The Hunger (41 page)

“You see the world so simply, you who have lived but a single lifetime.” Sincai’s eyes filled. “I cannot kill either of them.”

“And yet you will let Asharti kill Beatrix?” John almost shouted. “What kind of a man are you? Beatrix loved you! I know she did. She still loves you!”

Sincai looked stunned for a moment. Then he examined John’s face and finally looked down into his glass. He swirled the rich amber liquid lazily. “Oh, I think not. Not anymore.”

John was growing desperate. “Then don’t kill Asharti. Just use your strength to get Beatrix away from her. Bestir yourself, for God’s sake, on behalf of one you brought out of barbarity, one who loved you.” John drew himself up. “You can kill me after I have seen Beatrix to safety. Rid the world of a made vampire. According to her, that may
be the only way I can die. You would be doing me a favor, as well as the world at large.”

“I wonder.” Sincai looked pensive again.

John clenched his teeth around the impulse to punch the man in the jaw. “How easy to wonder! Harder to act.” He glanced around the elegant room wildly. “If it is me that bothers you, give me your word you will save her and kill me now. I’ll tell you where she is . . . where to go . . .” He trailed off. Sincai had gotten a faraway, empty look in his eyes. What leverage did he have to make this man . . .
move
from this house this minute and go after Beatrix? John followed Sincai’s gaze and turned to see what he was staring at. He got a shock, indeed. There was a tiny portrait, no more than a foot square, of a woman who was unmistakably Beatrix, done in the flat style typical of Byzantine painting. She wore a red dress with stylized folds and a square neckline. Around her head was a gilt halo. Beatrix as a saint, or the Madonna.

“A besotted artist painted that in thirteen twelve. Religious art was the only kind allowed back then. I made him a rich man.” Sincai’s voice held more sadness than John had ever heard.

John held his breath. The man loved her. Would that not be enough to counteract the torpor that seemed to shimmer around him?

Slowly, Sincai set his glass and the decanter upon a tiny table. “Sunday did you say?”

John nodded.

Sincai rose and strode to the door. “Then there is not a moment to lose.” Energy spilled over the room in almost painful abundance. “Can you keep up? If not, stay here and await my return.”

John’s Companion charged up through his veins as relief sluiced over him. “I’ll keep up.”

Twenty-Two

Sincai showered Mechlin with orders. Two horses called for by name, sandwiches ordered to take with them, and his valet was to provide John with soap and hot water and a change of clothing. At that, John protested.

“I’ll not ride with a scarecrow,” Sincai said with finality, “and one who smells into the bargain. It will take a few minutes to prepare our departure.”

John opened his mouth and shut it. He was alive. Sincai was going to save Beatrix. And truth be told, he was exhausted. Perhaps ten minutes to wipe his body with a steaming towel would help keep his senses about him. The journey back would be long. “As you wish.”

An austere and disapproving gentleman’s gentleman led John up one flight to a luxurious bedroom done in rich browns and gold. A fire crackled in a grate. A hip bath stood next to the hearth. In trooped a whole line of servants, men, girls, and boys, each carrying a pail of steaming water. John’s jaw dropped. “When . . . how did you . . . ?”

The servants plashed their buckets into the bath. “Mijanheer Sincai likes to have water ready whenever he may
call for a bath,” the valet announced, eyeing John sharply. “Yes. I think so.” He inclined his head an inch only. “I shall return with suitable clothing.”

The last servant was a girl in a mobcap and white apron. She ducked her head and laid soap and two large towels near the bath. She was still closing the door when John hastily stripped off his clothes. The bath was hot enough to send shivers up his spine. He soaped and scrubbed ruthlessly, aiming for speed, ducked and washed the dirt of travel from his hair. He stood, dripping, but feeling somewhat more alive.

A knock at the door was followed immediately by Sincai, dressed for travel. In one hand he carried gleaming Hessian boots, a pile of clothing over his arm, and in the other a silver-chased goblet. John could smell the blood in it. Sincai glanced briefly at John, laid the clothing on the bed, and set the goblet on the night table. John hastily stepped from the bath, coloring, and turned his back on Sincai. His heart throbbed in his chest and a dreadful neediness crawled up his veins. He could hardly get his breath. Sincai brought him blood! Revulsion made his stomach turn.
Think, man!
He shook his head.
Do you imagine you can save her in the state you’re in? Very well, then
, he answered himself.
Blood it shall be
.

“Do I delay you?” John’s voice barely shook. He reached for the towel and dried himself brusquely. Looking down, he realized Sincai had seen his scars front and back, even those Asharti made on his groin and his buttocks. He pushed down the desire to stride to the table and gulp the contents of the goblet, and wrapped the towel around his waist.

“No, my groom is just bringing the horses round from the mews. You have time.”

John turned. Sincai sat on the bed, next to the clothes. The man’s eyes moved slowly over his body. John lifted his chin, trying not to hear the call of the goblet. “The
scars are not from Beatrix, if that is what you’re wondering. They belong to Asharti,” he said stiffly. “These were already healed when I was infected.”

“You seem to have quite a variety of scars, actually,” Sincai remarked, throwing him the freshly ironed shirt. It smelled of the soap used to wash it. John pulled it over his head.

“I’m familiar with various kinds of steel.” John reached for the trousers, hand shaking. He did not mention the lash. Sincai would have seen those scars as well.

“It had occurred to me that you might be drawing me into some sort of trap. Those two cannot have any love for me.”

Was the man backing out? John cast about. Anything he said proved Sincai’s point if looked at through another lens. He stared at the floor, trying to think in spite of the itching in his veins. The screw of paper he had carried next to his heart in the inside pocket of the snuff-colored coat lay on the carpet. He had unfolded that little screw of paper and read it at every stop for water or food, however brief. He leaned to pick it up and tossed it to Sincai.

Stephen Sincai looked at the screw of paper warily, then smoothed its worn folds and read. “It might not be her hand,” he whispered, doubt turning his mouth down and drawing his brows together. “I can’t remember.”

“You would not recognize it. It was written in pomegranate juice with her fingernail. Asharti did not care to loan her a quill.”

Sincai took a breath. He looked up at John, inclined his head and rose. “Ring the bell if you can’t get into the coat. I used to wear it hunting, when I hunted, so it fits me a little loosely. Talmere thought you might get those shoulders of yours into it.” At the door, he turned. “You know, if my Companion was as hungry as yours is I would have downed that goblet the instant it was set upon the table. Are you perhaps trying to resist your needs? If
so, you’re a fool. You were weak when Bea made you and you’re only a few days out from the rejection sickness. You may be a liability.”

“You have my permission to leave me if I can’t keep up,” John said, his voice tight.

“I don’t need your permission,” Sincai reminded softly.

John pulled on the trousers over the smalls and stood. “Then we understand each other.”

“Drink my small offering,” Sincai drawled. “You’ll find it beneficial.”

John pulled on the boots, refusing to look at the goblet. “And what innocent suffered to produce it?”

The ghost of a smile drifted across Sincai’s lips. “Oh, surely not innocent. It’s my blood.”

John looked up sharply. “Why?”

Sincai shrugged. John could not read his eyes. “Beatrix may have use of you. The blood of one as old as I will give you strength,” he said as he slipped into the corridor. The door closed.

John stared at the goblet. Sincai’s blood. He would give that to John? He must truly still love Beatrix. John sighed. He had to drink the stuff, of course. That was the new reality. And what would he not do for Beatrix? He must be strong for her. Closing his eyes, he took a breath, preparing for the gagging ordeal ahead. No use delaying. He strode to the tiny table and clutched the goblet. The vibrations in his core ramped up until they seemed a kind of song. His blood was singing at him, urging him to drink. His chest heaved as he raised the heavy silver cup with a hunting scene of stags and slavering dogs. Where had he seen that tableau before? The scent of blood filled his nostrils. The song inside became an operatic chorus. He was trembling as he brought the goblet to his lips.
Let me not vomit it up
, he thought. He gulped the thick liquid. Copper! Viscous life! It coursed down his throat. He
gulped convulsively. Far from vomiting, he wanted to keep drinking forever. The song was now a thousand voices strong, making him feel so alive he thought he would burst.

Then the blood was gone. He licked the rim of the goblet, and set it down. His hand no longer shook. The song died away, but it was not quite gone. It had turned into a hum that made his center vibrate with life. He breathed. The feel of air in his lungs tasted like cool water to a parched man. He turned into the room. There was the bath, steam still faintly rising from it. The fire cackled and flapped in coruscating colors. The lamps cast a soft glow over the reds of the draperies and bed hangings. God, but he loved the color red!

He felt alive, so damned alive! “Damned” might be the prescient word. He might be damned. But he was strong. And he was going to save Beatrix.

He ran down the stairs to the foyer, grabbed the cloak Mechlin handed him, and pushed out the door into the night of the tree-lined canal. Sincai was just swinging up onto a black gelding, seventeen hands if he was an inch. A groom held a prancing, big-boned chestnut mare.

“Sandwiches in the saddlebags,” a generously proportioned woman in a mobcap called from the doorway in Dutch. “And four bottles of hock.”

John swung up on the spirited mare. She was more than up to his weight. Leave it to a man like Sincai to have two such fine pieces of horseflesh in his stable.

“Pick the horses up at the Gronigen Inn in Rotterdam,” Sincai shouted to his groom.

They were off. A light rain began to fall. The horses were a handful in the streets of Amsterdam as they made their way across the concentric rings of the canals. John hunched his shoulders against the drizzle, glad Sincai knew the city. It would be a long way to Paris. The glow
inside John said that he might be strong enough to make it now. And if he was cursed he was glad. He might lose Beatrix to Sincai. In fact, he was sure of it. But she had a chance to live.

Beatrix sat in the twilight, trembling. The day had been long. The evening brought no comfort, though. For that was when Asharti came to gloat. Even as Beatrix thought about her, her throaty laugh could be heard in the corridor. Beatrix’s stomach knotted in anticipation.

“Well, my little conspirator, Friday evening. Only two nights left.” Asharti spoke in the old language, the language of Transylvania in the eleventh century. She was dressed for the evening in an empire-style gown of cream brocade with large figured stripes worked in gilt thread. The gold and diamonds at her breast were worth a fortune. Her dark hair was swept up and pulled severely off her face, accentuating her cheekbones and her almond eyes.

Beatrix was silent. She would not give her enemy the satisfaction of a reply.

Asharti smiled slyly. “You have grown so silent. There were times when all you wanted to do was talk, talk about what we could do with the world at our feet, plan utopias and new societies.” She seemed to have a thought. “Now it is I who plan for the world’s future, not you.”

Beatrix looked up at her with tired eyes. Her clothes were dirty. She was past the need to eat, but she could no longer stand without wavering. So she sat, staring dumbly at her adversary.

“Ramon tells me you accept your fate. You are ready to die.”

“How does Ramon know anything?” Beatrix was prodded into speaking.

“You talk in your sleep.” Asharti smiled. It was not an attractive smile. “You know your problem?” Asharti remarked, pacing back and forth in front of the bars. “You
simply aren’t interested in life anymore. You have no desire. You don’t
hunger
for anything.” She stopped and turned. “I want everything. It keeps me interested in life. It keeps me strong.”

“If you think that makes you superior, you’re wrong,” she muttered.

“So it’s true!” Asharti practically crowed. “Why, I’ll wager you were on the brink of retiring to Mirso.”

Beatrix was thankful she was probably too pale and worn to flush. She wanted more than anything to wipe that smirk off Asharti’s face. “On the contrary, I was involved in solving a little problem that
interested
me.”

Asharti raised her brows. “Oh. You mean you were trailing your Englishman here to France.” She chuckled. “Oh, my. We were interested in a man, and that gave us purpose in life. How small of you.”

“Believing in love isn’t small.” Her own voice sounded small in her ears as she said it.

“It is the smallest, dear sister, the smallest thing to believe in at all.”

“Only if you’ve never been in love.” There.

“I’ll wager you’ve been in love a thousand times,” Asharti sneered. “That would be just like you. Naive.”

Beatrix looked up at that proud, sneering face, and everything came clear. “No,” she said slowly. “I have not been in love since Stephan. I lost the courage for it.” Asharti started to interrupt and Beatrix held up a hand. Something in her manner or her face must have made Asharti pause. “No, no, I have just realized this. You are right. It
is
naive to believe in love after you have seen all the permutations of love gone wrong, love marred by death, love withered with age, love sapped of vitality by petty irritations or boredom. Even if I told myself it was not for me, still I saw it all in others. But there is courage in that kind of naïveté. I . . . I think it may be second innocence.” She stared up at Asharti, not seeing her, but
seeing William Blake’s childlike drawings of stars and suns and animals, hearing his wonder at the symmetry of tigers.