by Michele Hauf
“All of them?”
He frowned. “They have taken vows to, if not fit in with the mortals surrounding them, come close to doing so. They stay away from people and are lucky to have made it this far without being hunted and killed. They are well provided for with stocks of blood, kept stored for needs that arise, and willing donors who are well paid for their services.”
Though Madison winced at the donor part, she took all this in ravenously.
“They have formed their own community here,” St. John continued. “They do more good than harm, for the most part.”
“How many? How many of the old ones are there?” she asked.
“I can’t tell you that for reasons which will soon be made clear.”
“Can an Ancient die? Again? Can you?” She didn’t wait for his reply. “Just how ancient are you?”
“Older than you. Older than the rest.”
“Are there females among these Ancients?”
This was a selfish question. The thought of females like him, tall and elegant and hurtfully beautiful, brought on a wave of jealousy she could barely contain.
St. John read this, and smiled. “None. No females.”
“Why not? If you mention the words weaker sex, I’ll stake you myself.”
Something she had said caused him to smile again. Madison sensed a fresh round of heat beating at the air between them.
“Actually, I’m not sure why,” he finally replied.
“You’ve never asked?”
“It never mattered.”
His answer took some time to absorb. She’d been correct, then, when she had touched his bare back and thought his reaction odd. He hadn’t been handled by a female for years.
How many years?
She wanted to be the only one to ever touch him, and ever get near to him. She felt an icy blast of jealousy for this creature beside her that was so very much the male she wanted.
“If you’re not like the others, why are you here?” she asked.
“I have a task to do, and have been building up to it.”
“Where does the term Protector come in?”
“I serve the Hundred in a guiding capacity, when I choose to. I help them to deal with mortals and keep their secrets, a job that suits us all, for now.”
“Mortals like me,” Madison said.
She held up a hand, as if asking him to hold off on answering her. “Why would they believe you’d serve them in any capacity, if I can see the flaw in that in about two seconds, and that you’re so much more than they probably are?”
Did he smile again? She thought he did, though the darkness outside the glass wall now hid all but the outline of the contours of his face.
She was aware of the line of his shoulders. Aware of the fall of his hair and the lean hardness of his hands. She tried desperately to erect a barrier against the notice of those things, hoping to section off her feelings. It was more than the masculine attributes of this figure beside her she craved, though the exact meaning of what she needed from him still remained out of reach.
“They don’t know everything about me,” he said. “And serving them serves my purpose.”
“Now I sense a change in you, St. John,” Madison said.
“That purpose has almost been satisfied, after a very long time.”
Madison watched him, soaking up every detail.
“I believe that my brother came to London to find all of you, for a reason I can’t comprehend,” she said. “Not to kill you. Not as a vampire hunter. Stewart used the case he was working on as an excuse to get here, where he had something else in mind.”
“Yes,” he said. “It is possible that your brother had other motives.”
Excited, Madison pressed on, desperate to know everything.
“Possible, or probable?”
She placed her hands against St. John’s chest, ready to shove the answers out of him if necessary. Finally, they were getting somewhere. Half the questions had answers. Surely he sensed her frustration over him withholding the rest.
Against her palms, she felt the hardness of muscle and bone beneath his sweater. She felt a beat, and wanted to damn this creature whose heart worked much in the way a mortal man’s would, each stroke strong and sure and as fast as her own. Each stroke seeming to bring her closer to him.
Beside her stood a being whose pulse was a mockery of life. The forces invigorating him should have disappeared, fading to nothing on the day he had died.
God, yes. St. John had died.
Did the remembrance of that death pain him, as it pained her to think of it? Was that the source of his dark demeanor?
She knew in that moment that she did truly love him, in spite of all that. In spite of knowing about him.
The acknowledgment of her emotions wasn’t a shock. It was depressing. St. John was a special being, even within the tiers of special beings. He had a job to do that might soon take him from her. And though he’d said she was special, she was still mortal, and would eventually, after finding her brother, go home.
Twisting the fine weave of his sweater between her fingers, Madison felt the steady throb of his heartbeat reverberate in her forearms, shoulders, chest and the pit of her stomach. She had always tuned in to Christopher St. John as if they were fatefully connected. This made them closer than normal, and incessantly intimate.
“If Stewart wanted to chase vampires, he could have done so anywhere. But he came here, Christopher,” she said.
It was the first time she had used his given name. Madison observed how his expression softened.
“Your brother came here to find himself,” he said, his velvet voice husky. “He tried to distance himself from you, having to leave you behind in order to find answers.”
Her grasp on his sweater tightened. She didn’t have time to think about ruining the expensive cashmere, or the fact that St. John was already facing the door.
“His wasn’t a completely selfish action,” he said. “Your brother also came here to find those girls, hoping to pick up their trail, meaning to ask for direction from those who could find out what had happened to them.”
“The Ancients,” she said.
“Yes.”
“You knew who he was?”
“I saw him once. By that time, it was too late to help.”
“Too late? What do you mean?”
The immortal male she clung to remained silent for a short time. Then, as if he had considered what he was about to say from all angles, he said, “Stewart killed a vampire when eyes were watching. No one could have saved him from what came after.”
Hearing this, Madison wanted to change her plea. She wasn’t ready for this. How could anyone be ready, no matter how desperate they were for facts?
“What did Stewart want to find out about himself?” she demanded.
St. John’s hands covered her own, inflicting a level of pleasure and support that by all rights should have been torture. Madison allowed the sparks flickering between them to fuel her depleted energy.
Her voice emerged strongly. “I love my brother. I deserve to know what happened to him. You must see that.”
Yes, she was feeling stronger now. She felt ready.
“The police believe I’m withholding evidence and hiding Stewart’s whereabouts,” she said. “They assume I’m purposefully hampering their investigation, and will charge me eventually unless I give them something. I don’t have anything to offer them. I don’t know where Stewart is, or what he is doing.”
“Maybe that’s a blessing in disguise,” St. John suggested.
“Not a blessing. I think you know that. I think you understand. They think he might have killed a girl.”
“Yes,” he said so softly that Madison wasn’t sure she heard
him at all. “You deserve to know more, though not from me.”
“From you,” she argued. “I want to hear it from you. Who will tell me if you don’t?”
She planted her legs apart in case the information he might eventually provide turned out to be as outrageous as everything else so far. She decided not to let him go until she had something more, and planned to block his exit if he tried to get away.
“Stewart can tell you. He should tell you,” he said.
“If he could be found.”
St. John nodded, and hesitated again, as if considering what she’d said. “Your brother was bitten,” he finally said.
“Bitten?” Madison repeated.
“Stewart was what you are. A Slayer. He thought his strength might help when facing the Ancients. The problem was that he wasn’t strong enough to actually find them. The old one he did discover was the wrong one. I know this now. Stewart didn’t have a chance to get the information on the girls that he sought. Fledglings found him, sent by a bigger monster. Too many of them. I’m sorry, Madison.”
Madison tried to make sense of this explanation, without success. “Bitten,” she said, reeling from the idea. “Are you saying that my brother is one of them now? He is a vampire?”
“Not one of them, exactly.”
“Then Stewart is alive? He’s okay?”
When St. John didn’t immediately reply, Madison knew that more bad news was coming. She snapped her body straight. As if to steady her, St. John pressed his chest tightly to hers.
Her ears filled with the sizzling buzz of a lightning streak, and the sound hadn’t come from outside the wall of windows, where the moon shone brightly. The charge had originated right there, from St. John’s touch. He continued to affect her this way.
But instincts about what he might say next were warning her to beware, pay attention, run away, suggesting that she actually was unprepared for the explanations to come.
She hung on, filled with dread.
“Madison,” he began, using her name like a lover’s caress. “Your brother is killing vampires. He is staking vampires because he has to. Stewart is killing them because that is his destiny, even though he has become something like those he chases.”
Madison saw in the smooth planes of St. John’s hard, proud face that he had told the truth. He had given her what she had asked for. It was up to her to connect the dots.
Stewart was a Slayer and a vampire.
Was that even possible?
What kind of special monster did that sort of mixture make?
St. John broke away from her. He moved toward the windows and looked out. His face, his expression, his demeanor had changed again when he glanced back at her.
With trepidation, he said, “You’ll have to let the rest ride for now, my love. Time is up. The first of the Nosferatu has arrived.”
Madison had no idea what Nosferatu meant, though the word was more terrible than anything she had heard so far, and struck fear into her bones.
St. John was going to face some dreadful beast. Maybe more than one. He seemed calm enough about the upcoming engagement, when a dark river was carrying monsters closer.
Christopher St. John’s expression was gentle when he looked at her, showing his worry and his concern for her. Monsters had arrived, and his thought wasn’t for himself.
Looking to the window, and the red-tinted night outside it, Madison felt like screaming.
Chapter 23
“If you stay here, you’ll be safe.”
St. John said this from the doorway, and in a way that made Madison want to weep.
“I’ve taken great care to keep this place hidden,” he said. “Possibly for just such a night as this one.”
Madison moved toward him, willfully making her feet move.
“I have to go,” he said quietly, his voice the draw for her that it always had been. “So much depends on what happens now.”
“Who is going to help you? Does the detective know?” she asked.
St. John shook his head. “Stay here, Madison. I’d have you safe, you know. Always.”
“My brother is still out there.”
“I couldn’t stop them from biting him. I didn’t know until it was too late. You must believe that I would have tried to stop it.”
She nodded. “He helped me. Stewart didn’t hurt me. He isn’t a monster.”
“I don’t know what he is now,” St. John confessed. “No one really knows.”
St. John pulled her hands from his sweater, and held them clasped in his for a few seconds longer. “Wait for me here, my love,” he said. “Please.”
“Not knowing what will happen to you out there?”
“For now,” he said. “Just for now.”
“What if I do love you?” Her voice was faint. “What happens then?”
“It would make everything I have ever done worthwhile,” St. John said.
His voice echoed in the wide expanse of space he had called his refuge. It echoed inside Madison.
She had told him the thing she had barely admitted to herself. Love, she had said. What if she loved him.
It was a fascinating word to describe the complex emotions that had somehow entangled them both. There was no explanation for how it had arrived between two beings that had spent so little time together. But what was time, after all?
Did caring for another person, really caring about them and what happened to them, constitute being in love? Did the fact that she ached for St. John prove the truth of her feelings?
When she opened her eyes, she was alone.
Her immortal lover had gone.
“It would make everything I have ever done worthwhile,” St. John had said, if she loved him. She didn’t know how she would cope if he didn’t return.
Her brother had come here to help those missing girls, and that had gone wrong. She had come here to find Stewart, and how would she categorize what had happened to her since?
Although she had felt strong the moment before, the room began to revolve around her as St. John’s presence faded. She seemed to feel those enemies closing in.
However, this wasn’t about enemies. The spinning sensation had been caused by the recognition of a title that she was afraid now defined her. A title that could keep her from St. John forever, if it were true.
That word lit up her mind, lit up St. John’s apartment, reflecting off the windows, hitting her eyes with an uncomfortable glare.
Slayer.
She was what her brother was, St. John had told her, and it had been Stewart’s downfall.
It wasn’t a choice or an option, St. John had led her to believe. Genetics determined who would be a vampire hunter. Born to it, was the way this went.
Her parents had produced a set of Slayers without letting their children know. Their silence, before their deaths, had resulted in Stewart being nearly killed because he wasn’t strong enough to hold his own when he came here.
Nearly killed.
She clung to that. St. John had said her brother had been bitten. Not killed. He hadn’t used that awful death word.
There was hope. In a world threatened by darkness, there was some light, and she was starved for light.
“I believe you,” she whispered to St. John. “I trust you.”
She had to confess everything.
“If what you say is true, I see the horror of the future. I will be the one running through the shadows with a wooden weapon in my hand. I will be seeking fanged creatures that will know how to fight back. I will do so in your honor.”
When the flash of rightness came, streaking past her vision in prisms of multicolored light, Madison realized it was a sign of her soul opening up to what had been hidden there.
Slayer.
She held tight on legs that no longer wanted to support her. It all seemed too much.
After taking a step, she crumpled to the floor, refusing to give in to the waiting void that offered a temporary respite from the world, its secrets and what part she would play in it after this, if she chose.
How could she make it work, when she loved an immortal soul that she had been born to fight?
Love...
Opposites...
St. John had gone to confront a wave of unspeakable terror taking shape. Them. Nosferatu. But he had seen to her safety first. He cared for her that much.
Using the window for support, Madison picked herself up. Pushing back her fear, she sent her senses inward, in search of the thing St. John said had long lain dormant inside her.
What she found instead was Stewart’s voice, calling.
“Maddie. Mad one....”
It was a voice she had to find.
* * *
St. John emerged from the Tube station through a blocked-off exit used by underground workers. He soon found what he was seeking. The creature was grotesque in the simplicity of its design, a tall, slender beast with the bone-pale face of the dead.
Nosferatu. Eternally damned, savage vampires with the bite of a bear trap and no remembrance of a soul. Creatures with no thoughts of their own, and no heartbeat.
At first sight, its features were human enough, save for the mouth and eyes. With its dead-white skin, its lips glowed red, as if it had been snacking on some poor soul on its way here.
Its eye sockets were black, bottomless holes, surrounded by circles of more blackness. Sparse, stringy hair, as white as its face, covered only the bottom portion of its head, curtaining large pointed ears.
The rank odor of death trailed behind this Hunter like a kite. Moldy earth, fetid flesh, death trapped in a body. Once free of the exit, the monster moved with a gliding motion, as if on skates, never seeming to actually touch the ground.
Its long, threadbare coat kicked up dust and debris as its arms swung menacingly at the air. This ungodly entity, not of the earth or what lay below, had been created to mock both places as a mindless beast on the rampage.