When Julien returned carrying her cloak, he had mastered himself. "You must be here with friends," he said brusquely. "What box?"
"Sixty-two," she heard herself say in a voice she did not recognize.
"Boy," he called. "Box sixty-two. Tell them the lady has the headache. Davinoff took her home."
Sarah thought she might faint at the pressure of his hands placing her cloak about her shoulders. It was the touch she had longed for, but now it chilled her with the threat of loss. Julien spun his cape about his shoulders and placed his hat carelessly upon his head. Then he took her arm in that old electric grip and drew her out of the theater and into his waiting carriage.
She sat in the cold dark and watched him climb in across from her.
"What is your direction?" he asked, no emotion in his voice now.
She gave the address of her hotel, and he called it to the driver. She shivered and pulled her cloak about her. What would she say to him? She had imagined this moment many times, but not like this. The horses clattered off over the snowy cobblestones and the well-sprung carriage glided after them. The silence grew taut between them. She tried to think of the glass chalice and what he had once let it promise, but her talisman did not ward off the grim set of his lips.
"What brings you to Vienna, Sarah?" he finally asked.
"You know that." She could allow no games between them. "You bring me to Vienna."
"How did you find me?" he asked. It was more a weary lamentation than curiosity.
"Oh, bills of lading, cartage companies. I met Mr. Leiden in Amsterdam, who wants you back as an investor." She took an absurd pride in her ingenuity.
There was another silence. "I am sorry it was all for naught."
Sarah took her heart in her hands. She tried to focus not on what he had just said, but on the look in his eyes in the lobby of the concert hall, before the grim resolve had entered them. Why else had she come all this way if not to make a push for what she wanted? "My courage failed me, back in Bath. I am so very sorry. The differences between us seemed too great to be bridged. But I have found my courage now, Julien. I know what I want."
"It is a false courage, my love," he whispered. "You do not know the obstacles."
Sarah heard him call her "my love" and drew strength from that as well. She leaned forward and touched his knee. "Then tell me," she said, and let all her love pour out toward his dark shape in the corner. "I will face eternity with you, Julien. I accept the need for blood, and how I will have to get it. I will risk all." She felt light-headed now that the words were said.
She could see his chest heaving in the darkness while he struggled with himself. "You don't understand!" he finally said through gritted teeth. She sat back as though she had been slapped. "I should never have offered the Companion. It is strictly forbidden. And only evil comes of it. Khalenberg is right about that, though not the way he thinks. It is a terrible burden, a curse." He jerked his face to the window, then turned back deliberately. He seemed to consider before he spoke. "It finds the smallness in one, magnifies it. Look what it did to Magda." He had some hold upon himself that strained the muscles in his shoulders.
"Curse or blessing, it does not matter," Sarah said simply. She saw him shake his head, but she pressed on. "It is who you are. Can you not accept that, and share it with another?"
"You are an innocent," he returned, his voice harsh. "You only see the sunshine."
He called her naive once more. The pain shot through her, but she persisted. "It was I who thought it wouldn't last, that you would grow bored."
"You appear to have changed your mind," he said, almost bitterly.
"I'll take what time you will give me," she whispered. "Let us be together until you tire of me." She heard his sharp intake of breath. He ran his fingers roughly through his hair.
"You deserve better," he growled. In the illumination of a passing street lamp, she saw his mouth was grim again though his tone was light. "I hear you will be the toast of the town, if you aren't already. Bath was too small to hold you."
He could not distract her that way. "I have never cared for such things and you know it."
"You will find someone you need not have courage to love."
"I will love only you." She said the words. They too were final. She hoped he could hear that in her voice. "Tell me you do not care for me in return," she challenged.
"Not the point. Many can love, but… things stand in the way." He sagged into the squabs.
"Don't give the gift, if that is the barrier. I will take any years you offer until I grow too old to be attractive to you." Did he know that would be the hardest sacrifice of all?
His eyes grew tender for a moment, as though he would say that age didn't matter. Then he took a breath. "That would tear us both apart. No, our story may be the stuff of tragedy to us, but it is unimportant in the grander sweep of time, believe me."
"You can throw away what we have together?" she whispered.
His jaw clenched. "You will feel this way again with someone more suitable."
Sarah froze. He would throw it all away. The carriage began to slow. They were nearing the hotel. In another moment, he would hand her out of the carriage and out of his life. "I so wish I had taken your gift when you offered it that night," she blurted. "Don't leave me with a lifetime of regret for my cowardice."
"If you had taken what I so rashly offered, you would be wishing me at the devil. I know you don't believe that. And you think your regret will always be as sharp as it is now. But all things fade, dear Sarah, even in a single lifetime." Sadness crept into his harsh tone.
The carriage stopped. Sarah's eyes filled with tears. He refused to be convinced. Then he opened the door and stepped down. He took her arm and led her up to the bright doorway of the hotel where the doormen waited. They swung the doors wide. She stopped and turned to him. As she looked up into his face, her tears spilled over in frustration. She could feel despair lurking just beyond the edges of her mind. She must think of some last word to change his mind.
"Good-bye, lovely Sarah," he whispered. One hand touched her chin. He bent and brushed his lips across her forehead. She imagined a fiery brand would still be visible there when she looked into a mirror. Her breast began to convulse in sobs, as he jerked away and stepped into the coach. He pulled the door after him and disappeared into the darkness without a backward look.
Sarah stared after the carriage long after it had rounded the corner. Tears streamed openly down her face. Her breath came in halting gasps.
"Fraulein? Are you all right?" one of the doormen called in halting English. With a start she realized what a sight she was. Shaking her head, she stumbled past their curiosity and through the lobby, up the stairs to the refuge of her rooms.
Chapter Nineteen
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Sarah ran up to her room and bolted the door behind her. Panting more than her mad dash warranted, she tore off her fine white dress to get into her nightclothes. He had rejected her, just as she had so foolishly rejected him so long ago in Bath. She had told him all, stripped bare her heart. She had done everything she could, and still it wasn't enough. A sob crept into her throat. Now she would never see him again. He would make sure of that. Already she felt empty. She had no home. Bath meant nothing to her. Madame Gessande was her only friend.
Pulling her nightdress over her head, she turned down the lamp and dove under the quilts. The only light in the room was the flicker of the fire in the grate. She trembled as she clutched the covers about her, but not from cold. She barely heard the scratching at the door.
Madame Gessande called softly, "Are you asleep, cherie? Did Davinoff bring you home?"
She could not answer, but something in her reached for human connection. A sob escaped her almost against her will.
"What has happened?" Madame fussed, coming in to sit upon the bed.
"He doesn't want me," Sarah sobbed.
"Oh dear." Madame rocked Sarah and patted her shoulders th
rough the racking sobs. After a while Sarah subsided into tortured gasps, and Madame held her away to look into her eyes. "I could have sworn he loved you, petite. I have seen men in love before and this one had the look if ever I have seen it. He wouldn't get over something like that in a few weeks."
Sarah hiccuped and Madame provided a handkerchief from her reticule. "Oh, he loves me, underneath it all." she said then blew her nose resoundingly.
"So, what can the problem be?" Madame asked with some incredulity.
"He… he thinks we are too different." Sarah knew it would sound inconsequential.
"Oh Lord, never tell me he's being noble! Foolish boy! You'll not make me believe he's low-born, or that it would make a difference to either of you if he were."
"It's not that kind of difference, Madame," Sarah said in a small voice.
"Then what?" the woman asked, holding Sarah's shoulders. Sarah owed her more of the truth. "He… he has a disease, Madame," she stuttered. "It would be… distasteful to some."
"And you once expressed distaste?"
Sarah nodded. "I recoiled from him in Bath." But Madame still misunderstood.
"He should know that where one partner has syphilis, you simply make adjustments."
"It isn't anything like that." Sarah sighed. "It is a disease of the blood."
"So that's how he knew so much about George Upcott's specialty," Madame mused. She examined Sarah. "You have decided you can live with it?"
"I could even share it."
"You have told him so, I take it."
Sarah nodded once more, and closed her eyes. They felt sore and swollen, like her heart.
"This heroism is misplaced. I shall talk with him. I found out tonight where he lives."
Sarah sighed. Madame would find Julien gone. Neither of them would see him again.
"You get some sleep, petite," Madame whispered, and kissed her cheek. "All is not lost." She rose and tiptoed out of the room, leaving Sarah, sleepless, to her thoughts.
They told her she would have to learn to live without Julien.
In the wee hours of the morning, as the fire burned its last gasping coals in the grate, Sarah began to grow angry. He did love her! She was sure of it. As each word tonight, each expression replayed in her memory, she grew more certain of what she had told Madame instinctively. Didn't the gift of the little flying machine from Leonardo whisper to her that they must, together, try the impossible? She could not believe his choice of that most symbolic gift was accidental. Hadn't he, at one point, believed enough in a life together to leave her the Roman chalice? It was a chalice made for ceremonial drinking. What could it mean to Julien but drinking blood? That chalice was a promise and a challenge. It had drawn her across a continent. He might have lost his courage, but she had not.
He could not doubt she loved him when she had trekked halfway across the world to find him. No, he did not doubt her love. What could it be? He said the Companion found out the smallness in one and magnified it. Ahhh. like the mushroom in Sienna. That gave her pause. Did he think she would become like that dreadful red-haired woman, killing wantonly? She sat up in her bed and purposely let the light-filled memories of Sienna wash over her, and acceptance. She had enjoyed it. She had enjoyed what human bodies could do together. And while the mushroom had robbed her of the will to stop those visions of Corina's sick torture—they had seemed unreal—Julien had taught her that she did not enjoy another's pain. Everyone had darkness inside, but making love wasn't that darkness. It was something she had never understood until she'd made love to Julien. Humans were created to make love to one another, to embrace abandon as well as control, the physical as well as the spiritual. It was their complexity, their destiny, maybe even the way that they were most like God. Julien was wrong. Sarah wasn't Magda, or Corina. She was just finding out that she was Sarah, and Sarah alone.
Julien thought power corrupted. But he lived with that power. Why couldn't she learn to do so? His doubt made her angry all over again. Why had she not brought him to book for his misgivings? She'd sat in that carriage like a dumb beast being led to slaughter.
It was forbidden to make a vampire, he'd said. But he had made the redhead. And he was not a man to let anything stand in his way. She would not accept that excuse.
What was standing in his way? Why had he rejected her? She lay there in the faintly graying light, her tears gone. He knew she was not like Magda. In the end, Julien was afraid, as she had been, that there were too many obstacles. Was he protecting her from the consequence of their love? Or was he trying to protect himself? She was the strong one now. She looked inside and marveled for a moment. She knew she must say to him what she had not said in the carriage. He must hear what she thought of his cowardice. She must have courage for them both.
She reviewed again every detail of that evening. She knew where he was going. He was going to Mirso Monastery wherever that was. That gave her heart. But there were too many things she didn't know. Who forbade the giving of blood? Why did the Companion change one? There were dozens of questions. Almost the only thing she did know was how to start defining what was yet unclear. Julien said Khalenberg had sinned as well. That meant there was one at least in Vienna who knew more about Julien's kind than she did, including, no doubt, the precise location of Mirso Monastery.
The next morning Sarah ordered one trunk repacked and taken downstairs. She took only traveling clothes and the treasure Julien had left her. As she approached the concierge desk, the entire staff buzzed with excitement. "I should like to ask a direction," she announced to the impeccably dressed man obviously in charge.
"How may we help you?" He made a shushing motion to the two young men behind him.
"I wish to send a note to a Mr. Khalenberg." The man's stricken look took her up sharply.
"Fraulein doesn't know?" he gasped. "There were tend murders last night in the Stephanplatz. Terrible."
"Torn limb from limb, all of them," a young man behind him announced with relish.
Sarah felt faint. Hadn't Julien said that was one way to kill a vampire? The concierge glared at his assistant. "Who was killed?" she whispered. Julien? Khalenberg? The one was unthinkable, the other might derail her quest.
"Johann Villach, and several less respectable characters," the concierge confided.
Sarah sighed. Not Julien. Not Khalenberg. "What has this to do with Mr. Khalenberg?"
"Villach is one of Khalenberg's 'familiars.' They form a triangle with Magda Ravel," the young man behind the concierge blurted.
"Back to your work with you," the concierge ordered. The two others retreated reluctantly.
Villach must be the blond man who had left Magda. A familiar. Sarah knew what that meant. She remembered Khalenberg's ashen face in the lobby of the concert hall. Was Villach Khalenberg's sin? And who had killed him? "Was Miss Ravel injured?" she asked.
"Nein," the concierge answered. "But she is nowhere to be found."
Sarah sighed in relief. "Is Mr. Khalenberg implicated?" she asked. She could not see the hawk-faced man in a gaol cell. "Of course not, Fraulein! He was at the theater. The murders were at the Stephanplatz."
Sarah did not enlighten him as to how someone like Khalenberg could seem to be in two places at once. "I should send my condolences," she said. She was going to see a man who might well tear people limb from limb. Sarah knew she must go the address the concierge printed on a card immediately, before her knees or her courage failed her. She hoped Khalenberg would see her. Julien would be her calling card. But what then? How did one press a creature such as this and come out whole?
Sarah sat stiffly in a brocaded chair next to a window that looked up upon the Graben and waited. All doubt was gone now, if not all fear. Her way lay through Khalenberg's drawing room. Whatever trials might be presented, she must pass them before she could go on. Danger pressed palpably on two fronts. He might refuse to see her. If he did, she would have to coerce information from him.
Khalenberg entered at last, al
l angular disapproval. She thought he still looked ravaged. His face was parchment white, his eyes deep-set in hollows, whether because he had lost a lover or rid himself of a problem at great personal cost; she could not tell. In either case he was a man who had himself rigidly under control. "He is gone, you know," he said without preamble.
"Yes," she returned, mustering her courage. It would never do to show fear.
"Then why are you here?"
"I want to know things that only one of his kind can tell me," she answered. Her knowledge was the first salvo in this siege. She had the satisfaction of seeing him start.
"So he told you what he is," he returned harshly. "This had gone further than I thought."
"He did not have to tell me." She saw curiosity flick through Khalenberg's gray eyes and rushed on, her words tumbling over themselves. "He was too ill to control the manifestations. I saw everything, and guessed what he must be."
Khalenberg looked at her strangely. "You interest me." He sat in a wing chair opposite her and deliberately crossed his long legs.
Sarah took a breath and plunged ahead. No threats and no orders to leave yet. "You know he loves me. I love him. You advised him against sharing his Companion with me. Why?"
"I reminded him of his obligation." Khalenberg's mouth twisted.
She pressed on. "What is his obligation?" Only if she pushed him beyond what he was willing to tell her would she find what she needed.
"He is not allowed to spread the Companion."
"And not allowed to share the power," Sarah observed, then silently cursed herself.
Khalenberg grunted. "Davinoff was mistaken. You are all alike. You want the power."
"No, that is not it," she returned fiercely. "I was the one who first refused his blood. You think everyone wants immortality? What is this power you speak of, anyway?" she sputtered. "You • pop in and out of places and make people do as you wish. But look what it has done to you and Julien! Bored wanderers, cynical, belonging to no one. I cannot believe you are happy."
Sacrament Page 33
