"The woman in the dream," she persisted. "The woman who was lying there, pleading on the floor."
Silence hung like death.
The candles flickered softly, and their flames were the only sound.
Jesse didn't look at her.
"My sister," he said.
Olivia stared, a thousand dark emotions coursing through her. She couldn't speak, she could only watch the slow, slow shake of his head.
"We didn't know. She was Father's child by a mistress, and when her mother died, Father brought her here as his ward. That's why Skyler and I were
BLOOD RO OT S
forbidden to take an interest in her. Only we didn't know. Only Yoly. Only Yoly knew."
"How?" Olivia's voice was trembling. "How did she know?"
"Because she helped deliver Suzanne the night she was born. Just like she helped deliver us. Suzanne's mother lived in town, so Father took Yoly to her in secret. He was always very discreet about his affairs. He sent the woman and her child off to France, and Suzanne attended all the best schools."
"But ... you fell in love with her?"
A slight stirring of his shoulders. She thought he might have sighed.
"I thought she was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen. I was totally enchanted. Unknown to me, she was also encouraging Skyler—which, as you must realize by now, doesn't require much effort. We met secretly so no one would know. I always had the lady's virtue at heart, but I found out later that her relationship with Skyler was very different."
Olivia stared down at him, shaking her head. A slow numbness was crawling all through her.
"But you loved her?"
A nod. "Yes. Very much."
"And she must have loved you, too. She went to Mathilde and asked that yours and Skyler's lives be spared during the War."
"Mathilde's magic was strong and dangerous. None of the other slaves ever crossed her—they were all too afraid of her. When Suzanne went to Mathilde for help, she didn't know what she was getting into."
"She hated Suzanne, didn't she?"
Another nod. "Because of Skyler. She was insanely jealous of him. And there didn't seem to be a woman, black or white, who could ever resist his charms."
Olivia felt a faint flush of color across her cheeks. As if someone else had blushed. Some other woman she might have known at some other time.
"But the bargain was never actually made?"
"Mathilde wanted to work in the house. To be Suzanne's personal maid and have special privileges none of the other slaves had except for Yoly. And she wanted Skyler, of course."
"But Suzanne never agreed?"
"I believe she would have promised Mathilde anything to save our lives. But there was never time to formalize the agreement. And in the meantime Suzanne had made other plans for Mathilde."
Olivia nodded slowly. "She was going to send her away. To a family she knew in France. So Mathilde wouldn't be any trouble to her anymore."
"We didn't know anything about it." Jesse pressed one hand wearily to his eyes. "If we had, we'd never have allowed it. Skyler would never have agreed."
"And Mathilde found out. . ."
"Yes. By accident that very night. The same night that everything happened." Jesse paused, an edge of sadness, of bitterness in his voice. He cleared his throat and went on slowly. "Skyler and I had arrived at the house just that afternoon. I'd been hurt—a bayonet wound in the chest—and they'd sent me home to recuperate. I was still in shock—I didn't know anything, I didn't remember anything. Skyler got special permission to bring me here, and then he was due back at camp as soon as he'd rested."
"He went to Mathilde that night, didn't he?"
Jesse nodded. "He always went to Mathilde. I believe his plan was to sleep there part of the night and then to come back to Suzanne after Yoly relieved
her at midnight. Of course Suzanne didn't know—she and Yoly were taking turns sitting by my bed, and she thought Skyler had gone into town to be with friends."
Jesse ran one hand slowly over the back of his neck, as if the weight of all the memories was too heavy a burden.
"The storm was so fierce that night. I remember shouting, sitting up in bed, and the sky exploding and the roar of the wind. I was delirious—I thought I was in battle again, the cannons and the guns and the screams of dying men—I thought I heard Skyler, only I couldn't find him, and I ran . . ."
"So that's why you were in the cemetery. Because you ran away, and Suzanne went after you."
He lifted his head and nodded slowly. Olivia stared full into his deep, sad eyes.
"I didn't know where I was going . . . what I was doing ... I just ran and ran ... It was so dark, and it was already flooding, and I kept falling down in the water. The next thing I knew I was on the ground, and someone was trying to lift me. I thought it was Skyler, but I couldn't see his face."
"Suzanne was trying to get you out of the rain. Trying to get you into the mausoleum."
"I was fighting her, and she was trying to drag me inside. I could hear someone crying, and then someone was wiping my face . . . kissing my face .. ."
Olivia turned her head away. For a long moment Jesse said nothing.
"She was drying me off," he whispered. "Holding me. Trying to get me warm. She was . . . taking off my wet clothes . . ."
Silence fell again. It was Olivia who gently broke it.
"Skyler saw her, didn't he? On his way back to the
house. He saw Suzanne running, and he followed her to the cemetery."
Jesse's voice was tight. "He chased after her through the gardens . . . but by the time he found her . . ."
"You and Suzanne were making love," Olivia whispered.
For a long, long moment Jesse stared at the floor. When he finally met Olivia's eyes again, his own were full of pain.
"He was standing there ... he was so hurt. . . just staring at us . . . just staring . . ."
Olivia could feel her head shaking slowly . . . denying what was happening . . . denying what she was hearing, but Jesse kept on.
"And I saw the way he looked at me ... as if I'd betrayed him ... as if we both had. And then I realized Suzanne was looking at me, right into my eyes, and I was nodding, yes, just ever so slightly, yes, and then she was holding out her arms to him. She held out her arms to Skyler, and he came to us . . ."
Jesse's voice trailed off. He stared long and hard into his memories, as if he'd forgotten Olivia was even there.
"We never heard Mathilde," he murmured. "We didn't know she was there. We didn't know she'd gone to the house before that looking for Skyler. We didn't know about Suzanne's letter or that it had fallen out of her dressing gown, or that Mathilde had found it on the bedroom floor."
Olivia closed her eyes. She pressed her hands to her temples, and her own voice sounded faraway. "And when Yoly came in to relieve Suzanne, all she found was Mathilde. She got scared that something had
happened to Jesse, and when Mathilde ran out of the house, Yoly followed, too."
Jesse gave a humorless laugh, and it echoed eerily through the church.
"A comedy of errors. The scene was set."
And Olivia could see the scene as clearly as if she were there in the mausoleum again—the shadows writhing on the floor—the tangle of bodies—the panicky woman . . . She reached out and touched the wall beside her, knowing that if she didn't hang on to something, she would swoon and fall.
"We were on the floor between the vaults." Jesse hesitated . . . swallowed hard. "I heard Suzanne cry out, she said someone was there, someone was watching—but I thought it was just the shadows—I didn't believe her—it didn't seem real—"
"Don't," Olivia murmured. "I don't want to hear—"
"Suzanne screamed at us not to touch her, to let her go, but we didn't realize —neither of us saw Mathilde until she threw herself on top of Skyler and me—"
/ am not hearing this . . . this is not happening . . .
"We wrestled with her on the floor, a
nd she was screaming and cursing at us, hitting us and smearing something on our faces, in our mouths, and Suzanne kept crying, and we couldn't see, it was so dark, everything was confused, we couldn't do anything—"
He leaned forward now . . . put his hands up to his head. His brow furrowed in pain.
"Mathilde was screaming and screaming, and I could taste blood, I could smell blood, and there was raw meat in my mouth, down my throat—we were trying to get away from her, trying to keep her away from Suzanne—" His hands crushed against his
temples, against his past. "Ill never forget her words. The three things she said. I still hear them now, and Fll hear them forever."
"No," Olivia begged him, "no, please don't. .."
" 'We will feed off each other/ " Jesse's eyes clouded and dimmed. " 'You will love her only to lose her, always.'" He caught his breath slowly, and then his voice trembled. " 'It will always be ... as it is now.'"
Olivia lowered her head. Aching tears welled up in her eyes, in her throat, and it was several moments before she could face him. Jesse sat very still. When he spoke again, he sounded strangely empty.
"I remember Yoly screaming, too. What have you done, she kept saying, what have you done—she's your sister . . ."
Olivia squeezed her eyes shut once more. She felt cold and drained, and it was an effort just to speak.
"Yoly got caught in the magic," she mumbled.
"Yes. When she tried to pull Mathilde off of us, Mathilde attacked her, too."
Olivia stared at the candles, at the altar, at the pale, dazed glimmer in Jesse's eyes.
"The wind," Jesse whispered. "I remember the wind ... icy cold in the hot, hot night. .. whirling through the mausoleum at the very moment Mathilde made her magic. And I remember thinking this can't be happening, this can't be happening to me . . . and how everything began to fade . . . faces and voices and feelings and sounds . . . and then a long, long nothingness ..."
"Were you unconscious?" Olivia whispered. "Did you sleep?"
Jesse shook his head in a kind of wonder. "I don't know. None of us knows. I only remember being
awake, yet not awake, aware yet frighteningly paralyzed. And that afterward the whole thing seemed like a dream ... all of it some horrible nightmare. I suddenly saw Skyler and Mathilde beside me and Yoly standing in the open door. I couldn't find Suzanne, so I ran outside. There was a strange, thick fog, and it seemed to take forever to get back to the house. But when we finally got there, Suzanne was dancing in the ballroom . . . dancing around and around . . . and everyone else was dead."
"Dead!" Olivia's eyes widened, shocked.
"Father . . . the slaves . . . everyone. In the cabins
... in the house ... in the fields. And this terrible
stillness . . . the deep, deep fog. Like . . . something
that could never really exist. . ." His voice trailed
away. He shook his head hopelessly.
Olivia stared at him in horror as he went on.
"It didn't happen right away . . . the knowing. It was gradual . . . over a long, long period of time. We buried our dead, and we never again saw anyone we knew. After what we'd done that night, how could we ever face anybody? Skyler and I stayed and waited for the army to come after us, to arrest us for desertion, but they never did. No one came. Not neighbors. Not friends. As if our world here had become invisible . . . unreachable. Completely forgotten. Suzanne went totally mad. We stayed and we cared for her, and Yoly delivered her baby, and we loved Suzanne until she died. And then . . . only then through those years . . . did we finally realize just what Mathilde's magic had meant."
An ironic smile curled the corners of his mouth. It frightened Olivia to see it there on his face.
"We watched Suzanne grow old . . . but we never
grew old with her. We watched her wither . . . and we watched her die . . . and Skyler and I, Mathilde and Yoly, we all stayed behind."
His voice dropped, his hands opening as though he longed to grasp something he could never have.
"Do you know what it feels like, to hurt yourself and bleed, except within minutes it's as if nothing had ever happened? Wounds perfectly healed. Broken bones mended. Or to try and leave this one place you've lived your whole, long life, or to try and eat food that normal people eat, and get so violently sick in both cases that you pray to die . . . only you can't. . r
He gazed off into the darkness, his face softly troubled.
"We can never leave the plantation again. We can't live without human flesh . . . but we can't die."
Olivia felt her stomach lurch . . . the head in the cauldron . . . the flavor in her food that she could never identify. . . the marks on her thigh and on Helen's arms . . .
"But Skyler will always have Mathilde. And the Devereaux line will always be ensured through its female offspring . . . again and again and again. And Yoly will always be here to deliver the Devereaux daughters . . . and raise them into gentlewomen . . . and bury them when they're finally old . . ."
His voice trailed off. He stared long into the past, and then he roused himself with an effort and gave Olivia a slow, sidelong glance.
"You dreamed my dreams," he said to her, but his voice was strangely empty, strangely void of emotion or caring or any of the other things she had believed about him. "You healed my wounds .. . you had the visions ..."
Olivia was backing away from him, backing into the throbbing shadows, shaking her head slowly, fearfully, from side to side.
"Only one person would be capable of that," Jesse said, and he was standing up now, staring at her, coming toward her through the flickering, distorted darkness. "Only the bloodroot. Only the new mistress of Devereaux House."
"No!" she screamed at him. "No, I don't believe you! You can't be here—not after all this time—you can't be real—"
"There's no name for what we are," Jesse said quietly, sadly, and he was still coming, so calm and resigned, just like the pictures in Devereaux House, the portraits over a hundred years old . . .
"Only a dream!" Olivia screamed again, and the shadows were around her now, thick and confusing, and she couldn't see anymore, couldn't see his face, or which way to go, or where she was— "Only a dream! Only in my mind—dear God, what is this!"
And she felt the arms go around her from behind, the lips blazing a trail of ice-cold fire down her neck, the tongue slowly tasting her shoulder, and she felt her own mortality shudder through her veins, the panic and pain and despair of her whole life swell up around her in hopeless waves and shatter at the sound of Skyler's deep laugh . . .
"This is real," he said. "Welcome to the family."
BLOOD ROO TS
shaking her head, remembering. "Your mama wasn't strong like you."
"Passionate like you." Skyler smiled.
"Jesse!" she sobbed. "Please! They're going to kill me! They're going to—"
"Love you."
Miss Rose took Olivia's face tenderly between her thin hands, her faded blue eyes so kind, so knowing.
"Kill you? Why, no, child, no ... we need your life."
"No," Olivia whispered, and she tried to twist free, but Skyler only held her tighter, effortlessly, to his body. And she could feel him wanting her, the slow tightening of his muscles, and she moved against him, helplessly, in her fear, in her desperation.
"My time is over," Miss Rose murmured. "At last I can die in peace knowing you will take my place as mistress of Devereaux House. You will have nothing to fear . . . you will be protected and revered as I have been ... as is due your station . . ."
The room was spinning, faces spinning, distorting all about her. She felt her shoulders drawn back against Skyler's chest, she felt his chin resting lightly on her bare shoulder. With one hand he reached around her and slowly untied the ribbon on her blouse. She could smell warm, rich blood. . . exciting . . . enticing . . .
"You will perpetuate our bloodline," Miss Rose was saying, but her voice sounded faint and faraway. "You will save u
s from extinction."
And Olivia could see Mathilde now, strange, exotic eyes reflecting the candlelight, mouth drawn into a satisfied smile. And they were all watching her—all of them watching, all of them waiting, and Skyler's deft
fingers at the front of her blouse, working it open, Jesse's half-reluctant nod—
"No!" Olivia screamed, "What are you doing to me!"
All of them watching, Skyler's lips at the pulse of her throat, blouse pulling away from her breasts, Skyler's hand slipping inside, Jesse's eyes with a strange, soft fire—
"Not here," Miss Rose said. "It must be done right. Take her to the cemetery."
"No!" Olivia shrieked. "OK God, help me!"
There is no God, no one to help me, no one to ever help me, this is why I'm special, what I'm being saved for, this fate, this destiny —
Through a blur of terror she felt hands grabbing her, holding her, carrying her through the woods and the rain and the dark foggy morning. She kicked and fought, vaguely aware of water flowing, and sky flowing, and her own hot blood flowing, flowing, and suddenly she saw the mausoleum standing open before her.
Candles flickered within, softly illuminating the fog that swirled through the doorway, that oozed restlessly into deep, dank corners.
She could see the crumbling vaults lying along the floor now ... the rows of sealed crypts faded into the walls, their dead shut away forever .. .
And as Olivia stared groggily through the shadows, she could also see the narrow space ahead of her upon the floor . . . the narrow aisle wedged there among the slithering shadows, waiting there between the huge stone sepulchres . . .
"Help me—Jesse—don't let them do this to me—"
And she could hear the huge door groaning shut
behind her as hands pushed her forward—as the world grew small and distant and unreachable and unreal. ..
"Don't let them do this to me!Don't let them touch me!"
Olivia clawed at the walls, trying to hang on, but her hands were torn free, and she pitched forward, screaming, as someone shoved her down onto the floor. I'm being buried alive — buried alive —and it was like a grave, like being underground, small and dark and close, and the damp, foul smell of the dead, the long silent sound of the dead . ..
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