Come to Me (15 page)

Was Samira a product of his imagination? Was she a demon, or a human woman possessed of dangerous powers, or was she a dream? Perhaps he slept still, upon that text of demons, and these past three nights had never happened.

All he knew for sure was that a beauty who lied could bring Death knocking on his door. It had happened once before, and he wouldn't let it happen again.

"Where am I going to go?" Samira asked Constantin plaintively, her voice carrying across the water. She sounded so lost…

Nicolae felt a piercing twinge of guilt: He had summoned her twice, the second time intentionally. He had trapped her and demanded her help, and was therefore indirectly responsible for her present helpless form.

What had she been thinking, that would make her believe that she could best aid him by being in human form? Maybe demons weren't very bright.

He slowed his steps. Even wet, muddy, and chilled, she was a sight that male eyes could hardly forget. When he'd put his hand on the side of her breast, she had felt as real as his own flesh, only twice as soft and a thousand times more pleasing to look upon. She was so fragile-looking now, so small and earth-bound without her wings. Even his weakened arm was probably strong enough to hold her. What harm could she do?

Maybe he should give her the benefit of the doubt; keep her under guard but still let her into the fortress. If she was telling the truth, and she truly had become human for thirty days, then Constantin was right and she wouldn't survive on her own. She was a vulnerable, beautiful woman utterly alone in the world. If nothing else, she'd get herself burned as a witch, and then she'd never be of any use to him.

"I'm going, you sun-baked human!" she shrieked behind him. "Ow! I'm going!"

Nicolae turned, and he saw Constantin chasing Samira down the walkway, Petru following, the torchlight surrounding them in an orange glow of illumination that looked unsettlingly like hellfire. The white tunic she'd been given was trailing from her hand, unworn.

"Curses on you and your heartless master!" Samira screeched over her shoulder, sounding now both hurt and infuriated. "May you never satisfy a woman! May your cocks turn small and floppy as worms! May your balls shrivel to the size of peas, and be eaten by angry chickens!"

Nicolae winced. She
was
a fiend. But was driving her away truly the right decision? Distrust and—yes, he had to admit it—fear were making it difficult to think clearly. It wasn't fear of Samira, though: Her being so easily driven away was proof enough of her helplessness in this form.

No, he had to admit to himself, the fear was of his own bad judgment. He was afraid of the power that her face and body might hold over him. He was afraid of what she might influence him to do.

Damn
. He wasn't a coward, and he refused to be ruled by the past. He was his own master. He controlled his own body, his own thoughts, and he would control his own fate. He wouldn't let fear make his decisions for him, especially not fear of her.

"Begone with you!" Constantin yelled.

"Go, you demon wench!" Petru added.

Samira was on the far shore now, and Constantin held the torch while Petru started pulling up planks.

"I'll be gone, I will! I'll go right to Dragosh and help
him
understand magic texts on demons and creatures of the Night World!
He'll
want to know what I know about the forces and powers you humans can't see!"

There was that. She might be of some use, after all.

"Stop!" Nicolae called out.

The three figures froze, then all eyes turned toward him. "My lord?" Constantin called.

"Put the planks back. Bring her to the fortress."

"My lord?" Petru asked, sounding disappointed.

"Bring her inside." He was not going to shout explanations across the water. It was undignified. He wouldn't give her the satisfaction, either. It was better to keep her in a position of ignorance and powerlessness, from which she would be less likely to cause trouble.

He couldn't see Samira's expression from this distance, but she'd stopped screeching her vile curses.

He turned away and went back into the fortress, resisting the urge to turn and watch as they replaced the planks and led Samira back across the water. He passed through the gateway in the outer wall—an arched tunnel with dark holes overhead, from which monks and villagers had once dumped boiling water and oil onto the heads of Tartars and Turks. For all the good it had done them: The invaders had always found a way inside.

He grimaced, hoping he hadn't just committed the worst sort of failure: handing the enemy the key to the gates and cheerfully inviting him inside.

Andrei, Grigore, and Stephan were waiting for him in the grassy courtyard. The monastery walls formed a large rectangle around the ruined church. Rooms were built into the thick walls, cells where the monks had once lived and studied, and where this small band of men now passed their dreary days, waiting for the chance to reclaim their lives and their honor. It was Nicolae's fault that they were here, and he would die before he would abandon his efforts to bring them all back to glory. On those days when there seemed no hope left for he himself, thoughts of his responsibility to his men pushed him forward.

"A problem?" Andrei asked. He was dark and slender, with a hooked nose and hooded, languorous eyes. Deeply intelligent and devoted to the pleasures of the flesh, Andrei was as much a poet as a warrior, and he was Nicolae's oldest friend and most loyal companion. Given the choice, Andrei would rather spend his days in bed with a beautiful woman than don a breastplate and ride into battle, but he never abandoned a friend.

"A problem of a wickedly female sort."

"Would you like me to take care of it?" the man asked, his dark eyes showing a flicker of awakening interest.

Nicolae looked at the three soldiers and sighed. They hated that he was dabbling in black magic, and feared for his soul and their own. They also hated their exile at Lac Strigoi, though; and their faith that Nicolae might find a way to return them to their former lives clashed with their faith in a god who would damn them for associating with evil. Nicolae wasn't at all certain of what their reaction to this minor
success
of his was going to be.

"You'll not want to touch this one, Andrei. None of you will. She's a demon."

Stephan and Grigore, young brothers who had once pinned all their hopes of future advancement upon serving Nicolae—and paid a price for that faith—gave twin grimaces of distaste and fear. "A demon?" Stephan asked with alarm. "Why is there a demon here?"

"I summoned her. Unfortunately, something went wrong, and now she's temporarily human. Powerless, too, it appears."

"It appears?" Stephan asked, his voice screeching upward into high registers. He, like the others, knew how often and how wrong Nicolae's magic experiments went, and was plainly not assured.

The last time Nicolae had had a
success
, Stephan's skin had turned blue for a fortnight. Another time, Grigore had suffered visions of giant spiders and sent them all half mad with his shrieking. Andrei's glass of wine had turned to jelly and crawled onto his hand and tried to mate with it. It had put him off his favorite drink for weeks.

Nicolae shrugged, hoping a casual attitude might reassure the men. "Yes, she's powerless. Keep your distance from her, though. She's wily, and full of lies." He looked at Andrei, one eyebrow raised in an effort at humor. "She's not the type to whom you want to read poetry and invite into your bed."

Andrei pursed his lips. "I do draw the line somewhere, you know."

"Not that I've seen," Grigore muttered.

Andrei's large dark eyes—the best weapon in his female seduction arsenal—narrowed ever so slightly as he looked at Grigore. It wasn't a glare so much as Andrei's subtle evaluation of whether this comment deserved the effort of retribution.

Samira emerged from the gateway at that moment, and whatever Andrei might have said was lost forever. A trio of jaws dropped and six eyes bulged as all three men gaped at the muddy, disheveled, stark naked woman who had stepped into the torchlight, orange tongues of light licking over her voluptuous body, the tunic she still held by the end of a sleeve now filthy and tangled under her feet.

"Good God," Stephan said under his breath.

Samira stopped and frowned at the three men who were gaping at her. Nicolae saw her gaze settle on Andrei, whose eyes couldn't seem to find one place to rest on her, his gaze touching up and down her body. Samira dropped the tunic. She crossed her arms beneath her breasts and gave an annoyed sigh, unconscious perhaps that she'd just forced her breasts up into even greater prominence.

"Hey Hook Nose, haven't you ever seen a woman before?" she asked.

Grigore snickered, and Andrei had the grace to color, the darkening of his skin visible even in the dim light. He turned his eyes away.

"Where shall I put her?" Constantin asked, his air that of a man who had dealt with demons all his life. Having spent ten more minutes with Samira than the others, he clearly considered himself the expert.

"I'll go to the tower with Nicolae, of course," Samira said. She flicked one of her soggy locks back over her shoulder, dropped her arms to her sides, and started purposefully toward him.

His alarm must have shown in his face, for suddenly everyone was reaching for their swords, a hubbub of "Halt!" and "Stop!" filling the courtyard. Samira did as they commanded, but her lips thinned into a narrow line. Nicolae couldn't tell if she was about to cry or about to rip someone's eyes out.

He hoped the latter. It would be easier to deal with that than with the piteous puppy whining she'd done earlier. "She can stay in the storeroom," he said.

"With our food?" Petru wailed. "My lord, I shouldn't like to be poisoned!"

"And what, pray tell, would she use to poison us?" Nicolae asked dryly. "Surely you don't think she carries a vial of some noxious substance on her person? Hidden in her hair, perhaps?"

Petru shrugged, and glared at Samira. "She could use her blood. Surely demon blood is poisonous."

Stephan and Grigore grumbled at that possibility.

"It's the only room that can be barred," Nicolae pointed out.

"There's your tower," Andrei said.

Nicolae cast his friend a dark look. Andrei returned one of arch amusement.

"Aye," Constantin said. "You at least know the magic to control her. The rest of us are helpless against one such as she, if she should retain any of her former powers."

"You're the one who wanted her to stay in the first place! I noticed your sword worked perfectly well against her. Surely you need no higher magic?"

It was obvious, though, that his men would not be at ease unless she were under Nicolae's own personal control. "Make a pallet for her in the church, in the alcove near the tower stairs, then. Surely God will keep her in line." And to Samira he said, "Do you give your word to stay out of mischief?"

She didn't answer, her jaw set, her eyes staring coldly at him. If she'd still had her wings he might have been intimidated, but as it was she looked singularly harmless. At the moment, he could believe she was a naked young woman, muddy and bedraggled, and nothing more. "I can send you back outside these walls," he warned.

Her nose wrinkled in the hint of a snarl. "I promise to behave."

"Good girl." He had the urge to laugh, remembering how frightened of her he had been last night. "Petru, find her something fresh to wear. Stephan and Grigore, make up her pallet, if you would. The rest of you, turn in for the night if you wish. We'll decide what to do with our guest on the morrow, assuming she doesn't flit away with the dawn."

"I'm not comfortable leaving you alone with her," Andrei said, "no matter how well you can control her. In your own words, she is wily and full of lies."

"I've handled her two previous nights already, and you see no harm has come to me. Surely you don't doubt my strength?"

It was a loaded question that all knew better than to answer. With grumbles and mutterings, the men reluctantly dispersed, casting looks of mingled suspicion and lust at Samira.

Samira, for her part, stood still, shivering slightly, her face impassive, although her gaze flicked from the departing men to Nicolae to the empty space in front of her. He had no idea what she might be thinking. For all he knew, she was planning how best to slit his throat.

He had a dozen questions for her—questions that he'd rather try to find the answers to without his men looking on. He didn't want them to see him fail, as might happen. He needed their confidence in him.

"Do you want to wash off that mud?" he asked her brusquely, gesturing to the smears that coated her skin.

She touched her forearm, running her fingers over the crusting muck. Her lips curled in disgust. "Yes."

He led her to the well and drew up a bucket of water. From under another bucket on the ground he took a chunk of soap and handed it to her, then turned his back. "Let me know when you're done."

For a long moment there was no sound, and then he heard the soft splash of a hand going into the water. There was an accompanying gasp, which he assumed had something to do with the cold temperature. What did she expect? He wasn't going to make his men heat it for her. They made do with cold water, and so would she.

There was a soft thud, followed by whispered curses. More splashing. And then long minutes went by with no noise. He couldn't even sense her movement. As the silence continued, he once again got the unsettling notion that she was staring at the back of his neck, waiting to sink her teeth into it. He felt the hairs there rising, his muscles tensing for the attack.

"Are you done?" he asked, struggling to keep his voice even, and to keep from turning to make sure she was where he'd left her. He wouldn't give her the satisfaction' of knowing how uneasy he was with her behind his back.

"No."

"Hurry up."

"Nicolae?"

"What?"

"Um…"

"
What
?" His jaw tensed, he was annoyed with himself for getting into this situation as much as he was annoyed with her for being there and not being a proper demon anymore.