A Stone-Kissed Sea

Natalie scrunched up her face. “Be honest. Is it the ‘give me that burger now or I’ll cut you’ kind of hungry, or a ‘hmm, is someone barbecuing?’ kind of hungry?”

  Makeda took a deep breath and realized that—though it was two months before the time line she’d set for herself and though yes, Natalie smelled highly appetizing—she did not detect any feral reactions to the unexpected stimuli. Her heartbeat after the initial shock of seeing her friend had slowed to three beats per minute, which was her typical baseline during waking hours. Her fangs were not extended. Her eyes remained undilated, and no evidence of visual exclusion was present.

  “Barbecue, not burger,” she finally said.

  “I could have told you that solely from the time it took you to answer me. Trust me, I’ve been around uncontrollable vampires before.”

  Makeda held up a hand. “Stop. I really don’t want to know about your sex life.”

  Natalie’s eyes widened before she burst out laughing. Makeda smiled herself.

  She hadn’t seen Lucien in nearly three months. While her mate had remained in Europe, Makeda had returned to the US, longing for the calm isolation of her lab after the turbulence of the previous four months that had turned her world upside down. So while Lucien flew between Ireland and Greece, coordinating treatment for the Elixir patients and helping Saba with the political transition, Makeda had returned to the lab.

  She worked every night with Ruben and the two other immortal assistants that Katya had hired. She continued perfecting the protein test for Katya, improving the detection factor for Elixir with the updated information on the virus and overseeing its production.

  She worked. She slept. She video-chatted with her family on the new Nocht-compatible laptop she’d acquired.

  And she missed Lucien.

  “I missed you!” Natalie said, wiping her eyes. Walking over, she held out her arms, and Makeda carefully stepped closer.

  “I just wanted to be sure,” Makeda said, hugging her friend. “You know hurting you or the children would kill me.”

  “We’ll wait on the kids so you don’t stress out, but I’m so glad I can see you again.”

  “You saw me before.”

  Natalie pulled back, glaring a little. “With a glass wall between us. I felt like I was visiting you in prison.”

  “Purely a precaution for your own safety.”

  “Fine.” Natalie pulled up a stool and perched at the edge of Makeda’s worktable. “Can we just get back to being normal again, please? You’re safe around humans. George is more wild and crazy than you, Mak.”

  “Again”—she sat on the stool across from Natalie—“I don’t want to hear about your sex life.”

  “Too bad, because I want to hear about yours. Spill.”

  Makeda smiled. “It’s pretty slow at the moment.”

  Natalie’s expression was immediately sympathetic. “How much longer?”

  “He doesn’t know.” She shook her head. “It’s turning out to be a lot more complicated than he thought.”

  “Isn’t it always?”

  She took a deep breath and battled back the curl of hunger at Natalie’s scent. “I miss him, Natalie. So much.”

  “You sleeping okay?”

  “Oh yeah. I mean, newborn-vampire sleep is kind of the best. I wake up at night feeling completely rested. It’s great. I still haven’t figured out if I’m having normal sleep patterns or not, but there must be some kind of pattern because without REM—”

  “Focus, Mak. Lucien?”

  She blinked. “Right. The short answer is, there are dozens of vampires petitioning Saba for healing, and he has to evaluate all of them before he sends them off to Dr. McTierney—Patrick Murphy agreed to continue treating the Elixir patients in his facility—and that takes time because he’s Lucien and he’s thorough.”

  “Thorough is good.”

  “It is. It’s also time-consuming. And in addition to all the medical stuff, he’s also trying to set up some kind of administrative infrastructure for the new council to deal with current business holdings. Not to mention all the responsibilities associated with overseeing what is basically a federal kind of government over the local vampire leaders in the Mediterranean. Though it sounds like Emil Conti’s been really helpful with that.”

  “That’s all good, but—”

  “And he has some leads on the business side too. I guess there’s someone in Cyprus—”

  “Makeda.”

  “Yeah?” She blinked and stopped tapping her fingers. It was a habit that had become entirely more destructive as a vampire. The edge of her desk was in splinters.

  Natalie was staring at her with concern. “Baojia said you finalized the stuff the doctor in Ireland needed. Is that right?”

  “I did. Lucien and I decided that since he was the one who’d run the vampire trials with Saba’s stem cells, he should run the human trials too.”

  “That’s great.” Natalie smiled. “I’m so glad you’re back here and that you had time to… level out, you know? It was kind of crazy how you turned.”

  “It was.” She nodded. “I needed to establish a regular schedule again. Change is always difficult for me, and when it all came so rapidly—”

  “Stop.” Natalie raised a hand. “Listen. Love you. Glad you’re back, but… Honey, you need to go to your mate.”

  Makeda’s heart started to beat more rapidly. “Do you think so?”

  “Don’t you want to?”

  “Yes!” She took a breath. “I want very much to go to him. In my opinion, he’s not operating at full capacity because he’s worried about me and he doesn’t have enough help.”

  Natalie’s eyes narrowed. “Then why are you still here?”

  “I was finishing the work to send to Dr. McTierney.”

  “But you’re done now.”

  “And… I thought my presence could be distracting. I didn’t know if I was safe around humans. Lucien needs to travel and interact with humans for his work and I was worried…” Makeda took a deep breath and realized she hadn’t thought about Natalie’s scent for over five minutes.

  Natalie’s smile grew. “I don’t think you need to worry about that, Mak. I’m pretty sure you’re going to be okay.”

  “I should go to Lucien?”

  “You should go to Lucien.”

  ❖

  Alitea

  Lucien lifted his hands from the wind vampire’s neck. “Thank you. I have a good idea of your level of infection. I can run the blood test for you, but it will likely confirm what we already know.”

  “And?”

  “It’s as you thought. Infection occurred two years ago?”

  “Before the tests. I didn’t realize…” The vampire shook her head. “It doesn’t matter now.”

  Though the immortal’s amnis was erratic, it had not yet reached the critical state where she was losing time or wandering in a fugue, which meant she could wait on the island until some of the more critical Elixir cases were seen to. Lucien had sent four immortals to McTierney the week before. He’d need to wait at least a month before he sent more.

  Which, for this vampire, might be a good thing.

  “You have time to decide.”

  “But this is the only option, isn’t it?” the Algerian woman said. Her skin was light brown, and intricate tattoos marked her flawless skin. Long wavy hair fell around her face, and her eyes were a stunning blue that reminded Lucien of the sky. In fact, everything about the woman, from her wind-blown hair to her soft, airy voice, reminded Lucien of the sky.

  She owed her fealty to Inaya, but her blood beat with the desert wind.

  “We have time,” Lucien said. “Ziri is your grandsire. You could petition him, and we could try treatment with his blood, but there are no guarantees that it would work. And if it doesn’t…”

  “I might not have enough strength to accept Saba’s cure.”

  Saba’s cure was what immortals around the world had come to call the procedure that Brenden McTier
ney had perfected in Ireland that killed off the living bone marrow of the infected immortal and replaced it with stem cells harvested from Saba’s blood. Saba’s cure worked on anyone. There had not been a single failure, even in the most advanced cases.

  But it also changed them.

  “Tied to the earth…,” the wind vampire whispered. Her hand reached down, and her fingertips dragged in the dust. “Never to walk the sky again.” There was a wild panic in her blue eyes.

  “You have time.”

  She rose. “Thank you, healer. You have given me much to think about. I will consider all this if you will allow me the time.”

  “Of course. You’ve introduced yourself to Ziri?”

  “I have.”

  “If you stay on the island, we will guarantee your safety while you are here.”

  She bowed to Lucien and left his office.

  Built from recovered marble he’d broken and shaped into bricks, his office backed into the hills of Alitea. He’d dug a comfortable series of tunnels, one of which led to the harbor, thinking of the time when Makeda might be able to join him.

  He ached with missing her.

  When he was working alone, he talked to himself, half-expecting her to answer. She didn’t. She was at home in the US, working on the human stem cell trial protocols and acclimating to human interaction with her sire watching over her. It was good that she was with Baojia. He steadied her and was a fierce protector. Lucien knew Makeda was safe, learning valuable lessons she would carry into eternity. It was good that she could visit with her family. Soon she’d be able to see them in person, and he knew from introducing himself to Makeda’s parents that it would be an eagerly anticipated reunion on both sides. They adored her.

  And he missed her horribly.

  He heard someone coming down his path. He reached out and felt a familiar energy. Saba entered and sat on the narrow bed where he examined his immortal patients.

  “I saw Inaya’s woman flying back to the shelter,” she said.

  “Infected.”

  “And?”

  He took a deep breath. “I don’t know. She is very much a creature of her element.”

  Wind vampires had, so far, been the most reluctant to accept Saba’s cure.

  “A bird who has tasted the sky will fight to keep her wings,” Saba said. “This does not surprise me.”

  “I know. I just wish…”

  “Did you and your brilliant mate find anything else that could cure these children?”

  “No.”

  “Then allow yourself to rest. There is a cost to everything. I offer healing to creatures who have already lived unnaturally long lives. They will take it or they will not. Their decision is not your responsibility.”

  “I know.”

  “I would have you smile again,” Saba said.

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Then summon my mate to me, Emaye.”

  Saba’s eyes sparkled in the candlelight. “Is that all?” She clapped her hands. “And it is done.”

  He frowned at her playful smile. “Saba…” He fell silent when he felt Makeda’s step on the island. Smelled her scent on the breeze. Sensed her amnis waking within him.

  Mate!

  Saba’s laughter chased Lucien out the door and down the path. He raced toward the ocean and the scent of her. Cinnamon and citrus. Earth and salt. He raced past stone buildings and lush gardens, the beginnings of new civilization on the island. He leapt over rocky hills and ran down the slopes leading to the harbor.

  Makeda stood on the pebbled beach, shaking the water from her hair. Her smile was brilliant in the moonlight.

  She raised her face and laughed as Lucien tackled her into the sea.

  ❖

  Chencha, Ethiopia

  “Tell me about the princess again,” Lucien said, tickling her neck with the rough whiskers he allowed to grow when he was in the mountains.

  Makeda couldn’t stop the smile. “She lived in the mountains in a cave. And all her guards had teeth.” She snapped her teeth at his chin.

  “Are you calling me a hyena?” he asked.

  “Are you calling me a princess?”

  “Definitely.” They slept in the round tukul high in the mountains where the clouds made islands of the peaks. The tukul was windowless and warm, trapping the heat from the wood stove on one wall. Thick cotton and wool blankets covered them, and the rhythmic syllables of her mother tongue dropped like raindrops on dusty ground.

  After a year of work in Alitea, Lucien had taken her back to her childhood home. They’d escaped the traffic and crowds of Addis to climb mountains and swim in rivers and lakes, diving with the crocodiles and laughing at angry hippos. She’d rediscovered the birds that had sung her childhood lullabies and the air that smelled of eucalyptus and cedar. She tasted wild honey and mango again.

  Lucien and Makeda went to Sidamo to visit her grandmother, who was so old she didn’t question why her American granddaughter only visited at night. Makeda tasted fresh injera and her grandmother’s shiro wat. She sat and chopped onions at her grandmother’s feet, listening to stories she hadn’t heard since she was a child while Lucien roasted meat outside with her uncles. She stored away the memories, knowing that someday, like Lucien, her human memories would fade and all she would have left were the pictures she took with her mind and the old camera Lucien found for her.

  One night they walked down the mountain to the twin lakes of Chamo and Abaya and climbed the mountain that rested between them. Lucien settled on the hillside facing east to watch for the sun.

  “They call this the Bridge of God,” Lucien said.

  “Why?”

  He frowned. “I don’t know.”

  Makeda smiled. “Really? You’ve never asked?”

  He shrugged. “Does it matter?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hmm.” He settled his arms around her. “Okay, I will tell you the story.”

  “I’m all ears.” She leaned back against his chest and felt their amnis join and dance in the grey dawn air.

  “When the earth was newly born, God took many years to create the world and every creature, fashioning each to fit its unique place. But he knew there was something missing. So he wandered over Africa for days and nights, because this land, he decided, was the most beautiful of all his creations, and he loved it very much. The lakes we see today are his footsteps, didn’t you know?”

  “Are they?” Makeda watched the sky go from grey to blue while Lucien kept talking.

  “They are. God walked up the great valley, his feet pressing into the damp ground, and water filled the holes where his feet had stepped. He walked and he walked until his feet had gathered so much clay he had to shake them off. The mud he shook off his feet made those mountains behind us.”

  “You’re a good storyteller.”

  “I know. Be quiet and listen.”

  Makeda laughed and watched the sky go from blue to purple.

  “After walking and thinking for so long, God decided to make humans, mortal and immortal, and put them here, because in the great valley there is everything. There is earth and water. High mountains that touch the air and the fire of the sunrise every morning. That is why every one of us came from here. No matter where we have wandered, mortal or immortal, this place is our true home.”

  The purple turned to pink on the edges of the horizon.

  “So after God put his people in the great valley, he decided to rest here on this bridge between the two lakes and watch the sun rise, because he knew in all the world”—Lucien’s voice fell to a whisper and his arms tightened around her waist—“there was no more beautiful place than this.”

  Orange and yellow clouds lit the sky, nearly blinding Makeda’s sensitive eyes. She shivered in excitement. Being on the hillside facing east as dawn brightened the sky felt like walking on the edge of a cliff. Frightening, exhilarating, alive.

  So alive.

  Lucien’s arms tightened again. “Sitting here and watching the sun rise,
yene konjo, is like watching the world being born.”

  She gripped his hands, felt his lips touch her neck.

  “I’m ready,” she said.

  “If you’re sure.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes.”

  The burning edge of the sun peeked over the horizon just as Lucien grabbed Makeda and fell back into the earth, closing the world over them as Makeda’s eyes went blind from the flare of sunlight. She saw nothing. She was blind to everything but Lucien’s touch as he carefully formed the soil in a comfortable cave around them. She laughed with wild abandon, her heart raced, and Lucien covered her face in kisses.

  “Not a scratch,” he said. “I promise. Not even a singed hair.”

  She couldn’t stop laughing.

  “Makeda?” Lucien was laughing too. “Are you okay?”

  “That was”—she gasped—“amazing!”

  “Want to do it again tomorrow?”

  “Yes!”

  His laughter shook the earth. “I think I’ve created a monster.”

  Her voice began to slur with exhaustion. “This is like… the vampire version of extreme sports.”

  “You have no idea.”

  She turned her face to his and lifted her mouth for a kiss. He very quickly obliged.

  “I want to see… everything,” she said, her voice growing softer. “I want to climb all the mountains. I want to swim to the bottom of the sea. I want to find… caves and scramble… up trees. I want to see it all, and… I want you to show me.”

  His forehead pressed to hers. “Done.”

  “Thank you for my life, Lucien.”

  “No, Makeda,” he whispered. “Thank you for mine.”

  THE END

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