The Burning (42 page)

He laid the fire and struck the flint into the shredded bark he had piled at the center. If his blood was powerful enough to cause this kind of sickness, would it be enough to save her from it? He blew on the sparks and watched them catch. Smoke curled up and was carried off by the draft. He turned to Ann. She seemed insensible, her head jerking from side to side as if in protest of the Companion’s invasion. He must wait to give her blood again. He dared not drain himself. He was all that stood between her and death. He took a cloth and wiped her forehead gently. Could he bear to watch her suffer?

His fault.

He was a curse. He had never done anything in his long life but what it led to misery and irreparable harm. Beatrix, Asharti, Stancie, last night Kilkenny, and worst of all, Ann.

He hung his head.

His fault.

She opened her eyes because she heard his voice, calling her, commanding her to drink. She couldn’t thrash against the pain anymore. The pain was a part of her. It was her soul, and if it was torn out of her, her soul would go with it. Stephan held her to his naked chest. He was bare to the waist. He had wounded his throat again to give her blood. She wanted to refuse it. He was weakening himself for her.
She shouldn’t take more of his blood. But she was too feeble to resist. He bade her open her mouth. And something else bade her suck as well. Something inside that wanted his blood. Where had that feeling come from?

She sucked at his strong throat. A constellation of stars winked at her, golden and austere. Only slowly did they resolve themselves into the crystal surface of stalactites with candlelight winking off them. The blood coursed down her throat and the something in her that wanted the blood rejoiced. It seemed to be . . . singing, very faintly. There was a song of thrumming life coursing through her veins and arteries. For a single moment, the cave came into sharp focus and Stephan’s flesh pressing against her felt real and near. She felt the blood throbbing in his body and . . .

And then the darkness claimed her again.

Stephan sat, motionless. Outside the sun was rising. He had replenished the candles and restocked his supply of wood early in the evening. Good thing. He might not have the strength for those simple acts now. At present he just sat, leaning against a huge rock, watching Ann. He couldn’t give her more blood. He had to wait. He had almost drained himself to give her what she craved the last time. Still it might not have been enough for her. She had wanted more. His body would make more blood. But it took time, time Ann might not have.

The fire crackled and snapped. Its warm light flickered over Ann. She lay still under her blankets in this place of rock and water, hidden in the earth. So still. How long since she had been infected? Thirty hours? Thirty-five? He couldn’t think. It had gone so quickly. Or maybe it had taken an eternity. Somewhere out there, the Daughters were waiting, but they hardly mattered now. Nothing mattered except giving Ann blood. He felt her drifting into the last crisis. And he had no more blood to give her.

Despair beat at the edges of his mind with dark wings. He hadn’t always taken the right path in his life, or even looked for it. In the New World, after he had despaired of Beatrix and Asharti, he had let the Inca people perform human sacrifices to give him blood. He had pretended that he gave their lives meaning by impersonating a god. But they did not need him to worship. They were perfectly capable of finding meaning all on their own. There had been other times when he had tried to find the right way. He had trekked to Nepal and tried to be a spiritual leader instead of a counterfeit god. What good had that done? Had not the Chinese massacred nearly half his people? And what had he done but fight like a demon in return? His actions only added to the carnage. They didn’t stop it.

His impulse to defend made vampires had ended in Asharti. His failure to love her as he loved Beatrix set her on her path. God! He turned his face to the ceiling of the cave. That simple movement made his vision waver.

Now he had tarnished Ann’s life as well. Or caused her death.

The colors of the cave ran together, darkened. His head grew heavy and he nodded. Blackness . . .

Twenty-Two

Ann felt the singing more than heard it. It fluttered at the edge of her consciousness, urging her awake. Alive. She was
so
alive! Life seemed to be crowding down her veins. She was full to overflowing with . . . something else inside her. She should be afraid. She was not alone inside her body anymore. But she wasn’t afraid. Nothing that felt this right could be fearful, could it?

She opened her eyes. A million sparkling coruscations leapt into focus. She gasped in surprise. Bright, incredibly detailed, the stalactites had a million subtle variants of color in them. And beyond the sparkling, pendulous stones were dim legions of others behind them. She realized they were hanging in darkness, but she could still see every one of them, marching back into the blackness that was still not black to her. What had happened to her eyesight?

The gurgle of the stream was loud in the cave, but behind it she could hear other things: the refolding of wings from a chamber somewhere that held bats, the dripping of the
stalactites, the crackle of a fading fire, breathing. She turned her head.

Stephan sat, head drooping, back against a large stone to her right. There were smudged circles under his eyes. His dark curling hair gleamed in the light, but his features looked sharper than she remembered. The lines in his face were etched deep with exhaustion.

That was because of his gift. He had given her his blood again and again. And the being inside her that
was
her now had taken it with shameless greed, as much as he would give.

A horrid thought intruded. Had she killed him? But no, it was his breath she heard with ears that could hear sounds she had never heard before.

She sat up and the blankets fell away. The air in the cave was chill as always. She looked down. She was dressed only in her shift. She rubbed her hands across her bare arms and felt the tiny hairs that stood up there. She was . . . corporal. The feeling of her own physicality was almost overwhelming. She looked around. Everything was new and more intense. Yet she herself was more intense still. She was . . . strong and so
alive
! It was a feeling of . . . triumph, for lack of a better word—joy.

She crawled over to Stephan through the sand. She heard it shushing under her knees, felt its graininess. Stephan woke with a start as she touched him. The feel of his biceps under his shirt burned her and sent shocks down to her groin. The Companion in her blood surged. She smiled. He looked startled for a moment, then took her face in his hands and examined it as though his life depended on it. She felt the worry and the suffering he had undergone in the last hours. His shirt was loose and unbuttoned, and his pulse throbbed in the hollow of his throat. Whatever he saw in her face, it made him clutch her to his body. His heart beat against
hers. She felt his heat, smelled his wonderful scent of cinnamon and ambergris. Erich had said she smelled that way too, now. The feel of Stephan’s body against hers made her blood tremble in her body and pool in her loins.

“Thank God you’re alive, Ann,” he muttered as he kissed her hair. She could hardly breathe he held her so closely. It felt wonderful.

She ran her fingers through his hair and felt silken strands across her skin. She had begun to throb in time to the beat of his heart. But she wanted to see him. She sat back. “I think the thanks belong to you, Stephan. I only hope you’ve not weakened yourself beyond repair. I . . . I was so selfish and greedy.”

He smiled at her tenderly. “Not you, my love, never you. But the one who now shares your blood knew what it needed. And what it needed, it took.”

“And you, will you be all right?” She could not keep the anxiety from her voice.

“I am better even now.” He smiled.

If this was better, she would hate to see him worse. “You look . . . tired.” She smoothed the hair back from his face. He was such a beautiful man, both inside and out. His thigh against hers was warm. She began to throb.

He chuckled. “Only with worry. And that is now gone.” A shadow darkened his eyes.

She wanted to wipe the shadow away. She knew what he was thinking. The Daughters still waited for him. “I . . . I feel so alive,” she said, to distract him.

His eyes crinkled. “The blood is the life, my dear. Now you know what that means.” But again the shadow crossed his expression. He gathered himself. “I . . . I’m sorry your life has been so changed. Not what you expected. Not what you wanted.”

Ann straightened in his arms. Best take care of this right here and now. “How do you know it’s not what I want?”

He looked surprised. But then he swallowed. “You don’t know the burden . . . eternal life, the need for blood . . .”

“I’m not one of your ignorant, newly made vampires, Stephan,” she said with some asperity. “I have your experience. In some ways I have already lived two thousand years.” She saw she was not convincing him. “And reticence about drinking blood hardly seems a problem. To the contrary, my eagerness would have drained you.”

“Living it is different,” he whispered, looking away.

She had to give him that. A tendril of fear wound round her spine. Maybe he was right. “And . . . you don’t think my mind is strong enough to bear it?” Insanity was her most basic fear.

He jerked back toward her. “No, it isn’t that. You’re the strongest person I know, to have borne the burden of your gift alone for all those years . . . But now I’ve burdened you with yet another trial.” He seemed to want to say more but couldn’t find the words.

“I took on the burden. This was not you.”

He searched her eyes. “If I had not intruded on your life . . .”

Speaking of distraction, his smell, the sight of blood pulsing in the hollow of his throat, his body touching hers, were combining to make her almost dizzy. She pressed her breasts to his chest and closed her eyes. There was no denying she was wet between her thighs. “I feel so alive, Stephan,” she murmured. “Is that not something to be treasured?” She should tell him how much she wanted him, but that seemed a trivial impulse when she had to convince him that she wanted the life she had chosen in that angry moment at the lodge, and that the responsibility was not his.

“That is the Companion,” he said. “You will never be alone. And you and your Companion together are more alive than either of you by yourselves.”

“It’s wonderful,” she breathed. “And the heightened
senses are wonderful.” She brushed her lips across his collarbone. “To never have known this would have been a tragedy.” What would it be like to make love to Stephan with her heightened sensibilities? She felt Stephan’s nipple through his shirt with one finger, shuddering with pleasure at the thought. She glanced up, flushing in embarrassment. Did Stephan guess her thoughts? Where had her breeding gone?

Stephan smiled at her tenderly. “That impulse too is the Companion.” He brushed her hair from her face and ran his thumb across her cheekbone as she flushed an even deeper pink.

She was obviously feeling the first flush of life as he had always known it. Stephan had never experienced that rapid expansion of senses and the surge of life the Companion brought the first time. But he knew it was almost overwhelming for humans when they changed. This was the time when her struggle to accept could be made harder or easier, depending upon her first impressions of her state. She
seemed
positive. She was thinking about how it would be to make love with all that heightened sensibility.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” he whispered. “The Companion has an urge to life, and part of that urge is an increased . . . sexuality.” He ran his hand under her hair to cup the back of her neck. His own Companion surged in response. The feeling seemed new as he thought about what was in store for Ann. His genitals tightened and he felt himself swell.

“I seem to feel everything so keenly,” she said, marveling, as she smoothed her palm over his chest and shoulder. He was certain her touch, even through the linen of Polsham’s shirt, would leave a bubbling burn behind it. “Has it always been like this for you?”