The Blood That Bonds (19 page)

Two was quiet a moment, head down,
considering. She looked up at Theroen. “Who is Lisette?”

Theroen visibly flinched away from her, eyes
widening. He turned his head, but not before Two read what she
needed from his expression.

“
Oh,” Two said. “Who
was
Lisette?”

“
Not now, Two.”

“
Theroen …”

“
Please
,” he turned his eyes back toward her, and the look on his
face made Two want to take it all back. She wished she had never
mentioned the name, wished it had not flashed into her brain in
that moment before sleep.

“
Okay, Theroen. I …” She
stopped. Theroen sat on the foot of the bed with his elbows on his
knees, back bent, hands laced behind his head, staring at the
floor. His expression was dark and miserable. Two felt adrenaline
flood her system, then depart, leaving her shaky and scared. She
had never expected anything like this. She crawled across the bed
and stopped, unsure of how to proceed. She touched his
shoulder.

“
I’m not going to hurt you,
Two.” Theroen sounded weary. He did not look up at her.

“
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I
didn’t know!” Two felt herself crying.

Theroen turned to her, wiped a tear from her
cheek. “Don’t.”

“
I can’t help it. I’m
scared.”

Theroen smiled at this, kissed her briefly.
“Scared?”

“
I don’t understand
everything. You haven’t told me everything, and now I hurt you. I
don’t even know how I did it. I didn’t know I could. I didn’t think
there was anything I could’ve done …”

Theroen stood up, looked out the window,
sighed.

“
Lisette was a vampire. In
a very real sense, you owe your present fortune – if you wish to
consider it such – to her. She saw the good in me even as I spent
my nights bathing in the blood of those I destroyed. She helped me
to find the good in myself. And I loved her. I loved her like I
love you. I loved her, and I couldn’t save her, and I’ll never
forgive myself for it.”

* * *

The girl made the cut below the nipple on
her left breast and stood, beckoning. Theroen lounged on
overstuffed cushions of velvet, warm from the first kill, ready for
the second. She was white cream against the red fabric. Pouting
lips, full breasts, dark hair on her head, between her legs.
Theroen reached out, took her hand, brought her to him. The girl
swooned, falling against him, panting, as he drank from the wound
she had inflicted upon herself.

Her death came with a tiny gasp, and the
girl went limp in his arms. Theroen shoved the body away, reclined,
reflected. Two of them, and still he was unsatisfied. There could
never be enough death. He could drown in a sea of human blood, and
it would never be enough.

A walk, then, and perhaps another
victim.

In the ten years that had passed since his
rebirth into darkness, Theroen had learned little of his nature
beyond that which was readily evident to him. He would not take
instruction from Abraham, and the elder vampire in turn shunned his
creation, leaving Theroen to his own devices.

Theroen knew he was strong. He knew he could
read minds with a proficiency that seemed to enrage Abraham. He
knew he could make women do terrible things to themselves, and in
this last he sometimes took great pleasure.

There was no God, no devil, no heaven or
hell. Lost in a sea of blackness, Theroen let his base instincts
run wild. Women, always women. He would watch them, his powerful
mind compelling them to perform acts of lust and passion upon
themselves, upon each other. He would watch, but never join them.
For the women from whom he drank, Theroen’s touch meant only
death.

Some went quietly, like the two tonight.
Others laughed, wept, screamed, begged. It didn’t matter. How could
it? How could anything matter at all when God had so clearly
forsaken him? Theroen reveled in debauchery worse than that which
had driven him from the church, and it just didn’t matter.

Someone was watching him. He could sense it,
and this presence frightened him. Theroen was unaccustomed to being
noticed. His speed and uncanny ability to manipulate the minds of
those around him made it an infrequent occurrence. What concerned
him most was that he could not throw off this feeling. It pursued
him through streets, back alleys, parks, graveyards. He skipped the
whorehouse from which he’d been planning to acquire another victim,
moved onward, toward the townhouse. Toward Abraham. Toward
safety.

There was something humorous in that
concept, that he might turn to Abraham for sanctuary. The vampire
elder had all but denounced him, yet blood bonded them. Theroen
hated his master. Despised him. Loathed him.

And yet this fear …

The presence shifted, and he realized that
the feeling of being watched was more than a mere tingle at the
back of the neck. It was spatial. It had depth. He felt the
presence overtake him at a frightening speed. There was a short
moment of paralyzing terror, and then it moved onward, in front of
him now, yet still focused on him in some way.

From the shadows there was laughter like
silver bells on a sheet of glass. The woman stepped out from the
doorway of a cathedral. Black hair, pale white skin and oceanic
green eyes. Theroen felt himself lost and drowning in those eyes,
and looked away, snarling.

“
Do you fear everything you
don’t understand?” Her accent was French.

“
I fear nothing.” A lie,
perhaps. His fright was replaced with the hot flush of humiliation.
Theroen was glad for this. Of the two, he preferred the
latter.

“
You fear me.”

“
You were trying to
hypnotize me.”

“
I was doing nothing of the
sort.”

Theroen looked back, was pulled again into
the depths of those eyes. He struggled to maintain focus, coherent
thought, any semblance of composure.

She laughed again, but there was no trace of
mockery in the sound. Theroen’s spine knotted and he shivered. “Who
are you?”

“
Who I am would be a long
tale indeed, my fallen priest. Your father knows me. Perhaps you
could ask him.”

“
Your name, at
least?”

“
You can call me Lisette.
It is not the name I was born into, but the one I chose for myself
later. After. It has a lovely sound to it, don’t you
think?”

“
Lisette. Madame. What do
you want?” Theroen had regained some composure. His thoughts were
more clear, the sense of fear not gone, but faded. The girl, and
Theroen saw now that she was little more than such, laughed
again.

“
Ah, you are brave, child.
But don’t make assumptions based on my appearance. I’ve walked this
earth for far longer than you can currently conceive.”

Theroen looked again, trying to see past the
facade. The eyes told him she spoke the truth. They were ancient
and ageless, like Abraham’s, yet without the malice that forever
darkened his. Lisette smiled at him and took a step forward.
Theroen flinched, stumbled backward, immediately on the defensive.
His fear seemed to leap forward, energizing his muscles. Lisette
paused, shaking her head.

“
Child, if I wanted to kill
you, you would be very dead by now. Do you not understand
this?”

Theroen shook his head, a guarded expression
on his face. The woman before him was lithe, petite, nearly angelic
in her beauty. A killer?

And then she was gone, and he felt the
lightest touch of lips against his ear. Her voice was a whisper,
heard as much in his mind as by his body. “That and more.”

Theroen jerked to the side, flailing his
arms for balance, losing it, falling.

Then he was sitting. Sitting on a stone
bench, vaguely aware of some sort of movement too fast even for his
vampire senses to track.

“
Dear God,” his voice was
thick with fear and confusion. The vampire, now sitting beside him,
smiled again.

“
You speak to Him who has
forsaken you, Theroen. Is this not the case? Or perhaps you have
only forsaken Him?”

Theroen searched for something to hold on to
in his confusion, and found his anger. “I know not of Him. Not
anymore. I know of fallen priests, and I know of their sins.”

Lisette clapped her hands together at this,
laughing, merry, unperturbed by his blasphemy. Theroen turned to
her, teeth clenched, angry. She looked at him with calm eyes, and
shook her head.

“
I am not mocking you, my
young priest. Ah, has Abraham taught you
nothing
? No, of course not. Your
goodness disgusts him.”

“
I’ve no goodness left in
me, lady. You look upon a black hearted killer. A creature of
evil.”

More laughter. “I look upon nothing of the
sort. I look only upon a man, and a vampire, who knows nothing of
his own true nature. I look upon a man who was been led by others
all his life, and knows not how to lead himself.”

“
I look,” she said, “upon a
fledgling in desperate need of answers.”

Theroen said nothing, but turned away.
Answers? Perhaps, yes. Certainly Abraham had provided him with
little in the way of understanding. He felt movement: Lisette
leaning in closer. This time he did not shy away. He was instead
suddenly, acutely aware of the woman next to him. She smelled of
lilacs and blood, and he felt a wave of desire wash over him. When
she laughed this time, it did not bother him so much.

“
You
must
learn to guard your thoughts, my
child. Such impure images from a man of the cloth …”

“
I beg your pardon,
Madame.” He could think of no other response.

Lisette moved her lips to his neck, held
them above the vein. “Is that all you beg for?” Her breath set the
tiny hairs below her lips standing on edge.

“
Milady …” Theroen felt out
of breath. No mortal woman had ever had this effect on him as a
vampire, not even the victims he made perform for him. Before that,
as a virgin for all of his twenty-three years, he had steadfastly
disallowed any such thoughts. Now, they swamped him, overwhelmed
him, swept him up.

Half-focused images, potent, carnal, flashed
through his mind. Her open bodice beckoned, the white breasts
luminescent in the moonlight. Skin like porcelain. Hair like ebony.
Lips like blood. He sensed, or thought he sensed, some dull fire
from between her legs. Theroen moaned slightly. Her lips never
touched his skin, yet they burned there like hot iron.

“
Alive below the waist,”
she commented in a whisper. “How curious. Your father is possessed
of no such blessing.”

She touched him there, ever so gently, and
Theroen made some sound, some choked sob. He began to turn toward
her, desire overwhelming him.

As suddenly as it had begun, it was over.
Lisette sat up, and the feeling, which had been like a building
explosion, drained suddenly away. Theroen drew in a shuddery
breath. Lisette laughed.

“
I like you, Theroen
Anders. I shall visit you again.”

And she was gone.

* * *

“
So she’s the one who
taught you that you could … you know?” Two asked.

“
Yes, that and much more. I
wish I could tell you the whole story, Two. I haven’t the time,
right now. I have to go and find out what Abraham
wants.”

“
I’m hungry. Should I
wait?”

“
If I’m not back in a few
hours, then you can go yourself. Just be smart about it. I’m sure
you’ll do fine. Otherwise, I’d certainly enjoy your company. I
thought we might go into the city tonight.” Theroen glanced in the
direction of Abraham’s quarters, his expression of exasperation
surprisingly human. Two laughed.

“
Go. I’ll take a shower,
and wait for you.”

She watched him leave, then stripped off her
nightgown and made her way into the bathroom. It was not as
luxurious as Melissa’s, but it was quite enough for Two, who had
spent the last year showering in a cold tile room with seven other
women.

She thought of Darren. Molly. Janice. Rhes
and Sarah. Would she see them again? Her desire for revenge against
Darren was already fading. It was difficult to maintain any
concern. Her connection with those mortal lives had been severed.
She didn’t need the drug, didn’t really care if Darren’s crimes
went unpunished. The thought of Molly still hurt, but what could
she do for Molly? Killing Darren would only put the girl out on the
street with no immediate source of the drug.

More pressing, and more troublesome, was the
story Theroen had begun. Lisette. An elder vampire and a previous
lover. Two wondered what had happened to her, and knew it couldn’t
have been pleasant. The expression on Theroen’s face had been
heart-breaking.

There was still so little she knew about her
lover. Centuries of life that remained dark to her, stories untold.
Theroen was a creature beyond the scope of time Two was capable of
visualizing. She could not imagine living for nearly half a
millennia. The thought filled her both with fear and a fierce,
fluttering excitement. So much to see and do, side by side with the
one she loved.

Two turned off the shower, brushed her hair,
pulled on clothes. There was a plush armchair against the wall, and
Theroen had left a collection of Dickinson’s poetry on the
nightstand. Two sat down, picking up the book and beginning to
read.