The Mech Who Loved Me(81)

"I've got you," he muttered.

A shaky hand curled in his shirt, and Ava tilted her face up to his, her breath cool across his throat.



       
         
       
        

"What is it, sweetheart?"

She suddenly pushed him away, hiding her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking. Kincaid reached for her face, feeling sick to his gut. What had the bastard done to her? Had he touched her? Tortured her? Kincaid brushed some of her loose curls behind her ear. There was bluish blood all over her face, her lips. He wanted to kill the prick, but the truth was, she needed him at her side more than Kincaid needed to vent his feelings. "Are you hurt? Did I squeeze you too hard?"

A hand on his chest stayed him.

"She needs blood," Malloryn said, three simple words cutting like a scythe through the tremble in his heart.

Blood.

All of them knew his thoughts on the process of bloodletting. As much as he'd begun to accept the blue bloods he worked with, they took their blood in private, or out of a flask. He could handle that. It was the thought of one of them using a little razor on him-or someone else, right in front of him-that made the muscle in his jaw tic.

"No blood," Ava ground out, scrambling out of Kincaid's lap and tucking her knees up against her chest. She looked up, her eyes as black as pitch, and the breath went out of him. "Not right now. I can't control it."

Shit. Malloryn was right. The predator in her was right beneath the surface. Every vein in her face stood out as though black ink filled it, particularly under her eyes. She looked terrible.

She looked like the dhampir had, before he died.

Or like David Thomas.

Everything in Kincaid went cold. Everything. Hadn't she said it herself? "If you put this weapon in the wrong hands, Kincaid, then you cannot tell me innocent people won't die...."

But he'd never thought Ava would be the one stricken down by Black Vein. He'd never... put a face to the nameless, faceless enemy in his mind when he thought of finally destroying the blue bloods with this weapon.

Why wasn't she dying? It felt like there was a hand around his chest, squeezing, squeezing....

"Where's my... my solution?" Ava patted at her skirts, hunting for any sign of the reticule she normally carried, even though it was nowhere to be found.

"I assume you lost it in the scuffle. The closest flask we know of is back at the house," Malloryn explained in the kind of tone one used on a child. "You're not yourself right now, Ava. We can't risk taking you out into the streets like this. All you'll see is prey when you look around you, and you've been resisting for so long you have no control when the bloodlust rises-"

"I have control," she snarled, and then froze, as if hearing the anger in her words. A twist of horror crossed her face. "He injected me with something. Said it would stop my heart, but of course it didn't, and now-" 

Her clockwork heart.

"It's not your fault." Again Malloryn sounded exceedingly patient. "We can run tests on what he gave you back at the laboratory, but right now your bloodlust's been triggered. We need to deal with it first, and your injuries. You're bleeding internally."

"I'm fine." She coughed even as she said it, spraying blood across her cupped palm.

Malloryn looked at him, and that was when Kincaid knew what the duke was silently asking.

No. No way. He was nobody's blood whore.

Not even for Ava?

His stomach twisted. She was injured, and she needed blood, but... all he could see was Agatha, swaying from the rafters of his house as he screamed and begged for her to come back.

Malloryn saw it on his face, and gave a little nod. "Here." The duke began unbuttoning his sleeve to reveal his wrist. "I'll do it."

And that was all shades of wrong. Kincaid's vision went white and he turned around, clasping both hands behind his head. The idea of Ava sucking on the duke's wrist made him want to punch something-though he had to admit the thought of her drinking blood wasn't the prime cause of that emotion.

Jealousy?

Shit. He shot her a look, finding her backing away from the duke, scrambling across the tiles, her gaze locked on the vein in Malloryn's wrist with a hunger she couldn't hide. Yes and no warred within her, and suddenly his hatred for bloodletting washed away. This was Ava he was thinking about. Not some leering blue blood lord who thought all humans were cattle. Not the bastards who'd used his sister like their own blood whore for the night, before casting her out into the streets.

Kincaid rubbed at his chest as Malloryn drew a small bloodletting blade from the kit in his pocket and placed the razor over the vein.