One With the Night (29 page)

Doggedly, she worked. The rain settled into a sodden tattoo.

When it was done, she stood, swaying. She should say words. What words could she possibly say? Footsteps sounded behind her. She didn’t turn. Clara, in a voluminous cloak, came to stand beside her. Jane turned her head, slowly. Clara held a makeshift cross; two sections of a fir branch, peeled of bark and lashed together with brightly colored braids of embroidery floss. They were absurdly cheerful. The ends were left long. The strands danced as the drops hit them.

“Here. Just until you have a stone made.”

One end of the longer branch was sharpened. Jane took the cross and fingered the braid. “You couldn’t find black?”
How ungrateful of me …

“I had black. But black is for mourning,” Clara said simply. She took the cross gently from Jane and went to the head of the grave. With a single powerful thrust, she plunged it into the earth. Jane stood like a statue, unable to move. That thrust had been so final.

Clara looked up at Jane, waiting for her to say something. But Jane had no words. She shook her head, her features threatening to collapse around her.

Clara nodded. She looked down at the grave and clasped her hands.

Jane closed her eyes, swaying.

“Return, on this happy day,” Clara intoned, “to the one who made you, who knows you and yet loves you. The ones you left behind rejoice in your passing, and wait only to join you.”

Jane opened her eyes.
Rejoice?
The rain subsided into a fine drizzle.

“You helped many. You left progeny,” Clara continued. “Your mark on the wheel is distinct, and will last until you can return. Rest now. Suckle at the spirit of the world to refresh and enlarge your soul. You have earned it.”

What a mélange of religions. She stared, wide-eyed, at Clara. Then she shook her head.
A little selfish, aren’t you, Jane? Screaming and crying. Angry at God. Papa does deserve peace. What more fitting for a man so involved in the cycle of life than to return to God’s earth?

“Come,” Clara said. “Let me make you some tea and heat you a bath.”

The woman took Jane’s arm and led her down toward the house. In the eastern sky, behind the house, a lighter band outlined the hills across the loch.

*   *   *

Atlas Mountains, March 1819

He knelt before Asharti, rock hard. Her gauzy dress was olive-green tonight. She wore copper armbands, loop earrings, a girdle tinkling with discs, and copper-colored sandals.

Now that he was vampire, she could devise more demanding exhibitions of submission. She liked to see his blood flow and since he healed so quickly she could make it flow as often as she wanted. She amused herself sometimes by sending him into the sun naked until he blistered and oozed. But it was only a matter of hours until he was whole again and ready to serve her. And now there was nothing left of him. He lived to please her and the thing in his blood made him hard and needing. He was finally everything she wanted. He was constantly inflamed, whether she abused him or not, and he had begun to wonder if it was the abuse that inflamed him.

“So,” she remarked, popping a date into her mouth. “What next? The army moves at sunset. We have little time. When we descend on Algiers, I will be too busy to enjoy you for a while.” She needed hardly any sleep. Her vitality never seemed to wane. Some said she had taken strange blood of some kind that gave her more strength even than others of her kind.

“I await yer command, mistress,” he murmured.

“Well, you’re certainly ready,” She picked up a small quirt. It was only perhaps eighteen inches, supple, with a leather thong at the end. “But let us prepare your cock to better please me.” She nodded to him. He knew what to do. He spread his knees, then leaned back and grabbed his ankles. His chest and belly, his loins and thighs were vulnerable to her. She leashed his bobbing cock with a looping leather thong, so she could pull it down, away from his belly.

Standing, she popped another date into her mouth and laid the little quirt across his inner thighs. He jumped. The flesh there was almost the most tender. Almost. She struck his belly, his chest. His Companion went about healing the welts even as she laid them. As she worked, she jerked the leash rhythmically. It was that which made him moan, finally. He knew what would come. She took longer than usual getting to his cock, but finally she knelt before him. She alternately laid the quirt across his shaft and bent to lick the welt she’d made. Her saliva kept it from healing. The process was like to kill him. Or no, to be fair, it only made him wish he were dead. When she was done, she lay back on her divan and beckoned. He knew what was required. He plunged his well-ribbed cock into her moist folds until she writhed in pleasure. She could control his release. But these days it pleased her to demand that he control it himself. To come inside her without her permission meant a day in the sun … When she had done shuddering, she lay back, looking dissatisfied.

He quickly knelt beside her, head bowed. The welts on his cock slowly disappeared. “How can I please ye, mistress?” Better to be punished for speaking than for failing to please.

Her brow furrowed. “I don’t know,” she said, pouting. “It is all too easy with you now.”

What? Did she want resistance? But when he resisted, she punished him.

“Is sexual abasement all there is to require?” she mused. She tapped a copper-painted nail against her ruby lips. He saw it through his eyelashes, since he dared not look at her directly. “But … I know!” She chuckled. How he dreaded that laugh! She raised her head. “We stop at a village to recruit our strength. A perfect test…”

Dread suffused him. A test? He knew she would ensure he could not win.

*   *   *

Callan woke from sleep with a start, Asharti’s words still echoing in his mind. He felt as though he had been drugged. A figure was limned against the afternoon sun slanting through the windows. Jane?

“You are awake.” The figure twitched the draperies closed.

Elyta. Callan’s intestines knotted. He knew what she was here for. And his nightmare about the North African desert two years ago was about to leak into the present.

She wore the deep purple wrapper. Her breasts moved freely underneath the fabric. Clara came in with a load of peat cubes dried at the hearth in the kitchen. She laid them on the fire and withdrew. Callan sat up. He was stronger. Clara’s vile potion had helped. There was no comparison, of course, to how he had felt when his Companion coursed through his veins. He was getting used to the dulled senses, the sharp sense of loss as his body yearned for the half of his being that had been stripped from his blood. Probably there would come a time when he wouldn’t even miss the sense of being acutely alive. At least he was human. Poor Jane was not.

She would be soon, he told himself. And then he must trust Elyta to hold to her bargain. Not certain. But he had no alternatives. He could do this. He must do it. For Jane.

Elyta came to stand over him in the dimmed room. “Are you ready?”

“Aye. But there’s one thing that’s changed.” Better to get it out in the open.

She raised her brows in threat.

“Nae, I’ll submit ta ye,” he hastened to assure her. “But I canno’ guarantee th’ stiff cock that comes with being vampire.”

Elyta shrugged. “Well, as to that—I’ll strike a bargain. I’ll use compulsion only to keep you hard.” She wagged a finger at him. “You must submit yourself, or your precious Jane dies the minute she has served her purpose.”

“Agreed.”

She sat beside him, sinuous, and ran her long-nailed hand through his hair. “And how are we feeling today?” She laid a finger lightly over the pulse in his carotid. “Much better. I knew Clara’s potion would work wonders.” She rubbed her breasts against his chest and kissed the hollow in his throat lightly. “We’ll have to make sure you get one several times a day.”

He shut his eyes, trying to breathe evenly, and lifted his chin to bare his throat.

“Excellent.” She chortled. “I’ll sip. But I won’t feed from you. You wouldn’t last. I’m going to savor you.” She ran a hand over his chest and slid it down to his hip. “Kiss me.”

Asharti had never allowed him to kiss her. She had considered it too intimate. He almost didn’t know how to proceed.
Like you’d kiss any other woman,
he told himself. He lowered his lips to hers.
But not like you’d kiss Jane.
Elyta made a pout and he pressed his lips against hers. She slid her tongue inside his mouth, probing. From her it was a violation. His mind rebelled.
For Jane,
he thought fiercely. He ran his hands over Elyta’s back, underneath her wrapper. He could do this. Soon she would compel an erection and it would get easier. She was a beautiful woman. Any man could do this, couldn’t they? He tried to concentrate on her breasts brushing his nipples. Her hand had found his balls. She was squeezing. He opened his hips to give her better access. Now his cock was responding. Was that him, or was it her?

That way lay madness. Just respond. For Jane.

“Kiss me,” she breathed into his mouth, “like you want to kiss that little slut.”

Callan’s chest tightened. He couldn’t fail Jane. He thrust his tongue inside Elyta’s mouth. It wasn’t a passive act. Asharti would have punished him for that. But that’s what Elyta wanted, wasn’t it? She sucked on his tongue like a summer ice.

She pulled away. “Tell me how you’ll demonstrate your submission.”

Oh, God. “First I’ll suck yer breasts,” he whispered, bending his head. He pushed aside the neckline of her wrapper. His tongue flicked over her nipple. Her breath began to come faster.

“And later? Tell me what you’ll do later.”

“I’ll lick ye between yer legs until ye come.”

“Yes, but I won’t be finished. I need release many times a day, and I’ve been deprived.”

“You’ll want … you’ll want ta put yer teeth inta me, just ta taste th’ blood even if ye dinnae feed.” He pressed her buttocks to him so she could feel his erection against her mound. She slid along it and took his earlobe in her mouth. “I recommend th’ inner thigh,” he murmured.

“I’ll take that under consideration. What else?”

“My cock. You’ll want ta use my cock.”

“Not yet. I’ll want more submission first.”

He kissed her throat, licking over the artery. His own breath was shallow and fast. He couldn’t think.
Just use yer experience. Lord knows, submission is one thing ye’re good at.
And Asharti had taught him much. He could do this. If only he didn’t find out he liked it. “There are some whips in th’ stable. I’ll wager they’d leave good welts on my body.”

“Ooh,” she moaned, grinding against his erection, lifting her breast to be suckled. He did, swirling his tongue about her nipple assiduously. “The barn is a good idea. I don’t want an audience. You’ll moan, I know, as I lay the leather across your bare flesh. And then?”

He switched breasts. “I’ll bathe ye.”

“With your tongue.” She sighed. “And then?”

What could she want? If she had coached Asharti, there was one thing she must like. Abasement. “I’ll beg ye ta let me service ye again.”

“I’d like to hear you beg…” she breathed as she rolled onto her back, spreading her legs. He lowered himself between them and flicked his tongue over the nub that thrust itself up between the folds of flesh.
I can do this.
He wouldn’t think whether he was excited by her treatment. He pushed firmly on the door inside his mind as Elyta pressed his head into her sex.

*   *   *

“Flavio could be back with the glassware before morning,” Jane said, “if he can raise a shopkeeper at night.” She motioned Kilkenny to a chair at the kitchen table across from where she had her pen and ink and notebook laid out. His hair was damp from bathing. He wore one of the kilts and a crisp white shirt with a blue wool waistcoat. Clara had taken over laundry duties from Mrs. Dulnan, since Jane was sure they’d seen the last of any villagers. The vest made his eyes look almost blue. He moved stiffly to sit on the edge of the chair. She peered at him. He looked tired still, though he had slept away last night and the day, as well. She had thought he would recover quickly once the poison was out of his system.

“Do you … do you feel up to the interview?” she asked.

“I’ll do,” he said. But his tone was grim.

She herself had slept like the dead after Clara’s warm bath and hot tea. And while there was a dull ache in her heart for her father’s absence, she knew she must focus on the work at hand. Papa wouldn’t have been so weak, and she couldn’t be, either. The cure for vampirism existed. She had clues she could follow to find it. It must be found. She daren’t let herself think about a life as a vampire, alone and ageless. Drinking blood. What would she become?

She had another problem. Her veins had begun to itch with need. Her Companion wanted blood. But there would be no more villagers sauntering up to donate blood. Could she hold it until she had reconstructed the cure? A day, two at most. Perhaps if her first trial hit the mark, she wouldn’t need to find a way to fill her mother’s china teacups with viscous, warm …

She pressed down the thought of blood, even as her Companion thrilled up in response.

Clara came up from the cellar with a tankard. “This will set you up, Mr. Kilkenny.”

He took it from her and gulped from it. The sight of his strong throat undulating as he drank was … distracting.

What are you thinking?
she admonished herself.
He’s human now. He doesn’t want you just because he’s infected with the parasite anymore. You’re the only one who’s abnormal.
But not for long. She let resolution harden her. It would keep away the grief and isolation.

He put the sweating tankard down. It didn’t smell like ale. “What is that?” Jane asked.

“Something to help him gain strength,” Clara said. “Raw eggs, some herbs.”

Kilkenny drained the remainder, without a word.

“Let us begin then,” Jane said. “Close your eyes.”