Page 24 of Vampire's Choice

A woman in her thirties and a vampire in her eighties were roughly around the same age, maturity-wise, so Ruth felt an easy kinship with Clara she knew might or might not be beneficial for protecting her. Only time would tell. She had no comparable girlfriends, beyond Nerida and Miah, who lived at a women and children’s sanctuary in Tennessee. Ruth saw them far too rarely, though they stayed in touch with the technology the world had available to them. She still wrote them letters sometimes, like she had well before the electronic age.

“A meal sounds good,” Ruth said. “Then I’d love the tour. I’ve already seen a dragon. Will everything else be equally amazing?”

“Frequently.” After a hesitation, Clara slid an arm through hers. “I feel like we’re going to be friends, and I’m a very touchy-feely person with my friends. Is that okay?”

“If and when it’s not, I’ll break fingers to teach you to keep your hands to yourself.”

Clara chuckled, a cautious sound. “Okay, you’ll be a scary friend. That’ll be all right, too.”

Ruth had her worries about what she might screw up or where she might fall short. However, on this at least, she felt the same way.

Peak lunch time had passed, so the tables around the kitchen tent were less crowded. Clara secured Ruth the promised blood, plus herself a slice of angel food cake. The top and base were layered with thinly sliced fresh peaches. As Ruth sipped from the blood, Clara moved a couple bites of cake onto a saucer she put politely in front of her.

Vampires couldn’t ingest great amounts of anything other than blood, but they enjoyed the tastes and textures of food. The cake and fruit were good.

“They do miracles in that kitchen.” Clara chewed on her own light-as-air bite of cake. Ruth agreed, and gestured to the tattoo on Clara’s shoulder and the henna on her face.

“What are these?”

“The henna reinforces the properties in the crystals. Healing, protection, balance. I do henna myself, for fun and decoration, but this is a special kind of application. One of the married couples does them. They work together, bringing feminine and masculine energy to the work for a stronger binding.” She lifted the shoulder. “The tattoo is an angelic protection symbol. And tracker, in a sense. I like it because it’s pretty. Marcellus likes it because it helps him do his job.”

Clara’s cheeks had flushed a fetching pink color. “So he put it on you himself?” Now Ruth realized why it seemed familiar. It looked like the work on Marcellus’s arm guards.

“Yes. He puts his hand over the area, and chants the proper words. I could feel it marking my skin, but not like the sting of a tattoo. More like being the earth while a Creator carves it with rivers and streams. It hurts, but not in a bad way. And his voice put me in a dreamy state. He stroked my hair while he was doing it. It was one of the first times he initiated that kind of touching with me. Before that, it was mostly me throwing myself at him.”

Ruth grinned and Clara answered in kind before glancing at the tattoo again. “Most the Legion angels carry similar marks, praises to the Goddess, promises to serve Her with their lives, that kind of thing. They’re applied via the same method, but Marcellus says an angel acquires them from higher-ranking angels, as an honor or award. One of those soldier type rituals. They can let them be visible or keep them melted beneath the skin, but they usually come out full wattage during battle.”

“I saw them, when I first met him.”

“They’re sexy, right? Like everything about him.” Clara gave Ruth a wry look. “I know what you’re thinking. Everyone does. Him and her? Really? An angel and a strange mortal girl, centuries younger than him?”

“I had the thought. But I expect I’ll understand why before too long.” Ruth took another swallow of the blood. They’d seasoned it, and the flavor was excellent. Her initial caution about taking prepared blood, instead of fresh from the vein, had eased. It was also restoring her, the aches and pains melting away. “Even if I didn’t, love doesn’t have to make sense to anyone but the people involved.”

“Unless it hurts too many others.”

Ruth shook her head. “I think that’s a separate issue. The love exists. If it sucks for others, if the cost of pursuing it is too great, a person can stop acting on it, but they can’t stop feeling it.”

“And since Love is connected to the Divine, the question is why was it given to you if it wasn’t meant to be pursued? It might be an act of will that serves a good yet unseen.” Clara made a whimsical face. “I’ve done some spiritual soul searching between the covers of a book myself. Maybe we can trade libraries.”

She put her chin on her hand. The bracelets slid down her arm with a pleasant chiming noise. “You sound like you have firsthand experience, though.”

“No. My father did. My mother did. Others I’ve met. But my father told me once, ‘Love can kill you. Hate can force you to live. But only the one that can kill you is worth living for.’ I kind of took it from there.”

Clara gave her an impenetrable look. “What?” Ruth asked.

“I’m starting to understand why they sent you here. So I’m going to apologize ahead of time, for when you hear how I threw a tantrum over having another ‘goddamn babysitter I didn’t ask for.’ He has this infuriating way of listening to me like an adult listens to a raving child, until I honestly want to hack off his wings with a steak knife. But then he’ll do something that tells me he was listening all along.”

Clara’s expression became more tender. “I used to be a pretty social person, but because of my gift, I didn’t have many close girlfriends. The ones I did…I needed them, as in really needed them, to keep my sanity. As this ability expanded, it got down to one. Alexis. We used to be able to spend a lot more time together. She has some abilities that helped her relate to my struggle with mine. But she’s also a merangel, and her mate is a seriously terrifying Dark Spawn vampire sorcerer. That’s okay, he’s the right person for her, and they love each other to pieces, but he’s apprenticed to a Dark Guardian, so Alexis is often on adventures with him.”

“Like Adan and Catriona.”

Clara brightened. “That’s right, I’d almost forgotten. You’re Adan’s sister. He’s wonderful.”

“Catriona is wonderful. He’s a pain in the ass. For my thirtieth birthday, he ground up a Carolina Reaper pepper and mixed it into a glass of my dinner blood. He did stop me from taking more than one swallow, but I was hacking and wheezing for an hour. He told me it was to welcome me to vampire adulthood—thirtyish is the vampire version of that. My throat and tongue were raw for a day.”

“A Carolina Reaper pepper?”

“Ranked one of the hottest in the world, and sold by the Puckerbutt Pepper Company. I think the name was part of the appeal to him.” Ruth pointed a stern finger at the amused fortune teller. “Don’t be fooled. The mature and serious Light Guardian is all an act. His core identity is obnoxious asshole older brother. He claims the ‘older’ shit only because he shoved me aside to come out first.”

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