Pulling his fingers out of her pulsing sex, he tightened his hold on her neck.
She was not so dazed that she didn’t recognize the gesture of a man drawing a weapon.
“Beg for forgiveness,” he commanded. “Beg for it!”
“Who are you?!”
“I said beg!”
It was difficult to speak with his fingers digging into her flesh but she whispered, “Please forgive me!” and not only because she feared the silver dagger in his hand.
“Tell me you truly regret all the terrible things you have done,” he insisted remorselessly. “Tell me you are truly sorry.”
“I am sorry! Oh God, I am!” She was destined to die tonight after all but instead of flesh ripped from her bones by wolves it was regret, an agonizing, rending regret she was suffering. She truly was sorry for all the mortal sins she had committed. Suddenly she couldn’t understand what had possessed her to behave as wickedly as she had. It all seemed like a nightmare, a terrible dream she had just woken from in the cold and the dark. “Please, my Lord Jesus Christ, forgive me, for I have sinned!”
Tightening his hold on her throat so she couldn’t breathe, much less utter another word, he took a step back, raised the dagger and swiftly thrust the blade into her heart.
Chapter Sixteen
Gasping, Audrey wrenched free of Jonathan’s grasp and placed both hands protectively against her chest. “You stabbed me in the heart!” Despite her shock, she remembered not to speak too loudly in the paranormal fog enveloping them.
He returned her incredulous stare with a supremely steady gaze, but his lips looked thinner than normal; his sensual mouth strung tight with emotions he wasn’t letting her see.
The gentle rainfall was in the process of transforming into snow. Just before melting, frozen drops of water glimmered all over his black coat as though he’d casually wrapped a piece of the universe around his body. His hazel eyes were remarkably luminous, like double suns burning through the mist and making her feel warm deep, deep inside herself where the cold could never reach. But now, suddenly, his eyes also frightened her.
“It’s freezing.” Hugging herself, she took a step back away from him. “I need to go home.”
“But your friend is still missing,” he reminded her quietly. “Don’t you want to find her?”
“Of course I do!” She pulled her gloves out of her coat pocket and concentrated on slipping them on to avoid his eyes. “But I don’t know how to since you won’t tell me. You just expect me to know everything somehow, but I don’t. It’s impossible. Anything can happen in there!”
In the Dragon’s Breath. The fog drifting through the burned out church in which they stood was much more than just droplets of water vapor suspended in the air. Mist, she had discovered, was a physical manifestation of pure potential, an exhalation of boundless energy she was able to inhale with her feelings and shape with her thoughts.
“Are you really giving up so soon, Audrey?”
“I’m not giving up, Jonathan, I simply don’t have your powers. I’ll freeze to death standing out here for hours on end… How long was I gone?”
“Just a few minutes.”
“What? It felt like hours!”
“Well, it wasn’t.”
Abruptly, shame overwhelmed the shock and anger possessing her. It was one thing to know, intellectually, that he had once killed a woman she had been in another life, and another thing entirely to actually, helplessly experience the moment of her murder at his hands. She couldn’t stop seeing the long dagger rising over her like a silver cross; disbelief repeatedly sparked in her mind as she kept recalling the lightning-bright metal flashing and slicing through her flesh and heart. The pain lasted a mere instant, vanishing like a dream as she abruptly woke from what she perceived as her self into everything in a silent expansion akin to merging a sexual climax with a nuclear explosion. At least that was the only way her brain could describe it now.
“Falkon was there,” she confessed, through her repentant tone attempting to convey she still felt intensely drawn to this centuries-old and strikingly handsome vampire, a drop of whose blood she had inadvertently (or willingly?) drunk. “I introduced him to Aapti as… as my husband. Then he-”
“Then he commanded you to remember.”
“Yes.”
“And you obeyed him.”
“I had no choice! One second I was standing in a warm bedroom in some idealized version of ancient India with Aapti, who was dripping with bright and colorful jewels, and then suddenly it was dark and cold and I was sitting in a sled flying across the snow in what might have been Siberia for all I know!”
“Eastern Anatolia in Turkey, hundreds of miles from Constantinople, now known as Istanbul.”
“And you know this because you were there, correct? You were the wolf chasing the sled, and then you were the man who…” She couldn’t bring herself to describe what had happened but there was no need; he knew what he had done.
“I saved your soul, Audrey.” His voice was hard, denying her the gentle reassurance her defensive anger was petulantly demanding. “If you hadn’t confessed, if you hadn’t begged for forgiveness, you wouldn’t have died that night and been reborn and begun making amends for all the vile crimes you committed.”
“Oh God!” Bowing her head, she covered her face with both hands and muttered, suffering a thrill of horror, “I would still be a vampire.”
“We’ve only just begun here.”
She lowered her hands from her face and focused on his sternly beautiful countenance. Shaken to the core of her being, she almost felt nothing at all… the storm of her emotions orbited an utterly calm transcendent I…
She remembered what he had said, “I am your sword, my lady. Use me wisely” but she wasn’t as brave as she had believed. When push came to shove she immediately tripped all over herself and, her self-esteem plummeting, took it out on him—blaming him for her short-comings by accusing him of expecting too much from her too soon. The truth was she resented him only because she was disappointed with herself.
She took a slow breath, straightening her back as she removed her gloves, returning them to her pocket. Then she moved toward him, bracing herself on the implacable understanding in his eyes. Nothing, she felt, could ever chip away or erode his profound confidence, which had its source in—which was—a force beyond time and all the confining laws on which physical dimensions depended… his awareness was the very nature of space… as was hers… perception was structure, creation and consciousness were inseparable from each other…
Yes, my lady!
“All right, let’s try this again,” she said brightly. “I promise that, this time, I’ll keep a clearer head. Now that I have some idea what it can be like… in there, I’ll do my best to hold on to the knowledge of where I really am, here with you. I’ll really do my best this time not to be afraid no matter what happens.”
“Sometimes fear and pain can’t be avoided,” he held her eyes, “but you don’t have to believe in their power over you, over your true Being.”
“Amen.”
“Vampires have more faith than most people,” he surprised her by adding, “but, even though they like to think they have, they’ve failed to conquer fear.”
“Yes, you told me… they desperately hold on to one particular physical vessel because even though they know life itself is eternal they’re afraid of losing their ego, their sense of self. They’ve no desire to be recycled in God, so to speak, even though the essence of who they are is immutable.”
“You understand intellectually, Audrey, but it’s time now to apply that knowledge.”
She thought, Easier said than done.
No doubt.
She wasn’t sure if he was agreeing with her or issuing a command. Was there ever a human being born who wasn’t plagued by doubts? Doubts were more insidious than termites; you scarcely knew they were there until life applied some form of pressure and you immediately broke down.
Closing her
eyes, she lowered her head and concentrated on the firm warmth of his hands cradling hers. Cradling… In many respects she was like an infant, completely dependent on his knowledge and protection. In the world she was suddenly living in the border between reality and imagination was no longer under the dictatorship of her reason or constantly patrolled by cynical thoughts, which were fatal as bullets to the subtle senses she was developing.
Nothing happened.
Aapti? she called tentatively in her head, but she didn’t feel her friend’s presence.
Try harder.
Aapti!? Where are you!? Show me, please!
It surprised her how fast she felt a forceful warmth flow up the back of her neck and rush out through the top of her head. My soul? The thought frightened her. She was off to a grand start. Desperately, she reached for the mysteriously calm I at the center of her being. Faint colored lights rippled behind her closed eyelids reminiscent of ocean waves flowing into the “cave” of her awareness and breaking against it to define her surroundings…
She opened her eyes and found herself standing in what appeared to be a dimly lit subterranean chamber. She couldn't determine the source of the illumination. The place looked disturbingly familiar and she understood why an instant later when she discerned a naked woman lying on her back across the packed dirt floor. Something cold slithered between her heartbeats, then she realized it wasn’t Aapti and was torn between relief and disappointment that she hadn’t found her friend. Reluctantly, she walked toward the motionless body. Abruptly, the young woman moaned as her head fell to one side.
She's still alive, thank God!
“And she can live forever,” a man’s voice wrapped itself insinuatingly around her, “if we want her to.”
“Falkon?”
He stepped out of the shadows as though her vocal chords caressing the syllables of his name had conjured him.
“Afanasiia.”
“My name is Audrey.” Her heart beat in synch with every step he took toward her. “Audrey Goodrich. Please remember that.”
“If you insist, but for me you will always be Afanasiia.”
Once again he had sewn impenetrable shadows into elegant clothing—a shirt with long full sleeves, form-fitting pants and knee-high boots that looked indestructible. She wondered if he had used cobwebs for thread as she found it difficult to look away from the unnaturally luminous little white buttons running all the way down his chest to his stomach, like a string of moons caught in his irresistibly attractive orbit. His commanding presence made it hard for her to think as at the extreme borders of her hearing she distinguished the bass-like thrumming sound she had come to expect in the Dragon’s Breath, only this time it was far away... as though the stone walls around them stretched for miles in all directions... she pictured a brilliant blue-white sea breaking on a rocky shore, above which rose the haunting towers of a magnificent old castle—Falkon’s centuries-old ego.
She said lightly, “Aren’t you tired of living on the island of this one limited personality you’ve inhabited for so long?”
“Not at all,” he responded mildly but his smile stiffened. She noticed then how his arms hung limply from his shoulders, almost like rags strung on hangers.
“Wouldn’t you love to sail the waves of the Zero Point Field, my lord?”
“That’s essentially what we’re doing right now, my lady.”
“Maybe, but when the time comes I won’t be afraid to strip off my physical body and dive in!”
“Only to be washed back to solid land gasping for breath between a woman’s thighs, and wailing in protest at finding yourself trapped in yet another brief and frustratingly powerless lifetime.”
“Falkon, why won’t you tell me where Aapti is?”
“I would never hurt you, Audrey-Afanasiia. Your friend is safe. She is merely serving as the bridge on which you and I can meet like this.”
“But she’s pregnant and her husband is worried sick about her. You can’t just – ”
“I promised you no harm would come to her.” Impatience sparked tiny red flames in his eyes, which just as quickly blew out as he added, with a hint of sadness, “I always kept my promises to you.”
“Did you? You promised you would come for me but during all those endless weeks I was fleeing for my life there was no sign, no word from you, at all. At every miserable little village I waited, but no messenger from you ever arrived and I was always forced to keep moving to avoid suspicion. Where were you?”
“My love, I followed as soon as I could, and I had almost caught up with you. It was I who found your body, still so beautiful, perfectly preserved by snow and ice, so that at first I thought you were still alive despite the dagger sheathed in your heart.” Abruptly, he closed the space between them and took her gruffly in his arms, pinning her arms to her sides and forcing her to rest a cheek against his chest. “I did not abandon you, Afanasiia! And it was certainly not I who murdered you! My wedding gift to you was eternal life. It was you who chose to throw it away by repenting. And ever since that fateful night, I have wandered the earth missing you like my own life and searching for you everywhere!”
The absolute silence where his heartbeat should have been made her feel as though she was plummeting down a bottomless chasm so swiftly it paralyzed her. It seemed a miracle when she was able to pull away from him. “You don’t have a heart, Falkon. How can you believe you still love me when you don’t even have a heart?”
“Don’t be foolish.” His tone remained patient. “Only the physical body depends on a crude pumping machine to keep it functioning.”
“But you need other people’s blood to survive and that’s wrong!”
“What gave you the idea,” he turned away, “that I need blood to survive, Audrey?” Stepping around the lovely inert body lying on the ground, he dropped to one knee beside it and looked up at her, his expression intent. “I feed merely to absorb and experience fresh perspectives on life. I was educated, my mind developed, in a very different time and place. It's like upgrading a computer’s operating system. As the world changes, it makes new demands on our awareness. How we perceive what's right or wrong or even what's possible keeps changing, slightly but significantly.”
She was listening to him, she couldn’t help it. Her curiosity was a fire his reasonable tone was stoking. As questions sparked in her mind, it cost her considerable effort to quench them in her mouth and swallow them. She watched, transfixed, as he slipped his hands beneath the girl’s shoulders and lifted her up into a sitting position. Her head hung back limply, exposing her creamy throat.
“This one is a sweet little hairdresser,” he said indulgently. “Her receptors are, as in every person, unique, but in her case very few of them have begun functioning at optimum capacity.” Holding her up, he slipped his other arm beneath her knees and lifted her effortlessly off the ground as he stood. “I think of her as vampire fast-food, a tasty little infusion of current pop culture.”
“Are you going to kill her?”
“She’s barely alive yet but, no, there’s no reason to kill her. Just a glass of her blood will be more than enough for a little cultural pick-me-up.”
“You have changed! When I was the woman in the sled I remembered all the horrible things we had done together.” She didn’t want to talk about it but she had to, Jonathan had told her it was necessary she face all her evil deeds so she could forgive herself. “We tortured and killed countless people just for fun!”
“We didn’t torture them, Afanasiia.” Indifferently dropping the girl's legs, he propped her back up against him, raised her arms straight over her head and clamped a metal restraint around each of her wrists. “It's true they died in the end, but before that they suffered the most sublime pleasure at our hands. And, by the way, the word fun did not exist at the time. Its peculiar vagueness is something I still struggle with. Perhaps this girl’s blood will help me with that.” He nearly smiled.
“Why hasn’t she woken up?” The vis
ion of Falkon suspending a lovely young woman from the ceiling was turning her on, there was no denying it and no point feeling guilty about it. When she spoke again, her voice sounded oddly matter-of-fact. “Did you drug her?”
“Of course not.” Standing behind the girl’s body—hanging now like a slab of meat at the butcher's except for the fact that she was still alive—he casually squeezed her pert breasts and slowly ran his hands along her shallow curves. “I have no desire to pollute her blood.”
She thought of Jonathan, and of her own physical body standing with his in the dense fog wafting through a burned out church. “I’m leaving now, Falkon...”
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
Her blue suitcase, which she had indeed forgotten all about, was suddenly lying on the floor a few feet away. It was closed. She had left it behind in a castle she had never been in because it didn’t really exist…
Don’t think.
The “voice” in her “head” could have been hers or Jonathan’s, it didn’t matter; it was only important she listen to it. She stared at the suitcase without trying to understand how it could be there, or where there was. It really was the most beautiful color, the deep luminous blue of a sunny winter day. She wondered if it still contained the clothes she had packed in it or if it was empty now. If she opened it, would she find Whispers sleeping in it again?
Falkon said firmly, “Open it.”
“Why? I already know what’s in it,” she lied. “I packed it.”
His answering silence possessed the force of a command. She didn’t look at him but she felt his willpower as distinctly as hands pressed against her back forcing her to move toward the suitcase. She didn’t resist because she sensed it was important she open it and face whatever it contained. Bolstered by how real and normal it looked, she sank to her knees, flipped open the old-fashioned brass clasps, and slowly lifted the top.
Behind her Falkon spoke softly, “I took the liberty of repacking it for you.”
She glanced at him, and when she looked back down at the suitcase it had grown larger; it remained narrow but it was long enough now to accommodate a single gown spread out in it like a body.
Eternal Blood - Books 1-3 Wolf Shield, Sword of the Blood, Vampire Bride Page 17
