I inhaled the aroma. “Mmmm. English or Swiss?”
She smiled. “Dutch, actually. It’s made with a new process. Have a taste.”
She handed me the cup and saucer and I took it, being very careful not to touch her in any way as I did so. I blew across the rim of the cup, watching her, and waited as she poured another for herself. Taking a sip, I let the drink roll around on my tongue before I swallowed.
“Dear Goddess, this has to be the best chocolate I’ve ever tasted.”
“Isn’t it lovely? I’ll package some up for you when your work here is done.”
I thanked her. She took an appreciative sip herself then settled against one end of the couch. I settled against the other and we regarded each other over the white-and-gold Sevres cups while I waited for her to open the conversation.
“I hear that I owe you a large debt, Miss Craven. MacLeod tells me that you saved my life this morning.”
I shook my head. “It would please me if you would call me Cin,” I said. “And you owe me nothing, Highness, truly. I’m just glad that we found you before the dawn did.”
“As am I,” she replied.
“Are you feeling better?” I asked.
“Whatever is ailing me, it comes and goes. I assure you that I am perfectly lucid at the moment.” She took a long sip of her chocolate, and I had to repress the urge to shift uncomfortably under her gaze. “So tell me, did you save me just so that you and Devlin can kill me later, or lock me up in Castle Tara like a madwoman?”
I was silent for a moment and then said, truthfully, “I don’t know yet.”
She laughed. “Well, I thank you for being honest, anyway. It gives me hope that you’ll keep an open mind. I know Devlin and Justine, and I know them to be fair. I have faith that you’ll catch whoever is trying to make me look guilty of these murders. I can’t believe anyone truly imagines that I’m running around Edinburgh killing people and selling their bodies. It’s ridiculous.”
I didn’t tell her that we had all pretty much come to the same conclusion. I was hoping that if she was motivated to prove her innocence, then she might let something slip that could actually be useful to us.
“I’m happy to have help in figuring this out, though,” she said. “It’s obvious from what happened last night that whoever is responsible is working some nasty magic against me.”
“You think someone is working magic against you?” I asked.
“I’ve been losing time, a few hours here and there at first, now sometimes it’s days. Yesterday, for example—one minute I’m sitting in that chair in front of the fire, trying to make it through Mrs. Radcliffe’s Gaston de Blondeville, and the next I’m chained to the gazebo on the roof, apparently. I don’t even remember being there.”
“So you don’t recall seeing or hearing anything unusual while you were reading? Even if it seems unimportant, it might be helpful.”
She shook her head. “No, nothing.”
Well, that was disheartening. Now we had someone who could not only work magic but also defy a vampire’s keen sense of hearing.
“What about food or drink?” I asked. “Did you have anything to eat or drink just prior to … the incident?”
She narrowed her eyes. “You think someone drugged me?”
I shrugged. “Or managed to slip a magic potion into your food.”
I looked down at my cup of chocolate, and she looked at hers. Marrakesh gingerly set hers down on the tray, and I did the same with mine. It clattered more than I would have liked. My mind flashed on the image of Hashim bent over the tray when we came in, of the guilty look on his face when he stood up. My stomach clenched and I had to tear my gaze away from the silver teapot when Marrakesh answered.
“No,” she said, “I hadn’t had anything since Khalid brought a young man to me at about nine o’clock.”
“Do you have regular people that you drink from?” I asked. It wasn’t uncommon for vampires to have veritable harems of willing donors. Many vamps didn’t like to drink from strangers, and I’d found that the vampires of the higher classes, regents and their courts, usually didn’t go out and hunt. They had people who brought their meals to them. Some habits even death doesn’t change.
Marrakesh surprised me, though. “No,” she said. “Khalid brings MacLeod and me someone fresh every night. It’s too easy for humans to get addicted to feeding us, no matter how willing they think they are.”
She was right. Drinking blood from a human is a very sensual thing, whether you wish it to be or not. It’s why most vampires will generally only drink from the opposite sex, unless their sexual tastes run to the same gender to begin with. The process can be painful, it can be downright erotic, or the human can walk away without remembering a thing. It all depends on what degree of control the vampire doing the drinking wields. To do it painlessly, or with pleasure, you have to bespell them. It’s a form of mind control that vampires acquire with age. Often a human who has been drunk from on a regular basis will come to crave it, as one would crave a drug or a lover’s touch. The feelings aren’t real, though. They’re not built on anything more substantial than vampire magic.
Also, once you drink from humans they are essentially yours. A strong vampire can crawl inside their heads and bend them to his or her will. If they’re not drunk from again, the hold will wear off eventually, but it could take weeks, months, or years, depending on the age and strength of the vampire in question. The possibilities for abusing that power are staggering. It’s illegal by the laws of the Dark Council, but it’s a very hard thing to prove, and it’s done with far more regularity than the High King would like.
“MacLeod told me what I said last night on the roof,” the queen said, pulling me from my thoughts. “And that you saw the tattoos on my back.”
I schooled my features and replied, “Yes, though I’m surprised that he would tell you.”
She held her gloved hands out, palms up, and said, “It is my gift, or my curse. He can keep nothing from me. The gloves offer protection from my ability but there are times, with him, when I do not wear them.”
Of course. Anytime she touched him she would be able to see whatever she wanted in his mind. There were moments, like tonight, when I wished that I could tell what Michael was thinking as easily as that.
Marrakesh shook her head. “I don’t even have to touch you to know what you’re thinking now. Do not ever envy me this ability. It has been a strain on my relationship with MacLeod from the very beginning. We love each other with everything we have, but there are some parts of yourself that you should be able to keep private, even from your lover. Do you have any idea how strong a man he is, to be able to hold absolutely nothing back from me in order to be my husband? Can you even begin to imagine what it would be like to have your lover know every thought or feeling that ever tripped through your mind?”
I considered that for a moment. The things I had been thinking about Drake in the carriage flashed through my head, and I thought about how mortified I would be if Michael ever knew that I’d had those thoughts. And did I really want to know what had run through his mind when he’d been ogling that prostitute’s breasts tonight?
Marrakesh smiled. “I see you understand.”
“So,” I said slowly, “you would know if MacLeod were in any way connected to what’s happening to you?”
She snorted. “I would know if MacLeod thought my dress was unattractive. I can assure you that he is not plotting to kill me.”
I nodded and then something occurred to me. “Marrakesh!” I exclaimed, almost slapping my forehead that I hadn’t thought of it sooner. “You can solve this! Touch them; that’s all you have to do. Then you would know …” But she was already shaking her head. “Why not?”
“This ability that I have has no filter, Cin. I can’t just pick and choose what I see. When I touch someone, I see it all. I know them inside and out. It is not a parlor trick. It’s a weapon. There are things that we all bury deeply, and they should be a
llowed to stay there. Hashim, in particular, has a fear of me touching him.”
“But don’t you see? That’s the very reason that you should do this. You’re powerful, Highness, and at the moment someone else is pulling your strings like a puppeteer. If you have the ability to stop it, but you won’t do it because your lieutenants are squeamish …”
“I will not force such humiliation upon my friends, especially not when I know in my heart that they are innocent.”
“But you can’t be certain of that.”
“Of course I can. I know because …” She paused for a long moment as if gathering her thoughts, then smiled a bitter smile and said, “After what you heard and saw last night you have me at a bit of a disadvantage. No one living knows what you do now, except MacLeod, Khalid, and Hashim.”
I almost reached out and touched her hand. Almost. “If I could take back the knowing of it, I would, Highness. It’s not my right to know such things, and I want to assure you that anything you said while under the influence of … whatever that was … will never go any farther than that rooftop.”
She nodded. “I thank you for that. However, now that you know half of the story, you might as well hear the rest. Then you will understand why I would no more suspect Khalid or Hashim of trying to harm me than I would MacLeod. Trust is not one of my virtues, nor is it something that I give lightly. There are the only three people in this world that I trust. We have a bond, Khalid, Hashim, MacLeod, and I, one that has been forged with pain and blood.”
“I can’t imagine the horror you must have felt on that beach,” I said.
“If that had been the end of it, then maybe I wouldn’t be so … damaged,” she said. “But that was only the beginning.”
Chapter 16
She leaned back, looking not at me but at the fire in the hearth, until I thought that she had forgotten I was there at all. When she spoke, her voice was detached, as if she were telling a story she had no part in. Perhaps that was how she had to tell it, to get through it.
“Magnus took me off that beach. He avenged my honor as I had asked, and in return I showed him where the gold and valuables were hidden. He was a man of his word, an honorable man, and he married me within a month. I don’t know that I could say that I was happy, necessarily. I don’t know that I could have been happy at that point in my life, but I was content. Magnus treated me like a queen and the next year I gave him a son.” She closed her eyes and smiled bitterly at the memory. “Magnus was so proud of him. He doted on that baby, and nothing was too good for either of us. Erik was ten months old when his father was killed on a raid. No one saw it happen, but I know that he was stabbed in the back by his nephew. Gunnar had always been Magnus’s heir, and then I came along and gave him a strong, healthy child. He hated us both with the fire of a thousand suns. I would pray at night that Gunnar would be killed in battle, or that at least Magnus would live long enough for his son to grow into manhood, so that he could protect himself. When they brought Magnus’s body home to me I knew that my son and I would soon be dead. There was no place for me to go, no one who could protect us from Gunnar.”
“What happened?” I whispered.
A tear slipped down her cheek. “That blackhearted bastard, may his soul be damned for eternity, drowned my baby and sold me to the slavers. He stood on the dock and told me that I was nothing more than a whore his uncle had dressed up as a queen, and that now I would once again be what I was meant to be.”
My heart ached for her. I couldn’t imagine how she had lived through those years.
She took a deep, shuddering breath. “I ended up in Algiers. Darius was a vampire of … varied appetites. He had a harem of a hundred women, but it wasn’t just the women who fed his needs. Men, boys, young girls, it didn’t matter to Darius. Sometimes he participated, and sometimes he just liked to watch. A concubine who became pregnant by one his human slaves was rewarded, and Darius was gifted with another soul to destroy as he willed. Needless to say, I lived in fear of becoming pregnant. Khalid and Hashim were particular favorites of his. Their mother had died in childbirth, and I took them under my wing. I tried to protect them but Darius was fascinated by the fact that they were twins. You cannot imagine the horrors they endured growing up.”
I blew out a breath, thinking that all my new theories were unraveling before me. Khalid and Hashim were not just soldiers to her, they were her children.
“Darius didn’t just keep concubines for his own entertainment. The ones who were … particularly skilled … he prostituted for gold, or land, or information. I had been there for a little over a year, Khalid and Hashim were just babies, when Darius came to me and said that he was going to present me as a gift to the Caliph of Cordoba, and that I was to get the information he wanted or he would have Khalid and Hashim killed. I’d just lost my own son a few years earlier and I couldn’t bear to lose those two precious babies as well. So I went with him to Cordoba, where the caliph found himself quite taken with me. He also had a tendency to talk too much while he was making love.” She shrugged. “When I got the information Darius required, he stole me out of the palace and took me back to Algiers. He said that he was so pleased with me that he couldn’t bear to lose my beauty to the ravages of time. He turned me into a vampire, as he did with a few of his favorite concubines.”
For the first time she turned her face from the fire and looked at me. “I had longed for the day when my beauty would fade and he would have no more interest in me. Sometimes he killed his humans when their faces and bodies no longer pleased him, but the ones who had been obedient he often set free.” She laughed. “Not that I had anywhere to go if he had set me free, but a slave rarely thinks that far ahead. So instead of earning my freedom, I was forced into another three hundred years of slavery to Darius’s greed, twisted appetites, and frivolous whims.”
I swallowed. I had thought that I wanted to know this, but now I wasn’t so sure. I searched for some safe thing to comment on, anything that would take that look of painful remembrance out of her eyes.
“And the tattoos?” I asked. “I assume that they’re tied to your gift somehow. They’re all symbols of knowledge, prophecy, or protection.”
“Darius had an Irish priest as one of his prisoners. He never harmed him, would never drink from him or force him to do the things the rest of had to do to survive. I think he served as a mirror for Darius. The more shocked the priest was by Darius’s perversions, the more Darius liked it. The tattoos were at one time nothing more than paint. I used to have to lie still for days at a time while the priest painted me like an illuminated manuscript before Darius gifted me to one king or another. He thought the markings on my body would intrigue a man. The priest drew symbols of knowledge in the hope that I would be successful in my mission, and not be punished by Darius for failing to acquire whatever it was he wanted. After Cordoba, Darius had me painted again before he turned me. When I woke as a vampire the markings were permanent … and I had the ability to see into a man’s soul simply by touching him.”
“It’s an amazing gift. I’ve never heard of anything like it before.” And I hadn’t. Usually, other than your standard vampire magic, a vampire’s abilities were a magnification of the abilities they’d had as humans. Marrakesh’s clairvoyance was completely new after her change. I wondered how much of that was due to the heavy symbolism of the tattoos on her back.
She shrugged. “It was, and still is, a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, after Darius realized what had happened, he never touched me again. On the other, I was now of infinite value to him and he would never let me go. I was given a suite of rooms and I never again had to endure what the other concubines did. It made me bold. We tried to escape once when Khalid and Hashim were twenty. Darius caught us and I spent the next five years in a windowless cell drinking stale blood from a pitcher, and that was only when someone bothered to remember I was down there. When I was released and I saw how much Khalid and Hashim had suffered—” She closed her eyes and sh
ook her head. “My God, Cin, the scars they have, both inside and out. And Darius had turned them, because he knew it would hurt me. Leaving them human was the only thing I’d ever asked of him.”
“How did you end up here?” I asked.
“In 1250 a young man issued a summons for one and all to come and challenge him for the right to rule the world’s vampires. The date of the combat was set for July 1, 1260, because it would take years for the news to travel throughout Europe, central Asia, and northern Africa. Darius laughed it off, as did most in the beginning. As the time of the challenge grew nearer, however, more and more vampires made arrangements to attend. After all, if someone was going to be king of us all, then you’d much rather it be you and not your neighbor. They went in droves, and when the dust settled the High King had won the right to rule, and MacLeod had won the Western Lands while Drake had won the East.”
“Did Darius attend the challenge?”
“No,” she said. “No, he didn’t, and he refused to accept the High King’s authority or sign his name in the Book of Souls. MacLeod came to him and gave him two choices: Either Darius could swear fealty to the High King, or he would face an army that would take everything he had, including his life.”
I raised my eyebrows. “I’m surprised MacLeod would make that trip. Now it’s our responsibility to go to the High King.”
She shrugged. “Things were different in the beginning. When the two kingdoms were new there were many concessions extended to the older vampires in an effort to bring them peaceably under the High King’s dominion. Now that our rule has long been established, such compromises are no longer made.”
“So MacLeod saw you when he went to visit Darius?” I imagined him meeting her and instantly falling in love.
“He did. We had moved from Algiers to Marrakesh by then. MacLeod came to bring Darius to heel … and he left with me.”
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