Beyond the Night (7 page)

Her eyes widened as she comprehended what he meant. Her. They meant that she might be carrying a child with comingled blood.

She touched her neck but still couldn't feel anything like a puncture.

Charles looked at them like a benign uncle. “We all have our parts to play,” he said gently.

“As do I,” a ragged voice interrupted. Peter stood at the threshold, barely hanging on. “That you intend to honor Senna with the role of our Queen—damn your bones—”

Charles mouthed something, and Dominick read his lips:
We want the child.

A fierce protectiveness welled up in him, an emotion beyond anything he had ever experienced.
His child—his son or daughter, HIS.
He had to get Senna out of there, he had to protect the child.

And Senna. Especially Senna. He hoped she hadn't seen Charles's lips moving.

“I'm in deep mourning, if you haven't noticed,” Senna interpolated uneasily because it was obvious from Dominick's expression Charles had said something unsettling. “No visitors, no receiving for at least three months. I think Lady Augustine's friends will observe the niceties. They saw enough last night to keep them gossiping for days,
Peter
.”

“I could kill you,” Peter spat viciously.

“You're not strong enough,” Charles said.

“Bastard.”

“Yet,” Charles added kindly.

“I will help.” Another voice, Dnitra, who with a loud ruffling sound, had returned and reformed into her corporeal body.

“This is Dnitra,” Dominick said, keeping his voice neutral. “Clan Iscariot.”

“Ah, too bad,” Charles murmured, giving her an appreciative look.

But they are really nipping around
me,
Senna thought.
They want to keep me occupied so I can't elude them, now that I know their plan.
And she knew Lady Augustine lived, a fact neither she nor they were going to share with Dominick.

Charles believed she had no control of her powers or her impulses. Peter believed his thirst for vengeance would fuel his impaired body until he could steal her child away and then kill her.

And Dominick somehow thought that bringing an Other into her house, Lady Augustine's house, would soothe the anguish she'd endured at his leaving her in that blood-drenched landscape with nothing more than a nugget of obsidian to ward off the sun.

Oh, no. All of her trying to understand what had happened that life-changing night could not be explained or wiped away with a sudden reappearance with another
woman
, she thought caustically.

Especially
that
woman.

Damn him—how did one transhape?

Charles thought she didn't have the ability to use her powers. He intended to watch over her and pin her down so she was never out of his sight, until he got what he wanted.

And that bloodsucking bitch wanted to
eat
Mirya and possess Dominick.

Senna felt a jolt of fury that almost paralyzed her.

She had to get Mirya away from here. Which meant she
had
to figure out how to change shape.

She had already successfully willed her body through time and space just by picturing where she wanted to go. Surely trans-shaping was no more difficult.

So just imagine yourself a fly . . . your body diminishing to the size of a bean with wings.

A slurping sound.
Really?

Charles: “Oh, Senna, you didn't.”

She tried out her wings, buzzing high up toward the ceiling.

Oh, yes, I did.

M
irya!

She buzzed insistently in Mirya's ear.

Quick, we have to go.

Mirya slept like a log. And Senna's puny little fly legs couldn't wake her. She could only buzz relentlessly in her ear.

Mirya, we don't have time. Wake up, wake up!

Finally, Mirya struggled to consciousness.

Mirya, we have to go. To your home. Now.

She buzzed away, just as Charles broke the door into Mirya's room, followed by Peter, Dominick, and Dnitra.

“Where is she?”

Mirya rubbed her eyes. “What?”

“Senna. I know she was here.”

“How can you know that when I don't even know that?”

“I know.”

“Ah,” Mirya murmured. “I don't know. Go away.”

“She knows,” Dnitra said, pushing her way past Charles. “Old woman, I will eat you if you do not tell.”

Mirya shrugged. As Dnitra lunged at her, Dominick grabbed Dnitra.

“You will die,” he whispered as she fought him. “Choose.”

She wrenched away from him. “Only because of Iosefescu.”

“That's as good a reason as any.” Dominick pulled her back into the hallway.

“Peter and I, we'll find her,” Charles said, following him. “We're not going to waste time looking for a needle in bell towers and hidey-holes. We'll watch Mirya. Shadow her. Find Senna. Simple.”

Charles turned back to the bedroom, where he expected to see Mirya sitting docilely on the side the bed. But no one was there. She was gone.

The alleyway was dark and narrow. Senna couldn't even see Mirya, but Mirya was like a cat; she saw in the dark, she knew her way by gut and by instinct, and she moved quickly and evasively as if the enemy were at her back.

Senna landed on her shoulder as she entered the alleyway and remained there until they were safely inside Mirya's little hovel.

“That is you?” Mirya asked. “Not Charles?”

“Me, if only I can transform myself. I'm trying. It's just, I don't know yet how it works.”

“Breathe deep. Think upward and outward.” Mirya bustled, putting up a pot of tea and setting out some biscuits from her meager stores.

“How do you know that?”

“I know many things.”

Senna breathed in as far as she could, envisioned herself upward and outward re-formed, and there she was, inhabiting her corporeal body as if she'd never transformed.

She slumped into the nearest chair, palming her belly. “That is damned tiring.”

“Tea.” Mirya handed her a cracked cup. “
You
will not eat me tonight.”

Senna sipped and sighed. “I need your help.”

“They, however, will kill me and devour me with no qualm at all.”

“Stop it.”

“It is the truth when you deal with vampires. If I help you, I die.”

“Lady Augustine lives.”

“Pah!” Mirya spit her tea. “Who sired her?”

“It wasn't me. I found her dead in the parlor,” Senna said carefully.

“Dead and blood-soaked,” Mirya finished for her. “And so you did what you did.”

“I did not sire her.” Senna sipped again so she wouldn't have to elaborate further.

Mirya shook her head. “No. You fed. Don't deny it. You did.”

Senna preferred silence to confessing to that sin. The only absolution was Lady Augustine's emergence as an undead, which was a mixed redemption at best.

“I have to find her,” Senna said finally. “The Season begins, the Queen will be more public than usual, and Lady Augustine—”

She couldn't finish. She would sound like a lunatic. Lady Augustine taking the place of the Queen, and paving the way for the Tepes to take over the Palace, Parliament, the world?

“The Keepers of the Night are very vigilant in their zeal to protect,” Mirya said offhandedly, biting into a biscuit.

“They're murdering people,” Senna said flatly, keeping her still-roiling feelings out of it. She still had enough humanity in her not to condone wholesale murder. Or taking down the Queen. She felt puny, weak, and too frail for a one-woman crusade to save the monarchy.

Charles would search relentlessly for her. And Dominick and that woman could return to wherever they came from. Senna had no use for him here.

“The baby moved,” she said suddenly.

Mirya perked up. “So.” She reached across to lay her palm against Senna's stomach.

No sparks. No electrical jolt.

Senna let out a breath as the baby moved tight against her belly and Mirya's hand.

Mirya nodded. “All is well. You should rest. Nothing more can be done tonight.” She cocked her head. “They are still searching.”

“Charles will never give up.”

“He will not find this place.”

“Can I stay?” Senna asked humbly.

“Oh, you are weary now, but in the morning . . .“ Mirya stopped and listened again. “In the morning, I could be dead.”

“
You
could kill me tonight,” Senna countered.

“Then we become wary allies until we're not.”

Senna slept in Mirya's bed, while Mirya curled up on the floor on a bed of rags. Blood dreams invaded Senna's consciousness. She hadn't fed in how long?

She couldn't leave the hovel, could she? If she transhaped until she found her victim?

But the Keepers of the Night were prowling, guarding the city. They were everywhere. She'd be in danger of being seen, caught, turned over to Charles because she was so inept in her vampiric skills.

But Mirya was there. Whole and full of hot, pumping blood—she might have been right she'd be dead by morning.

Even a rat would do.

If she didn't feed, she'd die . . . she'd be nothing but a desiccated body in the morning, her blood all sour and barely trickling out of her every pore.

Dominick . . . !

That cut deepest of all—Dominick and that vampire bitch. Dominick seemingly surrendering his claim on Senna, on her body, on their child.

The thought nearly crippled her.

It was too easy to jump to the worst conclusion.

She lay in Mirya's bed, rocking her body, holding on to what was left of her sanity, trying to keep her mind on the child. It didn't work.

Bite Mirya. Take Mirya, she expects to die.

NO! By the damned, if she did that . . .

She felt a nudge against her shoulder, and she slowly rolled over to face Mirya.

“This is for you.” Mirya held a basin in her hands, and Senna could just see that it was filled with liquid—no,
blood
.

She cupped the bowl in her hands and drank. Thick, hot, metallic, luscious. She paused once to gurgle, “How?”

“No matter. You will kill me anyway.” Mirya had already retreated to her little corner of the room.

Senna inhaled the scent. Fresh blood. Still warm. She thought she could feel the pulse of the body in which it had flowed. But she couldn't let herself think about that. Nothing mattered but feasting on it.

In the end, it wasn't nearly enough, but it was just what she needed at that moment. She could have drunk a bucketful.

She licked the sides of the bowl. She felt the child move. This was real. Life within her, conceived while she was alive.

She looked at the residue of blood in the bowl.

I am undead. I transformed my body. I can transport at will. I can compel a person's mind. I will continue to eternity.

She shuddered as she looked around the little room. It reeked of poverty and despair, the scent of the elderly and smoking candles, of dust, decay, and creatures hiding in the eaves. The furniture consisted of a bed, chairs, a table, a fireplace, a rocking chair, some cast-iron pots, some plates, and a rack of pegs on which to hang some ragged clothes.

Two dirty windows were on either side of the door, and under one of them Mirya had made the pallet of rags and dirty laundry on which she'd slept.

I am suffused with someone else's lifeblood.

What did she care about Lady Augustine? Or the Queen? Let them kill everyone, they couldn't kill her, and she'd protect the child growing in her with every ounce of vampire cunning she possessed.

She palmed her belly. Faint movement, a flutter.
Who are you, baby?

What are you?

She became aware that Mirya was watching her. Mirya knew. She'd felt the movement. She could tell.

“Mirya!”

Mirya waved her question away as if she knew what it was before Senna could ask it. Nor would she look at Senna. “Stay and rest,” Mirya told her, then got up and began preparing the morning tea.

“Mirya.”

“I know nothing.”

“You know many things. You felt it move. What did you sense?”

“It is an active baby.”

Senna's patience was wearing thin. Obviously vampires did not have much to spare.

“The child is healthy, it moves, it kicks, it grows. What more do you need to know?”

“Does it inherit its father's vampire blood?”

“How can I know that?” Mirya asked reasonably. “Have some tea.”

“You know.” Senna was absolutely certain of that.

“Lady Augustine,” Mirya said instead. “She is undead. She is not contained.”

“No.”

“And dangerous.”

“Possibly.”

“Dominick does not know.”

Senna went silent. The tea tasted like hot stale water. Mirya's gaze looked beyond her, to a place where she could see and sense things. Things she'd never tell.

But there were things Senna knew: that Charles and Peter were scheming to take down the monarchy. That they planned to kill and sire every last person into clan Tepes. They would make the streets awash with vampires, who, would, when they finally had nowhere else to root and roost, swell out to the countryside, to Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Europe, in a killing and siring spree until the Tepes ruled the world. And then what? Factions forming and reforming? New alliances? Prefectures of enemies? Interclan wars?

Where did the Iscariot fit in their doom-filled fantasy?

Charles must be stopped. Lady Augustine must be contained. The Queen must survive.

“Dominick doesn't know,” Senna said finally.

“He will help.”

“He is busy with other matters.”

“She is not important. Dominick, however, is. The Tepes must not rise to power.”

“Can they?”

“Anything is possible.”

“Mirya—” Senna hated the warning note in her voice.

Mirya shook her head. “Anything is possible. You must determine what you will do.”

“They plan to compel the Queen and put Lady Augustine in her place.”

Mirya shook her head again. “She has not been in London all that often. She will return as the Season commences, and the planning for her Jubilee begins. Lady Augustine will not get near her.” Mirya thought for a moment. “She could scrim a lady-in-waiting, perhaps.”