One With the Night (27 page)

Her father’s beetling brows drew together. “I must mitigate the side effects first, Jane.”

“I’ll show you just the strength of tincture of foxglove I used to stimulate Mr. Kilkenny’s heart. That helped counteract the depressive effect of the laudanum.”

“Jane, I can’t lose you. Let me refine the formula…”

“And who will you test it on, Papa? Mr. Kilkenny is now human. The other three like being vampire. They won’t agree to take something that might cure them.” She could see he had not thought of that. “I am your only test subject now. So you might as well give me the dose.”

He rubbed his jowls, thinking. “At least let me do a bit of fiddling with it tonight, Jane. You can take it tomorrow…”

Light flared through the window. The night was lit by a red glow. A sound as of a growling breath shook the windowpane. Her father turned. Time slowed. Jane drifted to the window. “The laboratory,” she murmured. Figures were silhouetted against an inferno.

“No…” her father whispered. “My notebook…”

Below them, the kitchen door swung open, casting a channel of light into the yard. Elyta dashed into the darkness, closely followed by Flavio and Clara.

“No!” Her father whirled and scurried from the room.

Jane looked at Kilkenny. “It must be vampires.” She started for the door.

“Dinnae go!” he called roughly. “Ye’re no match for them.”

The implications hung in the air between them for a single instant. “I have to protect Papa,” she said on her way out the door.

Outside, her father struggled up the rise to the laboratory, shouting in rage. Ahead, Elyta had already wrenched the head of a vampire from his body. Blood soaked the gravel path. Flavio grappled with another. Clara stood off to the side, wringing her hands. Jane could see at least two other strangers cast into relief by the flames that engulfed the laboratory.

“My notebook,” her father moaned as he panted up the hill.

She grabbed his arm. “There’s nothing to be done now, Papa. Come away.”

A shadow loomed behind them. A huge, hulking man blocked their way back to the house. Jane gasped and stepped in front of her father. “What do you want?” she hissed.

“To finish what our brother started,” the man said in heavily accented English. His face was set and hard. He had the Magyar features of the first attacker. His coat was of rough material, like that of a farmer or a poor tradesman. He hadn’t made a move yet, though. Was he undecided about whether to kill them? She must keep him talking.

“Why would you destroy the only escape from your condition? It will be a blessing for some of your kind.”

“Because of the way
they
will use it,” he growled. His neck was as thick as a tree trunk, his hands large and gnarled with veins.

“Who? How?” Her father had gone still behind her.

“The Elders,” he spat. “If they control both Mirso and the cure, they own our souls.”

“They want to distribute it to those who need it,” Jane protested.

“Who says that, Elyta? She’s aligned with them.” He shook his great, leonine head. “No, only those loyal to them will get the cure, just as loyalty is the price for entrance to Mirso. Either that or they will cure the rebels who do not want the cure by force. Khalenberg wants to go back to the way things were, when any could gain the refuge of Mirso. We struggle in his cause against the Elders. We do not want a cure. We do not need it. We embrace our nature.”

She spared a glance to the flames now licking out the laboratory roof. “Well, it seems you’ve got your wish. The formula is gone.”

The vampire stared at the burning building. The flames sounded like sheets flapping in the wind. Slowly his eyes turned back toward her father. “The cure exists as long as he’s alive.”

He lunged. Jane grabbed his coat collar and thrust with all her might. He fell back. “I won’t let you kill my father!” she yelled.

“You’re new,” he said, recovering. He straightened. “You cannot stop me.”

He swept her aside with one arm. She stumbled away. Her rage gushed over her. Bending at the waist, she launched herself at him, butting him in the stomach with her head. He staggered back. But Jane leaped on him, hitting his back with both fists.

“Leave us alone,” she shouted.

It took her a moment to register the gurgle she heard behind her. “Papa?”

Everything stopped as she turned. Her father’s neck angled horribly. A ferret-eyed man was just letting him go. He toppled slowly to the side.

“Papa!” Abandoning all thought of fighting, she ran to him.

Some part of her knew it was too late, even as she cradled him. His head lolled at an impossible angle. “Papa!” But his eyes saw nothing anymore. It happened so quickly! He couldn’t just … die like that, could he? Did a man’s life escape him so easily?

The ferret-eyed man grabbed her shoulders and jerked her to her feet. “Mebbe we could save this one for a while, Allya,” he said, leering.

“None of them remains alive,” the big one called Allya growled. His eyes were full red.

Red eyes! She had the same power. Kilkenny had taught her how to use it. The ferret-eyed man took her head in both hands from behind.
Companion!
Power raced up her veins. The world went red. She scrabbled at the man behind her but she couldn’t get a grip. She tried to slip out of his grasp, but he was too strong for her. Very well. Kilkenny had taught her what to do.

Companion, now!
She felt the whirling blackness sliding up. The vampire was twisting her head. She tensed her neck muscles, resisting.

“No, you don’t, girl!” the hulking Allya threatened. His power showered over her, slowing the blackness at her hips.
Companion!
She thought about the well. A moment more … The blackness surged up. She’d make it now. She felt the triumph singing in her veins.

As her vision dimmed, she saw Kilkenny behind Allya with the great claymore raised in shaking arms. The world snapped to black with a sear of pain.

*   *   *

She popped into space next to the well perhaps a hundred yards from the melee. Kilkenny, dressed only in a billowing shirt that came to mid-thigh, hacked down at Allya. Blood spurted. But he had not enough strength to cut the big man’s neck clear through.

Allya turned with a howl of rage.

No!
she thought. Kilkenny mustn’t die, too! Jane pulled up her skirts and took off at a run, wailing. Trying to draw the power again so soon would take her too long. The ferret-eyed vampire lunged for Kilkenny. Jane pressed her legs for speed. She was running faster than she thought was possible. Allya grabbed Kilkenny by the shoulders and hoisted him off the ground. The great claymore slipped from his grip and slid down the hill. Flavio appeared behind the ferret-eyed vampire and whirled him around.

No matter how fast she ran it wasn’t fast enough. Allya shook Kilkenny, who flopped like a rag doll. Surely his neck would snap, just like her father’s. Why had he come? He was no match for vampires either. Not anymore.

Allya was hissing something at Kilkenny. Jane was almost on them. Allya was so big! Her heart sputtered.

The claymore! She scooped it up as she ran up the hill. She swallowed, panting, as she raised it. Could she do this? Kilkenny’s white shirt was covered in blood.
It’s Allya’s,
she told herself, pushing down panic. Allya half turned. A step more. She set her feet.

And brought the claymore down to finish the work Kilkenny had started. It slipped through flesh. There was a snap of bone. The tip of the claymore came around, nearly grazing Kilkenny. He dropped to the ground. Allya’s arms clawed at his own wounded neck.

But it was too late. Allya’s head toppled first and then his body. Jane watched, unable to look away. Kilkenny crawled to the body. She stood, immobile, as though she had been turned into a pillar of salt for the sin she had just committed. Kilkenny grabbed the head by the hair and tossed it down the hill. His gray-green eyes looked up at her with so much compassion she started to cry. Damn him! Why did he have to look at her like that? Slowly, she turned around.

The ferret-eyed vampire disappeared right from under Flavio’s grip in a whirl of blackness. She didn’t care about that. All she could see was her father’s broken body. Flames shot thirty feet into the night sky from the charred black lattice of the laboratory roof. They cast the whole farm into red relief. Jane ran to her father’s side and collapsed to her knees. Why she took his hand she didn’t know, perhaps to jerk him back from the underworld by force. The very slackness of his muscles said her gesture was futile.

He was dead.

Tears splashed onto his waistcoat. They must be hers. Some part of her watched herself from far away.
So this is what grief feels like.
She’d thought she’d grieved over being a vampire. But that wasn’t grief. She’d never known her mother, so she didn’t grieve her passing. Grief apparently meant she couldn’t catch her breath. Oh, those were sobs that choked her. She heard them as little brittle gasps.
That sound is really quite ridiculous
.

“Hell and damnation!” Elyta said. Jane heard her through the sobbing. She looked up. Elyta stood with hands on hips. “Well, we’d better find his notebook.” She strode forward and stood over Jane and her father’s body. “Where did he keep it?”

Jane heard the words, but she couldn’t quite think what they meant. A voice in her head whispered,
Your father is dead. You have nobody now. You’re all alone.

Elyta pulled Jane up by one arm. “Where is the damned notebook?” she shouted.

Oh. That’s what she meant. The sobs still racked Jane, though. She couldn’t speak. So she just looked up the hill to the stone creamery building with the flaming roof.

Elyta and Flavio followed her gaze.

“Khalenberg and his minions have their wish. The cure is lost,” Flavio said quietly.

Jane drew a breath deep into her lungs. Lost? She blinked against the flames. The air whooshed out of her. Glowing cinders drifted into the night sky. Snapping tongues of flame ate at the darkness. She turned her head to where Kilkenny lay, chest heaving, propped on one elbow in the grass. He had made it back to human. But now she never would.

Her father was dead. She was utterly alone in a world that held the kind of monsters who had attacked them tonight. She was a monster like them. Not only did she drink human blood, but she had killed tonight. She would be a monster forever, unless she was decapitated. The world was more horrible than she had ever imagined. She glanced to her father’s body. Kilkenny was right. She had been innocent. But now her innocence was dead.

Down at the house, three carts filled with men and women clattered up the drive. People spilled from them, shouting. Many carried buckets.

“Get ta th’ well!” Mr. Campbell ordered. “Ye with buckets, form a line.” He strode up toward Jane and Kilkenny, Elyta and Flavio. Clara disappeared quietly into the house. Jane heard the creak of the windlass as the bucket was drawn from the well, then the crash of glass. The bottles of blood had broken when the bucket was turned out.

As Mr. Campbell got closer, he slowed, taking in the carnage. His eyes darted from Elyta and Flavio to Jane standing over her father’s body, across the decapitated remnants of their attackers to a half-naked Kilkenny, gasping on the grass. Blood was everywhere. It splattered the three others and soaked the ground. Jane looked down and saw that her wrapper was drenched in blood, too, as if they had all been painted by the same careless artist.

Now others were beginning to notice what the light of the fire revealed. A hush fell across the would-be rescuers.

“Come, Flavio,” Elyta whispered as she stepped forward. “You know what to do.” A threatening murmur rolled through the crowd. Elyta’s eyes went the deepest carmine red Jane had ever seen. Flavio clenched his jaw and strode up to stand beside Elyta.

“Silence,” Elyta hissed, and the word echoed in Jane’s mind. The crowd’s murmur halted instantly. Jane saw the ones who were looking at Elyta grow still. Others turned at the note of command in her voice and were caught by the red of her eyes. Flavio’s eyes were red now, too.

Elyta glanced around. “Wet the roofs of the house and the barn,” she ordered. The words seemed to come from the rocks and the trees, echoing out over the crack of the flames and back from the cloudy sky above. Elyta’s voice trembled in Jane’s lungs and reverberated in her mind.

To Jane’s amazement the villagers formed two lines and began a bucket brigade. Elyta and Flavio moved off, eyes still red, to direct their work. Jane knelt beside Kilkenny.

“Are you all right?” she whispered.

“I’ll do.”

“You should never have left your bed,” she chastised as she examined him for wounds. He was scraped about a bit, but seemed whole. “You aren’t strong enough.”

“I’ll give ye that,” he muttered. He lifted his brows and took a breath as though to gather himself. “Feels a bit … strange.”

“Ahh.” He was talking about being human again. She looked back at the burning laboratory. “I suppose I shall never know.” Her voice was small. The night seemed infinite. Her father’s death had stripped her of any light remark she might have made to turn away the emotion. She and Kilkenny were now stranded on opposite sides of a river, one cured, one not.

Jane realized all at once what she had been hoping, somewhere down so deep she could not even acknowledge it was there. She had thought that once she and Kilkenny were both human … maybe … maybe …

Tears welled again.

“I’m verra sorry, Jane.” Kilkenny’s voice was hoarse. “About yer father, and th’ cure.”

She nodded, unable to speak. She had no one who cared for her. Her father was dead. Kilkenny, who had so despised his own condition, would not be able to help but despise her for drinking blood, for her strength and her need for sex. Perhaps she’d become just as cruel and horrible as Elyta. How could he not despise her? For however long he lived. He was mortal now.

She looked away from him and watched the villagers saving the house and the barn from the infection of flying cinders. Anyone could see there was no saving the laboratory. With a great cracking sound, the blackened timbers slowly collapsed inside the soot-covered stone walls.