Secret History of Elizabeth Tudor, Vampire Slayer (29 page)

I run, heedless of dignity, with no thought but survival. My skirts catch around my legs. I grab them in both hands and leap, hurling myself into the maze of columns that hold up the tiers of seats around the pit.

“There is nowhere to hide, bright Queen!” Blanche calls out. “I see in darkness as well as you, even better. I hear your every movement. I smell the scent of you. Come out and die swiftly. Otherwise, I promise, you will curse your last moments on this earth.”

I am cursing already, regretting my arrogance and stupidity. How did I imagine that the sole survivor of a line that dared to topple a king would give up what she believes to be her rightful place simply because Mordred bid her do so? And, moreover, that she would cede it to me, heiress to the throne from which her family’s ruin was decreed?

She will kill me to gain the place at Mordred’s side that will come to her when I am dead but also for the vengeance so long awaited.

But not if I can kill her first. Please, God, let me truly be as treacherous and scheming as she claims I am.

“Wait,” I call out. “There is no need for this. I have no quarrel with you. Mordred is my enemy.”

“And you imagine that I am not?” Again, she laughs.

With my back pressed against a pillar, I dare a swift look into the pit. Blanche has settled on the ground again. Her wound still glitters, but she seems unaffected by it. Her arms flung wide, she paces like a beautiful, agitated beast anxious to be done with its confinement.

“Come out, come out, bright Queen!”

“Why should we two be foes? Mordred contrived at my mother’s death and he conspires to take my throne. I sought your power so that I could kill him, but now I see that was a mistake. Far better that we should be allies. Tell me, what is it that you wish?”

Silence for a moment, broken by the murmur of the wind, before she says, “To rule in my own realm, Queen regnant of all vampires.”

Poor Mordred, so convinced of Blanche’s devotion! Yet she seems more than able to embrace existence without him. Indeed, he stands between her and the power she seeks.

“What of vengeance for your family?”

Again she hesitates, but at length I hear, “You did not kill them.”

“I sit in the place of those who did.”

“True … do you think that I should kill you for that?”

I manage a faint laugh. “I would prefer that you not, but consider that if I die, there will be chaos in this land. Out of it, the remnants of the same lineage that destroyed yours will have a chance to rise again and take the throne once more. Is that what you want?”

The wind is growing stronger, whistling down the river from the direction of the distant sea. I would draw my cloak more closely but that I must keep my arms unencumbered.

“You know that it is not.”

“Then let us make common cause. With Mordred dead at last, we will both achieve our ends.”

I dare to peer once more around the column. Blanche appears to be considering what I have said. I could try to strike her now but the distance between us is great enough that I could miss, and for certain there will no other opportunity.

“Let me come out,” I call, “that we may discuss this face-to-face.”

She tosses her head, the dark mane of her hair fluttering out around her. I marvel that she does not feel the cold, but in truth my own sense of it is fading. The power is rising in me, eclipsing all else.

“As you will,” she says.

I step out slowly from behind the pillar, knowing even as I do so that I may be taking my last steps in this life. If Blanche only means to lure me out …

“Come closer,” she says. “You fuss so about the faceless thralls, I would see you clearly.”

Crossing the sandy floor, I affect such confidence as I can muster while seeking to divert her. “You will admit that they are passing strange.”

“I suppose, although it’s been longer than I can remember since I thought of them at all. Still, you could say that they are Mordred’s little joke.”

Despite the circumstances, my curiosity stirs. “How so?”

“They are his former foes, men and women who have dared to go against him. He has taken that essence of humanity you make so much of from them and left them able to do naught but his bidding.”

A shiver runs down my neck as I consider what such a living death must mean. Does sufficient spark of consciousness still exist for any of the thralls to know what is happening to them?
I almost hope that it does not for surely the knowledge of their torment would be torment in itself.

“Why doesn’t he simply kill them?”

“Because death would be a release. This way their punishment goes on and on.”

“And you call that a joke?”

“It is for him, for he certainly enjoys it.” Something in my expression must alert Blanche to my disgust for she adds, “Did you think him too refined for such cruelty?”

“I hadn’t really thought of it at all.” This much is true. I have considered, and been tempted by, what Mordred could provide to me—eternal youth and beauty, safety of a sort for my realm, and so on. I have given scant attention to his essential nature, yet I am not surprised.

“In my experience,” I say, “power does not bring out the best in people. To the contrary, it tends to be corrupting.”

I will be the exception to that, of course. Alert as I am to the sins committed by my father and my sister, Mary—both of whom only just refrained from adding my own death to their litany of offenses—I will never allow such cruelty to take root within my soul.

Bless God, let that be so.

“How perceptive of you.” Blanche beckons me nearer. “So we are to be friends, you and I? You to rule over England while I rule over the vampires? Is that what you propose?”

“It is, but none of that can come to pass while Mordred lives.”

“How then do you suggest that we destroy him? I can tell you that your power is not sufficient to the task. Go against him as you are now and you will find yourself in the ranks of the thralls.”

The very thought fills me with cringing horror. It is all I
can do to refrain from crying out against so loathsome a fate.

“Your power added to mine and mine to yours will surely accomplish what we both desire,” I say as I come closer still.

“Indeed it will,” Blanche says, “but for that, one of us has to die.” She raises her arm.

“Wait! We can attack him together.”

She hesitates, but I sense that she is only playing with me. Mordred’s cruelty has its equal in her. “We could,” she says, “if I were willing to trust you, but I learned long ago that trust is for fools.”

I do not need to hear more nor am I likely to, for just then she releases a dark, suffocating blow. Rather than attempt to flee again, I leap forward and dive toward the floor of the pit. She is just sufficiently surprised for me to have a chance at the desperate plan I have conceived.

Rolling over and over across the sand, I unleash a spear of light that misses her entirely and strikes instead a tier of seats rising over the pit. They collapse with a shriek of rending wood into a cloud of dust. Blanche’s face contorts, her beauty replaced by stark hatred as she prepares to deliver another blow.

Scrambling to my knees, skittering backward like a crab, I strike at her again. This time, against all odds, my aim proves true. Blanche cries out and lurches back, but not before releasing another blow at me.

I throw myself desperately to the left, rolling again, and do not get to my feet until I am once more within the shelter of the columns, where I leap upright and run, darting in between them. She howls with rage and comes after me.

As she steps across the sand, I raise my arm and, calling upon all my strength, take aim at her again. Once more, I
miss her. Snarling, she continues forward. So dark and thick a cloud of life-draining energy as I have not seen before hurtles across the sand. It passes by so close as to threaten to suck me in. I cling with all my strength to the column, knowing that the contest between us is almost done. I have little left.

Indeed, I can muster only one more blow and I have scant hope of that succeeding. Blanche has withstood everything I could throw at her, and now she comes at me remorselessly. I take a final breath, gather myself, and—

She slips. Her feet roll on the pearls scattered across the floor of the pit when I struck her first. Her balance lost, she flails.

In that moment, I gather myself and whisper the only prayer I can think of.

“Morgaine, help me.”

Does the priestess hear? I have no idea, but I do know that in the instant when Blanche struggles to right herself, everything I am, all the power I possess, combines within me into one fierce, final blow that holds nothing back and leaves nothing in reserve.

I live or die on this, my final chance.

The spear of light strikes her midchest. For a moment, she teeters, forward and backward, staring down at herself in dumb amazement. With aching slowness, the glittering wound expands, spreading in all directions until she is engulfed in its pulsating glow.

The other vampires I slew died quickly, but not so Blanche. She fights against the light, twisting this way and that, her face contorted in rage and agony.

“Damn you!” she cries, even as the thin web of cracks begins to swallow her. Her form disappears, only her face remains to the very end, her eyes filled with consuming hatred.

“Damn you and all your kind!”

Then she is gone, only the light remaining to fall like frozen stars onto the sandy ground, where, long after it has flickered out, the pearls continue to shine.

I double over, struck down by mingled relief and weakness greater than any I have ever known. My knees strike the sand as I hover on the edge of unconsciousness. Darkness threatens to engulf me until, first as a faint glimmer but growing rapidly into an incandescent core, I feel the new power within me. Blanche’s power, all the strength and will of a three-hundred-year-old vampire, second only to Mordred himself in supremacy.

My power now, added to that which I already possessed, and gained without the terrible price I paid before. As I get to my feet, all weakness falls away. Every part of my body feels reborn and remade. I hold out my hand, staring with wonder at the glow of strength that emanates from it. As it does from all of me, I am certain.

Abruptly, I throw back my head and laugh. I have won! Or very nearly so, for what chance has Mordred to stand against me now? I am stronger than any Slayer has ever been, certainly stronger than Morgaine, weakened as she was by love. No one is my equal for power! I will defeat all my enemies and rule forever, eternally beautiful, everlastingly—

A gasp of horror catches in my throat. What am I becoming? I sought Blanche’s power to preserve my humanity, not to sacrifice it. Morgaine never warned that this might happen. Is it possible that she did not know?

Too late, I realize that my experience has gone beyond where she can guide me. I am in a realm entirely separate and apart. I am alone.

Or I am not. For even as the crushing sense of inhuman solitude threatens to descend upon me, a familiar voice calls my name.

“Elizabeth!”

He is there, stepping out of the shadows around the pillars, striding toward me. Impetuous in his desires, vainglorious in his aspirations, sometimes infuriating and frustrating. But always and unceasingly my love.

“Robin!”

He throws his arms around me, fierce in his embrace. I am lifted free of the pearl-strewn ground, hugged so that my ribs threaten to crack and all the breath is expelled from me.

And I glory in it. I love and am loved. I am human.

“I feared the worst when you did not return.” He sets me back on my feet but keeps me close, cupping my face in his hands. “What happened?”

Never will I tell him the truth of what I so nearly felt myself become. Instead, I say only, “Blanche is gone. Her power is mine.”

“Praise be to God!”

Indeed, but I will withhold my thanks until the greater battle is done.

“Come.” Taking him by the hand, I lead him away. In the morning, the court will see the collapsed tier of seats and wonder at what brought them down. I will have it put about that they were shoddily constructed and must be dismantled entirely before any come to harm. The pit, the sand, the whole of it, will be erased. I want no reminder of the place where I did battle with Blanche only to discover that the greater threat remains within myself.

But for now there is the sweet seclusion of Robin’s bed, his
body strong and eager against mine, and the reminder of all that makes human life so precious.

I sleep at last, wrapped in his arms, and dream of pearls falling one by one through the narrow neck of an hourglass, winding around its bottom like an opalescent ribbon that will shortly reach its end.