The Burning (44 page)

As she lay there, sated, her thoughts turned to her mother. To touch someone you loved, and who loved you in return, was nothing short of magic. It was a gift from God to know a man physically, spiritually, emotionally. She finally understood why the Bible called the act of lovemaking “knowing a man” or “knowing a woman.”

Yet her mother had allowed the difficulty of the gift to
isolate her from everyone, including the man she married. She must have thought she loved him, to agree to the match. She must have
wanted
closeness. But her fear of knowing everything about her father got the upper hand. And what of her father? He’d known what her mother was before they married. Uncle Thaddeus said so. He must have loved her, to accept that burden. Yet her mother must have held back from giving herself over to the possibilities of love. If her mother could have mustered the courage to abandon her fear, could the tragedy of madness and suicide have been averted? A sadness came and sat in her chest, and then . . . relief. She wasn’t doomed to repeat her mother’s fate. She had the courage to love Stephan, to touch him, to let him love her, to abandon the refuge of isolation. She curled closer into his embrace. Then she let out the breath she realized she’d been holding, as guilt washed over her. How could she feel relieved at her mother’s tragedy?

She bit her lip. Another breath. Not relieved at the tragedy. Relieved that she wasn’t required to repeat it.
Don’t lose your way in guilt,
she admonished herself.
That is the burden Stephan carries
.

She opened her eyes. Stephan was looking tenderly at her. She reached up and kissed his lips. They were slightly swollen. She smiled at him. She had done that. His eyes were serious.

“I know,” she whispered, her voice husky with their lovemaking. “It’s time to go.”

He nodded, and his arms tightened around her in a crushing embrace that she returned. Then he let her go, and held her only by her shoulders as he kissed her forehead lightly.

“Yes,” he breathed and rose.

She got up as well. “I do hope you brought some other clothing, since we seem to have ripped what we were wearing apart,” she said, looking around. “Ahhh, very foresightful.”
She descended upon a pile of clothing hidden in the crevice of a rock. She picked out a green gown, the most attractive of her small selection. She couldn’t feel the person who had made it. She knew it belonged to her but that was all. Strange. On impulse, she touched a shirt in the pile belonging to Stephan. She got a very faint impression of the person who had ironed it. She picked it up and felt it with both hands. Alice. But she had to consciously open herself to know that. Polsham had worn it last. Then faintly, faintly, she felt hands at a loom.

She looked up at Stephan. “I can hardly feel the people who have handled this.” It was hard to even form the words. “I mean I can if I try, but it isn’t . . . overwhelming.”

He examined her face. “Are you losing your gift?”

She turned and leaned down to touch the paper and string of a package he had bundled up to bring food up to the cave. She felt him, and . . . and Mrs. Simpson, and before that . . . maybe the butcher who had wrapped meat in it the first time. “It’s still there,” she said in a small voice that nevertheless echoed in the immensity of the cave. “But I have to listen to hear the others who have touched it. They don’t . . . shout at me anymore.”

“Maybe the Companion singing in your blood drowns them out a little.”

She went still. There it was, a sort of humming she hadn’t noticed since she first woke because it was always there. “It does. It
does
sing,” she marveled.

“That’s what others experience as vibrating energy when we enter a room,” he said seriously. “Are you sorry things have changed?”

She smiled, and the smile grew into a chuckle and ended in a cascade of laughter. “I must have some new gowns made,” she gasped. Indeed, the thought of all the things she might now do flushed over her. “I’ll eat at hotels and turn the pages of borrowed books without using my stick, and sit in
hired carriages. I don’t have to be afraid of touching a new umbrella.”

His eyes crinkled at the corners. “Freedom, indeed.”

“You may well scoff, sir!” she protested, still laughing. “But you’ve no idea how shopkeepers look at one when one refuses to pick up the money, but asks them to select the right coins from one’s reticule and put the others away.”

“I don’t,” he said, smiling. Then he grew serious. “Life will be easier for you. I’m glad.”

She felt the tug of his body, impossible as that was after all they had done today. But the time for lovemaking was over. She handed him the shirt and knelt to select what she needed from the pile of clothing, along with a bar of soap. She knelt at the edge of the narrow channel of the stream and splashed herself. The water was ice cold. Gooseflesh popped out over her body as she soaped. Good. It might focus her thinking for what was to come. She laved water over her face and rinsed the soap away, all without turning to look at him.

“Will you wash? It’s cold but refreshing,” she called over her shoulder as she slid into her shift. She shrugged into her half-corset and pulled the laces into a bow. Finally she pulled up the skirt of the green kerseymere dress, stuck her arms through the sleeves, tied all in place. She only turned when she was buttoning the two large decorative buttons that held the lot together. He stood with his clothes in one hand and his boots in the other. He had been watching her.

His long limbs laden with muscle, the point of his hip, his heavy sex, still full if not erect, struck her senses like a blow. He was . . . beautiful. She stepped aside as he passed her, knowing that touching him, as she longed to do, must be put aside. She had another purpose now.

She busied herself around the little campsite, stealing surreptitious looks to where he washed and dressed. She mustn’t be taken by surprise. She had to stay close to him. He sat and pulled on his boots. The muscles bunched in his
thighs. Ummmm. Stephan had opened a new world to her in more ways than one. In fact, the whole of her life at Maitlands Abbey now seemed like sleepwalking, half-alive. Now she had wakened, and the life and feeling running inside her would not be denied. She would not be denied. She was going with him.

Stephan glanced up at Ann. She was watching him, her eyes glowing. Now was the time. He would tell her only that he was going to the village and Maitlands to gather what they would need for their journey. He wouldn’t tell her he was going to confront the Daughters. His heart clenched with despair and he pushed it down ruthlessly. There was a chance he could prevail, however small. He might be able to separate them. Could he say he needed additional training before going after Kilkenny? Could he lure one into sex? It seemed a sacrilege after the day he had spent with Ann. But it might be his only chance to live and return to her.

He was fooling himself. He was no match for even a single Daughter.

Leaving Ann without a final word to tell her how much she meant to him seemed a betrayal. But it might be even more cruel to confirm his love, then snatch the bliss he knew they were capable of achieving from her. She was betrayed by his past sins whether he told her or not.

Perhaps he was meant to die, without atonement. Perhaps hell yawned under his feet even now. Once, dying would have seemed a blessing not a penance. But now . . . it wasn’t that he feared hell. He glanced again to Ann. Now he had glimpsed redemption. He didn’t need Mirso. Loving Ann, protecting Ann, was all the purpose he needed in life. To have it taken from him was penance, indeed. The only thing worse would be to know he left her facing the
Daughters. That would be a hell worse than Satan’s paltry fires.

He stood and shrugged on his coat. She hurried over.

“I must go now.” He stroked her hair. “I shall be back.”

“I’m going to make sure of it.” Her hand gripped his shoulder. “I’m going with you.”

He shook his head, managing deprecation. “Not needed. But if you wish me to get something special from Maitlands, write me out a list.”

“Don’t try to tip me the double, Stephan Sincai.” Where had she learned that cant? She looked clear through him with those translucent gray eyes. “You’re going to face the Daughters and I am going with you.”

Couldn’t he lie to her? She seemed to know what he was thinking, regardless of the fact that she said she couldn’t read minds. He would have to count on her good sense, instead. “You can’t come, Ann. They’re old and strong. They’ll want to kill you.”

“Well, I don’t think they’ll be very happy with you, either, Stephan. The best thing we can do is work together. You saw what we did at the lodge.”

“That was an accident, Ann. Our emotions were running high. Something . . . something sparked a connection, that was all.”

“Well, let’s do it again.” She had set her mouth.

“I can’t endanger you, Ann.” For so many reasons. He called to his Companion. The darkness whirled up from the floor. He’d make a quick escape. He thought about the woods behind the tavern. The cave was bathed in a red film which turned slowly black.

At the last minute he felt something intrude upon his maelstrom of darkness, grab his arm and slide in next to him. Another Companion vibrated against his. Then the field collapsed in a shriek of pain and he popped into space directly behind the Hammer and Anvil.

Ann stood next to him, shaking the blackness from her vision. What? “You must go back immediately, Ann,” he said, making his voice as stern as possible.

“No, Stephan,” she gasped. “I’m coming with you. You
need
me against the Daughters. Maybe I’m a conduit that amplifies your power. I don’t know. I just know the only chance you have against vampires so old and powerful is to open yourself and embrace the power we share.”

“Ann, you helped me,” he said in his most rational voice. “But now I can do it myself.”

She looked up, all five feet of her, and shook his shoulders, though he did not move. “This is my fight, too, Stephan. I won’t sit in that cave and wait for what happens. You can’t expect that of me. I have too much to lose.”

“
I
have too much to lose if you’re harmed,” he said through gritted teeth. “Even if I lived, do you think I could bear it if you did not?” He wanted to growl at her like the leader of a wolf pack. He wanted to shout, if that would make her obey. She crossed her arms. God, if the Daughters were in that tavern, they would feel his vibrations even now, and hers!

“I expect you to live with the possibility that you might have to, Stephan,” she practically hissed at him. “Don’t think you can shut me out. I’m part of this.”

She was right about that. She had crept into his life until she was the most important thing, the best thing about it. He glanced to the tavern down the hill. Light spilled out into the darkness. He could hear the rowdy taproom, the ecstatic whimpers of the chambermaid as the boots slammed his seed into her in a closet upstairs, the baying of a hound at the approach of new patrons. But no vibrations.

“They aren’t there, anyway, Stephan,” Ann whispered.

She felt it, too. “Where could they be?” he murmured, distracted.

“Maitlands,” Ann said after a moment. “Looking for you.”

“Why not the lodge?”

“They’ll have already been there,” Ann said calmly. “That was undoubtedly their first stop. So they would cast around for another place for you to go to ground. They will have heard tales of me letting you out of the cell, that we’re suspected together of the murders . . . They’ll be at Maitlands, all right.”

She was right. He stared at her hand where she clutched his biceps. He could tear himself away, take several steps—he was faster than she was—then draw the darkness. And find her at Maitlands directly after him if she could figure out how to draw her power. Hell, even if she didn’t translocate, she could be there in thirty minutes if she stole a horse. It might be over by then. In which case she might run smack into the victorious Daughters.

“Damn it, woman! Can’t you stay out of this?” he barked.

She shook her head, smiling ruefully. “No. Not anymore.”

He stood there, clenching his fists. He was a vampire two thousand years old, with experience of women and humanity down the centuries, and he was powerless against this girl.

She smiled again, her victory twinkling in her eyes, and raised her brows in inquiry. “Shall we go, then?”

He hesitated. She set her lips and frowned in concentration. Then a wash of blackness swirled tentatively up around her knees. She was trying to translocate. He sighed. “Let me.”

He called to his Companion and the darkness whirled around them both. He was going to take her into almost certain death. How could he protect her now? Damnation! But then, he was already damned. Now she was going to be damned with him.

“I knew you’d see the light,” she whispered, gripping his arms now with both hands.

And the darkness overcame them.

Twenty-Three