Women Of The Bite Part 11

All the way back to the apartment building, Akasha waged an internal battle with herself. Try as she might to think of a way out, there was nothing she could do. If she ran, the s.h.i.+fter could easily mow her down, and she'd not have the blood she needed for her children. Hope was lost. It was all up to the stranger now. She held all the cards.

The weather-worn building can into view much sooner than Akasha had expected. She stood on the crumbling steps, her stomach heavy with fear as the s.h.i.+fter pulled up to the curb and turned off the engine.

"You live here?" The Clan woman asked.

"Here is all we have," Akasha replied. "We'll have to go in the back way so no one sees us."

Suspicion crossed the woman's face, but she unstrapped the cooler and followed Akasha around the far side of the building. Akasha paused when they reached the door and turned to face her guest. This was it. No turning back now. "You have a name? I'll have to have something to tell the children."

"Sari."

Akasha nodded. "Fine then, Sari. I'll remind you my children are sleeping and are not used to me bringing home strangers in the middle of the night, or any other time, for that matter."

"Understood."

Akasha wasn't sure what Sari was saying she understood, but out in the open didn't seem the place to question her. The boards creaked as the two women walked over the dusty floor, both following the set of prints that made a path from the outside to the place Akasha's family called home.

All was quiet as they entered the apartment, and Akasha hesitated outside of her children's door. Sari's gaze swept over the dismal living room, and over the barrier between it and the kitchen. Sari opened her mouth and closed it, a mixture of emotions playing over her face.

"You wanted to see the children?" Akasha found herself hoping Sari had changed her mind, that she would go, leaving behind the box of hope she held in her hands.

No such luck. "Yeah. We should do that," Sari said.

Akasha gently pushed the door open.

Sari took two steps forward to peer inside at the sleeping children. She watched the comforter rise and fall with their breathing and closed her eyes. "Close the door."

Sari crossed the living room sat the cooler on the barrier. She stood there, staring down at the red plastic cover as she spoke. "There's a dozen pints in there. I don't know how much it will take to make them well. I don't figure they will stay cool for very long, and it doesn't look like you have electricity for that fridge."

"We don't." Akasha sat on the arm of the couch. "The bas.e.m.e.nt stays very cold so I keep most of our perishables in there."

"I thought you were starving."

"We eat human food. It just can't nourish us like blood does."

Sari nodded. "You were right. My people know nothing about your kind. We think we do, but these children, you, none of it is like what I'm used to when dealing with vamps."

"We're not the monsters the Bane are. Can't you understand that?" Akasha sighed and leaned her head against the wall. "The Sacrosanct...we just want to live in peace."

"Bane? Sancrosanct?" Akasha turned around, her nose crinkled in puzzlement. "I don't understand any of it."

"I am Sacrosanct...my children are Sacrosanct. We are born with the blood of our ancestors, the gift, curse, whatever you want to call it. For some of us it remains dormant in us until another of our kind awakens us. For others it is all they ever know."

"Which way was it for you?"

Akasha paused to consider how much she wanted to reveal. The tension of a moment ago had faded from Sari's expression, leaving confusion and curiosity in its place. She'd still have to choose her words carefully, but hope colored the connection between hunter and hunted. "I'll tell you what you want to know, but first I need to ready my children's dinner."

"Of course." Sari backed away from the cooler.

Akasha carried the lantern into the kitchen and hefted the portable gas camping stove onto the counter. She poured water from a jug under the sink into a sauce pan and lit the fire under one of the burners. "Hand me a bag, if you would."

Sari moved back to the cooler and removed a bag from the top of the pile. She closed the plastic top and brought the bag to Akasha. "Won't they need more than the one bag?"

"It's not good to let them eat too fast. Upset tummies and all," Akasha explained. Sari chuckled and Akasha frowned. "What's so funny?"

"You sounded just like a real mother there."

"I am a real mother." Akasha turned away and slowly kneaded the bag to start the warming process.

"Sorry," Sari murmured. There were several moments of silence and as Akasha lowered the bag into the simmering water Sari spoke again. "So, we were discussing how you are...became...Sacrowhatever."

"Sacrosanct." Akasha leaned back against the long dead stove and watched the water simmer. "When I met my children's father, Maxwell, he told me I was special, that my blood was that of his people. It was so wonderful and romantic, I bought into the whole thing, let him awaken that part of me. I had Wei a year later and everything was fine, until Maxwell's mother died. He became possessive, frightening. He wouldn't let us leave the house. I tried to run away with my son, but Maxwell always found us. After my daughter was born, he grew violent. He brought home his blood dolls and flaunted them in front of me, they who had freedoms I'd never know. Finally, while he was away, I escaped this last time, and we've been hiding ever since."

"If you were so miserable, why did you have a second child with him?"

Akasha didn't answer at first. She'd already said more than she'd meant to, but it'd been so long since she'd had someone to talk to. She needed to hear herself say these things. She needed to have someone else hear what happened. Somehow she knew that would make their life now seem more real. "It was during one of his rages. I hid Wei in the closet when I heard Maxwell coming. Maxwell was drunk or something, I've never been sure, but he raped me that night. I cried the whole time. I just wasn't as strong as him. He only ever let me have just enough blood to keep me alive and functioning, never more than that. I couldn't fight back."

"d.a.m.n." Sari reached out a hand as if to touch Akasha's arm, but Akasha drew away. "How did you manage to escape?"

"One of the human guards had a thing for me so I led him into my bedroom and right into a homemade trap. The trap broke his neck and I gathered what I could for my kids and I to feed on. It got us to the city, to this place, and away from Maxwell before it ran out." Akasha took the bag out of the water with a pair of tongs and fished out two plastic cups from the cabinet. She cut a triangle in the top of the bag and split the blood between the two cups. "Now we get by as best we can."

"You can't squat here forever."

"I know," Akasha said, swirling the hot blood in the cups until it cooled enough for the kids to drink. "But it's all we have."

There was a long pause before Sari spoke again. "This is no place for kids. They need a chance to go to school. To make friends...your kind can go out in the sun, right?"

"Yes, if we feed regularly it's not painful, but our abilities are weaker during the day." Akasha set the cups on the counter. A normal life. That just wasn't something her kind knew, not for at least a hundred years or more. "We'd go to one of the Sacrosanct colonies, but Maxwell would find us for certain then."

"Yeah, but he'd never find you in a Clan home. Never in a million years."

"What?" Akasha's mouth fell open. What new craziness what this?

"Go feed the children. I'll explain when you get back."

Akasha picked up the cups and walked back toward the bedroom. She still didn't know what Sari had meant, but the relief at being able to properly care for the children overrode her confusion. She pushed the door open with her foot and went to sit next to Wei's side of the mattress. "Wake up, honey. I've got a treat for you."

It took some effort to stir the children awake, but soon both were eagerly drinking the contents of the cups. In no time, the children were pleading for more. Concerns about upset tummies were soon forgotten in the glow of her children's smiling faces, more alive then Akasha had seen them in weeks.

Akasha returned to the kitchen to find another bag already simmering on the camping stove. "How'd you know?"

"I was a mother once." Sari looked away, and shoved her hands into the pockets of her uniform. Before Akasha had a chance to ask, the phone in Sari's s.h.i.+rt pocket buzzed and she answered it. "Yeah, it's me. Yep, everything's fine. The story checks out." Sari frowned. "No, I don't need back-up. I have it handled. Yes, I'm sure."

Sari hung up and Akasha's breath caught in her throat. "Someone knows you're here?" Akasha took a step back and glanced toward her children's open door. "They do, don't they?"

"I had to tell them where I was going. They're my pack. If I didn't check in, they'd freak."

Akasha breathed deep, doing her best not to panic. The Clan knew where they were. Fine. They'd have to find a new place to stay. Once the children were fed, they'd pack up and leave the Clan far behind. She just wasn't sure how they'd manage it and avoid Maxwell, too.

"Hey. It's nothing to worry about."

"Nothing to worry about?" Akasha hissed through gritted teeth. "We have a pack of weres who'd like nothing better than to wipe us all out, and they now know where to find us. You think that's nothing to worry about? We trusted you, Sari."

"They're not coming after you." Sari poked aggressively at the bag with the tongs. "And if you're worried about that d.i.c.khead of a vamp finding you here, then staying here isn't an option anyway. You know what you have to do."

"What's that?" Akasha shot back.

"You bring the kids and come stay at my place," Sari said in a matter-of-fact tone.

"You're insane."

Sari laughed. "It wouldn't be the first time someone has told me that, except usually it's one of my pack that says it."

Akasha pushed past Sari and set the empty cups on the counter. "Less than an hour ago you were ready to kill me where I stood, and now you want to have some f.u.c.ked-up slumber party. What the h.e.l.l are you playing at?"

"I'll tell you what I'm thinking. Then maybe you'll not think it's such a crazy idea."

Akasha rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I really see that happening."

Sari backed up and handed Akasha the tongs. "This place is a s.h.i.+t hole and you know it. If any of my sisters had gone through what you did, that a.s.shole would have his head mounted on my pack leader's living room wall. My people believe when the G.o.ddess sends someone for you to look after, you don't turn them away. There was a reason I was the one to find you tonight. I'm older than many of the women in my pack, but I'm also in a lot of ways more open minded. If there is a peaceful solution to something, I'd rather go with that than a fight. That vamp I killed didn't give me a choice."

"What's that have to do with us?" Akasha poured the second bag in the cups, and watched Sari out of the corner of her eye.

"I look at it this way," Sari explained. "You and the kids get a home until you find something better, and I get real details on your people and the Bane. If what you say is true, we're fighting a war on half-a.s.sed information which is a p.i.s.s-poor way to go about things. You get the rea.s.surance that the kids are safer from your ex than they could be anyplace else, and just for good measure, we send my pack after the b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Dear ol' Maxie will be so busy dodging them he'll not have time to think about you and the kids."

Akasha swirled the blood in the cups slowly, meditatively. Again the lessons of Madam Annette came back to her and she found herself nodding thoughtfully. Sari could've killed them a hundred times over, and yet here she stood offering them her home. The Clan were many things, but skillful tricksters was not a way she'd describe their kind.

"Mama, I'm still hungry." Lili stood in the doorway, her eyes roving over their visitor, studying her. With a satisfied sniff, she smiled. "I'm Lili. Who're you?"

"Sari."

Akasha stared at her daughter, who so often was her gauge on who could be trusted and who could not. It was Lili's gift, knowing what lay inside a person. If anything could rea.s.sure her, the trusting smile her youngest now gave Sari certainly did. "I have more for you here." Akasha held out the cup and Lili crossed the room to take it from her.

Lili watched Sari as she sipped her blood, her hunger obviously satisfied enough that she didn't need to rush this time. "You don't smell like us."

"I'm not like you." Sari crouched in front of Lili. "I'm Clan. You're San...san..."

Lilli giggled. "It's Sacrosanct, silly."

"Sacrosant," Sari repeated slowly, carefully p.r.o.nouncing each syllable. "Okay, I've got it now."

Lili giggled again and Akasha cleared her throat to get her daughter's attention. "Take this to your brother."

Reluctantly Lili took the second cup and shuffled off into the bedroom. Akasha counted herself lucky. When her daughter was feeling herself again it wouldn't be half so easy to get her to cooperate.

"So she's Lili," Sari began. "And that would make you...?"

"My name is Akasha."

"Ah," Sari smiled. "That's Sanskrit, isn't it? Something about the aether, isn't it? You looked more Chinese than Indian."

"I'm impressed. You got the meaning correct. My parents were from Taiwan, but I was raised by my adoptive mother, who was originally from Nepal, and her American husband. They're the ones who named me." Akasha squinted her eyes, looking for some something she might have missed about their new friend. "You don't look like someone who reads ancient languages."

"So maybe you have something to learn about me as well." Sari took a step forward. "So, how about it? You up for a bit of adventure?"

At first glance, the s.p.a.cious room was like walking into a living gallery rather than a children's bedroom. The wall behind Akasha was skillfully painted to give the feeling of a gray stone castle, with the oak door central to the picture connected to the stone by two heavy chains. The rest of the room was the enchanted forest, complete with regal unicorns and flittering fairies. Even the dressers and shelves were placed in a way to camouflage them against the trunks of trees, so nothing spoiled the illusion of the forest. Two elves peeked out from behind the wide oak that housed the closet door, one a taller blonde with green eyes and tawny skin, the other with dark hair and eyes. Something in the elven girls' features was so similar, Akasha knew at once they were sisters.

Sari walked past her toward the box seat on the far wall covered in pink and purple pillows. Moonlight cast shadows upon her face, highlighting a mournful sadness Akasha hadn't noticed on Sari's face before this.

Sari closed the deep blue curtain and kept her back to Akasha as she spoke. "I have some things in the attic that might fit Wei and Lili. Kamal preferred the frills and dressy things, but her sister Ela liked more practical and simplistic clothes. I hope Wei doesn't mind pinks and purples. Both girls were fond of those colors."

"Wei loves pinks and purple, as does Lili, so that shouldn't be an issue." Again Akasha noticed signs of the weight of sadness in Sari's voice and the way her shoulders drooped. "Where are the girls now? Grown up and moved away?"

Sari shook her head. "War takes many victims, not always just those who wear the mantle of warriors."

The meaning of Sari's words. .h.i.t Akasha, and she took a step back. These girl's were Sari's children, and they had been killed. Had it been by Akasha's own kind or the Bane? Akasha took another look around the room. An L-shaped bunk bed sat tucked into one corner of the room, and colorful scarves of greens, blues, and purples hung from the top bunk, s.h.i.+elding the lower in a tent of soft fabric. Deep pink covered the exposed upper bed and a pyramid of stuffed animals was neatly piled on the trio of matching pink pillows. The same care had been taken in the placement of all the various knickknacks around the room, and not a speck of dust could be seen anywhere. This was not just a bedroom. This was a shrine.

"We shouldn't be here," Akasha whispered. This was a place of sacred sorrow.

Sari turned to face Akasha, her eyes glistening with restrained tears. "Life has been gone from this room for six years, Akasha. My heart has been dead, my soul heavy with the burden on my rage. I believe now my G.o.ddess sent you and your children tonight to cast out that pain and hate. She knew I'd never be able to turn my back on children who needed my help." Her voice took on an air of desperate need as she pleaded. "Please. I want to hear children's laughter in my house again, even if only for a time. I fear my soul will die without it."

When Akasha had agreed at the apartment for her family to come here, she had doubted the wisdom of the choice. Now, looking into Sari's eyes, the sincerity behind her teary gaze convinced Akasha this was the best choice for all of them. "I'm sure my children will love this room. It's beautiful."

Even as tears trickled down her cheeks, Sari smiled. "Thank you. This is your children's room for as long as the three of you stay with me. There is nothing here that they may not touch, but I will ask that they are careful."

Akasha nodded. She'd left the children happily curled together on Sari's comfy couch under a plush throw watching some such movie of dragons and wizards they had picked from Sari's sizable movie collection. There was little doubt the wonder this place would inspire when they saw it. "I'm sure they will be. My children have lived with so little for so long, they've learned to be very cautious with what they do have."

Sari took a step toward Akasha, her tone tentative. "I only have the one other bedroom for now, but if you three decide you want to stay for more than a few weeks, I'll gladly clear out the office to make it a suitable bedroom for you. For now you can have my room. As I'm sure your children can attest to, the couch is quite comfortable."

"I couldn't kick you out of your own bedroom."

Sari took another step forward, and Akasha was surprised to find Sari's long strides had brought them no more than an arm's length apart. "Well, I doubted you'd let me share the bed with you, so the couch seemed an acceptable alternative." Sari smiled. "Unless you'd prefer the company."

The surprise of their sudden closeness was nothing compared to the jolt that shot through Akasha at Sari's suggestion. What was that about, she wondered? "I..." Words failed her as Sari closed the gap between then, her warm breath caressing Akasha's face with the scent of the pumpkin and spice tea she'd had when they had arrived at the house. Sari licked her lips and a s.h.i.+ver tore through Akasha at the simple gesture. This was madness.

"Life has long been gone from this house, Daughter of the Veil, and from my bed. We could change that all tonight if you'll allow it."

Logic screamed countless argument in her mind on why this was a foolish idea, but when Akasha opened to mouth to reply, her heart betrayed her mind and nothing but a soft breath escaped her lips. Sari leaned close, and her hand came to rest in the small of Akasha's back. It was a perfect fit, like lock and key were made to come together. Their lips met, at first soft and tentative, Akasha trembling with a sudden wave of restrained need and frightening vulnerability. Her fear faded as warmth replaced it, coursing over her body and drowning her logic in a sea of untapped pa.s.sion. The sensation echoed in her mind, demanding she record this feeling she'd never known before this.

Their kiss deepened and Sari pulled them together hard, her body hot against Akasha's. Her lips broke free from the hungry kiss, and traced a path along Akasha's chin to just beneath her ear. As Sari spoke, she nibbled and tugged at the sensitive lobe between each sentence. "Share my bed. Not just for tonight. Wash everything away until there only our pa.s.sion and our spirits. I know you can, Daughter of the Veil. You are the only woman with the power."

Akasha's knees shook at the rush of heat brought on by the playful teeth and tongue as much as the sensual tone of the words. She wanted so badly to believe she had that power. Could she really heal such pain rather than cause it? Was that really within her grasp? "I... I..."

"I want you." Sari moaned low, the vibration shaking free a responsive moan from deep within Akasha. "I need you..."

Akasha's answer came in a barely audible gasp of her own need, but Sari understood. She drew Akasha into her arms and carried her out of the room and down the long hall to an open door. They feasted on hot kisses and the room around Akasha became nothing more than a colored haze. The door thudded shut and they landed on a bed that could have easily been a bed of moss rather than a mound of thick linens; Akasha wouldn't have cared.

Clothing seemed to fall away like leaves in a heady summer wind and soon their bodies pressed hard, moving in a slow and steady rhythm. Akasha's knees bent expectantly as Sari's thigh edged between them, kneading a firm pressure against the growing heat that throbbed there, demanding to be satisfied. Another hunger called from within Akasha but she ignored it. Nothing could spoil this. Nothing must betray the trust she felt between them.