire, but an alien besides? Do you have any idea how insane that sounds?”
”It is the truth. My father 's people did not call themselves vampires but, by human definition, that is what they were. Their digestive systems were too advanced for Earth's crude protein. They could not process the plants or animals as humans did, so they learned to take their nourishment from blood. They fed without restraint and wiped out entire populations in the process.
You've heard of some of them, no doubt: Atlantis. The Mayan kingdom. Countless other unnamed, unrecorded civilizations that vanished seemingly overnight. Many of the ma.s.s deaths historically attributed to plagues and famine were not that at all.”
Good Lord.
”a.s.suming you can be taken seriously about any of this, you're talking about thousands of years of carnage.” A chill spread over her limbs when he said nothing to deny it. ”Do they they... do you-G.o.d, I can't believe I'm having this conversation. Do vampires feed on any living thing, like each other maybe, or are we humans the main course?”
Lucan's expression was grave. ”Human blood alone contains the specific combinations of nutrients we need in order to survive.”
”How often?”
”We must feed every few days, a week sometimes. More is required if we are injured and need strength to heal from wounds.”
”And you... kill when you feed?”
”Not always, seldom, in fact. Most of the race feeds from willing human Hosts.”
”People actually volunteer to let you torture them?” she asked, incredulous.
”There is no torture involved, unless we will it. When a human is relaxed, the bite of a vampire can be very pleasurable. When it's over, the Host recalls nothing because we leave no memory of ourselves behind.”
”But you do kill sometimes,” she said, finding it hard not to sound accusing.
”At times, it is necessary to take a life. The Breed shares an oath never to prey on the innocent or infirm.”
She scoffed. ”How n.o.ble of you.”
”It is n.o.ble, Gabrielle. If we wanted to-if we gave ourselves over to that part of us that is still the warring conqueror of our forebears, we could enslave all of mankind. We could be kings, with every human existing only to feed and amuse us. That very idea is at the core of a long, deadly battle between my kind and our enemy brothers, the Rogues. You saw some of them yourself, that night outside the dance club.” ”You were there?”
As soon as she said it, she knew he had been. She recalled the striking face and sungla.s.s -shaded eyes that had watched her through the crowd. She'd felt a connection to him even then, in that brief glance that had seemed to reach out to her through the smoke and darkness of the club.
”I'd been tracking that group of Rogues for about an hour,” Lucan said, ”watching for the prime opportunity to move in and take them out.”
”There were six of them,” she remembered vividly, seeing in her mind the half-dozen terrible faces, their glowing, feral eyes and snapping fangs. ”You were going to confront them by yourself?”
His shrug seemed to say that it was not unusual odds, him against many. ”I had some help that night-you and your cell phone camera. The flash surprised them, gave me the chance to strike.”
”You killed them?”
”All but one. I'll get him, too.”
Looking at his fierce expression, Gabrielle had no doubt that he would. ”The cops sent a squad car out to the club after I reported the killing. They didn't find anything. No evidence at all.”
”I made sure they wouldn't.”
”You made me look like a fool. The police insisted I was making all of it up.”
”Better that, than tipping them off to the very real battles that have been taking place on human streets for centuries. Can you imagine the wide-scale panic if substantiated reports of vampire attacks were to start making news around the world?”
”Is that what's happening? These kinds of killings are going on all the time, everywhere?”
”More and more, lately. The Rogues are a faction of blood addicts that care only about their next fix. At least, that had been their mode until very recently. Something's going on now. They're preparing. Becoming organized. They've never been more dangerous than they are now.”
”And thanks to the pictures I took outside that club, these Rogue vampires are coming after me.”
”The incident you witnessed brought you to their attention, no doubt, and any human makes good sport for them. But it is the other pictures you've taken that have likely put you in the most jeopardy.”