The Hunger (45 page)

She was so confused. She had always loved Stephan, hated Stephan, loved Stephan. But she didn’t anymore. She had outgrown him. “John isn’t you. He’s just . . .”

“Just the man you made vampire. He is the first, isn’t he?”

She nodded into his shoulder.

“Surely you know why you made him.” Stephan’s voice was gentle.

She glanced up, remembering how she could not imagine a world without John in it. Stephan was staring at the cathedral’s vaulted arches. She couldn’t see his eyes. “Do you believe in love, Stephan? I mean, that it can really last for us?”

“Absolutely, kitten. I believe in love.” She could hear his sincerity. He meant it with all his soul. “Now, go and make yourselves happy. The poor devil is looking quite forlorn.” He let her go and gave her a gentle push.

She turned to him, still uncertain.

“Take the leap of faith, kitten. You’ll see.” There was an expression in his eyes she couldn’t read, and she thought she had seen every expression in the world.

She smiled. “Thank you, Stephan. You are still the wise one.” She reached up and kissed him on the cheek.

And then she turned and walked toward John.

John watched Beatrix come toward him, Sincai trailing behind her. What had he seen? Sharp as his hearing was, he could not make out their words. The immense emptiness seemed to eat them. Beatrix was smiling. She fairly glowed, though she was incredibly pale. She was like a bride who had just taken her vows. His heart clenched.

“I trust you are now ready to shoulder your responsibility,
Sincai, or do you need me to play nursemaid a little longer?” Khalenberg’s voice rasped out behind John.

“I am,” Sincai said. He had the strangest expression on his face. John had never seen another like it. Regret, courage, incredible will, all mingled there in a complex mélange. How different from the emptiness John had first seen in his eyes. Did he regret leaving Beatrix to discharge his duty? Of course. But had they cemented their commitment to return to each other? Beatrix’s expression said she had been fulfilled somehow. She was . . . sure.

“What about your other obligation?” Khalenberg jerked a head in John’s direction.

Sincai turned his old, full eyes on John. “Langley is not my responsibility but Bea’s. She will decide his fate.”

Khalenberg threw up his hands. “Soft! All of you.”

Sincai moved back to Asharti and put his arm around her shoulders like an iron clamp. A blackness began to grow around them. “Eradicate her leavings, Khalenberg.”

Khalenberg’s lips thinned, his disapproval of the fact that Beatrix would obviously not kill John writ large across his face. He nodded curtly to Sincai. “The blood is the life.”

“The blood is the life,” Sincai echoed from the whirling black around him and Asharti.

“Nooooo,” Asharti wailed. “I won’t be exiled.” But the echo back from the stone in the dark immensity of the cathedral was the only thing left of them.

Khalenberg nodded crisply to John. “I will be watching you.” The darkness swirled around him and he was gone.

John stared at Beatrix, standing in her bare feet and a night shift in the cavernous dark of the cathedral. Her pale skin glowed. Her auburn hair reminded him of banked coals. It stood out about her head in soft disarray like the corona in the picture Sincai had kept for all those centuries. She stared at him with big dark eyes, so vulnerable, so uncertain. The shell of the experienced courtesan lay broken around her, and what was left was a woman
who had the courage to free her nemesis and his, who had come within a handbreadth of death when death was something foreign to her, not her destiny, who had seen her first love disappear from her life a second time in a whirl of blackness. She must be devastated at the separation, even if it was temporary. But . . . she looked so sure. She was strong now, with Sincai’s love.

His entrails shrank within him. But he had to say something. He cast about and steeled his features. “I . . . assume congratulations are in order? It must be distressing to be separated from him just when you have been reunited.”

Suddenly all her sureness dissolved. She examined his face like an ancient soothsayer must have examined a sheep’s liver. For a long moment she said nothing. Then she wet her lips and took a breath. “She told me she had you captive, you know,” she whispered. “She told me endless stories of what she had done to you. I thought I would lose my mind.”

John’s heart stuttered. He too licked his lips. He mustered his courage. And then he couldn’t say it. “You . . . you were honorable to let Sincai take her away instead of killing her.”

“She lived through the taking of Jerusalem in the First Crusade. I think . . . she was not the same after that. Atrocities seemed unimportant, even demanded by the world of the strong.”

“It is you who were strong.” His hands clenched at his sides, nails biting into his palms.

Tears welled into her eyes as she stood there, swaying on her feet. She shook her head convulsively, her mouth mobile, whether in smile or sob he not tell. “No. No. I was weak enough to want the blade for a while . . .” She put a hand to her forehead. “Strength,” she muttered. She looked up. “I must know . . . why?” The word seemed torn from her.

“Why?” Panic beat at him. What did she mean?

“Why did you come for me?”

It was all here in one roll of the dice. Let his legendary luck not desert him now. He could not admit what he wanted from her. He could only confess his own naïveté. “Because I love you.” He ground his teeth together against the tears that welled in his own eyes. “I know it’s stupid of me. Crass. I should not speak of it when you have just rediscovered your own love.”

He stopped, not knowing how to go on, the emotional pitch between them so intense it seemed to fill the empty, echoing space of the cathedral.

She reached a hand across the space that separated them. Then to his shock, she wavered and folded in on herself. Her head hit the stone hiding countless crypts in the cathedral floor.

John lunged forward. “Beatrix!” He skidded to his knees beside her and reached for her throat. Her pulse beat back at him. She had fainted. As well she might. She had nearly been decapitated. He had distressed her pointlessly with his confession. He gathered her into his arms and carried her through the stone tracery of the decorated choir. There, under the Gothic arches, were ornately carved wooden benches, set with pillows embroidered, no doubt, by local widows. It felt familiar, somehow, as though he had dreamed it somewhere before. He laid her out and slipped his arm under her head. “Beatrix,” he whispered, willing her to consciousness. “Beatrix.”

She stirred in his arms, gasping for breath, and he held her tenderly. “You are fine. You’re safe now. It’s over.”

“So stupid of me. It’s only that I haven’t fed. And I was weakened . . .” She trailed off.

He knew why she was weak. She had not fed since she had given him blood. Bloody hell! “We can remedy that here and now,” he said, loosening his cravat.

“No,” she protested. “I can’t take from you . . .”

“Who better?” he whispered, kissing her cheek softly.
“Share and share alike. I have Sincai’s blood. It’s very strong. I’m more than able to give a little.” She was so needy, she might well drain him. It didn’t matter. He would be glad to be drained by her.

She moaned a little. He knew she felt the blood throbbing in his arteries and her Companion demanded of her. He tossed his neck cloth to one side, and pulled open his collar. He held her head to his throat, counting on her Companion to make sure she could not resist. He swallowed. She breathed a weak protest as her canines, distinctly sharp, scraped his neck over his carotid. “It’s all right,” he murmured.

“No,” she protested distinctly, then he felt the pain of penetration and she was sucking at him.

“The blood is the life,” he whispered. He cradled her body against his own, feeling her breasts free and pressed against his chest, his palm cupping her buttocks. His loins tightened and his member rose. God in heaven, but he wanted her, even though she loved another! He gritted his teeth, ashamed for his body’s response when she was weak and needed blood.

Beatrix felt his blood revive her. The sweet satisfaction of pulling at his strong throat translated itself into wetness between her legs. Feeding from John felt sexual. She could feed without having sex, unlike Asharti. She knew that now. She had done it for six hundred years. But with John it was different. Everything with John felt sexual, alive, as her Companion demanded life. And that did not seem wrong. Was she lying to herself?

His blood, his selfless offering, the feel of him against her, all settled in her throbbing core. He told her he loved her. He had not abandoned her. Beatrix was acutely aware of the thick flow of life in her throat, John’s hand on her buttocks and cradling her head. Against her thigh a rising hardness said he felt the pull of life as well. Her Companion
surged up, showering vibrant power over her. She pushed her hips against John’s thigh and his erection, all the while sucking rhythmically. This was not like Asharti. She opened her eyes. John’s head was thrown back to bare his throat to her, his own eyes closed in an ecstasy of giving.

She gasped once, twice, as she tried to get control. She must not take so much! He was new, even though he had Stephan’s blood. She pulled her teeth from his flesh with a little cry. Two tracks of red wound down his neck from the wounds she had made. She licked them away and watched the circles close. She glanced up and saw him looking down at her. His eyes were liquid heat. His blood revived her. And with returning strength she felt her other need grow.

“Beatrix,” he breathed, and brushed her forehead with his lips. It sent shivers down her spine and directly into that point of pleasure now infused with the Companion. The Companion ever strove toward life. And what more final proof of life than sexual congress? She had been wrong about what made Asharti who she was, and what made her different.

Swallowing, John pulled himself away and laid her on the cushioned bench. A broken smile touched his lips. “Apologies, Countess. I was carried away.” He turned away in shame.

She reached to touch his face. “I’m not sure you understand. Stephan doesn’t love me anymore. He set me free.” She smiled. “And I haven’t loved him for a long time. I might not have known it, but it was true. Tonight I choose you, John Staunton.” It felt wonderful. It felt naive. She chose to love him. She drew his hand to the place where her arteries throbbed in her neck. Blood. The blood is the life. She could feel his urgency ranged against his reluctance. He was afraid to believe.

But the dam broke. He took her in his arms. The hips that moved so slightly against her thigh, pressing hardness against her, said he wanted this as much as she did.
He was kissing her, and she opened her mouth to his searching tongue. She reached for the buttons over the bulge in his trousers. He kissed her neck and breasts as he lifted her shift above her hips.

She arched into him, signaling her approval of the feel of his lips on her nipples under the gauze. He pulled at her left nipple softly. She pushed his trousers down over his hips and reveled in the silken skin of his cock against her thigh. Yes. That was what she wanted. She ran her palms over both buttocks, feeling the muscles bunch under her hands. The mystery of John Staunton, Earl of Langley, was how she could stand the next few moments until he put that cock inside her. Her Companion demanded it, and so did his. Good. The Companion’s need would wipe out any lingering taint of Asharti for them both. He needed to get back the positive energy that lovemaking was meant to impart. Giving and taking in balance. She slid one hand between them and gently stroked his cock. She felt him shudder. Then she moved down to the root, cupped his balls and rubbed right where the two joined.

“God in heaven, Beatrix,” he gasped.

“We are in the right place for that,” she murmured, glancing at the mingled gargoyles and cherubim carved above them. It struck her that those figures represented the mix of life; good was mixed with . . . not evil, but at least imperfection. She was imperfect. So was he. So would their love be. Could it be any other way?

His chest heaved. “Is this blasphemy?”

Her hands continued their massage. “I think this is the primal urge toward life,” she murmured as he groaned. “God made the world in seven days. He must have felt it.”

He bent to her lips, his tongue probing. She ran her thumb over the tip of his cock and slid the moisture there over it. He pulled himself out of her hands. He must be close to coming. She let him slow the pace, if one could call it slow. He slipped his hand between her
legs and slid his fingers through her wetness over her point of pleasure. She lifted his shirt and pressed herself against his bare chest. He seemed to know the instant when she could stand it no longer. He touched her knees. She opened. He lay between them and slipped inside her.

The rhythm of their movement was like feeding at his throat. It crescendoed into a single ritual that embodied life itself. Beatrix hurtled over the edge into some contraction or expansion of the soul that approached nirvana. Somewhere she felt John pulsing inside her as she contracted around him. The cathedral was filled with small moaning, grunting sounds that existed before the world was born and would exist after it was a burned-out coal.

They lay there on the choir bench, in disarray. Beatrix wasn’t sure how long. The quiet of the church was far from the earlier roaring crowds. The horror of the blade receded.

“Beatrix,” John breathed against her breast. “Thank you.”

“Thank you?” She smiled lazily. “I should thank you.”

He shook his head, ever so slightly, and then, unable to resist, licked her nipple where her shift had torn. “You, who have had a thousand men, must think me poor sport.” He raised his head, struck, and she saw him pull back. He sat up. “I mean, well, I suppose for one who was taught by Stephen Sincai, and who has been famous for . . . for her skills . . . I . . . I am sorry that it did not work out between you. I realize I am your responsibility. However, I hope your duty will not be too onerous. I’ll find a city. And I will never presume upon your . . . kind impulse here tonight. After Sincai has settled Asharti—”