Page 213 of White Wolf

Nikita’s eyes were still dilated when he turned his head, tips of his fangs still showing. “You’re not afraid enough.”

“What?” His voice was coming back to him, but he was still covered in gooseflesh, shaking inside his skin. He sipped the water Sasha had given him.

Nikita sighed. “You’re afraid, yes.” He relaxed a little, which in turn helped Lanny relax. Walked over to the table where he’d left his glass. “But it’s still exciting – the idea of all that power. And you’re afraid, but not afraidenough.” He lifted his wrist to his mouth, andbitit.

Lanny watched, sickened and fascinated, as blood welled against Nikita’s lips. As he reached for the empty glass and then held his wrist over it, blood dripping down into it in crimson spatters.

“You don’t see the power as a responsibility.”

Drip, drip, drip.

“And so you abuse it.”

The blood ran quicker. Several ounces stood in the bottom of the glance, enough that it lapped up the sides a fraction.

Nikita brought his wrist back to his mouth and sucked at it. Slid the flat of his tongue across the punctures his fangs had made.

The whole room seemed to tilt sideways. Lanny had the sense that he’d been watching a movie, one of those hokey, gaudily-spooky things teenagers flocked to, and that somehow he’d managed to step through the screen.

Wounded hand tucked in close to his chest, Nikita picked up the glass with the other and turned to Lanny, eyes normal again, expression resigned. He offered the glass. “You can drink this, if you want to. It isn’t a cure – not a permanent one – but small doses will keep the cancer in check without killing you the way chemo does.”

Lanny looked at the glass of thick, dark blood. Then at the man’s face. “Are you serious?” His stomach lurched at the thought.

“Afraid so. It’s your choice, but this is the only help I can offer you.”

Do it, Trina’s voice said in his head.Buy some time.

“It won’t make me…?”

“It won’t turn you, no.”

“It sounds too good to be true.”

“It probably is.”

But what choice was there?

“This is insane,” Lanny said, and reached for the glass.

~*~

He sat with his forearm resting on his knee, watching the punctures in his wrist knit together. A few last drops of blood welled, and then the skin fused, dark pink, then pale, then white. He licked the blood away absently; his own taste didn’t elicit so much as a twinge of hunger tonight.

Lanny was gone, the stained glass sitting on the coffee table, still giving off a faint heat from the man’s fingers. His smell – sick and scared – still tainted the air and it made Nikita’s skin itch.

Sasha settled at the near end of the sofa, close enough for his scent to drown out the others in the room. One of those automatic, comforting, wolfish things he did without being asked.

“You regret it?” Sasha asked, pale brows drawing together over worried blue eyes.

“Regret what?”

Sasha’s voice dropped to a whisper, head ducking slightly. “That I turned you.”

Pain lanced through Nikita’s chest, like a blade right through his heart. “No. Sashka, no, come here.” He opened his arms and Sasha came with a whimper, folded himself into the corner of the chair, legs flung over its arm, pressing the top of his head under Nikita’s jaw and curling himself up tight in his lap.

Nikita kissed the top of his head. Held him. Rubbed his arms and let a low, hopefully soothing rumble loose in his chest. “No, I don’t regret being here with you. Not ever. I was dying a horrible, painful death, and you saved me.”

Sasha whined, distressed, a shiver moving through his frame. “But you told Lanny–”

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