She sat bolt upright, eyes wide, more blood-sweat on her face, skin shining red.
“Aliena!” I reached for her, touched her wrist, snatched my hand back. She was scorching hot. Vampire or not, heat like that had to kill her soon.
What was happening to her?
She screamed again.
“Aliena!” I grabbed her flailing arm, careful not to touch her flesh. Her jacket was hot, but not scalding. In spite of my efforts to hold on to her, she was too strong and jerked out of my grip. “Aliena?”
She looked over my head as if I wasn’t there. I continued to call her name. She let out another piercing wail, her eyes staring past the ceiling. I grabbed her again.
She trembled, making louder and louder cries of agony. I hung on, hating that I was helpless to do anything. Suddenly, her body went rigid and her head snapped back. Her mouth opened, fangs extended, eyes fiery red, and she let out an ululating cry of agonized misery.
“Aliena!”
The scream cut off abruptly and her body went limp in my arms.
I held her away from me, peering at her closely. Small dots of blood covered her face and neck.
How could this be happening on Valentine’s Day, the perfect day to ask your sweetheart to marry you?
I picked her up and left the living room. Entering her room, I tossed her onto the bed and quickly undressed her, noting with distress the blood-sweat covering her body.
I carried her to the bathroom, her body still burning hot, lay her in the tub, and started the shower. Hissing, the droplets turned to steam when they hit her skin. As the water poured down, I took off my clothes and knelt on the carpet, looking her over.
She lay on the porcelain as if dead.
Stepping in, I picked her up and turned her back and forth in front of the chilly stream, relieved when her body temperature began to drop. Once she was clean of blood, I held her against me with one arm and turned the flow off.
Slipping as I stepped out, Aliena’s dripping body nearly twisted out of my arms. Gripping her more tightly, I plucked a bath sheet off the shelf and carried her to the bed. Awkwardly, I draped the towel behind her and laid her on the comforter. I went back to the bathroom for another towel.
After I had carefully dried her off and swathed myself, I leaned over and inspected her closely. Her skin appeared natural, her body temperature had returned to normal, and she was no longer sweating blood.
In the kitchen, I hunted through a drawer, found a magnifying glass. Returning to Aliena, I started at the back of her neck and went over every inch of her. I found no puncture marks, cuts, scrapes. There was nothing under her fingernails, or between fingers and toes. I probed her skull, digging my fingers under her thick hair.
She remained smooth and without blemish.
I pulled the comforter down, lifted her and slipped her between the cool sheets, lowering her head softly to the pillow. I sat on the edge of the mattress and ran my hand through her hair.
I had no idea what had happened to her, didn’t know what to do. In this state, I could not tell if she was getting better or worse.
At least she wasn’t burning up anymore. That had to be a good sign. Picking her hand off the coverlet, I kissed it, looked at her engagement ring. Our dance and her happiness at my proposal flashed like pictures in my head. Had that only been an hour ago?
What was I going to do? I brought her hand to my lips again. Somehow I must heal her. But how? I could think of nothing. There was only one course to follow and I hated that path.
I would have to wait and see.
Chapter 11
Karina and I married the day after our meeting, on Pentecost, a cool, sunny May afternoon in 1487, in the Cathedral of Santa Eulalia. The thirteen coins I had given her the night before represented a traditional symbol of my commitment to her. The amount could support a small family for fifteen or twenty years.
The chapel occupied one of the outer aisles of the church, with a soaring ceiling and vaulted arches, the sunlight tinted by intricate stained-glass windows.
Karina glided down the aisle on her father’s arm, her black wedding gown intricately embroidered, the hoops of her verdugada cascading to her feet. The dress had huge openings at the shoulder on either side. Through these holes poked the billowing sleeves of the kirtle she wore beneath her dress. This formal undershirt was also black, square-necked and cut low. Above the neckline was a transparent strip of black silk. She looked lovely as she smiled and nodded to the small group of friends and family in the pews on either side.
She wore the small black purse I had given her around her waist. Men who danced with her during the reception would put coins in it, mostly silver reales and the occasional gold ducado.
Attired in black doublet and hose, I stood at the top of the steps in front of the altar. My jacket’s sleeves were fashionably slashed, showing an occasional flare of the purple tunic I wore under it. Across my chest I wore a black leather baldric that held a jeweled ceremonial sword at my hip. A black cape with purple-black lining hung over my left shoulder, draping to the knee.
Karina wore a black scarf over her hair, with attached veil. All I could see of her face was her dark eyes. When she alighted on the top step, she shot me a swift look and away.
The priest intoned the ceremony, Karina and I recited our vows, I lifted her veil, we kissed briefly, and then the family cascaded over us. As two of her aunts pulled her away and her grandfather took my arm, Karina and I watched each other. Even with her veil in place, happiness clearly lit her face.
Don Alejandro dragged me off to the dessert table in the reception room.
“No champagne,” he said. “Wine is for ladies.” He steered us to a bottle of Courvoisier cognac.
My bride, along with the rest of the women, sat on the other side of the room at a table that stretched the length of the wall. Bunched together at one end, they had their heads close.
A small group of players provided the music. The women occasionally danced with the children. Karina pirouetted with her father and other relatives who had come here to wish us well. The crowd was small, due to the quick betrothal, but most had already been here in anticipation of her marriage to Santella.
She kept her veil in place during our matrimonial waltz. We did not speak. During that first dance, our eyes communicated, and she entranced me with her calm assurance, her palpable tranquility.
Alejandro and I drank a full bottle of brandy between us. I finished the last third of the bottle, wanting the jolt, while also trying to prevent my bride’s grandfather from becoming plastered and falling asleep beside the fruit pastries. When I set the empty down, he gave me a sad, bleary smile.
“All good things must come to an end.” He listed to port, and began to tip over. I got an arm around his shoulder and guided him to our table, where we sat. He took my hands.
“How does a man thank another for an affair such as this?”
“When two men of worth become friends, there are no true sacrifices, no favors. I am your servant.”
He kissed me on the cheeks.
“A good boy.” He banged his hand on the table. “A man—like your father.” His eyes focused on my face. “You look exactly like him,” he said for the sixth time since I arrived. He slapped my face lightly. “Both handsome men. All the women…” He trailed off with a sigh and looked at his granddaughter as she danced with her father. “She is so young, such a child. But smart for a woman—a thinker.”
Karina saw us watching and waved. Her eyes came to rest on mine. She seemed to suffer a shock, turning away quickly as if she were a doe catching the eye of the hunter.
“I know you do not want her for your wife, Sebastian. If you must tell her this, you will be gentle.”
“We shall see, Alejandro. We must consider her mind as well. She hardly knows me. She may not wish to be married to me.”
He looked over at the women. They watched us.
“I would not count on that, my boy,” he said.
Karina and I finally escaped the reception and dashed to our carriage, everyone following us down the dusty road for half a kilometer. It was the first time we had been alone since meeting in Alejandro’s garden. The sun had set moments before, turning the clouds pink and violet, and a chill wind sprang up.
“That was nice,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Your family seemed very pleased.”
“Not everybody.”
“Oh?”
“My aunts don’t think I deserve you and that you should have married one of them.”
“Why do they say you don’t deserve to marry me?”
“They say I’m too young to appreciate you.”
“I wouldn’t listen to them. It was jealousy. This ceremony makes other women—especially the ones who aren’t married—wish they were also celebrating their wedding day.”
“I know.”
Since we had to travel for three days to Tarragona, we stopped at the same comfortable inn where my men and I had stayed the night before, and where I had left them. Once I turned the horses over to the grooms, I guided Karina inside and carried her up the stairs and over the threshold to our room, kicking the door shut. There, I set her on her feet.
The owner had a fire going already and the room glowed warm and comfortable in the mellow light. A brown-and-tan patchwork quilt covered the bed, now turned back, and two lumpy-looking sacks. Ten months ago, the manager had met a man named Jacques Pillou who had invented soft, down-filled cases of cotton for resting the head upon while sleeping. He called them “pillows,” after his name. The innkeeper provided two of them with this room. After resting on one the previous night, I decided to purchase ten of them in the morning.
There were also a small wooden desk and chair against one wall, and a polished oak bench next to the fireplace.
“Would you like a drink?” I asked her. Two bottles of river-chilled champagne sat in a shiny metal bucket. Crystal goblets had been placed next to them. I popped the cork, set the glasses on the table, and filled them.
“Yes, I think I would like something.” She removed her veil and scarf, set them on the desk.
I carried the drink to her. She took it and I clinked my glass against hers.
“To Mr. and Mrs. Montero.”
“Yes,” she said, looking at the bubbles rising in her champagne. She closed her eyes, brought the glass to her lips, and drained the drink. She pushed the goblet back at me. “More, please.”
“Here,” I said. “Take mine.”
“Thank you.” She finished that one, too.
“Another?”
“Something to sip.” She burped, and covered her mouth, face going red. “Oh, dear.”
“Perfectly natural with champagne,” I assured her. I filled the sparkling crystal again. “Here you are.”
She took it, walked toward the fireplace and sat on the small bench. The light from the blaze flickered over her.
“Karina, my dear,” I said, embarrassed now that I had to explain the situation, “we must take a moment to discuss our marriage.” I removed my baldric and cape and set them with my saber on a small chest at the end of the bed. “You and I needn’t remain married, or perform as man and wife. You are a sweet girl, and when I discovered you were destined to be Count Santella’s wife, I intervened.”
“Why?”
“Your grandfather requested it of me. We know Count Santella well, and the pleasures he enjoys. He has beaten at least two women to death, though we can’t prove it. None of his people dares to give evidence against him. We could never allow him to have you. Your parents couldn’t bear to give you to such a man, knowing what awaited you.”
“You did this to protect me?”
“Yes.”
“I thought Grandpapa owed the Count a debt.”
“So you know about that.”
“No one told me, but I have overheard conversations. It is always alarming to hear one’s mother cry.”
“I see. Yes, it’s true Alejandro owed a debt to the Count. One of my men is taking him a counteroffer.”
“What would he take instead of me after all that trouble he went to?”
“Gold.”
“How much gold?”
“An amount Count Santella will not be able to pass up.”
“You bought me?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes.”
None of this was true. I had dispatched no one. My plans for Santella did not involve bribery.
“You are as free as you ever were,” I told her, “without the threat of marriage to Count Santella hanging over your head like the Sword of Damocles.”
“I know all about the Count. You needn’t have worried. If he was ever cruel to me, I would have put a knife in his ear when he was sleeping.”
“Well,” I said, amused. “It’s a good thing we avoided all of that. We wouldn’t want you to become a murderer at sixteen.”
She watched me with a patient expression I would come to recognize over the years. “You’re the only man I ever heard Grandpa talk about with respect. He thinks everyone is as stupid as a pig, but not you.” She sipped her drink.
“Don Alejandro is very kind. As for now—”
“You are my husband.”
“As I said, it was arranged.”
She was quiet for a long moment. “You don’t want me?”
I sidestepped that question. “Do you not think me too old for you?”
“What do you mean? My father is twenty years older than my mother. You only look ten years older than me.”
With a start, I realized she was right. Even I sometimes forgot that although I was over two hundred years old, I didn’t look a day over twenty-five. And Karina was certainly not too young for matrimony. Most girls married at fifteen or sixteen. To me, the difference in our ages was great, but others would see nothing out of the ordinary.
During our conversation in the garden, I had discovered Karina to be an intelligent, well-read young lady who spoke four languages already. Her comment about killing Count Santella showed she kept her eyes and ears open to what was happening around her and had a fiery sense of self-protection.
“How do you feel about me?” she said, her voice low, her gaze on the sparkling bubbles in her goblet.
“I think you’re a wonderful girl with a bright mind and—”
“I didn’t mean that.” She looked up at me. “You know what I’m asking. I’m your wife.”
“Yes. I know.”
We all make errors in judgment. I had forgotten the one element that overrode the plans of humans. Love. It was impossible to account for such a variable. I had known she was excited about getting married. I lied to myself and said it was the dress, or the ceremony, or the relief, or the dream that made her so excited. After all, we had only met. She did not even know me.
I understood very well that none of that mattered.
“You don’t have to say anything,” she said to the floor. “I may be young, but I am not slow.” She took a sip of her champagne. “I have been in love with you since the first moment I looked up and saw you in the garden. You’re so handsome and you hold yourself like a king. You look like every girl’s dream of the prince who comes to take her away.” She glanced at me, down again. “And last night, when Grandpapa introduced you as the man to whom he had given my hand in marriage, I didn’t sleep at all.” She took another drink. “I couldn’t believe I had heard him right. I still pinch myself,” she said, doing so to her forearm. “I thought I was dreaming.”
I remembered her stunned expression at dinner after Alejandro’s announcement of my proposal. For the rest of that evening I had caught her staring at me, disbelief on her face, a glimmer of hope in her eyes. And that other expression was there, too.
As early as that dinner, I realized she might be in love with me.
“My heart went from terror to joy when I knew what he said was true.” She hesitated, then, perhaps emboldened by wine, she said,
“I thought about you all night and dreamed about being alone with you.”
“Oh? And what happens in your dream?”
Her face reddened and she looked at my shoes. “Oh, you know. You make love to me, using the tricks you learned in other lands…” I laughed, and she blushed furiously, “…and before we go to sleep, you tell me you love me.” She set her glass on the table and looked up at me. “I know it’s just a dream.” A tear slid down her face. “I know you don’t love me.”
I walked to her and pulled her to her feet, took her in my arms. She remained as unyielding as a stone column. When I kissed the top of her head, her arms went around me and squeezed tightly.
It was true I did not love her. It was also true she was one of the dearest people I had met. I knew her wit and intelligence would make her an interesting companion for a lifetime. Could I commit to her on that alone? No. There had to be at least a possibility of falling in love with her.
“I don’t know you yet,” I said. I decided to give her a conditional promise, swearing to myself that I would try to love her. “Do you think if we give it time, you’re the kind of girl to make me happy?”
She looked up, her eyes wide, that flicker of hope I had seen last night now a blazing beam. “I would do anything you asked. Anything at all.”
“I don’t want a slave,” I told her. “I want a partner. Perhaps someday, you will have to take care of me.”
“I will,” she said with fierce determination. “I swear it, I will do whatever I have to do. Anything if you will be my husband.”
“Fair enough. I give you my oath.” I leaned down and kissed her on the lips, softly. She went rigid again. I cupped her jaw in my hand and kissed her more strongly, teasing her lips open with my tongue. Her body softened into mine and a great sigh escaped her.
I reached around and began undoing the fastenings of her dress. Breaking the kiss, I pulled her wedding gown off her shoulders and let it fall to the ground. I lifted the black kirtle over her head and dropped it. All she wore now was a fine black linen camisa that came to the middle of her thighs, and black leather shoes. Pushing her down onto the bench, I went to one knee in front of her, unlaced the straps of her shoes and pulled them off.
Ghosts of Atlantis (Immortal Montero Book 3) Page 6