A Kiss of Blood(21)

She turned to Micah. "Will you let Zack know we left, please?"

"Sure, Quinn." He accompanied them upstairs and opened the back door for them. "Be good, kids," he quipped. "No fighting, and be home in time for dinner. Call if you're going to be late."

Quinn snorted. Arturo ignored his friend as he ushered her out the door and into the dusky twilight of a Vamp City day.

"Where are the horses?" Quinn asked as they started walking away from the house.

"The barn." His voice was sharp and cold, which just made her angry.

"What's gotten into you?"

His mouth turned harder if such a thing were possible. "Neo oversteps. I do not want his hands on you."

"They haven't been!" They strode quickly toward the barn door, their strides fueled by their mutual anger. "He's never made the slightest move on me, and if he did, it would be none of your business."

Suddenly, her back was up against the wall, her body pinned by that of a furious vampire.

"It is my business. You are my business." Arturo's enunciation was slow and cold and dangerously precise. "You are mine, Quinn Lennox. Mine."

She gaped at him, speechless. "I'm not your slave. I've never been your slave, and I'm never going to be!"

"Not my slave." At her words, at her vehemence, his anger seemed to ease. He gripped her jaw with long, cool fingers. She tried to jerk away, but he held her fast. His voice lowered, softened. "You are mine, cara. The sunshine that warms my flesh. My sunlight." His hold on her jaw tightened, though not unduly so. His expression grew tormented. "Do you have any idea how much I want you? Yet I do not push you. You have lost your faith in me. You are angry with me for handing you over to Cristoff and, dio Quinn, you have a right to be."

He released her suddenly, turning away, running a hand through his hair. "The things I saw today . . ." His voice was low with anguish. "I have watched his atrocities for months, years, and felt too little. Felt nothing."

Quinn stared at him, her own anger slipping away as she realized how shaken he really was. This wasn't about Neo. This was about Cristoff.

"What happened at Gonzaga Castle this morning, Arturo?" she asked quietly. Not that she really wanted to know. She didn't.

When he didn't answer, she reached for him, sliding her hand down his back. She felt him tense and shudder. Slowly, he turned back to face her, his expression revealing little, but his eyes burned.

He took her face in his hands. "He will never touch you again. I vow it." His shoulders sank, his forehead tipping against hers. "Mio dio. You've changed me, cara. I cannot decide if I should thank you or hate you for it."

"Micah's glad."

"Yes. As am I." One of his hands began to stroke her hair.

"Does my hair feel different? Like Neo's hair?"

He pulled back and smiled, though the smile only briefly reached his eyes. "No. The glamour is nothing but illusion. It is your silky hair I feel." His knuckles brushed her cheek. "Your soft skin. Your scent that I smell." He leaned in to briefly press his lips to forehead. "You that I taste."

Slowly, he pulled away. "Come." He held out his hand to her. "I will endeavor to be less of an ass."

She grinned at him and slipped her hand in his. "That's all I ever ask."

The smile he gave her was soft but still filled with shadows.

"I'm sorry, Vampire. Sorry for what you've lost. It's incomprehensible to me that Cristoff could have ever been a good man, but I've only ever known the monster. It must be very hard to watch a friend lose his soul."

He lifted their joined hands and brushed a kiss over her knuckles. "I believe I now understand the frustration and sorrow I've witnessed in the eyes of my own friends too often these past couple of years. While my soul was not fully compromised, neither was I unaffected. I was not the man they knew."

"And now you are again."

"I hope so."

And how could he know for certain when he hadn't realized he'd changed in the first place? she wondered. But unless he was playing them all, he had absolutely changed. For the better.

"I like the real you, Arturo."

She glanced at him and caught the smile light his eyes. "I like you, too, Quinn." He squeezed her hand. "Let us get this errand over and done with so that we might return to Neo's before lunchtime."

"I'm all for that."

He pulled something out of his pocket with his free hand and proffered a roll of SweetTarts. His weakness, she remembered. With a smile, she took one and popped the tart candy into her mouth.

If she wasn't very, very careful, she could be in danger of liking this vampire entirely too much.
                       
       
           



       Chapter Eleven





Quinn rode beside Arturo, enjoying the wind in her hair and the feel of the horse beneath her. She was starting to understand the appeal of the animals, she decided. Especially one as calm and easy to control as the one she was on now.

"Choose a name," Arturo said, when they'd ridden a short distance.

"Pardon me?"

"A name for me to call you as my Neo-look-alike slave. One you will remember to answer to."

"Neo-look-alike," she muttered, and he smiled, pulling a smile from her, reminding her how much she'd enjoyed his company once. His mood had lightened as they'd ridden, and she was glad. "Jillian," she said without thinking. "It was my mother's name."

"Jillian it is, then." He cut her a chiding look, even as the humor lingered in his eyes. "Endeavor to act at least a little like a servant if we come across others, yes? You needn't act obsequious."

"Obsequious isn't in my dictionary. Or my nature."

"I've noticed."

As they rode, Arturo gave her a few riding tips, and she felt like she was really starting to get the hang of it by the time they entered a small cluster of log houses that looked like they'd been built somewhere on the prairie a couple of hundred years ago.

Quinn glanced at Arturo. "What exactly is a fae, anyway? I'm assuming they don't fly."

He smirked. "They do not have wings, no. They are humanlike and gifted in the ways of clairvoyance. Think Tolkien's elves, though perhaps not quite so attractive."

"Not so attractive" turned out to be an understatement. Minutes later, Arturo dismounted, turning to her, then standing back to allow her to dismount on her own.

He nodded with approval. "You're getting the hang of it."

Arturo rapped on the split-wood door of one of the houses, and a face appeared in the front window. Male or female, Quinn couldn't tell, but the mouth was comically wide, the eyes slanted downward, giving the person . . . the fae . . . a look of sadness despite the wariness in those pale orbs. The face disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, and, a moment later, the door opened. The sad-eyed creature, apparently a female, if the simple, old-fashioned dress was anything to go by, eyed Arturo with antagonism.

"You are not welcome here."

Quinn looked between them in surprise. Then again, he'd admitted he'd had few dealings with the fae.

But the great diplomat . . . the great manipulator . . . wasn't about to be put off. His voice low and hypnotic, he said, "You have nothing to fear from us. We ask only to speak with Tarellia."

The woman watched him carefully, the rigid line of her shoulders easing just a little.

"Who are you?"

"I am Arturo Mazza."

"Mazza," she muttered, then frowned. "Cristoff's snake." She spat onto the dirt beside the porch, disgust in her words.

Arturo said nothing for a moment. When he spoke, his words were even more hypnotic than before. "I mean you no harm. I am here on a diplomatic mission and only want a word with Tarellia, then I will take my leave." He leaned forward slightly, and said in a conspiratorial whisper, "I bring gifts, woman. I carry with me the latest seasons of CSI and So You Think You Can Dance."

The last was the clincher. The fae's eyes lit up like Christmas-tree bulbs. "Dance! And AA batteries for the DVD player?"

"And batteries."

Quinn stifled a disbelieving smile. Every time she thought she had this place figured out . . .

The fae eyed her with distaste. "The human stays outside."

He shook his head as if he knew he had the upper hand now. "My slave goes where I go."

The fae frowned, then waved them inside. "Come, both of you."

They followed the now-excited woman through a tiny, if quaint, sitting room and into another, slightly larger room with a fire in the hearth. In a rocking chair in front of the fire, in a dress of bright red velvet, sat a female similar in appearance to the first, her eyes not quite as sad-looking.

She looked up when they entered, her gaze wary.

"What is this?" she asked the first woman sharply.

"He wishes to talk to you, Tarellia. He brought the latest season of Dance!" Her face glowed with happiness.

The fae in the red dress, her yellow hair piled high atop her head in a classic beehive, rolled her eyes and waved them in. "You discovered her weakness."

Arturo gave a charming smile. "I've found it to be the weakness of half of the population of Vamp City."