By Blood We Live

"You saved me?" he panted. "The last thing I remember is Lou unloaded two slugs into the back of my head." Tony's hand gingerly touched his skull and then when he felt no wound, panicked.

"I perceived that you wanted to live more than anything else, in order to avenge this travesty of justice."

"I did, but… but how?" He stepped out of the walk-in shower, bumping into the glass and staggering to the far side of the spacious bathroom. "I heard the shots, felt the impact, passed out. How in the fuck don't I have a huge hole in my head!" He looked around, noticing something was missing. "Where's the mirror? Where's the goddamned mirror, Odette!"

"I don't have any in the mansion," she said calmly, turning off the water and covering her nudity with a large, white Turkish towel. "They upset me."

"Why! What's going on?"

She tossed him a towel and watched him grab it swiftly. "I'm sorry, it was the only way to save you. But once you eat, you'll understand all."

"Eat? Eat! Are you insane?" He wound the towel around his waist and struggled to stand without the aid of the double sink. "I'm not hungry, I'm about to lose my mind. My brains just got blown out, but I'm not dead, this ain't a hospital, and I don't know why I'm even alive." Pain doubled him over again.

"You're not. Eat," she whispered, offering him her wrist.

He seemed confused, and then became horrified as her French manicured finger broke the skin and fangs filled his mouth at the first sight of her blood.

Tears stung his eyes but the scent of blood saturated the bathroom, drawing him to her beyond his control. He closed his eyes as he took her arm and brought it to his lips, her fingers threading through his hair, petting him as he greedily suckled, colors staining the inside of his lids, pleasure careening through his system until he could stand it no more. He threw his head back and released a moan. Her embrace opened the floodgate on years of hurt along with a torrent of tears.

Sobs of remorse choked him, a tender mouth swallowed them away. Velvet tresses were in his fist, his fingers wending their way through dripping curls. Hands so graceful, so soft removed pain from his aura with each gentle caress until towels fell away and skin burned against skin. This woman had saved him, had pulled his essence of existence away from the blackness. He had another chance to complete the mission he'd begun. Her story exploded inside his mind and he wept for her as his story entered her and she wept for him, their honesty becoming raw passion that slammed against the walls and melted down to body-slicked heat on the towel-strewn floor.

The storm of emotions and pleasure was so swift that it left them both breathless. He stared down at her, tracing the edge of her beautiful brows and then cradled her cheek.

"Why did you come back for me?" he murmured, still out of breath.

"Because you were a keeper. I found you after a very long search. A nobleman… and it has been centuries since I'd found someone worth saving." A gentle smile eased out of hiding on her face. "Plus, I so badly wanted a Vodka martini."

He paused to catch his breath, his mind laboring under the new knowledge it had just received. "What they did to you was unforgivable."

"I became what I am, much like you did tonight," she murmured, touching his cheek, her smile fading. "Someone cared enough about me to give me another chance and I loved him for that… and for whom he was."

He understood what Odette was telling him, he loved Meghan that way. But it was becoming so difficult to hold onto the memory or to nurse it to life.

"Imagine after more than two hundred years… the memories fade and all you have left is the pain." Her stare was so hypnotic, so open, and for all that she was and all that she had done, she possessed serenity.

"I have to finish this, tomorrow night, then I can move on."

"I know you have to redress what happened to you," she said quietly, briefly closing her eyes. "Just as one day I'll route out the rest of those in the coven that participated in the coup against Alfonse."

"I know," he murmured, moving against her slowly and now appreciating the unhurried pleasure of their union. She was a beautiful woman, but there was something beyond that, something still so genuine inside her very being. It had been so long since he'd witnessed that or had allowed himself to experience the possibility it existed beyond Meghan. The fact that he felt the way he did almost seemed like a betrayal.

"It's not a betrayal," Odette murmured, brushing his mouth with hers. "They would have wanted us to go on, to thrive, and not merely survive. If we exist tortured, then the others have also won."