Page 7 of Until the Heart Stops
Perhaps he watched me from afar. Vampires had a habit of doing so when a human or Lycan enraptured them. Perhaps he’d been captivated by my work ethic or wit?—
It was my turn to roll my eyes.My work ethic.That right there was the reason I hadn’t taken a lover in over a year. No doubt whoever this mysterious patron was, these gifts were for another reason thanmy work ethic and wit. I knew Iwas beautiful. The goddess had blessed me as she had my mother and the women before me. But that beauty only ever kept others at a distance, as if I was as unreachable as Deimos himself.
And yet it was a nice dream, wasn’t it? A few moments as the night deepened and our few clients passed through the velvet curtain to meet with our other blood giver, Liam, to imagine it was a male like the blond vampire. For there was no way it was truly him. But perhaps an immortal like him, one who would one day reveal themselves and give me everything I would never admit I wanted.
And yet they’d already put it into words.
Chapter 3
The third gift arrived with a female vampire.
It was the very next night after the second had arrived and Noah had met with me on the edges of the market as he was getting off patrol. The deep cuts across his throat and hands were now a pinkish blue instead of the black they’d been only this morning when I’d applied the salve on the edges of the river. The infection from the venefica’s claws had all but disappeared.
“What if you took this night to rest?” he murmured, hands behind his back, the black of the uniform of the Vyenurs shifting as he ducked beneath a low awning. “There are two more doses left from the phial.”
I frowned. The potion he took to tamp down his demon magic was not particularly safe and I knew it made his skin itch. Noah’s kind had been here long before humans ever traveled to these shores. No one knew if the Vyenurs appeared because of the venefica or if they evolved alongside one another, but they had been locked into the constant battle of hunt or be hunted for millennia.
The Covenant had taken advantage of that, supplyingthose who served them with weapons and stipends. Almost half of the Vyenurs within Oylen was under their command, though the hold they had on the demons was tenuous at best. Those who bent the knee to the Covenant benefitted with their access to healing potions and better weapons. Those who didn’t?
Well, there was a reason I’d been considering selling things in order to get Noah healing salves.
No matter what potion he took, it was clear what Noah was from the demon sigil marked across his light-brown skin. Each Vyenur had one and Noah’s had appeared in the center of his brow: a series of interlocking circles hidden beneath his unruly dark hair. But the sign was clear as if burned there.
“What ifyoutook the night to rest?” I countered, rubbing a hand over my face. Sleep had eluded me and tonight would be a long one with Eamon booked to see Adrienne. “You’re the one who lost half their guard only a few nights ago.”
I regretted the words the moment I spoke them. Noah’s expression, which always carried a gentle smile, cracked while his throat bobbed with a swallow. Vyenur demons were immortal, as in they could not succumb to old age or sickness, and they were stronger even than vampires who could die by the sun or fire. The only thing that could destroy a Vyenur was the one thing they fought: venefica.If too much of their venom got into their bloodstream, they could be dead in days, minutes even, if it pierced their heart.
He’d lost friends he’d known for centuries. And though they did not typically mourn their dead, as they would soon be reborn with a new life, the loss stung. Noah was only three hundred—practically a teenager to hiscommanders—and a few they’d lost the other day had been alive for over a millennium. Gone in an instant.
None of us were strangers to grief.
I slipped my arm through his and rested my head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry. I spoke carelessly.”
His sigh was soft and, though the tension didn’t ease from his limbs, he tilted his head down to touch mine. “Thank you.”
My stall came into view and I sighed. He was right, I was tired. And to top it all, tomorrow night Eamon would hold his monthly ball now that he was home from one of his many trips and the shop would be closed with all the other blood dens. It was an ancient vampire tradition to hold a feast on the full moon of each month. Thousands of years ago a feast would have meant a blood orgy and a pile of dead bodies come morning. These days, however, it merely meant a luxurious ball complete with the synthetic blood the Covenant had developed to satiate the masses.
“What do you need?” I asked as I brought down the wards and tucked my dagger back into its hidden holster in my corset.
Noah’s sigh was as heavy as my own. He raked his hair back from his face, the demon sign catching the light of the fires crackling every few stalls or so, before he ran the same hand down over his face.
“I don’t want to be alone,” he answered in a voice so soft I barely heard it.
He didn’t need to say anything else, and I knew he would not want empty platitudes or offers. Instead, I drew back the velvet curtain, dipped into Liam’s parlor where he hosted his clients complete with a game table, and dragged one of the plush stools out, setting it beside my own.
Noah shrugged off his dark red jacket to reveal the black tunic beneath and settled on the stool. “Should I…?”
He trailed off. Vyenurs and vampires generally got along, but there was something about Vyenur magic that set a vampire on edge. Humans were generally unaffected by it, but I knew the magic running through his veins was as ancient as it was dark. An aspect of it called to the primal part of vampires which, depending on the individual, could make them much more dangerous.
It was why he chose to take the magic suppressant when he worked the booth. We didn’t want a vampire who felt on edge feeding on Adrienne or Liam. I reached beneath the counter and drew out the phial, handing it to him. Noah downed it in one and shivered. The sigil on his brow burned bright for a moment as the potion took effect. Finally, his shoulders relaxed a bit more and the hint of his usual smile returned as he dragged the ledger closer to him and I batted his hands away.
“Don’t, your mathematics is terrible,” I quipped.
His thick black brows rose and he pointed a finger at himself. “Mymath is terrible? I’ve been alive for three hundred and twenty years more than you.”
“And the one time you balanced the ledger?—”
“That wasonetime!”
