Fear tingled down Ian’s spine. Beatrix Lisse had Asharti’s glow of life. And she knew what he was. “What do you want here?” he barked.
She slipped out of her evening cape and draped it carelessly across a chair, revealing a deep rose satin dress. “Surely you know that, at least.”
The only surmises he could make were based on his single other experience with a female of his new kind. He said nothing, for anything he said might further betray his ignorance, and ignorance was weakness in the face of one so obviously strong.
“You look uncomfortable. Perhaps we should sit?” She lounged into a wing chair set beside a fire that was hardly more than embers now. He loomed above her, caught himself chewing his lip, and tried to force himself to look as relaxed as she was.
“Well,” she said, after a moment. “Perhaps you should tell me what you are doing here.”
“Why should I do that?” he growled.
“Because only one of us is allowed to a city and London is mine again since Davinoff left, so, though I have been away, still you may not come here without my permission, which you should know.” Her gaze flicked over him. “But you don’t. Very well, then I shall tell you some things, and perhaps that will loosen your tongue.” She stared him straight in the eyes, which made him glance away, afraid she would bend his will to hers. “So,” she said. Then, “You are ignorant, which means you have been recently made and whoever made you abandoned you without telling you how to go on. They tell me you have come from North Africa. That means Asharti made you. You can’t have had a good time of it with her. I know that because I have known Asharti and what she can do firsthand.” Her countenance darkened in remembered anger before she mastered herself and went on. “And because I can see you expect the worst from me. How am I doing?”
Ian swallowed, trying to control the pounding of his heart. She knew everything. That was dangerous, but that also meant she had the knowledge about his condition he needed badly. How to proceed? Before he could muster any words, she spoke again.
“I thought so,” she said calmly. “Your power is emerging as the Companion settles in. Yet already I feel it quite distinctly. That means you could be very strong, even for one of us. Rubius was right. You have not run mad, so you have a resilient mind.” She put a finger to her full red lips. “Now we must determine the fell purpose for which Asharti sent one of her minions to London. Yet it is dangerous for her to leave you in ignorance,” she mused. “Perhaps she told you just enough to accomplish whatever your mission is.”
Ian’s questions were banished in favor of outrage. “She did not send me here. She infected me accidentally with a drop of her blood and left me to burn in the desert sun. I crawled into El Golea on my own and came home to England to escape her.”
“You lie,” the woman said lightly, but power throbbed under her words. “No one survives infection without continued application of a vampire’s blood to give their body immunity to the Companion. Conversion cannot be accidental where the victim lives.”
“It . . . it was not her who saved me.” He took a breath. “Fedeyah left me a skin of his own blood and a burnoose to cover me against the sun.”
Lady Lente raised her brows, considering. “Poor Fedeyah!” she said at last. “He still follows her wherever she allows him. Why would he risk her wrath after all these centuries?”
Ian was startled at how easily she referred to extreme age. Concentrate. He needed this creature’s goodwill. He wanted to know what perhaps only she could tell him. “Since he has not the will to escape, it might comfort him to know it was at least possible for someone.”
The black eyes grew thoughtful. “It is easy to say she does not know you are here. You might have become her lover to gain the power of the Companion.”
Ian could not swallow. “I never wanted what I have become.”
Lady Lente tilted her head, speculating.
“I . . . I was her slave. She enjoys . . . compulsion.” It was all he could admit.
“Yes. She does.” The black eyes bored into his until he had to look away. “I am only too familiar with that. It is one reason she was exiled to the desert—that and the fact that she had no compunction about killing humans or making vampires. If a drop of her blood is so strong, no wonder she is bold enough to misbehave in Africa.” Her eyes flickered as she thought.
A step sounded on the stair. Both Ian and the Countess went quiet. A rap on the door at five in the morning? “Rufford, I know you are awake. It’s me: Ware.”
Ware? Here from El Golea? He did not want the one person other than Miss Rochewell who knew something about him here in London. His position was precarious enough. He glanced at the Countess, willing her to disappear the way she had come. But she tapped her lips with one finger and slid silently instead into the bedchamber, leaving the door ajar.
“Rufford, answer, I say.”
Ian opened the door. The Countess would hear all Ware’s likely accusations. “Why are you here at this hour, raising the house?”
A voice yelled, “Quiet!” from across the stairwell.
“I have a message for you.” Ware pushed past Ian into the candlelit room.
“From whom?” Ian shut the door and turned on his visitor.
Ware took a stiff envelope out of his breast pocket and looked at it with a fascination bordering on revulsion. “I believe her name is Asharti.”
Ian felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. He could practically feel the flare of interest and threat behind the bedchamber door. But that was only a flicker compared to the dread that welled within his own breast as he stared at that letter. He thought he’d left the horror behind. Now it reached out for him, even here, in the staid respectability of Albany House in the middle of London in January 1819. He did not reach for the letter. “How does she know I am here?”
Major Ware let the hand holding the letter drop to his side. “I told her.” His eyes dropped, too. “One does what she wants. If you know her, you understand.”
Ian understood. He grabbed the decanter and poured a glass. Nodding toward a chair, he handed it to Ware. Then he filled his own. They might both need brandy tonight. Ware placed the envelope upon a side table, where it immediately became a vortex for all energy within reach.
They gulped brandy. “How did you meet Asharti?” Ian still said the name with difficulty.
“Marrakech fell to her hordes. Then she moved on Algiers. She came through El Golea.”
Ian jerked his head around, started to speak, and thought better of it.
“I know,” Ware continued. “It all happened so quickly, there has been little word of it in the capitals of Europe. One moment she had a ragtag band of Bedouins and Berbers in the desert, and the next they are storming Marrakech and . . . and performing horrible desecrations on the dead and dying.” Ware tossed back more brandy and breathed in past its burn. “She killed the Dey, some say with her own hands, and his sons, uncles, brothers, too—all the males of his family. She set one of her own creatures on the throne.”
“What do you mean, one of her creatures?” Ian did not want to know, yet he must.
“The ones who are like her . . . the ones who, who violate before they kill. . . . Sometimes she orders them to let a man she selects take . . . their blood, and then . . .” He could not go on.
“Then the victims, too, suck human blood,” Ian said, his voice harsh.
“There are more and more of them. They keep the troops in line and follow her like she was a goddess.”
“If she is a goddess, then where she rules is hell.” Ian strained to swallow.
“She killed the entire delegation in El Golea after asking each in turn where you were.” Ware stared at his boots. “It was terrible.”
“Except you.”
The Major nodded slowly. “I was the only one who knew the name of your country seat. She spared me so I could bring this letter to you. Her army moved on to Algiers.”
Ian’s brows drew together. How did she
know he was even alive to ask the British delegation where he was? Only Fedeyah . . . But of course! He wondered if Fedeyah threw his disobedience up to Asharti in some short-lived moment of defiance or whether he regretted his moment of compassion to Ian and sought to rectify it. Wait. . . . “Algiers?”
“The only question is whether, after Algiers, she presses on to Tripoli or skips across the Med to Rome.” Ware looked up, his pale eyes horrified. “She means to have all Europe.”
“Easy to say,” Ian murmured, thinking quickly.
“I think she can,” Ware almost whispered. “You haven’t seen her Bedouins fight. Nothing seems to kill them.”
Neither said anything for a moment but sipped their brandy. Did Ware know Ian was like the monsters Asharti created? He had seen the healing. Ian stared at the letter. There was no escaping it. The room seemed to shimmer as he reached for it. The heavy rag paper felt rich and oily against his fingers. There was no address on the outside. He turned it over. The seal was red wax, incised with two crossed flails like the symbol of the Pharaohs. It had been melted at the edges, opened, and resealed. Someone thought he would not notice, but his eyesight was very good these days. He broke the seal and ripped the envelope convulsively.
Dearest Ian,
I have missed you terribly. You are now the only one with blood worthy of mine running in your veins. Meet me in Tripoli. My armies should be there by the time this reaches you, and you can return to Africa. You will be my consort when I am Queen of both the human and vampire world. I know where you are. Do not make me come to you.
Asharti
Ian’s throat went dry. It all fell into place. He was the only one who had blood enriched by the power of the Old One, though he had it only once removed through her. It was Fedeyah who made her first minions, and after that they made one another. She did not allow them her blood direct. He had no illusions about the meaning of consort. She wanted a slave or a plaything, or she wanted him dead. Death would probably be quite creative, only slightly less horrible than being back in her power permanently. Most terrible of all, England wasn’t far enough away. She could find him, bringing destruction and creating monsters as she came. And she knew about Stanbridge. Henry and Mary and the boys were in danger, too.
The world seemed to shudder. He looked around at the richly colored carpets, the flickering candles and dark woods of the sitting room. They appeared a sham, suddenly, as though they were a snakeskin that might be shed at any moment, covering desert sand and rock.
“What is it?” Ware asked. “What does she say?”
Ian glanced to the Major. The room shivered back into place. “You know very well. Did you take the letter to the Foreign Office in Whitehall? Or the Admiralty?” He watched Ware try to dissemble and the anger drained away. “It doesn’t matter. Patriots should not be despised.”
“What will you do?” Ware studied his face. The letter confirmed exactly what Ian was. Ware knew Ian drank blood like Asharti’s army. He thought him evil, like the bitch Queen herself. But then, why was he here? Only to obey Asharti? That was reason enough. Still . . .
“What do your betters want me to do?”
“I told them you . . . you might be able to stop her.”
“Whatever made you think I would try?”
“I wasn’t sure you would.” Ware had eyes only for his glass. “But I thought it possible.”
Ian tossed the letter on the writing desk and drained the brandy, pretending calm. “I don’t know what I’ll do.” He shot a glance at Ware. “Can your contacts wait while I decide?”
Ware shrugged and rose. “I don’t know.” He looked curiously at Ian. “How long were you . . . with her?”
Ian kept his face impassive. “Until she discarded me. I won’t submit to her power again.”
Ware shuddered. “Of course.” He picked up his hat and headed toward the door. “I am at the Hart and Hounds. I’ll tell Whitehall to wait until Wednesday, that you’re making plans.”
He was gone. The Countess slipped back into the room. She went silently to the desk, read the letter while Ian poured himself another brandy. “So,” she said at last.
“Indeed.” His gut churned. If he did not go to Asharti, she would come to find him.
“She offers you a position at her side.” Beatrix Lisse, Countess of Lente, still thought one who got letters from Asharti might be her minion.
“No. For her there is no relationship of equals. She offers a return to slavery, or she wants to kill me in case I pose a threat.”
“And why exactly would you pose a threat?” The Countess’s eyes were black metal.
Ian considered her for a moment, revulsion and fear plunging inside him for all his calm exterior. This woman knew things Ian must know. He must understand what he was and what he was up against, what tools and skills were at his disposal, if he was to have any chance to escape the fate Asharti planned for him. It might be clutching at straws, but he needed this woman. “Because I was infected with Asharti’s blood after she got the blood of the Old One.”
The Countess leaned over the desk. “You have the blood of the Old One in you?”
“Only once removed. Asharti drank a drop from his veins. She tore her lip on my teeth.”
“That is why she is strong enough to best the champion Rubius sent against her,” the vampire woman whispered. “Now she is making others. Her army drinks blood openly.” She paced to the window, sprinkled with diamonds of raindrops against the blackness. After a moment she whirled. “If she is not stopped, there will be more vampires than humans on which to feed, to say nothing of drawing unwanted attention to our kind. It will mean war between the races. The delicate balance that sustains our society will be overturned forever.”
“Then stop her,” Ian snapped.
Lady Lente lifted her chin. “I am not sure we can. She killed Ivan Remstrev last month. He was second only to Rubius in strength.”
“Muster your own army,” Ian said, exasperated.
“Making vampires is forbidden. Rubius would never consent to spreading the Companion and later hunting down all we made to kill them before they could go mad or make others. We ourselves are strung out over the world. By the time we could gather, there might be too many of them to stop. And then, she has the blood of the Old One.”
Revulsion filled Ian. If they could not stop her, Asharti would lay a swathe of destruction from Algiers, to Rome, to Paris, to London, and even to Stanbridge in order to eliminate him. He was the only other source, however diluted, of the power of the Old One.
Premonition filled Ian. As one, he and the Countess turned toward the rain-spattered window. It was almost dawn. With a start he remembered that he had a duel to fight this morning. As silly as that seemed at this point, he did not want it spread about that he had failed to appear.
She seemed about to speak and thought better of it. “I am sorry it took so long to find you tonight.” She rose and took a card from her beaded reticule. “Call on me at sunset. Decisions must be made. There are things you must know. Do not fail.” It was a threat, uttered in that musical contralto, but a threat nonetheless, the second against him tonight. She stepped toward the door, but she did not open it. Instead she paused. A whirling blackness overtook her that made Ian dizzy. When the shadows dissipated, she was gone.
Ian stood for a single moment, breathing hard, in the middle of the room. Then he strode down the hall and out the door to the waiting carriage. He must get to the dueling ground. The Mulgrave woman had bragged that they were lovers, false though it was, and her fool husband had challenged him in the middle of White’s. Now he would be late. The sun might even have risen before the face-off could occur. Painful, but all he had to manage was a retreat to the drawn curtains of the carriage after letting himself be shot. The carriage pulled off at a brisk trot. Ian sank into the squabs, the enormity of what had happened this evening overwhelming him. Beatrix Lisse, Asharti, Major Ware, the letter, all whirled in his brain.
He was afraid of Beatrix Lisse. She was old and strong. But he was more afraid of Asharti. A sense of predestination filled him. What would Lady Lente want of him? Faustus selling his soul to the devil probably wouldn’t touch it. Still, there must be some way she could help him escape Asharti, who would appear one day looking, literally, for blood. He glanced at the card.
Number 46 Berkeley Square.
Fifteen
“You refused Blakely?” Lady Rangle let her voice rise, all languor forgotten. She thrust up from the chaise longue in her boudoir and began to pace among the pale pink and lavender colors laid in swaths of fabric across windows, bed hangings, and upholstered furniture.
Beth did not relish the scene to come. “I cannot marry without love, or even respect.”
“Respect!” Lady Rangle actually wrung her hands. Beth had never seen someone really do that. “I don’t know whether you have looked in the mirror lately, my dear, but not all of us will have a variety of suitors from which to choose.”
Beth knew she was not pretty. Still she had her pride. “He was at least four years my junior, Aunt, and he had little experience of the world. We should not have suited.”
“Suited!” Lady Rangle cried. “He had a reasonable portion. He was not ill looking. He actually offered for you! And you refused him, after all the trouble I took to let you two be alone in Ranelagh Gardens. I can present them, but I cannot accept for you. You must do something on your own.” She turned abruptly. “Still, if the Admiral can be brought to the mark . . .”
Beth repressed an urge to hang her head. “I shall refuse him as well, dear Aunt.” She saw her aunt’s eyes grow alarmingly protuberant. “Older than my father!” she said hastily. “And I hardly understand a word he says, his speech is so full of naval expressions.”
“All you want to talk about is your precious North Africa, or some arcane study of something or other,” her aunt accused. “For God’s sake, what young lady plays chess?”
Susan Squires - [Companion Vampires 0] Page 24