The Burning (4 page)

Oh, do you?
thought Ann. She was about to enter and stop this ridiculous conversation, when a dreadful premonition dawned. She stopped dead. Was her uncle going to tell her cousin about her? It was none of his business. She stood in the shadow of the door, just out of sight.

“It’s more than that, I fear . . .” Uncle Thaddeus cleared his throat, but could not go on.

“Don’t worry, my lord,” Van Helsing said. “I’ve heard what they say in the village.”

“And what do they say?” Resignation laced her uncle’s voice. Ann wasn’t sure she could bear hearing what the villagers said about her.

“That she’s a witch who knows what you’re thinking,” Van Helsing said calmly. “That she has a pact with the devil that allows her to see into a man’s soul. Nonsense, of course.”

Her uncle got up and paced the room.
Laugh,
Ann pleaded.
As though it were too outlandish to be true. That’s what I would do
.

“I told you Ann is special, Erich.”

No! Don’t tell him!

“And now you’ll say what the villagers think is true.” Van Helsing chuckled. “Well, whatever you want to put about. I understand. Beautiful girl, rich into the bargain. Of course you want to discourage fortune hunters.”

“Ann can’t sustain the usual courting and the usual coarse relationship, Erich.” Her uncle’s voice was firm, commanding. “She . . . she doesn’t like to be touched.”

“What woman does?” Van Helsing chuckled. “Not the way we men want to touch them.” There was something in his voice that was . . . threatening. “Men and women are cut from different cloth, Lord Brockweir.”

“No, it’s more than that. Since she turned fifteen . . . well, she can’t abide touching.”

There was a brief silence. Ann wished she could see Van
Helsing’s face, then was glad she couldn’t. “I want only your permission to worship your niece, Lord Brockweir.” His voice dripped false sincerity. “From afar. She is an angel. Should I be fortunate enough to engage her affections, I would treat her like a delicate hothouse orchid, to be treasured and protected.”

Don’t believe him, Uncle! I don’t even need to touch him to tell you everything about him is a lie
. She saw her uncle raise his brandy glass in salute.

“Then may your suit prosper, young man. I shall do what I can to forward it.”

Uncle!
Betrayed! She turned and ran upstairs. She’d been betrayed.

Stephan rode through the night, south from Bath. Even though he was bundled to the eyes, the daylight had been difficult. But there was no time to be lost so he had ridden straight through. Now he was tiring in spite of his strength. His horse was fresh, though, having been changed out in Bath, and he cantered in long easy strides along the wide road under a moon playing hide-and-seek with the clouds of a coming storm. Stephan could smell rain.

His mind drifted. He had called Kilkenny the root of the evil he sought to rectify. But that wasn’t true. Stephan himself was the evil, because Kilkenny was made by Asharti, and Stephan was responsible for Asharti and the crimes she had perpetrated upon the world.

It had started with Beatrix. He had found Beatrix, a beautiful natural-born vampire, haunting the streets of Amsterdam at seventeen, abandoned by her mother, with no knowledge of what she was or how to go on. She was ripping throats to get her blood. He had taken her in. What else could he do? A born vampire was rare and treasured. He made her his ward, tamed her, educated her, nurtured her.
Perhaps even then he loved her, feral kitten that she was.

And then he realized that with Beatrix he had a chance, perhaps his only chance, to do something about the injustice he believed was inherent in the Rules handed down by the Elders of his kind. The Rules said that vampires made by ingesting vampire blood must be killed. Rubius, the Eldest, said it was because the balance between vampire and human must be preserved. Of course, you couldn’t go about the world making vampires. But if a vampire was made by accident one shouldn’t let them die. That was murder in Stephan’s eyes. Rubius said that made vampires went mad because they were not born to the burden of eternal life and physical and mental power, and the need to drink blood to sustain their Companion.

Stephan didn’t believe it, naïve as he was then. What he did believe was that if he could find a made vampire about the same age as Beatrix, he could nurture them both, and love them both, and prove that made and born could be equally valuable members of their society. Then Rubius would change the Rules.

Fool! In so many ways.

He’d found the second half of his experiment when he had chased off after Robert Le Bois on the first Crusade, trying to overtake him before he sacked Jerusalem. He had wanted to stop the carnage. Le Bois liked carnage . . .

JERUSALEM, 1191

“Do you want her, Sincai?” Robert Le Bois had his beefy fist wrapped in the long dark hair of a young Arab woman. She was the most beautiful creature Stephan had ever seen, long straight nose, wide, full lips, and dark eyes lined with kohl. Her body was perfect, and imperfectly concealed in diaphanous scraps of cloth that fell from her shoulders and were girdled at her hips with a beaded net. “I’ve tired of her, as have the men in my regiment.”

“I hardly see how you’ve had time for carnal activity with all the killing you’ve been indulging in, Le Bois.” Stephan examined the girl closely. She smelled of cinnamon and ambergris and he could feel the slow vibrations that surrounded her. She was a newly made vampire, and the right age too. He glanced to Le Bois. The brute had infected her with the Companion from his blood and then followed that up by forcing her to drink more vampire blood to get immunity. Otherwise the infection of the Companion would have killed her
.

“These Jews and Infidels have no importance, Sincai. I rid Jerusalem of vermin, in the name of God.” Le Bois laughed and downed a goblet of mead even as he wound his fist more tightly in the girl’s hair
.

“Why did you make her?” Stephan asked, his voice tight. “You know the Rules.”

“They last longer that way.” Le Bois tossed his metal cup across the room, where it careened across a game board, scattering dice and provoking a howl from the drunken players. “Don’t be an old woman, Sincai. I know the Rules. I’ll kill her when we finish with her.”

“I don’t think the intent of the Rules was that it was acceptable to make vampires if you killed them later, Le Bois.” Stephan sipped warily from his own cup and glanced around the room. He had failed to overtake Le Bois. By the time he got to Jerusalem, it had fallen. He had found Le Bois and his inner command holed up in a mosque. The tiles of rich blue and green lining the walls were chipped where broadswords and pikes had been tossed carelessly aside. Any valuables had already been carried away. Outside, the streets were running with blood and echoing with the wails of the vanquished. He and his men were horrified. Twelve hundred Jews burned alive in a synagogue, men maimed, limbs severed, dying in their own blood. All in the name of Christ. Still, Le Bois had achieved the goal they had all crossed two thousand miles and fought countless battles to accomplish. Why could he not like the man for it?

Le Bois narrowed his eyes. “Soft on made vampires, are you, Sincai? I heard that about you. You should be ashamed.”

Stephan shrugged. “What do you care what I do with her?” The girl’s eyes were not frightened, they were dazed. He wondered how long these beasts had had her
.

Le Bois smirked and shoved the girl away. She fell on her knees at Stephan’s feet. “All your talk of Rules, you’d better obey them. Rubius wouldn’t like to find you’d let her live.”

Stephan didn’t look at the girl. “I don’t need a nursemaid, Le Bois.” He leaned down, and without taking his eyes off Le Bois, he pulled the girl to her feet by her elbow, then he touched his temple with one finger in salute and turned his back on Le Bois’s belly laugh
.

That was how Asharti came into his life. God, what a simpleton he had been! He had thought Asharti was perfect for his experiment. Or his rebellion, as Rubius would have it.

And what had come of that rebellion? He had tried to nurture them equally as his wards. He had tried to show them both that they were valued. But he had failed. Failed because he fell in love with Beatrix, and that pushed Asharti over the edge into jealousy and excess. One could call it madness. Evil shot across the world propelled by Asharti’s need for power until the universe had been nearly overset, all balance between human and vampire lost . . .

When had he known what she was becoming?

CASTLE SINCAI, TRANSYLVANIA, 1104

He pushed into the chamber he had left so recently, angry at Asharti before he even got there. The steward of the castle had reluctantly reported that the boy who chopped wood for the cook had to be turned off. He had fainted in Asharti’s chamber, no doubt due to the wounds in his neck and the insides of his elbows, and had to be carried out
.

Stephan knew at whose door he should lay that blame. He told the steward, Rezentrov, to find the boy and care for him. It was Stephan’s job to confront Asharti. She had become increasingly wild and rebellious. She cared for none of the history of their kind he tried to teach her, and none of the Rules
.

The door to Asharti’s chamber burst open and banged against the wall
.

Stephan had no idea what he had expected, but certainly not the scene that met his eyes. She had another strong young man in the bed he had so recently vacated. The naked boy lay on his back. Asharti straddled his loins, moving in rhythm to his thrusting even as she sucked at his neck. Her hair cascaded in a curtain over her face, her rich brocaded robe concealed her lush body. The boy moaned, somewhere between anguish and ecstasy, as Asharti began to grunt with her release
.

“Asharti!” Stephan barked
.

She did not look back at him. But she did withdraw her fangs and sit back as her own release made her shudder. She took in a long, slow breath
.

“Stephan. How nice to see you twice in one night.”

“Get off him.”

She obliged, wrapping her dressing gown around herself and falling into the pillows on the great bed. The boy gasped for breath. There were ragged wounds at his groin. Stephan knew how they were made. Asharti was amusing herself by torturing this boy, just as she had amused herself with the cook’s assistant. Stephan strode to the bed and felt the boy’s throat for his pulse. It beat erratically
.

He scooped the boy up in his arms. “Rezentrov!” he called. The steward had been trailing him fearfully. Now he peered in through the doorway. “Take him down to the kitchen. Bind his wounds. Get him some wine and see if you can get him to eat something. I’ll be down shortly.” Rezentrov called for assistance. Stephan deposited the young man outside the door and closed it. He turned on Asharti
.

She was watching him, a smile hovering about her mouth. She was curled like a cat in the bedclothes
.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he snapped
.

“Amusing myself.” There was not a shred of remorse, not even consciousness of her sin, in her manner or her voice
.

Stephan clenched his fists. “You will
not
feed among the staff. I gave you specific orders. Do I not provide for you? I took you and Beatrix to feed only yesterday. And no one was hurt,” he added pointedly
.

“You provide as much as you can, Stephan.” She looked up at him from under her lashes. “But some of us have larger appetites than others.”

“You could have killed him, or the cook’s boy.”

“What is that to me?” She snuggled into the covers
.

“The Rules say
—
”

“Outdated concepts for old men. Surely you aren’t one of them?” Her manner was insolent under the feigned concern. “Why, I thought you wanted to disprove the Rules.”

“Those that are misguided, yes. But you know as well as I do that only our discretion preserves our anonymity. That anonymity prevents war between human and vampire. It preserves the balance. I won’t talk of morals since I’m sure that would not sway you. But toying with them
is
immoral.”

“You are so timid, Stephan. They are nothing. We are powerful. We can take anything.”

He took a breath. He had to believe she could be coaxed out of the . . . hardness that made her indifferent to suffering. “Taking is not the way to satisfaction, Asharti.”

She narrowed her eyes. “
Taking
is the way of the world. As I know, to my cost. No one will ever take from me again, Stephan. It is I who take now.”

He did not deny her pain. Had she not suffered? But she must not turn that experience into a compulsion to give pain as it had been meted out to her. Could he stop the cycle?

“Just as you do,” she added, her eyes narrowing in spite. “You take from me while you worship Beatrix. From her you want love. From me? Sex. But I’m used to having that taken from me, so that works out nicely, doesn’t it?”

“No, Asharti. It isn’t like that.” But it was. He
did
love Beatrix. He might want to love Asharti, but how could he when he could see so clearly the growing blackness in her soul?

She laughed
—
that throaty, contralto laugh. “Lie to yourself, Stephan, but not to me.”

Lying to himself was the one thing he could never do. His fault. His responsibility, that she had run amok, spreading evil and made vampires across the world in a vain quest for power so that no one could hurt her ever again. He had not killed her, even when he knew what she was. He had spared her twice, once in Transylvania, and once in a Paris cathedral. So he was doubly cursed with the blame for her sins. If he was lucky, he could atone and gain the peace of taking the Vow of abstinence at Mirso. If not, then this hell of guilt would go on forever.