by S. E. Lund
He pulls me into his arms and sighs once more, pressing me against the wall, one knee between my thighs.
"Oh, Eve…" he says and tilts my chin up so I'm forced to look in his eyes. "It took every ounce of strength to resist you." He says nothing for a moment, and I feel all choked up. "I apologize," he says. "I rashly encouraged you but this can't happen between us."
"Why?" I ask, trying to look away but he prevents me.
"Eve, I'm not sure I'm ready for this," he says.
"For what?"
"For us."
"Well, that's a first," I say, my voice wavering. "Usually, I meet a guy and he's all over me and it's me who can't commit. Who takes so long to warm up."
"I'm warm, Eve," he says softly, his forehead against mine. "I'm more than warm." "I'm incendiary. But there are things I need to be sure of. Things I have to do before this can happen…"
I close my eyes, because the feel of his body against me has just reignited my desire once more.
"Don't do that if you're not going to," I say and stop, unable to say the words.
"If I'm not going to what?" he says, his mouth quirked into that damn lopsided grin.
"You know."
He leans closer, his lips beside my ear, brushing the skin on my cheek. "If I'm not going to be your lover?" he whispers and his words alone nearly make me faint. "I can't do it. I'd have too much power over your body and mind. It wouldn't be fair." He takes in a deep breath. "I forget how inexperienced you are." He strokes my cheek with the back of his fingers. "I have to be very careful. Vampires have a lot of power over mortals. We can read your minds and it's hard to resist you."
"Tell me how to put up mental blocks," I say.
He shakes his head. "No."
"Why not?" I say, frustrated. "So you can just hop into my mind anytime you want?"
"Yes."
I turn my head away in frustration, but he takes my chin and turns it back. He's smiling, and his smile turns into a full-out grin, and it's contagious because he's so beautiful in his paleness and black-lashed blue-eyed way, and he's being so honest. I can't help but smile back, my eyes tearing up a bit when I do.
"Oh, Eve…" he says and closes his eyes briefly before bending down and kissing my cheek, his tongue touching my skin and I know he's after my dimples and it makes me both smile even harder and imagine where else he might put his tongue one day – when he's ready for this – for us.
Whatever that means.
He presses his cheek against mine, exhaling into my ear.
"I have to go – now – or I'm afraid I'll never leave."
He takes my hand, leading me to the door. When we reach it, he folds me into his arms and strokes my cheek.
"So lovely," he says and I feel my cheeks warm under his so-intense gaze. "You have to know that I want you so much, Eve. But there are things taking place and before I …" he says and hesitates. "I want to make sure of them first. I can't say anything more. You'll have to trust me that I'm not doing this to play with you. I never intended for this to happen. I let things get out of my control tonight because you read about my past and your too-warm heart and body got the better of me."
"None of what happened to you was your fault," I say, tenderness for him filling me when I remember what happened to him.
He shakes his head quickly.
"I'll be in better control of myself from now on."
"Do you have to control everything?"
"Oh, yes. I exist for one purpose and that's to achieve my endgame. To attain it will require my utmost focus and self-control. I have to keep everything under control."
"Even me?"
"Especially you. You more than anything."
I frown, not knowing what that means or if I even like the idea. Or if I really like it.
He breathes in deeply and makes that throat noise.
"Please don't tempt me." He kisses me, his kiss chaste and then I think how different he is from Julien and my mind goes back to the image of Julien standing on the front step just a short while earlier.
He frowns and cups my cheek with his hand.
"You were with him again?"
"He followed me," I say, trying to find some excuse. "He said he has a security detail on me of his own. I didn’t let him into my apartment."
He shakes his head and then he relives everything that happened between Julien and me.
"He's not going to give up. Eve," he says and holds my gaze, his brow furrowed. "You have to stay away from him. He'll try to get in between us. Try to take you from me."
I frown and two emotions battle inside of me. I like the way he sees me as his, despite protesting earlier to Julien about the twins and their possessiveness. At the same time, I don’t like it – in my mind. I'm an adult. Not a child. I'm not a possession.
I'm so confused.
He bends down once more and kisses me, harshly, his tongue finding mine, and a surge of his desire fills me and it's mixed with frustration and some fear. I can't help but respond, my body warming in response to his touch.
"Just please, stay away from him." He strokes my cheek with his thumb.
Then he's gone. I'm standing alone at my door, my body still so in need of release even if my mind is now so confused over these brothers. I go right to my bed and snuggle under my covers.
I wonder whether one day we'll be lovers. I want it to be so, whenever he's ready. Whatever the hell that means…
Chapter 9
"If I know what love is, it is because of you."
Herman Hesse
I wake in the middle of the night and can't fall back to sleep. My sleep is still all out of whack and so I get up and make a pot of decaf blackberry tea and take the manuscript – or what's left of it – and sit wrapped in a blanket on my couch.
I wonder what Michel's torn out of this document – what was it that he felt was so bad he didn't want me to read it? Was it worse than the chapter I did read?
I turn the pages to where I left off last night. Michel had just consented to be turned and drank the blood he needed to become a vampire – with Julien's help.
The next page starts a new chapter. The picture at the top of the page is an image made of the original and is of a black-cowled Death rising up out of the midst of a fiery pit. Beside Death, angels weep, their tears dripping down their faces. The title of the page is Lacrimosa – Day of Tears.
The words at the top of the page are of those from the funeral mass, part of the Dies Irae, first in Latin and the translated to English:
Lacrimosa dies illa (Ah! That day of tears and mourning!)
Sounds like the content will be intense. I sip my tea and hope what's in this section isn't too graphic, but read on anyway.
"The subjugation of Michel," reads the translation, "provides Marguerite with endless amusement."
Michel's subjugation…
I feel like a filthy voyeur taking pleasure in reading the intimate and tragic details of his life and death – and resurrection. Still I read on, surprised that Michel's left this part in.
"By turning Michel so soon after my father's death, she denied him the right to attend our father's funeral mass and so he is forced to return to the Basilica that evening where he kneels alone with his grief at the front of the sanctuary while monks chant Agnus Dei – Lamb of God.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis. Lamb of God, you who take away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.
I fear there is no mercy for either of us. I refuse to kneel beside him as he wishes me to, having forsaken the Church when it sided with the King of France against my father.
But standing here in the shadows, listening to the chanting, I feel such a great loss. It's not my father I miss – he was an old drunkard who beat Michel and me mercilessly, treating both of us as a burden to be borne rather than sons to father. I miss the Church – I miss Mass and the connection I felt to a God I now have trouble believing in. Strangely, Michel mourns our father, whom he betra
yed for his beloved Church. Perhaps neither of us perceived what we were losing when we chose sides.
Now, we've lost it all.
Michel cannot take up his position as Bishop of Carcassonne, and has had to relinquish his vows, so the Bishophood has passed to another loyal servant. I had to compel the Deacon to allow us into the Basilica and the monks to chant so that Michel could say his goodbyes to our father's corpse as it lies in the sanctuary. It was the least I could do for him considering the hell Marguerite has put him through.
Despite it all, he wears his vestments, perhaps to keep alive his belief that in spite the humiliation Marguerite subjects him to, he is still a priest, beloved of God, called to the Church, and that his suffering on this earth will ensure he is welcomed into Heaven.
But he is as undead and damned as the rest of us.
After my father is buried, we say our goodbyes to Carcassonne and our father's residence and leave, following the Crusaders as they make their way across the Languedoc in search of heretics to burn and estates to rob.
It is two years before we return to the region, but to a vampire, two years is like a week to a mortal. Two years of traveling across France finds us in a small village outside of Toulouse where the fighting is fresh and there's ripe picking among the fallen and few to ask questions when bodies turn up drained of their blood. Battlefields are notorious and the weapons leave terrific wounds that bleed freely. Exsanguinated corpses are all too common.
Marguerite is still the same, and she has finally won. Michel is now her servant in body and I fear, soul. He no longer fights her.
It isn't just his enslavement that she takes delight in, but the complete control she exerts over his life and how much she disrupted it. Here we are, knight and priest, her servants, waiting on her every word. I wonder if all Sires are this imperious. If I were to make a vampire, I wouldn't treat her this way. I would share with her the wonders of immortality, but Marguerite seems only to delight in having power over us, in killing mortals as if they were stock animal.
For the past two years, she has delighted in controlling Michel and seeing him humiliated. Our only consolation was that we had each other, and indeed, our mutual tragedy has drawn us together more closely than since we were young boys and I took on the role as his protector from our father.
The inquisition is in Toulouse to investigate claims of Waldensian witchery, and so the three of us have to be very careful not to raise suspicions. We have enough wealth from our dead father's inheritance to live in elegance. Money for bribes is plentiful and so we relax and enjoy ourselves as much as is possible.
We take rooms in an inn nestled on the side of the mountains. Night fell several hours earlier, and I've fed and now stand in front of a basin of water, cleaning off the blood from the kill.
I watch Michel with Marguerite. He's sitting on the divan in front of the fire, having freshly bathed and wrapped in a sheet, his chest bare. She sits facing him, equally unclothed, enjoying his attentions as he feeds her sweet dates brought all the way from the Holy Land.
He plucks one after another from a small container and feeds her, kissing her after each morsel, smiling, enjoying himself. I'm not jealous – it's the most peaceful I've seen my brother for a very long time – even before he was turned. I feel no real love for Marguerite. She's beautiful, and she's smart in a feral way, but she's brutal and manipulative. I never know what she's planning next. Whatever it is, she tries to make Michel and I rivals for her affection, but neither of us play into her plans, much to her chagrin.
"These are so good, Michel," Marguerite says. "How sweet of you to get them for me. How thoughtful. Your brother doesn't seem to think of me the way you do."
I turn to face her, drying my hands on a towel.
"Rest assured, dear Marguerite, that I think of you constantly. You've made it impossible for me to do otherwise."
"Ignore my brother," Michel says and turns her face back to him. "Thoughts can be hidden, if one is strong enough. Only actions matter." He kisses her. "As for these, I purchased them from a vendor in the night market who had just returned from Jerusalem. I'm told they are the very best of their kind. You seem hungry and I'm only too pleased to feed your appetites. All of them." He smiles, and it's a wicked smile I've never seen on his face before.
"These are just so sweet. You are so sweet, I can't resist," Marguerite says as she chews on a date.
"You taught me not to resist," Michel replies and kisses Marguerite again. "To love obedience to you in all things."
"And I'm so glad you no longer resist."
"Oh, I no longer resist any of my inclinations," Michel says, his voice low, husky. "Whether for sex or blood – or vengeance."
She pulls back at that and looks at Michel quizzically. Even I turn to regard my brother. What does he mean by that? Vengeance against whom?
"What do you mean, vengeance?" she says, a frown on her pretty brow.
But Michel ignores her. Instead, he pulls Marguerite into his arms and kisses her, a hand tangling in her long fair hair, his kiss silencing her questions. She lets him kiss her and slips her arms around his neck.
For my part, I pour a glass of wine and decide to go out onto the terrace while they play with each other so I can watch the stars. I'm in no mood to watch them and I'm surprised and a bit saddened that he seems so ready to accept her control, but his happiness is all that matters and Michel truly does finally seem to have accepted his lot. She has finally broken him and it has taken only two years.
I lean on the terrace rail, looking out across the valley below. A full moon hangs in the sky and thin wisps of cloud obscure the stars. I turn around and lean against the balcony rail, staring straight up in the other direction, hoping to catch sight of a few stars but the moon's too bright.
When I look back inside the room, I see Michel laying with Marguerite and so I turn back to the stars. It's nothing I haven't seen hundreds of times before. Instead of watching them, I watch the moon rise over the valley.
When I next turn back to the room, Marguerite appears to be asleep, for her eyes are closed. Michel stands and pulls on a pair of breeches. He turns and sees me on the terrace.
"Come," he says and pulls on the cassock of his vestments. "We don't have long. The potion will last less than an hour."
"Potion? What are you doing?" A jolt of fear races through me.
"Getting my revenge," Michel says without emotion. "I met a woman in town who claimed to have a potion that could make a witch powerless. Of course, I didn't believe it, but I thought I'd try anyway. I tried it, and Marguerite didn't even notice. Poor dear thought she'd simply drank too much wine. I decided to use it again. This time, I'm prepared."
"What are you planning?" I dress while Michel pulls his white surplice and alb over his head and slips on his boots. He straightens his vestments and runs a hand over his head to smooth his hair.
"The witch will burn, tonight. While you kept her busy last evening, I met with the Inquisitor and arranged for the local sheriff to come and take her away to the square. They're only too happy to have a witch burning as a lesson for the town." He slips on some gloves and then goes to a leather bag by the door. Inside is a long length of chain. It's shiny, and I know it's silver.
"Put your gloves on and help me," he says. "This will disable her. I'll have to gag her or she'll try to compel the humans who come too close to her."
I do as I'm told, my mind numb, slipping on my own gloves, and then help Michel tie up her hands and feet with the silver chains. Her skin burns, smoke rising from where the silver touches her bare skin. Whatever the magic is, it's powerful enough to prevent her from waking.
"You know this is going to displease her Sire," I say. "From what she's said, Soren's an Ancient. Very old and very powerful."
Michel shrugs as if he doesn't care. "I've never seen him, so he must not care too much for her. I'm leaving for London once this is done," he says. "Come with me and we'll start new lives there."
> "You mean to go through with this? Destroying Marguerite? Has all this been an act?"
"I learned to act when I was very young, Julien," he says. "I acted obedient to father to avoid his kicks and blows, and then to the Church to avoid the same. I even appeared obedient to God since it was He who chose this fate for me. It helped me to appear obedient to Marguerite, but I never intended to be her slave forever."
"You surprise me." I watch dumbfounded as he places a balled-up piece of muslin into Marguerite's mouth and ties a strip of cloth around her head to keep it in place.
He stands up from his task. "I surprise myself, but a man reaches a point where he can no longer comply with his own debasement. Even a vampire."
A knock sounds at the door. Michel motions to me, and so I go to the door, admitting two men and the local Sheriff. A priest follows them in. He bows to Michel and the two speak in quiet voices as the guards pick up Marguerite and carry her, chains and all, out of the room.
"Won't she be questioned?" I pull Michel aside, unsure what I feel about this. "Do they not need a confession?"
He smiles. "That's been taken care of. A confession was written and signed, witnessed by me, trusted priest, loyal to the Holy Church. Money goes a long way to speeding up these things. We're so fortunate we have a great deal of it."
I'm stunned. "You bribed the Inquisitor?"
"I lost my illusions, brother, the night I lost my life." Michel motions to the door. "Let's go. I want to make sure this happens quickly, before I lose my resolve. She's a beautiful thing, and it wasn't her fault she was turned so young and with such little moral development. But she's still a monster and even if we leave her, she will only create more vampires to fill her needs."
When I hesitate, not sure if I can support this, he puts his hands on my shoulders.
"Come," he says, his voice solemn. "Be free of her. If we don't do this now, we'll never escape her compulsion. I must be free to do God's work."
"I thought you said God abandoned you."