The Companion - One With The Shadows Part 24

Gian looked exasperated.Kate wanted to distract him from the fact that she would be such a drag on his purpose. "Will you two a.s.semble another caravan and cany on your expedition? You might as well."

Rufford laughed. "I was not included. Beth was going to explore lost civilizations on her own. Deserting me in fact. Alas, I am chained to Algiers at the moment. We are still cleaning up after our little war."

"He means they are arming the populace with knowledge of how to kill any left of the poor creatures Asharti made vampire for her army." Beth sighed.

Realization struck Kate. "That terrible plague that hit this area two years ago... Is that plague what you call the North African Vampire Wars?"

"That's the story we put about. And it was a plague of sorts," Rufford agreed. But then he looked at Gian. "It wasn't easy, what we did. And it wasn't clean. Innocents were hurt on both sides. But it had to be done, Urbano. You know that."

Gian, still at the sideboard, downed his gla.s.s of brandy at one gulp and poured himself another. He was upset by this "war" that the world had thought a plague. "It may have been duty, but we sullied our souls," he said. "There was no honor in it."

"That's the price for keeping the balance between vampire and human."

"The only reason you two weren't killed along with all the others who aren't bom to the blood was that you destroyed Asharti,"

Gian said, and downed the second gla.s.s. "According to the Elders, making a vampire is an abomination. If the Elders had sentenced you and Mrs. Rufford to death too, would you still think it had to be done?"

"I would have taken Beth and run for the hills. She's my first concern. But they didn't condemn us. So I fought, as you did. Beth fought in Tripoli with Khalenberg. It's a rough world. But we play the hand we're dealt. Then we live with what we've done."

Beth smiled. "You are too hard on yourself, Gian. Yet you are so courageous. Both of you." She glanced to Kate.

"For our part, we'll deal with Elyta if she comes through Algiers."

She rose. "I'll write you out contacts for supplies and animals along your route. Use my name. You'll be treated well."

"You'll find these much more comfortable for desert travel." Beth bustled into the room with an armload of clothes, followed by two maidservants carrying boots and coats and belts and all manner of things, along with two very large carpetbags bound by complicated straps. She held up an example. Breeches. "One really can't ride a camel except in breeches or a burnoose. You seem comfortable with trousers. These will be much better than the ones you have."

Kate had been feeling lost, with everyone out making who knew what arrangements. She was going across the desert on a camel into mysterious mountains where temples were buried carrying deadly jewels the size of apricots with vampires on her trail. Not to mention that she was going with a vampire to do it. And speaking of that vampire, with all the preparations, he had been nowhere in evidence. He had been studying maps, and making notes, and... and he didn't seem to have time for her. But that was good. She didn't want to get more involved with him. Not when they might be killed.

And if they weren't killed, then what? She had no idea. In fact, there was so much puzzling about Gian, and what she wanted, and what she was afraid to want, that she couldn't even think about him.

So she welcomed the life that entered the room with Beth. The women dumped their load of clothing on the bed and the maids retreated murmuring to each other. One made the sign against the evil eye. Kate sighed.

"I'm sorry about their reaction," Beth said.

"Don't be. I'm used to it." Kate shrugged as though she didn't care."You are a strong person. Gian has told me all about you." Beth sorted clothes into piles.

Kate was appalled. "I don't know what he could tell you. He knows nothing about me."

Beth glanced up, smiling. "Only how you came to be involved with the stones."

"You mean that I picked the pocket of one of Elyta's vampire friends and stole the emerald?" There, that would shock her.

"He quite admires how intrepid you are. Your skills saved him from Elyta."

"He just knows my tricks. That isn't me." Kate fingered a fine pair of loose wool trousers dyed red. Dressing like this would be... different at least. She could put her reticule, with her tarot cards and money in the capacious pockets.

"And what do you know of him?"

The question was innocent, but Kate felt as though Beth was challenging her. "That he is arrogant. That he's used to having whatever women he wants. That he can be incredibly stubborn."

Beth sighed and smiled. "In short, a strong and attractive man. Aren't such men all like that?"

Was she dismissing those observations? Very well. "I know he values his honor and his duty to these Elders, whoever they are, more than his life." She let her tone tell Beth how stupid she thought that was. "I know he cares for his mother." She paused.

"He's generous to his servants." She shrugged. "He has courage." She wouldn't say that he was also an extremely generous lover.

Or that he made a thrill inside her loins even when she thought about that. That was just a measure of her weakness, not of him.

"He is all of those," Beth agreed. "They are part of what I value about him. With what he went through during the wars, I worried for him. Ian and I both did. He seemed so... lost afterward. Ian thought this mission to find the stone would help him find his way back."

Gian lost? That didn't seem right. "I know he hates what he did in the war, somehow."

"Yet he wants to find purpose in fulfilling a duty at incredible personal cost. That is a courageous man." She held up a sheepskin jacket. "It is cold at night in the mountains."

"He's just arrogant enough to think there's a purpose to life." Kate was thinking out loud. "And that he is the one to find it."

"And isn't there?" Beth folded clothes and put them into a valise.

"No." Kate found herself at the arched window surrounded by blue tiles, looking out over a courtyard with olive trees in it. "The only purpose is survival, and to grab what comfort or happiness you can for as long as you can hold it." She could smell the jasmine on the night air. "And that's usually short enough."

"I agree with you."

What did that mean for a woman who was vampire? What comfort and happiness could there be? But how could she ask someone about that? Desire warred with discretion in her breast. Discretion lost. "Are... are you sorry you're a vampire?"

"No." Beth's gaze was frank. "I find the night a comfort now. And the blood? I once worried about that. But you've no idea how sweet it is to feel the thrill of life along your veins when your Companion tastes the first copper richness of blood. In fact, the feeling of being alive and... more because you are two beings together is something I can't imagine being without. The senses..."

She closed her eyes, a look of bliss pa.s.sing over her face. "You can't imagine the heightened smell, the sight-even at night- and touch... Oh, I love the sense of touch."

Kate blinked. She knew what or whom Beth was thinking of touching.Beth opened her eyes. "I'd wager Gian doesn't feel how special it is. He was bom to it. But it's like opening a window and seeing a whole other world outside."

"Mr. Rufford made you vampire?"

"He had no choice. I'd been infected by Asharti. He had to give me his blood. Without immunity from a vampire's blood, reaction to the parasite kills you."

"So it was an accident." Beth was just making the best of a bad lot.

Beth stalked over and looked Kate right in the eyes. "Make no mistake. I would have cut his veins and infected myself if he hadn't." Her tone was fierce. "I love him. I knew he loved me. He was going to live forever. Can you imagine growing old while the one you loved did not? What kind of life would that be? Wouldn't it tear your heart out each day? No, I'm glad he made me.

I'd do it for him if the situation were reversed."

Kate bit her lip. "You say that now, but... Forever? What guarantee is there that things won't change, and you won't end up regretting this?"

"No guarantees in life, ever. We all must live with it." Then she smiled. Her face softened. "Living without guarantees is what takes true courage." She turned to the valise and snapped it shut. "Don't worry about Elyta. My Ian can take care of her if she comes through Algiers. I'm only sorry I can't go with you. But when you come back, if you want to know more, come to me. I'll stand as your friend. And if ever Gian's attentions should be... distasteful to you. Just tell him. You said yourself he has honor."

She grinned. "And don't let him bully you. Men will, you know, if you let them."

Beth Rufford was gone. Just like that. What had she meant by saying that Gian's attentions might be distasteful? Did she think Gian would try to make Kate vampire?

Kate shuddered. But she wasn't sure it was entirely a shudder of distaste.

Chapter Nineteen.

Gian placed the boxes, one silver and one mahogany, inside his burnoose in a leather pouch slung over his bare shoulder by a broad strap. He would need them close by for Kate to take their direction. He sucked in a breath and let it out slowly, trying to relax. Taking Kate into such danger grated on him. He'd taken blood again in the city last night, but still his strength was not even enough for translocation. His vampire senses were coming back slowly. Normally he could go a fortnight without blood, but he wasn't sure he would last so long. He'd have to forage in a village. Let me be strong enough. He wasn't sure to whom he prayed.

He walked out onto the balcony. The night was drenched with jasmine and the faint odor of camel. Who could ever forget that smell? It was part of his memory of Algiers, along with the scent of spices in the markets, the aroma of overripe meat, the pungency of that peculiar kind of red dye being made in large vats. One fear at least had not come to pa.s.s. Algiers had not brought on the nightmares again. He'd been to the Kasbah for supplies without being paralyzed by memories. The familiar smells, the calls of the mullahs, nothing had brought on his sweating, shaking dislocations. Maybe that was because he was about to push himself and Kate into another nightmare. Or maybe it had something to do with Rufford. Just knowing that someone else shared his experience and was struggling to move on was... comforting.

Below him, Kate stood in the courtyard of the Ruffords' villa in the dusk under the olive trees, her hair tied up under a turban, a long flowing cotton jacket almost covering her loose trousers. She was saying her good-byes to the Ruffords. She'd pulled the end of her turban across the lower half of her face to cover her scar. She didn't have to do that. She was beautiful to him. Jupiter and Hera, but he wished he didn't have to take Kate with him. He was torn between relief that Beth Rufford's reaction to the stones held her and her husband in Algiers, out of danger, and regret that their strength and determination was lost to him. Now it was up to him alone to protect Kate, with whatever strength he had.

He should be thinking only of the success of the mission. He should be glad Kate could find the buried temple, and that Elyta had not yet found them. Should be.

But what he was thinking about was the fact that Ian Rufford had made his true love vampire. And neither was sorry about it.

Blasphemy, of course. Against every principle of the Elders. Yet the Elders dared make no complaint. And Ian and Beth Rufford could give a fig about the Elders' Rules. He watched them; Rufford's arm around his wife's shoulders, her soft looks up at him.

They felt no obligation to obey the stricture of the Elders that vampires live one to a city either. Algiers did not seem to be suffering. Gian had found Rufford by inquiring after a rich man who appeared only at night. He was surprised to be greeted not with fear, but with adulation for Rufford's work in creating schools for girls as well as boys and giving small loans to poor men who wanted to start some tiny business. Rufford had been busy. And Algiers was the better for it.

Rufford had carved a life, not only made of what he wanted, but what Beth wanted too. Gian smiled to think of Rufford daring to put up schools for boys without providing schools for Arab girls as well. There would have been h.e.l.l to pay with Beth for that.

And Beth traipsed off to G.o.d knew where to look for her artifacts and feed her pa.s.sion for history and the Sahara. She had learned to live without the day.

He turned from the balcony and trotted through the house into the courtyard. He must let Kate say their good-byes. He daren't approach the Ruffords with the stones. The time approached. Even now he could hear the braying of the camels, the snorting of the horses, the coa.r.s.e Arabic of the drivers at the end of the lane where the caravan had gathered, ready to start. The Ruffords looked his way, expectant. He touched his temple in salute.

He saw Kate gather herself. He repressed a smile. How courageous she was.

"My camel calls," she said, taking her leave of her host and hostess.

"A hot bath awaits you upon your return," Beth said, smiling. He could see the worry behind her eyes, but she would never tell them of her fears.

"We expect you back before the next full moon," Rufford growled.

Gian started for the great doors that gave onto the dusty street, herding Kate with him. "The blood is the life," he murmured in the cla.s.sic farewell of vampires.

"The blood is the life," the Ruffords murmured in unison.

He and Kate walked through the doors toward the braying of the camels. They were leaving all succor behind them.

The hot bowl of the valley that held the teeming city of Algiers was long behind them. Kate s.h.i.+fted her sore backside on the camel's ornate saddle and pulled her sheepskin coat around her, grateful for the wool that lined the leather. The high pa.s.s through to Djelfa had taken four nights to navigate. Gian had pressed them forward for fourteen hours a day, even into the daylight. There were perhaps twenty animals, evenly divided among horses and the camels used to pack supplies. He rode a series of the delicate-looking Arab horses, which weren't really delicate at all, but hardy creatures with great endurance. He covered himself with a burnoose when the sun was up. She knew that couldn't be comfortable for him. When they stopped, she fell to her pallet, exhausted, while he tended to the animals, made sure the men were comfortable, brought her food. She often didn't see him rest at all, since he was up before she woke.

Her animal brayed in protest as she tapped its haunch with a stick. Camels were not meant to navigate the mountain pa.s.ses. It protested the small patches of snow that lined the cliffs above the narrow gorge even in June. What did a camel know of snow?

She was exhausted. Every muscle in her body ached. Her belly cramped around the dates and nuts and jerky that made their meals. She glanced to Gian, his face pale in the moonlight. He seemed a stranger to her now, implacable, remote. His duty drove the caravan and his will.

They had changed out the animals twice at villages along the way, the last at El Djelfa only a few hours ago. Beth's name opened many doors. Kate's camel was fresh, if she was not. The path began to slope down, almost imperceptibly. And then they were at a bend. The path wound down steeply below them. Gian held up a hand to stop the little caravan.

Ahead the Sahara stretched, a sea of sand, infinite, ruffled with the waves of dunes. It looked close, though she knew they would take all the night ahead or more to make it to the desert floor. The moon rode high to her left, casting cold light over a landscape that looked like she imagined the floor of the sea must look.

Gian shot her a glance. "The worst is over now." He handed her a small metal flask. "Drink this. It will warm you."

She thought about refusing. She didn't like brandy. But it was his way of taking care of her. So she took the flask and sipped. At least it was good brandy. Not like the Blue Ruin she'd been given as a six-year-old on the streets of London. That stuff had been enough to strip the skin off your throat. "Thank you." She handed it back. "But you don't know the worst is over."

He looked exasperated. She raised her brows. "True." He bit the word out, then turned again to the wild landscape below them, thinking. He touched the pouch that held the stones inside his burnoose absently. "But once we're on the desert floor we'll make our way southwest, along the cliffs until the stones tell us we've come to the right place. We must be getting close."

As far as she could tell he had no basis for that a.s.sertion. She'd looked at the map. The Atlas Mountains stretched for hundreds of miles diagonally across the hump of North Africa, dividing the Sahara from the fertile coastal strip of land. They might have to wander for weeks taking readings from the stones that led them ever farther from the pa.s.s through the mountains.

He called something in Arabic and motioned the caravan on. "There isn't a moment to lose," he said, for the fiftieth time since they'd left Algiers. Her camel groaned and strode forward with his lanky, rolling gait.

She felt like there was some string, wound through her head and her heart, that he controlled, pulling her forward toward the sea of sand below. He thought Elyta and her vampire acolytes were near, else he wouldn't rush so. Yet to her they seemed far away.

The Ruffords existed in some other world, Matthew had been a part of another lifetime altogether. Here there was only biting cold and stiff joints, and a tiredness in her bones that threatened to engulf her. And ahead, an endless sea of sand out of which they would try to pluck a single spot. She had seen the place in her vision, but she hadn't seen any people there. She couldn't be sure it was Gian who delivered the stones to the place they longed to be. She couldn't be sure of anything, except that she would follow Gian anywhere.

The caravan strung out along the cliffs on the sea of sand Gian said was called the Grand Erg Occidental. The cold was left above them. The air was hot, and so dry it seemed to strip the very moisture from her flesh. They'd stopped last night in the tiny village of Laghouhat for a fresh supply of dates and goat's cheese and olives. There were no fresh animals to be had there. The village was poor, perched between the harsh mountains and the desert. They had traveled all night along the edge of the desert.

Several times she'd stopped and handled the stones. They were going in the right direction. But there was no end in sight.

The sun rose. Gian pulled the hood of his burnoose up. He looked like the cowled figure of death on horseback. She could look him in the eyes since her camel was taller than his horse.

"Effendi!"

Gian turned. The caravan had stopped behind them. The drivers pointed out into the desert and talked all at once.

Kate and Gian turned to see what the fuss was about. All Kate could see was a... kind of a dirty smudge against the horizon. Gian scanned the way ahead, and then turned back the way they had come. She had never seen him look so grim.

"What is it?"

"Sandstorm."

Images of being buried alive in sand tumbled around in her mind. Gian shouted something in Arabic. Kate was shocked to see tear in the men's eyes. She was even more shocked when the whole group turned out into the desert floor, right toward the sandstorm. Those who rode broke into a canter, while those who led camels pulled their beasts into a run.

"What are we doing? Can't we outrun it?" she shouted to him, even as her camel broke into a rolling lope, not wanting to be left behind.

"No. We only have about thirty minutes until it's on us," he called back.

"Then why are we going directly into its path?" The man had lost his senses. They were all going to die. "At least take shelter under the cliffs."

"Look at the cliffs. See how scoured they are?"

Kate turned in her saddle. They were deeply eroded, their face a series of round pillars.

"Up against the cliffs the currents of air will boil about so no tents can stand. We'll be safer out in the open where the wind can roll over us. If we get our tents up in time."