Immortal Confessions (7 page)

He father didn’t strike me, as I expected him
to. He just said, “Were you with her?”

“Yes,” I said, trying to sound as regal as
possible. “I love her. I will pay a dowry for her, if you’ll give
me her hand.”

“Absurd,” he said casually. “You clearly have
no money. But you have something else I want more than money,
something only you possess.”

“What?” Jesus, was this man a homosexual?

“I know what you are,” he said, throwing
Anna’s book on ghosts at my feet. “I want you to make me as you
are. You do this, and she is yours.”

My mouth fell open. “How did you know?”

“I noticed the blood garnish was missing from
my pork dinner. The next night, eating venison, I tasted that my
meat was dry. None of my men admitted to slaying the deer, so I
asked the cook where the meat had come from. She said you’d brought
it to her. She added wine to it the other nights, as I asked her
to. But I knew that the blood was missing to a point it should not
be, I who have always desired my meat rare to the point of
bloody.”

Well, I knew where Anna had gotten her sharp
mind. “So?”

“So, you’re a vampire. I wish to be one.”

“The longevity I enjoy comes with many
drawbacks—”

“That doesn’t matter. I’m dying,” he said,
uncovering a sore oozing pus. “Leprosy.”

I was sickened, but did not shrink back. “If
I say no?”

“I’ll have my men burn you at the stake as a
sorcerer, before the sun is at its zenith. And you will burn, Bard,
either from flames, or from the rays of the sun.”

Triple shit! I had no idea what to do to turn
him into what I was. Yet I’d die for certain unless I tried. I
attempted to access my memories of becoming vampire. What had
happened that day with the vampire who’d attacked and turned Danial
and me? The memory was blurry, as so many of my memories were. I
thought I remembered enough to know I needed to drink some of his
blood, and give him some of mine. But how much?

“Your answer, Bard. Now.”

“Untie me.”

“Your word as a gentleman?”

“You have it.”

He unlocked my cuffs, and removed them.

“Sit down,” I said. He did, looking at me
without fear.

“I must take your blood.” He leaned his head
back, and bared his throat to me. I drank from his neck vein, but
took very little, as his blood tasted of his disease and it
sickened me. Then I cut my wrist deeply, letting my blood flow into
a goblet. When the wound closed, the goblet was close to full.

This would either cure him or kill him, more
likely the latter. Either way, I had no choice. “Drink it all,” I
ordered.

He did, draining the cup. Like magic, it
worked. Anna’s father got paler, his canine teeth grew, and his
eyes brightened. When he got to his feet, it was with the swiftness
of a man twenty years younger. “I am saved!” he shouted. Then he
realized what that meant and quieted, shooting me a quick grateful
look.

“You’ll need to beware the sun, and also
fire,” I said hurriedly. “But other than that, you should be
immortal.” Sounded good, even if I wasn’t sure it was really true.
“Now for your part of the bargain.”

“You’ll need to stay here,” he said. “Give me
your wrists.”

I didn’t like the sound of that, but did as
he asked. He clamped the manacles back on me, after hanging the key
around my neck.

“I will say that you are to be hanged
tonight, after full dark,” he said. “Arrange an escape of your own
design right after sunset. I will make sure only a single guard is
posted.”

“And Anna?”

“She will leave in late afternoon to go
riding for some fresh hawthorn, for her bridal wreath, and forget
to ask a maid to accompany her. No one will miss her until dinner
tonight, at which time I will let her betrothed know she is having
pre-wedding jitters, and has taken to her bed, asking not to be
disturbed until tomorrow. I assume she had a spot to meet you?”

“Yes.”

“Then meet her there.”

“And her dowry money? We will need it, until
I can get a more profitable job.”

“You speak like a nobleman, even if you are
not one,” her father said, with his first nod to me of real
appreciation. “You could not take it all, not without a wagon. I’ll
arrange to have the richest gems and a measure of gold in put in
saddlebags, then left where Anna can lay her hands on it before she
leaves. As she’s said you wish to marry, it is her right.”

“You must be a nobleman, to have kept to your
side of the bargain.” More likely, Marcus had refused to marry her
after hearing of her being found with me, and her father thought
she was already pregnant.

Her father gave me a real smile. “What am I
out? I’ve sons and grandsons aplenty. My daughter is taken care of,
I’m saved from death, and I’ll still have more money left over
after than I would have had if she’d married Marcus. Besides, as
much as he’s rich, he does not have the daring you do, to have done
what you have. Anna came to me, pleading for your life, and told me
how you’d killed the bear that attacked her with nothing but a
knife.” He paused, and gave me a nod of respect. “These are
difficult times we live in, Bard. The best men are those that do
whatever is necessary for the sake of their loved ones, be they of
noble blood or not.”

I agreed with that. “Yes.”

“I ask you to take good care of her,” her
father said seriously. “I know of you, and your many lovers. Do not
disgrace her, Bard.”

“I will not,” I said seriously. “I give you
my word.”

“Very well,” he said. “Fare you both well. I
will not see you again, as I’ll need to pretend that I had no
knowledge of this, lest I incur the wrath of Marcus’s father.”

“Understood.”

He left me there, and I sat for a while,
thinking more on what I was. You might wonder I wasn’t planning my
escape, but I didn’t see the point. A lot could happen between now
and dusk. It would be wiser to wait for a chance to act than to try
to make a plan. I’d always been lucky when it came to recognizing
the best moment to act.

Besides, I was in shock to have discovered
that I could make more of my kind by giving them a large infusion
of my blood. That part of the legends was true. But I didn’t
understand why, if that was true, there seemed to be so few
vampires in the world. Where were they all? Why had I never met
any? I had traveled all over the countryside, and seen not one.
Were they avoiding me?

Of course, the obvious conclusion was next.
Would taking blood from Anna over and over make her a vampire? The
legends said so, that this is what made a vampire. But was it that,
or the healing I usually did with a little kissing after feeding
from a human? Sometime in the distant past, I’d made too deep a
wound on a drunken man’s wrist, and had discovered a little of my
blood would heal human flesh. But I had never bitten a human more
than once, and even that I had done only rarely, so as not to
arouse suspicion.

Dare I risk Anna’s life? Would she love me,
if I turned her by accident? Would she believe that it had been an
accident?

I pondered this. I admit I also spent a lot
of time thinking back to making love with her, and how good her
blood had tasted. I needed to calm myself, after all, and that was
an easy way to put myself in a good mood.

But my trials were not over.

An hour before sunset, Marcus entered, his
guards at his sides. “You are to be hanged, and then burned until
you are dead,” he intoned, shooting me a look that said he’d
clearly heard all about how Anna and I had been found. “Do you have
any last requests?”

To kill you. “To speak to a priest.”

“Denied,” he said flatly. “You can speak to
the priest as you are being fitted for the noose, and he is praying
for you.”

If he was going to be a prick, why bother
asking me? “To speak to Anna.”

“You will never see her again,” Marcus spat
at me. “Anything else?”

Bastard. Think! I needed to buy time!

“A last meal,” I said quickly. “I would like
some meat, rare, and wine, red.”

“That is acceptable,” he said gruffly. He
turned and left, leaving a guard beside me, and another at the
door.

I waited until he had gone, and then tossed
the guard inside my last coin from my pocket. “What has happened? I
thought my burning was to wait until this evening.”

The guard pocketed the coin immediately.
“Anna’s father is dead from disease, a terrible disease which
destroyed his flesh. He looked well this afternoon, abnormally
well, but he collapsed on his way to his rooms with his mistress
not an hour ago. His horrible appearance was not to be believed,
except I was there to witness it. His leprosy had spread to his
face and hands almost as if he had been cursed by God—”

I felt sick. What I’d done hadn’t cured him,
or made him vampire. It had somehow made the disease stronger.

“—
plus the caravan was intercepted, and
the purse and the rest are stolen. Without that money, it is likely
the Lord Marcus’s father will refuse to let Marcus marry Lady Anna.
But Marcus is also known for his fairness, and so there is gossip
about what will happen—”

Well, at least one thing was going right. I
had only to get Anna, and get out of here. The problem was I had no
idea where she was, and it was a reasonable guess with her father
meeting such a gruesome fate that she would not be out riding.
Moreover, I was due to hang, though I guessed the sun would kill me
before I ever got to the hangman’s noose.

To my surprise, I was saved by my love. A
knock sounded at the door, and when the guard answered it, Anna
stood there, her fine dress gone, dressed in patched peasant
clothes and a long drab cloak.

The guard looked over at her uneasily, then
back at me. “I have orders to let no one see the prisoner.”

Anna handed him some coins. “Say he
escaped.”

The guard turned to her. “I can’t, I’ll be
killed—”

Here was the moment I’d been waiting for!

I acted quickly, grabbing his neck and
twisting sharply. The guard’s neck broke with a nice snap, and he
collapsed. The guard outside the door took a breath to scream, but
I was faster, yanking him inside the room, and stabbing him in the
heart with a dagger I’d grabbed from the fallen guard. I let his
still-twitching body slide to the floor, adrenaline running through
me. Anna looked at me in horror, but I was already going through
his pockets, getting back my one coin, and grabbing his small
purse. Then I put his guard clothes on over mine, and his leather
hat. It mostly covered my hair.

“You killed him like it was nothing,” Anna
whispered. “Like he was nothing.”

I was about to tell her it was nothing, but I
saw her face, and decided that was unwise. “Anna, we needed the
money. I also badly need the blood, after what I did for your
father.”

Her eyes cut to me. “He tried to get you to
change him?”

“It didn’t work,” I whispered. “I’m
sorry.”

“I knew he was going to die soon,” she said,
grabbing hold of me, and burrowing close. “He’d been sick for
years, and it was spreading—”

“Shh, Love. Be strong for me, and watch the
door.”

She nodded, brushed away a tear, and moved to
the door, peering through the crack down the hallway.

I drank a few swallows from the guard’s
wound, but then dropped him. I couldn’t bite him to get more, not
without leaving the telltale marks on his skin. We didn’t need a
mob on our tail with torches. It was already going to be hard
enough getting away.

“We must go,” I said, leading her from the
room, glad the sun was setting. “Do you have all you wish to
take?”

“Yes,” she said.

We made our way to the castle gate. We were
unrecognized due to our disguises. It helped immensely that the
guards were too caught up in gossip of the Lord’s death and
arguments of which of his son-in-laws would succeed him to care
about a guard and some peasant wench. We made it into the forest
and were not pursued.

Trouble again found us when Anna and I
reached the stream. The gypsies were there with Maris, waiting for
me. The bitch had betrayed me!

“What is this?” Maris’s father said grumpily.
“A ransom attempt? We already have the money—”

“No,” I said smoothly, as I handed the reins
of the closest of our horses to Anna. “I am just here to reclaim
what is mine. Then I’ll be on my way. You can keep the treasure,
and your daughter, too.”

You can imagine how well my words were
taken.

“What?” Maris screeched. “You were going to
marry me! I found the dress!”

Stupid chit. “I never said that. You betrayed
me.”

“You betrayed us!” her father shouted. “Hand
over your saddlebags, all of them, or we’ll kill you and your
trollop!”

My horse spooked, rearing, as I grabbed for
the reins. “Never,” I said forcefully. “Leave, before I kill you
all.”

“I am not trollop; I am a lady!” Anna said
scathingly, her hand resting on her saddlebags. “But it’s easy to
see you’re a whore! You’ll never wear my dress!”

Maris screamed again, my horse bolted, and
the male gypsies dismounted as one, all furious. I faced them, and
before the first one could throw a punch, I broke his neck. The
others paused. I advanced, throwing the body aside.

I lunged for them with bared fangs and they
retreated, eyes white and round with fear.

“Devlin!” Anna screamed.

I turned back just in time to see Maris stab
Anna in the side. I lost all reason, running supernaturally fast to
them, snarling wildly. Maris screamed and let go of Anna, who had
fainted.

“Devlin, no, please!”

I grabbed her by the throat, and in my rage,
I crushed her neck like an egg. She collapsed bonelessly to the
forest floor.

I turned back to the gypsies, snarling in
ire, but they were already riding hard, the hoof beats of their
horses pounding the grass as they rode out of sight. Anna had let
go of the reins when she fell and her horse was running with
theirs. In a second, the trees had swallowed them.