“You are testing my patience,” he said between clenched teeth, his grip tightening on her jaw.
“No, not a mosquito,” she said, her voice frosting over with contempt. “They at least have wings. You’re more of a louse, I’d say, or perhaps a bedbug, scuttling about in the dark, antennae twitching at the scent of blood…”
He cuffed her, whipping his palm hard across her face, which struck the statue with a dull crack of skull against stone. “Blöde Fotze,” he spat out. “Dumpfbacke. You asked for that.”
“Ah, yes,” she said as she looked up at him, ugly abrasions marring her forehead and cheek. “That’s what bullies always tell themselves, especially bullies who like to hit women. If this is the kind of treatment I can expect from you, why on earth would I want to spend the rest of eternity at your side?”
“Things will be different after you’ve gone through the change,” he said, “very different. You’ll be like me. We’ll understand each other. We’ll be part of each other, sharing everything—our bodies, our prey, our very souls.”
“I’ll get to share my soul with the likes of you?” she asked with a little smirk that made Turek’s hackles quiver. “That can’t honestly be your best argument.”
Yet, to Turek’s dismay, it was. The enticement he usually employed to woo converts—immortality—was only effective with humans and non-immortal follets. “I’d expected some resistance on your part,” he said. “You can’t see any benefit to going through the change, but that’s only because you don’t understand our way of life, the lust for blood, the exultation of the hunt, the thrill of sinking your fangs into warm human flesh. And, of course, you care nothing for me—yet. But you will. Once you’re a vampyre yourself, you’ll come to understand me—dare I say, even hold me in the same esteem in which I hold you—and you’ll thank me for turning you.”
“You can’t turn me against my will,” she said. “And I assure you, there is no argument powerful enough to convince me to become what you are. I will never, ever taste a drop of your blood, Turek, and there is no way you can force me to do so. You can drain every ounce of my blood—I’ll make more. You can beat me to a pulp—I’ll recover.”
Turek smiled as he reached into the right-hand pocket of his robe and pulled out the squarish brown bottle he’d pinched from Will Hogarth’s painting supplies before following Lili to the bathhouse.
“What is that?” she asked warily.
He uncorked the bottle and held it under her nose; she flinched.
“Spirits of turpentine,” he said, inhaling from the bottle as if it were perfume. “I’m actually rather fond of the aroma—though I can appreciate your distaste for it. As one also susceptible to fire, I understand your aversion to combustible substances.”
“An ugly threat,” she said in a thin, wavering voice, “and a curious one, coming from someone who claims to hold me in esteem. You say we’re two of a kind, that we belong together, that you want to spend the rest of eternity with me.”
“And so I do,” he said. “Vampyres are creatures of passion—but also of ferocious pride. If, as you insist, I can’t have you, then I shall see to it no one else ever will.”
Setting the bottle down, Turek withdrew from his left-hand pocket the petite, ornamental leg irons crafted to match Lili’s wrist cuffs. She kicked and thrashed, but she was no match for his strength; in short order, he had her feet tethered to the statue’s ankle torques. He lifted the hammered brass bowl from the fire pit and set it on the platform, to the side of where Lili stood, then built a fire so high that it would burn like the devil when he lit it.
If he lit it, for of course he was hopeful that the threat of a fiery demise would prompt Lili to agree to undergo conversion. Should she persist in refusing, however, he would burn her to ashes.
Not that he was particularly eager to do so—she was, after all, an exceptional example of her race, and exquisitely beautiful—but far better that she should be destroyed than to spend the rest of her long, perhaps even infinite, existence laughing at the “bloodsucking insect” who’d had her in his clutches only to weaken and let her go.
Lili had observed these sinister preparations with commendable stoicism. It was all feigned, of course—the color had leached from her face—but that only made her display of composure more remarkable.
Retrieving her veil from the altar where he’d tossed it earlier, Turek held it wadded up over the firewood-filled brazier, doused it with turpentine, shook it out, and wrapped it around Lili’s legs and torso. Enveloped by the volatile solvent and its ominous reek, she began trembling.
Her trembles turned to shudders, racking her head to toe, when he wrested one of the torches from its hole in the bedrock and brought it close.
“Having second thoughts, liebling?” he asked softly. “There is no shame in entertaining a change of heart, especially when one’s life is at stake. No one knows that better than I.”
Lili shrank back from the torch, its flames sputtering in her huge, dark eyes.
Turek lowered the torch to the fire he’d prepared, which ignited with a whump, thanks to its spattering of turpentine. In no time, roaring flames leapt from the brazier, which stood less than a foot from Lili in her turpentine-soaked veil. The fire emanated a hellish heat, raising a sheen of sweat on her pallid face.
Replacing the torch, Turek retrieved the poker, hooking it around the handle of the brazier that was on the far side of Lili so as to pull it away from her a bit. “Wouldn’t do to have a spark landing on you just as you’re reconsidering,” he said. “You’d go up like a torch yourself.”
He stepped up onto the platform and pricked a fresh vein, this one in his left wrist. Holding it up for Lili to see the blood seeping from the tiny punctures, he said, “One drop, and you will live forever as one of my kind. Refuse this offer, and I shall move that brazier right in front of you and watch you burn to death, shrieking in agony. When the flames ebb, I shall replenish the wood. There is plenty, as you can see, to keep this fire raging all night, and that’s long enough to reduce you to cinders. Surely any fate is preferable to that.”
“Nay, there’s a worse one by far, and that would be to spend eternity as a murderous little maggot like you.”
With a surly thrust to his jaw, he said, “There is a limit to my patience, Lili, and you have reached it. Consider this my final invitation—and your final opportunity to spare yourself from the flames.” Bringing his wrist very close to her mouth, he said, “One drop. One flick of the tongue…”
She raised her gaze to his and, still shaking like a rabbit, said, “Go to Hell.”
“Lili, Lili…” Turek sighed in exasperation, anger, and genuine sorrow. Hooking the poker around the brazier’s other handle, the one closest to Lili, he said, “I daresay you shall be there long before I am.”
Ten
GO TO my chamber in the cave,” Darius told Elic as he laid Charlotte on the mattress—facedown, because her back was, if not flayed, damn close to it. The wounds were open, bloody, horrific. “I’ve got some hartshorn drops on the shelf with my medicines. Bring that and a jar of salve.”
“Which salve? You’ve got—”
“The green one,” Darius said, picking one at random as he pulled the blanket up to Charlotte’s waist. It didn’t matter which he brought; the point was to get Elic out of here while he healed these bloody awful wounds. “Go.”
“Should…should I bring back some sort of bandaging, or—”
“Bring back whatever the hell you want, just go!”
As soon as Darius heard the door slam shut, he drew in a calming breath to clear his mind, and contemplated the gashes on Charlotte’s back. He’d done this to her, brutalized her in a bewildering black rage that had vanished the moment he’d realized the damage he’d wreaked. She’d fainted from shock and pain, and was still unconscious, which was all for the good. Healing those who were awake and aware provoked too many awkward questions.
Darius held his hands over the lowe
r part of Charlotte’s back, about an inch from her lacerated flesh, closed his eyes, and focused all his mental faculties. He began to tremble as his own energy, his own curative life force, funneled into Charlotte, knitting the torn flesh, closing the ghastly wounds. His hands grew warm, then hot, shaking as he strove to undo the terrible wrong he’d done to this complicated, confused woman who’d had the poor fortune to stumble upon the likes of him in this cellar full of instruments of torment. Slowly he moved his hands upward over her back, feeling the damage repair itself, the skin grow together strong and smooth.
He opened his eyes, drained and shivering but gratified to see that the lacerations he’d inflicted had all but disappeared, leaving only a network of faint pink streaks, like mild burns. Those would fade over the course of the next few days, leaving her whole and perfect once more.
Elic, despite their long acquaintance, knew nothing of Darius’s ability to heal. Nor did Inigo, nor Madame des Ombres, nor any of her predecessors. If they’d given it any real thought, they might have suspected, given his compulsion to turn the wishes and desires of humans into reality. What more profound desire could there be, when one was sick or injured, than to be made well again? There wasn’t a human alive who wouldn’t take advantage of such a talent, for their loved ones if not for themselves, as Darius had learned all too well a long time ago. Every healing tapped into his own vital humors, leaving him exhausted, sometimes cripplingly so. He’d even been known to lapse into a coma, if the injury or illness was exceptionally severe. Incessant, indiscriminate healing, such as had once been forced upon him, left him a depleted husk in short order. Worse, it interfered with the natural balance of life and death, spawning myriad treacherous repercussions.
Having journeyed halfway around the world to escape those who would exploit his healing powers, Darius was loath to reveal them to anyone, even those closest to him. Although he tended to avoid attachments to humans in the interest of self-preservation, Elic and Inigo did not. They befriended people quite liberally, both here at Grotte Cachée and in the course of their occasional travels—always without Darius, who didn’t dare risk the possibility of physical contact with humans. If Darius’s fellow follets knew that he could erase the suffering of those they cared about, they would inevitably pressure him to do so. “Just this one exception,” they would implore. And then would come another exception, and another, and yet another. Those he healed, even if they were sworn to secrecy, would eventually send their own friends and family to Grotte Cachée to be healed by him…and so it would all begin again.
Darius drew the blanket up to Charlotte’s shoulders and stroked her hair off her face with a tremulous hand, saying her name. She stirred, murmuring something he couldn’t make out.
He reclined on his side next to her, too fatigued to sit up anymore. “How are you feeling?”
She squinted her eyes open. “Darius? Wh-what…?” Her expression shifted from bafflement to fear as she remembered what had happened, what he’d done to her. She shrank away from him, flinching when he closed a hand over her shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he said earnestly. “I’m so sorry, Charlotte. I don’t know what…” He shook his head, grimacing, for of course he did know what had come over him. It was the same thing that came over him every time he suffered passing contact with a human, the gradual displacement of his own identity with a new, unfamiliar, and entirely unpredictable Darius—not that it always ended with such savagery, thank God.
She was staring at him, as if wondering how to react to an apology from a man who’d just torn up her back with a chain whip.
“Forgive me,” he said. “Or don’t forgive me, but please know that I didn’t mean to hurt you, not like that. I promise nothing like that will happen again.”
She reached around beneath the blanket to touch her back, frowning in confusion. “I thought…It felt…”
“You’ll be fine,” he said.
“Wh-where is Elic?”
“I sent him back to the cave for some tonic and salve.”
“The cave?”
“It’s where I live, as a sort of permanent houseguest of Madame des Ombres.”
“You live in the cave?”
It felt good to smile. “A suitable abode for a bear such as I, wouldn’t you say?”
“Madame won’t give you a room in the castle?”
“I prefer the cave for its privacy,” he said. “I like being alone, just dusty old me and my dusty old books.”
“Books?”
“They’re a weakness of mine. I’ve been gathering them for cen—for years.”
“What kind of books?”
He shrugged as he stroked her arm over the blanket. “There are a number of medical treatises, some very old. The healing arts are a special interest of mine. Quite a bit of history, philosophy, religion, some fiction—whatever appeals to my various interests.” With a devilish grin, he said, “I’ve got quite a few volumes of erotica, dating back to the ancient Greeks and Romans.”
“Indeed.” She rolled onto her side, gathering the blanket around herself. “My favorite of that era would be the verses of Catullus. So witty and vigorous. I never tire of reading them.”
“Which translation?”
“The original Latin, actually.” Charlotte caught his eye with a slyly sweet smile.
Darius ducked his head and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m a blockhead.”
Charlotte laughed, happily and carelessly. Darius stared at her, astonished not only by this display of good spirits, after all they’d been through, but by how girlishly pretty it made her.
She said, “I don’t suppose it will surprise you that I, myself, have amassed a rather shamefully vast collection of bawdy literature. Have you gotten yourself a copy of Fanny Hill yet?”
He shook his head with a quizzical frown, not having heard of it.
“Oh, but you must!” Pushing herself up onto an elbow, she said, “It’s an entire novel of the most delicious smut, written by some poor bloke in debtor’s prison who’s trying to earn enough money to free himself. Do snag yourself a copy before the English Church manages to get it banned. I hear they’re trying.”
“I shall write to my dealer in London on the morrow. I’ve learned one mustn’t hesitate about these things. I did manage to acquire the complete works of Sappho before the Church burned her writings.”
“You must be older than you look, then,” observed Charlotte with a chuckle. “Weren’t those burned in the Middle Ages?”
Forcing a little laugh, Darius said, “I meant they were published before the burnings.” Little lies, he thought. Even his most innocuous encounters with humans were buttressed with a framework of little lies, insignificant individually, but onerous when taken together. “I was lucky to get the Sappho. Some books that were censored are virtually lost.”
“Aretino’s Postures,” she said.
“Precisely. The most famous—or infamous—erotic work in European history, and yet I’ve never been able to get my hands on a copy. What I wouldn’t give for a first edition.”
Charlotte studied his eyes for a moment, looked down, picked at the blanket. She seemed about to say something, but hesitated, as if rethinking it. Finally she said, “You…you’re not at all the man I’d thought you were when…I first came down here.”
“I wasn’t myself,” he said quietly, stroking a stray tendril of hair off her forehead. “You seem different, as well.”
“Because you realize I’m not some illiterate little hoyden?” she asked with a smile. “That I am, in fact, a rather erudite little hoyden?”
“I confess, it didn’t occur to me that there was much of anything beneath your highly polished, if somewhat brittle surface—not even a past. I, er, I apologize for making you talk about your son. That was callous of me. I knew you didn’t want to drag motherhood and all that down into this den of sin—why would you? I’m sure you’re an excellent mother, very loving. What I said about him being inconvenient, an
d your packing him off to boarding school—”
“Nat isn’t in boarding school,” she said in a soft, strained voice, her gaze on the mattress.
“Ah. Well, it was never any of my—”
“He died five years ago.”
“Oh.” Darius moved closer, gathering her in his arms and tucking her head against his chest. “I’m sorry, Charlotte. God, so sorry,” he added, sick at the memory of how he’d taunted her about her son.
“I killed him,” she said, “the same as if I’d thrown him under those carriage wheels myself.”
“I…I’m sure you didn’t—”
“I did,” she said into his chest. “I don’t why I’m telling you. I’ve never told anybody. You might think I’m immune to shame, someone like me, but this…It’s hard enough to live with, much less talk about.”
And yet, Darius realized, because she was curled in his embrace and couldn’t hide her raw need, she felt compelled to talk about it now. To him. This, then—the part she’d played in her son’s death—was the sin for which Charlotte had sought punishment at his hands, however dimly she recognized it. A doomed endeavor, of course, but perhaps not completely futile if it impelled her, for the first time in five years, to want to unburden herself.
“Tell me,” he said.
She was silent for so long that he thought perhaps she’d had second thoughts, but then she said, very softly, “Somerhurst—my husband—he…he didn’t want me after Nat came. Didn’t want me in his bed, I mean. He said now that I was a mother, he didn’t see me the same way. For the longest time, I tried to change his mind. I tried to be pretty, alluring. I stole in to his bed one night. He bloodied my nose, called me a hussy.”
Darius let out a little huff of disgust.
“After that”—she lifted her shoulders—“he spent most of his time in London and left me to the estate in Cambridgeshire. He had no interest in his son, except as an heir—avoided him when he could, and ignored him when he was forced into his presence. He had his whores and his mistresses, and I had Nat. I had the better end of the bargain, to my way of thinking. I adored Nat, he was the world to me. He was a real boy, daring, adventurous, but a cuddler, too. He—” Her voice cracked.
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