Bound by the Vampire Queen (7 page)

The flicker in her eyes, a subtle gesture, told him he had permission to see what way her mind was going. Her Fae powers were impressive and growing, but she didn’t yet have a predictable command of them. If she couldn’t disprove the leak that she’d lost her vampire powers, then they didn’t have a lot of options, not in the short term. She knew they couldn’t risk coming before Council where they’d be outnumbered. They might indeed succeed in taking Kane, and she wouldn’t risk that.

“So instead of going in a more enlightened direction, they’ve decided to tighten the reins.”

“We shouldn’t be surprised,” she said. “Mason implied as much, based on the documents he’s been reviewing on recent Council decisions. There was the mess involving Stephen’s betrayal of Council, and Lady Barbra’s suspected involvement in it.”

“His next Council meeting will be Mason’s first as a full member.” Though Jacob offered it as a point in their favor, it didn’t ease the pale strain in her face.

“He can’t fight the entire Council. Cal him. Tell him if we’re delayed, he should not take Kane to that meeting under any circumstances. Provisions should be made…”

“I'll take care of it, my lady.” Jacob nodded firmly.

“They won’t get near him.”

Her fingers were white on the table edge. Elijah looked between them. “Can you postpone your trip to this Otherworld?”

“No.” Lyssa tightened her jaw. “Lord Keldwyn made it clear that they will come looking for us. That would be just as dangerous for Kane. Perhaps more so.”

“Trapped between two crappy choices.” The majordomo passed a ham sandwich to Lyssa.

“Sounds like a normal week for you two.” If the Council had remained in the dark about her loss of vampire powers, Mason would have been able to do what he’d intended. Recommend she be reinstated in an advisory capacity to the Council, where they could honor and benefit from her wisdom and strength, as they had for decades. Jacob knew she’d nursed that quiet hope herself, even though she hadn’t put as much faith in it as he and Mason had. Still, feeling anger on her behalf, he reached out, touched her hand.

“Power is the true currency with vampires.” She lifted a shoulder. “I'll pen a neutral response to this before we embark on our quest tomorrow. A great many things may change before that part of things is over. It’s best not to commit to a course of action until then.” She glanced at Ingram. “Were you able to work on the project we called about?”

“Yes, John helped. No surprise that the boy’s actually much better than his grandpa on the computer.” Ingram wiped his hands on a towel and slid a folder to her. “I spoke to the visitors’ center in Atlanta, a couple historic societies, even some of the garden clubs. While they had nothing definite, they gave us some leads and we drove around a bit, took some pictures. John also helped me put some links to satellite photos in the file that might be likely spots for what you’re seeking.” Taking a computer tablet out of the kitchen desk, he laid it at her elbow.

“Our needle in a haystack?” Jacob asked. “The dryad in a tree?”

“We'll see.” She sighed, turning on the screen.

“We'll study these, and head out to look ourselves tomorrow night. After you’ve had your vampire beauty sleep.”

“That’s right. Us young vamps need more rest than you old—”

Jacob was quick enough to have his hand off the butcher block before the knife stabbed into the wood where it had rested. Fingers flexing on the blade, she lifted an eyebrow, her jade eyes gleaming.

“Don’t get too confident, fledgling. Age and experience are more than capable of taking you down a peg or two.”

He grinned, glad to see the flash of temper in her gaze. “I never forget, my lady.”

Ingram cleared his throat. “I’d forgotten vampire flirting is a little more extreme. Or perhaps that’s just the two of you,” he added dryly. Carefully retrieving the knife, he began slicing again.

Later that night, after taking care of some other more mundane business for her, Jacob went looking for his lady. From the way she’d looked after digesting that note, he knew she’d be walking in her rose garden, and that was where he found her.

Ingram had taken good care of the plants, keeping tabs on the landscaping crew who maintained them.

Like Jacob, he understood the significance of the spot to her. For loving and impregnating a vampire, Lyssa’s father, a Fae lord even more powerful than Keldwyn, had been turned into a rose bush. He was then planted in the desert to wither and die. That had all happened a thousand years ago, before Lyssa was born. When she’d been hiding in the mountains and still carrying Kane, Keldwyn had given her an enchanted rose that came from her father’s transmuted form. It was now suspended under glass in her bedroom here, but she’d known the story long before she’d received the rose, and so had always cultivated exotic, delicate roses in her father’s honor.

She’d avoided going to the nursery entirely, and he knew it wasn’t because she missed Kane. As he watched her from the doorway of the solarium, he could see it happening. She was shedding that part of herself. It was in how she walked through her rose garden in that slow, methodical way, her back straightening, chin lifting unconsciously. She was drawing her shields around herself, repatching any armor that the past months had softened or dented.

She was becoming Queen of the Far East Clan again, right before his eyes. And Jacob knew what that required from him.

Though some might cal her months as a fugitive in the Appalachians a hardship, once they’d been reunited there, neither of them had viewed it that way. Not long after they’d met, he remembered a vulnerable moment where she’d spoken of her longing to simply exist. Not as a queen, but as a creature of the forest, nothing required of her but to be. As such, in those forest months, they had been merely Lyssa and Jacob, one’s strengths filling in for the other’s weaknesses, whenever needed, so that they could survive and be together.

Even after they’d returned to Atlanta, with the limbo state of the Council not being sure what to do with her, they’d been able to hold on to that, unmolested by vampire affairs. Until the attack on Mason’s estate had drawn the attention of the Fae queen. While he was sad to see those times about to disappear, perhaps he was cut out of the same fabric as she was, because it was a passing moment. He could feel himself changing as well, aligning back to the concentrated focus of a servant.

Not just guardian and lover, but the being whose role was anticipating her needs at all levels. The knight and samurai that were his past, but also part of his present, were resurrecting, getting ready to defend and care for his liege lady.

His somber thoughts were broken by a smile at her entourage. Bran, her Irish wolfhound, stalked so close to her side that her hand rested with relaxed ease on his wiry head. Whiskers trailed in their wake, making occasional spectacular leaps at Bran’s tail as it swayed with his stately stalk. Now that Ingram and John lived on Lyssa’s property, Bran had developed a tolerance pact with the cat, ignoring her most of the time. However, Mr. Ingram was careful to keep the feline inside when Bran’s siblings were running loose on the estate.

“Because what one dog will do to a cat is a different matter from what a pack will do,” the fifty-something majordomo had observed earlier.

“A universal truth,” Lyssa murmured. That moment had been the beginning of her mood shift.

At dusk on the following day, they’d start seeking the whereabouts of a dryad trapped somewhere among the concrete, glass and asphalt of downtown Atlanta. But tonight, Jacob watched his lady draw strength from the brown earth beneath her bare feet.

When she at last stopped in the inner circle of her garden, where the plants were oldest, those that bloomed with the sweetest, deepest fragrance, she lowered herself to the ground gracefully, sitting on one hip. She wore one of the older skirts she used for her gardening, an oversized Renaissance shirt loose over it. The shirt had belonged to Rex, her former husband. An unsettling choice, but Jacob understood that as well. Another reminder of what she had to become again, from a time when she’d had to be more guarded than she’d ever been, her emotions locked behind a fortress to protect what she held dear.

In the kitchen with Ingram, he’d seen the sharp, calculating intelligence she’d always possessed. But he also had a window to the scars that had lingered inside her from the events of the past couple of years, things those white knuckles on the table had betrayed.

When he’d met her, his lady’s confidence had been unshakable. Even now, he’d put his money on her against the intelligence or brutality of most opponents. However, something had shifted. She was more unsure of herself, afraid of the consequences of her actions. Her irritation with that, with her inability to overcome two years’ worth of traumatic events to reclaim that steady core of certainty, was severe. She viewed it as a liability to her, to him and to their son. It made her savagely angry with herself. So when it became unbearable, she paced, hoping to find what he knew only time and other, as yet unknowable factors, could bring back to her.

What he could give her was his unshakable faith that it would happen. His confidence could be hers.

Feeling her frustration getting beyond what he could bear to let her handle alone, he moved into the garden, came to her. As he sank to his heels, he slid his arms around her, and was glad when she laid her head on his biceps, though her hands stayed compressed in her lap. “I hate this shirt,” he said.

Nudging her head to the side, he gave her the sharp edge of his fangs, underscoring how fervently he felt about it. She shivered in his arms, a sweet coil of desire moving through her. She wasn’t wearing a bra beneath the loose shirt and he cupped her breasts, the peaks pressing into his palms. “I’m going to make it disappear one day, I swear to God.”

“You’d never destroy it.” She drew in a breath as he punctured her skin, drawing out a sweet, small drop of blood, teasing the artery with his tongue.

“You understand too well why I keep it.”

“I wish there was no reason for you to keep it.” She was silent at that, and he changed tactics. He hummed against her skin, until her shoulders relaxed somewhat. “What is that?” she asked.

“‘Stand by Me,’ by Ben E. King. Surely you’ve heard it.” He told her the words, spoke the opening lyrics. How he’d stand by her when the night came, when all was dark. Her lips curved.

“Actually, since you’re a vampire, it would
have
to be dark. So I am not overly impressed.” He chuckled, pressed a kiss to her temple. “If the world crumbles, I'll be here, my lady.”

“I know.” She hooked her hands over his forearm.

“Would Keldwyn lie about the time distortion?”

“According to lore, the Fae don’t lie. They’re master word manipulators. Either way, we’re faced with an impossible choice, just as you said.” She sighed. “It begins again, Jacob. We must be queen and servant once more.”

“Yes, my lady. Though you are always my Mistress. That never changes. Only the face of it does.”

He knew something else about her that no one else did, except perhaps Mason. A thousand years gave her great wisdom, great strength. But it was also a long, long time to live. A long, long time to be a queen and endure loss and betrayal, to see death and hate resurrecting in her life, challenging her over and over again. Thomas, her former servant, believed Jacob had come to her in three different lifetimes, whenever she was in greatest need of him.

There were times Jacob thought the Delilah virus she’d barely survived had only been the catalyst of that rebirth, that the true danger to her was the unbearable weight of time.

Other than the Delilah virus, the Ennui, a wasting and self-destructive apathy, was the only disease that could impact vampires. When they met, she’d dismissed the idea that Ennui would ever affect her.

“I’ve seen things, Jacob. I’ve met Chinese dragons >whose whiskers feel like feathers when they brush them across your face. I’ve seen wars begin and end. Seen people do so many things I didn’t expect, and many things I did expect, and dreaded.

That is why the Ennui does not affect me… Life can be intensely amazing, or quietly desperate, as Thoreau said. If you wake each day with a genuine awareness which allows you to appreciate everything as if you were seeing it for the very first time… or the last.”

But he also knew such a mental ill ness could hit when a person’s defenses were low, and she’d taken so many emotional blows these past few years…

You are worrying for me. You know I worry about nothing when you are at my side.

“Yes, my lady.” He smiled against her skin.

“Apparently, you don’t need a vampire’s ability to be able to read my mind.”

“You rarely close your mind to me. Though you could do that anytime you wished now, as a vampire.”

“But never as your servant.”

“I think we are the most confusing relationship the vampire world has ever experienced. Certainly the most confusing one I’ve ever experienced.” That made him laugh outright, but he nodded toward two rose bushes. Bran lay between them, a look of sufferance on his face as Whiskers occupied the valley between the dog’s shoulders in a neat bread loaf shape, purring. “There are other, far more confusing relationships, my lady. The world is a mysterious place.”