Chapter Four

Dimitri stood, dripping, hard, yearning and terrified at his Sire half-collapsed in the bathroom shower. That was the only possible explanation.

Nico was his Sire.

It didn’t make any sense. It didn’t obey any of the supernatural laws of power. It wasn’t possible. Human beings couldn’t be a vampire Sire. They couldn’t even sense vampire power beyond the limited effects of glamor and bespelling.

He’d enthralled Nico only once, on that night in the humid, neon-flashed dance floor. He’d stalked his prey across the club, danced with him close through half a song, then touched him gently with power so he’d answer Dimitri’s question truthfully.

Dimitri hadn’t needed to pour more than a whisper of power into the exchange. He’d been grinding against Nico for several minutes, his hand wrapped around Nico’s hip and pressed against his hard cock. He already knew Nico was ready.

“What makes you cum?”

Nico had looked up at him with wide, hazy eyes and whispered, “Bite me.”

He hadn’t expected that answer. His prey tended to ask for a blow job. Or to go down on Dimitri.

Against his better judgment, Dimitri had yanked Nico’s head to the side and sank his teeth into his willing flesh. He’d dunk his fill there on the floor.

And true to his whispered desire, Nico had cum in his arms with a soft, keening cry of pleasure that went straight to Dimitri’s cock.

He’d left Nico on the dance floor that night, but Dimitri had known instantly he’d be back. Again and again.

Despite his obsession, Nico was only human. Dimitri’s favorite human, to be sure, but limited by his moral life. He had no knowledge of the occult, of vampires in general, or of their power specifically. He was entirely innocent of that world.

And yet it had to be true. Nico was Dimitri’s Sire. Somehow. It was the only thing that explained why Dimitri was alive. Why Nico himself was alive. Why both of them surged with power.

And it explained why Nico was overloading.

Humans couldn’t interact with vampire power. They couldn’t gather it and compress it down to advance their rank in the Court. They couldn’t pull it from other vampires like a Sire could, to stay stronger than those they had turned. And a human certainly couldn’t pass that power to the King in the same way vampires passed it to their Sire.

But somehow Nico had generated power like a Sire could. And he’d trickled it down to Dimitri—like a Sire could.

And now it had built up in his body, running amok in his veins, because he’d never learned to handle it the way a fledgling vampire did when they first turned.

Dimitri shoved the impossible nature of it aside and focused. Nico seized in the tub like he’d been electrocuted. Dimitri understood exactly where things had gone wrong.

He shoved himself into the tub. He grabbed Nico under the arms. If he held Nico against his chest, he couldn’t injure himself and Dimitri could have a second to think.

Dimitri had been a vampire for over two centuries. Taking power from blood and cycling it around his body—giving himself super strength, speed, and healing—was as natural as breathing. It wasn’t something he actively thought about.

And like breathing, as soon as he turned his attention to the internal process, it stuttered like he’d taken manual control of the system. He sent his own power flowing and watched it.

Watched as a portion of it siphoned off and was sent up the bond to his Sire.

To Nico.

Dimitri was making this worse, he realized with a jolt. Every time his power rolled through his own body a portion was tithed to his Sire. And Nico didn’t know what to do with it all.

Nico shook in his arms. The shower rained on them both.

Dimitri tried to wipe Nico’s hair back and let his head fall on Dimitri’s shoulder. “Nico. You have too much power. You need to send it back to me.”

Which, of course, he wouldn’t know how to do. Dimitri cursed. He’d make a shit Sire trying to explain this to a new vamp.

“You need to push it down the bond, Nico.” He pressed his fingers on Nico’s chest, right over his heart—going a million miles a minute—and tapped there. “You generated too much, you have to get rid of it.”

And how exactly had Nico done that, anyway? All vampires generated power from blood, but Sires could generate it in other ways. Often violent ways. He didn’t have time to figure that out.

Nico’s skin flushed as his temperature started to rise. Dimitri leaned forward to crank the water temperature down as cold as it would go, just to delay whatever process was happening in Nico’s body. Some kind of overload. Like a battery with too much juice.

He pressed his cheek to Nico’s head and whispered, “Dammit, you need to dump power down the bond or you’re going to boil…” How could he get that through if Nico couldn’t even hear him. His heart clenched with fear. Not just at the idea of losing his Sire again so soon, but of losing Nico.

Dimitri wasn’t sad to be free of his old Sire. He hoped the man was burning in eternal realm of Light, in fact. But Nico… his perfect, indulgent Nico. His Nico who craved their bloodplay even more than Dimitri did. Who didn’t see Dimitri’s eight fangs as something to fear, but something that gave incredible pleasure. He’d never once considered what he might do without him. Dimitri was immortal, but Nico was young, they were supposed to have decades together…

Dimitri dove into his own body and sought the bond that tied them together. If Nico couldn’t reach down, Dimitri would find a way to reach up. He’d felt Nico’s thoughts and desires streaming through like they were Dimitri’s own. He’d acted as his Sire commanded. But maybe he could do the reverse.

He poured his experience into the bond, stepping through the elements of grabbing a hold of the power and pushing it down the connection. He felt like he was screaming inside his own mind. Shoving complex thoughts up the pop was like swimming upstream. He nearly drowned in the panic/fire/meltdown pouring out of Nico’s heart.

But he persists. What else can he do? If this didn’t work Nico would burst into flame and Dimitri right after. He shoves instruction up the bond in simple, concrete thoughts. Grab it with both hands. Push it down the bond to me.

Come on, Nico.

His human’s body started to heat up. Sweat broke out on Nico’s forhead. Dimitri clamped a tight lid on his panic and rocked Nico gently in his arms. Even the cold water from the shower started to steam off Nico’s skin.

But then the first drop of power slipped down the bond. Dimitri felt it suddenly in his heart, like a direct shot of adrenaline. He jerked in the tub, but held Nico tighter, shouting in his mind: Yes. Again. MORE!

Another teaspoon of power slipped across the divide and into Dimitri’s heart. He held Nico tight and buried his face in Nico’s neck. “Yes. That’s it. A little more, Nico.”

The power slipped faster. Dripping steadily. Then in cups. Like Nico figured out how to turn on the tap. Dimitri took a heavy, deep breath, bathing in fresh, golden power. His body responded, stiffening against Nico’s back, but it was the last thing on Dimitri’s mind. His Sire was learning.

He muttered further encouragement, hoping Nico understood. This trickle of power wasn’t going to save him yet, only delay the firy end.

But abruptly the leaking faucet became an open floodgate. Power dumped into Dimitri’s body and he arched under Nico, his entire body clenched in response. He cycled the power automatically, the technique ingrained from 200 years of practice. The power spiraled inside him, touching every muscle, every bone, every cell in his body. He condensed it down, crushing it into a smaller and smaller ball.

This was more difficult than he remembered. The flood continued to pour in as Dimitri funneled it into his system, only to realize that the mechanism for power that he’d run like an engine inside his chest for the better part of two centuries had stopped at some point recently.

When his Sire had died, perhaps?

Had he consumed every last drop of power in his blood frenzy’s unthinking hunger?

Dimitri realized he had to restart his own power cycle from scratch. And it wasn’t easy. He forced the power down into a ball, but, like water, it resisted compression. Unlike water, it would obey Dimitri’s will eventually.

He spun the ball of power. It swelled in his chest as Nico continued to pour energy into him, but Dimitri could hold it. He knew how to handle an overflow, how to delay its effects inside him. And more importantly, how to cultivate.

The ball ground slowly in a counterclockwise circle. Like a giant ocean churning in an ancient current. He applied pressure. He pushed the power with intent, leaning his will into it. Demanding it obey him. The volume was almost too much. It started to press against his skin from the inside.

In a human, he’d be edging toward overload, like Nico had. But Dimitri was a vampire. For vampires, too much power was just an opportunity to advance.

The spin began to pick up speed.

The unending ocean tipped slowly into a whirlpool. A funnel of power.

It poured in from Nico at the top, a raging waterfall of liquid gold. It splashed into the whirlpool and got sucked into the spin. He shoved at the spiral until the tail of it elongated downward. Tighter. Smaller.

Condensed.

He’d forgotten how difficult this was. It took everything he had just to keep the system spinning. Leaning on it like Sisyphus rolling the stone unendingly upward.

Until it caught.

Some fulcrum tipped finally over in Dimitri’s favor. He gasped for air as the cultivation caught its own spin and rushed away from him. All he had to do now was give it a little nudge now and then. It whirled like a tornado inside him. And it took everything Nico had to give, gulping power down, sucking it in without Dimitri needing to guide it.

He dropped his head back against the tub with a heaving sigh. Nico’s skin under his hands was starting to cool. His surging body had settled to twitches. The danger had passed.

And for the first time since he lost his Sire, Dimitri probed his tongue around inside his own mouth, counting fangs.

He’d been a powerful vampire of his Court, one of the strongest under his Sire. Eight fangs—the same as his Sire and on the edge of being able to Sire vampires of his own. To break away and start his own Court. An incredible feat in only two hundred years.

He poked his tongue at his own teeth and felt his stomach drop. There were only two fangs, on the top jaw near the front. The canine teeth. Baby fangs.

He was the world’s oldest vampire fledgling.

Dimitri closed his eyes and laughed ruefully. He was starting from the very bottom. A fledgling with a human Sire that didn’t know how to cultivate his own power.

A Sire that couldn’t grow stronger, but could still form a Court.

Such that it was with only one vampire member.

Dimitri’s laugh wheezed close to something else as his chest clenched. Some other, more desperate emotion he wasn’t ready to name. He leaned forward to turn off the water and hugged Nico tightly from behind. He dug his face into his human’s—his Sire’s neck, and tried to breathe evenly.

He was alive. Nico was alive. Dimitri had a Sire, an improved situation from only a few hours ago.

A Sire who didn’t cultivate power through the torture of others.

Dimitri looked up, staring off into the middle distance. How exactly did Nico generate all that power?