Midnight Bites (The Morganville Vampires)(136)

Eve had a finely tuned sense of danger, thankfully, and she shut up and went still. Michael met her gaze and held it steady. I’ve got you, he told her. You’re safe.

Her faint smile said, I know.

“What do you mean, her blood?” Claire had been very quiet, but now she spoke up, and Michael sensed her moving forward on his right. “What do you want with Eve? Or rather, from Eve?”

“Clever girl,” Rozhkov said. “I’d heard as much about you. It’s gratifying to know that gossip can convey truth, occasionally. I’d heard much of the four of you. It seems it’s all true.”

“Answer the question,” Shane said.

Rozhkov made a motion that wasn’t quite a shrug, wasn’t quite a headshake. It was something that came from some earlier time, and a distant land, and it had the feeling of disinterest to it. “There is power in some bloodlines; even you untutored children must know that. Power handed down, life to life, generation to generation. Yes?”

“I’m not some witch,” Eve said. “I might wear the look, but—”

“Not witchcraft,” he said. “But your blood holds a secret that you do not know, and cannot use. I can.” He turned toward Eve, and Michael took a step forward, fists clenching in a sudden rush of dread and fury . . . but the other vampire only touched her hand very gently, with fingertips as pale as snow. Traced the blue lines of veins in her wrist. “Therefore I ask that you donate your blood to me.”

“Wait, back up,” Eve said. “What?”

“You give blood, as part of your taxes in Morganville, do you not?”

“Well . . . yeah . . .”

“Then I only ask you to give it to me.”

Michael’s urge to hit the man was only getting more pressing. Asking for Eve’s blood was personal. Way too personal. In vampire terms, it was like sex, and he was doing it in front of her vampire husband. He knew Shane and Claire might not get the distinction, but he knew Eve did.

She pulled her hand back and folded it into a fist. “I’m spoken for, in case you hadn’t gotten the memo.”

Rozhkov studied her for a moment, then nodded and sat back. He seemed different now. Thoughtful. “I suppose I must tell you the truth, then,” he said. “I am ill, you see. You may ask Glass if you wish confirmation of it.”

Michael unwillingly nodded.

“It is an affliction that strikes old vampires, sometimes. We . . . begin to lose our essence, which is diluted by so much borrowed blood in our veins. We lose touch with who we were, and when that happens, we lose . . . too much. So from time to time, the oldest of us must find one who shares that blood with us, to remind us of who we are.”

Claire, of course, worked it out first. “Wait. You mean you’re related to Eve?”

“Distantly, through many, many generations,” Rozhkov said. “Your great-grandmother Ulyana granted me this favor, once. I only need a single small amount from you. Just enough to reconstruct my own—what do you call it, the chains of life?”

“DNA,” Claire said. “You need Eve’s blood to fix your broken DNA?”

“I suppose that is as good an explanation as any,” he said. “So yes. I could take it by force, of course, but I would prefer not. You are, after all, family.”

Eve stared at him, a frown deepening between her brows. “Family,” she repeated. “Yeah, that’s rich. I kind of loathed my family, you know.”

“All families are full of good and bad. But I ask you, for blood’s sake, to do me this favor. This honor.” He met Michael’s eyes once more. “I ask that it be allowed, just once. I take no more than a taste.”

“It’s Eve’s decision,” Michael said. He wanted to make it for her, but he knew how she’d take that, and he also knew, deep down, that she’d be right to be angry. “Ask her, not me.”

“I have,” Rozhkov said. He returned that unsettling stare to Eve’s face.

She didn’t meet it. She was looking down at her hands. “I don’t know you,” she said. “All I know is that you’re desperate enough, or cruel enough, that you’d threaten the life of an innocent person just to get my attention. If it’s desperation, then maybe I should do this, or you’ll do worse. If it’s the other thing . . .”

“I am cruel,” Rozhkov admitted. “I am old. Not as old or as powerful as Amelie is, true, but I know the world in old ways.” He gave her a sudden, strangely sweet smile. “One would also say I have learned this new world, because I did not resort to violence.”

“Yet,” Shane said.

“Yet, yes.” Rozhkov’s gaze remained steady on Eve. “I do not beg. If you tell me no, I will go. Perhaps I will sicken. Perhaps I will do terrible things as my senses twist in on me. I do not know, as I have never let my—debility grow so strong. But is your decision, as Michael said.”

Eve’s shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. “Hell.” She suddenly lifted her wrist and held it out to him, and her eyes squeezed tightly shut in anticipation. Her whole body was clenched, rebelling against the decision, and Michael knew he looked just the same—felt just the same. He wanted, with every cell of his being, to pull her away from Rozhkov, get her safe from him . . . and it took every single ounce of will he possessed to hold still as the other vampire raised Eve’s arm, then parted his lips, and the fangs came out.