by Raven Hart
Who indeed? The need to explain Eleanor fought with my damaged pride. Why should I explain anything to my faithless wife?
“She’s my fledgling, and my lover.” There, I’d said it. I watched Diana closely for a reaction.
She looked down for a moment, most probably choosing her words. “Not your mate, then? Even so, she would kill for you. She loves you.”
“Yes. I daresay she does.” I conjured up the vision of Eleanor facing Diana with the stake in her hand. “As for the killing…she chose to be with me and I suppose intends to protect her investment.” Better to speak of ownership than of love.
“And you chose her as well. Yet not as your mate…”
Yes. I had done that. Eleanor was the only woman in several lifetimes who’d convinced me I was not better off alone. I wiped my bloody arm and tossed my shirt away. “Yes. I chose her. In many ways we are well suited. She’s bound to me for the foreseeable future.”
Diana drew herself up and walked to the opposite side of Will’s bed to fuss with the covers. “So you leave me to compete for your attention.” She looked toward me, her eyes sparkling with defiance and tears.
“I’m not sure what you mean. You have my complete attention at this moment and until they return. Until Hugo returns. And—” I rested a hand on Will’s clammy forehead. “—we have a son between us.” I remembered Jack calling Will a monster. I myself had seen Will in action, felt his challenge, but I had not seen him wantonly kill.
“What kind of being is Will?” I’d almost said man, as any mortal father might have. But our kind had overlong years either to mature in mind and deed or forever stay frozen in time and in temperament. I remembered Will as a headstrong young boy, but that boy had never been vengeful or disrespectful. “Is he a monster like Reedrek?”
“No! Never,” she answered with venom, but she couldn’t hold on to her fury. It collapsed as one tear fell. “You must understand—before I could protect him, Hugo—”
At the sound of the name, Will feebly thrashed one arm as though he might fight off a ghost.
“As you are well aware, we are bound to our sires for our apprenticeship. Since Hugo made Will and, technically, me as well although Reedrek had bled me, neither of us could challenge his behavior in any way. Nor could we kill him.”
Will began to cough, spitting up mucus. Diana put an arm behind his back and lifted him into a sitting position. That’s when I saw the web of scars marring his bare back.
“Hugo did this?” The scars had been cut into his skin by a whip; they had to have occurred before Will had been made. I felt a rush of hate. I should have killed Hugo the first moment I’d set eyes on him. “Why?”
“He said he had to teach Will to obey…before he would offer immortality. So that he would understand his place in our—” Diana’s gaze slid away. “—our new family.” She looked at me again. “He said he would kill Will if I interfered.”
“And this?” I touched the livid scar in the shape of a cross on Will’s upper chest. “This surely occurred after he was made.”
“Yes. The first time Will ran away, he was punished.” She pulled the sheet up to cover the evidence of Hugo’s cruelty.
I took Diana’s arm and steered her from the room. She continued the story. “When Will’s apprenticeship ended, he ran away. He left us and settled in Moscow.”
So Olivia’s spy had been close to the mark. They’d been in Russia or Eastern Europe.
“He wrote me hundreds of letters, many of them begging me to come to the city where we could get lost in the crowds and we might live our own lives. But by that time I’d—”
“Fallen in love?” I finished, and dropped my hand away from her arm. She had obviously chosen to stay with Hugo.
“No. By that time I’d gained power. I was a better match for his lordship. As you witnessed earlier, I can rival his violence. You needn’t worry: I punished Hugo for touching my son.”
She was right—she didn’t need to convince me of her ferocity. I’d seen it firsthand. She might not be able to kill her sire, but she could certainly make him wish for death.
“Why did you never come back to England?”
She looked surprised by the question and answered with one of her own. “What was left in England but horrible memories?” She seemed to understand what I wanted. “By the time Reedrek came to us again, bringing news of your successes, I had Will. He returned to our home in the country when Napoleon burned Moscow in the 1812 wars.”
In 1812, almost three hundred years after our making, I’d been in Savannah, setting up my New World home. Defying my own sire. Reedrek no doubt had fed Diana those lies to keep us apart forever.
“Did you ever wonder why Reedrek chose us?” I asked. “Why he took such pleasure in destroying every shred of love and connection between you and me…and Will?”
Diana shrugged philosophically. “He told me once that he’d given us a great gift, and it was up to us to use it well.”
“His idea of use and mine have clashed from the beginning,” I answered. “I’ve done my best to be his most ill-favored son.”
Diana smiled and cupped my cheek with her hand. “I would have expected no less from you,” she breathed.
Suddenly the air between us felt charged with sexual power. But instead of touching her with my hands, I reached for her with my mind, letting her feel the coiled need inside me and the emptiness I’d carried since we were ripped apart. In life and in undeath, I’ve wanted you, wished for you, missed you. When my soul took its leave, part of it went in search of you.
Her lips were moist and soft as she pressed them to mine. A shiver of recognition ran through me, and I shut my eyes on the present and searched for the past.
“My heart, we must be careful,” I whispered into a mortal kiss. “Even though it’s full light, we might wake the babe.”
Diana pressed her overfull bodice against my chest in a wanton display of her new bounty. “He should be used to our rocking by this time. If it were not so, he wouldn’t have been made.”
“But I—”
“Shhh—” She unfastened the front of her blouse and ran her teasing hand over her own nipples. Just a touch caused them to pucker and weep milk. She moaned in what sounded like pain. “I swear I feel like I might burst.”
The sight nearly caused me to moan as well; I was in danger of bursting the laces of my breeches. I couldn’t take my gaze away from her.
“Won’t you help a lady in distress?” She sighed and tugged my head forward. “I’m sure Will won’t miss a taste, or two…”
Her wantoness took my breath away. She wanted me to suckle on her like our babe.
“I—” I wanted that too, I realized, and set about making us both happy. She stiffened in my arms as I drew a taste onto my tongue.
“Easy, love. I’m so tender—ahh—”
Belying her words, she pulled me closer as though only I could scratch the itch she endured. Her nipples stiffened further against my lips and I fed from one to the other. The sweetness of her mother’s milk filling my senses.
She struggled to pull up her skirts. “Please, Cuy, now—”
I knew what she wanted, what we both wanted, and I set about freeing myself from my breeches. Then I pumped into her with such ferocity that Will indeed began to cry at the disturbance. Ah, yes, dinner had to wait until the sweets had been devoured.
Stepping from the past into the present, I answered Diana’s mouth with my own, stroking her tongue with mine, finding fangs instead of softness. The contrast shook me to the core. She would never again be the loving innocent I’d married. And I would never have what I wanted the most—
“Well, now isn’t this cozy.” Hugo’s voice vibrated through the erotic air around us. Somehow he had sneaked up on us; I hadn’t heard Jack’s car, or any vehicle for that matter. Of course, my ears were roaring with the hot blood of my libido; I’d intentionally shut out the world.
I pulled back only far enough to capture D
iana’s gaze. I wanted to see her reaction before I dealt with her lover. Her eyes were soft with surrender, but defiant. In that moment, she truly wanted me and no other and didn’t mind broadcasting the fact.
“Go away,” I said, without releasing my wife.
“No,” he answered.
Reluctantly I pulled away from Diana, turning my back to her so I could face the violence of her sire and mate.
“You strain my thin supply of civility,” I informed him.
“And you try my patience,” he answered, shifting his attention from me to Diana as though he spoke to her and not me. She stood next to me.
“By the way, how is Will?” he asked. The question scrambled my anger and awoke suspicion. What was Hugo up to?
“He’s better,” Diana said. “But not cured. No thanks to you.”
“Ah, so your hero has not saved him.”
“At least I’m doing something,” I said.
“Yes, well, why don’t you give him the cure?”
Diana looked as if she was losing patience herself. “What are you talking about? There is no cure—”
My reaction was instantaneous. I crossed the distance between Hugo and myself in a trice. Face-to-face, I took my next breath from air he exhaled. I shoved him up against the newel post of the porch. “There is no cure,” I ground out.
Hugo looked amused. “That’s not what our sire, Reedrek, told me.”
“Tell me what you’re talking about, right now,” Diana ordered. Then there was silence. They were communicating as sire and offspring, leaving me out of the conversation.
Diana’s next words were for me. “What is the voodoo blood?”
So, he truly had spoken to Reedrek—but how had he found him? I never should have allowed Hugo out of my sight but I’d been so preoccupied with Will and Diana…“It runs in my veins. It helps but isn’t a cure,” I lied.
“Why don’t you ask your hero why he won’t use the blood to save your son?” Hugo sneered.
“Cuy?” Diana said, sounding confused. “I can feel that Hugo is telling the truth about this. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“There is no cure,” I repeated, practically hissing the words into Hugo’s face.
He smiled. “Liar.” Then he twisted away from me. “You also lied about killing Reedrek.”
Diana remained silent as Hugo went to her and rested an arm about her shoulders. It was a direct challenge to every connection I’d been building with Diana. Reedrek had armed him with the means to destroy us again, not to mention my New World family. But no matter who was doomed, I could not give away the secret of Melaphia and Renee.
“Why do you doubt me? I’ve risked my life to save Will. We are working on a cure. Gerard is—”
“Tell us about Renee,” Hugo said.
Seventeen
Jack
I felt like a coward letting a sullen and silent Hugo out at the plantation and taking off like a scalded dog. I should have gone into the house, faced William, and owned up to what I’d done. Taking Hugo near enough to Reedrek’s tomb that he could communicate with his sire was one of the more boneheaded moves I’d made lately. Well, that and accidentally raising a zombie. And getting tangled up with a Mayan goddess whose touch nearly electrocuted my sorry bloodsucking ass. I guess it was my week for boneheaded moves.
William would know about my little mistake soon enough. I wracked my brain trying to think of what Reedrek could tell Hugo that would hurt us most.
The voodoo blood, of course.
My head throbbed with the implications while I headed for the house on Isle of Hope to check on Iban and Lucius. I wanted to see for myself if Iban continued to get well and to assess his state of mind, and I needed to check up on Lucius to see what kind of mischief he might be setting in motion. I still thought Lucius was the kind of guy who’d let a little whiff of power go to his head.
I was almost to the driveway of William’s place on the Isle when I saw one of his fleet of vehicles pulling out and coming toward me. Rennie and I maintain William’s wheels, and I know them all like the back of my fangs. I screeched to a halt in the middle of the road, blocking them.
Iban got out of the passenger seat of the Lexus and came toward me. “Is he still alive?” he asked, his dark eyes blazing.
“Who?” I hopped out from behind the wheel and went to face him.
“You know damn well who. The murderer.”
“He’s still undead as far as I know,” I said.
“Not for long. William led me to believe that Will was about to die, making my ripping his throat out an empty gesture. Then I realized that if I could be cured by the voodoo blood, Will could as well.”
“You can’t possibly imagine we’d let Will feed off Melaphia in her condition!”
Lucius had gotten out of the driver’s seat by then and came to stand between us. “What about her daughter?” he said accusingly.
“Don’t even go there. Renee is off-limits. If Hugo ever got ahold of our baby girl, she’d wind up just like the goose that laid the golden egg.”
“So you say,” Iban said coldly. “However, I’m skeptical that William wouldn’t use anything or anyone at his disposal to save his only son. No matter. I’m going to end Will’s suffering myself and avenge Sullivan in the process.” He took a step back toward the vehicle.
“Wait,” I said, and Iban stopped and turned back to me. “You’re forgetting something.”
“What?” he asked impatiently.
“Sullivan’s body is lying in William’s vault. Don’t you think the least we could do is give him a decent send-off?”
“I intend to take him back to California.”
“Without Tobey’s rig, it’s going to be difficult enough to get yourself back to California in one piece, let alone an undocumented dead mortal body. Besides, there’s nobody to invite to the funeral.” There was my famous tact in action again.
Iban looked like I’d punched him in the gut, but obviously saw the truth in what I said. “What do you propose, then?”
“I propose we bury him in the family cemetery at the plantation.” I was flying by the seat of my pants now, but I tried to sound like I’d thought everything through. “I was just on my way out here to talk this over with you. If you give me until tomorrow night, I can have all the arrangements made. You won’t have to worry about a thing. Just show up at the plantation an hour after sunset tomorrow.”
Iban seemed weary and undecided. Lucius put an arm around his shoulder. “Jack is right, my friend,” he said, giving me a meaningful look. “You need some rest. There’s plenty of time for vengeance. Young Will has an eternity to rot in hell after he finishes rotting on this plane of existence. If you see your friend buried in a suitable grave with a service to honor his memory, you’ll have some closure and the knowledge that you did right by him.”
I silently thanked Lucius, an unlikely ally, for his help. He could be downright diplomatic when he wanted to be. Maybe he was using his powers of enthrallment on Iban like he’d tried to use them on me. If so, I was grateful this time.
Lucius’s sentiment seemed to buoy Iban’s spirits, if only a little. “All right, Jack. We’ll go back to the house to wait for your call.”
Man, that was close. As soon as I saw Lucius turn the Lexus around, I headed the ’Vette into town.
William, I called out to him.
Nothing, like nobody was home. Maybe he’d finally stopped communicating with me altogether.
William!
What? he finally answered. Make it quick.
Iban and Lucius were headed there to kill Will. I got them to go back to the Isle of Hope house by telling them I was arranging a funeral there at the plantation for Sullivan. I bought you some time. My advice is to kill Hugo and get it over with, then move Will and Diana into your vault and lock them in. Meet the rest of us tomorrow evening at the plantation for the funeral and see if you can get Iban to calm down. I’m going to pick up Sullivan’s body and arrange for a
coffin and a backhoe.
I understand, he replied. Make it so. I’ll deal with you later.
Then he was gone and I breathed a sigh of relief. Deal with me later? Maybe I’d scored enough points with my sire to keep him from wringing my neck over the Reedrek slipup. Or maybe not. I’d be able to judge that better when I saw him.
I started making mental notes as to what all I had to do before sunup. First order of business—take a dead man on a road trip.
William
“Get away from her, you bloody bastard,” I growled as I grabbed Hugo by his hair and twisted him from Diana’s side. I’d been momentarily distracted by Jack’s frantic message but a few particular words resonated. Kill Hugo and get it over with. A splendid idea.
“You told Will he was immune—that both of you were immune to this pestilence.” I clamped an arm around his neck. “Let’s test the truth of your words.” I bared my fangs, and jerked his head to one side to expose his neck. He struggled with the strength of a bull, nearly shaking me off.
“Don’t worry—” I managed. “I won’t kill you now: I’d rather watch you rot. Already, I can feel the virus in my veins.”
“Noooooo!” Diana shouted, and flew at us. She pushed my face away while at the same time pulling Hugo free of my hold. We wrestled, careening against the breakfront, knocking chairs askew. Still she managed to get between us. “Run!” she ordered, shoving him toward the door. “Go back to the ship, anywhere! Get out!”
She might just as easily have staked me through the heart. Even though Hugo had sold out her and our son, she still wanted him in her world.
Hugo disappeared into the darkness, and a few seconds later I heard one of the cars I owned start and race down the driveway. Diana stood in the open doorway facing me.
“Why?” I asked. But her newest betrayal riled my anger beyond conscious control. Blood began to seep from my bare chest. “Why?” Red mist burst forth, spattering everything in its path with my tainted blood.
Diana blinked the mist out of her eyes and touched the blood on her face with a shaking finger. She looked horrified. “He’s my—Will’s sire. If you kill him we’ll lose his power.” She swallowed back a sob. “If Will dies—if you die, I’ll be alone.” Not the answer I was expecting.
