Vampire Lords of Blacknall: Trinity (10 page)

“I’d not take your blood,” Trinity offered. “Rise,” he added, thinking to help Baptiste’s cause. This only brought a wail from Irene as she rose high enough to scamper out of the laboratory and out into the shadows at the edges of the chamber.

“Ah, bloody hell,” Baptiste expelled as both their gazes turned to watch her. “She thinks you are rejecting her blood like it’s demeaning,” he said, and then he added louder out into the shadows. “Not like you are giving her freedom.”

Trinity shrugged, and pulled off the jacket he’d borrowed from Christian. “Do you have an extra shirt?”

Baptiste raised an eyebrow, propping his hip against the table he’d been working on as he crossed his arms over his chest. “You came here for a shirt?”

Trinity threw the jacket onto the table beside where he stood and he lifted his arms to stretch his tall body to the left, “For that, and some blood would be nice,” he said leisurely, stretching his limbs to the right. He added aloud for the benefit of Irene, “But not fresh blood.”

A little while later after he’d gotten a shirt and some of the stored blood they regularly received from doctors leeching patients, he and Baptiste sat on either side of a table.

“Dr. Latham said you’ve been giving them your blood.” Trinity inclined his head toward the two humans hiding in the shadows.

“So you left us so quickly to fetch Doctor Latham to attend to that innocent, Lady Winslow?” Trinity shrugged, holding his brother’s gaze. His brother’s returning half-smile was indulgent. “All right then,” Baptiste said slowly, “I’ve been administering vampire blood to several feeders.”

“And?” Trinity asked.

“And,” Baptiste emphasized. “I’ve notated a dozen effects.”

“A dozen,” Trinity muttered, scraping his jaw with his hand, and then he uttered, “I
gave
my blood to her.”

“Lady Winslow?”

Trinity returned a temperate look. “It took her pain away, but …”

“She wanted more,” Baptiste finished.

“What have I done?” Trinity’s fist hit the tabletop rattling even the sturdy legs. He stood and paced away several steps, flinging his tangled blond hair back from his face before he paced back. “What is it about this one woman?”

He stopped before the table and watched Baptiste lean back in his chair with his gaze drifting toward Irene. “Some feeders I’ve given my blood to have had a different reaction. It’s as if they’ve become addicted to it, while all others only mildly crave it, but enough that’s easy for them to break the desire.”

“Some?” Trinity questioned with a harsh voice.

Baptiste turned his gaze too glare up at him, as he uttered, “One.” He grimaced, saying, “Just one.”

Trinity’s gaze jumped to Irene and she wailed, and then she ran out of sight into one of the cells. “Why?” Trinity asked with a crack in his voice.

“Even vampires need to find a mate. Perhaps, to someday procreate.” Baptiste’s handsome features looked like a battalion wall ready to defend his amazing conclusions.

“What?” Trinity shouted, on the edges of some beliefs he could barely believe or hope were true.

“No!” Baptiste exclaimed, standing, “I’ve not proven anything yet, just tossed out silly theories. It’s bringing Miss Irene’s mind back and I will break her of the addiction later.”

“Is she a virgin?” Trinity asked roughly, but in a calmer voice.

“Nay,” Baptiste answered, grasping the back of the chair to sit once again.

“But Lady Winslow tempted you. She tempted all of us.” Trinity returned to sit, slowly.

“Aye,” Baptiste nodded, “But while it was exquisitely tempting, it didn’t look to me to be even half as much as it affected you.”

“It was staggering.” Trinity’s lips settled into a grim line as he placed his elbows to the table. “It drove me to near insanity wanting to fuck her while at the same time suck her luscious hot blood. Blood so pure it brought me to my knees denying it.”

“We’ve all had the driving need to bite as we ejaculate, I dare say.” Baptiste’s gaze trailed toward the cell that hid Irene.

“Yes, but only at the last, bursting instant. It’s always gone in seconds and not a constant driving demand when just close to the woman.” Trinity sighed, adding, “She’s not the least bit affected by me.”

Trinity heard Baptiste’s surprised breath. “No entrancement?” Baptiste’s voice sounded harsh as he reached to the left for a piece of parchment and a quill. He began writing on the parchment in a flurry. “She showed no signs of arousal, even though you were aroused —”

“I’m
not
your test subject,” Trinity interrupted irritably. He added, “But my shaft was hard.” He left the obvious unsaid,
therefore my arousal should have affected her.

Baptiste paused with his quill raised above the parchment as the fingers on his other hand rubbed his temple. “Nothing I discover about vampirism is ever really constant, is it?” he muttered. He laid the quill down and both his hands came together on the tabletop as he sighed. “All right, brother to brother, the virgin temptation could easily point to the nature of the wickedness inside us instead of some predestined mate. You’ve sensed her above all others, and I might add it seemed as if it is the same way you sense us at times. This anomaly with Lady Winslow happened when she was in danger. Further, there’s the point she’s not affected by your aroused allure, when every other woman you tempt is. Times are changing, definitely changing.”

“I’ll
never
see her again,” Trinity uttered, jerking his chin forward. “Then none of these troubling questions will matter,” he finished flatly.

“But she’ll continue to tempt you.” Baptiste pinned him with a serious gaze.

“We live with and fight with constant temptation as it is.” Trinity stood, breaking their locked gazes. “Just add another to the heap.”

“But, what if she were your destined —” Baptiste started.

“Don’t!” Trinity charged, “Dare go there.”

Trinity moved the chair away, and then he asked in a quieter voice, “Can she survive the addiction to my blood, do you think?”

However, he knew the answer to that had not yet been tested.

Chapter Eleven

B
eth dreamt about Trinity. When she woke, nearly all she could think about was him, his blood, then him again … until she wanted to pound the bed covers in teary frustration.

“Beth?”

She turned her head against the pillow and saw Adam quietly entering the room. “Say that he is here!” she exclaimed. “Come to see me.”

“Who, Beth?” Adam asked, walking to the side of her bed.

“Lord Trinity,” she explained in a strident whisper.

“Oh no, Beth, of course that Trinity Blacknall, whose title I learned is Marquis Montrose, is not here.” Adam raised his hand to her temple. “You look feverish.”

She tried to rise and Adam’s bandaged hand moved quickly to her shoulder to press her back. “I
must
see him.” She continued to press upward.

“I know you’re in pain, sweetheart,” Adam began.

“No, no,” she said. “No pain at all.” She tried to rise again.

“You must stay still.” Adam’s tone was firm as he pressed back against her wish to rise. “Doctor Latham spoke of no fever,” he muttered.

“When was the doctor here?” Beth asked, wondering where Lord Trinity might be. Surely, he would return to see her. Wouldn’t he? He
had
to.

“Within the hour, Beth. Don’t you remember?” Adam asked with concern. “He bandaged my finger and came right in to see you for a good twenty strokes.”

Beth’s eyes filled with tears as she looked up at Adam. “He did?” she barely whispered. How could she not remember it?

“It’s all right,” Adam soothed. “You’ve been through so much, too much. It’s no wonder some things seem vague.”

“I need to see him,” she whimpered, and her gaze rose to Adam’s eyes, pleading with him.

Adam’s returning gaze looked furrowed with worry as he hushed her, saying, “You need sleep, sweetheart. Just get some more sleep.”

Beth trusted her brother above anyone and for him she struggled against the intense fascination she felt to see Trinity again. “All right, Adam.” She gave in and she felt him lean forward to hear her as she closed her eyes with tears drying on her cheeks.

Still, as soon as the door clicked shut behind Adam, Beth opened her eyes again. She moved to sit in the bed, leaning back against the pillows as she pressed her hands together in her lap. Someone had put her dressing gown on and pulled her hair back into a braid. Yet, the last she remembered was lying in bed, naked beneath the covers, while only one of Trinity’s firm hands held her down.

Was it infatuation
? Was that the strange feeling she had to see him again? She’d never been in love. She’d thought herself slightly attracted to Lord Bellingham once, yet nothing close to the feelings churning inside her now. She was nearly embarrassed she could be so overturned.

“He is handsome,” she muttered, twisting her fingers together. “And dangerous.”

Thinking of Trinity made her body ache in places she’d never known could ache with such temptation. But he knew. Lord Trinity knew about where women ached with desire. He’d been attracted to her. She felt it, or confused, she wondered if she’d seen it, when she’d … Oh lord, when she …

“
Drank
his blood,” she hissed. She shivered with goose bumps flooding her skin and her fingers grasped the bed linens on either side of her. She realized she knew from swallowing his blood, she
knew
… “He’s a …” She gulped. “He’s a
vampire.
”

Beth’s squeezed her eyes shut. Since she’d tasted Trinity’s blood, she had impressions of things: craving the taste of blood, living in coldness, and unrelenting power. She knew through the effects of his blood, flowing through her, that he’d had a violent past. One that troubled him deeply and which drove him now. She knew he loved his brothers with feelings that were overpowering.

“He fights the greatest temptations with ironclad willpower every second of every day,” she whispered, her fingers curling and uncurling in tension.

Trinity was not really a man. He was a lethal copy that looked like the perfect reflection of a man, but he fed on human blood to stay alive.

“And last night he saved my life,” she said seriously as she moved to get out of bed. She knew, if she could see her back, she’d find the wound was healed and the stitches were already gone. “Because of Trinity’s blood.”

She walked across the room to the drapes covering the glass-paned doors that led out onto a vast, stone courtyard at the back of the mansion. She pulled the heavy draping aside enough to see the sunlight. It was still daylight out and she was glad because she had some intuition that nightfall would make her craving for Trinity’s blood worsen.

She’d drunk the blood of a vampire
… and now she was changed. It was unnerving and terrifying. Yet, even as it frightened her, she wanted to show as much strength of will as Trinity showed every minute of his life. He’d told her the way.

“Be stronger than your urges, maiden.”

He expected no less of himself, and oh, how she wanted him to respect her. She looked out into the sunlight wondering if she would ever see him again. She thought not. He was a man not to be interested in the trite involvements of society where young girls dressed up to go to balls, trying to find husbands. His pursuits were about serious business, not the silliness she moved through of gossip, aspirations, and parties.

“Maiden, you want my blood,
not
me,” she expelled the words Trinity had thrown at her.

He was right. Could she separate the two? Yesterday she’d been a carefree, silly girl, and today she’d woken to growing new understandings of life that more than surpassed the entire previous years of her life. Beyond her imagination. “But I’m still alive,” she said fiercely, and she wasn’t going to squander the gift of life she’d been given.

Adam came to visit her again later that afternoon. His handsome face looked very grim when he entered the room. She’d wanted to retire to her own rooms, but she didn’t want anyone discovering she was healed … so quickly. Therefore, she sat in bed, because she was plagued by tiredness.

“Adam, what is it?” she asked without any preamble that others who weren’t brothers and sisters might employ.

“Lady Ariel returned your letter unopened.” He lifted the letter to her gaze as he moved to sit on the bed beside her.

Beth frowned, looking up at him with worry. She didn’t reach for the letter he held toward her, as if she touched it would make its return real. “That isn’t good, is it?” she confided softly.

She’d taken the task of writing a note to Ariel to call her to her side so they might sort through the events of last evening, and frankly, so she could do some inventive lying. She at least thought Ariel might wish to know about the health of her friend.

“No.” Adam admitted to it not being a very good sign, and he set the letter on the bedside table. “What did you say in it?” he questioned, then he added, “Had she come this morning, I dare say your condition would have sent her packing in fear,” he paused. “But you look much recovered now.”

Besides the gnawing desire to taste Trinity’s blood again, she was rather well, considering the ordeal she’d been through. She reached for and clasped Adam’s hand so their hands sat together on the bed beside them. “Thank you so much.” Tears gathered as she squeezed his hand and she willed them not to fall.

“I’m just glad I was there,” he replied gruffly.

“I feel much better physically.” She knew Adam would take up her meaning. She was undecided how much to share with him. However, her views on her brother hadn’t changed after last night. In fact, certain aspects had become stronger. She wanted Adam to be able to go to the university unhindered, and everything that had happened was not moving him in that direction.

“I will not question you now, so close in your recovery, about what happened to you last night, Beth, but I expect us to speak about it as soon as you are able.”

Beth played demure in front of him on the subject and she felt a stab of guilt. Nevertheless, if she explained everything that happened to her last night from her viewpoint, she’d only succeed in miring him deeper into her troubles.