The Hunger (8 page)

“Easy,” he whispered. His voice echoed in her mind. She struggled, but his arms were steel. No one was stronger than she was! To her surprise, his eyes went red in the darkness
.

She stilled. “Are you
. . .?”
She couldn’t say it
.

He nodded. “I am as you are.” He glanced to the carcass behind her. “And you have much to learn, my pretty feral kitten.”

She searched his face. Cheekbones. Eyes near black now that the red had faded. High forehead, nose straight, jawline strong. Lips. Had she ever seen lips like that? His hair was dark and curling around his shoulders. He was . . . handsome. She knew she would never forget his face. She was afraid. And yet, to find someone like her, someone who
knew . . .
Her eyes filled
.

He gathered her into his arms and cradled her head against his chest. He smelled like her mother, spicy, yet different
—
thoroughly masculine. “My name is Stephan Sincai. I will teach you who you are and how to go on. I will take the pain away,” he whispered into her hair
.

Beatrix knew she had found a refuge
.

Beatrix tossed under her coverlet. He wasn’t a refuge, of course. But what did she know at seventeen, homeless, killing for what she needed, wanted by no one? Except Stephan. The admonishment she made to Langley about first, unwise loves came back to her.

Beatrix pulled the covers up, longing for the simplicity of sleep. How she had loved Stephan! He took her in, became her teacher, her mentor, and later, more. Beatrix once thought Stephan was an anchor—someone she could trust to always be there. Instead he had taught her the ultimate lesson of her kind; the lesson of impermanence.

Her mind flitted over the centuries. They came and went, the men. She fought side by side with bloody Henry at Agincourt. Da Vinci taught her about the art that saved her. De Sade was interesting if only because he practiced so freely what she practiced not at all. But he actually hated women, even her, in the end. She had sought companionship but never a sexual connection. That was too dangerous after Asharti. Astronomers, painters, kings, emperors, philosophers, they all ran together. In the end they were not Stephan. So she sought meaning in causes. She had thrown herself into countless movements, at least until the factions rose and the quibbling over doctrine began. They all came to nothing. That left only art. Art organized the chaos and cut through to truth. Art had been her only solace for centuries. Except for the blood.

The blood is the life
. Stephan said their kind used it like a mantra, a shorthand for who they were. The symbiotic Companion in her blood gave her strength, powers
humans thought were unnatural. But the Companion exacted a price—a life that could be eternal. To what end? Stephan was right. The blood was all the life there was, and suddenly that didn’t seem enough.

CASTLE SINCAI, TRANSYLVANIAN ALPS
, 1102

“I have returned, kitten.”

Beatrix leapt to her feet from the huge carved chair in front of the fireplace in the echoing hall of the main keep. Leaping flames sent sparks shooting up the maw of the great chimney. “Stephan!” She threw herself into his arms. “I thought you would never come.”

“Now, child,” he murmured as he held her away from him. His hauberk was muddy from traveling, his long dark curls disheveled. A week’s growth of beard covered his strong jaw. He looked tired, but his dark eyes still burned with energy under his bold black brows. “A lady does not throw herself upon her returning lord. Have I taught you nothing?”

Servants came, bowing, to take his cloak. Beatrix smoothed the rose brocade of her heavy dress over her breasts, and held out her arms to show the drape of the sleeves, tight over the shoulder, with cuffs that widened into points two feet in length. It was lined in the palest silk to match the silk that covered her head and draped under her chin. “See what the seamstresses have wrought, Stephan? Am I not beautiful?”

“You are quite beautiful, my little one. And, I might add, hardly feral anymore.” He called to one of the servant women for mead. She hurried to do his bidding
.

Beatrix smiled. “I have learned all your lessons about the Rules, Stephan, no matter how boring. You promised when you returned we would learn more exciting things. Shall you teach me how to ride horses and fight with swords?”

“Perhaps,” he said. “But first you must meet someone.” He turned and motioned toward the dark arch of stone that led to the great entrance hall. “Asharti, come meet your new sister.”

From the shadows, a young woman peered, nervous, her eyes taking in the great plank table, the tapestries that lined the stone walls, the sconces that sent the smell of burning oil to join the wood smoke from the fire. She was beautiful in a way Beatrix had never seen. Her eyes were dark, like Beatrix’s own, but they were lined with black smudge that made them look exotic. Her skin was too olive but it was fine, and her features were finely drawn. She wore a shapeless striped garment with a hood that covered her from neck to ankle, tied at the waist with a rope net like a girdle. She hesitated at the doorway as though she expected something fearful
.

“Come, child,” Stephan encouraged her, holding out a hand. “No one will hurt you.”

“Who is this?” Beatrix asked, drawing herself up. “I have no sister.”

Stephan continued to hold out his hand to the newcomer. “Have I not heard you mourn that there were none like you your own age?”

The girl
—
she looked a few years older than Beatrix
—
came forward slowly
.

Beatrix felt her breath catch in her throat. “She is like me?”

Stephan smiled. “Just like you. Asharti comes from the city of three religions, Jerusalem. She was made by a Crusader who was one of us.”

“Made! You mean she was born human and one of us shared the blood? You said the Rules did not allow that! And only born vampires are allowed to live,” Beatrix protested
.

Asharti looked at the ground, afraid, then up at Stephan under her lashes
.

“It is not allowed. But what has happened, happened. Is that a reason she should not be given the same chance at life I give to you?” He did not wait for an answer, but shook his head. “You will welcome her, Bea, because that is the only action worthy of a generous soul. I will teach you both, and you will be solace and support to each other on your journey.”

Beatrix’s eyes filled, shamed that Stephan had found her wanting. He reached for the girl’s hand. The poor creature was so unsure, she was practically trembling. He grabbed Beatrix’s hand and joined the two young women
.

“You are both in need of a sister,” he said, in that wonderful voice Beatrix had grown to love. “And someday, together, you will make them all believe in the future of our race, as I do.”

Stephan’s face, with its strong features and expressive eyes, fairly glowed from within. Beatrix decided she would not mind a friend, someone who understood her. But it was more important still that she not disappoint Stephan
.

She squeezed the girl’s hand. “Asharti. That is a pretty name. Do you speak Dutch?”

“I speak the French better,” Asharti said slowly. “Robert, who make me, he teach me.”

“Je parle français, un peu.
Stephan, can I take Asharti to my rooms? That golden-colored dress would look very well on her, and it does not become me at all.”

Stephan smiled with satisfaction. Beatrix flushed to know she had pleased him. “I counted on your generous spirit, kitten. I have ordered the servants to draw two hot baths.”

Beatrix covered her eyes, trying to push back the past. Asharti. If Beatrix could have seen the future . . . But she hadn’t seen the evil then. No, she had been glad to have a fellow student of Stephan’s teachings. Asharti had progressed rapidly. It wasn’t long before she lost all shyness. It seemed she had lost all fear. Instead, the anger lurking
always in Asharti’s heart had surfaced. From the perspective of centuries, Beatrix thought the anger and the fear were intertwined . . .

Stephan rapped Asharti’s fingers with a small pointer as she reached for a handful of walnut meats. “Pay attention, both of you! You must know the history of your kind.”

Asharti snatched her hand away, pouting. “Boring! What do I care for Rubius and some monastery and a fountain?” Her petulance warned of a tantrum
.

“You care because one day they may be your salvation. Rubius, the Eldest, and the Council make the Rules that govern us. The fountain is the Source of the Companion. And Mirso Monastery is the last refuge for our kind.” Stephan strove to keep his annoyance in check. Both Beatrix and Asharti knew it. It made Beatrix nervous. It made Asharti bold
.

“What if I don’t want salvation?” How did Asharti dare challenge Stephan and why did he allow it? He seemed to indulge Asharti as he would never indulge her
.

“When you are as old as I am you will begin to value the Vow and Mirso Monastery.”

“As old as you are,” Asharti snorted, lifting her finely arched brows. “You are not old.” They sat in the solarium at the top of the castle, the precious glass of its windows no longer used to let in the sun, but to paint the walls with a starscape of shining fragments. Stephan liked to give lessons there, as though the proximity of the universe could enlarge their souls
.

“More than a thousand years,” he said then held up a finger to Asharti’s protestation. “I was born when the Carpathian Mountains were called Dacia. We were part of the Roman Empire. The yoke of Rome was hard, yet the Romans dragged us out of tribal warfare and brutality.” His eyes glazed as he journeyed to another time, another place. “I thought I would never tire of drinking the blood
,
feeling the life shoot down my veins. Now I take comfort in the fact that someday I can join the monks who chant and starve their Companion until their needs are small, their powers diminished, their pain and memories gone. It keeps us sane, in a way, to know there is a last protection in taking the Vow.”

Beatrix shuddered, unable to imagine anything more horrible. “How does it protect?”

Stephan stared out at the stars. “Because it cannot be renounced, it protects us from ourselves. Once taken, it is secure. We are secure.”

“Of course you can renounce it. All you have to do is leave,” Asharti protested. Beatrix could feel her sister’s anger. Asharti hated to be checked, even by Elders she did not know
.

Stephan suppressed what looked to be a smile. “Only in death, my pet.”

“You said it was nearly impossible to commit suicide,” Beatrix observed, wary
.

“And so it is. The Companion’s urge to life is strong, even if one can inflict enough damage to one’s own body to die.”

Beatrix shuddered. Stephan said actual separation of the head was necessary to kill a vampire
—
decapitation
—
something their Companion could not repair. “Then
. . .”

“I was talking about homicide,” he said, in that calm voice he reserved for the most brutal facts about their life
.

“They would kill one of their own?” Asharti asked, outraged. “I would kill them!”

“Yes, they would,” he said, ignoring her second comment. “If one can renounce the Vow, then what protection is it?”

“How do you know so much about this Vow if no one who takes it can leave the Monastery?” Asharti asked with narrowed eyes
.

“I was born in Mirso, to a refugee who arrived big
with child. I grew up serving Rubius.” He took a breath. “One day Rubius told me I must go out into the world to experience life before I could return. He cast me out. I was reluctant to leave my prison, but once the doors were open I did everything, experienced everything; kindness, brutality, intellectual exhilaration, sexual depravity . . . all of it.” His brown eyes stared at the cold stars. “And slowly, everything palled. When you have done it all over and over again until you can predict the failure of your hopes down to the last detail, what is left?”

Beatrix shivered. “You are not like that now. What changed?” she whispered
.

He forced a smile. “You two gave me an interest in life again.”

Asharti eyed him as though he was lying to her in a way she could not quite comprehend. Beatrix opened her eyes wide as the burden of his statement settled on her shoulders
.

“So,” Stephan said briskly, “I am invested in your learning. And that brings us to practicum, lovelies.” Stephan rose. “Tomorrow night, I shall show you how to translocate. And to take blood without ripping throats, Bea, and without draining your victims, Asharti.”

“I like the last drop.” Asharti’s expression was bold
.

“Humans and vampire kind exist in a delicate balance. Disturb that harmony and all suffer. Killing humans every time we feed would mean that humans discover us.”

“We are stronger than they are,” Asharti said, shrugging
.

“True,” Stephan soothed. “We take what we require. But we exist in secret, one to a city, feeding and leaving our food source intact to provide sustenance another day.”

“I will do what I like, Stephan. Who can stop me?” A challenge direct! Beatrix could not believe her ears. Was Asharti mad? She held her breath, expecting Stephan to flash his eyes red. He didn’t. Asharti gave a sly laugh at her triumph and turned, about to flounce from the room
.