Immortal Confessions (27 page)

“You have a choice,” he said, looking out
over the waves. “I need an answer tonight.”

“What do you mean?”

“Louis came for you, Dalcon. Other vampires
went for Uther and his people, no doubt. They will not go beyond
France. But Anthony will follow, if just to make good on his word
to take Eva for his own. After Louis’s injury at my hands tonight,
he might be ordered to do it anyway. He will likely be waiting for
us with more vampires in America, teleported there by Titus. Demons
are not bound by oceans any more than they are bound by any other
obstacle.” He looked at me. “Quentin looks like you, Devlin. I can
arrange it so that Anthony finds him and Eva, and that he is
mistaken for you.”

My eyes could not have been larger.
“How?”

“Never mind how. Do you want it done? Say the
word, and it will be so. Because if he thinks he’s killed you, and
taken the woman he wants, Anthony will curtail his pursuit and Anna
and you will be free to start a new life. Anthony can be made to
think she drowned at sea.”

I looked out at the ocean, and thought about
it. What he was offering did have merit. I’d learned enough from
Quentin to manage my own money now, and it was true that in a
fight, that coward was going to run if he had an opportunity,
goblin blood or no goblin blood. Whatever use he’d been in the
beginning to me had long since expired.

But Eva…she’d been loyal. And she was oathed
to me, even though we weren’t lovers. I couldn’t condemn her to
death, even if I could Quentin.

“No,” I said slowly. “This is between me and
Louis. I can’t hide; I must face him, or his man, if he finds
me.”

Ravel looked at me for a long moment. Then he
looked back out over the waves. “She said you would say that.” He
rolled his eyes and grinned. “I’m out fifty American dollars.”

I glared at him. “You are betting on my
willingness to kill my friends to save my own skin?”

“Not at all,” he said, looking away again. “I
was betting the future Rene saw wasn’t true. But it appears I was
wrong.”

He sounded morose. I didn’t want to hear
anymore, especially if what waited before me was not only terrible,
but also unavoidable.

* * * *

We arrived at Plymouth roughly four months
later. The seas had been calm, and for days we’d made no progress.
Then there had been sickness, and when we’d landed, we’d been off
course, our navigator having died in a card-related brawl two weeks
before. Ravel said the weather was Titus’s fault, but the rest was
ill luck, and there was nothing for it.

When we got there, we found no one waiting,
only a message from Uther. His men had left word, having arrived a
good two months before us, their ship having made good time. They
were living on some land of mine that Quentin had purchased in New
York, again on Rene’s advice.

“We should leave for there,” Ravel said over
dinner that night in our room. “Tomorrow night at full dark. It
will take a few weeks to reach.”

“Should we not wait for Rene and the others?”
Anna asked nervously, petting L’Amour. “She told us to wait for
each other.”

“She came to me in my dreams, and told me to
leave as soon as possible,” Ravel said grumpily. “No reason
given.”

Nice. “What is it with her?” I asked
grumpily. “Why all the mystery? Isn’t it enough that we’ll likely
do anything she advises?”

“No,” Rene said, appearing in our midst,
cloaked as always. “It is not.”

Ravel gave a start, Anna cried out, and
L’Amour shot straight up in the air, and came down to screech her
way under the bed, claws scrabbling.

“Good going, sister,” Ravel grumbled.

“We should leave tonight,” Rene said, as if
he’d not spoken. “Come. Quentin and Eva are outside waiting.
Another carriage is there for you. Ravel will drive one, and I the
other.”

Ravel, Anna and I got to our feet.
Reluctantly, we followed her downstairs.

Eva and Quentin were indeed there, the former
looking a little pale. She hugged Anna fiercely, and Anna hugged
her back just as hard. When they got into the same carriage, I just
sighed inwardly, and got into the carriage with Quentin.

As usual, he was in the mood to talk. “This
land, Devlin, it is so rich! There is so much more here than I
thought there would be! The men in Europe talk as if this was a
backwater pigsty, but there are fine shops here, and so many
opportunities—”

It was always money with him. I ignored him,
and instead focused all my attention outside.

He was right. This new country was growing
fast. There were numerous villages, and in each, many new buildings
were going up. While there was definite energy in the small cities
and towns we passed through, I enjoyed more the vast tracts of
wilderness between villages. Though the roads were poor, and there
were no gaslights beyond the big cities, there was something about
the land and the trees that I favored. It finally came to me that I
liked the rural feel of it, that it reminded me of my days singing,
and of being mortal, and of the days when I first knew Anna, as
suspenseful as they had been. Fontainebleau had been beautiful, but
it hadn’t been as soothing to me as this new, untamed land was.

Quentin, of course, was not feeling
soothed.

“Devlin, have you heard a word I’ve said?
What do you think of investing in some more land? Apparently there
is much up North that is for sale, thousands of acres.”

“Yes,” I said suddenly. “Invest in whatever
you can around the central tract of what is already mine.”

“I was talking about west of here,” Quentin
said grumpily. “About the Midwest, as they are calling it. That
land of Lewis and Clark’s—”

“No, here,” I said flatly. “I do not want to
go to that land you say, it is described as being dry and barren. I
want large trees and green grass, and I want it near land I already
own. I do not want to be driven from my home ever again,
Quentin.”

“As you wish,” Quentin said, throwing his
hands up. “I will look into it at the next village. There is a
lawyer there who has handled some of your affairs.”

“What is his name?”

“I can’t remember,” Quentin said nastily.
“Must be from not having enough blood these past weeks. I’ve missed
Jezebel sorely. Eva was not the most willing bedmate.”

I gave him a look. “You bedded her? My Oathed
One?”

“Spare me your bullshit,” Quentin said in
exasperation. “She has been bedding another man the whole of your
oathing. It was only a few times, when she was in the mood. God,
you wouldn’t know that woman was werewolf, the way she avoided the
shaft.”

Probably was your winning way with words, Q.
I rolled my eyes. “So long as it was her will, I’ve no problem. But
I take it you both weren’t looking for a lasting commitment?”

“I was not,” Quentin said hurriedly. “She
cried a lot for Levi. I did my best to comfort her, but I didn’t
know what to say.”

He seemed sincere. “There is nothing to say,”
I said, rubbing my eyes. “But now we are here, I’ll see if she
wants to strike off, and find another mate. Surely Ravel or his
sister can remove her marks.”

“They will if that’s their plan,” Quentin
whispered. “I can’t help but feel as if they are pushing us toward
some kind of conclusion of their own design. I don’t like feeling
in the dark, while others make plans for me.”

“Nor do I,” I said in a low voice. “Nor do
I.”

We finally arrived at my land in summer,
close to July 1, I think. The year was roughly 1819. I loved my
land on sight—the large forest, the springs, and a bluff that
overlooked a long sloping meadow.

“We’ll build there,” I said tenderly, holding
Anna. “There on that bluff. A large house for you and me.”

“We do not need a large house,” Anna said
practically, slipping into what I called her wife-mode. “Not for
you and me.”

“And L’Amour,” I said gently. “She is going
to have her kittens soon, Love.”

Anna gave me a piercing look and then turned
her eyes away. Before I could ask her what it was for, Uther
descended and gripped me in a hug.

“It is good to see you again,” he rasped. “We
were worried you wouldn’t make it to this safe haven.”

“That is what we will call it,” I said,
inspired. “Haven. Quentin, write that down.”

Quentin muttered something, but he wrote it
down in his little notebook.

“Are there places for you and your kind?” I
asked Uther.

He nodded. “There are natural caves in the
forest, though they are too small for us to make homes of. My
people have been building tunnels. They will do, at least for
now.”

“Good,” I said, shaking his hand. “Do
whatever you need to in order to make yourself at home.”

“We have built you a temporary shelter, Dev,”
Uther rasped. “Come.”

I followed him, the others trailing behind
me. Sure enough, there was a small one-room house built a little
back from the bluff, hidden in trees. We entered, and saw it had a
roughhewn bed, a dresser, and a cast iron stove. There was a loft
above, where another bed lay.

“Underneath is a tunnel, which leads to our
home,” Uther rasped. “If there is danger, run to us, and we will do
our best to get you to safety.”

I felt overcome, that after all he’d suffered
because of knowing me, he’d worked to make me safe and comfortable.
“Thank you,” I said brokenly. “You have been a good ally,
Uther.”

“What are friends for?” he rasped, and then
smiled, baring his long fangs.

I hugged him then, even though he recoiled a
little, clearly uncomfortable. After a long minute, he finally
hugged me back.

* * * *

We settled in nicely there. No one bothered
my friends and I. Part of that was I’d learned my lesson, so to
speak; Quentin and I did not bite humans around us, settling most
nights for animal blood. He bitched about it at first, but when I
told him to shut up or leave, he shut up. After a few weeks, when I
began to feel forgetful, I risked Rene and Ravel teleporting us to
Plymouth, that we might go to a brothel there that serviced
vampires and their special needs. That worked for him and myself,
even if it wasn’t optimal. As always, so long as Quentin got laid
regularly, he was mostly amiable.

The other reason we were not bothered is that
Quentin and I journeyed to see the Vampire Lord of New York in
Albany in that first week, where we swore allegiance to him and his
rules. Surprisingly, there were few: no killing sprees and no
killing humans unless you could cover it up and the victims were
not prominent citizens.

He was no nobleman, this Lord; in fact, I
hesitate to call him a Lord. He never called himself that, saying
he was Chief Vampire. That fit, as he was clearly a native, by his
look and his name, which I made no attempt to pronounce and have
long since forgotten. I knew by the look he gave me that he knew
who I was, and what had happened in France, but I could also see he
was not the kind of monarch Louis had been. He was content to be
paid lip service, and he didn’t care what I or any other vampire in
his domain did really, so long as blood didn’t run in the streets,
and he didn’t have to do much but sit on his throne.

Part of me wanted immediately to overthrow
him, as he was lazy, having no real guards to speak of, just as Guy
had done. Then I remembered Anna, and knew I could not put her
through that again. Maybe we did not have the mansion I’d wanted
for her, or the pretty things. But we had each other, and L’Amour
and our friends, and that was enough, at least for me. I was
content to live in peace in my rural estate, and let vampire
society as a whole forget my existence.

But as it turned out, destiny intervened.

A month passed, and then two. My investments
were doing well, and I’d purchased more land, increasing it to
about two thousand acres. Our home was taking shape on the hill. I
had planned it big enough so that the small cabin we inhabited
would eventually be part of it.

Anna and I were happy together. She cooked
and sewed, and went walking with Eva. She tended L’Amour, and her
five kittens, fussing over them as if they were children. Our
nights together were sweet and tender, as they had been in the
better times.

Eva seemed happy too. It was easy to see she
still missed Levi, but she had found a wolf pack that lived nearby,
and despite they were fully animal, and she was not, keeping
company with them seemed to keep her content.

Uther and his people were also happy. Game
was plentiful, and out here, there was no one to see them—who could
not go missing easily—and no hunters to come and hurt them. Some of
his womenfolk had become pregnant, and would soon give birth.

Rene and Ravel we did not see much, save for
their taking Quentin and me to town. They kept to themselves in a
small stone house they had erected by some magic almost overnight,
and what they did there together, I did not guess or desire to
know.

Quentin alone was disgruntled. He missed the
city, he missed hunting humans for blood, and he missed the finer
things in life. “What good is being immortal?” he whined one night.
“We are living in the forest like peasants! We might as well be
farming! This is not who we are, Devlin. This is not who we were
meant to be.”

“It is who we must be for now,” I said
firmly.

“For how long?” he whined, his golden eyes
looking into mine forlornly. “This is not all I want to have for
the rest of my life.”

“Nor I,” I assured him, watching Anna and Eva
walking back from the woods with lanterns and berries, the six cats
trailing them. “Be patient.”

“Devlin,” Rene said, stepping from the
shadows. “I need to speak to you.”

I shot her a look. As usual, her hood covered
her face.

“Fine,” I said. “Quentin, please watch the
women.”