The Companion - Beyond The Night Part 5

"Someone got th' influenza? This is a bad bout, certain." He sat back down. " 'Alf the county's down with it."

How could he be so calm? "Yes, yes," she said, sitting across from him, leaning forward.

She must make him understand the urgency. "Mr. Drew Carlowe has this influenza."

"I thought so. Yer th' ghost, ain't ye?"

She went still. Then she mustered a laugh. "Do not be nonsensical." She touched his hand.

The skin was paper-thin. "Quite corporeal, I a.s.sure you." His pale blue eyes were quizzical. "Then ye've been playing ghost. Naughty girl."

She sighed. Maybe the truth would make him tell her how to get this doctor. She nodded.

"I wanted to be alone and in England this is impossible for a woman. I frightened people away."

"Th' bites?"

Oh, dear. "Some were more stubborn than others. I p.r.i.c.ked them with a knife point."

He pressed his mouth together and nodded. "Th' disappearing?"

"People see what they want to see. And I wore a white dress that seemed to float." "Red eyes?"

She shrugged and tried to look confused. "Did they say I had red eyes?"

He sipped his ale. "Must 'ave been a shock when Carlowe bought th' place."

"Yes, especially since I own it."

"Ahhh, th' absent landlord. Or 'is daughter. Guess Melaphont got a little overanxious."

"He is a greedy man, this Melaphont." She frowned. "And he has been very bad to Mr.

Carlowe." She was going to take care of Melaphont for Drew, after Drew was well again.

She'd start by making him give Drew's money back for the house. After that. . .

"He's about to get his due, I expect."

She couldn't spend any more time here. "Please, please tell me how to get to this Maples."

"I doubt th' quack'll come. Melaphont's an important man around 'ere." She glared at him.

He sighed. "Th' road turns up into the 'ills three miles past Ashland. It's marked."

"Thank you, thank you, sir." She rose. "What is your name, if I may ask?"

"'Enley."

"Mr. Enley, I hope you do not catch this influenza. I would not wish you to die."

He looked surprised. "Thankee, young lady. I would not wish it, either."

She curtsied in the English fas.h.i.+on and rushed from the room, pulling up her hood, then hurried behind the tavern, drew her power. She must get to The Maples.

The dusk was settling in as she materialized in the wood at the edge of the road to The Maples. She threw back her hood, freed of the itching pain of the sun at last. The doctor had to come, though it was growing dark, even though he thought Ashland was haunted. She could not compel him because she needed his medical judgment and under compulsion there could be no judgment or creativity. She would just tell him it was she who haunted it, as she had told Henley. He had to come. She stepped out onto the road.

The Maples turned out to be even larger than Ashland, with twenty chimneys poking up from a late-sixteenth-century facade of stark gray stone. It stood across a man-made lake, lights blazing from every window, a solid vision of wealth and power. On one side, a new wing rose, half complete. Its style did not match the rest of the house. Melaphont had no taste. She hurried over a bridge that crossed a stream that fed the lake and crunched up a wide gravel drive to the portico. Up shallow steps, she took the great knocker and banged on the door.

A very severe man with a mouth that turned down opened the door. He said nothing, but stared at her in disapproval.

A woman alone could not be either wealthy or of good character in England. "I must see the doctor," she panted.

"He is engaged with Sir Melaphont." The man began to shut the door.

"But there is someone who needs his help!" she pleaded, stopping the door with one delicate hand. She did not wait for another refusal, but pushed past him. "See here!" he protested.

Twin staircases wound up from the far end of the immense foyer. She couldn't search this entire pile looking for the doctor. She drew her power even as she whirled on the majordomo. The world went red. "Take me to the doctor. Now."

His gaze became vague. He nodded and moved off toward the stairs. She followed. In the broad hallway of the first floor a young man paced. He affected a curl of dark hair that he let hang across a pale brow, but there the likeness to a portrait of Lord Byron she had seen in books stopped. His face was pudgy and petulant.

"Grimshaw!" The boy started forward. "The d.a.m.ned doctor won't let me see my father."

Grimshaw said nothing of course, because he was under Freya's compulsion. He just opened the door and ushered her inside.

"Grimshaw! I say-"

The door shut in the young man's face. The bedroom was huge. A portly man stood with his back toward her, his hand on the wrist of an immense figure only dwarfed by the great, curtained bed in which it lay. The figure emitted wet, gasping sounds and the room smelled of blood. A basin of it sat on the table by the bed. What was this? The doctor turned at her entrance.

"I said no visitors, Grimshaw." The doctor glowered.

Freya willed Grimshaw out of the room. He closed the door behind himself. The younger Melaphont could be heard protesting in the hall.

"Who are you?" the doctor said. He was an austere older man with luxuriant mustachios and iron-gray hair swept back from an intelligent forehead.

"Never mind that. Mr. Drew Carlowe needs your help. He is at Ashland."

"The new owner? It's influenza, I a.s.sume."

She nodded. Her glance darted to the figure in the bed. This was Drew's nemesis. He was immensely fat, his jowls dripping down over the collar of his nights.h.i.+rt. His face looked like it was melting. Still, there were cruel lines about his mouth. She could believe he had lied about Drew and punished him unjustly. Now he was like pale yellow dough, still, his eyes closed. The doctor laid his patient's hand back on the coverlet.

"And I would come if I thought it would do any good, young lady," the doctor was saying.

"But there's really no use. Oh, I bleed them, because one must do something. But there is really nothing to be done but make them as comfortable as you can and let the disease run its course."

Freya was stunned. "You . . . you cannot help him?"

The doctor looked at her with sympathy in his eyes. He shook his head.

Freya felt tears of frustration well up. Her throat closed. These humans were at the mercy of some silly disease that wasted one away with fever? And the doctor only bled them. This would weaken them for their fight with the illness. She if anyone knew that the blood was the essence of life. One did not drain it lightly. This whole effort had been useless, and she had left Drew alone. The doctor turned back to his patient. A dreadful gurgling sounded then silence.

Freya was stunned. "He is dead?" It could happen, just like that?

"I'm afraid so," the doctor said. "He was my most important patient, too."

Freya did not wait to hear more, but pushed out of the room, past the petulant son, and out into the night.

5.

Freya hadn't slept for days. She'd insisted Drew take broth as she held him in her lap. He had to keep up his strength. Supplies had mysteriously arrived the day after she'd gone to the village, in spite of the fact that she had made no order in Tintagel, where she got her own victuals. The delivery had included a salve which she put on Drew's lips to keep them from cracking, and some apple vinegar she used in the water in which she bathed him. It seemed to cool the intensity of his fever.

If he were vampire he would live forever, barring some bizarre accident of decapitation, or murder by the same means. They wouldn't be a different species any more. Could they become even closer? He would be even more easily aroused than he was as a human, have even more stamina. The prospect would have given her shudders of antic.i.p.ation if she could feel anything but anxiety.

If she had made him vampire before this happened she might have prevented all this. She couldn't do it now. He was too weak to survive the ravages of ingesting her Companion. It was a difficult transition, until the immunity she gave with her blood could take hold.

But there were so many reasons she couldn't make him vampire, then or now. It was against the Rules of her kind, for one thing. And for another he would never agree to be made a monster like she was. That's what she would be in his eyes if he knew what she was.

Vampire. The very word struck fear into the hearts of humans. Yet another reason she couldn't tell him. A gulf had opened between them. Why did she struggle so vainly against it?

In the wee hours of the fourth day, his breathing grew wet and labored. It sounded only too familiar. She brought pillows from other bedrooms and propped him up. That seemed to make his breathing easier. His eyes opened and, as always during these past days, he thanked her. This time he only whispered it before he drifted away.

She sat on the side of his bed and took his hand. "Don't die," she ordered to his closed eyes, as though it was in his power to decide. "Don't die." This time it was a plea. What should she do? What could she do? Nothing. Nothing but wait.

Hours pa.s.sed. The sun rose. Her kind always felt the exact position of the sun. She sat, listening to Drew's breathing. She was so sorry she had pushed him away when he wanted to know about her. Not that she could tell him she was vampire. But he had trusted her with his story, with his pain, and she had not returned his confidences in full measure.

She turned her head. She had neglected to close the heavy drapes on one of the windows.

The sky was reddening over the tangled gardens that looked east. She rose to twitch them shut, then sat heavily in a chair.

She woke with a start. How long had she slept? Hours. She jerked upright and went to Drew. His breathing was definitely easier. She placed a hand on his pale forehead. It felt.. .

cool.

She sucked in a breath. He opened his eyes. They were clear. Exhausted but clear.

"Welcome back," she whispered.

Drew reclined on the divan in the drawing room. The windows were thrown open to the dusk. Freya put down a tray with tea and preserved fruit and scones. He watched her as from a distance. Everything seemed distant these days. Influenza had left him weak and strangely lethargic in his mind. He lived in the moment, as Freya would say. h.e.l.l, he was just glad he had moments.

"Is this not a pleasant room?" Freya asked, as she poured and handed him a cup. "I must say living here is much easier with an army of servants."

"An army?" He smiled. How could one not smile when one looked at beautiful Freya?

"Well, six. Mr. Enley sent two granddaughters to set the house to rights and a cousin as cook, and a nephew to take care of the stables. And the two young men-are they his family?

No, I think not. They are beginning to cut back the overgrown gardens."

"I thought the house felt more alive," he murmured. He didn't correct her about Henley's name. "I seem to be keeping backward hours, sleeping all the day."

She blushed. "You keep my hours. I. . . I have a sensitivity to light."

Well, at least she was saying something about herself. He had not pressed her further about what she was. Such considerations seemed far away. Or was he afraid to drive her away?

"I noticed," he remarked. "Why has Henley had a change of heart? He was a proponent of the 'ghost who drinks blood' theory. I shouldn't think he'd send his relatives to serve here."

"I told him I was not a ghost when I went to the village."

"You went to the village?" He found himself mildly curious. That was a new sensation. It must come with leaving his bed for the first time.

"I tried to find you a doctor."

"That was good of you." How she had exerted herself to care for him. He would never have asked it. In fact, he had never been so dependent upon anyone as he had been on her in the last days. She who had never wanted a houseguest, especially a needy one, had been exceedingly generous and tender. She hadn't even allowed the new servants to relieve her. "I expect the doctor was busy and couldn't come."

She turned her eyes away as though concealing something. "He said he could do nothing but bleed you in any case, and I knew that would do more harm than good."

He nodded and sipped his tea. Old Henley didn't seem the type to just accept a strange woman with an Eastern European accent showing up. But he must have. He had sent half his extended family to help out. "Do you need money to pay the servants? I shall write a letter to my banker in London."

"I have no need of your money, Drew. I pay them in gold." She sounded haughty. Then she screwed up her face and shook her head. "I am sorry. A foolish arrogance, when I use my father's money and live in my father's house. He left gold in . . . storage here, against need."

She sat abruptly back in her chair. "I suppose I will never be independent of him."

Drew was not independent himself. He'd been dependent physically on Freya. He wasn't independent of her psychologically, either. He couldn't imagine waking and not seeing her calm, almost black eyes rise from her book.

He'd forgotten all about his obsession with Melaphont.

The thought was like a cutla.s.s tearing the shroud of distance that enveloped him. What was he doing, lolling here and thinking of Freya when Melaphont no doubt strode around his precious house, directing the building of his new wing with his chest puffed out? Did the villain ever think of the boy he had wrongly ruined? No. But he would.

Drew set down his teacup too bluntly. It sloshed tea onto the table. "It's time to get back to my purpose. I've an idea how to make Elias Melaphont regret the day he sentenced me."

"Had you thought that by ruining him, you would also ruin his son?" Drew blinked. "He has a son?" He set his lips. "Then maybe that is the way to get to him."

He threw off his blanket and pushed himself off the divan. His legs were so cursed weak. He sat down again abruptly.

"You mustn't worry about Sir Melaphont now," Freya soothed. "Have you overtired yourself? I'll help you to your room."

"d.a.m.n it, Freya," he fumed. "I can't lie here when that worm is up there gloating."

Freya went still. It was as though she was gathering her courage. "He isn't gloating."

Drew frowned, "How do you know?"

"He is dead. Of the influenza. I saw him die."