For a long moment she was impaled by those eyes, willed to move away. She stepped back again and again until the stone wall poked at her back. Slowly she slid to the floor and crouched there, unable to look away from the gaze that held her. Finally, the stare that transfixed her moved to penetrate some other unseen object, and the bond forged between them was ripped asunder.
Relief flooded her when the power of those eyes moved elsewhere. She couldn't cry out. She could hardly even breathe. She crouched where she was and hoped not to draw his attention again. There was something more than human in his voice, in the way she had felt impelled to move. Had he spoken at all? She had felt his words more than heard them. Who was this man?
Sometime in the night she began to wonder what would happen if she couldn't get near him to give him any more laudanum. More likely she would never have the courage to move. Perhaps he could kill her with the power she had felt. He did not move, but stared ahead.
Sarah forgot her stiffness when he spoke. She raised her head from her clasped knees, not sure what she heard. He was still locked in his terrible trance, but now he was mumbling, speaking, and listening in turns as if there were a partner in his onesided conversation. The language was unfamiliar. Then his voice rose and the words took on the chanting cadence of an incantation. Over and over he repeated the same words with greater and greater intensity. Every fiber of his body shook in the struggle.
What was his straggle? Was he wrestling with pain, with the drug, or with something larger? He seemed to be casting spells, as did the ancient Cornish crones, believing they could control destiny with their rhymes. As he writhed and thundered the words she couldn't understand, he pushed himself up until he was standing. The words spiraled up into a shriek that was insane or inhuman. Sarah covered her ears and felt that she was shrieking too.
The shriek was replaced by a snarl. Davinoff stood, naked, before her and growled and snapped with bared teeth. He was an animal, the like of which she had never seen—cornered and deadly, no light of rationality in his eyes. He filled the shadowed room and threw himself against the manacles, howling as no human could. He must break the chains or loosen the mortar. Then he would be upon her, ripping her throat like a beast. She sobbed and gasped, sure he would twist free and descend upon her. The stairs were behind her. But thoughts would not translate themselves to movement. She sat frozen in her chair, unable to take her eyes from his.
His dark eyes flamed and glowed now. He had become a predator in darkness, a feaster on souls as well as bodies. The room grew dark around him. The lamp dimmed visibly. Suddenly, his reflection in the wardrobe mirror to his left winked out. Only the ring and the manacles were visible as Sarah stared in horror at the mirror. Darkness and terror eddied out from the mirror and swirled around her.
When she came to herself, she lay draped across the arm of the chair. Her hair brushed the floor. She could not see him. She heard no sound. For some time she resolved she would never move so she would not draw his attention, but she was uncomfortable and at last her body moved of its own volition. She heaved herself up and lay with her cheek on her hand, looking at the mirror. His reflection flickered there. He was no longer the terrible beast-thing she had watched in horror. He lay crumpled in the corner looking terribly human. She glanced at her watch. It was late afternoon somewhere, but down here it was always night.
The past terror nibbled at the edges of her mind. What had she seen? She had expected frenzy in withdrawal. She had expected him to struggle in his chains. She had not expected…
What? She could not think if what she saw was real. A darkness? Was that simply her faint coming on? And the mirror? She put her hand to her forehead. Of course not. She shook her head slowly. Stupid girl. Was she hallucinating? She couldn't know. But she still must do something. Could she climb the stairs and ride the horse back to Bath? Could she leave him here? A tiny chuckle rose in her throat and turned into a stifled sob.
She was a prisoner here of her own making. She could not run away. She would not abandon her vow. She had placed the manacles about her own wrists as surely as Davinoff had. It could end in death, his or hers. She knew that now. It was a debt she owed. Because she had refused to look on darkness in others, in herself, so many times, she would stare it down here in her cellar. If she ran away again, she would die for certain, not in body perhaps, but in her soul. She owed a debt for who she was, what she knew about herself, beginning in Sienna. If peace waited somewhere beyond the darkness, well then, the debt was paid and she was free.
At last the watch said six. Mechanically she got up and measured out seven drams of laudanum. He was too weak to gulp it from the cup. She would inject it. She went to the bandbox and took out George's syringes and the needles. Back at the bottles, she pressed the plunger down to eject the air, pushed the needle into the laudanum. She drew the drug into the tube, just as she had done at the hospital. Of this much she was sure. She held the syringe upright as she crossed the room. To her surprise, he had drifted into consciousness again. He watched her. His eyes were not beast-mad any longer. They were glazed and dull.
"How much?"
"Seven. A third of your former dose." She knelt and pulled back the coverlet. Laying the needle carefully to one side, she tied a piece of rubber tubing tightly around his biceps, all concentration. She hardly noticed his flesh as she held his arm and waited for the vein to stand out, blue and mortal. She had done it before. She could do it now. Testing the angle, she placed the needle against his fragile flesh. He did not flinch as the needle went in. She pressed the plunger slowly home. When she looked up, he had lost consciousness.
Jerking the needle out, she moved away. She wondered whether by giving him the drug she was actually giving him strength. She wondered if that was good or bad. She was beyond deciding. She went on with the plan because it was easier and because she saw no alternative. The death struggle of this creature with the drug was her death struggle too, now.
In spite of all her explanations to herself, she was not surprised when the lamp beside the chair dimmed. It was his doing, of course. She turned her head slightly. She had not seen him stand, though in the darkness he was standing now. Those two red embers in the blackness were his eyes. They seemed to move closer, then recede. Sarah made no move. She was resigned. The terror was a part of her. The eyes grew larger and smaller, red and glowing, absolutely inhuman.
The light glowed dimly each time the embers receded and she was able to see him, large and luminescent black, a cape of darkness thrown over his shoulders. His lips parted slightly and his canines gleamed. Then the lamplight faded out altogether and there was only the darkness. It gathered in his corner and swirled with invisible currents around the vortex of his eyes. His power drew her, and she knew she must not go. He called her because he could not come to her. She must come to him. Must come.
But she did not. She would not cross that space to him. She would see this thing through, and to do that she would not set her foot on the floor. She must sit safely on the island of the chair. If she moved, she was lost.
Calmly she realized that she knew exactly what he was. He had no reflection in the mirror. His canines were elongated. He drew the darkness, was a master of the night. The composure with which she managed such clear thought hid fear that gnawed at her soul. She had always wondered where he came from. She had never been quite able to place his accent. Now she knew. The Carpathian Mountains struck dread among the superstitious: a country where dwelt things undead. It was the stuff of ghost stories, told late at night. Yet in her cellar was one of its sons. She remembered the two puncture wounds on the neck of the Countess Delmont. How had she not recognized them at the time? And she, poor fool, had thought he wanted her. His lust was not for kisses, but for blood. She was too exhausted to feel shame.
Sarah found she was moving off the chair, her eyes fixed on those glowing orbs. No, she mustn't go! She had lost her concentration, let his will seep into her and eat at the foundations of her re
solve. With an effort, she pushed herself back into the chair, breathing hard. She must not lose her focus. It took her some minutes to rip her eyes from those two red circles in the darkness. She cried out with effort and covered her face with her hands. She sat there for an eternity, hands over her eyes. Then she felt stronger. Careful not to look anywhere near the corner where the creature was, she took her hands away. Her light flickered, then flickered again. It, too, seemed to be fighting against the darkness. Then the light came on.
Sarah chanced a glance to the mirror and saw his figure there, light dying in the eyes. The black shape shook its head violently and shed a layer of darkness. A gut-wrenching cry escaped from between the canines, one that stripped the soul of civilization. Sarah shivered from someplace beneath her spine. Then, standing with feet apart and hands still bound, he was suddenly enveloped in the darkness once again. He seemed to shimmer and become invisible for a moment. Then like the light, he flickered into view and collapsed upon the pallet. The light by the chair grew two shades brighter still.
Sarah sat, unable to move. It was just Davinoff in the corner now, not a vampire from the Carpathian Mountains. Sarah's senses reeled. But she knew now what she faced.
After a time, she got up. The watch said that it was almost dawn. She stared for a moment at Davinoff's reflection in the wardrobe mirror. The cellar seemed disheveled and ordinary. As if moving were itself enough accomplishment, she sat again on the floor at the foot of the chair.
The bruises and the poultices stood out against his pale flesh. How many days had it been? Three or four. He slumped against the wall. He might be dead. This was enough to move her. She ought to stay away. She tried to feel the terror she had felt but a little while ago, but she was numb. There was no sign of breath. So she crawled on her hands and knees to him and touched the hollow of his throat. A pulse fluttered, just barely there. She began to cry then for the first time, just tears, no sobs. What to do? Finally, she dragged him out upon the pallet, then staggered to the table and measured out five drams of laudanum. Such a tiny amount compared to what had gone before. The needle found his vein and her thumb pressed the drug home. It was early, but she didn't care anymore. She did the thing she knew to do.
He was close to death. The effort needed for the field of darkness had left him drained. She knew now what he had meant when he had promised he wouldn't lose control. He had refused to take her blood when she would have offered her neck willingly under the spell of his eyes. He might have been trying to spare her. She gained some strength from that.
Hadn't she seen other men become animals when deprived of the drug? How different was this man? More powerful, more strange, but no more violent, no more desperate than the others. One of the strangest things was that he had never once asked her for the drug. Of course, he had wanted it last night. The drug and something more. That was why he willed her to come to him. How had she been able to resist? She remembered the palpable force impelling her to move back from him. He must have grown weaker. She might not be alive if he had not.
That must mean that he was near the end. He would soon die. She squinted at him, sniffing. But life still coursed in his veins. He needed sustenance to give him strength. She had prepared for that, though the sustenance he needed might be different than she had anticipated. Rummaging through the bag, she drew out her supplies. She dragged a high chest near his pallet, then removed several large bottles from the bandbox. She would follow Dr. Parry's lead and put his food directly into his veins. She broke the seal on one bottle, inserted rubber tubing, and held up the opposite end. In this end, she fitted a syringe with a larger needle. The upended bottle she placed on the chest looming over Davinoff.
Making sure the valve was shut on the tubing, she took the syringe and knelt beside his still form. She exposed the vein in the crook of his elbow. With the heavier needle, she might well shove it clear through. The needle met the skin's resistance and slid into the vein. She strapped it flat to his arm with a strip of cloth. Earlier, the needle would have ripped from his arm at his first fevered thrashing. Now he would be still, perhaps unto death. The nutrient Dr. Parry invented would drip into his veins, giving him, perhaps, a little extra strength.
She watched him for some time. Finally, she got up and combed her hair using the wardrobe mirror. Dark circles hung under her eyes. With only a single glance at the still form in the corner, she left the room for the first time in two days. It was a gray and dreary morning elsewhere in the house. She fixed herself food and ate in the kitchen. The real world was comforting and ordinary. She went outside in a drenching, steady rain to feed the horse and fill his water trough. He nickered softly at her as she entered his stall.
"I have not been a steadfast friend," she said to him, startled at the sound of her own voice. "But I have been busy." She fed and brushed him, filled his trough. How she longed for a simpler time, before Corina, before Davinoff. She also longed for a bath.
It was almost two hours before she descended the stairs again, clean if not refreshed. She had steeped herself in steaming water. Her fear was gone. She knew the worst, after all. She opened the door to the cellar, not caring what she might see, and descended into the gloom. But Davinoff lay as before. The bottle floated above him, a slender link with Sarah now.
She sat beside him on the floor, her mind a pleasing blank. She checked his pulse from time to time. At what must be dusk, it seemed to weaken. She counted the beats. It was weaker. He was sinking toward death. She had done what she could. Roused from her lethargy, she bit her lip, rose, then knelt again to check his pulse. He couldn't die. Not after so much suffering for them both. It wasn't fair. She stood and paced the dusty cellar floor.
What to do for a creature so strange? This was beyond her. She ran her hands through her hair, distraught. She didn't know enough about him!
But she did. Every child knew what he was. He was a creature of fable become real. Some stories she knew to be true. Reflections and canines; these myths were only too real. The core of the vampire legends was that they drew their strength from human blood. If anything were true, would it not be this center of all the fear? Was that not what the Countess Delmont's scarf proclaimed?
Could she do this thing? But there was no reasoning about it. And she was beyond fear. She had come too far since that day at Chambroke to turn back. The decision was already made. She had done it to Davinoff. Could she do it to herself?
Kneeling at Davinoff's side, she clamped the tubing to stop the flow of nutrient into his bloodstream, then withdrew the needle. She emptied a bottle of the nutrient into the basin. Then, with the bottle and the tubing and syringe, she set about her task. The bottle she set on the floor by the chair where the light was better and tied a section of tubing around her left arm, tightening it between her teeth and her other hand. The blood pulsed in her vein.
This was just a matter of courage, of getting the needle in her arm. She would think no further than that. Her arm rested on a strip of cloth draped over the arm of the chair. She held the needle with its tube in her right hand. Could she do it from this angle? She positioned the syringe carefully and took two slow breaths. Then she forced the needle in. It was a simple sear of pain, no more. The tube darkened with her blood. She used the cloth strip to secure the needle.
Sarah breathed and loosed the tube about her arm, then removed the clamp. Her blood flowed down the tube with a life of its own, surging with the beat of her heart. She leaned back with that peculiar peaceful sense she had heard occurred with loss of blood. Perhaps it felt this way to die. George would have been proud of her technique.
When the bottle was full, she replaced the clamp. She withdrew the needle and pressed a bit of bandage into the crook of her arm. She rose slowly, feeling dizzy, and took the red bottle to the pallet. It was only four-thirty by her watch, but he might not last until six. So she injected three drams of laudanum into his arm. The red bottle sat beside her, along with the cup.
With the injection of
the drug, small as the dose was, his breathing deepened. She rubbed her hands over his forehead, down his neck, and over his chest. His flesh called to her. It felt human and mortal, no matter that she had seen him as an elemental being. "Davinoff," she whispered, "wake up." There was no response except for the labored breathing. "Wake up, Julien Davinoff, or you will never wake up. Do you hear me?" His flesh spoke to her. Her voice grew more urgent. She took his chin in her hand and shook his head. "Davinoff, damn you, wake up!"
The eyelids fluttered. She rubbed his chest, whispering to him, urging him to make another effort. The fringe of dark lashes finally raised. He looked up at her from far away. She poured the thick red liquid into the cup and lifted it to his lips. "Drink," she said softly. He did drink. His lips and mouth were stained with her blood, still warm. When the cup was empty, she poured the rest and he drank it, too. She watched a trickle run from the side of his mouth. His eyes were unreadable. Then they faded and closed. She lowered his head and wiped his mouth.
She was not ashamed or horrified at what she had done. She had done the most she could. She hooked him up to another bottle of the nutrient. Now she must sleep. There was no more laudanum to give. If he was alive when she woke, she would think what to do. She lay down on the floor next to the pallet and pillowed her head on her arm.
He was alive when she awoke. His breathing seemed a little stronger. She felt it even before she sat up, disheveled and stiff. She checked his pulse and felt its more rhythmic beat. It was almost midnight, six hours since the last of the drug had been given. She had promised herself to think what to do, but thinking still seemed beyond her. All she knew was that the blood had been good. There would have to be more.
Sarah sat in her chair with fresh materials around her. This time it wasn't quite so hard. But this would have to be the last. She wasn't sure how much blood she could give. This time the feeling of peace as the bottle filled was even more pronounced. She closed her eyes and managed to take more than she intended before she came to herself and clamped the tube shut.
Sacrament Page 20
