The New Night Novels (Book 2): Revelations (A New Night Novella) (4 page)

     “Come on, baby,” I whisper. I lick my lips, thinking of him shooting his hot load into me. “Come on, I want to feel you come inside of me.”

     He groans and fucks me harder. It seems like he’s trying to punch a new hole in me so he can go deeper before he comes. I feel his body stiffen and know he’s close. I want to see him when he comes, so I open my eyes and grab his face in my hands. His eyes are gone in a haze of lust. Two more strokes, and he freezes with his dick as far in me as it will go.

     I feel the eruption of pleasure all throughout my pussy. The explosion of cum drenches the inside of me as fully as the lake water drenched my outside. He presses his full body weight into me and thrusts with each spurt of cum. He groans low in his throat and brings me up into a sitting position.

     Without letting his dick slide out of me, Ramses picks me up and holds me against his chest. Both of our breathing quickly returns to normal, but I know we’re going to have a chance to get it up there again. He’s still rock hard inside of me, though he’s twitching with sensitivity as I contract the muscles of my pussy around him.

     “Hot damn, I missed that.” He nuzzles his face into my hair. Though it hadn’t really dried from the lake water, it’s now also damp with sweat.

     “Don’t go again,” I beg against his neck. Though I want to have more sex-I want to fuck him until neither of us can walk-I can’t let another minute go by without getting my pleas out there. I can’t be without him again. We were together for three hundred years before this. Never separated. With this being the most tumultuous time in history, human and vampire, I can’t handle being without my rock and anchor anymore.

     Ramses sighs, regret evident in his drooping shoulders. He lowers me to the bed and sits down beside me. I don’t think there’s going to be anymore sex for a while. Damn my mouth.

     “I wanted a little time with you before…but we should get it all out there now. There’s a lot we need to discuss.”

     “We could just forget I said anything.” The halfhearted suggestion makes him smirk at me.

     “I don’t think so, sugar. You can’t spend all your time just distracting a man with sex. Nothing would ever get done.”

     “Acceptable point,” I say with a smile. I missed this more than the sex, though the sex is out of this freaking world. The back and forth with Ramses, the joking, the easy conversations. Those are the treasures of our relationship, and I longed for them more than for his body during our separation.

CHAPTER SEVEN

     “We have to talk about the Rippers,” he says. I nod. It always goes back to the Rippers. It’s why he left. Though I never knew the exact reason, I knew it had to have something to do with the Rippers. Nothing in our world is free of their influence.

     “Okay, shoot.”

     Ramses makes himself comfortable against my plain wooden headboard and I cuddle up against him. How many times have we had conversations in this position? Our talks have ranged from the best ways to take down a Ripper to places we want to visit when the world got back to normal to what kind of taco we prefer and why. He’ll never sell me on fish tacos, but it’s a lively debate every time.

     “You know the Grissom virus was genetically-engineered,” he begins. I nod
. Common
, common
knowledge.

     “Can I clean up real quick?” I interject. “If this is going to be a long history lesson, I don’t want to be all sticky.”

     Ramses grins at me and unwraps his arm from my shoulders. I scamper off the bed and grab a towel out of a small cupboard. Waving for him to continue, I wet the towel and begin cleaning my sensitive bits.

     “So, from the beginning of it, we’ve always assumed it was humans who made the virus and distributed it to each other, right? We thought they were looking for better ways to kill each other, like they always have.”

     I return to the bed and hop over him to curl up against his side again. I bring the towel with me. I enjoy the task of rubbing the fabric over his moist genitals. Something about it makes the act more intimate than sex, though nowhere near as pleasurable.

     “Right. The initial wave was mostly soldiers. Grissom’s troops were among the first of the first.” I recount the history lesson easily. We all know how it went down. No company or mad scientist may have claimed responsibility for it, but it was just a human mess up that led to what was almost the apocalypse for both of our species.

     “We’ve found leads that suggest no humans took part in creating and distributing the Grissom virus,” Ramses says slowly. He’s lowered his voice to nearly a whisper. “Sreya, we think a vampire may have been responsible.”

     “What?!” I exclaim. “Why in the hell would any vampire do that?”

     Ramses calms me by stroking his hand down my hair and over my shoulder. He goes so far as to shush me and I glare at him a little bit.

     “Be quiet, you,” he scolds in a friendly voice. “No one here knows of this, that I’m aware of.”

     “Fine,” I say in a milder tone. “But what makes you think it came from our people? This virus annihilated the human population, our food. We replenish our ranks from them. And the Rippers are wrecking our population, as well. Why would any vampire do that?”

     Ramses shrugs. “Maybe they didn’t think far enough ahead. The Grissom virus mutated, remember? It’s possible they didn’t have the foresight to predict what would happen, or the time to test the virus they were putting into the population. There are any number of options.”

     “What evidence have you found?” I ask. I draw invisible patterns on his hard, bare stomach, frowning. This is the most disturbing thing I’ve heard in years. Ever since the news of the Grissom virus first hit.

     Ramses hesitates, and I don’t like it. He’s always been solid and sure. Hesitation isn’t his style. This whole fiasco-conspiracy, whatever it might be-has him rattled.

     “We’ve studied the virus as completely as we can,” he says. “A few of our other scientists in different safe zones have, as well. We’ve all come to near the same conclusion. The Grissom virus had to be developed using vampire DNA as the base.”

     “Why would anyone do that?” I whisper. The horror I feel at the very thought spills into my tone. “And how could it be distributed without a maker? It isn’t like what makes us vampires is very easy to catch.”

     “And I think that’s
exactly
why the virus destroyed the human population as it did,” Ramses follows on my trail of thought. “Vampirism was weaponized. It was distributed into the human population in a much more communicable form, airborne at first, and then transferred through the bites of the infected. You’ve seen what happens when an inexperienced maker tries to convert a human, or what happens when the process is abandoned midway through.”

     I sit up, no longer in the mood for cuddling. I cross my legs underneath me and tap one finger on my bare knee. “The attempted convert is driven insane,” I muse. “So you think it was like the mother of all misguided conversion attempts?”

     “I don’t think it was a conversion attempt at all,” Ramses counters. “I think someone took the failure of the process and used it to destroy the human population. Vampirism is transferred through bite and blood. Whoever weaponized our DNA created a multitude of the half-turned and let them loose on the rest of humanity. Someone
meant
for this to happen, Sreya.”

     “But you think they didn’t mean for it to go this far? You think they couldn’t have known the Rippers would threaten our way of life, as well?”

     “Could you?” His tone is pensive and somber. I ponder it myself. Could I have guessed that a virus released into the human population to turn a percentage of them into pseudo-vampires would infect nearly all of them and leave the world in a limbo claimed by what amount to the walking dead? They haven’t been transformed, so they aren’t vampires, but neither are they human any longer. I can hardly grasp the concept now, after seeing it myself. I’m sure if I’d been responsible for doing it in the first place, I couldn’t have imagined the devastation that would take place as a result of my actions.

     “So what do we do now?” I ask him.

CHAPTER EIGHT

     “What we need to do is why I’m here,” Ramses says. “We’ve been in contact with several groups working on a cure and a vaccine. We’re closer to the vaccine than the cure. I need Dr. Geisel’s research files, to see if he’s any closer to what we need than we are.”

     “Why haven’t you asked him?” I pull at my hair, trying to tug the tangles out of it that the dip in the lake and then sex worked into it. Ramses moves my hand away and works at the knots with gentler fingers.

     “We’re concerned with his loyalty and intentions,” Ramses admits. “He’s the only one who hasn’t contacted us to exchange information.”

     “Our towers are down,” I inform him. “They have been for years. Your father won’t authorize a group to repair them, because the only person we have on hand who can actually fix the towers is a human.”

     “Which human?” Ramses asks. “They need to be kept safe and looked after, because those towers are important. I’ll convince Father of the need to repair them so Dr. Geisel can exchange the knowledge he’s gained with the other working toward a cure.”

     “Kaiser,” I answer, and hope the name of my donor doesn’t stoke the flames of Ramses’ jealous fire.

     Much to my relief, he nods and stands. He begins to pace. “We need to keep him near us, and guard him while he works on the towers that need to be repaired. If we’re going to drive back the threat of the Rippers, we need to do it by protecting our human allies and having an open exchange of information.”

     “Dr. Geisel keeps pretty much to himself,” I admit as I shimmy off the bed. I open drawers and remove undergarments, tight black pants, a white tank top, and a zip-up sweat shirt to go over it. With one mournful look at my ruined bra, I begin the process of dressing with my second favorite. Ramses grabs his own clothes and follows my lead as I continue speaking.

     “He doesn’t even want to work with the other doctors and scientists we have here. One of the humans is a genuine virologist, and Dr. Geisel sends him out of the lab all the time. He says he can’t tolerate him, and the man’s an imbecile. I think he’s just kind of arrogant.”

     Ramses smiles as I fluff my hair and try to tame it with a pony tail holder. “Sounds like an ass, not just kind of arrogant,” he says with a laugh.

     I shrug and say, “Yeah, I guess. I don’t mind working for him because I feel like I’m doing something good. I want to help the human population, and ours, of course. If we can cure the Rippers…” I trail off with a frown. I’ve considered the implications before. How would it work? Their bodies haven’t deteriorated much, but can we bring their personalities and reasoning abilities back? Will we invent a cure just to end up with billions of bodies no longer capable of containing cognizant human souls?

     “Hey, I didn’t mean to worry you,” Ramses says. He takes my hands and rubs his thumbs over the backs. It isn’t what he’s told me that’s worrisome. It’s the end result of either cure or curse that could leave us with the same depressing scenario: a planet full of even more death.

     I force a smile his way and shake my head. I squeeze his hands in response. “No, I’m glad you told me.” I step in to hug him, and hold him as tightly as I can. “I’m glad you came back.”

     “Well, I came back for a reason,” he reminds me. “There’s a lot to do, and I need you with me for it.”

     We end the embrace and step back, still holding onto each other’s arms as though parting is too much effort. “Couldn’t you just say you need me with you? No reason for it, you just need me?” I ask on impulse.

     Ramses looks surprised at my question. If he can’t imagine the problems his leaving has created, with thoughts on my self-worth and his dedication to us being the least of them, then shame on him. I wait for an answer, still holding him by his large biceps.

     “Sreya,” he says my name in a serious tone and takes my chin in one warm, smooth hand. “Of course I need you, sweetheart. For three hundred years, I’ve needed you. When I was without you, it was the closest I’ve come to dying since I left humanity for this life.”

     My knees feel a little weak and I smile again. Since he’s been gone, I haven’t been anyone’s sweetheart or sugar. I’ve been a fighter, a runner, an executioner of poor souls with no life left but one of violence and blood. It feels nice to be a little weak again.

     “I just had to get that out there,” I admit. We finally break contact, but hold hands again almost as soon as we stop touching.

     “So when did this Dr. Geisel show up here?” Ramses asks as we leave my room. I make sure to lock it, as I always do.

     “Right around the time you left, actually. I remember feeling pretty lost and down and having him show up with things for me to do was really helpful. I think I would have driven myself insane worrying about you if I didn’t have runs to go on for him all the time.”

     “And what did he ask for, mainly?” Ramses continues his questioning, storing all of my answers in his fascinating, fast-working brain.