Nightbound (22 page)

“Don’t. Please.” She turned away from him, hugging herself with her arms as she fled to the opposite side of the suite. “It’s horrible that this happened between us, but we didn’t know. Now that we do, you can’t—you and I can never—”

He seized her with his ability, turning her around and lifting her off her feet as he pulled her through the air to him.

“I was born in the thirteenth century, and when I became a man, I took vows as a Poor Fellow-Soldier of Christ and the Temple of Solomon.” When she reached him, he held her suspended in the air before him. “After the Crusades, I came home to England, where I died of plague. Three days later I rose from my grave to live again as a blood-drinker. I have walked the night for seven centuries, love.” Gently he lowered her to the floor. “I am all these things, but I am not your brother.”

“I want to believe you.” Her expression clouded. “I know you have an extraordinary power; you’ve demonstrated it twice now.”

“Three times,” he corrected. “I used it to keep you from falling down the steps in the cloister. Why won’t you believe the rest of what I’ve told you?”

“I can’t.” She clutched at the front of her robe. “You have to understand—I’m a scientist, Beauregard—”

“Beaumaris. My true name is Beaumaris.”

“All right.” She looked miserable. “Beaumaris, you are an amazing man. You’ve also been lying to me since we met. As I said, I’m a scientist. I deal in facts, not fantasies. Human beings can’t live for centuries. Having the
plague doesn’t make you rise from the grave or drink blood or give you eternal life. You have a tremendous gift, and I can’t explain how you have it, but it doesn’t make you an immortal.”

She didn’t believe him at all. Beau was speechless.

“We can be tested and find out if we’re siblings.” The wrenching sadness in her voice made it clear that she still thought they were. “Perhaps we’re related more distantly; I know cousins sometimes share physical characteristics. The rest of it, well, you don’t have to lie to me anymore. I’ve read about the dark kyn, but they’re just stories made up by a mentally ill priest.”

She thinks I am lying. Or mad.
“You will want proof.”

“You can’t prove…I mean, that’s not necessary.” She reached out and touched his arm. “I’m sorry. Honestly, I’m not making fun of you. You saved my life tonight. I’ll always be grateful.”

Grateful. She was bloody grateful.
Not for long.
“Come with me.”

Alys didn’t resist as he dragged her over to the room service cart. When he picked up the serrated knife from the tray, she reached for it. “Please don’t—”

He held out his forearm. “My kind are very hard to hurt, and nearly impossible to kill. Behold.” He thrust the knife against his arm. The blade snapped off and fell to the floor. He held up the broken handle. “When we are strong, as I am, steel cannot cut through our flesh.”

Doubt flickered for a moment over her face. “Did you use your power to snap the blade?”

He bent down and drew the dagger from the sheath in his boot and handed it to her. “Examine it. Assure yourself it is not a fake.”

Alys heaved a sigh before she inspected the blade. “It’s a real knife, and the metal looks like copper.”

“It is copper, the only metal that can hurt us.” Beau took the dagger from her and used it to slash his wrist.

“Oh, my God.” Alys grabbed his arm. “What have you done? Are you crazy?”

Beau stopped her from using her robe to stanch the wound. “Watch.” After a few moments the blood stopped flowing, and then disappeared as the edges of the slash sealed together. “A mortal cannot heal so fast. Examine it for yourself.”

She touched his arm just as the last mark of the wound vanished, and gazed up at him. “I can’t explain this, any more than I can substantiate your kinetic power. I wish I could. But it’s not proof that you’re some kind of immortal vampire who’s been alive since the Dark Ages.” She touched her shoulder. “Maybe you believe you are, and you behave as if you are, but there are no such things as vampires.”

There was nothing left for Beau to do but demonstrate in the most basic way what he was.

He handed her his dagger again. “Prick your finger on the tip. Not deeply, only to draw a drop of blood.” When she hesitated, he added, “You said you were grateful to me. I did save your life, Alys. This is what I want in return.”

Alys looked sadly at the blade before she pressed her finger to the point. She showed him the drop of blood that welled from the tiny wound. “Anyone can drink blood, Beaumaris. Even me.”

He took hold of her wrist, bringing her fingers up to his face and breathing her in. He opened his mouth, tilting
his head back so she could see his
dents acérées
stretch out into his mouth.

He lowered his chin. “Can you do that?”

Alys stared at him blankly. “You grew fangs.”

“Aye.” Now that he had told her all, he saw no reason to mask his natural speech. “The scent of mortal blood sends us into our predatory state. My eyes change as well.”

“Your pupils are constricting.” She moved closer, her hands cradling his face as she watched. “Like a cat’s.” She pressed her fingers to his mouth. “May I?”

“Have a care. They’re sharper than my blade.” Beau parted his lips for her, and stood silent as she traced the shape of his
dents acérées
. The touch sent a new surge of lust through him, and when he groaned, she snatched her hand away. “It does not hurt me.” He brought her fingers back to his mouth. “It is a different kind of torment.”

She glanced down and up again. “It arouses you.”

“Not always. The taste of blood is a pleasure, as is feeding on it, but
you
arouse me.” He took her in his arms. “So, then. Have I convinced you at last?”

Slowly Alys nodded. “I don’t know what to say to you. You are a vampire. A real, living vampire.” She uttered a short laugh. “With food allergies.”

“We cannot eat food. Any food,” he admitted. “But, Alys, we are
vrykolakas
, not vampires. Sunlight does not turn us to ashes, nor must we sleep in coffins or fear the cross. Like the vampires of folklore we do not age, and we heal instantly from almost any wound, but we are not evil.”

She smiled. “You couldn’t be evil if you tried.”

“There is something more you should know about
me.” Beau had never told a living soul about his origins; he’d spent seven lifetimes pretending they didn’t exist. But no one had ever loved him before Alys, and she deserved nothing but the truth. “I was born in Jerusalem. The man who sired me came there on Crusade. I never knew him or his name, but I was told he was an Englishman.” He had to say this now, this thing that he had never spoken aloud. “He met my mother in a brothel. She was a harlot. A Saracen harlot.”

“We call them Muslims now.” Her smile faltered. “How did you get to England from Jerusalem?”

“My mother gave me to a Templar. I was only a boy; I didn’t understand that she was dying of consumption. He brought me to England and found a family to foster me.”

“He didn’t tell anyone about your mother,” Alys guessed. “And neither did you.”

“I didn’t speak enough English to say more than ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ By the time I did, they believed what the Templar had told them: that my mother was Italian.” He held up their hands, her flesh so pale against his. “That explained the color of my skin.” He kissed the back of her hand. “I have never told anyone of this…but you.”

“We all have secrets.” Her eyes shimmered with tears. “When my guardian sent me away to school, I realized I wasn’t like the other little girls. Their parents came to see them on weekends and holidays, but Robert never visited me. I was so lonely, but I was only seven years old. I didn’t understand how busy he was, or even where he was. One Christmas I ran away from school and took a train to Paris. I walked to the address on Robert’s checks from there, but it was a church, not a house or a business. The caretaker said he didn’t know my guardian. A man
drove past me while I was walking back to the station, and offered me a ride. It was raining, and I was wet and cold, so I got into his car. But he didn’t take me to the train. He drove off the road into the woods.”

Beau could imagine the rest. “You don’t have to tell me any more of it, love.”

“It’s not what you think.” She slipped away from him and sat down, staring at her clasped hands. “He told me what happens to little girls who run away—what he was going to do to me. I got out of the car and began walking toward the road. He came after me, but when he grabbed me, he tripped and fell down and he didn’t move again. A few hours later the police found me walking on the road toward the train station. They told me the man was dead.”

“What killed him?”

She met his gaze. “I did.”

Beau’s voice grew gentle. “Alys, you can’t blame yourself for the death of a man who surely would have killed you. You were a child. It was an accident.”

“When the man was saying all those terrible things, I heard another voice. It whispered to me inside my head, and told me to get out of the car.” Alys knew how crazy she sounded but pressed on, determined to tell him all of it. “It showed me the rock sticking up from the ground, and the old root stretched across the road. It told me that if I took three steps to the left when the man reached me, that he would catch his foot on the root and fall, and hit his head. I didn’t know it would kill him, but no one had bothered to explain death to me yet. I thought he was sleeping.”

He came to her, drawing her into his arms and kissing the top of her head. “Perhaps God was looking out for you that day.”

“God, if he even exists, doesn’t tell runaway seven-year-olds how to kill someone. I didn’t know whose voice was inside my head, but I’ve never forgotten it. And I never heard it again, until two weeks ago, in the bar at the Jade Palms.” She looked up at him. “It was your voice, Beaumaris. Twenty years ago, when I ran away from school and was picked up by that monster, you saved me. You were the one I heard in my head. You told me how to kill him.”

Beau scooped her up in his arms and carried her into the master bedroom, where he lowered her onto the bed and sat down beside her.

“I wish I had saved you.” Beau tucked a piece of her hair behind her ear. “I would have gladly put an end to that monster myself. But I cannot speak to the mind of a mortal; no Kyn has such a gift. Nor was I in France twenty years ago. I never knew you as a child. The voice you heard that day did not come from me. I wish I could explain what happened to you, and why you believed it was me, but I cannot.”

Alys put her hand on his. “He sounded exactly like you. Maybe I’ve convinced myself it was you because you’re so good at rescuing me.”

“I will never let anyone harm you again. Rest now.” He leaned over to kiss her.

Alys looped her arms around his neck, holding him close when he would have drawn back. “You’re not jumping out of here this time. I won’t let you.”

“You know what I am now, and what I can do to you.”
Beau pushed aside the robe and traced the marks he had left on her shoulder. “We do not kill mortals; we try to live in peace with you. But we need your blood to survive.”

She put her hand over his. “You wanted to feed on me last night. That’s why you left me down in the pit. So you wouldn’t.”

“I cannot bespell you. I would have hurt you.” Beau briefly explained how the Kyn used
l’attrait
to lure mortals as well as make feeding on them painless. “Some mortals can resist our influence for a time, but only a very few like you are completely immune to it.”

“I’m not that immune.” A sudden rush of self-consciousness made her cover her face with her hand. “I’m in love with you.”

Beau brought her hand away. “You do not know what you say, Alys. What I did tonight…You owe me nothing.”

“You saved my life tonight, and for that I am grateful.” She leaned closer. “But it’s not why I’m in love with you.”

“I am not a mortal,” he reminded her. “Even if I were, I am no one and nothing to be loved. I was born in a brothel to a whore. My very existence was so repulsive to my father that he never claimed me as his son. I have spent my life like a coward, hiding what I truly am from everyone.”

“You aren’t hiding it from me now.” She took a deep breath and linked her arms around his neck. “You trusted me with the truth. Can’t you trust in how I feel about you?”

Beau gave her a desperate look. “You told me that you don’t believe in love, Alys.”

“Five minutes ago I didn’t believe you were one of the dark kyn.” She pressed a shy kiss to the corner of his mouth. “I’m flexible. Would you like to find out how much?”

“If I stay,” he warned, “it will be much more than a little touching and a few scratches.”

“God, I hope so.” She reached for the belt of the robe to untie it, and found his hands had already done it for her.

Beau parted the robe’s edges by running one hand from her navel to the inner curves of her breasts, which he uncovered with two slow sweeps of his palms. “You should never hide these beauties.”

“I sunburn easily, and I’d get arrested for indecent exposure, and oh, my.” All the breath left her lungs as he lowered his head and brushed his mouth over her nipples. “What are you doing?”