The Burning (15 page)

“That is part of the suppression of emotion which is essential to your training,” Freya explained. Her expression was soft. Was that sympathy or something else?

“All he needs to know is that if he does not,” Estancia said, “he will be punished.” She distributed her ample figure over the third chaise. “Or we could let our father punish you.”

Freya sat up from her chaise and slipped a silken robe over her athletic frame. “Don’t threaten, Stancie. Stephan wants to obey. He wants to learn to increase his power and control it. He wants to atone and take the Vow and make peace with his past deeds and his soul.”

It was true. He did. He bowed his head. This was part of his atonement, this submission to their training. No matter what kind of training it was
.

“We shall see.” Deirdre’s voice seemed habitually hard, pitched low, almost masculine in quality. It matched her tall, angular body and her implacable eyes. “Very well, sisters. What do you think of him?” She shrugged on the wrapper that lay at the foot of her chaise
.

“Easily aroused, even for one of our kind. He is highly sexed.” This from Freya
.

“Good stamina,” Estancia acknowledged grudgingly. “Though he might not have expended himself in some time. We shall see if his endurance continues.”

“But his control is not what we could wish.” Deirdre tapped her finger to her lips. “I had to suppress ejaculation several times tonight.”

“That’s what we are here to work on.” Freya shrugged
.

“He must rid himself of emotions.” Estancia was pouting again. “I can feel them simmering just below the surface. Rebellion, self-absorption. He is prideful.” She was the only one who had not covered her nakedness with a robe except Stephan, of course. His clothing lay strewn around the room, but he did not think taking the initiative to retrieve it would be viewed with complacence by the sisters. He swallowed, trying to conceal the fear, repress the rebellion
.

Deirdre slapped her knees and rose, “So, first we increase the sexual energy further.”

Estancia gathered up his clothes. “Suppress to increase.”

Freya took his boots. “Then frequency is the key.”

“And then, when the power is sufficient, we go slowly, to be sure we don’t have a repetition of the last one.” Deirdre swung open the door
.

“Rest,” Freya said to him. “You will need your strength.” She laid their dresses over her arm, along with Estancia’s robe
.

They trailed out the door. It closed behind them with a thud. He could hear the iron bar being lowered on the outside. It could not keep him in, but it was a clear signal that he was not allowed out of this room
.

Exhaustion welled up inside him. He felt stripped both mentally and physically. Could he give himself over to these strange and powerful women? But what choice did he have? They held out the promise of salvation, for him, and if Rubius was right about Asharti’s followers, for his kind and for the world. He had to persevere. He had no choice. He bit his lip. He was coward enough to be afraid. It might be a long and tortuous route to the grail
.

He had to get some sleep. Stephan rolled onto his back. Damn the Van Helsing girl! She brought on these memories.
The Daughters were right,
he told himself. They had increased his power, no matter how painfully. They had forged him into a tool to serve his kind. Not the best tool, but they had worked with such flawed material. They at least showed him the way to earn redemption. He thanked them for that. No matter how badly it ended.

He couldn’t think about that.
Tuatha, denon, reheldra, sithfren,
he murmured to himself. He couldn’t think about the Van Helsing girl.
Sithfren, hondrelo, frondura, denai
. There. He had control now. Better. Blank was better.

Eight

Stephan awoke as the sun set. He had slept like the dead, exhausted from his ordeal at the hunting lodge and the memories of his training at Mirso. The sweat of remembrance had dried on his body. He was himself again, however inadequate that was. He heaved himself up on one elbow. Kilkenny’s army would be coming for him. The one who got away last night would bring Kilkenny himself, if he was lucky. How long? It depended on how far Kilkenny was from Cheddar Gorge. The North? Scotland? Ireland? A week at the least, perhaps more. That would give him time to recover fully from his ordeal. He must find blood tonight, perhaps from several sources since he would take only a little from each.

His thoughts strayed to the Van Helsing girl. They would have found her and called a doctor by now. Had she spoken to anyone of what she had seen? Was she still unconscious? What would the doctor say was wrong with her? That still puzzled him.

He sat up. He wanted to know.

Whatever he told himself last night, it was his fault she was ill. More suffering to be laid at his door. It was his fate to atone, to try, however vainly, to correct the wrongs he had wrought. Besides, if she had wakened he could compel her to believe what she had seen had all been a dream. In her weakened state, that would be easy.

He dressed hastily, shrugging on his coat and tying his cravat with careless fingers. He ran his hands through his hair but did not shave. Then he swirled his cape around his shoulders even as he drew the power and the darkness whirled up around him.

Stephan suppressed the grunt of pain as he flickered into the shadows of the great front portico at Maitlands. A man with luxuriant sideburns and a medical bag was just climbing into a carriage on the drive. The carriage door snapped shut and the driver Stephan had seen at the tavern flicked his whip over the horses’ heads. They crunched forward through the gravel. He thought briefly about snapping into the seat beside the doctor, questioning him, using his power of compulsion to make the man forget.

Not wise. What if the doctor had a strong mind? In strong minds, sometimes a stray memory or some remnant of fear and suspicion lingered. No. He must let the doctor go. There were other ways to get the information he wanted.

He turned his attention to the house. Lamps glowed out into the darkening gloom of an early twilight. Clouds threatened rain. Farther down, the empty Gothic arches of the ruined section stared blindly out across the rolling lawns that gave onto a small lake, ruffled by the wind of the approaching storm. The water was empty of ducks now. Above him, he saw a shadow moving in a second-floor room in the right wing. Only a dim glow could be seen in Miss Van Helsing’s
childish domain on the fourth floor. Why did a grown woman inhabit a nursery? He slid along the house, silent in the night, his ears pricked for sound. Around the side was another long wing, this a more modern addition. The house was built in an L-shape. At the back were the kitchens. He heard clattering, sobbing.

Peering in at a window, he saw the older woman in the mobcap crying into her apron, her shoulders heaving. Stephan’s heart dropped. Had the girl died? A dour-faced, middle-aged man dressed in slightly old-fashioned livery thumped her on the back.

“There, there, Mrs. Simpson. The doctor hasn’t said there isn’t any hope.”

Stephan breathed again. She wasn’t dead. But it didn’t sound good.

The woman wailed anew. “An unfortunate turn of phrase,” the man acknowledged.

“So still she is. It’s like she’s dead already.”

“Coma. The doctor told Mr. Van Helsing she’s in a coma.”

“What’s that? And when will she wake up?”

“I don’t know,” the man admitted. “Mrs. Creevy said nobody knows.”

“And . . . and that devil saying we can’t have anyone in to stay with her . . .” she hiccupped.

The man’s face darkened. “He can’t say anything of the sort. He’s not master here.”

“Yet!” the woman hissed. “Mark my words, Mr. Polsham, with Lord B. laid by the heels, and now Miss Van Helsing in such a bad way, he’ll be calling the shots, sure as sugar is sweet.”

“Mr. Brandywine will have something to say to that.” But Polsham didn’t sound certain.

“He’s only Lord B.’s steward. He ain’t here every day. And that creature saying, since he’s her cousin he’s the only relation she has living ’cept Lord B. . . .” she trailed off unhappily.

“I’ll speak with him,” Polsham said grimly. He handed her a handkerchief. “Don’t you worry, Mrs. Simpson.”

Mrs. Simpson took the handkerchief gratefully and blew her nose. “When I think . . .”—her sobs overtook her again and her voice cycled into a throttled squeak—“that she might wake up with no one there . . .”

“Do you need my support just now, or . . . ?”

“Go!” She motioned him with her free hand as she held his handkerchief to her mouth. “He’s in the library.”

Polsham gave her shoulder a final pat and strode off resolutely. Stephan melted into the full dark and listened to the footsteps retreating. He remembered the conversations in the tavern. The villagers thought this Van Helsing cousin was angling to marry the girl, in spite of the fact that she was generally thought to be crazy or a witch. The servants were obviously distraught at any thought of change, but it wasn’t as if the cousin could actually make trouble.
It’s not my concern in any case,
he told himself and pushed down the uneasy feeling in his gut. He had no business with feelings of any kind. The wind had risen further. It plucked at his hair. He glided around the end of the wing. A room shone light into the garden from the main portion of the house. The floor-to-ceiling bookshelves were clearly visible.

A plump young man stared into the fire, a glass of whiskey in one hand. His features had a dissolute look. The combination of protuberant eyes and a loose, wet mouth was particularly unattractive. He was dressed in the height of style, rather too high as a matter of fact. The padded shoulders of his coat, added to the fat he carried and height of his neckcloth, made him rather ridiculous. But there was an air of debauchery about him and a hard look in his eyes that was anything but comical. Stephan saw no resemblance to his beautiful cousin upstairs. Still he knew this creature’s kind. They were constantly disappointed that the world didn’t seem to know it owed them whatever they coveted. He’d
wager there was a string of ruined women and broken men who had bought into some one of his schemes behind this one. Stephan didn’t like the look of him at all.

Van Helsing downed the whiskey, and Stephan could see his hands shake. He seemed afraid of something. He started visibly as Polsham knocked and then entered.

“What is it? Dinner?” the cousin snapped, when he realized it was only Polsham.

“Shortly, sir.” Polsham inclined his head to acknowledge the question, but the man’s back was stiff with purpose. “I wanted to speak with you, sir.”

Van Helsing’s eyes narrowed. “About what?”

Polsham hesitated, but he mustered his courage and continued. “We . . . Mrs. Simpson and I . . . we thought someone should sit with Miss Van Helsing in case she wakes.”

“Oh, you did, did you?”

His tone was belittling. Of course one like him had a mean streak.

“And who did you think would sit with her? Me?”

Polsham cleared his throat. “No, sir. That would not be seemly.”

“You, then? I hear the cook’s assistant has been bundled off and the footman gave notice this morning.”

Polsham colored. “We could get a girl from the village—”

“As far as I can see, no one within a hundred miles of this place would come here, regardless of the pay, after what she did down at the tavern yesterday.”

That was a facer for Polsham. He looked around blankly, trying to think of someone.

Van Helsing took a swig of the whiskey. “She’s a loon, or worse. And let’s not forget that she might be a murderer. You’ve already got the only idiot who would come to this house sitting up with your master.” He topped off his glass from the decanter at the sideboard. “Likes her gin, but then, we can’t be choosy.”

“Mrs. Simpson—”

“Is the cook. She’s busy. Especially now that she has no help, thanks to my cousin’s interference.” He took a gulp of whiskey. “Have the Creevy woman look in on Ann during the day. Mrs. Simpson can sit up with her at night. As long as it doesn’t interfere with her duties.”