Midnight Kiss

by Nancy Gideon

  Finally, it slowed, growing languid and lush, flowing all around her and within her. Her hands had risen to clutch in Louis’s hair, holding him at her throat, but even that became too great an effort. Her fingers loosened, relaxed, grew numb, and finally let go. And her hands thumped slackly to the mattress as consciousness was bled dry and reality faded.

  Chapter Sixteen

  AWARENESS CAME TO Louis in a tortured rush, lurching through him on the frantic beats of his heart. Pain, terrible and crushing in his face, his chest. The cold panic of death. Power reborn. Hunger. Hunger. A senseless driving thing, that relentless craving. Animal and instinctive, that vile thirst. That hunger to live, to devour life. To feed on the warm, rich pulse of life and feed and feed until the blood intoxicated. Because that was the kind of monster left behind when all that was human was drained away.

  What had he done?

  His eyes snapped open to the sight of his bed canopy overhead. He lay still, panting softly, clinging with a trembling hope to the wish that it had all been just a dream. That none of it had happened. That the taste in his mouth wasn’t the very blood flushing hot through his every fiber. He closed his eyes and forced down the drunken satiation, breathing deep, dragging up the awful courage to look, to discover if all had been truth or dream.

  He opened his eyes and slowly turned his head, bracing for whatever sight would greet him. Then his breath gushed out in wave of relief for Arabella was there beside him, her eyes closed gently in sleep, her features so lovely and serene, and he found he was shaking all over.

  “Oh, Bella, my love, I have had the most terrible dream...”

  Then he touched her cheek, refusing to recognize its pallor, and leaned over to taste her lips, rejecting their unnatural chill and unresponsiveness.

  “Bella?”

  Her head moved all too easily at the gentle guide of his hand. There was no denying the wounds at her throat or the bloodstains, dark and sinister, upon snow-white sheets. Or the fact that her beautiful bared breasts moved not at all.

  “No.” He took a tight breath. “No, no... Bella...”

  He rolled up to his knees and simply rocked back and forth, overwhelmed by the shock of it. From some deep well inside him came a sound that was half laugh, half sob as he thought of the irony—such irony. Remembering Gerardo’s crazed grief as he spoke of killing all those he’d loved. The justice of it was too cruel to comprehend.

  “What have I done... oh, Bella, what have I done?”

  Carefully, so carefully, he gathered her up in his arms. She was fragile, like a delicate leaf drained to a skeletal framework by some greedy insect. Her arms trailed down like pale silken sashes and her head lolled back, exposing his savage mark. He held her in a cherishing embrace, his head pillowed on her still bosom, awful sounds beginning to wail and whimper from him as he tried to grasp the fact that she was gone.

  “Don’t leave me, Bella. Don’t leave me alone. Forgive me. You must forgive me. I never meant—I never meant to hurt you.”

  When he was nearly lost to his all-too-human mourning, his sharpened senses began to detect a faint thrumming that was not his own, a stubborn flutter of life struggling beneath the press of his damp cheek within a form that was not yet hollow.

  He lifted up slowly, his own breath suspended, almost afraid to hope as unsteady fingertips sought the unmarked side of her throat. And felt an unmistakable stirring.

  She was alive. His Arabella was a fighter—a brave, determined female. But was the trickle of life that remained enough to see her through the night? The alternatives were all too terrifying. He couldn’t lose her. He sat for a moment, adoring her beloved features through a mist of anguish. He couldn’t let her die.

  Howland. He would take her to her father. He would know. He would be able to restore her.

  Hard as it was, he released her and was quick to clothe them both. Dressing her was like dressing a cloth doll. He swept to the door, taking no pleasure in the power surging through him, and shouted for Takeo. The sound of his voice swelled mightily through the halls, waking his servant from the deep, unnatural sleep Louis had cast over him. Scrubbing his eyes and looking concerned, the boy rushed on bare feet, then slowed and stopped in dismay. He was quick to recognize the change in his master, and Louis fought not to shrink beneath that knowledge.

  “Takeo, harness up the carriage. There’s been... an accident.”

  The inscrutable gaze for once gave all away as the boy tried to look beyond him into the bedroom. His youthful face was etched with stark distress.

  “Do it now!”

  Takeo flinched and backed a few wary steps before turning to race down the stairs.

  Louis went back into the bedroom, pausing briefly as he passed his shaving stand. And he was drawn fatalistically to peer into the small mirror there, to see—nothing. Nothing but the room behind him. And with a wretched cry, he smashed his fist into that damning glass, shattering it as all his dreams had shattered.

  IT WAS HARD FOR Stuart Howland to look upon the figure hunched on his sofa with head in hands, unashamedly weeping, without seeing a devoted husband suffering from heartache. But it was also impossible for the doctor not to see beyond to what else Louis Radman was—the bloodthirsty fiend who had drained his daughter near to death. He couldn’t help but see the demon he’d given his daughter to in marriage.

  At his step, Louis came up in a stiff bolt of alarm. There was a desperate wildness glazing his eyes, eyes that glittered like wet gold. Dead eyes.

  “Does she live?”

  It took all Stuart’s control to answer in a level voice. “Yes. Barely.”

  “But you can save her. You can make her strong.” These weren’t questions, they were demands, and Stuart was in no mood for them. Not now. And he was not afraid of the killer beneath his roof.

  “I don’t know. Time will tell if she’s strong enough to survive.”

  Louis took a shuddering breath, his eyes closing as fresh grief streaked his face. A face flushed and ruddy with life stolen from a trusting innocent. “She will. She must.”

  “And if she doesn’t,” the doctor made himself ask, “what then? What will she be if she dies?”

  Louis spoke slowly, with a matter-of-fact flatness of inevitability. As if he’d seen it so many times, it no longer had the power to shock or disturb. “She will rise up as a revenant-en-corps. Without the transformation of spirit, she will walk as a revived corpse, a decomposing body stalking the night in search of victims to sate her hunger, an undead horror.”

  “Like you,” Howland said savagely, but Louis shook his head with a grim sadness.

  “Not like me. Nothing like me. Not unless I were to initiate her with my blood, to bring her over at the point of death. If I do not and she dies, she will be no more than a purposeless ghoul preying on anything she comes across, without the cunning or skill to survive.”

  “In other words, your blood would make her into a clever, immoral killer, instead of a simple beast.”

  Louis didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. Instead, he said very softly, very gravely, “Should she come closer to death, I will see that she crosses over to share eternity with me.”

  “No! You will not turn my child into... into a—”

  “Vampire,” Louis concluded for him. “It was not my intention, but I will not lose her.”

  Stuart glared at him, growing angrier by the second. “She would not want to exist as such. She loved life too dearly to wish it so perverted. She would rather die with dignity than continue in damnation.”

  Louis couldn’t argue, because he wasn’t sure the doctor was wrong. Arabella had vowed to follow him across the grave, but she’d had no idea what that would entail and he couldn’t bring himself to thrust a corrupted half-life upon her unless he knew for certain that it was her will. Even if it meant giving up hi
s selfish need to have her with him. So he told the doctor in a somber voice, “Then you must be prepared to do what needs to be done to keep her from rising again.”

  Stuart turned away from the illusion of his humanity. He asked in a choking tone, “What must I do?”

  “The kindest, quickest way is during daylight hours, while she sleeps. Sever the head from the body and kill the evil within her by driving a stake through her heart. She should then be burned and her ashes scattered in flowing water so the spirit will be trapped there.”

  “That is the only way?” His words quavered with horror.

  “There is fire or consumption by the light of day, but those are—unpleasant.” Enough said about that.

  Howland took a ragged breath, as if trying not to associate the grimness of their conversation to the child he’d raised. “If she lives, what then?”

  “She will be linked to me for as long as I exist.”

  Louis could imagine the doctor’s analytical mind spinning, reaching outside its usual realm to presuppose the supernatural states affecting his daughter. He came to one logical end. “If you die before her, what then?”

  “The curse will end with me. But I cannot die. I am immortal.”

  But not indestructible. Louis could read that whisper as it rode through Howland’s mind. It wasn’t spoken aloud. He could feel the man’s hatred, his fury, his loathing, solidifying in a dangerous direction. And Louis was cautious.

  “If you have done all you can for her, I want to take her with me.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “She must not be moved. Her condition is unstable and critical. She needs my care. There are measures I must take soon, or she will die.”

  Louis nodded. “I want to see her.”

  “No. That I cannot allow.”

  “I am not going to harm her,” Louis drawled out fiercely.

  “I am hardly convinced of that, my lord. You will not take her. You will not see her. Ever.”

  Louis absorbed that with gaze narrowed and replied, “She is my wife.”

  Howland threw out all remnants of civility. “That unwholesome alliance will not stand! I will not have my child in the hands of a demon! I’ve seen what good your word is, Radman. I let my lust for fame overcome my sensibilities. No more! You came close to killing her, and I’ll not believe you can keep it from happening again. You are what you are, a vile, unholy thing. And you will not have Arabella. Leave this house. Leave our lives. If you think for a moment that she will not hate you for what you’ve done, you are mistaken. Good night, sir. There is nothing for you here.”

  If you think for a moment that she will not hate you for what you’ve done...

  Louis hesitated. He need not have listened. He could have easily swept the threat of Stuart Howland aside and taken what he wanted. But he could not bring himself to harm one dear to Arabella. Hadn’t he done enough already to prove everything Howland said was true? And because he was so broken by despair, so filled with self-loathing, he allowed himself to be driven off into the night like the curse he was. Away from his love and his last hope.

  NOTHING HAD EVER seemed so empty as the inside of his house when Louis returned to it. Ghosts were everywhere. Arabella agreeing to marry him beneath his kisses in the parlor, her radiant smile as she spoke of reading through all the books in his library, the timid way she’d devoured him with her gaze that first day she’d stood on his doorstep. Shadows of happiness that would never know substance again. Because he would never have substance again.

  Live or die, Arabella was lost to him, and he could think of no reason to continue an eternity without her.

  Takeo followed behind him, a silent, worried watchdog of his every mood. For some reason, the mind link between them had not been rejoined when he returned to his supernatural state. Perhaps he had been human, for just a little while. Just long enough to taste the fleeting splendor of that existence and to ruin the life of the woman he loved. But that frail state had faded fast. Whether or not it would have held, he didn’t know. Would never know. He’d been regressing even as he went on his fateful, foolish visit to Gerardo, elsewise he wouldn’t have sprung up after mortal death like a powerful phoenix reborn. Elsewise, he would have been in a fledgling’s thrall to her who had made him, to Bianca, instead of master of his own course. A course more deadly and destructive than even the wicked Bianca could have devised for him.

  He’d been a proud fool to think he could escape his destiny. There could be no salvation for him, no redemption of a soul too lost to preternatural sins of arrogance and disdain for mankind. And he had dragged many with him into that hell. Gerardo. The Pasquale family. How many more over the centuries? Even Arabella.

  That thought was unconscionable. She who loved life could not be reduced to his dark state. Not unless it was by her choice, and he had yet to hear her speak it. And he would not hear her speak it if she was to die and pass beyond while separate from him. Years and miles would not reduce his hold upon her. Only death could break it.

  Hers.

  Or his.

  What reason did he have to go on? The residue of his mortal conscience could not stand the strain of Arabella’s soul upon it. He’d lost his chance to walk with her in her world, and now his own held no appeal. His own, where Bianca and Gerardo crouched like patient spiders, waiting to ensnare him in their age-old web of vengeance. Where he would go on and on at the expense of the innocent—unless he ended it now. Now, while Arabella hovered at the edge of the veil of death, because once that balance teetered, there would be no retrieving her.

  And if she lived, how could he bear the knowledge of her turning away from him in horror and hatred? How could he keep himself from seeking her out again, whether it was her will or not? And of course, it wouldn’t be her will. It would never be her will again. He’d taken that from her when he’d taken her blood. She would be his servant, his slave, and he couldn’t stand the thought of her dependence when it was her self-sufficiency he’d admired most of all.

  He’d had it all, his every wish. The sun, human emotion, the love of a woman, the anticipation of a normal death... why go backward now? He knew what awaited him, the same that had been there for three centuries, and it held no sense of expectation. What was power without the ability to feel compassion? What was eternity without simple intimacy? What was he without the woman he’d made into his wife? Why go back when nothing of value lay ahead?

  He was standing in the vast ballroom. Darkness there seemed centuries deep. A fitting place for what he had in mind. He crossed to the wall and lifted a heavy saber from its display with crested shield. Then he turned to Takeo.

  “It is time for you to see to your promise.”

  Takeo’s gaze was confused, but when Louis extended the saber, understanding came quick and terrible. The boy took a step back, refusing the offering.

  “Takeo, you must. Free me from this horror that I am. Save Arabella from the same.”

  The boy’s head shook from side to side and his eyes filled with tears. His mouth moved in a frustration of silence, and the need to express himself had never been more important. He pushed up his sleeve and held his wrist up to Louis, patting the bared surface desperately.

  “No.”

  Impatiently, Takeo reached up to catch the back of Louis’s head, forcing it down against the frantic pulse, begging him to make the connection by tempting the vampire hunger with the irresistible scent of life throbbing against his lips. Louis’s hand came up to support the boy’s arm as his thirst roared, crushing reluctance.

  With a swift puncture, the link was forged. Louis felt the boy’s blood jet to the back of his mouth and he swallowed with a low moan of helpless rapture. There was nothing like that first taste, the warmth, the strength, the fire. It was glorious. Always. Akin to nothing in Louis’s experience, e
xcept maybe making love to his first woman. The sharp anticipation, the longing, followed by the surprising pleasure of the act itself. The always amazing feel of drinking up the texture of another’s mind. A communication likened to no other.

  Master...

  Takeo’s voice, so sweet upon the ears of the only one who had ever heard it.

  Louis drew back, panting hard, commanding the rage of thirst to quiet. He was then aware of how he’d crushed Takeo to him the way a cat subdued his prey until he’d toyed with it to the point of death. He released the boy with a momentary alarm. There was always that guilty fear that he would go too far. But this time, he’d been able to stop himself. This one last time.

  Louis reached out with his thoughts. Takeo, my friend, it is so good to speak with you again.

  Takeo was quick to respond. Then do not cut our conversation short, I beg of you.

  You ask too much, young friend. It must be done and I would have it done at your hands, at hands that would strike true out of love.

  Please, don’t order this done.

  I do not order it. I ask. If you will not, I will give myself over to the daylight. I don’t want to burn. I am very afraid of that fire. But this way, it is nothing. I’ve seen it done, and I—I will feel nothing. You would be doing me a great kindness. I am determined to see this done, and you will spare me much suffering. Louis paused, letting his anguish swell until he could see it reflected in the boy’s teary gaze. I cannot go on without her, Takeo. And I cannot bring her over to me. I must end it now, while there is a chance for her soul to survive. Please help me. Do this one thing for me.

  But—but what of me? Who will care for me once you are gone?

  Louis smiled slightly. Never had he heard Takeo express a selfish wish before, and he read through it easily. My friend, do not play upon my sympathies. You know it is you who has seen to my care all these years. You will be fine. I have seen to it. I will miss our conversations. But the time grows late. Release me, then, one last favor. Louis paused, struggling to frame all his passions in one phrase.