The Companion (16 page)

“Ehh, hombre,” the woman challenged, sizing up Rufford with a practiced gaze. Her blouse, white in the dark Gibraltar night, had slipped from one shoulder. “Soy yo. ¿Tu quieros hacer con una mujer a muy habilidos esta noche?”

Rufford hesitated.

“Francais?” she asked. “Bon. C’est une nuit parfait pour l’amour, n’est pas? C’est un jardin tout près.”

Still he hesitated, so she reached out slowly and took his hand, as she would a wild animal’s. He let her draw him through an arch covered with the same vine that sheltered Beth. She gave them a moment, then tiptoed after them. Peering around the arch, she saw the woman lead Rufford to a stone bench in a circle of flagstones, surrounded by a black jungle of tropical plants. The woman lounged across the bench, breasts swelling beneath her low-cut blouse. Rufford loomed above her, uncertain, as though he might turn and run at any moment. Then Beth saw his shoulders sag. He sank to the bench.

Beth slid through the dark leaves, some smooth and shiny, perhaps schefflera, and some light and prickly, Pride of Madeira, their purple flower cones now indigo in the night. Had Rufford come ashore for a common liaison with a Spanish harlot? But there was something in his defeated attitude that said this was more important, more costly, than a carnal need. The moon broke through the clouds and lit the flagstone circle as though it were a stage. Beth found a place where she could crouch among the riot of the garden unseen and yet see Rufford’s face.

The woman urged him on, her full-throated murmurs unintelligible. Perhaps she quoted prices; perhaps she promised ecstasy—Beth couldn’t hear. She ran her fingers through his hair until his ribbon came loose and it tumbled forward. Beth could almost feel its lush curls. The whore pressed her breasts against his chest as he hung above her, and Beth held her breath.

Rufford himself inhaled and turned his head up, as if in supplication.

When his gaze dropped, Beth was shocked to see that his eyes had gone red. They glowed in the night with their own inner light, crimson instead of blue. His eyes had betrayed a faintly red cast that night she saw him heal, but nothing like this inhuman fire. He gazed at the whore, who went suddenly
limp. She would have fallen, but he caught her. She lay draped across his arm, her breast heaving, her head lolling so that her throat was bared. Rufford panted over her for a long moment, then opened his mouth. By the light of the moon, Beth saw canines gleam, impossibly long. Then he bent over the harlot’s throat. Beth saw her jerk once, then lift herself to Rufford in a sensual pull as he stayed there, kissing. Kissing? Sucking?

Revulsion showered Beth. Of course, sucking! Like a bat. One of those vampire bats Granger mentioned. He was a
vampire
? Her heart wrenched in anger, in grief or horror. She wanted to run from the garden, but she dared not move lest he see her and she, too, fall victim to him. Her heart trembled and her stomach heaved. This was no “condition.” She tried to remember vague legends: garlic, wolfbane, sun, blood, dead but undead, immortal, evil.

With a grunt of effort, Rufford tore his lips from the woman’s throat, and sagged over her body. With effort, he raised himself and resettled his victim against his shoulder. Beth watched in morbid fascination as the woman’s eyes fluttered open. “You will remember only that someone thought you were beautiful, valuable, that you were loved,” he growled as his eyes began to fade through burgundy to blue again.

The woman woke, as from a trance. She sat up and looked around, confused. Rufford stood. Beth could see him flushing, even in the moonlight that washed the color from the world. “For your trouble,” he muttered, and laid a golden coin upon the bench.

“Estancia!” a male voice called from the tavern. Light flickered in a window that gave onto the garden. “Dónde estás, Estancia?”

Rufford looked around to the voice, then back at his victim. “Comó estás? Bueno?”

She looked up at him, dazed, and nodded. “Bien, assez bien.”

He turned, striding out through the arch as the call within the tavern rose again.

Beth pushed after him, freed from her spell. In the archway, he looked both ways, hesitated, and then headed uphill again, away from his inn and the wharf.

She should scurry back to the Fruit of the Vine and safety. She knew what Rufford wanted with Gibraltar now. She knew why Callow bore the same marks that Rufford did. She wondered that she hadn’t realized it long before. She, too, paused in the archway, undecided. Behind her, a door opened. Light cascaded over her. “Estancia, venga. Se está hacienda tarde.”

Beth stepped out of the light to avoid discovery. Almost against her will she turned to follow Rufford’s retreating shadow. She was following evil itself into the night. Why? Why would she do that? Her heart was still pounding, but her brain cleared enough to think.

Her brain did not like the words
evil
and
horror
. Those were superstitious words, words in which her father had never believed. Granger’s words about bats came back to her: “Some, by nature, like blood. It isn’t fatal to their victims, and the poor beasts can’t help it, certain.” Was a drunken surgeon more liberal-minded than she was? The look of shame on his face, the sag of his shoulders, said that even Rufford didn’t think it was a condition, but some evil. She remembered his wild concern for Callow, his guilty, almost tender questioning of the whore.

Her thoughts collided all the while her feet followed Rufford. Clouds closed over the moon, casting the street into darkness. Beth longed to move to the center of the dirt lane to avoid the filth at the edge, but though Rufford now seemed oblivious to his surroundings, she dared not risk discovery. Whatever he was, he would not like being followed by a fellow passenger. Fellow passenger? How could she return to the confines of a ship with one such as Rufford? Yet she didn’t have enough money to bespeak a coach in the morning and abandon her voyage.

He turned into a narrow alley. Had she seen another shadow there? She stopped, then moved quietly to the corner where he had disappeared. She saw him gliding, almost preternaturally
smooth and quiet, a blacker shadow on the darkness. Ahead of him flickered another shadow, or was it two?

The alley was filled with crates and rotting vegetables, molding rags and human filth. The stench was nauseating. Ahead, Rufford slid after his quarry. She picked her way through the maze of half-seen obstacles to another narrow lane. Rufford was moving faster now into an empty field with grasses growing up around half-burnt timbers and fallen stones. He was gaining on the other shadows—three? They sauntered, muttering, up to no good this late, surely. Could he manage to subdue three? But she had seen his strength. He had pushed off a pirate’s corsair single-handed. He had not been violent with the woman, but with three to one, someone would get hurt. Should she shout? Should she warn them of their danger? But that would reveal her. And she could not let Rufford know he had been discovered.

It was all one in the end, for she tripped over a stone in the tall grass and went down with a gasp. The quarries glanced back and began running. Rufford hesitated and stalked back toward her. She struggled to her feet and turned to dash away, heart pounding.

A strong clasp gripped her arm. He turned her with a growl. She squirmed to escape, keeping her face turned away, her eyes downcast. He had her by both shoulders. But he did not shake her, hit her, do all the thousand things he might have done if he was angry. The heated power in his hands on her shoulders seared her.

“Don’t be afraid,” he murmured. “No tiene miedo.” He dragged her to a crumbled stone fireplace, sheltered by a tree only singed by the fire that had destroyed the building.

And she was not afraid. His arm encircled her. She sagged against his strength. He pressed her to his chest while he fumbled with her shirt collar. She could see him perfectly clearly in the moonlight!: the cleft of his chin, the vulnerable lips that puckered too sweetly for evil, the curling hair, unbound. But more than these was the strength that emanated from him, the scent of cinnamon and ambergris. The sense of him penetrated to her core. Her head lay along his
arm. He leaned over her. She could hear his panting breath, a low sound in his throat like a growl. She turned to him, baring her carotid artery, and looked up.

“You!” he exclaimed. But he was gasping. His eyes had gone full red. “Why have you done this?” She thought for a moment he would pull away, but then, with something like a snarl, he bent to her throat.

The twin pains, when they came, were not unexpected. She only thought they would be sharper. Perhaps it was the languor that overcame her, but the piercing of her skin did not seem important. What was important was his scent and the nearness of his body. His lips were soft against her skin. Now both arms embraced her and pressed her breasts into his chest. His mouth pulled at her throat, sucking, and she moved her body in some instinctive counterpoint, her hips pressing against his thigh, which had somehow gotten between hers and hers between his. She was burning, throbbing in her loins with the pulse of her blood, her mother’s blood that ran within it, his blood. He held her tighter. She could hardly breathe, and now his hips were thrusting back, even as he pulled against her throat and pressed her against his body. She did not care. Let him take all the blood she had, just so she might stay here, in this almost ecstasy, forever with him.

With a cry, he withdrew. He wiped the blood from his mouth and shook his head, as if to clear it. “Too much. Too much.” But still he held her close. She looked up into that countenance as if she had known it forever. She saw guilt suffuse him. He turned his gaze to her, still burgundy, but fading. “You will remember . . .”

“Everything, always,” she whispered.

His eyes widened and snapped back to blue. He let her go as though she were a hot coal. Beth dropped to her knees, unable to stand on her own. She wavered.

He threw himself down on his knees in front of her and took her shoulders to steady her, examining her neck with horror. “God, what have I done?”

She smiled sleepily at him, unable to speak. He looked
wildly around, came to himself, shook her to get her attention, and muttered, “You will remember nothing.”

But it was too late and he knew it.

From somewhere far away she could see the pain in his eyes, see him swallow and look about himself as though something would occur to change what had just happened. He examined her again, taking in the ragged urchin’s clothing, no doubt. “I must get you back to your rooms.” He stood and hauled her to her feet. Taking her arm, he pulled her through the burnt remains toward the lane beyond. She didn’t care if she got back to her rooms. She wanted to stay here, in the ruins, with him. She stumbled a few steps and sank again.

Rufford turned and swept her up in his arms, carrying her lightly, as if she weighed nothing at all. “The Fruit of the Vine, did you say?”

“Um-hmm.” She buried her face in his shoulder, feeling the warmth emanating from him, breathing in his scent. The muscles beneath the fabric rolled as he shifted her weight. She had never been this close to a man not her father. Were they all this powerful, this overwhelming? she wondered, from very far away. She had been missing something in her life.

He strode down the lane, across, into another, always downhill. Beth must have swooned, for the next thing she knew, he was shouting for the landlord in Spanish and kicking at the door of the inn. The door cracked open; a small man with mustachios protested that it was too late for a room, to no avail. Rufford pushed past him. Loud voices, a querulous inquiry from the top of the stairs—another guest. Threats from Rufford to wake the whole inn. The landlord sent them to a small room at the back of the house.

Rufford laid her on the bed, shut the door, took off his boots for some reason, and sat next to her on the bed. Noises outside petered out. Then quiet. She drifted.

“What is the number of your room?” he asked in a low rumble.

“What?” she murmured from somewhere near unconsciousness.

“Your room. I must get you back there if there is not to be a scandal.”

She looked up. His brows were drawn together in anger. Was he angry at her? “Eight.”

He nodded. “Rest. I must wait until the house has gone back to sleep.”

She smiled and drifted away.

Ian watched her in the moonlight from the opened shutters as sleep took her, and felt for her pulse. Her wrist was so small. He could break the bones between a thumb and forefinger. Why in God’s name had she followed him? It was all her fault, putting herself in his way just as he was bent on feeding. Dressed like an urchin, no less! He would never have . . . but he had. Even when he saw her eyes, those unmistakable green-gold eyes, he had been unable to restrain himself. He had fed from her. And it was more than feeding. The act had been totally unlike taking sustenance from Callow or the harlot earlier tonight.

He fingered her wrist again. He could feel no pulse. Panic surged. What had he done? He put his palm across her fragile throat and felt with thumb and middle finger for her carotid. The two round red circles accused him. There! Faint and fluttery, but a definite pulse. Ian breathed again. He had taken far too much blood for one so small. What had come over him? He had already assuaged his most urgent need. The feel of her slender body pressed against him made his body react even now. It had bordered on . . . ecstasy. That must be why he had so lost control. Who had begun to move their hips first? He could not control his caroming thoughts.

Why had she done it? He had to admit it had taken courage. She must have seen him with the woman in the garden, else she could not have followed him to the burnt ruins. She knew what he was, and even so, she continued. Perhaps she had known all along. She had seen the boy on the ship, the marks.

He put one shaking hand to his mouth, trying to quiet his mind. She might still die. She had been seriously weakened.
But if she survived she must be preserved from her folly. He could not let her be found in boy’s clothes, having been carried in by a strange man last night. He would place her back in her own room in her own clothes. That would take care of the maids. Would the landlord connect the sick boy who must have a room at long past midnight with the sick girl to be found in number eight tomorrow? Gold would keep his silence.