Blood Marriage (43 page)

Above her the slow clap...clap...clap of ominous applause sounded. Elizabeth's mouth went dry. She turned slowly and looked to the top of the stairs. 

Lucy.

The hood of her scarlet cloak was pushed back to reveal that one side of her scalp was red and puckered, hairless. A similar ugly burn mark extended down the side of her face in a slim jagged line that passed over one eye and across her wide sensual mouth. That mouth stretched into an evil smile, exposing even white teeth. With fascinated horror Elizabeth watched the teeth elongate into fangs and a strange calm gripped her. She was half-way up the stairs before she realized she was moving, trapped in those cat green eyes, pulled forward against her will.

"E-liz-a-beth." Lucy's voice was at once a caress and a lash.

With the small spark of will remaining within her, Elizabeth tried to resist the call of those cat eyes, tried to stop advancing up the steps. But her body would not obey her. A half dozen more steps and she would reach the landing. Lucy's arms opened to receive her. 

Below, a door was thrown back on its hinges with a great bang. Cool night air rushed up the stairs and for a second the green eyes looked past her, releasing her.

The memory of Vlad's voice echoed in Elizabeth's mind.
Don't look at her
. Elizabeth shut her eyes, yet still she felt compelled to ascend the stairs. Beads of perspiration gathered on her neck and face as she strained, fighting the call. And finally she did stop, but couldn't summon the strength to flee. Her arms remained pinned to her sides, her legs refused her command to reverse, though her muscles trembled and burned with the effort. Her body would not obey her. 

So she gave up. She stopped trying to will her muscles to action and instead willed them to relax. Completely. Her knees buckled. Her shoulders slumped. For an instant she teetered, and then she was falling backward and downward away from Lucy's waiting embrace. 

A distant part of her mind wondered if it made any real difference, to die at the hands of the demon vampire or of a broken neck from tumbling down the stairs, but it was only a fleeting thought. Denying Lucy another body for her brethren, protecting Nicholas from suffering as Bergen suffered, was the better choice. 

Her hip struck the stairs first and the jarring pain seemed to awaken her, releasing the trance-like hold Lucy had on her. Instinctively, her arms came up to cover her head and by the time her shoulder hit, she was already thrusting out with her legs, trying to get them pointed down the stairs, hoping to brace them somehow and stop her fall. She tumbled down several more steps before her heel dug in, bumping from step to step and slowing her descent. She came to a stop halfway down the stairs, level with the transom window above the main entrance. For a second she lay perfectly still, hoping Lucy would think her dead.

"Ah...there you are," Lucy said, as if greeting an old friend.

Elizabeth tilted her head enough to allow her eyes to drop from the transom to the doorway below. Just outside the threshold, outlined by the night beyond, her mother's lacy wedding dress glistened in the moonlight. 

"Come in, and be welcome," Lucy said.

Her mother's corpse stepped over the threshold and advanced toward the stairs. Elizabeth stopped breathing. The corpse paused at the center of the moonlit circle on the entry hall floor. Its head swung slowly toward Randall's inert form at the base of the cupboard, then to Elizabeth, and back again to Randall. It cocked its head to one side and its nostrils flared as if trying to decide who smelled the most appetizing. Lucy's throaty laughter drifted down from the stair landing.

"Lady Devlin, allow me to introduce..." The wicked delight in Lucy's voice made Elizabeth's skin crawl, but the sound of her name on the demon vampire’s lips drew her, tempting her to turn and look at the creature again. She didn't. 

"Ah, but I forget, you two have met," Lucy said. "I believe Behendolith found you quite disarming." Lucy's laughter rang from above. The demon Behendolith's snarl echoed it from below.

Elizabeth sat up. The corpse that had once been her beautiful mother advanced, coming to stand next to the bottom step. Its mouth opened. Its dead lips stretched. A low growl gurgled up from its throat and a swollen purple tongue darted out of its mouth. The face that for so many years had blessed Elizabeth with smiles and laughter, that had showered her with motherly kisses and wisdom, the face that had reflected the years of happiness and the years of sorrow with equal elegance, was gone -- transformed into a grotesque mask. 

Watching her mother's precious flesh being distorted and violated was more than Elizabeth could bear. Terror gave way to righteous indignation and full-blown rage. How dare these hellish creatures desecrate her mother's body! 

Elizabeth rose to her feet and squared her shoulders. For years the specter of death had been her constant companion. She'd learned to live with it, made peace with it, and even embraced the inevitability of it. Did these demons expect her to cower now at the prospect? She was outnumbered and outmatched. She would die. But not without a fight.

Though she didn't dare look and she'd heard no sound, the hairs on the back of her neck told her Lucy was no longer at the top of the stairs. The sound of her voice confirmed it.

"I know she smells sweet, Behendolith," Lucy purred. "You may taste this one. But you must finish on Randall. He's been of little use to me anyway. I will finish this one, prepare her body for one of our own. Agreed?"

The corpse nodded and its eyes turned red. Elizabeth was struck by the fact she hadn't fallen into a trance when she'd looked into its eyes. This one was not yet
varcolac
. A tiny ray of hope sparked within her. She'd seen Grubner's corpse destroyed with steel and fire. 

"Nicholas will not be pleased if you kill me," Elizabeth said. She turned slightly, risking a view of the stairs behind her. She raised her chin slowly, counting the empty steps until she caught sight of the hem of Lucy's dress. Just five steps, but the
diavol varcolac
wasn't moving. That bit of hem swayed, but did not descend to the next step.

"Yes, I have seen how his eyes follow you, his lust for your body." There was a pout in Lucy's heavily-accented tones and Elizabeth imagined the creature shrugging. "But I do not intend to destroy your body and in time he will tire of it. He will see the wisdom of joining me, of being beside me as I rule this world," Lucy said.

A snarl came from below.

"With my brethren, of course," Lucy added. "In the past our kind has preferred to dwell and dominate alone, but we are eventually found by the Clans and sent...away. That will not be the case this time. Joined together we will be invincible. In Hell we are legion. And here, already our numbers grow."

Lucy paused, and a vision of Fielding in the parlor telling her of the London murders flitted through Elizabeth's mind. How many killings had there been? Had anyone known to burn the bodies? The hem of Lucy's dress descended another step. Four.

"The Clans will not dare to move against us." There was a hint of madness in Lucy's speech. Could demons go insane? 

"It will never work," a masculine voice said from below.

Nicholas stood in the open doorway beneath the transom, his boots planted wide. A mantle of chains draped his shoulders. Their silver gleamed against his black clothing, giving him the look of a champion already decorated in victory. 

"Your kind can not live together for any length of time," he said. "The Clans would have no need to destroy you, only contain you while you destroy each other." He spoke to Lucy, but his eyes traveled between Elizabeth and the corpse. He bent and picked up the sword from the floor, seeming to measure its weight in his hand. Then he smiled at the corpse.

Behendolith backed several steps up the stairs, stopping beside a wall scone. By its flickering light the oily lace of the wedding gown looked like pale reptilian skin. 

"Send her back to Hell and I will simply find a new body for her," Lucy said. "Another female body perhaps?"

Cold fingers brushed the hair from one side of Elizabeth's neck. Her back stiffened and her breath caught in her throat. Nicholas froze. His gaze met Elizabeth's, held for the space of a heartbeat and then dropped quickly to her feet. When their eyes met again there was the hint of a question in his. She closed and reopened hers slowly to show she understood. 

Lucy's tongue flicked over the pulse in her neck. 

"Wait!" Nicholas said. "Wait, Lucy, please." He lowered the sword until its tip rested on the first step of the stair. "You are right. I do lust for this female's body, but I am a man and will grow tired of that in time as men do. But lust was not the reason I bound her to me in marriage. Do you not smell the difference in her blood?"

Heat fanned over Elizabeth's neck as Lucy inhaled deeply and exhaled again. "Delicious," she breathed.

"Yes, delicious," Nicholas agreed. "That is the reason I married her. The disease she carries sweetens the blood. It's like nectar to members of my clan. We seek out those like her, feed on them and, as is the way of the clans, pay for what we consume by curing them of their illness."

"Stupid mortals," Lucy hissed close to Elizabeth's ear. "Why pay for what can be so easily taken?"

"Yes, why pay?" Nicholas said. "And why cure the disease that creates such a delicacy?" 

"But you have cured it many times before, have you not?" Lucy demanded.

"In males." Nicholas casually pulled one chain at a time from his shoulders as he spoke, dropping them at his feet beside the bottom stair. "When Vlad told me he had found my next meal, I assumed it would be a male as they have always been. I was surprised when he sent me in search of a woman." 

Nicholas removed the final chain from his shoulder and dropped it with the others. The tip of his blade still rested on the stairs, his sword hand on the grip, but he leaned forward resting the forearm of his other arm on top of the ornate silver hilt. He appeared relaxed, as if he had shed his weaponry and any inclination to fight with it. 

"Females with the illness are as rare as saints in Hell," he said.

"That is rare indeed." Lucy laughed and her hold on Elizabeth relaxed.

"Which is why I do not wish for you to kill her," Nicholas said.

"You love her?" Lucy's hold tightened again. She made the word love sound like an obscenity.

"Love her? No. Love the taste of her blood? Yes." Nicholas's eyes caught and held Elizabeth's, their expression cold and merciless. "It is why I married her. So that I could taste her again and again, using her the way a farmer uses a dairy cow."

Lucy's glee boomed out, echoing through the whole of Heaven's Edge, and as Behendolith gurgled as well, Lucy released her hold on Elizabeth.

For less than a heartbeat Nicholas's eyes trapped Elizabeth's, then his gaze flicked sharply downward in command. Elizabeth collapsed to her knees while thrusting out with her arms, hurling herself forward. Her palms slammed into Behendolith's back as she fell, sending the demon sprawling forward headfirst down the stairs. 

Like a strike of lightning, the upward swipe of Nicholas's sword severed the corpse's head from its body. Nicholas dodged nimbly around the remains, leaping up the stairs to catch Elizabeth by the arm before she could tumble down after it. With one mighty thrust, he shoved her behind him.

Lucy's glee turned to fury.

"Run," Nicholas said to Elizabeth.

But Elizabeth didn't run. She fell to her knees on the stairs behind her husband, her fingers fumbling along the inside of his Hessians. She prayed the knife he'd used to whittle stakes beside her mother's funeral pyre just hours ago, would still be there. It was, and she pulled it from its sheath. 

A heartbeat later Lucy flew into him, knocking him backwards over Elizabeth and down the stairs. They rolled in a tangle of black and scarlet past Behendolith's headless corpse, slamming into the entry hall floor below. The sword, knocked from Nicholas's grasp, clattered across the floor.

"Run!" Nicholas roared at her again, his voice guttural through his bared fangs. He rolled free of Lucy, lunged for the sword and came swiftly to his feet. He stood in the circle of moonlight, sword extended toward the
diavol varcolac
who half-crouched opposite him. 

"You fool!" Lucy said, and began to prowl first to one side and then the other, ducking and bobbing as if trying to catch Nicholas's eye. "You were my
childe
. You would have been my beloved son, my consort, my lover. I would have set you above the rest of your kind to rule them by my side."

"For how long?" Nicholas matched Lucy's movements maintaining the space between them, keeping his eyes averted from hers and his sword ready. "Until you tired of me? Until another took your fancy?" 

Just beyond the edge of the moonlit circle Behendolith's headless body convulsed and settled. Then the arms began to move, the fingers opening and closing as if it searched for something.

"Upstairs, Elizabeth. Hurry!" Nicholas said.

"Run, Elizabeth," Lucy mocked him. "Run. And after I destroy your husband, I will find you and make you my little blood cow."

"Please, Elizabeth," Nicholas voice held an odd pleading note. "Go!" 

But she couldn't leave him. Wouldn't. A half-vampire with a silver sword was surely no match for a demon. She grabbed her oil-soaked skirt and stabbed into it with the knife, cutting away the front from waist to hem in a frenzy of slices.

Below her Lucy lunged for Nicholas. He drove the sword at her, but she twisted at the last moment and it entered her side, missing her heart. She screamed and sank her fangs into Nicholas's upper arm. They fell to the ground and the sword ripped through Lucy's flesh, skidding through the blood that erupted onto the floor. Fangs flashed as the two struggled at the center of the moonlight circle.

Elizabeth rushed to the wall sconce and lifted the candle from its base. Quick steps took her down the stairs and she set the candle on the floor just outside of the circle.