Jane Austen: Blood Persuasion

by Janet Mullany

“Indeed.”

  She realized now where they were, close to the Great House, and leaving the woods for an open meadow. A little light came from the shuttered cottages that lined the road ahead.

  “And you, Raphael. You too are what Luke calls a eunuch, neither Damned nor mortal? Are you one whose metamorphosis is halted? What is William to you?”

  To Jane’s annoyance, William, ahead of them, turned at the mention of his name, thus effectively breaking the flow of conversation. For someone who was so keen to have her take Raphael as her lover, William’s behavior was certainly contradictory.

  “Raphael, if you will, fetch some lanterns and bring them to the barn.” He waited for Jane to catch up with him. “I hope you realize now the severity of our situation. I see you are shocked by what you witnessed.”

  Tom handed her a flask and the brandy fumes made her eyes sting, but a good gulp of the spirits made her feel a little stronger. “Indeed I am. How long before more in the village are attacked? What of my family?”

  “You should persuade your family to leave the cottage to visit one of your brothers, and you should move to the Great House. They will be safer elsewhere and you may continue your metamorphosis. I am concerned you have progressed no further.” He led her to the outbuildings that clustered at the side of the house.

  “But . . . I pray I shall remain mortal. Every night, William. I do not wish to progress.”

  “So be it. If it is any consolation, Jane, les Sales rarely hunt in the day, despite your friend’s unfortunate experience. You should, however, be concerned with Duval’s interest in your niece.”

  “What do you think he intends? You think seduction or draining her is not bad enough?”

  “He may intend to create her. She is not of high rank, but you, even in your half-formed state, have power, and it is likely he believes she may have the same potential.” He pushed open the door of one of the larger buildings. “He needs more to rally to his cause.”

  “As do you, William.” She couldn’t help the ironic laugh that welled within her. “How the mighty are fallen, that the Damned stoop to create from among the gentry.”

  His expression, however, was serious. “Be assured, Jane, I shall do all in my power to have you return as one of us, however hard you pray. Did you enjoy wearing men’s clothes and running through the darkness tonight?—nay, you do not need to answer, for I see you did. Do you not remember what it was to be even stronger and swifter, invincible? Do you remember the pulse of blood on your tongue? No?”

  “Where do you want these lanterns?” Raphael, carrying a pair of lanterns, approached them.

  William gave him a brief nod of thanks and gestured to a nearby bench. He continued, “At the least, you must be armed. I shall provide you with pistols and a knife. I remember you had some skill in fighting.”

  Jane nodded and yawned. The effect of the brandy, after its initial bracing shock, was to now make her feel discontented and sleepy. She longed for her bed. “Could we not resume this tomorrow?”

  “I regret not. Mr. Papillon has invited me to view his collection of curiosities and to dine.”

  Jane laughed. “You will certainly need to reserve your strength, then. I trust he will not display his sister in his cabinet of curiosities. Tongues will wag, you know.”

  “I see you still possess the unfortunate tendency to speak to your Creator with disrespect. Let us continue.” William gave a curt nod to Raphael. “Pray show her how to use the pistol.”

  A glint of amusement in Raphael’s eyes nearly sent Jane into a fit of inappropriate laughter, but she managed to keep her countenance.

  Raphael removed his coat. “It’s best to learn in your shirtsleeves, Miss Jane. You have a greater range of movement.”

  Aware that she had been watching him slide the garment from his shoulders and admiring his form as he stood before her in shirtsleeves and waistcoat, she nodded and removed her own coat. She wore no waistcoat; her skin prickled with a chill that was only partly the effect of the cool air.

  “So.” Raphael handed her one of his pistols. “A beautiful instrument of death, Jane.”

  She weighed it in her hand, sliding her fingertips over the polished wood and the delicate tooling. Inlaid ivory and silver scrollwork depicted flowers, as though it were a piece of embroidery. “It is very fine work,” she said.

  He came to her side, his shoulder touching hers. “So, here. This is at half cock. And now full cock, ready to fire. It is empty, so it is safe to show you. Try it.”

  She placed her thumb on the silver lever and imitated his movements, hearing the quiet clicks as she manipulated it.

  “Good. Now raise it. You practice first as though for sport, not for real life.” His hands on her shoulders turned her so she stood directly in front of him, her back against him, sharing the heat of his skin. His hand grasped her wrist. “Sight. Look along the barrel. Keep your arm straight. When you fire, you hold your breath. Aim at that knothole in the timber there. You see it?”

  She nodded. The barrel wavered at the end of her outstretched arm, and she laughed.

  “Try again. Hold your breath. Fire.”

  “May I try with it loaded now?” She lowered the pistol and turned her head to Raphael’s.

  They stood for a moment, their lips almost touching, his chest close to her shoulders, their skin separated by only a few layers of cotton. “So,” he said and stepped away. “Yes. Yes, I think so.”

  He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket. “Here. This is your powder. Hand me the pistol, Miss Jane, and I shall show you.” He held a small twist of paper and bit the top off quickly, so Jane could not tell if he was en sanglant or not. “Some of the powder down the barrel. You keep a little for the firing pan. This is the ball. It goes after the powder, and you ram it firm with the rod.” He drew a slender steel rod from the underside of the pistol, so cunningly nestled in a groove, Jane had not seen it there. “You learn to do this fast.”

  He handed the pistol back to Jane. “Place it on half cock, if you please. The rest of the powder goes into the firing pan. And now it is ready to fire when you place it on full cock.”

  He stepped away and Jane raised the pistol, aiming at the knot in the wood she had sighted before. She held her breath and pulled the trigger and was taken aback by the loud explosion and the scent of burned powder. Through a haze of smoke, the walls of the barn turned into a row of houses built of Bath stone and the shouts of battle echoed in her ears.

  The illusion lasted but a moment, and as she came to her senses she caught William’s disapproving stare.

  Her canines were bared in a snarl, not en sanglant (not yet) but sharp and sensitive.

  “I beg your pardon,” she muttered, and raised her other hand to her mouth.

  “Not bad,” Tom said. “You missed the timber but not by much.”

  “Good.” Raphael, leaning against the wall of the barn, arms crossed, smiled at her with friendly encouragement. “Try again. This time you load. Here.” He held out another packet of powder and a ball.

  She ran through the routine again and again, until the beaten earth floor around her feet was littered with scraps of paper, and a pall of gray smoke hung around the barn. The pistol gained a familiarity in her hand as she learned to appreciate its heft and balance and grew accustomed to the kick of firing, the sharp explosion that rang in her ears. She could load without thought, her movements swift and economical.

  “Well enough,” William said. “Try a moving target.”

  “I beg your pardon?” She lowered the pistol.

  “Tom, if you will?” At William’s suggestion, Tom moved into the center of the barn, his coat removed to save the garment from damage.

  “Not my head, if you please,” Tom said. “Or my bollocks, however much you resent my intimacy with Martha.”

  “I quite understand,” Jane said. “In short, I should avoid an injury to the part that governs you.”

  Tom grinned with great good nature and took a turn ar
ound the barn, hands linked beneath his coattails.

  Jane raised and sighted down the barrel. Tom darted out of range, moving with the unearthly rapidity of the Damned. She swung the pistol, her finger tightening, and her shot went wide.

  “Try again.” Raphael handed her a loaded pistol.

  This time Tom ran slowly, zigzagging across the barn, but making sudden, unexpected feints. “Look lively, Jane. I’m barely moving.”

  “Keep your arm straight,” Raphael said. “Don’t let him taunt you.”

  She concentrated, her arm weaving, finger stilled, then took a breath, held it, and fired.

  “Ow!” Tom staggered, clutching his arm, and the dim space filled with the intoxicating scent of blood. He dropped to one knee, a dark stain spreading over his shirtsleeve.

  “Serves you right,” Jane said. She lowered her arm and took a deep breath.

  There was no denying the desire she felt for the spilled blood, the gorgeous richness of a fellow vampire’s blood, and the invitation in Tom’s gaze.

  Victor’s spoils. She remembered fighting with Luke, lapping the blood from his skin, a rare and luxurious flavor . . .

  She took a step toward him. The blood had soaked the sleeve and spread onto his hand. He clenched his fist and scarlet drops fell onto the floor, the tiny splashes magnified by her sensitivity.

  “Come,” Tom said.

  She knew what he expected, that she should lick his wound clean and breathe it closed.

  “Does the ball remain in your flesh?” Her voice was hoarse.

  Another step.

  “No, it passed through the muscle. Two wounds for you, Jane.”

  He unbuttoned his cuff and rolled up the sleeve, the light from the lanterns gilding the hairs on his arm and turning the streaks of scarlet to glistening trails.

  Her breath caught.

  He smiled. “Drink, Jane. Come back to us.”

  Come back, my dear fledgling.

  And then she knew. She turned to William, and the rejection of the blood of the Damned felt like a rip in her own heart, leaving her raw and hungering. “So this is what this is all really about, is it not?”

  William bowed his head in acknowledgment. “I told you I would do all I could to persuade you to throw your lot in with ours.”

  “You have played me for a fool!”

  “I seek to hasten what is inevitable, Jane.”

  She turned to the bench where the second of the pair of pistols lay. It was loaded, she knew, and she moved faster than she would have thought possible.

  She raised the pistol and pointed it at Tom’s head. “You shall lose an ally and a companion, William. Is this really what you want?”

  No one moved. Tom, who had watched the scene with amusement, now became still and serious, staring into the barrel of the pistol.

  “Tell me, why I should not dispatch him. I have been deceived, by you, William, my Creator.”

  “I admit it.” His voice was rich and quiet and resigned. “I think only of what is best for you. All I do, it is for love.”

  She shifted, as though arranging her feet for a dance; turned her right foot from the heel, adjusting her stance, and swinging her arm with the gleaming pistol to aim at William. Her shot could banish him to hell: immortal, yes, but indestructible, certainly not.

  “All for love. I think not, sir. You might have some concern for my soul, as I do. I have every justification for pulling the trigger. One small movement of my finger, that is all.”

  “It is your choice,” William said.

  She knew it was the part of her that was Damned that stilled her finger, and equally, it was her instinct as a Christian and as a woman to spare him. But the anger and despair burned within her.

  “You deceived me once when you created me and abandoned me. That was an unnatural act, was it not? You should have loved me then, William; you should have been a true Creator to me. So I shall end this sad charade now.”

  She took the breath that would precede the tightening of her finger upon the trigger, but a warmth enveloped her, stole around her with the scent of spices and herbs. Raphael’s arm wrapped around her shoulders. His other hand grasped hers and lowered the pistol, took it from her hand. She heard the quick metallic sound as he uncocked it, still holding her in his embrace.

  “Well, that was exciting,” Tom commented. He licked his wound himself and breathed it closed. “I wonder what would have happened if we’d chosen Raphael for your target practice?” He viewed his ruined shirt with distaste. “I need to dine. I’ll bid you good morning.”

  He opened the door of the barn, and a little grayish light, that of a very early morning, seeped inside.

  William walked out of the barn, not looking at Jane. Tom gave her a rueful glance and followed him, leaving Jane still wrapped in Raphael’s embrace.

  Chapter 11

  Jane turned and laid her face against Raphael’s shoulder, too weary and sick at heart to feel arousal at his embrace. A little hunger lingered, fighting with exhaustion.

  “I could sleep like a horse, standing up,” she murmured.

  “Do you wish to come to the house?”

  “No. And am I to think you are yet another temptation cast before me by William?”

  He stepped away from her, his face severe and rigid. “You insult me. I hope I am my own man, still.”

  “I beg your pardon.” She reached for her discarded coat and shrugged it onto her shoulders.

  “But I fear our continued association may well have dire results and propel us both toward Damnation. It is better, madam, that we associate no more.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake. I am wearing men’s clothes and you address me as ‘madam.’ And I believe that the decision regarding our continued association is mine also. So I have judged right, Raphael. You are one such as me. But what is your association with William?”

  He paused, one arm halfway into his coat. “William is my brother. Yes, brother by blood and by birth, and my Creator, the one I hate and love most in the world.”

  “So you also are his fledgling.”

  “I was.” He pulled his coat onto his shoulders and reached to adjust her lapel, smoothing it. “Some twenty years ago I took the Cure. There was a lady who would not countenance marriage—or any other sort of liaison—to one of the Damned.”

  “You are married?”

  “No, no.” He shook his head with an ironic smile, and in that gesture she could see William. “The Cure was lengthy and difficult, for I had been Damned so long, and I retired to a monastery to recover. She would not wait. I cannot blame her. I had leisure to contemplate my soul and repent of the evil I had done as the Damned.” He opened the barn door.

  Jane stepped outside into the chill gray of early morning. A tentative flute and whistle indicated the start of the dawn chorus. “You took vows?” She tried to suppress an inappropriate laugh. “I beg your pardon, it is like something from a gothic novel.”

  “Life in the monastery gave me the opportunity to undertake scientific studies to find a true cure for the Damned. Even then I knew taking the waters was a difficult and imperfect process that might not work permanently.”

  “And did you succeed?”

  “I did, after correspondence with some of the leading men of science throughout Europe. It is why I came to England, to confer with a Mr. Davy in Cornwall and Mr. Herschel, the Astronomer Royal. I believe I have the solution. If it is successful, it will not only provide a permanent cure but make the person who takes it safe from the lures of the Damned so they may never be created again. And William asked to see me, so, here I am.”

  “Why?”

  “He is my Creator,” Raphael said. “And my brother. Is not that reason enough? He wants his fledglings, even if, like me, they seek to destroy what he is, or, like you, reject him. It is what he is.”

  Their boots crunched on the gravel of the house as they walked back toward the village. A sleepy child, yawning, accompanied by a calf on a rope, passed
them, gazing at them with curiosity.

  “Will you take your cure yourself?” Jane said.

  He shook his head. “I hope I shall not need to. It may kill if taken as a preventative. I do not know, for I have but one small flask of the solution and I fear it is an imperfect solution at present.” He sighed. “I fear, however, that I may need it soon. You have noticed, my dear Jane, that association with the Damned, in our state of imperfect metamorphosis, speeds the process. Our association with each other, also, for our vampire tendencies are stronger than our human souls.”

  “You mean we damage each other,” Jane said. “Well, my mother will be disappointed but relieved that I do not contemplate an affair of the heart with a Roman Catholic. I believe that making the choice between a papist and one of the Damned as a son-in-law might prove a weighty moral dilemma for her.”

  “You jest about it. I admire you for that.”

  “What else can I do?” She walked ahead of him as a cart clattered by on the road, for they had now left the driveway of the Great House. “Surely at my time of life to think of love is absurd.”

  “My dear, I am older than you even in human terms.”

  She nodded. “I shall go the rest of the way alone. I thank you for coming with me.”

  She turned away quickly, ignoring his outstretched hand. A handshake between two friends, what harm could there be in that? Merely the danger of bursting into tears of disappointment and anger, and she did not want him to see her weep. She entered the yard of the cottage, where chickens stretched and fluffed themselves but scattered at her approach, and let herself in through the back door of the house. From the kitchen came the sound of banging pots and the servants’ voices; the household was awake.

  She grabbed her own clothes from the peg where she had hung them last night and crept into the shuttered, dim dining room to change into her shift, and then barefoot, and hoping Cassandra would not awake to ask awkward questions about the boots and men’s clothes she carried, ascended the stairs and entered their bedchamber.

  Cassandra lay asleep, as usual buried beneath the bedclothes.

  Jane thrust the men’s clothes beneath her bed. She would have to send them back to the Great House, for she would not go herself. William’s presence, as her Creator, was too strong, and she did not want to see Raphael again.