Every evening at dinner, the footman brought him blood, and each time, she knew when the it was coming because Dennis shifted in his chair, eyes drawn to the approaching cup. He paid a high price for his strength and immortal life. A part of him must be thinking of blood every waking moment.
Calban was giving him enough blood to sustain him, but he was pushing him. To what end? Parsons knew it had something to do with the silver bands. Calban wanted Dennis to lose control so she would have to use the lightning magic on him. This must be some new test but she wasn’t sure who he was testing.
One evening, she went to offer Dennis a new book she had just finished and heard him speaking softly to himself.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, amen…” He was silent.
Parsons had seen picture of Americans praying beside their beds. Was that what he was doing? It was all a mystery to her, but he sounded so earnest.
Suddenly, he was standing in the doorway although she hadn’t heard him move. “What are you doing out here? Listening in?”
“No, I—I was bringing you a book.” She handed it to him. “But I did hear you…”
“I don’t really believe in this stuff anymore,” he said, with a pained note in his voice. “I just can’t shake it.”
“Did you ever really believe it?”
“I believed in something. I guess sometimes I didn’t always believe in Catholicism, not every bit of it, anyway. But I thought the heart of it was true, maybe. Now I can’t believe in anything. It would crush me too much. I have certainly been barred from the gates of heaven, so it’s easier to assume it never existed at all.”
“And what do you do?” Parsons asked. “When you start thinking that everything you’ve been told is a lie?”
“Is that what you think, Parsons?”
Parsons. He said her first name. She wondered how long he had been thinking of her that way. He had always been Dennis to her, even though she tried to call him Mr. Faraday.
He moved away from the door and toward her, putting a hand against the wall behind her head. When had he started looking at her without seeming afraid?
Maybe this was the first time.
“All I’ve ever had to believe in is the will of fate,” Parsons said. “It’s the only way I could accept my own fate. To know it was meant to be…and if I do everything I’m told to do, I’ll have greater fortune in my next life. But—if I stop believing that—Mama’s death would be senseless…”
“What if it’s a lie they told you to control and pacify you?”
She looked up at him, and then let her eyes level to the hollow of his neck, his unbuttoned collar.
“If you think your belief is a lie, why do you still pray?” she asked.
“Mmm.” He sounded willing to relent to this argument. “I just want so much to trust something,” he said. “That’s all.”
“Dennis…what did Calban do to you?”
He dropped his hand from the wall, slipping his hands into his pockets, still regarding her. Still standing close. Quite close. Close enough that Papa would clear his throat if he climbed the stairs. “He starved me until I had no self control at all. And God knows I tried. I tried to hang on, and I couldn’t. He wanted to see what it was like when…”
She stiffened, putting a hand on his arm. He sounded so pained she could hardly bear to let him go on. “I’m sorry. I didn’t really have a right to ask.”
“Look, I don’t want to admit it but you should know. He threw a woman in there with me. Later he told me she’d been sentenced to death anyway, so it didn’t matter. But at the time, I didn’t know, and it didn’t matter. I was too damn hungry. A part of me felt as helpless as she was, but I still did the deed. I killed her. I killed her while I fucked her.” His eyes shut.
A little shock went down her spine, but she didn’t react outwardly. “Your file said—”
“My file said what?” he hissed. Even though he wasn’t yelling, his voice was so threatening that she shrunk flat against the wall.
“If she was sentenced to death, it was hopeless for her. It was—a merciful form of execution.”
“Oh, I see, I did her a favor, did I? Well, I’m the one who has to live with it. You don’t know how hard I tried not to harm another human being. The other vampires had no such qualms anymore. You don’t know how proud I was to break away from them and live alone, knowing that I had left with my moral integrity—a bit compromised but never broken. I wasn’t a killer. I could go to sleep each day resting easy with my soul. But Calban wouldn’t rest until I was truly a monster.”
Sorrow welled in her throat. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I truly am, I—I don’t know what to think anymore. I don’t know what to do.”
“Perhaps it’s telling that you’re not more shocked.” He finally turned away from her.
“I am shocked.”
“You could have fooled me.”
“I suppose—well—I know people do awful things. This world is cruel. I never trust men at all. Els is always telling me that most of them are nice and I only notice the bad ones. But when you say you felt helpless that day—that you fought for your integrity—I truly do believe you’re a good man. I believe you because you say shocking things to me. You’re not trying to pretend you’re a good man while you’re thinking something else. I see the fight in your eyes every day that you’re here.” She hated that her words didn’t banish the pain that was in his eyes now, didn’t convince him. “It really isn’t your fault. Magic is like that. It does things to people. The real you is the man who never killed anyone in America.”
“I hope so,” he said.
“You don’t look like you enjoy eating,” Dennis remarked, as she picked at her fruit one morning several days later.
“I’ve gotten more used to it over the years.” She glanced at the clock. The courier with the blood was late, and Papa wasn’t home either—he’d gone to the workshops early. “Did you want anything?” she asked.
He looked at the tray of fruit and the neglected tureen of seaweed soup and shook his head. “This is no breakfast, if you ask me. I’d eat if I could have my mother’s cooking.”
“What would she make?”
“Truthfully, my mother isn’t a very good cook at all.”
She half-smiled. “Then why do you want it?”
“Because it’s how home tastes. What I’d give to have my morning coffee with some eggs and bacon.”
“What is bacon? I’ve seen it in pictures.”
“Cured pork. Strips of it, all crispy fried up in a skillet. Did your mother ever cook?” He slid into a chair and slung an arm over the back. Such a simple motion but sometimes the grace of his simplest movements enraptured her.
And no one ever asked her questions like that about her mother. “No…she worked all the time. Our cook always did the cooking. I don’t think Mama ever set foot in the kitchen.”
“She did the same thing as your father?”
“Almost. She worked more with large steam-powered engines. Trains, especially. That was how she died. A steam boiler exploded.”
“What was she like?”
No one asked that either. Maybe because everyone knew what she was like. Or maybe—well, it wasn’t the way of things here to speak about what the dead had been like. It was a short jump from reminiscing about the dead to ancestor worship, and Lord Jherin discouraged that. “She was—I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. She was wonderful but I don’t know how to explain.” She was distressed, realizing that she didn’t have words to explain her mother to someone who had never known her.
“You don’t have to.”
“But I wish I could. I—I’m afraid maybe I don’t remember her very well. People say she was wonderful. She was the opposite of my father. He was always quiet, except with her. They both came alive together, working on things.”
“Where were you?”
“Underfoot. I wasn’t shoved off on
my nurse all the time if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I was,” he said. “You seem awfully lonely.”
“I’m not, I have Els.” But of course she was lonely.
I have you, Dennis…oh wishes to the fates, let me have you. She was starting to rely on his presence, in some way, and that scared her, because Calban could snatch him away at any moment. Their conversation seemed to come easier after he told her what Calban had done to him, like it was a weight lifted from his shoulders, even though they had not spoken of it again.
“I don’t even know for sure if my mother is alive anymore,” he said. “Ten years have passed. She would have turned sixty this year.”
“She can’t cook? I thought that was all women do, in Earth.”
“My mother is very absent-minded. She’s bad at all those things she’s supposed to be good at.”
“I’ve never heard anyone say their mother is bad at everything she does.”
“It was a running family joke. But she was good at the things that counted. Maybe she’s a little like yours was, but without the ability to pursue her ambitions. But she was funny, well-liked…and very kind.”
“What about your father? Is he similar to mine? Quiet?”
“Not exactly. No, I guess we differ there. He was one for telling a tall tale.”
“A ‘tall’ tale?”
“You don’t have a word for that either, huh? It’s a story that is greatly exaggerated for the purposes of entertainment.”
Eugenie walked into the room nervously. “Miss—the courier was here. He said the blood is late and for you both to go to work.”
“Why?” Parsons asked.
“I don’t know.”
Dennis frowned, but he said, “I’m all right. Let’s go, then.”
He actually had his own desk at Product Development by now. He reviewed translations when the men weren’t peppering him with questions. But he was meant for something more than this. She wondered if anyone else felt like they were trying to tame an animal.
She was nervous to bring him there hungry. But she didn’t want to leave him behind. His mere presence protected her from harassment these days, even if Mr. Samaron still looked at her whenever he came by.
They had barely settled into the days work when the dull everyday of the office was invaded by Calban, sharply dressed in an Earth-style suit of velvet; dark red velvet, the color of the blood in the bottle he was carrying in one hand.
Parsons’ heart twisted. She hadn’t seen Calban since he brought Dennis to her. And he never came here.
The men and Lu rushed to welcome him. “Sir—to what do I owe this visit?” Mr. Denordin asked, as if it had anything to do with him. He hardly seemed to see the blood.
Dennis stood up and looked at Calban wordlessly. It almost seemed like a challenge.
Calban gave Lu the bottle. “Put this on your desk, dear, would you?”
“Oh.” She almost jumped back before taking it. “Yes, sir. But why?”
“You’ve all been taking part in an experiment,” Calban said. “Mr. Faraday is, as you know by now I’m sure, an undead human. Blood is how he stays so fresh.” He smiled faintly. He was insulting Dennis by lumping him in with zombies, who were fragile at best, and decomposed without elixirs.
“I’ve been sending him this blood during his private hours, but I think it’s time to try it during the day now. Specifically, I want him to wait until lunch to have it.”
“This isn’t very fair,” Parsons said. “Why do we need to test him?”
“Because, if this city was under attack by the Miralem, I might not be able to get him his daily ration in the chaos, and I need to know that he won’t go around killing people to feed.”
Lu looked quite reluctant to have the bottle in her keeping.
“Calban,” Dennis said.
“The Peacock General,” Calban prompted.
“I’m not going to call you that.” Dennis walked up to him, moving on the verge of supernatural speed. Calban was quite tall and always wore heeled shoes, so nearly everyone had to look up to him, but Dennis looked at him with unbridled loathing. It made Parsons shiver. “What do you want from me?”
“I’m trying to give you some measure of freedom.” Calban spoke through his teeth. Had he always been this menacing? He was looking very thin, Parsons noticed. Pale, too, under a thin veneer of cosmetics.
“A measure, yes,” Dennis said. “As long as you can dictate every moment of my life.”
“I need to know where you are at all times, Mr. Faraday. You could hurt someone.”
“This world is a sham,” Dennis said. “Everything here is stolen, including me. You brought me here with a promise to help me. At least I can console myself knowing that it’s all hollow. This is a brutal world, given a veneer of respectability. You have no ideas of your own, but you like to take everything you can get your hands on, claim it and control it.”
Calban swished a hand through the air and a jolt of magic forced Dennis to take a step back.
Mr. Denordin stopped just short of grabbing Dennis by the shoulder.
“Control yourself, Mr. Faraday,” Calban said. “No one likes a critique from an uninformed critic, do they?”
“Mr. Faraday, sit down,” Mr. Denordin said. “You should never ever speak to the general that way.” He looked at Calban like he expected some tremendous punishment to rain down, and was ever so slightly excited to watch the show.
But Calban put his hands behind his back. For a moment, he regarded Dennis in heavy silence. Then he simple said, “If he drinks the blood before lunchtime, let me know.”
Everyone in the office looked uncomfortable, slowly getting back to work. Parsons sat down in her chair, feeling small for a moment before anger crept in. She didn’t know where to look.
Dennis smacked a hand on her desk. “Thank you for defending me,” he said sarcastically.
“I—I’m sorry.” She could hardly express how sorry she was, but—in that moment, Calban terrified her.
Dennis went to Lu’s desk and took the bottle of blood. He drank it right down as Lu put up a feeble protest of, “Ohhh, the general said…”
“Then tell him I failed,” Dennis said. “I don’t care. I’m going for a long walk, unless you care to stop me, Miss Belvray.”
“It’s—it’s sunny outside.”
“Then I guess I’ll burn.” He yanked on his gloves, snatched up his cloak, and left.
She let Dennis walk home, and drove to Els’ to pour out her heart.
“Sounds to me like he’s just cross at Calban. And no wonder. Let’s go back to your house and have some fun without him.”
“Not my house, then he’ll see us.”
“That’s the point. He’ll probably feel silly for taking it out on you.”
“You just want to meet Dennis,” Parsons said.
“You promised I could. It’s been a month!”
“I didn’t promise. I said maybe.”
“I hate to break it to you, but no matter how much I embarrass you, you can’t hide him from me forever,” Els said, moving to her closet. “How long since you got in some target practice?”
Lawn archery was one of the most popular athletic occupations for young women. Parsons used to think Fanarlem didn’t need to exercise, that she couldn’t get any stronger or more coordinated. But over time she realized that all her running around with Els had, in fact, increased the agility and precision of her movements. She didn’t seem to get stronger, but better at using what strength she had.
“We will look very dashing shooting arrows,” Els said.
They set up the target in Parsons’ garden lawn, and were soon engaged in friendly competition, without ever setting foot in the house.
When clouds moved over the sun, the back door of the house opened. Dennis walked into the yard. She felt like he’d been waiting; he’d probably had enough of the sun earlier. His face still looked pinkish beneath a hat, despite his quick healing.
Parsons immediately shot the next arrow past the target. So much for dashing.
“You want to take a turn?” Els asked him, like nothing had happened between Parsons and Dennis.
Parsons looked away, nervous, acutely aware of his shoes crunching in the grass.
“You must be Els,” Dennis said.
“I am the famous Els. Finally.” She smiled at him and shot Parsons a look of approval.
He looked at Parsons. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking. “I’d take a turn, sure,” he said. “I’ve shot a gun, but not a bow and arrow.”
Els handed him the bow. “Hold it like this…,” Els instructed him.
A thrill passed over Parsons, watching him draw back the bowstring and size up his target. His eyes intent and beautiful, the lines of his arms and legs strong and graceful. If he held her, she would be dwarfed by him, and she always hated being dwarfed by everyone else, but with him the thought became exciting instead. She wanted to be small next to him, overwhelmed by his strength, and yet she was sure he would be very restrained with her.
Well, of course he damn well would. So restrained, in fact, that he will never want you at all.
She cursed her brain for even letting these thoughts in. This attraction thing was a disease. A disease that she had to conceal as best she could, like a creeping rash.
Els smacked a mosquito on her hand. Parsons realized that Dennis was staring at her skin like he was a mosquito himself. His eyes glazed.
Suddenly he grabbed Els’ hand.
She gasped and tried to yank her hand back. “Don’t tell me this bothers you? This little smear of blood?”
But Parsons knew how much he was already struggling to keep control. She had been sitting in one of the lawn chairs, but she quickly scrambled over and put a hand on his arm. “Dennis,” she said, with a hint of desperation.
His hand tightened around Els’ arm. He slowly pulled her wrist toward his mouth. He seemed in a trance.
“You’re hurting me,” Els said, trying to sound calm and not quite managing. “Mr. Faraday, please.”
The Vampire's Doll (The Heiress and the Vampire Book 1) Page 14
