Me . . . and Balthasar.

Chapter Three

THE VAMPIRE’S GIFT

I gripped the back of the couch as the world shifted, saw Ethan’s eyes go wide. Saw his mouth form my name—“Merit?”—but heard nothing but the pounding of blood in my ears.

I glanced up, vertigo racking me as perspective shifted, caught Balthasar’s intense glance.

“What are you doing to me?” I demanded.

Balthasar smiled venomously as the sound grew louder and faster, as if hornets buzzed through my head. “I am demonstrating what it means to be one of my vampires.”

I became a marionette, pulled toward him as if gravity’s axis had shifted, sucking me sideways. I fought back—of course I fought back, tried to pinwheel my arms and legs to move. But the effort was useless. He dragged me stiffly forward, pulled me toward him by the sheer power of his will.

Balthasar had called me. Balthasar, who stood smiling through hooded lids, had managed to draw me in despite my obvious reluctance, my palpable fear.

This wasn’t supposed to work on me.

When Mallory had brought Ethan back to life, her power over him had briefly lingered. She’d been able to funnel her magic through him, and he’d detested the violation, her presence inside the sanctity of his mind.

I understood that feeling now, because that’s precisely what this was—a violation. By compelling me forward, he’d stripped me of my right and will, my ability to say no.

If this was glamour, the calling of a vampire to its Master, how did other vampires survive it? How did they live with the intrusion? The invasion? How was this different from what Mallory had done?

I glanced back, intending to scream for help, wondering why Ethan, Malik, and Luc hadn’t risen to stop him, to help me.

But they looked frozen behind me. Not because Balthasar had stopped time, but because I was moving faster, at the same speed that Balthasar had demonstrated a moment before.

I fought for control of my own body, of my own mind. I’d long ago learned to keep blocks in place to keep my keen vampire senses from overwhelming me with sounds, smells, and tastes. I tried to pull them down, imagined their working like heavy metal shutters, creating a seawall between my mind and the buffering waves of his magic. But it was like trying to hold back a hurricane with an umbrella. The magic spilled around it, over it, under it, and through it like a leviathan.

And with the leviathan came a pulse of passion and arousal so keen it was nearly painful. My body felt suddenly electric, every nerve sensitive and attuned to Balthasar—the line of his neck, the nimble fingers that twirled the globe, the beckoning eyes.

All the while, Balthasar kept smiling. The psychic ropes he’d used to pull me forward tightened, each shuffling step bringing me closer to him.

I couldn’t find breath to speak, and pled with my eyes for him to stop, to release me. But the fear only seemed to excite him, his arousal perfuming the air with old magic and the nearly overpowering scents of orange and cinnamon.

His eyes quicksilver with excitement, Balthasar bared his fangs with a hiss, needle-sharp tips gleaming as he prepared to bite, and extended a hand toward me.

“A kiss for a lovely woman,” he said.

The closer I drew, the more the rest of the world faded, until he was the only thing I could see . . . and the only thing I cared to.

The silver in his eyes spun like sugar, and he looked like the hero from a Gothic poem, with sable hair and fresh-cream skin, his lips flushed crimson with desire . . . for me, for only me, because he and I were the only ones in the world.

He would bite me. He would pierce skin and vein, and he would take from me, and I would never want for anything else. I would never need anything else, because he would be everything . . .

His hand gripped my arm and drew me closer, my eyes drifting shut as his bared fangs promised simultaneous pleasure and pain, the vampire’s gift. His lips found mine, made contact—

“Arrêter!”

Ethan’s voice boomed through the room on a shock wave of fury. Suddenly, he was beside us, hauling me away. Balthasar dragged himself from my mind, the separation leaving me cold and empty. Without his bolstering magic, the floor rushed toward me like I’d been thrown against it. I landed on my knees with rattling force. Nausea welled as the world spun, and I squeezed my eyes closed until I felt the carousel slowing.

Malik was suddenly at my side. “I’m going to help you to your feet.”

I nodded, unsure I’d be able to form words, and Malik put an arm around my waist, drew me to my feet. My knees wobbled but held.

“I won’t let you go,” he said quietly, and guided me toward the couch and away from the scuffle.

Even still, there was a terrifying part of me that didn’t want to go, that didn’t want distance from Balthasar, from the pleasure he promised.

Ethan grabbed him by the lapels, shoved him back against the bookshelves with enough force to snap wood and spill books and crystal to the floor.

Balthasar’s laughter was cold as ice. “Perhaps you’ll think twice the next time you lay hands on me, mon ami.”

Ethan’s voice was cold and sharp as Balthasar’s, and he pushed him again into broken wood and glass to punctuate the words. “If you touch her again, come near her again, I will tear you apart with my own bare hands, Master or not.”

Balthasar raised his hands between Ethan’s arms, attempted to break Ethan’s hold. But Ethan was driven by fear, love, and fury, and he had the upper hand.