The Burning (33 page)

The feeling ramped up again. He was a volcano about to lose control. He needed her help to suppress his ejaculation, but she was focused only on her orgasm
.

“Stancie,” he said. “Help me.” She rode him, banging against his hips. He knew it was worth punishment to speak thus to her. But she was beyond hearing. Where was her power?

He grunted with the effort to restrain himself
.

Then the dam broke. He felt his balls contract. The molten lava surged up from his core through his cock in a pulse that tore a cry from his throat. The room contracted around them and then bulged out. A white glow pulsed out from him. Things seemed to speed up and then slow down. He saw the wave of power engulf Stancie. Her eyes grew round. Her lips pulled back over her teeth in some animal snarl. She might have screamed. He couldn’t hear her. His hips arched up. The throb of his ejaculation seemed to reverberate in the contracting and expanding room. The shriek echoed in his mind. Pulse after pulse impaled Stancie as she writhed above him, not in ecstasy now, but in some kind of tortured, wrenching, psychic storm
.

The last pulse of fluid from his cock pushed her off him. In horror, he saw her flung against the sideboard. Her eyes went blank, her mouth slackened
.

The world bounced back into place. The room was filled to bursting with silence. Then he heard the low crackle of the fire. He managed to get up on one elbow. Stancie stared at the ceiling from the carpet just under the sideboard. Her gaze was blank. Slowly, she began to laugh. The laugh ramped up the scale until it was a shrieking gurgle. He made his way to her, took her shoulders
.

“Stancie,” he said sharply, shaking her, hoping to God that he hadn’t done what he just thought he had. It was no use. She couldn’t stop the shrieking laugh. And there was no one home behind her eyes
.

Stephan was still shaking when Dee dragged him into Rubius’s private quarters. Freya trailed behind, crying
.

Rubius looked up from a book whose leather binding was crumbling and frowned at the unexpected intrusion
.

“It’s over,” Dee practically shouted. “Kill him. Kill him slowly, Father.”

“What is the meaning of this, Deirdre?” Rubius asked, glancing to Freya, surveying Stephan briefly, and finally returning to Dee. Stephan was naked. He could only be grateful he was only partially erect. He tried to gather his senses, still not quite sure what had happened
.

Dee took a breath. “It’s Stancie. She’s . . .” Dee glared at Stephan. “He . . . he lost control. He made her . . . crazy.”

Rubius snapped his book shut. Maybe death at the Eldest’s hands was Stephan’s best hope. The memory of the empty look in Stancie’s eyes and her maniacal laughter made him break out in a sweat
.

“He deserves a week in the sun before he dies,” Dee hissed, rounding on Stephan
.

Stephan could make no defense
.

“He didn’t mean what happened, Father, I’m sure of it,” Freya managed with a full throat. She sank into a leather wing chair and daubed her cheeks
.

“I don’t care.” Dee turned to Rubius. “If you could see her, Father . . .” She trailed off as the Eldest stood. His habit stretched across his belly
.

“Get hold of yourselves, both of you,” Rubius snapped. “I shall see her, of course. But I can guess what happened.”

“I want him punished, and punished, and
—”

“And waste all our work?” Rubius tossed the book onto the chair seat and stalked toward Stephan, his eyes narrowing. Stephan felt as though a cold steel rod had been shoved down his spine. “How did this happen?”

Stephan wasn’t sure who he was asking. He glanced to Dee. She only glared at him. Freya began to leak tears again. He took a breath. “She was . . . tutoring me privately.” Was that what it was? Was that what they would think it?

“Alone?” Rubius asked sharply
.

“Dee warned her,” Freya said, trying to defend everyone at once
.

Rubius’s mouth turned grim. “How long had that been going on?”

“I . . . I don’t know. Months.”

Now the old man’s eyes looked like robin’s eggs, light blue and hard shelled. “And?”

“I . . . I lost control.” He stared at the floor and hoped to god Rubius didn’t notice that he was drenched with emotion, regret, fear
.

“He must have been trying to harm her,” Dee insisted. “How else would she go mad?”

Rubius sighed. He turned and poured himself a glass of wine and held it up to the light of the candles in the chandelier. It gleamed like translucent blood. “You know how it works, Deirdre. Her impulse is turned back upon her. She gets a blast of whatever she is.”

“No, he must have
—”

“You are not listening,” Rubius snapped. “You could not be blind to the fact that Estancia was not balanced. The obsessive sex, the recklessness, the jealousy? I warned you to watch her. And yet I find she was allowed her way with the Penitent, without supervision, without support or restraint. She has jeopardized all our work.” He waved the glass at Stephan as he took a sip. “Look at him. She’s sapped his confidence. His emotion is out of control. She may have ruined everything.”

“You can’t be thinking of letting him continue on his mission?” Deirdre was outraged
.

“Of course I can! Sit down. And Freya, stop blubbering!”
He waited for them to recover from their shock at his stern command and motioned Stephan to kneel on the carpet in front of the fire. “Now let’s be clear on several points. Nothing will stop our mission, short of the Penitent’s death. And I have no intention of killing him.” Stephan could feel the Eldest’s hard stare upon him, feel his inescapable will. “He has committed far worse crimes than losing control with Estancia.”

Stephan shrank inside as guilt washed over him again. He deserved his fate
.

“At least punish him. A week in the sun
—”

“Would weaken him! There is no time!” The old man towered over the three of them. His bulk seemed to fill the room. He began to pace. “Our situation grows more serious. Kilkenny cares nothing for the Rules! He has penetrated the English government.” Rubius rounded on Stephan. “Your penance is that you must kill Kilkenny and hunt down all he has made!” He turned to Dee and Freya. “Ready or unready, this Penitent becomes a Harrier in three days, and we send him out into the world to fight Kilkenny’s army. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Father,” Freya almost whispered
.

“Deirdre?”

His eldest daughter met his stare for only an instant. “I understand.” Her voice was like broken glass
.

“Then take him back to his room, and work on correcting the damage Estancia has done. I want his emotions under control by the time we send him out.”

Deirdre rose. “Get up,” she ordered, and stalked toward the door
.

Freya touched Stephan’s shoulder as he rose. “He’ll be ready, Father.”

Stephan dared not look up at Rubius. He had never felt less ready, less worthy. He had driven this man’s daughter mad today and the Eldest sublimated the anger he must feel to the cause of his kind. Somehow, Stephan must find a way to follow his example
.

In three days they had patched up his control as best they could. Dee had been unrelenting, while Freya tried to encourage him. She had been almost gentle with him. But they had stimulated him relentlessly. He produced the glow, but it was unreliable. He had blasted rocks and controlled his sexual release. Always the control he managed felt tenuous. Stancie’s eyes haunted his thoughts, accusing. But he had made it through a session last night without the Daughters’ help to restrain him, and his glow had flickered a little more brightly. Did one night mean he was ready?

Ready or not, here he was in the great central courtyard, clothed, mounted on a strengthy stallion as dark as the night around Mirso. The Source burbled over its rough stones. He had a fortune in gold coins in his saddlebag. His horse minced on the cobblestones, anxious to be off
.

Around the courtyard stood troops of silent monks. Their hoods concealed whether they were male or female. Why had Rubius gathered them? Deirdre and Freya, ethereal in the spring breeze, flanked a still and stolid Rubius
.

“Go, boy.” Rubius’s voice echoed across a courtyard silent except for the trickle of the Source and the impatient clack of the stallion’s hooves on the cobblestones. “You pay for disobeying the Rules, beginning today. Your quest starts in London. You will stop Kilkenny’s blasphemy. Find the tendrils the brute has grown into the British government, then trace them to their root. Send word back by the fastest couriers of your progress.”

Stephan nodded, once, hoping he seemed surer than he was
.

“The refuge of Mirso is denied you until they are gone, to the last one of them.”

The ranks of monks shuffled nervously behind Rubius
.

Perhaps they, like Stephan, thought that statement might be the equivalent of permanent exile. There was no worse fate for one of their kind. He pushed down that thought, just as he would push down all emotions. He would not fail. He wanted redemption and the refuge of Mirso too badly
.

The wooden gates that stood four men high swung open
.

Stephan wheeled the stallion and touched his heels to the horse’s flanks. The creature sprang forward under him. The horse’s iron shoes sparked against the cobblestones in the night. He glanced down, and saw Flavio, the closest thing to a father he had ever had, waiting at the gate. He saluted and got a tiny nod in return. He would see Flavio again. He vowed it
.

Stephan couldn’t make love to Miss Van Helsing. Her life or her sanity might depend on his refusal. Yet she looked up at him so expectantly, so shy. The shyness wrenched his resolve.

“If you’d rather not . . .” she stammered. “I . . . I quite understand.”

“You must know I find you . . . attractive. But if I lose control . . .” How could she not realize? Perhaps she had not remembered Stancie. He straightened himself. “I could hurt you. You may not remember, but I drove one of Rubius’s daughters mad.”

She blinked. There was a long pause he found excruciating. “I remember that now.” Her gaze roved over his face, examining him. “And what Rubius said about it. I’ll take my chances.” Then she smiled. It was a tiny, tentative smile. “I’ll not be as taxing to your strength as Stancie.”

That smile went straight to his heart. He was tempted. Surely he had enough control to hold back his own release long enough to pleasure a human woman.

But he was no longer the man to make love to her. “Making love” was not in his vocabulary anymore. What he had
experienced with the Daughters was sexual acrobatic training, nothing more. There was no caring. He had not cared . . . since Beatrix. And Beatrix had found him wanting.

He cleared his throat. “It isn’t only that.” How could he say this? But he had to find a way. It wasn’t fair to let her feel rejected for herself. She deserved to be loved, to know physical intimacy, and she had been so brave to ask for what she deserved. He could see her faltering even now. She thought he didn’t want her. “No, no . . . don’t misunderstand me. I . . . I want to. Very much.” Zeus, what a cad he was! “It’s me. I am not fit . . . anymore . . . to . . . You know this.” He rushed ahead now, unable to stop himself. “What I did at Mirso . . . that isn’t what it should be like. You deserve something better, someone who can . . . who will . . .”

To his surprise her features let go their anxious creases. “And who would that be? Erich? Or someone from the village on a bet? Jemmy, perhaps. That’s it.” She raised her brows and smiled again, ruefully this time. “I’m afraid you are the only likely candidate, Mr. Sincai. If you can’t bring yourself to . . . well, I understand, but don’t think I’ll be throwing myself at the next male who walks through the door.”

Bring
himself to love her? He couldn’t let her think he expected loving her to be distasteful. Without thinking more, he gathered her into his arms. Of course he would give her what might be denied her the rest of her life. He kissed the top of her head, her hair tickling his lips. He wouldn’t let it be like it was with the Daughters. If he could control his release, he could control the process as well. He would pleasure her tenderly, as she should be pleasured. The pool of lava at his core the Daughters had raised to such excruciating effect was his burden. He would not let it be hers. It might be torture for him, but it was a price he would pay gladly that she might experience pleasure. He took her by the shoulders and held her away from him. She was so slightly built. “I shall do my best to be worthy of your first encounter.”