The Burning (41 page)

He started at the soft touch at his elbow and turned to find Ann standing so near he could see the blood throbbing in the hollow in her throat. “Let me have Polsham bring up hot water. A bath would soothe you,” she said.

He shook his head, a little too emphatically. “No one must know I’m here.”

She held out her hand for the towel, smiling. “Then let me.”

He felt his heart beating in his throat. She took his towel and motioned him to sit on the small stool. Then she dipped the cloth and wrung it out. She started with his back. She touched one shoulder with her bare hand while she moved the damp cloth over his flesh. Her fever had abated for the nonce, yet her touch burned him still. She said nothing. He sat ramrod straight, his muscles bunched as though that could deflect the softness in her touch. Inside, too, he clenched himself. She was ill, damn it! He would not let her touch lure him into a sexual response. Where was the training of the Daughters when he needed it?

The Daughters!

They would come after him, if not immediately, then after they had hunted down Kilkenny. Ann came around and knelt in front of him. She daubed at the blood from a scalp wound now healed that matted his hair. After they had killed
him, they would kill Ann as well. She would have no protection against them. He was making her only to leave her to the tender mercies of Deidre and Freya.

Ann dipped the rag and washed his chest and belly. Stephan distracted himself from a desire to turn and take her in his arms with plans to protect her. They must go to the cave. The Daughters would surely look for him here. He must have time enough to give Ann full immunity.

And then he had to meet the Daughters. Better he sacrifice himself than have them find him with Ann. He hated to leave her alone in her new condition, but he could give her information, send her to Beatrix for help. Better that than that she face the Daughters. They must never know about Ann.

Twenty-One

Ann ran her hands over Stephan’s body, marveling that the horrible wounds he had suffered little more than an hour ago were now no more than pink new skin. Some had already disappeared altogether. The feel of silken skin over muscle under her hands as she cleaned him inflamed her more than the fever had a moment ago.

She knew what was ahead of her; the sickness, the need for blood, the drag of eternity. She had experienced it herself, through Stephan. And yet, did one ever
know
? Would she succumb to the madness of the newly made when they realized that their state was irrevocable?

Perhaps. But strangely, that was not what preoccupied her. What she wanted to know was how she had found the courage to infect herself. In the heat of the moment, she had let her anger carry her to this most extreme of decisions without even considering the consequences. The anger had felt good. When had she ever been angry at her uncle, the servants? Even for Van Helsing she had only felt fear. The anger shooting out of her at the moment she pressed her
hand against Stephan’s bloodied shoulder was . . . freeing. In some ways, hadn’t she always seen herself as a victim of her gift, confined and limited, unable to affect her own destiny? Victims didn’t rail against their fate. They believed their submission was natural or inevitable.

But she didn’t, at least not tonight. It was like passing through a gate. She felt it slap shut behind her, leaving her in unfamiliar territory on the other side.

The anger was not the cause of what she did tonight. It only freed her to do what she wanted to do. She wanted a chance to be with Stephan. She
knew
he loved her, had loved her for some time. But that didn’t mean he would have chosen a life with her. They were too different.

Not anymore. Now they were alike. She had been willing to do the impossible to remove the barriers. Like the barrier of her humanity. Now she took his blood and felt its soothing call to her, however faintly yet. She took pride in the fact that he wanted her and his body could not hide it. She wanted him in return. He still might not choose a life with her. But she had done what she could to improve the odds.

She daubed at the blood in his hair. His eyes were closed as though he was afraid to look at her. That would never do. “What next, Stephan?” she whispered softly.

He was spared answering by a shriek of nails being wrenched out of new wood. It came from behind her secret door next to the fireplace.

Stephan set his mouth and stood. “I should have heard him,” he muttered. Ann liked to think she knew what had preoccupied him.

The tiny door in the woodwork opened. Erich wriggled through it and stormed into the room. He had a stout stick in one hand. “Where are you, lightskirt?” He stopped dead when he saw Stephan. Shaking, he pulled out a cross. It gleamed in the candlelight. “You!” he breathed. “I thought you were dead.”

“I’m not.” Stephan rose. “What are you doing in a lady’s bedchamber?” He loomed large in the darkness. His voice was a soft rumble, but one could not mistake the menace in it.

Erich held his cross out at arm’s length. “Back, Undead! By all that is holy I adjure you.” He raised his stout staff and began to retreat.

“Were you here to bludgeon her to death?” Stephan’s voice was a growl now. “Do you inherit if she dies?”

“It goes to the Crown, Stephan,” she said to distract him from the rage she could feel churning inside him. “He knows that.”

“Then he came to force himself on you, hoping you could not refuse to marry him if you were mad. Either way, he deserves what he gets.”

Erich was shaking. He held up the cross. “By all that’s holy—”

Stephan lunged forward and snatched the cross from Erich’s hand. “Fool! I have been a Jesuit priest in my time. And I was there with the Original of your paltry symbol nearly eighteen hundred years ago on Golgotha when the soldiers took Him down. You defile His name.” Stephan raised a hand as though to strike Erich with the cross. Erich cowered and raised his club in defense. “You’ll not threaten her further.”

Ann stepped between them. “Of course he won’t. He’s going away.” She turned to Erich. “Aren’t you, Erich?”

“Yes, yes!” Her cousin nodded, trembling. “Away.”

Stephan glanced at Ann, who hoped the pleading in her eyes could make him stop and think. “There has been too much blood tonight, Stephan.”

Ever so slowly, Stephan let the tension flow out of his shoulders. They sagged. He turned away, his disgust with his acquiescence writ clear upon his features.

“Do you know what I suggest, Erich?” Ann continued, pressing on before Stephan could change his mind. “I suggest
you help humans and vampires understand each other, wherever there is strife between them. You can become the expert on vampires, called in to explain one race to the other, when they rub against one another.” Here she glanced to Stephan. “It can be a kind of atonement for the evil you have propagated hereabouts.” She drew her brows together. “Why did you serve them, Erich? Was it money? Did they threaten you? Why?”

Erich straightened. “You have his blood, don’t you? Your smell has changed.” He drew himself up. “That’s what I wanted. I wanted to be one of them—or rather, one of you. I want the power you have, the immortality. But Kilkenny would never countenance it. Said I wasn’t of pure intent.” Here he sneered. “As though they were worthy! They needed a slave who could do their business in daylight, that was all. They were never going to give me their blood. My consolation prize was your fortune. At least I would have lived my single lifetime in wealth and comfort.”

“You have the property in Derbyshire, and a tidy income that can keep you in comfort,” Ann consoled. “Retire there and contemplate for a while. Perhaps you’ll think yourself well rid of your masters and their blood.”

“To be faced with the thing you want most every day and be denied it! You have no idea how I’ve suffered,” he hissed. “And how will I get the blood now?”

“Get a vampire to love you,” Stephan said, his voice cold. “But you’ll have to look elsewhere. We are unlikely candidates.” His knuckles were white where he clutched the cross.

“I would go now, Erich,” Ann said hastily. “My solicitors will be in touch.”

“Thank her, Van Helsing,” Stephan growled through clenched teeth. “She is the only reason you leave here alive.”

Erich paled and backed toward the door. “I . . . I have friends.”

Stephan took a single step toward the door. Erich turned
tail and ran, pulling it shut behind him. Ann had to laugh. “He will make a poor advisor on vampire lore,” she said, sighing.

“He makes a poor human being in general.”

Ann came to Stephan’s side. She was feeling feverish again. She couldn’t let him know that. After all he had suffered tonight he could not be constantly giving her his blood. “Where were we? Oh, yes. I asked you what was next.”

“You will sleep until morning, and get what rest you can. Then I am afraid we must to the cave. Only there can I remain by your side and give you my blood as you need it.”

That wasn’t what she meant, but she couldn’t press him now. She could see the distress in his eyes. He hadn’t fully accepted yet what had happened, what she had done, what her action meant. She had to allow him time.

She smiled and nodded. “Lie with me and keep me warm? I feel a chill in the room.”

She saw in his eyes he knew the fever was returning. They both knew he had to conserve his strength to make his blood last for the days it would take her to come to grips with the symbiotic partner who now shared her blood.

Stephan put his arm around her and led her to her bed. He turned her gently on her side, pulled off his boots but not his breeches and lay behind her, cradling her in his arms, his body curled around her. As he slipped the coverlet up around them, she began to shiver.

They’d need candles—lots of them, blankets. Stephan made mental lists to distract himself from the feel of Ann’s body curled into his. Food? He’d steal from Mrs. Simpson’s kitchen. He’d take her clothes and he’d borrow a shirt or two from Polsham. One trip to carry supplies, and one to carry Ann.

There would be a hue and cry when she was missing.
They’d find the pony and cart. They’d find the lodge and its horror. Would they think she’d died at the lodge? God willing, she’d be recovered and could return before they thought her a ghost or some other superstitious phenomenon. She’d be more alive than she had ever been, but these louts wouldn’t notice.

How long until she had passed the worst of the sickness? Days perhaps. Then he would leave her to take care of the Daughters somehow. They were too old and powerful for him to kill. He would lead them away from here, away from Ann, before he challenged them. It would mean his death. When he did not return, she would be alone. But at least she would be safe.

Her rounded bottom curled into his loins and stirred them. He put down the erection ruthlessly.
God, man, the girl is sick with your blood, and you can’t suppress your lust?
He chanted for control and got it. In the morning, just before dawn, she must have his blood again. He hoped they could both get a few hours’ sleep before then.

Ann lay on the bed Stephan had made with a cushion of leaves over the cave floor and several blankets. She was shivering already, barely conscious, though he had given her his blood only an hour ago. The sickness was taking a fierce and furious course. He had never made a vampire, but he knew the process was usually much more gradual. Fear cycled in his belly.

He looked around. She should not have to suffer in such a damp, unfeeling place. Water glistened as it dripped from the stalactites and ran in rivulets to the central, gurgling channel that rushed through the center of the lofty room. Candles flickered on every rocky surface. Their warm and wavering light kept back the darkness in the echoing chamber, but they could not give warmth. He must build a fire.
He hoped the cave was big enough so that the smoke would not suffocate Ann. There was a draft from somewhere. That boded well.

It was his fault that she was in this horrible predicament. He knelt beside the stack of wood he had gathered from the forest outside. But his thoughts would not be distracted from the central question that drove his fear. Why was Ann’s sickness so virulent? Stephan was only two millennia old. Not old enough for his blood to cause this kind of sickness.