Immortal Confessions (28 page)

“Sure,” Quentin said prissily. “Go talk about
your destiny.”

I left him, and followed Rene. She led me
into the woods, to the cabin she shared with her brother.

As I followed her in silence, I wondered
again who she was, that she had come halfway around the world to
help me, dragging her reluctant brother with her. What was in this
for her?

She let me inside, and then closed the door.
Abruptly, I looked around and saw Ravel was not there.

“He is speaking to Uther,” Rene said. “He
should not hear this.”

I wanted to shake her. “Hear what?”

“What I must say. Please sit down.”

I wanted to bite her now. “I’ll stand.
Speak!”

“As you wish.” She strode over to the
fireplace, and put another log on.

I thought that odd. The night was hot, not
cool. Maybe she had done it for me, knowing I was always cool, and
appreciated warmth.

She stood there so long I grew impatient.
“Speak, or I am leaving, Rene. What is it?”

“What do you want, Devlin?” she asked, not
looking at me. Or maybe she was, as she was still cloaked.

“What do you mean?”

“What do you want? If you could have
anything, what would it be?”

I looked at her suspiciously. “Why are you
asking me this?”

“I have seen your future, and my own, till
now,” she said. “But I cannot see beyond us being here, in this
place at this time. When I try to, I see nothing, only cloudiness.
And I feel that there is much evil that is to come, but there is
much joy, too.”

I shivered a little, she sounded so sure of
herself.

“So tell me what you desire,” she finished,
stirring the coals. “And we can work towards that end.”

I came towards her reluctantly, to stand near
her. “Has this happened before, that you could not see?”

“Sometimes,” she replied. “But only rarely.
It worries me very much, that I’ve led you to this strange land,
and now that we are here, my vision is clouded.”

There was a strange note in her voice, a
familiarity with me that made me feel uneasy. I shook it off. “Do
not be upset. You saved us, all of us, you and your brother. I am
in your debt for saving Anna.”

She didn’t answer.

I pondered her question for a time. What did
I want most? Forgiveness from Danial? Not anymore. It was true I
still loved him, being brother and all, but I didn’t want him
anywhere near Anna. An apology for his actions wouldn’t be
unwelcome though.

Power? Not like I had before. I wanted to
rule absolutely, or not at all. There was no point being Master if
you had a Master to answer to above you.

Money? I was making enough, though more
prestigious surroundings wouldn’t be unwelcome.

Sex? Maybe. Anna and I were as good as we’d
ever been, but it was true we’d been together almost five years
now. I’d never been with only one woman that long, not even a
fraction of that time. Part of me missed an adventuresome woman,
one who would seduce me instead of me seducing her, as Jezebel had
tried to do. Anna was never unreceptive, but there is a difference
between automatic response to a question and being the one who
brazenly proposes the question, if you get my meaning. But I wasn’t
about to hurt Anna for some sport, or let her go without my blood
too long, so she turned into the kind of woman she’d been when I’d
left her alone for a month. Maybe Rene could give her some kind of
aphrodisiac, to make Anna lose some of her inhibitions about what a
woman’s role in bed should be?

“Anything?” I asked. “Even something
impossible?”

“Anything,” she replied. “With magic, most
things can be done.”

“Tell me what happened the night we
left.”

“You know, Devlin. You were there.”

I grated my upper and lower fangs together.
“I meant what happened because of me leaving. What of Uther’s
people he left behind? What happened to Jezebel?”

“That harlot left France the same night you
did,” Rene said scornfully. “She has always been a coward, as you
saw the night you saved her life.”

“You knew of that?”

“I kept a close watch on you, Devlin. I spend
many nights watching in my crystal. You were nearly seduced. Are
you missing her claws?”

That made sense, I thought spitefully. Rene
couldn’t go out in polite society with the way she dressed as a
funeral mourner. “I had things well in hand, thank you. It’s a
relief to know she remains in the Old World. What of Danial?”

“He is here, out among the frontiersmen.”

Angry as I still was with him, it was a
comfort to know he was still alive. “And Louis?”

“That I cannot say,” Rene said regretfully.
“Titus blocks my visions of him and of Samuel. But Anthony is not
in these lands as yet. Is information all you want?”

I quickly mulled over a few more things I
won’t list here. But after several more minutes, I was still no
closer to a decision.

“Let me think on it,” I said finally. “I have
many things I want. But I cannot decide what I want most.”

“Take your time then,” she said, not turning
to me. “It is of no matter.”

I turned to go, and then looked back at her.
“Why do you help me?”

“Leave,” she said gently. “Suffice to say
that my fate and yours are intertwined.”

“How so?” I said, going to her and standing
directly behind her, so that my head was near her cloaked one.
“Please, tell me.”

“Leave,” she said again gently. “I promise,
in time, I’ll tell you all.”

Part of me was captivated and part of me was
curious. I reached up with my hands, and touched her shoulders. She
froze under my hands. I ran my hands up her form, gently, and then
I placed my fingers on the sides of her hood.

“Show me your face,” I whispered.

She grabbed my hands tightly in her gloved
ones in a flash. “Leave, Dalcon. Leave now, or I will take my
brother tonight and leave this place. And you will be on your
own.”

I let her go with an angry hiss, and walked
out, slamming the door so hard that the wood cracked with the force
of the blow. I walked quickly back to my home, cursing her oddness,
her talk of destiny, and her mysterious bullshit.

I got home to find Anna in bed waiting.
Quentin was asleep upstairs, and Eva was out roaming with the
wolves. L’Amour was lying in her bed, her five kittens sleeping
beside her.

Anna saw I was upset, and comforted me. I
took comfort in her body, and her blood, losing myself in her
softness.

Afterwards we held each other. Then, out of
the blue, she began to cry. I held her close, asking her what was
wrong, what had happened, but she wouldn’t answer, no matter what I
asked. So I bit my lip, stopped talking, and held her as she
cried.

An hour later, she sniffled a few times and
was silent. To my surprise, I discovered she had finally fallen
asleep. I got up, and sat near the bed, looking down at her. Was
this something I had done? Maybe being with me was driving her
crazy. She was only human, after all.

I heard a noise, and went to the door,
slipping on my pants. Eva was there, just slipping her dress back
on from changing back from wolf.

“What is wrong with Anna?” I whispered to
her. “She was crying tonight. Did something happen?”

Eva gave me a look that told me I was an
idiot, clearly. “Something happened a month ago,” she said
pointedly. “You’ve just been too much of a dolt to see it.”

I wanted to hit her, or bite her. But this
was Anna we were talking about, so it was time for groveling.
“Please,” I said, taking her hand. “Tell me.”

“Your cat had young,” she said flatly. “Anna
knows she never will, so long as she stays with you.”

Her analogy was bad, but it had the impact of
a fist to the gut. All the wind went out of me, and I shot an
anguished look at Anna, still asleep in our bed. This was what she
had meant that night she’d said I could never give her all she
wanted. This was where all her frustration had stemmed from.

“Has she spoken of leaving?” I whispered.

“No,” Eva said, pushing past me. “She has
not. She does not speak of this at all, but I am a woman, and it is
easy to see. It’s what Levi felt when he found out I could not have
his children. We tried so hard that first year, even enlisting
magical help, with no success. It drove him to drink, as he loved
me and he didn’t want to break with me.” She looked back at me.
“There is more than one reason he faced Anthony that night, when he
could have fled instead. I think it was easier than facing my
barrenness and the rest of our lives together.”

I could not hear anymore. I grabbed a shirt,
and turned to her. “Watch over Anna. I will be back soon.”

Rene was waiting for me when I arrived at her
cottage, and so was Ravel. “We set up a warning spell, so we knew
you were coming,” he said, looking at me with a grin. “What is the
matter?”

“I must speak with Rene,” I said in a cracked
voice.

Ravel shot me an uneasy look, but he left.
When he was gone, Rene faced me, silent in her cloak.

“I want to have a child,” I said haltingly.
“Can it be done?”

“Is it you that wants it really?” she said
softly. “Or is it Anna?”

“She does. I love her and want her to be
happy.”

“I see,” she said, again going to the fire
and poking through the ashes to stir it.

Could she not leave it alone? Women.

“It can be done, I think,” she said. “But
there will be pain for you, and there is no small risk to
Anna.”

I felt my heart skip a beat. “What risk?”

“Women who try this usually die,” Rene said
flatly. “Do you think you are the first vampire and human to fall
in love? It is true your relationship has lasted much longer than
is usual, so perhaps it might work for you.”

“Perhaps? What does that mean?”

“It has never worked, to my knowledge,” Rene
said. “A pregnancy just never occurs. The woman dies in a short
time from the influx of vampire that overloads her system.”

“We have shared blood almost every other
night for several years, and had sex more often than that,” I
replied. “She has not turned, Rene. She only begins turning if she
drinks a large amount of my blood. After stopping she reverts
quickly, within a day, to her normal scent.”

“Interesting. Possibly she is resistant, or
there is faerie blood in her veins. We and werecreatures are the
only races that cannot become vampire.”

“Would that help us have a child, or be a
hindrance?”

“I can’t say. But the danger I speak of is
not of turning, Devlin. It is of dying.”

“The old ones can turn humans into vampires,
can’t they?” I said quickly. “Why does the woman die and not
turn?”

“Some have,” Rene replied. “But not all who
have tried this are powerful enough to withstand the potion to make
this possible. It is no easy thing, to make what has been held in
one single moment for hundreds of years able to change enough to
put forth life again. It is no easy thing to make a vampire mortal
enough to make a child, and yet immortal enough to keep being a
vampire.”

“What are you saying? Speak plainly!”

“You could die, doing this. Anna could die,
doing this. Is it worth the risk?”

It was not, not to me. But maybe it was to
Anna.

“Dalcon, there is much I do not understand
about this potion, why it works, or how it is made, or even what
kind of side effects it might have.” She paused. “I wish you had
asked for something else.”

I was wishing that, too. But there was
nothing for it but to go back to Anna, and tell her everything and
see what she said.

* * * *

I told Anna all of it the next day. Instead
of wild hope, or hysterics, she was calm, and thoughtful “I want to
try,” she said calmly.

“Are you sure?” I said seriously, odd
feelings stirring in me.

“Yes,” she said, and then she looked at me a
little in longing. “I want your baby, Devlin. I want our baby.”

I looked at her, and in that moment, I think
I loved her more than I had ever loved anything in my entire life.
Something changed in me in that moment forever, because when I
thought of her, and her having my child I felt as if I’d never
wanted anything before as much as I wanted that. Why had I not
wanted a child before this moment? Because I hadn’t known it was
possible? Because I hadn’t known how much she wanted one?

I held her to me, marveling at how I was
feeling. Where had these feelings come from? Had they been inside
me these last two hundred years? I had not wanted offspring when I
was mortal. It must have been because I loved her.

I went to Rene that afternoon, and told her
Anna wanted this, and so did I. She nodded, and said she would
contact a potion-maker she knew. A week later, she delivered it to
me. The bottle which held the proposed key to Anna’s happiness and
mine was a simple clear glass half-pint jug, the potion inside it
shimmering slightly, like sunlight in water. It had no smell, and
the taste was very close to simple water, with a slight aftertaste
of bitterness. .After I downed the whole of it, I asked Rene if I
should go to Anna, to try at once.

“The potion-maker said it would take a
while,” she replied. “He did not say how long.”

“Bring him here,” I growled.

A few minutes later, he was standing before
me, trembling a little. He said the same as she; that he didn’t
know how long it would take.

“It’s never been done, what you’re trying to
do. All the book says is that to be successful, you must keep
taking the potion until you are as warm as a human. When you are
warm, the book says that the ‘life spring is renewed, and life can
now spring forth.’ There is a much less potent mixture that will
keep you warm and fertile, once you reach that point.”

I grated my upper and lower fangs against
each other. “Approximately how long, would you guess?”