He is not the man, she told herself. But she already knew that. A piece of her didn’t even care, declaring she should take him however she could get him and damned the future and the cost.
Servaes drew her down to the bed. The breeze caressed her naked body, making her shiver with the chill. As she landed on the soft cushion, she noticed the blood on his lips and chin. Hesitantly, she felt her neck. It was smooth and didn’t hurt. Servaes chuckled, a low sultry sound. Reaching behind him, he took up his shirt and wiped his mouth on it, then moved to do the same for her.
The shirt moved across her lips, and the smell of him engulfed her senses. She closed her eyes, waiting for him to finish. When she again looked at him, it was with a trace of sadness.
Servaes watched her shoulders lightly quiver. His body lay next to her, drawing her down on the bed as he fitted her along his side. She could feel the connection of their blood. She could feel him all about her senses, inside of her. She knew that even if she banished him from her and he left, she would never be free of him. She wanted to hate him for it, but couldn’t.
Servaes couldn’t offer her what she needed. She needed a man who could stay with her, be with her, and grow old with her. The beautiful man before her would never fade, never die. Hathor couldn’t bear to know she would do all those things without him.
"What is it, chéri?" he asked. "Why are there tears in your eyes? I did not hurt you."
There was questioning in the statement, though Servaes knew he’d taken the pain of her maidenhead away from her. Hathor shook her head in denial but refused to tell him how she felt. There was no use. He never promised her aught but passion, and that he did give her.
"I’m cold," she said at last. Her shivers didn’t come from the draft.
Servaes lifted his hand, shutting the balcony doors with a gesture. Then, flicking his finger, he latched them so they wouldn’t open again. The silvery moonlight trailed in around them, lighting them with a softened blue glimmer. Using his power, he lifted her up and brought the blankets over their bodies. He pulled her into his arms.
"Better?" he murmured against her temple. She managed a weak nod.
"Can I get pregnant?" she asked suddenly, drawing back to study the chiseled lines of his face. "What I mean is … can I with you?"
"No, chéri. Children are something I cannot give you," he answered. The thought struck him strangely in the pit of his stomach. He ignored it.
"Oh," she mumbled, not sure how to feel. What would they have been anyway? Human? Vampire? A strange half-breed?
Servaes studied her. He could feel the steady beat of her heart, could hear it clearly in his ears. His body never felt more alive, his blood never so quickened as it was in her arms. Stroking her hair, he said, "Give me your mind. Let me read you."
Hathor swallowed. She started to shake her head, but when she saw the desperate look on his face, she nodded. Closing her eyes, she relaxed. She could feel him, his thoughts, as he entered her. She didn’t fight it as he probed within her, though she was frightened by what he might discover.
Closing his eyes, Servaes instantly pulled back in surprise. His eyes bore intensely into her as he withdrew his thoughts from her. His face gave away nothing. Carefully, he whispered, "You love me."
Hathor’s lips trembled, terrified. Hesitantly, she nodded. He had discovered it easily. She should have known he would. The truth of it flowed through her so intensely that surely he could feel it inside of her as he could feel everything else.
"And you knew I would find it," he said, mimicking her thoughts, though he didn’t read into them. Again Hathor nodded, unable to speak. She watched him from beneath her lashes. The knowledge tore through him like a blessing and a curse. There was nothing he could do -- nothing to offer her in return. Yes he could feel, but he had stopped feeling such things long ago. Such emotion only brought pain. Once you killed the feelings of the heart, they were not so easily resurrected. Harshly, he snapped out in anger, "I am not that man on the boat! I am not that human form that strolled with you in the gardens! I am a creature. You must understand that! The man you love died. We are not the same."
"You are the one who danced with me in the gardens. You saved my life," she murmured, moisture brimming her long lashes. Her lips quivered, fighting to hold back tears.
"Your life was merely spared. There are those who want you dead still." His eyes grew wide with blackness. "I have saved nothing."
"But --"
"I have no humanity," he growled. His voice trembled and shook. His body withdrew completely from her, his flesh hating him for making it. His skin begged to be next to her, to hold her and make love to her again and again, forever. His breath escaped him like a seething whisper.
"Loneliness," she stated coolly. "There is humanity in that. And I can feel your loneliness within you. I never asked that you love me in return."
"Quit saying that! Quit thinking it! You do not know what you feel," he protested furiously. "You are confused. My blood has confused your mind, clouded your thoughts. It is too much for your human brain to handle. You are bewitched."
"Why are you so angry?" she asked suddenly. As she watched, his body blurred, speeding up until he was before her in his pants. She gasped, clutching the covers to her naked breasts. Her heart beat wearily at the look he gave her, dispassionate and outraged. There was death in him, and darkness. With sudden realization, she said, "It is you who are afraid. You are afraid of what I offer you, because I don’t demand anything from you. I give you my heart freely, and that scares you."
"I?" he asked. Then, cruelly, he came for her, grasping her roughly under the chin. He dropped the mask from his features, letting her see the full force of the demon he truly could be. Hathor flinched in fright. His pale skin transformed in the moonlight, pulling and pulsing with little blue veins. The veil was lifted. His eyes filled with the angry red of blood--her blood. Her fingers dug into his wrists to no avail, the nails clawing at the unaffected skin. Growling, he said with the voice of a demon, "Tell me then. What do you propose? If you love me, will you join me? Shall I make you one of the undead? Would you like to taste all the world has to offer? Together we could trail the earth, leaving a kingdom of corpses in our paths. We could rule the planet, eating our way through the humanity you think to love so much. Here, let me show it to you."
He moved so swiftly that she couldn’t protest. Servaes put his hand on her forehead, sending her a rush of dark images. Horrible depictions of death and blood in a torrent she couldn’t slow or deny. There were centuries of the lowest of mankind marched before her, seen only as a vampire could see them -- their true inner depths, the darkest pleasure of their cruelest of thoughts and deeds.
Hathor’s mouth opened wide with a suspended gasp. The cords of her throat strained in hard lines. Her eyes rolled in her head. She heard the screams of his past victims -- saw the endless line of their faces frozen in fear, in rapture, in dread, in destruction. And there was death, so much death.
The victim’s faces disturbed her initially. But beyond that, she saw why they were chosen. She saw the deeds of their numerous sins. She saw the woman he punished that first night in the club, saw the agony he visited back upon her. The woman was strapping her five young children down in her van, having drugged the older ones on generic sleeping pills. Then, she watched as her children screamed, tumbling into the water to their deaths. Hathor could feel the sickening sense of freedom the woman felt, complacent in her deed. The murderer’s pleasure flowed throughout Hathor’s limbs, choking her with the flood of enjoyment the mother felt. Hathor tried to fight it, but it was real, and it was there, and it sickened her beyond measure.
The mother blamed an innocent maid for their disappearance and paid her lawyer well to make sure the poorer woman was found guilty of the deed. The maid was the only one who loved them. It was not as if the woman couldn’t afford to raise the children. She was rich and resented them for keeping her from her wild, lustful ways. She hated the
m for driving men away from her. The maid shot herself after being held responsible for the crime.
Servaes withdrew his hand from Hathor’s sweat-beaded head. Hathor gasped and shuddered. Her body fell limp. Her mouth fell open for breath. He forcibly held her before him, making her face his turbulent and cruel expression.
"Would you like to see more, my love?" he spat sarcastically. The words formed around his lengthened fangs in a hiss of ridicule. His gaze was fraught with the red of blood and anger. The words were like a slap across her face. Her eyes cleared and widened at his malicious tone. His fangs, like daggers, were unleashed as he spoke, darting dangerously in front of her gaze. "Does it not look enchanting? I could show you centuries of cruelty. Just say the word, and I will give you this gift of immortality. See then how much you think to love your vampire."
Hathor trembled, truly frightened of him for the first time. His face was contorted with pain. She could feel his sadness as surely as if it was hers. The mother’s pleasure still flowed inside of her -- a sick and twisted feeling that overwhelmed her heart with misery as she fought it. That someone could find such joy in the pain of others terrified Hathor. Tears streamed down her face, as she begged, "Stop. Please, stop it. I don’t want to be a killer. I don’t want to see anymore. I hate that you made me feel it."
The eyes of the children haunted her, as did the contentment of the mother’s sense of freedom. It shocked her. It made tears pool in her eyes. She loved Servaes for making the mother suffer before she died. She hated him for showing so much of his world to her. He gripped her tightly as she tried to wiggle free.
"Do they not excite you?" he inquired coldly. "Does the death not quicken your blood?"
"You have made your point, Marquis," she spat. The images he gave her swirled in her mind, confusing her thoughts.
His eyes narrowed lazily. His lips curling up in savagery, as he said, "You cannot love me. What you love is a dead man."
Hathor felt him leave her. She blinked slowly, falling back onto the bed. When she opened her eyes, she was alone. Servaes was gone. And she couldn’t help but wonder if he was right. Did she truly only love the human him? Or could she also love the vampire?
She saw the pain killing brought to him, how it hurt him each time even after hundreds of years. She felt how he rejected hurting children and the innocent. Every one of his victims had a dark secret. Whereas it wasn’t the ideal of a justice system, it made sense on a baser level. Hathor couldn’t blame him. But could she forgive him?
Shaking her head, she tore at her pillow in confusion. She was so lost. Maybe forgiveness wasn’t hers to give. She couldn’t give Servaes the redemption he sought. She didn’t know anything anymore, didn’t understand. Servaes surrounded her, marking her. She could taste him, smell him, feel him. God help her, she loved him.
Hathor fell asleep, her body too weakened from his malevolent gift to do much else. When she awoke, it was morning. The sun streamed in her window, casting the square shadows of the windowpanes across her naked contours.
Pushing herself up, she groaned. Her body felt as if she gave it a hard workout, the muscles in her limbs pulled so stiffly that each movement was like a stretch. And, deep inside, there was a throbbing ache where Servaes had touched her soul.
Swallowing insecurely, Hathor stood. She quickly slipped on some clothing--blue jeans and a T-shirt -- not bothering with her appearance. Servaes wouldn’t come to her now. A nervous terror gripped her as she stumbled her way down the long staircase and across the formal dining room. Stopping above the basement stairs, she froze.
Tears spilled from her eyes and she began to cry. Clutching the railing, she haltingly tripped her way down the steps. Her heart broke, the two pieces refusing to beat. Without him, she would never be whole. Her bare feet made no noise in the darkness. She cautiously switched on the light as she passed through the basement kitchen. Then, stopping at the door to his bedroom, she sniffed. He was gone. She felt it even before she pushed open the door.
Walking over to the bed, she stared at the smooth coverlet. She could detect the faint impression of where his coffin had been. In its place was a folded parchment. Automatically, her eyes went to the floor where his trunk had stood. It too was gone.
With shaking hands, she picked up the letter, wiping the tears off her cheeks. Her nose burned with the need to cry out. She hugged the parchment to her chest, shut off the light, and climbed up the stairs into the back yard. Then, crossing barefoot over the soft cushion of grass, she followed her feet to the fountain where he first met her in the gardens.
Sitting, she gazed at the frozen woman in stone, as the statue glanced behind her in worry. The sun caressed the sculpted details of her face and hands. Hathor took a deep breath. Lifting the letter, she unfolded it, noticing there was no wax seal as there had been before. Inside she recognized his writing, the fine scroll of an old quill.
Do not come after me, she read. Forget me if you can. Think of me as dead for that is what I am to you. Adieu, Servaes.
There were no more -- just those simple words. But how could she forget him? It would have been easier to forget her heart’s beating, to forget to take breath. The parchment fell from her fingers, blowing away with the breeze across the beautiful garden, kissed by sunlight. Hathor didn’t have the strength to stop it. She stared numbly at her fingers, calmly clutching at the air. The blood in her veins slowed. It was his blood inside her, given to her in passion. Her life was his. She was forever changed.
A grief so powerful welled within her. It flowed out from her like a silent scream, carried over on the wind. It reached out to him, damned him, cursed him, loved him, for it was he who had shown her the will of her heart. It was he who had shown her a destiny so bittersweet that it soured. He had shown her the only thing her heart could ever want.
Hathor realized with a sudden blast of insight that she didn’t care if he turned her into the creature he was. If she were with him, it would be worth it. She would live in darkness, drink of blood. She would find a way to endure it, because she would be with him. That is what fate held for her. Her heart could take nothing else.
As the pain of her broke and spilled forth over the distance of earth and time, as she fell to the ground in weeping sobs that racked her body until she could no longer move, it was not Servaes who caught her scent or her pain. It was a force much older, much darker. It was a force buried deep behind rock and earth, who had been waiting patiently to see what would happen between the two lovers. And, within this invincible force, an unfeeling heart thumped just once.
Chapter Sixteen
Island of Delos, Cyclades
The deep waters of the southern Aegean Sea surrounded the ancient island of Delos. Its old Greek ruins buried secrets of the past beneath the island’s surface. No humans were allowed to stay or live on the island. The vampires willed it so.
The secret society of humans aware of the dark presence decreed the island a place of archeological significance. When a tourist would go missing, lost in the depths of the sea, these officials would declare the loss an accident.
On the island, tourists would snap their pictures by day, gazing at the ancient ruins -- the fallen columns, the old stone lions whose faces were eaten away by time. But at night, the island was home to the small vampiric tribe of Vrykolatios who roamed it freely, protecting the secrets of the vampire past and feeding off the blood of neighboring islanders.
Archaic stone floors -- mosaics of the past depicting Gods turned myths -- were a part of the ruins. The vivid patterns were still visible after thousands of years of sun and storm. This is where Jirí found himself, standing by a broken column, staring down at the circular design so familiar and old to him.
Leaning over, he pushed a combination of mosaic pieces, first a weathered red, a black, a faded green. The mosaic didn’t move. Then, going back to his broken column, he lifted the old rock easily with one hand. Before his eyes the centerpiece of the floor spun with a great deal of du
st flying about.
Jirí placed the column just like he found it. Then, walking over the stone, he jumped into the vaulted floor. He fell down easily, through a tunnel of spider webs and dust that opened into an oblong chamber until finally landing in the depths of the earth.
As his feet touched the marble floor, fitting neatly in his tribe’s circular symbol, the opening above his head sealed shut with a thud. Dust floated down around him. He lifted his fingers to brush it from the shoulders of his floor-length jacket.
Folding his hands neatly in front of him, he stood tall as if the descent took no effort, when if fact it hadn’t. Smiling politely, he met the eyes of the others gathered, nodding his head to all around. Making his way to the large stone table, a circle in shape with a large hollow center, he took his seat amongst the tribal council.
The council hall was made of carved stone. The floors were of gray marble slats, with a black impression of the tribal symbols behind each of the eight chairs. Colorful mosaics decorated the walls depicting the bites of vampires, legendary and real. Around the doors hung dark red draperies that framed the thick old wood and hid them from view.
The round table dominated the room, its legs and edges carved with old design, and in front of each chair the symbol of the tribe. In the middle of the unbroken circle was a hollow. The floor sunk a few feet below the table’s legs with a short pedestal in the direct center holding a lighted torch for illumination. The fire cast the tribal elder’s pale faces with ghoulish contrast. High-backed chairs surround the table in eight spots, each occupied now that Jirí took his seat.
"Jirí of the Moroi," acknowledged the weathered voice of the Drauger leader, Ragnhild. His old blue eyes glowed slightly yellow from his handsome Nordic face. He had the look of a Viking warrior with his long, braided hair and trim beard. He was dressed simply in breeches and a tunic shirt. "Has Vladamir not risen from his rest to take his rightful place in the chair?"
Redeemer of Shadows Page 23