Hot Blooded

annoyed afresh by the reminder, then quickly apologized.
She wasn't used to depending on other people for things like this, important
things, things she couldn't do without. Her nerves didn't settle until they were
walking side by side on the road, and his hand reached to clasp hers.
    "You can count on me," he said, but that wasn't the problem.
    Allowing him to comfort her was way too easy, way too pleasurable. Power
flowed across the link between their fingers in smooth, warm waves. She'd felt
the tingling before, but her perception of it was stronger. She wondered if he
was trying to calm her, if that was among his gifts.
    "Just how old are you?" she asked, looking up at his starlit profile. His
features could have been cut from marble; they were that motionless and serene.
Seeing him this way, she realized how much of his nature he'd hidden up until
now.
    "I was born around eleven hundred or so," he said. "Anno Domini. I was a
forester—a gamekeeper, you'd call it—to a large estate in Burgundy." His mouth
twisted wryly within his otherwise unmoving face. "I was not a popular figure,
since my job was to prevent the starving rabble from poaching my lord's
lapins
, sometimes by rather Draconian means.
    "One day, I caught a wolf who was not a wolf in one of my traps. The jaws of
the trap were iron, a weakness of ours, which sapped his
upyr
strength.
Unfortunately for me, as soon as I opened it to remove what I thought was a
carcass, the wolf sprang up and changed into a man. Because I had more
stubbornness than sense, I fought him… nearly to my death.
    "I suppose my ferocity impressed my opponent. Auriclus decided to change me
rather man let me die of my wounds."
    "That was his name, Auriclus?"
    He shook himself from the past and met her gaze. Watching him, she couldn't
tell what he thought of his sire. "Yes. We do not have many elders, but he is
one. Only an elder can change a human to what we are."
    "So you're an elder."
    "Not officially, but yes."
    She knew this answer only told part of the story. His fingers were noticeably
stiffer within her own. "Could you get into trouble for saving me?"
    "That is conceivable, but not likely. Many of the
upyr
on the
Council are my friends. I suppose I must pray they trust me to know what I was
doing."
    A gravity she didn't understand shadowed his words. "Well," she said,
hesitant to pry, "I suppose I should be extra grateful you stretched the rules."
    He stopped and turned to her, his back to the darkened road, his hand closing
tight on hers. The glow she had seen the other night flared in his eyes. "It was
my choice to do what I did. I couldn't have let you die. I love you, Mariann. In
all my years, I've never felt anything like this."
    The passion in his voice struck her speechless. He sounded like a crusader
before a war. At that moment, she could imagine him living a millennium ago.
    He loves me, she thought, the truth of it sinking home. Her happiness at
hearing the declaration, her need to believe it, put a knot of wariness in her
neck. Who fell in love like this? And with her?
    "That's… quite… flattering," she said, the words coming out on separate puffs
of air. "Considering you've been around since way back when."
    She didn't see his expression shift, but between eye blinks it turned sad.
His right hand rose to brush a curl the breeze had blown across her cheek. "My
words weren't meant to flatter."
    "Bastien," she said.
    Maybe he sensed she intended to warn him he was going too fast. She wasn't
ready to give him the trust a good relationship required. If this was what he
expected, he didn't want to hear. He waved toward the intersection that marked
the edge of town.
    "We should not dally," he said. "Heather will be concerned."
    Â 
    SOME
upyr
were born with a knack for glamour, but Mariann wasn't one
of them. Bastien suspected she was going to have to learn the hard way, by
experimenting over time. While he could cast the illusion of normalcy over her
himself, he had to be touching her to maintain it, a requirement that would make
working with her assistant impractical.
    "No kidding," Mariann burst out once he'd explained. "Why did you even bother
to let me come?"
    They stood outside the bakery door, speaking in tones no human could have
heard.
    "I could thrall her," he said. "That lasts longer than a glamour."
    "Thrall her?"
    "It's a form of hypnosis, of brainwashing. It changes what people