Blood to Blood (20 page)

The railing had already been put in on the main staircase, one of the few things left in place from the building's previous days. Work also had begun on a second staircase, added as another precaution against fire.

Mina climbed the main stairs to the second floor, where a set of rooms for a woman with children were taking shape. Scarcely three meters square, the rooms seemed small to her, even without the cupboard and bed that would take up most of the floor space. But they, like most of the rooms, had small windows that could be opened for air and every other a rope attached to the sill, another escape route should they need it.

"All these precautions seem so extreme," Mina said. "I'm concerned that we might be challenging disaster."

"With so many living in such a small space, the risks increase. You've seen how many children the hospital has treated for burns," Winnie reminded her.

There was a third floor, reserved for women without children, but the stairs were only roughed in. A dangerous climb for women in long skirts and they didn't attempt it, returning to the ground floor instead.

There Mina paused and looked at the additions one more time, wondering if Gance would approve of how she'd spent so much of his gift to her, then followed Winnie outside. Winnie checked her watch. "We should find a cab," she said. "Margaret is cooking dinner by herself tonight, and I wouldn't want to be late and risk having her burn it."

They'd asked their cab to wait, and as they walked toward it they saw Dr. Rhys coming up the road. Though he was dressed in a suit and vest, he carried his medical bag.

"Visiting a patient?" Winnie asked when he'd joined them at the side of the road.

"Actually, I'm leaving for London on the last train tonight. I thought I'd catch you here to see if Mrs. Harker and you were interested in having supper with me before I go."

He'd spoken to Winnie, but looked at Mina as he did. "Actually, I have plans already—" Mina began.

"She and Mr. Beason and I are dining together. You're welcome to join us if you wish, though I really hadn't planned on—"

"If you mean that you're likely having a brisket or such, yes, I do eat meat. But I would not wish to impose, and I'll need to dine closer to the station if I am to leave tonight."

Again, he watched Mina as he said this, waiting no doubt for her to second the invitation. "Then since we're going near the station, you should share our cab. They can be hard to come by at this time of day," Mina said instead.

They dropped him close to town. As he left, he took her hand as always. This time he kissed the back of it. "Those you help would never dare to do this. They should," he said and left without looking at her again. His hand had been damp and had left patches of dampness on her own that cooled and dried in the breeze coming through the open doorway. Mina watched him walking away as the cab started on.

"If you had said one word," Winnie commented.

"Which is why I did not."

"For the best, anyway. You know, I have heard that he doesn't have any patients in London at all. That he goes to carouse in the worst sort of places."

"Then why does he take the bag?" Mina asked, smiling.

"It's filled with sheaths."

They giggled, but though Winnie might not realize it, there was a grain of truth in the jest. The doctor's actions reminded Mina of Jonathan's when they had first met—those reluctant, almost chaste touches, the glances that quickly ended when he saw she was watching. With the doctor, unable to speak to her of how he felt, they seemed to grow in intensity. Then he would go to London for a night or two and return far more relaxed. Well, there was a large Indian settlement in the city. Perhaps he had a sweetheart there.

Mina hoped he did, someone to lighten the quiet intensity of the man.

It was fewer than three weeks since she'd first spoken to Arthur Holmwood, but Joanna began to wonder if the feeling, the strange, flustered feeling that she'd never experienced before, was something akin to love.

No, not love. Love was too enduring an emotion to feel for a creature whose life was so fleeting. Infatuation, perhaps? Not just with the man, though he was handsome and attentive enough; no, there were his possessions as well.

After she found the box of earth and the place he had arranged, obviously for her, she had gone to his room confused and angry from that confusion. She had lain behind him, wrapped her arms around his chest, holding him tightly.

"Arthur Holmwood. You wish to speak to me. Wake up," she'd called.

And he had. For a moment, he struggled; then, realizing who held him, he stopped testing her and relaxed in her arms. "Did you like the gift?" he whispered.

"This is a terrible game you play," she said, gripping more tightly so he had to fight to catch a breath.

"I've been nothing but honest. And I have no intention to harm you. Do what you wish with me."

The anguish in his tone was obvious. It recalled a similar surrender in herself, memories centuries old but too intense to forget. How many times had she said words so similar? How many more times had she thought them?

She let him go, and moved away with scarcely a rustle on his bedcovers.

He wrapped the sheet around himself and sat on the edge of his bed. "I stayed awake so many nights waiting for you. Finally, I was so exhausted, you caught me asleep. I'm sorry."

"Sorry?" She hissed the beginning of the word, then held the remaining breath for her next response.

"One should remain awake for a guest."

"I was late." She began to giggle, fought it and won, standing still and silent, as Illona might have.

They looked at each other in silence until she asked, "Why did you do all this to bring me here? What do you want of me?"

"To know you." She frowned and he went on, "Not what you are. I know that already. I want to know what you feel, how you exist, your dreams… all of it."

What could she answer? She had no idea how to start except, perhaps, with the story she had recently told Colleen. But it was already late. She didn't need a clock to tell her that she had at most two hours to dawn and a long way to travel.

"Tomorrow night," she whispered and vanished.

Used to being awake when her mistress returned from her travels. Colleen was up well before dawn. The mantel clock said it was after four, far later than Joanna usually roamed. Though she knew it was silly to worry. Colleen could not help herself. She paced the little house, moving from room to room as if convinced that Joanna would try to avoid her altogether.

Joanna had no reason to do so. Indeed, she wanted a human perspective on what had happened that night. But seeing Colleen so angry, she said nothing to the girl. She even took refuge behind the locked door of her own chamber when Colleen, completely forgetting the deference a servant owed to her mistress, demanded the information. Joanna might have reminded Colleen of her place but the girl meant so much more.

And so, minutes before dawn, she returned to the room where Colleen pretended to sleep and kissed her lightly on the cheek. "I will never leave you," she said, repeating a promise she had made more than once, then retreated before the hungry light of the rising sun.

Even in sleep, she could feel Colleen's misery—sharpened by the blood bond between them. Illona and her brother had used the bond to make slaves of their human servants. Joanna looked at it first as a tool for learning, later as a gift. The bond between them allowed her to share the girl's humanity. For that alone she would love her.

At dusk, Joanna dressed in a russet-colored gown, the newest in her growing collection, and joined her now placid servant in the parlor.

"I'm sorry," Colleen said, looking at her with eyes red from crying.

Joanna said nothing, only sat beside her and reached for her hand. Even on this cool evening, it felt warm against her own. She sat there, relishing the peace of the house until the mantel clock struck midnight. "Go to sleep. I'll wake you later," she said to Colleen.

Before the girl could reply, she was gone.

She found Arthur waiting for her in his garden, drenched with moonlight, as if he had guessed that she had spent the happiest years of her life in gardens. But though her grandfather's had been beautiful, they could not compare in scope or arrangement to this one.

Not only one, Arthur had explained on that second night she came to him. There was a cutting garden, a rose garden, vegetable and herb gardens for the kitchen and sachets. There were hedge mazes and topiaries and arbors.

That evening she walked with him through all of them while she answered his vague questions as best she could.

What was her life like?

Endless. Lonely. Filled with darkness.

He seemed so sad at hearing this that she tried to convey the glory of night. But the words seemed hollow, even to her. After centuries, she still dreamed of the sun. "Why do you question me like this?" she asked him in turn.

They were in a hedge maze then, walking aimlessly near the center. A bench had been provided for those hopelessly lost. He sat on it and did not look at her as he confessed his part in the killing of her brother, and why he had done it.

"I saw Lucy die twice. I wanted vengeance that no human laws could give me. I won't apologize for what I did to him. But I mourn for my Lucy and despise my weakness in killing her. That's why I sought you out. I… I thought that if I were to find you and speak with you and know you, then I would at least be spared all the doubt. Guilt at least offers the promise of eventual peace, but doubt only seems to grow stronger with age."

How could she answer except with the truth? She gulped in air, convinced that if she had tears to shed she would be crying, as he was. "For as long as my brother walked the earth, your lover would have been his slave," she said. "When you killed him, you would have ended that."

"Then afterward she could have been mine?"

She had no words to answer him. Instead she pulled him to his feet and pressed her body against his. Chest to chest. Lips to lips. He shuddered, tried to pull away, but she held him until he was frantic, then released him. He fell backward onto the bench, and she suspected that only supreme self-control kept him from running as far as he could, trying to get away from the horror he felt.

"There would have been no"—she tried to find the right word and used her own instead—"
relatie sexuala
. No children. No life as other couples have."

"I could have let her live."

"With him she would have been a slave. Without him, helpless as a child."

She considered the weeks after the change, how the new and desperate hunger would not be controlled. Illona had brought her youths and infants, mocking that soft spot in her silent heart. And though it had sickened her to destroy those innocents, she had feasted on them. "Children are all alike," she finally said. "They are brutal in taking what they need."

"But if—"

Incredible! He would continue to protest, continue to find some reason to think he should be damned. She was too weary to argue further. She took a backward step away from him, another, then turned and fled on human feet into the maze.

"What have I done?" he called as he tried to follow, went the wrong way at the second turn, turned back and came face to face with her.

By then she was calmer, "Enough," she ordered.

"I'm sorry," he whispered and offered her his arm.

They went on through the maze and out the far side, down a straight path lined with poplars and flower-filled urns to an iron bench where they sat some distance apart, silent and awkward.

"And your thoughts on London?" he finally asked.

"Too confining. Too dangerous."

"Dangerous? For you?" he actually laughed as he said this, as if she were powerful, not in hiding and constantly afraid.

"For your own." She told him about the starving child.

"There are too many poor to help. And too few people try."

"In my land, parents give their last bits of food to their children. What other future is there?"

"It's different here."

She told him about the murder she'd witnessed.

He wasn't laughing then. "There have been four murders just this summer. You actually saw the man?"

"Just his back, not his face. I've glimpsed him before, I think. And now he has seen me."

"Does he know what you are?"

"He knows I am different."

"Don't go back to those streets."

"You sound like my servant. Always worrying about me. But how should I live. Lord Arthur? Should I feed on the wealthy until someone spies me and hunts me down?"

"Men like that are deadly…" Wanting to warn her, he reached for her hand as if she were fragile, human. His hand passed through her, her form ghostly in the dim lamplight, her nervous laughter vibrating in the air. "Deadly." She repeated his last word.

The air cooled around him and she was gone—up and toward the crowded parts of the city.

The hunger she felt that night was not for blood. Instead she walked the gayer streets of Chelsea and St. James, stopping finally beneath the marble columns of the St. James Theater. The lights were up in the lobby, revealing women with long skirts and elaborate hats, men in starched collars and ascots. She heard their laughter, watched gloved hands with feathered fans flutter seductively.

The lights dimmed slowly. A cue, no doubt, because the lobby emptied quickly, leaving only a pair of bored ushers.

No threat to her. Formless, she moved inside and up to a dark corner of the balcony. There she took form again and stayed, a woman unnoticed in the dark. She watched the audience as they did the stage—never a part of it, intrigued nonetheless. She could hear every breath, every soft whisper to a partner or friend, every rustle of a taffeta petticoat.

The noises around her faded. She stood lost in thought until the heroine on the stage stepped forward and began to sing.

She had an incredible voice, one well suited to her love song. Joanna listened to the deep breaths that gave life to the long, drawn-out notes, the lilting tremolos.

Once, she would have found the creature attractive only for the blood she could give. Not anymore. For centuries she had killed and killed, and convinced herself that that was how she needed to live. The lust for killing had become like the lust for opium or strong drink—a vice impossible to control while caught up in it. Once the others were gone and she was on her own. her fear had made that killing impossible. It was her weakness, not her strength, that broke the hold that horrible lust had on her soul.

And she had longed to be as strong as her Tepes blood. A horrible fate!

Her weakness seemed a blessing now. She took a seat in the empty back row and listened with rapture to that voice rising and falling and rising again to incredible heights. If she had money with her, she would have sent flowers after the performance, or some other gift to show her gratitude for the revelation that voice had given.

So how would she answer Arthur's anguished questions when she saw him next? A lie would be so much kinder than the truth, but she had time to consider that. More pressing was what she should tell Colleen now that her perspective on her servant had shifted.

For that the truth would be kindest, she decided, then sat and thought of nothing but music until the curtain fell.

As the lights went up, she vanished and moved out the second-floor doors to the balcony, the night. She waited until nearly dawn before returning to her home and the safety of her box, her earth.