One With the Night (28 page)

When they had worked for half an hour or so and the roofs were wet, Elyta clapped her hands. “Villagers, go home. Forget what you have seen.” Again, her voice reverberated.

And they left. One by one they turned and climbed back into the carts.

“Wait,” Elyta commanded. “You in the red and yellow kilt—you remain.”

A large man of middle age with a healthy beard stopped where he stood, his gaze fixed on Elyta. Jane recognized the keeper of the tiny tavern in the village.

“You stay.” Elyta turned to Flavio. “We will need sustenance after our ordeal tonight, and that one”—here she nodded to Kilkenny—“isn’t strong enough to supply us.”

Jane contracted inside. Elyta would have no compunction about draining Kilkenny unless she had other plans for him. She hated to think what that might mean. The tavernkeeper, entranced, walked slowly up to the diminutive beauty.

Jane wasn’t going to watch. She helped Kilkenny up, gently, so her strength wouldn’t leave more bruises than he was likely to have from his encounter with Allya. He was shivering, probably with shock as well as cold. “Come into the house,” she whispered. She pulled his arm around her shoulder and took his weight as they staggered down the hill.

CHAPTER
Seventeen

Jane and Kilkenny stumbled up the stairs. She lowered him onto the rumpled bed and swung his legs under the coverlet. Then she pulled off his shirt. Her spirit was numb. He made no demur at her stripping him. He seemed dazed. It was amazing that in his condition he’d been able to make it out of the house with the great claymore at all. She wrung out a towel and wiped away the smears of sticky blood on his chest that had soaked through the shirt.

Her brain felt dried out, like the inside of a walnut left too long on the tree. He should have stayed inside. Stupid man. Didn’t he know he was human now? He’d nearly been killed. And there had been too much death tonight. She contracted inside.
Papa
 …

She wouldn’t think about that. She didn’t have any sobs left inside her, and she couldn’t think about her father without sobbing. So she’d just put it off for a while.

Kilkenny dragged himself into almost certain death just to help me.

The thought appeared inside her mind as though it was inserted by someone else. Why had he done that? His dark lashes lifted and his gray-green eyes looked into hers, examining her, even as she searched them in return. There was pain in his expression.

Downstairs, she heard a clatter. Kilkenny might not hear it at all.

“Elyta, you’ve drained him!” Flavio’s voice rose in accusation.

“What does it matter?” Elyta, very angry.

“You tried.” Flavio reasoned with her. “But now it is time to return to Mirso.”

“I won’t go back without the cure, Flavio,” Elyta almost snarled.

“There
is
no cure. Not now.”

Silence. Jane began to think again.
Would
Elyta and Flavio just … leave?

“Is that true?” This from Elyta, slowly, thoughtfully. Footsteps hurried up the stairs.

“Elyta…” Heavier footsteps thundered up after them.

The bedroom door banged open. Elyta stood there, a disheveled vision of lavender, now liberally splashed with blood. “You worked with your father,” she accused.

Jane rose slowly. “I don’t have the formula, if that’s what you mean.”

“Don’t you?” Elyta’s eyes narrowed.

“Believe me,” Jane snapped. “If I had it, I’d be making up a batch right now.”

“You might want to keep it yourself. What could you not ask in ransom for the formula?”

“Ye want it for yer personal power, dinnae ye?” Kilkenny had pushed himself up on one elbow. The bedclothes covered him to the waist, but the muscle of his abdomen and chest were revealed, the swell of shoulder and bicep, the soft nipples.

Elyta noticed, too. She smiled. Jane hated that smile. The eyes Elyta turned back on Jane were hard as well as avaricious. “Having the formula will guarantee me a seat on the council.”

“I don’t care about your vampire politics,” Jane said. “The formula should be used to save those who were made vampire from a fate forced upon them.”

Elyta snorted and started to reply, then stopped herself. “So re-create it.”

“What?”

“Re-create your father’s work. I’ll take the formula back to Mirso so we control access to it for born vampires, and you can use it to save the ones who are made.”

“But I don’t know the formula…”

“You gathered his ingredients, didn’t you?” Elyta’s deep brown eyes were pools of covetous desire. Even without compulsion, Jane felt the push of her ambition.

Jane nodded slowly. “Yes … but…” She glanced to Kilkenny. He would be able to describe the taste, the texture, even the exact symptoms of the decoction he drank. She turned back to Elyta, her eyes flickering over the vampire woman’s face.

“You don’t remember what you gathered?” Flavio asked doubtfully.

Jane shook her head impatiently. “I have it all in my notebook.”

“So there is no problem…” Elyta shrugged, but her eyes still burned with intensity.

“But I don’t know which ones he was actually using in the end. I’d need someone on whom to test the trials…”

“Clara.” There was not a moment’s hesitation in Elyta’s answer.

“She doesn’t want to be human, does she?”

“And who else is there?” Elyta asked impatiently. “If we are to find a cure, there must be sacrifice. Kilkenny knew that.”

“But it was my choice,” came the gruff rumble from the bed behind her.

“Clara will volunteer, and if that isn’t enough, there’s always Flavio,” Elyta said coolly. She put her hands on her hips. “You will try.” It wasn’t a question.

Jane glanced again to Kilkenny. His brows were drawn together in suspicion. But what did it matter? Jane wanted her humanity back. And what she did would serve others like her who wanted their humanity back, too. If it came down to it, she could test the formula on herself.

She nodded to Elyta.

“Excellent,” the woman said briskly. “What will you need? Beakers and such? Flavio can take the carriage to Inverness and bring back whatever you want.”

“Give me a list,” Flavio said tightly. “I can return by tomorrow night.”

“I might not be able to do this…” Jane felt the enormity of her commitment.

“Oh, I’m certain you will,” Elyta cooed. “And you’d better do it quickly. I want to be gone by the time it occurs to Khalenberg that you may be able to re-create the cure.”

*   *   *

Flavio and Jane were planning to use the kitchen as a laboratory as they went downstairs. Their voices disappeared. Damn his human hearing! He raised his eyes to Elyta. She was looking at him like he was the first course in a banquet for the starving.

“She thinks ye’ll let made vampires live once they’re human.” Elyta was using Jane.

Elyta chuckled. “You know better. Once they know our ways they are a danger to us.”

“That means she’s a danger ta ye, too.” His stomach twisted.

She nodded. “Yes.” Her eyes were flat brown. Elyta would kill Jane the moment she ceased to be necessary. Anger rose up inside him. But anger would do him no good.

He pushed it down. “Sa what will it take for ye ta let her go once she finds th’ cure and takes it?” Did he have anything he could trade for her safety?

“Nothing you can give me,” she confirmed. “I’ll take whatever I want from you.”

His mouth went dry. He did have something to barter. He knew her. He had been trained by her acolyte. A plan circled inside his brain. He licked his lips. Could he do this? But Jane needed protection from Elyta. And Elyta would exact a price from someone. Only he had the coin in which it could be paid. He knew how to do this, to his shame. He knew too that he might find out things about himself he’d tried for two years to deny. But what difference to anyone if the price exacted was the sacrifice of his soul? He wouldn’t need to take his own life when it was over. Elyta would take care of that. His breath came shallowly. At least it was something he could
do
for Jane. He plunged ahead before he could change his mind.

“How about my submission?”

“You will submit in any case.” Elyta shrugged.

“Willingly. Anything ye want. Far more satisfying than compulsion.”

She lifted her brows. He’d caught her attention at least. The small smile curled only the corner of her mouth even as her eyes narrowed. “You love her, don’t you?”

A weight sat on his shoulders. He shook his head. “It is no’ for th’ likes of me ta love a woman like her. She just deserves ta live. What happens ta me does no’ matter.”

“How delightful,” Elyta purred. “An altruistic devil. You are a contradiction in terms—a puzzle, in fact. And how I like to unravel the knot of a mystery! Sometimes the only way to get the solution is to cut the knot, though. Would you like to be cut?”

He looked up at her. “If that’s what ye want. Do we ha’ an agreement?”

Elyta’s smile was slow. She cocked her head. “We do. For her life only, not yours.”

“I expected nothin’ else. When do we start?”

Her smile widened. “Soon. First I must see that Clara has buried that man. You’d better get some rest. Your life is likely to be quite demanding in the very near future. I’ll have Clara make up a restorative to strengthen you.” At the door, she looked back. “Do I need to shackle you? If you try to escape, Jane will suffer.”

“Ye dinnae need ta shackle me.” His voice was steady as he said it.

She began to pull the door shut after her, a self-satisfied smile on her face, but she stopped. “One more thing. You don’t tell her of our agreement. No matter what.”

He took a breath. So if Jane found out what he was doing she’d think the worst of him. That wasn’t new. And there was a horrible possibility that she would be right. “No’ a word.”

*   *   *

Flavio left with the carriage for Inverness. A leaden core weighed Jane down. Still, there was one task she had to face. Her father wanted burying. She headed up the hill. The creamery, a shell of blackened stone, still smoldered. Ash spiraled up on the draft where once live cinders had buzzed like fire ants. Inside the empty window frames, haloed with tongues of soot, coals glowed and tiny flames licked at the charcoal of the huge beams. Their crazy angles were like sticks from a game of spillikins abandoned by a thoughtless child. The air was acrid with smoke.

There were no dead bodies on the path. Where was her father? Trails of blood on the grass showed where they had been dragged up the hill. She followed the tracks up to the back of the creamery. Clara had her skirts tied up around her waist and was patting a mound of dirt with the back of her spade. There were four other fresh mounds. Her father’s body lay in the wet grass. He looked asleep. Of all of them, he wasn’t bloodied.

Clara straightened. “Go down to the house, Miss Blundell,” she ordered quietly. “I’ll soon be done here.”

Jane stretched her hand out for the spade. “I want to do this.”

“A fine lady like you shouldn’t—”

“I
want
to do this.” Jane’s voice shook. She couldn’t say more.

Clara nodded. She handed Jane the spade. “Do you want help?”

Clara’s image rippled with the tears rising to Jane’s eyes. She shook her head.

Clara nodded once. She was about to push past Jane when she stopped. “You’ll want a marker, just until you can have a stone carved. Will a cross do?”

Jane nodded. Tears coursed down her cheeks.

Clara nodded in return and started down the hill.

Jane stabbed the spade into the earth and kicked it home with her sturdy half-boots. The wet earth was like butter to one of her strength. The smell of dirt and decayed vegetation and the fecund potential of growing things joined the smell of smoke and death. Ashes to ashes. Her life was full of ashes. She could taste them in her mouth. She threw the spadeful of dirt over her shoulder and stabbed the earth again. Why did he have to die? It wasn’t fair! Just because he wanted to help her? Just because he was a brilliant man who
could
help her and others like her? Did nature abhor a man who stood above the rest? Well, then, damn nature all to hell. And if God was the progenitor of nature, then he might damn himself, as well!

She took her anger out on the soft, wet earth. The sides of the hole rose around her. The soil grew denser, but she didn’t care. On one thrust of the spade the handle snapped off at the base. Shrieking, she thrust it into the floor of the grave as if to wound it. The Scots heavens opened and a leaden rain began to fall. She grasped the handle and let it hold her up until she couldn’t stand at all and slid to her knees in the muddy hole. Heaving sobs, she dug at the mud with her hands, using them like claws to rip her father’s grave into the earth. Droplets plinged against the water in the hole in a fierce chorus. No sobs of hers could compete with such an outpouring. She leaned against the muddy side of the grave as they washed her face.

Her sobs subsided with her fury. The rain was a flapping curtain of tears.

Oh, God, forgive me.

For long minutes she just knelt there in the rain, her body heavy. But she couldn’t just kneel here in an empty grave. It must be filled. She climbed out, her muddy dress clinging to her. She stood over her father’s body. There would be no community of mourners, no sacred ritual, no coffin of carved oak to send him heavenward, no shroud, however little protection that would have afforded. He would go directly into the ground, to meld his flesh with the wet and rotting vegetation and the mud. Dust to dust, only wetter. He would become the peat that in centuries hence would feed the fire in the kitchen grate of a people who had long forgotten Muir Farm.

She picked him up, her arms under his shoulders and knees. How light he was for one of her strength. His head lolled against her shoulder. He seemed shrunken, as though the earth already had the part of him that pumped him up with life, and all that was left was this wasted husk. She splashed into the grave with him and laid him carefully down, arranged his limbs in a parody of dignity. The rain made rivulets down his cheeks, like tears. Her own tears were gone. She climbed out of the grave again, slipping, getting to her feet. Like a dream she took the metal spade in both hands and scraped mud back into the hole. The sound of the first splat into the grave was like a blow.