One With the Night (21 page)

“There’s always pain,” he acknowledged. “But it gets easier, after a while.”

As she came to herself, she began to feel the heat from his hands on her arms through her riding habit. He was so close. If she turned her face up …

Their lips were inches from each other. His eyes searched her face. They glowed in the darkness that was almost day to her, but more … seductive. She felt his chest rising and falling with his increasingly ragged breathing and the vibrations that called to her. Wet throbbing began between her legs. She wanted him. There were no two ways about it.

He took his hands from her arms as though he had been burned and stood. After a moment he held out his hand to help her up, but the action looked like it took all his courage. It certainly took all her courage to place her hand in his palm. God! The feel of skin to skin was like scraping your shoes along a carpet when the wind was high and then touching someone unsuspecting, but a hundred times more powerful. She let him pull her to her feet and took her hand back before it was blackened with the energy coursing between them.

She had to face the truth. She had never felt so alive, so connected to another person as she did with him; not her father, not her friends, and certainly not with Mr. Blandings. The act of sexual congress with Kilkenny might not be exactly transformation, but it had changed forever her perception of pleasure and intimacy. And she had to admit she wanted it again. Now would be ideal. If she weren’t careful she’d just throw herself at him. What was she becoming? Or what had she already become?

He cleared his throat and stepped back a pace. “Ye’ll no’ be able ta best an old one in strength,” he croaked. “Sa ye call th’ power, pain or nae, and go.”

She nodded. Of course, she had no intention of leaving her father to the mercy of vampires if it came to that. But acquiescence was the price of more knowledge. That was what she was here for. It was why she didn’t just run from the feelings gushing through her. She wanted to know more, no matter how horrible. She swallowed and tried to get some semblance of control over her body. “What do you call that … phenomenon again?”

“Translocation.” He turned to the horses, still quietly grazing as if the whole world had not turned inside out, and she followed.

“How about the other legends? I tried touching garlic and crosses. Nothing happened.”

He shook his head. “They canno’ repel us. Though I can see where ye would no’ want ta associate with anyone who eats a lot o’ garlic.” There was that gleam again.

“And what is the scent we have? I mean underneath the cinnamon.”

“Ah, that’d be ambergris.”

Ambergris. She should have recognized it. It was one of the rarest ingredients of perfume, taken from whales and worth a fortune. Echoes of the pain receded. Now she tasted the blood on her lower lip. As they rejoined the horses and she took up Missy’s reins, she pulled out a handkerchief from the sleeve of her habit and dabbed at her lips. “Do you want to tell me how I cut my lips?” She raised her brows.

He looked guilty again and chewed his lip. “That’s about feeding yer Companion when ye dinnae get yer blood from a cup.” He looked over to her. “Are ye sure ye want ta know this?”

Definitely not. But she said, “Yes.”

He ran his hand over Faust’s neck as the horse grazed enthusiastically. “Fangs,” he said at last. “The Companion’s power runs out yer teeth. There ye have it.”

An image of wolves flashed through her and the needle teeth of bats. She was breathing shallowly. “You rip, like … an animal?” she whispered.

“Ye dinnae ha’ ta rip. Puncture and suck, though,” he said grimly. “Like an animal.”

She felt her eyes go big.

“Enough,” he said roughly. “Let’s find this root o’ yers.”

CHAPTER
Thirteen

Callan tried to break off her questions and get down to their task but she stayed rooted to the spot. She looked so horrified. And why not? She was right. She needed to know how to use the thing in her blood. She needed it against Elyta Zaroff and the others if not against the vampire faction out to destroy the cure. But he felt like he’d just destroyed whatever innocence she’d had. He hadn’t even told her about the compulsion. What would she think of that?

“Come now,” he said again, more softly. He kept himself half turned away. He wanted to take her in his arms to comfort her, but who knew what he might do if he felt her heart pounding against his? Even clasping her arms had stiffened his detestable cock.

“Are we evil?” Her voice was shaking.

He stared at the ground. Oh, yes. He was at any rate. Maybe he had always been evil and now he was just an immoral vampire instead of an immoral man. But he couldn’t tell her they were evil. Maybe she could avoid it, with her sweet, generous nature. She was waiting for an answer. He raised his head. “Is th’ thing in th’ lake we saw evil?”

She shook her head, slowly. “It just is.”

“People in th’ village think it’s evil.” He had to give her hope.

“Yes.” Her voice was more her own now. “They think that seeing it bodes disaster. The old biddies think Evie’s baby is cursed because she saw it right before she gave birth.”

“And what is it, really?”

“Just a big animal. It probably got trapped when the loch closed to the sea at Moray Firth. It just goes about doing what a big creature needs to do.”

“We’re like that.”

“You mean we must do what our nature requires?”

“Close enough.”

“Does it require that we kill?” Her voice was small, but resolute. That was the girl he’d come to know in the last days.

He shook his head. “Ye dinnae kill fer yer blood.”

“Do you?” she whispered.

Ahhh. The pain jerked through him. He carefully closed down his expression, fighting back the guilt that drenched him. “Once.” That was true. That was the only time he’d killed just for blood. He turned away before she could see the half-truth and grabbed the horses’ reins. He wouldn’t try to excuse himself by telling her he hadn’t meant to kill that one. There were other inexcusable acts for which there had been no excuse. “Now will ye look for yer flower or no’?”

He glanced back and saw her decide to follow him. They combed over the meadow in silence. He put some distance between them to get a little peace from the importuning of his genitals. He had vowed he would never lose himself to a woman again. Yet he had lost himself with her last night. He told himself it had not been like it was with Asharti. But he might be wrong. He’d longed to please Asharti, and she’d used his lust against him. Last night had he not thought of Jane’s pleasure first? Had he not lost all control of his lust? Just like with Asharti.

He watched her poke at a low clump of greenery across the meadow and stand to wave at him. She’d found the flower.

This was not love. Vampire to vampire, their blood called to each other. He had told Miss Blundell they didn’t need to be evil. But this dreadful sexual urgency could not be wholesome. Both churches he’d followed, Protestant and Catholic, would say they were possessed by the devil for the fearful longing in their loins. They were cursed. He’d never entirely escape the desert and Asharti. He knew that now. But if he gave in to his sexual urges, he’d lose whatever small shards of himself were left.

*   *   *

Jane waved to Kilkenny that she’d found the valerian. He was standing stock-still, staring into space. When he turned his eyes on her, she saw such pain there it was as if someone had dashed cold water on her. What had he been thinking? Or remembering …

Suddenly, knowing the new rules of her existence didn’t seem enough. She wanted to know Kilkenny. What was his pain?
Why
had he killed and betrayed his country? Perhaps therein lay the key to dichotomy between what she’d been told and what she felt was true about him. She motioned again and this time, after some hesitation, he strode across the meadow. He stood over her, examining her as though his life depended upon it.

“Are … are you well?” she asked. At her words, he started, and then his face just closed down. It was the most amazing thing. He squeezed every drop of emotion from his expression.

“Well enough.” He tore his gaze from her face and looked around. “D’ye need th’ whole plant?” She didn’t, just the flowers, but before she could say anything he had knelt and taken up a trowel. He had the small bush out by the roots and was shaking it in an instant. Jane watched his flat expression, looking for the emotion.

“There’s another over there,” she remarked, as much to buy time for her appraisal as a need to have more. He got up without looking at her and strode over to the clump.

Her mind strayed again to what he had said, how they got their blood. Something niggled at her brain. Punctures. Fangs. Horrible! She could hardly imagine …

The scars on his body! The twin, circular scars at his throat and on the inside of his elbows, and … Oh, dear Lord, his groin … They were the marks of puncture wounds made by fangs … before he was vampire and could heal without scarring. And that meant a vampire had sucked his blood, many times. What vampire would take blood by biting his groin?

A woman!

Even a strong man like Kilkenny would be no match for a vampire woman. The dreadful possibilities expanded in her imagination. He had other scars, the jagged ones. Vampires didn’t have to rip and tear, he’d said, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t if they wanted. And the grim look on his face when he said it … A female vampire had torn his flesh and licked his blood. There was no question in her mind that it was a woman. The nature and location of the scars all spoke of some twisted sexuality and obsession. Revolting!

She watched Kilkenny kneel and dig at the valerian with his trowel. No wonder he was so grim and withdrawn. Not surprising that he hated what he was.

She almost gasped. The woman who gave him his scars was the one who made him vampire. She just knew it. She had seen the pain and longing in his eyes when he talked of the woman who made him that first night in the woods. Could he love someone who had done that to him? Perhaps the twisted sexuality and obsession was his as well as hers.

That made her blink. But then why did he want to be cured so badly? He would be reveling in what he was, devoted to the one who made him and shared his twisted pleasures.

Unless he had rejected that horrible part of him. That made sense. The only way to reconcile the honor and generosity, even the touch of self-deprecating humor she saw in him with twisted love, killing, and vampire armies taking over England was that he had changed, or recovered from a madness. And the madness might be a reason for his crimes, not an excuse, mind you, but a reason.

It still didn’t ring true.

Dear me,
she thought.
I still don’t know what to believe about him.

She shook her head. Scientific method. Were her conclusions about Kilkenny and the unknown woman mere imaginings? She would never be able to ask him. But the evidence of his scars and the clues inherent in his own words made her deductions seem logical.

He pulled up the plant and shook the dirt from the roots. “Enough?” he asked.

She nodded as he put it in the basket. “I think so.”

He took the reins of the two horses. They turned back down the hill.

“Now for the hemlock by the little loch up the glen.” She wanted to get out of here.

Another thought occurred. What if the lust she felt was the precursor to losing all control and becoming like that unknown woman who hurt Kilkenny? A chill ran down her spine, and it wasn’t from the night air. She must absolutely not give in to her lust, lest she become the monster Kilkenny knew it was possible to be.

*   *   *

“Well, not a success.” Miss Zaroff frowned as Brother Flavio, Kilkenny, and Jane stumbled into the kitchen from the laboratory. She was standing in the doorway in a lilac sarsenet walking dress with a matching reticule hanging from her wrist. She pulled out a small vinaigrette and held it delicately to her nose. Jane watched as Brother Flavio helped Kilkenny sit on one of the sturdy oak chairs. Kilkenny hadn’t needed resuscitation today, but the process was still horrible enough. Clara, who had been peeling potatoes, went to the canister of tea and ladled some into a teapot.

“The valerian was not the answer,” her father said absently as he wandered in.

Miss Zaroff threw up her hands dramatically and made a small sound of disgust.

“I thought surely…” Her father looked old today.

Miss Zaroff came to stand over him, hands on hips. “What is this … this valerian?”

“An herbal soporific.” Her father’s voice held exhaustion.

“Soporific? What is … soporific?”

“Valerian contains a sleep-inducing compound,” Jane explained. “Sit, Papa, and drink some tea,” Clara set a cup down in front of him with a tea-strainer over it.

“A narcotic to depress the parasite’s reaction long enough to kill it.” Her father sighed. “But apparently not strong enough.” Clara poured tea into the cup.

“Narcotic?” Miss Zaroff asked quickly. “Like opium? Opium is one of the few ways to suppress our Companion, though I warn you, it does not kill it.”

“Opium!” her father crowed. “Of course! It is stronger than valerian by a thousandfold. The apothecary at Inverness will have a tincture of laudanum at the least.” He bustled to the door. “I’ll go tonight.”

“Not you, Dr. Blundell,” Miss Zaroff called.

Her father stopped and turned at the sharpness in her tone.

“You are too valuable. Flavio will go as soon as the sun sets. It is what, fifteen miles?”

Her father nodded, turning back to his table. “Seventeen. I’ll need to distill it … and…”

Opium. They were going to give Kilkenny opium as well as poisons. He would not meet her eyes. The cup clattered against its saucer as he raised it to his lips.

“At least I’ll get some sleep,” he murmured.

*   *   *

Jane sat writing in her notebook at the kitchen table, alone. She had slept a few hours. The sun was setting. Kilkenny was still asleep in his room. Brother Flavio had just departed for Inverness in the gig used by Mrs. Dulnan during daylight hours on a mission to acquire opium or laudanum in large doses. He’d have to brave the sun tomorrow to buy it. Jane’s father had retired to his study, his nose in dusty herbal texts. Miss Zaroff was not yet in evidence. As soon as it was full dark, Jane would avoid both Kilkenny and the other vampires by going out into the hills alone. Her father never had to know. She would practice translocating until it was a skill she could rely on. She glanced to her notebook where she had outlined a practice regimen.