The Vampire Queen's Servant (36 page)

"So he went to Madrid. With
the third mark, a vampire can't shield her mind from her servant when she's
under great duress," his lady explained. "It's a protection for the
vampire, to ensure if she is exposed to sunlight or threatened in a way that
makes her insensible, the servant can feel it and come to her aid. But when not
under duress, a vampire can sever the link and then, even under duress, until
she reactivates it, it cannot be felt."

She met his gaze, reminding him
of his unguarded thoughts earlier. "It's a loss beyond measure," she
confirmed softly. "To both of us, but at the time I thought it was the
best thing. So many things went wrong after that point, I no longer know which
one thing or group of things I could have changed to make it turn out
differently." She looked down at her hands, an unusually self-conscious
gesture for her. "I'm old enough to know wishful thinking is simply
pointless."

"No one knows everything,
my lady. Thomas never doubted your love for him. Never. You can look into my
mind and see the truth of it."

Though she kept her head bowed,
he felt her reach out, confirming it. She lifted a shoulder. "That is
meager comfort considering everything, but thank you, Jacob."

"He wasn't sick at that
point. Neither of you were."

"No."

He didn't want her to stop, but
he knew some stories couldn't be told all at once. He had to be appreciative of
how much she'd been willing to give him. When he looked at her drawn face, the
shuttered eyes, he knew her head could easily begin throbbing again. Reaching
out, he ran his knuckles alongside her face. "I want to know, my lady, but
not at the cost of draining you. It's been a long night. Perhaps you could tell
me later."

She nodded. "But I do need
you to understand this, Jacob. Never underestimate Carnal. I did, to my eternal
regret. Carnal exploited Rex's struggle with Ennui and poisoned his mind,
convincing him the other high-ranking vampires viewed him as little more than a
sycophant, living off my riches and the power earned through my title and
command of politics."

Shifting to prop her head on the
opposite side of the chair, she turned her attention back to the fire.
"One of the unfortunate things you learn when you live a long time, Sir
Vagabond, is that love can erode. Once it begins to do that, it can be sculpted
by the right forces into any manner of vile and evil thing. Carnal was a master
sculptor.

"You're right," she
said abruptly. "I'm too tired to tell you more. Leave me."

Cursing himself, for he could
see the pain back to simmering behind her eyes, he ignored her command.
Instead, he left her to fix another compress and came back to her side,
kneeling by the chair. Laying his hand over the cloth he placed upon her brow,
he wished he could will the pain into himself, lessen the throbbing.

"I thought I told you to
leave me."

"Aye, you did. I disobeyed,
as you tell me I tend to do."

She had her eyes closed and said
no more. Since she didn't order him to go again, he kept vigil quietly at her
side, his hand over the compress, his thumb moving slowly over her temple.

As the fire crackled and
stillness settled over the room, shadows began to collect in the corners of his
mind. Shifting, moving. Becoming figures, voices. Offering him images and
thoughts not his own. After a while, they drew his attention so he moved toward
them cautiously, a man in the dark learning his way. A startled moment later he
realized somehow he was following a misty path from his mind into hers.
Suddenly, there was a lurch, and he stepped hip deep into the quicksand of her
memories, so squarely he almost jumped at the sensation, for he'd expected more
resistance.

Outside of his mind, his lady's
lips were tight as she swallowed like a person fighting nausea, her color even
paler than usual. Stroking her temples, he hummed the soft Gaelic lullaby. Her
brow eased, her fingers reaching for his other hand, drawing it onto his lap to
curl her fingers loosely around his. She didn't lift her head or open her eyes.
It was a moment of simple pleasures, a stark contrast to the vision straight
from Hell into which he'd stumbled.

Rex had taken her down into some
part of the mansion Jacob was thankful he hadn't yet seen and hoped had been
destroyed. There'd been a rough wooden stock there, something directly out of a
medieval village, but the cuffs were lined with some type of substance that
burned the skin and made it difficult for a vampire to use her strength to free
herself. He'd put her in that stock, gagged her with the bloodstained whip,
fastening the two ends to the wood so it stretched her mouth like a horse's bit
and kept her head up, her neck at a painful arch where he could see every
nuance of her face. Because her beautiful hair was matted on her face, down her
back, he gathered it up, twisted it into a knot and then nailed that knot to
the wood, wrenching her head to the right. He'd then readjusted the hold of the
whip so he could see her windpipe struggling to process air she didn't need but
still rasped alarmingly in her throat.

Bloody fucking Christ
. With the hair out of the way, Jacob could see Rex had flogged her
until her skin hung off her back in strips, the welts so numerous and blood so
thick her upper body was a mangled mass, as well as her buttocks. Since he was
in her mind, surrounded by the hazy drift of her thoughts, he knew she'd
managed to keep from screaming until the very end. She hoped until Thomas had
left, despite the fact Jacob thought Rex might have eased off if she'd given in
to the urge sooner.

Her teeth bit into the thick
blood-soaked braiding while Rex fucked her from behind, digging his hands into
the destruction of her back.

Jacob learned then that vampires
could not pass out from too much pain. Her muffled cries made an eerie backdrop
to the howling of Bran and his siblings. Rex had locked them out, and they were
circling the foundation of the house, baying, Bran going mad at being unable to
come to her aid.

But even as Jacob watched,
horrified and loathing Rex, he was forced to see Rex through her eyes, because
these were her memories. He saw in him what she saw. A man with a desperate
emptiness taking him over, fixated on the subjugation of his wife as the answer
to his need to feel, his ultimate victory that would make everything all right.

One dinner guest had apparently
not been dissuaded from coming. Jacob felt his hot rage become ice-cold as
Carnal entered the dungeon room, removing the tie of his elegant suit. His eyes
greedily drank in the sight of Lyssa's naked and tortured body. He spoke,
egging on his sire, telling him he was right to do what he was doing, that she
had to understand Rex was the true Master of this Region and of her, now and
forever. She was his property… his slave to share as he chose.

Jacob saw Rex's hesitation at
that. Lyssa did not react to it at first. Apparently, the fact that Carnal had
made such a suggestion did not shock her. However, when Rex's face reflected
his decision on the matter, her reaction changed.

She'd not been able to hold back
her screams, but she hadn't shed any tears. Only when Rex stepped aside and let
Carnal take hold of her hips, driving his cock into her rectum with savage
ferocity, did she cry. Rex knelt, kissing every tear off her face as if they
were jewels he'd won, instead of the rain Jacob knew was washing away all
vestiges of the bond they'd shared as husband and wife.

It wasn't the pain, though that
was enough that even the residual experience of it made Jacob want to vomit and
never eat again. It was the realization Rex was truly lost to her.

Jacob was so deep in her mind
now he felt the impact of that in her soul, the searing pain as her heart
shattered. But he also witnessed the birth of the ominous realization of what
she had to do. She would have to be the catalyst to bring this tragedy to its
inevitable conclusion. Only in its infancy then, the idea was a small enough
voice to be denied that night. But if she had heeded it then, Thomas would have
lived.

And his lady would not be
dying.

White-hot pain shot through his
mind, shoving him brutally out of her thoughts. Jacob only had a moment to
reorient himself to the present before her hand clamped down onto his forearm.
His lady twisted ruthlessly, coming out of the chair, slamming him onto his
back on the carpet, one leg bent at a painful angle beneath him because of his
kneeling position.

Another rough twist, and his
forearm snapped under her grip. Agony took the form of fire burning up through
his arm to his shoulder, wrenching a hoarse cry from his throat, particularly
as she didn't let go, pressing forward, planting her foot on his chest.

"You've no right. No
permission." It was a hiss, her eyes glowing red with a menace he'd never
seen from her before. "You forget your place, servant. You don't know the
meaning of what you just saw. It's something you can't understand so you won't
judge it, you hear me? You won't judge me or my husband. I'm done with you
tonight. Take your simple cures and be gone."

She caught his other arm and
hurled him—there was no other word for the explosion of strength that sent him
hurtling toward the incorporeal entrance to this chamber. He closed his eyes,
expecting to hit a door. A grunt left him instead as he hit the bedroom floor.
The floor of her bedroom on the plane of reality he knew.

When he rolled, trying to regain
his feet, he found he was alone with no access to her lower chamber.

"Son of a bitch…" He
managed it through clenched teeth, cradling his arm. He didn't know whether to
curse her or himself and he did both liberally, hoping she was hearing every
word he had to say. There was too much pain roiling through him to sense
whether she was there or not.

"Ah, Jesus." He
pressed his forehead to the carpet.

When she allows it…

She hadn't allowed it. Somehow,
perhaps because of her illness, she'd been completely unaware he'd been able to
walk into her mind, and he'd been unable to resist. Wanting to know, to
understand answers she hadn't been ready to offer him. That he'd just told her
he wouldn't push her to get. Rationalizing it, he'd figured it would be easier
to get them this way, where she wouldn't need to talk about them. But that was
hindsight. He hadn't thought at all, just walked through that portal between
their minds, fascinated by the ability to use it, feeling that his feelings
toward her gave him permission.

Earlier tonight, she'd opened to
him, held him close as he made love to her. Touched his face. Everything they'd
shared, her smiles at him, the touch of her lips, her body, the pensive look as
she remembered things no one should have to remember. Playing in the fountain,
letting him put his arm around her as he would a lover… It meant something to
him. He'd assigned a significance to it that didn't figure on the vampire meter
of trust at all.

You forget your place,
Jacob.

I thought it was at your
side. Your back. Wherever you need me, even if it's hip deep in the quagmire of
your fucking psychotic mind.

But it wasn't her voice he
heard, only the recollection of her statement and his current response to it.
There were no shadows now. He felt her nowhere within him, though the link
between them ached like a wound needing the pressure of a bandage.

There was a trembling low in his
gut, an element of shock he recognized, and not just from the pain in his arm.
He'd never been deliberately hurt by someone he cared about, not physically in
the way a mortal enemy would have tried to hurt him. It wasn't just a moment of
passion. She'd waited a key moment before she did it, made sure she had his
attention so he'd know she'd fully intended to do what she did.

He'd never been treated as a
slave. Hadn't that been his thought earlier? She was introducing him to a lot
of firsts tonight. So where did that leave him? He couldn't think about it now.
He'd do something wrong, something he'd regret later.

She wanted distance. Away from
her was the last place he'd wanted to be only minutes before. Now if he didn't
get some air he thought he'd try to stake her himself.

Fucking bitch. Broke my
fucking arm.

Struggling to one knee, he
wondered if he could hitch a ride to the emergency room.

"You know, for somebody who
isn't in Mrs. Wentworth's employ, I seem to be ferrying you around a lot,"
Mr. Ingram observed, looking down at the Danish Jacob had bought him from the
emergency room vending machines. Feeling a moment of wistfulness, he bit into
it.

"Does eating month-old
pastry always make you choke up like a little old lady watching greeting card
commercials?"

Boy was in a foul mood, but he
was paying attention, Ingram noted. The kid watched everybody too close, and
didn't know when to leave well enough alone. Probably why he was here. They'd
given him some ice to help the pain, but they were backed up, and it would be a
while before X-ray could take him.

"Makes me think about my
wife, giving me hell for eating this kind of junk."