Immortal Confessions (30 page)

I entered the shade of the forest, and the
pain lessened, though I was still burning. Finally, I made it to
Rene and Ravel’s house, just in time to fall in the door when the
latter opened it.

Ravel shut the door behind me. Then he helped
me stagger into Anna, who was lying on the floor, Uther and Rene
beside her. There was another man there who looked familiar, but I
couldn’t place him.

“This is Titus,” Rene said softly. “I am not
well versed in healing, but he is.”

Rip’s brother, who had worked for Louis. Had
she summoned him from Hell?

“Everyone out,” Titus rumbled, looking up at
me with red eyes, “Save you, Vampire.”

Soon, we were alone.

“She is dying,” he rumbled softly. “There is
nothing I can do.”

“No, I can turn her—”

“You do, and she will be miscarrying
forever,” Titus rumbled. “Or at best, she will be pregnant forever,
and never come to term, never bring forth life. How long do you
think she could bear that, vampire? How long could you?”

The world stopped, and there was only that
moment, that instant where I could feel my heart dying within my
chest, knowing I was helpless to save Anna.

I felt his hand on my shoulder. “If you
really love her, let her go.”

I let out a sob, put my face in my hands and
tried to get a hold of myself.

“Speak to her,” he rumbled gently. “She can
hear you, Devlin. She would want you to speak to her, to hear you
tell her you love her one last time.”

I swallowed and tried to speak, but no words
came out. Tears were already falling from my eyes, and I couldn’t
see. I wiped them away angrily.

A door closed gently as Titus left.

I took Anna, and clasped her in my arms
gently. “Anna?”

Like magic, her eyes opened and she looked up
at me. “I’m sorry,” she said brokenly. “I’m sorry that I wasn’t a
better wife to you.”

I put my lower fang through my upper lip to
hold on, trying not to fall to pieces. “Love, you have nothing to
be sorry for. I’m sorry that I was not human, that I couldn’t have
given you the family you deserved, that I didn’t…that I
couldn’t...”

I fought myself and finally got the words
out.

“That I wasn’t enough of a man to let you try
with someone else,” I whispered brokenly. “It would have been easy
for you, with another human. But I just couldn’t bear the idea of
you having someone else’s child. I was selfish, and stupid—”

She looked up at me, and faintly smiled. “You
dolt,” she whispered. “I wanted your child. That was the
point.”

I dissolved into tears. “Please don’t leave
me,” I cried, embracing her desperately. “Please Anna, please,
don’t leave me!”

“I love you, Dev,” she said weakly, her eyes
misting over. “I’ll always love you.”

Then she twisted in my arms, letting out a
soft cry, and relaxed completely, her body going limp as her life
left her. I screamed with everything I had, all my rage and pain
and my shattered broken heart. Around me, all the house windows
splintered and broke into shards.

I cried for a long time, holding her body,
feeling it grow cold in my arms. Then I lay her gently down, and
went to walk out into the sun.

Uther and Ravel stopped me. I fought them,
but they held me, even as Rene locked the door in front of me.

“Take him back to France, Ravel,” Rene said
quietly. “It is night there. Take him back, and turn him loose.
Follow him, but do not interfere.”

* * * *

I do not remember much of that night. I
remember arriving in France, somewhere in Paris, in the bad
section. I remember Ravel taking his hand off me, and stepping
back. I remember the first woman I killed, a young girl who was
eighteen, if that. She was walking her little poodle. She screamed
at the sight of me, and I ripped out her throat, and drank until
she was dry. It was good that the dog ran, or I’d have killed it
just as I killed its master.

I killed many that night. I was not
discriminate, I killed everything I came across, vampire, human,
wereman, faerie, and witch. I ran across all but the last more than
once.

Ravel followed, and watched me. Although he
threw up a few times that I remember, he did nothing but follow. At
dawn, he teleported me back to my home. Rene was waiting there,
with Uther.

“Did you conceal what happened?” she asked
Ravel.

He gave her a look. “You didn’t tell me to do
that.”

“Idiot,” she said, sounding very angry. “Why
did you think I sent you with him?”

“Protection? I don’t know! You never tell me
your plans, Sister!”

“Go home,” she said, turning away. “You’re
useless!”

Ravel swore, and abruptly disappeared.

“Was that wise?” Uther rasped.

“Probably not,” Rene said. “But I was
angry.”

“We are finished with the cairn,” Uther
whispered, as if I couldn’t hear. “Should we lay her in it?”

“Yes,” Rene said sadly. “Let him remember her
as she was, not as she looks now. He may wish to build a bigger
monument one day.”

Uther nodded and then turned to me. “I am
sorry,” he said more gently than I’d ever heard him say anything.
“She was everything a woman should be, friend. I am grateful I got
to know her.”

I nodded absently. He left, shutting the door
behind him.

Rene did not speak. She came to me, and
helped me disrobe. She cleaned my body off as Anna had done a
little over a year before, but she gave no sign it affected her as
a woman. When she was done, she took the towels, and rinsed them
out, leaving them to dry near the rack on the sink.

“Get some rest,” she said in her soft voice.
Then she left, too.

I lay there for a long time, crying a little,
and trying hard not to think. How could I ever rest? How could I go
on?

I sat up, and ran my hands through my hair,
noticing that it was long as it had been when I’d been turned, and
that my beard was back. How long had it been since I’d left it like
this, and not shaved? Ever since Anna had first shaved me, and
given me that compliment.

I felt another wave of loss so severe it was
crippling. How could I go on without her? Why the hell would I want
to bother?

My eyes found L’Amour at the foot of the bed,
sleeping. Her kittens had long since left for new homes. I had
placed them with families of their own, at Anna’s request, and they
lived in nearby villages to the south. Isolated as we were now, it
was unlikely L’Amour would ever be pregnant again.

How long would the cat live? Ten years,
fifteen more at the most? What would I do for those years? How
would I fill them, so I didn’t go crazy?

I got up, and put on some pants and a shirt.
If there was ever a time I needed to know what the future held, it
was now.

* * * *

I got to Rene and Ravel’s house just as dawn
broke over the horizon. As she had always been before, Rene was
waiting for me in her cloak, the hood obscuring her face.

She let me in, and then bolted the door
behind me. Again, she put another log on the fire, but this time
she crouched before it.

“Ravel is in Ireland, nursing his wounded
pride,” she said absently. “I should not have been so hard on him.
It was not his fault.”

“No, it was your fault,” I said harshly. “How
could you have seen so much in France, and nothing here? How could
you have not foreseen Anna’s death?”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I loved her as a
friend. I didn’t want her to die.”

“You should have warned me—”

“I did warn you,” she said, throwing the
poker violently to the floor. “You didn’t listen, Dalcon! I warned
you there was risk, and I warned her, too! I told you both that
this might happen, that it had always happened before! I tried to
get you to change your minds!”

“You should’ve tried harder!” I shouted at
her. “What good is a witch who knows when you are coming, but can’t
see the love of your life dying?”

“I’m sorry,” she said in a muffled voice.

For some reason, that enraged me. “You’re a
shell of a woman! Always skulking around in that cloak, wearing
gloves, and hiding your face! What the hell do you have, leprosy?
Are you so ugly that you’re afraid you’ll scare people? Why can you
not be more like Anna? She was never afraid to show her face to me!
She never hid herself from me!”

“I would be her for you if I could,” Rene
gasped out.

Belatedly, I realized she was sobbing, that
she had crumpled under my words and was now huddled before the
fire.

I closed my eyes and sighed. Then I went to
the fire, easing down beside her.

“I’m sorry,” I said, hating how weak I
sounded. “It isn’t your fault, Rene.”

She didn’t answer.

I deduced she needed me to hold her, and I
brought her close, hugging her slight body to mine. She turned in
my arms, burrowing close to me, even as she cried harder, her
sounds muffled by her cloak’s hood.

“Please don’t cry,” I whispered softly.

To my surprise it worked. Rene sniffed, and
choked a little, and then she was quiet. I noticed she was shaking
slightly. Then I realized she was trembling.

“Why are you trembling?” I asked gently. “Are
you afraid of me?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

I felt despicable. “Don’t be afraid of me,” I
said gently. “I’m not going to hurt you, like I hurt those people
last night.”

Again, she didn’t answer.

I reached down inside her hood and gently
cupped her face in my hands, tilting it up to face me. My eyes met
blue-green eyes the color of the sea.

She seemed unable to hold my gaze, looking at
me for a moment, and then looking away, only for her eyes to return
to mine again. She was shaking harder now.

I slid my hands up from her face. She
immediately looked down, and I pushed back her hood. Her hair was a
gold blond color as mine was, though hers was much darker. There
were streaks in it of both a light gold, and of light silver. I ran
my hands through it, and it fell shimmering in the firelight in
waves down her back, the ends resting on the floor.

“You are beautiful,” I said in a kind of
wonder, again cupping her face in my hands. “Why did you hide
yourself under this?”

Again, she didn’t answer.

I made her look at me. “Rene, why?”

She reached out with tentative hands and
touched my lips. She had taken off her gloves. Her hands were
delicate and feminine.

I reached up with my hand, and caught hers in
it. Then I kissed it delicately. She let out a sigh.

Something broke in me, and I crushed her to
me, my mouth devouring hers. Rene was shaking hard, but she kissed
me back with enough fire to make my blood sizzle. Then she pulled
back from me, tearing her cloak over her head. Under it, she wore
only a thin shift. She took that off as well, baring her body to my
lustful eyes.

I was trembling myself, struggling with my
own clothes. Finally I gave up and ripped them, pushing the shreds
aside and pulling her astride me. I kissed up her neck frantically,
my hands roaming her body. She was crying out, moving against me in
desperate need to be filled.

I rolled over on her, and moved to enter her.
To my shock, I felt her grab hold of my stiff organ, and guide it
into her. I let out a scream, and began thrusting immediately,
pistoning in and out of her as fast as I could. Rene cried out
loudly, gripping me as though she was drowning, her warm body wet
and slippery from her need of me.

A moment later, she came screaming my name
“Devlin!”

A half second later I came, emptying myself
into her completely, my muscles contracting over and over as I
gasped out my release. I lay there shaking, feeling her shake under
me, wondering what to say or what not to.

“I’m sorry,” Rene said gently. “I didn’t mean
to call out your name.”

I knew it was because of Anna. “It’s not like
you didn’t have the right,” I said, drawing back from her a little.
“But call me Dev, please. And no more ‘Dalcon.’ Agreed?”

“Agreed,” she said shyly.

I moved off her, but I was unwilling to let
her go. She seemed just as unwilling to let me go.

“Did you hide yourself all this time because
you wanted this to happen between us?”

She cleared her throat and looked up at me.
“The truth is, I dreamed of you. I dreamed of you from the first,
us hand in hand.”

“When? After we’d met?”

“When I was young,” she said almost ruefully.
“When I had no silver streaks in my hair, and thought love was an
easy thing to feel.”

“Why?”

“I asked for a vision,” she said almost
wistfully. “I asked to see the face of the man I was supposed to be
with, that I might know him when I found him.”

I didn’t know what to say or feel. Luckily
for me, she kept talking.

“I gave up after twenty years,” she
whispered. “I thought it had been a false vision, it happens
sometimes. But when Uther brought you to me that night, I knew it
was you. I couldn’t face you, not like it was nothing, not when it
was you. I couldn’t even bring myself to talk to you. So I spoke
only to him. I learned that night you had a woman already, and that
you were vowed to one another.”

I stared down at her. “How could you say
nothing, knowing what you did?”

She sighed. “You were happy. As much as I was
angry that you loved someone else, I couldn’t hate Anna. What was
there to say? That I’d dreamed of you first, so you had to leave
her? You didn’t know me, Dev. And the truth is you didn’t want
to.”

She was right. I nodded. “Go on.”

“I did everything I could that night to see
what would happen to you and to her. I saw into the future. I saw
your brother, he and Anna together, and what you did after. I saw
your mansion in flames. Lastly I saw us fleeing to America, and
ending up at Hayden—”