“An enemy that has had the good luck not to tangle with millennials,” Brigit pointed out.
“We can fix that.” Mors grinned.
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They'd begun to understand what the refugees meant when the boat docked at Calais. There was a chill that had nothing to do with a foggy November night. Meaghan muttered something only Swefred could hear, and he put an arm around her and whispered into her hair. The other three concentrated on buying the train tickets. They wanted to keep moving, swiftly.
France felt like a nation holding its breath. Watchful. Apprehensive. But not enough, Brigit decided. There was still too much to enjoy. And there was some kind of faith she couldn't place, some variation on the age-old certainty that everything would be all right because it always was. Except when it wasn't.
I suppose we should be grateful for constancy.
Zipping along through the countryside, Brigit began to sense something even more infuriating. Many of these provincial people knew, or suspected, that Nazi hunters working undercover had been systematically scourging France of its vampires. They approved; they liked it. A vampire-free France had been an ideal for centuries and had now been achieved at no cost to the French. There were many who wondered what other benefits the Nazis could bring, so long as no one made much fuss.
Disgusted, Brigit made her way to the back of the train where Mors stood alone, leaning on the wrought-iron gate, watching a long-invisible England disappear further into the mist.
He smiled at Brigit. It never failed to amuse and yet vex her that he
almost always knew exactly what she was thinking, and today was no exception.
“Well, perhaps they're not so wrong. What do we do for them, really?”
“Give them the stuff with which to scare their children into behaving.”
“And nightmares, don't forget nightmares.”
“A little abject terror is good for a person.”
“Too right. How else do you know you're alive?”
Brigit's laugh was stopped short by the sight of a church spire. Norman, and lit in a majestic orange glow, it radiated surety and solidity to the market town.
“I almost want to make ten vampires, just to upset their precious pleasant order.”
Mors smiled his most wicked smile.
“Feeling energetic, aren't you?”
“And angry.”
“Save that. You'll need it later.”
What he really meant, they both knew, was that she had to be careful. Brigit was possessed of a kind of fire inside that was a unique beast, separate from the demon. Time away from Eamon was not likely to keep it tamped down. It had exploded twice in her life, and nearly killed her both times. Mors knew how to guard her, but they'd be working far apart every night. She placed her trust in her control, and the essence of Eamon that clung to her. She was determined it would be enough.
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The smell hit them like a blunt object as soon as they crossed the border into Germany. Brigit inadvertently dug her fingernails into her palm, a reaction as much to the reeking air as Meaghan's low whine and shudder.
They had to change trains for Berlin. Stepping out onto the platform, Brigit had a strong sense of walking through a curtain of ice water. She and Eamon had once traveled to Berlin to see Beethoven debut a new symphony, and they'd enjoyed themselves. The food was a bit hearty, perhaps, but lined the stomach well for the crisp autumn nights. There were pleasant cafés for lingering, reading papers, and savoring the marvelous
coffee. To be sure, there was a stridency about the people that one didn't see with the French, and certainly not with their beloved British, but there was nothing to make a vampire uneasy.
This was quite different. Blinking away grit, she inhaled coldness, trepidation, and what she could only imagine must be the smell of impending catastrophe. It was Eamon, not herself, who had a sense of things coming, so she hoped it was just a fancy. The others, after an initial wrinkling of noses and shiver, had recovered their mantles of businesslike indifference. Except for Mors, who was casting a bold eye over a pretty young woman. She was blushing, but seemed to enjoy the look.
Lots of luck, my friend. The train's due in ten minutes.
The other waiting people, well-wrapped in winter coats, noticed nothing. Brigit studied them. Just civilians. Looking ordinary. Tired, perhaps, and impatient for the train, but nothing to cause alarm. They were just people. Simple, small, edible people. But not appetizing. The vague uneasiness in a few, the whipped-up lather in too many others, it didn't smack of anything digestible. Brigit told herself it could be worse. And it had been. The Civil War, that had been bad. And countless other times.
Maybe I just don't care for foreign food.
She meandered down to the end of the platform and leaned against the railing to better stare out at the empty track. In her mind's eye, she followed it back to Calais and then across the Channel and home, to Eamon.
Feeling the danger of that thought, she turned the other way and looked instead toward Berlin, to the lair Ulrika had described, and the task ahead. She closed her eyes to better summon her strength. Then it happened. As surely as if she had turned her eyes inward, she saw the apprehension in the demon. It felt something akin to fear. It had the power to thrive on fear, although it generally chose not to use it, preferring to gain strength in sensuality and desire. That the demon could lose its nerve had never occurred to Brigit. She chose to be cross. She had not spent so many years learning to be mistress over that inner beast to let it assert itself through faintheartedness now. Its fear would feed on her, and she wouldn't have that. It and she would go home again, once they had completed their work.
Mors had disappeared, but Brigit studied the other three, wondering if they had taken any stock of their demons. It wasn't the sort of thing she could ask. The demon was each vampire's own personal creature, that innermost part of the self in that other world. It was them, and yet not them. In the human world, with their human faces on, it was as though the demon did not exist. Not that they pretended it did not, it was merely that there was no acknowledgment. They were two different creatures, and neither was human.
Brigit pressed her fingers to her eyelids, collecting herself. When she looked up, she saw a man watching her curiously. She tossed her head and smiled at him.
“Just a bit of grit in my eyes.”
“Ah, yes. Inevitable. But the stations are much cleaner now, wouldn't you say?”
“Oh, certainly.”
Did he really think so? It didn't seem any more clean than the French or British stations, and a damn sight less cheerful, too. However, she nodded politely and moved down to rejoin the others. Her first insincere conversation in Germany. She wondered how many more she would have before she could leave. The thought nearly made her smile, but it was interrupted by the screeching arrival of the train.
Mors swung up behind her, whistling. She turned to him with questioning eyes. He winked.
“Got a toothpick?”
“Seven minutes. I'm impressed. And what about teeth marks? Tracks covered?”
He edged her farther into the dark corner and raised a handâone fingernail stretched out long into a blade-like talon.
“Throat slit. Which is why you shouldn't struggle when being mugged. Why parents don't teach their children these things, I don't know.”
He flipped open his coat just enough to show Brigit the woman's handbag.
“Extra identity, which you'll probably need. You can thank me later.”
“Such a giver you are. So, a violent crime in a peopled train station.
How shocking. Here I thought the Nazis had established themselves on a platform of law and order.”
“Scandalous, isn't it?”
Brigit hesitated, then had to ask.
“And the taste?”
Mors had just started toward the others. He paused and turned to look at Brigit with some resignation.
“Well, we didn't come here for the food.”
Indeed.
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The train was a local and unbearably slow. Brigit rubbed her wrist absentmindedly, then gazed down at the pink mark she'd made.
Pink. Her skin turned pink under his hands, his mouth. The blood that lay so still under her flesh always rose with eager obedience to meet his touch. She followed the path of his hand up her leg, her thigh. He nipped the inside of her knee and she moaned, clutching the sheets as his mouth slowly worked its way upward.
More of her body yielded to him, to his insistent tongue. A tiny pocket of her mind wanted her to pay closer attention than she ever had, because this might be the last time, the last time that she was lost in such perfect ecstasy. But Brigit did not want to think such things. Eamon's mouth now trailed up her stomach, closed around her left nipple. His eyes, warm and sensual, rolled upward to see the heat in her face. It was a look and a gesture that never failed to inflame her further, and she groaned with the exquisite pain of wanting more.
And there was more. And more. And she didn't care what anyone might thinkâshe was not going to bathe the scent of him out of her hair before the journey. But she wasn't leaving yet. Not yet. She held his face in her hands and concentrated on the feel of his skin, the sheen of his eyes, the curl of his mouth. She had known him the moment she'd met him, but she would memorize him yet again. Even through the glaze of tears that she couldn't keep from clouding her eyes.
“Eamon. My Eamon. My most beloved.”
She woke suddenly, wondering if she had spoken out loud. But only Mors was looking at her. She shifted her gaze away from him, and her thoughts away from the dream. It was easier to think about Mors. Mors
was very different from the rest of them. Nearly all had been notably beautiful humans, and young, quite young. Few were older than twenty-five when made, because most of the chosen, men and women alike, were virginal and comparatively untethered to life. Mors was, the guess went, forty. Possibly older, perhaps younger, it was difficult to say. He had certainly been a soldier. A Roman general, they thought with some certainty. His way with a sword, or even a pair of swords, was terrifying in its power and artistry. In his occasional moments of restlessness, he sought out hunters to fight and dispatched them with his big, easy laugh. His was an untold history, though there was no one who didn't wish to learn it.
In any case, his face betrayed some time. Which could, Brigit supposed, make his association with four people half his age look questionable. On the other hand, he covered his shaved head with a fedora worn at a rakish angle and had a way of shouldering his greatcoat that made him seem to swagger even when lounging in his seat. In fact, far from looking distinctly older than the others, he simply looked roguish, powerful, a man who would naturally draw acolytes. Swefred and Meaghan existed separately from the group, Mors plainly had as little interest in them as they him, but whatever Brigit and Cleland might be to this older, knowing man with the ironically cocked eyebrow and curving, amused lips, that was another matter. One that gave some novel pleasure to those observers so disposed to lurid speculation.
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Theirs was to be the next stop, and Brigit was impatient. The sooner they were settled, the sooner they could begin. Ulrika's detailed instructions for getting to the abandoned lair played out in her mind and she was grateful for their intricacy, and for being rather tired and hungry. It meant there was no mental acumen left for wondering what Eamon was doing right this moment.
Extra distraction arrived in the shape of a startling smell. A young man, sweet and intoxicating, lurched past them toward the lavatories. All five pairs of eyes rolled toward him, intrigued. A spy, Brigit guessed, tapping him for Belgian. And a virgin, too, or at least not very experienced. On his way to meet a woman in Berlin. Desire and happy anticipation ran high in him. One good potential meal amid all the unappetizing
lumps they'd encountered so far, and he'd have to go free. Mors singsonged out the window: “Going to be a loooong holiday.”
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Despite the late hour, the station was busy and no one noticed the attractive, well-dressed group of five, who, while they had sat together on the train, now peeled off to various points around the station. One of the ladies headed for the powder room, another to the newsagent. One of the men needed a quick pick-me-up at the bar before going home to deal with the wifeâhonestly, such a relief to have business in Paris, such a bother to have to go home to snapping wife and squalling children. The barman understood only too well and they swapped stories with spirit. Another man thought he might just as well get his shoes shined. The third was a tourist and roused the sleepy clerk at the information desk to inquire in painstaking German if he could take a bus to his hotel, or should he hail a taxi?
The strolling guards usually noticed lovely young women who were traveling alone, but if the guards on duty had been questioned later, they would have sworn no single women had left the station all night. Nor men, for that matter. The vampires knew how to move with hot swiftness, clinging to shadows. Only one guard thought he saw a glint of something in the corner of his eye, but decided he'd either imagined it or it was a spark going off, or something equally innocuous. He'd never have guessed it was the rhinestone brooch on Meaghan's felt hat.