Serpent's Kiss (Elder Races #3)(40)

Rune cradled her close as he felt his T-shirt grow wet. He could smell a trace of frankincense in her hair, along with the clean fresh scent of lavender. Underneath that was her lush womanly fragrance, and she was so utterly perfect that bewilderment and outrage roared through him again at the thought of her dying.

Wait. His breath hissed. There it was, the word on the tip of his tongue, only it wasn’t a word but a concept. A premise, not a conclusion.

He buried his face in the slender crook of her neck, crushing her to him. She stirred and murmured either a protest or a question. He muttered, “Hold on just a minute.”

He wrapped his Power around her and opened his Wyr senses wide, and inhaled Carling’s fragrance again.

Wyr, especially the older and more Powerful Wyr, could sense disease in a way that animals could. They could taste when food was tainted, which made them extremely difficult to poison. They could smell when injuries became infected, or when illness was exuded in a person’s sweat glands.

Carling’s research had taken the path of modern medicine. She had followed closely the research done by Louis Pasteur and Emile Roux. She had chronicled how she had corresponded with the two doctors in the 1880s, asking detailed questions about their development of a vaccine for rabies. In turn the two scientists had studied Vampyrism with fascination.

Vampyrism had all the characteristics of a blood-borne pathogen. It was found in blood and certain other bodily fluids and had a 98.9 percent infection rate when a direct blood exchange had occurred. It could not be transmitted through air, and intact skin acted as an effective barrier. The conviction that Vampyrism was an infectious disease had become so wellentrenched in modern thought, it was no longer questioned. Now in the twenty-first century, virtually all medical and scientific research on Vampyrism was based on that premise.

But every instinct Rune had was telling him Carling’s energy was robust. She did not smell diseased. He thought of the woman he had passed just outside the Bureau of Nightkind Immigration. That woman’s sickness had been evident. The taint had lingered on her skin underneath the scent of lilacs.

Carling smelled sexy and feminine with the tantalizing sultriness of her own Power, and the faint metallic tinge that all Vampyres shared.

In fact, to Rune she smelled perfectly healthy.

“I’ve got it, I figured out what bothers me,” he said. He straightened and pulled her away as he talked. Her arms fell loose to her sides. “What if everything you tried didn’t work because Vampyrism is not a disease?”

Grinning, he looked down into that haunting, beautiful face of hers that had grown on him like an addiction. Her expression was blank, those long almond-shaped eyes of hers fixed on something only she could see.

His stomach clenched. He guided her over to her office chair and nudged her to sit. She went without a protest, as passive as a doll.

A ripple went through the office. Then the scene changed. He relaxed and let it take him.

It was time to hit Vegas again, baby.

EIGHT

He didn’t walk a path this time, but the shift in energies felt just like a crossover again, a crossover that somehow turned, was bent in some fundamental way. It was like taking a flight of stairs that doubled back on itself, or turning a corner and discovering a different landscape than expected. He tried to hold on to the feeling so he could examine it more closely. He had the sense of almost grasping it, but then the feeling flowed past him and was gone.

Carling’s office faded, and a hot, humid evening enfolded him. Disoriented, he stood still and soaked in impressions.

Somewhere nearby there was the hoarse rhythmic bellow of bullfrogs. He looked up. The shadowed, spiked tops of palm groves dotted the edges of the night sky, which was brilliant with stars in a way that modern cities with their light pollution never saw anymore.

He stood in the shadows of a columned building built of granite blocks, close by other, larger buildings. Indirect torchlight flickered in various places. The air was pungent with the fetid smell of the nearby river, and the lingering odor of rich food. He smelled yeasty things, beer and bread, along with spiced fish and meat. The evening must still be fairly young.

He also smelled people, and he heard raised voices. A man, shouting in rage. A lighter, younger feminine voice, spilling out a desperate-sounding patter of rapid words. Too accustomed to modern languages, his mind felt rusty as it tried to switch gears and make sense of what he heard.

There was no mistaking the meaty sound of a blow, and a sharp pained cry that was cut short. Nor the sound of a whip as it sliced through air.

A whip.

Fucking hell.

Moving on panic and instinct, Rune lunged forward. He slammed into a wall and sprang off it, and hurtled up wide carved stairs, following the projection of echo back to its source.

Come on. Kick up the speed, goddamn it. He moved faster than he could ever remember moving in his life, but the flat wicked slice of the whip tore through the air in a second stroke, and the sound flayed him alive.

He exploded into a large, luxurious room. Arranged for a seduction, it had become the scene of a torture. Metal braziers lit the space with an abundance of flickering light. The room was open on three sides to a simple balcony and the night air, and framed with gauze hangings that kept out the river insects. There was artfully arranged bedding, untouched. A low table held a feast of meat, fish, spiced vegetables, beer, bread and honey.

A girl child sprawled on the floor, her narrow honey-colored back split and bleeding with whip lashes. A dark man stood over her. He wore a shenti, tooled sandals, and a collar made of beaten copper, and he had a close-clipped beard and a gaze glittering with fury. The man pulled back his arm and shook out his whip.