Chapter 15
Valentin brought Liling's carry-on and the blood into the cabin. He stocked the refrigerator with the blood, covering the bags with some hand towels and stacking some cans of soda in front of it. He intended to tell Liling what he was, once she felt better, but until then it was better to keep certain facts of his existence from her.
He looked at the dripping carry-on. They both had significant secrets they were hiding from each other. He wanted her to know his—he needed her to know—but would she trust him enough to tell him hers?
He went out to the front room, but the quilt lay empty, and Liling was nowhere in sight. He went to the bathroom, and then the bedroom, but he couldn't find her. "Liling?"
Valentin breathed in, ignoring the smell of the propane from the fireplace to find her scent. It was very light, the slightest trace of warmed peaches, but she was here in the cabin. He followed it back out of the bedroom and to the couch. He thought for a moment that the scent came from the quilt he had wrapped around her, until he heard the beat of her heart coming from beneath it.
Gently he picked up the end of the couch and lifted it away to reveal her small form. She had crawled under it to hide.
"There you are." He knelt down and pulled her hands away from her face. "Why are you under the couch? I know the cushions are lumpy, but they must be more comfortable than the floor."
"I heard what the pilot said before he shot you," she said, her voice unsteady. "He said, 'The girl must die,' and I was the only girl on the plane. He was going to crash the plane because of me. You almost drowned. None of this would have happened if I'd left Chicago on my own."
Jaus picked her up and sat on the couch with her, holding her on his lap. "Did you hire the pilot? Did you give him the gun? Did you knock me out?"
"No, but—"
"But no." He pressed a finger to her lips. "You did not do any of those things. You are not responsible for this. Geliebte. It simply happened, and we are fortunate to have survived it."
She shook her head. "I should have known. I should have… expected it."
"Is that why you were carrying so much money, and disguises, and false IDs?" Before she could answer, he said. "I found your bag. What are you running from, Liling?"
She paled. "I can't tell you. It's too dangerous."
Jaus considered compelling the truth out of her, but she was shivering and terrified. He took the quilt and bundled it around her. "Very well. When you are ready to trust me, I hope you will."
He sat holding her until her body stilled and her breathing slowed. He thought she was sleeping until her hand touched the scar on his arm. The warming sensation her fingers brought to his flesh eased some of the stiffness he had acquired from using it after long inactivity.
"Does it still hurt?" she asked.
"A little." He kissed the top of her head. "I am very grateful for what you did to heal me."
She stiffened. "I didn't do anything."
He set her back and looked into her downcast face. "My arm has been useless for years. The doctor who reattached it said it would always be so. Despite that, I have tried time and again to exercise it and loosen it and force it to work, to no avail. Then you touch me—you kiss my scar—and a few hours later, I can use it again. It was you."
"I didn't heal you," she insisted. "I can't do anything like that."
"You did something."
She stayed silent for so long that he thought she would not reply. Then, in a voice so low he could barely hear it, she said, "I took away your pain."
Jaus felt puzzled. "I was never in pain," he told her. "I could not feel anything in my arm."
"Paralysis is a kind of pain. It blocks the body from feeling what it should feel," she said. "Sometimes that is better for a person, because it keeps them from suffering. There is a man at the Lighthouse who is paralyzed from the waist down. The wounds to his legs from the car accident he was in compressed his nerves. If his spine worked as it should, he would be in agony for the rest of his life."
"How could you know these things?"
"I feel them when I touch people." She looked up at him. "Like Mr. Lindquist, the man who had the stroke. He must have been aware of what his sister was doing to him. He felt it, and he can see and hear. But he couldn't tell anyone, not even me. He is trapped inside his body and he can't get out. Many of the stroke patients are like that. Aware but imprisoned by their flesh."
"Could you heal him?"
"No. I can't heal. I can only ease their pain." She looked ashamed. "The wounds remain, and the body must heal itself. Sometimes I can only help them for only an hour or a day."
Jaus looked at his arm. "So my arm will not remain like this. It will become paralyzed again."
She stroked his scar. "Not unless you want it to."
"What do you mean?"
She bit her lip. "Your arm was never paralyzed, Valentin. Your heart was."
A surge of anger made him put her aside, and he got up from the couch. "You are mistaken."
"You could always use your arm, but your mind wouldn't allow you to," she insisted. "It happens that way with some people when they feel guilty."
"I am not guilty of anything."
She came to stand in front of him, her hand holding the quilt around her. "I could feel it. Each type of pain is unique, and your heart created this one to control your flesh. Perhaps it came from something terrible that happened just before you were wounded—"
"Willst du wohl gefälligst den mund halten?" He seized her shoulders. "Be silent. You will not speak to me of this. Ever again."
"Very well." She swallowed. "In a few hours, your arm will grow numb again. You won't be able to lift it or use it. And your heart will see to it that you never again do whatever it was that caused it to be severed."
Jaus went still. He walked away from her and went to the large front windows, where he stood with his arm braced against the frame.
Liling came and sat on the window seat. She said nothing, but sat waiting and looking up at him.
"Her name was Jema," he said slowly. "She was all I ever wanted. Like a dream that you know will never come true but you can't stop thinking about it. I was well aware that it would be almost impossible for us to be together. She was frail and sick, and I had my reasons to stay away. But I couldn't. I watched her from a distance. No. I worshiped her from a distance," he corrected himself. "Jema was everything bright and beautiful and perfect in this world." He rested his forehead against his arm.
Liling pulled her knees up against her chest and looked out at the lake. "She sounds lovely."
"She was," he agreed. "But do you know, never once in all the years I cared for her did I imagine I would one day lose her. Not when I lived and breathed every moment with her in my heart. I knew her condition was terminal. I knew there was no cure. I knew all of these things, but I still held on to hope. I believed there was still the chance of a miracle happening, and she would be saved, and we could be together at last."
"Did Jema die?"
"Nothing so simple as that." He looked down at her. "I was so blinded by my own regard for Jema that I didn't see what was happening to her right in front of me. On the night that I finally found the courage to tell her how much I cared for her, she revealed her own feelings. She didn't care for me. All those years I had devoted my heart to her and she didn't care. She never even thought of me. I was no one, nothing, a nice man she barely knew."
Liling didn't say anything, but curled her hand around his calf.
"Thirty years of my life, rendered meaningless in an instant. And then I learned that she had been with another man. A man I knew named Thierry. She was in love with him."
He sank down, propping his back against the window seat and staring at the flames in the fireplace.
"I never felt such rage," he said, his voice breaking on the last word. "I think I went mad. I attacked Thierry. We fought over her, and although he was the better swordsman, I had nothing left to live for. I meant to kill him or die trying."
Liling looked at the fireplace. "Did you kill him?"
"Almost. Jema distracted him, you see, and Thierry lowered his guard for a moment. Only a moment, but that was enough. I used it. I lunged, and then she was in front of Thierry, between us." He shook his head. "It happened so fast. I couldn't stop myself in time…" He closed his eyes. "After I ran her through. Thierry cut off my arm."
"Oh, Valentin." She came down from the seat to sit on the floor beside him, and rested her cheek against his shoulder.
"She survived. She is with Thierry now. I am told that they are very happy together." He ducked his head. "You think that is why I have not been able to use my arm?"
"It makes some sense," she said in a tentative tone.
He looked at his hand and clenched it. "Because the last time I did use it, I almost killed the woman I loved."
"The heart makes harsh decisions," she said quietly. "If you couldn't use your arm, then you couldn't hold a blade or hurt another woman."
He met her gaze. "Are you afraid of me, Liling?"
"No." She said it without hesitation.
"You should be." He pushed himself up from the floor and left the cabin.
Valentin walked blindly, barely aware of his surroundings. He stopped in front of a massive oak tree. Bark exploded as he drove his fist into the trunk.
"Why should I be afraid of you?" a soft voice said behind him. "I am not a tree."
He leaned against the scarred trunk, hiding his bloody hand from her. Then he turned and held it out in front of him. "Here. Here is one reason." When she looked away, he walked up to her and grabbed a handful of her hair, forcing her to face him. "Look at it. Look." She took a deep breath and watched his wounds as they slowly closed and disappeared. "You see? I do not need you to heal me." He released her. "I do not need anyone."
"Valentin." She rested her hand on his shoulder and lifted her face to kiss his wet cheek. "I am still not afraid of you."
"You think I need your polite lies?" He slid his hand to her neck. "Now you will tell me the truth. Tell me that you despise me for what I am, and what I have done. Tell me how you cannot wait to be rid of me. Tell me."
"I don't despise you," she said slowly, the words halting. "What happened was an accident. I know you would never have hurt Jema, just as you would never hurt me. I don't want to be rid of you. I don't want to leave you when we arrive in Atlanta. I want to stay with you. I know what you want. I can give it to you."
The place on his cheek where she had kissed him burned under his fingers. "What is it that I want?"
She pressed herself against him, her cheek against his shoulder. "My surrender."
His touch compelled her to be truthful, so she could not be lying to him. He hardly knew what to make of it. "Why?"
"Because it will please you as much as it does me." She buried her face against him.
Valentin swept her up in his arms and carried her back into the cabin. He took her to the bedroom, stripping the T-shirt from her body before placing her on the bed. He tore off his own clothes and joined her, stretching out over her. When she tried to touch him, he pinned her wrists down.
"Did you like what we did on the plane?"
Her eyelashes swept down shyly. "Yes."
His cock had been hard and erect ever since the word surrender had left her lips. "I did not frighten you?"
"You did, but it excited me. I felt"—she closed her eyes—"so alive, so wanted."
Valentin rolled onto his back and stared at the rough oak beams above them. He knew his own nature, and he had spent many lifetimes controlling it to a fine degree. He had even conquered it, he had thought. But being with her had caused a resurrection, brought it rising out of the darkness inside him. He had wanted her surrender, all of it, everything she was, for himself.
And she had given it to him. Beautifully, completely, without condition. Remembering how made his shaft swell even larger.
Few women, human or Kyn, could respond to such a need. It had been another reason he had never approached Jema Shaw. She had been too delicate, too ill. Had they managed to have some sort of relationship. Valentin could never have been himself with her; she had been too fragile. With Jema, he would never have known the dark satisfaction he craved to take, and to give.
Why had he never realized that?
"I will go." Liling scrambled off the bed.
Valentin jumped after her, lifting her and holding her as she fought him. She was much stronger than he had imagined; he could barely hold her. "Geliebte, be calm."
"You don't want me," she said, pushing her hands against his chest. "Please. I don't want your pity, not like this."
Valentin fell onto the bed with her, trying to contain her struggles. "You are wrong." He braced himself on top of her. "Liling, stop."
Instantly she went still and stared up at him blindly. Her fists relaxed, and her legs shifted, opening, spreading. She lifted her hips, rubbing herself against the surface of his thigh. The soft black hair over her mound felt damp, and as she rubbed, he felt on his skin the slickness between her legs.
Valentin looked down at his hand, which he had somehow clamped over her small breast. He watched her face as he massaged her gently. "Do you want me to touch you like this, mein Mädchen?"
Liling's eyes softened, and her lips parted before she averted her face. "You don't want me. You want her."
"Or do you like it here?" He brought his hand from her breast to her crotch, cupping her.
A spasm of delight crossed her features, and she shuddered, pushing her hips up against his hand.
The scent of her arousal poured over him, the tang of hot peaches, and Valentin drew his hand away, taking hers and bring it to his erection.
"Wrap your fingers around me," he said, guiding her with his hand. "There. Now stroke me, like this." He moved her hand in slow motion before releasing it and bringing his own fingers back to her sex. He parted her and rubbed gently. "Tell me what else excites you."
"This." She pumped him with the languid motion he had shown her. "Giving you control. Doing what you say. The surrender. It feels safe. You're the most exciting man I've ever known."
He bent to kiss her open mouth, doing with his tongue what he longed to do with his cock. She trembled against him, and he lifted his head, his body shaking with his own lust. "You want me to take you."
She nodded, her fingers tightening.
"I would very much like to," he told her softly. "But this changes everything. Do you know what it means to surrender?"
"It means being yours. Belonging to you. Giving you what you need." She bit her bottom lip and arched, digging her heels into the mattress.
Valentin closed his eyes, fighting back the ferocious need to put his teeth to her flesh. She was too weak now for him to take her as he wanted. He had to end this before he lost control.
He took her hand away and gathered her close, reaching down to seat his shaft against the top of her mound. He worked himself against her hardened clit, using the friction to bring them both to the edge.
"You will give me whatever I wish," he whispered against her ear as he pressed her hips closer. "Whenever I want it. You will do this willingly."
"Yes," she whispered.
"When we are naked together, you will let me do whatever I wish to you," he persisted, pushing his cock faster, harder. "You will trust me to see to your pleasure."
"Yes. Anything." She sobbed the word.
Valentin shifted her, impaling her wet slit with a single thrust, making her cry out.
"Then, my lady," he said against her mouth. "I am yours."
A large shadow and a small one inched across the table in the guards' hall. "My lady."
Jayr didn't look up from the map she was studying. "Not now, Rain."
"I would not disturb you," the big man said, "but Farlae and I wish to help search for Suzerain Jaus."
"You and Farlae?" Jayr frowned as she took in the sight of her men. Rain had garbed himself in a baggy pair of camouflage-patterned trousers and a leather vest over a striped shirt. None of it would have merited her attention, except that they were made of pink and yellow fabrics. Her wardrobe keeper, who stood next to Rain, wore his customary black turtleneck and fitted black denims. Both men were armed with sheathed daggers. "What is this?"
"Rain and I wish to help," Farlae said. One of his eyes, flawed with an enormous black mote, glittered. "Rain is the best tracker in the Realm, and I can see what others cannot. If we can search together, I think we can find Jaus."
Jayr sat back and folded her arms. "Rain is the best tracker in the Realm."
"Among most Kyn, too." The former court jester produced a modest smile. "Well, Gabriel Seran has a better nose." He studied her face before he turned to Farlae. "I told you she would not believe us. Now will you come and play strip Monopoly with me?"
Farlae cuffed the back of Rain's head. "We must demonstrate, my peacock. Tell her where Harlech is."
Rain scowled, sighed, and then breathed in deeply, turning as he did. "The stables, feeding a horse."
"Farlae, I don't have time—" Jayr said, but the wardrobe keeper held up one hand.
"Where is Beaumaris?"
Rain took longer to answer. "On the battlements. No. At the east tower now. Standing guard."
Farlae nodded. "And where is Lord Byrne?"
"In the suzeraina's bedchamber." Rain gave Jayr a decidedly lecherous grin. "Preparing the lady's bath."
Jayr couldn't help smiling. "I sent Harlech into town an hour ago. Beaumaris is off duty tonight, and Aedan does not draw baths for me. I shower. Now, if you don't mind, I have to coordinate the next phase of the ground search."
Farlae tossed her his radio/mobile phone, which she caught out of reflex. "Call them."
Jayr knew from the look on her wardrobe keeper's face that she wouldn't get anything more accomplished until she did, and she keyed in Harlech's code. "Harlech, when will you be returning from town?"
"I apologize, my lady, but I have not yet left," her second said. "The stablemaster asked me to give Byrne's palfrey a bit of coddling. She has been off her feed of late. How may I be of service?"
"It's nothing. Harlech." Jayr eyed the two men as she keyed in Beaumaris's code. "Beau, where are you?"
"The east tower, my lady." Beaumaris replied.
Jayr frowned. "You're not on duty tonight."
"Gawain has become infatuated with a human in town, and this is her only night off," Beau explained. "I agreed to switch duty shifts with him. Did you need me at the keep, my lady?"
"Not now." Farlae's gloating expression annoyed her, so she asked. "One more thing. Beau. Have you been on the battlements tonight?"
"I went up to check the perimeter," he admitted.
"He went up to have an assignation with the new French girl from the kitchens," Rain whispered overloudly. "I can still smell her scent in his."
"Thank you, Beau." Jayr switched off the radio.
Byrne came in and surveyed the three of them. "Why are you two annoying my mistress?"
"It seems Farlae and Rain wish to help search for Lord Jaus."
Byrne chuckled. "I dinnae think Jaus will need tailoring or entertaining."
"Sprinkling rose petals in the lady's bath was a romantic touch," Farlae said unexpectedly. "But she favors slices of citrus or stalks of heather."
Byrne stared at him. "How did you know what I put in the bath?"
"Rain can smell it." Farlae told him, "and I can see the traces of essence the petals left on your hands."
Jayr turned to regard him with her dark brows lifted. "You drew a bath for me?"
"For us. I thought it would be romantic." Byrne glanced at his hands, which appeared clean and unmarked, and glowered at Farlae. "What color were the roses?"
"Blush pink, with reddened edges." As Byrne gaped. Farlae gave Jayr a complacent look. "Are you convinced, my lady?"
She chuckled. "I am. Very well, you two may lead the next search team."
Alexandra shoved open the door to the one room in the house where there wouldn't be any vampires—the kitchen—and stomped over to the cabinets.
"My brother isn't nuts, oh, no," she muttered to herself. "I'm the one who's crazy. I gave up my life for this. Not like there were any other options, but still. I could have stayed here. Opened a blood bank or something. Doesn't want treatment. 'If it kills me, it kills me.' Who does he think I am, a crisis-line counselor?" She slammed shut the cabinet and banged her head against it. "Shit. I can't do this. I can't."
"The tea canister is on the second shelf to the right," an old, tired voice behind her advised. "The chamomile will not make you sick."
Alex turned and looked at Gregor Sacher, who was sitting at the kitchen table. In front of him was a small bottle of schnapps and a half-empty glass. "Can I have some of that?"
"Even if you could keep the alcohol down, my lady, it would not intoxicate you." He gave her an apologetic smile and lifted the glass. Before he drank, he looked into it. "My doctor in the city says I should not drink. I think he is jealous, because he is not yet old enough to legally buy his own liquor." He took a swallow.
Alex came over and sat down beside the elderly tresora. "Please tell me that you're not suicidal. Apparently I suck at handling the suicidal."
Gregor uttered a sour chuckle. "Never fear, you need not handle me. I am merely old and useless. Or so I heard one of the guards telling my grandson."
"Oh, useless, my ass." Alex said. "You've got this place running like clockwork. Who is this guard? I'll go and beat him to a pulp for you."
"You are a lovely friend, but you will hurt your hands. Besides, Wilhelm agreed." He took another sip of the schnapps. "These days it seems that all I am good for is wandering around the house after him, fretting and complaining. 'Getting in the way,' he called it." He carefully replaced the glass on the table. "It is past time I retired. They are indulging me because I am old and they pity me." Before she could comment on that, he asked, "How is your brother?"
"I've started him on chloroquine, which should eliminate the parasites from his blood." She sat back in the chair. "Unless it's a strain of falciparum malaria, which is resistant to the drug. If that's what he's got, we're looking at a more serious situation. It could kill off so many of his blood cells that they'll start blocking the vessels to his major organs. His spleen will enlarge. He'll have brain-damaging convulsions and go into renal failure. And then my big brother will finally get to know for sure whether or not there really is a God."
"There is." Gregor assured her. "Nothing as tragic and ridiculous as this world could have happened by random chance."
Alex nodded. "Anyway, if it's a resistant strain, I can try other drugs. They've had some success treating patients with a combination of pyrimethamine and sulfadoxine—" She stopped and jammed her fists against her eyes. "No. I don't know what to do. I don't even recognize the type of malaria he has. I've never seen anything like it. I thought it might be a new strain of something that's come out since I stopped practicing medicine, but John says he's had it for fifteen years."
"Could it be something other than malaria?" Gregor asked.
"No, because it has the exact same symptoms as malaria," she admitted, dropping her hands. "There's something else, though—something working in conjunction with the disease—that I can't nail down. I've ruled out blackwater fever, Ebola, and AIDS. I need to run more tests. I need to run about a thousand tests." Why were her eyes stinging? "But I'll find out what it is and I'll put together a treatment plan. I'm a great diagnostician. Everything will be fine. I just have to chain my brother to the bed. Are you sure I can't beat the snot out of that guard for you?"
"Quite sure." Gregor offered her a white handkerchief.
She wiped the tears from her eyes. "His white blood cells are being compromised by this other thing. It's driving me crazy. It's not leukemia, but it's attacking his immune system."
"Is this fatal?"
"Not always," she lied. "There's radiation therapy, transfusions, and with a bone-marrow transplant—" She stopped herself. "I'll figure out something. I found a treatment for Richard, I diagnosed Jema, I sewed Val's arm back on…" She gave him a guilty look. "Sorry. I know you're worried. Michael and the men will find him and bring him home."
"I do not think my master is coming back this time." Gregor said. "I think his plane crashed, and he was torn to pieces or he burned to death in it. Or he is somewhere so far from humans that he will starve or bleed to death before he can be found."
Alex's heart constricted. "Don't give up hope yet, Gregor."
He added more schnapps to the glass, but his hand was shaking, and it splashed over the rim. He put the bottle down quickly. "I wish only that I knew for certain. I can feel him when he is in the house, but not when he travels. When he is gone, I never know if he is coming back. I never…" He covered his eyes with his hand.
"Let me have that." Alex took the glass of schnapps and drank down the rest, coughing as the fiery alcohol blazed its way down her throat. "Good Lord," she wheezed. "Is this liquor or paint remover?"
"Wilhelm sometimes uses it to clean the chrome on the Ferrari." The old man sniffed. "You are going to be very sick from drinking that, you know."
"I think it's my turn." She shoved the hair hanging in her eyes out of her face. "Val's not dead. My brother isn't going insane, and he won't die of mutant malaria. In a week or two all of this is going to seem pretty funny."
He gave her a sad look. "I do not think I will laugh."
"Neither do I. Which is why they will never hire me to be a crisis counselor." She felt her stomach heave, but after a moment the sensation passed. "Wailing and not knowing. How do we do that, Gregor? How do we act like we're okay and everything will be fine when the people we love are in danger and we can do nothing to help them?"
"I can't." His lower lip trembled. "Suzerain Jaus is a lord paramount, and I am sworn to serve him. I know my place and my duty. But that is not all that he is to me. Alex. I love Valentin. I love him like a son. Now, when he is in trouble, when he most needs me. I cannot go to him."
"Gregor."
"I cannot find him. I cannot bring him home and take care of him. I don't eat; I don't sleep. I cannot think of a life without him in it." He drew in a shuddering breath. "I cannot bury another son, Alexandra. This time I fear they will have to put me in the grave with him."
Alex put her arms around him and held him as he wept, making soothing sounds until he composed himself.
"You are very kind to an old man, my lady." Gregor seemed embarrassed now.
"I wish I were like you, but I hate my brother. He's a stuck-up, sanctimonious jerk." And the way he avoided looking at her was driving her up the wall. "I didn't ask for this vampire thing to happen to me. I didn't want it. But I adjusted, and I'm doing the best I can. I'm not whining or crying, even when I want to. And I'm still his sister. I love my brother. And you know, he can't even look at me anymore? Because when he does, he can't hide how much he hates me for what I am."
"Alexandra." He rested one frail hand against her cheek. "Whatever happens, he will always be your brother, and you his sister. That bond, it is forever. Nothing changes it. Not even death."
She sat back and looked into his eyes. "I think the same thing goes for you and Val."
He took his handkerchief from her and blew his nose in it. "You are wrong. You do not suck at this."
"Thanks. I feel better." She pressed a hand to her abdomen. "Except I have to go throw up now."