Love at First Bite (10 page)

"Did I hurt you?" he asked.

"I felt a twinge only. Nothing compared to what came after. You know," she mused, "the first time was very good, but the last time with you inside me felt more fulfilling. You said there are other ways?"

He smiled and nodded. "Lots of other ways."

"I want to know them. How many times can we do it?"

"I don't know," he said, barking a laugh. "A lot of times."

"Good," she said, snuggling into him.

"Maybe not an infinite number just in a row," he amended. "After a few we will have to rest. But there is always tomorrow…"

Rufford! Rufford and Fedeyah would be coming at dawn. If they survived the night. They had been doing their duty and suffering for it while he had been dallying here with Emma. He raised himself on one elbow. And when they came, they would be wounded and bloody, and they would heal too quickly. He had to keep Emma away from that and from knowing that her only protection from monsters was another monster. She must never know what he was.

But first, he'd let her show him how many times she'd like to be loved tonight.

"We're going to get some visitors at dawn," he said, looking at her tenderly. He was supremely sorry this night had to end.

They had made love to exhaustion. She was just stretching awake from having slept for a few hours. He drew her into his chest.

There was no stopping time, though. "They need a place to recuperate from their battles. It… it has been my job to attend to them, and I must go when they come. And tomorrow night, I'll be with them, fighting."

She, too, raised herself on one elbow. Her lips were swollen from kissing, her cheeks and breasts still flushed. "Of course. I can help. I can take care of your compatriots, and you, God forbid, if comes to that."

"They have their own ways. There's nothing you can do." He hated rejecting her offer.

She looked at him strangely. Then she sat up. "Vernon Davis Ware, if you think I came all the way to Casablanca, married you—which I just did, minus the minister—just to have you keep me at arm's length, you'll have to think again. Whatever trials you have ahead are my trials. Do you understand?"

He did. But of course she had no idea what she'd gotten herself into. When it got close to dawn, he'd lock her in the room next door to protect her from the knowledge of just what she had married, for however brief a time. At that thought, winter seemed to blow into his soul, bleak and sere. And even more concerning, a little fire in that frozen landscape would not go out and hissed into the blowing snow,
The blood is the life
!

Chapter Six

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How dare he
?! Emma thought as she rattled the door-knob.
He's locked me in
!

She whirled and put her back against the door. She'd moved into the adjacent room at his insistence, because of the broken lock. Here she was, dressed in serviceable clothes and sensible half-boots, ready to go down and help him and his friends, and now he was trying to protect her from the ugliness of his life. She wouldn't have it.

She pushed off the door and went out onto the balcony. The sun was rising behind the city, for it created an answering glow out over the harbor, now empty of ships.
We'll just see about that
. She climbed up on the wooden chair and from there to the sidewall of the balcony.
Don't look down. The gap isn't more than four feet. Hardly more than a step
.

She held her breath and jumped, teetering on the wall of the balcony to her original room until she could grasp the striped awning and lower herself down. She dashed out through the broken door. Now to find her quarry. Where in the hotel would she be if she had just come in from battle? There were probably forty rooms here. No, not in a room. She'd be in the kitchens.

She went cautiously down the great staircase, then wended her way to the back from the lobby. She heard them before she saw them.

"Lord, Rufford, if reinforcements don't come soon…" Davie, sounding shocked.

"They'll come…" A weary baritone she recognized. She had stood up at his wedding to Beth Rochewell. Ian Rufford was here with Davie?

"Fedeyah, sit down. Drink this." Davie in his most commanding Major's voice.

"Enough! There is so little." An Arab accent. "Save some for Rufford and yourself."

She slid quietly toward an open doorway from which the voices came.

"I'll find more." This from Davie, but he wasn't sure. She could hear it in his voice.

"You can't go out in daylight." Mr. Rufford gasped for breath. "You'll fry."

"The city is deserted, except for them," the Arab muttered. "Unless Allah provides, we must do without."

Emma peered around the door frame. At first she couldn't quite take in what she was seeing. Davie stood over Mr. Rufford, who was laid out on one of the long wooden tables in the center of the kitchen. He cradled Mr. Rufford's head in one arm and was helping him to drink from a cup. Mr. Rufford's mouth was stained red, along with everything else. Blood was everywhere.

Terrible wounds were revealed by the shredded clothing still clinging to Mr. Rufford. On the hearth of the great fireplace filled with spits and pots sat an Arab man with sad eyes, also wounded. The whole place smelled of blood. Shock and revulsion cascaded over her.

"I should never have left you to face them," Davie said, his voice soaked in guilt.

Mr. Rufford put up a hand and looked around. How was he still breathing? "Come in, my dear Miss Fairfield," he said hoarsely.

Davie swung round. The Arab looked up. She sighed and stepped out into the doorway.

"Miss Fairfield! Get back to your room!" Davie cried, laying Rufford back onto the table. He strode across to her and took her shoulders.

"
Miss Fairfield"? "Get back to your room"
? "As you recall,
Major Ware
, as soon as you can find a minister, it will be Emma Ware. And I told you when I accepted your proposal to share your life last night that I share it all, whether you like it or not."

She looked to the other men. She was about to ask how she could help when a cut across Mr. Rufford's forehead sealed itself before her very eyes. She gasped.
What is going on here
? Davie tried to turn her about and hustle her from the room, but she pulled out of his grasp. She glanced across to the Arab. The pink weal of a scar slowly disappeared from his cheek.

"What are you?" she whispered to Mr. Rufford, ignoring Davie's sputtering protests.

"Don't tell her," Davie warned.

"We are not like you, Miss Fairfield," Mr. Rufford said, getting up to one elbow. "Not anymore." A sword wound on his chest began to close.

She swallowed and tried to breathe. "I see that." She turned to Davie. "You might as well tell me."

He looked away, ashamed.

"Perhaps it would be easier if I tell you, Miss Fairfield. I'll be stronger in a bit." Mr. Rufford lay back, obviously exhausted.

She wanted to know now. Davie was leaning against the window frame as though defeated. She turned to the Arab. "You tell me."

The Arab glanced to Davie. "We have a thing in our blood, miss. It changes us."

"How?" She crossed the room to him, slowly. "How does it change you?"

"We are strong. We heal and live long. Sunlight is painful. We can move unseen."

Davie turned from the window, his expression fierce. "I don't think you're doing it justice, Fedeyah. It's a disease, Emma. We're vampire. We're immortal unless we're decapitated, and we drink human blood. No way around that. And Fedeyah forgot to mention the fact that we can compel weaker minds. We can make people do things they don't want to do."

They were vampire? The word echoed in her mind with horrible reverberations.

"God in heaven," Davie continued, rolling his head, "we can't even commit suicide! Rufford knows; he tried often enough. We're monsters, Emma, once we're infected. Monsters." This last was said on a note of such despair, her heart went out to him.

She stood, blinking stupidly, wondering what to do, what to think. Vampire, human blood, immortality. And Davie, her Davie, was condemned to this? She glanced to Rufford, who seemed only half-sensible, his wounds slowly resolving themselves. The red trickling from the corner of his mouth was human blood. How could she think that so calmly?

"Who did you kill tonight?" It was as though someone else asked the question.

"Others of our kind, made by an evil woman. Not pretty." Davie's mouth was grim.

Decapitation. She would wager it wasn't pretty.

"They want to rule the world," the Arab said. His voice grew incredibly sad. "They make more vampires. It would destroy the balance. We make jihad against them."

"Balance? What balance?"

"We do not kill humans for our blood," Fedeyah explained. "We don't make others of our kind. There are Rules. Rules they do not obey."

"And these Rules wouldn't condone marriage to a woman who isn't like you, would they?" She turned to Davie. Anger boiled up out of her belly uncontrolled. Davie drank human blood and was going to live forever unless he was killed in some horrible way fighting a war against monsters like him. "You knew that last night. And you let me think we could be happy together." Tears sprang from nowhere.

"Go back to your room, Miss Fairfield," Davie said. His voice was distant. He turned back to the window.

She whirled and ran down the corridor and up to her room. The damned door was locked, so she went into her original room and pushed the door back into its frame, no matter how silly that was. She couldn't lock out the creatures downstairs. With their strength they would just push through an unlocked door or a locked one. She remembered how Davie had burst into the room.

She threw herself on the bed, sobbing, because all her innocence was lost and all her future, and the world held monsters and one of them was Davie.

She came out of a sleep feeling drugged and groggy. It was twilight. The sky outside the window was purple, edging into indigo.

Someone was knocking at the door.

"Miss Fairfield?"

One of the monsters
, she thought dully.
Mr. Rufford
. "Come in." What did it matter?

He pushed the door in gingerly. He was clean, shaved, no blood in sight. He wore a shirt open at the neck, black trousers, and riding boots to the knee. His brown, curling hair was tied back in a ribbon, just as it had been in St. James's Church when he had married Miss Rochewell.
Hmmm
. Emma thought about that.

He made a small bow. "Are you well? I thought you might be hungry." She got up on one elbow. He carried a plate: cold roast beef, horseradish, some radishes and small tomatoes, a chunk of bread. She was famished. How could her body betray her emotions so? Without waiting for an answer, he set the plate down on the table beside the bed. She sat up and touched her hair.

"You look fine." He hesitated, looking as though he thought he should go but wanted to stay.

She didn't want him to go, she decided. In the shock of the moment in the kitchen, she hadn't realized what to ask. Now she did.

"Won't you sit down?" she asked, gesturing to a chair.

He hesitated, then sat.

Emma's mind churned. She thought back to the wedding. "Miss Rochewell, I mean Mrs. Rufford…" She frowned. "Where is she now?"

"She serves the cause in Tripoli." The grimace around his mouth said he didn't like it. That was interesting, though. Beth Rufford was allowed to help the cause.

"Did she know?"

His blue eyes looked up sharply. "When she married me? Yes. A tribute to her courage."

Miss Rochewell had accepted that Mr. Rufford was vampire? How could she? Still… Emma sorted through what she knew.

Drinking human blood—bad, but as long as they didn't kill… How could she be thinking that? Strong—that was fine.

Compelling people against their will—bad again, but a good man could refrain, couldn't he? It occurred to her that compulsion might be one way a woman could hurt a man during sex. She wondered how Davie had been "infected" and whether it had anything to do with the evil woman who made vampires. And yet the most important thing Emma wanted to know might only be answered by this vampire sitting across from her who had married a mortal woman. "How… how does she bear the fact that she is mortal and you are not?" In some ways it came down to that.