Free Seer: Thrall by Robin Roseau Page B

not!" she said. "You know they don't like me. They're with Dolores."
    "You never should have accepted my invitation to a date, Solange! You are just as self-centered as you were two hundred years ago. You destroyed my life. It doesn't require a seer to know this wasn't going to turn out well, but you went ahead anyway, knowing you were never going to trust me."
    She turned away.
    "God!" I said. "I only have myself to blame. I should have run when the dreams first showed me what you were, metaphor or nothing. But no, not me. I thought you were fascinating. I thought you were elegant and charming. Do it. Do it, Solange! But make sure you take enough of my brain I don't remember how stupid I was to ever believe I could trust you."
    Her back stiffened.
    "Oh, you didn't like that, hmm? Trust goes both ways. I trusted you, and I was an utter fool, so of course, you'd be a fool to trust me. Is that it? Or is it just that you flat out don't care, and I'm so beneath your notice, it doesn't matter what you've ruined. You should be ashamed."
    I sat there in the chair, panting at her, then slowly levered myself up. She heard me and turned around.
    "What are you doing? Get back in that chair!"
    "This is my last opportunity to defy you, so I think I'll make the most of it," I said. I took two steps towards her, then a third, and I was nearly pressed against her. I tilted my head back, exposing my neck. "In the movies, the vampires bind their victims by drinking their blood. Is that what you do? Do you drink now? Go ahead. Let's get this over with. But be quick. I'm not sure how long I can stand here."
    She stood there, not moving, but her fangs were out, and she was eyeing my neck.
    "Do it!" I screamed. "Just get it over with!"
    "Stop it!" she hissed at me. I took an involuntary step away from her and began to fall from my own clumsiness, but she reached out and scooped me up in her arms. I threw my arms around her neck, and a moment later, she was setting me back into the chair. "Just shut up, Sidney."
    "Make me."
    "Damn it! You're making me angry."
    "Do I look like I care? What are you going to do? Shove me back into your plastic baggie instead? Hey, at least I'll only live another year or two, unless you decide to keep me alive just to treat me like you do that one man. This will all be over for me, and you can forget about me. You can forget about what, in your selfish choices, you have done to me."
    "Shut up, Sidney!" she screamed. "The nature of the bond is tied to our emotional state when we do it!"
    I shut up for about five seconds. "Fuck," I said.
    "Yeah," she agreed. "Fuck."
    She turned her back on me. We stayed like that for several minutes.
    "I'm sorry. I didn't know."
    "I brought us out here to talk to you about it," she said. "It's a lovely night. I thought that might be a good setting. The bond wouldn't be very intense. We'd come out of it as friends."
    "What if we did it now?"
    "We'd hate each other, and I'd spend forever tormenting you. I wouldn't be able to help it. You'd spend the time doing everything you could to make me miserable, even knowing how poorly I'd treat you for it."
    "I'm sorry," I said again. "Have you ever bound someone while making love?"
    "That's what Aubree and I did. We became horny little weasels. The bond broke when..."
    "When she became a vampire."
    "Right. Or we'd still be all over each other. Now she has the bond a vampire has to her maker."
    "Is that what you want? For us to come out of this as friends?"
    She didn't answer. Instead, she turned around. Her fangs were still out.
    "Nothing matters beyond stopping the war," I said. "I'm sorry I was an ass. Do what you need to do. If you need to wait a day or two, then wait a day or two. I'll keep the rest of my thoughts to myself, and in a few days, they won't matter."
    "You weren't an ass," she said. "You were expressing justified frustration, and I don't blame you for it."
    I took several deep breaths. "Solange, I forgive you for what you need to