The Vampire Queen's Servant (13 page)

"What do you think, Mr.
Ingram?" she said.

The driver came a step closer at
her gesture, but kept the island between them. "I'm not sure if my soul is
as strong as the boy's," he said carefully. "You want more than a
driver, that's the way it seems to me. It wouldn't be fair to commit to a job
and then back out, so I need to know what it is I'm really dealing with."

She understood clearly the
"what" was referring to her.

"I'm a vampire," she
said simply. "You may not believe that. You may decide I'm a mentally
unstable person and make your polite though hasty farewells. But you asked for
honesty." She inclined her head. "I have enemies. Many. Which is why
I take so many precautions on my property and when I go beyond its boundaries.
As long as I appear ready for them, it's unlikely they'll ever attack. They
wait for the moment of weakness only. It is the way of our world. My enemies
also rarely target staff unless staff members get between them and me. I'll
never ask you to do that."

"That's gracious, ma'am.
But I'm not a coward. I'm also not so easy to kill." His dark eyes
glittered.

"I don't doubt your
courage, but they'd kill you with as much effort as swatting a fly and it
wouldn't even slow them down on their way to me," she said bluntly.
"Good staff is hard for a vampire to find, so we don't sacrifice them
frivolously. It's not unheard of for a vampire to slay another and then
promptly turn around and offer the dead vampire's staff positions in his own
household. After all, you've already worked for one, what's the difference in
working for another?" She lifted her shoulder in a casual shrug.
"Though I admit, some of them wouldn't give you a choice. There is some
danger involved."

The black man removed his cap,
scratched his head. There was gray in the close-cropped cotton of his hair.
"I suspect a person in your circumstances has to break a few laws to live
under the radar. So what I need to know, ma'am, is if you dishonor what I
consider one of the more important Commandments. Do you kill?"

At her ironic look, he set his
jaw. "I've broken it myself, when I served. Even had to do it once or
twice in this job. I know it's not something a person should break lightly,
which is why I'm asking."

Lyssa pursed her lips. "An
extraordinarily honest question. Are you asking to give yourself time to think
your way out of a crazy woman's house? Because if that's the case, the door is
there. Neither I nor my dogs will keep you from leaving, and I'll wish you no
ill will."

Ingram glanced at the door, then
at Jacob.

"He's not yet bound to my
service," she said in an even tone. "He's also still free to go. If I
decide to keep him, I'm sure I'll regret him for the nuisance he is."

Jacob wisely chose not to
comment on that. Ingram cleared his throat, met her gaze squarely. "I knew
when you got into my car tonight you weren't human, ma'am. I got a sense for
it. You're not the first of your kind I've driven."

That was a surprise.
"Indeed. Yet you drove me. Most wouldn't after recognizing it."

"I thought about driving
away. But when I say I'll do a job, I do it. Never left anybody who paid my
boss for a ride without one."

They studied each other for a
few minutes in silence. The night was waning. Lyssa wanted to go to bed. She
rarely let physical factors impair her judgment, but it was possible this was
one of those infrequent times. She'd made several very impetuous decisions
tonight. However, seeing Elijah Ingram's large hands turning his cap in that
methodical way as if it represented the cog of his mind, she knew her intuition
was sound. She just needed to speed up the interview process and hope the loss
of finesse wouldn't lose her the possibility of his service.

"All right then."
Perching on the stool at the end of the counter, she took the seat directly
across from him. "When I have a human servant, I take blood from him. If
he maintains his health and diet adequately, that sustains me and I don't crave
additional blood. If I'm somewhere he's not and I need it, I can seduce and
temporarily command the mind of a person to draw blood from him. Not in a
lethal dose. We prefer to know the history of our donors, though, so that's
usually an unexpected event."

She paused, her glance shifting
between the two of them. "Once annually, in order to retain my full
strength, I have to take a healthy adult in the prime of his life and drain him
dry. I take his life," she added quietly, so there was no
misunderstanding. "He has to be a good person, not the dregs of society.
Blood infected with evil impacts a vampire… negatively."

"Draining him doesn't make
him a vampire?"

The question came from Mr.
Ingram, because of course Jacob would know all this. However, she saw the
forced strain around his mouth, the sharp focus of his eyes. He might know it,
but it didn't make hearing it any easier. And she wouldn't dress it up for
either of them.

She shook her head. "You do
have to drain the body to do that, but to convert a human requires a special
secretion from the fangs. You have to prep the person with three different
marks, like a servant, and make them drink from the sire first as well."

"You always take a man? For
your kill, I mean."

She rolled it over a moment. His
generation held to certain moral tenets that he would never dismiss no matter
his own circumstances. That suggested not only what motivated the question, but
the proper answer for it.

"Always a man. Never a
woman. Absolutely never a child."

She didn't add she chose a
healthy male because she was a female vampire. As such, the taste of a male was
just preferred. Sweeter to her palate.

From Jacob's expression, she saw
he understood the nuances in her response in a way Mr. Ingram would not. He
wasn't pleased with the revelation. She decided to ignore the ridiculous twinge
of lust his possessive reaction sent through her vitals. Obviously a lingering
side effect of her medicine.

"I try to pick a person
with few ties, but that's not easy when you're seeking a person of integrity.
When I go on the hunt, my driver and servant—for it's best to have both to do
this though not completely necessary—help me with transportation and disposal
of the body."

Had Jacob truly understood what
would be required of him during her annual kill? Or like the requirement of
sexual submission, had the significance been lost on him because it was so far
from what he knew the world to be? If he'd truly hunted vampires, he wouldn't
be completely naive about her kind. But she wondered.

Drawing herself up straight in
the chair, she spoke unapologetically. "If I don't do this once a year, I
weaken. Within ten years I'd become a living corpse, even with regular
feedings. It's a form of what you would think of as rigor mortis. Unable to
move, I'd suffer an eternity of starvation. It's likely from that state some of
the myths about our being dead have sprung. A human, stumbling upon a vampire
in that condition, gets too close and the vampire is just strong enough to grab
hold and restore some of his vitality by draining him. But he will have lost
some of his faculties from the deprivation, and control of his bloodlust will
be much harder. Human blood in a terminal quantity from a living donor once a
year is the only thing that prevents imbalance in our constitution."

"Are there those who do it more
than once a year?"

Apparently, Elijah had kept his
wits about him enough to catch the subtle notes of what wasn't being said as
well as what was. "Yes." Lyssa nodded. "For the pleasure of it.
For the added strength they perceive it gives them, like taking an overdose of
vitamins. But I am not one of those vampires."

There was a cap on the number of
humans that could be killed by a single vampire in the course of a year. The
number was higher than she liked, but she was not Council and her influence had
kept the quantity lower than initially proposed. She'd had to be satisfied with
that.

Ingram swallowed. His jaw
flexed. "The explanation's appreciated. I understand from your way of
thinking you're just treating that one person the way I have to treat my dinner.
But when you're the same as that dinner, it's different."

"We may be human in
appearance, but vampires are a different species. We exist and thrive in very
different environments. There are many mysteries we don't understand about one
another."

Her voice was becoming more
flat, her body language minimal. Feeling Jacob's close regard again, Lyssa knew
she was showing her weariness. While she didn't have to retire at the first
glimpse of the sun, this evening, including her fainting episode, had drained
her. She'd done her best for now. If they wanted to leave, well, that would be
fine. But even as she had the thought, her gaze drifted back to Jacob, his bare
shoulders and firm mouth. When a pang of yearning clenched a cold fist in her
belly, she had to push it away with a surge of effort.

"That's my philosophy on
it," she continued. "But it's not shared by all my kind. Many view
you as tools, fodder for entertainment, food, experiments. The same as many of
you view other species. Not equals in any sense, not deserving of any rights we
haven't given you. Beings who have the simple misfortune of being treated as a
product instead of a sentient being with its own right of existence."

She lifted a shoulder.
"It's an understandable deduction. For the most part, the weakest of us is
superior to you in strength and longevity. Most of us that live to one hundred
years outstrip your experiential intelligence, because if we don't, we don't
live to see two hundred."

"So you don't agree with
that viewpoint?" This from Jacob, his mind working over her words so hard
she could see it in his expression.

"Yes. And no." She
leaned back in the chair. "I'm a predator, Jacob, and humans are my prey.
I'll never view them in a way comfortable to you or your kind. But like the hunter
who's finally learned to respect the stag enough to kill few and far between,
and only when necessary for food, I've learned there's far more to you. An
essence whose value is separate from my needs. However, while a human may sit
down to a burger, despite the fact there's a salad bar nearby with enough lower
food chain nutrition to fully sustain him, for a vampire there is no salad bar.
There is only human blood."

Time ticked away for a quarter
of a moment as she waited. Jacob picked up Ingram's keys from the counter as
the driver at last raised his gaze, meeting hers with visible effort.
"I'll think about it awhile, but if you're… interviewing elsewhere, I'll
tell you it's likely I'll say no. There are just some things it's hard for a
human to do. It's hard to watch a cat catch a mouse and not help the mouse,
isn't it? I could maybe drive you around while you're here, for your manicures
and errands. I'd have to think about that, too. I'm just not sure I'm your man
for the rest."

"I understand. I appreciate
your honesty, more than you realize." Rising, she came around the counter
and extended her hand. "Thank you for considering it."

He hesitated. When she began to
lower her hand, her gaze frosting, he surprised her by reaching out, albeit
awkwardly. A light shake, the way a big man tended to handle a woman's fingers.
It almost made her smile, though his honest words had stung. Not because she
was ashamed of what she did to survive, but because she liked him.

"I'm finding it hard to
believe you're letting me go so easy after telling me all that."

"Well, again, Mr. Ingram,
who would believe you? But there's another reason." She withdrew her hand.
"No one serves me except by choice."

She shifted her attention to
Jacob so he would not miss the warning note in her voice. "Once the choice
is made, I become far more territorial."