Immortal Confessions (29 page)

“Maybe two months?” he offered. “Even then,
your lady may not conceive. She may take a while to ‘catch,’ so to
speak.”

I did not like him talking of Anna as if she
were a goat. “Fine. Make more of the potion, enough to last six
months.”

“That is doable, Lord. But I’ll need payment
in advance.”

“How much?”

“For all of it…I’m guessing fifty thousand
dollars.”

My eyes popped wide. “Fifty THOUSAND?”

He nodded. “The ingredients are
expensive.”

“I’ll bring you the first payment tomorrow,”
Rene said. “Please leave.”

The potion maker nodded, and disappeared.

“Damn demons,” Rene said. “I know it would
not cost so much if he was not charging us ten times the going rate
for his damned demon blood.”

Demon blood? I was drinking demon blood? I
felt queasy. Then I felt surprised, as Rene was making a kind of
attempt at humor. I had never heard her curse before, or even act
upset.

“Go to Quentin,” Rene said. “Have the money
ready, and tell me where to pick it up. I will deliver it.”

“I cannot get it that fast,” I said, sitting
down heavily. “Truthfully, I don’t know if I have enough. My
investments have grown, but not to that extent. We need money for
our house—”

“What is more important to Anna,” Rene said
softly. “A house or a child?”

I got up and went to talk to Quentin.

He was dismayed, and incredulous. “Have you
lost your mind? This is what you want to spend your fortune on?
This is dreams and nonsense!”

“Think that if you will, but do not speak of
it, not within Anna’s hearing,” I said sternly. “Just get me the
money.”

He grumbled, but he began getting it. He sold
off the bulk of my investments that week, and Rene delivered the
cash to the potion-maker. In return, I received little vials to
drink every day of more of that shimmering clear fluid.

Ravel asked me if I felt any side effects,
but there were none, not even any pain. Anna acted the same, too.
By the third month, she was still not pregnant, even though I had
turned warm almost a month before.

“Have patience,” the potion-maker said, as he
gleefully took my money. “From the books, it could take years—”

I grabbed hold of him. “I will not pay for
years of nothing,” I said, baring my fangs. “Do you
understand?”

“I do,” he said haughtily. “If nothing
happens, the next two months after that the demon blood is on me.
But I don’t advise trying longer than that, Vampire. There is a
limit to how much of yourself you can share with a human without
harming her, even a resistant one, as your Lady seems to be.”

I stalked away from him, wanting to kill him,
and knowing I couldn’t, as he was too important to Anna’s dream of
a child.

Time passed, month after month. Anna became
silent, and withdrawn, and the hope that had been so strong in our
hearts felt now like a millstone around our necks. We kept trying
every night, though there was little pleasure now in the act for
me, as it had become a kind of test, a test I was failing the
longer no child formed within her. It was easy to see Anna had
begun to feel the same way.

Uther, Eva, and Quentin said nothing to us,
though by now word had spread about what we were trying to do.
Somehow, it was harder to be around them after they knew, as it was
something that could not be mentioned. In response, Anna and I kept
to ourselves more.

Then the inevitable happened.

Eva came to me, and told me she had decided
to leave. The wolf pack was leaving, as humans were moving into the
area, and already, two of the pack had been shot. She wanted my
permission to go with them.

“You’ll likely die,” I told her seriously.
“There are more humans heading west. There are no forests in the
Great American Desert.”

“We are heading west and then north,” she
replied. “It doesn’t matter, Devlin. I have had enough of the
vampire world and the human one. It is easier with the wolves. I
will miss Anna a great deal, but I cannot stay here in this place
just for her.”

“Go then,” I said, giving her a chaste kiss
as I removed her choker. “You are released from your oath.”

Eva gave me a grateful smile. Later that
night, Ravel removed her oathing marks, and she hugged us all
goodbye. As I watched her walk naked into the woods for the last
time, and change, I found myself admiring her lithe body and
lamenting that I had never slept with her. Then I put the thought
out of my head, embarrassed.

A week later, Quentin left. He came to me,
bag in hand to say he was going south. “There is nothing for me
here,” he said a little sheepishly. “You know I like city life.
You, Anna, and the bats are happy here, but I’m not. It’s okay if
you want a rural life, but I must seek my own elsewhere.”

“Go,” I said, shaking his hand. “You are
right, its better this way.”

He took a train south the next day, arriving
in Charleston in a week’s time. For a few months we got letters
from him, telling us of all we were missing, and how much fun we’d
have, if we only came down to visit.

A month later, the letters stopped. Worried,
I sent Ravel to investigate.

He came back with sad news. Quentin had been
careless and bitten a human who was niece of the mayor of that
city, causing her to fall ill. The Lord of that city had had him
hunted down and killed.

I thought for many months afterward on
Quentin’s life and his death. To have come through all the scrapes
he had in Europe, to have arrived in this country and suffered
through months of living in the sticks, as he called it, and then
finally to make it back to the city life he loved, only to be
killed a few months later…it seemed horribly unfair. Quentin might
have been boorish, but he was no killer. The woman he’d attacked
hadn’t even died; she’d most likely been willing. It grated on me,
because I kept thinking to myself if I’d had control of this
northern state as I knew I should then maybe I could have
interceded on his behalf, and stopped him from being killed.

I hadn’t really missed Quentin, sure somehow
in time he’d return. Realizing that this would never happen now, I
began to feel lonely, as my trips to town were and would now always
be solitary ones. Quentin hadn’t been my close friend, but he had
been someone to talk to that was male, and the only vampire I’d
ever really known. I was reluctant to try to strike up another
friendship with my kind. There were only two others I knew of in
Plymouth besides the Vampire Chief, and they were not the sort I
wanted to make the acquaintance of anyway.

As a result, my friendship with Uther
deepened. He came and sat with me sometimes, now that Quentin was
gone. It was a brief respite to talk to him, as protecting Anna
took up most of my time, and it was true we grated on each other’s
nerves with Eva also gone. One night I told him of how I’d met
Anna, and my life, and even about Danial, and how we’d been
attacked and become vampires. He didn’t say anything about it,
ever. But he shared some of his past with me too, over the
following months, and it felt good to have a best friend again.

* * * *

Finally, the following spring of 1820, our
luck changed for the better. We learned that Eva was alive, that
she had found a werewolf mate of her own, and that they were living
in what would be Wisconsin one day.

Rene heard a week later that Louis was dead,
killed in his home Department of Ille-et-Vilaine by an assassin who
had also killed Anthony, and a slew of his vampires. Suspicion was
on his successor, a vampire called Martin. Nothing else was known.
I was just glad that bastard was dead.

A week after that, Anna came to me and told
me she was pregnant.

I wish my tale ended here. But I must go on
to the bitter end.

Those months while Anna was pregnant were
wonderful. She did almost nothing, as I waited on her hand and
foot. As the doctor I took her to via Ravel’s teleportation said
all was well, I still made love to her as much as she would let me,
but very carefully and tenderly, with none of my usual roughness.
We did not share blood, worried it might hurt the baby. I quoted
her poetry, as I had not for so long, and I sang to her sometimes,
as I held her sleeping in my arms.

There were difficulties. Anna seemed to want
me to bite her more than she had before. I did as she asked, as I
did not scent her turning, and I was careful not to take her blood,
using more of the paste concocted by Ravel to heal her wounds. Yet
it worried me that she asked for that.

Rene was no help, nor was Ravel. “We can’t
advise on what we know nothing of,” Rene said patiently. “Do as you
think best, and as Anna wishes.”

Uther did help, him and his people. By now
our large home was built, and ten of his batmen patrolled it at all
times. This was small comfort, as I worried about Anna constantly,
that we would be attacked and she would be hurt. It was irrational,
but I began to fear that hunters would come, or another vampire,
and take her. The more her belly grew with our child, the more
intense my fear became, until I dared not sleep, for fear I might
wake up and not find her next to me.

In that, I made the worst mistake of my life.
I went to the Chief Vampire in New York, and told him of what was
happening, and asked for his protection for Anna.

He did not believe me at first. When he
finally did, greed filled his eyes. “Are you sure it is yours?” he
said. “Are you sure?”

“I am.”

“Then she must be protected at all costs,” he
said seriously. “I will have to let my superior know, as law
requires.”

I felt the first warnings of danger. “Do not
let anyone else know. The fewer who know, the better.”

“I cannot keep this kind of information from
Joshua,” he said. “His wrath would be terrible. And you would be
wise to have his protection in this. He can spare a regiment of
guards to send to you, when I cannot. He will be honored you asked
him for his help, that he could be part of this.”

That was a lie; I’d seen he’d wanted Anna for
himself. But there was nothing for it now but to accept.

A week later, ten werebears showed up at our
home. I marveled at the size of them, and marveled still more, when
I saw them become bear. They were the largest and most powerful
weremen I’d ever seen, a type of Western native bear called a
grizzly.

“We are Joshua’s men,” their leader said. “My
name is Cavedweller.”

I expected something like that. These were
all native men, too, by their human forms.

“We will protect the woman,” Cavedweller
said. “We know what to do. Tell your men to stand aside in there is
an attack, as it is our lives if anything happens to her.”

I brought them to Anna. After that, they
became her shadows.

She hated it, of course. But when a trio of
vampire hunters came that next week, I was grateful they were
there.

Uther and his men dispatched two of them
easily as they slunk in the windows. But a third found the secret
passage to our room, followed it upstairs, and made it close enough
to Anna to make her scream.

I was in my study, working on my ledgers and
swearing at the cost of things, when I heard it. I was at her side
a moment later. But the hunter was dead by then, and his remains
had already been taken outside.

I thanked Cavedweller. He just nodded, and
said that was what he was there for.

More hunters came that next week, and he
killed them too, though I drained one myself in a fit of pique.

The week after, a young vampire came to the
house. He said he was just curious when we caught and interrogated
him. He had heard there was a woman pregnant by a vampire and
wanted to see if it was true, that he meant no harm. Cavedweller,
who said his reasons didn’t matter, that any strange vampires were
to be killed on sight, dispatched him.

I lay next to Anna that night, thinking of
all she was to me, and congratulating myself that I’d done
everything I could to protect her, to make sure she wasn’t stolen
from me. I told myself I could relax, that surely now, she was
safe.

* * * *

A month later, Anna was outside picking
flowers when I heard her scream. A second later, she was being
carried inside by two of the werebears, who were frantically
calling for me. I ran to her side. She was groaning in pain, blood
seeping through her dress.

“Uther!” I screamed. “Uther!”

He was at my side a few moments later. By
then, Anna had slipped into unconsciousness.

“She is losing the child,” he rasped. “We
must get help!”

“Take her to Rene,” I said, running for my
coat. “I’ll meet you there!”

“It is day,” he said. “You cannot go
outside—”

“I’ll find a way! Go!”

“You cannot,” Cavedweller growled, blocking
our way with his bearmen. “She must come with us, or we must go
also. We are not to let her out of our sight. Those were my
orders.”

I didn’t have time for this. I shoved him
aside, and he shoved me back. His push was incredibly powerful—I
went through the interior wall and lodged halfway in.

Everything happened at once. Uther called
loudly for his men, and grabbed hold of Anna, morphing into his
batform. The bears tried to hold him, but he broke free,
screeching, and his men flooded the room, attacking the bears.

I tried to get myself out of the wall,
shouting I was going to kill Cavedweller, all his men, Joshua, and
that fucking Indian Chief vampire, too, if I didn’t get Anna to
Rene in time. I worked myself out of the wall a second later, and
ran outside, putting on my coat. The pain of the sun’s rays on my
skin was instantaneous. I shrieked, and kept running, seeing my
wrists that were uncovered smoking, feeling my face peeling. I ran
on, because I couldn’t do anything else.