“Stay outside a moment and catch your breath. I'll get the children inside.” His uncle couldn't hear the voice, or feel the ice, but even in the poor light he could see Jacob's eyes were wild and his skin flashing white and then red. If he was going to be sick, better to do it outside.
Jacob bent quickly to his brother and sister and kissed each face.
“Forgive me. Oh, God, forgive me.”
Alma clutched at his hand but said nothing. He cupped her face, looked in her eyes. Her brown eyes were darker than his, wider, and wiser. They smiled, though her face stayed solemn. She nodded, whether in understanding or farewell, he didn't know. Beloved sister. Best friend. Blood. No! He wouldn't leave them. He would collect himself, and come inside.
His uncle patted him on the shoulder. “You will be all right in a minute. We'll be waiting for you.”
And they went in. Even though others followed, Jacob was sure he saw that icy door close hard behind them, sucking them deep inside. He reached for them, but the singing whisper came again. He had to go.
He almost floated toward the extraordinary girl, sure he was walking the walk of a dreaming man.
“No, this is real,” she whispered, though he'd said nothing. “Tell them one last good-bye. The children will hear you.”
She cupped her hand around his mouth. And as if in a dream, he did as she bid.
“Alma. Abram. I love you. God be with you, always.”
He wanted to say more, or perhaps just the same words again, but the sound died in his throat. The girl dropped her cool hand from his mouth and wrapped it gently around his fingers.
“They're not afraid.”
Her eyes were honest, and he believed her.
She applied a tiny bit of pressure on his hand, just enough to pull him away from that miserable spot. He didn't know where they were going, but neither did he care.
They were past the city walls, in a moonlit clearing. He looked into her eyes and forgot that barely an hour ago, he'd guided his family out of their home, fighting the urge to wonder if he'd ever enter that door again. Who could think of anything else, looking into these eyes? And though it was insanity to think so, it seemed to him she was the loneliest woman he'd ever seen, and yet lost in love. Despite the chill and the strangeness, he'd never felt so complete in his skin and right in his place as that moment. And not since he was a tiny boy, falling asleep under his mother's hand stroking his hair, had he felt so loved and protected. It was incomprehensible, but he didn't mind. He'd always had an affinity for that which couldn't be immediately understood.
The girl smiled suddenly, a brilliant flash that took his breath away. The energy she radiated glowed hot around her, a beacon of light in the darkness. There was intelligence in those large, lonely eyes, and a lost world, and a world to be discovered. He'd never wanted to touch anyone so desperately. His heart was pounding, he almost felt like it was expanding, pulsing against his ribs. So slowly, he might have been standing aside and watching himself, he raised his fingers to her cheek. The feel of her skin sent a shot like lightning through himâat once cold and hot. Her eyes sparked and he bit back a gasp. He had no idea what the love between a man and a woman was like, but the powerful energy that was now swirling around him, tickling his skin, told him he was on his way home.
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Brigantia was terrified. She had smelled him before she saw him, and the scent had made the back of her neck tingle and her fingers ache.
His intelligence, his pride, his courage. His hunger for all there was in the world, and more. And music, music that made her think of sunlight dappling the river, the feel of lying on a hill and staring up through the trees and into a bright blue sky. Two hundred and seventy-four years since her humanity, and the few happy memories of that life were flowing through her useless veins. She pressed her hands to her head, summoning all her concentration. But then she looked up, and saw those eyes.
She buried her face in a tree, trying to think.
This is love. This is the love I thought was just the stuff of ancient poetry and idle dreams.
She peeked at him again.
I can hear his heart beating. I want to crawl inside that heart. I want to be the only one for whom it beats.
She would have to turn him, there was no other option, as a human he was already the walking dead, but turning him meant that heart wouldn't beat, and would she deserve him, deserve this possibility of love? She knew only too well that to turn someone did not mean they rose and loved you.
The Jews were heading to the castle to wait in safety for help. But there were so few of them, and the hatred in the air was so high. If he went in there, he would not come out. She told herself this was his only chance, even knowing she meant it was hers. So with guilt overwhelmed by longing and hope, she sent out the whispering call.
And so here they were. She knew what she had to do. Otonia had explained it. With infinite care, with infinite tenderness, and yet with control.
“What is your name?”
“Jacob. Of the family Emmanuel. What is yours?”
“Brigantia.”
“An ancient name.”
“Yes. Mine is an ancient family.”
She willed herself to stop talking, fearing it would dissipate the spell. She laid a hand on his chest, memorizing the feel of his heartbeat. He laid a hand over hers and her stomach contracted. Otonia had never even suggested it might be anything like this. “And yet with control.” Easier said than done.
She was aching to kiss him. It was taking most of her control to fight that urge. It would be wrong, it would be kissing him under the blind canopy, embracing from across a divide. It wouldn't be real, and it
wouldn't be love. However long it took, she was going to wait for that kiss, till he was in this place with her.
She reached up to his ear, whispering again. A formula that slipped back to the beginning of their time, and nobody knew when that was. But it was a sweet hiss that hung like a mist around them. His breath was hot on her neck, his arms tight around her, his pulse racing. The demon strangely unwilling to riseâall she wanted was to lie down with him. At last, however, the fierce pounding of his heart against her breast and the feel of his blood coursing under her touch roused the demon, and her fangs slid out from under her gums. More gently than she knew possible, she bit.
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Of course, Jacob had dreamed of holding a woman close, and wondered what it must feel like. He wanted to kiss a woman, properly, and no woman had ever made his mouth tingle like Brigantia. But she shied from his lips, her mouth was hot on his neck, and he wondered why he wanted so much from a stranger, or why she felt like someone he'd known even before he was born.
His mind was whirling. He was floating; no, sinking. Was he supporting her, or she him? His blood was pounding so hard, he had no sense of it draining, and was fast becoming a freak of nature as his heart simultaneously raced and slowed.
His one certainty was that his mouth needed to be on some part of her flesh. As though she read his mind, or, happier, shared his need, she slid her hand up his back and around to his face. He pressed her palm against his slightly open lips, drowning in the salty sweetness of her taste and the pressure of her fingertips against his cheek. There was warmth in this small hand. Warmth and wetness, although he didn't notice that, and if he had registered the blood dripping from the swift slash, the injury would have horrified him even more than that same blood dripping down his dry throat.
But he was now far past noticing anything.
For years afterward, it was a small point of pride with him that, although far from the manner in which he'd imagined or even intended, he did, indeed, die on his feet.
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There is no consciousness in the dig, any more than there is in a bird's pecking of its shell, or indeed, a baby sliding out of its mother. The dig is just determined, the arduous and painful task of vampire birth. It was not until his head burst through and he shook particles of dirt from his eyes that his brain clicked in and began to work again. She was there, watching, her lovely face bathed in moonlight. He pulled himself out of the grave and knelt on the edge, feeling the need to pant from the exhaustion, but, of course, there was no panting.
He wished she wasn't there, wasn't watching. He didn't want her to see him struggle, gasp for a breath he didn't need. The chill clawing at his back wasn't the night or his own self, but her. Her, and the cold stillness she'd planted inside him. He blinked down into the empty grave, expecting to see a shadow of himself inside all that churned-up dirt. He studied his handsâdirty, but familiar, and wondered where this tingle came from, this sense that each was enclosed in something immense, overwhelming, something that tugged and was determined to possess him. His hands were not his, not anymore.
Food. He needed food. Simple sustenance to fill the hollowness, to settle the mind. A warm meal, a good meal, the essence of life. The bowl of lamb stew that flitted through his mind danced tauntingly before him, its sweet smells dissipating with each imagined sniff, chunks of meat and vegetables evaporating and then the gravy swirled and snaked its way into the ether. Blood bubbled from the bottom of the bowl, blood that had been so carefully drained away and buried, now swelled up to the brim. Blood. An unkosher thing, forbidden, even if it was what some Gentiles alleged the Jews stole to make their Passover matzo. But as the bowl expanded into a tub and invited him to bathe, he knew this was his staff of life now, and he would not shy from it.
Infuriating certainty told him exactly where he must go. Steps retraced, moving backward through space even as he'd leaped forward into a vortex. Pushing against a heavy wall that chafed deep under his skin, all the way back to what had been his home.
And all the while, she tagged behind him. He could hear the buzz of her unspoken thoughts, feel her mouth open and then close, and took some pleasure in her uncertainty. She had pulled him from where he belonged and set him here, on this peculiar precipice, and although an
echo whispered that he'd wanted that, that the song which breathed through him when she'd summoned him forward was the song he had always wanted to sing, was meant to sing, his propensity at this moment was not to forgive. The weight of his partial soul was too heavy.
They were there, as he had known they would be. The vultures. Not even vultures, for the bold and determined had raided the homes of the Jews the previous day. These were the weak parasites who were suffered to pick at bones and privileged to keep a morsel of cartilage, should they find one.
The small, shabby house in which he'd been born and lived his short life still smelled faintly of bread. He could open the door and enter, which meant the house knew its people were gone and would not come back. It was stripped bare. Furniture, crockery, linens, the children's whittled toys. Other children had played with those toys on this day. The vision filled him with a rage he hadn't thought possible.
He tucked the rage away for later use and concentrated on the smell. She was in the bakehouse. Searching through the cupboards by the light of a single candle for things overlooked. Already she had found some salt and a dull knife. She was enjoying her luck.
“Go away, this is my spot!” Her cry was an echo from inside the cupboard, her impertinent bottom an obscene protrusion.
“Is it now?”
The voice was pleasant, leisurely, and tinged with sarcasm. Her bottom froze. There was an alertness about it, like a fox who hears the distant baying of hounds. It amused him, and he wondered how much mileage she'd gotten from that communicative round rump.
She backed out quickly and looked up. Yes, he knew her. One of those flirts who sometimes came to buy his bread and ogle his face. Giggle, and even wink. Exactly what she expected from him, he never wanted to know, but if she thought her own face and patronage meant anything to him, she was quite wrong. He was not so foolish as to refuse to sell, because that could have led to trouble, and the entire Jewish community had always been determined to avoid trouble. But trouble came anyway. Didn't it just?
The girl had enough grace to look abashed. She brushed a loose
curl out of her face. Flour clung to her cheeks and hair, making her look foolish. She tried to smile.
“You are back. I thought ⦔
“That I wasn't coming back? That I was taking up permanent residence in the castle, perhaps? I, and all my people? Well, why not? We could earn our keep there, certainly. Mop up after the pigs. I suppose that would be appropriate. The animals dirtiest to you tending the animals dirtiest to them. What a charming entertainment.”
“No. No, I ⦠you don't understand. I'm not like that. Some Christians are, I suppose, but that's not proper Christian behavior, not really. You must believe me.”
“Oh, I do. I suppose you only thought that since everyone else had stripped our homes, you may as well come along and see what could be yours. Why should only the people who want us dead get to prosper off us?”