Cin Craven - Wages of Sin Part 10

"Turning Sebastian into a weasel, I didn't mean to do that. It happened. I thought he was a weasel and there he was... weaseled. I shouldn't be able to do that, Michael, not with just a thought. The dress I wore to my parents' funeral? I lit it on fire because I was upset and I simply thought about burning it. I do well enough in a structured setting, like when I did the spell to summon you, but put me out where my emotions are running wild and it's anyone's guess. You've seen the books and chairs flying all over the room.

I don't mean to do that, it just happens. I have no control over it and I don't know how to get control over it."

"But you've trained, I heard Pendergra.s.s say so."

"Yes," I said, hugging myself, "since I was eight years old and even before that. I don't know how to explain it to you." I paced the room, thinking. "All right, say you're a child and you're going to be a swordsman when you grow up. You spend your life watching other swordsmen, reading everything you can get your hands on about the art, and then one day when you're twenty-two someone puts a sword in your hand for the very first time. You know all there is to know in here," I said, tapping one finger to my head, "but you've never actually held a sword before. Now do you understand?"

He nodded. "It must be extremely frustrating."

"That," I said, "is an understatement."

Michael moved in front of me and grasped my shoulders. "We can fight her, and we will. Devlin may not have been able to beat her before but there are three of us now. The Destroyer is dangerous, she's a killer, but this is what we do."

"But you heard what he said. She's too strong. You'll die."

He shrugged. "I've already lived far longer than I have a right to. I will die in battle one day; I've done it before. I'm a vampire, Dulcie. I won't die asleep in my bed. If I fall against the Destroyer then at least it would have been for a good cause."

I leaned into him and laid my head on his shoulder. "Don't be stupid," I said. "I won't have you all die, not when I can save you.

The world needs you... and I'm just a girl."

He stiffened and whispered, "Why do you care so much?"

I looked up into his eyes. "Why do you?"

He brushed the side of my face with his hand and then ran his fingers through my hair, looking at it as if it were something precious.

"I've been content with who I am for many years. I've enjoyed what I do and up until last night I wouldn't have traded it for any other existence."

"And now?"

"You make me wish I were human," he said softly.

I laid my head back on his shoulder, slipping my arms around him, my fingers splaying over the hard muscles of his back. "That's funny," I said with a sigh, "you make me wish I weren't."

Chapter Fourteen

I rode Missy into the stable yard two hours before sunset. Dismounting, I tossed the reins to one of the village boys and walked into the stable. Devlin's giant coach was pulled in alongside our older town coach. The vampire's coach had been specially made, I was sure, to fit his large frame, the velvet seats inside easily accommodating three people across. There was a coat of arms emblazoned on the door: a black falcon with its wings outspread, under the right wing was a golden fleur-de-lis and under the left a white Jacobite rose. The motto inscribed around it was Latin. I memorized the phrase, intending to look it up in the library later.

Latin had never been one of my better subjects. One of the village boys was just bringing the first of Devlin's four matched grays in from the paddocks.

"Charlie Harper, right?" I asked. He and his two younger brothers were the tavern keeper's sons.

"Yes, miss," he said, pulling his forelock. He put the gray into one of the empty stalls and then came back to stand before me.

"You've done a fine job here," I said. "When you're through today go up to the house to Mrs. Mackenzie. I'll ask her to pay your wages, you and your brothers, for the month."

"For a month, Miss Craven?"

"I may be traveling soon. I want you to keep an eye on the house and the barn until Tim and the regular boys return. Come up every morning and, weather permitting, turn the horses out in the paddocks. Clean the stalls and put out fresh hay and water. Bring them in and give then grain in the late afternoon but mind you're home by sunset. Can you do that for me? I'll pay you all handsomely."

"Yes, Miss Craven, certainly. I don't mind telling you that the extra money will come in handy, what with the killings in the village and everyone afraid to leave their house at night. Da's fair worried about feedin' us all through the winter if the magistrate don't find the killer and lift the curfew soon."

I was distracted from replying by a small, long-haired white and gray kitten rubbing itself against my black riding habit. I reached down and picked her up and she purred to me.

"Well aren't you just the prettiest thing? You're entirely too lovely to be a barn kitty. Wherever did you come from? Well, no matter. Why don't you come up to the house with me and tell me all about it?"

I scratched her behind her ears and her purr grew louder. "What's your name, puss?" Leaning down I put my ear next her whiskers and pretended to listen to her. "Priscilla K. p.u.s.s.ycat? That's a fine name indeed."

I called to Charlie Harper, "I'll give you a bit extra to bring some supper to the barn cats on occasion," I said, rubbing my nose against the kitten's. One big furry foot reached up and touched my face.

Charlie smiled. "Yes, miss. Be happy to."

I walked into the kitchen and scrounged up a bit of chicken for the kitten. She sat purring happily and eating. I really wasn't aware one could purr and eat at the same time, but there it was.

Mrs. Mackenzie walked into the kitchen as I was leaning against the counter, contemplating purrs.

"I told Charlie Harper to come up and get a month's wages from you for him and his brothers."

She stilled. "Dulcinea, what are you going to do?"

"I don't know," I said with a sigh, "but if I pay them their wages in advance that's one less thing I have to worry about."

She crossed the room and pulled me into her arms. I felt like I had as a child when I'd cut myself or fallen and skinned my knee and Mrs. Mackenzie had always been there to comfort me.

"What am I to do?" I asked, burying my face in her shoulder, my voice quivering on the edge of tears. I'd ridden for an hour and still had no answer. In fact I hadn't even been able to form a coherent thought the entire ride. Feelings, images, fragments of thoughts, they all just chased each other around like kittens inside my head.

"I can't tell you what to do, Dulcie."

"If it were you, what would you do?"

She was quiet for a moment and then she said softly, "I would survive. Whatever it took, I would survive."

And so she had, once. She'd left her family and everything she'd ever known, took her destiny in her hands and made a new life for herself. It was a good life but not, I'm sure, the one she'd envisioned as a little girl. Could I do the same? If it came to it, could I be brave and live?

"Where is Devlin?" I asked, pulling away.

"I think he's in the library."

I walked to the door.

"You're not going to leave this kitten in my kitchen are you?" Mrs. Mackenzie called after me.

"If you don't want her in then put her back outside when she's finished her chicken."

Mrs. Mackenzie snorted but as I walked down the hall I could hear her cooing to the little ball of fur, something about her "pretty, tufty ears".

Kittens are good for the soul.

Chapter Fifteen

I found Devlin in the library. The heavy velvet curtains were shut against the afternoon sun and he was sprawled on the red leather sofa, a snifter of brandy resting on the hard plane of his ma.s.sive chest.

"I owe you an apology," he said without even looking up.

"You don't," I replied. "I'm the one who dragged you all into this."

He sat up. "And if it were any other beast who stalked you, you would be free now. Last night, Kali, she came out of nowhere. I have trained for centuries to be prepared for anything in battle but I wasn't prepared to see her. I told Justine to run; I thought she was with me. I was twenty yards away from her when Kali leant her power to Montford and Justine was wounded." He smiled, "Though my girl did get that b.a.s.t.a.r.d before she fell."

"Then what happened?"

He shrugged. "We both gathered our wounded and retreated. Kali could have killed us both. I don't know why she didn't.

Perhaps it suits her temper to play with us a while longer."

"How is Justine?"

"She's weak. She needs to feed. We'll have to go out after sunset and hunt," he said.

I narrowed my eyes. "May I ask that you don't feed in my village?"

He stood. "I can feed from a human and they would never know it. We don't harm humans, Miss Craven."

"Tell that to the families of the dead girls in my village."

"The human body holds too much blood to drink in one feeding. It takes three feedings in a short s.p.a.ce of time to kill someone. If a vampire kills a human it isn't an accident, it's a plan. And if we leave bodies in our wake the humans begin to notice and we are hunted. That is why killing humans is forbidden by the Dark Council. I am their instrument of justice. I am judge and executioner."

"Except you can't kill this one," I said sadly.

A dark storm raged across his face and he turned and braced his hands on the mahogany desk. I could see the tension in his ma.s.sive shoulders.

"Devlin, I'm sorry."

"No, you're right. I should be able to keep you safe and I can't."

"You said earlier that you knew this demon, that you'd been her... guest. Tell me about it."

He turned. "That is very personal."

"I have an impossible decision to make, Devlin. I think I have a right to know everything."

"I guess you do at that," he said, waving a hand toward the sofa. "Sit."

I did, smoothing the black wool folds of my riding habit around me.

"The year was 1353. I was not much older than you are now. I was a knight, the son of an earl, a wealthy man for I had the favor of the king and the king's son. I had won my spurs on the field of battle at Crecy alongside Edward the Black Prince. I was young, arrogant and thought myself invincible. I was wrong."

I waited while he stared into the distance, remembering.

"I was in a brothel celebrating a recent victory at a tournament. That's where she found me."

"Kali?" I said, blus.h.i.+ng.

"No, Yasmeen, Kali's lieutenant. She was a beautiful woman, all dark hair and dusky skin and eyes like melted chocolate. I took her upstairs to one of the bedchambers. I was dead drunk and when she bit me I pa.s.sed out from liquor, shock and blood loss," he laughed, a harsh, grating sound like broken gla.s.s. "What the entire French army couldn't accomplish in years, she did in minutes. I awoke in Kali's harem."

"In her what?"

"It's the only way I can describe it. She liked to drink from young, strong men. There were perhaps thirty of us bound in chains in one large, well-appointed room in the cellar of some great house. We were fed and clothed well and every night Yasmeen would come and choose two of us to make love to her while Kali watched."

My face flamed. I had to ask though, "Kali didn't-?"

"No, never. She prefers women."

I looked at him blankly."In her bed. She prefers women in her bed, not men."

"Oh," I said but it took me a minute before understanding truly dawned on me. "Oh," I said again.

"Yasmeen was Kali's lover as well as her lieutenant but Yasmeen was not so... particular about whom she took to her bed.

Afterward they would feed from us, d.a.m.ned near kill us."

"Did you ever try to escape?"

"Yes, many times. There was no escape though and the punishment for trying..." his voice trailed off. "My only hope was that the next time one of them would kill me. They often did that with those they'd tired of," he shrugged. "We were expendable. Yasmeen could always procure more of us, the same way she had taken me."

"How long were you there?" I asked softly.

"Three years, six months and twenty-three days."

I sucked in my breath. Lord and Lady!

"One morning Yasmeen came to the cellar. She took me into one of the bedrooms and told me that Kali had decided to slaughter all of the men, to bathe in our blood, literally. She said to me, 'If you will make love to me as you would to one of your pale English ladies, not because you fear me or because I command it, but of your own free will and I will risk my mistress's displeasure and free you. If you do this, you will see another moonrise, you have my word on it.' I asked her why and she said simply, 'Because you please me, knight.'"