One With the Shadows (36 page)

“Let’s get you out of here,” he said. His voice was startling in the new quiet.

Where? Where would she go? Her plan of living in a rural cottage seemed ludicrous. She stared around at the silent sand, not even the whisper of a sirocco to stir it. The certainty of who she was and what she wanted seemed lost forever.

*   *   *

The sky had gone red ahead of him. Gian’s old enemy, the sun, would rise soon. There was no cover out here on the plateau. They had trudged for most of the night in the vague direction of El Djelfa. The horse couldn’t go on much longer. Neither could Kate. He had only pretended to drink this night, so as to save the water for her. But there was little left. She was nodding on the horse’s back, so he steadied her with a hand on her lower back. The daylight would be merciless. He wondered if he could stand another twelve hours at the equator with sunlight scraping his skin even inside the burnoose, burning his eyes no matter how he squinted. He was almost human in his weakness. He’d borrowed power from the Old One, bent on retrieving his jewels, to set Elyta on fire, but it was a loan only, and it was gone now.

But while he had had it, he had controlled the power, directed it, and shut it off when it had done its work. The vortex would have taken Elyta anyway. He knew that now. But he had made her suffer. He should be sorry for that. Maybe someday he would be.

Using that power had taken its toll. It would weaken him for the fight against the sun. He required blood. And there was no blood. Kate needed all her strength. He had to get Kate to shelter. He must prevail, even if the horse faltered. He could carry Kate. They couldn’t have survived a sandstorm, Elyta, and even the wrath of the Old One just to have her die on this endless sere plateau.

Behind him, he felt the sun rise.

Twenty-one

Kate cracked open her eyes. They felt swollen. All of her felt swollen. She was in some kind of dim room. The walls were whitewashed, the shutters drawn against the heat of the day. They cast bars of horizontal light across the dirt floor. She was lying on a pallet of some kind. Her mouth felt like she had inhaled sand. An old woman was holding up her head. The crone’s wrinkles rearranged themselves into an almost toothless grin.

“Drink, English,” she said in that language. It was heavily accented.

Cool water poured down her throat. Kate swallowed until she gasped and choked.

“Enough. More later.”

“Gian?” Kate croaked.

“The one who carried you here?”

“Yes,” she whispered. She remembered sliding off the horse. She remembered the horse staggering. It had been so hot, so bright. Gian had picked her up, and dragged the horse along behind him. He must have carried her to here, wherever here was.

“He lives.”

Kate didn’t like the sound of that. Only just living? “Is he well?”

“He was burned as though he walked naked in the sun.”

Did his burnoose not protect him? She shoved up on one elbow. “I must go to him.”

The old woman pushed her back down, gently. It wasn’t hard. Kate was weak as a kitten. “You rest. Later more water and food. Then go.”

Kate had to find him. She remembered the bubbling of his skin with burns the night he had carried her from the lodgings in Rome. He had healed that. He could heal whatever he suffered in the desert now, couldn’t he? Elyta had not weakened him that much. She couldn’t have. Kate would not let it be so.

The room was swimming. Her vision blurred at the edges. She fought against the darkness that washed over her. But it was no use …

*   *   *

Gian tried to breathe. He’d heal. It was just taking longer because the stones, and using the Old One’s power, had weakened him. That was all. He could bear the pain. He always had. He was naked. The thought of cloth against his skin made him nauseous. He lay on his back on a pallet of some kind. Even that was torture. An old woman came occasionally to give him water and thin gruel. She said Kate was well so he stopped trying to get up. He had not let her grease his flesh with animal fat though. That would only delay healing the burns. He’d heal faster if he had blood. But he was too weak to compel the old woman or even draw his fangs.

He had never been affected so by sunlight. It was as though he were newly made, not more than eighteen hundred years old. By the time night fell on the plateau, he had been nearly crazed with pain. The tiny village, clustered round the date palms and the pool of brackish water, had seemed a hallucination brought on by pain. It wasn’t, thank the gods.

But the pain from burned flesh was not the worst. The worst stretched out ahead, in an infinite future devoid of meaning. The stones were returned. The vampire wars were over. They had receded into the past instead of being a series of ever-present nightmares that dogged his every move. Elyta was gone. The Old One had returned to waiting.

And Gian had no purpose. He could not go to the Elders at Mirso Monastery and ask to serve on other missions. There was a reason the stones had not wanted to fall into the Elders’ hands, crazy as that seemed. The concerns of the Elders might be just as political as Elyta’s ambitions, if to a different end. And there was the fact of his unusual powers. Had they really destroyed that other firebrand because he was uncontrolled, or because he had learned to control it, as Gian thought he had, and that made him a threat? He didn’t know.

And then, when he finally healed, when he got Kate back to Algiers or Amalfi or Rome or Firenze, she was going to go to England to be unhappy in some rural backwater. He would be left, at best being allowed to exist on the fringes of her life, helping her where he could, watching her age. That was the only purpose his life could have. He twisted against the pallet and the coarse canvas cover tore at his flesh.

He dozed sometimes and dreamt, fevered dreams of Kate being harassed by village ruffians, himself unable to protect her. Sometimes he dreamed about the Ruffords, strange as that was. He didn’t want to sleep. He didn’t want to dream. But waking was a nightmare too. Sleeping or waking, all he felt was pain.

*   *   *

“How are you?” That was a stupid question. Kate carefully erased the horror from her face as Gian turned his head in her direction. She hated to think he had been healing as the old woman had promised her. Because in that case, his burns must have been even more appalling than they were now. His body was blotched with open sores weeping serous fluid. His vibrations were so low as to be almost imperceptible. She felt better after sleeping, water, and food. That seemed a betrayal.

He smiled, his blistered lips cracking. “Good,” he whispered, his voice hoarse.

She wanted to burst into tears. That would never do. She couldn’t burden him with her need for reassurance. She managed a tentative smile. “Liar.” She knelt beside him. “Water?”

“Thank you.”

She lifted his head and scooped water from the bucket next to him with a wooden ewer. He slurped the ewer dry. She laid him down carefully. Why was he not healed? It had been what—three days?

He must have read her thoughts. “It’s going faster now.”

“Not fast enough.”

“Faster and the villagers would cast us out,” he mumbled through swollen lips.

“You need blood.”

His eyes registered—what? Longing? He turned his head away. “I won’t die.”

Kate turned and pulled the fluttering fabric that formed a door across the entrance to the hut. “But it will save you suffering. And you can’t take it from a villager or they would do considerably worse than cast us out.” She knelt again beside him.

“You’re not strong enough.”

She smiled at him. “I’m much better. If you can’t draw your power, I’ll get a knife.”

“I won’t take blood from you.” This was said through gritted teeth.

“So, you can carry me across the desert, but I can’t help you in return?” She raised her brows. “Arrogant, Urbano. Very arrogant.” If she could provide blood, maybe his need would overcome his resistance. Getting a knife from one of the villagers might rouse suspicion though. Very well. She looked around. How did one draw enough blood to feed a vampire? She glanced around the tiny hut. She needed something sharp. A crockery bowl sat near the door. She took a breath and rose. She hit the bowl against the doorpost. Shards cascaded to the packed earthen floor.
God, grant me courage.
Taking up a triangular splinter, she sat beside him, careful not to touch his ravaged flesh.

“Kate, don’t do this.”

“And how, pray tell, are you going to stop me?” She braced her wrist on her thigh and sliced across it as hard as she could. The shock of pain immobilized her for a moment. Then the blood welled. Gian moaned. Was it in protest or anticipation? The blood began to spurt. She’d done it. “Drink,” she whispered, holding her wrist to his mouth.

He took three ragged breaths. He shook his head, convulsively. But she could feel the Companion in his veins rise a little and increase the pace of his vibrations.
Yes,
she thought,
take over for him. You know what to do.

He fastened his blistered lips on her wrist with a growl. She smiled and closed her eyes.

*   *   *

Kate watched Gian sleep, fascinated. It was almost imperceptible, but his burns were healing. She had saved him pain.

She loved this man, even if he could not love her in return. She treasured his contradictions: selflessness all wrapped up in arrogance, his courage and his cowardice. And they were so alike; both allowing their past to circumscribe their future …

That did not mean there was any escaping who they were. There were no choices.

*   *   *

The sun sank below the horizon. And the pain was gone. Gian opened his eyes, and his gaze met Kate’s. Her blue eyes were clear and true. She had been watching him sleep. And the feeling that he belonged with her was so strong it made his stomach clench.

“Thank you,” he said. It was so inadequate. What other woman would have gouged her own wrist and let him suck her blood just to spare him pain?

She smiled. And the smile was tender. “You’re welcome.”

He pushed himself up, trying to ignore that smile. “We’ll stay here until you are fully recovered. Then the villagers can direct us to the next oasis.”

A look of tristesse passed over her face and was quickly suppressed. She smiled again, but this time it was rueful. “As you will.”

*   *   *

The horse had survived against all odds. A few days of hay and water, and he was, if not as good as new, as good as she and Gian were. Gian had paid the villagers for their kindness with gold coins he produced from the seams of his burnoose where they had apparently been sewn.

Now the rock-strewn plateau again stretched out before them under a waning moon. That seemed fitting. The whole world seemed like it was waning to Kate. They walked. Gian led the horse. The villagers had sworn they could reach the next water hole before the dawn, and sure enough, in the distance huts rose in rectangular contrast to the rocks and the flat desert, the soft-looking fronds of date palms caressing their angles.

Kate existed in some kind of dream state. Her thoughts, hovering around her, flapped like vultures. Living in a village away from everyone suddenly seemed the last thing she wanted to do. She would miss the new cities, the excitement of duping a whole roomful of marks. No, even that was tame compared to saving the world—at the very least the whole of France. And she would miss Gian Urbano. How could she have ever guessed she would be here, with him, at the spine of the world?

The warring halves of her had stopped their debate, exhausted. She accepted that the world was not as she had always thought it. It held more things unseen than she had ever imagined. And she, who thought she was not special, was perhaps unique among humans. Were all the other things she had believed equally wrong?

The thought seemed to wind around her spine. She believed she controlled her own destiny, that she was invulnerable to the scorn of those around her, that people were inherently selfish, doing wrong at every turn either from malice or ignorance. But those things were wholly wrong. Gian did not do things from malice or ignorance. He was not selfish at all. And as for her? Her past controlled her. Her fear of being abandoned directed her every reaction. And the feeling that those around her held her in contempt, whether because of her background, or her scar, quite ruled her life. She found that contemptible.

She had never believed in love either. But that did not prevent her from loving Gian. It had happened against her will.

She was glad. He couldn’t love her in return, of course. But … but her life was richer for having loved him. She had to tell him. She had to thank him before they parted. At least that.

“Gian.” The word was out of her mouth before she could stop it.

He turned. Concern was written on his features. “Kate?”

What was she thinking? How could she expose herself to ridicule like that? He’d leave if she said it. But it was Gian. And she trusted Gian. He knew everything about her. Whatever he felt for her or didn’t feel, he didn’t despise or ridicule her. And he would leave anyway. So it didn’t matter. He couldn’t go without knowing. “I … I must thank you.”

“It was nothing.” His expression flattened itself, unreadable.

“I don’t mean for carrying me across the desert. Perhaps I should mean that, but I don’t.”

He looked … wary. He should. She was about to create another barrier between them. Women had been prostrating themselves before him for centuries. He surely wouldn’t want to hear protestations of love from a charlatan tramp with a scarred face. She should just motion him forward. How could she say anything anyway with the lump in her throat?

But this was something she had to do. She had to share with the person she knew best in the world her realization that what she believed about life before was wrong. “I … I hadn’t felt … anything for … for a man, before I met you.” She shook her head, disgusted with herself. Her resolve seeped away. “Women must say that to you all the time. How … banal of me. I shouldn’t have…” She trailed off, unable to continue.