The Hunger (34 page)

She bit her lip and laid John down. He sank immediately into a state not far from comatose. She wrung out a cloth in a bowl of water next to his pallet and pulled back
his coverlet. Wiping his body with a cool cloth had become her own torture. Twice each day she had to hold herself in check as she ran her hands over the strong column of his neck, his shoulders, bulky with muscle, the soft nipples, the ribbed belly, and then lower, following the vee of hair; hips, genitals, God forbid, and thighs. It was a feeling she thought she had lost forever. He possessed just the type of body she liked, masculine to a fault, mature. But it wasn’t just that. No, she was attracted to the courage he took for granted, his despair at being made. It was her memory of eyes that laughed at her in spite of all her worldly sophistication, and the fact that she did not know what he would do. Would he accept his vampire nature? And how would his experience at Asharti’s hands scar him? Could he survive the self-hatred he would feel? She felt she knew him better than she knew almost anyone, yet he was still a mystery.

She pinned her hopes on his courage.

He woke again, in a dim and squalid room. It must be some kind of garret, for the ceiling was sloped at the edges with the peak of a roof. He smelled the tar that sealed the roof tiles, along with dust, mold, and the smell of burning coal. There was a grate with small, licking flames. The pain that was torture worthy of Asharti had receded to bearable, though it lurked there still. The pain of sorrow, regret, shame lurked inside as well, but they had been joined by a tiny thrill of . . . life. He was alive, very alive.

He rolled his head. Beatrix sat near the grate with a single candle on a tiny table next to her. She was in her shift, reading in an upholstered chair of a color between brown and gray whose stuffing protruded in several places. It was the only furniture in the room apart from the pallet he lay on, a narrow bed, and a rickety table by a great window filled with impenetrable darkness. The soft, buttery light
of the candle made her pale skin glow. The thin white fabric of her shift hardly concealed her form. How could a woman so beautiful be a monster?

Her dark lashes swept her cheeks as she read. He realized with a start that she was pale because he had drunk her blood. Revulsion overcame him. He had been totally dependant upon her in these last days of indescribable pain. How many? He didn’t know. Each time he woke she forced him to take her blood. Horrible, and yet . . . She had rescued him from Quintoc and Asharti. How had she appeared in France? And why? She had rescued him at the cost of dreadful wounds, stitched him, cared for his squalid needs. According to her story about this infection, she had saved his life with her blood. He contracted. She had made him a monster.

She lifted her head and stared at him with dark eyes made enormous by her pallor. A small smile touched her lips. “I felt you waken,” she said. “You have your own vibrations now.” She rose and came to kneel beside his pallet. “That may mean the worst is over.”

“Are you . . . well? You were . . . wounded, I know.” His voice was a harsh rasp.

“I am fine.” She reached for a pitcher and mug sitting on the bare floor next to a small iron caldron. He saw the outline of her breast and nipple through her shift as she poured. “Do you remember me telling you that the Companion in your blood gives you the power to heal?” She lifted his head and dragged another pillow under it. He was damnably weak, in spite of the thrill of life along his veins and arteries. The water felt like heaven as it coursed down his throat, almost as good as her blood . . . He took a breath. He wouldn’t think of that.

“What is this . . . this companion?” he asked to redirect his thoughts.

“An organism, in scientific terms,” she said as she laid his head back on the rough canvas ticking of a pillow
without a case. “When our blood is infected with it, we become one. Symbiotic, if you wish. More than we could ever be alone. In fact, you will never be alone again.” She set the mug down. “I want to tell you about it. You only know about the blood. That is the hardest part for those not born to the Companion. Will you listen then, while I feed you?”

His eyes grew round.

“Soup, you ninny! Just soup. The body still requires food and water.”

He felt a little sheepish. “Tell me, then.”

She pulled the caldron closer and took up a battered spoon. “The Companion shares our blood. I was born to it. My mother was vampire. But children are rare. I may have been the last. We live, one to a city, so as not to call attention to ourselves, except at Mirso Monastery. There are many there.” She lifted his head and spooned soup into his mouth. It was barley with some vegetables and perhaps a little beef. Where had she gotten the ingredients? Had she cooked it over the fire? “Mirso is the last refuge of our kind. It is in the Carpathian Mountains, through the Iron Gate of the Danube at Tirgu Korva. You may need it one day.” Her eyes bored into his.

Why did she tell him this first? He swallowed the soup. “What about the blood? How can I avoid drinking human blood?” This was what he had to know.

“You cannot. And if you resist, the urge that comes upon you might lead you to take too much. It is forbidden to drain your donors. You must have it every two weeks at the least, but I advise you to take it even before the first signs of hunger come on you, a little from each.”

“What signs?”

“An itching along your veins, a longing. You will know.”

He looked inside himself. He knew it already. A tingling, itchy feeling. Panic set in.

“You feel it now,” she said, reading his thoughts. “For a while, you will need it often.”

He nodded, trying to master his revulsion.
“Why?
Why must I drink blood?”

She sighed. “Assuming your question is not metaphysical, it is because the Companion is the true vampire. It feeds on red blood cells, and they must be replenished.”

“Animal blood—would that do?” He knew he sounded desperate, but he couldn’t drink human blood. He wouldn’t. Suicide flashed through his brain again, but at the very thought of it, the throbbing life that itched along his veins ramped up in protest.

“No,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry.” She moved on. “You will be sensitive to light, especially at first. For a while, you will be able to be abroad only at night. Later, by covering your skin, and using blue or green tinted glasses, you may withstand a brief time in the sun. I will show you how to translocate when you are better.”

“What do you mean?”

She sat back and looked at him steadily. “The Companion gives us power in return for hosting it. The power can be used. You saw the strength. You felt the translocation when we escaped from the cell. You know the compulsion we can exert. All that is from our partner.”

He felt the blush rising as he thought of Asharti, of Quintoc, and the compulsion he had felt. Insufferable shame . . . he could not even muster anger. He glanced away. Beatrix too had compelled him. She laid a hand along his cheek. He pulled away.

“Not your fault,” she whispered. “Theirs. Remember that. Be outraged, be angry, but never ashamed. Quintoc has paid.” Her eyes darkened. “Asharti will pay, too.”

He wanted to be angry. But all he could do was let his head sag away from her. Her hand dropped to his bare shoulder. He realized he was naked under the quilt. It sent
a thrill along his spine and into his loins. That frightened him. He suppressed the feeling ruthlessly.

“So. Translocation. We draw the power of the Companion until the field is so intense it collapses in on itself and we pop out of space. Our reflections in mirrors disappear, because no light escapes the field. We can direct the reappearance with a fair amount of accuracy. A mile or two, three at a stretch. Walls are no barrier.”

His curiosity got the better of him. “What prevents you from reappearing in the middle of a tree or a mountain?”

She raised her brows. “I am not sure, frankly. Perhaps the solid mass resists us more than air. I have landed in water and got my feet wet, but never anything more solid than mud.”

“What about garlic and wolf ’s bane and crosses?”

She drew her delicate brows together. “Myths. And we do not turn into bats. I think bats are a metaphor to explain our ability to relocate and our love of darkness.” She offered more soup and he shook his head. She pushed the caldron away. Then she turned deliberately back to him. “But let us deal with your real question. You want to know if we are evil. I can touch a cross. I have prayed both in churches and in military trenches over the years.” A shadow of pain crossed her face. “And if I am no longer sure the divine presence takes a personal delight in every sparrow, I do not believe our kind is born to evil, either. Some of us even do great good.” She turned her head away. “I have been sinful in my time. More sinful than most people can imagine. I have killed, along with Asharti. My guilt is never-ending. But I do not do those things anymore. I try to find a way in life that harms no one. I do not forgive myself, you understand. I am not sure God forgives me. But I go on.”

He searched her face. She believed she harmed no one, in spite of the fact that she drank human blood? Her expression said she did. There was humanity in her face.
Pain, surely, but humanity without question. “What about Asharti?” he croaked.

Her expression hardened. “Every race has its failures. I would agree that she’s evil.”

He wanted to know more of Asharti. Yet another question burned. “Why did you save me from them? And how did you know where I was?”

“You left a trail for one who knows how to look. I saw Reynard and heard the name Asharti. I knew your danger then. I saw your man, Withering. I saw Barlow.” She started at her mistake. He knew by her expression what had happened.

He contracted inside. “Dead?”

She took a breath as though for courage. “Yes. I killed him.”

He clenched his eyes and swallowed. “God in heaven,” he whispered, more to suppress the tears that clogged his throat than in supplication. He turned away when she reached for him.

“You did not betray him,” she said flatly. “When I saw him, he had been vampire for perhaps three months. He served Asharti long before you returned to London. He betrayed you to her, and your government, as well.”

John jerked his head back toward her. “You lie! Barlow would never betray—”

“Think,” she insisted. “Was he sick for a while, like you are now? And were there not attempts on your life? Who knew where you were the night of the footpads . . .?”

John’s brows drew together. The footpads attacked as he came away from meeting Barlow, the bullet in Berkeley Square . . . and what about the hulks? No Faraday. He had been transferred. Dupré was killed. Was it because he knew about Asharti? Would the guard have killed John that last day if the prisoners had not saved him? Barlow had been surprised to see him back . . . It was possible. “Not Barlow . . .” he murmured.

“He told me he had tired of serving so irresolute and corrupt a government. He was at the end of life. She offered him eternity, and a chance to carve a new reality. He would not renounce her . . . I had to . . .” She hesitated, then changed the subject. “Will you take blood?”

He shook his head, too vehemently. She would force him now. A lead weight anchored itself in his belly.

But she didn’t. She pulled the quilt up. “Sleep if you can.” She sat back on her heels.

He grabbed her hand and held her. “How do you live with it?”

She did not ask him what he meant. “I was born to it.”

“Your mother taught you from the cradle . . .” He shook his head, rejecting the idea.

“My mother taught me nothing.” Her voice held an echo of bitterness from long ago. “She abandoned me. My father I never knew. I was left to fend for myself when the need for blood came on me at thirteen or fourteen. I got what I needed on the back streets of Amsterdam in the eleventh century by ripping the throats of men who wanted to use me and got more than they asked, if not more than they deserved.”

He let go her hand. The thought of a beautiful young girl of fourteen forced to make her way in the back streets of Amsterdam was horrible. He tried not to think about the eleventh century. “Was there no one to help you?” he asked quietly.

She smiled, her eyes far away. “Stephan. Stephan Sincai. He rescued me.” She came back to the room in spirit, and looked at him seriously. “Asharti, too.”

John’s brows drew together. She had known Asharti all her life?

“Yes,” she answered the unspoken question. “We were like sisters once, only I was born vampire and Asharti was made, like you. Stephan saved us both. It was forbidden to make vampires. It still is. They were killed on sight, since
they often went mad. Stephan wanted to prove to the Elders at Mirso Monastery that born and made vampires were not different once the made vampire assimilated to his new condition, if they were nurtured equally, given love.”

“He loved you?” There was a prickle of something like irritation around John’s heart.

“I don’t know.” She said it calmly. At one time, he would wager she had not been calm. She had loved this monster. Perhaps she still did. “I’m not sure I know what love is. After we left him, he wandered the world. He was hurt somehow. Does that mean he loved us? I think not.”

“Looks as though his experiment failed, if Asharti is any mark.”

She looked away. “Perhaps”—her gaze roved over the room—“perhaps she always had this seed of evil in her. Perhaps he just picked the wrong person to prove his point.” She took a breath. “I learned, centuries later, that he talked the Elders out of killing Asharti. Maybe he did love her. He took full responsibility. But he has never called her to heel.”

“Could he?”

“He is very old. That means he is powerful.”

“How old?” What did a woman who had lived seven hundred years consider old?

“Oh, thousands of years. I do not know exactly. Not so old as Rubius, the Eldest. Some say
he
goes back six thousand years to when men hunted with sticks and gathered berries.”

John took a breath, trying to digest that. All he could think of was that this Stephan could control Asharti, but he did not. “So this man, or whatever he is, simply lets Asharti bring down governments and create . . . vampires right and left?”