One With the Shadows (24 page)

So, her mother had abandoned her. She had been a disappointment, whether because she was a girl child, or she had demonstrated her instability at an early age, it was impossible to tell. She wanted to be a man. And she hated everyone for the fact that she hated herself. She didn’t know what femininity was, or how to be comfortable with it.

“They won’t like you controlling a human government,” he observed.

She grinned. “The stones will take care of anyone they send after me.”

She really was insane if she thought Rubius and the other vampire Elders would tolerate her rebellion.

“Don’t look at me like that!” she shouted.

Definitely insane. And he lay weak and bleeding in shackles at her mercy. He gathered enough courage to ignore those facts. “Being head of a government is so public. There are other ways to influence.”

“Like your mother?” she scoffed. “I want people to know who pulls the strings.”

He changed tactics. “Are you sure the path to power is not more attractive to you than actually getting it? Wielding power is rather dreary work.”

“
You
are advising me to be satisfied with what I am?”

“I’m telling you you’ll never be satisfied with what you are.”

“You arrogant bastard.” She reached for the tongs. “You think you’re better than I am?”

The stone sizzled into the wound still open on his hip. He bit his lip and twisted away, trying not to cry out, but she held it there until he couldn’t suppress the scream. When she finally took it away, he collapsed.

How long can she keep me here? How long can I take this?

Elyta stood. Her figure swam before his eyes. “I’ll teach you some respect before I go. Or maybe I’ll take you with me. You’re no threat, now.” She turned on her heel and let herself out through the door to the chapel. The bolt clunked into place on the outside. They’d put in a bolt and lock, just as they’d put these shackles in the chapel’s walls.

Time passed. He might have lost consciousness.

The sun rose over the mountain that loomed behind the villa in the east. Gian blinked. He still knew where the sun was. That might be the only thing left of being vampire. That and the need for blood. His Companion was screaming inside his veins for it, longing for the strength it would give to speed his recovery. But there was no blood.

Sweat had dried on his body. His erection had subsided. He buried his face in the crook of his arm. The shackles held his wrists just above his head. So this was what rape felt like. This was why women feared men. Maybe they hated them, somewhere deep down inside. He hated Elyta. But he had to admit he understood her too. She
was
brilliant. She was beautiful. She was passionate and intuitive and alive. And no one valued her. Her mother had abandoned her. And that had festered in her until the canker had swallowed her heart.

He didn’t have the strength to hate right now. Soon the room would be bathed in light. Painful. But in the afternoon, the sun would shine through the aureole window above the door. Elyta had chosen well the location of his chains. Would the healing stop altogether if enough of his power was siphoned away? Maybe the stones would kill his Companion. Death was better than her keeping him for recreational rape and torture. Once he thought eternity had grown boring. Now he longed for ennui, and failing that, death.

Perhaps his mother was dead even now. He didn’t want to think about that, or the way she would have ended.

And Kate. He didn’t want to think about the fact that she had betrayed him to this fate. He took a labored breath. She had many things in common with Elyta. Both had been abandoned, never valued. Kate had been even more a victim than Elyta. He understood being a victim as he had never understood that before. That was why Kate built up the carapace of cynicism. So she couldn’t be hurt. Maybe their experiences had had a similar effect on the two women. They’d been twisted like the little trees the Japanese made to grow in dishes.

He just had realized what they were too late. And his mistakes had put the emerald in Elyta’s hands. She had two stones now. He wouldn’t say she couldn’t rule France. Paris was in for a shock. And Europe for that matter. And his mistake had cost him his pride and his life. Let it end soon.

*   *   *

Kate opened the door to her room above the tavern on the piazza of the tiny village of Ravello. The sun was rising. She had sent Luigi out to gather intelligence last night while she tried vainly to sleep as she waited for the right time. As if she could sleep knowing what might be happening to Gian even now at the Villa Rufolo. That was his home according to his mother. The image from her vision of Elyta torturing him floated before her eyes, waking or dozing. But she had to wait until daylight. She wanted the vampires asleep and Gian alone. She was no match for Elyta and her crew. The problem was Gian. How would he escape in the sun?

She carefully folded a blanket from the narrow bed in her room and tucked it under her arm. She could only hope that wrapping him up would let him make it to the shelter of the carriage where Luigi could take them away. The room lightened. She tiptoed down the stairs and out into the stable yard behind the little hotel. Luigi was waiting with the carriage.

“Well? Are they there?” she whispered.

He nodded. “Four visitors. They arrived four days ago.”

Four days. She wouldn’t think about that.

“No one has seen the servants lately. Provisions are being delivered and left in the kitchens. They say the owner hasn’t been about for years.”

But he was there all right. She swallowed. “This is dangerous, Luigi. These people will kill you and the groom if they find you. So you mustn’t take any chances.”

He nodded, nervous but determined. He, like everyone else, was devoted to Gian.

“Wait at the gates to the villa. They open off the west end of the piazza. Be ready to leave at a gallop. If I’m not back in an hour, I’m … I’m not coming. In that case, get yourself and the boy out of danger. Return to Firenze and give the contessa the news.”

“And what would I tell her, Signorina Sheridan?”

“Tell her I’m dead, and that when she is better, she must track down Elyta Zaroff in case her son is still alive.” If she never recovered, at least she could send her vampire friends.

He reached out and touched her shoulder. “Don’t go, signorina.” His brow was puckered with worry. “There is nothing a girl like you can do to help him. He is strong and wily. He has been in scrapes before and come out whole.”

“Not like this one.” She took a breath and mustered a smile. “Don’t worry. I’m wily myself. Now promise me you’ll leave in one hour.”

“Oh, I promise, signorina. I am wiser than you are.”

She gave a nervous laugh. “I should hope so.” She took off her veil. She’d need all her vision. Then she hurried across the empty piazza in the graying light to the gates of the Villa Rufolo. She removed a pin from her hair and turned to lean on the gates, trying to look as though she was waiting for someone. Her heart was thudding in her chest. She felt for the tumblers in the huge old padlock. They were almost too heavy for her hairpin. They slipped.

Focus, you bloody little fool,
she thought, and closed her eyes.

The next hour was the most important of her life. She could hardly believe she was going to try to best four vampires and steal Gian out from under their noses.

The tumblers clicked into place.

She pulled open the lock. It might be ancient, but it was kept well oiled like the gates themselves when she pushed them apart to slip inside. She shut them behind her, left the hasp through the handles to keep the gates shut, and picked up the blanket she’d brought. The wide graveled carriageway was overhung with trees and lined with ferns and flowers. Kate kept to the shadows along the edge as she stuck her precious hairpin back into her knot of hair. The house loomed behind plane trees, pines, and cypresses in the early light. It was wide, with a tile roof and thick, whitewashed walls. The architecture went from very old on the left, perhaps twelfth century, to more modern on the right. On what looked to be the first story of the more modern part, the lights still shone in several rooms, revealing they had been decorated in the Baroque style. That part was perhaps sixteenth century. A silhouette crossed the room and then another. Men. Or more accurately, vampires. They had not retired yet. She waited behind the bole of a large tree. The day grew brighter as the minutes jerked slowly by. She stole glances up at the rooms until finally she saw only a single silhouette closing up the shutters. Better.

She darted across the open drive for an archway over a walkway. Off to her left squatted a square stone tower. The bottom was covered in vines. A heavy door stood half open. A tower might seem like the ideal place to hold a captive, but peering round it she saw no aureole window. Her vision said that Gian would be held in a room with an aureole window.

She headed around the end of the twelfth-century part of the house. Stone walls had pointed arches on the windows that pierced them. She came to a door under a portico. This had probably been the main entrance at one time. She stopped and sniffed the air. No cinnamon here. She stepped off the walk into the flower beds. She had worn soft slippers, the better to be stealthy. The last thing she wanted was gravel crunching under her weight. Now she was round to the back. Through the huge trees she could see a long terraced garden with columns and pergolas, and beyond that the sea. Waves crashed against cliffs somewhere below. The whole place was scented with flowers, and under that, the fecund brine of the Mediterranean. The line of the house stretched away. She craned her neck to see through the foliage.

There! An aureole window.

She hurried ahead. A narrow wooden door under the window, all iron straps, had a heavy padlock very like the one at the gate. She dropped the blanket, took her trusty hairpin and bent over it, listening to the mechanism. This lock was not as well cared for as the one at the front gate though. The tumblers were stiff as well as heavy.

Strange that she didn’t smell cinnamon. She couldn’t feel Gian’s electric hum of energy either. It didn’t matter. This was her best chance. One tumbler. Bloody hell. The second one was bending her pin. She held it with one hand and pulled out a second pin. A loop of hair escaped with it. Inserting the second hairpin, she worked with both hands now.

She wanted to scream in frustration. An agonizing moment—lifting with one pin, catching with the other … The tumblers slipped. She let out a breath and jerked on the lock. It opened with a clunk. She threw the bolt with another clunk and pushed on the door. It creaked. Did everything have to make a racket? She opened it only wide enough to slip through. The place was cast in shadow. Only a dim glow of the dawn from the round window and the door ajar broke the darkness. But she could hear breath rasping in and out of lungs.

“Gian?” she whispered.

“Kate!” The baritone was his, but its usual air of command and arrogance was gone. Now she could make out his form in the shadows. He was chained to the wall, naked.

God in heaven, it was her vision.

“Is there a light?” She set down the blanket again and looked around.

“Why are you here?” His voice was hard, but without its usual force.

“To get help you escape, of course.” Why else would she have come three hundred miles, and risked being caught by Elyta?

“Had second thoughts about betraying me?”

Oh. That was what made his voice hard. Well. She’d made the decision, and now she had to face the consequences. “No second thoughts. The way I saw it, your mother was going to die immediately if she didn’t tell Elyta where you were, whereas your death was not yet a certainty. Telling Elyta about you to save your mother seemed the lesser of two evils.”

“She’s alive?” He still had control of his voice, but she could hear the hope there.

“When I left her. But weak.”

“Thank God,” he breathed.

“Now, stop jumping to conclusions for a minute.” She peered around. “Is there a light?”

“A candelabrum to … to your right on the bench … in the arch.”

She had never heard his voice tremble. Feeling her way along the wall, she came to the arch, bent to the bench. Candelabrum. Striker? Yes. She flipped it twice and the flint caught. She lit the candles and turned.

She almost gasped. Even in the flickering light, Gian looked horrible. In the vision he hadn’t had all those burned places on his body. Those must be where Elyta had set the stones against him. Or the cuts, half-healed, the jagged tears. Why hadn’t he healed?

“Oh, Gian.” She hurried over and knelt beside him, touching his belly, his chest lightly, not knowing how to help him. His cinnamon scent was very faint, just sensed beneath the blood and the sweat. There was no feeling of electric energy about him at all. He shoved himself up with effort. He had a three-day growth of beard and there were dark circles under his eyes. She must get him out of here immediately.

“Luigi has the carriage at the gates. Will you burn if I cover you in this blanket?” She fished in her hair for the hairpin yet again and pulled the heavy shackles toward her. His wrists were chafed bloody.

“I might burn, I don’t know, but it will heal.”

She glanced up at him. “That doesn’t seem to be going so well right now.”

“Get out, Kate. This is too dangerous.”

“They’ve retired for the day. Be quiet.” She twisted her hairpin in the lock. These were quite simple locks because they were so old. Not a great deal of demand for iron shackles these days. It clicked open and she grabbed the other one.

Electric energy. Cinnamon. Kate turned.

A vampire pushed in through the open door, wearing a hooded cloak. “What do you think you’re doing?” he growled. “Elyta!” This was shouted. He shut the thick wooden door with a bang and stood in front of it.

Kate leaped up. She gave him a shove. He stumbled back. Kate lunged for the door.

Vibrating energy washed over the room. By the time she turned, the other vampires had already materialized into the shadowed corner of the chapel. Elyta was dressed in a wrapper of purple so dark it was almost black. Her hair was down about her shoulders, as though she had been interrupted at undressing.