Love At First Bite Part 24

"How can you prevail against your... kind if they are essentially immortal?"

"Decapitation. The head must be separated entirely from the body or it will heal."

Ugly. But at least there was some way to kill them. That's why Rufford wanted swords.

"You'll leave that to us, of course," Rufford continued. "Fedeyah and I-"

"Fedeyah! Asharti's second in command?"

Rufford nodded. "We are responsible for clearing the land west of the Atlas Mountains."

Davie's jaw dropped in horror and surprise. "Two of you? For all that territory? And one her servant? I would never trust him!"

"I do," Rufford said quietly. "With my life. Every night." He brushed aside Davie's outrage and glanced to the window. Outside it had grown full dark. "I must get to it. They are converging on Casablanca, which means this place will get more dangerous before it gets safer. That brings us to you." He turned back to Davie. "Don't go out at night. Stay at the safe house, no matter what you hear, no matter how badly you want to leave. Never touch us when we are wounded. Examine yourself for wounds and bandage them carefully before you get anywhere near us. A drop of our blood in the tiniest scratch or accidentally swallowed will infect you. You either die a horrible death or get immunity to the parasite from ingesting large quant.i.ties of vampire blood and become a vampire yourself. Not what you want, I'm sure."

The very concept made Davie's mouth dry.

"Think of your job as setting up a field hospital in a dangerous area." Rufford stepped back into the shadows. A more intense blackness seemed to whirl around him. "Begin tomorrow with finding a safe house. Leave the location here. Cover your tracks. They're everywhere."

And he was gone. Davie wondered where he and Fedeyah would find shelter tomorrow during the daylight. And he wondered just what he had gotten himself into. He had never felt so weak, so mortal. He turned to the window. Somewhere in the darkness Rufford and Fedeyah would do battle tonight with the remnants of Asharti's army converging on the city. He couldn't see them. But they were there. He stepped away from the window. Maybe they could see him.

Emma Fairfield stood next to the champagne fountain at Bedford House. She was very still. Couples danced in the precise dips and graceful patterns of a country dance. Ladies sipped punch and examined their dance cards. Dowagers in turbans and feathers rapped the knuckles of their equally ancient cicisbei. She could see tables of whist and pique through the card room door. It seemed unreal, it was so pointless. Richard danced courtly attendance on a woman he cared nothing for. He hated this evening as much as Emma did but had nothing better to do since Damien was gone up to Northumberland. Richard would have gone with him at any other time. They could be much freer there. In fact, Richard stayed in London only to give her countenance and allow her to have season after season where she refused all offers of marriage. She could not be so selfish as to let that go on forever. He glanced over to her. She made no sign. It seemed too much effort. Richard leaned in and spoke to a man on his left. The man-young Thurston, wasn't it?-glanced in her direction and then started across the room.

Emma breathed in and out carefully. It was only at her brother's instigation that she was here tonight. Actually, "instigation"

wasn't the word. "Prodding." "Nagging." In the end it was easier to come. She need only stand and watch after all. But Richard obviously had other ideas. "Miss Fairfield." Thurston bowed crisply before her. He wore the uniform of the Seventh Hussars. It matched his blue eyes. Too much gold braid for her taste. "May I have this dance?"

She looked at him. She should say something. What did one say? "No, thank you."

His expression was startled. "Uh... Perhaps some punch?"

She shook her head. "No," she whispered.

"Oh." His dismay would once have been comical. But she didn't respond to absurdity anymore. She hadn't smiled for ten days.

He glanced back to her brother, who made threatening expressions with his eyebrows. Thurston turned back and chewed his lip.

She looked at him calmly, not letting him see the knot of wormy despair that lurked inside her. No one must see that.

"Well then, I'll just be..." He took two steps back, turned, and retreated in disarray. She saw Richard sigh. She didn't move, just

stood there, her hands folded quietly in front of her. The music seemed a desecration to her mood. She should never have given

in to Richard.

Several young women hurried across to her as the dance finished, abandoning their partners with unseemly haste. "There you are Miss Fairfax," Chlorinda Belchersand called. Emma had known Chlorinda almost as long as she had known Davie.

That thought stabbed through her calm and made her gasp against the pain. Davie! Oh dear! She thought she had cried all the tears she had when she discovered he had wound up all his affairs and written out a will. That was when she was sure he wasn't coming back to her, ever. But tears closed her throat now against the thump of her heart. She fumbled at her reticule for a handkerchief as Chlorinda and Jane Campton arrived in a flutter.

"Where have you been hiding for ten whole days?" Miss Campton asked, breathless. "Did you have the influenza? You look very pale."

Emma dabbed her handkerchief to her eyes. It was easier to say nothing than to lie.

"Isn't influenza just horrible?" Miss Belchersand agreed, apparently willing to forgo Emma's actual partic.i.p.ation in the conversation. "It makes your eyes water for days."

"I heard the posies were piled up in the foyer and you wouldn't see any of the young men who brought them." This from Miss

Campton in a confidential whisper.

"I heard that you would have had several proposals of marriage if you were in any condition to receive them," Chlorinda revealed, not to be outdone.

"Well, she can receive them now that she's out and about again."

Emma couldn't think of anything more likely to send her to a madhouse than a proposal of marriage, or at least any proposal of marriage but one. She stared around the room as sets formed for the next dance. She wouldn't listen to their chatter.

"No one knows who to bet on next now that Ware is gone off," Chlorinda confided.

"Miss Fairfield would never have taken a second son without a fortune," Miss Campton sniffed, "and one tied to the diplomatic

corps into the bargain. All those postings to vile places!"

"Well, she needn't have gone with him. An absent husband is a great convenience, and one dependent upon your money is even better. One would always have the whip hand, wouldn't one?" Chlorinda Belchersand's tone was arch.

Emma turned her eyes slowly toward the two women now talking to each other as though she weren't there. How had she never noticed how small and spiteful their eyes were?

"Well, who do you think it will be?" Miss Campton asked Miss Belchersand.

"I'm not going to accept an offer from any of these silly creatures," Emma interrupted. It was more than she had said at one time in ten days.

"You were always such a rebel, Emma." Chlorinda t.i.ttered. "What will you do? You can't live with that brother of yours forever."

"I may just set up on my own." She raised her chin.

"That isn't done! Everyone will talk about you!" Miss Campton said, horrified.

"Everyone seems to be talking about me now," Emma pointed out. "Men bet on the outcome of the affairs of my heart at White's. So why wouldn't I rebel?"

"Because society punishes rebels," Chlorinda said, now sounding truly worried. "You've refused all offers until you're nearly on the shelf. That's bad enough. But there are limits. If you set up for yourself, you won't be received. If you retreat to the country, you'll end up walking on the moors or whatever and dressing unfas.h.i.+onably and dying alone with only an aged housekeeper to note your pa.s.sing."

"You have been reading too many novels," Emma said in a damping tone.

"You'll never know the touch of a man," Jane Campton said thoughtfully. How unexpected! A physical sense of yearning swept through Emma. That was a hard truth to bear.

Suddenly she wanted to shriek at these silly girls, at Thurston, at the dowagers and the cicisbei and the whist players. She wanted to shriek that they had no meaning in their lives, no love, and that pretending it didn't matter didn't fool anyone. Instead, she pushed past the two young women and bore down upon Richard. He turned in surprise.

"I have the headache and I'm calling for the carriage, and you may take me home or not as you please," she said, through clenched jaws. If she clenched her jaws she might not scream.

Richard raised his brows. "I'll call the carriage." He turned to the Countess Lieven, with whom he had been conversing. "Your servant, my lady. Duty calls."

Emma turned and stalked out of the hall without looking back. Inside she was seething. Davie had done this to her. She was certain he loved her. It had been written in his expression of loss that afternoon at Fairfield House. He had been going to offer for her, until he felt some wretched sense of duty and protectiveness that sent him off to Casablanca without her.

The whole town had become intolerable and she didn't know whether to cry or shout defiance at the unfairness of it all. Where was all her vaunted calm? Lost. And she didn't know how to get it back.

Chapter Three.

It was almost dawn. Davie waited in the darkness of the tiny whitewashed house. The windows were covered over with black cloth. Rufford and Fedeyah would be here soon.

He should leave. The weapons cache must be moved and the food supply replenished. Then he would bring several young men and women for Rufford and Fedeyah when they woke. They drained a little blood from each, as the donors drowsed and smiled, and stored it in two leather sacks. They needed it most when they arrived, wounded, just after dawn. Davie had never seen them return from a night of fighting. But he had seen the results of the battle. The city was buzzing with fear. Twelve decapitated bodies had been found in an alley today. Twelve! The number of Asharti's followers in the city had been growing. And they were not as discreet as Rufford and Fedeyah. Human bodies drained of blood were being noticed, even in a city where the poor died on the streets every day. Citizens were leaving if they had the means to do so. Davie dreaded a panic that would send the population of the African metropolis streaming into the desert and certain death by exposure or setting sail for Gibraltar in unsafe craft that would leave them at the mercy of the weather and the sea.

With the turn of days, he had been lingering longer as dawn approached, tempted to stay. Curiosity killed the cat. Possibly quite literally in this case. Who knew what feral monsters Rufford and Fedeyah became after a night of killing? They never let him into the room where they slept. By the time he returned in the late afternoon, they were sitting in the chosen house, with the remains of the food he had brought scattered over a table, making plans for the night. This campaign was taking a terrible toll on Rufford. The man's grim determination had been slowly turning into a heartsickness that was palpable. And Fedeyah? Davie had never trusted the Arab and couldn't read his face. Fedeyah followed Rufford's orders, just as Davie did, though the Englishman was something like a thousand years younger than the Arab.

Davie felt he was doing too little, that he was protected from whatever put such a charge on their souls. At the very least he could witness that cost. So he sat, quiet, as the gap around the cloth that covered the window lightened. He laid a sharp cutla.s.s across his knees, lit a fresh candle, and waited.

The two whirlpools of blackness did not surprise him. He had seen vampires translocating many times. But he was shocked at the figures that materialized out of the darkness onto the terra-cotta tiled floor. They were covered in wounds that showed bone and guts and shouted death. He jumped to his feet. Rufford took a single step forward. His soft leather boots gushed with blood. He was naked except for a cloth around his loins and those boots. His burnoose had apparently been ripped from his body. Davie had been in the Peninsular War. He had seen wounds and death aplenty, but nothing quite so vicious as Rufford's. It looked like an animal had raked him with six-inch claws. Shoulder gaped over ligament; chest showed bone; belly revealed intestine; thigh showed layers of muscle.

Rufford toppled to the floor.

Davie rushed forward. "Rufford!" Fedeyah sank to his knees. He, too, was wounded, but not like Rufford.

"Get from us," Fedeyah gasped in his heavily accented English. "The blood!"

Davie stopped, swallowing hard. Fedeyah's wounds were already beginning to close. Rufford didn't seem to be making the same progress. The scoring Davie could see on his back still bled. The dirt floor was dark with blood. "Can he die?" Davie croaked.

"No," Fedeyah panted. "But drinking blood can give him strength and spare him pain."

"Right, right." Davie scanned the room. "Blood." There it was, on the crude wooden table. He lunged for the leather water sacks. When he turned back, Fedeyah lay on the floor in semiconsciousness. His wounds were visibly healing now.

Davie took a breath. Very well. It was up to him. He held up his hands to the light of the candle, front and back, checking for cuts or sc.r.a.pes. Nothing. He could do this. He knelt beside Rufford. The man's pale English flesh was an anomaly in this land of sun and sand. Davie sucked in a breath and turned Rufford over by the shoulders. Davie's hands were slick with blood. He heaved the nearly naked man into his lap, not looking at his belly or the wounds in his neck and chest. Holding up his head, Davie got the nipple of the water sack between Rufford's lips and squeezed. Thick, half-coagulated blood oozed from the corners of Rufford's mouth before he gasped and choked and swallowed. But then, barely conscious as he was, he sucked greedily. G.o.d in heaven, what am I doing? Davie might burn in h.e.l.l, but he wouldn't let a man suffer. When Rufford had taken what there was, Davie laid him down and took the other sack to Fedeyah. Davie roused the Arab, who raised himself on one elbow and took the water sack. Fedeyah upended it over his mouth and squeezed. Blood arced into his mouth. His wild black hair was caked with dirt and dried blood. As Davie watched, a scalp wound closed and sealed itself. Fedeyah leaned against a wooden chest, breathing hard.

Davie turned to Rufford. The belly wound was healed enough so that no intestines were visible now. The gleam of bone had gone from his chest. As Davie watched, Rufford opened his eyes. They radiated pain. His gaze darted about the room until it fell on Davie. "You shouldn't be here," Rufford croaked.

Davie leaned down and hoisted him up by one arm, though Rufford protested weakly. He got his shoulder under Rufford's arm and pulled him onto one of the beds, a simple wooden frame with rope netting supporting a straw mattress. Fedeyah crawled onto the other one. "You were in no shape to get to the blood," Davie panted.

"Doesn't matter," Rufford muttered. A cut on his temple sealed itself and faded into a pink line of new skin. "I'd heal sooner or later."

"If it weakens you for tonight, it matters. Looks like last night was a near thing."

"More all the time." Rufford's voice was bleak. "They make their own reinforcements."

Davie glanced to Fedeyah, who seemed to be dropping off to sleep. "You took the brunt of it," he said to Rufford.

"I have an Old One's blood. I am the stronger. It's up to me to protect him."

"Seems they know that. They're going for you."

Rufford nodded. "Word is out. We no longer have to look for them. They find us."

This whole campaign seemed hopeless to Davie. "Can just two of you turn the tide?"

"Beatrix sent word to all the cities and even to Mirso Monastery itself. They will come. Some to Tripoli, Algiers, and here. We must hold out until they get here."

"Then I hope they arrive soon."

"I'm more worried about Tripoli."

Ahhh. He was worried about his wife. Davie couldn't imagine having the woman you loved in a situation like this. He looked

away, remembering Emma. He saw her in the breakfast room in the Grosvenor Square house. The room was light with gentle English sun. Her skin was clean and pink. He would never see her again.

"Miss Fairfield?"

Davie stared at him. The man could read minds!