Makeda licked her lips, her head swimming. “Too much.”
“No,” he grunted. “Take more.”
“Lucien.” Her back ground into the earth as he thrust. “Too much.”
He lowered the hand holding her mouth to his neck and pressed his forehead to hers. His eyes were closed and his face was incandescent.
“I can feel you,” he said. “I can feel myself in you. My cock. My blood.” He cursed in some ancient language. “Yene hiwot.”
He sounded desperate. She threw her arms around his shoulders, replete with his power, and wrapped her legs around his hips. The new angle drove her closer to the release that had been building since she’d driven her fangs into his skin.
Lucien flung her over the falls again, and she cried out when she came, dragging him with her into the rush of madness and release.
❖
They lay in the grass sloping up from the falls, the stars wheeling overhead as the moon sank under the horizon and night birds sang. Lucien played with her curls, spreading them out on the lush grass as they dried. His eyes were intent on his task, fascinated by her. Makeda glanced at the rough bite on his neck, which was almost healed. It was still an angry red but closing before her eyes.
“You didn’t bite me,” she said.
He paused, his hand hovering over her hair. “Did you want me to?”
“I suppose… I just assumed—”
“A bite is never assumed, Makeda. It’s a very intimate act. More intimate than sex. I would never bite you without asking.”
Her mouth dropped when she remembered her first violent night as an immortal. “You mean the night I woke when I bit you—”
Lucien stopped her mouth with his, crushing the apology from her lips.
“I wanted it,” he said when he came up for breath. “Even if I couldn’t admit it then. The tie between us… I wanted your bite, Makeda. If I hadn’t, I would have stopped you. I wouldn’t have even let you close to my neck.”
She couldn’t ignore it. “I violated a boundary even if I didn’t know it, and I am so sorry.”
“You didn’t know. And I’m the one who is sorry. I didn’t know what to say to you that night. You were so angry—with good reason—and I was thrilled and guilty at the same time. Ecstatic that you were alive and guilty that you’d been changed without your consent.”
“You were so cold.”
“No, I wasn’t.” He played with her curls again. “Trust me. If you’d had a civilized turning, Baojia and I would have talked to you before it. You would have had time, like Natalie, to come to terms with the transition. Understood what exchanging blood can mean.”
“What can it mean?” She propped herself on her elbows. “I bit you tonight, Lucien. You told me to—”
“I told you to”—he looked away—“because I’ve never experienced that pleasure before. And I wanted it with you.”
“Never?”
“No.”
Makeda blinked. Lucien was over two thousand years old. She had a hard time imagining there was any type of sexual pleasure he hadn’t explored with that many nights lived. He’d demonstrated more than a few mastered skills in the previous few hours.
“Didn’t you ever have vampire lovers?”
“Not many. And never the kind who…” He ran his hands through his damp hair. “Do we have to talk about this?”
“We just did things that are probably illegal in this country, and you’re reluctant to talk about your past biting history?”
He fell back on the grass with a rueful laugh. She crossed her arms and laid her head on his chest.
“Makeda…” He twisted a lock of hair around his finger. “Biting can be extremely pleasurable. During sex it’s otherworldly. But exchanging blood, taking my blood while I take yours, is also a tie. A very long-lasting one.”
“And you don’t want that tie with me?” It stung. Even though it was too soon. Even though they’d never talked of commitment. It stung.
He scowled. “Did I say that? Exchanging blood like that is equivalent of marriage for our kind. Mating.”
“Wait. That’s what vampires mean by mating? It’s an actual blood tie?”
“Yes.”
Oh. Well, she couldn’t argue with caution then, even if her own emotions were riotous. She was grateful he hadn’t taken advantage of her ignorance.
“But Baojia calls Natalie his mate.”
“Because for him she is, even if they haven’t exchanged blood. Once she becomes vampire, she’ll take his blood and he’ll take hers. It will tie them on an elemental level. Their amnis will join and…”
“I felt your amnis in me,” she said. “When I took your blood.”
“I offered it to you. I wanted you to take it. There’s no obligation, Makeda.”
She paused, her chest feeling tight and full. “Do you want my blood?”
His eyes told her without words. They flared with heat, and she saw his fangs lengthen behind his lips.
She let out a slow breath. “How do you know? We’ve only known each other—”
“We’ve known each other for months. Worked together for months. And been through a very soul-stripping experience. I have been alive more than two thousand years,” he said. “You are my match, Makeda. I am certain of it.”
So am I. Makeda couldn’t say the words even as her heart screamed them. She wasn’t a sentimental creature and she never had been. She had to examine this urge to cling to Lucien. Was it healthy? Codependence? Grasping the familiar in an unfamiliar world? Until she had more time, more confidence, and more familiarity with this life, she could never admit how much she wanted Lucien to belong to her.
He tugged her down to his mouth by the curl twisted around his finger. “You’ll know when you know,” he said. “We have plenty of time. Until then, feel free to take as much of my blood as you like.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” He nipped at her full lips. “I love how it feels. Plus it will make you stronger. My amnis is very old.”
She crawled over him, throwing a leg over his thighs. He was roused and ready; so was Makeda.
“Only if you’re sure,” she said, closing her eyes when he palmed her breasts and stroked.
His hands slid down her sides, gripped her hips, and lifted her onto his erection. “Very, very sure.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Lucien slept that day in the bosom of the earth, Makeda curled against his chest, his blood humming in her body. He could hear the crash of the falls overhead and the everyday sounds of humans as they went about their business. Goats and sheep trod over them, birds hopped, and children laughed and ran. And they rested, cradled by the red earth and the roots and rocks that sheltered them.
Makeda wasn’t a fastidious lover, for which Lucien was extremely grateful. He enjoyed getting dirty with a partner. Enjoyed cleaning up just as much. And with Makeda…
It was unlike anything else. She existed with him now, a part of his soul residing outside his body. He was heady with possession and knew Kato and Gedeyon would have to be careful for a few days. Until Lucien felt more balanced, any immortal his instincts told him could be competition would be in danger.
If Makeda were ready to offer her blood, it would be a moot point. But currently he resided in her blood. She didn’t reside in his. Her trust humbled him. She’d fallen asleep in his arms knowing that he hungered for her. He would never take her blood without her consent.
Not like you took her life.
Lucien’s conscience ate at him, but he pushed the quiet voice back. Makeda was happy. She’d laughed the night before. Smiled when they made love. She would be content when she was his. He would make sure of it. She’d never stare at the horizon again, searching for oblivion in the sunrise.
She would be his.
The other piece of his soul stirred and turned toward him, burying her face in his neck as she nuzzled closer.
Yene konjo. Yene hiwot.
My beauty.
My life.
She was beauty to him. She had a bump on her nose, a scar on her chin, and slightly knobby knees. Her ears were uneven on her head, and nothing could be more beautiful. He’d noticed it the night before, and the imperfection had delighted him. As did the distant look she got when she was thinking over a problem. She’d stare into the distance and focus inward. Her internal musings would hold the entirety of her attention, and Lucien would be forgotten. But when Makeda came back to herself, her eyes lit with the joy of a traveler returning home. It was as if she’d found the greatest adventure in her mind.
“Kiss me with the kisses of your mouth,” he whispered as she stirred in his arms. “For your love is more delightful than wine.”
Her eyes remained closed. “My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag,” she whispered. “But really he’s more like a lion.”
Lucien smiled. “You know Song of Solomon.”
“My father is a theological scholar. I read the Bible backward and forward whether I wanted to or not.” Her eyes opened with a glint. “But as a young girl, I may have found Song of Solomon the most tempting.”
“Makeda,” he breathed her name across her cheek. “My queen.”
“Is the sun down?”
He nodded.
“So we need to go back.”
“Only if you want to. We could stay here another night if you wish.”
“We shouldn’t.” She scraped a hand over her eyes and smiled. “We’re filthy.”
He glanced around the hollow he’d created in the earth. It was cozy to him, but he suspected it wasn’t to everyone’s taste. “It’s good clean dirt.”
Makeda laughed and poked at the earthen ceiling. “We’d better go. I should train with Kato tonight, and you need to talk with Saba about donating stem cells.”
He groaned and hid his face in her hair.
“Just get it over with,” Makeda said. “Your dreading it is probably worse than the actual conversation.”
“I don’t think she’s going to like this.”
“How do you know?” She looked up. “She’s scheming something right now. I’m certain of it.”
“What makes you say that?”
“It’s the look on her face. My mother gets the same look. Like… frustration and resolution all at once. When I was a child, my mother got that look right before she turned the car around and took us all home for being brats.”
“Well, she is a mother. She considers herself a mother to all vampires, in fact. No doubt she’s plenty annoyed with us right…” The realization hit him so hard he stopped breathing. Stopped talking.
Oh. Saba was planning something all right.
“Shit,” he muttered. “We need to go.”
“Oh?” Makeda rolled to the side and Lucien lifted his arms, spreading the ground above them as if opening a curtain. “What’s so—”
“She’s ready to turn the car around,” Lucien said. “You’re right. She’s fed up with the lot of us, and she’s deciding what she’s going to do.”
Makeda climbed out of the hole and shook out her hair. “So what’s the emergency?”
“Have you ever heard of the Axumite Dynasty?”
“It ruled Northern Ethiopia from the first to the ninth century,” Makeda said. “Of course I know it.”
“An Axumite emperor took one of Saba’s daughters for a lover. Then that emperor abused her trust and locked her in a sunny room as she rested.”
Makeda gasped. “What did Saba do?”
“She killed him, laid waste to the countryside, and ended a nine-hundred-year dynasty,” Lucien said, remembering the blackened churches and bloody stones as he climbed out of the earth and grabbed Makeda’s hand. “She didn’t hold back, Makeda. No one with any relation to the power structure survived. Women. Children. She wiped them from the face of the earth. Thousands of innocents were caught in the backlash of her rage.” He headed back up the hill and toward the river that would lead them to Lake Tana.
“But why would Saba—”
Lucien stopped and spun around, putting his hands on her shoulders. “I love my mother, Makeda. But she’s not… good. Or bad. Not in any way that modern people understand. When I say Saba is debating what to do about the future of the vampire world, it is very much an emergency.”
❖
They were only a few kilometers from the island when Makeda stopped, forcing Lucien to halt alongside her. He surfaced and wiped the water from his eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“You need to calm down,” she said. “If I can feel your nerves, she’ll be able to as well.”
“Saba is probably planning wide-scale destruction as a way of wiping out the Elixir problem and rebuilding immortal society. That’s what all the travel was about. That’s why Kato is here. She doesn’t see history in centuries, but millennia. Do you realize how many people that would affect? Some people think she’s a benevolent earth mother, but those people also forget the earth can be an uncontrollable bitch when it’s roused.”
“I know that, but you approaching her when you’re angry won’t help her to calm down. If you want her to calm down, you need to be calm too. Think. Don’t just react. Plan. Are you certain she wants to rebuild immortal society? You told me she didn’t like politics.”
“That’s why she goes the ‘razing empires and laying waste’ route.”
“So give her another option,” Makeda said. “Lucien, we have the cure. Don’t you think she’d rather donate a few stem cells rather than destroy entire societies and geographical areas?”
He paused and really thought about it… and he honestly didn’t know what Saba would prefer.
But he did know what Kato would prefer. And Ziri. They were moderates.
Arosh would vote for wholesale destruction.
“We’re asking her to donate stem cells that would change her family structure in massive ways,” Lucien said. “We’re asking her to basically adopt any infected vampire whose sire is no longer living. She’d be responsible for them. Stuck with them even if she didn’t like them. She stopped siring vampires long ago, Makeda, and she had her reasons.”
“So give her new reasons,” Makeda said. “Figure out how all these new children can help her or benefit her or… something.”
“Like how?”
She threw her head back in frustration. “I don’t know! You know this world far better than me. You’ll think of something. Just figure out a way that everyone becomes a winner—the infected, Saba, the world as a whole—and present that option to her. At least it may make her think twice about the wholesale destruction.”
He felt a smile threatening. “Just reason with my sire, stop world destruction, and make everyone a winner? Is that all you want?”
“Yep.” She smiled and pressed a quick kiss to his mouth. “That should do it.”
“Great.” He started swimming toward the island again. “I’ll get started on vampire sunscreen right after that.”
“I knew you were brilliant.”
❖
It scraped against every instinct in him, but Lucien left Makeda to train with Kato while he went to look for his mother. An hour of thinking aloud with Makeda was all he’d needed to formulate a plan that would cure their patients, prevent wholesale destruction—probably—and it might just straighten out the mess the immortal world was facing. In fact, it was Saba’s own bloody past that had been the key.
Saba was leaning on a rock near the coffee brazier, chatting with Hirut and chewing on a mefaka as the coffee roasted. She eyed Lucien as he sat down and stretched out his legs.
“Good. You got that out of your system,” she said. “Hopefully the girl will have more control now.”
“Salem, Hirut. Hello, Saba. And how are both of you this evening?”
Hirut laughed as Saba patted his cheek. “So shy, my son. Is your woman well?”
“She’s training with Kato right now.” He grabbed one of the chewing sticks from the small sack Saba carried at her waist and
bit down. The mefaka was as effective as a toothbrush, and Lucien preferred them when he could get them. “You visited Arosh when you were traveling, did you not?”
“I did.”
“And Ziri?”
She glanced at him, then at Hirut. “Why do you ask?”
“What are you planning, Emaye?”
Saba leaned back against the rock and looked up at the stars. “Do you have a cure for Geber’s poison yet?”
“Yes.”
Saba and Hirut both stared at him.
“Truly?” Hirut asked. “Lucien, that is wonderful!”
“How long?” Saba demanded.
“It hasn’t been tested. Makeda and I have to finalize the trial protocol with the doctors in Ireland. That’s where we’re going to run the tests. But we think it will work. She’s nearly certain of it, and so am I.” He met his mother’s eyes. “It’s not a cure, Saba, it’s a treatment. And the immortal patients will need stem cell donors.”
“Offspring? Siblings? Mates?”
“No. So far, there’s only one sample we’ve tested that has the immunity needed to battle the virus.”
Lucien knew the second it registered. “Me?” Saba’s lip curled slightly. “What do you want me to do?”
“We want to try both peripheral stem cell donation and bone marrow and see if one is more effective than another. The peripheral stem cells can be collected from your blood, the others can be collected with a needle into your pelvis. It’ll be more painful, but you’ll hardly feel it. I can do the procedure right here on the island.”
“And that’s all?” She narrowed her eyes. “That’s not all. You’re changing their blood, aren’t you? Making their blood mimic mine.”
Hirut sucked in a breath.
“Yes,” Lucien said. “After the transplant, their amnis will align with yours. They’ll be earth vampires, and they’ll have a sire bond with you.”
Saba started muttering under her breath. “I don’t want more children.”