One With the Shadows (11 page)

But he just couldn’t keep his mind on his work. His world had dissolved in chaos. The fires for instance. Were those really his doing? First the fires in Algiers, then LaRoque’s lodgings, and finally the girl’s … all started with spontaneous combustion and the only thing they had in common was … him. And the girl. She didn’t even seem to realize how odd it was that she could resist his powers of suggestion. In fact, it always came back to the girl … She was an exact opposite of him, in every way. She had no honor at all. A thief, a charlatan who seemed to be able to ignore what she didn’t believe in. But courageous, educated, thoughtful. He’d never encountered her like.

Well, speak of the devil
. That’s what she’d said to him that night in her rooms.

He rose as the waiter let her in. She was wearing red again. Emilia, the unconscious donor of the wardrobe, loved red. This dress was burgundy, like new wine, with soft, loose sleeves and a waist just below her ribs in the latest fashion. Gian had never liked those high waists that refused to reveal a woman’s form. The bodice curved over the girl’s breasts. She wore a thick black ribband around her neck to hide the fading bruises Elyta had left. That would become a fashion, if the women of Firenze had eyes. It made her neck look slender and elegant. She had knotted her hair up hastily, for tendrils wisped around her neck and ears, but the effect was … attractive. She was so stupidly conscious of that scar. One didn’t even notice it after the first day or so. And except for that she was a diamond of the first water. He frowned. Something was bothering her. Her eyes glittered with fear and determination.

She stalked in and stood, rod-straight, in the center of the room. The door closed behind her and still she did not move.

He raised his brows. “Will you eat something?”

Her jaws clenched. “I … I wonder if you would assist me with this clasp?” She came forward, hesitant. Her hand was clenched around a delicate silver chain until her knuckles were white. She opened it slowly. The garnet crucifix.

Ahhhh. Gian could not help but smile. So, she was even more intelligent than he thought. She had put the clues together. Now she wanted to know for certain rather than run screaming away because she was courageous, and because she did not want to believe those clues, since that would mean that all things were possible whether you could see them and touch them or not.

All those hours in the carriage he had half wanted to tell her what he was, perhaps in recompense for her revealing her own past. Or perhaps because he had revealed himself to no one except his mother and at some point that didn’t count. Or perhaps he had wanted to tell her because, in the telling, he might reveal his nature to himself. He knew little of himself these days, and what he knew appalled him. But now that the moment when he could reveal himself was on him, he knew he would hide the truth. Why spoil her certainty? Why burden her dreams with monsters? Why risk her revulsion? It was his job to tell her that monsters did not exist and keep her by him until he could see her safe.

He nodded. “Of course.” She was actually holding her breath. He took the crucifix from her and undid the clasp. So many things people believed about his kind were myths, garlic and crucifixes among them. He’d never been dead. He was flesh and blood, as painful as that was at times. He glanced up. She was staring at him as though her life depended upon what she was seeing. “Will you turn round, or shall I clasp it behind your neck?”

She seemed incapable of moving. So he leaned in and reached around her neck. His lips were inches above her hair. He could feel her heaving breath. He was strangely touched. And excited. He eased closer. Her breasts brushed his waistcoat. His cock stirred as it had whenever he was near her. A false promise these days and a torture, knowing it was false.

He stepped back, feeling almost awkward, hoping she did not notice her effect on him. She looked up, her blue eyes big, searching his face. Just to be certain she understood what was happening, he reached out and lifted the cross as though to examine it. As his knuckles brushed across her breasts he noticed that his hand was trembling slightly. He cleared his throat lest his voice betray him. “A pretty bauble, and old.” He let it drop to the cleft between her breasts. It nestled there, snug. He turned her to the great mirror that hung over the mantel, so she could see her reflection and, more important, his. She still did not say a word. She was thinking. He could see it in her eyes. He was not out of the woods yet. “Will you sit? I ordered you tea, since the British seem to like it so. And Luigi said you ate eggs for breakfast.”

He pulled out a chair. She hesitated, and then sat. He poured her tea from the pot and returned to his seat.

“Tell me about this disease your servants say you have,” she said, without preamble.

Good. She was already searching for other explanations for what she had seen and guessed. “An … infection in my blood. I was born with it.” Well, not exactly an infection. An infestation more likely, though a glorious one. He must let her ask the questions. That would tell him exactly how much she had guessed. He wouldn’t volunteer any more than he must. He laid a plate with eggs and bread and butter and passed it to her.

She took it absently. “Sophia said that is why you go about only at night.”

“I am sensitive to the sun. It burns my skin quickly and hurts my eyes.”

“Burns.” She thought for a moment. She was thinking about how he had survived the burns she saw in the square outside her lodgings.

“It isn’t all bad.” He shrugged. “It also lends me a certain resilience. I heal quickly.” Healed anything except decapitation.

She nodded, pensive. “You do not wear lenses, do you? Elyta had the same red eyes and they seemed to glow when there was no reflective light source.”

Red eyes that should have made this little charlatan do anything he wanted, but somehow didn’t. He cut a bite of meat. “My condition affects the pigmentation of my irises.”

“You share the disease with Elyta?”

“And LaRoque. The one from whom you stole the emerald.”

“How was she so strong? Are you that strong?”

He managed a laugh. “I should hope I’m stronger than a woman. But still, who knows? She trained in the Orient. You have heard of the art of
jujitsu
?”

She shook her head.

“An old martial art. The fifteen hundreds, I think. It uses points of leverage and the enemy’s weight against him. Elyta could throw a man twice her size across her hip.”

The girl chewed her lip. He saw her gathering herself. This could be bad.

“You know hypnotism, do you not?”

That was one way to describe the power he had from the parasite in his blood. He called it compulsion. “Not a crime, surely.” Neither of them was even pretending to eat at this point.

“You used it on … that girl in the tavern, didn’t you? You don’t need to deny it,” she added. “I saw you.”

Had she seen him with his fangs run out, taking that girl’s blood? He answered warily. “Then you saw that I left her feeling better about herself than when she came in. As a woman should after an … intimate moment.”

She gathered herself again. Would she ask about the blood? Then she closed her eyes and shook her head, half laughing under her breath. “It’s none of my business who you like to kiss. How silly and rude all these questions are.”

He relaxed. “We are always curious about that which is strange to us.”

“You will never believe what I … well, never mind. You’re right of course. I didn’t understand about your disease. I was imagining all sorts of things.” She looked stricken. “Oh, dear! I’ve been blurting out whatever comes into my head. How many times have people pointed at me and asked astounding questions? I of anyone should be sensitive to another’s differences.” She bit her lips. They were really quite lovely lips, pink without rouge, full. Made, in fact, for kissing. “I’m sorry if I gave you pain,” she said.

She, who pretended to be so cynical, had a generous spirit underneath. An achievement, surely, with the life she had led. “I’m glad you asked.” As long as the asking had resulted in her thinking she was imagining things, all had turned out for the best. He returned to his meal, and she to hers. A wall came up between them. He could feel her turning over his answers. It was in her nature not to believe what she had guessed. That would be his protection.

Yet a certain sadness came over him. She had just shown how appalled she would be if what she imagined were true. And it was true. Oh, she had the details wrong. But in her eyes he would be a monster. The word alone for his kind struck fear and loathing into human hearts. And that meant he could never share with her what he was. Or with any human. Paolo knew his healing, his long life. But not about the blood. Not about the strength or his more-than-human senses, or his ability to translocate from one place to another.

He could share what he truly was only with his kind.

But could he? They were allowed to live only one to a city to conceal their presence among the human population. The only one of his kind he knew well was his mother, a remarkable woman who made others pale by comparison. But even his mother wouldn’t understand what the wars in North Africa had made him. Even the ones who had fought by his side there weren’t as sickened by the experience as he was. Then there was the spontaneous combustion he could apparently cause. Not even he understood that.

He was alone.

So he would see his mother tomorrow. He would provide for the little charlatan. Then he would take the stone to Mirso Monastery. And his duty would be done.

He had always wondered why his kind retreated to Mirso and took the Vow, never to leave the confines of its walls again. They said it was because they had grown heartsick with age, ennui gouging out globules of sanity with its teeth. The rigor of the chants, the ascetic rituals that starved the Companion in their veins of its need for blood, gave a life one could understand, control. Perhaps not much of a life, but better than the alternative: drugging yourself into a stupor or going insane. Too bad vampires could not commit suicide. The Companion’s urge to life was what incited it to rebuild its host forever, and its power over its host was absolute. It did not allow suicide. The mere thought of trying to put himself in a position to be decapitated generated a shuddering revulsion in his veins even now. That was why no vampire lived in France, what with Madame Guillotine on the rampage there these last years.

For the first time he could see that Mirso Monastery might be all that was left to him. When the duty of returning the stone was gone, when all he had were the memories of women he did not love, and of the vampires he had killed in the desert, some innocent, some not, when all he could remember were endless rounds of human venality and cruelty—what then?

Maybe if he lived an ascetic life at Mirso, his pyrotechnic abilities would disappear. If you had no strong emotions, then you couldn’t bring forth flame. That sounded appealing.

He looked up and found the girl staring at him. She flushed and looked away.

Did she flush because she was thinking carnal thoughts about him, and he caught her out? That was usually the case with women. Did she flush with embarrassment that she had thought him a vampire? Or did she flush because she was self-conscious about her scar? When she turned, she instinctively turned her marked cheek away.

She had not eaten, but pushed her plate away. “Let us go,” he said, rising. He left his own steak half finished.

*   *   *

He was sleeping in his corner of the coach. She could hear his even breathing. That was a good thing. The man had been sleeping far too little in the last days. And even if his condition gave him healing properties, surely healing the burns she had seen would have taken his strength. She wondered if the healing properties shortened his life span. She couldn’t ask him about that. She flushed again just to think what she had already asked him.

How
could she have believed he was a vampire? And asked him to touch a crucifix as proof that he was not. She cringed just to think about it. As though he was a risen corpse. She knew from experience just how warm his touch was. At that inn the first night she had seen him eat a pigeon pie liberally laced with garlic. There was nary a glimpse of fangs on his even white teeth. The poor man had a disease and she had vilified him for it. How different was she from all those ignorant creatures who blamed her for being scarred? And that she could even consider there were such things as vampires meant she was losing her grip on reality.

Dear Lord! What would the nuns think? What would Matthew have thought?

And why should she care? Because she might be a creature of her upbringing, and for better or worse the nuns and Matthew had formed her character: they and the streets of London.

That depressed her.

She sighed. Thinking him a vampire was as stupid as believing she saw the future. Best get her mind on what counted. Would he pay her for a stone he could just take? And if he did, was there something else he wanted of her? She still didn’t see what he got out of the bargain.

More carriages were passing outside. They might be coming to a town. Florence? She peeked out behind the shade. The Tuscan hills rolled away into the distance. Some were covered in neat rows of vines, like a chenille bed coverlet. Some were crowned with square houses sporting tiled roofs, their plastered walls painted curious shades of brown and brick red and dusty gold. They looked sturdy, confident. The trees were cypress, standing upright in lines along the roads or clustered about the houses.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

The deep rumble startled her. She let the flap down. “In a cultivated sort of way.”

He chuckled. “You prefer the sublime of Turner, all wild chaos? Less comfortable, I assure you.”

She had to smile. “I’m sure you’re right.”

“I am. I’ve been to Turner’s Alps. But I grew up around here.”

“In the countryside?”

“My mother’s estates. When my father was alive we liked it better than Firenze.”