The Burning (38 page)

But Ann had no doubt who he was. Neither did Stephan. His hands tightened their grip on her upper arms and he thrust her behind him. “Kilkenny,” he said bleakly.

Ann peered out around Stephan. Kilkenny stopped. The
others behind him spread out in a line. They were an odd mélange of young and old, workaday and elegant, plain and well made. All stared with dreadful purpose at Stephan as the red glow left their eyes. “And you must be the Harrier,” Kilkenny said. His voice was shocking. It was not the Irish lilt they expected but a Scottish burr that echoed in the dusk. The man may have come from Irish stock, but he had been raised in the Scots Lowlands. “We’ve a score to settle, I believe.”

“Yes.”

Six! There were too many of them. That made the one word from Stephan so unbearable. If only he would take her advice! It was a horrible time for the test of an unproven theory. But he couldn’t win out against six in any other way, could he?

“Let the girl, go, Kilkenny. She has nothing to do with this.”

Kilkenny glanced to her. She could see his eyes were light, not quite blue, not quite green or even gray in the half-light. He nodded. “A human has no business here tonight.”

She glanced along the line of vampires. Then her eyes returned to the one standing just behind Kilkenny. It was the creature who had killed Molly by draining her blood. A shiver went down her spine. Stephan thrust her toward the dogcart.

“Go,” he hissed. “Go now.”

She stumbled toward the cart. She didn’t want to see what would happen here. What could she do against six vampires? She was five feet and not quite seven stone of human female. There was nothing she could do here except distract Stephan with fear for her welfare.

Ann scrambled into the cart and took up the pony’s reins. No one else moved. Their gazes were locked together in a terrible tableau. She shook the reins over the pony’s back. The beast darted down the track as though the devil was at his tail. It might be true. The cart jolted over the uneven
track. The palpable menace in the air receded. That was Kilkenny’s evil.

He hadn’t looked evil, though. World-weary, tired but determined. Reluctant, even. That was how he had looked. The pony slowed of his own accord as they left Bucklands behind. Ann’s heart did not. It pounded unevenly in her breast. What was she thinking?

She hauled on the pony’s reins. He almost sat back on his haunches, he stopped so fast. She turned the cart around. She couldn’t leave Stephan to face six vampires alone. She could not imagine waiting at home in her nursery for news of the fresh murders at Bucklands Lodge and wondering whether the bodies they found would include Stephan’s. She had to be here tonight, whether she wanted to see the horror or not. She clucked to the pony. He took a few unwilling steps, then reared in the traces, snorting. “Whoa,” she said softly. “Whoa, boy.” He shook his head and snorted again. He made it clear he was not going back to that smell of cinnamon and the red glowing eyes in the darkness.

Ann leapt down from the cart and started back down the track at a run, holding her skirts up. God help that she was not too late.

Too late for what? The breath pounded in and out of her lungs in a rhythm with the thud of her feet on the soft earth and the pumping of her heart. She didn’t know. She only knew she had to be there. The track curved in the darkness. She had no time for curves. She veered from the road and stumbled into the forest itself. Branches tore at her. The rising moon peeked through the trees. She pushed through the verdant brush hoping she would not trip over some half-buried log. The smell of rot and green life, damp stones and wet wood, enveloped her.

Growls and shrieks of pain tore through the night. She was too late! She pushed through a last dark wall of brush and burst into the clearing in front of the lodge. The open
space was filled with wild thrashing. By the light of the moon, she saw Stephan at the center of a whirl of bodies, moving almost too fast for her to comprehend. She could comprehend the smell of blood, though. Stephan was in his shirtsleeves, and she could see the stains of blood splashed dark across the white canvas of his shirt.

Her heart leapt into her throat. “Stephan,” she whispered, and then realized she had shouted it. One man stood off to the side, watching the melee. It was Kilkenny. She could feel the hum of power in the air. Red eyes glowed, including Stephan’s.

A body toppled out of the gyrating mass slowly, in counterpoint to the frantic activity. Its head rolled toward her, eyes still blinking, mouth gaping. Ann shrieked and backed away, blinking. But she could not tear her gaze away from the horror of the head until she heard a grunt of pain she recognized as Stephan’s. She searched for him in the melee. Another assailant fell, headless. Now there were three and Stephan. His shirt had been torn from his body. She could clearly see the dreadful wounds there. His belly was slashed. A dozen holes seeped blood. Her brain knew that he could heal such wounds, but her heart simply clenched in terror that Stephan could be so hurt. One attacker lunged out. Something glinted in the moonlight. A knife! It found Stephan’s throat. Blood spurted. No one could survive that blow! He staggered back, up the shallow stairs to the portico.

She darted forward against her will. Stephan! He glanced toward her. Just that tiny lapse of attention, and one of his attackers lunged after him and got Stephan’s head in his hands. The brute began to twist. Another closed in with a second long blade. It flashed again and again in the silver light. Ann kept on running. No time for guilt. No time for second thoughts.

As though time had slowed she saw him reach out a hand to her as though to stop her, even as he strained in resistance
to the tall thug who grasped his head. They had him now. The third pulled back, gasping, then struck in for the kill from behind. Blood was everywhere. Stephan’s blood.

“Ann!” she heard Stephan shout in a voice drawn out into an impossibly low rumble. She pushed up against the struggling mass of bodies and reached for that hand.

“Stephan,” she shouted, or maybe she didn’t. His touch almost burned her. She poured all her love into that connection, all her regret, but also all her will. She saw his eyes widen. It was as if they stood there, connected, and the man who twisted his head, and the one who raised the knife, and the other, attacking from the rear, weren’t there, or if they were they didn’t matter. It was only Stephan and Ann, joined by the touch of their hands. It didn’t matter that the grip was slippery with blood. Their gazes locked on each other. Ann felt him open to her. Love, fear for her, anger at his enemies; all of it washed over her. Then she felt his power surge up and it was her power too, incredible, invigorating. It was Stephan and something else she felt, something that sang in his blood and rejoiced in living. She wanted to shriek in laughter or in ecstasy.

Stephan began to glow.

There was no other word for it. A faint outline of white surged out from his figure. It enveloped her hand in a tingling flow of life and energy. She had never felt so alive. The eerie white corona bathed the scene in light, making the blood shine black and the eyes of his attackers glow more purely red. Ann felt the power course through her and down, out into the earth. Indeed she seemed to feel a kind of rumble in the ground that echoed in her lungs.

Stephan swept the three vampires from him with one hand, the other still firmly joined to hers. They struggled up as he drew her into his body. The wound at his neck seemed to be closing, for the blood no longer spurted, but his body was still slick with it. The glow enveloped her and she felt
strong, stronger than she could ever imagine. He looked down at her, tenderly.

“Ann.” She heard the name echo, almost as though they were in her cave. The three vampires lunged. Stephan tore his gaze away from her and turned it on his attackers.

They stopped suddenly. For one long instant, their faces were frozen in surprise and horror. Then the power in the air ramped up. The corona expanded. A tearing shriek that was not made of human voices rent the air, and the three bodies . . . exploded. There was no other word for it. One moment they were lunging forward, and the next moment a shower of unrecognizable matter was shooting outward from the portico.

The glow faded. Shadows crept into the clearing again. The life and ecstasy faded, leaving Ann hollow. Stephan sank to his knees and she followed, leaning heavily against him. Blackness ate at her vision and she fought against the desire to gag or faint. Her stomach churned. Around them a semicircle of . . . of red slime radiated in stabbing rays like a sun. She saw Kilkenny beyond it with a horrified expression on his face. He fell to his knees, retching. Ann heard nothing but the ringing in her own ears. What had happened here?

Minutes passed. Ann shook her head and her senses rattled back into place. Stephan’s chest heaved against her side where he cradled her against him. Somehow they had both collapsed on the stone of the portico. He hung his head. His dark hair curtained his face. The wound in his belly had nearly closed. The stab wounds were in various states of repair, from still bleeding to faint pink weals on his flesh “What . . . what happened?” she whispered.

He raised his head. His eyes still looked distant. His shoulders sagged. “I think you were right,” he said in an exhausted voice.

“Has that ever happened before?”

“No. I melted glass once.” A long pause. “I cracked
stones and . . .” Another pause. “I lit a fire in some leaves and broke some rock.” Silence. “But not this.”

Footsteps sounded, muffled, in the damp earth. Ann looked up. Kilkenny stood there, his heavy seaman’s sword drawn. He looked as white as his cravat. He raised his sword. “I dispatch the evil one, in the name o’ the future o’ our kind.” His lilting Scottish burr was raw.

Stephan raised his head. “I’m not the one making vampires, Kilkenny.” He was exhausted. Ann realized there would be no repeat performance of his power tonight, with or without her help, even though his wounds were healing. His neck no longer even seeped blood, thank God. He let her go, and staggered to his feet, hands on his knees, panting. She glanced to Kilkenny. He was fresh. In fact, he had saved himself for just this eventuality. She wondered why he hadn’t struck Stephan’s head from his body even now with that heavy sword. “You are the one who is evil,” Stephan accused.

“If the purpose be pure, the making of vampires is na wrong.”

Stephan managed a snort. “Pure! Like draining humans of blood? That kind of pure?”

“We dinna drain blood.” Kilkenny was stung to defend himself. “We are the outcast, the hunted. All we want is to establish a vampire homeland here; one strong enough to resist the tyranny of Rubius and Mirso.
Ye’re
a minion of his tyranny.”

Ann was shocked. Kilkenny thought Stephan was the evil one? “I saw the man who stood beside you tonight kill a woman from my village,” she accused.

“There have been killings all around here, man,” Stephan said. “Your followers were a band of killers.”

Kilkenny narrowed his eyes. “Ye lie.” But his mouth wavered. He raised his sword, but he was chewing his lip.
He doesn’t want to kill us,
Ann thought with surprise.
And he won’t believe his followers would kill. What kind of evil is that?

A realization rolled through Ann. The man was idealistic. As idealistic as Stephan when he wanted to prove made vampires were as good as born vampires.
Well, now
. . .

“Come on, Kilkenny, let’s make it a fair fight, hand to hand.” That was Stephan’s only chance. Kilkenny would never do it. Why would he give away the advantage of the sword?

“After what I just saw ye do? I’m thinking the sword is hardly equal to the weapons ye’re wielding.” Kilkenny looked wary, determined. Ann realized suddenly that he thought he was the one to die tonight. “Ye’re an old one, after all.”

Still she had to take Stephan’s part. “He’s injured, can’t you see that?”

Kilkenny peered at Stephan, who was still panting, his breath ragged. The wounds might be healing, but he had obviously used up his strength.

The sword clattered to the stone. Ann cocked her head and knit her brows, considering. Was it possible . . . ? Could Kilkenny be . . . honorable? Before the two men could close with each other she scrambled up and did the only thing she knew how to do.

She stood between them and touched them both at once.

Kilkenny washed over her; his childhood as an outcast Irish immigrant in Scotland, the nephew of an Irish peer whose mother married down, growing up aristocratic but dirt poor, outcast from his richer relations, his resentment that the Irish were second-class citizens who could not even vote because they were Catholic, his participation in the Rising of ’97 as a very young idealist trying to reclaim his Irish heritage, his realization that having lived in Scotland, he belonged to neither country, the journey to Marrakech as part of a tour of foreign capitals to gain support for the Irish cause, the enslavement by Asharti, the terrible things she did
to him, being made vampire, the terrible things he did in her name when his courage failed him, his revulsion, his escape. And the fact that he remained an idealist.

All of vampire society was out to kill the vampires Asharti made, without regard to who they were or what they could contribute. For him, making England into a vampire homeland that could stand against Mirso was self-defense, both physically and mentally. He turned his self-loathing into a desire to create Utopia, where vampires and humans would live together as Scots and Irish and English couldn’t seem to do.

She turned to Stephan, and saw his eyes blinking. She got only what she had not had from him since they last touched, the adrenaline rush of battle, the stoic refusal to acknowledge pain, the determination. She could only hope he was getting Kilkenny through her, at least an impression of him. And Kilkenny? She looked up at him and saw him blinking, too. Did he get what she had gotten of Stephan? He would see the idealism, the courage, the awful guilt for Asharti. Would Kilkenny blame Stephan for what he had gone through? Or would he recognize Stephan’s suffering and the atonement as akin to his own impulses?