I finished the drink, went to throw the can at him, but it was out my hand and vanishedbefore I had a chance.

‘Tell me you did not just do magic?’ I demanded.

‘Why would I tell you that, Genevieve, when that is exactly what I did do?’ His mouth turned grim. ‘It appears your blood not only enhances my own powers, but grants me your magic as well. Much as if you were another vampire I had fed upon.’

Which was so fucking unfair. ‘Except I can’t callstuff,’ I said, hearing the thread of a childish whine in my voice. ‘Or vanishit like that.’

He lifted an elegant shoulder. ‘The vampires I feed on cannot necessarily tap all the powers that run in their blood either.’ He flicked his fingers and the dome went fully opaque; a Privacy spell. Crap, this just got better and better. I scowled at Malik as he draped the leather coat over my shoulders, saying, ‘Put the coat on and fasten it.’

‘That’s the third order in as many minutes,’ I snapped, jerking the coat on, fingers buttoning it up clumsily, as I fought to disobey. ‘I thought we agreed you weren’t going to do that shit any more?’

In answer, he bit down on his wrist then held it in front of my face. ‘Drink.’

Both my hands grabbed his arm, my mouth latching on to the bloody bite like I was starving. I sucked down his spicy blood as if it was ambrosia, my fury mounting even as he pulled me into the V of his legs and my body traitorously responded to where his obvious arousal pressed against my butt.

Bastard, I thought loudly at him.

‘You are right, Genevieve,’ he murmured against my ear as his hard arm pinioned me around my waist. ‘I am indeed a bastard. My father never married my mother, and her people, Christians who worshipped the western god, forced her to give me up when I was seven as devşirme. Devşirme was the tithe paid by those conquered by the Ottomans.’

Surprise made me choke on his blood. He was choosing nowto tell me something personal about his past? Didn’t he know the time for sweet nothings was during the post-coital haze? And not after he’d pissed me off with all his orders. But his words still muted my fury, and raised an instinctive compassion in my heart for the child he’d been.

‘You do not need to feel pity for me,’ he said coolly, as if he’d read my mind which, with me attached to his wrist like a limpet was a possibility. ‘I was trained as a janissary, one of the sultan’s elite army, and was proud to swear my loyalty to him and his blood. It was a prestigious and rewarding life, more so than the one I was otherwise destined for as a subsistence farmer in Northern Albania.’

Bully for you, I muttered at him. But how about we can the personal history and talk about the present? For starters: I’ve had enough blood. In fact, sucking on you is making me feel nauseous.Which wasn’t a lie. I was feeling sick, just not physically. Though, the way my stomach was bloating up like an over-stretched wine bag, physical sickness was going to be an option in the near future.

‘Keep drinking,’ he ordered.

I didn’t need to pity the child he’d been, or the bully he was being now. But while I might not be able to disobey his ‘keep drinking’ order, I could dig my teeth into his arm in protest. Triumph sparked as he flinched, then an odd note of remorse hit. I was causing him pain . . . or he was causing me pain . . . I was getting echoes of what he was feeling, sucking them down with his blood. Damn. If we merged thoughts any more, then between us I was going to get emotional whiplash.

‘When I was twenty, Suleiman 1 became sultan. He was my liege and my . . . friend. He had ambitions to expand the Ottoman Empire; ambitions which succeeded, as history has documented. What history does not detail is the strategy he used to win the Battle of Mohács where he defeated Louis II of Hungary and the Ottoman Empire became the pre-eminent power in Eastern Europe.’

Through my link with his blood, I caught remnants of his feelings for Suleiman: loyalty, respect, an echo of hero worship, and sadness that his liege and friend was long gone; but, above all, a brotherly love. Not that any of that explained why the hell he was telling me all this. Or made me any less furious.

‘Suleiman used sanguine lemurs, as they were called then.’ Malik’s voice was stark. ‘Revenants.’

Revenants are the skeletons in the vamps’ closet, the monster side of the vamp myth, the one that isn’t supposed to exist. Unlike the usual ‘lucky’ recipients of the Gift (3V-infected humans who are carefully nurtured over months, or even years), revenants are made instant vamps through a forbidden ritual. One day human, the next a bloodthirsty, bloodsucking monster with less impulse control than a greedy two-year-old. All they want to do is fuck, feed and kill, and not necessarily in that order. Though ‘want’ isn’t quite right, as after a few days they don’t usually have any higher functions left, and most end up shambling corpses; the true undead.

The penny started to drop. Malik carried the revenant curse in his blood, though he’d overcome it. Damn. Whatever the reason I was getting this story, I knew it wasn’t going to have a happy ending. The thought almost snapped the tether of his order and stopped my own feeding.

‘After the battle, Suleiman gave orders to keep no prisoners,’ Malik carried on in a low voice. ‘It was a good strategy. It sent a message to our enemies, plus we had neither the manpower nor the supplies to support the extra mouths. But his true reason for the order was to destroy the revenants. They had been corralled along with the vanquished enemy, and had continued to feast unchecked until the monsters died with the dawn. There was no way to determine which of the living or dead might be infected; one bite and a drop of blood can be all that is required for the curse to manifest. Suleiman paid the dragons to burn every one until they were nothing more than ashes to be scattered to the four winds.’

His blood told me he’d been one of those who’d directed the massacre, and I tasted the horror and shame he still felt at that memory. It coated my throat, made it hard to swallow.

Was that when you were made revenant? During the fighting?

‘After the battle, Suleiman dispensed with the vampire’s services, the one who had made the revenants. When the vampire left, he took something of mine. I hunted him down. Offered myself in exchange. That was when I was afflicted with the blood-curse.’

He stopped. And this time I felt grief, failure and soul-deep revulsion and hatred. For what he’d become, and for the vamp who’d made him both evil and a monster.

The vamp that did this to you is the evil monster, I said firmly, my own anger rising. Not you.

Bitter denial trickled through his blood, and then he gently ordered, ‘Stop now, Genevieve.’ My mouth and hands let go of his wrist, and I gasped, slumping as he released his mental hold on my body. ‘You have received back all but a small part of the power I acquired from you when I fed.’

I rubbed my neck and jaw, easing the stiff muscles there, swinging between anger, the need to comfort him and wondering what the hell he was talking about. ‘Explain.’

A weary sigh chilled my nape. ‘It was too dangerous for me to carry your magic, Genevieve.’

I twisted to kneel between his legs, relieved to find his almond-shaped eyes were back to their normal obsidian black. ‘Dangerous?’

Malik traced a finger over the pulse in my throat. It jumped at his touch. ‘I became close to losing control of the revenant when I took your blood. It is why I took more than I intended.’

My chest constricted. It was his biggest fear; that he’d go insane with bloodlust, start killing and spread his revenant curse. Personally, I couldn’t see it; after all, he’d kept himself under strict control for centuries, always feeding from other vamps, however difficult they made things for him, and never from humans. Or even me. Until now. But then that’s phobias for you. Still, it was understandable after the trauma of seeing an army destroyed by a pack of animalistic revenants, only to become one soon after. I shuddered. It also sort of made sense of his ordering me about, but—