The Vampire Queen's Servant (35 page)

"He became infatuated with
a young man at the turn of the century. Cecil Miles, an innocuous name for one
who would never be more than a New York banking clerk, or would not have been
except he stumbled on Rex feeding in an alley. Rex turned and saw Cecil
standing there, completely fascinated. He became his new playmate. It was as if
their meeting was fated by an evil sprite, for Cecil had an unhealthy
fascination with pain and suffering. Rex nurtured his burgeoning bloodlust to
keep him company in places I refused to go. He petitioned to make Cecil a
vampire, and it was permitted. I should have opposed it."

She drew away now and rose from
the bed, letting the compress drop away. Moving to the chair by the fire, she
sank into it, turning partly away from him. While Jacob was glad for evidence
the attack was receding, he could see the weariness in her. He moved to her
side, knelt by the chair.

"Cecil learned quickly,
but… you remember what I said?"

Jacob nodded. "That made
vampires are more bloodthirsty, less disciplined."

"He was… what was that word
you used? A
sociopath
as a mortal. By his cleverness and Rex's
influence, after only a hundred years he acquired himself a small territory in
Mexico. Not an influential one. We are not complete fools. But it will not be
enough. He will always want more."

"Carnal."

She nodded. "It was Rex's
pet name for him. At a certain point, it was what he preferred to be called.
I'm not so sure if whatever it was that made Rex more susceptible to the Ennui
and his own weaknesses enhanced Carnal's bloodlust. Transferred in the blood
during the siring."

She shook her head. "Cecil
wanted to be fully in control of Rex, and he realized I was his greatest
obstacle in that. Over time he guided Rex more and more toward the things where
I had to run interference, increasing Rex's frustration and mistrust of me.
Carnal also exacerbated the sickness in Rex's mind, feeding it with more and
more creative entertainments, which I am selfishly glad I did not know much
about." Her lip curled. "I didn't act any differently from a wife
married to a serial killer or a pedophile, who denies to herself what is
happening. I deserved the punishment of Thomas's loss, but Thomas certainly
didn't."

When Jacob reached out, she
shook her head, a sharp movement.

"The night it happened, we
had a dinner party planned for midnight. I was dressed in a black dress I think
you would have liked." An image of her appeared in his mind briefly,
standing in this room, putting on her earrings, showing him the low-slung back
of the dress, the short skirt with a fringed hem that drew the eye to the
exposed lengths of her thighs.

"I like it," he
responded, though he couldn't smile.

"I burned it after that
night, but it was one of my favorite dresses." Grim humor passed through
her gaze. "Rex and I had fought earlier. It doesn't matter about what. It
was meaningless. He came to our room, asked my forgiveness. Touched my face and
asked if I would bring some cut roses to the dinner table because they always
added such a lovely touch of color to the meal." She swallowed. "When
I went to the back garden, I discovered he'd torn them all out of the ground.
Only then did I realize why his hands had smelled of the earth.

"Thomas came to find
me," she said after a brief pause. "Rex knew I cultivated those roses
in honor of my father. But I think I was crying because I knew that was going
to be the end, that I could tolerate no more. Then it got worse."

She fell silent. Jacob curled
his hand on the chair arm, wanting to touch her, offer comfort. Turning her
head to look at him, she reached out, touched his face, ran her fingers over
his lips. He swayed as images unfolded in his mind, a sensation disconcertingly
like a television flipping on. It obscured his vision as he struggled to manage
reality against the flashback she'd chosen to show him graphically.

Thomas stroked her hair,
then picked up one of the broken branches. "We will make it all right, my
lady. I'll go get a shovel."

The pictures apparently were not
adequate, however, for the images kept rolling 'through his mind as she
narrated the event which had sealed Thomas's fate.

"Something alerted me. It
took a cursed few precious seconds to pick up on the strained tone of his
voice, the delicate way he'd picked up the branch, as if it were made of glass
and he was afraid his grip would break it. I found the knife later in the
kitchen. Imagined him picking it up and slicing off the end of that branch to a
pointed angle with one cut, as if he'd been born a samurai. My monk who
regularly cut his hands on small steak knives."

Whether it was the power of the
images or she was intentionally letting him inside her mind further than he'd
expected, Jacob felt the fear she'd felt then. Not for herself, but for Thomas.
Her narration ended, and there were only the images, a movie he knew was not
going to end well.

She didn't bother with the door.
She ran toward the house, her gaze on the upper level where the bedroom was,
where she knew Rex would have been standing, watching, waiting for her
reaction. Anticipating the bitter enjoyment of her pain, her struggle to put
the rosebushes in the ground. She leaped, soaring. Vampires could not fly, but
like squirrels they were capable of catapulting themselves remarkable
distances.

Jacob felt his own stomach lurch
with the unfamiliar sensation, flinched as she didn't slow down for the master
bedroom window but went through it, a priceless stained glass art depiction of
the dragon and St. George. It exploded around her, cutting her skin. He
realized she'd never had it recrafted. It was a curtained picture window, one
of the few non-stained glass windows in her home.

Thomas had reached the bedroom a
single handful of seconds earlier, probably knowing he had little time before
she'd realize his intent. Rex had not expected anything. Thomas was already
driving the branch of thorns with its sharpened end toward his back.

The vampire spun just before she
came through the window, perhaps sensing Thomas's rage-driven attack. The
rosebush stake sliced through the shirt and into his skin but went high,
shooting upward and tearing muscle rather than stabbing through it.

Lyssa slammed into Thomas. As he
was catapulted into the wall by the impact, she took the blow in the face that
Rex had intended for Thomas's chest, had the monk had been there a bare second
before.

Lyssa spun, grappled with her
husband, and they crashed into the bed frame, shattering it and tangling them
both in the covers.

"No," she was saying.
"No."

She was adamant, fierce.
Pleading, but not for Thomas's life, Jacob realized. That wasn't in question.
She would not permit Rex that transgression. She was pleading for him not to
force the conflict between them to a point of no return.

Rex backed off, his fangs bared,
his shirt bloody, the wound visible under the torn fabric. Even now it was
mending. Lyssa watched him warily, her body tense and ready, moving to keep
herself between him and the dazed Thomas, struggling to get to his feet.

"I will send him away, Rex.
But you cannot kill him. I won't permit it."

"Your loyalty is to
him?" Rex snarled. "He intended to murder me."

"You've been trying to
murder my soul for so long it knows not how to draw a deep breath
anymore," she said in a terrible voice. "You don't see me piteously
whining about it, the way you are about a mere human's scratch."

Fury flashed through his eyes,
but now she straightened, her expression assuming that dispassionate calm Jacob
already knew well. "Thomas," she said without taking her attention
from Rex. "Go and pack. You'll go to your monastery in Madrid until I bid
you return."

"Never," Rex spat.
"He shall never return. Because I will hunt him the moment your back is
turned and kill him. Torture him slowly and let you feel every moment of his
pain. You'll have to kill me. Show everyone your pathetic weakness, that you
would choose a human over your husband."

Lyssa studied him for a long
moment. Jacob wondered what thoughts were going through her, for that was
something her vision did not reveal. Thomas had made it to his feet, was
holding his ribs, his spectacles gone. His hands were shaking, but the fury was
still in his eyes. He was even insane enough to dart a quick look around for
the sharpened branch, though his face fell when he saw it had rolled under the
bed behind Rex.

Lyssa took a step forward,
drawing Rex's attention. "A human can't last long under torture. Is that
what you want? A blink of distraction, followed by the quick grunt of a snapped
neck, the gurgle of a heart being ripped out? Wouldn't you prefer the sweetness
of my cries? That's what this is always about, isn't it?"

"My lady, no." Thomas
stepped forward, and her hand shot up, pointed like the finger of God toward
the door.

"Get out of my sight,
servant. I will not permit your death, but I will not tolerate an attack on my
husband. Your punishment is banishment. Go," she snapped. "Obey
me." She looked toward him, and Jacob saw the crumpling of Thomas's
expression as she dealt him a mortal blow with her thoughts.
You've brought
this upon me. If you have any love for me at all, you'll go before you make it
more than I can bear
.

He stumbled from the room as she
shrugged out of her sexy sequined dress as casually as she might before
preparing for a shower. Stripping off underwear, tossing it aside so she was
completely naked, completely vulnerable. Rex, his eyes already alight with
anticipation in a way that elicited nausea in Jacob's belly, drew a bullwhip
from a baroque armoire. It was the type of whip Jacob had seen used on
elephants in the circus.

"Thomas." She stopped
her servant at the door, her voice as cool and remote as ever. "Remember
to contact our dinner guests on your way out and let them know we will
reschedule."

The vision evaporated, snapped
off like a television, her mind closing the door before he could see more. His
mind could imagine it too well, however. Thomas's heart had broken that day.
Jacob knew it, because he'd seen it in the man's eyes whenever he'd even hinted
at what had driven him from his Mistress's service. The wound her words created
had not been the shattering blow, however. Jacob suspected it had been her
screams coming through the walls as he stood in the servants' quarters, folding
socks, placing shirts in a suitcase with his trembling hands.