Blood Rhapsody

by Nancy Morse

  “Edmund,” she uttered, part dread, part disbelief.

  “I know all about Edmund de Vere,” he said, unable to disguise the vehemence that accompanied that name.

  “Nicolae, he wants to kill you.”

  “Yes, I know that, too,” he muttered. “His family has been hunting me and my kind for centuries. They are members of a secret society called the Sanctum. They fancy themselves purveyors of Christianity and are devoted to destroying all that which does not fit their definition of righteous. Within each family the first born son of a first born son is a dedicated vampire hunter. Your Edmund has become quite skilled at it.”

  She pushed herself away from him with a shudder. “He is not my Edmund,” she said. “He is a detestable monster. He drugged me and brought me here to use as bait to get to you. He left me here to die and said he would seek you out and destroy you. Nicolae, you must be careful.”

  He smiled at her refreshing innocence. “It is he who must be careful, my sweet Prudence. He has been hunting vampires for what, twenty years at most? I have been eluding vampire hunters for centuries. I will deal with Edmund de Vere. But right now, I must get you out of here.”

  “What is this place?” she asked, her eyes searching the darkness.

  “We are in the cellar of the distillery.”

  “That smell.”

  “Juniper barriers. Used to brew the gin.”

  “How did you find me?”

  His thoughts flew back to the note tacked to his front door and to the impending doom awaiting Edmund de Vere. “I’ll explain everything later.”

  “The rats,” she said, her voice scarcely a breath.

  “They’re gone now,” he assured her.

  “Something chased them away. A dog, I think.”

  He turned his head away. “Yes,” he said, losing a beat in his response and praying she did not notice. “It must have been a dog. Come, let’s go.”

  Pru held back. “I told him you would not come. Why did you? After the things you said to me I thought you wanted nothing more to do with me.”

  “Prudence,” he uttered, though in truth he did not know where to begin or how to explain.

  He hated himself for the terrible things he had said to her. If he were a drinking man, he would have drunk himself senseless to numb the consuming guilt he felt over it. He had told her what he is and how he was made, but how could he explain what dwelled beneath the surface, the centuries of slaughter and death and bloodlust that were so much a part of him?

  The only thing that mattered was the music, and even that seemed to have lost much of its meaning since the night of the concert. There had been no joy for him in playing for an audience of pompous, self-righteous mortals. He realized that night with a start that the only person he played for was the only one who imagined him capable of possessing a soul.

  Often, he thought about his life, the eternal wanderings in search of sustenance, the trail of bloodless bodies, the failed hope of ever being loved for what he was, the dashed illusion of ever being mortal. He dared not even admit it to himself as a conscious thought, but in the deep, dark recesses of his being lay a relentless wish that some day, somewhere, a hunter would catch up with him and put through his heart the stake that would end this eternal misery. He lived and yet he was not alive. The truth was, he died that snowy night in the Carpathians and had been gone for centuries. Not even sweet Prudence, who offered a taste of salvation to a man starving for it, could save him from himself. If there was any semblance left of the man he had once been, it resided in the sense of right she had awakened in his long slumbering conscience. He needed desperately to know that she saw in him the one thing that gave him the illusion of mortality, a soul. But the only way to keep the fantasy alive was to keep her safe and to do that he had to protect her from himself. It was a conundrum he had not previously thought possible. The music in him now was a rhapsody of blood.

  “Nicolae, you’re hurting me.”

  At first, her voice did not register, lost as it was amidst the ghastly memories and disillusionments that plagued him. He made a sound, a deep, guttural moan from somewhere so far inside that its source eluded him.

  “You’re hurting me.”

  This time her voice was louder, more forceful. But it was the undercurrent of fear in her tone that penetrated his murky thoughts of past and present. He realized that he was holding her tightly against him, crushing her to him as if clinging to life itself. He felt suddenly foolish and let her go.

  He reached for her hand but she pulled her fingers from the cold confines of his.

  “You haven’t answered my question,” she said. “Why did you come to rescue me?”

  He answered as truthfully as he knew how. “You don’t know me, Prudence. If you did, you would have wished for another rescuer.”

  “Oh, I think I know you,” she said.

  “You know only what I have told you,” he flatly replied.

  “The story you told me, of that terrible night so long ago, is only part of who you are. The other parts of you I have come to know from observing and from what I have experienced when I am with you.”

  He remained quiet and scarcely breathing, waiting for her to put into words the searing definition of what he thought of himself.

  “You are a scoundrel, of that I am certain. You care only for yourself and nothing for others. The harm you inflict can reach deep down into one’s soul. Those of us who have souls, that is.”

  He cast his gaze downward at her biting sarcasm so that she could not witness the wince in his eyes.

  “You are immoral and a liar,” she went on in a slow, measured tone. “You have lived so long hiding in shadows and darkness that you would not recognize true friendship if it bit you on the nose.”

  She was right. God help him. How well she knew him.

  “You are beautiful on the outside, which I can attest works to your advantage quite well. One can only imagine the sheer numbers of women you have lured to your bed over the centuries, ones who did not require the tutelage that someone as inexperienced and unworldly as myself had need of. Not that I am ungrateful for the benefit of your teachings. You have taught me things and awakened in me a passion I thought existed only in novels.” She drew in a deep breath. “Don’t misunderstand. I am not trying to be purposely cruel,” she said, adding matter-of-factly, “That is your specialty, not mine.”

  “So much for the other parts of me,” he said with a characteristically cynical note.

  “I’m coming to that,” she said. “Don’t rush me. I wanted to make sure you know what a truly reprehensible man you are.”

  He gave a short laugh. “There is no doubt.”

  “Yes, well, despite all your shortcomings…”

  “Which are legion.”

  “…you do have some redeeming qualities, although I suspect that even you are unaware of what they are.”

  “Let me see if I understand what you are saying. I am a lying, reprehensible, immoral, self-centered scoundrel with redeeming qualities. Do go on.”

  “You have a talent that quite simply takes one’s breath away.”

  “Ah, we’re back to the bedroom again.

  She gave out with an impatient huff. “I’m talking about your music. The way you play can only come from a place of goodness and courage. There is no malice in it. No cruelty except for the wrenching of emotions of those who hear it. Although I would like to think of you as truly evil, I am obliged to admit that listening to your music is like opening a portal through which angels pass. There is something magical, almost heavenly, about it. I know what you told me about losing your soul, but I do not believe it. The alchemist said—”

  “To hell with what the alchemist said!”

  Angels. Heaven. He’d heard enough. He jumped to his feet and began to pace the floor. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” He ran a hand through his hair, pushing the midnight locks from his face. “There is no soul. Don’t you understand?”


  “But the music—”

  “Is just that. Music. Nothing more. I have a gift for coaxing sounds from my instrument. Do not imagine it as some gift from God. Why would God give me anything when He took from me everything?”

  “He did not take your talent,” she countered. “He did not take your mind. He did not take your beauty. And he did not take your redemption. ‘In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses.’”

  “You quote Sriptures to me?” he exclaimed. “Here is one. ‘For they have shed the blood of your saints and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink.’ If you believe that in God there is redemption, then you must also believe that He made me a blood drinker, and in doing so, has taken from me all vestiges of humanity, including my damned soul.”

  “You cannot adapt Scriptures to suit your meaning,” she objected.

  “And if I do, who is to judge me? Will God deprive me of the kingdom of heaven for it?” He laughed, a sharp, mirthless sound. “He could have shown mercy and let me die with the rest of my family, but instead, he damned me to eternal hell. For what reason? Because I killed the wolves that were taking our livestock? Because I failed to say evening prayers with Izabella and Gizella? It may have been Draculea whose bite turned me into this creature who stands before you, but it was God who forged my destiny.”

  His bootheels made scarcely a sound as he paced back and forth over the earthen floor that was soaked with gin. “You ask why I came to your rescue. All right, I’ll tell you. It is because I love you. Despite the things I said to you, I love you. Do you hear me, Prudence? I love you. And that is another cruel joke God has played on me, that I should love a woman who will never love me back.”

  He cast a quick glance at her and through the darkness saw the stunned look upon her face. “I’m surprised you hadn’t guessed it by now. Ah, but you’re much too guileless to see through my façade, aren’t you? But it’s all been for you. The finished manuscript. The concert. Even the cruel things I said.”

  “Nicolae, I—”

  “Don’t say anything,” he cut in. “I’m feeling foolish enough as it is.” His pacing ceased and he stood there, a tall, slender figure eteched against the darkness, shoulders slumped in resignation. “You don’t love me,” he muttered. “The truth is, you’d be a fool if you did.”

  “But I do care for you,” she said.

  “Spare me the friendship speech, Prudence. Don’t get me wrong, a person such as myself can use all the friends he can get. I was just hoping for…” He stopped, then went on with the bitter taste of bile on his tongue. “What does it matter what I was hoping for? There’s not a thing about my life that is how I would wish it. It is what it is and no amount of hoping will change that.” An expression of silent pain passed across his handsome face like a shadow.

  “If I interpret Scriptures to suit my own miserable existence,” he went on, “it is only because all belief has been bred out of me. What you see before you is an empty shell where once a man existed.”

  “And yet you love.” Her voice drifted like a chill wind into the dank space between them, sending a shiver across his preternatural flesh.

  “In vain,” he replied.

  “But the feeling exists, filling up the empty space inside.”

  To the point where I can think of little else except you, he thought miserably. But he had already risked too much by revealing his feelings. What would be the point of destroying what little pride he had left by admitting that his love for her had become a dark hunger as essential to him as the bloodlust?

  “The empty space grows even deeper because of it,” he said, his voice torn between need and despair.

  “Would you rather I lie and tell you that I love you?” she asked. “I can do that. We can both pretend it is so.”

  Nicolae smiled grimly and turned away. “Lies are like strangers who knock at your door. Once you let them in, they never leave. For a while they provide comfort, even if it is only within the confines of your own mind. Sooner or later they awaken, yawn, stretch their slimy limbs and proceed to devour you. For all that I am, and all I am not, I choose truth over lies any time. Never will I see the rapt love in your eyes or hear you whisper lovingly in my ear, and nothing can alter that meloncholy fact.”

  Something touched his arm. Soft, tentative, turning him back toward her. She moved into his arms that opened to receive her and laid her head against his breast.

  Oh God, yes, he thought, let us pretend, just for tonight.

  He bent his head and brougt his lips close to hers and was about to capitulate to the lie when something froze him within a hair’s breadth of kissing her. His body went rigid.

  “What is it?” she questioned.

  He cocked his head to the side.“Did you hear that?”

  “No,” she whispered. “I heard nothing.” Her hand was smooth and warm against his cheek as she turned his face back toward hers.

  He felt his emotions stir, his willpower weaken as he touched his lips to hers, tentatively at first, then stronger, more forceful as the feeling overpowered him.

  Her lips parted to allow his eager tongue entry to the warm, moist hollow of her mouth. He felt her shudder and heard the small sound that caught at the back of her throat. He drew one hand through her hair and down her back, across the torn and soiled fabric of her dress to cup her buttocks and pull her hips hard against his. He was breathing deeply, his ebony lashes sweeping downward to conceal his eyes as he moved in rhythmic thrusts against her. It didn’t matter if she did not love him. She loved what he could do to her, and for now, it was enough.

  Her breasts pressed provocatively against his chest. The tantalizing female scent of her was almost too much to bear. His breathing quickened and his shoulders trembled. He clutched her tighter, pressing himself against her as if clinging to a life raft that tossed on a turbulent sea of emotion and desire.

  “Oh God,” he moaned against her mouth, an anguished sound from deep in his throat. “Oh God.” But not even God could save him from this madness.

  He knew his kiss was hurting her and that the superhuman strength in his fingers was biting into her flesh, but the hot need welled up within and nothing could stop him now. Nothing except…

  A faint odor drifted from somewhere beyond his consciousness to nag at his senses. Little by little it pierced the irrationality that clouded his reasoning and forced a vestige of reality into his being. The smell of blood wafted to him. It was old blood, soaked into the hard-packed earth of the floor. Why hadn’t he noticed that before? But it was more than that which set the hairs at the back of his neck on end.

  All of his senses came alert at once. Panting, he thrust her away from him, so hard that she lost her footing and almost toppled over backwards.

  He silenced her gasp with a forceful command. “Be quiet.”

  “Nicolae, what—?”

  “Shut up, damn it.”

  His eyes spliced the darkness with a fierce green fire, then narrowed to mere slits as he focused his attention on the sounds of crackling and spitting that were discernible only to one whose senses were as acute as his. Lifting his head, he sniffed the air and snarled in pure reaction. He would know that smell anywhere.

  The rats knew it, too, for there suddenly converged upon the static stillness a frantic scurrying of little rat feet and squeals of terror.

  Fire!

  CHAPTER 19

  Through the darkness Pru saw something in Nicolae’s eyes that she had never seen before, turning their beautiful green glow into something dark, dangerous and scornful. Why did he look like that? Mere moments ago he’d been like a fervent lover, ready to take her right then and there on the gin-soaked floor, and she would have let him. Indeed, she craved the dizzying heights to which he took her. But now, there was a wild, panic-stricken look in his eyes, like that of an animal caught in a trap from which there was no escape. His lips were curled back in a snarl, his face knotted in a look of terror that dis
torted his handsome features. The sight of it drove a bolt of alarm through her. She drew in an unsteady breath, but before she could utter a sound, there came to her nostrils the smell of smoke, shaking her with a violent tremble.

  A hush as still as death descended over them. For several tense moments they just stood there, frozen like the marble statues in Vauxhall Gardens. And then, a sudden, crashing sound split the stillness.

  Let’s go!” Nicolae grabbed Pru’s hand and yanked her toward the exit.

  The great wooden door that rolled on iron tracks was bolted from the outside.

  “Stand back,” he ordered.

  He took several steps back. Gathering his incalculable strength about him he lunged at the door with his shoulder. It did not budge. He tried again. Nothing. He hissed and swore under his breath. He tried kicking the door in, but again his strength failed him. His face twisted with emotion, he said through gritted teeth, “I haven’t fed tonight. My strength is weakened.”

  Pru knew he was referring to the liquid meal that was so crucial to his existence. Horrified, she cried, “What will we do?”

  “Blood. I need blood.” He searched the dark corners of the cellar for a sign of the rats from which to feed, but they had all scurried into their holes.

  Without heeding the consequences, Pru rushed forward. Pulling at the collar of her dress, she exposed the white skin of her neck. “Here is the blood you need.”

  “Are you mad?” Nicolae exclaimed. “Do you know what that means?”

  Her face was very pale. “It’s the only way.”

  He gave her a look that burned with indecision. His hesitation stretched into maddening delay. “Yes,” he said finally, his voice a low drone. “The only way.” He reached for her and drew her close. “I’ll take only what I need, not a drop more. I swear it.”

  She went rigid at his touch.

  “Trust me, Prudence. I won’t make you into something like me.”

  Her voice shook treacherously. “Will it hurt?”

  “Only a little. Only a little.”