Nightbound (20 page)

Perversely aroused by the mortal’s crisp, polite voice uttering such obscenities, Farlae reached for the buttons securing his own trousers and released them, easing his rigid penis out of the opening and wrapping the broad head in a handkerchief. “Yes, that’s it. Tell me all about it, darling.”

“Kiss you, indeed,” Leeds murmured, his hand stroking steadily. “I’d have you bound by wrist and ankle, on your knees in front of me. I’d take your pretty hair in my fist and shove my cock in that bloody gorgeous mouth of yours. You’d whimper as I fucked myself in and out of your lips.”

Farlae’s eyelids drooped as he imagined the same, Leeds on his knees in front of him, his hands chained behind his back, his mouth open and wet. But the mortal’s face quickly blurred in his mind, broadening into one dearly loved, as open and unpretentious as a summer’s day.

“Jayr,” Farlae heard Leeds panting, and squeezed his cock as he answered with, “Rain.”

The mortal took only another few minutes to bring himself off, and Farlae followed him, jerking as his body spasmed. He closed his eyes, letting the solitary pleasure ease to a sullen glow as he imagined kissing his seed from
Rain’s lips. For all his talk of eventual damnation, his lover was as generous and passionate in bed as he was ridiculous and foolhardy out of it. After so many centuries of being together, Farlae had expected their mutual desire to cool, but if anything, it had grown more intense.

I will tell him that I love him,
Farlae thought,
that he is my sygkenis and I will have no other. And if it can be done, I will marry him.

The slam of a door startled him out of his reverie, and when Farlae glanced at the terminal, he saw Leeds’s room was empty again.

“God rot you,” he swore as he wiped himself with the handkerchief and buttoned up his trousers. “You’ll not spend another night under this roof, you randy little bastard.”

Farlae switched off the terminal and left the storage room, tracking the mortal’s scent through the corridors and out into the gardens. There he stayed in the shadows as he caught up with Leeds, who moved with purpose toward the potting shed.

Cursing himself for not thinking of searching the grounds, Farlae slipped around to the side window, where he watched Leeds unearth a plastic-wrapped satellite phone from a pot of soil.

Now I have you for certain, you fucking traitor.
Farlae watched and listened as the mortal punched in a long string of numbers and began speaking in rapid Italian.

“I believe I have been compromised,” Leeds said. “I must move on to the next phase ahead of schedule.” As he listened, his shoulders stiffened. “Yes, I will kill her myself. I will contact you as soon as it is done.”

Jayr.
Farlae drew his dagger, and moved around the shed to wait for Leeds to emerge.

Shortly after midnight Harlech burst into Jayr’s study.

“Captain?” She smelled the blood on his hands before she saw it, and jumped to her feet. “How are you injured?”

“It is not my blood, my lady.” He glanced over his shoulder. “We’ve a man down. Would you come, please?”

She hurried out after him, and followed him down to the end of the corridor. Three warriors with blades drawn stood guard as a fourth crouched over a blood-soaked body on the floor.

“One of the household patrols found him here,” Harlech told her as Jayr knelt down beside the body. “From the trail he left on the stones, he must have crawled in from the gardens.” He produced a dagger. “We found this lodged in his chest.”

“You have given him blood?” When Harlech nodded, she leaned over, brushing the hair back from the still face. “Can you hear me?” When he didn’t stir, she pressed her hands to his chest, finding no pulse. She concentrated, searching with her Kyn senses for any spark of life left in him, but only when she was about to give up did she find it. “He is still alive. Harlech, we will need a litter to carry him to the infirmary.”

“Yes, my lady.” He ran off.

A shadow fell across the stone, and Jayr looked up, feeling an intense relief. “Devan, thank God.”

“I heard the commotion.” He knelt down to look at the wound, which he examined closely. “My lady, this
was no accident. This man was stabbed with copper. Who is he?”

“This is Farlae.” Despair swamped her as she rested her hand over his silent heart. “He is our wardrobe keeper.”

T
he smell of honey made Alys frown, as did the warmth enveloping her. The bottom of the pit was cold. She should be freezing.

“You’re awake.”

She opened her eyes to see Beau standing beside her in the dark, a tray in his hands. “What time is it? Why are you here?”

“It is a little after six, and I sleep here.” He reached over and switched on a lantern. “How are you feeling?”

She sat up and rubbed the back of her head where there should have been a bump—and there wasn’t. “We’re back at the cloister.” As he set the tray of tea and food on her lap, she gazed up at him. “I was in the bottom of that borrow pit. You left me there.”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” he said. “I found you wandering about the native village just after sunrise this morning. You were sleepwalking again.”

And he was lying to her. Again. “I was?”

He nodded. “You must have had another nightmare. You were in a pit, you said?”

In the pit where he had done terribly intimate things to her, as he well knew, Alys thought. “Yes, I was.” She didn’t have to try to sound muddled; she was completely dumbfounded. “I fell into it and you came to rescue me.”

He smiled and poured a cup of tea for her. “How did I do that? Was it like that
Raiders
movie you spoke of, with all the snakes?”

“I don’t remember any snakes.” He was joking about it now. She wanted to hit him. “I saw you jump straight up in the air, and then…I must have blacked out.” To keep from screaming, she took a sip of the tea, which he’d laced liberally with honey.
To cover the taste of the drugs?
She set down the cup. “It was a very vivid dream.”

“It sounds as if it was.” He nodded at the tray. “That’s the last of the bread and eggs. I’ll make a trip into the city for more food supplies.”

“I’ll go with you.” She forced a smile. “I have some things I need to do, too.”

After he went to take stock of what they would need, Alys dumped the tea he had made for her down the shower drain, and stuck the food in a self-sealing bag under her mattress. In the process she remembered the back injury she’d sustained, and reached back to feel for the bandage.

She wasn’t bandaged or wounded, Alys discovered, and wavered for a moment. She had fallen into a very deep pit and blacked out. Concussions had a way of distorting memories.
Is he telling the truth? Was it all a nightmare?
She felt along her back again, this time more carefully, and felt a faint, irregular scar. She took the hand mirror from her backpack and held it, turning her head and positioning it so she could see the spot. She did
have a scar, a brand-new one that had not been there yesterday. Somehow she had healed overnight.

No, he did something to me.

She remembered the strange heat of the antiseptic he’d used on her. If it had actually been antiseptic from the first aid kit, it should have stung; she knew because she’d used it several times herself on the cuts and scrapes she acquired while working the dig. And while she’d never had a problem recovering quickly from any wound, no one could spontaneously heal.…

Alys went to the trunk where she kept her books, and searched through them until she found the last birthday gift Robert had sent her, a memoir written by an ex–Catholic priest who among wild fantasies had claimed he’d discovered a second, secret society within the ranks of the Knights Templar. The author, an octogenarian whom the academic community had always dismissed as a madman, had insisted he’d even been attacked by members of the secret sect of Templars, who he claimed were not only immortal but also vampires. He’d prevented them from drinking his blood by hurling holy water at them.

She flipped through the chapters, skimming until she found the section on the evidence the priest had gathered about the sect he referred to as the “dark kyn,” and began reading.

Alys closed the book and sat back against the side of her bed, building almost helplessly a construct that duplicated the priest’s claims:
Strong and handsome. Smells wonderful. Avoids food. Only awake at night. He has every intern in love with him. He has
me
in love with him.

She shoved the book back into the trunk and slammed the lid down. Love wasn’t real, and neither were the imaginings of a disturbed mind. The priest had died more than a hundred years ago, committing suicide shortly after the publication of his wretched book. She could build another, completely logical construct to explain away the similarities. Beau had food allergies. He was charming. Hylord had insisted they work at night.

Beauregard York was not a vampire.

Last night I saw him jump out of the pit, just after he made me orgasm. But before that, he almost bit me.
Alys reached for her shoulder, and felt a tender spot. With
trembling fingers she pushed back her collar, and saw two shallow scratches surrounded by a fading bruise. Scratches that hadn’t been there yesterday. Scratches from two identical sharp objects scraping against her skin…

Alys retrieved her laptop and booted it up, watching the stairs as she ran several searches on Google and MapQuest. It would take hours, and if she was wrong, Beau would be furious with her, but nothing else would suffice. And if she was right, she needed incontrovertible proof with which to confront him.

She dressed and prepped her backpack before leaving the cloister, and found Beau stacking equipment cases in the church. “You don’t have to do that. We’ll only be a few hours.”

He gave her an odd look. “It’s no trouble. You’re ready to leave? Let me get my jacket.”

When Beau returned from the cloister, she shouldered her backpack and took out her keys. “We’ll take the van; it has more room in the back. Would you like to drive?”

“That would not be wise. The rental agency will have insured only you,” he chided. “If you’re not feeling well enough to drive, perhaps you should stay here.”

“I’m completely recovered, thank you.” He had a rational excuse for everything he couldn’t do, she thought. Of course he thought she’d never seen the two-week-old driver’s license in his wallet. “Let’s go.”

On the way to the city Beau turned on the radio, scanning the channels until he found the local classical music station. A dark and dramatic cello concerto filled up the silence between them.

“I liked that,” he said after the final, stark notes of the piece drifted into silence. “It sounded like a storm brewing.”

“Do you know the composer?” She glanced at him. “She’s a South Korean with a very memorable name.”

“What is it?”

“Unsuk Chin.”

“You’re jest—joking.”

He’d nearly said “jesting” instead of “joking”: another of his verbal slips. “You can Google her if you like. What sort of computer do you use at home?”

“Nothing special,” he said, turning his head to look at the scenery. “A laptop, like yours.”

“Is it Mac, HP, Texas Instruments?” she persisted.

“Texas Instruments.”

Who sold their laptop product line to Acer back in ’ninety-seven.
Alys was almost beginning to enjoy herself. “So you like vintage tech.”

“Like you, I am very fond of old things.” He nodded at the windshield. “There is an excellent market on the next block, to the right.”

“I thought we’d stop and get something to eat first. Charles told me about this place near here called Hoolihan’s. Great food, and live music, too.”

“That sounds interesting,” Beau said, shifting around to face her. “But you just ate a full meal back at camp.”

Alys hoped her stomach wouldn’t give her away by growling. “I was thinking about you. You haven’t eaten anything yet.”

“I did, just before you woke,” he said through his teeth. “But I appreciate your concern.”

No, you don’t.
Alys made a turn into the grocery
store’s side lot and parked the van. She was tempted to leave the keys in the ignition, but Beau was watching her too closely now.