Waging War (36 page)

He paused, and I thought he must have been
reliving it in his mind, because the shudder was back and there was
an edge of desperation in his voice. “When the sirens blew, there
was a mass exodus to the Underground station, and I couldn’t escape
the tide of people without raising suspicion. So down I went, and I
spent the worst night of my life, surrounded by hundreds of people
filled with the blood my body craved. It was as though I were an
addict in an opium den with no money to buy. An older man near me
was bleeding from a cut on his hand, and I literally shook with the
effort not to leap on him as I got up and moved to the far end of
the tunnel.”

“Is it a craving or a compulsion?” I
asked.

Archer met my eyes and then looked away. “A
compulsion. No matter how much you persist in believing me
harmless, this isn’t just a ‘condition,’ Saira, it is a beast that
must be fed to stay dormant, otherwise it rears up and takes
control.”

“Kind of like my Cougar, then?” I kept my
voice carefully neutral, but his eyes snapped to mine.

“You don’t have to kill to feed the
beast.”

I shrugged. “You probably don’t either.”

“Yeah, ye’re just bein’ a drama queen,”
Ringo said lightly.

We both stared at him, and I burst out
laughing. “Where’d you hear that?”

Ringo cocked an eyebrow with a grin.
“Millicent.”

My mouth dropped open. “No you didn’t!”

He laughed and wagged his eyebrows up and
down, and suddenly the mood of the conversation shifted. “Come on,
ye lot. Time to get to work.”

He pulled a Bowie knife out of his boot that
looked like something a hunter would wear and held it up as a dare.
Archer scoffed and pulled his own knife to compare blade size. So
of course, I rolled my eyes at both of them and drew my daggers out
and brandished them with ninja sound effects. Because that’s how
badass I was with my daggers. The laughter that erupted was the
perfect antidote to the business ahead of us.

Cleaning and butchering the buck was
actually far less bloody business than it would have been if Archer
hadn’t fed from it. Of course, Ringo had to comment on the fact,
but Archer took it in stride. He seemed more relaxed than I’d ever
seen him about the whole drinking blood thing, and it made me
wonder if he would remember this in his future and let go of all
the shame he had about me knowing he had to eat.

Ringo was a very efficient butcher, and
Archer had done a lot of field dressing of his father’s kills when
he was young, so I followed their lead, and we soon had three, big,
well-packed bundles of venison to bring back.

I told the guys I wanted to stop by the old
winery to bring some meat for the Jewish kids who lived there.
Archer looked thoughtful.

“I suppose it could be considered kosher.
Deer have cloven hooves, and the animal was completely bled before
being butchered,” he said wryly.

I hadn’t even thought about what might need
to be done to make the meat kosher, but since I didn’t know the
rules, all we could do was tell someone what we’d done – minus the
part about Archer drinking the blood, of course – and let them
decide.

The baskets on the front of our bicycles
were useful for carrying our bundles of meat, and within about ten
minutes we were walking the bikes down the long dirt drive toward
the old winery.

“I didn’t know this place existed,” Archer
whispered as we crested the hill. The winery spread out in the
small valley in front of us, and a light was on in the
farmhouse.

“Apparently most of the village has
forgotten it too,” I whispered back.

The night was actually louder than it seemed
the closer we got to the farmhouse. Crickets chirped and trilled,
and a pair of barn owls called back and forth to each other across
the property. It made me feel slightly better about climbing the
back steps to what I assumed was the kitchen door, almost as if it
wasn’t unreasonable to think someone might be awake in the hours
before dawn.

Rather than leaving the meat outside, I
knocked quietly on the door. The crickets instantly stilled, and I
could feel Archer and Ringo step in place behind me. My confidence
slipped the longer it took, and I almost put the meat down and
backed away, when finally the door opened.

And so did my mouth.

“Bas?”

Bas

The twelfth-century Moorish Vampire who
stood in the kitchen doorway looked as shocked to see me as I was
to see him. His clothing was casual, his shirt open at the neck,
and his trousers were old, but well-made. He wore his hair cropped
shorter than it had been in 1429, and without facial hair, he
looked younger than he had then. Considering that his skin hadn’t
seen the sun in more than eight hundred years, his appearance could
pass for vaguely Spanish or Basque, which, given Hitler’s
prejudices against blacks, among others, meant he had a better than
average chance of surviving the camp round-ups.

“Saira.” His voice rolled warmly in accented
English, and I remembered he had been going to spend time in Tudor
England after Elizabeth brought Protestants under her protection.
He clasped me in both hands and brought me forward for a
three-cheek-kiss greeting. Then he saw Ringo behind me, and looked
confused at first. “Ringo, was it?” He held out his hand, then when
Ringo went to shake it, brought him in for the same three-cheek
kiss. I had felt Archer stiffen at my greeting, and then with
Ringo’s obvious familiarity, he seemed less sure.

When Bas turned the full wattage of his
smile to Archer, the uncertainty became full-blown confusion.
“Archer, my friend. It has been far too long.” Archer got the same
greeting as we did, and graciously submitted, though Bas could
instantly feel his reluctance and pulled back.

Bas still held Archer’s shoulders as he
studied his face. “It is you, but not you. What has happened?” When
Archer didn’t immediately answer, I did – but I directed my
response to Archer.

“This is Bas. We met him in 1429 at Château
Landon when we were on our way to Orléans to find Joan. He is a
mixed-blood Descendant too, of Nature … and Death.” I tried not to
hesitate between the two Family distinctions, but I knew my voice
betrayed me. Then I turned to Bas.

“This is Archer, my Archer, but he has no
memory of having met you. He is from this time, and wasn’t on the
trip to France with us … before.”

Bas nodded, still studying Archer’s face. “I
see. I am sorry to have been so familiar with your woman, given
that you do not know me and know my friendship to be true. Please
accept my apologies.”

If Archer was startled by Bas’ heartfelt
apology, he gave no indication. Instead he smiled and held out his
hand to shake. “I apologize that I’m not yet the man you know. I
look forward to making your acquaintance.” Time travel
conversations were definitely a ten on the scale from one to
weird.

A huge grin lit up the Moor’s face and he
shook Archer’s hand enthusiastically. He stepped back and gestured
us inside the house. “Come, my friends, tell me your tales and I’ll
tell mine. Let us begin this acquaintance that we be strangers no
more.”

It was hard not to be infected by Bas’
enthusiasm, especially as he clapped the guys on the shoulders and
led us all into a warm kitchen full of the scents of cooking. I
looked at Bas in surprise. “Why are you cooking? You don’t eat
food.”

“Ah, I don’t, but the little ones do, and
they like my food better than the food Sister Agnes makes when she
cares for them.” He leaned forward and dropped his voice as if he
was revealing a great secret. “I use better spices.”

Then he spotted the packages of meat. “Ah,
what is this? You’ve brought the children gifts?”

I explained how we’d hunted and cleaned the
deer, and Bas nodded thoughtfully. “I think God would approve in
the spirit of the laws, whether or not the letter has been upheld.
These are interesting times, and God’s grace is found in the
generosity of strangers.”

He accepted the meat and immediately took it
downstairs to the cold cellar where it would keep for another day
or two before it had to be cooked. All three of us used the time to
wash our hands in the old porcelain sink, and then Ringo started
lifting the lids of pots and inhaling the delicious scents of the
meal cooking on Bas’ stove, while I quietly filled Archer in on our
fifteenth-century meeting with the Moorish priest. At least I
thought he was still a priest, considering Marianne’s story about
who was rescuing all the Jewish children and bringing them here.
Archer seemed particularly intrigued by Bas’ commitment to studying
a different world religion every century, and it was a reminder to
me of Archer’s own ecclesiastical studies in 1888.

When Bas returned, he washed his hands, then
scooped out two bowls of stew from the pot on the stove and placed
them in front of Ringo and me. “Eat,” he said in a warm, deep
voice.

I thought about being noble and declining so
the kids would have more, but my belly was empty and I was getting
a little light-headed from exhaustion. I thought I could probably
do more to help keep the kids fed if I fed myself, so after a quick
look at Ringo to make sure he was eating, I dug in.

The stew was delicious, full of complex
spices that tasted like I imagined a Moroccan spice store would
smell. Bas watched us inhale his stew for a moment, then turned to
Archer.

“How have you come to be in France?”

It seemed Archer had decided to trust Bas –
maybe because of our history, or because of his relationship to
God, or maybe just because of the way Bas had greeted him. He
didn’t even hesitate to fill Bas in on his mission to help Nancy
plan the targets for the Maquis disruptions of the 2
^nd
SS Panzer Division’s progress to Normandy, and on his own work as a
Bletchley Park codebreaker for the English.

Bas’ experience as a man of various churches
had likely placed him at the center of several of the great wars
through history, and he seemed to instantly grasp the significance
of everything Archer revealed. They discussed the Maquis’ plans for
a few minutes, but he seemed most intrigued by the English secrecy
around their codebreaking activities. “It’s a good long-term plan.
This war won’t last forever, and if their enemies do not realize
their codes have been broken, England retains the upper hand in
diplomatic relations.”

I picked up my empty bowl and went to the
sink to wash it. “That’s exactly what happened. The Russians didn’t
find out until the 1960s that their Lorenz code had been
broken.”

I didn’t really think about what I’d said
until after the words were out, but the silence behind me betrayed
my thoughtlessness. I spun to face the guys with a gasp. “I’m so
sorry! I know better than to talk about my history like it’s
yours.”

Archer’s tone was gentle. “And usually for
you, I would know the same history as you do.”

Bas fixed his gaze on me. “I assume there is
some anomaly that prevents the Archer I met in Château Landon from
being here now? And how is it that you two are in this time and
place?”

I explained about the rule of time travel
that prevents a person from being in the same time as himself, and
then all three of us brought him up to speed about the possible
cure for vampirism, our search for Tom Landers, and the possibility
that he could be working with Hitler’s Werwolves.

Bas asked a few questions for clarification,
but mostly he just listened and absorbed what we told him. He sat
back in his chair and steepled his fingers in front of his chin in
a way that reminded me of our friend Bishop Cleary. I almost looked
at Archer for a private grin at the resemblance, then realized I
was, yet again, having a memory that this Archer didn’t share.

“Do you intend to take this cure, Archer?”
Bas spoke directly to Archer, and his question surprised me. Of all
the things we’d said, that was the first thing he focused on.

“I don’t believe it is my choice to make
yet.” Archer’s eyes didn’t waver from Bas’, and I could see Ringo’s
eyes move back and forth between them like a tennis ball in a
match.

“Is it not? This is now the first you’ve
heard of the possibility of a cure, and the things that are
happening now will become part of your history when you are the man
who can make that decision. Therefore, it seems to me that you do
have a say – in this moment – about whether you will take that
cure.”

“I wouldn’t take it now, if that’s what you
mean.”

“Why not?” Bas leaned forward with keen
interest.

“Because whether it worked or not, I would
die before I could be with Saira in her own time.”

Bas smiled. “This is becoming a
philosophical discussion of which I very much approve. What if,
after you took the cure, Saira were to take you from this time and
bring you forward with her to her own time. If, as you say, you
would be dead of natural causes anyway, it should be possible, no?
Then, you could live out a natural, human life with Saira in her
time.”