The Hunger (35 page)

“By the time he returned to Europe, Asharti had gone to ground somewhere in Africa, no one knew where. I
heard her name for the first time in four hundred years from Reynard.”

An itching along John’s veins made it difficult to think. “Where is this Stephan Sincai now? She must be stopped. She will change Europe . . . no, the world . . .”

“I hear he took over Amsterdam after I left,” she said, her voice tight with constraint. “He lives on the Herengracht. He would like it there. I lived at number Three-eighty for many years.”

John was more sure than ever Beatrix still held feelings for this man who had first loved her in her youth. She knew where he lived even now. His heart sank.

“He does not care for the world anymore,” she continued. “He will not stop her and I cannot.” She stood. “Rubius could. I shall send to him. But the Carpathian Mountains are far away. Discretion is the better part of valor, now. I will get you back to England. You can recover your strength and learn how to be vampire. Then you must find a city of your own.” Her big, dark eyes stared at him with an expression he could not read. “There is only one of us allowed to a city, so our presence does not manifest itself to humans. Perhaps the New World? Or the Far East. But you will have time to decide.”

How lonely
, he thought.
To alienate yourself from the only ones who can understand you
. There was nothing to be said. He was overwhelmed by what she had told him. No, there was one more thing he must know. “Can she find us?”

She knew who he meant. “Yes. By our vibrations, if she can get close enough.”

He opened his eyes in surprise. “That humming feel of life in any room you occupy?”

She nodded. “And the scent. Cinnamon and ambergris, some version of it. So sleep now, and gain strength. We must away as soon as ever we can.”

She stirred the coals and drew heavy draperies over the
window that looked out on a paling sky, then laid herself out on the counterpane on the bed.

Weakness overcame him. He closed his eyes but it was long until he slept. Barlow had told Asharti everything, long before she compelled John. She let him think he betrayed his country, why? For amusement? And did it lessen his shame that there was no consequence to his betrayal? Shame . . . there was more than enough of that to go around. Asharti . . . Quintoc! His mind skittered over that to what he had become. No, there was plenty to shame him.

Beatrix sat in the darkness in the overstuffed chair and watched John sleep. He had slept all day. It was nearly midnight now. He would live. Her copy of
Tom Jones
lay abandoned by the grate, now glowing with coals alone. After all the blood she had given him, she was lightheaded, but that might be convenient. Her vibrations would be lowered with her weakness. That would make it harder for Asharti to find them.

Beatrix had no illusions about what had happened at Chantilly when Asharti returned. Beatrix wondered if LeFèvre would survive telling her the bad news. Her prey had been stolen from her, her majordomo killed, all by the woman she once considered her protégée, the woman who had rejected her in Krakow six hundred years ago. She and who knew how many minions would be combing Paris for them.

John had asked questions about his state with some degree of focus. He did not look as though he was going mad, but it was early days. She clenched her eyes shut. It was she who might be going mad. She had to acknowledge a tendril of hope that if he accepted his state, he might . . . they might . . . They might break the Rule of one to a city.

What could be more mad than that? She was going sentimental over a man? He had interested her enough
that she had tracked him over most of the south of England and even into France, into Asharti’s very lair. That spoke to a fair amount of interest. But it wasn’t love. Even when she was interested, as she was with Henry or da Vinci, love was impossible. They were from different species and they grew old and died. Vampires? Not likely. Perhaps her capacity for love died when she left Stephan.

Her gaze strayed to John. John shared her secret. And he would never grow old.

She got up and paced the room in front of the dying coals. It was wrong to hope. But neither would she abandon him or let him go mad. He
must
accept being vampire. She watched him toss again in some nightmare. His Companion, now that the immunity was taking hold, demanded blood. She would have to bring John to feed on his own. If he could do that, perhaps he could accept his fate. He was too weak for hunting. And she did not want his first experience to be a whore in the streets of the Marais. She wanted to make certain he did not get one who would struggle because John was inexperienced at compulsion. Struggling would horrify him.

There was one answer. The demands of the Companion in his blood might make it possible. She slipped her shift from her shoulders. She wanted to do it for him. The prospect of lying naked next to his hot flesh and baring her neck to him excited her. The wet between her legs had been there off and on for days. It pressed at her now, demanding satisfaction. But the thrill of desire mixed with the taking of blood wouldn’t be dangerous when it was not her who did the taking. Would it? Her shift pooled on the ground. Naked, she stood above him in the predawn chill where he tossed on his pallet.

Nineteen

John dreamt of Beatrix. It was a hot summer’s day in Gibraltar where he had laid the agent Jean Michel by the heels in ’08. They were lying on a secluded beach and Beatrix was gloriously naked. He noticed with surprise that he was naked, too. They were both covered with a light sheen of perspiration. Her lips against the throbbing veins in his throat were softer than he could imagine. She put her arms round his neck and whispered endearments in his ear. She loved him. He wanted to make love to her more than he had ever wanted anything. “Beatrix,” he murmured. The soft brush of her nipples against the hair on his chest as she raised herself to kiss him sent thrills straight to his core. His loins swelled with desire, hot and urgent.

The heat began to prickle. It seemed to soak into his veins; an itching that distracted him from Beatrix. “No,” he muttered, as the itching ratcheted up almost to pain.

“Shush,” said Beatrix, kissing his throat. “You can make the pain go away.”

He nuzzled her throat, then her breasts. It was almost enough to distract him from the pain. He ran his hands
down over her buttocks, pressing her to him. “Beatrix,” he moaned.

“Call your Companion, dear John,” she whispered.

He blinked. “What?” The dingy room flashed in around him and replaced the beach in Gibraltar. Except Beatrix was naked and he was naked, too, and sweating. She had her arms around his neck and her lips moved over his throat, kissing softly. Her breasts were pressed against his chest. His loins were heavy, throbbing. “Beatrix.” But then there was the pain, itching inside him. He sucked in a breath and let out a little moan. Need ramped up along his veins.

“Call, my dear, just call,” she whispered. “For me, just try.”

“Stop it,” he said. “Can you stop it?” He didn’t mean to stop the kissing. He wanted her to make the pain stop. But she seemed to know.

“Call. Just say to yourself,
Companion
. It will know how to stop the pain.”

Companion
, he thought.

Life rushed up along his veins, exuberance. His eyes closed, all focus internal. He had never felt anything so joyous. A long breath. Yes! But still there was an aching need. He had never needed as he needed now. But what? What did he need?

“Yesssss,” she breathed. “Now again.
Companion, come.”

Companion, come!
And the rush of life and needing was intensified. God, how could he stand so much exhilaration? He opened his eyes. A red film covered everything; the seedy room, the glowing coals, Beatrix’s expectant face turned upward, baring her throat. He bent and kissed her, the need inside him making him urgent with her. He pressed her against his cock, fully erect now. She pulled away a little and examined his face tenderly. Her eyes
glowed red, too, like burgundy-colored coals, even through the wash of red.

“This does not have to be sexual, you know . . .” she whispered.

“I want you, Beatrix Lisse. Is that so hard to understand?” He almost growled the question. His answer lay in her dilated eyes, her breasts rising and falling against his chest, in the wet he felt against his thigh. It had been long since he had wanted a woman like he wanted Beatrix. He knew what she was. Evil, probably. But the life coursing through him made everything else unimportant. He wanted her anyway.

“No. And perhaps that will make it easier.” What did she mean? She kissed him, as roughly as he had kissed her. He rolled her onto her back on the pallet and she spread her thighs to him. She wanted no caresses. She wanted him. And he obliged. He slid his member into her slick folds as she arched up into him. She was tight around him. He thrust slowly home, in order not to hurt her, but she curled her legs over his back and pulled him down until he was fully sheathed in her. He was groaning, so was she. Slowly, he began to move, in and out, as she adjusted the angle for her maximum pleasure. The pulsing life he felt in her matched the thrill along his own veins. He had never felt such sensation! Every fiber of him was alive with it. Her skin, her breath, the silk of her hair . . . She banged her hips against his, urging him on. He held himself above her, thrusting inside her. She threw her head back, baring her throat. Then, as though drawing herself back from some brink of ecstasy, she pulled him down to her, kissing his neck, his jawline, all the while they thrust in counterpoint. He kissed her, sharing his rasping breath with hers. His teeth scraped his own lips. He tasted blood. The excitement in his veins ramped up some scale he had not known existed into
frantic fibrillation. This was something more than sexual. He was confused and the insistent throbbing in his cock, in his veins, would not let him think. He needed, that was all he knew, a red need that required satisfaction in the next seconds or he would burst into flame.

She quickened the pace, sliding his cock in and out of her. Again she arched her neck. He could feel her blood throbbing in arteries just under her jaw like a pair of drums that shattered his body with their insistent booming. “Here, my love, is what you need. I give it freely.”

In one awful moment, he saw it; what he needed, what she gave, what his body and soul shrieked at him to do. He opened his mouth, knowing somewhere that his canines had elongated even as Asharti’s did, Quintoc’s did. Yet, horrific or not, he could not stop himself. The need shrieked at him. Her blood called and he buried his fangs in the throbbing artery in her throat even as he thrust deep inside her.

She gave a little gasp, no more, and then the blood was flowing; thick ecstasy. His body moved against hers in a rhythm with his sucking as he drew at her. She moaned, but it was not a moan of pain. She must feel the ecstasy that suffused him. He never wanted it to end. He drew at her throat even as he felt an explosion gathering in his loins, in his brain. Red went almost black. She shrieked, a long ululating cry as her muscles contracted around his cock, squeezing it at last into the threatened explosion. Blackness pulsed at him as he came and came, hunching into her, and sucking.

She drew away with a cry.

He stared at her, his breath coming fast and short. The pain in his veins was gone. He felt strong and sure. His orgasm was so strong it nearly rent him in two, but he was still hard inside her. Life surged not only in his veins, but in his loins, as though he could take her again this very moment. The room around them slowly faded from red to
dingy gray. Her eyes were big, but they held no accusation. Even as he watched, the twin wounds in her neck disappeared.

“The blood is the life,” she whispered. “But that is all I have to give.”

He opened his mouth and ran his tongue over his teeth. The canines retracted. He gasped, and withdrew from her. His cock was still embarrassingly erect. “What have I done?”

“You called your Companion and fed for the first time.” She drew a hand tenderly over his brow. Then, as she examined his expression, “From someone who wanted to give. You cannot say it was horrible.”

He had enjoyed the blood. He had wanted it. It had satisfied him. He was vampire. “No, and that is the most horrible part.”

“Hold me, that we may sleep together with the coming dawn.”

Her voice held no command. It was a woman’s supplication for at least the appearance of affection. “I’m sure you do this often,” he accused, and pulled up the sheet to cover the fact that he wanted her again, even now.

Her face contracted, and he felt ashamed at lashing out at her. “No, not like this.”

He might be damned, but he loved her. He could not remember a time when he had not loved her. The realization was an anticlimax. Something else, far more consequential than love, had intervened. He pulled the coverlet over both of them, leaving the sheet between his throbbing cock and her milk-white hip. He gathered her in his arms and held her head against his chest, so she would not speak, nor ask him to speak. He was too confused, too horrified by what he had done, and how wonderful it was, to bear any more questions. She went to sleep almost immediately, and he realized that with all the blood she had given him, she was weak.

He might have killed her if she had not pulled away. The wild ecstasy of blood and sex was . . . shattering. He had no control. He would have taken all the blood she had, willing the orgasm of blood and sex to go on forever. But no, he could not have killed her. She was immortal, except for decapitation apparently. And so was he.

As he held her in his arms, the reality of his new nature washed over him.

Love? Such as they were did not deserve love. All his life he had looked for a way to live with honor. He had resisted loving a courtesan, since by definition they were strangers to virtue. A courtesan was pure as virgin snow compared to what Beatrix actually was—what he was, now. Honor and virtue were banished from his life forever.