The Hunger (22 page)

Not what he had imagined when he thought to serve his country and make something of his life. But assassination was required. He always did what was required. He should concentrate on coming back alive. The damned French seemed to know everything.

His mind returned without his permission to Beatrix Lisse. He still felt stripped by their lovemaking, both physically and emotionally. He could almost feel her lissome body writhing over him, under him. He turned restlessly from the rail just as the cutter came up on the wind, and was thrown against the rigging. He clung with one hand to the ratlines and regained his feet.

It was best to end with her this way. His attachment was to Barlow and Whitehall. His passion must be saved for hating Bonaparte, his attention focused on accomplishing his mission. It might well be his last. He had no time for mooning over some woman he thought was mysterious. Mysterious? Her soul was an open book. She was like every other woman of easy virtue. It had only been his naive longing for her to be someone special that created the mystery.

Well, he would drown that disappointment in work.
It was only a few hours to Le Havre.

Beatrix popped out into the night from her whirling darkness near the main road through Hounslow Heath. Coaches stopped for a lone woman. Or there might be a single horseman on his way back to London. She was hungry and in no mood to deny herself but she couldn’t bear another night of adulation in order to fill her need. The moon was a lopsided sliver, grinning rakishly down at the world. The trees overhanging the graveled road gave her good shadow. She would feed tonight because if she didn’t Symington would bring her another young applicant for the position of a footman she didn’t need, and because if she mooned over Langley, the bastard would have won. At least here she could be alone. She felt as though she was clinging to some shred of herself, using anger at him to stave off something worse.

She became aware of someone else in the shadows some way down the road. A horse’s feet shuffled in the long grass of the verge. There he was; a mounted figure. Ah, a rarity. The patrols had almost banished highwaymen. Almost.

She moved through the night, silently. With a thought, she quieted his horse. By the time he turned, her blood was up, her Companion surging through her veins, her eyes already red. His hand moved to his pistol, but it was too late. His will was hers. She made him dismount without a word and come to her. Then she took him at the neck. She did not allow it to be a sexual experience. God, no! Not after Langley. She was feeding, nothing more. She tried to tell herself that sex and feeding did not intermingle for her anymore.
Then why do you never take females or old men unless you are desperate?
But this highwayman did not seem sexual. No, it was Langley who had lured her to drink from him as they made love. It
had taken all she had to resist. Sex and feeding together made her like Asharti . . . and she was
not
like Asharti. Not anymore . . .

NICULA, NORTHERN TRANSYLVANIA
, 1112

“Of course we can handle him,” Asharti admonished, passing Beatrix the tankard of rough peasant’s brew. “The trick is to cut him out from his fellows. But he will do that himself. Do you want one of your own, or will you share?”

Beatrix looked at the half-dozen men around the fire of the tiny inn doubtfully. They were far into their cups and the carousing had ramped up to rowdy laughter. Beatrix and Asharti couldn’t handle all of them. They had to be careful, even though they were vampires. They traveled with two grooms, paid well for their silence, and had an older woman as a chaperone. But those sops to propriety and safety were left behind. Tonight they were on the hunt. “I’ll share.”

Asharti rose and swayed her hips as she strolled to the circle. A roar of interest went up from the men. She put her hand on the shoulder of the big blond they had picked out. He wore the mark of the cross, sketched roughly on his jerkin. He had been to the Crusades. Asharti always picked Crusaders. “And what is your name, my fine buck?” she asked, her voice throaty
.

“Rolf, you have a live one!”

“Share, you devil. We’ll all take a turn . . .”

“Ah, no, gentlemen. Rolf here looks like the jealous type. Aren’t you, Rolf?”

Beatrix could hear Asharti’s hum ramp up, just enough to put compulsion in her voice
.

“To hell with you all,” Rolf said, standing. He knocked over the bench he had been sitting on. “Now, darling, what were you saying?”

“
I was inviting you to my room for a drink
. . .”
Asharti said, looking him full in the face
.

“Then let us go, before these louts get greedy.”

A jealous roar frosted with laughter raced around the circle. Beatrix faded into the shadows and ran lightly up the stairs to their shared bedroom. Hunger rasped along her veins
.

Asharti drew Rolf through the door. “This is Bea,” she murmured
.

Rolf took on an avaricious look. “Ho, ho, Bea, is it? Always room for one more.”

Asharti pressed her body along his. He held out his arm for Beatrix. She sidled into him. He leaned from one to another, planting beery kisses. He smelled of sweat and horse and mead
.

“How long since you had a bath, Rolf?” Asharti whispered
.

“Eh, what’s that?”

“How long since you bathed?” Beatrix insisted
.

Rolf looked startled. “I . . . I don’t know.”

“Just so,” Asharti said. “Why don’t you strip off your clothes? We’ve had a bath brought up.” She gestured to the halfbarrel on the far side of the bed. Rolf got a mulish expression. Asharti’s vibrations ramped up. “It’s not a request, Rolf. Strip.”

Beatrix watched his expression melt. This one would be no trouble. Her help was not even needed. He pulled his shirt over his head. Beatrix worked at his breeches. Asharti unlaced his rough boots. They had him naked in no time. He was well enough. Asharti liked them smooth and lean, though Beatrix did not. But he was tractable, if not exciting. While he bathed they changed into the loose robes they favored for nights of play and feeding
.

“He’s strong as an ox,” Asharti whispered. “He’ll have lots of stamina.” Asharti fed almost every night. For her, feeding was always entwined with sex, and she had an
insatiable appetite for sex. Beatrix had noticed that the guide they employed had marks on him, though Asharti had promised not to feed on their attendants. Of course she had sex with them. Asharti swived almost everything in sight. But she was not supposed to feed
.

Beatrix got a towel and handed it to Rolf as he stood. He dried himself then moved to wrap the cloth about his waist
.

“No, no, my pretty one,” Asharti said. “Not allowed.” She motioned to the bed
.

The cloth dropped. He climbed into the bed. His blue eyes glowed and his genitals tightened into an erection. This first one was natural
.

“Excellent,” Asharti murmured. She crawled up onto the bed next to him, even as Beatrix tucked herself against his other side
.

“I am a lucky man,” he growled, “to have two such beautiful wenches to pleasure me.” He reached to pull Beatrix’s head down to his lips
.

Beatrix felt her Companion cry for sustenance. She let her eyes go red. Her Companion washed compulsion over him. This was their game, not his. He would be quiet now. He bared his neck to her. The Companion ran out her fangs. Hers would be the first feeding of the night. She pierced his carotid where it pulsed against her lips. The sweet copper tang of blood excited her. She pulled at the twin wounds, even as she ran her hands over his chest. The place between her thighs throbbed. He groaned under her lips. She broke away. She must make him last for Asharti
.

But Asharti was already at the great artery in his groin. She stroked his erection even as she sucked. It was this which had no doubt extracted the groan. Asharti raised her head. Blood stained her lips. “The first sip is always the sweetest, yes?”

Beatrix nodded, smiling lazily. She felt almost drunk on the sensation
.

“Mouth or cock?” Asharti asked
.

“Mouth.” Beatrix hiked herself up and straddled Rolf’s neck. Asharti sat astride his loins behind her. Rolf did his job. He had no choice, in fact. Asharti had him well under her compulsion and soon both women were panting and racing toward their climaxes
.

When both had finished shuddering, they climbed off the dazed man and nestled against him, letting the gleam of sweat on their three bodies evaporate in the cool night air. Asharti had not allowed him to release his seed. She would want the use of him several times yet. For Beatrix, it was her Companion who was not sated. She had not fed in more than a week. It was she who first called her canines again and began sucking at the vein inside his elbow. Asharti was not loath to follow her lead. Asharti drew a furrow in his shoulder and licked at the cut. That always excited her. She made Rolf harden and offered his cock to Beatrix, who declined
.

But Beatrix watched as Asharti took him, and she could not help but be excited by it. As she watched, Beatrix allowed her Companion freedom. She answered its demands and rolled Rolf’s head to the other side. She pierced his other artery and sucked at his neck as Asharti made small, frantic sounds, impaling herself again and again on Rolf’s erect member. The blood, thick and luxurious, coursed down Beatrix’s throat. Her Companion thrilled along her veins. She had never felt alive as she did in these moments of blood and sex, she and Asharti and the men who served them. Life sang so in her veins she could hear nothing else, feel nothing else, just the rhythm of Asharti’s cries and the joy of sucking the warm copper life
.

Asharti climaxed in a shriek of ecstasy and Rolf began to shudder. Beatrix never wanted the sensation to end. She pulled harder at his throat. And a sweet, poignant sensation overcame her as he trembled under them. Beatrix had
never felt anything like it. It was if something whispered to her along with the blood, so faint she must strain to hear. She couldn’t hear. And then it was gone. She sucked at his throat harder, but nothing came
.

She pulled away, disoriented, disappointed
.

Asharti stared at her from those kohl-lined, black eyes
.

Beatrix felt the rush of the Companion cycle down. The room looked dirty gray, all color leached away. Her gaze came back to Asharti’s startled face then fell to Rolf. He lay, eyes wide and staring at the ceiling, incredibly pale except for the trickle of blood from his wounds. His flesh seemed shrunken
.

Beatrix felt distant from herself, and stupid. “What happened?” she asked slowly
.

“You . . . you drained him,” Asharti whispered. Then, when Beatrix did not seem to understand, “He’s dead.”

Beatrix jerked back to Rolf. Dead? He was dead? She had
killed
him?

Asharti crawled up to her on hands and knees until she was looking directly into Beatrix’s eyes, Rolf’s body under her. “It felt good, didn’t it?”

She couldn’t answer. The world was coming back and with it the horrible realization of what that whisper she couldn’t quite hear might have been. “Asharti, what have I done?”

“What you have done a hundred times. Don’t make such a fuss.”

“But that was before I
knew.
I never drained one, they just bled to death. That’s different. And I haven’t killed
—
not since Stephan said
—”

“Stephan!” Asharti snorted. “Stephan wanted us half-alive.” Beatrix began to tremble as Asharti took her by the shoulders. “We were born to feed upon them. Does the lion spare his prey? We were
made
to kill them by whatever made them, and us.”

Beatrix touched her lips with her fingertips
.

“You felt his soul, didn’t you?” Asharti’s eyes glowed, not with the red of the Companion, but with excitement. “Let’s go downstairs. I want to feel a soul tonight, too.”

Beatrix jerked away from her highwayman. “You will remember nothing,” she muttered as her Companion subsided. She passed a hand over her eyes.

This one didn’t die
, she told herself.
I haven’t killed for more than six hundred years
. But her breath was short. The highwayman slumped against a tree. He would wake, a little weak but nothing a good meal wouldn’t fix. Beatrix stumbled into the dark.

She had been appalled she killed Rolf that night, and ashamed. She still remembered the Crusader’s name after nearly seven hundred years; a man she had known for an hour or two. But he was not the last. Asharti made game of Beatrix for her squeamishness, prodded her into watching as she experimented with taking the last drop. Nothing came to strike Asharti dead. It seemed she paid no price at all for her blasphemy against Stephen’s teachings. Soon, Beatrix would start the feeding, and though she let Asharti end it, still she was a willing accomplice to the act. She watched as Asharti learned to magnify the feeling of that last gasp of life over her lips by pairing it with orgasm. Beatrix watched Asharti flutter in breathless ecstasy and then grow even more alive. Though the flying feeling was always followed by irritability and depression, Asharti said the ecstasy was worth it.

One night, something broke inside Beatrix. Why should she deny herself ecstasy when there were no consequences? Asharti sounded so reasonable when she said that sucking the last drop was a symbol of their freedom from Stephan. That night Beatrix sucked a strong young peasant dry in a fresh-mowed field under a harvest moon. It made her shudder even now, with shame, not ecstasy. Beatrix and Asharti took the last drop again and again,
looking for the taste of a man’s soul as well as his blood. Luscious sex was paired with blood and death. They raged over Europe for almost a hundred years, all boundaries gone, addicted to the rush of a fulfillment to which nothing else would ever compare.