Possessed by An Immortal
Page 12
“You really are bad at keeping secrets,” he said.
Chapter 13
Mark hadn’t been fooled for an instant by her sleepy-time act. Bree’s heart had been thumping like a drum kit while she did her best to avoid him. Fine. So he was a monster for wanting to kiss her. Little did she know just how much of a beast he really was.
She bounced off the bed and lunged at the book. “You have no right!”
He snatched it away. “I’ll be the judge of that.”
She fell back a step, gathering her dignity. “How did you know I even had it?”
“Unless you were utterly brain-dead, you kept it as a last-ditch bargaining chip, just in case you needed to buy your safety from Ferrel.” He saw her pale face, pinched with fear, and wanted to swear. He wasn’t the enemy. “Don’t bother. His type use words like honor and promise, but they’ll break a deal if it suits their plan.”
The book was the size of a thick hardcover, handmade and bound in brown leather. It was fastened with a leather thong that wound around an elaborate brass stud on the front cover. It made him think more of medieval fantasy than fashion designers. It was all very...Jessica.
Bree looked from the book to his face. “So this is what you’re really after?”
He could see her constructing an elaborate plot in her mind—one where he befriended her for the sole purpose of stealing the dress designs. He nearly laughed. “You’re the closest thing we have to a witness to Jessica’s murder. Of course I’m interested in this, and you. I want justice.”
Without saying another word, he unwound the thong and opened the cover. The paper was thick and rough, more beige than white. There were watercolor sketches of gowns and coats, hats and handbags, all labeled with Lark’s flowing handwriting. He had little interest in clothes, but could tell they had the trademark elegance of the fey. No wonder the humans had paid top dollar for her work.
He turned page after page. The paper rustled, sounding dry and strangely brittle for a book that shouldn’t have been older than a year or two. Bree watched him, all but crackling with anger.
The last few pages of the book were blank. He flipped backward, pausing when he recognized the sketch for a wedding dress. Yes, it was the same one Jack Anderson had kept hidden in his house. “This is Princess Amelie’s bridal gown, diamonds and all.”
“Yes.”
“I can tell it’s Jessica’s work.” He tried to find the right words to take the fury out of Bree’s eyes. “The designs have panache.”
But clothes were just clothes, even if they cost a lot of money. After five and a half centuries, he’d seen every kind of heel, wig and corset for both men and women. Was the book really worth killing for? Maybe he’d believe that if Bree was being chased by a pack of couturiers, but as far as he knew, the Knights of Vidon had about as much taste as a block of tofu.
And yet they had chased her. They’d even mobilized the paparazzi with that story about Jonathan’s paternity to slow her down. Why?
He closed the cover, ready to hand the book back to Bree. But then he caught a whiff of it. It smelled musty. Or was that glue? Cautiously, he sniffed the binding.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
He turned the book on end and peered down the spine. The stitching that sewed the binding together looked new, but the edges of some pages looked oddly waffled, as if they’d been left in the rain. But not every page. Very, very carefully, he opened the book as far as it would go.
Bree had silently come to his side and was peering over his shoulder. “What is it?”
He felt along the edge of the page where it disappeared into the crease. His fingers found telltale unevenness in the paper. Using his fingernail, he peeled away the corner of the page covering the real page of the book. It lifted with a sound like crunching leaves, but his hands tingled as if he’d thrust them into an anthill. Magic.
With an intake of breath, Bree bent to see more closely. “There’s more handwriting underneath!”
So there was, in thick, dark ink. Mark kept peeling, separating the hidden page from the page of sketches that covered it. Fey magic prickled all the way up to the nape of his neck, but there was no burst of sparkles or beams of energy to show it was anything more than a particularly clever scrapbooking job. Just as well, since Bree was watching.
Irritation coursed through him. Lark had put Bree in a lot of danger by making her into a mule for who-knew-what. If Lark wasn’t dead already, he’d be giving her grief.
At last the page of designs came loose, and he set it aside. Beneath was smoother paper with a faint gray hue. The angular writing looked masculine. Most of it wasn’t letters, though, but a long string of formulas.
“Do you know what that is?” Bree asked.
Mark frowned. “Not at first glance.”
In fact, it looked like chemists gone wild. Or maybe alchemists. There were symbols there he hadn’t seen since, oh, about the time men still wore tights. And codpieces. That was one fashion statement he wouldn’t miss.
“I need to take the book apart,” he said. “You can keep Lark’s drawings if you want them.”
“That book isn’t yours,” she said sharply. “Whatever is in there, Jessica gave it to me.”
That wasn’t logical. He waved at the page of symbols. “You can’t understand this.”
“Nor can you.” She made a move to pull the book out of his hand. “You just said so.”
There was no way he was letting her have it back. Not only did it have information Lark had kept hidden, but it was soaked in fey magic—magic he’d now disturbed and would need time to dissipate. Who knew what the wretched thing might do? He might look up to discover she’d been turned into a potted plant. “I need to study it.”
She grabbed the edge of the book, giving it a sharp tug. He brushed her hands away. He wasn’t rough, but he was a vampire, and strong. She stumbled away, eyes resentful.
“You’re a thief,” she announced. “And a strange one.”
Mark studied her, wondering how much she’d put together. There were some things about himself that were hard to hide. The sunburn. His lack of appetite. His strength. Still, people saw what they expected, and that was rarely vampires.
“I know what I’m doing,” he countered evenly. “I’ll get you to Los Angeles. I’ll get your son medical help. If there’s any monetary value to this book or its contents, it’s yours—but I need to understand these symbols.”
“That’s not the point. Jessica entrusted it to me for safekeeping. You can’t keep it.”
“It’s safe with me.”
Her look turned to icy contempt. “She didn’t give it to you. What part of that don’t you get?”
He was getting a headache. It would have been easy to give way to anger, but he had to swallow his pride and endure her glare. To be fair, she didn’t have all the facts. “Listen. The signatures—the bundles of paper sewn together to make up the book—look like they’ve been reassembled. Whoever disguised the book must have cut the original apart to do this. Whatever is hidden beneath the sketches is what Lark really wanted to hide. Don’t you want to know what that is?”
For a moment, she continued to rake him with her gaze, as if that alone could strip the skin from his flesh. Finally, she turned away to sit beside her sleeping son. She put a hand on Jonathan’s dark hair. “You have to admit it’s clever,” she said more calmly. “Whoever is looking for a valuable secret wouldn’t think of lo
oking inside an object that other thieves would want for a totally different reason. It’s really good camouflage.”
“Other thieves?” Mark asked, confused. Did she mean him?
Her look said he was an idiot. “Industrial espionage. Rivals were always trying to swipe Jessica’s collections. That’s why she had a safe on-site.”
“Oh.” That still didn’t answer what the fey woman was hiding. He flipped to the front of the book and peeled away another page, hoping for some sort of introduction that would explain the rest. If he was hoping for something easy, he was disappointed. “Well, the first part of this is written in Latin.”
“Who writes in Latin?” Bree said in an annoyed tone.
“It used to be the universal language of educated discourse.” He sounded defensive and he knew it. Vampires gave new meaning to the phrase “old school.” At least that sounded better than “geek for languages as dead as he was.”
“Can you read it?”
He silently read through the first passage. Whoever had written it had excellent grammar. Mark’s tutors would have been gratified if he’d ever done half so well.
This is the culmination of my work, the third of three trials I have made. This shall correct the shortcomings of the first two experiments and set the crown on my life’s attainments. I have labored alone for many years to understand the workings of a terrible disease, for men are made in the image of the divine and it is our sworn duty to protect them. What is this infection that turns such favored creatures into demons doomed to feast on the blood of their brothers? Indeed, it is only in this century that we have the ability to investigate. Genetics and virology can now combine with the forgotten teachings of unnatural philosophy to crack, and indeed re-create, the foul plague of vampirism. A necessary project, for how can the vampire be stopped except by a foe of equal strength and ferocity? One without the demonic evil transmitted through a vampire’s bite?
Mark nearly dropped the book. Damnation! Someone had written—or tried to write—a how-to book for making vampires! With alchemy, Latin, genetics and a virus. It was the oddest mix of ancient and modern theory he’d ever seen.
The implications made his head spin. Almost dizzy, Mark sat down on the other bed, facing Bree. What could this mean? Making more of his kind wasn’t a simple process. No one knew why or how it worked. Magic? It seemed that way, but who knew? If there was a way to understand what made them immortal, or how to control the blood thirst...
“What does it say?” Bree demanded, but Mark barely heard her.
So why do the Knights of Vidon want this? The answer to that question turned his stomach to lead. For how can the vampire be stopped except by a foe of equal strength and ferocity?
They wanted to make their own vampires. By the nine fiery hells! It was laughable, offensive and terrifying all at once.
He looked up at Bree, wishing he could talk to her. Now was one of those moments he could use a good listener—but she was just a human. A pretty, brave woman with a little boy who needed his help—who was at the moment sleeping off a dose of Mark’s own vampire blood.
Some interesting doublethink you have going on, my friend. If the book’s recipe for vampires was bad news, how was Mark’s home remedy any better? Too many doses of vamp blood had been known to produce interesting side effects, like sensitivity to the sun. He had to get to L.A. fast before his quick and dirty prescriptions caught up with his patient.
Something nagged at the back of Mark’s mind, but it wouldn’t emerge from the maelstrom of his thoughts. There was too much to think about at once, including the fact that Lark had entrusted the book to a woman with a baby. Irresponsible. Insane. Erratic. Which all spelled fey. Bree was too valuable for such careless treatment.
Valuable? His inner voice was mocking. In the grand scheme of things, she’s nothing but a snack for the road. You’re an operative. An assassin with a perverse urge to heal. What could she ever be but a sentimental keepsake?
How he hated that voice.
“What does the book say?” Bree repeated.
“It’s a recipe for a biological weapon.” His outer voice was hard and flat.
“What?” She recoiled as if the germs themselves were on the book.
“Who knows you have this book?”
She turned pasty at his words. “Jessica. Me. You.”
That wasn’t so bad. He relaxed a degree. “We should be all right as long as we stay off the radar. No phone calls. No contact of any kind with anyone.”
She blinked suddenly. “I called home. My father’s private cell.”
He tensed again. “When?”
“Tonight. No one picked up and I didn’t leave a message.”
He felt his face freeze. Whatever Bree saw there made her anxious. “I called on the room phone. It wasn’t the cell phone, so no one would necessarily know it was me.”
Mark gripped the book so hard he felt the cover boards dimple. “Ferrel knows who you are. What if your father’s phone was bugged?”
From Bree’s expression, it was obvious she hadn’t thought of that. She acted streetwise, and had survived her share of knocks and scares, but it was obvious part of her was still innocent as snow. He didn’t have the heart to ask if her father might be one of the bad guys. He was a famous director, surrounded by throngs of actors, staff, fans... Any one of them could be with the Knights.
“We’re leaving now,” he growled, and snapped the book shut.
Chapter 14
Memories of pain filled Bree, red and raw. Pain ripping her from end to end. She forgot the agony of childbirth when she was awake. Somewhere she’d read that the brain did that for the good of the human race—otherwise, no woman would ever have a second child. And yet she had dreamed of it often since Jonathan fell ill, as if birthing him again would make him whole.
Her eyelids flickered, letting in a hint of daylight before the noise of wheels on the road lulled her back to sleep.
This time, she was back in New York, working late into the night after everyone but Jessica had gone home. The studio was on the sixth floor of one of those old brick Manhattan buildings, the streets a constantly moving river of lights and cars outside the windows. Bree was drawing the design that was to go onto Princess Amelie’s wedding dress. It was going to be couched gold cord picked out in pearls and—though she wasn’t sure she believed this part—diamonds. There would have to be a fortune in diamonds to cover the whole bodice, but that’s what they’d said. Whatever. Bree had a heap of books on the table beside her with color plates of needlework. This kind of goldwork had to be done by hand, and there were only a handful of professional embroiderers who could do it. Royal weddings didn’t fall into a designer’s lap every day—especially one as junior as she was—and Bree was thrilled Jessica had invited her to come up with some ideas.
Which was why Bree was there that night. She’d had cramps since that morning, off and on, but they’d been so mild she had blown them off and kept working.
All of a sudden, she felt a change inside, the first hint of it so subtle it might have been just her imagination. She looked up, seeing her face reflected faintly against the glass, her features vague in the halo of lamplight. The lights moved behind the reflection, as if she were connected to the sea of movement yet floating above it, her wide eyes shimmering and insubstantial.
The next moment her water broke, unexpectedly warm. The birth would come hard and fast and sooner than anyone expected.
Bree yelped before she could stifle the sound. The sound brought Jessica out of her office at a run. Sh
e threw a layer of muslin down—the cheap stuff they used for making up patterns. It shone like a pale island against the dark wood planks. Then she grabbed Bree’s hand, helping her to the floor. “Sail through the pain. Just leave it behind. It can’t touch you.”
Bree wanted to scream at her, to call her an idiot, but she managed to hold on to some shred of dignity. “It hurts.”
“Then I’ll tell you a story. Keep your mind off it till the ambulance comes.”
Or the baby. It was going to be a race to see which arrived first. Bree cried out again, convinced she was going to rupture like the guy in Alien, a horrible space monster clawing its way out of her belly. She was going to die.
“Help me!” she wailed.
“Do you want me to call your mother?” Jessica asked.
“No.” What would her mother do, anyway? Bree couldn’t imagine. Write a contract? Deliver a brief?
Jessica made a face. “It’ll be all right.”
“I have to finish the dress.”
“The dress can wait. Royal weddings don’t happen overnight. Your child will be toddling before Amelie walks down the aisle.”
Another wave of pain came, blanking Bree’s vision to white. Jessica gripped her hand tight. “I’m going to tell you a story my mother told me when I was just a little girl.”
There had to be something in the soft, even tone of the woman’s words. Her voice was something to cling to, and Bree clung to it like a drowning woman. “Okay.”
Jessica smiled, her expression soft. “My mother used to tell it like this. Long ago strange creatures walked the land—the fair folk and the demons and the beast men. They came at the call of kings who offered them shelter from the fire and sword of human warriors, and for a gift of blood or gold would do the bidding of their mortal lords.”
A bright lance of pain forced a cry from Bree’s lips. She crushed Jessica’s hand, but the woman didn’t cry out. She was stronger than she looked.