The Vampire Queen's Servant (34 page)

How could nothing else hurt her,
but this disease take such a toll? He wished like hell for Thomas. The monk's
scholarly mind would have put two and two together and figured out the
correlation between the two diseases, ways to slow or ease it. Thomas could
have done that for himself, but Jacob had sensed the monk was doing only what
was necessary to be around long enough to prepare Jacob to serve his Mistress.
Without the connection to Lyssa and no hope of it ever being reinstated, Thomas
simply hadn't the will to live. On all other subjects, Thomas had filled him in
on every detail he could recall. But on the series of events that had given him
the terminal disease, he'd said little, not even how he'd contracted it. He'd
just noted brusquely it had to do with Rex's punishment and why his Mistress
had to shun him.

Jacob wrung out the cloth in the
first of the two basins he brought to the bed. The steaming water burned his
hands as he laid it on her forehead. "I need to know what this is, my
lady. Let me help you."

"I've told you—"

"With respect, I believe
the time is past for that." He met her gaze, frustrated by the shuttered
look behind the pain. "I have no leverage, no way of compelling you to
heed my request. But Thomas trusted me. I think you trust me, too, no matter
how uncomfortable that makes you. I insist on knowing, and that's that. I know
giving me the third mark will not only help with the issue of trust, it will
help me anticipate your state of mind and health better. You can draw strength
from mine whenever you have need, even from a distance."

"It's also a death
sentence. Much shorter than you'd get as a mortal. Bran would outlive
you."

Her confirmation of it made
something twist agonizingly in his chest, but he inclined his head. "I'm
aware of that."

Her eyes closed. "Why would
I be worth such a sacrifice, Jacob? Does it have anything to do with me, or is
it that insufferable code of honor you gratify?"

"Both, my lady. And the sex
alone is worth dying for."

"Jacob, this is not a
joke." If her head was not about to explode, he suspected she would have
screamed it. As it was, she choked it out as a snarl. He cupped her face, his
thumb stroking, reassuring.

"Sshh, my lady. Sshh. Aye,
it's not. What must I do to convince you that you're worth it to me, my
lady?"

"It's not worth it to me,
Jacob. Please, stop. Just… cease."

When she turned her face back
into the pillow, shutting him out, her body quivering with pain, he knew he had
to let it go. For now.

He began to hum, a soft Gaelic
tune. After his parents' death, he'd had to get accustomed to the idea that he
would never again feel his mother's hand touch his brow before he went to sleep
at night. During those first months he'd often wake in the dark of the night,
feeling afraid and alone. As if their mother had left her maternal alarm clock
implanted in his body, Gideon would rouse. Jacob would hear the soft shift of
his body in the other twin bed, the rustle of pajamas, and feel such relief
when his older brother came and sat on the edge of his own bed. He'd rest a
hand on Jacob's leg and sing the songs of their mother's people off tune, the
soothing tones of a boy's voice too fast changing to a man's.

So he kept up the tune while he
cleaned her up, hoping it was providing comfort to them both. He eased her out
of her clothes and tucked soft blankets around her. Sitting on the edge of the
mattress, he removed the compress and slid an arm under her back, folding her
up against his shoulder. Her forehead rested on it as he very gently unpinned
her hair and brushed it out, knowing she'd feel more comfortable with it
tended. Then he lowered her back to the pillow and replaced the hot compress.

"Was it Carnal that brought
this on, my lady? This was not like the last time."

"No. This is new." She
kept her eyes closed, though her lips twisted wryly. "I won't say he
didn't contribute."

Jacob picked up one of her hands
and began to massage between her thumb and forefinger, carefully kneading the
pressure point.

Some of the tension in her
shoulders eased, the pounding mallets lessening in force. Lyssa cracked open
her eyes. "Oh. That helps."

"Acupressure. It's good to
know we're not so different in some things."

Lyssa looked at his hands, tan
and strong, at the calluses she would never have. At the contrast of her pale
skin, paler than he'd ever have unless he was out of the sun long enough to
lose the pigment. "You did this with Thomas."

"He taught it to me."
He nodded. "My lady, if it doesn't cause you more pain, will you at least
tell me how you came to… send Thomas away? I know it's somehow related to your
sickness. And his."

Lyssa closed her eyes again.
Jacob did deserve to know. More important, he needed to know. There'd been
something different about Carnal tonight. He was always a mocking son of a
bitch, but she'd sensed something brewing in him, a kind of suppressed
excitement. Like a boy dying to tell someone a secret, but savoring the smugness
of knowing what someone else didn't. Whatever it was, or even if it was just
her imagination distorted by her current state, Jacob deserved to have enough
knowledge to protect himself against her enemies.

She took deep breaths, absorbing
the touch of his hands as much as the compresses, letting the pain wash over
her without resistance, hoping it would soon ebb.

"When I was married,"
she began softly, "it would have been better if I'd had a female servant,
but we tend to do better with servants of the opposite sex. But Thomas was a
quiet, scholarly man. He was a monk when he became my servant. I exempted him
from the sexual ways a servant is expected to submit to his Mistress."

She felt his mind absorb that.
As he remembered some of the images from earlier in the night, his visions made
a lazy stir in her blood despite her current state. Then she recalled the point
of the conversation and her reaction chilled.

"Rex didn't understand it.
He'd thought of so many twisted things to do to a man who'd taken a vow of
celibacy. My husband was not an easy vampire, not ever. He and Thomas did not
get along well, and over time it got worse."

Because Thomas knew he was a
sociopathic monster
, Jacob thought, then winced as
her eyes opened, reminding him his thoughts were no longer guarded. But she
kept on without comment.

"I encouraged Thomas to
take a short sabbatical to his monastery in Madrid. For all his love and
loyalty to me, which I did not credit as I should have, he needed a place from
which to draw energy for the nourishment of his own soul. That was the place
for Thomas. 'It's just a piece of land, a pile of stone,' he'd say to me. But I
knew his heart. I kept encouraging him to go, take some time. Things were well
in hand here. No pending threats on our borders, though I suppose I forgot to
look within as well as without."

Her fingers closed into balls on
her abdomen, and Jacob moved his massaging touch back there, loosening them. He
knew he should tell her to rest, but he couldn't ignore his gut, which told him
understanding all the pieces to this puzzle were critical to caring for his
Mistress. He didn't know how much time he had.

Enough, Jacob. Be easy on
that. This will pass.

Lyssa had no way of knowing if
he believed she was telling him the truth. The easing of his brow helped
reassure her, however, as if drawing him into her illusion gave her confidence,
making the lie forgivable and possibly even truth. She would have enough time,
damn it. Because nothing else was acceptable. She had to get through the Council
Gathering. Once she did that, it would be five years before there would be any
close scrutiny on her or her Region.

"Thomas understood, as I
have been trying to teach you, that you don't interfere between vampires. We
don't view you like children, from whom we will suffer interruption. You are
tools, instruments serving as extensions of our will. Thomas, having lived as a
monastic, understood better than most the concept of obedient service. He was
well suited to the way of life of a human servant." She paused, her
fingers whispering along his leg, crooked on the bed as he traded the now cold
compress for another hot one.

"Your pardon, my
lady." Reluctantly he left her to refill the basin with more hot water.

"You are not," she
murmured.

Jacob lifted his gaze to the
mirror. Too late, he remembered her reflection would not be there, though his
stricken look was, revealing his reaction to her words before he could mask it.
The mirror was one-sided, the way she was saying he must accept their
relationship to be.

He pushed that away and came
back to her to set the next compress while her fingers slid down to play with
his bare ankle under the jeans' cuff. He took it as a good sign she was
caressing him, though he noticed she wasn't succumbing to sleep the way she had
after the first attack he'd witnessed. Perhaps the change in symptoms had made
the sedative effect of the powder less effective.

She sighed. "Physical
violence was part of our marriage, a part Thomas did not understand and
abhorred. But he held his tongue for I bid him to do so, even as Rex became
more and more erratic, trying to make our relationship into something it could
never be. Then one night Rex tore out my rosebushes in a fit of rage. Thomas
came upon me in the garden, trying to replant them." She pressed her lips
together, obviously struggling with the memory. "I was crying. I suppose
I'd gotten a little frayed on the edges as well."

Reaching out, Jacob cupped her
face, drawing her gaze to his face. "My lady."

She shook her head. "My
mother died at five hundred, Jacob. Vampires do die for reasons other than
murder by staking or cutting off their heads. Immortality is a gift, but it
also has its drawbacks. As mortals pass over the threshold of old age, most
eventually get past fear and resistance to the idea of death. This acceptance
grows with the years, for they see so many cycles… life, death, growth, change.
They start to see how things remain the same even as the faces change. Because
of that, they become less interested in keeping pace with the world. They want
to be quiet, to rotate on the axis they've always known, knowing when Death is
ready it will come and they will find renewal then."

She touched the compress on her
head. "As you pointed out, we have things in common with humans. We can
lose interest in life, in seeking change and growth, only we do not die. Unless
a vampire figures out how to get past that phase—think of it as a midlife
crisis—he loses his sense of meaning. Things stop having lasting value, for you
feel as though you've seen and done it all. While you don't acknowledge it
directly as such, your immortality becomes a curse, a prison during that time.
You rattle those bars or obscure their presence with a haze of excess.
Violence, cruelty and lust for power are drugs of choice for the powerful and
purposeless. Quick rushes that don't last, and like drugs, you need more and
more fixes. More and more excess, as you rail against the fate that you feel
has you in thrall."

Jacob watched her gaze drift to
the fire. "We call it the Ennui. It is the greatest risk vampires face as
they pass the fourth-century mark. Many don't live to see five. They meet the
sunrise. Or they are murdered by one of us or human hunters like your brother,
because they choose more destructive ways to deal with it. My mother chose to
meet the sun. I hadn't seen her in fifty years when she did that."

He tightened his hand on the
side of her throat, and she gave him an indulgent look, but there was sorrow
under the attempt to shrug off his sentimentality.

"Vampires are predators,
and
kind
is not a word to describe us. But predators can be fair,
consistent, and have a reliable integrity. They are not incapable of
compassion. Rex was… susceptible to excess. He viewed humans differently than I
did, did not appreciate your diversity and value except as it served his needs.
Many of my kind are like that, but perhaps there was a little more of an edge
to his feelings on the matter. I noticed it, it bothered me, but it never went
far enough to be more than an irritation between us. But as the world wore on
him, that weakness began to become his strength, and it did not stop with
humans. Cruel, manipulative games that involved lesser vampires as well as
humans absorbed him like a teenager hooked on the worst of the violent computer
games. I tried to minimize the damage, keep him under control."

She kept the focus on
herself, made herself his most challenging sparring partner
. Jacob remembered Thomas's words, but he hadn't had this
information to fill in the blanks. He felt the deceptively fragile network of
bones and muscle beneath his hand, the line of her throat. When the delicate
edge of her jaw brushed the base of his hand so she could rest the side of her
face there, he felt an impotent anger at the destination toward which her words
were driving them. Her bones would heal, yes. But they could break. Over and
over and over. The nervous system of humans and vampires was another common
denominator between the two species. Pain was pain.