Eternal: More Love Stories With Bite (4 page)

"I'm taking a leave of absence from school."

"This can't be as simple as a mortal love," Mrs. Bethany said. Maybe she was so divorced from her old human life that she couldn't even understand how Patrice felt anymore. Though there was that silhouette on her desk—an image of a human man who must have died 150 years ago. "Do you think it's your duty to go to the battlefield, Miss Devereaux? Or do you, too, desire easy blood?"

Patrice imagined the Nazi soldier standing between her and Charlie,
then
imagined ripping that soldier open, draining him dry. "Both, Mrs. Bethany."

One corner
of
Mrs. Bethany's mouth lifted
in
a wry smile. "Then godspeed, Miss Devereaux."

* * * *

Bavaria, Germany

Six Weeks Later

A harsh voice rang out,
"Hier, Kommandant!"

Patrice huddled in a small gap at the base of an oak tree, cold with sweat. Flashlights swept through the forest, their beams scissored by the trunks of the trees that made up this vast forest. Although she was no more than a mile or two from Stalag VII-A, Patrice felt as though she might as well still have been halfway across the world from that POW camp, and from Charlie.

Getting here hadn't been easy. Pleasure travel to Europe simply didn't exist any longer, and even cargo shipping was rare, heavily guarded, and dangerous. Patrice had finally been able to stow away aboard a weapons shipment, and she'd spent the other time wondering whether German U-boat shells would count as "fire" and therefore have the power to kill her—to send her to the death beyond death. She suspected they would. Once arriving in France, she'd had to try to pass unnoticed in crowds, which was difficult in a nation with few black women.

But one of these women, a French nightclub singer and resistance worker named Josephine Baker, had proved both sympathetic and enormously helpful. With the fake papers she'd provided, Patrice had been able to get herself almost
to
the front. The rest had been running by night, hiding by day.

And the bloodshed she'd already seen had terrified her, not for herself but for poor Charlie.

He was such a gentle soul. Or at least he had been, before going to war. Although his letters had revealed some of the horrors he'd seen, Patrice knew now that Charlie had been editing them carefully. Because this was the greatest nightmare she had witnessed since the final years of the Civil War, worse even than the atrocities she'd seen during the Russian Revolution, and she suspected that even greater nightmares lurked deeper behind the front.

The thought of those nightmares being visited on her Charlie made Patrice want to run straight through the woods, without stopping, until he was again in her arms. But the Nazi patrol she'd just encountered had other ideas.

"Ich glaube, das Madchen ist hier versteckt!"
a soldier shouted. German wasn't one of the four languages Patrice spoke, but the voice was closer; that was enough to tell her it was a bad sign.

It's not as though they can kill me,
she reminded herself. But the reassurance rang hollow. They didn't know what she was, but they could hurt her, perhaps even render her unconscious; at that point, they would think her dead. And if they buried her in consecrated ground, or—more likely— burned her corpse . . .

Don't think about it. Run.

Patrice dashed through the woods, ignoring the snap of twigs beneath her feet and the branches scratching gouges in her arms and legs. Her skirt caught on something but she simply tore it free and kept running. Machine-gun fire lit up the forest, strobe flashes and reports so loud they deafened her, but there was nothing to do but go faster. She could outrun any human alive.

But then one leg gave out from under her, and she fell.

She saw the wound before she felt it, a dark wet mess. The shock of the bullet's impact had temporarily numbed her to the pain, but when she put her hands to her left knee, she found not intact flesh and bone but a gory ruin. Patrice swore beneath her breath. The wound would heal given time, but with Nazi soldiers running toward her, guns in hand, time was something she didn't have.

Anger was sharper than any hunger. Patrice felt her fangs sliding into her mouth, and the killing rage came upon her. When the first soldier appeared in her line of vision, she leaped toward him—using her arms and good leg, jumping from all fours like an animal.

He went down under her, screaming when he saw the fangs for the first half-second before she savagely broke his neck.

Another soldier, and she tried to jump for him as well— but the pain from the gunshot finally blasted through her. Patrice collapsed to the ground, and it took all her strength not to cry out. They had her, they had her for sure—

And then another figure leaped from the woods and tore the Nazi pursuing her in two. The shadows split in front of her, and droplets of hot blood spattered on her cheek. Patrice lay utterly still in shock, except for the tip of her tongue, which shot out to capture the drops.

She watched, silently, as the new figure cut through the entire Nazi patrol. Even before his third kill, Patrice had recognized the style of fighting and the way he moved. But pain had made her giddy, and her recognition was only a very faraway fact, more amusing than anything else.

When at last the slim shadow came toward her, blood- soaked, she just watched him from her place on the ground until he said, in his thick Russian accent, "Patrice?"

"Ivan Derevko." She made a sound that was half cough, half laugh. "Fighting for Mother Russia again?"

"Always. God knows who you are fighting for, but I dare say you lost." Ivan stepped closer to her, so that she could see him more clearly in the moonlight. He wore a long gray woolen coat and a black scarf looped around his neck, both somewhat disheveled from the fight. His blond hair and beard were striped with blood, and his smile still showed his fangs; it was how she remembered him best.

"I have to get to Stalag VII-A. As fast as I can. You have to help me."

"I? I
have
to do nothing. Luckily for you, your charms are such that I will help you as soon as it would do any good. In other words, not yet."

Charlie was in a prison bunk, sick and maybe dying. "Damn you to hell."

"Our mutual sire took care of that for both of us. Convenient. But whoever it is you hope to kill, you won't be able to manage it until that leg has healed."

Patrice wanted to argue, but she wanted to sleep even more. That deep, powerful urge to rest was a sign that her vampire body was attempting to shut down and repair itself. "I don't trust you."

"Wise of you. And yet tonight, you have no other choice." Ivan stooped to lift her in his arms. His embrace filled her with memories of years gone by—or were those dreams? Patrice could no longer tell the difference.

* * * *

She awoke in a house made of ivy.

No, Patrice realized—it was a regular house, but one so long-abandoned by humans that ivy had reclaimed
the
walls, the ceiling, even most
of
the floors. Ivy ignored winter and remained vividly green, its dark leaves defiant against the snow and
ice
that caked every other surface.
The
fireplace had been cleared out, or Ivan
had
simply started a fire there without caring if the ivy would eventually catch and burn down the entire structure. That would be like him.

Groggily she pushed herself up on her elbows. Ivan sat in the corner, on a metal chair that also was overgrown with
ivy.
His face remained as unearthly beautiful as ever: narrow but masculine, with high cheekbones and piercing
blue
eyes.
Apparently Julien had turned him as a kind of work of art; at least, so Ivan claimed. But Patrice could believe it.
He
hugged his arms as though he were cold, and she realized
that
she was lying on his coat.

"I like what you've done with the place," she said.

"It's not much, but it's home." Ivan's wolfish grin made
her
smile despite herself. "Now, the story. For two weeks I've
been
tracking
you.
I
recognized your scent—the style
of
your
kills
—but
I
told myself,
Patrice
is much too sensible
to
decide
that
wartime is the perfect opportunity to travel
in
Europe. I wasn't convinced it was you until I saw you for myself."

"The man I love is in a German POW camp. I'm here to
get
him out."

Ivan didn't immediately react, but Patrice could tell the smile was
no
longer entirely genuine. Then he surprised her—he laughed. "Still you are trying to replace me. Not so easily done."

"You replaced me well enough. Did I object when you took up with that Greek girl? What was her name— Athena?"

Ivan shrugged. "That was ten years after you left me. I shouldn't have expected you to object."

"Now it's twenty years after I left you. So let's put the past in the past." Patrice pushed herself the rest of the way up, so that she was sitting down instead of lying down. "You must hate the Nazis as much as I do. Won't you enjoy helping me? Think of the fun we'll have, killing them all."

"If I help you, it won't be for fun. And it won't be out of hate," he said quietly.

Rather than acknowledge the true meaning of his words, Patrice turned her attention to her knee. Dried blood was thick on her skin and her long woolen skirt, but the wounds had almost completely closed. Carefully she bent the knee; it still hurt too much for her to walk easily, but it was much better. Her vampire healing would restore her fully by sundown.

"Once it turns dark, I'm going, Ivan. Are you with me or not?"

"I'm with you. Always. You know this, of course." Ivan sighed and leaned his ivy-covered chair back; vines went taut and snapped. "So, tell me about this man who so enchants you. Human, I assume; no self-respecting vampire would remain in a POW camp for very long."

"Human. Charlie Jackson. Studying mathematics at Howard University."

"When and
how
did he
lea
rn
what
you
really
are?"