The Burning (39 page)

She waited in silence, trying to breathe and keep her own internal balance as she gripped each man’s wrist. At last they stopped blinking.

“Well, gentlemen,” she gasped. “It isn’t quite as straightforward as you thought, is it?”

Kilkenny ripped his gaze from Stephan to look at her. “What . . . what are ye, woman?”

“No more strange than you are,” she retorted. Then more gently, “You know me now, if you think about it.”

She could see him thinking. He nodded. “Ye ha’ the sight.”

She laughed, and it almost turned to sobs. “You could say that.”

“They were killin’ humans, weren’t they?” Kilkenny asked it softly. Sadness seeped into his eyes. Now, now they both understood.

Stephan straightened. “This doesn’t change anything.”

What?

“I dinna expect that it does,” Kilkenny agreed. They began to circle each other.

“You’re going to kill each other, when you’re really just alike?”

“We’re not alike,” Kilkenny muttered. He pushed Ann out of the way as he slowly circled right. “Get back, woman.”

“You’re both idealistic. You’ve both suffered. You’ve both done things you weren’t proud of.” She looked from one implacable face to the other, incredulous. “You’re both stubborn as hell!”

“He still makes vampires. That will be the destruction of our kind,” Stephan muttered.

“But not willy-nilly. He thinks of it as a state one should aspire to and tries to pick only those worthy,” she argued. They were crouched and ready to spring at each other.

“That’s not worked out so well,” Stephan growled.

Kilkenny flushed. “And ye’re still the Harrier, bent on destroying the good and the bad together just because they’re made not born. There were some good men who died here tonight.”

Stephan ground his teeth and lunged.

The two men grappled with each other for purchase, trying to wrench an arm off to make a try for the head direct easier. Ann wanted to scream in frustration. Could they not
see
that this was pointless? Damn their eyes and their stupid pride! If she was bigger she would just pry them apart and shake them like a mother cat shakes her kittens.

But she wasn’t. She looked around for a weapon. All she could see were the long spike nails used to board up the house scattered about the stone floor. She thought of stabbing either
one or both, just to get their attention. But they probably wouldn’t even notice, as intent on mutual destruction as they were.

Her anger boiled up into her throat. Men! These two were just too stubborn to give up their course. She would have expected better of them, now that she knew the depths of both their souls. Waste! Why couldn’t they talk it over? Why couldn’t they back down? How could she get them to just
listen
to her?

The answer, when it hit her, made her shiver. All the implications came raining down. And they didn’t matter. She watched herself pick up the spike as in a dream. It was made by the blacksmith, the tip shaved sharp when it was still red with heat. She stood and turned to the assailants, letting her anger fuel her determination.

When she spoke, it was softly, but her teeth were gritted in frustration. “Will you stop, then, you two?” Their grunts of effort were her only response. Kilkenny got the weakened Stephan to the ground and was wrenching his arm. “Then I have no choice.” She was really talking to herself. She raised the palm of her hand. There was no time for thought, only time to feel her stomach churn in rage. She stabbed the nail into her palm. A shock of pain made her gasp. She drew the point across her palm. Blood welled up in a line. This would stop their stupid wrangling. Then she walked to where the two men struggled on the stone floor of the portico.

Had Stephan healed all his wounds? No. There in his shoulder, a deep stab wound was still closing. And he was still smeared with blood. Enough, even if the wound closed? She bent, ignoring their struggle, and pressed her palm to Stephan’s bare shoulder. His determination, his angst that he might fail, washed over her.

The two men both turned to her with a mutual gasp.

“Ann!” Stephan barked. “What have you done?” They rolled apart.

“She’s infected herself,” Kilkenny said in shock. He and Stephan scrambled up.

“And now I’m a made vampire, Stephan. Will you kill me, too?” She pushed her hand against Stephan’s shoulder again, dragged her bleeding palm across his bloody chest while he stood there, sheet-white. “Or you, Kilkenny.” She rounded on him. “Since I’m in love with a character so foul as the Harrier, surely I must be punished for it with death.”

Both men took a step back from her fury.

It was Kilkenny who recovered first. “You . . . you did this for him?”

The fury drained away, leaving her shaky. She looked at her bloody palm, then up at the two men, horror writ on their faces. “Yes,” she said simply.

Stephan felt the world fall away from him. He watched blood well from the wound in Ann’s bloody palm. Her flesh was smeared not only with her own blood but with his. There was no going back, no starting over. She would be a vampire or she would die.

He looked to her face, furious an instant before, now big-eyed and uncertain. She had done this for him? She could love him that much?

“Ye’re a lucky man, Harrier,” Kilkenny said, his voice bleak. “To ha’ a woman who will sacrifice everythin’ for ye, an’ even brave eternity. She’s made it a little harder to hunt down all made vampires for Rubius, hasna she, then?”

“And you,” Stephan countered, “still have your faith that you can identify men of goodwill and start a utopian society? It’s just a little more complex than that.”

“We Irish ha’ always been dreamers.” Stephan saw pain drench him as he tried to compass the depth of his failure. Then his features closed and he shrugged. “I should ha’
followed my Scots upbringin’ rather than my dreams. The Scots are nothin’ if na dour.”

“There was never an army, Stephan. He made twelve. He wanted a homeland. He thought he could control the spread, whether it was true or not. So Kilkenny wasn’t the threat to the world of vampire and human Rubius told you he was. Rubius wants Kilkenny dead,” Ann said, drilling Stephan with her stare, “because his dream was a threat to Rubius’s own power. The Eldest used you.”

“A common pastime,” Stephan muttered. Rubius’s daughters used him as much for their own pleasure as for their task. Asharti had used him to gain knowledge. She played on his sympathy to escape her just reward. Beatrix? Beatrix hadn’t used him, except as an object of infatuation, but she never understood him, either. Only Ann accepted him for what he was and wanted nothing from him except . . . love. Ann didn’t want eternal life. He knew that. She wanted his love. He stared out into the darkness. The moon lit the radius of sludge that had once been five of his kind. Made, true, but of his kind. He had executed them without a second thought.

He was not worthy of her love.

Ann seemed to read his thoughts. “They were trying to kill you.”

“The four I killed in this house a week ago weren’t trying to kill me. I surprised them.”

“Rubius duped you, man,” Kilkenny rasped. “We’ve both been betrayed by idealism.”

Idealism . . . What was that? Stephan didn’t know anymore. “I was a willing victim.”

“Because you don’t forgive yourself.” Ann turned to Kilkenny. “Neither of you.”

“Because I wanted an easy way to redemption,” Stephan rasped. Forgive himself? He was unforgivable. His failings had cost others’ lives and worlds.

“Hardly easy,” Ann observed.

“She’s right,” Kilkenny agreed. Stephan realized he must know about the Daughters, through Ann. He was too tired and dispirited even to flush.

He gathered himself. “I let the one who made you go free. She killed, she infected humans to make her armies. I am responsible for your suffering, man.”

Kilkenny shrugged, trying to pretend he didn’t care. Stephan liked him for that. But Kilkenny’s eyes went dead with memory. Stephan had seen what Asharti had done to him through Ann’s connection. The Daughters were nothing to it, since Stephan had submitted himself to them. Kilkenny did not submit willingly. His sin was that he had done horrible things in order to please her in some twisted response to her dominance and mistreatment. That was what Kilkenny did not forgive himself.

Kilkenny mustered himself. “Hard ta foresee all the consequences of our actions.”

“A fact which applies to
both
of you,” Ann said, exasperated. She stood between them and looked from one to the other. “So, are you two done trying to kill each other?”

The silence stretched before Kilkenny nodded. “Take me if ye want me.”

Stephan shook his head in disgust. He was going to let Kilkenny go. Mirso was well and truly lost to him from this moment on.

Kilkenny glanced around as though he had suddenly wakened and found he had been sleepwalking to a place he did not recognize. “Our purpose is gone. Wha’ is left for such as ye and me, Harrier?”

Stephan pushed his hair back from his face. It was matted with blood. He couldn’t think about purpose yet. He glanced to Ann. She was barely on her feet after the strain and excitement of tonight. And soon she would begin to feel the effects of her infection. She would need the blood of a
vampire to give her immunity from the Companion. Lots of blood. She would become deathly ill. He had to make sure she survived, even if it was only to face the horrors of eternity. That was his purpose, now.

And then there was the problem of Kilkenny’s twelve. That number might have grown.

“Did your twelve make others?”

Kilkenny passed a shaky hand over his eyes. “I thought not. We had a pact . . . Now I don’t know.”

“I suppose we will find out,” Stephan said grimly. “But for now we must move on.” He glanced to Ann. “After what happened here tonight, human society will be after our hides.” Another thought occurred. “Two of Rubius’s daughters are about. Perhaps you would find Scotland more congenial for a while.”

“I doubt I shall find anyplace congenial,” the man who belonged nowhere said bitterly.

Kilkenny too needed a purpose. “Perhaps there is a middle way for such as you,” Stephan said. Kilkenny looked dubious. “Are we not looking for redemption? Perhaps it lies neither in adhering blindly to Rubius’s Rules, nor in creating an ideal society out of whole cloth. Perhaps you have to begin with what you have, where you stand. It may be that you can only hope to make the world a little better. There is too much evil to be rid of it all at once.”

“Wha’ are ye saying, man?” Kilkenny looked exhausted, too.

“Only that you are a good man. I felt it. Perhaps you can do a bit of good in the world, not much, mind you, but a little.”

“It’s too late for me to take Orders.” Kilkenny’s smile collapsed around him. He probably once had a boyish grin that had the maids clustering round him. Those days were gone now.

“Then dispense justice where you can. Use your strength and the other gifts of the Companion in the service of good
if you can find it.” Stephan let no sympathy into his voice. The other man would not abide it.

“You mean I should wander the world like those broken warriors in Japan?”

“Ronan samurai.” Stephan chuckled to himself. He knew a thing or two about Ronan samurai. He looked up at Kilkenny. “Yes. Start by finding the ones your followers made. Those are laid at your door.”

Kilkenny’s eyes danced about the carnage, the woods, the portico of Bucklands Lodge, considering. “Perhaps that is as good as any other plan.”

“Perhaps even a plan is too much to expect just now.”

Kilkenny turned bleak eyes on him. “Agreed. Just one deed, a little one, at a time.”

“It might be all you can be sure of.”

“And likely not sure of that.”

“Just don’t make any more vampires.” Stephan laid the boundary.

Kilkenny raised his brows. “Not even for love?” He glanced to Ann.

Stephan breathed out. “Point taken.”

Kilkenny turned to Ann. “Thankee for yer courage, miss. Ye saved a pair a’ old warhorses from disgracing themselves tonight. I hope ye dinna live to regret it.”

“Who can know?” She smiled and kissed him on the cheek. “That is too long to look ahead. I shall just look to the next small decision, and make it.”

Stephan put his arm around her. She looked up at him with those trusting, all-seeing eyes. “You are wise, Miss Van Helsing, for one who has lived but a single lifetime,” he whispered.

“Take care of her,” Kilkenny said gruffly. Then he turned on his heel and strode into the shadows of the sycamores until he disappeared.

Twenty