One With the Shadows (23 page)

“Your concern is touching, considering she betrayed you without an instant’s hesitation. But I did not have time to take your revenge for you. I should think living, looking like she does, would be better punishment than killing her.”

Gian felt his stomach go hollow. He thought he might vomit. Kate. Kate had betrayed him to Elyta? He’d thought, even though she cheated people, stole things, she still had some moral center that wouldn’t allow betrayal. He felt his knees go weak. The flames at the base of the pergola flickered and died. The compost heap stopped smoking.

They pushed him with their will onto his knees just outside the heavy wooden door, barred and riveted with iron, to the tiny chapel. Elyta stood over him.

“Look at me, pretty, pretty man.” She added her will to the curtain that shrouded him. He fought, fought to keep his chin down. But he couldn’t. Slowly, he raised his eyes to hers.

“Once you left me after only one night. No other man has done that.” She ripped his shirt and waistcoat open, baring his chest. “But now you are mine for as long as I care to use you.” From a pocket in her skirts she took a box and a small pair of silver tongs. The box was carved mahogany. It didn’t matter. He knew what was in it. She opened it, smug satisfaction writ across her features. “Not only did you leave me in Capri with hardly a backward glance, but when next we met, you tried to burn me. Gian, Gian, whatever will I do with you?”

He didn’t bother to deny it, or tell her the fire had been accidental. He’d burn her on purpose this instant if he could. But fire was far away. Kate’s betrayal had robbed him of his fury. He felt only empty. Kate had brought her own vision to life.

With the tongs Elyta picked up the stone, quiescent now in darkness, but still deadly. She held it up and smiled, bursting with the need for revenge.

He held his breath. She touched the stone to his breast, almost lovingly. A searing fire shot through him that grew and grew. He gasped and then a scream tore itself out from his belly up through his lungs and his throat. His Companion was screaming too. His body arched as the pain went on. It felt as though his soul was being sucked out through the stone. A luminous red fog clouded about his body and then was drawn into the ruby. It glowed now, even in the dark.

The pain stopped. He collapsed to the paving tiles of the garden.

“Take him inside.” The voice echoed from far away. Hands under his armpits dragged him up. He tried to make his muscles move, but he couldn’t. Weak. He’d never felt so weak. Head hanging, legs limp, he was dragged into the tiny chapel, now empty, but with four stout stone walls and that great heavy door. The two who held him dropped him at the far wall.

“Strip him,” Elyta said. Her voice grew clearer. He felt the clothes being ripped from his body. The stone floor was cold on his flanks even in the warm May night. He
wouldn’t
lie supine before her. He grunted with effort as he pushed himself up on his elbows. Two of her vampires grabbed his wrists and pulled him up to sit. They locked him into heavy shackles. He raised his head. The chapel didn’t have shackles. But there they were, mortared into the wall with a huge iron bolt. No problem to pull them out if he was at full strength. But somehow he didn’t think she would let him get back to full strength soon. That meant translocation was beyond him too. A chill gripped him. Had he ever been helpless before?

He lifted his head. She was going through his breeches pockets. She had the box. The look of triumph on her face was painful. “Now I have both of them,” she whispered.

He tried to think of something defiant to say, but everything that occurred rang melodramatic or patently untrue. He hadn’t been able to use his powers as a firebrand to stop her. What good were they to him? What good was he?

“Leave us,” she said to the others. Two, as they left, looked resentful, and one looked positively murderous. Was that … jealousy?

“You … have a quite the harem here,” he choked out. “You always did need adulation.”

She opened the silver box and took out the emerald with her tongs. She held it up where she could look at it. “I deserve it, Urbano. I’m more intelligent than they are, stronger, more focused on my goals.” Here her eyes snapped to his. “Altogether a better specimen. What a waste that the Elders do not recognize it.” She came and knelt beside him. “Just because I’m a woman doesn’t mean I was not meant to rule. I should be the matriarch of dynasties.” A shadow passed across her face. “But you know how hard it is for us to have children. I almost envy humans that, to see yourself replicated, spread out not only vertically through the ages, but horizontally, through wider and wider ripples in the pool of life.”

She pressed the emerald to his naked hip. He tried to jerk away, but she pushed it into his flesh. He smelled the sizzle of meat before he screamed. It wasn’t just a burn. It felt like his veins were being stripped from his body. This time the pain was briefer.

“Just testing this stone. I’ll keep you too weak to escape, but not too weak for my other purposes.” She put the stone back in its silver box as Gian lay gasping. But she left the box open and the little tongs laid across it, within her reach. “I think the stones can kill you. Perhaps we shall find out, if I tire of you. But not yet.” She unfastened the clasp of the cloak she wore. “You know, I gave myself to you so generously. I didn’t use my will on you at all that time in Capri. But I did expect you to acknowledge me, my abilities, my life force, as superior.”

“You wanted submission,” he gasped. “Like those poor bastards in your harem.”

“They do their best. But after a while, one needs new earth to turn.” Her eyes went red.

Companion!
he called silently. But there was no answering buzz of life along his veins. The world did not go red. Fear made his mouth dry. He had never felt powerless before. She could do what she wanted with him. He wasn’t surprised to feel the throbbing in his loins. She could compel arousal, and that’s exactly what she was doing. His cock responded, swelling. “You can’t attract a man, so you resort to rape?”

She laughed and leaned over him. “I attract all men, my dear Gian. They are drawn by my beauty and personality. I am larger than they are, in every way. That’s why it is my destiny to rule. Even you are not immune. You’re just willful. We can’t have that.” His cock was rock-hard along his belly. His stomach churned. “So I will do what men have done for millennia, I will
make
you acknowledge me.”

It wasn’t about sex for her. It was about power. She straddled his loins and lifted his member, then settled onto it. She was wet and ready. She’d been stimulated by his pain or his forced submission. “You’re twisted,” he managed to gasp.

She moaned in satisfaction and slid up and down. “I am a force of nature, Gian dear, and like a great wind, all in my path bow to me, even you. Now, you will move as I direct.”

Fourteen

“What is the fastest way to Ravello?” Kate asked the hostler at the posting house yard in Castellammare di Stabia. “My map shows a line going over the mountains. Is it a road?”

The hostler pulled his forelock in apology. Kate was glad she had the veil, or he probably would not have been able to take his eyes off her scar. “Not for a carriage,” he said. “Touch-and-go with a horse. Donkey or a goat’d be best.”

Not for the first time, or the fiftieth, she wished she knew how to ride a horse. “How long will it take to go round the coast?” They’d lost so much time already with the broken axle.

“Well.” He scratched his head. The hairline low over his forehead made him seem a little dim. “Two and a half days, maybe. Three. Very twisty round the coast. And narrow.”

She wanted to scream at him.

But she couldn’t. The feeling of dislocation that was becoming so familiar washed over her. A vision took her and shook her. This man would see his child die of smallpox, and it would change him forever. She shook the vision off. They were happening so frequently these days, they had started to seem almost normal. And that wasn’t normal at all. But she’d have to think about that later. So she didn’t scream at him. How could she, when she understood his coming trial? “And how long to ride over the mountains direct to Ravello?”

“Day and a half,” he drawled.

If Gian had gone across the mountain and they had to go round the coast it might be only a day’s difference. But she had been eight days on the road, and she started two days behind Gian. She gave the hostler a gold coin and strode into the inn, ordered some sandwiches, and watched the horses being changed out.

This was senseless. What could she do for Gian if Elyta had him? What kept her at this maddening journey? She was a girl who could pick pockets and read tarot cards. She had visions of the future, but she never saw herself, so they didn’t tell her what to do.

She loved him. She remembered a Kate who would have suppressed that feeling and just … moved on. She’d have built scar tissue around the wound and done what she must to survive. Survival was
always
the lesser of two evils. Yet here she was, ready to sacrifice everything, including likely her life, on some quest for which she was totally unprepared. She couldn’t even ride a horse, for pity’s sake.

But she was all he had. So she must do what she could. Was that a sense of duty? She was beginning to sound like Gian. She shook herself. It wasn’t duty. It was just that the lesser of two evils had changed if surviving meant suffering your whole life knowing you hadn’t tried to help Gian. Proceeding, even though she might be killed, was now the lesser of two evils.

She handed Luigi and the groom their sandwiches and got into the carriage, waving away the groom’s efforts to hand her in. There was no time for courtesies.

She’d just have to use what she was and what she had to hand. Improvise. That was what you did on the streets of London to survive. That’s what you bloody well did in the salons of Europe or any night in your lodgings with Matthew.

The carriage lurched off. So she’d improvise.

*   *   *

Elyta shuddered and grunted with her orgasm. But she didn’t let that distract her from controlling Gian. She kept his mouth and tongue at their job and his cock erect. It had been a long night. The woman was insatiable and she loved gloating.

At last she raised herself from where she had knelt over him. She pulled him up and locked his wrists back in the manacles, then curled on the thick fur she had laid beside him. The control that commanded him washed away, leaving him hollow. Despair slunk round him like a wolf waiting to lunge in and rip out his heart. He was helpless. And Kate had put him here.

“Very skilled.” She sighed. She ran her hands over his body. “And very, very pretty.” She stroked his cock. “I think you deserve release after that.”

“I don’t want release,” he said through gritted teeth.

“When I’ve kept you erect for three nights without ejaculation? Of course you want to come. You’re crazy for it.” She rubbed her thumb over the head of his cock and made his breath hiss in his throat. He would
not
give her the satisfaction.

But she was relentless. Soon he was breathing hard. He tried to think of other things. The vampire wars in Africa, blood spurting from a young boy’s headless corpse, even Kate’s betrayal—anything he thought might soften him. It didn’t work. She sank her teeth into his throat and sucked in rhythm to her strokes. Even that didn’t dampen the urge. He was on a path of no return. He grunted with the first spurts of semen, and hated himself for his weakness.

Elyta pulled away. Her mouth was smeared with his blood. He felt it drooling down his neck. The twin wounds did not heal immediately as they once would have. Elyta took up a cloth and a small knife with which he was only too familiar. She wiped his belly.

“Your blood is sweet.” She licked her lips. “I worried about the danger of ingesting your Companion. But it’s so weak I can hardly even taste it.” She took the knife and made a neat incision just in from his hipbone. There were cuts all over his body now, as well as the burns from the stones, in various states of healing. She leaned down and licked at the welling blood. Her tongue worked the wound. It would not even begin to heal until her saliva dried. By continuing to lick it, she could keep it open for hours. And he was healing slowly these days. It had taken all he had to heal the burns from the sunbeams coming in through the little round window yesterday. What would happen today?

She made another slice in his chest over his nipple. She liked to cuddle and talk and sip his blood after using him. “I think I’ll base in Paris, since no vampires live in France. And France is influential.” She bent and licked the wound at his chest. “Asharti was wrong to make a vampire army. Why create competition for blood? That woman was a lunatic.”

As if Elyta wasn’t mad?

“Made vampires are an abomination. It’s almost the only thing the Elders have right. And you needn’t make vampires. Just supplant the key ministers of a human government with our own born vampires, and you can rule a human population for generations. I could rule all of Europe with the French army at my service.”

Gian felt the blood at his hip begin to congeal. She noticed that and leaned down to lick it. “Is that what you want, to rule a human country?” Gian tried to distract her.

“I want to be valued for what I am,” she snapped, looking up.

“I thought you planned to use Rubius’s influence to get yourself a seat on the Council.”

“Just like a man.” Her voice dripped scorn. “Why must I have influence only through Rubius? Rubius sent me to Scotland to retrieve some formula he thought was a cure for vampirism as though I was a pet dog. He was so blind he didn’t see that I would take the formula myself. What could one not do if one controlled a cure?” She laughed, then sobered. “It all came to nothing. There was no cure.” She bent and lapped at his chest. Then she sat upright, licking her lips. “And who would want to rule in Mirso anyway? A hundred ascetics, denying their passions. The Elders are dried-out old men who suffer women only when women pretend to be exactly like them. Well, I am a living, breathing woman, more intelligent and more alive than they are. They should beg me to join their ranks, bow to my intuition.” She was hanging above him, almost hissing in his face. A bit of spittle hung at the corner of her mouth. “They don’t value women for what they are. Mothers abandon their daughters, instead of coddling them and cooing over them like your mother dotes on you.”