One With the Night (23 page)

He groaned, but not with desire. He wasn’t worth a ha’penny. His eyes filled. There was only one pinpoint of hope. Gathering himself somehow, he focused on it. When she was done with him tonight, she might ignore him, not believing he’d escape. But he would. He’d abandon both the cure and Jane. He had no choice.

*   *   *

Jane found translocation exhausting. She’d managed the feat four times already tonight. At least the concentration it required kept her from thinking about either Kilkenny or Elyta. Confusion rose in her breast. She looked around, wondering if she should try again just to keep it at bay. She breathed in and out slowly, twice. She must strive for scientific objectivity. Very well. She had a new theory to test. No time like the present.

Question: could the power of her Companion be transferred? Could she move anything else besides her own body? She spied a huge outcropping of rock poking through the heather. Too big. She wandered toward the bluff that rose practically out of the loch, searching …

There. That rock couldn’t weigh more than four or five stone. She knelt about ten feet from the edge of the cliff in a bare patch among the scratchy bramble that by July would yield the delicate pink flower clusters of heather. She willed herself to release the tightness in her neck and shoulders. She untied the knot in her belly that related directly to Kilkenny. And then she called.

Companion!

Life surged up along her veins. Power. Connection. She felt the wholeness, right or wrong. She would use it. She stared at the rock at the edge of the cliff and tried not to think she wanted to go there, but that she wanted it to go.

Give me power.

The black surged up around her knees. This was the hard part. What could she do but try? The blackness wanted to rise round her but she pushed it down. She stared at the rock.

And pushed the power out. She imagined outthrust arms.

Ahhhh! A wrenching jerk of pain. Her eyes dimmed for a moment.

She blinked. The rock was still there.

She sighed.
The essence of experimentation is patience,
she told herself. But she didn’t feel patient. She didn’t feel scientific. All she felt was … small.

Still, she wasn’t ready to return to the house. So she tried again. Again she fixed her attention on the rock at the edge of the bluff and called her Companion, again the surge of power, suppressed. She thought about pushing it out. This time she felt it flow in a smooth stream. She breathed out. As the last of the air escaped her lungs a twist of pain made her gasp.

She stumbled to the edge of the bluff. A ragged earthen pit gaped where the rock had been ripped out at the roots. The rock itself careened down the slope, tumbling over, shedding damp clods as it went until it sloshed into the loch below the little bluff.

Her eyes went wide. She’d done it. She’d moved something.

She grinned. The pain hadn’t been as bad as when she jerked herself out of space and reappeared. She’d have to practice this, construct experiments to see how much weight she could move and how far and how many times in a row before she got tired …

Kilkenny hadn’t said vampires could do this. Was he keeping something from her? Or perhaps he didn’t know everything about his state. Perhaps she’d be able to tell him a thing or two eventually. That was certainly a satisfying thought.

Life careened around her veins. She was strong and more alive than she had ever been.

But not for long. Why should she practice throwing stones about when she was only waiting for the chance to abandon that power forever? Sighing, she picked up the basket full of feverfew. What could her father want with that? She drew her power.

Behind her, she heard a slosh of waves. An eerie groan cut through the air. She gasped.

The blackness drained away as her concentration broke. Jane whirled. A hundred feet out in the dark gray loch a surge of flesh cut the churning water. Not again! She could see the skin rolling into view and sliding back into the water in what seemed a continuous loop. How big
was
this creature? And why did it keep appearing whenever she was near the lake? Another hump emerged, closer this time. Jane had the distinct feeling it was coming closer. Fear flashed through her. Instinctively, she called to her Companion. Darkness whirled up around her feet. She thought about the hill above the farm. A shock of pain and she was gone.

She wavered into space at the top of the hill. Three miles away, in the water, the creature submerged. She stood there, trying to breathe, for some minutes. There. She was better. She mustn’t let fear rule her judgment. She’d just missed a wonderful opportunity for closer observation. Some student of science she was! She turned toward the farm. The house below was a stone miniature like the models of the Coliseum and the Parthenon in the British Museum. Dawn was only a couple of hours away.

She didn’t have the strength or the will to translocate, so she trudged down the hill the way she had come. No one was about in the kitchen. Banked chunks of peat glowed in the great hearth in preparation for the morning meal. A slab of beef waited for the knife. The room smelled of burned peat and fresh bread.

Above her a rhythmic thumping echoed in the walls. What was that?

Her eyes grew wide in realization. Damn him! Did what they had done mean
that
little?

She stomped up the stairs. Anger flooded her, banishing reason. Outside the door to Elyta’s room, she paused. There was no question; the banging came from inside.

She threw open the door. Kilkenny lay across the bed, naked, his fists clenching the spindles at the corners above his head. The dark hair across his chest and under his arms stood out against his pale flesh. He was slick with sweat. Elyta, silken robe open, her bare breasts bouncing, rode him vigorously. The base of his stiff cock was clearly visible where it was stuffed deep inside her. At the sound of the door, Elyta paused and turned, a slow smile spreading over her flushed face. Her eyes glowed red with the influence of her Companion.

“Care to join me?” she asked, her breath coming a little fast.

Kilkenny turned his head. The expression on his face was one of horror, shame, despair, all mingled in some complex mélange of distress, no doubt over being caught
in flagrante.

What could she say? What right had she to interrupt them? Obviously, Kilkenny had made his choice. His choice was to … to
fuck
 … whatever came to hand. She shook her head in answer to Elyta. Her eyes filled. She couldn’t let them see her anguish. She spun on her heel and threw herself along the hall to her room. The door slammed with a satisfying bang. She only wished the door could shut out the emotions boiling inside her. To her dismay, the anger ebbed as suddenly as it had come. Tears overflowed as she threw herself on her bed. She tried to get the anger back. Damn him all to hell and herself into the bargain for imagining he might have cared.

*   *   *

Callan was not lucky enough to be called to the laboratory for testing formulas that day, since Flavio did not return from Inverness with the laudanum. Instead he spent the day in Elyta’s room servicing her again and again. She had become Elyta to him, just as Asharti needed only a single name, no matter what she wanted to be called. The look of revulsion on Jane’s face created a pain in his gut. Now her opinion of him was secured. She believed him not only a criminal and a traitor, but a fornicator with any woman available. She would think what they had done together meant nothing to him. He could be grateful only that she had refused to join Elyta.

He lay across the bed, the bedclothes in disarray, drained figuratively, but not literally. Elyta had not let him ejaculate all day. She curled against his side now, dozing. Even now, she might wake and rouse him. He felt defiled.

As he had defiled Jane Blundell? He clenched his brows together against the thought.

What he had done with Jane Blundell wasn’t fornication, no matter that the church would call it so. The feel had been entirely different. Yes, there was lust. Lord, but he had wanted her! Yet there was another … undercurrent with Jane, one that he …

What was the use? Jane Blundell was lost to him. He was Elyta’s now, body and soul, until he escaped, just as once he had belonged to Asharti. His chest felt heavy. He daren’t draw his power to escape until Elyta let him out of her presence. Would she grow careless?

Asharti never had …

*   *   *

Atlas Mountains, December 1819

“Fedeyah, bring the generals to me at ten,” Asharti commanded.

The eunuch Arab who had served her for centuries bowed and retreated. He was the one who made others as she was. She did not deign to use her own blood to turn them.

Callan blinked slowly as he stared at the fire in the middle of her tent. Outside it was a cold morning. They had made camp on the northern slopes of the Atlas Mountains. The army was on its way to Algiers, stopping at villages to take blood.

None of that mattered to him. He lived from her last command to her next command. Inside he was filled with dust. She had what she wanted of him. Always. There was never any doubt. He knelt in sandy mountain soil at the edge of her carpets. The sand absorbed the blood that drooled from the wounds she had made on his body. He was wrong. He wasn’t filled only with dust. He was filled with dust and blood.

The tent was quiet. Incense filled the air. Sandalwood. It almost obscured the scent of cinnamon. He could hear her quill scratching across a papyrus. Maybe she would be too busy …

“Slave!” The quill stopped. He scrambled over the carpets to crouch in front of her chair, forehead to the blue and red pattern. “How may I serve you, mistress?” he murmured.

“Pour me wine,” she said, pushing her scroll away. He could hear the rasp of paper against the inlaid wood of her table.

“At yer command,” he whispered. He rose. In truth he was a bit dizzy, so he placed his steps carefully. The amphora of wine sat on a small, low table along with a tray of fruit and a bowl of nuts. He poured the limpid red into her chased goblet. Her eyes upon him made him exquisitely conscious of his genitals. He felt himself tighten. Was it her will or his?

“Bring the whole amphora.” He picked up the amphora and negotiated his way around the fire crackling under the smoke hole of the tent. He set his burdens upon the low table, inlaid with mother-of-pearl in complicated geometrics. She wore a wrapper of fine red wool against the cold outside. A golden amulet hung between her breasts, matched to gold rings sporting dozens of tiny, tinkling discs in her ears and a dozen gold bracelets circling her arms.

He ducked his head and knelt beside her so as not to let her see his dizziness. His cock was full, if not rod-straight. She sipped in silence for a moment. Was she reading the scrolls she had written, or was she thinking of the faults he had accumulated this day in serving her? Anxiety wound up around his spine. Had he been eager enough in her litter this night? He was so tired. She allowed him little rest. At night he walked beside her litter while the army was on the move, except for those times when she called him inside. She dozed and used him and dozed again. By day he served her in her tent until she slept. She allowed him to truly sleep in the afternoon as she slept, before she bathed in preparation for sunset. Sometimes he could catch some moments of sleep while she reviewed her troops in the evening. In the first months of his captivity, longing for eight hours of sleep in an English feather bed could bring tears to his eyes. But he hadn’t cried in a long time. He existed now in a place beyond tears. He had crossed some line. He was not his own creature, but hers.

“Will you require compulsion tonight to serve me?” she asked, her voice silky.

“Nae, mistress.” He swallowed the lump that choked his throat.

“How do you serve me?” She lifted a curl of hair from his shoulders. His hair and beard had grown during the months she had owned him.

“Willingly,” he breathed.

“And why do you serve me willingly?”

He cast about, frantic. He didn’t know the answer. “Ye’re … my mistress.” Did it come out as a question? She wouldn’t like that.

She lifted his chin. Her grip was iron. “And you were made to belong to me. Serving me fulfills your purpose in life.”

He lowered his gaze. “Yes, mistress.”

“Suckle my breasts,” she commanded, pulling aside the fine red wool.

He lifted his head to where she leaned over him, and first licked her left nipple and then fastened to it. He felt her arch into his mouth. Her nipples were very sensitive. Her long nails raked his scalp as he sucked, and stopped and sucked again.

“How long is it since I have had to punish you with pain in your head for resisting me?”

He didn’t know! Weeks? A month? He sucked her right nipple until he heard her catch her breath. “I dinnae count the days, mistress,” he whispered.

She chuckled. “You are intelligent. It makes you difficult. But you have come round to submission in the end. A pity the act of submission doesn’t yet make you hard.”

She asked the impossible! Would she punish him if he could not comply? The very thought of punishment made him soften. And she wasn’t using her strange power to bring his cock to attention. He let his left hand drift toward his genitals, even as he cupped her breast with his right. He must raise himself in order to please her.

“No!” she barked. “Too easy. I want it to rise of its own accord.”

He slid his hand under her robe to caress her hip, hoping to distract her. Hadn’t sex and pleasing her become his only reasons for being? He should be able to keep an erection. It was the fear that stood between him and the reaction she required. But someone who had only dust inside could not really be afraid, could he? He concentrated on his desire to serve her even as he kissed her belly. But thinking about serving her brought the fear.