The Burning (49 page)

Twenty-Five

They watched her go. Ann was feeling a little lost, as well. Where to go from here? What happened after torture, and death, and glowing power, and risking everything in one leap of faith and trust? Slowly the reality of their surroundings sank in. She was barefoot, clad only in a man’s shirt. Stephan was naked. They were down in the crypt of the abbey with dead bodies strewn all over Maitlands above them. And the sun was rising.

Stephan looked down at her. “We can’t stay here,” he said. “They’ll blame us for the murders.”

“It was never a refuge anyway.” Still, the thought of leaving it behind was daunting. Where would they go? And was there even a “they” to go anywhere? Did he still think her love was a childish infatuation she would grow out of?

“Oh, dear!” she exclaimed. “I left Erich tied to the bed.”

Stephan stumbled to the coffin in front of the dying fire and picked up a pair of breeches from a pile of clothing on the floor. She watched him pull them on, and shrug the shirt over his head. He was exhausted by his ordeal. But he had a
murderous look in his eyes. Gathering boots and coat, he started across the crypt.

“Don’t you dare think of killing him, Stephan Sincai,” she called out. “I don’t want his blood on our hands.”

He set his mouth without looking at her and she followed him up the stairs. At the branch in the passage, he paused, not sure how to get up to the house. They must have transported him down here. She pushed past him. “This way leads to my uncle’s room.” They burst through the passage in the fireplace to find Erich still splayed across the bed in brocaded dressing gown, trousers, and slippers. His eyes went wide when he saw them. Ann’s sharp hearing caught carriage wheels and horses’ hooves crunching on the gravel in the drive. A shout of dismay indicated that someone had discovered the gutted bodies of the guards.

“So, Van Helsing,” Stephan said through gritted teeth. “You want to play with vampires. Dangerous work, that.”

Erich whimpered and pressed himself into the bed as though he could somehow sink right through both mattress and floor to escape. Stephan leaned over him, a grim look on his face. Erich shrieked. The smell of urine flooded the room as a dark stain appeared on his breeches.

“Stephan!” Ann said sharply.

Stephan glanced back at her and then ripped the cravat that tied Erich’s right hand to the bedpost as though it were string. Ann let out her breath. It was the work of a moment for him to rip the others, as well. He grabbed Erich’s arm in a grip Ann knew too well. “Come with me, you cowardly weasel.” He thrust his boots and coat under his right arm, and marched Erich out the door and down the stairs. Erich sniveled in fright.

She heard Jennings shouting to someone—the butcher delivering in the early morning? Dear Jennings at least was not dead. They were going to send the butcher’s boy for reinforcements. It would not be long until the place was teeming
with interlopers, and Jennings and the butcher might be in at any moment. Stephan was hauling Erich to the kitchen.

Ann wasn’t sure she could bear to see Polsham and Mrs. Simpson again, but she daren’t leave Erich entirely to Stephan. She stayed just inside the kitchen door, her back to the wall, where she couldn’t see their bodies.

Stephan went to where a great block held the kitchen knives.

The front door banged open. “Polsham!” she heard Jennings roar. “Mrs. Simpson! Are you all right?” Feet were running down the hall. Several pairs.

Stephan did not seem perturbed at all. He set down his coat and his boots on the table, took a long boning knife from the block and dragged Erich over to the two bodies. Erich had begun to sob. Stephan bent over the bodies, and when he rose, the knife was bloody. He wiped the blood on Erich’s shirt, then took Erich by the wrist and bent again.

The shouts were getting closer.

Stephan handed the knife calmly to Erich. His eyes went red, and Erich slumped, his face vacant. “Whenever you think of hurting someone, you will become impotent,” he said. “Repeat.”

“Whenever I think of hurting someone, I’ll become impotent,” he murmured.

Stephan grabbed his clothes and strode to Ann. He was gaining strength. One arm was around her bottom in a trice, lifting her against his chest. The darkness whirled up. Jennings appeared in the doorway, gasping, visible only through the deepening black. Then all was gone in a searing moment of pain.

They popped back into time and space inside the cave. Several candles still guttered, shedding a dim flicker in the
darkness. The damp and cold was a sharp contrast to the heat of the crypt. Stephan put her down, staggering a bit.

“Let him explain the knife!” he said through gritted teeth.

Ann suppressed a smile. Stephan thought the magistrates would do the job she wouldn’t let him do. But she wasn’t so sure. Erich had been cutting the rope from a box of wine brought up from the cellars even as Jennings had been coming in the door. Jennings would have been preoccupied by the corpses of his friends. She rather thought that Erich might be able to pull off an explanation that he had only just gotten free from where Stephan had tied him up as he killed the other two. She had no doubt that someday, down the years, she might encounter Erich again, up to his eyes in some scheme to make money off innocent people. He wouldn’t take her advice to act as liaison between vampire and humans to foster understanding. Perhaps he’d use his imperfect knowledge of vampires to gull humans into believing he could exorcise their nightmares with crosses and garlic. For a price, of course.

She didn’t forgive Erich for what he had almost done. He might have bungled it by falling asleep, but she had no doubt he would have tried to rape her if he could have. But his blood on her hands or Stephan’s was a guilt she couldn’t afford to indulge. Maybe she should feel guilty for the fact that Erich might escape retribution. Though Stephan’s curse, if it held, was punishment enough. She hoped the curse would prevent Erich inflicting himself on other women. But either way, taking responsibility for anything he might ever do was a trap from which she had to walk away. She had seen too clearly what guilt had done to Stephan.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t wait to get more clothing for you,” Stephan apologized as he pulled on stockings and boots.

“There was nothing there I wanted.”

“We’ll get you some ravishing clothes in Paris.”

“Is Paris far enough?”

He looked thoughtful as he shrugged himself with difficulty into his well-cut coat. “Probably not. The runner and that idiot of a squire will ache to believe we were in league with Van Helsing.”

It began to sink in that she would never see Maitlands again. But she had known that from the day she resolved not to marry Erich.

Her tristesse must have shown in her face. Stephan took the distance between them with two strides and took her in his arms. “I’m sorry about Maitlands.”

She looked up at him and smiled, as much because his impulse to comfort her pleased her as she was proud that she had anticipated this contingency. “At least it will be useful. I drew up papers with Mr. Yancy after I refused Erich’s kind offer, just in case things did not work out. Or perhaps just in case they did. I told him that if I left for a time, Maitlands was to be turned into a school for girls where they teach something besides needlework and watercolors and playing the pianoforte. The money from the estates will fund the whole. They have to find a body to declare me dead and have it pass to the Crown. I think it will be safe.”

Stephan raised his brows. “I am impressed. And you know,” he continued seriously, “if you want to have it back in future years, you can come buy it up in a generation or two. Money is never a problem for our kind.”

That took her breath away.

There it was. All the huge consequences of being “one of his kind” hit her at once. She felt her knees go weak. A generation or two? Money never a problem, even though she had not a shilling to her name at the moment? Sucking blood, boredom, a need for sex—would it become a preoccupation? How would she avoid the moral abyss that engulfed so many of them? Was she up to this? How could she be, who had never left her nursery?

She felt her gaze darting over his face. She had no control over her expression. He must be seeing all her doubts, all her uncertainty.

His eyes flashed horror, followed by resignation. His shoulders slumped almost imperceptibly. “I’ll see you’re established. There is, of course, no . . . obligation on your part.”

What was he saying? She felt so overwhelmed she wasn’t sure. He would help her. Without obligation. There was no obligation between them? Is that what he thought? After what had just happened between them? Had what he felt about her changed?

With a shock, she realized that even though he was touching her, she didn’t feel his experience washing over her. Was she losing her gift entirely? How many times had she prayed for that? But now she
wanted
that disability. It was part of her and she would be bereft without it. She reached up and grabbed his face in both hands, staring into his eyes.

A sharp breath took her. There it was. All she had to do was focus on it. On him. Oh, he still loved her all right. He thought what he’d just seen in her eyes was her getting over her infatuation with him.

God, but he was maddening!

“I am
not
Beatrix!” she practically shouted. She tossed her hands in the air and pulled out of his grip. “Lord, what do I have to do to prove my love is real?” She paced across the sand floor of the cave as a candle guttered and went out. “I just faced down the Daughters of Rubius with you because I
love
you. I stood beside you and joined to you when you thought it would kill us both. Doesn’t that earn me the benefit of the doubt?”

She thought that would get a rise out of him. It didn’t. He stood, quiet. Another candle guttered. “I don’t doubt you think you love me, Ann.” His voice was quiet too, in the immensity of the cave. “I’m the only man you’ve ever touched.
But life is long, how long you’ve no idea yet. There will be other men. You’ll touch them, too. First loves don’t last.”

“You’re saying no first love has
ever
lasted?” She folded her arms. “None? Never?”

“Well, no, I don’t mean to be absolute . . .” He looked taken aback. Good.

“Then you must think
your
love for me won’t last. Because I can feel you love me. You practically burn with it.” She also knew he felt he’d love her forever. The damned stubborn brute just wouldn’t act on that. For fear. For fear of what? She couldn’t quite make it out. She had to make him tell her.

A flush crept into his cheeks. He cleared his throat once, but nothing came out.

“Sorry, Mr. Sincai. That’s the consequence of understanding you better than any other woman ever will. No hiding.” She let her voice have an edge. She wasn’t going to let him go until he told her what the barriers to loving her were. She couldn’t overcome them until she knew what they were. She didn’t say anything. She just waited for him to speak.

“My . . . my case is special.” The words were practically torn from him. All right. That was a start. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t ask questions. It was up to him. She had told him she loved him. Wasn’t that enough?

But maybe he couldn’t feel how strong her love was the way she could feel his. She was the sensitive one, after all. Was she punishing him because he was not like her? She began to feel a little guilty.

Guilt! It was his guilt that stood between them, wasn’t it? He thought he wasn’t worthy. He hadn’t forgiven himself. Hadn’t he banished guilt as he gave advice to Freya in the crypt? He must have known his advice could apply equally to himself. She thought about that. Yes, she felt that in him. He knew.

But there was knowing intellectually and
knowing
in your
soul. Still, she couldn’t tell him. She dared not prompt. It was up to him. All she did was raise her brows.

Stephan stood there in the cave as she raised her brows in inquiry. His insides churned. She deserved better than he was. He would disappoint her in a thousand ways. Look at her! She was courageous beyond belief to have ever touched him. She was willing to go to her death for him, and hell and hades; he was not worth that. And how her delicate looks belied her strength of character! She had even made him spare the despicable Van Helsing. What greater proof of a magnanimous nature did anyone need?

And now she was waiting. Waiting for him to tell her why there was no hope for this first, pure love of hers. If he told her, was that kindness? Should he just lead her along, let her come to leave him on her own? Wasn’t he pushing her away even as he had pushed Beatrix away by telling her she would leave him someday? That . . . that was his fault, a sin, a sin of pride that he always told the truth. But God damn it, if she knew him through and through as she said she did, then she would know that about him! She would understand that truth was not something he could ignore.

He took a breath. He had to tell her why he was a special case. “I think you’ll find some men are less worth loving than others.” He tried to make his tone light.