Immanuel's Veins (36 page)

Lucine wasn't sure if she was alive or if she was dead.

Dead, she thought. She'd learned from the book that she was dead already.

But now hot fingers snaked through her body, tingling and burning along her wounds, and then deeper, through her veins to her extremities like molten lava finding its way through cracks and down narrow channels. It burned her fingers and her toes and it made her face hot.

Toma
. . . The thought of him made her jerk. Her eyes snapped open. She was lost in a sea of red.

Toma
. . . Sorrow welled up in her throat.
Toma, dear Toma!
He'd been right. All the signs were there. From the beginning she'd seen the affection in his eyes. And now she hated herself for not being swept away by those eyes.

Was she alive?

Her knee bumped into the hard surface beneath her. She was in the pool, below the surface, lungs burning. Suddenly alarmed, she flailed and jerked upright.

Her head cleared the water and she gasped for breath. Water streamed off her face and splashed into the pool. She wiped her face with her palm to clear her vision and was struck immediately with the changes.

At the door, Stefan turned and looked into her eyes. Vlad's limp body hung over his shoulder. From the look of disdain on Stefan's face, she thought Vlad might be dead. How? The lieutenant turned without a word and walked into the castle.

The pain on her face was gone. A glance down at her body showed only smooth flesh, no wounds. Her neck . . . She touched her neck with light fingers, then eagerly, grasping, feeling. But there was no torn skin. She was healed?

She spun around, rising to her feet. The coven was gone. They were all gone. Stefan had been the last. Rain poured, water flowed, but there wasn't another soul in the room. The cross upon which Vlad had pummeled Toma rose to the sky, mere stone.

“Toma?”

She looked around again.

“Toma!”

But only blood remained to show that anything had happened here at all. A fountain of blood and she, standing lost in the pool.

Something struck her ankle and she jumped back. A hand floated on the surface. Wearing the gold ring that bore the empress's insignia.

“Toma?”

She plunged both hands down and clawed at him, finding his hair and his arm. “Toma!”

Lucine hauled him up, got his head and upper body out of the water, but in the dark she couldn't tell if he was still breathing, dead or alive.

“No, no, please, no!” She dragged him to the side, then over the edge where he flopped onto the stone floor. “Wake up, Toma! Wake, wake!”

She still couldn't tell if he was alive and she had no idea how to help him. She beat on his chest.

“Wake up, Toma. Please don't leave me now. I need you! I am your bride, you can't leave me.” Then, when he still didn't respond, she screamed at him. “Toma! Wake, Toma!”

His eyes fluttered open. Lucine gasped. They closed again.

He was too weak, drained of blood!

But his eyes opened again, and this time he stared at her for an extended moment then sat up. The cuts on his wrists were still bleeding—she had to stop the flow of blood!

Her dress was tattered and drenched, but she had nothing else. Frantic, she tore off her sleeves. “We have to stop the bleeding!”

He was staring at her with wide eyes as she quickly wrapped his wounds.

“You're alive?” he asked.

I sat there in shock, seeing Lucine working madly over my wounds without bearing a single mark on her own body. I'd seen what the beast had done to her, and despite all that I had seen, the vision of her unblemished body was staggering to me.

It was more than the fact that she didn't bear a single mark. Her skin had changed, become smooth and flesh-toned rather than translucent and white. And her eyes. They were once again a light brown.

The Russians were gone. Vlad van Valerik's body was gone.

But Lucine was not. She was there and she was whole, unless this was her ghost.

“You're alive?” I asked, and in my shock it sounded like a reasonable question.

She worked to secure the cloth around my wrists without responding.

“But you are,” I said. “You're alive!”

She suddenly sat back on her haunches, dropped her head into her hands, and gave up a sob.

“Lucine . . .”

She sat up. “Shh, shh, no.” She pressed a finger against my lips to silence me. Then, with tears streaming down her face, she began to kiss my hands, like the tender drops of rain that now fell lightly around us. Unwilling to restrain herself any longer, she took my face in her hands and kissed my cheeks, my nose, my forehead, every part of my head.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you, thank you.”

She kissed my lips. “Thank you, Toma. I'm so sorry. Thank you.” And she kissed me again, a longer, lingering kiss that was far more than necessary for any show of gratitude.

She pulled back and stared into my eyes, searching through her tears. “I love you, Toma.”

It was all I wanted to hear. I was so eager to hear those words that I suffered a momentary fear she might take them back or soften their impact with an explanation.

So I threw my arms around her and pulled her tight against my breast. I began to cry unabashedly, undone by such gratefulness that she would love me, praying she would not take it back.

“I love you, Toma,” she said again, this time into my ear. And by the sound of her voice and her desperate embrace, I knew that what she said was true.

I could say nothing that I had not already said, and I didn't want to breathe a word that might upset the moment. We clung to each other for a long time, and although I was weak, she seemed to have the strength for both of us.

“Are they gone?” she asked, looking at the door. “I mean, gone?”

“Vlad van Valerik is dead,” I said.

She twisted back. “He is?”

“I put a stake through his heart before I fell into the pool.”

“Are . . . are you sure?” Her eyes darted about the room. “You saw him die?”

“I believe I did, yes. And now they are all gone. They must have taken his body.”

She stood and peered out the door. Then disappeared through it.

“Lucine? Hold on!” I pushed myself to my feet, reached out to the fountain to steady myself, then walked rather unsteadily to the door.

She stood in the great room two doors away, looking around, lost.

“Lucine?”

“They're gone,” she said.

“Are you well?”

Lucine turned and hurried back, and with each step she took, her face brightened. She walked right up to me and slipped her arms around my neck.

“I am far more than well now.”

She stood to her tiptoes and she kissed me until I was sure that I was melting there in her arms. Her tears came again, now surely drawn by love more than remorse. Her lips slipped away from mine and she buried her head into my neck, crying. Too much had happened not to cry.

Lucine and I stood in the Castle Castile now emptied of all its evil, and together we wept. For we had found the truest love. We had found God's blood.

We had found each other.

My dear reader— So you see, I am dead. Not in the flesh, but that hardly matters, does it? I was killed by Vlad van Valerik, and through my death Lucine, who was surely as dead, found life.

I can't rightly tell you if my death was physical, if I truly died in that fountain, but again, that hardly matters. Either way I am now dead to this world, having seen too much of the other. Having been infused with a new life, God's blood, which now surely passes through my veins.

I am not a saint named by orthodoxy, for that church has rejected my story and brands me as a heretic. There are times when I think back on those weeks and I wonder if it all really happened or whether perhaps I did lose my mind. But I have only to look at Lucine, my wife, sitting across the table, to know that every memory is true.

It wasn't a conventional happening, to be sure, but then neither are most of the accounts in that book called the Holy Scripture. If you have any lingering doubts, you may visit our home and we could talk about the matter over a fine roast and red wine. Naturally, you would have to travel to Russia because Lucine and I moved to Moscow after we were wed, two months following that day.

As for Natasha and Alek, we mourn their deaths to no end. If there was a way to bring them back, I would do it. I would enter another castle and slay another beast. But they are gone. Kesia sold the Moldavian estate and has taken up residence with her husband, Mikhail Ivanov, in the country near Moscow. We visit her often.

The Castle Castile is still vacant to my knowledge. No sign of the coven was found. The only bodies recovered belonged to our dear friends, Natasha and Alek. Although the antiquities remained there for a day, when I took the army up the following afternoon, even those were gone. The entire castle had been cleaned out then gutted by fire.

I am sure you want to know what happened to those creatures, those poor souls infected by Nephilim. Truthfully, I can't be sure. Lucine still carries the blood in her veins, this much we know. But she is different from the rest, for she has been recovered.

The rest may have vanished forever when their half-breed maker died. Dear God, I pray not, because Lucine and I still talk of Sofia and would relish a meeting with her, a chance to win her over to a new life.

We aren't certain which of them might be saved or turned, but we are convinced that a true half-breed would no longer be considered human, the greater half being made from that fallen angel himself.

So then, if you read this book and if you encounter any person who might strike you as lost to the darkness, I would only implore you to love them and pray they be delivered into the light by a blood that works to purge evil.

The Blood Book is lost, gone with the rest of the castle relics. But I attest to its message, and it is a message of love and romance. I have neither seen nor heard of that old messenger from God who called himself Saint Thomas. But to honor him I have taken his name.

As for me, I am freed from my duties to the army. And upon learning that Vlad van Valerik (who had indeed been chosen as Lucine's suitor) murdered Natasha, Catherine forgave me my indiscretion for falling in love with Lucine.

I now spend much of my time writing poems, songs, messages to my Lucine, which delight her. Books, such as this one you have read.

The very day Lucine and I rode down those Carpathian slopes, I penned a poem about Immanuel's veins. I have recently learned that it fell into the hands of a great writer of hymns in England named William Cowper. He did write a hymn using a fragment or two of my poem, I believe. For my words are true and I leave you with them now.

There is a fountain filled with blood,
Drawn from Immanuel's veins;
And any plunged beneath that flood
Will be purged of all that is bane.

The End

T
HREE OF
T
ED
D
EKKER'S
EARLIEST CLASSICS TOGETHER
FOR THE FIRST TIME