The Wolf and the Unicorn

From the next room, Antigone laughed. "This here is just the tip of the iceberg. If you like what you see in the living room, just wait 'til you've seen my library." She heated a pot of water on the electric stove and let the blood bags sit in the boiling water for a count of twenty, just long enough to warm them to a satisfying 99 degrees. She returned to the living room and handed one to Beckett along with a pewter mug before returning to the couch she'd been seated at earlier. "Dinner is served," she smirked.





"Indeed." He inclined a nod of thanks in her direction. "The pain's just now starting to come back, by the way."





She nodded as she poured the blood from her bag into a matching tankard and sipped. "Once I finish this, I should be able to stabilize you further, and I need to get a better look at what Yeqon did to you with that poison." She raised her mug in a toast. "To the Ba'ali, and the hopes that their nights are numbered."





He lifted his mug and drank deeply, feeling the pain ebb slightly as he did. "Speaking of them, I couldn't help but notice you're on a first-name basis."





She scowled, her dark eyes narrowing. "I made it my business to learn as much as I could about them. It makes hunting them a lot easier when you can anticipate their next move."





"Ah." He sipped more of the blood. "Aside from the fact that, well, they're Ba'ali...it sounds like you have an axe to grind with them, so to speak."





"You could say that. It would be an understatement, but you could say that."





The Gangrel nodded. "I see. Well, seeing as how I haven't formally thanked you, let me say how very much I prefer your company to theirs."





Antigone chuckled. "I'll take that as a compliment. How did you come to be in such a predicament, anyway?"





He sighed. "They caught me unawares, which is something that hasn't happened to me in a very long time. I'd been searching for a book," he gestured to the one on the table, "and had just found it. I was all caught up in the moment of discovery when they found me."





She reached over and picked up the book, opening it and scanning a page at random. "Ahh. The Book of Nod, or so it would appear."





"Even so."





"You know this is a fake, right? It was planted there for someone to find, and you walked right into their trap."





He choked on a sip of blood and sat up. "A fake? Are you certain?"





Antigone nodded, brushing a strand of her dark blonde hair behind an ear. "I didn't spend a few centuries hanging around with a Noddist for nothing. It's a piece of junk. It's been artificially aged," she said, turning it over to inspect the spine, opening and closing the cover several times. "I'd say this is at most a decade old."





Beckett shook his head. "Maybe someone simply made a recent copy."





"Then why go to all the trouble of aging it?" She handed him the tome to examine.





In the better lighting of the room, Beckett could see the signs he'd missed earlier, and had to agree with her. "So I was duped. It's happened before; not for a long time, but it's happened. So you're saying it was placed as a lure."





She nodded. "Not necessarily for you. I can think of a couple of people who'd jump at the bait of a Book, some of them pretty damned powerful Kindred."





He scowled. "Vykos, maybe?" A spasm of pain caused him to clutch his chest, and he dropped the book.





Antigone was at his side, kneeling beside him, a hand on his arm. "Let me look at that," she said, easing his arm away to his side. He shrugged off the leather jacket and removed the tatters that remained of his shirt, wincing as he moved and stretched injured muscles. She touched one of the burns with her forefinger and examined the fingertip. "Lean back and let me get a better look." He reclined further into the couch as she pulled a lamp closer to light the area better.





"Hmm. Not a contact poison. Maybe an acid." She licked her fingertip cautiously, and appeared satisfied. "Hmm, no, that's not it either. Whatever it is, it seems to be inert now."





He grimaced, "It sure as Hell doesn't feel inert."





"What I meant is that it's not going to harm me when I'm Healing you." She looked up and met his eyes, "I can heal you, and you probably won't even have any scars to show off as a souvenir of your adventure."





"Good," he hissed as another spasm shook him, and his fist clenched reflexively on one of the couch's pillows. "I have enough scars as it is."





"The tricky part is, though, in order to heal wounds of this sort," she looked away, the faintest flush coloring her pale skin as her voice fell to little more than a whisper, "I need to lick them." Beckett's eyebrows raised. "That is, if you...if you're okay with that."





He tried to laugh but another wave of pain turned it into a cough. "Where were you when I was alive?" he asked. "I'm sorry, I couldn't resist an opening like that. Yes, please do whatever you need to do to make the pain go away." The spasms were becoming stronger and more frequent, and a faint blood sheen glistened on his forehead.





Antigone nodded and leaned forward, the eye in her forehead opening with a golden glow as her others closed, and ran the tip of her tongue along one of the burns on his chest. A sensation every bit as intense as the pain he'd felt when the Ba'ali has poured the poison onto his skin, but pure ecstasy where that had been torment, filled him with a rush so intoxicating he wondered for a moment if he'd pass out from pleasure. He was vaguely aware that he'd woven his hands through her hair and pressed her closer to him as she continued her ministrations. Things his mind and body hadn't experienced in the centuries since his Embrace, things he'd though it impossible he'd ever feel again, assailed him as she moved from one burn to the next, until she'd tended them all.





"That's all of them," she murmured and looked up, meeting his gaze. He realized her third eye was blue, while the others were a rich whiskey-brown. "I hope that wasn't too unpleasant for you."





Beckett choked on a laugh and pulled her off her knees so that she was sprawled across his now-healed chest, his arms encircling her. "I would hardly describe what you just did as unpleasant." He inclined his head towards her so their foreheads touched. "Quite the opposite, actually." He brushed his lips across hers and felt her tremble as he did. "It almost made getting carved up by a demon-crazed maniac worthwhile."





She chuckled softly. "Don't you dare go getting yourself hurt again just so I can Heal you. I can make it painful just as easily as I can make it feel good."





"I wouldn't dream of doing it deliberately; it just seems to be a hazard of the trade." He smiled and twined a finger through one of her curls.





"You realize that you're feeling this way because you've drank my blood, you had the Blood Pearl..." she said, and he interrupted her with another kiss.





"That could very well be the case, but I'm not complaining. I recall you offering to "make it up to me", in fact."





"I..well," she stammered.





"Am I right in assuming that if you drank from me, you'd be enjoying these kisses as much as I am?"





"Quite possibly, although you seem to be enjoying them enough for both of us," she quipped.





Beckett moved his right arm from around her waist and brought his wrist up close to her mouth. "That’s not very gentlemanly of me, stealing all the pleasure for myself. Please, let me share it with you.”





She smiled and pressed her lips against the flesh of his wrist before sinking her fangs into the veins beneath.